The Petty Demon

by Sologub, Fyodor

  16. Maksimov reports similar punning on the part of rusalki. See Nechistaia sila, p. 118.

  17. See, for example, Sologub, “Belaia sobaka,” Sob. soch., Vol. VII, pp. 11–18.

  18. Maksimov, Nechistaia sila, p. 260.

  19. Pushkin, Polnoe sobranie …, Vol. VI, pp. 319–56.

  20. Ibid., p. 341.

  21. Ibid., p. 355.

  22. Mikhail Bakhtin maintains that the mouth is most significant in creating a grotesque image of the body, Rabelais and His World (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1968), p. 316.

  23. Sologub, “Nedotykomka seraia,” Sob. soch., Vol. V, p. 14.

  24. See Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), pp. 169–209, for an extended discussion of reliability.

  25. See Sologub, “Nedotykomka seraia,” Sob. soch., Vol. V, p. 14.

  26. For a discussion of narrated perception see Ronald J. Lethoce, “Narrated Speech and Consciousness,” Doctoral Dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1969.

  27. Maksimov, Nechistaia sila, p. 8.

  28. F.D. Reeve, The Russian Novel (New York, 1966), p. 315.

  29. Anon., Orthodox Spirituality (London: S.P.C.K., 1968), pp. 96–97.

  30. Sologub, “Edinyi put’ L’va Tolstogo,” Sob. sock., Vol. X, p. 196.

  31. Maksimov, Nechistaia sila, p. 8.

  32. Sologub’s depiction of paranoia is in accord with the following: Sigmund Freud, “On the Mechanism of Paranoia,” General Psychological Theory (New York, 1963), pp. 29–49; Carl G. Jung, The Psychogenesis of Mental Disease in The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Vol. III (New York, 1960); and Jacob Kasanin, ed., Language and Thought in Schizophrenia (New York, 1944).

  33. Kogan, Ocherki …, p. 106.

  34. Andrew Field, “Translator’s Preface,” in F. Sologub, The Petty Demon (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1970).

  SYMBOLIC PATTERNING IN SOLOGUB’S

  THE PETTY DEMON1

  CHARLOTTE ROSENTHAL AND HELENE FOLEY

  THE PARALLELS AND contrasts between the main plot of The Petty Demon and the subplot involving Lyudmila and Sasha are repeated and striking, but difficult to evaluate. To give but a few examples: in one scene, Peredonov and Ershova dance, and Peredonov’s movements are described as mechanical and lifeless.2 In another scene, Lyudmila and her sisters dance, and their movements are described as ecstatic and lively.3 while Peredonov declares that he fears incense and hates all aspects of the Orthodox Church ritual, Lyudmila confesses to Sasha that she loves precisely the ritual accoutrements of the church (137 and 299; 357). How are we to understand the relation between the two plots, and how does the world of Lyudmila and Sasha illuminate or undercut the larger world of the novel? How are we to understand the curious mixture of pleasure and pain which dominates, in different ways, the behavior and emotions of all the characters? why do both plots end in a violent act of ritualized destruction, a sacrifice or a near sacrifice? In this paper we argue that the task of interpretation must begin with an understanding of the system of allusions in the novel to classical an particularly Greek antiquity.4 Sologub makes the world of Sasha and Lyudmila represent the beauties and dangers of the pagan. By contrast, Peredonov and his world are insensitive to or eager to pervert the natural world and the possibilities it offers. As the narrator emphasizes, Peredonov did not experience the vital, elemental, Dionysian ecstasies of the natural world because he was blinded by delusions of a separate, individual existence (310–11). A fuller understanding of the “Dionysian ecstasies” which Peredonov finds repellent and stile, and to which Lyudmila and Sasha are allied, is central to an interpretation of the novel.

  The world of Sasha and Lyudmila is defined through a network of allusions to nature and classical mythology. Natural images, especially the sun, flowers, and perfumes5 dominate their world. Lyudmila would like to melt away under the sun like a cloud (356). She calls Sasha by the affectionate terms “my little sunshine” (245) and “my little sun” (245). Sasha’s surname, Pylnikov, is derived from pyl’nik, “anther,” the pollen bearing part (male) of a plant, usually a double sac.6 Lyudmila’s room always smells of flowers, branches, or the perfume which she loves (228, 365). All the Rutilov sisters, but especially Lyudmila (206) are associated with flowers. Their house has “carefully arranged plants by the windows” (403). Valeriya’s kiss to Sasha is like an apple blossom (237). The scenes between Sasha and Lyudmila revolve around flowers and perfume, as Lyudmila responds to the boy like a desiring flower to the sun overhead (244–45).7 In a poem quoted by Ivanov-Razumnik,8 Sologub describes beauty as “fragrant”; the beauty of the world of Sasha and Lyudmila is imminent in its natural perfumes.

