Petersburg (Penguin Classics)

by Andrei Bely

  His parents were dead.

  THE END

  Notes

  PROLOGUE

  1 Our Russian Empire … et cetera: this is a parody of the official title of the Russian Tsar, which included about sixty names of the lands and territories he ruled, and ended ‘et cetera, et cetera, et cetera’ (i prochaya, i prochaya, i prochaya). Rus is an archaic form of the name for Russia.

  2 downgraded: in Russian, zashtatny. A bureaucratic term that meant that a town was no longer the centre of an administrative district.

  3 Tsargrad: the Old Russian name for Constantinople. Nineteenth-century Russian nationalists liked to assert Russia’s claim to Constantinople, and Bely is making an ironic comment on this.

  4 right of inheritance: the Right of Inheritance was founded on the cultural and political relations between Russia and Byzantium.

  5 Piter: the popular and colloquial name for Petersburg is derived from the Dutch, Pieter. Pieterburg is actually a Dutch name, which Peter the Great intended to vie with Amsterdam, the city on which its design and planning were modelled.

  6 for the public: in Russian, publichnyi dom (literally, public house) means brothel. There is some obvious ironic humour here.

  7 It only seems to exist: here Bely is following the tradition, established by Gogol and continued by Dostoyevsky, of depicting Petersburg as an unreal city.

  CHAPTER THE FIRST

  1 It was a dreadful time: these lines are from Pushkin’s long poem The Bronze Horseman, though Bely quotes them in a slightly altered form (O nei instead of Ob nei).

  2 the very progenitor of the Semitic, Hessitic and red-skinned peoples: this is sheer wordplay, delivered in the humorous tradition of the eighteenth-century English novel, to which this opening paragraph pays tribute. ‘Hessitic’ is an invention, and ‘red-skinned’ has an ironic connotation here.

  3 the Kirghiz – Kaisak Horde: the name given to the nomadic Kirghiz people during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Kirghiz were related to the Mongols who had once subjugated Russia. Russian noblemen (including the eighteenth-century poet Derzhavin) liked to trace their ancestry back to real or imaginary Mongol antecedents.

  4 Anna Ioannovna: niece of Peter the Great, and Russian empress from 1730 to 1740.

  5 Mirza Ab-Lai: probably a reference to the sultan and khan of the Middle Kirghiz Horde, Ablai (d. 1781). Bely may also have derived the name Ableukhov from the ancient Russian Obleukhov family, two descendants of which came to occupy a prominent position in Russian literary life at the turn of the century. N.D. Obleukhov was the editor of the weekly periodical Znamya (1899–1901) and other conservative publications, while his brother, A.D. Obleukhov, was a poet who translated Alfred de Musset. The Obleukhovs were well known in the symbolist circles that Bely frequented.

  6 Ukhov: in Russian, ukho means ear.

  7 Heraldic Guide to the Russian Empire: Obschii gerbovnik dvoryanskikh rodov Vserossiiskoi Imperii, nachatyi v 1797 godu, a publication that gave illustrations and descriptions of noble coats of arms.

  8 the blue sash: the blue sash was worn with the medal of Andrei Pervozvanny – one of the most important decorations that could be bestowed by the Russian Empire.

  9 rejected in the appropriate quarters: an allusion to the fierce resistance offered by Konstantin Pobedonostsev (head of the Russian Holy Synod) to any attempts at liberal reform.

  10 the Ninth Department: a Department was a section of a higher government institution. Gogol mentions one in his story ‘The Overcoat’ (1841), and it is this link with Gogol that Bely is consciously trying to establish here.

  11 the head of that department: a reference to Vyacheslav Konstantinovich Plehve (1846–1904), Minister of the Interior and Chief of the Gendarmes, who was assassinated with a bomb on 15 July 1904 by the Social Revolutionary E.S. Sazonov.

  12 My senator: the members of the Senate – Russia’s highest legislative and administrative organ – were drawn from the three highest ranks in the government and military service. Their uniform consisted of gold-trimmed jacket and white trousers.

  13 a humorous little street journal: the events of 1905 gave rise to the publication of a very large number of small political and satirical journals. In his memoirs, Bely mentions caricatures of Witte, and ‘Pobedonostsev’s green ears’.

  14 real privy councillor: the second highest rank in the Table of Ranks, established by Peter the Great.

