Bakunin: Pitcher or Catcher?

Reprinted from an email I sent to a group of friends and academics last week...

This demonstrates, perhaps, the heights of dorkdom I conquer, up late reading.

While George Woodcock's chapter on Bakunin (in Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements -- a fabulous text, by the way) begins with giving explicit exception to "the sexual" when discussing The Big Guy's enormous appetites... It does go on to say the following (in reference to Bakunin's relationship with Sergio Nachayev):


"The fascination that Nachayev wielded over Bakunin reminds one of other disastrous relationships between men of widely differing ages: Rimbaud and Verlaine, or Lord Alfred Douglas and Oscar Wilde. There certainly seems to have been a touch of submerged homosexuality; indeed, it is hard to find any other explanation for the temporary submissiveness of the usually autocratic Bakunin to this sinister youth."


BOOYAAAA! Gay as a picnic basket. I rest my case. Anthony Masters's biography tapdances around it, while depicting a life straight out of Brokeback (replete with Bakunin's final years spent in the guest room of a house he shared with his wife, her live-in lover, and the 3 kids the latters' extracurricular activities produced), and Paul Avrich's Anarchist Portraits more or less has our oh-so-bearish "asexual" Uncle Micky pouring out his heart-wrenching disillusionment in letters with Nachayev; signing off with what could fairly be referred to as the late 1800's version of "I wish I knew how to quit you." Look it up for yourself.

That is all. Good night.
:::cue disco music outro:::