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Andrei Bely

Russian Research Center Studies, 83

Andrei Bely
The Major Symbolist Fiction

Vladimir E. Alexandrov

Harvard University Press


Cambridge, Massachusetts
and London, England
1985

Copyright 1985 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College


All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Publication of this book has been aided by a grant from the Andrew
W. Mellon Foundation.
This book is printed on acid-free paper, and its binding materials have
been chosen for strength and durability.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Alexandra , Vladimir E.
Andrei Bely, the major symbolist fiction.
(Russian Research Center studies ; 83)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Bely, Andrey, 1880-1934Fictional works.
2. Symbolism in literature. I. Title. II. Series.
PG3453.B84Z53 1985
891.73'3
84-19760
ISBN 0-674-03646-8 (alk. paper)

To my parents,
to Sybil

Acknowledgments

I take pleasure in recording my gratitude to the American Council of


Learned Societies for a fellowship that allowed me to extend Harvard's
generous semester-long leave for junior faculty to a full year. I am also
thankful for grants from the Harvard Graduate Society and the Russian Research Center at Harvard University, which helped defray the
research and typing costs.
Especially warm thanks are due colleagues and friends who took
time from their busy schedules to read drafts of this study: Nina Berberova, Donald Fanger, and Jurij Striedter. I have incorporated many
of their valuable comments and suggestions in my book.
Portions of Chapter 3 have appeared previously as articles: "Unicorn
Impaling a Knight: The Transcendent and Man in Andrei Belyi's Petersburg, " Canadian-American Slavic Studies, 16 (Spring 1982), 1-44; and
"Typographical Intrusion and the Transcendent in Bely's Petersburg
and Sinyavsky's Lyubimov, " The Slavonic and East European Review
62 (April 1984), 161-179.

Contents

Introduction
1 The Symphonies
2 The Silver Dove

1
5
68

3 Petersburg

100

4 Kotik Letaev and The Baptized Chinaman

153

Conclusion

191

Notes

195

Index

219

Andrei Bely

Note on Transliteration
A knowledge of Russian is not necessary to read the pages that follow. Familiar or readily accessible renderings of Russian names have
been used in the body of the text; these are based on a simplified version of the Library of Congress system for transliterating Cyrillic: "System II" in J. Thomas Shaw's pamphlet The Transliteration of Modern
Russian for English-Language Publications (Madison, Wisconsin: The
University of Wisconsin Press, 1967). However, the transliteration of
Russian words in the text and all transliterations in the notes follow this
system consistently in order to facilitate reconstruction of the original.
The only exceptions are the different transliteration systems used in
critical works I cite, which I have preserved unchanged.

Introduction

Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev (1880-1934), better known by his pseudonym, Andrei Bely, was a protean figure in Russian literature during
the first decades of this century. A great novelist, leading poet, critic,
memoirist, theoretician of Symbolism and precursor of the Formalists,
he left a published legacy of some fifty volumes and hundreds of
shorter works. Bely's role in Russian letters has been described as that
of "an incandescent, almost blinding presence"; contemporaries spoke
repeatedly of his decisive influence on the next generation of writers;
and in the context of European Modernism he has been ranked with
Joyce, Kafka, and Proust. 1
Four years before his death, Bely surveyed his large corpus of belleslettres and concluded that there were only a half dozen works "in which
I appear as a verbal artist and not a publicist." His short list included
the experimental prose narrative The Second Symphony (1902), and
the novels The Silver Dove (1909), Petersburg (1913-14; 1922), Kotik
Letaev (1917-18), The Baptized Chinaman (1921), and Moscow
(1926).2
This is unusually harsh self-criticism. Inevitably, it is also open to debate. Many students of Russian literature would object to his omission
of all works of poetry, especially The First Encounter (1921), which is
widely recognized as one of the great narrative poems of the century. 3
On the other hand, many would object to his inclusion of Moscow, a
novel that has yet to find an enthusiastic audience and must be considered a distinct failure, both by comparison to the earlier novels and according to intrinsic criteria. Perhaps Bely mentioned it in a flush of enthusiasm over its sequel, Masks, which he was writing at the time, but
which was to prove, upon publication in 1932, an even greater disap-

Andrei Bely

pointment to his readers than Moscow. Some might also object, if less
strenuously, to the inclusion of The Baptized Chinamana generally
pale work whose interest lies largely in the fact that it is a sequel to the
often dazzling Kotik Letaev.
With some alterations, then, Bely's own list is close to being an accurate assessment of his most durable contribution to Russian, and, indeed, European literary art. 4 His contribution to literature in the
broader senseincluding memoirs, criticism and theoretical worksis
qualitatively comparable and quantitatively much greater.
My focus is on Bely's narrative prose fiction from what could be designated his early and middle periods, 1902-1921. In addition to the Second Symphony, I have included the First, Third, and Fourth. Although
these sui generis prose narratives differ greatly in quality, they are of
major interest as prfigurations of Bely's three great novels: The Silver
Dove, Petersburg, and Kotik Letaev. The Baptized Chinaman, because
of its close connection to Kotik Letaev, cannot be ignored entirely. On
the other hand, his late novels Moscow and Masks will be omitted, not
so much for their weakness, as because they bear little relation to his
earlier works from the particular point of view that I have chosen for
this study.5
Bely is probably the most difficult novelist that Russian literature has
produced. It is frequently hard to determine what his texts are about
and how to approach them. The reason for this, I would argue, is that
Bely did not find the conventions of established genres adequate for the
expression of his unique apprehension of the human condition. Thus
he was compelled to find new devices and different principles of organization for his narratives in order to present his hermetic world view.
At the heart of Bely's view of man was, first and foremost, the connection between man and a transcendent, spiritual, or divine realm.
This vertical axisthe trunk of Bely's art and lifeevolves from the
Symphonies through the major novels, but always remains in the foreground of his works. Starting with The Baptized Chinaman, however,
the spiritual concern begins to recede; and in Moscoio and Masks it has
largely disappeared into the background.
Because it is clear from a number of Bely's autobiographical works
(which were never published in the Soviet Union) that he remained a
confirmed occultist to the end of his life, it is my assumption that the
late, major reorientation in his art was due more to external political
pressures than to any change of heart. Bely implied as much when he
wrote that upon his return to Russia from Berlin in 1923, where he had
spent two years, he found himself in "the 'grave' into which Trotsky
had placed me, [and] after Trotsky all his followers, [then] all the crit-

Introduction

ics." Indeed, Bely's difficult, metaphysical art was perceived as inimical


to the new regime, and he was treated as a "living corpse." 6 That this
should have happened is hardly surprising, for Bely himself had just
published a memoir in which he spoke of Marxism as "mechanical carrion." 7 The antipathy between the man and the regime was clearly mutual. Although there is little published evidence regarding the details of
Bely's relations with the authorities during the final decade of his life, it
is known that the occult movement to which he belonged (anthroposophy) and its press in Moscow were banned in 1923, and that Bely's
friends and wife were harassed by arrests in 1930 and 1931, even if he
himself was not. 8
It is most probable, therefore, that Bely was forced to conceal his
otherworldly inclinations in everything he wrote for publication in the
Soviet Union after his return. And although clear traces of spiritual
concerns can still be found in Moscow and Masks (which are of interest
from other points of view) these are insufficiently developed to warrant
inclusion in an analysis of the broad, overtly metaphysical schmas
that fill his famous earlier works. 9
Much of the published criticism on Bely consists of articles dealing
with isolated aspects of individual novels. As one would expect, Petersburg, his masterpiece, has received most attention; The Silver Dove
and Kotik Letaev follow far behind. Although many of these studies
are illuminating, they often address topics that are of less than primary
importance in Bely's art. In part this may be due to the difficulty of
identifying what constitutes the central spring in his workswhat motivates, organizes, and controls both the choice of subject matter and
the artistic means used to present it to the reader.
A consideration of a significant portion of an author's entire corpus
should lead to a clearer view of what is central for him. However, the
few monographs on Bely that have appeared stress such topics as his biography, eschatological beliefs, and stylistic features. 1 0 No student of
Bely's fictional prose would deny that these are important elements in
his works. But the reason why Bely focuses on the apocalypse, bridges
life and art, and loads his works with rhythms, alliterations, and neologisms is that he was a conscious Symbolist. 1 1 This is the rubric under
which Bely's center must be sought.
"Symbolism" was the term Bely always used for the primary concern
of his art and lifethe tie between man and the transcendent. Rather
than being merely a literary fashion or a category of fictional devices,
therefore, this was for him a radical epistemological stance: a new form
of cognition, most often based in visual perception, that would accomplish nothing less than the transformation of mankind. This view and

Andrei Bely

expectation dominated Bely's thinking and artistic practice from the beginning to the end of his creative life. In fact, the link between man and
the transcendent is the one element common to all of Bely s works in
different genres: lyric and narrative poetry, "Symphonies," and novels.
It is also the one constant (albeit sometimes concealed) feature of everything else that he wrote, including theoretical and critical essays,
letters, and memoirs.
Despite the significant evolution of his conception of symbolism, the
component elements in the act of symbolic perception always remained
the same for Belythe individual, the material world, and the otherworldly realm; what changed in his theory and art over the years was
the relationship among the three. To identify the nature of this relationship in individual works, and to trace how it evolved from his early experiments in the Symphonies to the more complex major novels will be
my primary concern in the pages that follow. I will also suggest how
Bely's conception of symbolism is manifested in the stylistic and formal
features of the works in question.
Bely s art could and should be approached from other points of view
as well. There is much in his works that has yet to receive any significant scholarly attention. But five decades after his death, at a time
when he is far from being officially accepted in the Soviet Union, I believe it is essential to concentrate on what is fundamental in him. A
study of the beliefs that motivated Bely s works is a necessary prolegomenon to a full and accurate understanding of his legacy.

The Symphonies
1
De la musique avant toute chose
Paul Verlaine

I did not have a clear idea of what a "Symphony"


in literature should be
Andrei Bely

Bely's four Symphonies are unique fictional prose forms. In comparison to traditional nineteenth-century narrative genres, their most striking characteristic is fragmentariness: the texts consist of sequences of
short paragraphs that are sometimes linked only metaphorically or by
means of leitmotifs; narrative points of view change often; symbolic
imagery expressing the frequently occult inner experiences of the narrator is intercalated with, and occupies nearly as much space as, the intermittent exposition of setting, plot, and character; and the organizing
beliefs and hierarchies of values in the works are hidden, requiring the
reader to become involved in deciphering the texts more actively than
do most narratives from previous eras. Thematically, all four works
are primarily concerned with symbolic cognition, a dualistic world of
matter and spirit, and the apocalypsewhether universal, personal, or
both.
In order to gain some perspective on the nature of Bely's achievement, it would be useful to characterize briefly some of the Symbolist
narratives composed at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of
the twentieth centuries, and to distinguish them from works that may
"merely" contain symbols.
In Charles Feidelson, Jr. s cogently argued view, the modern (that is,
nineteenth and twentieth-century) literary Symbolist
redefines the whole process of knowing and the status of reality in
the light of poetic method. He tries to take both poles of perception into account at once, to view the subjective and objective
worlds as functions of each other by regarding both as functions
of the forms of speech in which they are rendered.

Andrei Bely

Poetic language generated in this way becomes symbolic both of the


perceiver's inner experiences and those aspects of the world upon which
he casts his gaze. The act of perception underlying such symbolic language is implicitly a denial of the Cartesian distinction between subject
and object. It is thus a new epistemological stanceone that itself often
becomes a thematic concern of the work in which it is embodied, as
well as being the agent controlling the work's texture and form. 1 Such
characteristics are useful in categorizing works that warrant comparison with Bely s Symphonies and the novels that grew out of them.
Perhaps because of Symbolism's typical preoccupation with a superior
individual's perception, cognition, and ultimate expression of insights
related to the self and thereby hidden from the public eye, lyric poetry
centered as it is on the "I" of the speakerwas the preferred literary
form of Symbolists from Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) to Aleksandr
Blok (1880-1921). It was rare for Symbolists to write novels, especially
outside of Russia. A possible reason is that the novel has traditionally
been dominated by the third-person narrative point of view, and has
usually included a variety of other perspectives and voices emanating
from different characters. 2 These cardinal generic features create an inevitable tension between the novel and the epistemological and narrative bases of Symbolism as expressed in the lyrica theoretical problem that has a direct bearing on Bely's Symphonies (and one that he
successfully resolves only in Petersburg). The French fathers of Symbolism did write "prose poems," as Baudelaire dubbed the genre. But
this form ultimately bears more resemblance to the lyric than to the
narrative: it has been defined as "A composition able to have any or all
features of the lyric, except that it is put on the pagethough not conceived ofas prose." 3 This genre, which grew greatly in popularity
throughout Europe and Russia during the latter decades of the nineteenth century, may have played a role at the very origins of Bely's fictional prose.
Joris-Karl Huysmans' decadent classic rebours (1884) has on occasion been spoken of as the first Symbolist novel because Des Esseintes,
the protagonist, dedicates his reclusive existence to experiments with
synesthesia and other sensuously and intellectually refined pastimes.
Des Esseintes' creation of a domestic environment expressive of his
character might be considered analogous to the verbal embodiment of
the perceiver's inner state in images of the external world such as one
finds in the poetry of Verlaine or Mallarm, for example. But the "implied author" views Des Esseintes from the outside, and rebours is
narrated from the third-person point of view, which deprives the protagonist of crucial authorial or narrative support. Thus, the work can-

The Symphonies

not be said to embody any of the cognitive presuppositions of Symbolism, such as those to which Baudelaire gave most famous expression in
the first quatrain of "Correspondances": "La Nature est un temple o de
vivants piliers / Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles; /L'homme
y passe travers des forts de symboles / Qui l'observent avec des regards familiers." Furthermore, the work does not utilize the oblique
communication that typifies Symbolist poetry, nor is it innovative formally. Indeed, A rebours has been aptly described as being "about the
Symbolist experience" rather than an embodiment of it. 4
Karl Uitti has argued that a school of authentically Symbolist novelists first appeared in France during the decade 1 8 8 5 - 1 8 9 5 . 5 Reacting
against the esthetics and underlying world view of the naturalist novel
as codified by Zola, and responding to a renewed vogue for Schopenhauerespecially the idea that the world in which the individual exists
is his own cognitive constructsuch writers as Maurice Barrs,
Edouard Dujardin, Rmy de Gourmont, and Jean Lorrain created narratives in which all the content is the product of one central character's
perceptions. A first-person point of view in which the implied author's,
the protagonist's, and the other characters' perspectives overlap was
typically and inevitably the result. The language of the text produced
thus became the symbolic embodiment of the interaction of this merged
perceiver's inner experiences with images drawn from the world outside him. In Dujardin's Les Lauriers sont coups (1887), for example,
probably the best known work of this school, the object of the hero's
love exists only when he is thinking of her. Indeed, the entire novel consists of one continuous "interior monologue" (the term is Dujardin's)
presenting the detailed movements of the protagonist's consciousness
during a six-hour period. (Joyce would later acknowledge the influence
of this work on Ulysses.)
The epistemological premise of such works left a distinctive imprint
on the texture and character of their language. Since the narrative style
was intended to reproduce the idiosyncratic nature of the protagonist's
association of ideas, traditional syntactical rules were often abandoned.
And because the writers in question were consciously struggling
against everything that tried to deny individualism, and viewed themselves as superior to all that was common, their vocabulary tended to
become filled with rare and exotic words.
As far as is known, these relatively obscure French writers probably
had no direct influence on Bely's earliest literary efforts in the late
1890s. Clearly, however, certain of his stylistic features, such as a frequent and easy departure from the norms of nineteenth-century belletristic word order, punctuation, and even typographical arrangement
of text on the page, and his constant gravitation toward the first-person

Andrei Bely

in his narratives, constitute an interesting example of convergent evolution. (The device of recurring leitmotifs in Dujardin's novel and in Bely's Symphonies and later works derives for both writers from Wagner
and the cult of his music in fin-de-sicle Europe.) The most important
common ground Bely shared with these French writers is that he and
they acted in accordance with similar cognitive assumptions about
Symbolism, and attempted to overcome the distinction between subject and object by means of a perceptive act. The greatest differences
between Bely and the Symbolistes are that he did not write the same
sort of extended first-person narratives (although he did write lyric poetry all his life), and that he was a metaphysical Symbolistone who
always involved the otherworldly realm as the third component in
man's cognitive interaction with the world outside him.
All of this is not to say, of course, that Bely was unfamiliar with
either the general ambiance or the specific writers and works of French
Symbolism. Clearly he was acquainted with both, at first through exposure while still an adolescent in the culturally avant-garde household
of Olga and Mikhail Soloviev (the philosopher's brother), and later,
after he had decided to become a writer during his early twenties,
through the mediation of the "first" generation of Russian Symbolists
especially that of the Francophile Valry Briusov. At first, under Olga
Mikhailovna's tutelage, Bely's initial response to French Symbolism
was enthusiastic. But after he had begun to find his own way in literature his attitude became negative; and in later years he expressed scorn
for it on more than one occasion. In 1912, for example, he catalogued
the failings of a number of its major and minor representatives. In his
view, Mallarm and Villiers de l'lsle-Adam had failed to formulate an
adequate theory of Symbolism; Rmy de Gourmont was "rather empty"; and Jean Moras, Ren Ghil, and Henri de Rgnier were "very boring." By contrast, Bely saw his roots, and those of the "second" generation of Russian Symbolists to which he felt he belonged, in the
Symbolism of the "Germanic race"namely that of Wagner, Nietzsche
and Ibsen, 6 as well as in a number of nineteenth-century Russian writers, including Lermontov, Gogol, Tiutchev, Fet, and especially the philosopher, mystic, and poet Vladimir Soloviev.
In Russia there had been little Symbolist fiction before Bely's earliest
experiments with writing prose fragments in 1897-1898, or even before
his Symphonies began to appear in 1902. Julian the Apostate, the first
volume of Dmitry Merezhkovsky's historical trilogy, Christ or Antichrist, appeared in 1894, followed by Leonardo da Vinci (1901) and Peter and Alexis (1905). In the early 1890s Merezhkovsky's poetry and essays had been among the first signs of a revolt in Russian culture against
the reigning positivism of the day, and this was certainly an attitude

The Symphonies

Bely shared from the start. However, the only conceivably Symbolist
feature of Merezhkovsky s novels is the author's constant (and simplistic)
opposition of the spirit and the flesh, and his search for a means of uniting them. There is no stylistic or formal resemblance between Merezhkovsky's novels and anything Bely (or the French Symbolist novelists)
wrote. The one trait they share is the theme of apocalypse, which was
widespread throughout fin-de-sicle Europe as well as Russia. Roger
Keys characterizes Merezhkovsky's works, as well as the early stories
and novels by his wife Zinaida Gippius, as defined by the "inertia of
hackneyed forms inherited from an earlier utilitarian fictional esthetic.' 7
The important Russian Symbolist poet Briusov also wrote prose fiction. His best known work is the The Fiery Angel (1907), a historical
novel about witchcraft and demonic possession in Renaissance Germany. However, its utilization of a sixteenth-century narrative viewpoint effectively distances the author from the seemingly occult experiences described in the text, and the narrator's own doubts about their
being anything more than the workings of a deranged psyche undermine them further. In the absence of authoritative symbolic perceptions, it is hard to see how the work could be considered Symbolistic in
any strict sense of the term. Briusov's other prose works, although colored by distinctly "decadent" preoccupations, also do not grow out of
the epistemological premises of Symbolism.
Indeed, one is forced to conclude that other than Bely's, the only truly
Symbolist prose written in Russia at the beginning of the century was
by Fedor Sologub (1863-1927), whose novel The Petty Demon (1907) is
a classic of the period. The symbolic perceptions of the narratorwho
seems identical to the implied authorand the characters exhibit a tension comparable to what one finds in Bely. But Sologub's languid syntax,
traditional narrative forms, and peculiar blend of morbidity, sensuality, and idealism are all quite different from what one finds in Bely's art.
In short, an examination of Bely's Symphonies and later works in the
context of European and Russian Symbolist prose fiction is more useful
for illuminating theoretical issues related to Symbolist narrative genres
than for tracing the provenance of Bely's own works.

The First Symphony


Clearly among Bely's juvenilia, the First Symphony (written in 18991900, first published in 1903) is of interest primarily because it adumbrates some of the themes, stylistic features, and devices of Bely's major
novels. 8
It is basically a narrative about a spiritual quest with eschatological
overtones. The mainspring of the plot is that a King sends his son on a

10

Andrei Bely

journey to build a tower and lead his people "to the heights" (p. 21).
The son does not fulfill this vaguely Nietzschean or Ibsenesque task; instead, he retires with his wife to a tower in which he subsequently
grows old and dies. It falls to his daughter, the Princess, to succeed
where he had failed. She has from childhood felt something like a
Gnostic longing for the spiritual beyond: she has a "sad smile concealing memories" (p. 33); and her mother's last words are "I entrust you to
Eternity" (p. 40). Later in the Symphony, the Princess descends from
the tower, "fulfilling a heavenly command. She was setting out to expel
darkness" (p. 88). Raising a crucifix on a staff, the Princess wreaks havoc among the "black knights," "evil chapels," and "demons" of the land.
The Princess' story is intertwined with that of a young Knight whom
she saves. Although mired in evil, he too is touched by a longing for his
spiritual homeland: "[he] thirsted for dreams from beyond the clouds,
but dark ancestral forces arose in his soul" (pp. 52-53). The Princess
prays for the Knight, and as a result the evil entrapping him loses its
hold. After death, both transcend the fallen world and enter the Edenlike supernatural realm of Eternity, where not only St. Peter, but the
Lord God Himself appears. 9
The ideological framework of this tale hinges on an image of a female
figure of salvation combating evil. Given Bely s well-known veneration
of the religious philosopher Vladimir Soloviev (1853-1900), this concept evokes, at the very least, an echo of Soloviev's apocalyptic Sophiology.
Soloviev taught the existence of an aspect of the Trinity known as
Hagia Sophia, or Divine Wisdom. He conceived of this mystical "absolute unity" of the Trinity as a female being (his own visions of whom he
described in his poem "Three Meetings" ["Tri svidaniia," 1894]). Her
role in the cosmos is both to cause the appearance of all that is not divine, and to effect the reintegration of all in God. This is accomplished
through man, who is the one aspect of the material world having a potential unity in God. Man encounters the opposition between God and
what lies outside Him in the difference between the sexes. Through
union with woman by means of love, therefore, and through striving
for the union of mankind, man participates in Divine Wisdom's reintegration of the world in God. 10
In a late prophetic work, "A Brief Tale about the Antichrist" (1900),
Soloviev identified Divine Wisdom overtly with the Apocalyptic
"woman clothed with the sun," and made her manifestation on earth
into a central event of his personal refraction of the Biblical Revelation
of St. John the Divine. This particular work, and Soloviev's poetical expression of the philosophical idea of Divine Wisdom, or the Eternal
Feminine (itself an attempt to rationalize mystical experience), seized

The Symphonies

11

the imagination of young Symbolists of Bely's generation. For Bely, and


even more so for the poet Aleksandr Blok, with whom Bely had a long
and stormy friendship, a divine female persona became the central aspect of their own eschatologies. 11
Although the Princess in the First Symphony is not openly identified
with either Divine Wisdom or the Eternal Feminine, she has their aura
about her. More important, her story demonstrates that Bely's characteristic intertwining of individual destinies with cosmic processesa
practice that will typify his world view in all subsequent works as
wellis evident from the start of his career.
Specifically apocalyptic references can be discerned in the First Symphony, however, in the statements of various personages who inhabit
the transcendent realm which the Knight and Princess enter in the end
of the work. A certain "Iya" says: "Already He is wandering among us,
like an errant little flame" (p. 117). An unspecified person also cries that
"the time was drawing near . . . [and] that he will awaken them at
dawn to show them the One Who Had Arrived [Iavlennogo]" (p. 119).
This theme of the Second Coming is also sounded in the Symphony's
Introduction, with a centaur shouting that he can see "a pink sky" and a
"dawn" (p. 17). Bely reveals the eschatological significance that dawns
had for him in his early essay tellingly entitled "Sacred Colors" (1903).12
As might be expected, given this subject matter, the dominant tone in
the First Symphony is one of naively portentous high seriousness. The
characters, the details of the setting, and the action recall a variety of
works from the European fin-de-sicle, ranging from the stylized medievalism of Burne-Jones and other pre-Raphaelites, to the pregnant
mystery of Maeterlinck's Symbolist dramas (albeit without the morbidity of the latter), to the Nordic atmosphere of Grieg's music (in fact Bely
dedicated this work to the Norwegian composer). 13
It is worth mentioning, however, that Bely interweaves a satirical
note foreshadowing the much more important and effective satire in his
Second Symphony, and especially in his major works, The Silver Dove
and Petersburg. Speaking of the effete heir whiling away his life in the
tower while winter approaches, the narrator comments that "His nose
was turning red," and then describes him darning holes in his red garment (pp. 30-31). Given the great task he had been assigned by his father, these all-too-human traits are clear indications of the son's moral
failure and loss of purpose. They can thus be seen as rather primitive
variants of what has been called "philosophical irony": the narrator's
desire to underscore the vast distance separating the human from the
divine realm. 14 These deflating strokes are not lapses in narrative tone,
therefore. And although neither example is really comic, as Bely's satire
will become in later works, each provides a faint whiff of the peculiar

12

Andrei Bely

juxtaposition of hieratical solemnity and almost farcical satire that


typify his strongest works.
This complication of narrative tone also raises implicitly the problem of "romantic irony" for Bely, of how his worksthe products of a
timebound individual in a material worldcan give adequate expression to insights about the eternal world of spirit. The form Bely's explicit answer will take in Petersburgan answer he approaches gradually through the Symphonies and The Silver Doveis a complete
revaluation of symbolic perception and the act of writing, which become emanations of the transcendent realm rather than being the products of an individual's efforts.
- 2 -

Bely's name for the world view and artistic method that yoked man
to the transcendent realm was "symbolism." Before turning to the text
of the First Symphony and Bely's symbolistic method in practice, it
might be instructive to glance at some of his roughly contemporaneous
theoretical pronouncements on the subject. In his first published essay,
"The Forms of Art" (1902), he explains that symbolism is an attempt "to
unite the temporal with the atemporal; to show the unusual meaning in
an everyday action." A special type of perception lies at the heart of
symbolic art: "Knowing how to see is knowing how to understand the
eternal meaning in images, their idea." 15
The merged dual nature of symbolsthe view that they are created
when a "perceiver" underscores the Platonic Idea in an imageis a
point Bely also stresses in later essays, such as "Criticism and Symbolism" (1904). Moreover, he takes the very important step of applying
such symbolizing activity to life as well as art: "from this point of view
the entire world is 'a forest full of symbols,' as Baudelaire put it." But
this activity is not overly rational; symbols also reflect the unity of feeling with reason. 16
Although Bely refined and expanded these views in later essays, to
my knowledge he never confronted directly several theoretical questions that immediately arise and that have a crucial bearing on the
practical creation of Symbolist belles-lettres. An implicit characteristic
of Bely's conception of the symbol is its absolute veracity and reality.
Since it has been imbued with the Absolute, a symbol cannot be anything but a true reflection of some higher order. Furthermore, according to Bely's theory, symbols are the products of individual acts of perception. (He of course does not deny the existence of "public" symbols
that antedate individuals in given cultures and that may float into their
purviews, but he gives them relatively scant attention in his theoretical
writings.) Consequently, first-person "lyrical" narratives in which the

The Symphonies

13

narrator is identical with the implied, or the historical author should be


Bely's preferred form (as was the case with Dujardin). And, indeed,
first-person viewpoints dominate his works. However, there is rarely a
consistent, single voice in any given work. What one finds instead is a
multiplicity of first-person narrators, with different voices and often
vastly different perspectives, each of whom is capable of personal insights, or merging with a character's consciousness, or professing ignorance, and so on. This in itself is a phenomenon that needs to be explained. But what of other points of view contained within first-person
narratives? Most important, how can Bely's or the implied author's
symbolic perceptions, which are implicitly graced by the Absolute, be
reconciled with characters in a narrative who are presented from the
third-person point of view, especially when the characters are associated with metaphysical evil and, as will be the case in the Second Symphony, when they make egregiously erroneous symbolic perceptions?
Are they and their perceptions symbols that the narrator-author has
created? If so, it is not at all clear how they could be derived from the
act of symbolic perception as Bely described it in his first essays. O r are
characters' perceptions only simulations of symbolic perceptions? And
are only some of the images in narratives truly symbolic, while others
are not? Answers to these questions must be inferred from Bely's works
themselves. His theoretical essays deal with symbolism on too abstract
or general a level to shed light on these problems. And his practical
criticism of specific works and authors deals too rarely with narrative
prose (or from entirely different perspectives) to be of much use
either. 17
Examination of Bely's fiction will show that his resolution of the tension between lyrical and narrative perspectives will take the same form
as his solution for the problem of "romantic irony"a revaluation of
the ontological status of fiction and the role of the writer in producing
it. However, although Bely's earlier hybrid narrative forms may be
problematic from the reader's point of viewby appearing to disintegrate into two incommensurable textual fieldsthey do provide clear
advantages for the writer by allowing him great freedom in range of
voices and perspectives. Starting with the Second Symphony, Bely will
make use of this freedom for didactic purposes, often reserving true
symbolic perceptions for the implied author (or one of his voices) and
erroneous ones (or those involving evil) for characters. In turn, this
may be a reflection of Bely's view of symbolism as something that will
effect the transformation of mankind (a point to which I shall return).
Thus Bely's narratives can be thought of as resurrecting something like
the utilitarian ethos found in many of the greatest nineteenth-century
Russian novels.

14

Andrei Bely

In general, Bely's diffuse early theoretical formulations are reflected


in the text of the First Symphony. There is a widespread problem with
the symbols he created, however, in that they are often too abstract or
too vague to communicate effectively with the reader.
One category of symbolic actions and events in the Symphony follows what might be termed the "some-thing, some-one, some-where"
principle. Most of the Symphony is dominated by an implied firstperson consciousness. Rather than say what or who did something, or
where the event occurred, Bely attempts to create mystery, to suggest
rather than define who the actor, or where the locus of the action is.
(This general tactic is of course one of the distinguishing characteristics
of European Symbolism, and had been canonized long before Bely.
Mallarm's well-known dictum on the subject was "suggrer, viol le
rve.") For example, at the beginning of part one, "The wind burst into
the window, and something flew in with the wind, twisting the curtain"
(p. 21). A few pages further on, perhaps in order to suggest the presence of hidden beings in the "material" world (beings different from the
more overtly Bcklinesque ones that appear later), Bely writes: "At
times, someone sad swam up to the surface of the water. Swam rhythmically, cleaving the watery dampness with wet greyness" (p. 24).
Similarly, actions are sometimes glimpsed only obliquely, which
places them in a more suggestive realm than the everyday three dimensions: "The goat-legged forester hobbled between the trunks, disappearing somewhere off to the side" (p. 25). A variant of this that Bely
used to suggest the otherworldly source of the "murmur of Eternity" is
"from somewhere in the distance" (p.90).
Many other examples of this sort could be adduced from the four
parts of the Symphony. In each case, the indefinite words are those
components of the symbolic images that are meant to point to the transcendent, eternal or ideal realm that the perceiver (the narrator in this
case) can glimpse in an aspect of the Symphony's "material" world.
These recall comparable devices in such Symbolist works as Maeterlinck's play L'Intruse (1890), where the calls of birds, a flickering lamp,
and a gust of wind are meant to signal the advent of the otherwise invisible death. Olga Soloviev knew the Belgian playwright's works,
and, as Bely recalled in his memoirs, introduced them to him. But Bely's work has neither such a relatively clearly delineated occult cause
nor such palpable "signifiers," and differs in its form and themes, of
course. 18
The only instance when the reader is actually shown something of
the mysterious dimension in Bely's Symphony is near the end of part
four. Once the Princess and the Knight she saves have reached the

The Symphonies

15

realm where the Lord God Himself wanders wrapped in fog, we read:
"Someone waved to them with a blue iris" (p. 113). But in this case, a
few lines higher, we had been told that God Himself "rocked a blue
iris." Thus, we have a rare instance of the referent being more or less
identified for the reader.
Another device that Bely uses to create an aura of mysterious symbolic significance is made possible by a certain feature of Russian grammar: subjects in sentences can be implied by verbs alone, without any
semantic or syntactic awkwardness. But if a definite subject is not
specified, sentences containing such constructions automatically appear to reveal the actions of agents that remain hidden or occult. Thus,
the phrase propeli molitvu ([they] sang a prayer), repeated twice on
one page, adds to the atmosphere of religious mysticism that permeates
the scenes in which the Princess meets the as yet unsaved Knight (p.
58). It is as if the prayer were being sung b y invisible presences who are
themselves part of the transcendent or supernatural realm. The addition of "somewhere" to the phrase in one instance serves only to further
intensify its meaningful indirection.
In other cases, this effect of suggestiveness is achieved through
an ambiguous relationship between the verbs in question and potential subjects in close proximity to them. The sentence Podavali
znaki
i peregovarivalis'
([they] signaled and conversed), with its implications
of cryptic communication, may refer to the nevedomye
(unknown
ones) in the preceding line, or to some other subject entirely (p. 77).
Even when the context provides a fairly clear idea of the verbs' subjects, the fact that the verb and subject can be separated by varying
lengths of text, often dealing with other topics, still leaves some
ambiguity about the origin of the actions denoted by the verbs:

otdykhali belykh odezhdakh

. . . kivali trevozhnym ptitsam.

Vstre-

chali priletaiushchikh
brat'ev ([they] rested in [their] white garments . . . nodded to the disquieting birds. Greeted the brothers
who were flying in). This passage appears on the first page of the
Symphony's fourth part, and there is nothing preceding it to which
these verbs could refer directly. It is true that one can glide
metonymically between these beings clad in white and the "snowwhite flowers of oblivion" which appear a few lines higher on the
page: both are similarly situated on or near water, and both nodthe
former because they are rocked by waves. But several lines further
down from the passage describing the beings we read: "White men and
women followed with exhausted eyes . . . ," suggesting that it may in
fact be they who "rested," "nodded," and "greeted" earlier in the text
(p. 103).

16

Andrei Bely

Bely's symbol for eternity is structured in a similar way: "1. Time,


like a river, stretched without end, and misty Eternity was reflected in
the flow of time. / 2. This was a pale woman in black" (pp. 41, 81). The
difference here is that the agent and the action are now in tight proximity. But although the symbol's meanings and associations are given in
the first sentence (the hackneyed simile about time and the river can
hardly be considered a symbol itself), while the rather abstract image
appears in the second, the symbol does not seem to have fully coalesced, and thus produces the impression of artificiality and arbitrariness.
What might be termed "portentous personification" comprises another category of attempts by Bely to fill the First Symphony with symbolic significance. In this case, however, some natural phenomenon is
given the behavioral traits normally associated with human beings.
Like the separation of subject and verb, this device also means to suggest that sentient but occult forces operate in the "material" world. But
rather than keep the agent of action hidden from view or leave the subjects of verbs ambiguous, Bely, by personifying aspects of nature,
makes them into visible, but no less occult, subjects of actions in their
own right. Given the generally mythological character of the Symphony
and its overtly metaphysical concerns, personifications in it should not
be understood as merely decorative or traditional indications of Nature's sympathy for, or similarity to man.
Thus, when the heir and his wife arrive at the tower, "The morning
looked at them with a gloomy gaze" (p. 26); this might be an indication
that the place where the heroine-Princess will eventually be born is under a malevolent pall. This motif also appears in a different personification later, after the Princess has been born in the tower where her father
had taken refuge with her mother. A wind called "Roarer" (Revun) flies
over the surrounding forest "constricting the heart with a vague foreboding" (p. 30). That the possessor of the heart is not specifiedit
could be the narrator as well as the charactersaugments the suggestiveness of the image. Here personification results from the wind having a proper name, of course, but in the First Symphony Bely rarely
uses this device of capitalizing names to increase their portent. Personification of both types, however, will be used again, both more extensively and to excellent effect, in the compelling symbolic world Bely
creates in The Silver Dove.
Another means that Bely apparently attempted to employ in creating
symbolic significance was abstraction, and a lack of specificity in the
imagery of the Symphony is a major feature of the work as a whole.
For example, the first five "verses"as Bely termed these short numbered paragraphsconsist of a very generalized landscape:

The Symphonies

17

1. A large moon floated along torn clouds.


2. Here and there rose elevations covered with young birches.
3. Bald hills dotted with stumps were visible.
4. There were occasional pines that pressed against each other
in a lonely cluster.
5. A strong wind blew and the trees waved long branches, (p. 13)
The scene is a forlorn one and can be understood as expressing the narrator's dejection. But it is so abstract that one could see it in a variety of
other ways as well.
An abstraction that seems to grope for an occult meaning also appears in the description of the tower: it has a terrace with "curious" (prichudlivye) marble banisters (p. 27). Since a tower evokes a range of associations with both superior isolation and transcendence, the reader
automatically imagines that the "curious" appearance of the banisters is
somehow related to what the tower symbolizes. But the epithet is ultimately unsatisfying because it leaves too much to the reader's imagination. Another example, from the end of the Symphony, is the transfigured heroine's "special smile . . . just a bit sad" (p. 91). Presumably this
smile is meant to echo the girl's new, semi-divine status, but this is uncertain.
What makes these and other abstractions function in a symbolic
fashion is that various specific associations can be attached to each: a
range of examples can be imagined to illustrate each abstract rule, as it
were. This device is not peculiar to Bely's early art, and has a tradition
in French Symbolism. Anna Balakian has written of Verlaine's predilection for "the simplest words in the French language," which he "coupled
with the most non-specific adjectives possible" precisely in order to
stimulate the reader's imagination. 1 9 And Mallarm's well-known
claim that he had created "l'absente de tous bouquets" in his poetry
the Platonic Idea of flowers, rather than anything contaminated by
traits derived from particular speciesis a related phenomenon. The
decision whether or not a given image is successful rests ultimately with
each individual reader, however. But, clearly, Bely's prose in the First
Symphony lacks the simple alliterative music of Verlaine's verse (which
adds greatly to the effect of the poet's spare vocabulary), to say nothing
of the multifarious complexities of Mallarm's poetry. To put the matter bluntly, Bely's numerous abstractions in the Symphony are most
likely instances of artistic immaturity, haste, or self-indulgence, rather
than of conscious craftsmanship in the style and spirit of the great
French poets. This inference is supported by the fact that Bely would
start creating much more detailed and specific imagery immediately
after the First Symphony, and would continue to do so for the rest of
his life. 20

18

Andrei Bely

Bely himself makes this appraisal in his memoir The Beginning of the
Century. He depicts himself at the time he was working on the Symphony as a precocious but still unpracticed writer: "first I precipitate
the rhythm, trying to bring out the sounds by selecting any kind of
words; then I try to color my rhythms; I'm interested in images and not
their verbal formulation; my lexicon is still poor; melody and image,
and nothing else." 21 An imperfect incarnation of an artistic impulse into
language is precisely what seems to characterize Bely s world in the
First Symphony. And the underlying rhythm he claimed had motivated
him was not incarnated in the text in any striking way either, especially
in contrast to the highly rhythmic prose of his major novels.
An enigmatic sphere is one of the more intriguing and successful
symbols that can be found in the work. Its special significance is that it
marks the first appearance of an entire family of symbols that will recur
in several of Bely s later works. The young Knight, while still mired in
evil, participates in dark rites, one of which involves tossing a "hot little sphere" and singing "My sphere, my little sphere." This is known as
"the rite of the spherical terror." We are not told what this sphere represents; possibly, it is some remnant of the "bloody meteor" mentioned
on the same page (p. 52) that fell nearby. There are "old exhalations of
spherical nightmares" associated with the castle near which the meteorite fell, which links the sphere and the meteor. Thus, the sphere's associations bridge evil and the descent of a celestial body to earth, and hint,
however vaguely, at a transcendent that coerces man. Similarly, in the
essay "Symbolism as a World View" (1903), Bely speaks of a falling meteor as an "intrusion of Eternity" that acts as a reminder of the paltriness
of man's state. 22 This anticipates the role that related symbols will play
in three much more important worksthe Second Symphony, Petersburg, and Kotik Letaev.
-3The relation of life to art and reality to fiction was a central concern
for Bely from the start of his career as a theoretician of symbolism. He
explained in the essay "Symbolism as a World View" that symbolism
was not merely an esthetic mode, but a path leading ultimately toward
"life creation." Using Vladimir Soloviev's terminology, he prophesied
that symbolic art would be joined with mysticism to become "theurgy."
And, he continues, "If in symbolism we have the first attempt to show
the eternal in the temporal, then in theurgy we have the end of symbolism. For here we are already speaking of the incarnation of Eternity
through the transfiguration of the resurrected individual." 23
This Solovievian faith in the ability of the new symbolic art to literally transform mankind also explains Bely's ecstatic embrace of Nietzsche in this essay, as well as in later writings. Above all, Bely valued

The Symphonies

19

Nietzsche's proclamation of the coming "overman." In his memoir of


the period 1899 to 1901, when he was working on his early Symphonies, Bely recalls that Thus Spoke Zarathustra was his "handbook,"
and that he was completely captivated by Nietzsche's literary style and
personality. 24
In practice, the key element in Bely's fictional prose that serves as the
actual bridge between art and life is the first-person narrator. This is an
inevitable outgrowth of Bely's theory of symbolism, as I suggested
above. And although the most dramatic claims by the narrator about
the nature of his role will appear in Petersburg, several of these are already foreshadowed in a primitive form in the First Symphony.
It is noteworthy that the Symphony begins with a first-person Introduction. The speaker in these four pages makes a series of rather cryptic statements outlining an emotional curve going from dejection to
apocalyptic ecstasy: he begins by speaking of his desire for oblivion
and his feeling of worthlessness, and ends with a description of a centaur who rushes by crying about the "rosy sky" of a sunrise that can be
seen from a hill (p. 17). In between, the narrator describes a giant who
is crushed by the clouds he used to carry. This movement from despair
to hope in the Introduction also characterizes the general shape of the
emotional curve in the Symphony's four parts, establishing a parallel
between the first-person narrator's own experiences and those of his
characters.
After the giant perishes, the narrator says, using the suggestive subjectless verb form, "And when I cried and sobbed about the crushed giant, wiping away my tears with my fists, [they] whispered to me on a
windy night: T h e s e are dreams . . . Only dreams' . . . " (p. 16). O n
the Symphony's last page, however, the heroine and her Knight, who
have been reborn into a supernatural realm, awaken and "see that their
dream was not a dream, because He [presumably, God] . . . was whispering to them all that they saw in the dream" (p. 121). The connection
between this statement and what the narrator hears from the unspecified parties in the Introduction is suggested in the Symphony's second
part. The Knight is wending his way through a forest, hearing requests
"that the dream of life pass, and that we [italics mine] awaken from the
dream" (p. 54). Later the Knight sees the heroine in her tower extending
her arms toward the sun and asking, the narrator tells us, "that the
dream of this life pass, and that we awaken from the dream" (p. 55; a
similar statement appears on p. 42). The implication here is that the
narrator is including himself in two statements that characterize as a
dream a lower level of reality in the Symphony. Thus, the narrator's
world in the Introduction may be considered as continuous with the
"fictional" world of the characters. Even more intriguing is that the narrator's world, like that of the characters, is somehow an emanation of a

20

Andrei Bely

transcendent realmwhich is the implication of the statement at the


end of the Symphony that God "whispers" the world in which human
beings find themselves. The significance this has for the tension between the "lyrical" narrators symbolic perceptions on the one hand,
and the perceptions and actions of characters in third-person passages
on the other is that both sets may thus be reconciled by being understood as manifestations of a higher, cosmic unity acting through the
writer.
This possibility has a direct bearing on the metaliterary theme of fictionality that is also broached, however tentatively, in the First Symphony. In the first part, the narrator says that a "stooping colossus" is
"only a story" (p. 36), and repeats this later (p. 94). Elsewhere in the
Symphony, however, a giant insists to the Knight that he "is not a story"
but a giant (p. 83). These examples represent two heterogeneous points
of view that can nevertheless be reconciled with each other as well as
with the unusual conception of dreams discussed above. The difference
is between the superior divine point of viewthat of the omnipotent
creator, and the limited human perspectivethat of his dependent
creature. It is not that dream and reality, or fiction and reality are confused in the Symphony, but that dreams and fictions are also real. This
anticipates the alternation of characters and street crowds in Petersburg between being "shadows" in one scene and not the next.
The ontological weight that fiction acquires in a schema such as this
is also implicit in the unusual formboth structural and typographicalthat the Symphony has, as well as in the generic designation Bely
gave it. The key figure here is Schopenhauer. All of Bely s earliest theoretical essays on symbolism, which he reprinted in 1910 and 1911, pay
homage to Schopenhauer, even though Bely quickly abandoned purely
Schopenhauerian metaphysics and esthetics in favor of syncretic beliefs.25
In his first essay, "The Forms of Art," for example, Bely follows Schopenhauer in ranking all the arts in terms of their distance or proximity
to music, which is understood as a pure expression of Willthe Absolute in Schopenhauerian metaphysics. Thus, architecture is the least
perfect art, while symphonic music is the most perfect; and poetry that
aspires to music is the most perfect of the verbal arts. 26
Bely's thinking was always profoundly teleological, and he hypothesized that in the future all the temporal as opposed to spatial arts, including literature of course, would strive to approach music even more
closely.27 This was undoubtedly what he tried to achieve himself in his
Symphonies. The special distinction of poetry in Bely's Schopenhauerian system is that it is the form of art linking time and space. And since

The Symphonies

21

causality plays a major role in poetry as wellthus including the third


of Kant's categories in its purviewBely concludes that its "subject
matter" (predmet izobrazheniia) is not one or another spatial or temporal feature of reality, but reality in its entirety.28 This is the reality of
course, that serves as the phenomenal stuff an artist uses to express the
Eternal or Platonic Ideas. "Music," as Bely put it, paraphrasing Schopenhauer, "is a window through which charming floods of Eternity
flow into us and magic gushes."29 Thus poetry, a term that Bely must
have applied to his Symphonies since they aspire to music, is not so
much a signifier of the transcendent, as a direct if imperfect expression
of the Will, or Absolute that is seen in phenomena. This view obviously tends to erase the traditional distinction between fiction and reality.
Bely's description of how he actually went about writing the First
Symphony suggests that he saw his words as having an almost tangible
physicality. "A table is not enough for me," Bely wrote, reconstructing
his frame of mind:
I could work only in the open air; both my eyes and my muscles
participate in the work; I stamp out and shout out my rhythms in
the fields with waves of my arms . . .
It's not enough for me to hear: in this period I must carry over
what I hear into a gait; I discover for myself that there are muscular impressions [predstavleniia]
and non-muscular ones; the influence of bodily movements on the architectonics of the phrase
is the America I discovered in my youth. 30
Bely wrote this memoir in 1930-1932, at a time when, judging by
comments scattered throughout it, he had to defend himself against increasing hostility from the Soviet politico-literary establishment. His
reservations and rvaluations of the past are as painful to read as they
are understandable. They also justify a careful reading between the
lines, however, because it is known from the manuscripts Bely wrote
"for the desk drawer" in the late 1920s and early 1930s that during most
of his Soviet period he falsified and kept hidden a deep involvement in
spiritual, and specifically anthroposophical beliefs. 31 Thus the mention
of the close physical connection between sound and gesture, when considered in the light of Bely's essays from 1902 and 1903, suggests his private notion that his texts were perhaps divinely inspired, and that his
works thus acquired a mode of being more substantial than that of
mere "fictions." It would be erroneous to insist on this point too much
with regard to any one of the Symphonies. But since Bely will make the
remarkable claim in Petersburg that literary fictions are as real as the
reader's own world, it seems worthwhile to note an early adumbration

22

Andrei Bely

of this view. Moreover, the close connection between sound and gesture (assuming it is one Bely actually experienced during his youth, and
not something he projected onto his past from his anthroposophically
influenced perspective thirty years later), viewed in a philosophically
idealistic context, also prefigures the aspect of anthroposophy called
"eurythmy," about which Bely published an entire treatise in 1922 entitled Glossaloliia (sic).
It should be mentioned that Bely s use of Schopenhauer's ideas in his
early essays was clearly very selective: he did not give much attention
to Schopenhauer's concept of the world as representation, or to the philosopher's pessimism (although he would in his Second Symphony). Indeed, in Bely s conception, the subject's interaction (through symbolic
perception) with the world outside himself results in glimpses of Eternity rather than a confrontation with either blind Will, or a solipsistic
screen of illusion generated by the individual.
-4Although Bely called his four early works Symphonies, he made the
highly revealing acknowledgment after writing the first three that their
"structure arose by itself, and I did not have a clear idea of what a 'Symphony' in literature should be." He also confirmed this later in his life
when he recalled that the Symphonies grew out of sequences of "storyless" (bez fabuly) little scenes based on "cosmic" images that appeared
to him, and out of his improvisational themes on the piano, for which
he then created images.32 These avowals do much to explain why the
First Symphony's large-scale structure bears only a superficial resemblance to the sonata form. Indeed, it is possible that Bely derived his generic classification of "symphony" not directly from musical forms but
via Nietzsche, who referred to his most popular work, Thus Spoke
Zarathustra, by this term (in an obvious evocation of instrumental music of course).33 The general notion of symphonic music may have appealed to Bely for the same reasons that abstract language did in the
First Symphony. Symphonic music is also abstract, and, at the same
time, lends itself well to a range of emotional interpretations. The spectrum of feelings and attendant inner states that it induces are thus like
the content that a symbol can subsume.
However, there were three other undoubted influences that converged on Bely's Symphonies and left their imprint on the small-scale
structures of the works: Wagner's development of the leitmotif,
Nietzsche's aphoristic style, and the Bible. These are the dominant and
complementary extrinsic models for the unique short paragraph form
of the Symphoniestheir most striking formal characteristica form,
moreover, that can be traced in all of Bely's later works.

The Symphonies

23

Bely characterized his involvement with Wagner during his adolescence as "a mad enthusiasm," 34 an attitude he shared with many major
and minor figures in European and Russian Symbolism. In the case of
Nietzsche, who was also the object of a widespread cult, Bely was not
only seduced by his ideas, but became fascinated by his style from his
earliest contact with it in 1899: "in his aphorisms I see the ultimate in
symbolizing ability: the surprising musicality enslaved me, a musician
in spirit, completely
The philosopher-musician seemed to me
the very type of a symbolist." 35 In fact, in "Symbolism as a World
View," Bely defined "symbol" as "an aphorism charged to the limit." 36
A number of. diary entries from 1901, which were published only recently, help understand exactly why Bely saw a parallel between symbols and aphorisms:
The value of an aphorism is that it allows one to take in at a
glance any horizon, and maintain the relation among the parts.
An aphorism is the most intimate form of contact between the author and the reader . . .
The other valuable feature of a good aphorism is a certain reticence, which is, as it were, like a door that opens onto a further
development of the thought . . .
The aphorism of a sage is a point of departure, but the path
which one follows is already foreseen in that point. 37
Thus, the division of the text of the First Symphony into sequences of
short numbered paragraphs, many consisting of one sentence each,
may be understood as Bely's attempt to employ a syncretic form that
enjoyed the flexibility of leitmotifs, the pointedness of aphorisms, and
the hieratical weight of Biblical verses. But although Bely makes extensive use of leitmotifs by repeating individual numbered short paragraphs in different contexts, and sometimes varying them as well, there
is very little of Nietzsche's pith or laconism in them (to say nothing of
Biblical grandeur). Bely's "verses" resemble Nietzsche's aphorisms only
very superficiallymainly in the way that print is distributed on the
page.
Without the special typographical arrangement, the text of the First
Symphony would read as largely unremarkable prose. However, the
segmentation of the text naturally controls the intonational curve of individual "verses," thereby adding a certain lilt to them. And an intermittent, weak rhythm emerges when "verses," or parts of them, are repeated in close proximity to each other. It may also be possible that
Bely meant the unusual typographical format to suggest the measures
of musical notation.

24

Andrei Bely

The typographical form of the passages also serves to underscore the


horizontal component in a page of text. Since the paragraphs are numbered, the reader is confronted with an interrupted sequentiality that is
different from the way prose usually reads. This may be the consequence of Bely's attempt to bring into practice an early theoretical formulation of his that is also based on Schopenhauer's view of poetry as
pivotal between spatial and temporal artsnamely, that an essential
part of poetry is "the depiction of the sequential change [smena] in representations [predstavlenii]."3'
The horizontal layering of the text
thus may illustrate the alternation of discrete images, which would
seem to be an inevitable characteristic of symbolic perception in general: the subject's sense of self is lost during the act of perceiving a higher
order of reality in a phenomenon, and if the perceiver is to continue to
function as a human being, he must be able to withdraw from deep
symbolic perceptions, which brings them to a close. 39 In any event, Bely's early concern with the typographical layout of the First Symphony's text foreshadows his much more elaborate typographical devices
in Petersburg and other later works, in which the arrangement of the
text on the page is actually made into a visual representation of the author's metaphysical symbolism.
A manifestation of a musical principle of organization can also be
found on the smallest scale of the Symphonythat of the individual
word. A.P. Avramenko points out that Bely attempts to imitate the
widespread musical device of structuring a work around one dominant
note by repeating the same word. Thus, in the fourth part of the Symphony the sacral color white appears in numerous contexts: the "white
breasts of birds," "white" garments, "white" children, sighs, mysteries,
and so on. But the fact that the word appears some two hundred times
in the space of a dozen pages undermines its expressiveness. 40
-5It is also possible that the concepts of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and
Wagner fell on ground that had already been prepared. In his recent
study of Bely's earliest, and heretofore unpublished works, including
the so-called "Pre-Symphony," the noted Soviet scholar of Bely . V.
Lavrov suggests that a series of "lyrical fragments" was the "formal
point of departure" (iskhodnaia forma) of all of Bely's prose genres.
Some of them had been written with musical analogies in mind, and
after being reworked were incorporated into Symphonies; the Introduction to the First Symphony is an example. Thus, Lavrov argues, the
Symphonies developed inevitably out of an accretion of fragments (a
conclusion supported by Bely's own remark about "storyless" scenes
out of which the Symphonies grew). In turn, the form of these fragments was a spontaneous outgrowth of Bely's experimentation with

The Symphonies

25

"symbolic perceptions." In his earliest memoir, On the Border of Two


Centuries, Bely had described how he tried to teach himself to see "Platonic Ideas" in nature, and how the "style of the lines" he wrote down
developed directly from the "style of the perception." The form that resulted was entirely unique, Bely insisted in the memoir, even though he
had not thought about form but had concentrated on experimenting
with actual perceptions. Lavrov takes Bely at his word and concludes
that Bely's symbolic world view, subsequent theorizing, and all his belletristic works developed more out of such early experiences than as a
consequence of his first contacts with the new "decadent" art and ideas
appearing in Russia. 4 1
It should be noted, however, that the fragments Lavrov discusses
(several of which Bely wrote as early as 1897 and 1898), as well as the
seven "Lyrical Fragments in Prose" that Bely selected from among these
earlier efforts and reworked for publication in his first collection of poetry Gold in Azure (1904), bear a resemblance not only to Bely's own
Symphonies but to several examples of nineteenth-century "prose
poetry," including that of French Symbolism, thus suggesting a link between the two.
Avramenko has pointed out the connections between the subjects of
the published "Fragments" and the themes that appear in the First Symphony. These include black magic and terror, the struggle between
good and evil, and salvation through the agency of an incorporeal
force. A preoccupation with mood rather than plot, and indirect suggestion rather than denotation also characterizes both the "Fragments"
and the Symphonies. And like the Symphonies, the "Fragments" are
broken up into short paragraphs (which, in one instance, are numbered
like the "verses" in the first two Symphonies). 4 2
In their dimension, themes, forms, and typographical arrangements
Bely's various fragments and "Lyrical Fragments in Prose" recall, to differing degrees, such widely known assemblages of "prose poems" as
Baudelaire's Petits pomes en prose (1869), Rimbaud's Les
Illuminations (1886), and Mallarm's "Pomes en prose" (1864-1887). Bely's
fragments also resemble a series of prose poems entitled Senilia,
Poems
in Prose that Turgenev wrote in his old age (specifically, "The Old
Woman," "The End of the World," and "The Insect," among others),
which, as their generic designation suggests, most likely derived their
form from Baudelaire. Bely could easily have been introduced to examples of a genre that was popular at the time in the home of Mikhail and
Olga Soloviev; there, while still an adolescent, he experienced several
of the most important formative influences of his life. His own reminiscences confirm this inference, and have the additional value of pointing
to two specific writers whom he apparently tried to imitate in his "fragments": in an autobiographical letter from 1927 he speaks of his "poems

26

Andrei Bely

in prose" as being "a mixture of Turgenev, Edgar Poe [who had been
translated and first publicized in Europe by Baudelaire, and whose
poems were translated into prose by Mallarm] with everything that
was most left wing and most incomprehensible." 43
It is quite possible, of course, that Bely's early "lyrical fragments" reflect both his own experiments with perception, and the influence of a
popular avant-garde literary form. This supposition would in fact support Lavrov's conclusions (and Bely s admission) that the Symphonies
grew out of an accumulation of smaller pieces. It seems reasonable to
infer that experiments with "seeing Platonic Ideas" in nature, which
Bely claimed to have conducted, should yield results in which the firstperson point of view and immediate personal experiences are dominant. But, as I mentioned, Bely's Symphonies are typically built on alternations between first and third-person points of view. The First, for
example, begins with the narrator's point of view in the Introduction,
shifts to four sequences of verses presented from the third-person, but
with occasional moments of "free indirect discourse," (pp. 21-23), and
then returns to the first-person (pp. 23-24). Comparable shifts exist
both in Turgenev's Senilia, which contains a number of short, storylike pieces with an impersonal narrator, and in Bely's own fragments
(significantly, this characteristic is absent from the prose poetry of Edgar Allan Poe, as well as from Baudelaire). An obvious difference between the Symphonies and Turgenev's "prose poems" is that the latter
do not comprise one long continuous work in terms of subject matter.
However, L. P. Grossman advanced the argument long ago that Senilia
might be seen as a unified cycle constituting a "compositional whole"
a view that potentially brings it even closer to the origins of Bely's Symphonies. 44
The Second Symphony
A person reading Bely's Second Symphony (completed in 1901 and
published in 1902) immediately after the First45 is struck, on the one
hand, by the specificity of the imagery with which it opens, and, on the
other, by the seemingly absurdist manner in which disparate images are
yoked together in its first part. In sharp contrast to the conventional
narrative beginning of the First Symphony, with its description of the
old King's death in bland and abstract imagery, the Second opens vigorously with a cityscape composed of an agglomeration of fragments:
1. It was a time of suffocating toil. The roadway gleamed
blindingly.
2. Coachmen rattled by, presenting their worn, blue backs to
the hot sun.
3. Unembarrassed by the grimaces of passersby, yardmen
raised dust in columns, their brown-dusty faces guffawing.

