Petersburg summary

Demonstration on October 17, 1905 by Ilya Yefimovich Repin
Picture source

What an amazing, strange, wonderful, funny, frustrating, magical book. Needless to say, I highly recommend it. So what have you heard about Petersburg? Vladimir Nabokov declared it one of the most important works of the twentieth century, but he also stated no good English translation was available. I have no idea whether or not the 2009 Pushkin Press edition that I read, with translation by John Elsworth, corrects that deficiency. Even if the language only hints at what the original Russian achieves, it is a wonderful read on the surface as well as for deeper import. One example I can point to “on the surface” is the repetition of words, phrases and sentences providing a rhythm to the work that begs for it to be read out loud. This rhythm mimics the corkscrew-like plotline, circling back on itself while at the same time moving forward.

Petersburg is often likened to Joyce’s Ulysses and I find myself puzzled at that comparison. Many techniques in the style and wordplay are the same, to be sure. In addition, both books focus on a short time period with a city as a major character, but the main thing in common is that one or a dozen posts can’t sum up what it feels like to read the work. I’ll take a brief stab at a few of things I found interesting.

With a non-linear plot, jerky character development, and recurring motifs I found myself constantly asking “what is this novel all about?” The setting provides one clue, taking place in October 1905 Petersburg at the beginning of an unsuccessful revolution. There are many “revolutions” in addition to the obvious political friction taking place during the course of the novel. There is a strong generational conflict that reminded me of Turgenev’s Fathers and Children at times. Marital strife surfaces often as we see the possible dissolution of at least two families. Even with all the strife, the similarities and ties between characters stand out more than the differences. Actions and thoughts recur and migrate across characters, providing literal and symbolic patterns to help understand the individuals as well as the society. Bely looks at how everyone fits together in the “human myriapod” as well as what happens when they don’t engage harmoniously. The collective provides a life...a sound, a consciousness...of its own.

I’ve posted several excerpts that provide examples of the dual nature of characters and events, things described literally and symbolically for surreal effect. One recurring motif throughout Petersburg is that of expansion, whether of body parts (literally and figuratively), sensory diffusion, childhood nightmares, or the looming explosion (or at least the threat of it). This motif and the question of what is the novel all about fit together in looking at the Prologue, where the narrator asks “What is this Russian empire of ours?” He starts by pointing at a map and specifically at Petersburg, a two-dimensional dot. Throughout the book the meaning of Petersburg and of the Russian empire are expanded into greater meaning. The surreal and otherworldly descriptions of Petersburg append themselves to its very existence, a city whose existence mirrors the opening question. The statue of Peter comes to life (to some extent) worming its way into the consciousness of the city’s inhabitants and becomes an apocalyptic figure guarding the city from attack. The setting also plays into this question of what is the Russian empire, occurring after the disastrous loss of the war with Japan and as workers’ strikes begin. Petersburg itself stands as a symbol of Peter the Great’s imposed modernization while the appearance of Mongols in the city and bureaucracy (described by their dress) highlights the East vs. West struggle to define the empire. Possibly to signal which side Bely thinks will triumph, the young Nikolai discards Kant (Europe) in favor of Skovoroda ("Russia", in particular the East).

Here are my previous posts on Petersburg:

Petersburg online resources (including links to the prologue and first chapter as well as other works by Bely)

Discussion: Prologue and Chapter 1

Excerpt: The senator’s second space

Excerpt: A laughable figure

Excerpt: Beyond the wall, beyond the mirror

Discussion: Chapters 2, 3, 4

Excerpt: The terrible import of his soul

Excerpt: Why am I—I?

Excerpt: The horror in the eyes of his consort

Excerpt: And she was sad

Map of Peterburg, 1903
Picture source

Petersburg: And she was sad

Woman Sitting on a Red-Flowered Sofa by Gustave Caillebotte (1882)
Picture source

Anna Petrovna!

We had forgotten about her: but Anna Petrovna had returned and now she was waiting…but first:

—those twenty four hours! —

—those twenty-four hours in our narration expanded and scattered throughout psychic spaces: as a hideous dream; and the closed off the vista all round; and the author’s vision became embroiled in psychic space; it was occluded.

And with it Anna Petrovna was lost to view.

Like somber, leaden clouds, leaden cerebral games dragged by in this closed vista, in a circle that we have drawn—with no way out, no way out, ad nauseam—in those twenty-four hours!...

And through these baneful events in their sombre flow the news of Anna Petrovna fluttered like the glow of a soft light—from somewhere. We lost ourselves in sad thoughts then—but only for a moment; and—forgot—but we ought to have remembered…that Anna Petrovna—had returned.

Those twenty-four hours!

A day and a night, that is; a relative concept, a concept—consisting of a multitude of moments, where a moment—

—is either the minimal segment of time, or—something quite other, something psychical, determined by the fullness of psychic events—not a number; if determined by a number, it is precise, it is—two tenths of a second; and in that case it is unchanging; if determined by the fullness of psychic events it is—an hour, or—zero: experience burgeons in a moment, or—is absent in a moment--

—where a moment in our narration was like a full cup of events.

But Anna Petrovna’s arrival is a fact; indeed, a huge one; true, it contains no terrible import, as certain other facts we have noted do; and that is why we, the author, forgot about Anna Petrovna; >and, as tends to happen, in our wake, the heroes, of the novel forgot as well. All the same…

—Anna Petrovna had returned; she did not witness the events we have described; she had no knowledge or suspicion—of these events; only one occurrence was of concern to her: her own return; and it should have been of concern to the characters I have described; these characters ought immediately to have reacted to that occurrence; to have showered her with notes and letters, expressions of joy or anger; but no notes, no messengers to her were forthcoming: to this immense occurrence no attention was paid—either by Nikolai Apollonovich, or by Apollon Apollonovich.

And—Anna Petrovna was sad.

(pages 521-522, Petersburg by Andrei Bely, Pushkin Press, 2009, translation by John Elsworth)

I love this section of the return of Apollon’s wayward wife (and Nikolai’s mother) because it highlights many things Bely does throughout the book. The narrator constantly reminds you that all of this is happening through his “idle cerebral play”. His characters, “in our wake”, tend to engage in the same activities as the narrator. The narrator stays aloof at times, then inserts himself in the middle of the story. While omniscient and generous with details one page, the next he declares “what they said to one another over tea there in the hotel room remained forever an impenetrable secret to everyone”. Going on and on with scenes and story, he (almost) ends with an abrupt “Here we put a full-stop.”