  In Chapter 26 Lyudmila wears Japanese perfume to visit Sasha. The sisters take as the model for Sasha’s geisha costume at the masquerade the label on a chorilopsis perfume bottle (379); the robe is patterned with large fantastic flowers by now emblematic of the relation between Sasha and Lyudmila. In an article entitled “The Enmity and Friendship of the Elements,”9 Sologub finds that the Japanese—like the pagan Greeks to be discussed shortly—celebrate nature, while the Russians are hostile to the elements. Japanese paintings are radiant with the sun’s light; their flag displays the rising sun, a red disk on a white field, while the royal standard of the imperial family showed a golden chrysanthemum on a red field. These color groups—red and rose, gold and yellow—pervade Sasha’s and Lyudmila’s world. Sasha’s geisha costume is made from yellow silk and red satin; his parasol and stockings are rose colored silk. Lyudmila’s perfume atomizer is dark red glass patterned with gold. Even her cyclamen perfume is described as red and gold: its scent is compared to the reddish-gold glow of the setting sun (243). Lyudmila’s room is yellow and gold (237). Her hat is rosy yellow (349), her arms are covered with a yellowish rose material (240), and she loves brightly-colored clothes. Her surname, derived from the Latin “rutilus,” meaning red, suggests the brillilant red gems cut from the mineral rutile. In short, while the world of Peredonov is filled with grey and black, the world of Sasha and Lyudmila is brilliant with the passionate colors of flowers, sun, blood, and wine.10

  Like many of his contemporaries, Sologub admired and idealized classical antiquity. In an article, “Canvas and the Body,” for example, Sologub berates modern man for not enjoying the harmony of the naked human body and the natural elements as did classical antiquity.11 Sologub shared the general “Dionysian” mood of the modernists. Nikolai Berdiaev records Sologub’s participation in an imitation Dionysian mystic rite.12 As Sologub was reticient about influences on his literary development, we do not know the precise sources of Sologub’s views on classical antiquity. He was certainly acquainted with the work of I.F. Annensky, the classical Greek scholar, educator, and poet who translated Euripides’ Bacchae in 1894, accompanied by an introduction and three extensive essays.13 The influence of this play on The Petty Demon, as we shall argue shortly, seems unmistakable. The classicizing poet Dmitry Merezhkovsky used imagery in his early poems which may have inspired Sologub. These poems, written before Sologub finished The Petty Demon, include: “Leda,” the “mother of beauty,” and “The Song of the Bacchae,” which praises the sacred howls and Dionysian laughter of its gay maenads, and their abandonment of middle-class morality.14 Sologub’s sources also may have included the French Symbolists, whom he knew well, Volynsky’s and Minsky’s articles on Nietzsche published between 1895 and 1900, the writing of Lev Shestov on Nietzsche (The Good in the Teaching of Count Tolstoy and E Nietzsche, 1900), and the writings of Nietzsche himself.15

  For Nietzsche, the classical Greeks lived the purely aesthetic life celebrating creativity, a life which Lyudmila tries to instill in Sasha. Lyudmila, the life-affirming pagan, contrasts with the church-going marionettes of “peredonovshchina.” Like Nietzsche, Lyudmila rejects philistinism, stifling conformity, and prudery as a betrayal of nature. Both celebrate the amoral search for a pleasure that encompasses both joy and pain. Sologub’s wife, Anastasia Chebotarevs
kaya, connected Sologub and his fictional heroiness explicitly with the Nietzsche of Thus Spoke Zarathustra.16

  Through the Lyudmila-Sasha relationship, Sologub offers an alternative to “peredonovshchina,” a world modeled on an idealized pagan Greece, in harmony with nature, through which the participants can immerse themselves in creativity, joyfulness, self-oblivion, and a pantheistic communion with the natural flux of the universe that Nietzsche calls Dionysian. Through Dionysus man achieved a creative unity with nature and a universal spiritual power. The Dionysian artistic energy bursts forth “from nature herself, without the mediation of the human artist,” and offers “an intoxicated reality which likewise does not heed the single unit, but even seeks to destroy the individual and redeem him by a mystic feeling of oneness.”17

  Specific allusions to pagan antiquity permeate the world of Sasha and Lyudmila. Her patronymic, Platonovna, Plato’s daughter, makes her a spiritual descendent of the pagan philosopher. Lyudmila becomes a goddess or priestess of a Dionysian and pagan cult, while Sasha emerges as the young god himself. Lyudmila’s tender kisses remind Sasha of the wave that gave birth to Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love (235). He cans Lyudmila a rusalka (247), as she does herself (356). In Russian folk belief this female figure was a nature spirit, associated with water or the fields, and sometimes a dangerous temptess who brought death to he victims. Lyudmila, too, like the Greek goddess Aphrodite and the rusalka, is a nature spirit, a temptress, and a destructive force.