The Symphonies

27

4. Low born intellectuals [raznochintsy] exhausted by the heat,


and suspicious city folk [meshchane] ran down the sidewalks.
5. All were pale, and above all lowered the light blue, grey-blue
firmament, first grey then black, full of musical boredom, eternal
boredom, with a sun-eye in the middle.
1. A poet was writing a poem about love, but experienced difficulty in choosing rhythms, but made an inkspot, but, turning his
eyes toward the window, became frightened of the celestial boredom.
1. Over a cup of tea, two men argued about great and insignificant people. Their cracked voices had become hoarse from arguing.
3. During those days and hours documents and memoranda
were being prepared in offices, while a rooster led chickens
around a little paved courtyard.
4. There were two grey guinea-fowls in the little courtyard as
well.
5. A talented artist depicted a "miracle" on a large canvas, while
twenty skinned carcasses hung in the butcher shop. (pp. 129131)
This cascade of vignettes has two interrelated elements in common.
The more obvious one is that all surface aspects of the city are unattractive: ugliness and mechanical repetitivenessindeed, the seeming
pointlessness of existencecharacterize the stuff of everyday life that
lies in the narrator's purview. The second element underlies the first,
and implies the existence of a transcendent dimension in the worlda
dimension that, in fact, transforms the disparate elements of tedious
everyday life into symbols.
The transcendent underpinning of the world Bely has created is signaled in the passages cited above by the narrator's reference to "musical . . . eternal boredom." These three words form a dominant leitmotif throughout the Second Symphony's first part. Shortly after the
passages cited, the narrator hears "mournful and stern songs of great
Eternity" coming from the sky; "And," he continues, "these songs were
like musical scales. Scales from an invisible world. Eternally the same
and the same" (pp. 131-132). Similar references to music, eternity, and
a grinding repetitiveness appear later both singly and together in different contexts (pp. 138, 147,153,164,171, 182).
The impression that these three linked ideas may be the distinguishing features of a coherent world view is reinforced by their being the
key concepts of Schopenhauer's philosophy. References to musical
sounds coming from the sky (which, significantly, only the narrator

28

Andrei Bely

hears in the Symphony) appear to be Bely's nods toward Schopenhauer's canonization of music in The World as Will and
Representation
as the expression of the Absolute Will, or the ultimate thing-in-itself.
(Even though Schopenhauer did not locate the Will in the heavens, the
sky is the naif s traditional locus for the otherworldly, which is what
Bely plays with.) Thus, the multifarious things, beings, and actions
Bely intentionally yokes together into seemingly nonsensical pairs and
clusters can be understood as dramatizations of Schopenhauer's belief
that the Will is the ultimate driving force behind all phenomena,
whether laws of physics, animal instincts, or human behavior. This is
also the implication of a phrase that recurs a number of times in the
work: "misty Eternity was reflected in the flow of time" (p. 143).
The unattractive character of the world and its domination by ceaseless repetitions that induce deep boredom also echo Schopenhauer's
profoundly pessimistic view of existence. Because the Will is an endless, blind urge or striving, it can never be satisfied permanently. Happiness in human beings is merely the temporary satisfaction of desire,
which is quickly replaced by boredom, then by desire once again. Relations among the characters in the Second Symphony's first part are
largely abrasive and disharmonious, further reflecting Schopenhauer's
belief that conflict typifies the manifestation of the Will in the phenomenal realm, and that each living creature attempts to assert itself at the
expense of others.
A number of individual vignettes display even more obvious distillations of Schopenhauer's essential ideas. Both the special motive force of
the Will (expressed as music), and the conflict among human beings
who respond to its blind urgings, are encapsulated in the following
scene:
1. The day was ending. Military music was playing on Prechistinsky Boulevard, it's not known why, and to the Boulevard came
many inhabitants of houses and basements, it's not known from
where. They walked back and forth on the Boulevard. They
stood before the music, crowding and pushing each other, (p.
132)
Bely even plays with the Kantian Ding-an-Sich, which Schopenhauer
transformed into his Will, in the depiction of a concert:
1. And now it began . . . deepened . . . arose . . . as if these
were musical scales from an unknown world, arising from no one
knows where, dying away.
2. As if this was by itself [samo po sebe], and those trumpeting
and bowing were by themselves [samipo sebe], (pp. 182-183)
However, although Schopenhauer provides a conceptual framework
that orders and makes intelligible the seemingly absurdist successions

The Symphonies

29

of images and plot fragments in the Symphony's first part, he is not the
key to the work as a whole. In fact, the first part differs significantly
from the other three largely because in them Bely abandons the philosophy of Schopenhauer in favor of Solovievian apocalypticism.
But despite the resulting ideological or philosophical disjunction, Bely s symbolic method remains the same throughout, and represents a
significant advance over the First Symphony. Instead of the vaguely
mysterious forces and presences of the First, in the Second Bely provides glimmers from the otherworldly realm, which, although seen
darklyprincipally by the narrator in the first part, and then by several characters and the narrator in the later partsare still compelling.
Moreover, Bely continues to fill his world in the Second with concrete
objects and detailed images, not the highly abstract locales or things
that typify the First. The result is a much more convincingly wrought
fictional world.
Satisfaction with this and other aspects of the Second Symphony
must have moved Bely to include it thirty years later among his half
dozen best works. In the Second Symphony Bely indeed found a balance between noumenal suggestiveness and phenomenal specificity
that is comparable to the achievement of his later major novels. He also
succeeded in creating a narrative form that departs from nineteenthcentury norms more drastically than did the First Symphony, and that
demands to be read in a new way. Rather than being presented with a
unified narrative consciousness, the reader has to put together the unifying, deeper meaning of the work from details scattered across the
work's motley surface. 46
-2-

Put abstractly, the nature of the connection between man's physical


world and the transcendent is that man is the largely unwitting agent of
otherworldly forcesa puppet dancing on cosmic strings as it were.
And although Schopenhauerian metaphysics disappears from the
Symphony after the first part, this deterministic relationship still persists in the other three.
The structure of the relationship in the first part reappears in different guises throughout the Symphony. On occasion, the narrator depicts the unity behind diversity with satirical intent. An "aristocratic
little old man" has among his guests "conservatives, liberals and Marxists," all of whom are fond of him. "The kindly little old man with the
medal on his chest patted everyone on the back, and said 'Yes, yes, of
course'" (pp. 161-162). Irony at the expense of the facile grace and harmony that typify the old man's reception colors the rest of the description as well. A somewhat more playful instance of unity behind diversity is this description of the city asleep:

30

Andrei Bely

1. At night everyone slept. They slept in basements. They slept


in attics. They slept in the house of the aristocratic little old man.
2. Some slept hideously contorted. Somewith their mouths
wide open. Some snored. Some seemed dead.
3. All slept.
4. They slept also in a ward for the mentally ill. They slept on
equal rights with those who were well.
An additional point here is that this sequence of numbered short paragraphs follows one in which a grey-haired elder sadly surveys the city
and quietly comments "My God, my God!" (pp. 176-177). His sense of
despair, which foreshadows the Solovievian apocalyptic theme that
comes later, is clearly not shared by the city's sleeping populace. Thus
the narrator's description of the city's diverse inhabitants temporarily
united in sleep is an ironic comment on their spiritual blindnessan effect achieved through juxtaposition with the elder's despairing comment.
A somewhat more positive variant of the structural paradigm established in the first part involves church services in the city:
1. And while Father John conducted the service, in the neighboring church Father Damian did the same thing.
2. Services were being conducted in all the churches; they were
saying the same holy words, but with different voices.
3. Without exception, the priests were all in gold brocade;
some were grey, some were fat, others were good-looking, many
were hideous, (p. 219)
In a different guise, this relationship of earthly events to an otherworldly motive force recurs in a leitmotif in part three: "The little peasants and horses were different, but their activity was the same [deistvie
odno]" (pp. 237, 238, 239). Hinting at the deeper significance of this observationthat occult causes underlie everyday human actions such as
plowingthe narrator comments, following the first appearance of the
motif, that while an ordinary observer would not have noticed anything special in this fact, a more perspicacious one would have.
At the same time that numerous small-scale variants of this structural relationship pepper the Second Symphony, the bulk of parts two
through four consists of one large-scale version. I have in mind the story
of Sergei Musatov and the various other mystics who are the butts of
Bely's parody, and their foilthe figure of the deceased Vladimir Soloviev and those who are allied with him. All these characters are filled
with and motivated by an anticipation of the End. But they differ in

The Symphonies

31

how clearly they perceive it, and, more important, in their attitude toward it.
The question then arises of how part one is related to the other three
parts of the Symphony. Whereas numerous microplots were juxtaposed in part one, the remaining three parts have a much less nervous
texture because they are concerned largely with several major interrelated plot lines. To be sure, some characters are carried over from part
one. The "fairytale" (skazka)the narrator's name for the beautiful but
empty society woman to whom Musatov is drawnis the most notable example because of the role she will play in Musatov's misguided eschatology in part two. But basically Bely abandons the Schopenhauerian world view after the first part and replaces it with one derived from
Nietzsche and Soloviev. The consequence is that the first part seems incompletely attached to the rest of the Symphony.
Nevertheless, several bridges do cross the gap. In most abstract
terms, the world views in the first and later parts are congruent. An essentially passive attitude toward cosmic events is held up as correct in
the last three parts. Thus, the implicitly deterministic atmosphere of
part one is preserved later in the Symphony as well, although for different reasons.
Another connection between the parts may be inferred from Bely's
conception of the history of nineteenth-century European philosophy,
as well as from the evolution of his philosophical outlook in the period
immediately preceding his work on the Second Symphony. Given his
passionate, life-long concern with uniting thought, feeling, and deed, it
is not surprising that these two developments should parallel each other. In the essay "Symbolism as a World View," Bely began with Schopenhauer when he spoke of antecedents for his own conception of symbolism. Although Schopenhauer's philosophy was pessimistic, it was
widely popular, and, "as the pessimism was coming to the surface, an
ever-increasing relief was felt in a frank acknowledgment of all the horrors of existence." This "recent" phase was the one Bely embodied in the
first part of the Second Symphony, I would argue. But the historically
important role of Schopenhauer passed, and "Pessimism turned out to
be a furnace that consumed self-satisfied vulgarity [poshlost']." Nietzsche, Hartmann, and Soloviev are the next important figures; in Bely's
view they all advanced beyond Schopenhauer, who was, nevertheless,
a necessary precursor. In his conception of tragedy, Nietzsche reconciled the antinomy between the Will and representation, and propounded the unified personality of the overman as the goal of historical
evolution. In Hartmann's "unconscious" Bely finds a confluence of the
metaphysical Will with the world of phenomena. Furthermore, the
goal of the historical process for Hartmann is also the revelation of the

32

Andrei Bely

"unified spirit" (vseedinogo dukha). And faith in the appearance of a


new unified personality, capable of reconciling science, philosophy,
and religion, Bely sees as congruent with Soloviev's teaching about
Godmanhood. 4 7
This infinitely more optimistic, ideologically oriented complex of
ideas colors the second, third, and fourth parts of the Symphony. The
transition from the ugly world of the first part to the subsequent parts
may be seen as a reflection of the dialectical change in world views experienced by those who, like Bely, reevaluated their positions toward
Schopenhauer. The diachronic axis in the Second Symphony can thus
be said to contain an extraliterary dimension drawn from the recent
history of Western culture. That Bely himself experienced such a shift
in tastes is also amply illustrated in his memoirs, 4 8 all of which militates
against (but does not preclude) the temptation to see part one simply as
a wide-angle survey of a city teeming with stories, and the rest of the
Symphony as a sudden narrowing of the focus onto a few individual
figures.
A final possibility should also be mentioned. Bely was only twenty
years old when he wrote the Second Symphony, and this was his first
completed long work after the juvenile First Symphony. It would not
be surprising if the disjunction between the parts of the Second was due
simply to a beginning author's inexpert hand.
This is in fact suggested by Bely's recollection of how he wrote the
work. The early part was a diary-like record of his walks across Moscow with his close friend Sergei Soloviev (the philosopher's nephew)
a diary he kept to read out loud at Mikhail Soloviev's tea table. Mikhail
Sergeevich, Sergei's father, "encouraged" the diary, "and for the first
time the thought arose: to give a plot to the sketches [osiuzhetit' nabroski]." But only after passing a university examination in physics did
Bely launch into the second part, completing it in approximately twenty-four hours. 4 9
Even more revealing is Bely's candid avowal in a letter from 1902 to a
new acquaintance:
The idea of a Symphony as such came to me only beginning with
the second part . . . The first is an appendage that has a very
slight and frequently external link to "the symphony as such." It's
true that in the fourth part there are attempts to create an analogy
with the first, but these attempts do not redeem the inappropriateness of the first.50
-3Sergei Musatov's failed apocalyptic program dominates parts two
through four of the Symphony, and all the other plot lines gain significance in relation to it. Initially presented as an attractive and forceful

The Symphonies

33

character (pp. 211-212), Musatov commits a grievous eschatological


error by confusing mundane reality for a spiritual ideal. The reader's
conclusion that Musatov has erred (according to his own criteria) is reinforced by the episodic appearance of personages who understand this
mistake and articulate the correct view of the apocalypse. One of these
is the deceased Vladimir Soloviev himself. Thus the reader is manipulated into making judgments about Musatov on the basis of information and observations judiciously selected and presented by the narrator, who usually refrains from commenting in his own voice.
Musatovto whom the narrator refers as the "prophet" (p. 213) with
an irony that does not become apparent until near the end of the Symphonyproclaims the imminent birth of a world savior whose mother
will be the "woman clothed with the sun." The child will "shepherd the
peoples with a staff of iron," and with his mother will enter the final
fray against the serpent (pp. 211-213, 273). In short, Musatov preaches
the Solovievian refraction of the Bibical Revelation of St. John. He also
yearns to be the one who will effect a new synthesis between the decadent West and the still potent "hot blood" of the Russian East (pp. 239240), which recalls Soloviev s desire for, and efforts on behalf of, a reconciliation of Western and Eastern Christian churches (anticipating a
similar theme in The Silver Dove).
An active pursuit of a spiritual reality thus typifies Musatov's behavior. Most significantly, this characteristic seems to be the reason for his
downfall. As Bely dramatizes it, Musatov's central error is basically
one of misperception:
1. He whispered prayerfully: "Woman, clothed with the sun,
reveal yourself to your standard bearer! Hear your prophet!"
2. And suddenly his severe countenance expressed extreme embarrassment.
3. He recalled a familiar image: two blue eyes, framed by reddish hair, a silvery voice and the sadness of otherworldly [bezmirnykh] lips.
4. With one arm she cooled herself with a fan, answering foolish remarks in kind.
5. That is how he had seen her at the ball given by the marshal
of the nobility.
6. He whispered in embarrassment: "Woman, clothed with the
sun . . ." (p. 249)
Apparently, under the pressure of his desire to see her, Musatov projects onto a beautiful but vapid society lioness the image of Soloviev's
Eternal Feminine. Similarly, later in the Symphony, he makes the even
more egregious mistake of confusing her daughter for the man-child
who will become the savior of the human race (p. 297).

34

Andrei Bely

These errors are not a simple case of Musatov's confusing matter for
spirit; there is evidence that another agency interfered in his life. In any
event, it is instructive to recall Bely's early theoretical formulation in
"The Forms of Art" about the correct epistemological stance that symbolic art requires (even though this formulation appears to have been
superseded by his practice in the Second Symphony): it is not enough
to see objects, one must learn "to understand the eternal meaning, the
idea in images." In Musatov's case, his overly eager anticipation of the
Second Coming leads to imbalance, and he projects his solipsistic desires onto an aspect of external reality instead of perceiving what lies
outside himself.
Moreover, Musatov's error is not wholly invented by the author. In
Bely's "Instead of a Foreword to the Second Symphony," a text that has
been widely (and sometimes inappropriately) cited in the critical literature because it appears to provide a key to his intentions, he speaks of
satire as being the second of the three levels of meaning in his work. 5 1
He explains that "here are ridiculed certain excesses [italics mine] of
mysticism" and recommends that those readers who doubt the existence
of his satirical targets "scrutinize surrounding reality more closely"
(pp. 125-126).
It is quite clear from his memoirs whom Bely had in mind when he
said this. After Vladimir Soloviev died in 1900, his brother Mikhail
Sergeevich hesitated to publish fragments from the philosopher's unfinished essays that touched on his mystical experiences of Divine Wisdom. The reason was Mikhail Sergeevich's fear that new publications
might feed the imagination of a certain Anna Schmidt, a "half-crazed"
woman from Nizhny Novgorod who had decided that she was the
"world soul" that had inspired Vladimir Soloviev. According to Bely,
Mikhail Sergeevich feared the birth of a mystical sect based on his
brother's teachings and influenced by Schmidt's "ravings." "My first
book, 'The [Second] Symphony'," Bely explained, "was filled with echoes of these fears in the form of parodies of the sect":
the image of Sergei Musatov is the image of a follower of Soloviev that has been pointed and caricatured to the extreme of sectarianism; individuals like him appeared in Schmidt's sect; in the
"Symphony" I only caricatured Schmidt, depicting what would
happen if V. S. Soloviev agreed with the ravings of his insane follower.52
It is likely that the last phrase in this quotation is at least in part a bone
thrown to the Soviet censors. Vladimir Soloviev himself appears on the
pages of the Second Symphony in an unassailable aureole of mystical
affection, and clearly differentiates himself from Musatov. Thus, one

The Symphonies

35

can only assume that in his memoir Bely was trying to play down his
passionate attachment to Soloviev, in a continual, politically expedient
attempt to disassociate himself from the otherworldly preoccupations
of his youth.
This inference is supported by Bely's revealing remark in an unpublished autobiography that he "experienced exactly what Musatov, the
hero of my second 'symphony' experienced; the second 'symphony/ a
chance fragment, is almost a protocol transcription of that authentic,
enormous symphony that I experienced over a number of months during this year [1901]." Bely's avowal has the additional interest of showing that he consciously melded his life and art. The woman whom Bely
idolized at the time was Margarita Kirillovna Morozova, confidante of
the avant-garde, and wife of a wealthy manufacturer. He describes his
platonic infatuation with her, and perception of her as Soloviev's Divine Wisdom, in his narrative poem The First Encounter (1921). 5 3
Of course Musatov is not a simple translation of Anna Schmidt. He
appears attractive at first, and ends not as a completely ludicrous figure, but with something of a tragic pall over him. This is due in part to
the original grandeur of his design. More important in defining him,
however, is that Bely presents him as an unwitting plaything of a great
cosmic process.
Bely plants this information quite subtly. From his earliest appearances in the text Musatov is repeatedlybut only implicitlycontrasted
with an old Orthodox priest who closely watches those who speak at
the gatherings of mystics with his "intelligent blue eyes," but who, most
significantly, "listens more than speaks" (p. 204). His passive, silent
presence throughout much of the Symphony is his distinguishing characteristic. It is also antipodal to Musatov's active, self-confident, and
willful theurgy. As the narrator describes it, Musatov's desire in relation to his followers is to "diligently blow into their hearts a sorrow
about fiery storms, so that they would become enflamed with sorrow
and be consumed by love" (pp. 2 4 1 - 2 4 2 ) . And when the deceased Soloviev speaks of Musatov in the end of the fourth part, he specifically
mentions Musatov's "pridefulness" and "self-confidence" (p. 313).
The significance of the old priest's behavior is that it reflects the
"knowing passivity" of figures in the Symphony who are clearly presented by the narrator as Bearers of the Truth. Indeed, an unspecified
personage, designated at first simply as "the passive and knowing one,"
early in part one repeats from "up above" the city the condemnatory
epithet "pig-sty" (p. 142). The "passive and knowing one" also reappears later in part one and exclaims "Thus, thus, o Lord! I know you!"
(p. 195). Later still the same figure expresses displeasure with the mis-

36

Andrei Bely

takes of the Moscow mystics, including Musatov (p. 295). In this, he


repeats the critique of Vladimir Soloviev himself, present supernaturally, and his companion Bars Ivanovich (pp. 282-284). "Bars" means
"snow leopard" in Russian, and thus has associations with the Dionysian tiger, and, in turn, with Bely s own special conception of Nietzsche
as a precursor of Soloviev. It is also worth noting the Bely himself
claimed to have encountered the "white shade" of Soloviev, and to have
conversed with him in dreams after the philosopher's death. 54
The final canonization of the "passive and knowing" stance with regard to the apocalypse specifically occurs near the end of part four. The
enigmatic figure is introduced to the quiet and passive Father John as
Aleksei Sergeevich Petkovsky. 55 The priest greets him joyously, and
during their conversation about the failures of Musatov and the other
Moscow mystics utters the crucial observation: "We make no conclusions and do not speak of anything . . . We only wait. [For] Your Glory,
o Lord." Shortly thereafter, the narrator adds that the two listened silently to the "eternal approach . . . And, it seemedthat something
was flying with noise and singing" (p. 323). The italics in the text emphasize the importance of these words for Bely, and undoubtedly refer
to the Second Coming.
Important evidence extrinsic to the Second Symphony supports my
inference about the value Bely placed on a passive epistemologica!
stance. In early diary-like entries he refers a number of times to the importance of "listening" to the approach of a cosmic upheaval, rather
than "reading, thinking, or making conclusions" about it. And in comparing Nietzsche and Soloviev, Bely concludes that the latter "listened"
and "saw" better than the former precisely because he was more passive.56
However, the problem with Musatov is not only that his active
stance is diametrically opposed to the correct passive one of the positive characters. His willfulness, which is, after all, a form of pride, and
consequently an echo of the cause of Lucifer's fall and man's first sin in
Eden, appears to be the fatal flaw that the transcendent uses to destroy
him. Musatov's fate is highly revealinga paradigm, in factof Bely's
deterministic view of man's tie to the transcendent. Moreover, Musatov prefigures Darialsky and Kudeiarov in The Silver Dove, who are
also doomed because of their active theurgic stance.
That Musatov was a victim of the otherworldly is suggested by repeated references to the fact that "Eternity joked [shutila] with her favorite" (for instance, pp. 254, 267). Musatov is convinced that he is the
"herald of Eternity" (p. 267), and that Eternity "lit a new star" for him
and "pointed out" to him both the woman clothed with the sun and her
child (p. 293). Later, after Musatov in fact makes the mistaken identifi-

The Symphonies

37

cations, Eternity whispers to him: "I was joking . . . So, you joke
also . . . we all joke" (p. 300). One can only conclude from this that Musatov is intentionally made the butt of a cosmic practical joke, perhaps
as a sort of karmic punishment for his excessive (the word is repeated
numerous times by the narrator in relation to Musatov) love for his
apocalyptic design. This is why he comes close to being an undeserving
and essentially innocent victim. His fall is ultimately too ludicrous,
however, for him to be a true tragic figure.
There may be something of Bely's own deeply felt childhood experience behind Musatov's fate. In his memoirs, Bely often returned to
what he designated as his "scissors problem." He meant by this the profound trauma he had experienced as a childof being torn between
parents with antipodal characters and interests, and of his consequent
and constant sense of "guiltless guilt" for following the precepts of one
instead of the other. This experience led him to identify himself with
Christ, and seems to have been sufficiently seminal to have lasted into
adulthood, when it was fed by the Christological orientation of anthroposophy. The motif of the innocent victim also reappears in all of Bely's
works of belles lettres, and is dramatized with special poignancy in the
autobiographical novels Kotik Letaev and The Baptized
Chinaman.
Deceptive Eternity also tries to impart an idea to Musatov that is
both Nietzschean, and, within the context of the Second Symphony,
demonic. Eternity whispers to him more than once that "All returns,"
and further confides that "All essence is in the visible. Reality is in
dreams . . . A great sage . . . A great fool . . . All is one" (pp. 2 5 3 254). This statement is somewhat muddled. Nevertheless, Nietzsche's
idea of the Eternal Return is conflated in it with what Musatov hears
from bizarre creatures in the end of part four.
Musatov has had a lot to drink before he goes to them, but their supernatural and malevolent, rather than merely illusory, character is
confirmed by the narrator (p. 305) as well as by the quiet old priest (p.
318). 5 7 One of the demonic beings repeats the Nietzschean formula
"that all returns" (p. 307). But the being then undermines the idea's possible applicability to the Second Coming (which is a connection Bely
himself made in his theoretical writings) by adding that "the fourth dimension" is a continuation of this world, and that there is nothing different "beyond the wall" (p. 309). (This is also the essence of the comments made at a crucial juncture in The Silver Dove by Sukhorukov, a
character who is unequivocally demonic.) The demonic being's remark
is of course an explicit attack on all otherworldly beliefs, and is particularly perverse because the one who uttered it claims to be "a thing-in-itself" (p. 308). (By contrast, later in the fourth part the narrator says in a
scene describing Father John and the "passive and knowing one": "it

38

Andrei Bely

seemedsomewhere beyond the wall that someone's footsteps


were
approaching"
[p. 323]. The italics are Bely's, and the context clearly
suggests that these footsteps are related to the imminent Second C o m ing.) Finally, in response to his frightened question about what the future holds, the demon tells Musatov not about the apocalypse and a
hope for universal renewal, but that "the Negro" is the "coming master
of the world" (p. 311). In the context of the Symphony and some of Bely's later writings this is obviously meant to signify an issueless barbarism. 58
A brief glance back at Bely's theory of symbolic perception indicates
that he must have been of two minds with regard to the "[Platonic]
ideas" or "Eternity" that one must learn to see in phenomena. Judging
by Musatov's example, the transcendent plays the decisive role in human perception, and, in fact, seems to initiate it. Thus, by implication,
all creativity is the effect of a transcendent cause, rather than the result
of an individual's effort.
-4In Bely's later works increasing numbers of characters experience
ever greater coercion by a transcendent realm. In other words, Musatov's solitary fate of being toyed with by heaven, while other characters
resign themselves to whatever cosmic processes may bring them, gradually becomes superseded by visions of all protagonists in thrall to
forces that are largely beyond their ken, and that intrude into their
lives. This is perhaps the heart of Bely's later world view and art, and is
dramatized in the last two Symphonies as well as, with exceptional
brilliance and most fully, in The Silver Dove, Petersburg, and Kotik Le-

taev.

It is also neatly played out in a small, strategically located scene in


the second part of the Second Symphony that has the added interest of
illustrating a basic stylistic feature of Bely's: his characteristic rapid
shifts in narrative focus and point of view. Much of the nervous texture
(and difficulty) of his narratives, from the Symphonies through Petersburg and Kotik Letaev, is due to this distinctive feature, which is ultimately a formal reflection of Bely's metaphysics.
The sequence of passages begins with a scene in which the "passive
and knowing one" is sitting quietly, drinking tea, and apparently contemplating God. If someone had an acute sense of hearing, the narrator
explains, he would be able to discern the distant summons of a horn,
for it was as if Soloviev were standing on a chimney and trumpeting.
Such privileged perceptions by the narrator, which exceed the sensibilities of most characters, are widespread in the Symphony (for example, pp. 1 3 6 , 1 5 4 , 237), and typify Bely's later works as well. Then Bely

The Symphonies

39

adds the qualifying remark "But this is only how it seemed" to the statement about the horn. This is an obvious attempt to augment the apocalyptic suggestiveness of the scene he is fashioning by undermining the
certainty of the physical perception in a naive manner reminiscent of
the First Symphony. This device is still common in the Second, where
Bely often prefaces some portentous, symbolic vision with "as if"
(tochno). But by adding the remark, Bely also introduces another,
more human point of viewone less certain of the reality of Soloviev's
supernatural presence. Thus the narrative voice is complicated from
the start by being given a second dimension.
Immediately after this passage, Bely begins a new short sequence of
numbered "verses," which is his usual (but not exclusive) method of signaling a transition to a new topic or point of view:
1. A heavy, interplanetary sphere came flying in, it's not
known from where.
2. Whistling, it sliced into the earths atmosphere, and glowing
hot, emitted sheaves of sparks from itself.
3. From below it seemed that a large flashing star had tumbled
from the blue sky.
4. A white band remained in the sky, fading quickly in the cold.
5. The one sitting by the samovar saw, yes he saw the star, and
took it into account.
Following this, the narrator shifts to a six-"verse"-long sequence
treating meteorological phenomena that are actually part of "the question of the sacred meaning of Russia" (pp. 195-196). As a result,
through mtonymie contiguity, the arrival of the "interplanetary
sphere" in the earth's atmosphere is twice associated with the apocalyptic fate of the worldthe first time by means of Soloviev's harbinger
trumpet call, the second by the question about Russian national destiny.
The rapid shifts in point of view thus begin with the "passive and
knowing one's" quiet contemplation of God. Then the narrative moves
to a privileged, superior perception of the summoning sound of the
horn and the man in the "caped cloak" (who is Vladimir Soloviev, as we
learn later in the Symphony); and to the narrator's attempt to blur
these perceptions through the suggestion that they were only "seeming." This is followed by a privileged narrator's description of the interplanetary sphere, but from a different vantage point, one high above
the earth's surface, and modified by a recognition of personal limitation: the narrator does not know everything since he does not know
where the sphere is from. Next, the point of view shifts to the earth's
surface, from which the privileged narrator describes the sphere in the
way a naive observer might see itas a "flashing star" whose trail fades

40

Andrei Bely

in the sky. Immediately after this, the point of view shifts to the "passive and knowing one" internalizing the fact of the "shooting star." Finally, at the beginning of the next numbered sequence, the superior,
elevated narrators point of view takes over again.
The narrative thus leaps among a series of planes of different but related realities: the earthbound, material, human one; the supernatural,
mystical one of the deceased Vladimir Soloviev's apocalyptic trumpeting, which also implies shifts between human and Eternal time; that of
a superior observer hanging above the earth, but whose perceptions
occur within the limits of conventional astronomy; and one that is only
hinted at here (although it is developed more fully in later works), of
the self-conscious craftsman of the text itself. The segmentation of the
text into numbered "verses" naturally enhances such shifts in point of
view.
The movement among these (and other) planes of reality implies
their synchronic coexistence in the Second Symphony's world and in
the mind of that world's creator. Moreover, the planes of these separate
realities intersect, and, as a result, define a unique world that encompasses a range of phenomena (and spiritual dimensions)a world in
which any single event is illuminated fully only when it is seen from a
variety of earthly as well as transcendent perspectives. 59 A belletristic
tactic such as this clearly increases the polysemy of the image at the
point of intersection of the various planes to the extent of making it
into a symbol.
Bely also shifts rapidly among different planes of existence when the
planes are not contiguous. Or, to use Jakobsons seminal distinction,
metaphoric transitions abound in Bely's prose as well as mtonymie
ones.60
Metaphoric shifts follow the important scene of the "fairytale" telling
Musatov that her child is actually a little girl and not the male world
savior Musatov expected. Immediately following her light-hearted revelation, we read:
8. The little sunset laughed like a small child, all red, all giddy.
9. The building put up on a shaky foundation collapsed; the
walls fell down raising dust.
10. A knife stabbed into the loving heart, and crimson blood
began to pour into the sorrowful chalice, (p. 298)
The curiously diminutive proto-apocalyptic image in number 8 echoes
the idea that Musatov was the butt of a cosmic joke. Sentences 9 and 10
contain conventional images of pain and destroyed hopes, but with the
added suggestion in number 10 that Musatov was a sacrificial victim in

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41

the transcendent's design (a possible foreshadowing of Darialsky's fate


in The Silver Dove). What is particularly noteworthy about this sequence, however, is that the movement in the narrative from the "fairytale"'s revelation through sentence 10 is founded on a metaphorical
similarity among the constituent elements, rather than contiguous relationships. There is, in other words, a consciousness selectively stringing the images together, rather than a camera lens panning across an existing scene.
In the next two verses the narrator returns briefly to Musatov, and
then takes several even more extreme metaphorical leaps. A two-verse
cluster deals with an excited general who is preparing to play a cylindrical phonograph recording of a singer. The singer repeats "Good, good,
this is very good" after each couplet in the song (p. 298). These words
are clearly an ironic comment on Musatov's mistake, and the image of
the recording itself suggests the repetitiveness and, possibly, the theme
of Eternity from the first part of the Symphony.
Next comes another two-verse-long segment, with numbering beginning anew, in which a cook frying pancakes says that the first one
turned out badly, a lump (pervyi blin, da komom). He hopes that the
others will turn out well, and throws the ruined one to a "greedy dog"
(p. 299). This segment is also clearly an ironic comment on Musatov's
failure, especially since the cook's words are a well-known Russian
proverb about failed first attempts.
Before this unusual, choppy narrative returns to Musatov briefly,
several other clusters of verses linked by metaphoric similarity appear.
In one of them, characters in a playa "dreamer" and his "white woman"are swept away by an avalanche. The narrator adds that "This
was not reality, but representation . . . And they quickly drew the curtain because there was nothing to represent" (p. 299). Here Bely puns
on the Schopenhauerian theme of the first part of the Symphony, hints
at the transcendent's willful play with humans on the world stage, and
at the same time makes yet another veiled comment about the illusory
and inconsequential character of Musatov's now dashed hopes.
Bely s widespread utilization of such transitions between discrete short
scenes is undoubtedly part of his attempt to create a new genre, and is
probably related to his wish to eliminate the traditional distinction between poetry and prose. This would remain his goal some thirty years
later when he spoke of seeking to eliminate "the antithesis: poetry
prose." 61 Indeed, the way he arranges his text on the page resembles
somewhat the way in which poetry is usually printed (even more than
music). But metricized passages and alliteration are so rare in the Symphony that were it not for the special typographic segmentation of the
text it would read like plain prose. 62

42

Andrei Bely

In Jakobsons view, transitions between syntactic elements in realistic


prose tend to be mtonymie, whereas Romantic and Symbolist works
(and lyric poetry in general) tend to be dominated by metaphor. The
reason why Bely as a Symbolist would be drawn by metaphor is clear:
the trope corresponds well to a profoundly holistic world view in
which all phenomena are potential candidates for linkage because they
all share a common grounding in the transcendent realm.
Accumulating a sequence of scenes or images in which neighboring
pairs are connected as a result of the ability of the ordering consciousness to perceive similarities between them would naturally also appeal
to Bely; it would be the work of the creative form of cognition that he
postulates in his early essays and develops to an extreme in his mature
works.
Metonymie transitions also appear in the Symphony, confirming
this genre as a hybrid form with a narrative dimension. But the simple
fact of these transitions obviously does not make sections of the Symphony "realistic." As I mentioned above, underlying the latter three
parts of the Symphony is a Solovievian conception of imminent apocalypse, which thus makes all terrestrial events into de facto symbols of
the grand cosmic process. Musatov's misperception of a mortal society
woman as the woman clothed with the sun may thus be understood as
a foreshadowing of mankind's misperception of the Antichrist. Hence
the whole Second Symphony can be thought of as consisting of two
symbolic "axes"the vertical, which entails perceptions of a higher
apocalyptic reality by the narrator and by some characters (for example, Vladimir Soloviev's trumpeting), and the horizontal, which is the
sequence of proto-apocalyptic events experienced by Musatov and the
other characters alone. The lyrical, first-person symbolic perceptions
by the narrator-author, and the symbolic significance of the characters'
perceptions and actions, both point to the same higher transcendent
unity, suggesting that both may derive from it in some way (as Bely will
claim in Petersburg). Moreover, the fact that the Second Symphony
shows characters to be enacting symbolic events constantly, both consciously and not, suggests that the author may be doing so as well (but
this is not a step that Bely actually takes in the work, although he will
later). Both symbolic axes are also characteristic features of Bely's
Third Symphony and the three major novels, where the two axes are
reconciled into a spiraling development that several characters undergo, as does the narrator-author, by implication.
The narrative dimension in the Symphony may also be indicative of
another aspect of symbolic cognition that is important for Bely. Because his narrator and characters accumulate symbolic perceptions
during the course of the text, so does the reader. This causes the reader

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43

to experience gradually deepening insights into the higher reality that is


the foundation of the world of the work, which is the author's generally
didactic artistic purpose. In this regard, Bely's Symbolist narratives differ significantly from his own and other Symbolists' lyric poems,
which are typically characterized by single epiphanies or isolated perceptions rather than sequences of them. Cycles of poems, relatively
common among Russian Symbolists, obviously fall into a different
category.
Bely's conviction that all aspects of existence were interconnected led
him to claim in Petersburg that life and art were literally continuous,
and that his fictional creations possessed a mode of being equal to that
of his readers. This conception represents an extreme variant of the
metaphoric transitions between planes of existence discussed above.
Such an intentional confusion, or, better to say, melding of life and art
already appeared in a primitive form in the First Symphony.
There is also a hint of it in the Second. First of all, the ontological
weight that music has in Schopenhauer's metaphysicsas a direct expression of the Willis clearly relevant to all the Symphonies. Secondly, aside from the claims Bely made in his "Instead of a Foreword,"
real people appear on the pages of the work. The writer Max Nordau,
whom Bely portrays in his memoirs as an object of youthful scorn, 6 3 is
made to arrive in Moscow (p. 178). A forthcoming book by Valry
Briusov and Konstantin Balmont is mentioned (p. 194), as are other
writers. In a related vein, the narrator calls the "fairytale" s husband a
"centaur" who has "received the right to citizenship since Bcklin's time"
(p. 145). This playful remark about a widespread subject in the paintings of an artist Bely admired around the turn of the century is a direct
adumbration of the ontological claims he would make in Petersburg.
An amusing incident from Bely's own life illustrates the extent to
which he went in introducing artistic fantasy into everyday existence
the complement, as it were, of having Nordau appear in the Symphony. In 1903, together with several friends, Bely began to act as if
Moscow were in fact populated by unicorns, centaurs, and other mythical creatures. He even had visiting cards printed up for some of these
invented beings, with appropriately fanciful names and addresses,
which he distributed among friends. His blending of art and life went
very far, moving Sergei Soloviev to note at the time: "Recently Bugaev
raised a commotion with his Ogygs, Unicorns, etc. A psychiatrist was
almost summoned, and it was quite painful for both him and for us." 64
Probably out of political expediency, Bely later tried to play down
these activities as mere games characteristic for his set at the turn of the
century. 65 But even if peopling a city with creatures of the imagination

44

Andrei Bely

may have been a pose in part, it is also indicative of a tendency that


would eventually become a principle in his belletristic and theoretical
writings.
-5The Second Symphony is one of several prose works by Bely with a
prefatory statement that gives his readers some sense of what his intentions were.
"This work has three meanings," Bely writes. T h e satirical meaning
or side, which I already mentioned, itself has several dimensions. In addition to the outr Solovievian Sergei Musatov, there are a number of
veiled parodies of contemporaries who were inclined toward the otherworldly, such as Drozhzhikovsky or Merezhkovich (Merezhkovsky),
Shipovnikov (Rozanov), the Norwegian lion (Ibsen), the Belgian Anchorite (Maeterlinck), and so forth. There are also parodies of other
teachings, including theosophy, Hinduism, and the philosophies of
Kant and Nikolai Fedorov, to mention just some of the most egregious
examples. All clearly fall into the category of "certain extremes of mysticism" that Bely identified in his prefatory remarks as the butt of his
satire (p. 125).
Satire remains a major element in Bely's later works as well. But
apart from his desire to continue ridiculing error and absurdity, it is
most important to realize that he may also have been drawn to satire
for what may be termed metaphysical reasons. In a revealing early
critical fragment about the comic in music, Bely speaks of "humor that
stands on the border between laughter through tears and the frankly
funny. This mood is only a generic [rodovoe] lack of correspondence
between the ideal and its realization." 6 6 Lavrov, the publisher of this
fragment, concludes that in his first two Symphonies especially Bely
was trying to achieve the irony and humor he saw in certain musical
compositions. Indeed, such a conception of the Second Symphony's satirical level explains why Bely spoke of satire as a component of his
symbolism. It is not simply that satire adds a level of complexity or ambiguity, such as one expects to find in a Symbolist work. Rather, it is a
way of speaking about a metaphysical ideal and the reality that falls
short of it, all in the same breath. In the Second Symphony Musatov's
eschatology is the clearest example of the distance between the "ideal
and its realization." The "philosophical irony" that appeared in germinal form in the First Symphony can thus be said to have blossomed fully
in the Second, as it will continue to do in The Silver Dove and Petersburg.67
The other two meanings or sides of the work that Bely discusses in
the prefatory statement are "the musical" and the "ideal-symbolic"

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45

(ideino-simvolicheskii).
The latter is the predominant one, Bely adds,
and the combination of all three in one passage "leads to symbolism."
Since Bely spoke of symbolism in his early theoretical essays as an attempt to see the "Idea" in an image, his emphasis on the "ideal-symbolic"
side of the Second Symphony may be a specific reference to the firstperson perceptions of the narrator-author. These are quite obvious in
the work. The only meaning that remains to be discussed therefore is
the "musical."
By the musical side of his "symphony" Bely meant two interconnected features: "the expression of a series of moods, tied together by a
fundamental mood"; and the consequent necessity of dividing the work
"into parts, parts into fragments, and fragments into verses (musical
phrases); the frequent repetition of certain musical phrases underscores
this division."
The "fundamental mood" of the Second Symphony is an expectation
of something portentous. This encompasses the Schopenhauerian first
part with its references to Eternity and a lowering sky, as well as the remaining three, in which apocalyptic expectation is presented in both its
satirical and sacral forms. As for what Bely had in mind when he spoke
about a "series of moods" that this fundamental mood overarches, one
can infer that the emotional colorations of prose passages must be analogous to those in the sections of large-scale musical compositions such
as the sonata form. The first part is dominated by brief, atomistic vignettes that together with the Schopenhauerian background combine
to form a predominantly grey, oppressive, disjointed picture of Moscow. (The image of the "fairytale" is of course a different tonality that
foreshadows the latter three parts.) The atmosphere of the second part
is dominated by a mocking, sardonic narrative presentation of various
Moscow mystics, countered by a warmer, exulting anticipation of the
transfiguration of the world. These two main currents also interweave
to form the remaining two parts of the Second Symphony. 68
Understanding the importance of "mood" as an organizing principle
helps explain the role of one striking, but otherwise enigmatic character in the Symphonythe little nun at the cemetery. She appears several times in the text, but is not attached to any of the major or minor
plot lines. She is, however, juxtaposed (contrapuntally?) with the "fairytale"the object of Musatov's misguided mystical expectationsand is
characterized by a febrile, insatiable longing that is clearly religious:
9. One could hear the swifts shrilling, and the little nun was being consumed disinterestedly [bestsel'no] in the gleam of the sunset.
1. Again, and again, the young beauty in her spring outfit
walked among the graves . . .

46

Andrei Bely

2. It was the fairytale . . .


3. And again, and again, they looked at each other, she and the
little nun, and smiled as might those who knew each other.
4. Without words they communicated to each other that not
everything was yet lost, that there still remained many sacred
joys for people . . .
5. That it was approaching, coming, the dear, impossible, the
sadly-pensive . . . (p. 325)
The nun's connection to the Symphony is largely through the mood of
expectation that colors her image and saturates the work as a whole.
She is clearly also the "fairytale" 's double, but with the difference that
she is waiting for the Biblical "bridegroom." The "fairytale," even
though presented without irony in the passage quoted above, is the incarnation of more banal and superficial longings and embodies the distance between the ideal and the reality that falls short of it: "I smile like
a doll, while my soul asks for something that doesn't exist, something
that could have happened, but didn't," she tells her husband (p. 319).
Most likely, she is referring to such matters as the death of her admirer,
"the democrat" or "the dreamer." However, given the pattern in the
Symphony of the terrestrial microcosmos being determined by the cosmic macrocosmos, even the "fairytale" s mundane loving impulses
must inevitably be a reflection of something like the Gnostic conception of the human soul's longing for its otherworldly origins.
Leitmotifs continue to be an important feature of the Second Symphony's musical structure, as they were in the First. These are short
syntactical units within which meaning, rather than rhythm or alliteration, is the dominant feature. When repeated, however, both in their
entirety and in part, these units inevitably add a weak rhythmical and
alliterative dimension to the work. Moreover, since individual leitmotifs recur in different contexts throughout the Symphony, they echo
each other across the space of the intervening text and add a layer of
atemporal unity to it. In the Second Symphony and in all of Bely's major later works this "timeless" feature of the leitmotifs helps make them
into signs for the transcendent that rules over the world of man.
The Third Symphony
The Third Symphony (written in 1901-1902; published in 1905) 6 9 is
unique among all of Bely's artistic works. To begin with, its text looks
different from the preceding Symphonies: the short paragraphs, or
verses, are no longer numbered. Although clusters of these verses are
still separated by double spacing, numbers are reserved only for groups
of clusters, which, as a result, acquire the appearance of short chapters.
The net effect is to make the texture of the prose less fragmented and

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47

discontinuous than it had been in most of the Second Symphony, especially in its first part, and to bring it closer to that of Bely's later works.
This purely formal change is a reflection of the dominant thematic
feature of the Third Symphonya lengthy, unmediated depiction of a
transcendent realm, something that distinguishes it from all of Bely's
later works. The entire first part, and the last two pages of the final,
third part, take place in a dimension other than the terrestrialone
which the reader is shown directly, and not through a "window" that
opens briefly in the narrator's or a character's consciousness, and then
shuts again. The multifaceted reality Bely portrayed in the Second
Symphony by leaping among different planes of being or points of
view in the space of short passages still exists in the Third, but is presented entirely differently and more calmly. Because the reader is given
a view of the transcendent bases for terrestrial events in one continuous
sequence of scenes, it is no longer necessary for the narrator to interrupt a description of terrestrial events with fragmentary glimpses of the
otherworldly realm. This happens nowhere else in Bely's oeuvre, suggesting that the tactic was both experimental and not overly successful
in the author's own eyes.
The story in the Third Symphony is very simple, especially in comparison to the Second with its numerous minor subplots and vignettes
about the city. The first part, much of which has the character of a vision or a dream by the narrator, describes a Child living by an abstract
seashore in an atemporal otherworldly realm. The Child is the protg
of a wise Old Man who charts the paths of the stars and is associated
with Eternity. Then an enormous Sea Serpent and its demon companion come on shore, and the Old Man explains to the Child that he, the
Child, must now undergo yet another incarnation.
Part two opens with Evgeny Khandrikov (the name is derived from
khandra, Russian for "spleen"), a master's degree candidate in chemistry, awakening in his apartment. All during the day he is haunted by
dozens of vague recollections and symbolic perceptions of a realm beyond the phenomenal that the reader immediately recognizes derive
from the Child's life in part one. In order to escape the threats of a Professor Tsenkh, who bears unmistakable characteristics of the Serpent's
demon companion, Khandrikov seeks the protection of the psychiatrist Doctor Orlov, who, in turn, resembles the Old Man, and whose
name is derived from the Russian word for "eagle"the Old Man's
symbol and avatar. In the third part, Khandrikov escapes the threats of
Tsenkh and the Serpent, which appears in the terrestrial guise of a train,
by tipping over his rowboat on a lake. Although Bely does not make a
point of overtly contrasting matter and spirit in the Second Symphony,
Khandrikov's longing to escape from the earth of everyday material

48

Andrei Bely

phenomena to the realm he knew in his avatar as Child strongly suggests a Gnostic component in the world Bely fashioned. The final pages
show the Child being welcomed by the Old Man on the seashore of part
one. 70
Numerous details make it perfectly clear that Khandrikov is the reincarnation of the Child, and that Khandrikov's life, in all essential respects, is a translation of the Child's situation to earth. 71 In terms of
musical structure, one might think of the sections dealing with events
in the otherworldly realm as a melodic line that becomes punctuated by
chords in the section dealing with Khandrikov "on earth," when he experiences intermittent symbolic perceptions and sees the otherworldly
underpinnings of phenomena; this adds otherworldly notes to the terrestrial ones, as it were.
The dominant concept underlying the entire work, and suggested in
the title itself (The Return. Ill Symphony), is the Eternal Return of
Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Indeed, even the layout of the text
on the page in the Third Symphony resembles closely the design of
Nietzsche's book, especially such numbered sections as Zarathustra's
Foreword in the First Part. However, Bely remains true to his own
eclectic syncretism, and modifies Nietzsche's idea by adding to it an element that is, strictly speaking, antithetical to Nietzsche's entire world
viewnamely, a supernatural realm in which the psyche of the individual who will have to go through yet another life cycle remains until
such time as it descends to earth. This is directly contrary to Nietzsche's
concept, which rejects the creation of different worlds and insists on
the re-creation of the individual and his world totally unchanged.72
Another, equally radical modification of Nietzsche's ideas is proposed in the early essay "Symbolism as a World View." Bely here refers
approvingly to the interpretation of Lev Shestov, the Russian philosopher, that in Nietzsche's concept of the "eternal return" one must stress
"eternity" and not "return." "In this light," Bely writes, "the eternal return . . . is the return of Eternity," by which he meant God. Nietzsche
failed to see this because of the confusion in his "methods of cognition."73
Much else in the Third Symphony is derived from Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The Child and the Old Man share features with Zarathustra
himself and repeat some of his pronouncements. The Child recalls the
child that Zarathustra proclaims as the final and highest metamorphosis of the spirit, after the camel and the lion: "The child is innocence and
forgetting, a new beginning . . . . the spirit now wills his own will." The
Sea Serpent, the Child's opponent, recalls the "great dragon" named
"Thou shalt"the sum of all forces that try to prevent existential selfcreationof whom Zarathustra speaks when describing the obstacles

The Symphonies

49

that the spirit undergoing metamorphoses must overcome in its struggle for self-definition and the creation of new values. 7 4 This correlates
well with the narrator's explanation that Khandrikov's struggle with
Tsenkh is the beginning of his "final struggle for independence" (p. 87).
Within the context of the Symphony, however, the Child's struggle is
for independence from the necessity of repeated rebirths, which is suggested by the Old Man when the Child finally returns to the supernatural realm in the end of the third part (p. 125). The Child's and Old Man's
life by a cave overlooking the sea, the Old Man's association with an
eagle and eternity, and much of his rhetoric directed at the Child about
having to descend, or encountering the desert, or remaining faithful to
the earth, are also derived from Thus Spoke
Zarathustra.75

-2-

Given the importance of eschatology in all of Bely s works, the question naturally arises, what is the relation in the Third Symphony between cyclical and rectilinear conceptions of time? Or, how can the
Eternal Return be reconciled with a view of time that begins in Genesis
and ends with the Second Coming? These broader questions also have
a direct bearing on Bely's conception of the relation between man's
earthly time and the Eternal transcendent. Indeed, these are the central
questions posed implicitly by the entire Third Symphony.
They are also raised explicitly in a confrontation of central importance that takes place at a dinner party in honor of Khandrikov's successful defense of his master's thesis. Tsenkh offers a toast to "those
manifestations of culture, which, being firmly linked to science, proudly speed human genius along the endless rails of progress" (p. 79). The
entire scene is played out in paragraphs that resemble normal prose,
rather than the more aphoristic, short-paragraph form of the rest of the
work. This departure from the norm does not appear to be motivated
by anything discernible in the text, but it inevitably calls attention to
the content of the passages.
Khandrikov objects to Tsenkh s seemingly innocuous, conventional
toast on several grounds. First of all, he is opposed to Tsenkh's facile
hopes for a progressive "development of social consciousness" (obshchestvennykh
interesov) because this neglects the necessity of personal change. One can see here a glimmer of Nietzsche's concept of the
overman, and, more generally, of Bely's life-long aspirations for his
own and mankind's self-transcendence. Furthermore, Khandrikov is
opposed to social equality because this will lead to stasis: contrasts
cause human beings to strive. He uses the terminology of thermodynamics to express his reason, which sounds much like the Biblical con-

50

Andrei Bely

demnation of the lukewarm in spirit (Revelation 3: 15-16). But neither


is ceaseless striving a good in and of itself.
The core of Khandrikov's remarks is a series of hypotheses about
what man's condition in the universe might be. Human life may be no
more than the precipitation of crystals to the bottom of a container.
Furthermore, man, like some chemical precipitate, may be subjected to
a series of experimental transformations. This imagery obviously derives from Bely s course work in a Moscow University chemistry laboratory at the same time that he was writing the Third Symphony. 7 6 But
the processes he mentions, if applied to the human condition, clearly
suggest the possibility that man may be completely under the sway of
forces outside his ken.
Then Khandrikov launches into speculations about a variety of cyclical human conditions. Perhaps everything returns, or changes, he
suggests. Progress may move along a straight line, or a circle, or a spiral. He hypothesizes that the spiral of mankind's progress may be different from the spiral of "atoms' progress," and the latter may be
wrapped around the former. And mankind's spiral of progress may be
wrapped around a single loop of a spiral of the highest order. Perhaps,
he continues, each point in time and space is the common intersection
of many spiral paths of "different types of orders" (raznoriadnykh poriadkov). Thus man may actually be living simultaneously in the distant past as well as the present and the future. Time and space may not
actually exist, therefore, and man may be using these terms only for
simplicity's sake. But Khandrikov is also willing to allow that this simplicity may in fact be the synthesis of many spiral paths, and that all
that exists in time and space is actually what it seems. He concludes his
litany of possibilities by saying that even mathematics has given birth
to the theory of probability and to indeterminate equations, and that
"Everything flows. Flies. Speeds along misty circles. The enormous tornado of the world carries each life in its stormy embrace. Before it is
emptiness. And behindthe same" (pp. 8 0 - 8 4 ) .
But if all that Khandrikov can do is propose these fascinating possibilities, Bely himself has embodied at least a partial answer in the Third
Symphony. In this feature, the Symphony is also unique among Bely's
works of belles lettres, because nowhere else are the far-reaching questions contained in Khandrikov's proposals raised explicitly. They are
broached in Bely's theoretical essays, of course, and constitute the implicit foundation of all his art. In the essay "Symbolism as a World
View," for example, Bely speaks of "the spiral journey of the soul
through time" that reveals the periodic surfacing of Eternity in human
existence. 7 7 Full answers to these questions, however, are never given

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51

in any of Bely s other works either, although they can be found in absolutely staggering detail in the writings of Rudolf Steiner. This must
have been one of the features of anthroposophy that attracted Bely so
strongly in 1912 and in later yearsa topic to which I shall return in
connection with Petersburg.
The sum of Bely's implicit answer to Khandrikov's hypothesizing is
what we learn of Khandrikov's own life: man exists in a deterministic
universe and undergoes a spiral-shaped development consisting of a series of reincarnations. He can be said to exist in the past and in the future to the extent that, through memory and premonition, he has both
glimpses of a previous existence and the fate that lies ahead.
This schema is subsumed within a vaguely Christian context. The
Child's mentor, the Old Man, speaks of God's will in relation to the
planetary cycles that he charts (p. 9). Cherubim appear more than once
in the Child's otherworldly realm (p. 11). And a severe figure with a fiery sword guards Eden (p. 16). Most revealing, however, is that the
Child is associated with Christ's passion. The Old Man places a wreath
of scarlet roses, or "bloody flames," as it is also described, on the
Child's head and tells him "I crown you with suffering" (p. 37). Moreover, Khandrikov's "drowning"rendered brilliantly by Belyleads
to his "resurrection" as the Child once again. And the Old Man greets
him with: "Many times I crowned you with sufferingits burning
flames. And now for the first time I place upon you these stars of silver.
Now you have come, and will not descend [ne zakatish'sia]" (p. 125).
The "stars of silver" are a wreath of white roses.
Bely's color symbolism and the Old Man's words are quite clear by
themselves. But it is worth noting that in the essay on "Sacred Colors,"
which is roughly contemporaneous with the Third Symphony, Bely explicitly identified the color white as the "symbol of the incarnated fullness of being," that is, of the Divinity. The color red, however, denotes
not only hellfire, but also the blood of Christ's suffering and sacrifice. 78
Thus, the segment of the Child's cyclical existence that the reader is allowed to witness begins with a reincarnation colored by Christ's torment, and ends with an apotheosis that crowns fulfillment.
Nietzsche's idea of the Eternal Return is conflated in the Third Symphony with the story of Christ. In this conception man experiences a
finite number of reincarnations, rather than being condemned to return
eternally. And rather than being a unique and central event in human
and cosmic history, Christ's passion is in a sense the lot of every man. 79
Circular time and rectilinear time are thus reconciled in a finite spiral.
As for Khandrikov's implied question about the relation of the human
spiral of development to that of the material universe, or "the atoms" as

52

Andrei Bely

he puts itBely provides no answer. But since anthroposophy does address this question in elaborate detail, it is probable that Bely found his
answer there. 80
Because of the formal division in the Third Symphony between the
Child's and Khandrikov's realms, it might seem that Bely had abandoned the more complex multiplanar view of existence that he had depicted in the Second Symphony and would repeat with variations in his
later works. But this is not actually the case. Although the Third lacks
the nervous segmentation of the narrative into short passages dealing
with different planes in a physico-spiritual reality, or with perceptions
from different vantage points, there are suggestions that each of the
two worlds is itself hierarchically layered, and that the protagonist, the
Child-Khandrikov, passes between more than two planes. This is important for understanding Bely's w o r k because it shows that he created
variations on his characteristic apprehension of existence.
Most often, the Child-Khandrikov passes between different planes
of being by means of dreams. This is the mode of transition between
parts one and two of the Symphony, when the Child goes to sleep in the
end of one, and Khandrikov wakes up in the beginning of the other.
Similarly, in part one, the Child seems to pass into the yet higher
plane of the Old Man when he falls asleep: "There, where the stone had
been [the 'stone that looked like a man,' p. 8], the Old Man was sitting.
He turned his inexpressible face to the sleeping Child" (p. 9). We then
see that the Child "awakens" (p. 11); but he reassures himself, apparently when he sees the Old Man, that he is seeing nothing but dreams
(p. 12). Nonetheless, the Child is then actually touched by the Old M a n
and speaks to him, at which point the narrator says that the Old M a n
"bent down toward the sleeping one" (p. 12). But when the Child
"rubbed his blue eyes," he still saw the Old Man (p. 13) and drifted off
again. Finally,
The Child awoke. The Old Man had disappeared. Sadly he remembered the nocturnal visitation.
He glanced in the direction where the white stone had stuck
out. The stone was gone.
A sudden high tide had carried it into the sea, in order to throw
it out again . . .
(p. 13)
The dreams within a dream in this sequence of passages foreshadow
Senator Ableukhov's double dream in Petersburg, which also translated him into higher planes of being and put him into contact with the
spirit world.

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53

Later in the first part, the Child is awake when he sees the Old Man,
but the latter remains aloof and does not speak to him. He does so only
when he is climbing high into the mountains with the Child following
behind (p. 19). It may have been merely a slip on Bely's part that in this
instance he abandoned the dream as a means of transition into the Old
Man's realm. On the other hand, there is evidence in the Symphony
that dreams are not temporary journeys in other worlds, but real passageways into themwhich is what Khandrikov discovers. Thus it
may be that dreams are no longer mentioned in connection with the
Child and the Old Man, because the Child has "dreamed himself" into
the higher realm of greater cosmic awareness that the Old Man inhabits.
If we imagine a loop in the spiral that consists of the incarnation of
the Child as Khandrikov, and then Khandrikov's "drowning" and reappearance as the Child, the Child's dreams may have moved him along a
segment of that loop in the direction of the higher awareness that the
Old Man seems to possess. In other words, the dreams seem to translate the Child not only from the lower states to higher onesin a twodimensional planebut along the third dimension of the spiral's axis as
well.
This pattern of a temporal development combined with a cyclical
component is further suggested by a comment the narrator makes
about the Child shortly before he goes to sleep to wake up as Khandrikov. The Child is watching man-like marine creatures (one of several
farcical touches in the work), obviously derived from Bcklin's canvasses, cavorting in the water: "With surprise the Child looked at a
form of life that quite recently had been hidden from his gaze, sadly remembering his former acquaintance who had descended" (p. 41). Ii seeing what had been invisible before is a sign of advancement, and if the
creatures are a lower, more bestial form of life than the Child, then this
scene represents another bit of progress on the Child's part, even if the
progress must be understood as equivalent to a "fortunate fall." Movement along a spiral that is itself tilted "upward" can of course be imagined as requiring relative descents as well as ascents.
Khandrikov has similar dreams. In the course of his normal life he
sees an old man who seems "completely unique" (p. 64), but he cannot
remember where he had seen him before. Then in a dream he experiences the Child's seaside world and encounters the Old Man who assures him that his ordeal will not last long (p. 70). In this sequence of
passages Khandrikov also wakes up twice: after the first time he sees
the Old Man departing, and after the second, he is back in his familiar,
physical world. However, the mundane world has changed irreversibly
for him, as if he had passed into another, higher dimension of it, or

54

Andrei Bely

brought back a heightened awareness with him. Significantly, Doctor


Orlov now comes to him (p. 71), and henceforth Khandrikov becomes
increasingly aware of Tsenkh as his enemy and the Doctor as his ally.
Eventually, of course, he advances to the point of making the transition
through a kind of death back to the Old Man's world. The result of such
shifts to different planes of awareness, which also seem to be different
planes of being, is to make the protagonist's movement along the loop
of his spiral incremental, and not either continuous or simply dual.
The text suggests that there are realms higher than those the Child
achieves. The Old Man is hierarchically above the Child, and, moreover, speaks of Godyet another higher levelwhich the Child does
not do. Thus, although the Third Symphony shows a fair amount of
the supernatural, it is still reticent about the ultimate mysteries.
The conception of human nature exemplified in the Child/Khandrikov has an important bearing on such seemingly problematic aspects
of Bely's later work as the multivoiced narrator in The Silver Dove and
Petersburg. Rather than being evidence of Bely's inconsistency, the narrator's ability to shift from earthbound to visionary voices should be
seen as a reflection of the multiplanar composition of human nature
one that includes both physical and complex spiritual dimensions.
In terms of artistic effect on the reader, there is a positive correlation
between a skillfully maintained sense of pregnant mystery and the persuasiveness of the text. Khandrikov's existencepunctuated as it is
with flashbacks, "astral voyage"-like dreams, premonitions of the future, and sudden deep symbolic perceptions during which phenomena
open up to show the transcendent behind themmakes for engrossing
reading in comparison with the part of the Symphony dealing with the
Child in his generally very abstract world, which is, moreover, rendered in language that often fails to achieve the grandiloquently sacral
tone for which it strives. It is not surprising, therefore, that Bely would
abandon forever the form he tried once in the Third Symphony. In fact,
if one severs the part dealing with the Child from the text, what is left
resembles in many important formal and thematic respects Bely's later
works such as Petersburg and Kotik Letaev.
The Fourth Symphony
Despite some striking passages in it, the Fourth Symphony (written
in 1903-1907; published in 1908)81 comes close to being as frustrating
as the First in its imbalance between imagery and meaning. Now, however, the tilt is in the opposite direction. Instead of the vague or abstract imagery coupled with obvious portentousness that typifies the
First Symphony, the Fourth is filled with visually striking images whose
sense is often entirely unclear.