This section stresses the dual nature of things that Bely has worked on throughout the book. Concepts can be relative, either defined and precise or a “psychic event”, usually both at the same time. Many of these “psychic events” Bely employs are fantastic and magical, surreal in nature when described on the page but no less real than the experience of the precise meaning.

I have often heard Petersburg described as happening in a twenty-four hour period, which this excerpt appears to reinforce. I would guess that the bulk of the book takes place during a thirty-six hour period, but the opening sets up the story ten days earlier and the abrupt ending and epilogue carry the story forward several months. Still, after rushing along through so much action the reminder that much of this has occurred in such a brief period of time provides a reminder of how compressed the story has been.

This will be my last post on Petersburg before a brief summary and round-up of the other posts on the book. I don’t want to reveal too much about what happens in the final chapter (which begins with the above excerpt). Suffice it to say there is a payoff to everything leading up to this point and, while not as flashy or involved as some scenes, I found it profoundly intense and powerful. As I need to say in the summary post, highly recommended.

Petersburg: The horror in the eyes of his consort

Work is taking all my time...and then some. But I wanted to share a passage I read last night that captured much of what I’m enjoying about Petersburg. There have been many plot twists and revelations. What should I do when I want to comment on what I’ve read before more is revealed and before I fully understand what's happening? As I done so far with this book, I'll continue to err on the side of premature comments.

The passage below is from pages 486-487 of Petersburg by Andrei Bely, Pushkin Press, 2009, with translation by John Elsworth. I guess I should add there are a couple of revelations in this excerpt, of which I’ve tried to keep to a minimum in my posting on this book so far (at least beyond the ordinary comments and summaries of the book).

Apollon Apollonovich clasped his head firmly in his fingers, as his gaze drifted off into the crackling hearth, exhaling warmth: idle cerebral play!

The narrator had intruded time and time again, letting us know that the story we are reading is only a figment of his “idle cerebral play”, but we find out that his characters engage in “idle cerebral play”, too, as creations engage in the same pastimes as creators. While few of the character-specific things would have transpired, the reader still feels like he is experiencing the environment of October 1905 from Bely’s idle cerebral play.

It, too, drifted away—drifted off beyond the bounds of consciousness: there it went on swirling up into the swarms of chaotic clouds; and Nikolai Apollonovich came to mind—quite short of stature with a penetrating blue gaze and a cluster (one must be fair) of the most varied intellectual interests hopelessly confused.

And a young girl came to mind (that was—thirty years ago); a host of suitors; among them a still relatively young man, Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov, already a state councillor and—a desperate admirer.

And—the first night: the horror in the eyes of his consort, when she was left alone with him—the expression of disgust, contempt, disguised by a submissive smile; that night Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov, already a state councillor, performed a hideous act, sanctioned by custom; he raped a girl; this rape went on for years; and on one such night Nikolai Apollonovich was conceived—between two smiles of different kinds: between smiles of lust and of submission; was it surprising that Nikolai Apollonovich became thereafter a combination of revulsion, fear and lust? They should have embarked forthwith upon the joint upbringing of the horror they had begotten: the humanising of that monster.

Instead they just inflated it…

Like many other revelations in the last half of the book this provides much needed context for previous acts and attitudes. In addition, Apollon has gone through a humiliating reduction in status during the past few days and this passage reduces him in the reader's eyes.

And once they had inflated the horror to the limit, they ran away from it in different directions; Apollon Apollonovich—to direct the fate of Russia; and Anna Petrovna—to gratify her sexual proclivities with Mantalini (an Italian singer); Nikolai Apollonovich—into philosophy; and from there—into gatherings of undergraduates from non-existent institutions (all those moustaches!). Their domestic hearth had now become a desolate abomination.

Apollon Apollonovich has just spent the morning dusting his library and no longer has the power to direct the fate of Russia. Does he even have the power to direct his life or those around him anymore? (Is now a good time to mention that pesky ticking sardine can full of explosives in the house?)

And now he must return to that abominable desolation; instead of Anna Petrovna he would encounter nothing but a locked door, leading to her apartment (unless Anna Petrovna conceived a desire to return to this abominable desolation); he had the key to these apartments (he had been into this part of the cold house no more than twice: to sit there; each time there he had caught a cold).

I felt I might catch a cold from that sentence's coldness.

Instead of his son he would see there an elusive, blinking eye—huge, cold and empty: of cornflower blue; or maybe—shifty; or maybe—frightened out of its wits; horror would be hiding there—that same horror that had flared up in the bride the night that Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov, state councillor, for the first time…

And so on, and so on…

I get the feeling that "so on" will turn uglier in a few pages. Something about an abominable desolation...

Petersburg: Why am I—I?

Yet another extended quote from Petersburg. Many of the themes and motifs I mentioned in the first post continue to surface. Early in Chapter Six, the crowd in the streets is described as a wave, made up not of people but parts of bodies and articles of clothing. Bely captures the feeling surrounding the loss of individual existence in such a crowd, or is it really a separate being?

Beards, moustaches, chins: that abundance comprised the upper extremities of human torsos.

Shoulders flowed by, shoulders and shoulders; all together, the shoulders formed a pitch-black porridge; all the shoulders formed a slow-flowing porridge of extreme viscosity; and Alexandr Ivanovich’s shoulder immediately became attached to that porridge; stuck to it, you might say; and Alexandr Ivanovich Dudkin followed that self-willed shoulder, in accordance with the law of the indivisible wholeness of bodies; thus he was disgorged on to Nevskii Prospect; and there he was compressed like a single grain into the porridge that flowed with blackness.

What is a grain? It is both a world and an object of consumption; as an object of consumption a grain—of caviar, say—does not represent in itself a satisfactory wholeness; that wholeness—is caviar: the aggregate of grains; the consumer is not aware of grains of caviar; but he is aware of caviar; that is, the porridge of grains of caviar. Spread on a proffered sandwich. In just the same way the bodies of individuals who emerge on to the pavement are transformed on Nevskii Prospect into the organs of a communal body, into the grains of the caviar: the Nevskii pavements are a field of sandwiches. Exactly the same happened to the body of Dudkin as he emerged here: exactly the same happened to his persistent thought—to the thought of a huge, many-legged creature that ran along the Nevskii.