  15 Count Doublevé: Count ‘W’, i.e. Count Witte. Sergei Yul’yevich Witte (1849–1915) was Minister of Finance from 1892 to 1903, and was one of Alexander III’s closest advisors. He was largely responsible for many bourgeois reforms in pre-revolutionary Russian society, and in many ways may be seen as a liberal. He headed the Russian side of the peace negotiations that concluded the Russo-Japanese War and were held in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, USA, in the summer of 1905.

  16 borona: the Russian word is pronounced baranáh – making the pun more obvious.

  17 the islands: Kamenny, Krestovsky and Yelagin Islands, which are enclosed by the two arms of the Bolshaya Nevka river. Bely also includes the large and mostly working-class Vasily Island in this expression.

  18 yellow house: in Bely’s novel, as in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, yellow is the prevailing colour. It is the colour of central Petersburg, its residences and its official buildings. In Bely’s case, however, the matter is somewhat complicated by the fact that the yellow colour also symbolizes the Asiatic East, which has invaded the Europeanness of Peter the Great’s creation.

  19 tramcars … 1905: the first tramline in Petersburg was opened on 15 September 1907.

  20 the equestrian monument of the Emperor Nicholas: the monument to Nicholas I on Mariinskaya Square, designed by Montferrand and executed between 1856 and 1859 by the sculptors Klodt, Ramazanov and Zaleman. At this and other monuments to Russia’s former rulers, a soldier stood on guard.

  21 the ending of life’s way: an ironic comment on the fact that so many senior government officials were assassinated by terrorists between 1901 and 1907.

  22 the gold needle: the spire of the Admiralty building, referred to as the ‘Admiralty needle’ by Pushkin in The Bronze Horseman. The needle is a constant motif throughout the novel, and ‘The Admiralty Needle’ was one possible alternative title considered by Bely.

  23 the Flying Dutchman: this image of the legendary sea-captain eternally doomed to roam the stormy seas with his ship merges in Bely’s novel with the image of Peter the Great – the connection is made plausible by the fact that Peter lived for a time in Holland.

  24 German Sea: the older Russian name for the North Sea.

  25 Noses: here, and in the passage that follows, Bely introduces a reminiscent allusion to Gogol’s short story ‘The Nose’ (1835). There is also possibly a reference to a popular rhyme that was current among the Petersburg public in 1905 concerning the president of the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, G.S. Khrustalev-Nosar (1877–1918) – his surname translates as ‘Noser’ – and the Prime Minister, Witte, whose nose, according to the writer Yu. P. Annenkov, was ‘unnoticeable in profile, like that of Gogol’s Major Kovalyov’:

  Of premiers the Russians have acquired

  An inventory rich and rare:

  One premier has no nose at all,

  The other premier is Nosar.

  26 raznochinets (plural, raznochintsy): the Russian word means ‘an individual of no definite social rank’, and was used to describe intellectuals who did not belong to the gentry. Turgenev’s Bazarov (in Fathers and Sons) is perhaps the best-known example of such a type in Russian literature.

  27 The parallel lines … Peter: Vasily Island was built and planned by the architect Trezini, following instructions from Peter the Great. There were to have been parallel canals, on the model of the canals of Amsterdam, but the project was never brought to completion, and the unrealized canals were subsequently called lines.

  28 Stolovaya: public dining-room.

 
29 the past fateful five years: the first five years of the twentieth century, which Bely viewed as the watershed between two historical eras.

  30 China … fallen: a reference to the Boxer Rebellion of May 1900, and to the conclusion, in January 1905, of the Russo-Japanese War, which dealt a humiliating blow to Russia’s national pride.

  31 Coursistes: in Russian, kursistochki, the diminutive form of kursistki, who were young women attending classes at universities and other places of higher learning. Women were not formally accepted as students at the Russian universities.

  32 the plaisirs of Peterhof’s nature: a reference to the Summer Palace, ‘Mon Plaisir’, built at Peterhof (Peter the Great’s summer residence outside Petersburg) from 1714 to 1723.

  33 picon: a kind of essence that was added to alcoholic drinks.

  34 Konstantin Konstantinovich: Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich Romanov (1858–1915), Nicholas I’s grandson, and a poet who published verses under the initials K.R.