The Symphonies

55

In a memoir Bely referred to the work as "quadruply crippled." 8 2 He


was also willing to acknowledge the Symphony's weakness from the
very outset. The detailed "Instead of a Preface" anticipates that a reader
may find the work "boring, long-winded, and written for the sake of
the colorful tints of certain of its scenes" (p. 3). Although, regrettably,
one can only agree with this evaluation, Bely's attempt to account for
his lack of success is another matter. He attributes it to the way he chose
to fulfill the artistic task he set himself. He wanted to depict, as exactly
as possible, "certain inner experiences [perezhivaniia] that underlie . . .
daily life and that are in essence incapable of being incarnated into images." His method was to select the most appropriate image for a given
inner state. And it is here, Bely states, that he ran into a methodological
quandary. Should he have been guided by the beauty of the image, or
by its ability to accommodate the maximum of the inner state in question? This obviously suggests the two were not necessarily compatible
in his mind. Moreover, how should he bring together internal connections among inner experiences (that ultimately cannot be expressed in
images) with the connections among images themselves? Two choices
lay before him: one was "the path of art"; the second was analysis of the
inner states and their decomposition into component parts. The latter
was what he chose. And so he remains unsure if the Fourth Symphony
is a work of art, or a "document about the state of the consciousness
of a contemporary soul,"something of interest only to some psychologist in the future (p. 1). (This view of the work is particularly revealing of his consistent melding of life and art, at the same time that it
begs the question of the relation of characters to "a contemporary
soul.")
Other writings of Bely's shed light on this somewhat muddled account of unsuccessfully realized intentions. In fact, all of the questions
he raises turn out to be aspects of his evolving theory of symbolism. In
essays contemporaneous with his work on the Fourth Symphony, Bely
repeatedly defined symbols as the embodiment of internal experiences
in images that could be drawn either from the visible world or from
fantasy. 83 In his prefatory remarks to the Symphony, Bely in effect acknowledges dissatisfaction with the symbols he has created.
It is interesting, however, that Bely apparently also encountered certain practical problems while working on the Symphony that he did
not anticipate in his essays. His a priori dismissal of the possibility that
an inner experience ever could be embodied fully in an image is one example. (This also presents a striking contrast to the ontological claims
for his "fictions" that Bely makes in other works.) Another difficulty
was how to combine a series of inner experiences with their corresponding sequence of images. Yet he glossed over this very problem in

56

Andrei Bely

an essay when he spoke of art as being the "joining of two orders of successions"the one internal, and the other external. 8 4
In the prefatory remarks to the Symphony, Bely also mentions parenthetically that by inner experiences he means "mystical" ones. The
full significance of this laconic aside becomes clear only in the context
of Bely s theoretical essays. The presence of some third agencyin addition to the perceiving subject and the perceived object (or "image of
the visible" as he puts it)was implied in Bely s conception of the symbol in his earliest essays by references to the "eternal"or "Platonic" ideas
that are underscored in images when symbols are created. 8 5 In other
words, creating a symbol somehow puts the perceiver-creator into
touch with the transcendent. Bely maintained this view in essays he
wrote during and after his work on the Fourth Symphony. But as the
Second Symphony shows, he was also clearly inclining toward making
the transcendent dominant in both correct and erroneous perceptions.
In "The Meaning of Art," Bely identifies eight types of symbolism depending on where a "certain real unity," which he also calls God, manifests itself. For example, God can reveal Himself to the artist in an "image of the visible" as a man or an animal, awakening a corresponding
inner experience in the artist. The artist then fashions this vision of God
in some material form. Bely calls this interrelationship among the three
elements "symbolic realism," and finds it to be the origin of the artistic
images of Olympic deities. But other interrelations are also possible,
and the artist may begin by focusing on some aspect of the visible
world which then awakens a certain inner experience in him. This experience deepens the artistic perception, and, as a result, the given aspect
of the visible world is transformed. The artist creates the symbol by recreating through the medium of his art the perception that has been
transformed by his inner experience. The resulting symbol is for him a
revelation of "a certain hidden essence"; and the revelation in this case
occurs during the creative act itself and not prior to it. In this instance,
the artist does not see the created symbol as an exact recreation of an
inner truth, but as a hint of it. Bely mentions Raphael's Madonnas and
portraits by Drer and Holbein the Younger as examples of this type of
symbolism. 86
This latter schema is essentially a refinement of Bely's conception of
symbolism found in his earlier essays. It still attaches the symbolic perception to an absolute, spiritual realm as definitively as the former
schema, "symbolic realism." The other types of symbolism Bely outlines in the essay also anchor the creation of symbols to the transcendent.
This even-handed, "scientific" categorization of symbolism in "The
Meaning of Art" is somewhat misleading as far as Bely's own artistic

T h e Symphonies

57

practice is concerned (and it is interesting to note that he does not specify in the essay which category applies to his own works). In the Fourth
Symphony his point of departure, as he put it, was the "inner experiences underlying . . . the background of daily life," for which he then
tried to select appropriate images. But no matter what his own theoretical and methodological preference was, in the final reckoning symbolism for Bely always came down to the name for the cognitive practice
that expresses (and constitutes) man's link to the otherworldly. He
makes this especially clear in a m a j o r later essay: "in our feelings we
live in many worlds; we feel not only what we see and touch, but what
we have never seen with our eyes, n o r apprehended with our sense organs; in these unknown, inexpressible feelings the world of transcendent reality opens up before us, full of demons, souls and deities; feelings obligate us to be mystics." 8 7 This, then, is the fuller meaning of
Bely's passing remark in his prefatory comments to the Fourth S y m phonythat the inner experiences with which he is concerned are
"mystical."
A partial clarification of the unexpected "path of analysis" Bely
claims to have followed in the Fourth S y m p h o n y can be found in his
memoirs. While in Munich in 1906, he began to rewrite the nearly finished work,
dreaming about various technical tricks, such as doing with the
material of the phrases what Wagner had done with melody. I
imagined the themes as a strong rhythmic line [myslil tematiku
strogoiu liniei ritma]; the subsidiary themestwo w o m e n , an
"angel" and a "demon"merging into one in the soul of the hero,
not according to the laws of logic, but of counterpoint.
But the story [fabula] would not submit to the formula. I saw the
story as monolithic, but the formula fragmented it into two
worlds: the world of the hallucinations of a consciousness, and
the material one. T h e confluence of these artificial worlds incarnated illusions, and, at the same time, dissociated the stuff of everyday life. T h e story itself was n o w being reborn into the paradox of counterpoint. I was doomed to shatter images into
variations of gusts of sounds and gleams. This is h o w "The G o b let of Blizzards" was built. It demonstrated once and for all the
impossibility of a "symphony" in words. 8 8
This statement itself is not completely clear. Nevertheless, Bely s essential point seems to be that he failed to create symbols because he failed
to merge adequately internal experiences ("the hallucinations of a consciousness") with images taken from the world of nature (the "material
world"). Images that were supposed to e m b o d y inner experiences were
thus "shattered." Perhaps a clearer w a y to have put it was that he tried

58

Andrei Bely

to suggest too much. As a result, Bely's remarks prefacing the text of


the Symphony might be best taken as a post facto attempt to rationalize a surprising failuresurprising, because he had created successful
symbols before the Fourth Symphony (in the Second, and to an extent
in the Third) and would create others immediately afterwards (in The
Silver Dove).
In addition to broaching the complex topic of symbolic methodology
in his prefatory remarks, Bely also focuses on the Symphony's overt
theme and its formal characteristics. About the former he says that he
wanted "to depict the entire scale of that special sort of love that our
epoch dimly anticipates, just as Plato, Goethe, Dante anticipated it
earliersacred love" (p. 3). To be more accurate, he might have explained that he was concerned with love in the context of Solovievian
apocalypticism, but, most likely, that is what "sacred love" meant for
him in the first place.
Bely's elaborate claims about the formal experiment he was conducting are a more complicated matter. He makes the frank admission that
in his previous three Symphonies the "structure arose by itself, and I
did not have a clear idea of what a 'Symphony' in literature should be"
(pp. 1 - 2 ) . Now, however, he became interested in the "constructional
mechanism of that form of which I was vaguely conscious." But despite
the elaborate explanation of the form of the Fourth Symphony, this dimension of the work remains largely inaccessible even to the well-disposed and attentive reader.
Bely claims to have striven especially for exactitude in the exposition
of his themes, in their counterpoint, in connections among them, and
the like. He explains how each of the first two parts of the Symphony
has its own group of themes, and which sections of the second part contain the three component subthemes. These three subthemes "come
into contact" with the themes of the first part and form the fabric of the
work's third and fourth parts. 8 9 Bely even gives an example of the pattern of variation and repetition, whereby, he claims, a section in part
three echoes one in part two. He also explains that in order to fully understand the meaning of the symbols in the Symphony one must understand its structure, which requires being aware of the theme to which a
given symbolic image belongs, the number of times the theme of this
image has already been repeated, and what other images accompanied
it. A reader who follows these instructions will understand ninety-nine
percent of the meaning of the internal experiences embodied in
the Symphony; one who does not will only understand fifty percent
(pp. 2 - 3 ) .
Bely was obviously uncomfortable with these elaborate and, practically speaking, unjustified claims. He admits that he often had to

The Symphonies

59

lengthen the Symphony exclusively for structural reasons, and explains that he was really more of an investigator of artistic form than
an artist (p. 2). He also acknowledges that what he produced may not
give him any right to the reader's attention (p. 3).
Bely's sense of discomfort with his finished product is a reflection of
his high degree of (not always accurate) self-consciousness about it. He
was aware, in other words, that he had moved beyond his earlier Symphonies, which, despite their generic novelty, remain largely intelligible
works of lyrical and narrative prose.
-2-

Although the Symphonies are Bely's original formal creation, they


both echoed and foreshadowed a number of important developments
in modern prose fiction that in part grew out of nineteenth-century European Symbolism. Anton Kovac has suggested that the Fourth Symphony in particular "bears an intriguing resemblance to what Ralph
Freedman has called 'the lyrical novel'." 90 Freedman identifies a strand
in twentieth-century German, French, and English narrative prose
represented by Hermann Hesse, Andr Gide, and Virginia Woolfthat
combines features from novels and lyrical poetry, with the result that
"the lyrical novel shifts the reader's attention from men and events to a
formal design. The usual scenery of fiction becomes a texture of imagery, and characters appear as personae for the self."
This description is especially relevant for the Fourth Symphony, but
several other of Freedman's formulations can also be profitably borne
in mind. At the heart of the "lyrical novel" lies a particular type of epistemologica! stance, one in which the perceiving subject allows his consciousness to merge with objects in the world outside himself, which he
then presents in their transmuted state as art. This resembles the form
of perception underlying nineteenth-century Symbolist works in general, and recalls Bely's theory of symbolism. Moreover, in Freedman's
examples, the fusion of the world and the self occur in a "passive hero,"
a process comparable to Bely's making the actions of his characters into
reflections of a coercive transcendent (even though, paradoxically, in
his theoretical writings Bely stresses the existential creative act of the
perceiver as a first principle).
Freedman's study is also useful for providing a context that shows
Bely's Symphonies (and later novels) to be part of trends in European
literature broader than self-conscious Symbolism alone. Both the German Romantics and the French Symbolists had reacted against comparable conventional world views: eighteenth-century realism and nineteenth-century naturalism, respectively. "Romantic estheticism" was
itself spread through European literature by the late nineteenth-century

60

Andrei Bely

French and Belgian Symbolists. Similarly, the twentieth-century "lyrical novelists" not only reacted against the prevailing positivism of their
day, but also inherited their roles as heirs of the romantic exiles. 91 As
Bely attests in his memoirs and theoretical writings, and as his works
prove, his symbolism also grew from a personal rebellion against the
outmoded artistic fashions that were attached to a positivistic world
view, as well as the variously renovated Romantic currents that had
reached Russia in the mid-1890s. 92 And like the Romantics, he was also
influenced directly by German Idealist philosophy through his study of
Kant and those who built on him, such as Schopenhauer, Nietzsche,
and the neo-Kantians Rickert and Cohen, as well as indirectly through
Vladimir Soloviev, who built on Schelling.
-3The Fourth Symphony is basically a love story, though the love intrigue is almost totally obscured by the masses of imagery that sprout
from it. One Adam Petrovich, a mystic, encounters Svetlova, a beautiful society woman with "fiery hair" (one of the signs that she is to be
seen as the apocalyptic woman clothed with the sun) and falls in love
with her. She is also attracted to him, but must put up with an odious
husband, who, moreover, because of financial difficulties, surrenders
her to a certain Colonel Svetozarov. Both Adam Petrovich and Svetlova struggle against their carnal desires, and decide to spend some
time in monasteries in the north to dedicate themselves to sacred love.
Upon their return, however, their frequent meetings result in a rekindling of passion and a near consummation in a highly effective scene
that is easily the most erotic in all of Bely's works, and one of the most
unbuttoned in all of serious Russian literature. In the end Svetlova does
not submit, but her husband discovers them together. She returns to
the nunnery, and Adam Petrovich, after being seriously wounded in a
duel with her husband, is taken to a monastery as well. He lingers in a
semiconscious state for two years. Then he and Svetlova rediscover
each other; now, however, their love is purely sacred. After she slays
the apocalyptic dragon, the lovers are reunited in a blizzard and, apparently, ascend to heaven. 93
Even a bare outline of the plot suggests clearly that Bely was concerned with dramatizing individual instances of mystical self-transcendence that are reenactments of a great cosmic process. Kovac makes a
good case for the Fourth Symphony being a restatement, in artistic
form, of Soloviev's conception of man's difficult ascent to "Godmanhood." For Soloviev, achieving this state of union with the Divine
meant having to overcome man's earthly, temporal nature by means of
love between men and women. The human emotion of love is of divine

The Symphonies

61

origin, but in its earthly form it can easily be perverted. However, human beings can also realize it in its pure form. To accomplish this, they
must overcome egotism, not through self-effacement, but "by realizing
the majesty of one's own individuality" in a total union with the beloved. Such a union in Soloviev s view is a microcosm of the macrocosmic and apocalyptic union of mankind with God. 9 4
In a most interesting way, the Fourth Symphony thus turns out to be
a positive treatment of what Bely satirized in the Second. Musatov and
the "fairytale" were attracted to each other, but she in a purely flirtatious manner, while he saw her as the woman clothed with the sun. Unsullied references to the apocalypse were reserved for the "resurrected"
Vladimir Soloviev and his companion, while Musatov's apocalyptic
plans collapsed into farce, but Adam Petrovich and Svetlova experience a personal apocalypse that is nowhere undermined by the narrator.
Moreover, although the differences between the works are enormous, several of the major themes of the First Symphony reappear in
the Fourth. There too a male and a female character experience a mystical attraction to each other that culminates in their attaining a heavenly
realm after the Knight overcomes a base and malevolent heritage. And
although an important female figure is absent from the Third Symphony, Khandrikov also enacts what his fellow protagonists in the other
Symphonies either attempt or achievehe steps across the seeming gap
between the terrestrial realm and the transcendent.
As the Third Symphony showed especially clearly, a particular conception of time was also an essential part of man's link to the transcendent.
Time as such was of course already important in the Second Symphony's apocalypticism, but it is only in the Third that Bely's conception of
time as a spiral took obvious form. And although less clearly than in
the Third, a similar view of time appears in the Fourth Symphony.
The rectilinear component of the temporal spiral is suggested by the
proto-apocalyptic ending of the Symphony, in which Svetlova as the
woman clothed with the sun slays the dragon. Since this event precedes
the Second Coming, it can be thought of as the penultimate point on
the temporal line that began (implicitly) with Genesis. But in addition,
at the end of part four, Adam Petrovich and Svetlova ascend, as the
narrator puts it, "through time . . . to their homeland" (p. 227). T h e
fact that they return whence their souls came, as well as move through
time, suggests they move along a whorl of a spiral. This is the idea that
emerges from the narrator's statements:
All that was has not died: all that was, splashes on the surface.
Just a little longer.

62

Andrei Bely

Time will stop: the world will cease rushing forward.


And the past will return, (p. 114)
The return of souls is further linked with rectilinear time in the opus
that Adam Petrovich's friend, the "mystic," wrote about love. This episodic character is treated with respect by the narrator, in contrast to the
various individuals Bely satirizes in a style reminiscent of the Second
Symphony (pp. 18, 22-24, 32-33, 45-47). He is also said to have "secreted under a mask [his] loving knowledge about Christauthoritatively, wisely, insistently." In addition to having gathered "gnostic wisdom about love," he proclaims "The End is coming" (p. 46).
In the Third Symphony, the helical movement of time which the
Child/Khandrikov was forced to endure implied a strongly deterministic cosmos. In the Fourth, it is again difficult to assess Bely's view of free
will as opposed to determinism. It would seem, however, that he opted
for making the characters themselves responsible for their fates by having Adam Petrovich and Svetlova struggle successfully against sexual
passion in favor of spiritual love.
This is also implied in Bely's creation of characters who have erred in
their paths. He has "mystical anarchists" proclaim: "The more sacredly,
the more inexpressibly the mystery sighs, the more narrow is the line
separating it from sodomite mystery" (p. 48). As his memoirs attest,
Bely was violently opposed to Georgy Chulkov and his "mystical anarchism" because of its unprincipled and unmethodical eclecticism. 95
Thus, any belief put into the anarchists' mouths (fairly or unfairly)
automatically becomes heretical. Bely goes so far as to include a pair of
sodomiteswhose "lips . . . snake with a forbidden smile" (p. 49)on
the page that follows in order to underscore the actuality of the threat
implied in their perverse formulation. The fact that Adam Petrovich repeats the same sentiment about sacred love being close to profane as an
argument to persuade Svetlova to yield physically to him (p. 141)
shows that the idea is erroneous, precisely because when the two do not
succumb to it, they are resurrected into a divine realm as their reward.
On the other hand, the question remains whether the impulses toward good and evil that characters experience and ultimately follow
come from within themselves or from a spiritual realm that guides even
their thoughts. In The Silver Dove, Petersburg, and Kotik Letaev Bely
will decide in favor of the latter.
-4Bely's symbolism in the Fourth Symphony does not help to resolve
the question about the provenance of either the narrator's or the characters' "inner experiences." The problematic nature of the symbolic im-

The Symphonies

63

agery in this work is apparent from the very beginning. The first cluster
of verses reads:
The blizzard blew pale gusts off the roofs.
Snows spurted upward, and, like lilies, swayed over the city.
Melodious ribbons of silver swooped down, flew by, enveloped.
Collided, shattering into snow.
And the snow scattered into handfuls of diamonds. Spurting
like hundreds of midges, dancing, it flew about, and lay down at
one's feet.
And the midges were extinguished.
But, spurting light, they arose again.
Again gigantic lilies, having flown up, and swaying above the
city, fell with the snow storm.
This was the first blizzard of winter, (p. 7)
The scene is oriented primarily toward rhythmic and visual perceptions, and by means of vocabulary, syntax, and length of phrases renders well the erratic movement and pause of a snow storm, pure and
simple.
However, according to Bely's theoretical writings, as well as his prefatory remarks to the Symphony, the image of the snow storm is also
supposed to be an expression of inner experiences with roots in the
transcendent (presumably, in this case, the imagery belongs to a firstperson "lyrical" perception). This is precisely the dimension of the
Fourth Symphony's symbolic imagery that is difficult to apprehend:
the reader can "see" Bely's symbols, but is often entirely uncertain what
they signify. To be sure, the snow storm is presented as beautiful, and
the lily has well-known religious and artistic associations with purity,
the Virgin, and resurrection. These inevitably provide a direction for
expectations from the rest of the text, which, however, are never fulfilled.
The snow storm's meanings also increase in range during the course
of the Symphony. A number of anthropomorphic shapes appear to be
generated out of the flying snow, such as "a white corpse" (p. 8), "an invisible deacon" (p. 10), "a rider" and "his horse" (p. 18), "an icy skeleton" (p. 31). They inevitably add to the generally supernatural atmosphere of the storm, but their denotative function is weak. The
narrator speaks of the "blizzard bridegroom" who, in turn, sings: "You,
blizzard,wine creator: transform the vinegar of suffering into silver
and snow storm" (p. 39). The narrator also personally addresses an ektenia (a part of the Russian Orthodox liturgy consisting of versicles and
responses) 96 to the blizzard three times, in which he repeats "Let us pray
to the blizzard" as if it were identical with God (pp. 41, 59, 215).

64

Andrei Bely

But the opposite of this sacral significance is also found in the blizzard. In its "voice" Svetlova hears a "moaning cry about lustful nights,
about dead embraces, about a body being surrendered again and again
the moaning cry flooded her soul with anguish" (p. 143). This is a reminder of her husband's repulsive demands, representing the negative
side of the Solovievian conception of human love. (The link between
passion and a snow storm had been canonized earlier by Tolstoy in
Anna Karenina, and Bely's treatment of it in the Symphony is paralleled by Blok's in the collection Snow Mask, 1907.)
It is of course expected that a symbol as widespread in the Symphony
as the blizzard should have a range and depth of meaning that cannot
be easily exhausted. It is also expected that the reader should have to
work at making sense of the text before him. Bely obviously understood this, and, moreover, placed as a cornerstone of his theory of
symbolism the belief that art's role is to transform man:
An artistic image [a symbol] is like a mountain, the slopes of
which are covered by a vineyard of ideas; here at the slope is
where the new wine is madethe wine of a new life; but ideas are
not given here as wine: one cannot get them directly out of the
image; the effort of transformation, of understanding, of divining is necessary on the part of those who perceive art. 9 7
The process of fathoming symbols thus transforms the reader or perceiver, and acts as a potential bridge between the "fictional" world of
the text and the reader's real world. In these terms, the problem with
the Fourth Symphony is one of degree: the range and depth of symbols'
meanings is too broad. And the amount of purely mechanical unraveling of imagery that is necessary to get even a vague emotional or ideational impact from it undercuts its effectiveness.
A striking, extreme example of the disjunction between image and
meaning in the Symphony occurs in an (imaginary?) monologue that
Adam Petrovich addresses to Svetlova. His statements are in quotation
marks, followed immediately by short, purely descriptive passages
about a swan that are enclosed in parentheses: '"Holy ecstasies are
open to us, eternal, bright ecstasies, because every love carries one to
Christ as on wings.' (They were sitting on a swan's back and watching
how the swan carries [them?] off)." The swan, in addition to its obvious
extrinsic associations (it is a conventional image in French Symbolism
associated with purity and coldness, and appears in Tiutchev, a poet
important for the "second generation" of Russian Symbolists), is also
specifically attached to the image of Svetlova in the Symphony. But although the swan image is juxtaposed with the "inner experiences" of
Adam Petrovich, it does not fuse with them to form a symbol.

The Symphonies

65

This example also illustrates the problem with point of view in the
Fourth Symphony. On occasion it is impossible to determine if certain
imagery is related to the narrator's or the characters' internal experiences, or to both at once. This is not simply a matter of Bely's having
developed free indirect discourse to an extreme in this work. Since the
characters exist in a world in which metaphysical good and evil are opposed, it is important to be able to tell if they have the narrator's or implied author's support or not. It is uncertain if Bely's inability to distinguish at times characters' perceptions from the consciousness of the
narrator, and from the implied author, is a consequence on his conception of symbolism, as it was in Dujardin's Les Lauriers sont coups, for
example, or an artistic lapse. Since in all his works preceding the Fourth
Symphony, as in all his works following it, Bely shifts between distinctly first and third-person passages, and allows the narrator's voice to
blend with that of characters only in clearly delineated instances, the
ambiguous passages in the Fourth Symphony may not have been what
he sought to create.
It should also be noted that Bely occasionally reverts to the facile
suggestiveness that typified his First Symphony (and can be found in all
the others to a lesser degree). An egregious instance is the narrator's
mention of a Gnostic "call": "someone was summoning someone somewhere" (pp. 32, 34, 149). 9 8 Bely also enjoys repeating the adjective
"strange" without any additional qualifiers in an attempt to heighten
mystery (pp. 38, 82).
Bely himself may have sensed that his highly elliptical form of communication was not always accessible to the reader. In a number of instances in the Symphony, he resolves long series of obscure images by
suddenly having the narrator identify what they seem to be about.
These statements never exhaust all of the symbolic implications of the
images, of course, but the very fact that the narrator clues the reader in
is an implicit betrayal of Bely's symbolic method. A good example is
the beginning section of part two:
Oh, water,the roar of foam, oh, silver lace!
Above the pool, like a transparent bird, you spurted during the
summer.
Spurted during the summer: became a crystal shield. Became
exhausted, falling like crackling crystal.
Ah, crystals!
Ring out, ring out, golden crystals!
Louder ring out, laugh louder, ring out louderfall like a fountain, fall!
And with splashes of laughter bemoan enthusiastically [oplakivaite vostorzhenno]\
(p. 63)

66

Andrei Bely

The chapter-like section following these lines is entitled "The Marble


Genius." This naturally acts as a clue, and one concludes that the narrator is describing a fountain. Again, as in the case of the snow storm, the
rhythm of Bely's phrases captures nicely something of the play of water. Possibly the water images are meant to contrast with the snow in
part one, but this is uncertain. The passages that follow offer a fragmentary glimpse of a "white sad head" belonging to an unspecified "he"
(p. 64). Other physical details are mentioned: the figure is holding a
spear, and it is associated with time. This of course evokes an automatic contrast with eternity.
Among other related images that are developed at some length in this
sequence is the following particularly opaque one:
In purple, in the purple of roses, dimly burning out of pearls as
in an aureole of fire, the face grew dead; his bitter face grew dead,
like the visage of the airy moon, uselessly saturated with azure on
a summer day, and like a handful of frozen snow, melting into
azure [obtaiavshem lazur'iu] around the edges, (p. 64)
Not until approximately two pages into this section do we finally read:
"Colonel Svetozarov stood there like a giant, in a morning robe, covered all over with patches of light, and with a spear instead of a walking
stick [sic]" (p. 65). So the fountain imagery is apparently somehow related to him. But neither this sudden change in narrative strategy, from
"painting" with images to explaining by means of a declarative sentence, nor anything that follows, illuminates two pages of intricately
rendered images. Bely is the last artist imaginable who would indulge
in descriptive passages for their own sake. And even if the repetition of
leitmotifs was his main point, it cannot be said that the resulting
rhythm yields any additional meaning.
In all fairness, there are occasional successful symbolic images in the
Fourth Symphony. For example, Bely renders brilliantly (but ultimately untranslatably) the "cheetah" leitmotif that consists of periodic
manifestations of the animal in different contexts:
Golden, airy beasts threw themselves at them, and rushed
back.
It was as if a wild flock, moaning through the wind, had been
thrown into the greenery; and now the cheetahs were tearing
them to pieces with their strong paws, gnawing their breasts with
bloody, fiery [zarevymi], airy fangs; shattering on their breasts as
waves of leaves, flowers, patches of sunset, and cold, cold dew.
Behind their backs they arose again.
So the cheetahs flew, cut out in the greenery as patches of light,
together with the rushing bushes, from horizon to horizon.

The Symphonies

67

The future threatened with a roaring flock of beast moments,


the past ran away as the same flock; the present tore the moments
with waves of leaves, flowers and shadow, and a cold, cold torrent of tears, (p. 104)
Svetozarov is pursuing Svetlova in this scene, and, as their horses rush
through the forest, the cheetahs appear out of the play of sunlight on
greenery. The images are highly evocative, and the slight touch of confusion in them only adds to their effectiveness. Bely's choice of a large,
predatory, cat-like animal may be an evocation of Dionysus, who was
occasionally associated with a lion and other large felines. This, in
turn, suggests sacral orgiastic rites, as well as death and resurrection.
The developed image of onrushing beasts serves well, therefore, as an
expression of the lust that motivates Svetozarov, as well as the passionsacred and profanethat is a dominant theme of the Symphony
as a whole."
Since death and resurrection are the central mystery of Bely's essentially Christian world view, the theme of time that is broached at the
end of the passage just quoted broadens the image of cheetahs to include eschatology. These dominant associations also arise with the appearance of the cheetah images elsewhere (pp. 68, 83, 135, 137, 142).
But ultimately, the meaning of this symbolic leitmotif hinges on associations drawn from outside the Symphony, rather than on what was developed within it.
Other successful symbolic images are at once more brief and less portentous, such as the following rendering of the sweet interior tremor
that Svetlova's passing by evokes in Adam Petrovich: "She scattered
forget-me-nots over the glistening parquet with the train of her dress"
(p. 37). Similarly, when Adam Petrovich asks what must be a rhetorical
question, "Who can forbid me to only think of her?" a sequence of images appears that provides the answer:
An invisible someone whispered to him with snow and wind:
"To think about her? Well, no one, of course."
Snowily kissed him, tenderly threwthrew under his feet a
handful of diamonds.
Threw.
Swarms of spurting sparks, having blinded [him?] were already flying: flyingthey flew off from under his feet in the
white velvet of snow. (p. 50)
These and various other instances suggest that Bely's symbolic method
can work marvelously wella supposition that will of course be borne
out by his series of great novels.

The Silver Dove


2
. . . izmenish' oblik Ty
(. . . You will change Your countenance)
Aleksandr Blok

The novel The Silver Dove (written and published in 1909) 1 is, at first
glance, the most conventional of Bely's prose fictions. It has neither the
original typographical form and extreme stylistic experiments of the
Symphonies, nor the radical displacement of the conventions of the realistic novel and the "ornamental prose" style of Petersburg and later
works. Bely appears to have stepped back from the experiments with
genre he had begun to pursue at the beginning of his literary career,
turning to a more traditional and tested form. 2 As a result, the characters and their story produce a much more conventional and clear impression, as do the setting and narrative form.
Nevertheless, The Silver Dove remains a strikingly original work.
There is nothing at all conventional about its preoccupation with symbolic cognition, which, in abstract terms, is the heart of the novel, and
ultimately the reason for its orientation toward vivid visual imagery. In
1909, apart from Bely's own Symphonies, the only work with which
The Silver Dove could be compared in the uniqueness of the world contained within it and the novelty of its concerns is Fedor Sologub's The
Petty Demon. These two novels represent the highest achievements of
Russian Symbolist prose fictionindeed, of early Russian Modernist
prosebefore Bely's masterpiece, Petersburg.
The Silver Dove tells the story of Petr Darialsky, a young classical
philologist and minor decadent poet, who travels to the village of Tselebeevo during the summer of 1905. Distant rumblings of the Revolution can be heard in the background. The reason for Petr's journey is
spiritual: he believes the Russian peasants possess a traditional esoteric
wisdom that the Westernized elements of Russian society and the West

The Silver Dove

69

itself have lost. In Tselebeevo, Petr woos and wins Katiathe naive
granddaughter of the old, Westernized Baroness Todrabe Graaben,
who lives nearby on her estate Gugolevo. However, the village and its
environs also happen to be the home of a secret, heretical and mystical
sect of peasants and townsfolk known as the Doves. The head of the
sect, Kudeiarov, notices Petr and his spiritual proclivities and decides
to lure him into the sect by means of the coarse peasant wench Matrena. Kudeiarov's plan is to have Petr engender a Dove Child in Matrenaa child that will become nothing less than the savior of the
world. Petr succumbs to Matrena, abandons Katia, and comes to live
and work with Kudeiarov and Matrena. Despite Kudeiarov's strong
occult powers, which he manifests during rituals in which Darialsky
participates, Petr's attachment to the Doves wavers. He is unable to
shake off the (correct) impression that the Doves are associated with
metaphysical evil rather than good. Kudeiarov is displeased with Petr
because no Dove child is forthcoming. After some vacillation, Petr decides to escape from the Doves and return to Moscow. But before he
can, Kudeiarov, fearing betrayal, has Petr killed in the neighboring
town of Likhov.

-2-

The central role assigned to symbolic cognition in The Silver Dove is


signaled by the narrator in the novel's opening lines, when he begins to
set the scene for his story by describing the repetitive pealing that issues
from the Tselebeevo church belfry "into the blue abyss of day" (I, 9;
5)a phrase that is repeated twice more in the novel's first paragraph.
What is important about the phrase is its hint of a dualistic perception:
the everyday phenomenon of the blue sky seems to be underlain by a
portentous depth. Furthermore, the image contains a suggestion of an
opposition between good (day) and evil (abyss).
This is a classic example of a symbol as Bely understood the term.
The perceiver (the narrator in this case) creates an artifactthe image
that exists only in the words that embody it (it could not be readily
painted, for example)by infusing something he has seen with his "internal experience." And because these are rooted in a transcendent
realm (as Bely explains in the essays "The Emblematics of Meaning,"
1909, and "The Crisis of Consciousness and Henrik Ibsen," 1910), the
resulting symbol becomes an expression of a supernatural truth.
A few pages later, the narrator shares a similar, but somewhat more
expanded version of this perception with the protagonist, Petr Darialsky, and asks: "And the sky? And its pale air, which at first is pale
but, if scrutinized closely, is completely black?" (I, 17; 12). Here the

70

Andrei Bely

narrator is stressing that something negative may actually appear to be


positive at first.
The light mood of mystery associated with the sky is extended further into the sphere of nature by an aural perception of the narrators:
"Press your ear to the ground in the evening: you will hear how the
grasses grow, how the big yellow moon rises over Tselebeevo" (1,11; 7).
In this instance, the narrator's experience is synesthetic: he is capable of
hearing motion. But in addition to hearing such phenomena as grass
growing (which recall topoi from Russian folk tales), he can hear normal sounds of course. The consequence is that the natural world in the
novel again seems to fall into two realmsone of surface phenomena,
and the other of deeper realityboth of which the narrator perceives at
the same time.
The sense that there is a dimension beyond the superficial, material
reality leads easily to the narrator's view that there may be something
sentient in it: "And the grassy waves run, run on; frightened, they will
run down the road and break with an unsteady splash; then a little
bush by the roadside will sob out and the shaggy dust will leap up" (I,
11; 7). In this passage, and in numerous others like it throughout the
novel, the literary trope of personification acquires a significance resembling the one Bely gave it as early as his First Symphony. There is a
strong sense that the deeper plane of reality is both potent and ominous.
Such a view of personification is in keeping with Bely's theoretical
writings on symbolism if the sentient dimension in an image drawn
from nature is understood as the result of the narrator's deeper perceptions into the spiritual world underlying the physical plane of being,
and not a mere stylistic flourish. An alternative way to reconcile passages such as these with Bely's theoretical writings is to understand the
sentient element in the image to be the product of the "inner experiences" of the narrator being projected onto an aspect of the phenomenal world. Since these derive from a supernatural realm, they cannot
lead to solipsism, but make man and the world in which he exists into a
reflection of the Absolute.
Although these two conceptions of symbolism are founded on antipodal premises, both appear to operate in The Silver Dove. The essential difference is between the perceiver being able to see deeply into
a spiritual realm that lies outside him, and the perceiver being the recipient of "inner experiences" that derive from the transcendent and
flow into the world outside through him. The first alternative raises the
question of the extent to which the perceiver must already be "in tune"
with the spiritual dimension in order to be able to see it in the first
place. The problem of individual volition thus lies at the heart of the

The Silver

Dove

71

difference between the two conceptions of symbolism. In the Symphonies Bely's tendency was clearly to make man's thoughts and actions dependent on an otherworldly realm. In The Silver Dove, however, Bely
does not appear to have resolved the question of free will. This may explain why both conceptions of symbolism can be found in the work.
Some of the narrator's symbolic perceptions in The Silver Dove are
repeated frequently and thus function as leitmotifs, a device that is
clearly a legacy from the Symphonies. Moreover, since the leitmotifs in
The Silver Dove consist of the narrator's perceptions, Bely's use of the
device reflects the first-person bent implied in his theoretical essays and
manifested to varying degrees in all of his other works of fiction.
One literally haunting example is the eerie bush near Tselebeevo,
which, from a distance, looks to the narrator like a lonely wanderer approaching the village: "years passed, and the wanderer kept walking on
and on; he couldn't reach the human dwellings, and kept threatening
the village from afar" (I, 47: 36). The image reappears a number of
times (I, 63: 48; I, 123: 95; I, 275, 276: 210, 211; II, 21: 244; II, 164:
354), and then undergoes a series of transformations that connect it
with a malevolent character in the novel and make it into a specific
threat against Darialsky rather than a general one against the village.
First, during a description of a thunderstorm, the narrator mentions a
bizarre being he calls a "bristling creature" (raskariaka),
which approaches stealthily at night and "will pinch and strangle you with its
withered arms [u sukhorukikh
rukakh]" (I, 234: 180); in the morning
you will be found hanging from a bush. Furthermore, the Russian
words for "withered arm" are echoed in the name of the tinsmith Sukhorukov, a leading Dove who formulates the plan to murder Darialsky
and later helps to strangle him. This is not to suggest that Sukhorukov
is the bush literally come to life, but there is strong evidence for linking
Sukhorukov to demonic evil. Equally important is that in the end of the
novel, the bush turns into nothing less than evil incarnate. First the
bush becomes someone pursuing Darialsky from Tselebeevo to Likhov,
the town where he is murdered (II, 214: 393); then it is someone following Darialsky through Likhov (II, 221, 225; 399, 403). Finally, the narrator says that the figure following Petr is the devil (II, 228: 405). It is as
if the evil dormant in the bush and manifest in Sukhorukov had finally
succeeded in reaching its victim by the end of the work.
The narrator records dozens of other comparable symbolic perceptions, which also recur and become leitmotifs. Echoing the "blue abyss
of day," he also sees the "red abyss of the sunset" (II, 143: 340); a hut
whose window casts a sidelong glance like a clear, and then an evil eye
(I, 10: 6); the heat of the day that becomes suffocating and evil (I, 54:

72

Andrei Bely

41); a hawk's beak on the dove that is embroidered on a ritual cloth (I,
102: 78); and, if you look closely, as he puts it, the gnawed sheep bone
that shows through in Kudeiarov's face (I, 83: 64). All of the narrator's
symbolic perceptionsdirected at a wide range of phenomenapoint
in the same direction: toward a malevolent supernatural presence that
is immanent in the world of the novel.
This characteristic feature of The Silver Dove represents a significant
change from Bely's attempt to create symbols in the Symphonies. He
has clearly avoided the problem of imbalances between imagery and
meaning that characterizes the First and Fourth Symphonies. Bely's imagery is now lush in its specificity and ripe with hints of higher meaning
at the same time. He has also avoided the division between descriptions
of otherworldly and terrestrial realms that one finds in the Third Symphony, and the disharmony between different underlying metaphysical
systems that typified the Second.
By 1909 Bely had become a more experienced writer, but part of his
success with the symbolic perceptions in The Silver Dove may also be
due to his using his own experience. We know from his memoirs that he
actually trained himself to see "Platonic Ideas" in nature, and had many
periods in his life when he was subject to "mediumistic phenomena." 3 In
Notes of an Eccentric, for example, Bely recalls an "ancient network of
ravines" in the Russian province of Tula where he spent summers from
1899 to 1906 that was "gnawing away the fertile earth, and crawling
menacingly toward us." He perceived this as a Solovievian threat from
the East, and fought against it by throwing stones into the ravines. 4
Similarly, in his memoir about Blok, he recollects that he once saw how
"a completely black sky divided the blue sky, and glanced at the meadow out of the blue sky" (a variant of this image also appears in the early
essay "Sacred Colors," 1903). He admits that he used this moment in
The Silver Dove, and that Blok had praised it in the novel. Bely also
preserved the significance this moment had for him in real life: in both
the novel and the memoir, the perception is an adumbration of the danger that lies ahead for those who have set out on the wrong spiritual
path (Blok, and Bely himself at the time, as well as Darialsky)specifically, that of confusing evil for good.
Not all of Bely's autobiographical symbolic perceptions were visual,
and they certainly did not stop with the appearance of The
Silver
Dove. While in the countryside during the summer of 1911, as he also
reports in his memoir about Blok, he and his companions heard hollow
rumblings of thunder. But it could not have been thunder, Bely remembers realizing at the time, for the sky was clear; neither could it have
been artillery; nor was there any traffic on the road. Bely's conclusion
was that the "thundering silence" he heard then was a thundering "not

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Dove

73

here, but above the world"namely, a foreshadowing of the battles


that would pass through the area during the First World War, and ultimately of the sound of a "collapsing era." 5 Not unexpectedly, comparable experiences continued to fill his life after he became an anthroposophist in 1912. 6
-3The center of the novel's plot is the Doves' classically theurgic plan.
Concocted by their leader, Kudeiarov, its grandiose goal is to induce
the birth of the world savior through an incarnation of the divine spirit.
As the narrator himself admits (adding to the verisimilitude of his narrative, and, at the same time, underscoring the problematic difference
between his first-person perceptions and the third-person narrative
passages in the text), the details of the Doves' mystical program are not
completely clear, and nowhere in the novel is there a point-by-point exposition of all of Kudeiarov's prophecies and beliefs. However, what
emerges from various scattered, fragmentary comments is that Kudeiarov is preparing for some sort of Biblical Armageddon (I, 67: 51)
by trying to effect a Second Coming, even though he does not personally refer to Christ or the Revelation of St. John. Moreover, he expects
that after the incarnation of the spirit there will be a "be-doving" (voskholublenie [sic]) of the earth, and a liberation of the Christian folk (I,
288: 220). Although this victory over the coming Beast, to be achieved
through the triumph of the Holy Spirit, is put in religious terms, there is
a socio-political dimension to the Doves' plans that echoes the revolutionary turmoil sweeping Russia in 1905, suggesting a link between the
Revolution and cosmic events in the minds of the Doves. They print a
proclamation announcing that the Antichrist's "bestiality" has placed
its seal on God's earth, and summoning the faithful to raise the sword
against the nobility, who are Beelzebub's closest servants. In the same
breath, the proclamation announces the appearance of the Holy Spirit,
and calls for burning the estates of the demon's spawn, because the land
belongs to the people (I, 195-196: 150). Moreover, Sukhorukov and
others of the Doves want to implement this bizarre program by infiltrating "the socialists" about whom there is much talk throughout the
land, and using them for their own ends (1,104: 80).
Kudeiarov's theurgic program itself is thus broadly analogous to an
act of symbolic perception: the goal of both is to link the worlds of spirit and matter. The difference between them is that Kudeiarov's program
requires the mediator to appear in the flesh, while the act of symbolic
perception permits mediation to occur in the perceiver's consciousness
(or in the symbol he creates), with the perceiver himself (or his symbol)
thus becoming the mediator.

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Andrei Bely

In the Second Symphony, Musatov's "fatal flaw," which led to his becoming the butt of a cosmic joke by confusing a society woman for Divine Wisdom, had been the willfulness of his excessive desire to see the
woman clothed with the sun. A comparable connection between will
and grievous error characterizes Kudeiarov's theurgy in The Silver
Dove. As in the Second Symphony, the narrator in this novel makes
symbolic perceptions. However, the narrator also moves easily into the
eyes and minds of the characters. There is therefore more of an interpenetration of the narrator's and characters' perspectives in the novel
than in the Symphony. The contrasts between the narrator's and the
characters' symbolic perceptions of comparable or identical events are
thus more subtle in The Silver Dove than they were in the earlier work.
All the characters achieve intermittent glimpses into supernatural
realms, but not all their perceptions prove to be equally deep or valid.
And it quickly becomes obvious that the perceptions by characters
who are under Kudeiarov's influence are distinguishedin the worst
instancesby a proto-apocalyptic confusion of evil with good.
A small but revealing instance of the narrator simply seeing more accurately and more deeply than a character occurs during Kudeiarov's
journey through the countryside on his way to a Dove ceremony in
Likhov. The narrator catches a glimpse of the dynamic life that fills the
world: "the bushes sobbed and danced; the tiresome stalks danced too;
the rye danced; and the spry, light ripples squirmed fussily over the surface of the cold, calm, brown puddles." Then the narrator wonders
whether or not Kudeiarov sees what is going on around him, and answers his own question as follows: "All around him were foulness and
mud: the rain danced, bubbles burst on the puddles; but it was all right,
the carpenter kept on wading through the mud" (I, 74: 57). This description, with its emphasis on lowly mud rather than on the glimmering sentience that fills the world, suggests that Kudeiarov does not see
as much as the narrator. The importance of this detail is that it puts into
question Kudeiarov's vatic nature, which obviously occupies a central
place in the novel, and undercuts his entire occult program, the true nature of which also emerges through dramatized moments of visual cognition.
Both willfulness and evil mimicking good are central to a brilliant sequence of passages about Fekla Matveevna Eropegina s visit to Tselebeevo. She is one of the most pious of the Doves, and approaches with
a breathless, mystical expectancy the town where Kudeiarov lives, for,
as she believes, it is the place of the Holy Spirit's incarnation. The
world through which she passes is multifariously alive. When she
crosses a stream, the narrator comments, in a richly onomatopoetic
style that is laden with charming emotional accents: vozmutilsia ru-

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75

chei, zazhuzhukal voditsei; pobryzgivaet voditsa, povarchivaet (the


stream became indignant, its waters began to buzz; the waters splashed
and grumbled; II, 54-55: 270).
Fekla Matveevna peers carefully at everything around her, hoping
"to see grace." Instead, what she sees is that
each stump by the road had assumed the image of a devil; all the
way the wind had whistled around Fekla Matveevna and driven
dry dust at her; and out of the dust the stumps, the bushes, the
branches like devilish mugs grimaced maliciously at her in the
sun, driving her back to Likhov.
Then the narrator explains that after this experience Eropegina finally
understood
how many devils there are threatening human nature; invisible to
the eye, they swirl above us; only prayer, fasting, and the aspiration to saintliness, by emaciating the flesh endow corporeal sight
itself with spiritual sight; and by means of this spiritual sight each
material object becomes the image of invisible objects. (II, 5556: 270-271)
The last clause is a neat encapsulation of symbolic perception in general.
As Eropegina's own experiences unroll, however, they begin to confirm Bely's notion that "inner experiences" are rooted in the otherworldly. After arriving in Tselebeevo, she continues to believe that the
demons she saw are besieging the "holy places" of Kudeiarov's domicile. Then, during the night she is "granted" a vision of Kudeiarov commanding her to blot him out of her mind. Later she senses "as if a command from some invisible power: 'All that will be henceforth is good:
so it must be'." The first indication that there may be something wrong
with this edict comes when Eropegina receives word that her husband
has been stricken by paralysis. The reader has of course deduced by
now that Kudeiarov and Sukhorukov have been slowly poisoning him
all along (if he were to die, his fortune would pass to his widow and
then to them because she is a zealous Dove), and that this stroke is the
result of an unusually large dose. But Eropegina's reaction as she reads
the note is, as the narrator comments, "strange": she hears the same
command about all that happens being good, and almost says out loud
"So it must be." Although her heart briefly bids her "to weep and be
horrified," this impulse passes quickly (II, 58: 273), suggesting that she
is literally the plaything of forces that control even her thoughts and
perceptions. Most significantly, on her return journey to Likhov, "all
those stumps and bushes, which had threatened her so recently,
swaying gently in the evening breeze sang a new song about joy ineffa-

76

Andrei Bely

ble; in the thin whistling of the branches could be heard: 'So it must
be'." Her new misperceptions continue even when she arrives at home
and smiles joyously at her stricken husband while, the narrator notes, a
dove flutters in her soul (II, 59, 62: 273, 276).
This is also a clear instance of the truly evil being hidden under a veil
of seeming good that recalls the small-scale dualistic perceptions of the
narrator discussed above, but with the difference that the character is
deceived about the true nature of things whereas the narrator was not.
The devils Eropegina had seen as she arrived in Tselebeevo were most
likely there because of Kudeiarov's theurgy rather than in opposition to
it. Moreover, as will become apparent later, Kudeiarov's evil derives
from some source beyond him. But typically for Bely, neither the carpenter nor Eropegina is aware of being a victim of coercion.
Kudeiarov's willfulness (assuming it is his own, and does not derive
from outside him) is stressed in other ways. He is the one who wants to
use Matrena and Darialsky to create a fleshly trap for God in order to
hasten the millennium. Similarly, he objects to Abram the Wanderer's
paean to the joys of a rustic, peripatetic life in harmony with an unfettered spirit (an attitude the narrator shares: "if everyone roamed about,
they would inhale the same spirit and become one soul: the one spirit
has clothed the earth with its raiment"; I, 77: 59). Indeed, Kudeiarov
emphasizes his (excessive) concern with the "materialism" of his spiritual
program, which is in keeping with his trade as a carpenter, by adding:
"To build, brother, one has to planeto plane the House of God" (I, 81:
62).
Love between the sexes plays a crucial role in Soloviev's conception
of the world's salvation through Divine Wisdom; it is therefore especially noteworthy that Kudeiarov should try to influence the "affair"
between Matrena and Darialsky. Not only does he attempt to initiate it
by flooding Matrena with his occult powers so that she could attract
Darialsky (who is spiritually predisposed anyway), but Kudeiarov also
wants to force the romance to develop in a particular way. Matrena
herself senses difference when Kudeiarov's command becomes transformed into a "sweet and free uprush of the soul." And the carpenter is
enraged that she and Darialsky have been meeting "without prayers,
sense or ceremony," meaning, without his control (I, 2 8 6 - 8 7 : 218-20).
Although this might not seem an unreasonable objection within the
praxis of theurgic rites, what Kudeiarov yearns for, as the narrator explains, is "that the incarnation of the spirit in the flesh of man would
happen not as the world, but as he, the carpenter, wants it [italics
mine]" (I, 114: 87). This suggests that Kudeiarov himself is at least partially conscious that he is going against a divine or universal grain.

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Dove

77

-4One of the seductive features of The Silver Dove is that the reader is
allowed to participate in Darialsky's growing awareness of a metaphysical evil gradually manifesting itself in Kudeiarov's entourage.
Darialsky's ghastly fate is of course foreshadowed clearly and often
from the beginning of the novel, as is the fact that a potent malevolence
is loose in the world. But this is seen on the narrator's superior level,
whereas the characters' experiences occur on the level of the plot. Thus,
the first ritual of the Doves that we see in Eropegina's bath-house contains only a hint that something may be awry with the sect, whereas the
final rite in Kudeiarov's house, with Darialsky participating, is quite
another matter. Moreover, what happens there is presented through
Darialsky's eyes, so the reader has the impression of participating in his
uneasy discoveries.
The incarnation Kudeiarov had hoped for does not occur. As he tells
Sukhorukov with surprising casualness, a "corporeal child" did form,
but it was not "solid" and "dissipated into steam" without lasting more
than an hour. All of this was caused by Darialsky's weakness and fears,
Kudeiarov explains (II, 162: 353).
But although this incarnation failed to take place, Darialsky, apparently alone among all the participants in the rituals, notices that another presence does begin to manifest itself. In one scene Kudeiarov,
Matrena, Darialsky, and a laborer are dancing, and the narrator confirms Darialsky's fears: "they dance, all four of them, but it's as if they
are five . . . Who is the fifth?" (II, 151: 346). Ironically, Kudeiarov had
earlier forbidden dancing during the Doves' rites, because, as he explained, it would be dangerous. Perhaps the change in his attitude is a
reflection of his theurgy having been usurped by evil. At any rate, after
the ecstatic moments pass, Petr continues to feel very uneasy:
everything that had happened to him on the day before now appeared to him disgusting, shameful, and frightening: fearfully, in
full daylight, he would suddenly turn around at bushes, empty
corners, and it kept seeming to him that a certain someone was
following in his footsteps; he felt someone's stifling invisible hand
on his chest; and he feared suffocation. (II, 180: 367)
The victim to be has clearly experienced a premonition of his own
death in this passage. Several pages later, Bely dramatizes very effectively how Darialsky comes extremely close to actually catching a
glimpse of the invisible, evil presence itself. This time he is apparently
alone with Kudeiarov and Matrena:

78

Andrei Bely

the three of them are planing wood; but no: you lower your eyes
and there seem to be four: who is the fourth? You raise your
eyesthree again; lower them once more, and it still seems as if
the carpenter had begun to whisper with that fourth one; and that
fourth points a finger at Petr and chuckles, eggs the carpenter on
against Petr. (II, 186: 371-372)
The seventh chapter, in which this scene occurs, is subtitled "The
Fourth One," which underscores this figure's importance. But the closest we get to actually seeing the devil in any form is in another scene,
when Darialsky almost recognizes that the unremarkable tinsmith Sukhorukov is apparently the "fourth" who had "flickered" before his gaze
(in a manner anticipating how the inhabitants of the city can become
"shadows" in Petersburg). However, Darialsky stops short and concludes that the tinsmith could not be the fourth because "he is a nothinga zero" (II, 188: 373). Darialsky s words contain irony at his own
expense, of course, for the idea of Evil as total absence goes back at
least as far as St. Augustine. 7
This final characterization is particularly important because it echoes Sukhorukov's own deeply blasphemous and anarchical comments
to Kudeiarov, which consolidate the impression that he is in fact demonic. Sukhorukov implicitly denigrates the idea of a church, the existence of sin, and most significantly, of a Divinity judging in heaven:
"there's only emptiness; either chicken meat, or man's substanceit's
all one incontradictable [neprekoslovnyi] flesh," he proclaims (II, 189:
374). His remarks deny that there is any transcendent order, and are actually directed as much against Kudeiarov's heretical sect as against
any other metaphysical beliefs. Moreover, Sukhorukov's reference to
himself as the smartest person he knows is additional evidence for seeing him as a minion of Lucifer. It hardly bears repeating that Kudeiarov's distinguishing characteristic was also pride.
Sukhorukov's diabolical attempt to undermine Kudeiarov's faith
sounds like the remarks of the weird, demonic beings Sergei Musatov
encounters in the Second Symphony after his eschatological hopes
have been dashed. These creatures also deny the existence of a transcendent. Moreover, their evil nature was identified both by the narrator and the Symphony's positive character, the quiet old priest. This is
close to what happens in The Silver Dove. The old occultist Schmidt,
who represents the positive mystical pole in the novel and articulates
accurate, deeply perceptive views, recognizes that Darialsky is indeed
beset by demons (I, 298: 228). Moreover, the narrator crowns the sequence of symbolic perceptions that began with the bush threatening
Tselebeevo with the remark, near the novel's end, that Darialsky was

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79

being followed by the devil in Likhov. The reemergence of this interrelated set of themes after the seven-year hiatus separating the Second
Symphony from The Silver Dove suggests the continuity of Bely's
thought on the nature of evil and its relation to human pride, as well as
the central importance these questions had for him in his world view.
One of the greater ironies in The Silver Dove is that Kudeiarov's attempt to coerce the birth of a savior for mankind becomes a vehicle for
the appearance of an evil that hides behind a veil of good. Kudeiarov
thus becomes a party to one of the great acts of dissimulation in Christian eschatology, or, perhaps better to say, to an event that adumbrates
the appearance of the Antichrist.
The version of the apocalypse that dominated Bely's imagination
was Vladimir Soloviev's Brief Tale about the Antichrist, which, although based in Biblical Revelation, contains his own additions.8 Chief
among these is the idea of pan-Mongolism, and the vision of the Antichrist as a purveyor of "falsified good"an impostor who seems to be a
benefactor of humanity while he is actually in league with Satan. This
aspect of Soloviev's prophecy has been the subject of debate, with some
claiming that it has no basis in Christian Scriptural traditions. 9 But be
that as it may, it is a vision of evil that was Bely's model in The Silver
Dove.
Not only is evil's masquerade as good the central event around which
the novel's action is organized; it is also behind the narrator's and some
of the characters' dualistic perceptions. During the course of the novel,
the malevolent force that seems omnipresent below the surface of phenomena to the narrator's exclusively percipient gaze gradually intensifies and becomes reified into the invisible "fourth" or "fifth," and finally
overlaps with the clearly visible Sukhorukov. There is a difference, of
course, between evil mimicking good in order to deceive a perceiver,
and a perceiver glimpsing a spiritual evil behind material phenomena.
In the latter case, the evil does not manifest itself through intentional
deception. Nevertheless, because Bely has his narrator glimpse threats
in otherwise cheerful, or even merely neutral phenomena, such as the
blue sky, the shock of recognizing the evil behind them is comparable
to that of seeing through a veil of dissimulation. The narrator's individual perceptions scattered throughout the novel thus emerge as smallscale versions of the apocalyptic confusion of good and evil underlying
the work as a whole.
-5-

If in the narrator's eyes Kudeiarov's theurgic plan is compromised


first by ambiguity and then by evil, Darialsky's initial ideology and

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Andrei Bely

motivation for going into the countryside are presented with a high degree of approval. This is the case despite the fact that Darialsky himself
is shown to have erred in trying to bring his beliefs to life.
Despite his errors and blindness, Petr is the hero in the novel, and his
spiritual lan is appealing. Schmidt makes this clear when he tells Katia
that only great and powerful souls are subject to the temptations that
Petr had experienced, and that only giants fall the way he did (I, 299:
228). Schmidt's appreciation is based on Darialsky's central, problematic desire "to personally create life." Without any other evaluation of
Petr, it might be tempting to regard Schmidt's views with some skepticism. However, the fact that the narrator lends his voice in support of
Darialsky's ideas, despite his criticism of the man's personal behavior
(1,175:133-134), suggests that these ideas should be taken seriously.
One day, while fishing in Tselebeevo, Petr experiences a moment of
mystical exultation and an upwelling of long-cherished thoughts. The
narrator, entering Petr s consciousness, merges with it in contemplation
of the mysteries of Russia's fields and people. The Russian peasant possesses a silent wisdom, the narrator explains, and knows simple words
that affect one strongly only if they remain unspoken: "come to them
and you will learn to be silent" (II, 93: 301). The West is markedly different: "a great multitude of words, sounds, signs the West had thrown
out to the world's amazement; but those words, those sounds, those
signslike werewolves, when dying out, lure men after thembut
where?" (II, 94: 302). By contrast, the Russian "taciturn word, issuing
from you, remains with you: and that word is a prayer."
In these somewhat ambiguous statements Bely is imputing deep
spirituality to Russia, and materialism and superficiality to Europe. He
is also expressing the widespread Romantic and Symbolist doctrine
that a complex spiritual life cannot ultimately be expressed in words,
thus echoing Tiutchev's famous line in his poem "Silentium" (1833): "An
uttered thought is a lie" (Mysl izrechennaia est' lozh').10
Having identified Russia's essential difference from the West, the narrator wonders how the two will come into contact:
there are many books in the West; there are many unuttered
words in Russia. Russia is that against which a book is shattered,
learning is scattered, and life itself is burnt; on that day when the
West is grafted onto Russia, a world-wide conflagration will engulf it; everything that can be consumed will burn, because only
out of the ashes of death can issue forth the paradisiacal soulthe
Fire-Bird. (II, 95-96: 303)
This passage is important for understanding The Silver Dove because it
provides the positive counterpoint to the Doves' perverted theurgical

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81

plans. The narrator foretells that a synthesis will replace the existing dichotomy between Russia and the West, and embodies this synthesis in
the optimistic though ultimately apocalyptic image of resurrection out
of conflagration.
There is, however, some ambiguity in Bely's language in this important passage. The narrator says that when the West is grafted onto Russia, a "world-wide" conflagration will engulf "the West." Presumably, a
truly world-wide event will affect the entire globe.
The idea of a synthesis between Russia and the West is also an integral part of Darialsky s views on the Russian peasants and his own relation to them. He makes an unusual identification between what he sees
as the pastoral existence of the peasantry and the fountainhead of
Western civilization:
an eternal heaviness filled his soul, and, for that reason, the sunny life of long-past years in blessed Greece with wars, games,
sparkling thoughts, and always dangerous love, like the life of
the simple Russian people, always called up to the surface of his
soul pictures of a blessed paradisiacal life, of shady huts and honeyed lightly blown meadows with games and choral dances.
he dreamt that in the depth of his native people there pulsed an
older antiquity that was native to the people and had not yet been
outlivedancient Greece. In Orthodoxy and precisely in the outmoded concepts of the Orthodox peasant (i.e. in his opinion, a
paganizer) he saw the new torch of the Greek coming into the
World. (I, 172, 1 7 4 - 7 5 : 132, 133)
As Bely reveals in his memoirs, these were actually the ideas of his close
friend Sergei Soloviev, the philosopher's nephew. 11 The appeal of the
two societies is their fundamentally holistic character (which is also
probably the reason why the poet and scholar Viacheslav Ivanov,
among other major figures of Russian Symbolism, repeatedly returned
to Ancient Greece in his works). In this the two societies bear an abstract, formal similarity to symbolic perception, whose purpose is the
creation of links between different levels of being through cognitive
acts. The parallels Darialsky sees between ancient Greece and the Russian peasantrya view from which the narrator distances himself,
howevercan be related therefore to the complex synthesis of Russia
and the West to which the narrator does lend his voice.
The role that Petr sees for himself in this schema is that of a sort of
Nietzschean overman. Going on within him is "a struggle between the
image of the ancient beast and a new, similarly beast-like, already human health" (I, 176: 134). In the struggle for the new life, he feels that
"everything is permitted to him . . . there is nothing above him, no

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Andrei Bely

one, never." Insofar as this is an egotistical, "personal creation of life," it


is precisely what Schmidt faulted in Darialsky. But Darialsky's ideas
cannot be completely erroneous, for they also recall elements of the
narrator's prophecies. The struggle Petr is experiencing personally is related to the conflict between Russia and the West that precedes their
synthesis in the narrator's view:

their [i. e. Petr's contemporaries'] entire decrepit heritage had already become decomposed in him; but the vileness of this decomposition had not yet burned [italics mine] into good earth: for
that reason, the weak seeds of the future were somehow sluggishly vegetating in him. (1,176:134)
The effete inheritance mentioned in this passage is presumably the
avant-garde, "decadent" culture of the West that Darialsky's contemporaries (and he too, at one point) embraced, and that is parodied several times in the novel. And the peregar (transformation through fire)
that has not yet been completed in Petra personal apocalypseresembles the one the entire world is to undergo. Petr's problem, as the
narrator suggests paradoxically, in view of the novel's implicit condemnation of individual freedom, is that in some important ways he was
too weak to complete the existential struggle that he began. This is the
reason why Petr was so strongly drawn to the land and the people's
prayers about the land: he sought among them the strength he lacked
himself (1,176:134).
But this is where Petr's fate, together with his weakness and error,
conspire to doom him. Because of his blindness, which he overcomes
only by the end of the novel, when it is too late, Petr does not recognize
that "the people" to whom he was drawn are not their own masters. As
the narrator explains, echoing Schmidt, an "evil eye" that hates Russia,
a "secret enemy," has penetrated into the heart of the Russian people
and usurped their identity. These are the Doves with Kudeiarov and his
machinations at their center.
Thus, Darialsky's catastrophic mistake is to confuse the Doves with
the true Russian folka cognitive error based in misperception. Petr
seems to realize this himself at one point during a ceremony when he
looks at Matrena and Kudeiarov and sees that the Doves are not the
Russia he wanted to join: "horror, the noose, and the pit: not Russia,
but some dark abyss of the East presses upon Russia from these bodies
emaciated by zealous rites" (II, 147:342). Mention of the East is especially significant since it shows the Doves to be harbingers of the panMongolian invasion in Soloviev's eschatology, which, in turn, foreshadows the eventual (but temporary) triumph of the Antichrist.

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83

In his preface to The Silver Dove, Bely referred to the work as the
first part of a trilogy to be entitled "East or West." If the Doves represent
the East, it seems reasonable to assume that Bely intended The Silver
Dove to be primarily a portrayal of a manifestation of the Solovievian
East. But the West is present in the novel as well, in an abstract form in
the narrator's remarks, and in the concrete in members of the Todrabe
Graaben family. Although Baron Todrabe Graaben attempts to persuade Petr to return to the West in several scenes that capture beautifully the ebb and flow of their conflicting attitudes, Petr does not heed
him, and in this clearly has the narrator's approval. Indeed, everything
the narrator says about the West, and all we see of the Todrabe Graabens (whose farcical name is composed of the German words for
"death," "raven," and "grave" or "ditch," and is an obvious indication of
their moribundity) shows that the West is no antidote to the East. Thus
the collective title "East or West" was somewhat misleading, since it
seemed to suggest that the only possible choice was one or the other.
"Neither East nor West" would have been a more accurate title for the
planned trilogy. Indeed, Bely maintains this doubly negative attitude in
Petersburg, where he shifts his focus to the hallucinatory, Westernized
capital of Russia. And from what little is known about it, the unwritten
third noveltentatively entitled "The Invisible City"would probably have dramatized the apocalyptic synthesis of East and West about
which the narrator of The Silver Dove speaks. 12
Before leaving Darialsky's and the narrator's ideas about the individual's role in the cosmic destiny of Russia, it is worth recalling that in the
Second Symphony one aspect of Musatov's theurgic plan was a desire
to unite the "skeletal remains" of European culture with "Eastern
blood." He thinks of this during his trip to the countrythe traditional
locus of uncontaminated, native beliefsand he is beginning "to guess
Russia's role" in this "great union." 13 In these ideas Musatov is clearly a
precursor of Darialsky's. Moreover, the two protagonists also resemble
each other in that each originally misperceived a thoroughly worldly
woman to be the mother of a world savior.
Bely's life between 1900 and 1909from the earliest Symphonies to
The Silver Dovewas filled with the most varied passions and involvements. To his early immersion in Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and
Soloviev, he added during the decade's middle years a long, deep and
critical involvement with Kant; then, towards the decade's end, the
neo-Kantians (especially Heinrich Rickert), and the occult. Bely's early
exalted friendships and alliances with Blok, Viacheslav Ivanov, the
Merezhkovskys and other "Petersburg Symbolists" could not survive
harrowing conflicts during the period 1905-1908 that involved personalities as much as ideologies, and that were played out on the pages of

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Andrei Bely

Symbolist periodicals as much as in public halls, restaurants, and living rooms. It is therefore striking that Bely s thematic concerns should
remain so constant during the first decade of his creative life, even
while his development as an artist had progressed so far beyond his
first published Symphony.
-6-

All of Bely's theoretical writings ring with his conviction that symbolism is not merely an esthetic mode or literary movement, but an
epistemological stance that will completely transform man. The sense
of crisis to which Bely refers repeatedly in his essays and memoirsa
mood that lasted from the beginning to the end of his creative life
feeds on his typical syncretism: it encompassed everything from the development of modern thought out of Kant's critical philosophy, to an
anticipation of a literal Apocalypse, to the collapse of old Russia during the 1905 and 1917 Revolutions. All contemporary catastrophes
conspired in Bely's imagination to signal the imminent culmination of
man's break with his past and entry into a new, spiritual epoch.
In his fiction, the theme of the coming new man was sounded strongly
at the very start (in the Second Symphony, with Musatov's febrile anticipation of the Second Coming), and receives maximal clarity of expression in The Silver Dove in Darialsky's spiritual quest. This assertion must be qualified at once, however, because of the paradoxical
nature of Bely's conception of an individual's existential duties toward
his own self-transformation. In some essays, especially when he discusses Nietzsche and Ibsen, Bely makes it seem as if through sheer force
of will an individual can tear himself away from the beliefs and values
of the past and become a representative of the new mankind of the future. At the same time, in formulations about the ties between inner experiences and the transcendent, and even more strongly in the Symphonies themselves, he presents a thoroughly deterministic view of
existence, showing emotions, thoughts, and actions of individuals to
be the product of inscrutable supernatural forces. In later fictional and
theoretical works Bely resolves this paradox in the direction of a determinism that completely swallows the individual. But in The Silver
Dove the crucial question about the exact nature of man's tie to the
transcendent does not yet receive a clear resolution. Characters speak
of existential actions even though their lives belie any possibility for
real choices. And the fact that contradictory conceptions of symbolic
cognition seem to be at work in the novel should perhaps be understood as a sign of Bely's ambivalence about the reality of free will.
In The Silver Dove these questions revolve around the enigmatic
Schmidt, who occupies a privileged position in the novel. His prophetic

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remarks about Darialsky are nowhere undercut by either the narrator


or the other characters, and the narrator's voice surrounds him with an
aura of inviolable deference. Finally, Darialsky himself lends authority
to Schmidt by seeking his help near the end of the novel when he comes
to his senses and decides to escape the Doves.
Schmidt is an occultist. His arcane interests include astrology, the
Cabala, and a wide range of other esoteric writings that Bely has his
narrator list with evident relish. 14 Schmidt is clearly somewhere in the
theosophical camp and belongs to a secret organization located outside
of Russia. He implies that his distant brethren are capable of influencing fate from afar (suggesting their ability to negate free will), and we
know that he has tried to guide Darialsky in the past. It is most significant, however, that he fails.
Like the narrator, Schmidt finds that Darialsky's life is clouded by
misperceptions. He tries to console Katia, who is distraught at having
lost her fiance, by explaining that Petr has been "hypnotized." He also
tells her that for the time being "enemies" have triumphed over Petr in
the same way that "the enemy" has temporarily triumphed over Russia.
This is a metaphysical evil, for Schmidt says that no plain mortals can
know the guilty parties who have caused all the "absurdities" (nelepitsy) throughout the land (I, 298: 228). These statements are clearly in
harmony with the idea that there is a diabolical influence among the
Doves. But most important, they imply that the Doves (the "plain mortals") cannot know what they themselves are doing. Despite the fact
that everything dark is now attacking Petr, Schmidt continues, he can
still come out victorious. His major sin is a form of egotism: "he must
overcome himself within himself, and renounce the personal creation
of life" (I, 299: 228). He must reevaluate his relationship to the world; if
he can do this, the apparitions that surround him will disappear. In effect, Schmidt suggests that through force of will Darialsky can learn to
see the evil around him for what it isin other words, to stop being deceived by its mimicry of good. But later Schmidt appears to contradict
himself when he makes new astrological computations and concludes
that Petr "is lost" (II, 16: 240), implying that no effort on the young
man's part can change his fate.
Thus, from the point of view of Schmidt's pronouncements, the
problem of free will is unresolved in The Silver Dove. However, the implications of what he says about Darialsky's potential for overcoming
himself and his blindness contradict everything the reader has learned
about Darialsky's early life and influences before Tselebeevo. 15
That the course of Petr s entire life was predetermined is suggested by
the nature of his involvement with Matrena. The pivotal role she plays
in his existence is an extension of Kudeiarov's occult powerwhich ul-

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timately derives from an evil source that uses the carpenter for its own
purpose (in an anticipation of a comparable hierarchy of coercion dramatized in Petersburg). Moreover, as Petr's initial reaction to her in the
beginning of the novel indicates, there was something already familiar
about her that made him respond to her: "what that face was communicating to him, what response it awakened in his soul, he did not know"
(I, 19: 13). A few pages later, the narrator makes clear that what Darialsky sensed in her went far beyond the material plane of being:
thus the maw of a thousand-year-old past, opening for an instant, resurrects the memory of what had never happened in your
life, awakens an unknown visage that is horribly familiar from
dreams; and the visage arises as an image of a nonexistent but still
existing childhood; so that's the sort of visage you have, pockmarked wench! (1,21:15)
In other words, the narrator, who shares Darialsky's perception of Matrena at this point, suggests that Darialsky had seen her during some
state of being like a previous incarnation, or in another, spiritual dimension. This undermines the likelihood that Darialsky actually had
very much choice in joining the Doves when Matrena was proferred as
bait. His attraction to her appears to have been literally fated.
In fact, we know that one night, when Petr was still a student, he
screamed and fainted after seeing something in a window whose curtains he remembered drawing, but which he suddenly noticed were
open. He recalled after he came to his senses that it had seemed as if a
woman had been standing outside the window, with a pock-marked,
eyebrowless face marked by the imprint of alluring sin (I, 132: 103).
These are clearly Matrena's distinguishing features.
There are also suggestions in the novel that the attraction Darialsky
feels for this negative female persona is an outgrowth of his longing for
something like Soloviev's Divine Wisdom. Thus, his involvement with
Matrenaan antithesis of the Divine Eternal Feminineemerges as another variant of the deceptive mimicry of good by evil that characterizes the Solovievian Antichrist, and that underlies the numerous dualistic perceptions made by the characters as well as the narrator.
Darialsky recalls that in his earliest childhood he had heard a sweet
but mocking song both at sunrise and during darkness. He waited and
called for long periods of time, but no one came (1,128-29:100). Petr's
description of this expectant state resembles closely Blok's poems to his
Beautiful Lady, which make comparable use of sunrises as symbols for
apocalyptic hope. Later, Darialsky realizes very clearly that although
his love for his fiance Katia may be quite real, she and the one whose

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Dove

87

summons he had heard are not the same person (a realization that also
came to Blok with a vengeance):
the memory awoke in him [emu vspomnilos'a
reflexive verb
form implying that the memory may have come from outside
him; a point to which I shall return] of that only one, whom he
had never met, and had not met in Katia. He loves Katia, but Katia is not that dawn: and it is not possible to meet that dawn in the
form of a woman. (I, 2 1 3 : 1 6 3 )
In Tselebeevo, the image of Katia and the memory of the summoning
dawn are both overwhelmed by Matrena in Petr's consciousness. But
when he decides to leave the Doves (if, in fact, it was his decision to do
so) he again senses a nearly palpable intimacy with his former feminine
ideal, as if her influence on his life were on the ascendant once again.
Bely renders Darialsky's renewed longing with exquisite delicacy, capturing through imagery and rhythm the ephemeral sensations and
states of mind that verge on being physical:
on his chest he felt the touch of invisible fingers, on his lipsthe
kisses of tenderly trembling lips; and still further he walked over
the empty field; the evening glow in yellowish pearls ran away
across the field; at times it began to seem to him that he was on
the verge of overtaking the evening glow.
he stretched out his hands to those dear hands: but a breeze whistled in his cold embraces; and the voice, familiar from time immemorial but long forgotten, now sounded again, scattering unanswered a quiet song without words. (II, 206: 387-388)
The image of Petr striding across empty fields into the fading sunset
is an excellent illustration of the unreflecting, helpless gravitation toward a potent force that typifies his entire existence, and that is shared
by many of Bely's protagonists. In his misperception of Matrena as the
Eternal Feminine, Darialsky reenacts Musatov s mistake in the Second
Symphony, even though the "fairytale" was not the unwitting agent of
metaphysical evil that Matrena is. Similarly, Musatov was inveigled
into making his mistake by a transcendent that "played a joke on him,"
and Darialsky has been lured from infancy by a "sweet but mocking
song."
Darialsky's experiences with an eternal feminine principle drawing
him nigh (to paraphrase the conclusion of Goethe's Faust), follow a spiral that recalls the movement of several protagonists' lives in the Sym-

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Andrei Bely

phonies. Cyclical repetitions within a linear progression characterize


his existence. Petr moves from alluring dawns to a fatidic nocturnal attraction in the scene with the open window. And if his flirtation with
modish radical political beliefs (which the narrator mentions in passing) can be interpreted as a sublimation of his mystical inclinations,
Darialsky's existence within the time span of the novel follows another
whorl of a spiral: he moves from a negative ideological attraction back
to a positive ideal. Indeed, Elsworth points out that The Silver Dove
shares the theme of "the return" with the Third Symphony. Before he is
killed, Darialsky comes back to Schmidt from the Doves and hopes to
rejoin Katia. And at his moment of death, Darialsky's soul returns to
an eternal "ether."16 The rectilinear temporal component that transforms these cycles into the loops of a spiral is the apocalyptic teleology
saturating the work as a whole. The ascendancy of evil among the
Doves, presented by Bely as a temporary triumph of the Solovievian
East, clearly appears as a prfiguration of the Antichrist's coming reign.
-7Bely's descriptions of how certain ideas and mental images occur to
Darialskyhow he thinks and perceivesalso clearly support the inference that he is not controlling his own life. The scenes depicting his
mental processes are therefore most useful for grasping Bely's developing sense of man's dependence on the transcendent.
After seeing Matrena in church, for example, Petr experiences a
deeply unsettling sense of dj-vu. The narrator comments, "This is
how Darialsky thought," but then corrects himself and adds: "he wasn't
thinking, because the thoughts were taking place [sovershalis'] in his
soul without his will" (I, 21:15).
Later, while sitting by a lake and watching the reflections in it, Petr
muses about what has happened to his soul: it seems to have disappeared somewhere. The narrator's description of these musings centers
on the image of a bird of prey attacking its victim (Petr's soul) in midair,
which inevitably recalls the dove with a hawk's beak that was embroidered on the Doves' ritual cloth. Then the narrator adds, "and the days
flew; and the lightnings of his thoughts that someone had instilled [in
him] spurted" (I, 208: 159).
At times, Petr's self-consciousness rises to a level that allows him to
recognize that something bizarre is happening to him. When he is sitting and fishing for example, he experiences a shift in mood from religious ecstasy to an ominous premonition of death: '"What is it that I
am thinking'! Petr tries to understand." Then the narrator explains:
"He grasps that it is not he thinking; but that something was 'thinking
itself [dumaetsia] in him: it was as if someone had extracted his soul"

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89

(II, 129: 329). Petr experiences this anomalous state at other times
(without, however, being fully conscious of what is happening to him),
and so do Matrena and Fekla Eropegina, the merchant's wife. Their
thoughts are induced by Kudeiarov, but we know that he in turn is only
a vehicle for evil's action in the world of man.
Bely goes so far as to suggest that thoughts actually reify into matter,
so that individuals become agents of transcendent forces that act
through them to create aspects of the material world. Petr experiences
this in the scene with General Chizhikov that takes place at Baroness
Todrabe Graaben's estate. He first feels, just for a moment, that the
chaos that had been raging in him recently has abated, and that "the demons have left his soul." Bely explains this brief period of quiescence by
saying that "a victory had occurred in him" over the destructive emotion that had been leading him off the correct path; his choice of words
emphasizes Darialsky's passivity. But the demons quickly begin
to swarm around him again, and assume absurd but entirely real
images: in truth, weren't this troika and the General himself born
of the misty filth that had fallen over the region: the troika had
simply settled out of the fog, and someone's vengeful hand had
thrown it into the estate.
As though answering his thought, someone's steps resounded
on the terrace.
(1,199:153)
These steps announce the appearance of the farcical Chukholka, another of Bely's highly comical personae. The narrator describes his various fashionable interests and pursuitswhich are all elements in Bely's
biting satire on his nemesis of the time, the "mystical anarchist" Georgy
Chulkovand adds the significant detail that he was "an
impotent
[italics mine] conduit for all sorts of astral impurities . . . Chukholka
passed through himself all kinds of filth, which then crawled out of him
onto anyone he talked to" (I, 204: 156).
In passages such as these, Bely approaches the more radical epistemological-ontological process that lies at the core of his view of the human condition in Petersburg.
In the second novel, the nature of the
connection between man and the transcendent hinges on individual intellects acting as channels for transcendent forces that take form as aspects of the phenomenal world under the guise of what the narrator
terms "self-thinking thoughts" or "cerebral play."
Bely's early version of this process in The Silver Dove is significant
for two reasons. First of all, it shows how far his conception of symbolic
perception had developed in comparison to his early essays in which a

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perceiver could see the transcendent underpinnings of things by irradiating them, as it were, with his inner experiences. In his Symphonies
Bely had progressed from this view to conceiving of the component that
an individual contributes to a symbolic perception or image (as opposed to the component derived from the world outside the perceiver)
as being rooted in the transcendent. Now, in The Silver Dove, Bely has
approached the next logical step (which he will only actually take in Petersburg): he further decreases man's role in the creative process, and,
instead, has the transcendent totally dominate matterto the extent of
seeming to create it ex nihilo. This is also a progression beyond having
a spiritual realm merely control an individual s perceptions, as was the
case with Musatov, or Fekla Matveevna Eropegina, for example.
The second highly significant side of this development in Bely s conception of symbolic cognition is that it does much to explain why Bely
should have taken so readily to anthroposophy some three years after
he had completed The Silver Dove. There are major parallels between
anthroposophy and Bely's own theory of symbolism on the one hand,
and the world view he embodied in Petersburg on the other. Paramount
among these is the similarity of his (apparently independently formulated) conception of "self-thinking thoughts" incarnating as matter, and
the anthroposophical view of the nature of the tie between the material
and spiritual planes of being.
The final category of evidence I would like to bring to bear on the
question of the extent to which characters are free to mold their own
fates is the elaborate sequence of cause and effect relationships that
Bely creates in his novel. I will return to this in Petersburg, where the
entire plot hinges on a receding sequence of interlocking causes that ultimately abuts on the transcendent. In The Silver Dove the analogous
sequence seals Darialsky's fate with the Doves.
After having noticed Matrena in church, Petr returns to Gugolevo,
the Baroness' estate, to find his fiance, Katia. Although he has been
shaken by the sight of Matrena, he has not yet been won over by her or
the spells with which Kudeiarov has filled her. In Gugolevo, his tie to
Katia weathers a crisis brought on by her wanting to know if he had
ever been involved with other women. He had been, but Katia's love
for him allows her to accept him as he is: "She endured everything
and forgave everything." Petr then "rose from the ground, girded with
the strength of her love for the coming battle" (I, 215:164-65). It proves
insufficient, however, and the sequence of events that follows shows
the futility of his reliance on himself and the positive, but weak force
Katia represents.

