The alienation of Valerii Pereleshin

Valerii Pereleshin, a Russian-Chinese-Brazilian poet, translator, and monk, remains an underexplored and virtually unknown figure despite a life that spanned pivotal political and cultural moments of the twentieth century. Born in 1913 in Russia and dying in obscurity in Brazil in 1992, Pereleshin’s experiences of displacement, queerness, and marginality were central to his identity, yet he has largely been relegated to the periphery of literary scholarship. This article reinterprets his work through the Hegelian notion of alienation (Entäusserung), arguing that alienation is not a deficit but the very condition of freedom. Rather than a source of suffering, alienation enables subjectivity to emerge through misinterpretation, self-division, and eccentricity. Drawing on queer theory and psychoanalysis, and working within the broader Hegelian-psychoanalytic tradition, the article examines how Pereleshin’s queerness unsettles conventional notions of identity and belonging, casting alienation as a dynamic process of becoming. Pereleshin’s life and poetry demonstrate how freedom arises from the disruption of social norms and expectations, rejecting the myth of coherence or unity. By reclaiming alienation as a generative force, this study shows how transformation – of the self and the collective – occurs not through harmony but through shared dissonance.