“Then you can’t judge what it means to spend a night in prison,” Turgenev began with feeling. “The damp gloom, the bare walls, the poisonous, stifling stench. On the other side of the wall a clanking of shackles, the fierce cries of sullen guards and someone’s heartrending moans. Exhausted by this whole terror, you lie down on your cruel pallet—and suddenly the bedbugs, the lice, the fleas, the cockroaches and the tarantulas attack you and sting and sting you unbearably. You leap up, you want to get out, you bash against the doors in righteous indignation. But the ferocious roar of the drunken Cutthroat, armed with our own native and universally renowned whip, brings you instantly back to submission. You collapse on the damp, filthy floor, you become oblivious for half a minute and you start dreaming—oh, those horrible, delirious prison dreams! Horrible, horrible, thrice horrible! Ignominy, ignominy, a hundred times over, ignominy! Despicable Russia.”
“Incidentally, speaking of dreams,” Peredonov said, “last night I had a dream too. It was terrible! Supposedly I had robbed Marta, bumped her off and then dragged her off to the rubbish heap.”
Varvara started to giggle and said:
“And she deserves it, the bitch.”
Turgenev looked on with perplexity and annoyance. No one had been struck by the force of his words. It was just as though a gnat had buzzed. Turning to Sharik he grumbled:
“A benighted simplemindedness.”
“Mind-boggling!” Sharik muttered in response.
(h) They were inhibited by the presence of the new guests, the writers. For their part, the writers were smiling condescendingly and mockingly. Seeing that the ladies were looking at them at Grushina’s party, Sharik said:
“What vulgar dreams there are gadding about in this town! Turgenev, tell them your dream about the avenue of omniscient birds. The atmosphere in it will take your breath away.”
Turgenev smiled dreamily, raised his eyes to the ceiling and started to talk in a languid voice:
“It was a long avenue, an endless avenue. All the trees had their branches chopped off. A mystical fire blossomed between each pair of trees. And on each tree sat an omniscient bird, an owl*, blinking its eyes. A splendid atmosphere! But no, my friend, Sharik,” he said, growing faint from languor, “they won’t understand. They cannot understand it!”
“Amen, amen, be gone evil spirit!” Peredonov whispered.
Sharik envied Turgenev his dream. He was trying to think up a dream of his own that would eclipse all the other ones that had been described earlier—it was a dream that was obviously unlikely, with a multitude of details. It included a mighty-winged eagle (Sharik himself), a serpent, a crow and bloody-mouthed tulips. But Rutilov interrupted his story.
“I never have any dreams,” Rutilov said. “And even if I do, then I forget them immediately. It’s worth remembering them, truly!”
Rutilov wanted to uphold his dignity as an educated person in the eyes of the writers.
“What for?” Turgenev asked, shrugging his shoulders.
“I don’t believe in dreams,” Rutilov said. “We might be living in the provinces, but that doesn’t mean we’ve become savages.”
Sergei Turgenev gave him a condescending reply:
“Naturally, it’s not every being who has the opportunity to come into contact with the eternal problems of reality.”
Feeling wounded by the words of the writer, Rutilov said:
“Only the peasantry believe in dreams. It’s not becoming to educated people.”
Sharik smiled sarcastically.
“Such sophistication!” He said spitefully.
Pleased with the fact that he had related his dream, Turgenev was smug. He passed a hand through his hair and said:
“No, I’m not laughing at folk superstitions. I have a lot of sympathy for folk traditions. I’m the grandson of the common folk, I’m the nephew of prophesying woe. My cradle was fanned by prophetic dreams. My heart believes in all these tales—oh, I am a madman! Last night I also dreamed, there in the prison, that I was the Tsarevitch, handsome and youthful; My eyes were radiant like stars, my curls were spilling over my shoulders in a golden cascade, roses blossomed on my lips and exquisite maidens were kissing my white hand with lips as gentle as a dream.”
Peredonov once again produced a sudden and loud yawn, and furtively made the sign of the cross over his mouth so that no one would see.
(i) There was the smell of food. Grushina summoned the guests to the dining room. Everyone set out, jostling one another and affecting politeness. They sat down haphazardly.