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91

The causal sequence begins with Katia's grandmother, a highly temperamental old lady. Although at first very much opposed to Darialsky, she finally accepts him as her granddaughter's betrothed (1,163:
125). It so happens that many years ago the Baroness had toyed with
the affections of young merchant Eropegin (I, 192: 147), who has since
developed into the local tycoon. By establishing a conflict between the
young Westernized Baroness and the callow, but authentically Russian
merchant, Bely in fact implies causalities that go far back into prenovelistic time. Even though Bely does not make Eropegin into a bearer
of patriarchal merchant sensibilities in the style of Ostrovsky, Melnikov-Pechersky, or Shmelev, the merchant is made to feel inferior by the
Baroness because of his native provincialism. This focus shows the relations between him and the Baroness as stemming ultimately from Petrine Russia, when the massive importation of European influences into
the country led to the alienation of the aristocracy from the relatively
unaffected lower classes. (Bely will make even more dramatic use of
this turning point in Russian history in Petersburg.) Thus it is a very
striking "coincidence" that while Petr is still at Gugolevo, the same Eropegin suddenly arrives, unannounced and accompanied by the shady
General Chizhikov. It turns out that the merchant has engaged in financial chicanery by means of which he hopes to ruin the Baroness and
steal her estate. The General, a highly amusing character, has the minor function in the plot of stealing the Baroness' diamonds, an event
that was to be a link with Petersburg, according to Bely's original plan.
Eropegin s long-delayed act of vengeance against the Baroness occurs
on a day when she has already had to deal with unrest among her peasants (a local echo of the 1905 Revolution). Deeply upset by the financial web in which the merchant appears to have entrapped her, the Baroness is also suddenly confronted by the grossly absurd and highly
inarticulate Chukholka, who, Petr correctly infers, arrives as some sort
of diabolical spawn. Darialsky is himself especially upset by Chukholka's reappearance in his life at this moment because he knows from bitter past experience that Chukholka always brings misfortune with him.
Unable to explain to the befuddled old lady who he is or what he is doing in the house, Chukholka becomes the focus of all her irritation and
wrath. She comes close to striking him, and he bursts into tears (I, 222:
170). At this crucial juncture, Petr, who had arrived on the scene with
Katia, and who cannot stand the sight of Chukholka crying, pushes the
Baroness away, grabs her hands, seizes her stick, and tosses it aside.
The narrator describes these impulsive actions as being caused by a
"swarm of little demons" that flew out of Chukholka like out of Pandora's box and entered Darialsky's chest. Finally, appalled that he dared to

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Andrei Bely

raise a hand against her, the Baroness delivers a fateful slap to Darialsky's face:
Mechanically, apparently even calmly, as if accomplishing the
inevitable, her raised hand unclenched on Petr's cheek: the slap
snapped ringingly in the air; five white fingers slowly caught fire
on Petr's pale skin: now the demons who had torn apart Chukholka's self-consciousness, penetrating the bodies of these people disarmed by rage, raised such a whirlwind that it seemed as if
the earth between them had collapsed and they all threw themselves into the yawning abyss. (I, 223: 171)
The untranslatable timing and rhythm of the characters' remarks and
movements in these scenes, as well as the beat of the narrative itself, are
among Bely's most dazzling achievements. Darialsky recognizes that he
has been formally insulted, and although he understands the helpless
panic that caused the old lady to hit him, he cannot stop himself from
acting as though he had indeed been deeply offended:
Like a whirlwind it also entered his consciousness that now,
this very minute, he would consider himself insulted and would
leave Gugolevo forever, and that he would have to spend the
night in Tselebeevo: and while he was thinking this way, he was already beginning to feel insulted and saw that his presence here was
impossible: turning around, he quickly clattered out the door on
his heels; his vengeful enemy had carried out his execution:
fate
was returning him to those places from which he had
escaped
only yesterday [italics mine]. (I, 2 2 4 : 1 7 1 )
Thus the intricate network of causes and effects linking disparate people over decades (and, by implication, centuries) conspires to make the
Baroness betray her kindly feelings for Petr and act in a way that would
return him to the Doves. That Bely was able to create such a marvelously convincing and complex fate for Petr suggests that he himself
must have been convinced of the receding chains of causes that move
men's lives, and seems to me to be conclusive evidence for seeing Bely
as a confirmed fatalist. 17
-8-

The implications of Bely s theory and practice of symbolism, starting


with his earliest Symphony, suggest that he conceived of verbal art not
as mere fiction that mirrored a world existing independently of the perceiver, but as a phenomenon approaching the ontological weight of
things that really exist. In Petersburg Bely expands his conception of
the process implied in "self-thinking thought" to include the narrator-

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author himself. He claims an absolute reality for his fictional characters by making them the product of his own "cerebral play," or, in other
words, the reification of thoughts that pass through him from the transcendent. This view of creativity is another logical step in the direction
of making all human activity totally dependent on the transcendent: if
characters' thoughts as well as deeds ultimately derive from spiritual
dimensions, how can the author's be any different? And how, in Bely's
view, can what comes from the realm of the spirit not be real when spirit is
real? (This conception will provide the higher level of unity that resolves the tension between the lyrical and narrative sections in Bely's
prose fiction.)
There is a hint of this extreme view in The Silver Dove as well. In his
preface to the first book edition of the novel, Bely explains that although his Doves resemble a sect of contemporary Russian flagellants,
known as the khlysty, they do not exist in fact. However, he adds the
following suggestive qualification: "but they are possible with all their
insane inclinations; in this sense my doves are completely real." 18
By itself, this statement does not go farther than Dostoevsky's wellknown footnote to the first part of Notes From the Underground, in
which he says that although the author of the Notes is of course a fiction, such individuals "not only may, but even must exist in our society," if one takes into account the conditions under which the society
was formed. Dostoevsky's footnote may be understood as an illustration of his concept of "fantastic realism," or the extrapolation to its extreme of some existing ideology for the purpose of showing where it
could lead.
But in the context of The Silver Dove, and with other works in the
background, Bely's prefatory comment seems to reach farther than
this. When Katia visits Schmidt after Darialsky left her, Schmidt summarizes Petr's plight in the following words: "his tale [povest'] is absurd
and ugly; it's as if it were narrated by an enemy mocking the entire
bright future of our native land" (I, 299: 228). Povest', a long narrative
tale, rather than roman, a novela distinction that does not survive
translation, and is not a radical one in Russianis how Bely subtitled
the first two separate book editions of The Silver Dove before changing
to roman in the third. Thus Schmidt's talking of Petr's povest' evokes
associations with the work itself and not just the story of his sorry fate.
But could Bely have been implying, through the venerable Schmidt's
words, that he, as the author, was himself the agent of the "enemy"
(presumably the devil) who mocks Russia's future? In other words, did
Bely think that he too was motivated by the proto-apocalyptic forces
that rule over the world he depicted? Bely's veneration of Soloviev, as
well as his authentic apocalypticism and numerous occult experiences,

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Andrei Bely

make it difficult to imagine how he could have thought anything other


than that he was in harmony with a divine process. But there is no way
to be definitive about this on the basis of The Silver Dove alone.
It is worth noting, however, that the narrator, who often manipulates the reader into making conclusions for himself, at one point addresses the reader directly on the nature of the text the reader is holding
in his hands. Petr is in the Eropegins' house at the end of the novel and
has just seen the moribund merchant pass by. The narrator asks the
reader what he would do if he saw what Darialsky had just witnessed:
"You \tythe familiar second person pronoun in Russian] have become accustomed to reading about such adventures in novels, but this
is neither a novel, nor a fantasy, but . . ." (II, 232: 408). The narrator's
failure to complete the thought naturally makes the reader want to try.
Ending the sentence with some claim for reality is tempting, even
though it would raise the additional problem of having to reconcile
such a view of language with that expressed by the narrator in the passage dealing with the ultimate incommunicability of the soul through
words. As Gofman has suggested, these are the two polar conceptions
of language found in symbolism in general. 1 9 The presence of both in
The Silver Dove implies that Bely had not yet resolved this issue for
himself.
Bely's theory of symbolism seems to imply a faithfulness to absolute
truth that is qualitatively different from the approach of other literary
schools, such as realism or naturalism, to choose only those that were
contiguous with Symbolism's beginnings. Naturalism as defined by
Zola in "Le Roman exprimental" (1893), for example, strove to imitate
laboratory science by having the author deduce certain laws of social
behavior and then release representative character types into a novelistic world dominated by those laws for the purpose of seeing how they
behave. Truth about the human condition was of course the overt goal
of this plan, even though Zola's practice was not nearly as dispassionate or mechanical as he may have pretended. Nevertheless, the major
difference between naturalism and the "horizontal" Symbolism of Baudelaire or Verlaine is that in the former the literary text is only a reflection or record of lived experience that is ultimately independent of the
text, while in the latter the text can be seen as the actual locus and very
stuff of experiencethe verbal incarnation of symbolic perceptions
that do not exist except in words. 2 0 In the case of Bely, a "vertical"symbolist, the work of art either rivals or supersedes material reality because the text ultimately derives its authority and ontological weight
from a higher, spiritual realm. This view, foreshadowed in the Symphonies and The Silver Dove, receives most complete expression in Pe-

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95

tersburg and the important theoretical essay "The Magic of Words"


(1909).21
Such a conception of symbolist writing begs the question of what
constitutes a complete symbolist work, a question Bely did not treat in
his theoretical essays. Nevertheless, the development of his fictional
prose suggests an answer.
It is easy to imagine why, practically speaking, it is impossible to create symbolic verbal art that is the unmediated world of the writer. A
pure expression of Bely's theory would yield an endless text that consists of all of the author's conscious moments (recalling the "interior
monologue" of Dujardin's Les Lauriers sont coups). As it happens, a
powerful autobiographical bent does characterize the great novels of
Bely's mature, middle period, to say nothing of his memoirs of the
1920s and 1930s. Specifically, there is an intensification in the commitment to the experienced minutiae of the author's own life from The Silver Dove, to Petersburg, to the three interconnected works Kotik
Letaev, The Baptized Chinaman (which deal with periods of time from
Bely's infancy and early childhood), and Notes of an Eccentric (which,
although very digressive, revolves around one episode from his adulthood). The works after Petersburg are actually quite difficult to classify
since they resemble closely Bely's "official" three volumes of memoirs.
And what is most interesting, near the end of his life, while working on
the continuation of his last volume of memoirs, Bely actually contemplated uniting the forms of the novel and the memoir. 22 Indeed, the
three works after Petersburg were conceived as parts of a vast, multivolume opus tellingly entitled My Life. The provisional title for the
first part was I. An Epic, and Bely's plans called for a total of ten volumes. Nothing but early fragments of the entire work were ever completed, of course. 23
The question of narrative strategy broadly conceived is thus central
to all of Bely's belles lettres, with the first-person point of view being
the constant attraction.
-9In The Silver Dove, the style of the narrative is strongly influenced
by Gogol, as Bely acknowledged openly, and as has often been repeated
in the criticism. 24 Although regularly shifting to the third-person, the
narrative voice in the novel also ranges from the folksy skaz of Gogol's
Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka to the lyrical digressions of Dead
Souls.
This very variety of first-person voices has been problematic for
some readers, who have difficulty reconciling the chatty style of a hospitable denizen from Tselebeevo with the visionary, impassioned pae-

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Andrei Bely

ans of a more sophisticated narrator, or his easy movement into, and


merging with the consciousnesses of different characters. 25 By the standards of most nineteenth-century novels, the different narrative voices
represent a fragmentation of what is expected to be a unitary point of
view.
This criticism clearly touches on the related theoretical problem of
how to reconcile the privileged symbolistic perceptions of the narratorunderstood as stemming from or imitating authentic cognitive experienceswith the feigned ones of characters in all of Bely s narratives. But although this problem is not really resolved satisfactorily in
The Silver Dove, it is interesting to speculate how to make sense of the
narrative dimension of the novel and coordinate it with Bely's views.
There is no evidence that Bely ever found the narrative side of any of
his works problematic (except for the Fourth Symphony). However,
his metaliterary digressions in Petersburg indirectly raise the issue of
how to understand the works preceding it.
Shifts in point of view can be understood as an inevitable consequence of Bely's symbolic method when it is applied to a narrative
prose work that contains characters as well as a narrator. Since symbolic perceptions involve an individual's interaction with his surrounding world, and since such perceptions are meant to provide unmediated
glimpses of a spiritual reality, the perceptions cannot really be described if they are to be at all convincing, but have to be dramatized as
each person's own cognitive acts. The narrative consciousness must
therefore move into characters' minds and see the way they do, even if
this means the temporary eclipsing of the reigning, unique narrative
voice. Bely does this often with Petr, as well as with several of the other
major characters. And in this he is simply using more extensively the
narrative device of "free indirect discourse" that is common in the nineteenth-century novel (Tolstoy's narrators even merge with animals).
Furthermore, as Karlinsky has pointed out, the narrator's voice is everywhere appropriate to the characters who dominate a particular section of the novel. 26 It is as if Bely had his narrator imitate different character types in order to be in harmony with their particular minds and
ways of thinking and seeing.
In my discussion of the Second Symphony I suggested that the rapid
shifts in point of view that occur in that work, when combined, produce a composite picture of a multidimensional world. The same tactic
operates in The Silver Dove and in the later novels. Bely's different narrative voices can be understood as a reflection of his symbolistic world
view in which material phenomena occupy only one level in a complex
universe that also contains planes of spiritual reality. The different
voices might thus be seen as belonging to individuals who are vouch-

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safed differing glimpses into physical and spiritual realms that constitute the fullness of reality only when they are combined. Their voices
change in accordance with the depths (or heights) to which they see at
any given moment; and the surprising wisdom of a provincial chronicler, whose language is full of local color, is due to his having been
touched by some aspect of the transcendent.
An alternative way to understand the narrator's voices is to see them
as expressions of various levels of consciousness coexisting within one
individual. New experiences awaken different levels in the narrator at
different times; this is, in fact, the narrative principle in Kotik Letaev.
Bely apparently also cultivated a similar pluralism in viewpoints with
regard to his own life. His widow recalls how in the course of action or
in the midst of emotion Bely was capable of distancing himself from it
and speaking in an entirely different tone of voice about what he was
doing or experiencing.27
Support for these interpretations of Bely's narrative practice can be
found in his essay on Gogol, written during the same year as The Silver
Dove.2' As one might expect, Bely approaches Gogol as a kindred spirit.
He estimates his works very highly, and places his stylistic achievements on the same level as Nietzsche's. Identifying Gogol the man with
the narrative personae he created in his works (an inevitable temptation for a Symbolist), Bely concludes that Gogol straddled two
worldsthat of humble matter, and that of mysterious spiritual dimensions. "In his images, in his attitude toward the earth," Bely ai-gues,
"Gogol had already crossed the frontiers of art . . . . [and] thrown
himself into the abyss of his second T"by which he means Gogol's
transcendent cosmic self. Gogol thus
stepped onto paths which one must not enter without having
worked out a specific occult plan, and without an experienced
counsellor. Instead of uniting his empirical "I" with his universal
"I" [s 'ia' mirovym], Gogol sundered the tie between the two "I's,"
and a black abyss lay between them.
Bely goes on to claim that Gogol's earthbound self was "horrified by
contemplating Shponkas and radishes"a reference to Gogol's comparison of the title character of a story with a radish; while Gogol's cosmic self "soared in the immeasurable reaches of other worldsthere,
beyond the vault of heaven." 29 But when Gogol experienced the summons of the otherworldly, he did not have the necessary esoteric wisdom about "the mystery of love" to unite his terrestrial and spiritual
selves.

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Andrei Bely

It is the influence of Soloviev's teaching about Divine Wisdom that


leads Bely to identify mystical love (and to mention Plato and Bhme)
as the mediating agent between heaven and earth. This is the context
within which his comments about the absence of adequate love themes
in Gogol's work should be understood.
Bely's image of Gogol as narrator thus easily embraces both the
folksy and the visionary voices of the narrator in The Silver Dove. Gogol is of course not an ideally holistic consciousness. However, Bely
does not fault him for the range in his narrative voices, but for the absence of an esoteric wisdom that would adequately account for the connection between matter and spirit. And this is precisely what The Silver
Dove offers in its intertwined theurgic and Solovievian themes, and in
the essentially Christian faith in the restoration of a fallen world to God
after the Second Coming that is implied in the narrator s paean ending
with the image of the resurrected Fire-Bird.
The relevance of the essay for understanding the narrative form of
The Silver Dove is further supported by Bely's identification of a certain characteristic of Gogol's styleone that grows out of Bely's view
that Gogol's two "Is" were split. This distinctive feature is a type of dualistic symbolic perception identical to the one in the novel. Bely cites
an example from Gogol's "Old World Landowners" that is like the "blue
abyss of day" in The Silver Dove's first paragraph: "a horrible silence
during a cloudless day." In Bely's view, this is a perception of the "daylight approach of the abyss of the spirit to the surface of daylight consciousness"a perception characteristic of "highly enlightened mystics." In a similar vein, Bely finds an ominous image of someone's
frightening, flickering shadow in Gogol's story "ATerrible Vengeance,"
when on a sunny, cloudless day there appears "the shadow of a horrible
provocation that comes from the depths of the soul, from the depths of
the earth." 30
Bely's eccentric but assiduous study of Gogol thus appears to have
fed directly into The Silver Dove and to have helped shape much of the
narrative's verbal texture, including its dualistic perceptions. The range
in narrative voices in the novel emerges as Bely's deliberate attempt to
dramatize what he saw as Gogol's epistemological stance, but with the
difference that in The Silver Dove heaven and earth will be united in
the apocalypse.
It is striking, however, that Bely does not supply his narrator with
any independent, apodictic statements about the apocalypse or the
Second Coming, as he would in Petersburg, or as he did, somewhat less
stridently, in the Second Symphony. The narrator s paean in The Silver
Dove to the world-wide conflagration that will follow the grafting of

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Dove

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the West onto Russia is an instance of free indirect discourse, blending


with Darialsky's musings. The narrator's laconism about the author's
own fervent beliefs may be due to Bely's desire to be a "consistent" Symbolistto avoid presenting any insights that greatly exceed those of
characters. On the other hand, the widespread dualistic perceptions of
the narrator are small proto-apocalyptic insights that still go beyond
the abilities of the characters; and it is not at all clear by the end of the
work that Kudeiarov, Schmidt, or Darialsky grasp the true eschatological nature of the events in which they are involved.
This may be yet another instance of the narrator's predilection for
leaving lacunae in his tale for the purpose of drawing the reader into
ita time-honored device in the history of narrative. The most obvious example is Darialsky's fate, which is subtly adumbrated many
times in various ways by the narrator and characters (there is a recurring song that can be heard in the distance about a "young fellow" who
has "perished forever") without being fully revealed until the very end.
Another example is the whole matter of the Doves slowly poisoning
Eropegin. Hints about this are dropped a number of times (I, 51: 39; I,
85: 65; II, 50: 267), but the reader has to conclude for himself what is
going on because the narrator does not tell him.
Withholding information makes obvious sense from the point of
view of fictional devices designed to hold the reader's attention and to
involve him in the text; and in a way, the novel is a murder mystery.
Obliqueness is of course also preferable to directness because it allows
for subtler effects achieved through a play with the reader's imagination. Moreover, the narrator's reticence, and the reader's consequent
involvement in making sense of the perceptions dramatized in this extremely visual novel, makes the reader into something like an initiate
into the higher mysteries of existence. In an oft-quoted remark in Notes
of an Eccentric, Bely speaks of "every novel [being] a game of hide and
seek with the reader . . . the sole significance of the architectonics, of
the phrase, is to avert the reader's eye from the sacred point: the genesis
of myth." 31 This tendency becomes even stronger in Petersburg, and
must be understood in relation to the special truth-value and ontologica! weight that verbal art has for Bely.

Petersburg
3
As above, so below.
Hermes Trismegistus, Tabula Smaragdina

Petersburg (first published serially in 1913-14; second edition, 1922;


third, 1928) represents the summit of Bely's artindeed, one of the
peaks of twentieth-century literature as a whole. 1 W h a t makes Bely's
second novel so remarkable is what distinguishes every great modern
literary w o r k t h e uniqueness of the world embodied in it, and the
originality of the means employed to present this world to the reader.
Although neither the texture nor the appearance of the narrative is that
of any familiar poetic form, Petersburg is ideally approached as one vast
poem because of the intricate density of the text. In addition to such
traditional features of the novel as characters, plot, imagery, and the
narrator's relation to his story and to his authorall of which Bely interconnects with a seeming infinity of echoespunctuation, rhythm, and
sound orchestration are also central to Petersburg.2 M y task, however,
will continue to be limited to defining the central trunk of Bely's world
view, and certain characteristic formal features that grow out of it.
The basic plot line in Petersburg is simple. The time is the 1905 Revolution, and the place is the Imperial Russian capital, St. Petersburg.
Nikolai Apollonovich Ableukhov, a student of Kantian philosophy,
makes a rash promise to a revolutionary group to assassinate his father, Apollon Apollonovich, a senator and high-ranking bureaucrat in
one of the ministries. The famous revolutionary Dudkin, living clandestinely in the city, gives Nikolai a time bomb to use against his father. This
b o m b goes off near the end of the novel, but without harming anyone.
An important subplot involves Sofia Petrovna Likhutina, the delightfully flighty wife of a junior officer in a guards' regiment, and once
the object of Nikolai's unrequited advances. In fact, it was a sublimated

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rebuff from Sofia Petrovna that prompted Nikolai to make the patricidal offer to the revolutionaries in the first place. An additional subplot
involves the machinations of the enigmatic agent-provocateur Lippanchenko, who uses Dudkin to coerce Nikolai into fulfilling his promise.
However, a sketch of the plot suggests very little of Petersburg's intriguing complexity. An atmosphere of frenzied hallucination and
apocalyptic foreboding pervades the novel. The city itselfin the form
of vast, troubling vistas and agitated street scenesswells repeatedly
from mere background into an entity that receives as much authorial
attention as major protagonists are given in traditional nineteenth-century novels. The narrators different voices intrude freely into the text
with passages about Russia's destiny, recollections of Bely's own anguished past, and digressions about the nature of fiction, language, and
symbolism. Characters have febrile visions of spiritual realms and suffer encounters with otherworldly beings. The work is filled with numerous and obvious echoes from classical Russian literature, including
works by Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky, all of which Bely
transmutes and fuses with his own themes and perceptions into a verbal amalgam that is unique in Russian and European letters.
The uniqueness of the world in the novel is further enhanced by the
narrator's highly elliptical form of communication. This is perhaps the
single most important effect Bely achieved, or better to say, augmented,
when he abridged the novel in 1922. He cut more or less full exchanges
between characters and descriptions of events to a minimum, with the
result that the new text contains numerous passages teetering on the
edge of unintelligibility. The reader must therefore participate actively
in the workmuch more than is usually the casein order to infer the
necessary continuations and conclusions. (Though the impulse may
have been the same, Bely's practice and devices in the revised version of
Petersburg are a far cry from the frequently primitive elliptical communication of his First and other Symphonies.) The cuts Bely made
strengthen the general impression the novel producesthat the world
in it is difficult to apprehend, and that it "flickers" between being and
not being fully visible to perceivers in the text, or intelligible to its readers. The difficulty in making sense of the work is further increased by
its nervous narrative texture, as the narrator leaps constantly from one
to another of the planes of being that comprise his multidimensional
world. Indeed, Bely confessed to using an elaborate "cut and paste"
technique when writing the novel, which may have contributed to this
characteristic. 3 His refusal to signal clearly shifts among the various
plot strands also adds to the seeming chaos of events and places. In
these features, Bely leaves far behind the more traditional form of the
novel he utilized in The Silver Dove and returns to the avant-garde
modes of the Symphonies.

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Andrei Bely

Although a frenzied but ultimately serious tone dominates the work,


it also has extended passages of masterful comedy, farce, and satire, especially in the first edition. This feature recalls the Second Symphony
and The Silver Dove, but Bely s humor is much more effective in Petersburg. As in the earlier works, however, humor and satire in Petersburg are variants of "philosophical irony"Bely's way of suggesting
the distance between imperfect man and the otherworldly realm, which
man can hold dear even though he falls short of it.
Many of the themes and devices in Petersburg were prefigured in Bely's earlier works, even if only The Silver Dove begins to approach his
achievement in the second novel. I mentioned above that Petersburg
was originally conceived as a continuation of the earlier novel (Bely
even referred to it as "The Dove" in his letters to Blok before he settled
on the final title with Viacheslav Ivanov's help). As a result, the first
edition of Petersburg contained a number of echoes of the plot of The
Silver Dove. But after Bely abridged the novel, what remains in the
1922 and 1928 editions is quite minor. It includes the narrator's passing
mention of a clipping from a St. Petersburg newspaper of October 1905
that reports a theft of diamonds and the disappearance of a writer from
a provincial town (I, 77: 37). This is a reference to the Baroness Todrabe Graaben's diamonds, which, according to her son, were stolen by
General Chizhikov and not by Darialsky, the "writer" mentioned in the
clipping. The minor character Stepka, the Tselebeevo shopkeepers
son, turns up in St. Petersburg after we had seen him leaving the village
in The Silver Dove, and brings with him stories of the Doves' apocalyptic plans (I, 128: 67). And a tiny reminder of the theme of the Doves is
the "silver dove" ornament on the helmet of Baron Ommergau, a minor
character in Petersburg (1,140: 73).
-2-

If on the level of plot, setting, character, and narrative style Petersburg represents a significant break with The Silver Dove, on the level of
symbolic methodand the conception of man's tie to the transcendent
that underlies itthe second novel is a direct development of trends existing in the first. Before turning to these and related central issues in
Petersburg, however, a word is in order about the state of Bely's theorizing on the subject by the end of the first decade of this century.
Bely collected the bulk of his most important essays on symbolism in
three volumes, published when he was beginning to work on Petersburg in earnest. The essays from the early and middle years of the decade were also included, which is a measure of their continuing relevance for Bely at the decade's end. As he admitted himself, however, a
number of his latest and most important essays, which contain signifi-

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103

cant developments in his conception of symbolism, were written in


haste, and the three volumes do not present a methodical exposition of
a system of thought. 4 One of the major problems in trying to make
sense of the essays is that Bely repeatedly returned to the same questions, but often on different levels of abstraction, and using widely different terminologies that he never reconciled. There are also fundamental discrepancies among the essays, and to confuse the matter
further, different essays stress different aspects of his theory. Despite all
these real problems, however, by the end of the decade two fundamental principles of Bely s theory of symbolism emerge fairly clearly.
The first is that symbolism stresses the primacy of creation over cognition, a formulation found in his earliest essays and that continues to
be central in the latest ones as well. 5 More specifically, he states that
without the act of creation there is only "dead data" (mertvye dannosti)
making up "the primeval Chaos out of which worlds arise." Although
the world the artist creates by underscoring the fundamental traits in
"an image of the visible" may seem unreal, it is in fact true to a higher
reality that is discovered through the creative process. 6 In the major essay "The Emblematics of Meaning" (1909), which comes as close as
Bely ever got to writing a complete theory of symbolism, he actually
argues that the world of "empirical reality" has no a priori existence;
that even "particles, forces and ions" are products of a creative cognitive process. 7 And in another formulation from 1909, which follows a
very different path but comes to effectively the same result, Bely implies that the "objective world" may not be knowable even though it
may exist in some form: "by naming things we . . . summon them out of
the darkness of the unknown." 8
A similar idea is expressed in "The Magic of Words" (1909), which
has special relevance for Petersburg. This important essay examines the
nature of language, and also touches on the related problem of the ontological status of the artist-perceiver vis-a-vis the world outside him.
Bely argues that naming a thing with a word causes that thing to come
into existence. All knowledge stems from naming, and knowing is impossible without words: before one can know something, that thing
has to be defined, or, in effect, created with wordsbut with the difference that in this schema the creative artifact is verbal and not "an image" taken from nature. Bely specifically stresses the acoustic dimension of language: the word creates a "third world" of "sound symbols,
by means of which the mysteries of the world outside me as well as
those within me are illuminated." Fluidity characterizes the creation of
verbal symbols, for, as Bely says of himself, the writer pours some aspect of his inner nature (ultimately deriving, one assumes, from the
transcendent) into the outside and the outside pours into him. Without

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Andrei Bely

this interpntration, neither the self nor the world can be said to exist:
both arise only in the process of being connected in sound.9
Later in the essay, Bely extends his ideas about a "third world" of
acoustic symbols to symbols in general. He makes the significant argument that the creation of an image grants it a mode of being that is independent of the creative consciousness. The symbol becomes an "incarnation" and "comes to life." In this way metaphor leads to the creation
of myth. 10
I mentioned in the preceding chapters that some problems remain
unresolved in Bely's early theoretical formulations about symbolic cognition. One source of difficulty stems from the nature of the relationship between man and the transcendent. When Bely speaks of symbols
being created by an artist or perceiver who infuses some image taken
from outside himself with experiences deriving from within his self, it is
difficult to see how this could lead to anything other than solipsism if
"inner experiences" are understood in a straightforward manner, as
something confined to the individual's psyche. It is not clear why or
how an "irradiation" of a phenomenon by the perceiver's thoughts and
emotions should spontaneously lead to any insight into spiritual dimensions that lie beyond the material plane. The entire process seems
too active. And if Platonic Ideas exist in phenomena, a passive receptivity to their signals (whatever these could be) might seem more in order.
Bely began to resolve this problem in his theoretical, and especially
in his belletristic writings by making man's inner experiences stem ultimately from the transcendent. With this modification, the individual's
act of creative perception becomes a "mere" conduit for impulses from
the transcendent, which manifest themselves as what he sees. This sort
of cognitive dependency was dramatized in the case of Musatov in the
Second Symphony and Darialsky in The Silver Dove, and becomes the
central process in Bely's next two novels.
Indeed, in Petersburg, and in his essays from the end of the decade,
Bely decreases further man's role in defining the world in which he exists, and grants this function to forces rooted in the otherworldly realm
that act through man.
This development rests on the second cornerstone of Bely's theory,
which is formulated fully by the end of the decade. It is expressed most
completely in "The Emblematics of Meaning," where Bely posits a transcendent unity, that, although unknowable in its essence, is the ultimate ground of all that exists. Proceeding from this unity, one realizes,
for example, that the goal of all symbolizing activity is the recognition
that individuals are actually part of a whole: "I, you, heare one, . . .

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105

father, mother and sonare one." In turn, the unity that individuals
comprise is a symbol of something yet higher: "the mystery that is not
being revealed" (neraskryvaiushchaiasia
taina).11
Bely also extends his conception to include all forms of h u m a n activity. He differentiates between "symbols" in general and the universal,
ultimate "Symbol." The former are the various products of the interaction of individual subjects with the world a r o u n d them. The latter is the
unattainable transcendent absolute; and the relation between the two is
that the Symbol spawns symbols. When an artist creates symbols, or
when an individual makes perceptions, he is in fact submitting to the
will of this absolute that acts through him and brings everything into
existence. Similarly, the world in which an individual thinks he lives is
actually "a dream" created in him b y this unknowable absolute. 1 2
According to Bely, the Symbol can be conceived in eschatological
terms. Thus "The Emblematics of Meaning" posits a transcendent, teleological process in the universe that makes itself manifest in the world
of m a n through the seemingly independent symbolizing actions of individuals. 13 This concept, which lies at the very heart of Bely's world view,
is one of the most seminal in his entire theoretical corpus for understanding Petersburg, and represents the final resolution of the problematic
view of symbolic cognition that he broached in his first theoretical essay.
Implicit in this schema is the continual nature of man's symbolizing
activity. The Absolute reveals itself gradually, through the ever-growing "creative striving" of man. 1 4 Hence individual symbols will reflect
the Absolute with varying degrees of distinctness, and the boundaries
between them will be fluid. For, if all symbols reflect the Symbol, then
all symbolic images must inevitably have something in c o m m o n a
feature that is amply borne out in Petersburg.
Bely's belief in a transcendent explains the considerable pains he took
to disassociate his theory of symbolism f r o m mere estheticism. In his
memoir Between Two Revolutions,
Bely recalls h o w unimpressed he
was with the theoretical arguments of French Symbolists, some of
w h o m he saw while in Paris in 1906. It all seemed to him to be "the
ABC's" of The Scales, an important Symbolist journal edited by Valry
Briusov in Moscow, to which Bely contributed frequently. Bely concludes that Briusov, for one, "overestimated" the French writers, and
that their practice of "symbolism as a n a r r o w little school is impossible." 15 Indeed, f r o m his earliest essays to the end of his life Bely was interested ultimately in nothing less than the "re-creation" of man. In an
essay f r o m 1909 he spoke of Zarathustra, Buddha, and Christ as being
"artists of life" as much as givers of law. 16 A n d speculating about the future, Bely prophesied that symbolism would become a new religiophilosophical teaching and cease being a "mere" theory. 17

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Andrei Bely

Some of Bely's later essays in this vein seem to extol the existential
duties of the individual toward his own self-creation. 18 However, this
view can still be reconciled with Bely's belief in the Symbol if any existential act that an individual performs is understood as a veiled manifestation of a transcendent absolute. In Petersburg the narrator-author
will admit as much.
Bely's later theoretical ideas are strongly colored by his critical study
of Kant (whose views about man's ability to know the transcendent
were clearly antithetical to his own), and, especially in "The Emblematics of Meaning," the neo-Kantian Heinrich Rickert. Elsworth has
shown how Bely adapted the latter's concept of "value" to his own view
of symbolism as teleological creative cognition. 19 Two other thinkers
deserve special mention because of the direct influence their teachings
had on Petersburg. The first is Vladimir Soloviev, who remains as important for the works of Bely's mature middle period as he was for the
earliest, although Bely valued his "prophetic, mystical, intuitive spirit"
more than his philosophical side.20 The second figure is Rudolf Steiner
(1861-1925), the founder of anthroposophy.
The influence of Steiner on Bely is complex, and has yet to be studied
in the detail it deserves.21 In 1913, six years after striking off on his own
from the better-known theosophical movement (originally founded in
1875 by Elena Petrovna Blavatskaia [Mme. Blavatsky] and later led by
Annie Besant), Steiner formalized his departure by establishing a society dedicated to propagating his own staggeringly complicated esoteric
doctrine of "anthroposophy." His primary reason was that his Christological views were at odds with theosophy's reliance on ideas drawn
largely from Hinduism. In brief, anthroposophy, or the "occult science"
as Steiner also called it, is a highly syncretic and Hermetic view of existence: it teaches that both man and the earth are part of a spiritual universe undergoing an elaborate cyclical evolution. By means of certain
meditative exercises, an adept can come to know man's multileveled
spiritual composition and his intimate involvement in cosmic history.
As a result, he can become a self-conscious part of the teleologically
evolving cosmos, in which Christ is the central regenerative force.
Although Bely had been interested in theosophy and had known
something of anthroposophy earlier, he did not actually fall under
Steiner s spell until he met him in 1912, when he was working on Petersburg.22 Bely's commitment to the "occult science" was immediate and
total. He first followed Steiner around Europe to attend his peripatetic
lecture courses, then lived and worked in Steiners anthroposophical
community in Drnach, Switzerland, from 1914 to 1916. And despite

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107

personal frictions with Steiner himself in the early 1920s, Bely remained a fervent believer until his death in 1934. 2 3
The zeal with which Bely immersed himself in Steiner s doctrines left
a profound imprint on Petersburg, but anthroposophy alone does not
"explain" the novel. The reason is the lifelong habit Bely had of selectively adapting all the new ideas he encountered to those he already
held, even if this meant doing violence to the integrity of the new system of belief. A striking example was his ability to reconcile in his early
essays figures as alien to each other as Soloviev and Nietzsche. 24 With
anthroposophy Bely's task must have been significantly easier. His
world view prior to his "conversion" and Steiners teachings have a
similar general shape: both are variants of metaphysical idealism and
present a transcendent spiritual realm undergoing a spiraling teleological evolution as the ultimate reality; in the end, all man can do is become a self-conscious participant in the process of which he is already a
part. 25 Indeed, Bely's theoretical essays have passages that anticipate,
to an uncanny degree, what he was to find soon in anthroposophy. 26
The poet Aleksandr Blok, to whom Bely sent detailed descriptions of
his early infatuation with anthroposophyand whom he visited soon
after becoming Steiners followercommented on this compatibility.
"If one knew of Steiner only from A. Bely," Blok wrote to a mutual
friend, "one would have thought that A. Bely himself invented him; he
keeps saying the same things and in the same way." 27
Bely himself realized perfectly well that there was much in common
between his theory of symbolism and anthroposophy. In his revealing
and valuable memoir Why I Became A Symbolist (1928), he echoes
Blok by asking the rhetorical question: "What changed in me when I
became an anthroposophist?" His answer is "Nothing." More specifically, Bely states that his theory of cognition was pointing in the same
direction as Steiners, and that a series of lectures Steiner gave in 1914
was, in effect, an anthroposophical "transcription" of his essay "The
Emblematics of Meaning" (1909). 2 8 Rather than being understood as
another instance of Bely's syncretism, however, these remarks should
be taken as confirmation that Bely and Steiner did undergo a convergent evolution in their ideas. Bely also found that the fundamental outlines of Soloviev's world view coincided with Steiner's, and that
Steiner s lectures in 1914 confirmed Soloviev's apocalypticism. 29
In the final analysis, as far as Petersburg is concerned, Bely took
those elements from anthroposophy that were already congruent with
the ideas he had formulated in theoretical essays and dramatized in a
nascent form in his earlier works. The "occult science" gave Bely a
structured and detailed metaphysics stressing the individual's ties to the

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Andrei Bely

transcendent, and abounding in concrete images that he could readily


utilize because of their inherently picturesque or atmospheric nature.
The broad concepts of Bely's theoretical essays on symbolism thus
found resonance in the "ready made," tangible imagery and beliefs of
anthroposophy.
Most of Bely's borrowings were from Steiner s conception of how the
individual actually comes to know the transcendentthe heart of the
problem, as it werealthough Bely departed significantly from the
spirit of anthroposophy by making his characters the unwitting victims
of the spiritual world rather than self-conscious adepts exploring it.
Steiner did allow "spontaneous" initiation into the mysteries of existence for select individuals, but generally stressed the difficulty of the
path that had to be followed by human beings desiring enlightenment.
By involving all his characters in occult experiences Bely betrayed the
principle of free will that anthroposophy teaches (a principle that is
automatically problematic in any teleological metaphysics, as Calvinism illustrates in the context of Christianity). But at the same time he
was simply being consistent with his own strongly deterministic views
as expressed in his earlier belletristic works.
What does an investigation of Bely's anthroposophical borrowings
in Petersburg add to an understanding of the novel? The most important aspect of this connection is that it bolsters an occult reading of the
work and helps to explain certain repeating images that would otherwise remain enigmatic. An awareness of Steiner's influence on Petersburg adds weight to the argument against understanding the novel as a
mere metaphor for Bely's own purely psychological quandaries. 30 This
is not to say that there is no psychological dimension in the novel;
clearly, there is. Bely's presentation of his characters' psychologies is
overwhelmingly convincing and extraordinarily nuanced. But to deny
a metaphysical basis for the psychological dimension of the work is to
decapitate Bely by ignoring the organizing principle behind his conception of psychological states. As Bely put it himself, "all of Petersburg is
saturated with anthroposophy, and especially in the striking psychological passages."31
A neat formulation of the relation between an individual's psychological state and the cosmos can be found in a letter Bely wrote from
Dornach in 1914 in which he speaks of the overpowering sensation of
apocalyptic dread that he and other contemporaries experienced: "I understood that the reasons that cause this net (a net of spiritual alarm) to
arise before one's eyes are found in the depth of individual consciousness; but the depths of consciousness rest in the universal, cosmic unity
[vselenskoe edinstvo]."32 But Bely's debt to anthroposophy will become

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much clearer when scenes in the novel are juxtaposed with specific passages from Steiner's writings.
-3One of the features that distinguishes Petersburg from Bely's other
belletristic works is that it contains narrative digressions about the nature of cognition. Metaliterary discussions, such as those that took
place in prefaces to the Second and Fourth Symphonies, have now
moved into the body of the work itself. On a purely formal level, the
effect of this is to blur the distinction between fiction and realitya
central preoccupation in the novel as a whole. It thus becomes possible
to examine moments of symbolic cognitionscenes in which characters perceive and come to know somethingfrom three points of view:
(1) the criteria the narrator presents in the novel itself, (2) the theory of
symbolism Bely developed in his essays, and (3) anthroposophy.
The most revealing of the digressions comprises the last section of
Chapter I, and is entitled "You Will Never Ever Forget Him!" Ostensibly, this is a commentary on the encounter between Apollon Apollonovich and Dudkin on a city street and on several other characters and
settings that had just been introduced. However, the strategic location
of this section and the nature of the narrator's remarks suggest it may
be programmatic for the entire novel:
In this chapter we have seen Senator Ableukhov. We have also
seen the idle thoughts of the senator in the form of the senator's
house and the form of the senator's son, who also carries his own
idle thoughts in his head. Finally, we have seen another idle shadowthe stranger.
This shadow arose by chance in the consciousness of Senator
Ableukhov and acquired its ephemeral being there. But the consciousness of Apollon Apollonovich is a shadowy consciousness
because he too is the possessor of an ephemeral being and the
fruit of the author's fantasy: unnecessary, idle cerebral play. (I,
72: 35)
This remarkable passage posits the primacy of thought or imagination
over realityan idea that Bely had expressed in earlier works, both
belletristic and theoretical. What is new about it is that reality is now
seen as a series of hierarchically arranged levels: the senator exists because the author imagines him, and the "stranger" (Dudkin) exists because the senator imagines him. But the chain does not stop here.
"Idle cerebral play" is the central concept in this passage, and because
the narrator involves himself in its operation, he implicitly raises the

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question of his own state of being: whose "cerebral play" produces


him? As it happens, Bely makes no attempt to differentiate himself
from the narrator in Petersburg. Quite the opposite is true. Consequently, one can infer that the concept "idle cerebral play" is meant to
bridge somehow the gap between the fictional world within the novel
and the real world outside it.
The narrator's purpose in the rest of the section is to convince the
reader of precisely this radical viewthat the traditional distinction
between fiction and reality has been erased. He says of the senator:
"And granting that Apollon Apollonovich is spun from our brain,
nonetheless he will manage to inspire fear with another, a stupendous
state of being which attacks in the night." The section ends with an even
more strident repetition of this claim: "The aged senator will, oh yes, he
will, pursue you too, dear reader . . . And henceforth you will never
ever forget him!"
The same reality is granted to the other products of cerebral play,
even though they are spawned on a different level in the hierarchical series. The "stranger" whom the senator's brain produced "really exists"
because "thought exists" (literally: "possesses a reality of its own" in the
1928 edition of the novel).
What the narrator says about cerebral play itself, although somewhat cryptic, is highly suggestive. In characteristic fashion, he begins
by referring to himself as "the author," which implies in this context
that he does not view his text as being "fiction" in the usual sense of the
word. He says that he might as well disavow the illusions he created in
the first chapter because they are merely the product of "unnecessary,
idle cerebral play." Of course, he is being completely ironic, for, as he
immediately adds, "Cerebral play is only a mask. Under way beneath
this mask is the invasion of the brain by forces unknown to us [1928:
'by a variety of forces']."
This last statement is central for understanding the world Bely has
created in Petersburg, as well as for establishing the relation between
this digression and his theoretical essays. That Bely also attributed crucial importance to the concept "cerebral play" is clear from his having
considered entitling the novel Cerebral play.33 In effect, the narratorauthor has posited the existence of forces that invade human consciousness (or that may be human consciousness) under the guise of independent personal cogitations and create the individuals and things that
comprise the world. These occult forces seem to have the same function
in Petersburg, therefore, that the Symbol (as distinct from symbols) has
in Bely's theory of symbolism. By not saying more about the forces,
Bely is actually being consistent with his unavoidable silence about
what constitutes the mysterious Symbol. But just as it is possible to find

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references in his essays to a Solovievian eschatologywhich seems to


be the one visible face of the Absolute in Bely s schemathere are numerous indications in the novel of what these occult forces are. Much
of this chapter will be concerned with an examination of Bely's text for
evidence of a transcendent unity underlying the seemingly independent
cognitive acts of individuals. 34
The narrator-author's reference to cerebral play acting through him
as well as his characters is also very important for understanding how
Petersburg constitutes a resolution of the theoretical problem that has
troubled Bely's narratives since the First Symphony. For the first time,
Bely provides an omnipotent higher unity that acts through the narrator-author to create both his text and his entire world. Thus the perceptions that the "lyrical" narrator-author is vouchsafed can be reconciled
with the sections of the text presented from the third person because
both are ultimately reifications of the occult forces for which cerebral
play is a mask. The first-person narrator's perceptions, as embodied in
the text, and the characters with their experiences are all symbolic of
the higher unity that determines everything that is.
The assumption that some higher reality is behind cerebral play may
also explain why the narrator refers to the individuals spawned by it as
"shadows." Bely's world-view has neo-Platonic features (although his
conception of art is the opposite of Plato's), and the references to shadows bring to mind the "myth of the cave" passages in Book VII of Plato's Republic. Of course, shadows of the ideal Platonic forms are shadows only to those who know the ideal forms; for everyone else (the
ignorant multitude) they are the real things of this world. A comparable double viewpoint may be at work in the narrator's statements about
specific characters and things elsewhere in the novel, where individuals
and objects alternate between being shadows in one scene and not in
another. On the one hand, the narrator has insight into the higher reality, from which point of view aspects of this world are shadows. But
on the other hand, the narrator is also a man and, from the human
point of view (like that of most of the characters much of the time), the
shadows seem to be real things. An abrupt shifting back and forth between these two points of viewsimilar to Bely's style in the Second
Symphony and, ultimately, a reflection of his metaphysicscontributes much to the nervous narrative texture of the novel.
Other major aspects of Bely's theory of symbolism are also discernible in the narrator's digression quoted above. His description of
thoughts taking on a life of their own outside their thinkers' minds is a
variation on the fundamental thesis that creation has primacy over
cognition: beings and things are created by cerebral play before they
become known by the perceivers. This is also a further development of

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two scenes in The Silver Dove. In one, Eropegin and General Chizhikov appear as reifications of Darialsky's thoughts, and in the second,
devils swarm around the Baroness, Darialsky, and Chukholka as reifications of the inner experiences that appear to have been induced in
them by forces outside them. The new feature added to this schema in
Petersburg is that the role of the world outside the perceiver in the creative cognitive process seems to be totally devalued.
In some of his earlier essays Bely described symbolic cognition as an
individual's projection of some aspect of himself onto the external
world, which exists in a "potential" stateready to participate, as it
were, in the creation of symbols. But when Dudkin is created by the
thoughts in the senator's head, the reader is not shown that some material part of the St. Petersburg cityscape is infused with the senator's enlivening gaze; instead, Dudkin is described as springing fully formed
out of the senator's head, like Athena out of the head of Zeus, as the
narrator puts it (I, 47: 21). This would seem to be an extension of the
view Bely developed in his later essays about inner experiences being
rooted in the transcendent and about creative cognition (which produces symbols) being itself an emanation of the Absolute Symbol.
The idea that thoughts can come to life was also clearly anticipated
in the essay "The Magic of Words," in which Bely described an artist
creating metaphors that live on as myth. The difference between the
novel and this essay is that the importance of the role of the individual
in producing living thoughts is devalued in Petersburg. Apollon Apollonovich is quite unaware that a "birth" has taken place in him. But his
experience is also consistent with an idealistic universe, and illustrates
Bely's implicit denigration of free will in the novel as a whole.
The concept of thoughts taking on a life of their own is also a link between Bely and anthroposophy. The instances of thoughts apparently
becoming living creatures in The Silver Dove show that Bely was already on this track in 1909. Whether, as is most likely, this was an inevitable outgrowth of Bely's own theorizing, or a consequence of some
chance encounter with occult lore before he became a follower of
Steiner in 1912, is a question that cannot be answered decisively. Bely's
readings in philosophy and mysticism were sufficiently voracious to
encompass almost any ideas current during the first decade of this century. (See, for example, the bibliographical references in his voluminous
notes to the essays in Simvolizm.) Moreover, he had numerous encounters with practicing occultists, including anthroposophists, and engaged
in meditative techniques himself before he met Steiner. 35 Bely actually
believed that these ideas were his own: "That reality is created by us in
the activities of creative cognition, and is not served up to us on the
world platter, was perfectly well known to me before Steiners books." 36

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Be that as it may, in one of his best-known treatises Steiner describes


"living thoughts" in a way strongly resembling several of Bely s seminal
formulations (which, it should be remembered, he published before he
became an anthroposophist). Speaking of a dimension of the "spiritual
world," Steiner explains that
thoughts must be imagined as living, independent entities. What
is apprehended as thoughts in the physical world is like the shadow of what exists in the land of spirits as thought beings. If we
imagine thought, as it exists in human beings, withdrawn from
man and endowed as an active entity with its own inner life, then
we have a feeble illustration of what permeates the fourth region
of the spirit land. What man perceives as thoughts in his physical
world between birth and death is only the manifestation of the
thought world as it is able to express itself through the instrumentality of the bodies. But all such thoughts entertained by human
beings, which signify an enrichment of the physical world, have
their origin in this region. 37
The narrator's digression at the end of Chapter I seems based on exactly such formulations. Moreover, the published version of one of
Steiner's best-known lectures that he gave in 1911 has a sketch he drew
showing the movement of "living beings on the Astral Plane" into a human head where "shadow-images" of these beings are reflected as thinking.38 Bely clearly embroidered on Steiner's ideas by reifying "thought
beings" into characters. However, this is more an imaginative collation
of Steiner's ideas about "thought beings" with other notions of his
about "tone beings" (see below), rather than a betrayal of the spirit of
anthroposophy.
The epithets "idle" and "unnecessary" that the narrator attaches to
"cerebral play," to say nothing of "play" itself, reflect the irony of the
situation the narrator describes in the digression. On the one hand, he
is speaking about the fundamental creative force in the world of the
novel. On the other, this creative force acts through individuals who
are completely oblivious to what is really happening through them.
The situation is ultimately one that Bely takes seriously, but it was
quite in keeping with his character to be (philosophically) ironic about
matters that he took closest to heart, as he made amply clear in earlier
works, particularly the Second Symphony. In Petersburg, as before,
the point of Bely's irony is to underscore that he recognizes the distance
separating mankind from the realm of spirit in which he believes, and
not to question the validity of that belief.
The narrator's insistence on the continuity between the reader's
world and the world of the novel, which hinges on his implication that
cerebral play exists outside the novel, also has roots in Bely's theoreti-

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cal essays. It is a reflection of his conception of symbolism as a new religio-philosophical teaching that is destined to transform mankind. Bely's involvement with Steiner could only have reinforced this view
because anthroposophy had, and still has an explicitly didactic conception of its own role in the world. Moreover, the reader who follows
through consistently the implications of the narrator's digression is
forced to conclude that in Bely's view Petersburg was an "inspired"
textone that was produced by the same forces shown to operate
within the text. This is also a feature of the works of Steiner, who
thought of himself as one of those great teachers of mankind about
whom he often wrote. (A collection of his lectures is entitled The Fifth
Gospel, which presumably places him on the same level as the four
evangelists of the New Testament.) A desire to instruct the reader in
higher truths may be the reason why the narrator tries to buttonhole
the reader throughout the novel, revealing things about the characters
and the world in general that the characters themselves do not know,
which the reader must arrange into a coherent schema for himself. The
readers efforts, under the author's guidance, might be seen, therefore,
as a reenactment of the adept's quest for enlightenment in anthroposophy.
-4The metacognitive digression at the end of Chapter I indicates that in
order to understand the world of Petersburg it is essential to understand the forces for which cerebral play is a mask. But first, it is necessary to establish that the process described in the digression does in fact
operate in the rest of the novelthat thoughts become incarnated and
cosmic forces enter characters' minds. Since I will argue that a great
transcendent unity underlies the world in the novel, it is completely artificial to stop the examination of how the above-mentioned process
operates at any point short of that unity. Nevertheless, it will be necessary to do so, at least temporarily, in order to keep the development of
my argument orderly.
The consistency with which Bely applies his process to the confrontation between Apollon Apollonovich and Dudkin leads to an amusing, and, at first glance, bewildering circularity. After establishing that
Dudkin originated in the senator's head, the narrator explains that the
stranger's thoughts have the same properties as the senator's: "They
would escape and take on substance" (I, 47: 20). One of the stranger's
escaped thoughts is that he really exists, and this thought "fled back
into the senatorial brain. . . . The circle closed." The congruence of the
thoughts that occur in Dudkin and the senator implies that they originate in a common source. The world seems to be a composite, therefore,

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of separate intrusions of a given thought into individual consciousnessesa schema that vitiates the strictly hierarchical arrangement of
levels of reality in the narrator's digression, but, at the same time, tends
to dissolve the distinction between creator and artifact, or reality and
the novel. (The circular path of the thought is also one of the numerous
manifestations of the important sphere symbol in the novel.)
In the first chapter Bely also shows that quotidian things and places
are products of the senator's induced cogitations, as if to demonstrate
that he can account for all aspects of the world with his cognitive process. In a number of striking passages, the senator's brain is literally
identified with his house, with the result that the identity of thought
and reality is illustrated graphically. A servant is described as climbing
steps that are "soft, like the convolutions of the brain." And when the
senator hears a door slam in a corridor "it was only a hammering in the
temples" (I, 47-48: 21).
The dominant characteristic of cerebral play, however, is its consistently intrusive character. When the senator is at work in his office, cerebral play moves into the senator's mind more than once:
His innocent cerebral play again moved spontaneously into his
brain, that is, into the pile of papers and petitions. Apollon Apollonovich perhaps would have considered cerebral play on the
same plane as the wallpaper of the room; the plane, however, in
moving apart at times, admitted a surprise into the center of his
mental life. (1,45:19)
Each intrusion generates a new aspect of the senator's world. At first it
is his paperwork and his office space. Then it is his "memory" of having
seen Dudkin in his own home before meeting him on the street. But
rather than being simply an elaborate way of describing the workings
of memory, this passage, in the light of the narrator's metacognitive digression, implies that memory, like all other thoughts, originates outside the human mind. (This is a point that Bely will develop extensively
in his next novel, Kotik Letaev.)
An essential characteristic of intruding thoughts is that they function
didactically. They often impart new information, but in keeping with
the general tendency in the novel, it is almost invariably of more use to
the reader than to the characters, who are little affected by it. (Toward
the end of the novel Dudkin struggles briefly against the compulsion to
murder Lippanchenko, and Nikolai Apollonovich seems to enter onto
a new spiritual path by reading the Ukrainian mystical philosopher
Skovoroda; nevertheless, neither one experiences anything like the
drastic reorientation of character and consequent change in behavior
that can be found in Tolstoy or Dostoevsky.) A rather blatant example

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Andrei Bely

of a character being unaffected by a message from the beyond occurs in


one scene when the senator, walking through a seedy part of the city, is
struck by the idea that "they" hate him, meaning the revolutionaries.
He suspects that they are only an insignificant little band, at which
point cerebral play immediately intrudes to erect before him a gigantic
map of Russia. Apollon Apollonovich is forced to wonder if the entire
mass of the Empire's inhabitants is in fact his enemy (I, 252: 139). This
illumination does not change his reactionary policies, but it does suggest that he is a small part of a larger historical process, which, in turn,
is linked to a transcendent realm.
Apollon Apollonovich's son Nikolai has comparable experiences,
but the narrator uses a different expression when referring to the
thoughts that intrude into his mind. Nikolai's attempted patricide is, of
course, the mainspring of the novel's plot. Well into the story, the narrator asks if Nikolai was capable of conceiving by himself the plan to
kill his father. A dozen lines later he answers his own question: "No,
no!" because "there were swarms of thoughts thinking themselves [sebia mysliashchie my sii]; and it was not he thinking, but thoughts thinking themselves" (II, 143: 218). Although this phenomenon is not called
cerebral play, it seems identical. It also recalls Darialsky's agitation in
The Silver Dove, when such thoughts invade him too. Moreover, just
like the senator who "remembers" that he had seen Dudkin earlier, a
few lines after the narrator's comments about the thoughts thinking
themselves Nikolai "realizes" that he is the author of the plan to assassinate his father. The reader remembers, of course, that before the start
of the novel Nikolai had made an offer to a group of terrorists to assassinate his father (I, 51, 100: 23, 50). But in Bely's schema this again
means that the thought had been implanted in him earlier still. The narrator says that this thought from some realm outside Nikolai "burst" in
his soul. This seemingly insignificant detail is an echo of the important
explosion symbol in Petersburg (the bomb Nikolai is supposed to use
against his father is only one of the manifestations of the symbol),
which is ultimately a reflection of the apocalypse totally dominating
the world in the novel.
Support for the inference that "cerebral play" and "self-thinking
thoughts" are identical, and that they indicate a transcendent force acting through the human mind, can be found in a letter Bely wrote to a
friend after attending Steiners "secret" lectures in 1912-13. Bely speaks
of "thoughts thinking themselves" being the "oscillation" of the individual's "etheric body" (one of the spiritual components of the human being, according to Steiner). On the basis of anthroposophical teaching,
Bely also affirms that "the world is created anew out of nothing" (pre-

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sumably as a consequence of cerebral play). 39 Steiners published writings confirm this identification. He explains that the adept can accustom himself "to a mode of thinking that does not derive its content from
sense-observations." As a result, he comes to discover the existence of a
"thought world" that has an inner life of its own. By surrendering to this
special "sense-free thinking" (sinnlichkeitfreies
Denken), the adept
finds himself "in the region of a living supersensible world." And anyone who enters this state would say that something "thinks in me," or
that "Something possessing the nature of being acts within me."
Steiner is careful to differentiate between "thought associations one
creates arbitrarily and those one experiences when one silences this arbitrary volition." 40 Thus, "sense-free thought" in this conception is
strictly applicable only to occult experiences. Bely uses a modified version of Steiner's idea, therefore. Rather than leave the "thought world"
accessible only to self-conscious occultists, Bely makes "cerebral play"
and "self-thinking thoughts" into a part of nearly every character's existence. Moreover, the special cogitations come by themselves and are
not sought by the characters in the novel. This universalization of
anthroposophy's teachings typifies Bely's tactic in Petersburg as a
whole: he consistently imbues with a will of their own aspects of the
spiritual realm that in anthroposophy must be courted by initiates. In
so doing, Bely abandons an important tenet of anthroposophy (and
Christianity): that man has free will. But at the same time, he remains
faithful to the deterministic view of existence that he dramatized in his
Symphonies and in The Silver Dove.
The scene with Nikolai also illustrates the effect that the awareness
of Bely's reliance on several of anthroposophy's basic concepts has on
one's reading of the novel as a whole. The narrator's reference to selfthinking thoughts about patricide should not be understood as Bely's
attempt to dramatize Nikolai recoiling from accepting personal responsibility for a crime he has contemplated. Such a straightforward, psychological reading of the scene (if psychology is understood as dealing
with processes in the human mind alone) is invalidated by the occult
meaning that anthroposophy gives to "self-thinking thoughts," a meaning that is in harmony with the narrator's digressions in the novel, as
well as with Bely's theory of symbolism, and his own experiences: his
widow described how much he enjoyed "self-thinking thoughts," which
he characterized as "singing" throughout his entire body.41
Later in the novel, the narrator refers to the phenomenon of intruding thoughts in yet another way. Nikolai tries to deny that the bomb he
is to use is still in the house. Thoughts appear that correct his wishful
thinking, and Nikolai realizes that it is not he who is thinking, but a
"conscious contour" outside his body. The contour affirms that the

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Andrei Bely

bomb is in the house, but Nikolai still manages to convince himself of


the nonsensical nature of these self-thinking thoughts. Of course,
shortly thereafter the bomb explodesdisproving him convincingly
(II, 256-259: 285-287).
The third major character in the novel is Dudkin, a revolutionary,
who, at least on the surface, seems to be the antithesis of the reactionary senator. But like Apollon Apollonovich and his son, Dudkin is also
subject to the intrusion of self-thinking thoughts. For example, on his
way to deliver the bomb to Nikolai, Dudkin stops in a cheap restaurant
which happens to be decorated with a mural of one of Peter the Great s
naval battles. As Dudkin sits there, "thoughts were thinking themselves lumy dumalis'samij" (I, 42:18). In this instance, Bely uses a different Russian word for "thought" from the one he used in the passage
about Nikolai. Yet the effect is the same. The thoughts produce an image before Dudkin of a strangely familiar-looking workman with a
pipe against a dock-like background. This seemingly insignificant "picture" shows what portentous messages can be concealed in small details
in Petersburg: later in the novel it becomes obvious that this workman
is one of the avatars of Peter the Great, who, in turn, is one of the most
important symbols in the book, and who has special meaning for Dudkin in particular. The juxtaposition of the mural and Dudkin s "picture"
reveals to the reader the extent to which the novel is saturated with historical forces that are linked to the transcendent.
It is Dudkin's experience with intruding thoughts that offers the most
elaborate and probably the most revealing example in the novel. Dudkin has been told that someone is looking for him, but when he returns
to his attic he promises himself that he will not be afraid, because "Anything that might happen was only cerebral play" (II, 112: 202). It is an
indication of Dudkin's unusual perspicacity among the novel's characters that he is sufficiently aware of such "play" to try to dismiss it. However, the irony in his comment is entirely at his own expense. Shortly
after he returns home, Dudkin is confronted by a strange visitor. Although Shishnarfne seems to be three-dimensional at first, as Dudkin
speaks to him, his visitor becomes a two-dimensional silhouette and finally a voice coming out of Dudkin's own throat (II, 118-121: 205207). Shishnarfne's "disappearance" is a striking illustration in reverse
of the mental creation of reality the narrator discussed at the end
of Chapter I. Rather than have Shishnarfne leap into being from Dudkin's head, we see Shishnarfne withdraw into his throat. It is as if Bely
wanted to show how the forces that cerebral play "masks" return from
the terrestrial plane to their transcendent origin through a human
agent.