  35 And he is not: a quotation from Pushkin’s unfinished Lyceum poem ‘There was a time …’ (Byla pora …).

  36 Vyacheslav Konstantinovich: Vyacheslav Konstantinovich Plehve.

  37 And now it seems: a quotation from Pushkin’s Lyceum poem ‘The more often the Lyceum celebrates …’ (Chem chashche prazdnuyet litsei …, 1831).

  38 And o’er the earth: another quotation from Byla pora …

  39 Panteleimon: sometimes referred to as Pantaleon, ‘The All-Merciful’. A medieval physician who became one of the patron saints of physicians, and is much revered in the Russian Orthodox Church, where his name is invoked in prayers for those who suffer from ‘demonic possession’ and mental illness. His bones are interred at the monastery on Mount Athos.

  40 What is truth?: the question addressed by Pontius Pilate to Christ (John 18:38).

  41 Our Bat: Pobedonostsev was frequently depicted in satirical caricatures as a bat or nocturnal bird.

  42 collegiate registrar: according to the civil service Table of Ranks, a collegiate registrar belonged to the last, or fourteenth class, while a state councillor belonged to the fifth class.

  43 Liza’s shadow: a reminiscent allusion to a scene from Tchaikovsky’s opera The Queen of Spades (1890). Abandoned by Hermann, Liza throws herself into the Winter Canal.

  44 Hercules and Poseidon: sculptures that ornament the façade of the Winter Palace.

  45 Nikolayevka: a greatcoat with a pelerine, of the kind that became fashionable during the reign of Nicholas I.

  CHAPTER THE SECOND

  1 I myself, though in books: the epigraph to this chapter is taken from Pushkin’s unfinished long poem Yezersky (1832).

  2 the Comrade: a Petersburg radical newspaper, though it was not published there until 1906.

  3 Daryalsky: the hero of Bely’s novel The Silver Dove, who is killed by sectarians.

  4 the Chernyshev Bridge: a bridge across the Fontanka.

  5 Angel Peri: the name is derived in an ironic manner from a poem by Zhukovsky, ‘The Peri and the Angel’ (Peri i Angel, 1821), which is a translation of the second part of Thomas Moore’s long poem Lalla Rookh. Peri: ‘evil genius, malevolent elf or sprite … one of several beautiful but malevolent female demons employed by Ahriman to bring comets and eclipses, prevent rain, cause failure of crops and dearth, etc.; in mod. Persian, poetically represented as a beautiful or graceful being (cf. fairy in Eng.) … In Persian mythology, one of a race of superhuman beings, originally represented as of evil or malevolent character, but subsequently as good genii, fairies, or angels, endowed with grace and beauty’ (Oxford English Dictionary). In nineteenth-century England, Europe and Russia, ‘Peri’ was often used as a complimentary epithet addressed to a woman of high society, in the sense of ‘fair one’.

  6 Hadusai: the great Japanese painter and graphic artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849).

  7 Duncan and Nikisch: Sofya Petrovna uses the French pronunciation of the names of Isadora Duncan (1878–1927), the American dancer, and Arthur Nikisch (1855–1922), the celebrated Hungarian orchestral conductor. According to received Russian pronunciation, the stress would fall on the first syllable of each surname.

  8 meloplastics: meloplastika, a word invented by Bely as a humorous slip for mimoplyaska (mime-dance), a term invented in 1908 by the ballet critic Nikolai Vashkevich, with reference to Duncan’s dancing. Sofya Petrovna’s confusion is made all the more grotesque by the fact that meloplastika also suggests metalloplastika (metalloplastics), a craft taught to Russian schoolgirls that involved the tracing of designs with a heated needle on specially treated metal plates.

  9 Henri Besançon: Angel Peri’s mind has concocted a somewhat grotesque compound of Henri Bergson and Annie Besant (the theosophist author of Man and His Bodies).

  10 the Gregorian Regiment: the regiment is a fictitious one, though it is given verisimilitude by being placed under the patronage of a foreign monarch – and one of the royal hussar regiments in Russia was in fact headed by King Chakrabon of Siam.

  11 khokhol-Little Russian: i.e. Ukrainian. Khokhol is the derogatory Russian name for a Ukrainian, while ‘Little Russian’ means the same thing – the two expressions form a tautology.