“Help yourself. What do you desire?” Grushina regaled the writers who had sat down side by side.
Turgenev produced a melancholy smile, assumed an inspired look and said:
“Desires? But my desires are insatiable. I would desire to take wing and fly and fly …”
“And I would desire,” Sharik declared sullenly, “to give some scoundrel a punch in the mug.”
Turgenev objected:
“No, I want to have a woman who is as mad as I am! With reddish hair, with eyes that are green and wild, a woman who is long and supple like a serpent, and just as slender and wicked.”
(j) The very same fancy simultaneously entered the minds of both writers. They exchanged winks, stood up from supper, went off to the side and started a heated conversation. They were trying to convince each other to marry Grushina.
“There’s something bacchic in her,” Turgenev said.
“Really, I wouldn’t be at all opposed,” replied Sharik, “but she suits you more.”
And each of them tried to outdo the other in singing her praises: each was thinking of ruining his friend with this marriage.
(k) It was Murin, Sharik in a loose peasant shirt, Turgenev in a light-colored, light-weight suit with a pink tie, and their friends.
“Ah, the supermen!” Rutilov said with a giggle as he caught sight of the writers.
The writers took this salutation at face value and laughed.
(l) “Really, mam’selle, don’t you find it drafty down below?” Turgenev asked, as he sat Varvara in the carriage.
“I’m no mam’selle now, I’m a madame and I’ll give you one right in the kisser.”
“Aha, how stern!” Turgenev burst into laughter.
Sofiya was secretly rejoicing at the fact that the wedding was being marred. Her keen eyes were screwed up and glistening with pleasure and her thin lips were compressed in malice. But her movements were just as flowing and restrained as usual and her speech was just as unctuous and patronizing.
(m) The writers, Sharik and Turgenev, were already visiting the Khripaches that day. They were studying the local manners and for that reason made an effort to go everywhere. They started to talk about the latest town news, about Peredonov’s marriage and his eccentricities in general.
“By the way,” Lyudmila said, “what a handsome boy you have in the gymnasium, a Sasha Pylnikov—a picture of good looks.”
Varvara Nikolaevna was amazed. It seemed to her that it was not in the least being mentioned “by the way.” But the switch from Peredonov to the cute boy was incomprehensible to her and for that reason appeared even somewhat unseemly. She said:
“Actually, I don’t know them, any of them. There are so many of them and I don’t have anything to do with them.”
“He’s a new student of yours,” Lyudmila said.
“Really? But I don’t even know the old ones, let alone the new,” Varvara Nikolaevna protested.
“It’s that same boy that Peredonov thinks is a girl,” Lyudmila explained.
“Ah, so that’s it! Yes, I did hear something,” the headmaster’s wife drawled unwillingly.
Turgenev smiled craftily.
“Your Peredonov,” he said, “has expressed this fact somewhat crudely. The hypothesis that a girl in disguise has entered the gymnasium, naturally, wouldn’t bear any scrutiny. But, nevertheless, you do know who he is.”
The headmaster’s wife smiled benevolently. She
was expecting that the writer would say something witty and amusing.
“So, he’s nothing more than a young lad,” Darya said. “Only he’s cute.”
“It’s not quite like that,” Turgenev insisted.
“Well, who is he then?” Lyudmila inquired.
“A hermaphrodite!” Turgenev exclaimed and for some reason raised his eyes to the ceiling.
There was a general confusion—the ladies didn’t know that sort of word. Sharik translated:
“A boy-girl.”
“But what’s that supposed to mean?” a curious Lyudmila asked.
“How can I tell you!” Turgenev said. “If you like, it’s a higher being. In him we find a self-fulfillment, a harmonious combination of the active and passive elements in the human spirit and nature. And, actually, not simply a combination, but rather a synthesis of these two elements. Each of us represents a kind of disunited being. But the perfect person is not a man, not a woman, nor even a man and a woman together, and is neither man nor woman. These two elements are united in him chemically, so-to-speak, in a supernatural process, so that the usual physiological path is abolished as being superfluous and leading nowhere. We are all either fertile or procreative, whereas he already represents the self-wrought fruit.”