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Shishnarfne's withdrawal into Dudkin's throat is also another instance of Bely's imaginative use of anthroposophic beliefs. According
to Steiner, adepts striving to perceive the spiritual realm develop "psycho-spiritual organs" called "lotus flowers." These appear in various
parts of the student's body, including the forehead, the solar plexus,
and, most important for Dudkin, the larynx. It is by means of these "organs," which are visible only to spiritual sight, that students can commune with the higher world.
Bely does not mention any "lotus flowers." Nevertheless, the entire
scene with Shishnarfne seems to have been modeled very closely on
Steiner's conception of how initiates commune with the transcendent:
T h e impressions [from the spiritual world] that resemble most
those of the sense world are the tones of the spiritual world. . . .
These tones, however, are not experienced as something reaching
an organ from outside, but as a force streaming through the ego
out into the world. T h e human being feels the tones as he feels his
own speaking or singing in the sense world, but he knows that in
the spiritual world these tones streaming out from him are at the
same time manifestations
of other beings poured out into the
world through him [italics mine]. 4 2
Of course, in anthroposophy access to the spirit world is possible only
for those who have undergone special esoteric training. But although
there are hints in Petersburg that Dudkin has been involved with the
occult, there is clearly no suggestion that he actively sought to contact
Shishnarfne in this scene. A s a result, even he is shown to be a passive
victim of cerebral play.
Another, related element from anthroposophy that shows Shishnarfne to be a creature from the spiritual realm is the reversibility of his
name. It is obvious that the name is "enfranshish" spelled b a c k w a r d s
a word Dudkin used in his struggle against the Mongolian faces appearing on the wall of his attic. Moreover, "enfranshish," is an almost perfect transliteration into Cyrillic of "enfranchise," which, since it is a
word denoting "freedom," seems an appropriate choice for exorcising
hateful apparitions. In any case, Steiner explains that elements of the
spirit world, in addition to appearing as aspects of an individual's outer
world, also appear as mirror images of what they really are: "When,
for instance, a number is perceived, it must be reversed, as a picture in
a mirror; 265 would mean here in reality 5 6 2 . " 4 3 Shishnarfne repeats exactly the same idea at the end of his dialogue with Dudkin (II, 122:
208).
Shishnarfne's own words support the view that he is an intruder from
a spiritual realm. W h e n he becomes a voice emanating from Dudkin's
throat, he explains that St. Petersburg is

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the fourth dimension which is not indicated on maps, which is


indicated merely by a dot. And this dot is the place where the
plane of being is tangential to the surface of the sphere of the immense astral cosmos. A dot which in the twinkling of an eye can
produce for us an inhabitant of the fourth dimension, from
whom not even a wall can protect us. (II, 121: 207)
It is an important detail that the minor character Stepka takes fright at
Shishnarfne's appearance and says: "Well, if this sort has taken to dropping in, a Prayer Book's of no earthly use. This sort doesn't drop in on
just anybody" (II, 117: 205). Stepka's words prove that Shishnarfne is
not an illusion, or a mere hallucination of Dudkin's as some have argued.44
Another significant aspect of this scene is that it contains a rare continuum between the dramatization of the transcendent intruding into
the earthly world, and a rather elaborate indication of what the transcendent may be. Most often in the novel, Bely stresses only one and
hints at the other. During their conversation, Shishnarfne repeats certain ideas that Dudkin once preached in Helsingfors, but later abandonednamely, that it is necessary to hasten the collapse of Western
civilization and summon the Mongols (II, 115: 203). Even though Dudkin may have renounced these views, they still resemble closely one aspect of the narrator's own apocalyptic conception of history, which I
shall treat at length below. Thus Shishnarfne also has the benefit of the
narrator's implicit support, and Dudkin is shown to have had insight
into the grand process underlying the world of the novel.
Before turning to an examination of this transcendent process, I
would like to look into the role of cerebral play in the life of the narrator-author. His digression implied that he was subject to the same mysterious forces that intrude into his characters, and this is indeed the
case. The best illustration is the narrator's apostrophe to the city, which
interrupts the scene of Nikolai being badgered by the agent-provocateur Morkovin in a cheap restaurant. Immediately after Morkovin asks
Nikolai a question, 45 the narrator exclaims:
Petersburg, Petersburg!
Precipitating out as fog, you have pursued me with cerebral
play. Cruel-hearted tormentor! Restless specter! For years you
have attacked me. I have run along the horrible Prospects, to
land with a flying leap on this very same gleaming bridge . . .
O, green waters, teeming with germs! I remember that fateful
moment: on a September night I too leaned over the deep railing . . . (II, 21:148)

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The narrator-author's cri de coeur is a drastic change in subject matter


and point of view, and thus functions as an intrusion into the scene between the two characters on the levels of both form and content.
The theme of the intrusive passage, however, is the same as in the
preceding scene with Morkovin and Nikolaipersecution and coercion. The narrator-author's reference to the city as pursuing him, and
his perception of it as a precipitate out of fog, recall his speaking of
characters as shadows in the end of Chapter I. From one point of view,
therefore, the city is the narrator-author's "creation," and like "shadowy" Dudkin, who will pursue the senator, the city will pursue the narrator-author. But the reader has learned from Shishnarfne that St. Petersburg straddles the boundary between the world of matter and spirit
and has a spiritual "fourth dimension." Thus the city is both artificer
and artifactit is part of the transcendent realm from which creative
forces enter the narrator as cerebral play, and is itself the product of this
cerebral play. And the narrator-author can say that the "spectral" city
"torments" him because he is aware that the transcendent forces that
create the city are using him for their own ends.
The near-suicide "on a September night" which the narrator mentions serves to erase the distinction between the narrator and author in
the same way that the narrator's comments did in his metacognitive digression. The narrator-author does not explain this mysterious reference anywhere in the novel. But as Bely reveals in his memoirs, this
apostrophe to St. Petersburg, as well as other details in the novel, are
recollections of his own distraught state in September of 1906, which
had been brought about by the rebuff he had received from Liubov
Dmitrievna Blok, the poet's wife. Once again, therefore, Bely is stepping across the boundary between the novel's world and the world of
the reader as if the two were continuous. 46
Bely's description of the novel's genesis in his memoirs lends additional support to this inference. In a fragment that was published posthumously, he recalls that when he was trying to decide how to continue
The Silver Dove and to visualize Senator Ableukhov, he suddenly
heard the prolonged sound "u," as in the English "moon." To this sound
(subsequently appearing in the novel as an ominous background
noise), became attached a motif from Tchaikovsky's opera The Queen
of Spades (which is also invoked in the novel), and then
immediately there flared up before me a picture of the Neva . . . a
light blue silvery night and the square of the black carriage . . . it
was as though I began to run after the carriage in my thoughts,
trying to make out the one sitting in it. . . out of the carriage leapt
the little figure of the senator, exactly as I had sketched it in the

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novel; I made up nothing [italics mine]; I only spied on the actions of those appearing before me.
Bely explains that for weeks after the images of Petersburg first arose
before him, he felt totally enclosed in the alien and fantastical world
they created around him. "But I made up nothing . . . " h e repeats, "I
only listened, watched and read; the material was served up to me completely independently of me [italics mine], with an abundance exceeding my ability to accomodate it." And for a long time Bely felt that "the
limit between fiction and reality was lost" for him while he was working on the novel. 47
Bely's conception of artistic inspirationfor that is what seems to lie
behind his recollections of the novel's birthresembles closely a seizure of an artist by coercive cerebral play.48 (In fact, Bely acknowledged experiencing cerebral play in a letter from 1912, albeit not in relation to artistic creation.) 49 The appearance of images out of sounds is
part of the anthroposophical world view, and the recollection suggests
that Bely still held this view when he wrote the memoirs. Petersburg is
of course itself filled with numerous examples of alliteration that deserve to be studied from the point of view of anthroposophic teaching
about sound. 50 That Bely was deeply serious about viewing sounds as
agents of the spirit world is clear from his book-length treatise on the
subject, Glossaloliia, which he published in 1922, the year of his major
revision of Petersburg.
The impression that fiction and reality are a continuum for Bely is
also reinforced by the abrupt transition from his urban apostrophe to
the narrative that follows it. Nikolai Apollonovich suddenly appears
on the bridge that Bely, the narrator-author, said he had trod himself.
In the context of the apostrophe, this bridge, and presumably everything else in both the city and the novel, is a product of cerebral play.
Thus Nikolai Apollonovich on the narrator's bridge is also a product of
cerebral play, which, in turn, originates in the spiritual dimension hovering over and creating the city.
Other instances when the narrator intentionally merges fiction and
reality include his appearance on a street with his characters in the tellingly entitled chapter section, "Our role" (I, 49-50; 22), and at Apollon
Apollonovich's graveside (II, 163: 230-231). He also repeats that cerebral play applies to him and that it is responsible for the existence of his
characters and everything else in his story (II, 233: 265).
The special status of the city as straddling the boundary between the
ephemeral physical world and the transcendent world of spirit helps to
explain the narrator's reference to characters as shadows at the end of
Chapter I. Throughout the novel, in addition to calling the inhabitants

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of the St. Petersburg Islands a "crowd of shadows," the narrator also


stresses that the city's inhabitants become shadows, or that the city's
streets transform them into shadows (I, 35, 39, 49: 13, 16, 22, and so
on). Since they inhabit a dualistic city, it is appropriate for the citizens
to "flicker" between being fully present in the "plane of being" and
not. 5 1 It is like the disappearance of Shishnarfne repeated many times
over, but with the usual difference that there is no question of it happening through their own volition.
The question of the tie between the city and its inhabitants is also one
that serves well to illustrate the nature of Bely s abridgement of the first
version of the novel. Since he simply deleted numerous passages (adding a word or two only very rarely), several themes and image clusters
either disappeared or became muted in the later version. For example,
speaking of the deleterious influence of the Flying Dutchman on the
Russian people (an important symbol of transcendent creative will),
the narrator had originally explained that "During long years the
orthodox folk caroused here with the spectre: a bastard race came off
the islandsneither people, nor shadowssettling on the border between the two worlds that are alien to each other" (1916: p. 13). Similar
formulations had also appeared elsewhere in the novel. Moreover, the
theme of bastardry was linked to an image of "hellish dives" on the St.
Petersburg Islands, which was also deleted from the later version of the
novel. The effect of these cuts was to make the author s remaining comments more elliptical and the unstable, flickering "islanders" even more
elusive by virtue of the fact that their origins become more mysterious.
In turn, this forces the reader to a greater involvement in making sense
of the text.
-5In addition to embodying his coercive world view in the thematics
and in the texture of the prose, Bely also dramatizes it by means of a
highly original typographical device that appears often in Petersburg.
This is a series of twenty-eight passages scattered throughout the novel
whose left margin has been moved toward the center of the page, producing an indention. The depths of the indentions vary from seven to
twenty spaces (whereas the first line of a paragraph is indented only
three). Several passages have additional indentions a few spaces deep
within the primary ones, producing a steplike arrangement. In a number of cases, the passages are separated by only a few lines of normally
printed text, and comprise one continuous unit in terms of content. The
passages range in length from one line to seventeen, with seven being
the average. When Bely cut the original text of the novel by between
one-fourth and one-third to produce the 1922 edition, he deleted only

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three indented passages. His decision to save the bulk of them obviously
implies that he thought the device important.
In typographical layout alone, by appearing as embayments on the
page, the indented passages suggest intrusions into the text comparable
to the intrusions of the transcendent into human minds. Moreover, because of the blurring of the traditional division between narrator and
author in the novel, it is possible to see the indented passages as a typographical device representing the transcendent jogging the author's
writing hand, as it were, and, by implication, guiding it elsewhere in
the text. Even when the content of the passages is not radically different
from the surrounding text (which is more often than not the case), the
indented passages contain a sudden blossoming or expansion of a
thought or an image present in the context. Thus, the effect of thoughts
suddenly appearing "out of nowhere" is maintained.
Furthermore, because the reader is forced to read the pages containing the embayed passages in a special way, he experiences something
comparable, in the novel's terms, to a transcendent force acting on him.
The narrator-author's claim that his mental "creations" will be very real
for the reader is thereby reinforced. And on the level of the characters,
the indented passages function as another type of manifestation of the
transcendent's coercive role in their lives, evidence for which is abundant throughout the novel.
The content of the indented passages is fully in keeping with the intrusive form of the typographical device itself. Nearly half (thirteen)
can be said to deal in some way with the bomb and the events and symbols related to it. The novel's plot is built around the bomb, of course.
In addition to being literally a terrorist tool of assassination, the bomb
is also a central symbol of the coming apocalypse, and thus a synecdoche for the transcendent.
The bomb as such is not mentioned in all thirteen of the indented
passages. In several it is only implied: for instance, the passage dealing
with the stomach gases from which all the Ableukhovs suffer (II, 156:
226), and which foreshadow the rapid expansion of gases in the blast itself; or, to choose a different sort of example, the scene depicting Nikolai's revulsion at his father's physicality (II, 27-28:152), which was the
original motivation for his decision to murder his father.
The remaining fifteen indented passages address a variety of subjects. The first to occur in the novel is especially significant because it
deals with the Flying Dutchman, who, as the narrator describes it, sails
from the Baltic to conjure the spectral city of St. Petersburg out of the
clouds and mists of the Finnish marshes (I, 30: 10). The Flying Dutchman is another of Peter the Great's avatars in Petersburg, and as such is
justifiably thought of as one who has created something where there

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125

had been nothing. Such a conception of the Dutchman's and Peter's


roles is also clearly a variation on the theme of thoughts taking on a life
of their own outside the thinker's head. And, as a symbol of Peter, the
Dutchman acquires the aura of the world-historical forces still acting in
contemporary Russia two centuries after Peter. Through this association the Dutchman also foreshadows the Bronze Horseman's intrusive
flow into Dudkin's veins. In sum, the first indented passage is a brilliant
epitome of the coercive world view embodied in Petersburg as a whole.
Equally significant is the indented passage dealing with Dudkin's approach to Lippanchenko's house (II, 211: 259). Since Dudkin is under
the Bronze Horseman's influence and plans to murder Lippanchenko,
this passage invokes the same forces as the ones at work in the passage
about the Flying Dutchman.
There are also three indented passages dealing with the "white domino," which is the Christ symbol in the novel (I, 217, 219, II, 107:118,
119, 198). Even when this elusive figure appears in passages that are
not embayed, its relationship with the novel's characters has an intrusive nature. In different scenes the white domino seems to usurp the
identity of Likhutin (I, 217: 118), a policeman on the street (I, 229:
125), a certain "Misha" (II, 107: 198), and Nikolai Ableukhov (II, 146:
220). Where they do occur, the indentions on the page echo this sudden
movement of a divine force into the personas of the characters. The
white domino also recalls the red domino that Nikolai dons to terrorize
Sofia Petrovna. Both costumes recall the narrator-author's explanation
at the end of Chapter I that "cerebral play" is a "mask" for intrusive
forces. Quite obviously, the white domino is also an adumbration
of the end point of Bely's Solovievian teleologythe defeat of the
Antichrist and the Second Coming. But since the forces of evilthe
pan-Mongolian harbingers of the coming Antichristare temporarily
on the ascendant, it is fitting that for the time being the Christ
figure should appear as pale and impotent. Thus, these indented passages can also be seen to function as microcosms of the novel's macrocosmos.
There is one cluster of three overtly metaliterary indented passages
that appear on one page and are linked internally (II, 223: 265). The
"author" speaks in them of the relativity of time, and of his having got
lost in the "spiritual spaces" of his characters. On the one hand, this unmasking of the author's presence in an indented passage reflects his
seeming suzerainty over the text; on the other, his revelation of impotence before time and the spiritual dimensions that lie behind his characters raises doubts that he is really in control of what he is writing.
The three passages can be understood, therefore, as a reminder of the
author's awareness that he is the spiritual realm's amanuensis.

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Andrei Bely

The remaining passages deal with a range of topics. One has Apollon
Apollonovich contemplating flowers. He does not distinguish varieties
and refers to all by one name (I, 47-48: 21). This maniacal projection of
a fixed category is a reflection of his general rigidity in the novel, which
is, in turn, an echo of the inflexibility Bely associated with "the Mongolian task" that the senator is unwittingly fulfilling. Another passage
deals with the dirty napkins and a washtub which Anna Petrovna can
see out of her hotel room window (II, 225: 266). This image is associated
with the problematic sexuality in the Ableukhov family that leads
to Nikolais patricidal plan (to which I shall return below). In a like
manner, associations can be found between each remaining passage
and some important theme or symbol cluster in the novel, all of which
ultimately point to the great apocalyptic unity underlying Petersburg
as a whole. Similarly indented passagesexpressive of comparable
cosmic intrusionsappear in works Bely wrote after Petersburg, including Kotik Letaev, Notes of an Eccentric, and The Baptized Chinaman.52
-6-

Despite the abundant formal and thematic evidence in Petersburg for


the inference that Bely saw himself as something akin to the transcendent's agent or tool, Bely the historical author appears to his readers as
one who used language in a deliberate and highly original manner.
With a sufficiently deterministic world view, it is of course possible to
see literally every human deed as being controlled by an otherworldly
realm. From such a viewpoint, an unusually inventive use of language
may be less the result of an original mind's individual effort than evidence of inspiration from the beyond. This is a matter that cannot be
resolved. Perhaps the most useful approach would simply be to examine the metalinguistic dimension of Petersburgwhat Bely implies
about language in itwithout trying to pass final judgment on the author's underlying views.
The importance of this theme is signaled by the novel's opening with
an implicit question about the adequacy of language for the definition
of reality:
Your Excellencies, Your Worships, Your Honors, and Citizens!
What is this Russian Empire of ours?
This Russian Empire of ours is a geographic entity, which
means: part of a certain planet. And this Russian Empire includes: in the first placeGreat, Little, White, and Red Rus; in
the second placethe Kingdoms of Georgia, Poland, Kazan, and
Astrakhan; in the third place, it includes . . . Butet cetera, et cetera, et cetera. (1,11:1)

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Here Bely's narrator demonstrates the uselessness of the conventional,


chancery language of official documents by posing a crucial question of
world-historical dimensions and then, in effect, failing to answer it (in
a voice that recalls a Gogolian skaz). The ellipses following the list of
kingdoms that are part of the Empire suggest that in frustration he
abandons this particular linguistic line of approach in defining what
the Russian Empire is.
The narrator then turns to listing the types of cities that are found in
the Empire, which leads him to the differences between St. Petersburg
and Moscow. By using conventional categories and terms, and by relying on a humorous, simple-minded, and most important, an eminently
logical language, the narrator comes to the (intentionally) absurd conclusion that St. Petersburg does not exist:
But if you continue to insist on the utterly preposterous legend
about the existence of a Moscow population of a million-and-ahalf, then you will have to admit that the capital is Moscow, for
only capitals have a population of a million-and-a-half . . . And
in conformance with this preposterous legend, it will be apparent
that the capital is not Petersburg.
But if Petersburg is not the capital, then there is no Petersburg.
It only appears to exist. (I, 12-13: 2)
The narrator gets equally tangled up in his attempts to define Nevsky
Prospect in St. Petersburg by using language conventionally and logically. He twice breaks off his definition of it because the linguistic
means he is employing fail him: "The houses that form its lateral limits
arehmmm . . . yes: . . . for the public"; likewise, "Nevsky Prospect is
rectilineal (just between us), because it is a European prospect; and any
European prospect is not merely a prospect, but (as I have already said)
a prospect that is European, because . . . yes . . . "
The Prologue ends with the narrator's conclusion that St. Petersburg
does indeed exist, although, significantly, what defines it as existent is
language. Anticipating Shishnarfne's description of Petersburg as being
the point of contact between terrestrial and otherworldly realms, the
narrator describes the capital as it appears on maps:
in the form of two small circles . . . with a black dot in the center;
and from precisely this mathematical point, which has no dimension, it proclaims forcefully that it exists: from here, from this
very point surges and swarms the printed book; from this invisible point speeds the official circular.
The rest of Petersburg is de facto Bely's answer to the question with
which he begins the Prologue. Thus, in the context of the novel as a

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whole, the Prologue emerges as an instance of Bely's ironic treatment of


the problem of romantic irony. Although the locus of the novel's action
is the capital city and its spiritual dimensions, St. Petersburg is clearly a
synecdoche for the Russian Empire as a whole (the continuity of concerns between this novel and The Silver Dove, which takes place in the
provinces, supports such an inference). The form Bely's definition of
the reality of Russia takes is his highly unconventional and antilogical,
or better to say, poetic use of language.
The inadequacy of received, established, and "worn out" language
as Bely described it in the essay "The Magic of Words"is a theme that
recurs in the body of the novel as well. The fundamental problem with
conventionally used language is its ability to generate a false world that
acts as a screen of illusions separating the individual from true reality.
Apollon Apollonovich's attitude toward language is, as one might
expect, determined by his singularly inflexible character. His governmental role is in a sense equal to his output of various documents (II,
164-165: 231-232). And his attitude toward communication is the opposite of the narrator's allusive, elliptical style in much of the novel. In
the senator's view, "Every verbal exchange had to have a goal, plain
and straight as a line. He relegated everything else to tea drinking and
smoking what he called 'butts' " (I, 224: 122). His inclusion of all flowers under one name is a glaring instance of the inadequacy of his linguistic resources, and a damning example of his gravitation toward abstractiona great evil, according to Bely in "The Magic of Words." The
futility of his activities in the face of the great cosmic events looming
over Russia and the rest of the world is painfully clear, and is underscored by the fact that on a spiritual level he is actually one of the unwitting reactionary minions of pan-Mongolism. As the narrator says of
him, "People of that type always defend themselves with phrases like
'as is well known,' when nothing is known, or, science teaches us,'
when science does not teach" (II, 194: 249).
The same farcical inadequacy of clich-defined worlds typifies Bely's
satirical depiction of a political conservative and a professor of statistics at the Tsukatovs' ball (I, 195-196: 105-106).
However, the most striking instance of an individual blinded by linguistic limitations is Likhutin. Because of them he literally goes insane
when he is confronted by his wife's irresponsible behavior:
The horrible lot of an ordinary, normal man whose life is determined by dictionaries of easily understandable words and acts.
The acts draw him on, like a fragile vessel rigged out with words
and gestures. If the fragile vessel runs aground on the submerged
rock of inapprehensibility, it is wrecked, and the sailor drowns.

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At life's slightest jolt, ordinary people are deprived of reason.


(I, 241: 132)
The narrator then describes the pain that Likhutin has been feeling in
his head since his wife's "incomprehensible" behavior began, and comments that the "wall" confronting Likhutin was penetrable, although
not for him.
Dudkin, who is the most insightful of all the characters, and has a
special relationship to Christ and an interest in the occult, also evinces
an awareness of what a vital, as opposed to an ossified use of language
entails. Specifically, he instructs Nikolai Ableukhov in the difference
between an allegory and a symbol:
Allegory is a symbol that has become common currency. For example, the usual understanding of your "beside yourself." A symbol is your act of appealing to what you experienced there, over
the tin. A more appropriate term would be the term: pulsation of
the elemental body. (II, 82:184)
The "tin" in question is the bomb. It causes Nikolai to experience a bizarre state that Dudkin identifies by means of theosophical-anthroposophical terminology.
An avoidance of all "common currency" typifies Bely's own practice
in the novel as a whole. In fact, the work is unlike any other in Russian
literature. One brief example will illustrate how Bely even manages to
"make new" a common wordthe adverb "suddenly" (vdrug), a special
favorite of Dostoevsky's, whose works echo throughout Petersburg.
Bely literally brings this overused word to life by personifying it (and
by transforming it into a noun): he speaks of it "creeping" behind the
reader and producing the sensation that a mob is ready to fall upon his
back. Moreover, this "word"
feeds on cerebral play. It gladly devours all vileness of thought . . .
"Suddenly," like a fattened yet unseen dog, begins to precede you,
producing in an observer the impression that you are screened
from view by an invisible cloud. This is what your "suddenly" is.
(I, 52: 24)
The narrator's association of this familiar word with the concept of "cerebral play" makes the word into a manifestation of an aspect of the
transcendent. By implication, the other words used by the narrator are
similarly enlivened.
Thus the problem of romantic irony in Petersburg is indeed resolved
by Bely's revaluation of the act of writing, as was the problem of alter-

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Andrei Bely

nating lyrical and third-person narration. All of the narrator-author's


seeming revelations about his role in creating the text in fact show only
that he is the tool of transcendent forces.
-7One central passage in Petersburg voices Bely's conception of Russian national destiny and its relation to apocalyptic, world-historical
events. Bely apparently considered the passage to be so important that
he did not make a single change in it when he revised the rest of the
novel. It serves well, therefore, as a point of departure for examining
the nature of the transcendent forces, which, in their trajectory from
the world of the spirit, end as cerebral play in man.
The narrator's peroration 5 3 is inspired by Falconet's famous equestrian statue of Peter I, which stands in St. Petersburg's Senate Square.
This monument already had a symbolic aura, of course, before Bely
made it into one of the central symbols in the novel. Pushkin's long narrative poem The Bronze Horseman (1833) makes use of the statue as the
genius loci of the city, and Bely builds on this tradition: 5 4
From that fecund time when the metallic Horseman had galloped hither. . . Russia was divided in two. Divided in two as well
were the destinies of the fatherland. Suffering and weeping, Russia was divided in two, until the final hour.
Russia, you are like a steed! Your front hooves have leaped far
off into the darkness, into the void, while your two rear hooves
are firmly planted in the granite soil. (I, 124: 64)
Bely's triumphant conclusion is that Russia will heal her split destiny:
"there will be a leap across history." It is not completely clear what this
"leap" means; it may refer to a profound revolutionary upheaval during which Russia will abandon her past. (It is also possible that this image replicates one Bely used some years earlier to indicate Nietzsche's
successful "leap" across the chasm of madness and death to immortality.) 55 In any event, it is certain that the result will be catastrophic. Geomorphological changes will sweep the land: "The earth shall be cleft.
The very mountains shall be thrown down by the cataclysmic earthquake, and because of that earthquake our native plains will everywhere come forth humped. . . . As for Petersburg, it will sink." Next
comes the all-important Asiatic invasion:
In those days all the peoples of the earth will rush forth from
their dwelling places. Great will be the strife, strife the like of which
has never been seen in this world. The yellow hordes of Asians
will set forth from their age-old abodes and will encrimson the

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fields of Europe in oceans of blood. There will be, oh yes, there


willTsushima! There will bea new Kalka!
Kulikovo Field, I await you!
And on that day the final Sun will rise in radiance over my native land. Oh, Sun, if you do not rise, then, oh Sun, the shores of
Europe will sink beneath the heavy Mongol heel, and foam will
curl over those shores. Earthborn creatures once more will sink to
the depths of the oceans, into chaos, primordial and long-forgotten.
Arise, oh Sun! (1,125-126: 65)
The vision is clearly of a Solovievian apocalypse, but with certain
anthroposophic additions. The sinking and elevation of land masses recalls the emphasis Steiner placed on the destruction of Atlantis and
comparable catastrophic events as markers of transitions between
great epochs in man's history. 56 One of the names Christ has in anthroposophy is "Sun Being." Moreover, in the novel's manuscript Bely had
originally continued the sentence "And on that day the final Sun will
rise in radiance over my native land " with a phrase that was subsequently deleted: "that is our Lord, Christ." 57 And although the Antichrist is not referred to by name, his advent is clearly implied by the
Asiatic invasion which, according to Soloviev, was the first of the series of major events that would culminate in Armageddon and the Second Coming.
The actual historical events of September and October 1905Russia's defeat by Japan in the East, and revolution at home, both of which
comprise the novel's backgroundcould only confirm Bely's belief that
Soloviev's prophecy was literally coming true. Bely's letters to Blok at
the time he was beginning to work on Petersburg support this impression. 58 Thus his fixation on pan-Mongolism in the novel can be understood as an additional reflection of his view that fiction and reality are
continuous. In this context, it makes perfect sense that he would have
chosen Asia as one of the major symbols for the transcendent in Petersburg,59
However, despite the imminent destruction of Russia and the West at
the hands of Asia, the various manifestations of things Asian do not
horrify or revolt the narrator. In fact, in the passage about the invasion
quoted above, the narrator welcomes the final struggle of good and evil
by invoking the fourteenth-century Russian victory over the Mongols
at Kulikovo Field. This attitude reveals a major characteristic of Petersburg that has not been sufficiently appreciated in the criticismnamely,
that Bely has transvalued evil into something closer to good. The reason for this is of course the final outcome: all intermediate suffering on
earth is like Milton's "fortunate fall"it will be redeemed and given its
true meaning by the Second Coming.

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Andrei Bely

This view evolves naturally from both the Biblical Apocalypse and
Soloviev's "Tale." It may also be that Bely s conception of the "yellow
peril" was influenced by another widely known eschatological work of
Soloviev'sa poem entitled "Pan-Mongolism" (written in 1894, first
published posthumously in 1905). It begins:
Pan-Mongolism! Although the word is strange,
It caresses my hearing,
It is as if it were full of portent
Of the grand fate ordained by God.
(Panmongolizm! Khot'slovo diko,/No mne laskaetslukh ,/Kak by
predvestiem velikoi/Sud'biny
Bozhiei polno.) Bely's transvaluation of
evil is fully in keeping with Soloviev's formulation (although he does
not stress the theme of divine punishment as much as Soloviev does in
the rest of the poem). Bely also preserves the poem's privileged, divine
point of view about events on earth.
To the limited extent that characters react consciously to Asiatic and
other manifestations of the transcendent, however, they are routinely
frightened by them. Dudkin's experiences are especially nightmarish.
And even the narrator descends at times to the "human" level of the
characters, from whose point of view the horror of existence just prior
to the apocalypse is quite palpable. 60
The generally dark atmosphere pervading the novel represents another significant departure on Bely's part from the spirit of anthroposophy. Although Steiner describes cosmic catastrophes and the struggle
between good and evil in his works, the dominant tone of his writings
and his world view is optimistic. This lightness of tone is largely absent
from Petersburg, for several reasons. As Bely acknowledged in his
memoir Between Two Revolutions, Petersburg is filled with recollections of his extraordinarily tormenting affair with Blok's wife in 1906.
This appears in the narrator-author's own intrusive digressions, as well
as in Nikolai Apollonovich's involvement with Sofia Petrovna Likhutina. In addition to this personal reason, Bely's Solovievian apocalypticism, although conflated with anthroposophical beliefs, still plays
a more important role than does Steiner's brighter cosmology. Finally,
Bely's fatalismevident in all of his earlier belletristic workswould
necessarily lead him to stress catastrophe and coercion in human existence in preference to anthroposophy's triumphant image of the successfully self-transcending clairvoyant. Even in Kotik Letaev, Bely's
most orthodox anthroposophical work, the protagonist's anguished experiences probably represent more of a continuum with the author's
own past views and experiences than a faithful reflection of Steiners
teachings.

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The visions of the major characters occur during unusual states of


consciousness, giving the reader glimpses of the forces at work beyond
the visible, physical world. The recipients of the visions themselves
rarely carry the memory of what they saw into their normal or waking
lives. Here, as with the narrator's discussions of cognition, the reader
again shares the narrator's perspective on the nature of the transcendent. Together, they rise above the characters' experiences and view
them with a measure of detachment born of deeper understanding.
The senator's vision takes place as he drifts off to sleep. The entire
scene is Bely's highly imaginative dramatization of an experience common to both theosophy and anthroposophy, namely, the "astral voyage." According to Steiner, one aspect of man's spiritual dimension (the
"astral body") leaves the physical body during sleep and journeys into a
spiritual realm from which it draws sustenance. 61 To provide access to
the transcendent, Bely has a "corridor" form at the crown of the senator's head and extend into an "abyss," called the senator's "second space"
(1,174: 93). Apollon Apollonovich has the impression that "something"
(nechto) sitting in his brain can both look into this other dimension and
travel into it.
It is tempting to infer that this conduit is somehow related to the intrusive forces that produced the creative cerebral play in the senator's
mind. During the first phase of his journey, the senator appears to be
moving through a series of rooms, accompanied by his bulldog; earlier,
the senator's cerebral play was shown to have created the house in
which he lives with his son. Thus, the first phase of Apollon Apollonovich's "voyage" is colored by the construct of the forces intruding into
his mind in the beginning of the novel. More important, however, is
that in a "hall" he encounters a Mongol he had once seen in Tokyo, but
who is also his son Nikolai. Consequently, the senator's spiritual self is
shown to be in contact with a harbinger of the apocalypse. It follows,
of course, that if the son is an Asiatic, then this racial trait must be
shared by his fatherwhich is exactly what is revealed in Nikolai's vision.
The coercive effect of the transcendent shows up in the senator's exchange with the Mongol. In response to the senator's indignant demand
for some explanation, the Mongol responds with two apparently contradictory statements: "According to an emergency [literally: extraordinary] regulation!" and "There are neither paragraphs nor regulations!" (1,176: 94-95). These remarks are too brief to warrant extensive
analysis. However, they can be reconciled as two faces of apocalyptic
destruction. The absence of codes or regulations might be related to the
revolution threatening to sweep away established norms. The "extraordinary regulation," by contrast, evokes the reactionary policies of the

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government, and thus seems to be linked to the theme of rigidity that is


an echo of the spiritual mortification associated with the Antichrist.
The senator and his world are caught between these two forces, which
in a larger context are different sides of the same apocalyptic coin. Reaction and revolutionas they exist for mortals on the terrestrial
planeappear essentially identical from the point of view of the transcendent. Implicit in such a conception is that Bely is of course devaluing collective human activity in the face of a grand cosmic design.
Within the context of the novel as a whole, rigidity is deliberately assigned to Apollon Apollonovich, who is its most obvious representative. Significantly, ice had a formative influence on his character. Once
during his youth, the narrator explains, the senator almost froze to
death in the countryside; he felt someone's cold fingers thrust into his
chest and stroke his heart. Then this icy hand began to lead Apollon
Apollonovich up the steps of his career (1,104-105: 52-53). There is no
explanation for this strange event, but the hand's intrusion clearly resembles the intrusion of transcendent forces into human consciousness.
With this in mind, Dolgopolov's identification of a parallel between
Apollon Apollonovich's experience and an event in Soloviev's "Tale" is
especially fruitful. At the crucial moment when he accepts Satan's patronage, the individual who becomes the Antichrist feels that a "sharp
icy stream" enters him. 62 But in keeping with the transvaluation of
good and evil in Petersburg, the senator is more an amusingly grotesque reactionary and pathetic old man in the grip of forces that he
cannot understand, than the self-conscious incarnation of Satanic evil.
The senator's association with ice, and his idiosyncratic rigidity in
private life as well as in his political views, might be supposed to make
him something like the Western pole in the novelthe opposite of the
pan-Mongolian East. However, the conception of the novel as a portrayal of a dialectical struggle between the rational West and the irrational East is not supported by the text. As Bely commented in his
memoirs, Soloviev's pan-Mongolism, a symbol for "darkness" and the
"internal swamping of consciousness," can be found in both West and
East. In the West it is characterized by an impulse born of "dark reaction, numeration and mechanization" that substitutes for the new revolutionary, spiritual, and creative impulse in mankind. 6 3 Consequently,
the same blurring of distinctions that typifies Bely s views of good and
evil is also likely to affect the traditional conceptions of East and West
in the novel, despite the image of Russia at a crossroads in the narrator's paean to Peter's statue. As I suggested in the preceding chapter,
Bely had already abandoned the problematic necessity of choosing between East and West in The Silver Dove, despite his apparent original
intention to pose such a choice. Thus even geography in Petersburg
emerges as laden with eschatological significance.

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After encountering the Mongol, Apollon Apollonovich's astral body


enters another dimension in the spiritual realm and has an experience
that subtly links the entire Ableukhov family drama to anthroposophic
teaching, and, ultimately, the apocalypse as well. The senator feels as if
he has flown out through the breach in his head into "pretemporal
gloom." There, he senses
a form of some kind (reminiscent of the bottom of a bathtub),
filled with stinking abomination. The sensations began splashing
about in the bathtub with the dungy water. The sensations now
stuck to the vessel. Consciousness struggled to break away, but
sensations were pulling a heavy something. (1,177: 95)
Immediately after this passage, the narrator states that consciousness
saw itself inhabiting a little yellow old man, which links the foulness
convincingly with Apollon Apollonovich.
The significance of this bizarre association becomes apparent only
later in the novel, after the return of the senator's adulterous wife to St.
Petersburg. The narrator explains that the Ableukhov "domestic
hearth" had become "a sewer of abomination." And now that Anna
Petrovna is back, the senator realizes that he must return to this
"abomination" (II, 191: 247). The foulness had its origin in the sexual
relationship between the senator and his wife. Describing their wedding night, the narrator states that Apollon Apollonovich committed
an act of legally sanctioned rape. The rape had continued for years,
and Nikolai was engendered during this period. As a result, Nikolai
himself had become "a composite of disgust, fright, and lechery."
These associations suggest that the Ableukhov family drama has its
roots in the spiritual realm. Lust, the dominant disruptive force in the
familywhich is passed from the senator to his wife and sonis
shown by means of the image of foulness that the senator encounters
during his astral voyage to be related to something like an incarnation
in the spiritual realm: the senator's consciousness senses a malodorous
fluid substance, and gradually becomes attached to it; this fluid turns
out to be the senator's corporeal self.
Because the senator's vision has several parallels to anthroposophic
teaching, his experiences should not be read in the reverse order of his
reliving in a dream familial problems over which he agonized during
waking hours. In anthroposophy, influence moves primarily in one directionfrom the spirit world to man. According to Steiner, the powerful human passions including sexuality became a part of man's nature
during the so-called "Moon cycle" of cosmic evolution, when the "astral
body" itself became a component of man. During this phase of man's
and the earth's evolution, man first developed the ability to sense the
world outside himself. He also developed upper and lower parts to his

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body, and what had been "organs of movement" in his previous state of
being became "rudiments of hands." 6 4
The adventure the senator has is an imaginative and somewhat humorous recapitulation of these events. The narrator describes the senator's consciousness as existing in "pretemporal gloom" before it senses
something outside itself by means of extensions of itself that are like
arms. Moreover, the stuff of which man and the earth were fashioned
during Steiner's ancient Moon cycle is rather like the fluid which the
senator's consciousness encounters, albeit without being revolting. It
was "even denser than the water of today" and a "viscous element"; it
was like "turf, slime or spinach"; and the beings of that age were like
"Jelly fish and slimy creatures such as are still to be seen today." 6 5
In anthroposophy, the astral body, if not controlled by higher spiritual faculties, can have a destructive effect on the whole of man. The
Moon cycle thus represents something akin to a fall in human cosmic
history. 66 Steiner did not consider human sexuality to be intrinsically
evil. But an "important proposition" of his teachingand one that is directly relevant to the senator's situation in Petersburgis that "the
higher, more noble divine forces have an affinity with theapparentlylower forces of human nature." The "forces of reproduction" are
"base" only when man misuses them, "when he compels them to serve
his passions and instincts." But when man "ennobles them through the
insight that a divine spiritual power lies in them . . . [he places] these
forces at the service of the development of the earth, and through his
forces of reproduction he will carry out the intentions of the higher entities." 67
This is precisely the task that the senator's sexuality fulfills in the
novel, as can be shown by tracing the connections among sexuality, Nikolai, and the bomb around which the novel's plot is built. Even the
whole city and its inhabitants are touched by a sexual aura, which, in
the context of anthroposophy, has its origin in the transcendent. As I
mentioned, the inhabitants of the islands were called a "bastard race" in
the first version of the novel. Bely s oblique reference to his involvement with Blok's wife also evokes the theme of lust, but on the level of
the novel's narrator-author. Moreover, his frequent references to the
"waters teeming with bacilli" in the city's canals, and to the penetrating
moisture of its atmosphere, recall the foul liquids of the senator's vision
and family life, and suggest that the entire city is literally saturated
with Moon cycle influence.
That the senator's multivalent dream voyage consists of two
phasesthe Mongol, and the bathtubis suggested by his double
awakening: the narrator refers to "a double dream" (I, 178: 95). The
link between the two is the apocalyptic destruction that the Mongol
and the senator's lust both imply.

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Nikolai undergoes a spiritual adventure much like his father's, and is


also shown to be in thrall to the apocalypse. It is interesting that in the
first and second editions of the novel, the narrator overtly identifies "a
distant astral voyage" and "dreaming" as "the same thing" (1916: p. 265:
165). In the 1928 edition the reference to "astral voyage" was dropped;
instead, the narrator speaks of a "distant wandering" being the same as
dreaming (II, 49).
Nikolai's vision also begins with a corridor that opens onto "measureless immensity" (II, 49: 165). Similarly, the Mongolian theme is
evoked soon thereafter by the appearance before Nikolai of a "hallowed Turanian." But before this figure has a chance to open its mouth,
as it were, and give Nikolai instruction in the task he must fulfill, Nikolai himself "fantasizes" 68 that he too is an old Turanian who has become
incarnated in the hereditary Russian nobility. He believes his task is
to shake everything to its very foundation. The Ancient Dragon
was to feed on tainted blood, and to consume everything in
flame. The ancient Orient had rained a hail of bombs on our age.
And Nikolai Apollonovich was an old Turanian bomb. (II, 50:
166)
However, the ancient Turanian disagrees with Nikolai and proclaims:
"Not the destruction of Europe but its immutability."
The Turanian's correction establishes that the Mongolian task is to
promote inflexibility in all aspects of life. This statement recalls one of
the remarks the senator heard in his own vision, and, as a result, "legitimizes" his own rigidity as well as Nikolai's labors in constructing a vast,
rigorous, and apparently Kantian philosophical system, which the narrator mentions at different points in the novel. The efforts of both father and son thus turn out to be manifestations of the earliest phase of a
Solovievian eschatology.
It goes without saying that Kant's views on metaphysics were antithetical to Bely's conception of symbolism, as well as to anthroposophy. 69 In fact, anthroposophy still claims to have overcome the limitations that Kant imposed on knowledge. Moreover, outside the
context of the apocalypse as a whole, there is nothing appealing about
pan-Mongolism as such. So the ancient Turanian's implicit rejection of
Nikolai's patricide, and presumably, of all revolutionary destruction, is
not the final word on the matter. Within the context of the novel as a
whole, the bomb is clearly a prfiguration of the imminent apocalypse,
and as such cannot be denied. But as a harbinger of temporarily triumphant evil, pan-Mongolism would have to be opposed to revolutionary
change because time will inevitably bring the downfall of the Antichrist. Perhaps this is the limited point of view from which Nikolai's
Turanian mentor speaks. It is not clear how the statement the Mongol

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in the senator's vision makes about the absence of norms can be reconciled with the ancient Turanian's more narrowly focused message, unless these two representatives of the spirit world are speaking from two
different points of viewthe first from a broader one encompassing
the apocalypse in its entirety. Indeed, such a tactic is not unlike Bely's
use of multiple view points in the Second Symphony in order to give a
multifaceted perspective on some topic or event. In the same w a y that
the different perspectives combined in the Second Symphony to provide a full picture of true reality, so do the apparently contradictory remarks that the son and the father hear in the spirit world.
The visions of father and son reveal a profound identity between
them, which is all the more striking since on the surface they are depicted
as being total antagonists. By showing that they share a common
ground in a spiritual realm, Bely has suggested a reason for their psychological similarity, and more important, has given the reader a
glimpse of an aspect of the all-embracing unity that is the highest reality
in the world of the novel. He also illustrated the theoretical formulation I cited above: "I, you, heare one . . . father, mother, and son are
one," from the essay in which he discussed h o w symbolizing activity
gradually reveals the unity of all in the Symbol.
Although the Turanian in the vision condemns a violent destruction
of the existing order, the identification of Nikolai with the b o m b remains. Just before he awakens, the narrator says that Nikolai "understood, that he himself was a bomb. And he burst with a boom" (II, 53:
168). He is not just under pan-Mongolian control, therefore, but seems
to be an unwitting agent of the apocalypse as a whole.
In a sense, then, the senator has fathered a bomb. In fact the whole
Ableukhov family is the unwitting victim of transcendent forces moving the world toward apocalyptic catastrophe. This was the implication of a passage that was radically abbreviated in the 1922 and 1928
editions of Petersburg. After describing the senator's catalog of possessions, the narrator says of the Ableukhov home:
In the lacquered house the storms of life flowed noiselessly; nonetheless, the storms of life flowed destructively here . . . they tore
the air out of the hoarse throat with a stream of poisonous fluids;
and some kind of cerebral games whirled around in the consciousness of the inhabitants, like thick vapors in hermetically
sealed tanks. (1916: p. 7)
Many important thematic strands are tied together in these canceled
lines. The b o m b image appears in the moving vapors sealed under pressure. In turn, they are connected with cerebral play, which evokes the
entire process of creative cognition operating in the novel. The Ableu-

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khov family drama is implied by "storms of life" as well as by "poisonous fluids," which recall the foul liquids associated with the senator's
lust. Furthermore, the entire scene between Dudkin and Shishnarfne is
anticipated in the image of something erupting out of a hoarse throat.
Despite this deletion, however, the association of family, lust, and
the bomb remains in the later versions of the novel, and explains how
the Sofia Petrovna subplot is linked to the main, patricidal plot in Petersburg. Nikolai's offer to the revolutionaries to kill his father was motivated by her rebuff to his sexual advances. He felt deeply humiliated,
and translated his disgust with himself into a desire to destroy his father. As the narrator explains, Nikolai was moved by his sense of
shame about the physical act that conceived him: "He transferred the
shame of his conception to his father" (II, 161: 229). In a sense, Nikolai
inherited his father's problematic sexuality, and Sofia Petrovna, in unleashing the problem, becomes a participant in the appearance of the
bomb. Her role as an unwitting agent of apocalyptic destruction is further suggested by her acting as a courier with Lippanchenko's note instructing Nikolai to proceed with his promised patricide.
This intricate chain of causes that goes back in time before Nikolai
was even born recalls the similarly involved sequences of causes and effects that led Baroness Todrabe Graaben to slap Darialsky in The Silver
Dove and thus propel him irrevocably toward the Doves. In Petersburg
the ultimate causes are lost in even more remote times and dimensions.
If the Baroness is ultimately the product of Peter the Great's drastic
Westernizing changes in Russia two hundred years before, the Ableukhovs' (and perhaps all Russians') problematic sexuality originates in
millennia long past, according to Steiners cosmogony. In his next novel,
Kotik Letaev, Bely will go even further in this direction and will make
an investigation of the cosmic origins of his (autobiographical) protagonist the work's central concern.
Of all the characters in Petersburg, Dudkin has the most striking encounters with representatives of the transcendent. Shishnarfne identifies himself as a Persian, so he is part of the generalized Asian presence
in the novel. Moreover, he reveals that Dudkin will commit an act that
was preordained in the "fourth-dimensional" spirit world, indicating
that his life is controlled from there: "you are also registered there. The
passport has been made out inside you. You yourself will put your signature on it inside you by performing an extravagant little action" (II,
121: 207). This act turns out to be the murder of Lippanchenko, which
is also the direct consequence of the Bronze Horseman literally intruding into Dudkin. After Shishnarfne withdraws into Dudkin's throat,
the dismounted statue of Peter breaks down the door to Dudkin's room

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(recalling Shishnarfne's words about the inhabitant from the fourth dimension whom not even a door can stop), and, melting, "He poured
into his veins" (II, 133: 214). When Dudkin accomplishes the murder,
he reveals that he was under the statue's influence by assuming the pose
that Peter has in Falconet's monument astride Lippanchenko's corpse
(II, 219: 264).
Despite this apparent total coercion, Dudkin does make a remark
suggesting that he may have a measure of free will even if he cannot
embody it in action. When he approaches Lippanchenko's house Dudkin twice has the thought that it is not right to kill someone so simply,
on suspicion alone and without explanation (II, 211: 259). However,
given the cognitive schema that rules over the novel, it may be that
even this ethical thought was implanted in Dudkin from the beyond.
The bronze statue's role as a symbol of apocalyptic destruction, and
Dudkin's consequent involvement in events adumbrating the apocalypse, are implied by the narrator's statement that "Everything that had
happened along with everything that was coming was merely spectral
transiences of ordeals to be endured until the last trumpet sounded" (II,
1 3 2 - 3 3 : 214). In the same passage, the narrator identifies Dudkin with
the protagonist of Pushkin's The Bronze Horseman and revaluates his
experiences, so that what may seem to be personal tragedy becomes a
necessary step toward the final transfiguration of the world: "Alexander IvanychEvgenynow understood for the first time that he
had been running in vain for a century. . . and in his wake came a rumbling without the slightest wrath . . . He was forgiven" (II, 132: 214).
This is an excellent example of the transvaluation of good and evil in
the novel as a whole.
Like Apollon Apollonovich and Nikolai, Dudkin also has visions of
Asiatics. He sees Tatars and Japanese when asleep, and a "fateful face"
on a piece of dark yellow wallpaper even while awake (1,114: 58). But
in contrast to the other two characters, Dudkin is not a passive witness, and attempts to struggle against the visitations. Moreover, the
Mongol who appears on his wall "would fix a gaze full of hatred" at him
(I, 118: 60). This antipathy may have arisen because, as Shishnarfne
mentioned, Dudkin had at first advocated summoning the Mongols
to hasten the destruction, but later he took fright at this idea (II, 115:
203).
Dudkin's unique status is also signaled by the narrator, who, shortly
after the important passages dealing with Russia's destiny, says about
him: "At this point human destinies were distinctly illuminated for
Alexander Ivanovich. He could perceive: what would be, what never
was to be . . . but he was afraid to glance into his own destiny" (I, 126:
65). Even though he has special insights into the world order, Dudkin is
of course on a lower step of awareness than the narrator. In a sense, this

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is confirmed by his fear of summoning the Mongols while in Helsingfors, prior to the events described in Petersburg. In other words, he was
incapable of rising to a Solovievian welcome to pan-Mongolism.
But how can one explain Dudkin's unique status, and the difference
between his involvement with the transcendent and that of the Ableukhovs? The answer may be that they are tied to, or under the dominant
influence of different stages of the apocalypse. During his visit to Nikolai, Dudkin reveals that he thinks of himself as an agent-provocateur
"in the name of a great idea; and then again not in the name of an idea,
but of something in the air . . . I can call it a general thirsting after
death" (I, 117: 60). A few lines down, he describes a certain habit of his
that may explain this remark. During times of insomnia, and, significantly, when the Mongolian face is staring balefully at him, Dudkin assumes the pose of the crucifix against a wall. This tentative association
with Christ grows later in the novel during Dudkin's meeting with Lippanchenko, when Dudkin tries to impress the latter with his credo that
"the Revolution was a hypostasis" (II, 95; 191). This formulation can be
taken to mean that the revolution is the unique essence or person of the
Godhead, an idea that was not limited to Petersburg, or even to Bely
for that matter. It foreshadows the famous appearance of Christ at the
head of the revolutionary detachment in Blok's long narrative poem
The Twelve (1918), as well as Christ's association with the Revolution
in Bely's own Christ is Risen (Khristos Voskres, 1918), written in response to Blok.
Dudkin's association with Christ may shed light on his notion that he
is acting in accordance with a general death wish, and on his former advocacy of the destruction of culture. Both are reflections of the coming
apocalypse, which in turn can be seen as a reenactment of Christ's passion and resurrection on a worldwide scale. As a result, Dudkin is spiritually closer to a later stage in Soloviev's prophecy than are the Ableukhovs. They are motivated by harbingers of the Antichrist, while
Dudkin is associated with the beginning of the victory of good over
evil. The Mongol's hatred of Dudkin may be the result of the narrow
perspective that evil has on good, especially at a time when evil is temporarily on the ascendant. This sort of interpretation is perfectly in
keeping with anthroposophy, with its frequent descriptions of the staggered development of different branches or even individual members
of the human race at the same period in cosmic time.
The friction between Dudkin and the Mongol is atypical of the role
of Asia in the novel as a whole. As many have noted, a broad range of
details shows how much the other characters and St. Petersburg itself,
as perceived by the narrator, are saturated with a pan-Asiatic influence. Sofia Petrovna wears a kimono and decorates her rooms with

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Japanese prints (I, 81-82: 39). Her husband serves in a regiment whose
honorary chief is the King of Siam (I, 87: 42-43). Lippanchenko wears
yellow and seems to have something Mongolian about him (I, 56-57:
26). An automobile with Orientals in it, or with headlights like Mongol
eyes, roars through the city (I, 126: 65). The narrator can hear the
hoofbeats of approaching Asiatic horsemen (II, 176: 239), and refers
several times to a "shaggy fur hat" from the "fields of bloodstained
Manchuria" and its wearer who circulates through the city with revolutionary talk (I, 102: 51). Finally, the Ableukhovs have Asiatic blood in
them (1,17: 3), and as Dudkin says, so do all Russians (I, 57: 27).
Under the weight of so many presages of pan-Mongolism, references
to other stages of the Solovievian apocalypse may seem lost in the novel.
But Dudkin's association with Christ is not the only oblique reference
to the Second Coming in Petersburg. An enigmatic, unnamed figure
appears to several of the major characters, including Dudkin. It is
bathed in such an atmosphere of purity, mystery, and gentleness by
the narrator, that, as many other commentators have also noted, the
reader is led to infer it may be Christ. 70
The figure appears in the novel for the first time in an indented passage. Sofia Petrovna has gone to a masked ball where she sees a "white
domino" that she takes at first to be her husband. Then both she and the
reader realize that it cannot be he, for behind the domino's mask is
"Someone, Enormous beyond Measure" (I, 219: 119). This being tells
her that he looks after mankind even though everyone denies him. Sofia Petrovna feels on the verge of understanding something of great importance and wants to throw herself at the figure's feet. But the scene
ends prosaically with the "sad and tall one" helping her into a carriage.
In addition to evoking a number of associations with the New Testament, Likhutina's encounter with the figure is a reprise of several important themes in the novel itself. The masked white domino both recalls, and acts as a counterpoint, to the red domino and mask that
Nikolai dons to terrorize Sofia Petrovna, and which is perceived by his
father and the press as a manifestation of revolution. The disguises also
recall the narrator's reference to cerebral play being a mask for the intrusion of occult forces into the human brain. Moreover, the apparent
enormity of the figure that Sofia Petrovna encounters echoes Shishnarfne's description of the enormous astral cosmos that touches on St.
Petersburg and that is capable of "throwing out" spiritual beings.
It is highly significant in terms of the novel's metaphysics that certain
aspects of the figure's appearance change depending on who perceives
it. When Nikolai leaves the same masked ball he also sees the figure.
But to him it seems to be a local policeman who angrily walks by right
in front of him. (I, 229:125). To Dudkin the "sad and tall one"seems fa-

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miliar also, and he recalls having heard an old woman call him "Misha"
(II, 107: 198). Even more striking is Nikolai's sensation later in the novel
when he encounters the figure again: "it seemed as if someone sad . . .
had entered his soul, and that the bright light of his eyes had begun to
pierce him" (II, 146: 220). This encounter, and the figure's metamorphoses before different characters, show Christ acting like one of the
intruding occult forces about which the narrator spoke at the end of the
first chapter. The temporary influence of Christ can be sufficiently
strong to change an individual's physical appearance. Rather than fluctuate between being "shadows" and "real," a number of personages fluctuate between "transfiguration" and "being real." Another way of putting this is that mankind (as represented by such disparate types as
Sofia Petrovna, her husband, Nikolai, "an old woman") has a potential
unity in Christ. This is the central tenet of anthroposophy, and will become Bely's main theme in Kotik Letaev.
The question that immediately arises, however, is how Christ as a
unifying principle can be reconciled with the pan-Mongolism saturating the novel. The answer again lies in Soloviev's eschatology: panMongolism is but part of a whole, and a preface to the Second Coming.
The overwhelming preponderance of manifestations of Asia over those
of Christ in the novel has the same explanation: mankind is in the grip
of harbingers of the Antichrist, who must first dominate the world before he can be defeated by Christ. Thus it is fitting that Bely should
have portrayed an alienated Christ in his novel. Since Christ will triumph only in the end of world history, it is appropriate that He should
seem to be largely forgotten until that time.
Although it is possible to understand the white domino within the
context of a Solovievian eschatology, it is most likely that Bely borrowed his specific image of Christ from anthroposophy. In a wellknown lecture from 1911, Steiner had spoken of a major recent event in
cosmic evolution that must have struck a responsive chord in Bely
namely, "the appearance of the Christ as an Etheric Being in contradistinction to the Physical Christ of Palestine." At the beginning of the
twentieth century, Christ would start becoming visible, "at first to a
small number of individuals through a form of natural clairvoyance.
Then in the course of the next three thousand years . . . to greater and
greater numbers of people." According to Steiner, the Etheric Christ
will come to comfort men, and will show his supersensible origins by
vanishing immediately after appearing. But to those before whom He
appears, Christ will seem to have been a physical man. The effect of the
Etheric Christ on the world will be to bring about a unification of the
intellectual and moral poles of man, until the positive moral tenor of
the world is so heightened that the world will be transfigured. 71

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Andrei Bely

The appearance and behavior of the white domino clearly resemble


that of the Etheric Christ. Given Bely's syncretism, it is easy to imagine
how he could have reconciled the Christian idea of a Second Coming
with the gradually increasing manifestation of the Etheric Christ and
the changes in the world that would be brought about as a result.
- 8 -

It has become clear that neither the narrator nor the major characters
in the novel are free agents, but largely unwitting pawns in a grand cosmic design. A striking exception is Lippanchenko. Before he is murdered by Dudkin, he appears as the consummate manipulator of the
destinies of others. Bely acknowledged in his posthumously published
memoir that he had modeled Lippanchenko on the notorious double
agent Evno Fishelevich Azef, who had worked concurrently for the
Tsarist secret police and the terrorist arm of the Socialist Revolutionary
Party. (Curiously, Bely gave his agent-provocateur a surname that resembled to an uncanny degree the pseudonym Azef used while living in
Berlin, "Lipchenko"a coincidence that subsequently amazed Bely because he could not have known the pseudonym when he was working
on the novel.) 72 Like his real-life prototype, Bely's creation also serves
in the secret police at the same time that he is a member of a terrorist organization.
Lippanchenko directs his energies in the novel at arranging the assassination of Apollon Apollonovich by his son Nikolai. To this end, he
manipulates people without their knowledge and against their wishes.
For instance, he isolates Dudkin in a garret for a long time, and then
gets him to deliver the bomb to Nikolai. But Dudkin had no idea the
bomb was to be used to assassinate the senator, because Lippanchenko
had told him that Nikolai was to be given the bomb simply for safekeeping (I, 54: 25). Moreover, Lippanchenko gives Dudkin a note for
Nikolai without telling him that it contains a directive to the son to assassinate his father. Although Dudkin forgets to turn over this letter
when he delivers the bomb, it eventually reaches Nikolai through Varvara Evgrafovna, a farcical "liberated woman," and Sofia Petrovna,
who hands it to him at the ball. In the note Lippanchenko attempts to
coerce Nikolai, who, even though he had originally offered to murder
his father, expresses total revulsion with the idea in his dialogue about
this with Dudkin (II, 69:176).
In view of the high, senatorial rank of Apollon Apollonovich, and
the general instability in the land resulting from the 1905 Revolution,
Lippanchenko may be hoping for more than a mere assassination of yet
one more important personage. Even Varvara Evgrafovna, although
not privy to Lippanchenko's secret designs, understands the task Niko-

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lai has been assigned as one that will result in a "universal explosion" (I,
147: 77). Indeed, it is tempting to see Lippanchenko as one who is trying to cause a distinctly proto-apocalyptic explosion that will sweep
away the old order. This impression is augmented by the great tension
with which Bely surrounds the bomb, as well as by the numerous related
symbols of explosions and expanding crimson spheres with which the
novel is filled.
Lippanchenko thus appears to have something in common with
Musatov in the Second Symphony and Kudeiarov in The Silver Dove.
The resemblance is closer to the latter, and in both cases is limited only
to a characteristic that is a major preoccupation of Bely's: an individual's willful desire to have the apocalypse proceed the way he wants it
to. Musatov fits this pattern to the extent that he looks for apocalyptic
events under the promptings of his own, inner sense of cosmic time,
which tells him that the end of world history has already begun. In fact,
it had not reached the point he thought it had. Kudeiarov s misguided
theurgy is a more clear example of the same problem.
However, neither Musatov nor Kudeiarov is ultimately his own
agent. Either because of their willfulness, or for imponderable reasons
of fate, each commits an error and takes the wrong path under the influence of otherworldly forces, clearly evil ones in Kudeiarov s case.
The same seems to be true of Lippanchenko, who in the end manages to
effect only a distinctly false apocalypse.
Here again anthroposophy sheds some light on the novel. Rather
than proposing a bipolar opposition between Christ and Satan, Steiner
conceived of Christ as the perfect mediator between two opposing
spiritual tendencies in the universe that play a crucial role in its evolutiontendencies which, although not evil when in correct balance with
each other, are evil in their pure forms. One is designated Lucifer, and is
associated with a wide gamut of characteristics centering on the spirit; the
other is Ahriman, centered on matter. Man can fall into grievous error
if he goes too far in the direction of cultivating either spiritual or material qualitiesincluding his emotions and intuitions at the expense of
reason and logic, inconsistency at the expense of constancy, and art at
the expense of science. 73
Christ is called forth in Petersburg by the entire theme of apocalypse,
and actually appears on its pages in an anthroposophical, Etheric form.
The Luciferic pole of Steiner's schema seems to be somewhat underdeveloped, however, and is another instance of Bely's selective adaptation of a new influence. Only Sofia Petrovna Likhutina is sufficiently
flighty in her superficial involvement with different people and whatever is in vogue in the capital city to be under what could be termed a
disproportionately great Luciferic influence in Steinerian terms.