  12 Lippanchenko: this character is probably modelled on the real-life composer S.V. Panchenko (1867–1937), who was a friend of the poet Blok’s wife, Lyubov’ Dmitrievna, with whom Bely was for a time infatuated, believing her to be an incarnation of the Holy Sophia invoked in the apocalyptic writings of the philosopher Vladimir Solovyov. Panchenko was obviously perceived by Bely as a rival.

  13 dushkan: darling (Ukr.).

  14 brankukan, bran-kukashka or brankukanchik: more Ukrainian endearments.

  15 The Red Buffoon: Bely’s image of the ‘red buffoon’ or ‘red jester’ is derived from Edgar Allan Poe’s short story ‘The Masque of the Red Death’ (1845). Bely also wrote a verse ballad entitled ‘The Buffoon’ (Shut, 1911) in which a hunchbacked figure in a satin cape is the central character.

  16 Freak, frog: possibly a reference to another story of Poe’s, ‘Hop-Frog’ (1849).

  17 the Ciniselli Circus: an indoor circus, housed in a stone building on the Fontanka, that performed during the winter months.

  18 civil servants of the fourth class: according to the Table of Ranks, these included real state councillors, ober-procurators, master heralds, major generals (in the army) and junior admirals (in the navy).

  19 the fields of bloodstained Manchuria: most of the fighting in the Russo-Japanese war took place in Manchuria.

  20 crowds inundated … clergy: a reference to the funeral of Prince Sergei Nikolayevich Trubetskoy (1862–1905), a noted liberal campaigner. His funeral acquired the character of a political demonstration both in Petersburg and in Moscow.

  21 Peter’s little house: in Russian, Petrovskiy domik – Peter the Great’s Summer Palace, designed by Trezini and built in the Summer Garden, 1710–1712.

  22 Torricellian vacuum: the Italian physicist and pupil of Galileo, Evangelista Torricelli (1608–47), devised the mercury barometer, demonstrating the ability of air pressure to support a finite column of mercury. A Torricellian vacuum is an airless space formed above the surface of a liquid in a closed vessel.

  23 Morzhov: a comical name in Russian, suggesting a walrus. The name also has obscene connotations.

  24 Gregory of Nyssa: bishop of Nyssa, who lived c. 335–94 AD, and one of the Cappadocian Fathers, the younger brother of St Basil the Great. A Platonist, Neoplatonist and ascetic thinker.

  25 Ephraem Syrus: a fourth-century Christian Church father and ecclesiastical writer (c. 306–73).

  26 the Apocalypse: the Church Slavonic name for ‘Revelation’, the book of St John the Divine.

  27 academist: a student of the Ecclesiastical Academy.

  28 Harnack: Adolf Harnack (1851–1930), German Protestant theologian who preached a Christian morality based on universal brotherhood.

  29 schemonach: a monk who has taken the schema, the highest monasti
c rank in the Orthodox Church, demanding the fulfilment of a number of exacting tasks and statutes.

  30 Narodnaya Volya: the ‘People’s Will’ movement, a populist revolutionary organization.

  31 St George’s medal: a military decoration established by Catherine the Great, and extended to the lower ranks in 1807.

  32 Yakutsk region: a region of north-eastern Siberia. Many political exiles were sent there.

  33 I was brought out in a pickled cabbage barrel: an episode from the life of the Socialist Revolutionary activist Grigory Andreyevich Gershuni (1870–1908).

  34 Helsingfors: the Swedish – and Imperial Russian – name for the capital of Finland, until 1917 a Grand Duchy under the protection of Russia, and a part of its Empire. The city is now called Helsinki (though still known as Helsingfors among the Finnish–Swedish minority).

  35 Kaigorodov: Dmitry Nikiforovich Kaigorodov (1866–1924), the Russian botanist, entomologist, birdwatcher and pedagogue, whose most famous work was ‘From the Kingdom of Our Feathered Friends’ (Iztsarstva pernatykh, 1892).

  36 Yesterday the eyes had looked: there is an apparent inconsistency in Bely’s text here: Dudkin’s encounter with the senator on Nevsky Prospect and their subsequent meeting in Ableukhov’s house take place on the same day.

  37 A certain gloomy building: probably St Petersburg University.

  38 phytin: a medicinal preparation that was used in the treatment of nervous disorders, hysteria, et cetera.

  39 the perennial Horseman: Falconet’s equestrian monument to Peter the Great (1782), situated on Senate Square. It cost 450,000 roubles.