They left the pavement; multitudinous legs were running there; and they stared speechlessly at the multitudinous legs of the dark porridge of people as it ran past: the porridge, incidentally, was not flowing, but creeping: creeping and shuffling—creeping and shuffling on a tide of legs; the porridge was composed of many thousands of tiny constituents; every tiny constituent was a torso: and the torsos ran on legs.

There were no people on Nevskii Prospect; what was there was a creeping, clamouring myriapod; a miscellany of voices—a miscellany of words—was pouring out into a single moisture-laden space; coherent sentences clashed against each other and broke; and words flew apart there senselessly and terribly like the shards of empty bottles, all broken in a single spot: all of them, mixed at random, were woven together again into a sentence that flew for all infinity, without beginning or end; this sentence seemed senseless and woven from fantasy: the unalleviated senselessness of the sentence thus composed hung like black soot over the Nevskii; the black smoke of fantastic tales enveloped all its space.

And the Neva, swelling now and then, roared at those fantastic tales and beat against the massive granite walls.

The creeping myriapod is terrible. Here, along the Nevskii, it has been running for centuries. But higher up, above the Nevskii—it’s the seasons that do the running: springs, autumns, winters. There the sequence is changeable; but here—the sequence is unchanging in its springs, summers and winters;; through springs, summers, winters the sequence is the same. And, as we know, a limit is set to periods of time; and—period follows upon period; after spring comes summer; autumn follows upon summer and passes over into winter; and in spring everything thaws. There is no such limit to the human myriapod; nothing takes its place; its segments may change, but it—is forever the same; somewhere over there, beyond the railway station, its head bends round; its tail protrudes into Morskaia; but along the Nevskii its segments, the legs that are its members, shuffle by—with no head, no tail, no consciousness, no thought; the myriapod creeps past as it has always crept; and as it has crept, so it will go on creeping.

(pages 342-344, Petersburg by Andrei Bely, Pushkin Press, 2009, translation by John Elsworth)

Just a few lines later, Alexandr Ivanovich confirms the loss of consciousness when immersed in the myriapod as he tries to gather his thoughts “after immersion in the thought-collective it [his thought] had become an absurdity itself…”. Alexandr Ivanovich had earlier asked Nikolai Apollonovich “Why am I—I?”, questioning not just his existence but also what that existence means. Each character feels caught up in something in something greater than himself and Nikolai now understands him. Intrigues and events take surprising turns as the novel continues to rush along toward…well, whatever idle cerebral play deems.

Petersburg: The terrible import of his soul

To make up for light posting and little time to read, I wanted to share a passage from Petersburg that I found fascinating. I realize it is an overlong excerpt, but I found I couldn’t cut anything out of it and retain its power. To set the stage: Nikolai Apollonovich (Kolenka) has just returned home in the early morning after a disastrous party. He found out during the party that a package given to him contains a bomb that he should use to kill his father, senator Apollon Apollonovich. The father/son relationship, defined by embarrassment most of the time although affection shines through, reached a breaking point that morning after word was received that Apollon’s unfaithful wife has returned after a thirty-month absence. It doesn’t help that Apollon has also just been informed that his son is part of a plot to harm him. Nikolai retreats to his room to inspect the bomb, packed in a sardine can and equipped with a timing device. He sets the bomb to explode in two hours and then slips into a dream-like state.

Once Nikolai turns the key on the bomb, everything in the story rushes along, propelled by the irrevocable, impending explosion. His dream, an updated delirium from Dostoevsky, highlights the sense of doom and destruction that has been lying just below the surface of the action so far. But there is a change in how real everything feels—how actions chosen and decisions made will impact not just what happens to the characters next but to a wider range of people and for quite a while. OK, so we know it isn’t any more real than earlier…it’s still part of the author’s “idle cerebral play” as the narrator reminds the reader. Yet there is humor as well. A sardine can? Really?

(A couple of additional notes: Pepp Peppovich Pepp represents the name he gave to an expanding ball that Nikolai would see during childhood deliriums. Each turn of the key on the sardine can represents an hour on the bomb's timer.)

The Day of Judgement was at hand.

Bygone dreams were here in reality; the cycles of the planets ran their course here in reality—in a wavelength of a billion years: there was no Earth, no Venus, no Mars, only three nebulous rings ran round the Sun; the fourth had only just exploded, and great Jupiter was about to become a world; only ancient Saturn raised from its fiery centre aconian waves: nebulae swept by; and Nikolai Apollonovich was cast down into the immeasurable by Saturn, his parent, and nought but distances flowed by.

At the close of the fourth kingdom he was on earth: at that time the sword of Saturn hung as an unquenched thunderstorm; the continent of Atlantis had collapsed; Nikolai Apollonovich, Atlas, was a depraved monster (the ground beneath him did not hold—it sank beneath the waters); later he was in China: Apollo Apollonovich, the Emperor of China, commanded Nikolai Apollonovich to slaughter many thousands (which was done); and in those relatively recent times, which thousands of Tamberlaine’s horsemen flooded over Russia, Nikolai Apollonovich came galloping from the steppes to that same Russia on his steed; later he became embodied in the blood of a Russian nobleman; and took up the same old business: just as he had slaughtered thousands then, so now he planned explosion: he planned to throw a bomb at his father; to throw a bomb at swift-flowing time itself. But his father was Saturn, the cycle of time turned upon itself, and closed; the empire of Saturn returned (from sweetness here the heart may burst).

The flow of time ceased to be; for thousands of millions of years matter had been ripening in the spirit; but he had craved to blow up time itself; and lo, everything was perishing. “Father!”

“You planned to blow me up; and therefore everything is perishing.”

“It was not you, but…”

“Too late: the birds, the beasts, people, history, the world—everything is collapsing: it is all falling back to Saturn…”

Everything was falling on to Saturn; the atmosphere outside the windows darkened, turned black; everything came into its ancient molten state, expanding beyond measure, all bodies ceased to be bodies; everything revolved the other way—revolved terribly.