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Andrei Bely

As for Ahriman, Bely seems to have given Lippanchenko a number


of the traits associated with Steiner s spirit of matter. Reason, physical
ugliness, greed, egotism, fixedness, ossification, measure and calculation are all associated with Ahriman and applicable to Lippanchenko
to varying degrees.
The Ahrimanic influence, which causes absorption in the physical
and sensory world at the expense of the spiritual, prevents Lippanchenko from understanding Dudkin's mystical credo that the revolution is a hypostasis. A number of times Bely hints at occult experiences
Dudkin had in Helsingfors in which both Shishnarfne and Lippanchenko were involved. (This is more explicit in the first edition of the
novel.) The evil consequence of these experiences was an augmentation
of the physically sensual, or Ahrimanic side of Dudkin's nature: "he became a drunkard, his lustfulness began to act up" (1916: p. 340). Fearfulness is also associated with Ahriman, and Dudkin is repeatedly and
easily frightened by Lippanchenko, who, in fact, uses fear as a tool to
keep Dudkin under control. 74 An Ahrimanic combination of gross
physicality (even Lippanchenko's paramour's surname is Fleisch) and
powerful cerebration shapes the image of how Lippanchenko forces his
will on Dudkin: his "frontal bones [literally, "the bones of his forehead"] strained in a strong and obstinate effort to break down his [Dudkin's] will, o r . . . fly to pieces. And the frontal bones broke it down" (II,
102:195).
Lippanchenko's physically repulsive head is also associated in Dudkin's mind with the Mongol face that appears on the wallpaper of his
room at night (II, 94:191), thus linking the agent-provocateur with the
specifically Solovievian world-historical process. But whether he fits
Steiner's scheme or Soloviev's, Lippanchenko, who wants to manipulate the world, finally emerges as an agent of forces that derive from
and disappear into an otherworldly realm.
In Steiner's terms, Lippanchenko is acting in accordance with forces
that try to thwart a balanced cosmic evolution. But his efforts fail.
Rather than causing a major catastrophe, the bomb goes off without
hurting anyone. In truth, Apollon Apollonovich's governmental career
was already effectively over before the explosion, because he suffered a
sudden onset of senility. In turn, this may have been brought about by
his son's shocking behavior as the red domino (which is actually the
senator's own perverted sexuality returning to him in the form of his
sexually troubled son). Or it may have been simply the work of time,
as the narrator suggests (II, 172: 236). Like Kudeiarov and his implied
demonic masters, Lippanchenko and his Ahrimanic-Mongolian masters fail to thwart a divinely ordained plan. From their vantage points
at the beginning of this century, both Steiner and Soloviev were funda-

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147

mentally optimistic about the outcome of cosmic history, and in the


end their separate eschatologies dramatize the final impotence of evil.
The false, or better to say, non-apocalypse near the end of Petersburg
defines the strangely muted ending of the novel. The tension of Lippanchenko's machinations has been dissipated without much effect other
than Nikolai's banishment; and the true apocalyptic storm, signs of
which are abundant, is yet to come. This ending is like those of the Second Symphony and The Silver Dove, in which proto-apocalyptic
schemes collapse while true eschatological anticipation fills both the
narrator and the characters with whom he is in agreement.
Lippanchenko's death by Dudkin's hand may thus be seen as an explicit condemnation of the agent-provocateur's role by the author and
the positive forces at whose urgings he speaks. For a brief moment before the murder, in a passage to which I already referred, Dudkin experiences something like a clairvoyant insight into the terrorist drama of
which he has been made a part:
Alexander IvanychEvgenynow understood for the first time
that he had been running in vain for a century, from December to
October, and in his wake came a rumbling without the slightest
wraththrough villages, towns, entryways, stairways. He was
forgiven. Everything that had happened along with everything
that was coming was merely spectral transiences of ordeals to be
endured until the last trumpet sounded [italics mine]. (II, 132133: 214)
This passage calls forth a wide range of events that are all made into
adumbrations of the true apocalypsethe fate of Pushkin's protagonist
in The Bronze Horseman, the Decembrist Revolt of 1825, and, by implication, everything that had happened up to this point in the novel. It
is significant that Dudkin's insight occurs during the moments immediately following his "decision" to kill Lippanchenko, and immediately
preceding the Bronze Horseman's intrusive flow into his veins. Both
this experience and the murder thus seem to be sanctioned by an agent
of the otherworldly realm. To be sure, textual evidence for this point is
tenuous, but it seems likely that because of his own association with
Christ, and because of the Horseman's association with the true apocalyptic future of Russia, Dudkin may be an executioner driven by the
positive forces in their struggle against Ahrimanic evil. And this defeat
of one evil individual is, in part, a small-scale version of the apocalyptic defeat of Evil by Good that will come with the Second Coming.
The passage just quoted is also an expression of a spiraling view of
time. It implies that there will have been numerous repetitions of situations that foreshadow the true apocalypse (including a personal tragedy

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Andrei Bely

of a fictional character!) before the end of world history is reached. The


theme of repetition was explicit, of course, in the astral voyages of the
senator and his son, which reveal that the contemporary situation in
Russia, with the various manifestations of Asia, is a reenactment of a
conflict from centuries before. And having Dudkin enact the repetitive
fates of individuals from different epochs suggests that, to Bely's mind,
a spiraling view of existence in time still defines man's relation to the
transcendent, as it did in the Third Symphony and The Silver Dove.
-9-

Thus far I have been principally concerned with the main vertical
axis in Petersburg: earlier in this chapter, I examined how man is tied to
a transcendent realm; and in the later parts I looked at the nature of
that realm and its one clearly visible facethe apocalypse. Now, however, I would like to turn briefly to the interconnected network of symbols and see how it produces a consistently apocalyptic vision of the
transcendent; in other words, how a great unity can be seen to underlie
the seeming chaos of symbols perceived by both the narrator and the
characters in the novel.
The boundaries between individual symbols or groups of related
symbols in Petersburg are fluid. It is invariably possible to find an instance when any given symbol merges into another. And upon rereading the novel, each symbol one encounters automatically implies all the
others. From this point of view, therefore, the world of the novel once
again appears as profoundly unified. In fact, Bely's network of symbols
in Petersburg turns out to be a perfect illustration of a central thesis in
his theory of symbolism: the absolute Symbol manifests itself in the
seemingly independent symbols that are "created" as they are perceived
by individuals.
Tracing all the interconnections among all the symbols would be too
time-consuming, but it is worth examining the links among some of the
most important ones. 7 5 The portentous equestrian statue of Peter, for
example, is tied to the theme of pan-Mongolism by the sound of the
statue's hoofbeats when it moves through the city: they echo the hoofbeats of the approaching riders from the steppes. (In a footnote, Bely
acknowledges his debt to Pushkin's The Bronze Horseman for the description of the sound.) In a passage that disappeared from the first Soviet edition of the novel in 1928, the connection between Peter and the
Mongols was suggested even more strongly. During his dream vision,
Nikolai learns that he had once been ordered by his father, the Emperor
of China, to slaughter many thousands of people. Later, Nikolai galloped into Russia with Tamerlane's horsemen and was incarnated in the

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blood of a Russian nobleman. In Russia he slaughtered many thousands once again (1916, 269: 167). This association of bloodshed with
the image of Nikolai arriving in Russia on horseback recalls the narrator's paean to the equestrian statue, and also the high cost in human
lives that the establishment of Peter's new northern capital required.
Images foreshadowing the Bronze Horseman's highly significant role
in Petersburg are scattered throughout the text, but not all of them
make overt references to the rider or his steed. One important connecting leitmotif is the symbolic phosphorescence the narrator mentions in
connection with the moon over the city. The clearest revelation of the
links between the moon, the phosphorescence, and the rider occurs at
the end of the novel when Dudkin is on his way to murder Lippanchenko. The moon becomes entangled in the branches of a bush so that
the spaces between them fill with a phosphorescent glare: "They
formed into an immense body, glowing phosphorescent, wearing a vitriol-colored cloak" (II, 211: 259). In retrospect, then, the frequent appearances of the phosphorescent moon can be seen to function as prfigurations of the statue and all it symbolizes.
Bely links the Bronze Horseman to marine Dutch imagery by building on the tradition of Peter the Great's well-known affection for Holland, where he had worked as a shipwright in his youth. An old Dutch
mariner observes the statue's gallop through the city and looks forward
to drinking with Peter and to shaking Peter's hand, which, as the narrator puts it, will turn the ship (of state?) away from the destructive forts
of Kronstadt (II, 126: 210).
The ship leitmotif recurs throughout Petersburg, with the Flying
Dutchman as probably the most striking symbol in it. The legendary
ship appears in the first indented passage in the novel, in the midst of
the narrator's description of Apollon Apollonovich's naive faith in the
solidity of phenomena. The meaning Bely ascribes to the ship, however, is opposite to the senator's material way of thinking. The intrusive typographic form of the passage thus reflects the intrusive role of
the transcendent realm in the novel as a whole, and anticipates the
scene in which cerebral play erects a map of Russia before the senator
later in the novel. Typically, however, the senator remains oblivious to
the forces that rule his world.
In Bely's conception, the Flying Dutchman is the great artificer. The
ship comes from the Baltic and German seas "in order here to erect, by
delusion, his misty lands and to give the name of islands to the wave of
onrushing clouds" (I, 30: 10). The idea that St. Petersburg is spectral
and unrealalready traditional in nineteenth-century Russian literatureis credible if the entire world of material phenomena is seen as a
translucent, and at times permeable screen projected by a spiritual re-

150

Andrei Bely

ality. Creation through deception recalls the narrator's digression at the


end of Chapter I about the nature of creative cognition; the city is a "delusion" only from a privileged, spiritual point of view. The Flying
Dutchman is further linked to Peter I, of course, because the conjuring
of islands out of clouds echoes Peter's creation of his new capital on barren
Finnish swamps. Finally, the whole sequence from text to intrusive passage and back to text constitutes one of the rapid shifts between merely
human and more privileged viewpoints that recur throughout the novel.
The naval motif also appears in a more prosaic, but no less significant form as a "small steamboat" on the Neva and the canals (I, 61, 242,
250; II, 125, 251: 29, 133, 137, 209, 282). It shows up without any apparent relation to context, as a perception of the narrator that is not
linked to particular characters or situations. In consequence, what
seems to be background description serves as a reminder of the intrusive nature of the transcendent.
The associations raised by "steamboat," "mariner," "Flying Dutchman," "Bronze Horseman," have the effect of "digesting" the novel's
multifarious constituents to reveal a series of veiled references to one
thingthe coming apocalypse. But despite fluid boundaries between
symbols, individual symbols do not simply become synonyms for each
other, even if the ultimate significance of each is apocalyptic. The
Flying Dutchman, for instance, continues to have a Wagnerian meaning as well as the one Bely gave him. Like the characters in the novel,
the Flying Dutchman is doomed to act out a fate set by a supernatural
power. Moreover, the operatic theme of woman's faithfulness also appears in Petersburg in the senator's wayward wife and Sofia Petrovna.
Indeed, one would be hard pressed to summarize the full range of implications of any one of the symbols, which is, of course, another way
of saying that the recurring images in question are symbols.
It is interesting that the fluid transitions among symbols in the novel
appear to be reflected in its punctuation. This is an important feature of
Bely s art that has yet to be studied in the detail it deserves. Unusually
large numbers of colons, semicolons, and dashes appear in the text.
They signal differing lengths of pauses in the narrative, thus building
up varying degrees of tension, and, at the same time, anticipate connections with the following syntactical units. Where periods would
have signaled full stops, and commas a simple pause, Bely utilizes a
range of punctuation marks that lie somewhere in between. The effect
this has is to segment the text into syntactical units that are not as
strongly separated as they would be if commas and periods were the
dominant punctuation marks, at the same time causing a nervous flow
and pause in reading. The method serves to augment the impression
that the world in the novel is multifariously interconnected. 76

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151

The last example of a symbol cluster that is worth tracing because of


its extraordinarily wide associations is the expanding crimson sphere.
It is the image of an explosion, and as such clearly presages the apocalypse. It first appears in the course of Apollon Apollonovich's encounter with Dudkin on a city street. The senator likens the people he sees
through the windows of his carriage to shining dots. One of these seems
to fly at him "taking the form of an immense crimson sphere." This is
Dudkin materializing through him, of course, and the proto-explosive
image is repeated in Dudkin's eyes: "the eyes . . . recognized the senator,
and, having recognized him, they grew rabid, dilated, lit up, and
flashed" (I, 36: 14). The image of explosion illustrates the anthroposophical belief that internal spiritual communication with the transcendent is manifested in the world outside the communicant. For, as if anticipating Dudkin's circular "return" into the senator's head later in the
chapter, the senator also senses an explosion within himself: "in his
breast arose the sensation of a crimson sphere about to burst into pieces
. . . Apollon Apollonovich, you see, suffered from dilation of the
heart."
Nikolai has a similar experience when he is returning from the
masked ball. He feels that in the place "where his heart was located" a
crimson sphere appears, which expands and then bursts (I, 233: 128).
As it happened with Dudkin, the senator sees the explosion in his son's
eyes as well, and associates his son with the revolutionary (II, 2 4 : 1 5 0 ) .
The crimson explosion is also echoed in a passage about the little
steamboat, calling forth the entire naval motif together with Peter's
fateful role in Russian history: "A flaming lantern on the stern [of a
small steamboat] vanished at an angle into the fog, and the rings
spread, ruby red" (II, 251: 282).
The expanding sphere is evoked even at the end of the novel. The
whole muted Epilogue resembles the Pralaya of anthroposophy, a concept Steiner borrowed from Hindu myth, and which signifies a period
of rest between great phases of cosmic evolution. 7 7 The Epilogue is like
the lull before the apocalypse proper, therefore, now that Lippanchenko's false apocalypse has dissipated. But although the bomb exploded
some time before, a remnant seems to have followed Nikolai to Egypt
as a foreshadowing of the true apocalyptic explosion to come: "Evening
has begun to fall. The large piles of Gizeh stretch menacingly into the
dawnless twilight. Yes, yes: everything is expanded in them, everything
expands from them [italics mine]; and dark amber lights now go on in
the dust suspended in the air. And it is stifling" (II, 268: 292). It is as if
the dust and the heat of the explosion are still in the air, even though Nikolai is far away from the source of power and the original site of the
blastthe northern city straddling the worlds of matter and spirit.

152

Andrei Bely

The expanding sphere is also linked to anthroposophy directly, but


in a way that again shows Bely bending its teaching to fit his apocalypticism. Steiner explains that the various physical organs of man developed during different phases of the earth's evolution, as did the different
components of man's spiritual nature. For this reason, anthroposophy
literally considers man to be "fashioned from the entire surrounding
world, and every part of him corresponds to a process or being of the
outer world." At the appropriate stage in his development, a student of
anthroposophy can begin "to feel as though he were intergrown with
the entire cosmic structure." 78 This is the sensation that some characters
experience in the novel, but with the addition of the explosion motif,
and with the usual difference that none of the characters is on a spiritual quest. At one point, the narrator says about Nikolai's soul: "[it] was
becoming the surface of a huge, rapidly growing bubble, which had
swollen into Saturn's orbit . . . Everythingwas bursting" (II, 254-55:
284). Lippanchenko has a similar experience when Dudkin has mortally
wounded him (II, 218-19: 263-64).
A detail in the narrator's description of Lippanchenko's death provides the connection between the explosion motif and the rather cryptic Ableukhov coat of arms. The narrator mentions that after Dudkin
stabs the agent-provocateur in the stomach with a pair of scissors "from
there came a hissing. And some part of him thought [literally: And it
thought itself somewhere] that it was gases . . . a volcano opened up in
his stomach." The stabbing recalls the coat of arms, which depicts a
knight being gored by a unicornan image that functions as a knot tying together a variety of strands in the novel. First of all, it shows a man
under attack by a mythical or supernatural creature. Secondly, its special relevance to the Ableukhovs is implied in Apollon Apollonovich's
dream vision, in which he appears as a knight dressed in armor (I, 175:
94). Thirdly, the unicorn was a symbol for Christ in medieval Europe,
and Nikolai Apollonovich at one point feels "pierced" by the light
streaming from the eyes of the "white domino." Similarly, when Dudkin commits the murder, he is acting under the influence of the bronze
statue that has recently "poured" into his veins. The unicorn, in turn,
simply by virtue of several equine features also recalls the mounted
horseman. All these varied associations turn the coat of arms into a microcosm of Bely's deterministic world view in Petersburg.79

Kotik Letaev and


The Baptized Chinaman

4
Heaven lies about us in our infancy.
William Wordsworth, "Ode: Intimations of
Immortality from Recollections
of Early Childhood"

Kotik Letaev
Kotik Letaev (written in the course of 1915-16, first published serially
in 1917-18) is difficult to characterize generically. Following Bely's designation, the work is usually labeled a "novel," and for convenience I
will refer to it by the same term. 1 However, it represents not only a departure from the majority of long prose narratives that one normally
thinks of as "novels," but also from Bely's own practice in the Symphonies, The Silver Dove, and Petersburg.
The most important difference lies in the subject matter. Its close parallels with Bely's memoirs of his childhood make Kotik Letaev a very
thinly veiled autobiography, covering the period from ages three to
five. Indeed, Bely defends the factual accuracy of this supposed fiction
in On the Border Between Two Centuries, where he says that no other
book of his gives as straightforward "a copy" of something he had actually experienced as does Kotik Letaev. "it was not Andrei Bely who
wrote it, but Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev who naturalistically captured
what he remembered well all his life." 2 An unusual feature of the work,
however, is that it contains forays even further back in time to the moment of Bely's birth and to his prenatal existence; associated with this
are depictions of the spiritual cosmos. In this the work is obviously and
markedly different from any number of autobiographical novels of
childhood, such as Tolstoy's Childhood,
Boyhood,
Youth (1852-1856),
or Aksakov's Years of Childhood
of Bagrov-Grandson
(1858). As one
might expect, Bely could not acknowledge his occult beliefs publicly in
the Soviet Union in 1929. Thus in the memoir he attempts (unsuccessfully) to give a purely physiological motivation for the occult imagery
that fills the work. Nevertheless, his testimony provides valuable evidence for seeing his work as bridging reality and fiction.

154

Andrei Bely

Support for this inference can be found in Notes of an Eccentric, a


frankly memoiristic work published in Berlin in 1922a less repressive
place and time. In it Bely implies that he came to know the prenatal experiences he described in Kotik Letaev by means of anthroposophical
meditations. Later, in a letter from 1927 that was obviously not intended
for publication, Bely speaks of the "anthroposophical academic task"
that is embodied in Kotik Letaev: "through an expansion of memory to
truly see something of what had not been seen" in infancy. And in Why
I Became a Symbolist,
the important memoir he wrote for his "desk
drawer" in 1928, Bely says he described his spiritual development
"most exactly" in Kotik
Letaev.3
Bely actually wrote the novel while helping to build the Goetheanumthe combined theater and temple that Steiner designed and
anthroposophical initiates constructed by hand in Drnach, Switzerland. His immersion in the "occult science" at this time in his life (19141916) was total. Given the central importance in anthroposophy of the
"Akashic record"a cosmic transcript of all human experience that can
be "read" with great accuracy by the clairvoyantthere is no reason to
doubt that Bely meant all his depictions of his seemingly fanciful spiritual experiences to be taken as literally true. In fact, the inviolate authority that the Akashic record has for the anthroposophist lends a
weight to the accuracy of the clairvoyant's recovered past experiences
that simple memory lacks. Thus the sole truly fictional aspect of Kotik
Letaev is that most of the names of the characters have been changed
(Bely himself appears as "Kotik Letaev": the first name is a diminutive
of endearment that his mother actually used, whereas the last is derived
from the verb "to fly" and rhymes with his actual surname, Bugaev).
There is also the very minor detail of a single mention of "sisters" (that
could be meant figuratively), while Bely was in reality an only child. 4
The work hardly qualifies as fiction, therefore, even in the special sense
that applied to Petersburg.
Inevitably, given the subject matter, Kotik Letaev's focus is the formation and development of the eponymous protagonist's personality.
External events are relatively few as a result, and Kotik's story consists
largely of his gradual withdrawal from and loss of unmediated contact
with the spiritual realm out of which he descended when he was born.
This process clearly derives from Steiners view that "the human soul
and entire being are, during the first years of earthly life, in much closer
connection with the spiritual worlds of the higher hierarchies than they
are later." 5 Concurrent with the process of withdrawal is the gradual
crystallization of the sense of self as differentiating from the external
world of matter.

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155

One of Bely's original intentions was for the work that became Kotik
Letaev to be a continuation of the trilogy that began with The Silver
Dove. Stylistically and formally Kotik Letaev is of a piece with the preceding works, although there are interesting new developments in the
devices Bely employs, especially with regard to narrative point of view.
Leitmotifs, rhythmicized passages, and alliteration still abound, as
they did in Petersburg. Similarly, both the narrative and the protagonist's life progress along spirals, with cyclical repetitions of Kotik's experiences looping around a teleological progression toward ultimate illumination.6 And more than in previous works, but less than in those
that would follow, Bely coins numerous neologisms in Kotik Letaev to
render his unique world view.7
Bely's involvement in anthroposophical practices, whose goal was to
transcend the limitations of the self and achieve enlightenment, was
probably the single most important stimulus for the total immersion in
autobiography that resulted in Kotik Letaev (and in his new plan to
write a vast autobiographical epic, My Life, of which Kotik Letaev was
supposed to be the beginning). This autobiographical tendency was already clearly discernible in Bely's earlier works. From the First Symphony to Petersburg it took the form of recurring first-person narrative
points of view, and repeated intrusions of, and gradual increases in actual autobiographical content. A spiritual autobiography reflecting the
author's place in the cosmos was also the implicit consequence of Bely's
conception of symbolism as he had formulated it by 1910. Nevertheless, the quantum leap in his involvement with the minutiae of his own
life might not have occurred without the emphasis that the occult science places on the adept developing a clairvoyant awareness of his role
in an evolving spiritual cosmos. The ascent to this state inevitably
becomes all important to him. Thus, although Viktor Shklovsky was
correct in signaling Bely's growing involvement with autobiography
beginning with Kotik Letaev, he was wrong to suggest that anthroposophy and autobiography are at odds in Bely's work. 8 If anything,
the anthroposophical belief that the past can be retrieved from the
cosmic, Akashic record should motivate autobiography. Moreover, in
view of the harmony between Bely's theory of symbolism and anthroposophy, it is not surprising that the anthroposophical world view underlying Kotik Letaev should be in fundamental agreement with the
metaphysical schema found in the earlier novels, especially in Petersburg.
To be sure, there are several shifts in emphasis. The disappearance of
the Solovievian theme of pan-Mongolism, with its attendant mood of
febrile apocalyptic dread, lightens the atmosphere in Kotik Letaev in

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comparison to Petersburg. However, the change is not wholly to the


generally calm and roseate atmosphere of Steiner's writings (his "mystery dramas" are another matter). Kotik, like his predecessors in Bely's
other works, is very much under a coercive sway of a spiritual realm.
In part, this follows inevitably from Steiner's belief that the human soul
sojourns in an otherworldly realm before birth. But Kotik also anticipates having to suffer a Christ-like passion in the future, which may be
due as much to the simple fact that Bely did not have a happy childhood as to the important role that Christ has for the intitiate in anthroposophy. It was typical for Bely to give cosmic significance to his own
and his characters' troubled spiritual states.
The most striking innovation in Kotik Letaev is the double first-person perspective that operates throughout the novel (which, however, is
an inevitable feature of childhood autobiographies). The narrator
makes it clear in the Foreword that he is thirty-five years old at the time
he is telling his story. He has achieved a state of clairvoyant "self-consciousness," which "has burst open my brain and thrown itself into
childhood." The result is that he and his infant self can now "converse"
and "understand" each other (9: 3). This image of the adult confronting
himself as a child comes directly from Steiner's explanation of how the
achievement of occult insight appears to the adept:
In the higher world, self-knowledge is different, in a certain respect,
from self-knowledge in the physical-sensory world. Whereas in
the physical-sensory world self-knowledge appears only as an inner
experience, the new-born self presents itself at once as an outer
soul phenomenon. Man beholds his new-born self as another being
standing before him, but he cannot perceive it completely . . . .
there are always still higher stages. 9
This is the pivotal event in the narrator-author's life because it makes
the work he is writing possible. The adult narrator also draws a parallel
between the special form of cognition that his self-consciousness denotes and the beginning awareness of a child: "Self-consciousness, like
an infant within me, opened its eyes wide" (13: 6). Thus Bely is implying that his procedure in the rest of the work will be to present his own
development from the point of view of anthroposophy, which retroactively illuminates for him the physical and spiritual sides of his infancy.
Implied also is that the child's spiritual developmentwhich reflects
cosmic evolutionwill be given from the anthroposophical perspective of the adept who has achieved illumination by ascending through
the requisite stages. (This represents an interesting variant on Ernst
Heinrich Haeckel's seminal idea that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"that the development of an individual reflects the evolution of

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the species. Haeckel's notion reappears in various forms in the novel,


and is a fundamental characteristic of Steiner's world view and conception of man in general. Indeed, Steiner is known to have admired
Haeckel's ideas.) The effect of Bely's tactic, therefore, is that the same
entitynamely "Kotik Letaev" himselfis examined from two obviously interrelated, but still widely divergent points of view: that of the
infant's confused and uncomprehending perception of the world in
which he exists (presumably preserved in the adult Kotik's normal
memory), and that of the infant's spiritual experiences as retrieved, ordered, and illuminated retroactively by the adult's occult "clear vision."
This was, presumably, the meaning of Bely's remark about the "anthroposophical academic task" that he had set himself in writing the work.
The fact that the second point of view is occult rather than simply
adult is Bely's most striking innovation in the genre of childhood autobiography. But although the first-person narrative premise of this genre
eliminates in advance the problem of the Symbolist narrative that Bely
resolved in Petersburg, a different type of textual segmentation does
appear in Kotik Letaev (to which I will return below). One must assume that some overlap between these two view points is inevitable because the adult's clairvoyance should also be able to resurrect the totality of the child's experiences, including the confusion. Moreover, it
seems unavoidable that some of the adult's clairvoyant perspectives
should "contaminate" the child's original experiences.
The narrative shifts often and easily between the two poles. Rapid
shifts in point of view and narrative voice also characterized Bely's earlier works and contributed much to their nervous narrative texture and
elliptical suggestiveness. But Kotik Letaev's perspectives both derive
from and are directed at the same multidimensional persona, which exists on both spiritual and material planes, rather than at some phenomenon external to it.
The end result of this practice, however, is comparable to that in the
earlier works. In Petersburg, for instance, the shifts from the senator's
rigid and unimaginative cogitations to an indented passage about the
Flying Dutchman conjuring land out of fog, then back to the senator,
sketch several different but interrelated planes of reality that define the
complex material and spiritual world posited by the novel. In Kotik Letaev, the shifts in point of view sketch the different planes of being
both eternal and time-boundon which Kotik himself exists. As a result, he emerges as a composite of physical and spiritual dimensions
indeed, as the entity that bridges them. Like the city in Petersburg, Kotik is both embedded in, and a symbol for the entire cosmos.
Not only does the Foreword define the parameters of the workin
contrast to Petersburg, where the Prologue serves as foil for the remainder of the textit also adumbrates the major themes that will

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comprise the work itself. They are: (1) the triangular relationship
among the protagonist, the realm of the spirit, and the world of matter;
(2) the path one must follow to achieve "self-consciousness"; (3) the role
that an exalted being will play in Kotik's destiny; and (4) the relation of
language to reality.
Intimately connected with the first theme is the entire question of
perception and cognition, which was also central in Petersburg. And
this is the topic, or, rather, complex of ontological and epistemologica!
interrelationships, that should be discussed first.
-2-

In the Foreword, the narrator depicts a rugged mountain landscape


very much like the Swiss Alps Bely enjoyed climbing while in Drnach. 1 0 And the Foreword ends with a mention of the Swiss locales and
the year in which Bely (as opposed to Kotik Letaev) wrote it, reinforcing the autobiographism of the text as a whole. More important, however, is that the narrator clearly wants the dramatic scenery to represent his turbulent past and prefigure his future. He presents himself at a
summit in his life, which must be the consequence of the "self-consciousness" that he has achieved.
But the jagged mountain scenery is not merely a metaphor, emblem,
or objective correlative for the narrator's spiritual development. It also
appears to be the actual physical deposit of the narrators spiritual
growth:
In memory I speak with myself:here, on the steeply slicing
line:
"At your feet is everything
that once grew out of you painfully and that was you;
"that kept falling away like dead stone and kept being
repeated by cliffs . . .
"Nature, which surrounds you, isyou; among her
gloomy gorges you are visible to me, infant. . . (12: 5 - 6 )
As in Petersburg, the indented passages and original typographical arrangements in Kotik Letaev are often a record of a sudden shift in perspective, calling attention to the content of the set-off passage. In this
instance, the narrator has described the same sort of reification of
thought into matter that Bely dramatized in the first chapter of Petersburg. There, both Dudkin and the senator's house were called products
of the senator's cerebral play, which, in turn, was a mask for occult
forces that intruded into the narrator-author's mind as well as into the
minds of the characters.
Extrinsic support for claiming that the cognitive creative process established in Petersburg also operates in Kotik Letaev is provided by Be-

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ly's revealing essay "On the Meaning of Cognition" (1916).11 Because it


is written entirely from an anthroposophical perspective, its argument
is difficult to follow in places. But it is clearly a disquisition about the
same process of spiritual development that is dramatized on the pages
of Kotik Letaev. The essay's relevance for the novel is further indicated
by its year of composition, and, even more so, by its numerous specific
formulations of key concepts that are nearly identical to those found in
the novel. Bely himself underscored the significance of the essay long
after he wrote it by referring to it as part of his continuing attempt to
produce a complete theory of symbolism. As he said in his memoir Between Two Revolutions, "On the Meaning of Cognition" contains
"traces" of the "skeleton" of the entire theory, which, although remaining unfinished, was clear in his mind. 12 This avowal provides additional
evidence for the general continuity of Bely s thought before and after he
fell under Steiners influence. Moreover, it inadvertently reveals Bely's
continuing loyalty to anthroposophy at a time when he took pains to
hide this from public view in the Soviet Union.
The essay's particular utility is that it suggests a framework for understanding Kotik Letaev, and shows the novel to be based in a much
more orthodox conception of anthroposophy than was Petersburg,13 In
the light of the essay, the narrator's task in Kotik Letaev is confirmed as
the depiction of the achievement of "self-consciousness"a direct
knowledge of the higher worlds, which is the ultimate goal of anthroposophy. In Petersburg, by contrast, clairvoyant experiences were
vouchsafed to individuals who did not undergo the meditative training
that Steiner thought was necessary for the achievement of "spiritual
sight" and who failed to understand what they saw.
The idea of thought descending from the realm of spirit and passing
through man to create matter recurs in the essay a number of times.
Bely affirms that "the world thoughts [mirovye my sii] are deposited
[slagaiutsia] in us by the world of thought, and through us incarnate
the universe. We create a world in the world." In characterizing the nature of this created world, Bely echoes the Alpine imagery from the
Foreword of Kotik Letaev: "the world of concepts, objects, forms and
images crystallizes [italics mine] within cognitive acts." Similarly, he likens cognition to an organic process whose "waste products" are like
"mineral parts" (p. 39).
Numerous parallels exist between Kotik's experiences with the
worlds of matter and spirit and those of the narrator and characters in
Petersburg. Moreover, because the novel is primarily concerned with
the process of the individual's spiritual development, it is possible to
discern several stages in Kotik's relation to the material world on the
one hand, and to the spiritual cosmos on the other.

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Andrei Bely

Early on, the narrator establishes the primacy of the otherworldly


realm in the formulation of thought and the creation of the material
world (as was also the case in Petersburg): "The world and thought are
only the foams of threatening cosmic images; blood pulses with their
flight; thoughts are illumined by their fires; and these images are
myths" (19: 11). In "On the Meaning of Cognition," Bely uses the same
expression when he speaks of matter and concepts as the "foams" that
"cool" out of the boiling of undifferentiated reality during the initial
stage of cognition (p. 44).
As in Petersburg, the thoughts that derive from an otherworldly
realm bear an intrusive and ultimately deterministic relation to the individual. In the early stage of his existence Kotik appears as a mere
physical receptacle for thoughts: "an arising child's thought recalls a
comet; now it falls into the body; andits tail bloodies." This is reminiscent of images for the transcendent's relation to the earth in the first
two Symphonies, and in the early theoretical essay discussed in Chapter 1 above. Significantly, the descent of thought into the body occurs
immediately after Kotik's physical birth; in the preceding paragraph
the narrator had described the moment when Kotik's head is already in
the world, while his feet are still in the womb (20: 11-12).
The idea of a cosmic reality entering Kotik's corporeal self with great
violence is repeated again a few pages later. An "old woman," who, the
narrator speculates, is some sort of primeval "extra-corporeal condition" of his that "does not want to accept "the higher, divine self
that enters man's spirit, according to anthroposophy"describing an
arc in space, collapsed directly into my back" (24-25: 15). The old
woman recalls the female image for eternity from the Symphonies.
Bely s proffering a second image of intrusion after "the comet" of a
few pages earlier is a good illustration of the spiraling narrative form of
Kotik Letaev, which is, in turn, a reflection of the protagonist's spiraling evolution. There is a definite progression in his gradual loss of unmediated contact with the spiritual realm, which is a function of his
age. At the same time, while still a child, he returns to earlier moments
in his lifenot simply remembering, but reexperiencing them over and
over againapparently because the inherent instability of experience
requires it to be relived before it is established permanently.
After the image of the "old woman," the narrator turns to a highly revealing description of the first, tentative, and ultimately ephemeral formation of Kotik's sense of self. An integral part of this process is the reification of intruding cosmic thoughts into the matter that defines
Kotik's world. After experiencing the sensation of being a point that
swells to a sphere, then bursts and reforms a number of times, the narrator describes in an indented paragraph how "darkness (like a snake-

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skin from a little snake) began to crawl from me; sensations separated
from skin: they disappeared under my skin: out fell blackborn \chernorodnye] lands." The last phrase brings back the mountain landscape
of the preface, said to be the byproduct of the protagonist's spiritual development. This notion is supported by his skin becoming "a corridor"
for him, while "Rooms areparts of my body; they have been cast off
by me; andthey hang over me." The narrator also describes throwing
strange buildings out of his body, including a "temple of thought" that
he solidifies as a skull. A time will come, he explains, when he will be
able to remove his skull and walk through it as through a temple (2627:16-17).
The creation of the temple of course recalls the creation of Apollon
Apollonovich's house by his cerebral play in Petersburg. The description of the skull-temple also evokes the real construction of the Goetheanum. The two intersecting spherical cupolas that formed the roof of
the original building (which no longer stands) had a cranial shape. And
Bely's descriptions in Notes of an Eccentric of a night watch in the
Goetheanum recalls the skull imagery in Kotik Letaev.1"
Another direct association between thought and its condensation
into matter comes up in a scene of Kotik redefining both himself and
the space around himself after a moment of fright:
Iam a nervous boy: and loud sounds kill me; I compress myself into a point, so that, in the peaceful silence, to draw out of the
center of my consciousness: lines, points, facets; to touch them
with my sensation; and to leave an unsteady trace among them: a
membrane; this membrane isthe wallpaper; between them
are spaces; in the spaces appear: Papa, Mama, and . . . Nanny. I
remember:
I was growing rooms; I deposited them to the left and to
the right of myself; in themI deposited myself: amid
times. (52:35-36)
At the end of this passage, as well as later in the work, when the narrative spirals back to Kotik's first moments (111: 81; 186:139), the narrator establishes a connection between his ability to generate physical
reality (including himself!) and the transcendent by saying that he
"pulsed with time . . . with the corridor, the dining room, the living
room." As subsequent passages in the novel make clear, a pulsation or
rhythm is the way in which Kotik perceives an ordering principle or energy to be flowing into him and communicating with him from the
spiritual universe out of which he descended into his fleshly being. The
"pulses" are thus analogous to the "occult forces" that the narrator-author of Petersburg said are hidden by the "mask" of "cerebral play"the

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Andrei Bely

thoughts that occur spontaneously in characters. 15 The rhythmicized


passages in Kotik Letaev inevitably reinforce for the reader the effect of
the narrator's words about the occult meaning of rhythm. But for reasons to be discussed below, the rhythm in the novel should be taken at
most as an inducement for the reader to search his own existence for
comparable experiences, rather than as a bridge thrown across the gap
between reality and fiction, which was the way cerebral play was
meant to function in Petersburg.
In Petersburg the scene of Dudkin's confrontation with Shishnarfne
was modeled on the anthroposophical conception of "thought beings"
and "sound beings" into whose realm the adept could penetrate, and
who, in turn, could enter the world of man through the adept. The
same schema operates in Kotik Letaev, albeit without the atmosphere
of hallucinatory terror that colors many of the occult experiences in Petersburg. For example, sound is a means of contact between the individual and the transcendent, as in passages where Kotik is playing with
his doll, Ruprecht, which is like
the life of sound in me; but the life of sound in me isnot mine: it
belongs to the world of sound which is lowering itself into me: to
play on me as if . . . on a piano key; having experienced that
sound, I experienced it not in myself, but in a being of the land of
sound into which I was raised. (204:153)
This complex image comes straight from Steiner s teaching about "sound
beings." The narrator then goes on to say that he was not given a clear
view of the "land of sound," but did manage to glimpse a "sound apartment with all the domestic equipment of rooms of sound." There is no
indication here that this otherworldly version of the apartment is the
source of the rooms Kotik deposited in a material version outside himself. Nevertheless, the "sound apartment" is to the Letaev apartment as
a Platonic Idea is to its material embodiment.
In the terms of the theory of symbolism that Bely developed before
encountering anthroposophy, Kotik's experiences with the skull temple
and sound beings are instances of creative cognition (with the clear understanding that Kotik is not the source of creative forces, but only the
channel for them), or symbolic perceptions: the Letaev apartment and
all else that Kotik sees come to symbolize an entire otherworldly realm
and man's relation to it.
With time, however, Kotik's spontaneous ability to have such experiences is lost. The way Kotik explains his pain and bewilderment at this
is a negative version of his previous closeness to the creative otherworldly forces:

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all events and objects had fallen away from my thought; the actions of thought in objects, the metamorphosis of objects as I
thought about themall this had now ended.
All lies outside of me: it stirs, lives,outside of me; and it is incomprehensible.
All that was expanding, that was causing me to burst and was
becoming unmired outside of me as a wall: all had fallen apart
horribly, became separated into parts; became deadened into earth evaporating vapor in the evening over the fragrant
grasses. (150-51:112)
Despite its digressions to earlier and later periods (and eons), Kotik
Letaev is primarily about the protagonist's life between the ages of three
and five. The experience quoted above, and others that also detail Kotik's growing estrangement from creative cognition (76: 53, 96: 69), apparently occur after he has turned four (94: 68); indeed, he finds this
age to have been the turning point of his entire life: "The age of four had
cut my life in two" (128: 94). In this Bely is again following Steiner, who
taught that the child's spiritual composition undergoes a radical change
after the third year.16
Because of the spiraling narrative form of Kotik Letaev, the boundaries between different stages in the protagonist's evolution are blurred.
This is also probably due in part to the anthroposophical conception of
earlier stages in any developmental process becoming incorporated in
those that follow.
-3In addition to helping illuminate the continuity between the creativecognitive processes in Petersburg and Kotik Letaev, "On the Meaning
of Cognition" also serves to demonstrate the latter novel's dependence
on anthroposophy. Specifically, it reveals the extent to which Kotik Letaev is structured in accordance with Steiner's tripartite conception of
the individual's ascent to self-consciousness.
According to Steiner, a special form of meditation, which leads to
"sense-free thinking," is the path by which the initiate could come to a
knowledge of the "higher worlds" and of his place in them. Steiner outlined the nature of this path in Die Philosophie der Freiheit ( The Philosophy of Freedom, 1894), his first major anthroposophical work, and
returned to it repeatedly in later writings and lectures as well.
A number of passages in Kotik Letaev read like transcripts of occult
meditative experiences Bely actually had. Perhaps the most striking example is one describing a continuum between the adult narrator and his
infant self:

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Andrei Bely

I close my eyes: I catch up to the spirits with my thoughts; there


appear:
tremblings, gleamings
beneath my eyelids; I sense: the tremblings of the child's body; in
the tremblings sproutsa head; arms and chest sprout for me like
grass (267: 202).
Here, in the course of making a cognitive entry into a higher realm, the
narrator perceivesor "remembers"himself as a child. The light
flashes are evidence of an occult experience, as can be confirmed by
Notes of an Eccentric and in some of Bely s anthroposophical poetry,
both of which contain references to comparable displays. Indeed this
experience resembles a transition from the first to the second stage in
Steiner's tripartite cognitive schema.
Other instances of what might be termed "meditative curves," which
lead from some initial symbol or image the narrator is contemplating to
an occult insight, include his contemplation of a human skull and his
invitation to the reader to imagine one (33: 22), his contemplation of a
cloud (181-182: 136), and his sensation that the hemispheres of his
brain are melting and preparing to take flight (271: 205).
In anthroposophy, the first cognitive step the beginning adept can
reach by meditating on symbols is called "imagination." As Steiner says
in An Outline of Occult Science, this stage allows the individual to perceive "spiritual facts and beings to which the senses have no access."
The dominant characteristic of the higher world on this level is that "a
continual transformation
of one thing into another" takes the place of
earthly phenomena: "Birth and death are ideas that lose their significance in the imaginative world," and "In it there exist everywhere constant motion and transformation; nowhere are there points of rest." 17
In "On the Meaning of Cognition," Bely speaks of imagination as
typified by a chaos of ideas, sensations, fantastic images, dreams, and
the like, when "neither the world nor thought exists," and when the
"crust" of familiar concepts is removed from the world and the world
melts like ice (45-46). This description bears a very close resemblance
to several passages in the Foreword to Kotik Letaev. There are also passages, primarily in the earlier chapters of the novel, in which the narrator describes the instability of the infant's world in a way that suggests
Kotik is perceiving imaginatively: "swarm, swarmall is swarming,"
"metamorphoses envelop one" (92: 66).
The text also has recurring instances of imagery that is ordered in accordance with the characteristics of anthroposophical imagination. For
example, Kotik sees a "professor" as "an inkling about another universe
where all is still molten and to which the professor carries his deliria; he

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flies about in them" (140: 104). Later Kotik recalls how Tolstoy appeared in his purview, and how
he is shattered into "Tolstoyanism" according to the laws of the
abyssal pulse; and we hear about Tolstoyans; "Tolstoyans" visit
us; but the meaningdrifts about: as metamorphoses of images;
a metamorphosis flies by like dust along the street. (144:107)
Recalling his father's mathematical notes, and his mumbling over
them, "Just so!" (Tak-s in Russian), the narrator states:
These arelittle x's, ys, z's [iksiki, igreki, zetiki], . . . little
dachshunds [taksiki]; I encountered dachshunds on the boulevard.
I thought:
the "x"'s sprout like a shoot from the little lecture notebooks: like a greening, murmuring leafletfrom the swelling bud; they stiffen as poles; and they stick out afterwards . . .
as a young man left: at the University, for Papa. (178: 133;
a similar passage appears on 97: 70)
Comparable metamorphoses occur in Kotik's memories about a Greek
vase (181: 135-136), a piano tuner and two doctors (195: 146), and
about the flow of days (254:192).
Steiner s tripartite cognitive process is supposed to permit a mature
adept to gain insight into the ultimate spiritual truths of existence. This
naturally raises the question of what relation all these instances of
imagination have to the double-narrative viewpoint out of which the
novel arises. It is a legitimate goal in anthroposophy for an adept to examine his past (including his past lives) through meditation. But what
about three-year-old Kotik, who is simply too young to do very much
consciously? Was the infant spontaneously experiencing imagination?
Or is this the adult narrator's meditative experience coloring his presentation of a childhood experience? Bely's own comments suggest that
this was indeed the case. In the letter in which he speaks of the "academic anthroposophic task" embodied in the novel, he adds that he
wanted to introduce "the consciousness of a candidate for an 'esoteric
degree' [na esoteriku]" into what he had seen of his past through meditation. And in a memoir he claimed that the "cognitive schmas" of
anthroposophy explain to him fully what he had apprehended in Kotik
Letaev by means of "trained memory." 18 Since Steiner does not anticipate meditation by children of Kotik's age, we must conclude that Bely
has again embroidered on orthodox anthroposophy in Kotik Letaev, as
he had done in Petersburg, and as he always tended to do with any
teaching he adopted.

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Andrei Bely

It is also possible, however, to understand Bely's ascription of meditative experiences to his infant self in a way that does not go against the
grain of an anthroposophical world view. Given the importance of
Haeckel's principle for both anthroposophy and Kotik Letaev (where it
is evoked often), it could be fitting for a child to experience the stages of
man's cognitive ascent to enlightenment as he develops physically. In
this way, the child would recapitulate the highest spiritual stages that
initiates could achieve. And Bely could be said to have preserved the
spirit of anthroposophy, if not the letter.
The second stage of anthroposophical cognition is "inspiration,"
which provides the initiate with "points of rest" absent from the metamorphoses of "imagination": "one learns to know the inner qualities of
beings who transform themselves . . . . and discerns a great number of
relationships between one being and another." Most relevant to Kotik
Letaev is Steiner's explanation that
observation in the world of inspiration may only be compared
with reading: and the beings in the world of inspiration act upon the
observer like the letters of an alphabet, which he must learn to
know and the interrelationships of which must unfold themselves
to him like a supersensible script.
Thus, according to Steiner, "Without cognition through inspiration the
imaginative world would remain like writing at which we stare but
which we cannot read." 19
In "On the Meaning of Cognition" Bely's description of inspiration
also involves awareness of the higher beings in the realm of "sense-free
thought," but by discerning the rhythms that link the initiate with the
higher world
we grasp the life of ideas in two ways: by means of the hierarchical life of rhythm within and outside us; what is music within us,
is voices of hierarchies outside us; the worlds of angels and archangelsare thoughts; and the life of hierarchies in our thought
and the life of our thought in the formations of the worldare a
unity, (p. 47)
In the novel, Kotik's involvement with his doll Ruprecht and the
"sound apartment" refer to this stage. It is also clearly present in Kotik's
perception of candle flames dancing in candelabra: in the resulting
"gleaming rhythms the land of rhythm would begin to beat"; "the pulse
of the rhythm of gleamings ismy own," Kotik continues, "beating in
the land of the dances of rhythm." Bely strains language nearly to the
limits of intelligibility in order to communicate what was obviously

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not a verbal experience during his infancy. However, it is possible to


understand the "pulse of the rhythm of the gleamings" as being a link
between Kotik and the otherworldly "land of rhythm," which evokes
Bely's formulations in "On the Meaning of Cognition," and, in turn,
anthroposophical teaching about inspiration. The effect of a common
pulse beating in Kotik and the otherworldly realm is the formation of
"a passageway into another world," through which "beings of another
life will pass freely into our apartment" (thus giving Kotik the insight
into higher beings that inspiration is supposed to). The one being that
does appear before Kotik is associated for him with the Russian vowel
sound "iu" (close to the English "you"). It seems to Kotik as if the being
is trying "to make" the sound out of the air, or "to sculpt" it (183-184:
137-138).

This passage and others like it raise the possibility that Dudkin's encounter with Shishnarfne in Petersburg may also have been modeled on
the second stage of anthroposophical cognition (although this is something one would have been hard pressed to infer on the basis of the earlier novel alone).
In Kotik Letaev Bely also refers to his occult investigation of the connection between his childhood and the higher worlds of spirit by the
same metaphor of "reading" that Steiner uses when speaking of inspiration. In the novel, the narrator says "Impressionsare the written records [zapisi] of Eternity" (142:106), and claims that he could have formulated a cosmogony if he had been able to tie together his childhood
notions. Later, he refers to Steiner's specific formulation directly:
the transfiguration by memory of what happened previously is in
fact reading: of the universe that is not ours, that stands behind
what happened previously; impressions of childhood years, that
is, memory, is a reading of the rhythms of the sphere, a remembering of the harmony of the sphere; it isthe music of the
sphere: of the land where
I lived before birth!

(187:140-141)

The subchapter "Impressions" in which this passage appears transcribes


the adult narrator's occult investigation into his childhoodpresumably the anthroposophical task that gave rise to the text as a whole. Because this section contains a description of flowing light pulses out of
which forms arise, there is every reason to equate the narrator's references to "reading" with Steiner's definition of "inspiration."
There is considerable charm and warmth in Kotik's childhood
memories, but little of the humor, to say nothing of the satire, that was
an important constituent of Petersburg, The Silver Dove, and several
of the Symphonies. So it is all the more interesting to note that even in

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Kotik Letaev, his most orthodox anthroposophical work, Bely is capable of poking gentle fun at "inspiration." While in the countryside by a
pond, Kotik first experiences a Steinerian fluidity of thoughts: "A tree
would branch out, leaf out. . ./ Thoughts branch out leaf out for me /
I'm thinking something: but the confusion is swarming." Then it occurs
to him that his "thought is pouring out; and it silvers before me; but
you don't know what's in it. / Maybe . . .tadpoles?" (157:117). This
is a light-hearted depiction of the aspect of "inspiration" that involves
discerning "higher beings" in the metamorphoses of "imaginative"
thoughts. In general, this kind of philosophical irony appears in all of
Bely s earlier works and consists of characters enacting perversions of
his most cherished beliefs. Kotik speculating that tadpoles may be
higher beings in his swarming thoughts should thus be understood as
Bely's emphasis on the distance between any one individual and the
ideal to which he aspiresan ideal that clearly remains untarnished if
one judges by the work as a whole.
The hallmark of the transition from imagination to inspiration can
be summarized as the change from fluidity to fixity. The shift between
the two stages is an experience Kotik has often. The narrator says at the
beginning of Chapter Two: "I began to live in the state of being, in what
has become (as I had earlier lived in becoming) . . . . much would become fixed for a moment; and thenwould flow away" (62: 43). The
widespread opposition of "swarm" (roi) and "order" (stroi) in the novel
is a reflection of the same transition: "My first moments areswarms;
and 'swarm, swarmeverything swarms' is my first philosophy; I was
swarming in swarms . . . . the wheel and the sphere are my first forms:
conswarmings in a swarm" (64: 45). Similarly, Kotik registers the impression that adults around him gradually become fixed: "Aunt Dotty
is becoming . . . . she is slowly becoming solid . . . . Solid Aunt Dotty is
becoming: Evdokiia Egorovna; sheis like Eternity" (68: 47). In this
case, the child's perception is modeled on the adept's coming to know a
higher being. The experiences of transition apply to Kotik's reaching
age four, when he begins to live "on land" rather than "in oceans," or, as
he also puts it, when the "angel of the epoch" appears out of the flow of
human time (128: 95); to Kotik's memory of piano tuning, which gives
rise to a swarm of Ancient Greek philosophical teachings that lead, in
an indented line signaling the importance of the words, to "the ideal
world of Plato" (185: 139); and even to Kotik's memory of an ornamented Christmas tree forming out of various sounds (197: 148).
The third and highest stage in anthroposophical cognition is "intuition." This involves understanding the "inner nature" of the "beings of
the higher world" that the adept has come to know during the second
stage of inspiration. To know a higher being "means to have become

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completely one with it," and this final stage of cognition is what "makes
possible an adequate research into repeated lives and into karma." 2 0
More specifically, the highest insight of which the clairvoyant is capable in anthroposophy is the recognition of his unity with Christ. Bely
speaks of this overtly in "On the Meaning of Cognition":
Finally in inspiration,
in the union of our thought with the universe, in the wings of this thought as in an angel, "I" fly over the
chasm separating me from the boiling of the universe; "I" unite
with the world in the unity of the divine [italics mine]: this union
is in fact intuition,
(p. 47)
This aspect of the three-step cognitive process is perhaps the most
obvious in Kotik Letaev. For example, the formation of the skull temple from thought echoes a formulation from "On the Meaning of Cognition" that is part of Bely's explanation of intuition: "The universeis
the bones of The Word" ( V s e l e n n a i a k o s t i Slov[a?]; p. 49). The scene
with the skull thus appears to be an early adumbration of the highest
level of awareness that Kotik will reach only later in his life. In fact Bely
mentions in the preface of the novel that he achieved self-consciousness
at the age of thirty-fivewhich, in allowing him to recapture his past,
makes writing the novel possible. So it is not surprising that Kotik Letaev has only foreshadowings of the protagonist's future full enlightenment. It seems fair to assume that Bely intended to trace the continuation of his path to self-consciousness in a later part of the unfinished

My Life.

In the essay, Bely links the idea of the all-creating Logos ("world historyis the uttering of words by The Word; the words of The Word
create the given world," p. 49) with Christ. This connection will appear
in the conclusion of the novel as well. (The relation of "The Word" to
"words" of course recalls that of "Symbol" to "symbols" in the essay
"The Emblematics of Meaning"as well as the Biblical Gospel of St.
John.)
Intuition finds its clearest expression in Kotik's overt and elaborate
identification with Christ in the last pages of the novel. So further discussion of imagery scattered throughout the text that is related to intuition can be left for the next section of this chapter.
It might be helpful, however, to explain first why the three different
steps of the hierarchical cognitive series should appear throughout the
text of the novel, seemingly at random. A simple explanation can be
found in Steiner's teachings that the stages in question
need not be thought of as successive experiences . . . the student. . .
may have reached only a certain degree of perfection in a preceding stage when he begins exercises that correspond to a subsequent

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stage. It may well happen, for example, that the student has only
gained a few imaginations with certainty, yet he already performs
exercises leading to inspiration, intuition. 2 1
The combination of this view with Bely's spiraling narrative formin
which he returns to earlier events at the same time that Kotik grows
olderresults in intuitive moments appearing at the beginning of the
text while imaginative ones can be found near its end. The general,
large-scale tendency in the novel, however, is from imagination to intuition, despite repeated local countercurrents.
-4In "On the Meaning of Cognition," Bely explains that achieving the
highest state of "intuition" yields the (Pauline) realization that " T am
not ,' but Divinity within me." In keeping with this insight, Bely
draws a parallel between the story of Christ on Golgotha and the
anthroposophical conception of cognition. The initiate who achieves
the highest cognitive state relives, in a way, the "Golgotha mystery,"
which is the central event in cosmic evolution according to anthroposophy. 22 The essay concludes with the statement:
"Not b u t Christ in me."
We die in Christ.
But in this death is accomplished the rending of the veil in the
Temple: our personal "I" is the veil: beyond the veil are we ourselves, arisen in the Spirit and in Truth.
Weare born in God. In Christwe die. Andwe arise in the
Holy Spirit, (p. 51)
The last sentence in the Epilogue of Kotik Letaev is nearly identical:
"In Christ we die in order to be resurrected in the Spirit" (292: 222). It is
clear, then, that Bely is making the same identification between Christ
and "intuition" in the novel as he had in the essay.
In addition to concluding a series of images in the Epilogue that portray Kotik as a cross-bearing Christ approaching Golgotha, the narrator's final words also culminate a series of references scattered throughout the text to an exalted being that accompanies all the phases of
Kotik's spiritual development. Because this is an omnipotent, benevolent guiding spirit, it brings a major change from the atmosphere in Petersburg, in which the dominant forces were evil, and the white dominomodeled on the anthroposophic Etheric Christappeared as
distinctly alienated.
Already in the Foreword of Kotik Letaev, Bely speaks of

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that one (but whoyou don't know): andwith that very same
glance (what kindyou don't know) he will look, having cut
through the mantles of nature; andresounding in my soul: with
the immemorially familiar, most cherished, never to be forgotten
. . . (11-12: 5)
The narrator s relation to this higher entity resembles the Gnostic conception of the earthbound soul's stirring in response to a call from its
spiritual homeland. This is implied by Kotik's description of the descent of his "I" (as distinct from the Divine "I") into a physical body during the actual moment of birth. He recalls the sensation of being "terribly compressed" after having been "spread throughout the cosmos."
"But the decision has been made," he continues, "the hour of life has
struck; and releasing me from parental arms, Someone ancient stands
there behind T " (50: 34).
This exalted being resembles an entity that appears in many mythic
quest patterns and one that Steiner calls the "greater guardian of the
threshold" in anthroposophy. During spiritual exercises the initiate
who has achieved inspiration encounters this being as "an ever present
exhorter to further effort [and] . . . the ideal toward which he strives."
Eventually the adept recognizes that this guardian is Christ, and thereby gains insight into the ultimate mystery of existence.23
The exalted entity in the novel comes close to being identified with
Christ in the scene of Kotik in the skull temple (3637: 24). It is also
evoked repeatedly in the text in a more elliptical form (30: 19, 35: 2223, 48: 33, 80: 56, 105: 76, 209: 157) until it becomes associated with
the central trauma of Kotik's (and Bely's) lifehis being torn between
parents with opposing personalities. By trying to please one, young
Bely always automatically disappointed the other. As a result, he always felt guilty even though he was not at fault; and this experience
eventually led to his identification with the ultimate guiltless victim
Christ. Near the end of the novel, after describing his sensation that he
was at the intersection of the father's and mother's life lines (which inevitably evokes the image of the cross), Kotik states: "But it stood in
my soul: / 'You arenot Papa's, notMama's . . ' / 'You are
mine!'. . . "He' will come forme" (217:163). The idea that Kotik crucified belongs more properly to a divine being than to the physical world
is in keeping with anthroposophical teaching about the central role of
the "Christ impulse" in human and cosmic evolution.
Thus we again return to Christ, but by way of Kotik's experiential
role as a Christ figure, rather than through the practice of a special
form of cognition. This identification became so rooted in Bely's imagination that he continued to make it even in his official memoirs about
his childhood, which are otherwise characterized by his attempts to
adapt his past life to the requirements of Soviet ideology.24

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But the exalted being is not only Christ. Shortly before the novel
ends, the heretofore unspecified and tantalizingly familiar "he" is also
identified as Vladimir Soloviev. "It seemed," the narrator writes upon
recalling his childhood impressions of adults' conversations about the
philosopher, "I saw Vladimir Soloviev: and he isthat one (but who
you don't know)" (262:198).
Soloviev occupied a sacrosanct place in Bely s imagination since the
beginning of the century. Thus it is not surprising that Bely would elevate the image of this beloved personage to a supernatural realm (as he
had already done in the Second Symphony). The implicit identification
of Soloviev with Christ should probably be understood as Bely's way
of suggesting that the philosopher had achieved the highest level of
anthroposophical cognition (intuition), in which his individual "I" became dissolved in Christ. The incorporation of Soloviev into an anthroposophical schema is yet another instance of Bely's habitual syncretism
(and at the same time a reflection of Steiner s known admiration for Soloviev). 25
The merging of Christ and Solovievand implicitly Kotik himself,
because of his imminent crucifixionrecalls how different symbols
and symbol clusters merged in Petersburg. The little girl Sonia Dadarchenko, whom Kotik likes, and whose first name is a diminutive of Sophia (and thereby an evocation of Soloviev), becomes linked to the exalted being in the novel by the mere mention of her "violet eyes" that
"silently pass into" Kotik (228: 171). There are many other instances of
this in Kotik Letaev, and, as in the earlier work, the blurring of the
boundaries among symbols suggests a great transcendent unity underlying the world of the novel. However, since the focus in Kotik Letaev
is on the protagonist's development, the reader may expect a predictable curve of Kotik's growing enlightenment. In Petersburg, by contrast, the reader was given less guidance on what connections to make
among symbols and the direction, if any, in which they were pointing.
One important effect of Soloviev's appearance in Kotik's life is that it
induces in him "the sensation of self-thinking thoughts, rushing about
in wing-horned flocks" (260: 197). Reference to thoughts thinking
themselves first appeared in The Silver Dove. In Petersburg, cerebral
play and self-thinking thoughts grew in importance, and became the
name for the transcendent's moving into human consciousness and
constituting the world. Now, in Kotik Letaev, Bely refines this central
idea of his own world view in accordance with anthroposophy. Following Soloviev's identification with Christ in the novel, the appearance of
these thoughts in Kotik becomes associated with the attainment of the
highest, intuitive stage of cognition. This inference is supported by the
association of "self-thinking thoughts" with the image of "wing-horns"

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(krylorogi). Bely's striking neologism reappears throughout the text,


and culminates in an extended passage in the end of the novel when Kotik's head seems to dissolve, and the two halves of his brain sprout
wings and soar (268-71: 203-205). Like the idea of flight, wings of the
mind suggest transcendence, which is the state Kotik is indeed experiencing in the end of the novel. Bely employs this image in "On the
Meaning of Cognition" (p. 47), and in poems describing his own meditative experiences; 26 it also appears in Steiners writings.
The most overt identification of Kotik with Christ occurs in the Epilogue. Bely has his alter ego anticipate "the torments of my cross,"
"dragging a wooden and shoulder-breaking cross," and "hanging" from
"nails." These emotionally charged passages undoubtedly represent the
peak of Bely's life-long quest for the true tie between the transcendent
and man. As Christ, Kotik will become the living perfect mediator between heaven and earth.
But although he has come very close, it is not clear that he has yet
achieved the state where he will be crucified: "history has sharpened
into a summit; on it . . . will be a cross; I will set it there: it will be my
last step toward the vast world" (290: 220). The final image recalls the
"vast astral cosmos" of which Shishnarfne speaks during his meeting
with Dudkin in Petersburg. And in a way that evokes the cognitive
model of contact with "thought beings" and "sound beings" in the scene
between Dudkin and Shishnarfne, the narrator in Kotik Letaev gradually shifts to the cognitive significance of the images of Kotik s stages of
the cross, and what will happen to him once he is figuratively crucified:
My self-consciousness will be a man then, my self-consciousness is still like an infant: I will be born a second time; the ice of
concepts, words, meaningswill break: many a meaning will
sprout through it. (292: 222)
This passage brings the novel full circle to the author's Foreword,
where he spoke of the birth of self-consciousness as having been like an
infant opening its eyes within him. This conclusion does not vitiate the
spiral of Kotik's life, of course. If one includes his precorporeal past, his
existence consists of repeated incarnations and, at the same time, a progression toward greater perfection under the influence of the "Christ
impulse."
Kotik's cognitive and existential experiences ultimately reflect the development of the cosmos as a whole. To understand how intuition and
the individual identifying with Christ are the microcosmic variant of
the crowning event in the cosmos, it would be useful to retrace briefly

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Andrei Bely

the previous steps that an adept would follow and that Kotik in fact experienced. Although the intermediate stage of inspiration, which precedes intuition, linked the self and all that exists outside it by means of
pulsing thought rhythms, inspiration is also characterized by a sense of
the self as an entity apart from the universe. Nonetheless, this is an advance over the first stage in anthroposophical cognitionthat of
imaginationwhere all of existence is in an undifferentiated flux. In
turn, this earliest stage is superior to any nonanthroposophical cognitive schema, which gives an entirely false picture of the world and of
man's place in it. Not unexpectedly, in this step-like progression the
highest stage of intuition leads to a total integration of the individual in
the cosmos.
As Bely also explains in "On the Meaning of Cognition," this ascending cognitive process is ultimately the reflection in the individual of the
evolution of the cosmos. The universe too will complete a tripartite development:
1) the creation of man and the world in God, 2) the falling out of
man and the world from the divine depths, 3) the unification of
man and the world in human activity that transforms the world
and returns man and the world into the Divinity, (p. 47)
Presumably the "human activity" is the active pursuit of a meditative
state that permits knowledge of the higher worlds. Thus Kotik's cognitive development is not only analogous to an adult adept's progression
to illumination, but is also a Haeckelian recapitulation of cosmic evolution.
-5With the possible exception of Petersburg, all of Bely's earlier works
are centrally concerned with quests for a metaphysical absolute. The
fact that the Princess and the Knight in the First Symphony, Musatov in
the Second, Khandrikov in the Third, Svetlova and Adam Petrovich in
the Fourth, and Darialsky in The Silver Dove are not masters of their
own lives does not detract from the impression that they are enacting
an extended search for a principle that will bring them into harmony
with the transcendent. An argument could be made that in Petersburg
Dudkin and Nikolai Apollonovich are also involved in this pursuit, the
first through his mystically colored revolutionary activity, the second
through his philosophical and then mystical investigations. But the
world in Petersburg is so changed with cosmic forces, and everyone in
the city is so thoroughly overwhelmed by them (whether they realize it
or not), that a quest in the sense of a physical or spiritual journey to the

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source of power and ultimate enlightenment is neither necessary nor


even possible. Everyone in the city has already arrived, or, perhaps
better to say, the transcendent hovering throughout the city has already drawn all of the inhabitants into itself. In Kotik Letaev, Bely
again returns to a more familiar quest pattern, but one that has become
entirely internalized. 27
The use of a Steinerian cognitive methodology results in a form of
contact between man and the realm of spirit that differs in an important
respect from what Bely's earlier works dramatize. The narrator's memory, which has been illuminated by clairvoyance through the achievement of self-consciousness, is made to operate like a perceptive glance.
The target of the narrator's memory, however, is not the external world
around him, but his own childhood as recorded in an otherworldly
realm. The analogy between visual perception and apprehension of the
past through memory is underscored by the fact that Bely uses visual
images to communicate the meaning memory produces. Thus, Kotik
Letaev contains two processes by which the protagonist experiences
contacts with the spiritual realm, depending on whether we have the
infant's experiences or the adult's apprehension of those experiences.
The first occurs spontaneously as a given of the infant's existence and
results in the constitution of the world around him.
The second is encapsulated in the formula "memory of memory,"
which is the clairvoyant adult's way of referring to the memory of having had memories of a spiritual life while an infantmemories that
were subsequently lost with age. (This occult adult perspective is what
distinguishes Kotik Letaev from other childhood autobiographies.)
These are the memories that self-consciousness in the adult can recapture, and it is this attempt to recapture the past that is comparable to a
quest. But the ontological status of these memories, which are thought
processes, of course, is not simply that of purely mental images:
The memory of memory is such: it isa rhythm in which
thingness is absent; dances, mimicry, gesturesare the dissolution of the shells of memory and a free passage into another
world.
The memories of childhood years aremy dances; these
dances areflights into what has never been, and nonetheless existing; beings of other lives have now intruded into the events of
my life; and the semblances of what has been are empty vessels
for me; with them I ladle up the harmony of the incomparable
cosmos. (188:141)
The meaning of this passage (and others like it: 22:13,112: 82,122: 90)
is that through clairvoyance the adult narrator can enter into conscious
contact with the land of rhythm, which the infant Kotik entered spontaneously as a function of his young age (a fact the adult also learned

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through clairvoyance). O n the Meaning of Cognition" described inspiration, the second meditative stage, in similar terms. Like Kotik, the
adult can have his world "enriched" with beings from this spiritual
realm (to use an expression of Steiner's). Thus memory emerges as a
means of tapping into an otherworldly dimension in which the narrator's pastthe infant's immanent experience, which in turn is based in a
cosmic pastexists eternal and unchanged.
This is, in effect, Bely's personal version of the anthroposophical
Akashic recorda permanent recording of all that ever occurred.
Steiner claimed to have derived his cosmogony from a reading of this
record and taught that properly prepared adepts could do the same. 2 8
In fact, following Steiner's likening of "inspiration" to "reading" Bely
also refers to the act of "reading" when speaking of this special operation of memory in Kotik Letaev (187: 140-141, and, similarly, 183:
137). 2 9
The function of language in apprehending reality was from the start
a fundamental concern in Bely's theory and art. Thus the metaphor of
"reading" the indelible cosmic record (which, according to Steiner, actually yields its information in the form of clairvoyant mental images)
represents a radical shift away from the claims Bely made about the reality of his own fictions in Petersburg. There the reader was asked to
accept the contention that the fictional characters were as real as the
reader's own world; in Kotik Letaev, language is repeatedly shown to
be inadequate to the task of expressing the narrator's visions. The only
ontological claim that might be made about the world of the novel is
that it constitutes a transcription of what Bely experienced, and of
what he discovered about his past by scanning the Akashic record. Indeed, the primacy of this supreme otherworldly "text" in Steiner's
teachings may have been instrumental in Bely's abandoning his views
about the absolute reality of his own writing.
Revealing conditional constructions that have a direct bearing on the
problem of language appear often in Kotik Letaev. "Thus would I
thicken with a word the unutterability of the arising of my infant life,"
the narrator remarks on the novel's first page, following an indented
paragraph in which he attempts to describe his first vague sensations of
existence. Later, when trying to capture the child's perception of adults'
conversation, the narrator comments "I would express them in approximately this way, if I could have expressed myself" (193: 144). In
these and similar instances, the verbal embodiment of experience is
clearly something that follows the experience, rather than actually being the mode of existence of that experience, as it was in Petersburg.