He would have gone on speaking for a long while, but Lyudmila suddenly burst into laughter. The headmaster’s wife gave a restrained smile: she couldn’t make out whether the writer was joking or speaking in earnest, and for that reason she had a smile on her lips whereas her eyes expressed something akin to pensive consideration of this eccentricity. Khripach had listened attentively and then he said:
“This is rather clever and perhaps in the abstract it is feasible as some specific hope, although at present it is only vaguely expressed in other trends that have come to pass. But in regard to the given individual case it has been exaggerated. Moreover, the path which you have indicated, whether supernatural or superhuman, is essentially the path of the Antichrist and the originator of that path, that is, the Antichrist, cannot, in any event (here Khripach smiled ironically) be a pupil at a state educational institution.”
Turgenev had been offended by Lyudmila’s laughter, all the more so because at first she had apparently been listening sympathetically. “A crafty wench,” he thought and said as he shrugged his shoulders:
“If no one here cares for my hypothesis, then you are simply being deprived of one clear and elevated point of view of the subject.”
(n) The writers, Sharik and Sergei Turgenev, were at the masquerade as well. On their way back to the capital they had once again stopped off in our town. Dissipated and jaundiced from hard drinking, they nevertheless still appeared quite the young fellows. They had strong constitutions although they were always assuring their trusting friends that they suffered from the ailment of “the great Nadson.”* As always, Sharik wore his loose peasant shirt.
“This is the international costume,” he explained to Volodin. “All intellectuals should be wearing it.”
On his face he preserved an exaggeratedly disdainful and sullen expression. He despised this merry crowd. Turgenev was more polite. He had a condescending expression.
“There’s something intoxicating in the banal and stupid merrymaking of the crowd,” he said to Sharik. “You have exactly the same kind of impression as though you were taking a mud bath.”
“Proto-banal!” Sharik muttered angrily.,
“Yes, all this glitter bores me, like other people’s joy,” Turgenev said. “Listen, Sharik, how do you like this comparison: boring, like other people’s joy? I am going to insert it in my new novella.”
“Marvellous,” Sharik offered his praise. “A perfect fit. Really, other people’s joy is a spectacle that is fairly loathesome.”
Turgenev and Sharik went off to the buffet to drink tea.
“I drafted a critical study today, Sharik explained. “You’ll be interested in the content.”
“Naturally,” Turgenev said. “What you wrote can’t be other than interesting.”
“Yes, of course,” Sharik agreed. “So here’s my theme: Nekrasov and Minaev.”**
“Pfui!” Turgenev said scornfully.
“Wait,” Sharik stopped him. “I am maintaining that Nekrasov—and note that I am maintaining it with facts—that Nekrasov was envious of Minaev.”
“Aha!” Turgenev exclaimed and laughed. “Improbable, but nice. Immortally nice.”
“Yes, yes, he was envious,” Sharik said with conviction. “And in fact it was impossible for him not to be envious: envy is an essential attribute of the genuinely literary temperament.”
“Yes, perhaps you’re right,” Turgenev said thoughtfully.
“I can understand Salieri.”*
Meanwhile a crowd had gathered at the entrance to the buffet. They were looking at the writers and exchanging remarks. Sharik was angered by this. He stood up, frowned, scratched the back of his head and said in a rude voice:
“Hey, listen you characters there, what d’you want? What do you see here so interesting?”
“Sh-sh-sh,” echoed in the crowd. “He’s speaking, he’s saying something.”
Suddenly it became very quiet and Sharik’s voice echoed with ruthless clarity in the midst of this perfidious silence:
“I came here to study your manners, not to dangle in front of you like a scarecrow. I am a man of letters and not a deep-sea diver, or even some bare-bellied Venus. You’re wasting your time staring at me. I have the very same kind of mug as every other scoundrel here and I drink tea with my mouth and not with my nose or any other aperture.”
“Well done!” someone shouted in the crowd.
Someone clucked maliciously, someone started to laugh. Sharik went on, with increasing loudness and anger:
“Sergei Turgenev and I sat down to sip tea, so you scram, hop to it! Rather than goggling at us you’d better read our books more carefully, otherwise you’ll be gathering moss before you know it. Other men of fiction are merely my precursors … The precursors for me and Sergei Turgenev. So then, you go ahead and read us, learn some sense for yourselves, we won’t teach you anything bad.”