“Cela…tourney…” Nikolai Apollonovich howled in utter terror, finally bereft of his body, but not noticing…

“No, Ça… tourne…”


Bereft of body; still he felt his body: some invisible centre that had previously been both his consciousness and his ‘self’, turned out to posses a semblance of the former, burnt to ashes: Nikolai Apollonovich’s logical premises turned into bones; the syllogisms around these bones wrapped themselves into rigid sinews; the content of his logical activity developed flesh and skin; and so the ‘self’ of Nikolai Apollonovich again displayed its bodily form, although it was not a body; and in this non-body (in the exploded ‘self’) someone else’s ‘self’ was revealed: this ‘self’ had rushed in from Saturn and to Saturn it returned.

He sat in front of his father (as he used to sit before)—without a body, but in a body (a strange business!): outside the windows of his study, in utter darkness, a loud mumbling could be heard: turn—turn—turn.

This was the calendar running backwards.

“What calendar are we in?”

But Saturn, Apollon Apollonovich, replied with loud laughter.

“None at all, Kolenka, none at all: time, old chap, is at zero…”

The terrible import of Nikolai Apollonovich’s soul revolved restlessly (there, where the heart should be), like a whistling top: it swelled and expanded; and it seemed: the terrible import of his soul—a round zero—was turning into an agonizing sphere; it seemed: there was the logic—the bones would be blown to pieces. This was the Day of Judgement.

“Oh, oh, oh: what does “I am” mean?”

“I am? Zero…”

“Well, and zero?”

“That, Kolenka, is a bomb…”

Nikolai Apollonovich understood that he was only a bomb; and he burst with a bang: from the place where a semblance of Nikolai Apollonovich had just arisen in the armchair and where there was now nothing to be seen but a tawdry broken shell (like an eggshell), a zigzag of lightning flashed, tumbling into the black, aconian waves…


Then Nikolai Apollonovich awoke from his dream; with a shudder, he realized that his head was lying on the sardine-tin.

And he jumped up: a terrible dream…But what kind? He could not remember the dream; his childhood nightmares had returned: Pepp Peppovich Pepp, swelling up from a little ball into a colossus, had evidently fallen quiet there for the time being—in the sardine-tin; his age-old childhood delirium was returning because
--Pepp Peppovich Pepp, this little ball of terrible import, was quite simply a bomb belonging to the party: it was ticking away there inaudibly with its hairspring and its hands; Pepp Peppovich Pepp would expand, expand, expand. And Pepp Peppovich Pepp would burst: everything would burst…

“What is it…am I delirious?”

Again things started revolving in his head with terrifying speed; what was he to do? There was a quarter of an hour left; turn the key again?

He turned the little key another twenty times; and twenty times something wheezed there, in the tin-can: the age-old delirium withdrew for a while, so that the morning might remain morning, the day might remain day, and the evening—evening: but when the night came to an end no movement of the key could postpone things further: something would happen that would make the walls collapse, and the purple-lighted skies split asunder, mixing with spattered blood into one leaden, primeval darkness.

(pages 319-322, Petersburg by Andrei Bely, Pushkin Press, 2009, translation by John Elsworth)

Petersburg discussion: Chapters 2, 3, 4

Those were strange, misty days: venomous October was passing with its freezing tread; frozen dust blew around the city in drab-brown vortices; and the golden whisper of foliage lay down submissively on the paths of the Summer Garden, and he rustling purple lay down submissively at people’s feet, to wind and chase at the feet of a passing pedestrian, and to murmur as it wove from leaves a red-and-yellow web of words; that sweet chirruping of blue tits that all August had bathed in waves of foliage had long since ceased to bathe in foliage: and the Summer Garden blue tit herself was now hopping forlornly in the black network of boughs, along the bronze railing and across the roof of Peter’s house.

Such were the days. As for the nights—did you go out on those nights, did you find your way to the distant wastelands in the suburbs, to hear the insistent, angry note of “u”? Uuuu-uuuu-uuuu: that was how it sounded in those spaces; that sound—was it a sound? If it was a sound, then it was certainly the sound of some other world; this sound reached an unusual strength and clarity: “uuuu-uuuu-uuu”: rang out quietly in the suburban fields of Moscow, Petersburg, Saratov; but the factory siren did not sound, there was no wind; and the dog held its peace.

Did you too hear this October song of 1905? That song was not heard before; and it will not be heard again: ever.

(page 102, Petersburg by Andrei Bely, Pushkin Press, 2009, translation by John Elsworth)

So what happens in these chapters? Nikolai Apollonovich takes a package from Alexandr Ivanovich, fulfilling a promise he made when Nikolai was depressed. The revolutionary Alexandr has an awkward meeting with Nikolai’s father. The many suitors of Sofia Petrovna hover with resulting impact on her silent, suffering husband (Sergei Sergeich). Anna Petrovna, the estranged wife of Apollon Apollonovich, retruns to the family home (while the family is out). A meeting of revolutionaries is visited by a detachment of Cossacks. Nikolai, wearing the red domino mask, makes an ass of himself first in front of Sofia and then at a party. The central conflict is revealed, first to Nikolai who finds out that the package he received from Alexandr contains bombs to kill his father. Next Apollon meets a detective who informs him about the plot on his life. Sergei, distraught at his wife’s disloyalty, unsuccessfully tries to hang himself. Chapter Four ends on several positive notes, leading the reader to wonder what direction events will travel in the second half: Sergei and Sofia appear to have reconciled, Apollon protects a woman on her walk home, Apollon’s wife is back in town, and the sun rises on Petersburg to displace the gloom. Positive turns? Or false hope?