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The verbal difficulty might seem to be another consequence of Kotik


Letaev s being a childhood autobiographyof the notion that children
do not think in words (which have a reality for them independent of
things). But the narrator also makes it clear that what is approximate
about his renderings is not simply the adult's personal inability to recapture the infant's preverbal state. He acknowledges that some supreme experiences remain ultimately incommunicable. After a sequence of images dealing with the infant's perception of a scene like the
Adoration of the Magi, which he sees in wood fibers in a piece of furniture, the narrator admits that what he felt was
An inexpressible feeling:
I used to recognize it subsequently, unrevealed in its poignancy, but indistinctly audible to me beneath the images and
events of lifein works of art, in the din of cities; between two
entryway doors; most of allon the rib of the pyramid of
Cheops . . . (78: 55)
Even though the narrator can recognize in later life what he felt as a
child, he still cannot communicate it. This admission recalls the narrator's essentially Romantic paean to the unutterable Russian word in
The Silver Dove, and suggests Bely's return to the view of language he
held before Petersburg. In the earlier works there was at most only a
suggestion that fiction and reality were continuous.
The narrator also addresses another kind of gap between language
and reality that comes up in Kotik Letaev. A number of passages deal
with the young child's literal understanding of metaphors. Kotik hears
his mother say that a certain Ezheshekhinsky "flew off through a pipe,"
and then someone adds that this personage "is walking through fire and
copper pipes" (65: 45). Both phrases are familiar Russian idioms for
having had a rough time of it in life. But the child imagines Ezheshekhinsky literally wandering through pipes. This triggers Kotik's memory of his own movement through pipes before birth, as he puts it
which reminds the reader of the formation of the corridor and Letaev
apartment in the beginning of the novel. The entire experience becomes
Kotik's "first ponderings about the vicissitudes of fate."
Kotik fits another metaphor to his own prenatal experience when he
hears that "someone fell into a swoon" (75-76: 53). As he phrases it, he
hears this in "a dream," which, in anthroposophy, is really an astral
voyage or journey into a spiritual realm. For Kotik the metaphor
means falling through the parquet floor of the Letaev apartment into
the one beneath, and this is the meaning that the phrase has for him

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henceforth. It is possible to infer, of course, that Kotik had heard this


phrase in some half-waking state; the passages dealing with the swoon
follow a description of his impressions of some sort of party going on in
the apartment while he is in bed. But the important point is his way of
supplying a meaning for the words. Falling through the floor becomes
an image for his spontaneous ability to move beyond the limits of consciousness at an early age: "for me the threshold of consciousness is moveable, penetrable, openable like the floor boards of the parquet." The experiences he had when he was capable of crossing the threshold easily,
however, "are not applicable to anything," and are therefore forgotten
after infancy. Nevertheless, they revive later as a memory of his having
had a memory of some lost experience (76: 54).
These experiences in the spirit world that fade from conscious memory with age can be recaptured, of course, as the text of Kotik Letaev is
meant to illustrate. The method of recovering the lost occult experience
is, presumably, clairvoyant memory. This appears to be the narrators
point in the conclusion of the passage dealing with the swoon, when he
says that "the ancient experiences in the new conditions of life begin to
old-womanize outside me and transform mea thousand-year-old old
maninto an infant." The "old woman" is a reference to the protagonist's primal prenatal experiences, and he is able to reencounter her
through the "exercise of new experiences" ( 7 6 - 7 7 : 54).
The process that the narrator dramatizes in these two instances of
understanding metaphors literally is fully explicated in an important
subchapter in the novel, entitled "Self-Consciousness." The narrator
states that "an unknown word is comprehended in the recollection of its
gesture; the gesture iswithin me; and for words I select gestures; the
world is formed out of gestures for me" (115: 84). This is basically a description of an aspect of anthroposophy known as "eurythmy." It has to
do with the belief that sounds are linked to particular physical gestures
of the body, which are also reflected in the movement of the tongue that
produces the soundswith all being an accurate expression of cosmologica! verities. (Glossaloliia, to which I referred above, was Bely's
treatise on the subject.) Thus the narrator's statement that
words are imprinted on my soul in a hieroglyph unknown to
me:
and the meaning of the sounds of a word is fragmented
by my soul
and [my?] understanding of the world is not fused
with the word about the world
(115:84)
can also be applied to Kotik's encounter with such metaphors as "falling
into a swoon." 3 0 He hears the words, and supplies images of physical

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movement from within himself to infuse the words with meaning. This
primeval, cosmic meaning is what the adult then presumably tries to
recover through clairvoyant memory from the Akashic record. Although the point of contact with the otherworldly realm is within the
self, the fitting of eurythmie gestures to words leads not to solipsism
but to an expression of cosmic truths. As Bely said in a memoir, "The
subconscious is filled with gestures that depict the life of the spirit
world . . . A gesture is the root of the verbal tree." 31 A composition of
cosmically significant gestures is thus a true expression of the nature of
the world, while words without their underlying eurythmie significance are not. The gestures of which the narrator speaks presumably
derive from the same world of rhythm that generated the cognitive-creative impulses which, through Kotik, deposited his world around him.
This is why the narrator can say "impressions of wordsare recollections for me" (117: 86). The gestures that words evoke recall the ultimate transcendent reality of which he is trying to become aware again
through clairvoyance.
- 6 -

Kotik Letaev is the culmination of the major line in Bely s prose fiction that begins with the First Symphony, and that is marked by an
ever-deepening immersion of the individual in the realm of the spirit.
The last novels Bely wrote, beginning with The Baptized Chinaman
the putative sequel to Kotik Letaevare characterized by a sudden decrease in this metaphysical preoccupation. Ironically, this reorientation
in Bely s fiction is also prefigured in Kotik Letaevin the heart, as it
were, of his most otherworldly novel, and at a time when he was committed to the occult science.
Entire pages in Kotik Letaev consist of straightforward recollections
of childhood experiences. These are especially frequent in and after
Chapter Three, at the opening of which the narrator announces that he
is now four years oldthe age that marked the turning point in his
spiritual evolution. Neither unusual perceptions, nor specially metricized, nor otherwise poetically deformed narrative prose appears for
several paragraphs or pages at a time; these passages could easily be
part of Bely's three volumes of memoirs. Were it not for the context, the
passages alone would lead one to assume that the work at hand is a realistic one. Only an occasional leitmotif or other brief digression appears every once in a while, recalling the esoteric cosmogony that had
been established earlier, and would be developed later in the novel.
There would be nothing remarkable, of course, about straightforward recollections in a childhood autobiography. But although the
adult narrator in Kotik Letaev has explained how he lost his spontane-

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ous contact with the otherworldly when he turned four, the narrative is
written from a double point of view, including that of an adult who has
achieved clairvoyant insight. One would expect, therefore, that the
double viewpoint should inform even passages dealing with the child's
life after the age of four. Otherwise one is left with an impression that is
antithetical to an anthroposophical world viewthat a terrestrial existence could ever be free of cosmic significance.
Most likely, the pages in question are narrative lapses in a vision of
existence that at other times caused Bely to use language in a uniquely
nonrealistic manner. This impression of inconsistency is augmented by
the fact that after interludes of simple prose, Bely always returns to the
style of his visionary passages.
Nothing quite like this had appeared in Bely's earlier works. In the
Second Symphony, for example, the sudden transitions among disparate topics in the short paragraphsthe typographical texture of the
prose itselffunctioned as an adequate reminder of the underlying
Schopenhauerian or Solovievian metaphysics, even when music, eternity, boredom, or the woman clothed with the sun were not mentioned. In The Silver Dove, the narrator's and character's dualistic perceptions were sufficiently widespread throughout the work to bring
out the occult dimension of the novel. Similarly, the symbol clusters,
tormented cityscapes and nervous narrative texture in Petersburg did
not let the reader forget for an instant that he was in a sui generis world.
The reason for this segmentation of the text into different "fields" in
Kotik Letaev may be the difficulty of the task Bely has set for himself.
He attempts to use language that presupposes certain ontological givens in order to describe a reality that is not based on those givens. This
tension can be seen to operate even on a small scale in the novel. In the
section "The Formation of Consciousness," for example, Bely begins by
saying that in the distant past "T did not exist"that there was an
"enormous gap" in the body where consciousness was to be. But at the
same time he speaks of the "seethings of delirium" that "were appearing
to me"; and adds that "warmth seethed up for me; and I was tormented"
(17-18:10). In these passages, Bely wants nothing less than to describe
an absence of self-awareness from the point of view of the unborn and
unformed infant. But this is clearly a paradoxical desire in view of the
nature of language, and it leads to the striking inconsistency of referring to oneself even when that self does not existan additional complication in an already difficult series of passages. There is, in short, an
inevitable irreconcilability between the ideas Bely wants to express and
the means available to do this. Perhaps, therefore, Bely felt the need to
lapse into simpler prose dealing with mundane reality to provide relief
through contrast, both for himself and his readers.

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181

The two tendencies in Bely's prose grow out of the opposition between a conception of the self as integrated in the cosmos and one of the
self as separate from it. Behind them lies the double point of view that
operates throughout the workof the experiencing infant, and of the
recollecting adult. Bely attempts to capture the elusive experiences of
the child in highly allusive language that just skirts the edge of intelligibility. The narrator then often has to add a simple explanation from the
adult's linguistic resources to the child's impressions. For example: "the
live-flowing lightscript of lightnings iswords; and the pulsations
aremeanings" (116: 85). The narrator's interjection of "words" and
"meanings" is in effect a brief lapse from the way he normally tries to
use language to render the child's experiences. The point of these departures is of course to clarify what might otherwise be unintelligible, to
provide a small point of definite contact with the reader.
Another instance of such a small, rapid shift in perspective occurs in
the section "The Formation of Consciousness." The narrator describes
how his body "covered with consciousness boiled over," and then adds
a parenthetical comment, "bones in acids start hissing with bubbly
foam" (18: 10). The reference to this laboratory phenomenon is obviously derived from the adult's experience. And it functions not as a
metaphoric bridge between earthly and otherworldly dimensions, but
as a simple clarification of the obscure image that preceded it.
These small-scale shifts to denotative, "realistic" language echo the
longer passages that resemble official memoirs. An illustrative example
of the latter is the transition between two sections in Chapter Five. The
ending of one tells about the "memory of memory" being "rhythm in
which thingness is absent," and how "beings of other lives have now intruded into the events of my life." The next section begins as follows
however:
Papa's Nameday
Pompul stopped by rarely, showing up on Papa's nameday: on
St. Michael's Day, in November.
I subsequently recalled this day: the many-horned coat-rack
was filled with fur coats: the dining room rumbled, tightly
packed with professors and members of all kinds of societies;
someone rang every minutecame in: grey and young frockcoaters . . . (188:141)
Even if the conclusion of the preceding section with its reference to "beings of other lives" is an explanation of what came before in the novel
and not a link with what would follow, the reader still expects something quite different from Papa's Nameday. It is also surprising to read
a straightforward narrative description (albeit with Bely's unusual

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punctuation), especially since it is presented from the child's point of


view. One is left with unanswered questions about how the appearance
of guests is related to the anthroposophical formation and development of consciousness that is the focus of the work.
The appearance of small-scale realistic narrative passages in the context of cosmic visions suggests that clarity, even if it betrays unmediated
accuracy of representation, was important for Bely (and clarity, indeed
the scientific reproducibility of occult experiences, is a hallmark of
anthroposophy, or occult science). Giving in to plain prose is something like an admission of incomplete success in carrying out an artistic
project, one that Bely had defined as his "anthroposophical academic
task": "to truly see something of what had not been seen" in infancy.
The realistic passages sit like blocks of material whose occult significance is not illuminated in a context where the constant emphasis is on
the spiritual significance of things and events.
Similar retreats from an esthetic tactic occurred in Bely's Fourth
Symphony, but on a smaller scale. In Chapter 1 1 argued that Bely had
not succeeded in infusing his elaborate imagery in the Symphony with
sufficient meaning, and was then forced to add prosaic explanations to
make the text more fully intelligible to the reader. Something like this
occurs in Kotik Letaev, although it would be wrong to suggest that this
work is as obscure as the Fourth Symphony. Indeed, Bely often succeeds brilliantly in depicting a world and state of being of swarming
physical and spiritual impressions in Kotik Letaev, which is comprehensible, when the requisite effort in understanding it is made. It is also
clear that the difficulty of understanding Kotik Letaev is an integral
and necessary part of the work, as it was of Bely's earlier Symphonies
and novels, and a consequence of the difficulty of either mastering the
ideology, or acquiring the illumination that underlies it.
Finally, it is possible to understand the prosaic passages as nonproblematic. Since all things on earth imply or reflect spiritual realities in an
anthroposophical world view, Bely may have made the prosaic passages into highly encoded presentations of an anthroposophical cosmogony. In other words, the anthroposophy that is on the surface in
many parts of the novel may disappear below the surface in the "memoiristic" passages. If this is the case, then the work cannot be fully accessible except to a true initiate of the occult science, and specifically to
one who is fully conversant with Bely's unique refractions of its teachings.

The Baptized Chinaman


Bely returned to his vast, autobiographical epic My Life in 1920, and

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183

published the first chapter of the continuation in the following year,


with a title that suggested what his long-range intentions were: The
Crime of Nikolai Letaev. (The EpicVolume One). The Baptized
Chinaman. Chapter One. He shortened this to The Baptized Chinaman: A Novel in 1927 when he published a revised version of the chapter in book form. 32
Bely s young boyhood is the subject of the new work, which is thus
an obvious sequel to Kotik Letaev. However, an important difference
between the two is that Bely moves the visionary, anthroposophical
imagery which dominates the earlier work into the background of the
later one. Most of The Baptized Chinaman relates the child's realistic
impressions of his life; only a few passages deal with the otherworldly
realm. Bely even feels free to quote the descriptions of his father from
The Baptized Chinaman in On the Border of Two Centuries, his official
memoir of the period portrayed in the novel. 33
At the same time, a dual point of view persists throughout the work,
although it differs from the one in Kotik Letaev. Since there are few visionary passages, the two dominant points of view are the conventional
ones of childhood autobiographythe earthbound child and the earthbound adult. The child occasionally also has visions of something like
an ancestral past, but it is not clear whether they occur thanks to the
adult's ability to read the Akashic record, or because the child is simply
remembering occasional moments of spontaneous clairvoyance experienced during infancy. Presumably, since the work is the putative continuation of Kotik Letaev, the former is the case. In any event, what are
clearly the adult's perceptions make up the digressions and occasional
asides that ironize at the child's expense.
Apart from the rare occult passages in the work, what evidence is
there that Bely is still operating within a world view that is a continuation of that in Kotik Letaev1 The answer lies, I believe, in the significant role that alliteration and meter play in the prose of The Baptized
Chinaman. In Kotik Letaev the narrator made it clear that rhythms
connect the world of spirit with the world of man. Numerous scenes depict a variety of repetitive pulses as the most fundamental means by
which both information and literally creative energy were transmitted
from the cosmos to Kotik, and through him, into his world. Sounds in
anthroposophy fulfill a similar function; and it is likely that the numerous neologisms in the novel were there for the same purpose. Thus the
appearance of passages filled with sound repetitions and a recognizable
meter in The Baptized Chinamanmany pages of which are written in
regular amphibrachsis an indirect expression of an occult world view
even when overt occult imagery is absent. The problem is that when
the reader is presented with only such abstract and relatively mute phenomena as meter and alliteration, it becomes very difficult indeed to

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speak of the specific nature of man's links to the transcendent.


As he had done in Kotik Letaev, Bely places the same central event of
his young life at the heart of The Baptized Chinamannamely,
the
trauma of being torn between his parents, which leads him to identify
with Christ. However, in The Baptized Chinaman Bely emphasizes a
different side of this identification. In the earlier work the point of the
entire narrative was a depiction of Kotik's development toward the
achievement of the highest level of anthroposophical cognitionintuition, or the realization that the individual is one with Christ. Now Bely's emphasis is on the suffering he had to endure rather than the
achievement of ultimate wisdom. Either The Baptized Chinaman covers a period in Bely's life during which he had been removed somehow
from the path of enlightenment that was the focus of Kotik Letaev, or
Bely changed to a more pessimistic tone under the influence of the
ghastly hardships he had to endure in Soviet Russia in 1920.34 My guess
is that the latter case is more likely, because when the narrator turned
four in Kotik Letaev, which was supposed to have stopped his spontaneous contact with the spirit world, visionary passages continued as a
consequence of the adult's retroactive illumination of his childhood by
means of clairvoyance.
Bely often communicates his pain and sense of guilt with great power:
consciousness of "guilt without guilt" becomes increasingly
stronger in me.
I recall:
why is it that papa
yells at me when out of fright I get tangled up in my thoughts
about mama, who may wake up; if you listenyou're guilty; if
you don't listenyou're guilty:
guilty without end: guilty and
alone: guiltyto the end, guiltywithout any reason!. . . .
And for all this you get
a ringing slap in the face!
And the thread of my crime is clear to me: these nerves [of
mother's]are a consequence of difficult childbirth; I committed
a crime against mother by having appeared before her; and later:
I initiated discord between her and papa; self-consciousnessis
criminal . . . (pp. 170-171)
This is the childhood experience that explains the original title of the
work, The Crime of Nikolai Letaev.35

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185

-2-

The change to the final title of the work is difficult to understand, as


is the function of the Asiatic imagery in the novel as a whole. On a
number of occasions, the narrator describes his fatherwho is obviously a portrait of Bely's own fatheras having "Scythian" features
(pp. 7, 35, 94,154), or as recalling a Chinese who has fathomed the wisdom of the I Ching (p. 21), or as Zoroaster (p. 141). Near the end of the
novel, after relating the charming story of his father's dream of Christ,
in which Christ agrees with the father's eccentric philosophical system,
Kotik concludes: "Papa is probably a baptized Chinaman!" Although
this makes clear that the change in titles indicates an apparent shift in
focus from the narrator to his father, or to the narrator's relation to his
father, the meaning of this shift remains unclear.
The apocalyptic meaning of Asia in Petersburg makes it tempting to
hypothesize that the references to Asia in The Baptized Chinaman have
a comparable significance, despite the fact that they were totally absent
from Kotik Letaev. Thus the narrator's father as a baptized Chinaman
may be an echo of Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov, whose ancestor
was a baptized Mongol.
It is likely, however, that the frequent references to Scythians specifically refer to a Russian cultural and political movement known as
Scythianism and associated with the social and literary critic IvanovRazumnik. D. S. Mirsky characterizes it succinctly as a "sort of mystical revolutionary messianism, laying great stress on the revolutionary
mission of Russia and on the fundamental difference of Socialist Russia
from the bourgeois West."36 The Bolshevik Revolution was perceived
by the Scythians as a manifestation of the new world and order to
come. (Aleksandr Blok's poem "The Scythians" [1918] is a well-known
expression of this ideology). Bely was close friends with Ivanov-Razumnik for a long time, is known to have found his ideas congenial, 37
and first published Kotik Letaev in his almanac The Scythians. But
even without this connection, it is clear that the significance of Asia has
changed for Bely since Petersburg because the apocalypse as such is no
longer his central concern in The Baptized Chinaman.38
Indeed, the significance of things Scythian in the novel could be
characterized as more broadly occult and diffuse than something as
specific as the end of world history. In general, Scythian imagery recalls the narrator's prenatal cosmic existence in Kotik Letaev. But the
achievement of self-consciousness is not an overt theme in The Baptized Chinaman, and since the narrator had lost spontaneous contact
with the spirit world at the age of four, the fact that he continues to
have occasional occult experiences in The Baptized Chinaman could be

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Andrei Bely

understood as inconsistencies on Bely's part, or as natural but rare


events that constitute exceptions to the rule.
The narrator's occult visions in The Baptized Chinaman arise primarily during moments of emotional turmoil. He speaks of the moral
blows his parents exchanged being like the impacts of two lead spheres
against his "weak, five-year old body." The result was that "Iwas
pushed out into what lay beyond my skin by the squeezing of nightmare; and the sensation of destructiongrew stronger: in the collapse
of physical, psychic, and moral foundations" (pp. 168-169).
A hysterical outburst from the narrator's mother leads to an especially painful scene with the father that, in turn, prompts a complex sequence of images revolving around a Scythian slaying a Persian. This
violent image was awakened somehow in the narrator's imagination by
his father's practice of smashing a rusty nail into a metal washbasin in
order to "tame" his wife, who, as a result of the hideous noise, inevitably collapses into tears (p. 153). The horror of the scene apparently
causes the narrator to faint, and this is when he sees his father in the
guise of an enraged Scythian on horseback. The narrator then begins to
identify with this vision himself:
the galloping [of the Scythian] became bound together
through a compaction of the dust; compact dustis my body;
and it gallops in my little chest, it gallops in my little head; and I
am torn asunder in the galloping of thought, the galloping of the
heart;
thus
in the body:
in mine!
a race through the minutes occurs: of the dead Persian, and of the wild Scythian; the hooves pound; in my little
breastthere's a growing lump, a bloody lump: my Scythian!
(p. 156)
In this passage the rhythm (of a "gallop") takes on a material substance
that is the narrator himself ("compact dustis my body"). This recalls
the fundamental pattern of the relationship between the spiritual and
material worlds in Petersburg and Kotik Letaev, where the former created the latter. Moreover, the narrator's reference to a "growing lump"
in his heart echoes the expanding crimson sphere in Apollon Apollonovich's chest, although, again, here the image is not apocalyptic. The importance of rhythm as the primary link between man and the otherworldly realm is further underscored in this passage by the fact that in
the Russian original it is composed entirely of perfect amphibrachs.
This passage also hints at an occult dimension in the novel because it
seems to be concerned with reincarnation. According to Steiner, intu-

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187

ition, the highest cognitive state, allows the adept to investigate "repeated earth lives and . . . human karma." 39 The narrator seeing himself
as a Persian and his father as a Scythian (and all the other incarnations
of the father throughout the text) may thus be taken as evidence of the
tripartite anthroposophical cognitive schema still being relevant for the
narrator, albeit in a muted form when compared to Kotik Letaev. At
the same time, the spontaneous vision of a fainting child goes against
Steiner's belief that man can attain enlightenment "only through soulspirit exercises"a departure from anthroposophical orthodoxy that
also characterized Kotik Letaev.
Bely does not use amphibrachs exclusively in visionary passages.
The image of the Persian (an exemplar of an old, effete culture?) and
the Scythian (a healthy, barbaric destruction of the past?) continues to
develop until the narrator identifies himself with the Persian whose
head is being pierced by a spear thrown by the Scythian. This and related
images are interrupted by the sudden appearance of the narrator's parents, who have obviously come to his room because he has been having
a nightmare (p. 162). Even though it represents a return to reality, this
passage is also composed of amphibrachs. It differs from the visionary
passages only in that it does not contain any striking alliterations.
The general significance of the widespread amphibrachic rhythm is
probably as mute evidence of man's dependence on a spiritual cosmos.
So the narrator's comment about an accident his father had with fire
can be applied to everything in his life:
I felt that behind this event of memory, there crouched another
eventancient, ancient: in the rage of flame
there arose in memory
greater rages:
wild, Scythian ones! (p. 157)
Although the specific occult significance of Scythians and Persians is
unclear, the image of the narrator as a Persian being slain by a Scythian
does suggest a connection with Christ's torment. This possibility is confirmed later in the novel, where Bely presents an esoteric, anthroposophical version of the Old Testament in which the narrator's father appears as Abraham and the narrator himself as Isaac. The latter is of
course a well known biblical "type" for Christ. Inevitably, the narrator
identifies himself openly with Christ and says "I wanted to crucify myself" (p. 227).
The significance of Christ in The Baptized Chinaman continues to be
anthroposophical, as it had been in Kotik Letaev. In an important passage the narrator speaks of Christ in distinctly Steinerian terms as the

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Andrei Bely

central regenerative force in the cosmos. This page is also of particular


interest because it has one of the most striking typographical arrangements in Bely's entire canon. The narrator's text, as he speaks of Christ
as a "sun Disk,"suddenly splits into two separate columns of print, each
containing a different sentence. One speaks of the "Christ Being"'s body
entering "like a Sword into the world's / Nothingness!," the other of it
entering "like a Sword into the world's / Everything!" Following this,
the text merges into a funnel-shape that narrows toward the bottom of
the page as the narrator speaks of the occult, archangelic names of the
anthroposophical Christ's attributes (p. 217). The entire typographical
design thus describes the movement toward an ultimate unity in Christ
of everything in the cosmosa view that typifies anthroposophical
teaching as a whole.
In a suggestive but somewhat unclear study of the first version of the
novel (The Crime of Nikolai Letaev), written from what appears to be
an anthroposophical point of view, A. Veksler identifies a number of
parallels between alliterations and what Bely claimed was the mystical
significance of certain sounds in his Glossaloliaparallels that generally
support the overt themes of the novel. Veksler's comments also underline how hermetic anthroposophy, or Bely's refraction of it, can bea
feature that effectively blocks the uninitiated from understanding it.
For example, analyzing the important motif "the axis of days revolves,
the shadow of shadows" (vrashchaetsia
vereteri dnei, ten' tenei),
Veksler finds that the dominance of the letter "t" (in the Russian) is indicative of "immobilized shadows, as yet nonexistent, not manifested."
The "d" that appears shows "the becoming that has become; it is any
kind of form (of things, plants, and thoughts)." The "n" suggests "the
flying by of spectralness," and the "v" is "the sound of howling chaos
which blows through empty form and gives rise to shadows." "R,"
which is only "hinted at" in the motif is the "sound of rupture, the sound
of consciousness, the sound of explosive reasonthis is the sound of
'papa'." The meaning that emerges from this and other combinations of
sounds suggests to Veksler a tension between formlessness and form
the maternal and paternal poles in the novel, respectivelythat Kotik
resolves at the novel's end through his entry into temporality and his
ultimate identification with Christ. As Veksler explains it:
By his birth, Kotik divides papa and mama in half; before him
there was a holistic, mutual interpenetrating [do nego bylo tsel'noe, vzaimoproniknutoe];
he must unite them, uniting them
within himself in a new wayby means of papa's light to transform mama . . . and mama's sinsare his sins, because on him lies
responsibility for his mother. 40

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One should add that Veksler's analysis conforms neatly with Steiners
teachings about Ahriman and Luciferthe spirits of form and formlessness, respectivelyand Christ as the perfect mediator between the
two. Veksler states that Kotik manages to keep the opposing parental
forces in balance without succumbing to either, which is the relation
that Steiner claims is necessary with regard to Ahriman and Lucifer for
the proper evolution of mankind to occur under the influence of "the
Christ impulse." (There is a well-known anthroposophical sculpture
designed by Steiner that expresses this idea by showing Christ keeping
Ahriman and Lucifer apart.)
Because so few passages deal directly with the occult in The Baptized
Chinaman, there is little to go on in delineating the precise nature of
man's relation to the spiritual world in the work. But in addition to the
passage quoted above about the seeming compaction of the narrator's
body out of rhythm, there are other hints that suggest Bely has not
abandoned the world view that dominated his earlier works.
Here is one example: "I know: that chute which you can't overcome
in a hundred thousand years: is the spinal column; I crawled from the
worm to the gorilla, to . . . to . . . the spreading of the sphere: of my
head, on which I try to seat myself; and fall again into the antediluvian
past" (p. 168). This combines an image out of Haeckel with the image
for the mind expanding to the point of contact with the spirit realm
both of which figured prominently in Kotik Letaev.
Another particularly intriguing instance is the child-narrator's description of how a nanny of his came into being, which bears a resemblance to the way Dudkin arose before Apollon Apollonovich and
Shishnarfne appeared before Dudkin in Petersburg.
She simply appeared (very many things in life simply appear:
fleas, crumbs, motes of dust!)
and so someone breathed Henrietta Martynovna onto a mirror
for me; someone exhaled before the mirror; and having lost its reflectivity, the mirror becamea whitish mist; exhaled again: and
there sits Henrietta Martynovna. (p. 42)
In part, this passage seeks to capture the ebb and flow of the child's unstable memories of the woman. But there is also a complex connection
between perception and creation: the woman appears in a mirror
where, presumably, the child had earlier seen only himself. In Petersburg, Shishnarfne had returned to an otherworldly realm through
Dudkin's throat after becoming a two-dimensional figure on a window

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Andrei Bely

pane. Now, however, a person appears on a mirrored glass surface as a


reified exhalation from what may be a spiritual dimension. Moreover,
Bely uses the same tactic to suggest the ultimately mysterious origins of
the nanny as he had in the First Symphony. He does not specify the subjects of the verbs that indicate how she arose, and simply says "[they]
breathed [nadyshali]" Henrietta Martynovna; "someone exhaled";
"[they] breathed again [dokhnuli eshche]."
This general process (designated as cerebral play in Petersburg) is
also at work in the narrator's reference to the "fleetfooted conjectures
[that] run out of my head through the rooms." O n e of these actually appears to take on a momentary existence and "sucks everything out of
me, pouring it into himself" (p. 50). The independent state of being of
this "conjecture" recalls that of Dudkin after he springs from Apollon
Apollonovich's head. The otherworldly origin of such thoughts is suggested by the narrator's reference later in the novel to "Socrates' demon, Leonardo da Vinci's silent one" (p. 204), and, especially, "the elohim" (p. 210) who live in his father. The latter are spiritual beings that
have special significance in anthroposophy. And if they reside in the father, they may also pass through the son before assuming life outside
him.
The narrator's life continues to be cyclical in this novel, as it had been
in Kotik Letaev, and in the earlier works as suggested by the experiences of characters. There are numerous references to reincarnations in
which characters enact familiar events from past lives. Thus, in addition to having been a Persian, the narrator was a Hebrew in Sinai and
draws a parallel between his fear of transgression against both parents
and the constraints of the Mosaic Commandments (p. 214). The struggles between the parents are represented as reenactments of the quarrels of Xanthippe and Socrates. The father also is said to have lived in
ancient Rome and Palestine (p. 215). The difference between the cyclical shape of time in this work and the spiraling time in those preceding
it is that the teleological component that converts cycles into whorls of
a spiral is muted in The Baptized Chinaman. The narrator's identification with the transcendence that Christ represented earlier has become
significantly weaker.

Conclusion

From the perspective of the mainstream of modern Western culture,


Bely's fiction from the First Symphony to The Baptized Chinaman is
part of a major countercurrent. Descartes, the Enlightenment, the
French Revolution, Darwin, and Nietzsche are some of the points on
the curve culminating in the widespread image of modern man as alienated from any center of gravity that would draw him into being a part
of a greater whole. By contrast, all Russian and European Symbolists,
despite the wide divergences among them, shared a common faith in a
holistic apprehension of existencean idea inherent in the Greek verb
symballein, meaning "to throw together," from which "symbol" is derived. Thus, while various systems of belief that had once integrated
man into a religious, political, or historical context were being rapidly
eroded, Symbolists still tried to act as if "the world is wide and yet . . .
like a home, for the fire that burns in the soul is of the same essential nature as the stars."1
In this formulation (one that is particularly apt for Bely) Georg Lukcs is speaking of the Homeric epic sensibility, which he contrasts
with that of the novelthe epic of the fallen world. The European novel's association from its beginnings in Don Quixote with a poignant
sense that the unity between man and his world has been lost makes the
novel the modern genre par excellence. This feature also underscores
the difference between Bely's Symbolist prose and the main European
novelistic tradition.
It is of course only on a high level of abstraction that the unity Symbolism sought to reestablish can be compared to that of the epic, or, indeed, to analogous views of existence such as those implicit in the great
religions, and, at least in theory, in "socialist realism," which can be
said to aspire to the epic. The generic differences between Symbolist

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Andrei Bely

and epic or religious arts are vast and obvious. There was also not the
same certainty among many of the Symbolists about the unities they
thought they had found. The dark communication with Nature and
what lies hidden in it that Baudelaire posited in "Correspondences," for
example, is easily counterbalanced by the undermined mythic imagery
in his "Un voyage Cythre" and his longing to escape from an inhospitable world in "La chambre double." In like manner, Blok's Solovievian
"Poems to a Beautiful Lady" gave way to his "The Stranger" and to his
cruelly self-ironizing plays. In short, the suffering embodied in Baudelaire's and Blok's works can be ascribed to the absence from their
worlds of such unifying principles as the deities that caused Odysseus'
travails, or the God whose chastisements Franois Villon, Milton, and
Avvakum took to be man's lot, or the absolute historical determinism
of Marx.
The difference between Symbolism and the great systems of belief is
also obviously one of numbers. Mallarm and his disciples in late nineteenth-century Parisian salons, like the Moscow Symbolists grouped
around the journal The Scales, were self-proclaimed prophets of a literary avant-garde who argued for esthetic articles of faith that ultimately
affected only minuscule numbers of their fellow citizens.
Bely, however, was an exception even among the Symbolists because
a belief that crossed over into certainty was the mainspring of both his
art and life. His joining the anthroposophical movement, with its extraordinarily detailed and self-assured cosmogony, is only the most
striking manifestation of this dominant feature of his mind. That is
why an approach to Bely through his beliefs can explain aspects of his
works that could otherwise be easily misconstrued.
Petersburg and the question of authorship is the clearest case in
point. If the narrator's remarks at the end of the novel's first chapter
were ironic rather than sincere, for example, the entire work would become a distinctly modern, self-conscious play of the author with the
conventions of narrative fiction, the nineteenth-century Russian literary tradition, and fin-de-sicle apocalypticism and the occult. Indeed,
the work would emerge as a virtuoso performance in a void, and Bely
as a great ironist who believed only in verbal play for its own sake.
But Bely s idea of "cerebral play"when seen in the light of anthroposophy and his own theory of symbolismdenotes a conception of
authorship that is distinctly nonmodern and nonironic. It is closest to
Homer's invocation in the Odyssey, rendered by Robert Fitzgerald as
"Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story." But Bely goes further, for he believed that the words "singing" in him were not only derived from a divine being, but that they were as real as the things in the
reader's world. Moreover, the implications of Bely's beliefs in Peters-

Conclusion

193

burg go so far as to transform the symbolic perceptions that the


narrator-author fixes in words into "events" that the reader can perceive for himself. The problem of symbolic perceptions embodied in a
text being at best one step removed from the author's own experiencesand, thereby, not truly communicable as symbolic perceptions
to the readeris thus eliminated (but conditional on accepting what
Bely believed, of course). In Bakhtin's terms, Bely's conception of the
language produced by cerebral play is a reversion to ancient mythological or magical forms of thinking in which language and mythic imagery are completely interdependent: language gives birth to mythic
reality, and, in turn, is controlled by mythic imagery. 2 This is in fact
close to what Bely himself said of symbolic language in the essay "The
Magic of Words."
In a similar vein, the elaborate occult imagery in Kotik Letaev could
conceivably be read as an extended metaphor for a young child's confusion in a world that is new for him, even if there is abundant evidence
within and outside the work that this is not how Bely saw it. The child's
attempt to order chaos is undoubtedly an important part of the novel.
But to deny the relevance of an anthroposophic world view for understanding Kotik Letaev would be to flatten the work. And there is undeniable profit and pleasure in entering, even conditionally, a conception
of existence drastically different from that held by most readers.
Because Bely's world view is anachronistic, it is a constant temptation to speak of approaches to him in terms also relevant to works and
writers from the distant past. More recent writers, like the "God seekers" Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, do not seem comparable because, to
quote Andrei Siniavsky, "to seek means not to have. He who has, he
who truly believes, does not seek." 3 To choose one final example, the
Divine Comedy can be read from the point of view of what punishments Dante meted out to contemporaries in the various circles of the
Inferno, or from the perspective of his skill in manipulating terza rima,
or in order to trace the uses to which he put Virgilian epic traditions.
Analogous formal and thematic concerns can be profitably pursued in
all of Bely's works. But it would be as limiting to deny the stamp of Bely's beliefs on all aspects of his work as it would be to ignore Dante's
faith in a link between man and the transcendent.

Notes

Introduction
1. The estimate of how much Belyi published is by K. Bugaeva and A. Petrovskii, "Literaturnoe nasledstvo Andreia Belogo," in Literatumoe
nasledstvo,
27-28 (Moscow: Zhurnal'no gazetnoe ob"edinenie, 1937), p. 576. The quotation is from Simon Karlinsky's review of translations of Belyi s novels The Silver Dove and Kotik Letaev, The New York Times Book Review, 27 October
1974, p. 1. Viktor Shklovskii, the well-known Formalist theoretician and critic,
stated that the "new Russian literature" of the 1920s would have been "impossible" without Belyi's earliest works: see "Ornamental'naia proza" in his O teorii
prozy (Moscow: Federatsiia, 1929), p. 222. Similar views were expressed by
Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetaeva, Il'ia Erenburg, Evgenii Zamiatin, and
many others. The oft-quoted ranking is by Vladimir Nabokov in Strong Opinions (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973), p. 57.
2. See Belyi's contribution to the collection Kak my pishem (Leningrad: Izdatel'stvo pisatelei, 1930), p. 15.
3. Pervoe svidanie is available in English: The First Encounter, trans, and introd. by Gerald Janecek; Preliminary Remarks, Notes and Comments by Nina
Berberova (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979).
4. Belyi's omission of Notes of an Eccentric (Zapiski chudaka, Moscow-Berlin, 1922; rpt. Lausanne: ditions l'ge d'homme, 1973) from his list, a work
that is usually linked, as was Belyi's original intention, with Kotik Letaev and
The Baptized Chinaman, suggests that he did not see it as "fiction." This confirms the impression that Notes of an Eccentric is a very thinly veiled autobiographical memoir. Belyi clearly implied this in its "Afterword" (II, 234-236),
and in the body of the text, despite his unconvincing claims to the contrary in
"Instead of a Foreword" (I, 9).
5. Belyi is also the author of an unfinished "mystery drama," a "pre-Symphony," and several minor short stories that echo themes of his major works.
The latter have been collected, translated and discussed by Ronald E. Peterson:
Andrei Belyi, Rasskazy (1904-1918; rpt. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1979,

196

Notes to Page 3

as Slavische Propylen 141); Andrei Bely, Complete Short Stories (Ann Arbor:
Ardis, 1979); Andrei Bely's Short Prose, Birmingham Slavonic Monographs 11
(Birmingham: University of Birmingham, 1980). Juvenile prose poems entitled
"Lyrical Fragments in Prose" that Belyi published in his first collection of poetry, Gold in Azure (Zoioto lazuri) (1904), have also been reprinted: John E.
Malmstad, "The Poetry of Andrej Belyj: A Variorum Edition," (Ph.D. diss.,
Princeton University, 1968), pp. 103-119.
6. Pochemu ia stai simvolistom i pochemu ia ne perestal im byt' vo vsekh fazakh moego ideinogo i khudozhestvennogo
razvitiia was written in 1928, but
first published only recently: Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1982; the quotation is from
pp. 118-119. Trotskii's well-known, vicious attack on Belyi can be found in the
former's Literatura i revoliutsiia (Literature and Revolution, 1923).
7. Vospominaniia o Bloke (Moscow-Berlin, 1922-23; rpt. Munich: Wilhelm
Fink Verlag, 1969, as Slavische Propylen 47) p. 352.
8. See Georges Nivat, "Lettres d'Andrej Belyj la famille d'Asja'," Cahiers
du Monde russe et sovitique, 18, (Jan.-June 1977), 137. Evidence of Belyi's
continuing difficulties in living and publishing in the Soviet Union can be found
in his letters to relatives and friends from 1931-1933, published by Roger Keys
as "Pis'ma Andreia Belogo k A.S. Petrovskomu i E.N. Kezel'man" in Novyi
zhurnal, 122 (1976), 151-166; and as "Pis'ma A. Belogo k E.N. Kezel'man" in
124 (1976), 163-172; Gleb Struve published several relevant documents, including Belyi's letter to Stalin asking for help in resolving his problems in surviving: "K biografii Andreia Belogo: Tri dokumenta" in 124, pp. 152-162.
9. It is possible, however, that some future investigator will decipher an encoded level of metaphysical significance in Belyi's last two novels. In her fascinating memoir of his final decade, Belyi's widow, Klavdiia N. Bugaeva, underscores the great attention he paid to his own spontaneous physical gestures,
which he understood to be involuntary responses to the promptings of the
"subconscious" (which of course meant "cosmic influences" in the context of
anthroposophy): Vospominaniia o Belom, ed., annotated and introd. by John
E. Malmstad (Berkeley: Berkeley Slavic Specialties, 1981), pp. 50-54. Belyi acknowledged this himself in Zapiski chudaka, I, 173; and in his memoir from
1929, first published in Russian as Vospominanie o Shteinere, ed. Frdric lik (Paris: La Presse libre, 1982), p. 55. In his "Instead of a Foreword" to Masks
(Moscow, 1932; rpt. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1969, as Slavische Propylen 46), Belyi says that gestures express the spiritual life of his heroes (p. 11).
Moscow and Masks contain numerous descriptions of characters' gestures,
which may comprise an encoded "semiotic" system.
10. An exception is John D. Elsworth's fine book Andrey Bely: A Critical
Study of the Novels (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), which
reached me when my own book was in press. Although differing from mine in
many respects, Elsworth's book does engage the central issue of Belyi's preoccupation with dualities.
11. Following Anna Balakian's lead, I will write "symbolism" with a capital
"S" only when referring to a specific literary school. See her The Symbolist
Movement: A Critical Appraisal (1967; rpt. New York: New York University
Press, 1977), p. 3. Belyi did not usually capitalize "symbolism," and I will follow his practice wherever appropriate.

Notes to Pages 6 - 9

197

1. The Symphonies

1. Charles Feidelson, Jr., Symbolism and American Literature (Chicago:


The University of Chicago Press, 1953), especially chap. II, "The Symbolistic
Imagination" (pp. 44-76), which contains a far-reaching theoretical discussion
of Symbolism in general. The quotation is from p. 56.
2. This distinction has been made well, and subsumed in a larger argument,
by Mikhail Bakhtin in his important study "Discourse in the Novel": "Slovo
romane" (1934-35), in his Voprosy literatury i estetiki (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1975), pp. 72-233.1 follow Roger Keys ("Symbolism in the
Novel, Forum for Modern Language Studies, 19 [Jan. 1983], 43-57) in finding
Bakhtin's treatment of this question useful.
3. See John Simon, "Prose poem (poem in prose)," in Princeton
Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, Enlarged Edition, ed. A. Preminger, et al. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), p. 664.
4. Melvin J. Friedman, "The Symbolist Novel: Huysmans to Malraux," in
Modernism: 1890-1930, ed. M. Bradbury and J. McFarlane (New York: Penguin, 1976), p. 454.
5. The discussion that follows derives from the excellent short monograph
by Karl D. Uitti, The Concept of Self in the Symbolist Novel (The Hague:
Mouton, 1961).
6. "O simvolizme," Trudy i dni, 2 (March-April 1912), 6-7. (Belyi mistakenly joined two names in this essay and wrote "Leconte de Lisle Adam" instead of
either "Leconte de Lisle" or the more likely name of the author of Axel). Belyi
describes his introduction to French Symbolism by Ol'ga Solov'ev in Vospominaniia o Bloke (Moscow-Berlin, 1922-23; rpt. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag,
1969, as Slavische Propylen 47), p. 14; and his early preference for German
and Scandinavian authors over the French in his memoir Nachalo veka (Moscow-Leningrad, 1933; rpt. Chicago: Russian Language Specialties, 1966), p.
111.

7. Roger J. Keys, "Andrey Bely and the Development of Russian Fiction," Essays in Poetics, 8 (April 1983), 30. Keys makes a convincing argument that
some writers not usually associated with Symbolism in Russia (Garshin, Chekhov) exhibit traits congenial with Symbolism in their works (traits which, it
should be added, recall the French Symbolist novelists of the 1880s and 1890s).
Specifically, Chekhov wrote stories in which "the fictional world is largely filtered through the prism of the main characters consciousness," a "lyrical" feature of his work that held great attraction for Belyi (pp. 36-37).
8. The full title of the work is Severnaia simfoniia (1-aia,
geroicheskaia)
(Northern Symphony. 1st Heroic). For convenience I will refer to it as the First
Symphony throughout this study. All page references will be given in the text
and are drawn from the following edition: Andrei Belyi, Sobrante
epicheskikh
poem. Kniga pervaia: I. Severnaia simfoniia (1-aia, geroicheskaia);
II. Simfoniia (2-aia, dramaticheskaia),
IV (Moscow: Pashukanis, 1917); Vozvrat. Ill
simfoniia (Moscow: Grif, 1905); Kubok metelei: Chetvertaia simfoniia (Moscow: Skorpion, 1908). All are reprinted in one volume: Chetyre simfonii, Slavische Propylen 39 (Munich:Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1971). All translations
from the Symphonies are my own.

198

Notes to Pages 1 0 - 2 0

9. For a more detailed plot summary of the First Symphony, see the study by
Anton Kovaf, Andrej Belyj: The Symphonies: (1899-1908): A Re-Evaluation
of the Aesthetic-Philosophical
Heritage (Bern: Herbert Lang, 1976), pp. 66-73.
10. Vladimir Solov'ev was influenced by a number of earlier teachings, including Gnosticism, Jakob Bhme, and Schelling. For a brief summary of Solov'ev's ideas, see K. Arsen'ev and E. Radlov, "Solov'ev (Vladimir Sergeevich),"
Entsiklopedicheskii
slovar, XXX (St. Petersburg: Brokgauz and Efron, 1900),
785-796.
11. For a concise statement of Belyi's views, see his essay "Apokalipsis
russkoi poezii" (1905), reprinted in his collection Lug zelenyi (Moscow, 1910;
rpt. New York: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1967), pp. 222-247.
12. Belyi reprinted "Sviashchennye tsveta" in his collection of essays Arabeski (Moscow, 1911; rpt. Munich: Fink, 1969, as Slavische Propylen 63), p.
126.

13. For a useful survey of some of the other artistic and musical influences
on the work see Kovac, Andrej Belyj, pp. 28-58.
14. See the discussion of the term by D. C. Muecke, Irony, The Critical Idiom 13 (London: Methuen, 1970), pp. 67-69. In contrast to the examples of
"philosophical irony" that Muecke adduces, Belyi's point of departure is faith in
an accessible transcendent rather than belief in an indifferent universe in which
man is trapped.
15. Belyi reprinted "Formy iskusstva" in his collection of essays Simvolizm
(Moscow, 1910; rpt. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1969, as Slavische Propylen 62), pp. 171-172.
16. See "Krititsizm i simvolizm," in Simvolizm, p. 29.
17. In his review of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard (1904) Belyi spoke of
the characters being like the "strings in a general chord," which is the work as a
whole. This suggests he saw the characters as symbols created by the author; in
later reviews his attitude toward narrative works was similar. See his "Vishnevyi sad" (1904), reprinted in Arabeski, p. 403. See Also Roger Keys's discussions of these problems, cited above.
18. For a discussion of Maeterlinck's play see Anna Balakian, The Symbolist
Movement, pp. 131-134. Belyi describes Ol'ga Solov'ev's passion for Maeterlinck in Vospominania o Bloke, p. 128.
19. Balakian, Symbolist Movement, p. 63.
20. For a good discussion of the appeal and peril of abstractions in Symbolist poetry see Viktor Gofman, "Iazyk simvolistov" in Literaturnoe
nasledstvo,
27-28, (Moscow: Zhurnal'no gazetnoe ob'edinenie, 1937), pp. 82-88.
21. Nachalo veka, p. 120.
22. "Simvolizm kak miroponimanie," Arabeski, p. 228.
23. Ibid., pp. 236-237.
24. Na rubezhe dvukh stoletii (Moscow-Leningrad, 1930; rpt. Letchworth,
Herts., England: Bradda, 1966), pp. 465-466.
25. Belyi himself acknowledges Schopenhauer's great formative influence in
his memoirs about the period when he was writing the early Symphonies: Na
rubezhe dvukh stoletii, p. 352.

Notes to Pages 2 0 - 2 5

199

26. "Formy iskusstva," Simvolizm, pp. 147-174. Similar ideas are expressed
in the essay "Simvolizm, kak miroponimanie," Arabeski, pp. 224-225.
27. "Formy iskusstva," Simvolizm, p. 156.
28. Ibid., pp. 161-162.
29. "Simvolizm, kak miroponimanie," Arabeski, p. 225.
30. Nachalo veka, pp. 120-121.
31. In addition to Pochemu ia stai simvolistom (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1982), I
have in mind the memoir called Vospominaniia o Shteinere (Paris: La Presse
Libre, 1982) and the vast manuscript Istoriia stanovleniia
samosoznaiushchei
dushi, a short chapter from which was first published by Julia Crookenden in
Andrey Bely: Centenary Papers, ed. Boris Christa (Amsterdam: Hakkert,
1980), pp. 39-51. Ida Zeitchik comes to similar conclusions about Belyi's memoirs on the basis of his published legacy alone: "Andrej Belyj's Memoirs" (Ph.
D. diss., New York University, 1981). That Belyi had to adapt whatever he
published to the requirements of the censorship is clear from his remarks in a
letter from March 1932 to a close friend, A. S. Petrovksii, published by Roger
Keys, "Pis'ma Andreia Belogo k A.S. Petrovskomu i E.N. Kezel'man," Novyi
zhurnal, 122 (1976), 160, in which he refers to the volume of memoirs Nachalo
veka as having been "butchered" (zarezannyi) by the censorship.
32. For Belyi's acknowledgment that he did not know what a literary symphony was see his prefatory remarks to the Fourth Symphony, reprinted in the
volume cited in note 8 above. Belyi describes the genesis of the Symphonies in
his long letter to Ivanov-Razumnik from 1 March 1927, published by Georges
Nivat as "Andrej Belyj: Lettre autobiographique Ivanov-Razumnik" in Cahiers du Monde russe et sovitique, 15 (Jan.-June 1974), 54-55.
33. Cited by Elena Silard, vliianii prozy F. Nitsshe na ritmiku prozy A.
Belogo: 'Tak govoril Zaratustra' i Simfonii," Studia Slavica Academiae
Scientiarum Hungaricae 19 (1973), 291.
34. Na rubezhe dvukh stoletii, p. 388. For more on Belyi's attitudes toward
Wagner, and a study of "musical" characteristics in Belyi's later prose works,
see Ada Steinberg's Word and Music in the Novels of Andrey Bely (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1982).
35. Na rubezhe dvukh stoletii, pp. 465-466.
36. "Simvolizm, kak miroponimanie," Arabeski, p. 230.
37. . V. Lavrov, "lunosheskie dnevnikovye zametki Andreia Belogo," Pamiatniki kul'tury: Novye otkrytiia, Ezhegodnik 1979 (Leningrad: Nauka,
1980), p. 131.
38. "Formy iskusstva," Simvolizm, p. 161.
39. This is a feature of symbolic cognition that Feidelson (. 1 above) has
discussed with great acuity, both in theory and on the example of Melville's
Moby Dick.
40. A. P. Avramenko, "'Simfonii' Andreia Belogo" in Russkaia literatura XX
veka (dooktiabr'skii period): Sbornik 9 (Tula, 1977), pp. 57-58.
41. . V. Lavrov, "Iunesheskaia khudozhestvennaia proza Andreia Belogo," Pamiatniki kul'tury: Novye otkrytiia, Ezhegodnik 1980 (Leningrad:
Nauka, 1981), pp. 107-150, and especially pp. 113-124. Lavrov publishes in-

200

Notes to Pages 2 5 - 3 7

teresting examples of Belyi's early writings as an appendix to his study. Belyi's


comments in Na rubezhe dvukh stoletii, which Lavrov quotes, appear on pp.
352, 339.
42. Avramenko, "'Simfonii'," p. 55.
43. "Andrej Belyj: Lettre autobiographique Ivanov-Razumnik," 53.
44. L. Grossman, "Posledniaia poema Turgeneva," in Venok Turgenevu,
1818-1918: Sbornikstatei
(Odessa: Knigoizdatel'stvo Ivasenko, 1919), pp. 5790.
45. The full title of the work, which was Belyi's first publication, is Simfoniia (2-aia, dramaticheskaia),
but for convenience I will refer to it as the Second
Symphony throughout this study. All page references given in the text are from
the Fink reprint cited in note 8 above. Belyi describes the circumstances surrounding his literary debut, including the invention of his pseudonym by Mikhail Solov'ev, in Nachaio veka, p. 128.
46. L. K. Dolgopolov comes to the same conclusion in "Tvorcheskaia istoriia i istoriko-literaturnoe znachenie romana A. Belogo 'Peterburg'," in Peterburg by Andrei Belyi, Literaturnye pamiatniki (Moscow: Nauka, 1981), p.
530.
47. "Simvolizm, kak miroponimanie," Arabeski, pp. 220-222.
48. See, for example, Na rubezhe dvukh stoletii, pp. 482-483.
49. Nachaio veka, pp. 122-123.
50. Letter to Emiiii Metner (Medtner), fragments of which were published
by Georges Nivat, "Histoire d'une 'Tratognse' Bilyenne: Les rapports entre
Emilij Medtner et Andrej Belyj," Cahiers du Monde russe et sovitique, 18
(Jan.-June 1977), 96.
51. In his memoir Nachaio veka, Belyi speaks of "three sides" rather than
"three meanings," p. 121.
52. Ibid., pp. 119, 122.
53. Avramenko quotes from Belyi's "Materials for a Biography" (p. 61).
More relevant passages from this unpublished autobiography appear in the
Notes to the Biblioteka poeta edition of Belyi's poetry: Stikhotvoreniia i poemy
(Moscow-Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel', 1966), p. 622.
54. Vospominaniia o Bloke, p. 28.
55. Assuming there is no typographical error, this name differs in only one
letter from that of Aleksei Sergeevich Petrovskiia close friend of Belyi'sand
may thus be an encoded nod by a young author to someone from his inner circle.
56. A. Lavrov, "Iunosheskie dnevnikovye zametki Andreia Belogo," pp.
125, 133.
57. An echo of V. Solov'ev's attack on Tolstoi in his preface to the Three
Conversations is heard in what one of the beings says about knocking a length
of pipe into the ground and showing the emptiness inside to fools. Solov'ev has
compared Tolstois version of Christianity to a sect he had once read about
called vertidyrniki (hole twisters) or dyromoliai (hole prayers), who, if Solov'ev is to be taken seriously, bored holes in the walls of their homes and prayed
into them: izba moia, dyra moia, spasi menia (my hut, my hole, save me). This

Notes to Pages 3 8 - 4 3

201

degree of "simplification" reminded Solov'ev of Tolstois modifications of


Christianity, which, of course, Solov'ev attacks in his fictional "conversations." See "Ot avtora", in his Tri razgovora (St. Petersburg, 1900; rpt. New
York: Chekhov, 1954), pp. 20-21. Belyi obviously knew of Solov'ev's attack:
see his essay "F. Sologub" (1908) reprinted in Lug zelenyi, pp. 160,176. It is also
worth mentioning that several numbered paragraphs in the scene between Musatov and the demons (pp. 308-309) are the longest in the entire Symphony and
read like normal prose paragraphs. A departure from the norm of short paragraphs of course calls attention to the content.
58. See, for example, Belyi's Odna iz obitelei tsarstva tenei (Leningrad,
1924; rpt. Letchworth, Herts., England: Prideaux, 1971), where he turns "Negro" influences on decadent Western civilization into an image of proto-apocalyptic spiritual depravity (pp. 44-46, 51-54).
59. Nikolai Berdiaev has written of Belyi's Petersburg as a "cubist" novel in
which spiritual dimensions can be visualized as participating in planar forms:
"Astral'nyi roman (Razmyshleniia po povodu romana A. Belogo 'Peterburg'),"
Krizis i iskusstvo, 12 (1918), 36-46. This appealing and perceptive metaphor
can also be applied to the Second Symphony. Elena Silard, strukture Vtoroi
simfonii A. Belogo," Studia Slavica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, 13
(1967), 311-322, focuses on the fragmentation of the Second Symphony, which
she finds to be the characteristic that distinguishes it from nineteenth-century
fiction; however, she does not give adequate attention to the metaphysical unities in the work.
60. See Roman Jakobson, "The Prose of the Poet Pasternak," (1935), in Pasternak: Modern Judgments, ed. Donald Davie et al. (Nashville: Aurora, 1970),
pp. 135-151; or his section "The Metaphoric and Metonymie Poles," in Roman
Jakobson and Morris Halle, Fundamentals of Language, 2nd rev. ed. (The
Hague: Mouton, 1975), pp. 90-96. Sigurd Fasting makes similar use of Jakobson's ideas: "Andrej Belyj's Simfonia. 2-aja dramaticeskaja,"
Scando-Slavica,
25 (1979), 37-55.
61. Quoted by his widow, K. N. Bugaeva, Vospominaniia o Belom, ed. annotated and introd., by John E. Malmstad (Berkeley: Berkeley Slavic Specialties, 1981), p. 239.
62. For examples of rhythmic passages and alliteration see Silard, strukture Vtoroi simfonii A. Belogo," pp. 319-320. Silard also makes an attempt to
analyze Belyi's rhythms in the Second Symphony and trace their dependence
on Nietzsche, in her vliianii ritmiki prozy F. Nitsshe na ritmiku prozy A. Belogo," pp. 307-313.
63. Nachalo veka, p. 40.
64. The quotation from a letter by Sergei Solov'ev is cited by Vladimir Orlov in his edition of Aleksandr Blok-Andrei Belyi: Perepiska (Moscow, 1940;
rpt. Munich: Fink, 1969 as Slavische Propylen 65), p. 63 n. 6. For an excellent
description of Bely's melding of life and art at the beginning of the century, to
the extent that his personal letters and portions of "fictional" works were interchangeable, see . V. Lavrov "Mifotvorchestvo 'Argonavtov' " in Mif, fol'klor,
literatura, ed. V. G. Bazanovet al. (Leningrad: Nauka, 1978), pp. 137-170.