He turned away from the crowd, sat down, poured some tea into his saucer, set the saucer on his scalded fingers and slurped with deliberate loudness. The motley crowd gave the orator a round of applause and dispersed with laughter.
“He got rid of us smartly!”
“Now that’s some writer!”
“He doesn’t have to hunt for words.”
“Smart fellow!”
“We fools really deserved that!”
“After all, what’s the point of stating. Some wonder!”
The official with the besom was shaking it, clowning about energetically and repeating:
“This is a real bathhouse. They really steam our brother here.”
Turgenev had made no attempt to stop Sharik. He smiled sweetly and dreamt that this tactless escapade would find its way into the newspapers and discredit Sharik. When the spectators had left, Turgenev gave Sharik a sympathetic handshake and said:
“This speech will endure as a famous fact in our biography. Write it down before you forget it, otherwise people will distort it!”
“Yes, thank you, I’ll slap it down,” Sharik said. “I myself feel that I did a great job of it.”
“You know,” Turgenev said, “when a person hears speeches like that, the soul sprouts wings, white and sharp ones, like those of demons.”
“That’s a clever one you’ve come up with,” Sharik encouraged him. “You and I are in good form today!”
Turgenev’s eyes grew dreamy and be said:
“Today, while you were writing, I strolled through the woods outside of town. I conversed with the flowers, the birds and the wind. I was happy.”
“If you take some vodka or rum with you,” Sharik said, “then it’s really something.”
“No, I wasn’t drunk,” Turgenev protested. “My soul is akin to the clouds, tho
se mutable and beautiful clouds. Do you see the tears in my eyes? Those tears are from a surfeit of sensitivity.”
THE PETTY DEMON AND THE CRITICS
MURL BARKER
The Petty Demon, written during the years 1892 to 1902 was serialized in the journal Voprosy zhizni (Question of Life) in 1905. It was not until 907 that it was finally published in book form, and then it received widespread recognition and Sologub’s literary fame was assured. But not all of the early reviews and criticism of the novel were favorable; on the contrary, Sologub’s contemporaries were often sharply divided in their views. While it is a rather flippant exaggeration to write off this initial reaction to the novel as a “collection of cliches,”1 for today’s reader, most of this early criticism seems dated, repetitious and lacking in perspective. Part of the problem was the pronounced tendency toward rhetoric; there was a great deal of plot recapitulation; generalizations abounded. I do not feel that extensive translations of this material are necessary to accompany an English edition of the novel intended for the non-specialist. But a brief overview of the various interpretations by those early critics will serve as an introduction to the recent criticism included in this appendix.
Many of Sologub’s contemporaries reacted extremely negatively to the work (and its author) in their reviews. Anastasia Chebotarevskaya, Sologub’s wife, was irked by the attacks and was provoked into an angry diatribe aimed at these critics. In an article which is really a defense of her husband’s work, she questions these reviewers’ intelligence, their talent and experience in dealing with literature: in Russia, she claims, virtually anyone can pass himself off as a critic—beginning with the uneducated schoolboy.2 What prompted her article were the epithets directed at Sologub which she had gathered from the various critical articles written about him by his contemporaries. Sologub was characterized as “possessed,” “a maniac,” “sadist,” “a morbid, mutilated talent with a psychopathic inclination,” “abnormal,” “decandent.”3
Chebotarevskaya’s observations are not confined to The Petty Demon; rather; she comments in general about the author’s philosophy as dramatized by all of his works. She points out that one distinct thread in his works is his rejection of the world in its present, untransformed condition. Denial of the real world was not difficult for Sologub since death is viewed in such a positive light: it comforts, does not deceive and no one fears death—not even the children, who alone are called alive in this repugnant world. But Dream, too, may be a liberating force and with it, the creative process in particular. This idea is expanded in Sologub’s various solipsistic proclamations concerning the power of the individual’s “I” to create and affirm worlds within itself. And, Chebotarevskaya concludes, there is a striving in Sologub for the intimate to become universal.4
The Petty Demon Page 42