Bely builds on the atmosphere of strangeness in this section, at times creating an otherworldly setting. In the previous post I struggled with a vocabulary to explain what Bely is doing, although it’s a pleasure simply to let it wash over me. He shows the unseen—what’s beyond the walls or mirrors—by combining concrete realities and symbolic appearances. The bleak atmosphere rarely stops. Plenty of descriptions describe the smoke and soot hanging over the city and the stranger (who was seen following Apollon Apollonovich in the first chapter) makes the impact explicit: “Smoke penetrates the grey matter of the brain… The hemispheres of the brain become contaminated: a general inertia spreads through the organism…”. (page 96, ellipses in original) There are plenty of descriptions that capture the atmosphere Bely paints, but I’ll try to limit myself to only few more in this post:

The stranger with the little black moustache looked out of the window at the expanse of the Neva; a putrid pale-grey mass was hanging there: the edge of the earth was putrid pale-grey mass was hanging there: the edge of the earth was there and the end of all infinities; there, through the greyness and the putrid mass venomous October was already whispering something, beating against the windows with tears and wind; and the tears of rain on the panes chased each other, to twist into streams and trace the hieroglyphs of words; in the chimneys the sweet chirruping of the wind could be heard, and a network of black chimneys, from far, far away, sent its smoke up into the sky. And the smoke tumbled in tails over the dark-coloured waters. (page 112)

Many characters are introduced in this section. Sofia Petrovna turns out to be the love over which Nikolai had contemplated suicide. She is a flighty bird who enjoys tormenting her husband, Sergei Sergeich, while hosting many would-be suitors. In describing Sofia’s house, the narrator makes the comment that there was no perspective to it, which conveniently applies to Sofia’s character as well. Alexandr Ivanovich, the stranger seen following Apollon in the first chapter, turns out to be a revolutionary agent taking advantage of Nikolai’s weakness. Anna Petrovna, Apollon’s wife who ran off with another man over two years ago, turns up at the family house.

While there are other characters of varying importance I wanted to look at two characters who present alternative sides. Nikolai Apollonovich goes out in his cape and red domino, becoming a personality that, while achieving mythic status in newspaper stories, also seems to allow him an outlet for an alter ego. Meanwhile, Sofia Petrovna makes herself up into a character she calls Madame Pompadour, behaving in ways that Sofia doesn’t fully realize until too late.

Comparisons between characters, especially similarities, are fun for me to note. Nikolai and Apollon share much in common even though the generational differences receive substantial emphasis. One commonality between father and son, minor but it adds a nice touch, has both men tripping around the house (on the carpet, on the corners of furniture, etc.). For Nikolai, unfortunately, this is foreshadowing for his sprawling embarrassment in the streets of Petersburg in front of Sofia. Nikolai also displays empathy for his father, at least regarding how he would view himself if he were the father. Although at this point it seems that the sins of the son will be visited upon the father. The stranger, Alexandr Ivanovich, has a similar background as Apollon since both had been stationed in the countryside early in their career with similar outlooks at being away from the city. Alexandr and Apollon also have similar reactions to their isolation, although the reasons for their loneliness are very different—Alexandr’s due to his revolutionary role, Apollon because of his wife’s elopement.

The approaching winter mirrors the atmosphere of expectation in Petersburg, expectations without any sense of resolution.

Those were strange, misty days; an icy hurricane was making its approach in tattered clouds, leaden and blue; but everyone believed in spring: the newspapers wrote about spring, officials of the fourth class discussed spring; a minister who was popular at the time pointed to spring; and the effusions of a Petersburg girl-student carried the scent of nothing less than violets in early May. (page 99)

Everyone looks forward to spring but winter hasn’t begun, its difficult weather required before any regeneration can occur. In addition, the weather reflects the political atmosphere. There is plenty of talk of revolution and strikes, the stranger identifying the appeal of such talk as part of “a universal hankering for death, and I revel in it, with delight, with bliss, with horror.” (page 121) Newspaper stories, real (the defeat in “blood-soaked Manchuria”) and made-up (exploits of the figure in the red domino), add to the tension and feeling that strange events are happening all around. There are many more comparisons and contrasts in the atmosphere that Bely develops: city vs. country, order vs. chaos, younger vs. older, literature vs. reality, and upper vs. lower class to name only a few. The friction caused by these conflicts hints at a blaze about to ignite.

As usual, my discussion covers only a small portion of what is happening in this remarkable book. There are several references to Pushkin (“The Bronze Horseman” and “The Queen of Spades” figure prominently), many symbols (Bely’s use of colors is interesting, as is other works of art), and fun with narration techniques (the intrusions provide plenty of levity). There is an undercurrent that the present is a chimera, something not concrete or real, while reality or substance lies in the past or the future. So far it has been a lot of fun to read…I’m hurrying to post this so I can get back to the last half of the book and see what and how it all unfolds.

There are many more sections I had marked to quote, but I’ll pick one that shows the playfulness of Bely in looking at the party’s host in Chapter Four:

Nikolai Petrovich Tsukatov had danced his life away; now Nikolai Petrovich was dancing this life to its end; dancing it lightly, inoffensively, and vulgarly; not a single cloud darkened his soul; his soul was pure and innocent, just like that sunburnt pate or that smoothly shaven chin protruding between his side-whiskers, as though it were the moon peeping out between clouds.

Everything had danced out as he wished.

He had started dancing as a small boy: he danced better than anyone; and as an accomplished dancer he had been invited to people’s houses; by the end of his gymnasium days he had dance himself many an acquaintance; from this immense circle of acquaintances by the time he graduated from the Law Faculty a circle of influential patrons had dance out of its own accord; and Nikolai Petrovich Tsukatov set about dancing attendance on the civil service. By that time he had danced away his estate; having danced it away, he took, with simple-hearted frivolity, to attending balls; and from such balls he brought home with remarkable ease his life’s companion Liubov AleAlekseevna; quite by chance this companion turned out to have an enormous dowry; and from that day on Nikolai Petrovich danced at home; children were danced into existence; the children’s upbringing came out dancing, all was danced with lightness, simplicity and joy.

Now he was dancing to the end of himself. (pages 203-204)

Petersburg: Beyond the wall, beyond the mirror

How terrible is the fate of an ordinary, perfectly normal man: his life is resolved by a vocabulary of readily understood words, and by the practice of exceedingly clear actions; those actions carry him into the boundless distance, like a little boat rigged with words and gestures that are entirely expressible; if, however, that boat should chance to founder on an underwater reef of quotidian incomprehension, then, foundering, the boat is shattered, and in a trice the simple-hearted sailor drowns… Gentlemen, at the slightest jolt in their lives ordinary people are robbed of their understanding; no, madmen do not know such risks of damage to their brains: their brains must surely be woven from the lightest ethereal substance. For the simple brain everything that these brains penetrate is quite impenetrable: the simple brain has nothing left but to be shattered; and shattered it is.