202

Notes to Pages 4 3 - 4 8

65. Nachalo veka, p. 11.


66. Quoted by . V. Lavrov, "Iunosheskie dnevnikovye zametki Andreia
Belogo," pp. 120-121.
67. There is a tendency among readers of Belyi, especially of his Second
Symphony, to see his satire against mystical excess as an unconscious attack
upon himself (for example, Ivanov-Razumnik, Vershiny: Aleksandr Blok, Andrei Belyi [Peterburg: Kolos, 1923], pp. 41-43). However, Belyi's comment
about the comic in music makes clear that he was capable of preserving his own
ideals untarnished at the same time that he lambasted those who fell short of
them.
68. Attempts have been made to draw more detailed parallels between the
large scale structure of Belyi's Symphony and the traditional parts of the sonata
form, but this is a topic that lies outside my competence and purview. See Simon Karlinsky, "Symphonic Structure in Andrej Belyj's 'Pervoe svidanie'," in
California Slavic Studies, VI, ed. Robert P. Hughes et al. (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1971), pp. 61-70, and especially pp. 63-64; see also Kovac,
Andrej Belyj, pp. 153-158. However, Belyi himself admits in the Preface to the
Fourth Symphony (cited above) that he had no very clear idea of the musical
form when he wrote the three Symphonies.
69. The full title of the work is Vozvrat. Ill simfoniia (The Return. Ill Symphony), but for convenience I will refer to it as the Third Symphony throughout this study. All page references given in the text are from the Fink reprint of
the Symphony's first edition cited in note 8 above. Pagination begins anew for
the Third Symphony in the Fink reprint.
70. For a more detailed plot summary, as well as a useful attempt to analyze
the Third Symphony from the point of view of the sonata form, see Kovac, Andrej Belyj, pp. 174-184ff. S. Karlinsky ("Symphonic Structure," p. 64) comments in passing on the Symphony's musical structure as a "vast one-movement sonata-allegro."
71. In his memoirs, Belyi referred to Khandrikov only as one who was going
mad (Na rubezhe dvukh stoletii, p. 403). Belyi also recalled with pride how a
doctor told him that Khandrikov's growing insanity was described with surprising realism (Nachalo veka, p. 368). However, both comments need to be
placed in the proper context of Belyi making an obvious and even desperate attempt to accommodate himself to the Soviet regime. The essays, works of
belles-lettres, and other evidence from Belyi's youth (see also his memoirs of
Blok for example, which were published at a less repressive time and place) amply contradict the image of himself that he tried to publicize in the years before
his death. Moreover, in Belyi's world view, "madness" did not at all preclude an
idealistic conception of existence, or canonize a purely materialistic explanation of a person's psychological state. The idea that a madman has been singled
out by divinity, or has risen above the herd, has a venerable history in Russian
and Western culture, and can be found in Nietzsche's works as well as in his life.
Belyi himself referred to Nietzsche's madness as a sign of his having been
touched by the transcendent (see, for example, "Fridrikh Nitsshe" [1907] in
Arabeski, pp. 60-90). For more on Belyi's conception of all great prophets and

Notes to Pages 48-59

203

seers as "insane," a view he had formulated as early as 1901, see Lavrov, "Iunosheskie dnevnikovye zametki A. Belogo," pp. 121-122.
72. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Walter Kaufman, in The Portable Nietzsche (New York: Viking, 1968), p. 333.
73. "Simvolizm, kak miroponimanie," Arabeski, p. 235.
74. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, pp. 138-139.
75. For more on such borrowings, see Kovac, Andrej Belyj, pp. 200-207.
76. Na rubezhe dvukh stoletii, p. 403; Nachalo veka, p. 128.
77. "Simvolizm, kak miroponimanie," Arabeski, p. 235.
78. "Sviashchennye tsveta," Arabeski, pp. 115,121.
79. Belyi's memoirs (see, for example, Na rubezhe dvukh stoletii, p. 181), as
well as his autobiographical novels Kotik Letaev and The Baptized Chinaman
are full of references to himself as experiencing Christ's fate, even in childhood.
This dimension of the Child/Khandrikov argues against Cioran's view that
Bely portrays only cyclical recurrence in the Third Symphony. See Samuel D.
Cioran, The Apocalyptic Symbolism of Andrej Belyj (The Hague: Mouton,
1973), p. 175.
80. For an argument in favor of seeing Khandrikov as merely insane, and his
drowning as suicide pure and simplean interpretation that goes against the
grain of everything that Belyi held dearsee Ronald E. Peterson's "Andrei Belyi's Third Symphony: Return or Demented Demise?" in Russian Literature and
Criticism: Selected Papers from the Second World Congress for Soviet and East
European Studies, ed. Evelyn Bristol (Berkeley: Berkeley Slavic Specialties,
1983), pp. 167-173.
81. The full title of the work is Kubok metelei. Chetvertaia simfoniia (The
Goblet of Blizzards. The Fourth Symphony), but for convenience I will refer to
it as the Fourth Symphony throughout this study. All page references in the text
are from the Fink reprint of the Symphony's first edition, cited in note 8 above.
Pagination begins anew for the Fourth Symphony in the Fink reprint.
82. Nachalo veka, p. 9.
83. For example, "Smysl iskusstva," Simvolizm, p. 218; "Teatr i sovremennaia drama," Arabeski, p. 30.
84. "Smysl iskusstva," Simvolizm, p. 215.
85. See notes 15 and 16.
86. "Smysl iskusstva," Simvolizm, pp. 213-214.
87. "Krizis soznaniia i Genrikh Ibsen," Arabeski, p. 161. This view appears
to have been foreshadowed in Belyi's earlier essay "Apokalipsis russkoi poezii" (1905), where he wrote that "depths of consciousness rest in a universal
[vselenskii] unity," Lugzelenyi, p. 225.
88. Andrei Belyi, Mezhdu dvukh revoliutsii (Leningrad: Izdatel'stvo pisatelei, 1934), pp. 137-138.
89. For a discussion of sonata form in the Fourth Symphony see Kovac, pp.
267-270. A more detailed examination of musical structure is provided by Gerald Janecek, "Literature as Music: Symphonic Form in Andrei Belyi's Fourth
Symphony, " Canadian-American Slavic Studies, 8 (Winter 1974), 501-512.
90. Kovac, Andrej Belyj, pp. 229-230.

204

Notes to Pages 60-68

91. See Ralph Freedman, The Lyrical Novel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), pp. 1, 20, 28, 271, 275. Gleb Struve also speaks of a resemblance between Belyi's works and those of Dujardin, Joyce, and Virginia Woolf,
although he does not specify what it is. See his "Andrei Belyi's Experiments with
Novel Technique," in Stil- und Formprobleme
in der Literatur, Vortrge des VII
Kongresses der Internationalen
Vereinigung fr moderne Sprachen und Literaturen in Heidelberg (Heidelberg: Universitts Verlag, 1959), pp. 459-467.
92. For a summary of the early influences on Belyi, see his memoir Na rubezhe dvukh stoletii, which also describes his rebellion aginst the established
culture of his day.
93. For a more detailed summary of the plot, see Kovac, Andrej Belyj, pp.
231-236. It is a measure of the difficulty of simply understanding what is going
on in the Fourth Symphony that my reading of the plot differs from Kovac's in
several details. For example, Svetlova s remark to Adam Petrovich that she has
heard a lot about him (p. 90) suggests to me that he is not the student who visits
her earlier (p. 30) and whom she gently mocks, which is what Kovac believes
(p. 232). And, as the remark "she received the letter" (p. I l l ) indicates, Adam
Petrovich's letter to Svetlova before they journey North is not "imaginary," as
Kovac has it (p. 233).
94. Ibid., pp. 222-224.
95. Mezhdu dvukh revoliutsii, pp. 195 passim. For a concise description of
Belyi's polemic with Chulkov and the other "mystical anarchists" see A. V. Lavrov, "Neizdannye stat'i Andreia Belogo," Russkaia literatura, 4, (1980), 160165.
96. The Oxford Russian-English Dictionary (1972), p. 182.
97. "Smysl iskusstva," Simvolizm, p. 207.
98. For a discussion of Gnosticism in the Symphony, see Kovac, Andrej Belyj, pp.263-267.
99. It is noteworthy that Belyi would himself single out this sequence of
symbolic images in Nachalo veka (pp. 129-130) when speaking of the Symphonies, and stress their basis in empirical observations that he had practiced during his youth. However, in keeping with his tone in the memoir, he completely
devalues any symbolic significance of the imagery.

2. The Silver Dove


1. For a summary of the novel's writing and publication history see K. Bugaeva and A. Petrovskii, "Literaturnoe nasledstvo Andreia Belogo," in Literaturnoe nasledstvo, 27-28 (Moscow: Zhurnal'no gazetnoe ob'edinenie, 1937),
pp. 599-600. All page and volume references to the Russian text will be given in
the body of this book and refer to the reprint Serebrianyi golub' (Berlin, 1922;
rpt. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1967, as Slavische Propylen 38). Quotations will be given in the new orthography. The sole English translation of the
novel is by George Reavey: Andrey Bely, The Silver Dove (New York: Grove
Press, 1974). Page references to Reavey's translation will be given in the text
following the Russian volume and page reference, but the translation used here
is my own.

Notes to Pages 68-83

205

2. In general, the themes and forms of Belyi's poetry reflect those of his
prose. Thus, his turning from the experimental Symphonies to the more traditional novelistic form of The Silver Dove has a parallel in his turning from the
early, euphoric Gold in Azure (1904) to the sober, Nekrasovian, "civic" styled
verse of Ashes (1909).
3. Na rubezhe dvukh stoletii (Moscow-Leningrad, 1930; rpt. Letchworth,
Herts., England: Bradda, 1966), p. 352; and Vospominaniia o Bloke (MoscowBerlin: 1922-23; rpt. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1969, as Slavische Propylen 47), p. 214.
4. Zapiski chudaka (Moscow-Berlin: 1922; rpt. Lausanne: Editions l'age
d'homme, 1973), I, 50-52. As Belyi mentions, Solov'ev himself had seen a profound spiritual significance in the deserts spreading in the East of Russia because of poor land management; see his "Vrag s vostoka" (1892) in Sobranie sochinenii, 2nd ed. (1911-1913), V (1883-1892), 452-465.
5. Vospominaniia o Bloke, pp. 153, 688-690.
6. See Zapiski chudaka, I, 125.
7. See Samuel D. Cioran's insightful discussion of The Silver Dove for archetypal associations between evil and quaternity in his The Apocalyptic
Symbolism of Andrej Belyj (The Hague: Mouton, 1973), p. 129.
8. "Kratkaia povest' ob antikhriste" is the final section of Solov'ev's Tri Razgovora (Three Conversations) (St. Petersburg, 1900; rpt. New York: Chekhov,
1954).
9. See Dimitri Stremooukhoff, Vladimir Soloviev and His Messianic Work,
trans. Elizabeth Meyendorff, ed. P. Guilbeau and H. E. MacGregor (Strasbourg: 1935; Belmont, Mass.: Nordland, 1979), pp. 328-331, for a discussion
of this question. There was of course a native Russian tradition for evil disguising itself as good; see, for example, such medieval works as "Brother Isaac and
the Demons" from the Kievan Crypt Monastery Paterikon in Medieval Russia's
Epics, Chronicles, and Tales, ed., trans, and introd. by Serge A. Zenkovsky
(New York: Dutton, 1963), pp. 98-102.
10. For other expressions of this idea in the context of an illuminating discussion of Symbolist attitudes toward language see Viktor Gofman, "Iazyk
simvolistov" in Literaturnoe nasledstvo, 27-28, p. 60.
11. Mezhdu dvukh revoliutsii (Leningrad: Izdatel'stvo Pisatelei, 1934), p.
86. Moreover, the related idea of a Fire-Bird arising from ashes produced by the
grafting of Russia and the West resembles Gogol's description of how he
burned the second part of Dead Souls; see his Selected Passages from a Correspondence with Friends, "Fourth Letter" on Dead Souls (1846).
12. For Belyi's plans for the third novel see his letter to E. K. Medtner, (26
December 1912), cited in Peterburg, by Andrei Belyi, Literaturnye
pamiatniki,
ed. L. K. Dolgopolov (Moscow: Nauka, 1981), p. 515; in a letter to IvanovRazumnik (4 July 1914), Belyi speaks of the third part of the trilogy as being a
"complete 'yes' " (p. 519).
13. See the Second Symphony, p. 240. There are many other small echoes of
the Second Symphony in The Silver Dove. A light blue sky that alternates between grey-blue, grey and finally black in the Symphony (p. 129) recalls the
"blue abyss of day" in The Silver Dove. An officer who pronounces "r" as "g"

206

Notes to Pages 85-96

sounds like General Chizhikov. The device of having a song comment on the
work's action, widespread in The Silver Dove, first appears in the Second Symphony (p. 184). The leitmotif of "martins'screeches" (vizg strizhei, p. 229) also
appears in the novel as a leitmotif about spiritual yearning. The "fairytale,"
when she appears in Musatov's mind's eye, has blue eyes and red hair (p. 249),
as does Matrena. Musatov, like Dar'ial'skii, has a cane with a heavy knob (p.
253). The narrator calls a scene between Musatov and a teacher "a waking
dream" (son naiavu, p. 267), which is the title of two subchapters in The Silver
Dove.
14. Maria Carlson has identified the astrological references that appear in
connection with Schmidt and saturate the novel on various levels: " 'The
Sphinx (10) (99 Wands)': An Excursus on Applied Theurgy," paper read at the
American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages
Conference, Chicago, 29 December 1982; an abstract appeared in The Andrej
Belyj Society Newsletter, 1, (1982), pp. 8 - 9 . Cioran (Apocalyptic Symbolism,
pp. 132-134) provides another discussion of astrology in the novel.
15. See Andrew Barratt's insightful article with a similar conclusion: "Mystification and Initiation in Serebrjanyj golub': Belyj, the Reader, and the Symbolist Novel," in Andrey Bely: Centenary Papers, ed. Boris Christa (Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1980), 135-145.
16. John D. Elsworth, " T h e Silver Dove: An Analysis," Russian Literature, 4
(October 1976), 389.
17. See Nikolai Berdiaev's fascinating review of The Silver Dove: "Russkii
soblazn (Po povodu 'Serebrianogo golubia' A. Belogo)," Russkaia mysl', 11
(Nov. 1910), 104-115, criticizing Bely's "passivity" from the point of view of the
Orthodox Church.
18. Belyi's "Vmesto predisloviia" to Serebrianyi golub' (Moscow: Skorpion,
1910) was reprinted in the Literaturnye pamiatniki edition of Peterburg, p. 497.
19. "Iazyk simvolistov," in Literaturnoe nasledstvo, 27-28, pp. 60-61.
20. This conception has been discussed at length by Charles Feidelson, Jr. in
his study Symbolism and American Literature, (1953; rpt. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1969), pp. 44-76.
21. Reprinted in Simvolizm, (Moscow, 1910; rpt. Munich: Wilhelm Fink
Verlag, 1969, as Slavische Propylen 62), pp. 429-448.
22. Cited by John E. Malmstad from unpublished archival materials in his
notes to Klavdiia N. Bugaeva's Vospominaniia
o Belom, (Berkeley: Berkeley
Slavic Specialties, 1981), p. 359, n. 6.
23. For more on these plans, see Bugaeva and Petrovskii, in Literaturnoe
nasledstvo, 27-28, pp. 605-606.
24. See Belyi's Masterstvo Gogolia (Moscow, 1934; rpt. Munich: Fink, 1969,
as Slavische Propylen 59); and Thomas R. Beyer, Jr.'s, "Belyj's Serebrjanyj golub': Gogol' in Gugolevo," Russian Language Journal, 30 (Fall 1976), 79-88.
25. See, for example, Johannes Holthusen, "Erzhler und Raum des Erzhlers in Belyjs Serebrjanyj golub'," Russian Literature, 4 (October 1976),
325-344.
26. Simon Karlinsky finds Belyi switches "from one narrative manner to another in accord with the social and educational level of the characters on whom

Notes to Pages 97-100

207

the particular chapter is centered." See his review of the Reavey translation of
The Silver Dove in The New York Times Book Review, October 27,1974, p. 2.
27. K. Bugaeva, Vospominartiia o Belom, p. 82.
28. "Gogol"' (1909), rpt. in Lug zelenyi (Moscow: 1910; rpt. New York:
Johnson Reprint Corp., 1967), pp. 93-121. See Beyer's article in note 24 for another discussion of the possible relevance of this essay for the novel.
29. "Gogol," Lug zelenyi, p. 107.
30. Ibid., pp. 106,114.
31. Zapiski chudaka, I, 63. Barratt, in Audrey Bely: Centenary Papers,
comes to similar conclusions.

3. Petersburg
1. Reference to the novel is complicated by its textual and publication history. The first complete version of Peterburg appeared in three issues of the St.
Petersburg literary almanac Sirin in 1913-14. In 1916, the three installments
were excised from unsold copies of the almanac and collated to produce the
first book edition. This edition was reprinted in the United States (Chicago:
Bradda, 1967) and in the Soviet Union by the important series Literaturnye pamiatniki, ed. L. K. Dolgopolov (Moscow: Nauka, 1981). A German translation, for which Bely abridged the text, was published in 1919. The second Russian edition of the novel was published in Berlin by Epokha in 1922. In it, Belyi
deleted between one quarter and one third of the 1916 text (mostly repetitive
passages), but changed very little else. Ivanov-Razumnik (pseudonym of Razumnik Vasil'evich Ivanov) has described the complex textual history of Petersburg in detail in Vershiny: Aleksandr Blok, Andrei Belyi (Petrograd: Kolos,
1923), pp. 89-101; it is also described by L. Dolgopolov in the Literaturnye pamiatniki reprint, pp. 569-583. Ivanov-Razumnik's analysis of the differences
between the 1916 and 1922 editions (pp. 105-171) is highly debatable, and is
now superseded by Dolgopolov's comments, pp. 569-583, which contain a
more balanced analysis. A thorough study of the question still awaits its investigator. The third edition of the novel appeared in 1928 in Moscow with additional cuts totaling several pages. It is not known if Belyi himself was responsible for them. This edition was subsequently reprinted in the Soviet Union in
1935, and, after a long hiatus, again in 1978 and 1979. Belyi s stay in Berlin from
1921 to 1923 was the last opportunity he had to publish his works without the
interference of censorship, so the 1922 Berlin Epokha edition of the novel must
be considered the "author's final word." Unfortunately, however, this edition
has never been reprinted, and is a great bibliographic rarity. The 1928 Moscow
edition, however, was also reprinted in Munich in 1967 by Wilhelm Fink Verlag
(as vol. 29 of Slavische Propylen), and was for a number of years the most
readily available Russian text of the novel that is closest to the 1922 edition. For
this reason it will be cited throughout this book; all references to volume and
page will be given in the text. A page reference following an English translation, or the second page reference in a pair of references, indicates the following fine translation of the 1922 edition: Petersburg, trans., annotated and introduction by Robert A. Maguire and John E. Malmstad (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1978). Page references to the first edition of the novel will be

208

Notes to Pages 1 0 0 - 1 0 3

preceded by the indication "1916," and are drawn from the reprint (Chicago:
Bradda, 1967). Page references to the 1928 edition will be preceded by the indication "1928." All translations from the 1916 and 1928 editions are my own.
I consider the 1916 edition to be a draft of the novel; this is how Belyi also referred to it in the preface to the 1928 Moscow edition (see the Literaturnye pamiatniki reprint, pp. 498-499). Dolgopolov also provides a valuable description of Belyi's abridgment of the novel for the 1919 German translation,
supporting the view that Belyi had been unhappy with the 1916 edition from
the start (p. 576). For a useful, although overly Freudian discussion of the genesis of the novel's themes, see Magnus Ljunggren, The Dream of Rebirth: A
Study of Andrej Belyj's Novel Peterburg, Stockholm Studies in Russian Literature 15 (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell International, 1982).
2. A consideration of these features, despite their undeniable interest and
importance, will, for reasons of space, have to be omitted from the present
study. See Gerald Janecek, "Rhythm in Prose: The Special Case of Bely," in Audrey Bely: A Critical Review, ed. G. Janecek (Kentucky: The University Press
of Kentucky, 1978), pp. 86-102; and the recent study by Ada Steinberg, Word
and Music in the Novels of Andrey Bely (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1982), for a discussion of the alliteration in the novel. Bely's article "O
khudozhestvennoi proze," Gorn, 2-3 (1919), 55, includes several exemplary
analyses of rhythm in prose that should serve as models for investigations of
his own works.
3. Belyi's letter to Medtner (February 1913), quoted in the Literaturnye pamiatniki reprint p. 516.
4. The most important essays are in the volume Simvolizm (Moscow, 1910;
rpt. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1969, as Slavische Propylen 62). The others are Lug zelenyi, The Slavic Series, 5 (Moscow, 1910; rpt. New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1967); Arabeski (Moscow, 1911; rpt. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1969, as Slavische Propylen 63). (By K. Bugaeva's and A.
Petrovskii's count in Literaturnoe nasledstvo 27-28 (p. 617], these three collections contain fewer than half of the essays Belyi wrote by 1910). Belyi's own
reservations can be found in his preface and notes to Simvolizm. His description of the chaotic genesis of this volume is in his third volume of memoirs:
Mezhdu dvukh revoliutsii (Leningrad: Izdatel'stvo pisatelei, 1934), pp. 376379. Other general comments on his theory can be found in his second volume
of memoirs Nachalo veka (Moscow-Leningrad: 1933; rpt. Chicago: Russian
Language Specialties, 1966), pp. 113-115. Belyi's theory of symbolism has yet
to be studied in the detail it deserves. One overview is provided by Samuel
D.Cioran, The Apocalyptic Symbolism of Andrej Belyj (The Hague: Mouton,
1973), pp. 43-70. A fuller one is John Elsworth's "Andrei Bely's Theory of Symbolism," in Studies in Twentieth Century Russian Literature, ed. Christopher J.
Barnes (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1976), pp. 17-45.
5. Simvolizm: in the essays "Problema kul'tury" (1909), p. 8: "Emblematika
smysla" (1909), p. 70; "Smysl iskusstva" (1907), p. 211.
6. Ibid., "Smysl iskusstva," pp. 211, 205.
7. Ibid., "Emblematika smysla," p. 71.
8. Ibid., "Lirika i eksperiment" (1909), note on p. 574.

Notes to Pages 1 0 4 - 1 0 6

209

9. Ibid., "Maglia slov," pp. 429-430.


10. Ibid., p. 446.
11. "Emblematika smysla," Simvolizm, p. 73.
12. Ibid., pp. 70, 71, 102, 105, 112-13. Belyi also discusses a similar relationship between the "Symbol" and "symbols" in the earlier essay "O tselesoobraznosti" (1905; rpt. Arabeski, p. 107), but, if I understand him correctly,
without making all human activities products of the Absolute.
13. "Emblematika smysla," Simvolizm, pp. 106, 132. Since Belyi says elsewhere in Simvolizm that all art from all ages is symbolic, he must believe that
all artists have always been agents of the transcendent. (Whether this is also
true of all human beings is, on the basis of Belyi's essays, something of a moot
question). Cioran (p. 67) makes the useful formulation that Belyi's symbolism
was in fact apocalyptic, "for it depends upon those supernatural forces which
will create the world anew in the Second Coming of Christ." This explains why
Belyi is his theory spoke of present day "symbolization" rather than the higher
"symbolism" of the future.
14. "Emblematika smysla," Simvolizm, p. 71.
15. Mezhdu dvukh revoliutsii, p. 181.
16. "Problema kul'tury," Simvolizm, p. 10.
17. Ibid., "Emblematika smysla," p. 140.
18. "Krizis soznaniia i Genrikh Ibsen," Arabeski, p. 198.
19. See Elsworth's insightful discussion in Studies in Twentieth Century Russian Literature, pp. 30-33. He also traces other philosophical influences on Belyi. On the role of Nietzsche in the novel see Virginia Bennett, "Echoes of Friedrich Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy in Andrej Belyj's
Petersburg,"GermanoSlavica, 3 (Fall 1980), 243-259; and Horst-Jrgen Gerigk, "Belyjs 'Petersburg'
und Nietzsches 'Geburt der Tragdie'," Nietzsche-Studien:
Internationales
Jahrbuch fr die Nietzsche-Forschung,
9, ed. Ernst Behler (New York: Walter
de Gruyter, 1980), pp. 356-373.
20. Vospominaniia o Bloke (Moscow-Berlin, 1922-23; rpt. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1969), p. 210.
21. A vast work on this subject has appeared. Frdric Kozlik, L'Influence de
l'anthroposophie
sur l'oeuvre d'Andrei Bilyi, 3 vols. (Frankfurt: Rita G. Fischer Verlag, 1981). Unfortunately, however, the author is less sensitive to Belyi's texts than he is to anthroposophical ideas, so this 1000-page-long study
sheds hardly any light on Belyi's art or his involvement with Steiner.
22. Belyi's first personal meeting with Steiner seems to have won him over to
anthroposophy. In his letter to Blok of 14 May 1912, in which he describes the
meeting in detail, Belyi also traces his growing interest in Steiners ideas, and
contrasts this with his antipathy toward theosophy. See letter 242 in Aleksandr
Blok-Andrei Belyi: Perepiska, ed. Vladimir Orlov (Moscow, 1940; rpt. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1969, as Slavische Propylen 65), pp. 293-295. See
also the memoir of Belyi by D. Maksimov, torn kak ia videi i slyshal Andreia Belogo," Zvezda, 7 (July 1982), 167-178, who recalls how Belyi admitted
that "Steiners strength wasn't in [his] books, but in personal contact, in direct
influence." Belyi's widow, also a dedicated anthroposophist, confirmed to
Maksimov that Steiner s forte was personal teaching: "The Doctor didn't know

210

N o t e s to Pages 1 0 7 - 1 1 0

how to write. All his strength really was contained in his lectures and discussions" (p. 176). As for the important question of the timing of Steiners influence on Petersburg, in a letter to Blok dated December 1912, Belyi indicates
clearly that after he became Steiner's follower he reworked the early chapters of
the novel that he had already written (letter 246, p. 305). See also Ljunggren's
study, The Dream of Rebirth, for detailed confirmation of this point.
23. See Belyi's memoir of Steiner, written in 1929, Vospominaniia
o Shteinere, ed. Frdric Kozlik (Paris: La Presse Libre, 1982), and published in German
translation as Verwandeln des Lebens: Errinerungen an Rudolf Steiner, trans,
and notes by Swetlana Geier (Basel: Zbinden Verlag, 1975; 2nd ed., 1977).
24. This is not to say that Belyi was unaware of differences between the two.
See A. V. Lavrov's publication of Belyi's early diary entries: "Iunosheskie dnevnikovye zametki Andreia Belogo," in Pamiatniki kul'tury: Novye
otkrytiia,
Ezhegodnik 1979 (Leningrad: Nauka, 1980), pp. 132-133.
25. Strictly speaking, the spiritual world that is the basis of reality in anthroposophy should be characterized as "immanent" rather than "transcendent."
According to Steiner, all human beings are immersed in this world at all times.
But although Belyi shared this view, I shall continue to use "transcendent" for
both him and anthroposophy because this term comes closest to an impartial
observer's understanding of the relationship.
26. See, for example, Belyi's expectation that symbolism would become a religio-philosophical teaching ("Emblematika smysla," Simvolizm, p. 140); and
his hopes that a new theosophy would arise instead of the old (ibid., p. 505 n.
26). He also anticipated the need for mystery dramas, which Steiner both wrote
and staged ( tselesoobraznosti," Arabeski, p. 112). For specific instances of
ideas formulated by Belyi and supported by anthroposophy see the remainder
of this chapter.
27. Blok s letter to A. Remizov, cited in Aleksandr Blok-Andrei
Belyi: Perepiska, p. 328, n. 3.
28. Pochemu ia stai simvolistom i pochemu ia ne perestal im byt' vo vsekh
fazakh moego ideinogo i khudozhestvennogo
razvitiia (Ann Arbor: Ardis,
1982), pp. 127, 72-74.
29. Vospominaniia o Bloke, p. 49, and Belyi's letter to his first wife's mother,
parts of which were published by Georges Nivat, "Lettres d'Andrej Belyj la famille d' 'Asja'," Cahiers du Monde russe et sovitique, 18 (Jan.-June 1977), 144146.
30. See for example, Georgette Donchin's comment, "It is essential to realize
that the anthroposophic, occult world in Peterburg appears only as an extended horizon of Belyi's consciousness, never as a transcendental truth," in her
Introduction to the 1967 American reprint of the first edition of the novel (p.
and ff.).
31. Pochemu ia stai simvolistom, p. 94.
32. Nivat, "Lettres d'Andrej Belyj la famille d"Asja'," p. 144.
33. Letter to Ivanov-Razumnik from December 1913 in the Literaturnye
pamiatniki reprint, p. 516. In the letter Belyi also speaks of the events depicted in
the novel as a "shadowy projection" of a "spiritual provocation."

Notes to Pages 1 1 1 - 1 1 7

211

34. Johannes Holthusen, Studien zur sthetik und Poetik des Russischen
Symbolismus
(Gttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1957), p. 137, misses
the major point when he identifies "cerebral play" as being a metaphor hiding
the author's relation to the work and the characters he has created. In a more
recent study, "Belyj: Petersburg," in Der Russische Roman, ed. Bodo Zelinsky
(Dsseldorf: August Bagel, 1979), pp. 265, 425-426, Holthusen has altered his
view of "cerebral play" and conceives of it as involving the "cosmic side of life"
(p. 286). Anton Hnig, Andrej Belyjs Romane: Stil und Gestalt (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1965), p. 60, believes that "cerebral play" does not require
"mysticism" to be understood, and means simply that words used in a fictional
context should not be automatically thought of as referring to things in the real
world. Elsewhere (p. 69), he equates "cerebral play" with "free association."
Georges Nivat, "Le 'Jeu Crbral,' Etude sur Ptersbourg," Ptersbourg, by Andrei Belyi, trans, by G. Nivat and J. Catteau (Lausanne: Editions l'age
d'homme, 1967), p. 339, views "cerebral play" in a way similar to mine. He
finds characters' brains are "transparent" when it comes to intrusions by "cerebral play," and that identical forces act on all the characters. L. K. Dolgopolov,
in his essay on the novel in the Literaturnye pamiatniki reprint (p. 571), also
understands "cerebral play" to be the force creating all that exists, but concludes that this aspect of the novel was strongest in an early version intended
for the publisher Nekrasov.
35. Belyi had received instruction in meditation from the bizarre occultist
A. R. Mintslova. See his brief but interesting comments about his experiences
in a letter to the writer Marietta Shaginian from 1909, published by her in Novyi mir, 6 (1973), 147.
36. Pochemu ia stai simvolistom, p. 126. Belyi also mentions the fascinating
fact he gleaned from Solov'ev's scholarship that the Gnostic Valentinus (fl. c.
135-c. 160) was the first to have spoken of the world of matter as being dependent on the spiritual changes in man: Vospominaniia o Bloke, p. 458.
37. Rudolf Steiner, An Outline of Occult Science, (Die
Geheimwissenschaft
im Umriss, 1909), trans. Maud and Henry B. Monges, revised Lisa D. Monges
(Spring Valley, New York: Anthroposophie Press, 1972), pp. 78-79.
38. See Rudolf Steiner, The Etherisation of the Blood: The Entry of the Etheric Christ into the Evolution of the Earth, trans. Arnold Freeman and D. S.
Osmond (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1971), pp. 13-14.
39. Cited by Dolgopolov in the Literaturnye pamiatniki reprint of Petersburg, p. 561.
40. Steiner, Occult Science, pp. 295-296. Die Geheimwissenschaft
im Umriss went through at least twenty editions since its first publication in 1909. The
German text I consulted was published in Leipzig: Max Altman, 1921, pp. 359360. One of Belyi's terms may be derived from Hegel (directly or indirectly), as
suggested by the following summary of how the Hegelian Absolute functions:
"Being actualizes itself as concretely existing self-thinking
Thought [italics
mine] through the human spirit": Frederick Copleston, S. J., A History of Philosophy: Volume 7, Modern Philosophy, Part I, Fichte to Hegel (Garden City,
New York: Doubleday, 1965), p. 271.

212

Notes to Pages 1 1 7 - 1 2 2

41. . . Bugaeva, Vospominaniia o Belom, ed., annotated and introd. by


John E. Malmstad (Berkeley: Berkeley Slavic Specialties, 1981), p. 101.
42. On "lotus flowers" see Steiner, Occult Science, p. 302. The quotation is
from p. 76. It is also interesting to note that Belyi's description in Nachalo veka
(p. 165) of Briusov reading poetry recalls Shishnarfne's fading to two dimensions, and so does Belyi's description of himself as a "black contour" when,
after some spiritual transformation, he "turned himself inside out." See his letter to Medtner from 1903, published by Nivat in "Historie d'une 'Tratognse'
Bilyenne: Les rapports entre Emilij Medtner et Andrej Belyj," Cahiers du
Monde russe et sovitique, 18, (Jan.-June 1977), 99.
43. Rudolf Steiner, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment,
trans. G. Metaxa, ed. Harry Collison (New York: Anthroposophie Press, n.
d.), p. 146. Maguire and Malmstad (pp. 346-347) also read "enfranshish" as an
approximate transliteration from the Latin alphabet. They accept O. Ronen's
hypothesis, however, that "En franchise" is related to Dudkin's subliminal recollection of advertisements in newspapers of the time for insect powder
(known as "Persian powder" in Russian). They also note that the first third of
the visitor's name is the Russian word for a vulgar gesture. Hnig observes that
Shishnarfne is an anagram with 362,880 permutations (pp. 67-68). Kozlik argues that this figure is mistaken and calculates only 90,720 permutations (II,
475).
44. Stepka's reaction to Shishnarfne counters Holthusens argument (Studien, p. 134) that Shishnarfne exists only in Dudkin's imagination. The entire
confrontation between Dudkin and Shishnarfne recalls the famous scene between Ivan and his devil in The Brothers Karamazov, but with the important
difference that Dostoevskii does not have a third party present. This is only one
of the numerous literary allusions in Petersburg. Others are identified and discussed in Maguire and Malmstad's notes to their translation; in L. K. DolgopoIov's notes to the 1978 and 1979 Soviet reprints of the 1928 edition of Petersburg, and in the 1981 reprint of the 1916 edition; in Nivat's afterword to the
French translation; in Ada Steinberg's "On the Structure of Parody in Andrej
Belyj's Peterburg," Slavica Hierosolymitana,
1 (1977), 132-157 (reprinted, with
changes, in Word and Music in the Novels of Andrey Bely [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982], pp. 162-191); and her "Fragmentary 'Prototypes' in Andrey Bely s Novel Peterburg," Slavonic and East European Review,
36 (October 1978), 522-545. Belyi discusses echoes of Gogol' in his own Masterstvo Gogolia, (Moscow, 1934; rpt. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1969, as
Slavische Propylen 59), pp. 298 passim.
45. In the 1916 edition of the novel, p. 240, Belyi had included a sentence describing the agent and Nikolai going off in different directions between the
agent's words and the narrator's apostrophe.
46. Mezhdu dvukh revoliutsii, pp. 91-98.
47. See "Iz literaturnogo nasledstva Andreia Belogo: Vospominaniia, torn
III, chast' II (1910-1912)," in Literaturnoe nasledstvo, 27-28, pp. 453-454; and
Ljunggren's The Dream of Rebirth (pp. 32-33) for a quotation from unpublished drafts of Belyi's memoirs.
48. This is precisely the way Belyi experienced the "birth" of Moscow, as an
act of violent force exerted against his own will. Moreover, both he and his

Notes to Pages 122-132

213

wife saw the characters from the novel as "more real than any reality." See K.
N. Bugaeva, Vospominania o Beom, pp. 146-147.
49. Letter to Medtner, excerpt published by Nivat in "Histoire d'une 'Tratognse' Bilyenne," p. 122.
50. See Ada Steinberg's Word and Music in the Novels of Andrey Bely,
chapter 3, for an attempt in this direction.
51. It is an interesting note that in the article "Krugovoe dvizhenie" (1914)
Belyi used the same word, "mel'kanie," to characterize the instability of the
boundary between the worlds of matter and spirit, and spoke of the "self" as an
imaginary, fictional boundary between the two: cited by Dolgopolov in the Literaturnye pamiatniki reprint of Peterburg, p. 605.
52. Other forms of typographical arrangements in Belyi's prose await their
investigator. For Belyi's own fascinating discussion of the subject see his "Budem iskat' melodii (Predislovie k sborniku 'Posle razluki')" (1922), reprinted in
Andrei Belyi, Stikhotvoreniia i poemy, Biblioteka poeta (Moscow-Leningrad:
Sovetskii pisatel', 1966), pp. 546-550.
53. Nivat "Le Jeu crbral," (p. 349) believes these are Dudkin's words. However, the tone of voice speaking in these passages and its privileged point of
view are typical only of the narrator. He is also the only one in the novel to address Russia in the second person singular "ty."
54. For more on the meaning of St. Petersburg in Russian culture, see Sidney
Monas, "Unreal City," Chicago Review, 13 (1959), 102-112; Michael Holquist,
"St. Petersburg: From Utopian City to Gnostic Universe," Virginia Quarterly
Review, 48 (1972), 537-557; Donald Fanger, "The City of Russian Modernist
Fiction," in Modernism: 1890-1930, ed. M. Bradbury and J. McFarlane (New
York: Penguin, 1976), pp. 467-480. For a discussion of the distortions Belyi
made in the actual city's geography, see Dolgopolov in the Literaturnye pamiatniki reprint pp. 608-613.
55. "It seems to me more and more," Belyi wrote to Medtner in 1903, "that
his [Nietzsche's] flight across the chasm was successful, and that the accidental
awkward move he made when he was receding from our view we took as the
finality of his madness. But he did not collapse or fall and only tripped on the
edge of the chasm as he lept across." Quoted by Nivat, "Histoire d'une 'Tratognse' Bilyenne," p. 97.
56. See, for example, Steiner, Occult Science, p. 224.
57. On Christ as "Sun Being"see ibid., pp. 215, 248. Dolgopolov reports the
archivai finding in his notes to the Moscow, 1978, 1979 reprints of the novel,
pp. 369-370. Belyi also identified Christ with the Sun as early as 1905. See excerpts from Bely's letters to Medtner in Nivat's "Histoire d'une 'Tratognse'
Bilyenne," p. 104.
58. See Aleksandr Blok-Andrei Belyi: Perepiska, pp. 264, 269.
59. See Georges Nivat, "Du 'Panmongolisme' au 'Mouvement Eurasien':
Histoire d'un thme littraire," Cahiers du Monde russe et sovitique, 7 (JulySept. 1966), 460-478, for a brief summary of the symbolic significance of Asia
in Russian literary culture during Belyi's lifetime.
60. An awareness of these two possible ways of viewing the transcendent,
one limited and human and the other divine, provides a perspective on the
forces operating in Belyi's world that preempts judgments about them as simply
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214

Notes to Pages 1 3 3 - 1 5 0

"good" or "evil." Nivat's claim that demonism ultimately triumphs in Petersburg (p. 354), and his disagreement with Ivanov-Razumnik that the Bronze
Horseman can be seen as a presage of Christ triumphant (p. 354, n. 1), need to
be put into a broader context.
61. See Steiner, Occult Science, chap. Ill: "Sleep and Death," especially pp.
47-54.
62. Note in the Moscow, 1978, 1979 reprints of the novel, p. 368. Dolgopolov also makes the useful point that Solov'ev's and Belyi's characters have similar names, Apollonii in the first case, Apollon in the second; and that Apollonii's characterization as "polu-aziat i poluevropeets" (half-Asian and halfEuropean) is also applicable to the senator. I should add that Belyi also speaks
of the "ledianaia ruka roka" (icy hand of fate) in discussing Ibsen's characters in
"Teatr i sovremennaia drama" (1907), Arabeski, p. 36. Moreover, a similar association of ice and evil appears in the scene preceding Ivan Karamazov's meeting with the devil (which was the model for Dudkin's encounter with Shishnarfne). When Ivan returns to his room just before the devil appears, the
narrator says "something icy suddenly touched his heart"(part IV, book 11,
chap. 8: "The Third and Final Meeting with Smerdiakov"). It is quite possible
that Solov'ev's scene was modeled on Dostoevskii's.
64. Cosmic Memory: Prehistory of Earth and Man, trans, by Karl E. Zimmer (Englewood, N.J.: Rudolf Steiner Publications, 1959) pp. 206, 208, 227;
116-117; 136-137.
65. Ibid., p. 205, and Rudolf Steiner, Occult Signs and Symbols (originally
given as four lectures, Stuttgart, 13-16 September, 1907), trans. Sarah Kurland
and Gilbert Church (New York: Anthroposophie Press, 1972), p. 23.
66. Cosmic Memory, pp. 137, 227, 220-221.
67. Ibid., pp. 137-138.
68. In the 1916 (p. 267), 1922 (p. 166) editions, he "remembered" (vspomnil).
69. For Belyi's negative views on Nikolai's Kantian system, see his Vospominaniia o Bloke, p. 740.
70. Nivat "Le Jeu crbral" (p. 353), and Honig, Andrej Belyjs Romane (p.
64), among others, also conclude that the figure is Christ.
71. See Steiner, The Etherisation of the Blood, pp. 26-27, 30. The earliest
version of the letter that Dudkin reads to Stepka contained an overt reference
to the Etheric Christ; this and other interesting details are quoted by IvanovRazumnik, Vershiny: Aleksandr Blok, Andrei Belyi, pp. 148-149. Understanding that this is a specifically anthroposophical conception of Christ counters
Dolgopolov's contention in the Literaturnye pamiatniki reprint of Peterburg
that Christ occupies no significant place in the novel's conception (p. 621).
72. "Iz literaturnogo nasledstva Andreia Belogo," Literaturnoe
nasledstvo,
27-28, p. 454.
73. See Frdric C. Kozlik, L'Influence de l'anthroposophie,
I, pp. lv-lxii.
74. See Steiner, Occult Science, p. 213.
75. For a detailed study of leitmotifs and symbols in the novel, see Dagmar
Burkhart, "Leitmotivik und Symbolik in Andrej Belyjs Roman 'Peterburg',"
Die Welt der Slaven, 9 (Dec. 1964), 277-323.
76. Belyi's own view was that '"the period' is the sign of Pushkin's prose, 'the
semi-colon' is Tolstoi's; 'the colon' is mine; 'the dash' is the beloved sign of the

Notes to Pages 1 5 1 - 1 5 5

215

modernists." See his "Budem iskat' melodii," in Stikhotvoreniia


i poemy, p.
547.
77. Cosmic Memory, p. 184.
78. Steiner, Occult Science, p. 343.
79. For another survey of the coat of arms' associations, see Maria Carlson,
"The Ableukhov Coat of Arms," in Andrey Bely: Centenary Papers, pp. 157170,181.

4. Kotik Letaev and The Baptized Chinaman


1. Belyi also called the work a "Symphonic tale [povest1]." For the various
generic characterizations, the publication history of Kotik Letaev, and the
work's place in Belyi's complex literary plans, see K. Bugaeva and A. Petrovskii, "Literaturnoe nasledstvo Andreia Belogo" in Literaturnoe nasledstvo, 2728 (Moscow: Zhurnal'no gazetnoe ob"edinenie, 1937), pp. 604-606. Page references in the text are to the following edition of the novel: Kotik Letaev (Petrograd: Epokha, 1922; rpt. Munich: Eidos Verlag, 1964). The second page reference in each pair of references is to the English translation by Gerald Janecek
(Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1971), but the translation used here is my own. In several
instances I have used Janecek's apt translations for Belyi's expressions and neologisms: "conswarmings" for "sroennost' " (64:45); "fall into a swoon" for
"upast' obmorok" (75:53); "old-womanize" for "starushit'sia" (76: 54); "the
live-flowing lightscript" for "zhivotechnaia svetopis " (116: 85); and "frockcoater" for "siurtuchnik" (188: 141).
2. Na rubezhe dvukh stoletii (Moscow-Leningrad, 1930; rpt. Letchworth,
Herts.,: England: Bradda, 1966), p. 165. Belyi makes the same claim in a Preface to the novel that he wrote in 1928 and that was first published in Novyi
zhurnal, 101 (1970), 69-70.
3. Zapiski chudaka, 2 vols. (Moscow-Berlin, 1922; rpt. Lausanne: Editions
l'ge d'homme, 1973), I, p. 46. Belyi's letter to Ivanov-Razumnik was published
by Georges Nivat as "Andrej Belyj: Lettre autobiographique Ivanov-Razumnik," in Cahiers du Monde russe et sovitique, 15 (Jan.-June 1974), 74-75. Pochemu ia stai simvolistom i pochemu ia ne perestal im byt' vo vsekh fazakh
moego ideinogo i khudozhestvennogo
razvitiia (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1982), p. 9.
4. For a key to the actual identities of the people Belyi hid behind fictional
names see Dmitrij Tschizewskij's "Erluterungen" in the 1964 reprint of Kotik
cited in n. 1 (pp. xiv-xvi).
5. Rudolf Steiner, The Spiritual Guidance of Man (Die Geistige Fhrung des
Menschen und der Menschheit, 1911) ed. Henry B. Monges, no trans. (Spring
Valley, New York: The Anthroposophie Press, 1950), p. 6.
6. For more on the spiral see Gerald Janecek, "The Spiral as Image and
Structural Principle in Andrej Belyj's Kotik Letaev," Russian Literature, 4 (October 1976), 357-364.
7. For a good discussion of the novel's style see Georges Nivat, "Le palimpseste de l'enfance" in Kotik Ltaiev, by Andrei Belyi, trans, by G. Nivat (Lausanne: Editions l'ge d'homme, 1973), pp. 282-288.
8. See Shklovskii's "Andrei Belyi," Russkii sovremennik:
Literaturno-khudozhestvennyizhurnal,
2 (1924), 231-245.

216

Notes to Pages 1 5 6 - 1 7 5

9. Rudolf Steiner, An Outline of Occult Science (Die


Geheimwissenschaft
im Umriss, 1909) trans, by Maud and Henry B. Monges, rev. by Lisa D.
Monges (Spring Valley, New York: Anthroposophie Press, 1972), pp. 338-339.
10. K. N. Bugaeva makes this connection openly in her memoir Vospominaniia o Belom, ed., annotated and introd. by John E. Malmstad (Berkeley:
Berkeley Slavic Specialties, 1981), p. 52. See Also Belyi's memoir, Vospominaniia o Shteinere, ed. Frdric Kozlik (Paris: La Presse Libre, 1982), p. 220.
11. smysle poznaniia" (Petersburg: Epokha, 1922) was reprinted together
with "Poeziia slova" (Chicago: Russian Language Specialties, 1965). Page references to the reprint of the essay will be given in the text.
12. Mezhdu dvukh revoliutsii (Leningrad: Izdatel'stvo pisatelei, 1934), p.
211.
13. Gerald Janecek provides another anthroposophical reading of Kotik Le~
taev, based directly on Steiners own writings rather than on Belyi's refraction
of them, which is analogous to mine: "Anthroposophy in Kotik Letaev," Orbis
Literarum, 29 (1974), 245-267.
14. Zapiski chudaka, I, p. 93. See Belyi's Vospominaniia o Shteinere (between pp. 36 and 37) for photographs of the first Goetheanum.
15. See Belyi's essay "Zhezl Aarona (O Slove poezii)" (Skify, Sbornik I-i,
1917) for a discussion of the connection between rhythm and meaning on the
example of Tiutchev's poetry (pp. 201-203).
16. Steiner, Spiritual Guidance, pp. 14-15.
17. Steiner, Occult Science, pp. 271-272, 303-304.
18. Nivat, "Lettre autobiographique," p. 75; Pochemu ia stai
simvolistom,
p. 10.

19. Steiner, Occult Science, pp. 304-307.


20. Ibid., pp. 309-311.
21. Ibid., p. 344.
22. See Rudolf Steiner, The Fifth Gospel, (Seven lectures in Oslo and Cologne, 1913), rev. trans, by C. Davy and D. S. Osmond (London: Rudolf
Steiner Press, 1968), p. 151.
23. Steiner, Occult Science, p. 345.
24. See Na rubezhe dvukh stoletii, p. 181.
25. Christ, Solov'ev, and Steiner were linked later by Belyi as well. In his
Vospominaniia o Shteinere, p. 335, after describing the enormous effect
Steiner's lecture series (published later as The Fifth Gospel) had on him in 1913,
Belyi remembers that his thoughts turned back to the beginning of the century
and visits to Solov'ev's grave.
26. See, for example, "Dukh" (1914) in Andrei Belyi, Stikhotvoreniia
i
poemy, Biblioteka poeta (Moscow-Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel', 1966), pp.
372-373.
27. See Anna Lisa Crone, "Gnostic Elements in Belyjs Kotik Letaev," Russian Language Journal, 36 (1982), 88-105, for a Gnostic reading of Kotik's
quest. This study, although illuminating a number of images in the novel, does
not take sufficient account of the substantial differences between anthroposophy and Gnosticism (even though, as Crone realizes, Steiner borrowed from
the latter.) Although spiritual transcendence is central to both teachings, an-

Notes to Pages 176-185

217

t h r o p o s o p h y is not a dualistic system and has a very different concept of evil


f r o m Gnosticism.
28. See, f o r example, Steiners An Outline of Occult Science, p. 105, or The
Fifth Gospel, pp. 30, 41-42.
29. Additional evidence for Belyi's "reading" the Akashic record can be
f o u n d in poems f r o m his collection Zvezda (1922). They suggest that he practiced meditation and had visions of a spiritual reality like the one Steiner described . See John M a l m s t a d s "The Poetry of A n d r e j Belyj : A Variorum Edition"
(Ph. D . diss., Princeton University, 1968): poems N o . 345 "Samosoznanie"
(1914), pp. 376-377; Nos. 346-50 "Karma" (1917), pp. 377-379; N o . 369
"Dukh" (1914), p. 393; N o . 371 "Vospominanie" (1914), p. 394; N o . 387 "Inspiratsiia" (1914), p. 402.
30. For another discussion of these metaphors, which, however, distorts the
novel's metalinguistic dimension, see Carol Anschuetz, "Recollection as Metap h o r in Kotik Letaev," Russian Literature, 4 (October 1976), 345-355.
31. Zapiski chudaka, I, 154. See Bely s essay "Zhezl A a r o n a (O slove poezii)" f o r similar formulations and other illustrations of how Belyi matched gestures to w o r d s (especially pp. 186-189 passim), which recall the earlier essay
"The Magic of Words."
32. For a description of the writing and publication history of the work see
Literaturnoe nasledstvo, 27-28, p. 605. See also the Introduction by D. Tschizewskij and A . Hnig, which provides additional information, in the following
reprint of the w o r k : Kreshchenyi
kitaets (Moscow: Nikitinskie subbotniki,
1927; rpt. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1969). All page references to this reprint of the w o r k will be given in the text. All translations f r o m the Russian are
my own.
33. Na rubezhe dvukh stoletii, pp. 19-20.
34. The best description of Belyi's hardships prior to his leaving f o r Berlin in
1921 is in his own (unsent) letter to his first wife Asia Turgeneva, dated 11 N o vember 1921, published in Vozdushnye puti, V (1967), 296-309. For a description of his tormented state in Berlin see M a r i n a Tsvetaeva's brilliant short memoir "Plennyi dukh (Moia vstrecha s A n d r e e m Belym)," reprinted in Proza (New
York: Chekhov, 1953), pp. 286-352.
35. It is somewhat surprising that in Na rubezhe dvukh stoletii (p. 331) Belyi
would suggest that the "crime" in question was his going to a library instead of
to school for a period during his early adolescenceanother m a j o r incident in
his life, and one he had planned to depict in The Crime of Nikolai Letaev. In
The Baptized Chinaman there is ample evidence that Belyi conceived himself
(albeit ironically) as a "criminal" during his early childhood because n o matter
what he did, one parent would always be displeased (see p. 89). Perhaps the incident with the library f r o m a later time in his life should be u n d e r s t o o d as another, later manifestation of the original childhood t r a u m a . It is also possible
that in his memoir Belyi w a s trying to deemphasize his self-identification with
Christ in order not to antagonize the Soviet censorship.
36. D. S. Mirsky, A History of Russian Literature, ed. and abridged b y Francis J. Whitfield (New York: Knopf, 1966), p. 461. For m o r e o n Belyi and the
"Scythians," see ]. D. Elsworth, Audrey Bely (Letchworth, Herts., England:

218

Notes to Pages 1 8 5 - 1 9 3

Bradda, 1972), pp. 93, 95.


37. See Roger Keys s study "The Bely-Ivanov-Razumnik Correspondence,"
in Audrey Bely: A Critical Review, ed. by Gerald Janecek (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1978), pp. 193-204.
38. Samuel D. Cioran, The Apocalyptic Symbolism of Andrej Belyj (The
Hague: Mouton, 1973) mingles Solov'ev's "Pan-Mongolism" and "Scythianism"
and thus concludes that The Baptized Chinaman is an apocalyptic work (p.
36).
39. Steiner, Occult Science, p. 311.
40. A. Veksler, "'Epopeia' A. Belogo (Opyt komentariia)" in Sovremennaia
literatura: Sbornik statei (Leningrad: Mysl', 1925), pp. 48-75.
Conclusion
1. Georg Lukcs, The Theory of the Novel (1920), trans. Anna Bostock
(Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1971), p. 29.
2. Mikhail Bakhtin, "Slovo romane," in his Voprosy literatury i estetiki
(Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1975) pp. 180-181.
3. See Andrei Siniavskii's brilliant essay "What Socialist Realism Is" (Chto
takoe sotsialisticheskii realizm) in his Fantasticheskii mir Abrama Tertsa (New
York: Inter-Library Associates, 1966), p. 423.

Index

Alighieri, Dante, 193


Anthroposophy: eurythmy, 22, 37, 122,
178-179, 196n9; parallels with Bely's
theories, 51, 52, 90, 106-109, 112, 114,
192; Bely's experiences with, 73, 106107, 116, 154, 155, 161, 173, 209n22;
cognition, 106, 113, 117, 119, 154, 156,
159, 162, 170, 172-174, 175-176, 186187; cosmogony, 106, 131, 133, 135136, 141, 151, 163, 174, 180, 182, 183,
193, 210n25; meditation, 106, 159, 163170, 171, 173-174; Bely's distortions of,
107, 117, 132, 152, 156, 159, 165-166,
167-168, 172, 187; conception of
Christ, 142-144, 145, 169-173, 184,
187-189, 190; conception of evil, 145147, 188-189
Apocalypse: Solovievian eschatology, 1 0 11, 33, 42, 58, 60-61, 74, 79, 86, 98,
107, 125, 130-134, 137-139, 141-143,
155, 185, 205n9, 214n62; the Second
Coming, 36, 37, 38, 73, 145, 147; and
theme of East versus West, 80-83, 9 8 9 9 , 1 3 4 ; symbols of, 124-125, 140, 148152
A rebours (J.-. Huysmans), 6 - 7
Avramenko, A. P., 24, 25
Azef, Evno, 144
Bakhtin, Mikhail, 193, 197n2
Balakian, Anna, 17
Baptized Chinaman,
The, 1, 2, 37, 95,

126, 179, 182-190, 191


Baudelaire, Charles, 6, 7, 12, 25, 26 94,
192
Beginning of the Century, The, 18, 21
Bely, Andrei: and European and Russian
literature, 1, 8, 59-60, 105, 191, 192,
197n7, 204n91, 212n44; biographical
data, 1, 25, 37, 43, 72-73, 83-84, 95,
97, 112, 117, 121-122, 131, 132, 136,
144, 153-156, 158, 163-165, 169,
201n64, 212n42, 217n29, 217n35;
relations with Soviet regime, 2 - 3 , 4, 21,
34-35, 153, 159, 171, 184, 196n8,
199n31, 202n71, 217n35; origins of
early prose, 7 - 8 , 10-11, 22-26;
problematic features of symbolist
narratives, 12-13, 26, 31-32, 54-59,
62-66, 70-71, 93, 95-99, 111, 129-130,
157, 179-182, 198nl7; history of
philosophy, 31-32; conception of
multiplanar existence, 52-54, 96-98,
106, 114-115, 120, 157, 173, 174;
literary plans, 95, 155, 169, 182-183,
205nl2
Berdiaev, Nikolai, 201n59, 2 0 6 n l 7
Between Two Revolutions,
57, 105, 132,
159
Bible, 10, 22, 23, 33, 49-50, 73, 114, 142,
169, 170, 187
Blavatskaia, Elena, 106
Blok, Aleksandr, 64, 72, 83, 86, 107, 121,
132, 136, 141, 185, 192

220

Index

Bcklin, Arnold, 14, 43, 53


Briusov, Valry, 8, 9, 105

Haeckel, Ernst, 156-157, 166, 174, 189


Homer, 191, 192

Cerebral play, 89, 93, 109-122, 125, 129,


138, 158, 161, 172, 190, 192, 193,
211n34
Christ, 37, 51, 105, 106, 125, 129, 131,
141, 152, 156, 184, 185, 214n71. See
also Anthroposophy; conception of
Christ
Chulkov, Georgy, 62, 89
Creative cognition. See Cerebral play and
Self-thinking thoughts
"Chrisis of Consciousness and Henrik
Ibsen, The," 69
"Criticism and Symbolism," 12

Ibsen, Henrik, 8, 10, 44, 84


Irony: philosophical, 11, 44, 113, 168,
202n67; romantic, 12, 13, 128, 129-130
Ivanov, Viacheslav, 81, 83, 102

Determinism: dramatized in Bely s works,


29, 31, 36-38, 51, 62, 75-76, 84-92,
108, 117, 126, 132, 134, 139, 144-148,
152; implied in Bely's theory, 84, 105,
106
Dostoevsky, Fedor, 93, 101,115,129, 193,
212n44, 214n62
Elsworth, John, 88, 106, 196nl0
"Emblematics of Meaning, The," 69, 103,
104-105, 106, 107
Feidelson, Charles, Jr., 5
Fiction, ontological relation to reality: in
Bely's works, 18-22, 35, 43-44, 92-95,
99, 109-111, 113-114, 121-122, 124,
176-177, 192-193; in Bely's theory, 18,
95, 103-105
First Encounter, The, 1, 35
First Symphony, The, 9-26, 29, 39, 54, 61,
65, 72, 92, 101, 154, 160, 174, 179, 190,
191
"Forms of Art, The," 12, 20, 34
Fourth Symphony, The, 54-67, 72, 96,
109, 174, 182
Freedman, Ralph, 59
Glossaloliia, 22, 122, 178, 188
Gnosticism, 46, 48, 62, 65, 171, 211n36,
216n27
Gofman, Viktor, 94
Gogol, Nikolai, 8, 95, 97-98, 101, 127,
205nll
Gold in Azure, 25
Grossman, L. P., 26

Jakobson, Roman, 40, 42


Joyce, James, 1, 7
Kant, Immanuel, 21, 28, 44, 60, 100, 106,
137
Karlinsky, Simon, 96
Keys, Roger, 9
Kotik Letaev, 1, 3, 18, 37, 38, 54, 62, 95,
115, 126, 139, 143, 153-182, 183-187
passim, 189, 193
Kovac, Anton, 59, 60
Lavrov, . V., 24-25, 26, 44, 201n64
Les Lauriers sont coups (E. Dujardin), 7,
8, 13, 65, 95
Lukcs, Georg, 191
"Lyrical Fragments in Prose," 25-26
Madness, 202n71
Maeterlinck, Maurice, 11, 14, 44
"Magic of Words, The," 95, 103, 112, 128,
193
Mallarm, Stphane, 14, 17, 25, 26, 192
"Meaning of Art, The," 56, 64
Merezhkovsky, Dmitry, 8-9, 44, 83
Misperception, 33-37, 42, 74-76, 82, 8587
Morozova, Margarita, 35
Moscow and Masks, 1-2, 3, 196n9
Musical structures, 22-23, 24, 45-46, 5859, 202n68
Neo-Kantians, 60, 83, 106
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 18-19, 22-23, 31, 36,
37, 48-49, 51, 60, 81, 83, 84, 97, 107,
130, 191, 202n71, 209nl9
Notes of an Eccentric, 72, 95, 99,126,154,
161, 164, 179, 195n4
Occult science, See Anthroposophy
On the Border of Two Centuries, 25, 153,
183, 217n35
"On the Meaning of Cognition," 159, 160,
163, 164, 166, 169, 170, 173, 174, 176

Index

Passivity versus willfulness, 35-37, 39, 74,


76, 85, 104, 206nl7
Personification, 16, 70
Petersburg, 1, 3, 6, 11, 12, 18, 20, 21, 24,
38, 43, 44, 52, 54, 62, 68, 78, 89, 91, 92,
94-95, 98, 99, 100-152, 153-162
passim, 165, 167, 172, 173, 174, 176,
177, 185, 186, 189, 190, 192-193, 207nl
Plato, 12, 17, 21, 58, 98, 111, 162, 168
Poe, Edgar Allan, 26
Prose poetry, 6, 25-26
Pushkin, Aleksandr, 101, 130, 147,
148
"Sacred colors," 11, 51, 72
Satire, 11, 44, 102, 167, 202n67
Schmidt, Anna, 34, 35
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 7, 20-21, 22, 24,
27-29, 31, 32, 41, 45, 60, 83, 180
Scythianism, 185
Second Symphony, The, 1, 2, 13, 18, 2 6 46, 47, 52, 56, 58, 61, 72, 74, 78-79, 84,
87, 90, 96, 98, 102, 104, 109, 113, 138,
145, 147, 160, 172, 174, 180, 2 0 5 n l 3
Self-thinking thoughts, 88-90, 92, 116118, 172, 211n40
Shklovsky, Viktor, 155, 195nl
Silver Dove, The, 1, 3, 11, 12, 16, 36, 37,
44, 54, 58, 62, 68-99, 101, 102, 104,
112, 116, 121, 134, 139, 145, 147, 148,
153, 154, 167, 174, 177
Siniavsky, Andrei, 193
Sologub, Fedor, 9, 68
Soloviev, Mikhail, 8, 25, 32, 34, 200n45
Soloviev, Olga, 8, 14, 25
Soloviev, Sergei, 32, 43, 81
Soloviev, Vladimir: teachings and
influence, 8, 18, 29, 30, 32, 64, 76, 8 2 83, 93, 106, 111, 146, 180, 200n57;
appearances in Bely's fiction, 33, 34, 36,
38, 39, 40, 172. See also Apocalypse
Steiner, Rudolf. See Anthroposophy
Style and narrative structure, 5, 26-27,
29, 38-43, 46-47, 92, 95-99, 100, 101,
111, 122, 123, 138, 150, 155, 156, 157,

221

160, 162, 163, 179, 180, 183, 186, 187,


188, 208n72
Symbolic cognition, 36-37, 38, 78, 88-90,
96-97, 103-106, 108, 109-122, 133,
156-157, 162-163, 158-170, 172-174,
176, 178-179, 189-190, 193
Symbolic language, 14-17, 62-67, 69-73,
77-78, 92-95, 103-104, 126-130, 155,
166-167, 176-179, 180-182, 190, 193
"Symbolism as a World View," 18, 23, 31,
48, 50
Symbolism: Bely's theory of, 3 - 4 , 12-13,
20-21, 23, 38, 56, 64, 69, 84, 92-93, 9 4 95, 102-109, 155, 192, 1 9 6 n l l , 208n4,
209nl3; in Bely's works, 27-30, 38-43,
45, 55-59, 62-67, 69-72, 75, 88-90,
138, 148-152, 158, 162, 172, 186
Symbolist narrative, problem of, 5 - 9 , 24,
193. See also Bely, Andrei
Theurgy, 18, 35, 36, 69, 73, 74, 76, 79
Third Symphony, The, 42, 46-54, 58, 61,
72, 148, 174
Time, 49-52, 61-62, 87-88, 125, 147-148,
190
Tiutchev, Fedor, 8, 64, 80
Tolstoy, Leo, 64, 96, 101, 115, 153, 165,
193, 200n57
Trotsky, Leon, 2
Turgenev, Ivan (Senilia, Poems in Prose),
25, 26
Typographical devices, 7, 22-24, 41, 4 6 47, 48, 123-126, 150, 158, 188, 213n52
Uitti, Karl, 7
Veksler, ., 188-189
Verlaine, Paul, 17, 94
Wagner, Richard, 8, 22-23, 24, 57, 150
Why I Became a Symbolist, 107, 154
Writing, revaluation of, 1 2 , 1 3 , 21-22, 9 3 94, 111, 125, 126, 129-130
Zola, mile, 7, 94

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