Since the previous evening Sergei Sergeich Likhutin had felt in his head a most acute cerebral pain, as though he had banged his head at speed against a wall of iron; and while he stood before that wall he had seen that the wall was not a wall, that it was permeable and that there, beyond the wall, there was some light he could not see and some laws of the absurd, just as there, outside the walls of the apartment, there was light and carriage traffic… Then Sergei Sergeich Likhutin bellowed deeply and gave a shake of his head, feeling the most acute ceregral effort, such as he had not known before. Reflected lights crept across the wall: no doubt that was a boat chugging by along the Moika, leaving bright stripes upon the water.

Sergei Sergeich Likhutin bellowed again and again: again and again he shook his head: his thoughts were conclusively confused, as was everything. He began his cogitation by analysing the actions of his unfaithful wife, but at the end he caught himself in senseless drivel: perhaps it was only to him that a solid plane was impenetrable, and rooms reflected in the mirror were genuinely rooms; and in those genuine rooms live the family of some recently arrived officer; he would have to cover the mirrors: it was awkward to be examining with inquisitive glances the behavior of a married officer with his young wife; you might come up against all kinds of drivel there; and Sergei Sergeich Likhutin started catching himself out in such drivel; and he found that he was himself engaged in drivel, getting distracted from the essential, the absolutely essential thought (it was a good thing that Sergei Sergeich Likhutin had switched the electricity off; the mirrors would have been a terrible distraction to him, and at this moment he needed all his strength of will to discover in himself some train of thought.

(pages 257-258, Petersburg by Andrei Bely, Pushkin Press, 2009, translation by John Elsworth)

One of the things I hope I have conveyed about Petersburg with the excerpts I have posted is the other-worldly feel, soulless by nature. I completely misunderstood the term “symbolist” that is usually applied to Bely and see that he blends the conscious and unconscious of his characters to form a symbolic reality. The unrelenting horrid descriptions of Petersburg combined with the repetitive nature of the text forms a poetic hell through which Bely’s characters wander to and fro. Bely combines his characters with the city to create a third type of being…one constantly droning in a dark, otherworldly fashion as we see what lies beyond the walls and mirrors. Petersburg becomes a symbolic character that the characters are both a part of and pitted against.

The following excerpt highlights some of these thoughts. Senator Apollon Apollonovich wanders through the Petersburg streets after leaving a party where several discordant events occur. To make matters worse, he has just been informed that there is a plot for his assassination.

Apollon Apollonovich adjusted his top hat and straightened his shoulders, as he passed into the putrid mist, into the putrid life of the man-in-the-street, into this network of walls, archways, fences, all full of slush, subsiding pitifully, limply, in short—into that ubiquitous, worthless, rotten, empty universal latrine. And now it seemed to him that even that blind wall hated him, even that rotting fence; Apollon Apollonovich knew from experience that they hated him (day and night he walked enveloped in the mist of their malice). But who were they? A negligible little bunch, noisome like them all? Apollon Apollonovich’s ceregral play erected misty planes before his gaze; but all the planes blew up: the gigantic map of Russia rose up before him, who was so small: could it be that there were his enemies: his enemies were the gigantic totality of all the peoples living in these spaces: a hundred million. No, more…

(pages 267-268)

I hope to have more on Chapters Two through Four this weekend.

Petersburg: A laughable figure

Nikolai, upon crashing a ball wearing a cape and domino but freezing on the dancefloor, begins to realize he has turned a bad situation into something worse…

It was still him, of course: Nikolai Apollonovich. He had come today to say—to say what?

He had forgotten his own self; forgotten his thoughts; and forgotten his hopes; he was intoxicated by his own predestined role: the godlike, passionless creature had flown away; naked passion remained, and passion turned to poison. A feverish poison penetrated his brain, poured unseen from his eyes in a cloud of flame, entwining him in clinging blood-red velvet: as though he now looked at everything with a charred face out of flames that seared his body, and that charred countenance turned into a black mask, and the flames that seared his body—into red silk. He had now truly become a clown, an ugly red clown (as she had once called him). Now this clown was pouring scorn—perfidiously, vengefully, incisively—on someone’s truth—his own, or hers?—and once again the question: was it love, or hate?

It was as though all these recent days he had been casting spells on her, stretching his cold arms from the windows of the yellow house, stretching his cold arms from the granite into the mist of the Neva. He wanted to embrace in love the mental image he had evoked, he wanted to smother in vengeance the faintly wafting silhouette; it was for this that all these days cold arms had stretched from one space to another, and that was why all these days from such a space unearthly confessions had been whispered in her ears, sibilant invocations and hoarse passions; and that was why inchoate whistles had echoed in her ears, and the crimson of the leaves had chased between her feet a rustling web or words.

And that was why he had now come to that house: but she, unfaithful, was not there; in the corner he fell to thinking. He saw the venerable and astonished zemstvo member as though in a haze; somewhere far off, in the labyrinth of mirrors, it seemed, the figures of the laughing girls floated past as fitful blurs; and when, emerging from this labyrinth, from the cold greenish surface, the distant echoes of questions and the paper ribbon of the serpentin had struck him, his surprise was like surprise in a dream: he was surprised to see how a reflection, with no existence of its own, emerged before him into the bright world, but just as he regarded them as unstable, fleeting dream reflections, so these reflections themselves evidently took him for an emanation from the other world; and as an emanation from the other world, he drove them all away.

(pages 212-213, Petersburg by Andrei Bely, Pushkin Press, 2009, translation by John Elsworth)

Petersburg: The senator's second space

Apollon Apollonovich had a strange secret of his own: a world of figures, contours, tremors, weird physical sensations—in short: a universe of oddities. This universe always arose on the brink of sleep, and it arose in such a way that, at the moment he dropped off to sleep, Apollon Apollonovich would remember all the incoherences of the past, the rustling sounds, the crystallographic figures, the golden, chrysanthemum-shaped stars that coursed through the darkness on their legs of light-rays (sometimes one of these stars would shower the senator’s head with boiling water: a tingling in his scalp): in short, before he fell asleep he remembered everything he had seen the previous day, only to lose it all from memory the following morning.

Sometimes (not always), just before the final moment of daytime consciousness, Apollon Apollonovich would notice, as he dropped to sleep, that all the threads, all the stars, as they formed a gurgling vortex, whirled together to create a corridor running off into infinity and (the strangest thing of all) he felt that the corridor—began in his head, that is to say that it, the corridor, was an endless continuation of his head itself, whose crown had suddenly burst open—a continuation into infinity; thus it was that the old senator received on the edge of sleep the most extraordinary impression that he was looking not with hiw eye, but with the centre of his head itself, in other words that he, Apollon Apollonvich, was not Apollon Apollonovich, but something that had settled in his brain and was now gazing out from there, from his brain; when the crown of his head opened this something could freely and easily run the length of the corridor to the place when everything is cast into the abyss that revealed itself that at the end of the corridor.

This was the senator’s second space--the land of the senator’s nightly travels; and that’s quite enough about it…

(page 184, Petersburg by Andrei Bely, Pushkin Press, 2009, translation by John Elsworth)

After Apollon has a disturbing “double dream” (dreaming that he awoke and explored his house):

Only there was something wrong with his back: a fear of touching his spine ... He wasn't developing tabes dorsalis, surely?

Petersburg discussion: Prologue and Chapter 1

"During late 1905 and several times in 1906, Andrei Bely stayed in one of the furnished rooms at the “Bel-vu” in the corner building on 64 Nevsky and Karavannaia Street. It was during these stays in Petersburg, prompted by his frenzied and tormented love for Blok’s wife Liubov Dmitrievna, that the vision of Petersburg began to crystallize in the novelist’s mind. All three members of this famous erotic triangle met in Bely’s room in the spring of 1906 to discuss their troubled relationship."
Picture source: Mapping Petersburg

In this chapter we have seen Senator Ableukhov; we have also seen the senator’s idle thoughts in the form of the senator’s house, and in the form of the senator’s son, who carries in his head idle thoughts of his own; and lastly, we have seen another idle shadow—that of the stranger.

This shadow arose by chance in Senator Ableukhov’s consciousness, receiving there its ephemeral existence; but Apollon Apollonovisch’s consciousness is a shadow consciousness, because he too is possessed of ephemeral existence, being the product of the author’s imagination: needless, idle cerebral play.

The author, having once displayed these pictures of illusions, ought quickly to remove them and break off the thread of the narration with this very sentence; but…the author will not behave like this: he has sufficient right not to do so.

Cerebral play is only a mask; beneath this mask proceeds the invasion of the brain by forces unknown to us: and what if Apollon Apollonovich is woven from our brain—he will still be able to terrify with another startling existence that attacks at night. Apollon Apollonovich is endowed with the attributes of this existence; and with the attributes of this existence all his cerebral play is endowed too.

Once his brain has erupted in the mysterious stranger, that stranger exists—exists in fact: he will not vanish from the Petersburg Prospects, as long as the senator exists with thoughts of this kind, because thought, too, exists.

Page 73-74 (all quotes and spellings are from the Pushkin Press edition, 2009, translation by John Elsworth)

The prologue and first chapter can be found here, translated by Robert A. Maguire and John E. Malmstad

I wasn’t sure how often I would post on Petersburg, but after finishing the first chapter I wanted to get started. There is so much going on in Bely’s book and I know I won’t be able to capture it all, but hopefully with several smaller posts on it I can at least provide some of the flavor. I know these posts will come across more of a first impression since I know almost nothing of this novel going in, but some of that is by choice. So let’s see how it goes…

“What is this Russian Empire of ours?” the narrator asks at the beginning of the prologue and we start right in with questions about existence and inclusion. Bely starts with surveying the Russian Empire and then zooms in, step by step, on Petersburg and then further down to more detail, such as the Nevskii Prospect. We are told Petersburg exists because it manifests itself on a map with two concentric circles and a black dot in the middle. Questions of existence flow throughout the first chapter as well, culminating with the quote at the beginning of the post which is near the end of the chapter. This “needless, idle cerebral play” imbues characters with existence, and those characters in turn bring additional characters into existence.

Chapter One takes place on September 30, 1905. The reader sees Apollon Apollonovich, a high ranking government official, and his son during moments of their day. From his carriage on the streets of Petersburg Apollon sees a “stranger”, later identifying him as an acquaintance of his son Nikolai. The street scenes paint a grey picture of Petersburg and the people. Nikolai seems a pampered dandy, sleeping late and focusing on his costume for a party. Later in the chapter we find out his mother (Apollon’s wife) left the family 2 ½ years earlier. Nikolai has recently broken up with someone and contemplated suicide. He tries to intercept his former love on her doorstep but she escapes inside her house.

Since this brief summary doesn’t do the chapter justice, I’ll arrange the notes I took into general topics. I’m not sure how many of these subjects will be relevant throughout the book, but this organizes what I initially found worthy to note. For this post and the rest of the book I’ll continue to go with my unadorned notes, loosely grouped, to see how relevant my impressions are with this first reading of the book.

Existence
I have already mentioned some instances of the “cerebral play” involving existence which Bely plays with but there are a few additional examples I’d like to note. At one point, it’s as though thoughts escape Apollon’s and the stranger’s heads and only then become real, such as when the stranger follows Apollon:

They [thoughts] escaped and acquired solidity. And one such escaping thought of the stranger’s was the thought that he, the stranger, existed in fact; this thought ran back from the Nevskii into the senator’s brain and there established the idea that the very existence of the stranger in that head was an illusory existence. And so the circle was closed.

So what is the reader’s role in this play of existence? I’m hoping that will be addressed, as hinted at in several places in this chapter like the comment that items passed by “could not possess any spatial form: it was all just an irritation of the cerebral membrane…”. Such is the case with the book in my hands, too.

Intrusion by the narrator
The narrator makes several intrusions, some benign (such as when he directly addresses the reader) while others cast doubt on his accuracy. “In advance I must correct an inaccuracy that has crept in; it is not the fault of the author, but of the author’s pen…”. So we get to add another level of possible distortion in the guise of an unreliable narrator…or rather his pen. Even with that disclaimer, he claims ownership of his creations often enough in such terms as “my stranger”. In addition, he raises the question of what readers find believable: “[I]f we, the author, record in pedantic detail the path of the first person we meet, then the reader will believe us: this action of ours will be vindicated in the future.” Is it any less real if he doesn't "record in pedantic detail"? Even if the detail is believable, can the reader forget that it is a work of fiction? Does that matter?

One of the most intrusive points is when the narrator recounts his contemplation of suicide, just like Nikolai had earlier. It makes for a good disarming technique, making Nikolai’s actions more believable: “I, too, one September night leaned over your parapet: another moment—and my body would have tumbled into the mists. O, green water, teeming with bacilli! Another moment and you would have turned me too into one of your shadows.”

Shadows
Shadowy figures dominate Petersburg in this section, which to plays into the questions of existence, but there seems to be more going on with their use. “The streets of Petersburg possess a most indubitable quality: they turn passers-by into shadows; shadows, however, the streets of Petersburg turn into people.” In describing the people on the islands in the Neva, they blur the possibility of existence: “The dark shadows receded. But the hellish drinking dens were left. Long years the Christian people caroused here with the ghost: a bastard race arose from the islands—neither men nor shadows—settling on the border between two alien worlds.”

There are many more examples of shadows throughout the chapter, making the existence of the people in Petersburg, especially the working class, seem like pale imitations of life. Another intrusion by the narrator occurs when he implores the “Russian people” not to “let the crowds of slippery shadows come over from the islands!” A shadow seems to be a nice way of saying they are less than human.

Geometric shapes/parts vs. whole
There definitely seems to be a mathematical bent in many parts of Chapter One, many of which tie in with other themes. Some tie in symbolically, such as the point that Petersburg was originally designed with straight lines but now has many zig-zags. In describing the crowds along the Nevskii Prospect, the narrator describes it as a stream that can be broken into segments that have loose ties to the whole. This fits into the “myriapod” concept mentioned in the ‘inclusion’ section below. While the parts make up the whole, fragments can also defy the whole such as when Apollon’s heart defying his mind when noticing that things were not exactly the same around him. We also see consciousness separating from the body in many ways, whether through immersion in vodka or as part of the masses in the street.

Another geometric theme revolves around the concept that forces emanate from a center, radiating out to intersect with other radiating forces. This concept works in both directions, with individuals or things growing into such a center.

Inclusion/Exclusion
Bely often brings the question of inclusion into play, beginning with the first sentence of the prologue. “What is this Russian Empire of ours?” The narrator also uses “we” many times, such as “We are coming to meet the Senator”, bringing the reader into close confidence. Another example of inclusion, or at least I see it that way, occurs when the people along Nevskii Prospect lose individual definition and blend into a formless being. Bely describes the crowd on the Petersburg streets as a Myriapod, each individual melding into one many-legged (and many-voiced) creature.

Examples of exclusion occur at the same time as those of inclusion. The people that live on the islands are described by Bely as astounding, but not for good reasons. Performing “thievish tricks” in a grimy setting, the island inhabitants stand apart even when immersed in the Nevskii Prospect. From the descriptions given, the stranger’s hatred for Petersburg may represent the feeling of other islanders. And the feeling may be mutual toward them.

Symbolism
When reading what’s called a major symbolist novel, is it OK to say I’m not much into symbolism? So I’m not planning on spending much time on the symbols.
Even so, some of the symbolism I can identify so far adds to the mood and tone of the novel. There seems to be something hovering over Petersburg, more than just the clouds, throwing a pall on the atmosphere in the city. Bat imagery is used often, adding to the surreal and dark mood. And so far, Peter’s statue (The Bronze Horseman) has made only one appearance so far, but I’m sure that will increase as we get further into the novel.

Miscellaneous topics
This may mean nothing but I found it interesting that four characters introduced in this chapter had the same first name and patronymic. Is this meant to symbolize anything? Will it be used as a technique to highlight people stuck in the past or lacking an imagination? Or am I trying to give meaning to nothing?

The final note I want to make regards Nikolai’s apparent worship of Kant. Books line his room and a bust of Kant sits in the room…let’s see how that plays out.

One more quote:

Petersburg, Petersburg!

Sediment of mist, you have pursued me too with idle cerebral play: you are a cruel-hearted tormenter; you are a restless ghost; for years you used to assail me; I would run along your terrible Prospects and my impetus would carry me up on to that cast-iron bridge which starts from the edge of the world and leads to the limitless distance; beyond the Neva, in the green distance of the other world—the ghosts of islands and houses rose, seducing me with the vain hope that that land was real and not—a howling endlessness that drives the pale smoke of clouds out on to the Petersburg streets.

Restless shadows trudge from the islands; thus a swarm of visions repeats itself, reflected in the Prospects, chasing along the Prospects that are reflected in each other like a mirror in another mirror, where a moment of time itself expands into immeasurable aeons: and as you wander from one doorway to another you live through the ages.
(pages 72-73)

Petersburg online resources

Map of St. Petersburg, 1893
Picture source

I wasn’t sure what I would read next but after opening Andrei Bely’s Petersburg and reading the two-page prologue, I am hooked. So Petersburg it is. I am reading the Pushkin Press release, translation by John Elsworth.

A quick internet search on the author and title shows more available on the book than I expected. I made the decision to avoid reviews on the book because I wanted to come to the work fresh. All of which means this online resource post will contain fewer links (at least initially…as with other resource posts I may add more links later), focusing on historical context and biographical information. On to some links:

The Wikipedia entry on Bely (Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev), which also has links at the bottom of the page for a short story and a few of his poems

For some context of the historical setting of the novel, the Russian Revolution of 1905

Mapping Petersburg “explores the everyday life and the material, political, and literary culture of St. Petersburg (renamed Petrograd during the First World War) at the beginning of the twentieth century”

The book’s epigraph comes from Alexander Pushkin’s The Bronze Horseman, probably worth visiting before starting the book

Professor Elizabeth Beaujour’s page for her Modern Russian Literature course at Hunter college provides several links for Petersburg (and several other 20th century Russian writers)

The prologue and first chapter can be found here, translated by Robert A. Maguire and John E. Malmstad

Update (7 Dec 2011): "The Moving Tide of Abundance: Petersburg by Andrei Bely", an essay by Malcolm Forbes, can be found at The Quarterly Conversation

Demonstration on October 17, 1905 by Ilya Yefimovich Repin
Picture source