  Lyudmila espouses a pagan, and often specifically Dionysian philosopy. She loves the Christian church only for its ritual, incense, singing, and weeping—pagan features that stress ritual, not doctrine, beauty, not repression. Her cyclamen perfume exudes the pagan power of ambrosia and sun (244). She advocates a philosophy of beauty, centered on the human body (356). To Sasha Lyudmila argues that she is a pagan, and should have been born in Athens. She urges on the boy the view that happiness and wisdom are achieved only through madness, self-oblivion, and intuition (361). This same celebration of madness, of the achievement of happiness through self-oblivion, dominates classical literature on Dionysus, and especially the choral odes of Euripides’ Bacchae.18

  Sasha, like Lyudmila is explicitly associated with the ancient world through his study of Latin and Greek. Lyudmila calls him a “classicist” and complains that Kokovkina keeps him home to study the Greeks; Sasha asks Lyudmila to cuddle him for good luck so that he can get an “A” in Greek (247). One of Lyudmila’s favorite costumes for Sasha is that of a barefoot Athenian boy (360). Peredonov puns that Sasha lives in a “pension without classical languages” (195). While he thus associates Sasha with prostitution and his own fearful, vulgar fantasies, he instinctively, if negatively, associates him with classical culture.

  Sasha is Dionysian first and foremost through his sexual ambivalence.19 His name is either male or female. Throughout the novel his sexual identity causes confusion and he readily passes for as the masquerade. Dionysus in human form was frequently represented as a beautiful young man of ambiguous sexuality, with an enigmatic smile, and dark eyes like the “mysteriously sad” dark eyes of Sasha (212).20 Zeus entrusted his motherless son Dionysus to be brought up by nymphs, while Sasha is temporarily raised by the nymph-like Rutilov sisters.21 Both god and boy, through the geisha costume, are associated with the East. Each changes shape and identity through costume. Each, when he enters a new environment, causes widespread and insidious social disruption through his ambivalence and beauty, and threatens to convert his followers to a new cult.22 Lyudmila visualizes Sasha as a god of beauty, an idol (356), and a boy equal to a god (356); the narrator makes the same point (357). Sasha’s immature sexuality stimulates female fantasy rather than lust for direct sexual consummation, as does Dionysus as the leader of women’s cults in the Bacchae. Dionysus liberates the female in the male, the male in the female, thus undermining traditional gender identity.23 He turns Pentheus into a woman, and his female followers into men. Peredonov, like Dionysus’ royal opponent in the Bacchae, is attracted to the Sasha/Dionysus figure, but resists and debases his attraction.

  Dionysus, often incarnate as a beast, makes us see the beast in man, not the socially restricted human being. In Lyudmila’s pun on the words “who is that barking” (kto zhe laet) and “who wishes” (kto zhelaet), Sasha becomes a dog; for Sologub the dog can demonstrate its receptivity to nature through its sense of smell.24 In Lyudmila’s first dream a snake wears Sasha’s head. Dionysus, himself often manifest in the imagination of his followers as a snake, makes his female followers wreathe their heads and bodies with snakes.25 The effect of one of Lyudmila’s perfumes is like the touch of “joyous, nimble, scaly snakes” (252). Sasha, disguised as a geisha, is described as “nimble” (395), and the nedotykomka, which after Sasha’s arrival causes madness in Peredonov, is also “nimble” (185, 186), and a “nimble little snake” (401).26 Sasha, through his divine and bestial associations, comes to represent pagan divinity and an ecstatic identification with nature, while Peredonov, like Dionysus’ enemy Pentheus in the Bacchae, is finally punished and haunted by the very nature he rejects and fears. Pentheus fails to recognize Dionysus’ divinity, unlike the other Thebans (and Lyudmila in the novel), in his sexually ambivalent human guise. Hence he is punished with a madness in which he sees the god in bestial form. The mad Peredonov comes to see Sasha as a cat, an evil member of the family of unclean spirits in Russian folk belief.27

  In his article on the theater, Sologub insists on the inseparability of good and evil, pleasure and pain.28 The Dionysian cult, like the relation between Lyudmila and Sasha, dissolves the boundaries between madness and sanity, pleasure and pain, tears and laughter. Lyudmila recommends to Sasha suffering and the sweetness of suffering which can be achieved through a full experience of the physical self (356). Passion combines sweetness and youth with pain and tears (361). Lyudmila asks Sasha, “Do you understand, my little sun, when something feels sweet and joyous and painful and you’d like to cry?” (245). Her response to the crucifixion is consistent with this attitude: “You know, sometimes in my dreams,—he’s on the cross, and there are droplets of blood on his body” (358). Sasha, in response, wants to sacrifice his body and blood to her desire and his own shame (362).

  The Dionysiac is beautiful and dangerous, festive and violent. This ambiguous yet liberating dissolution of cultural oppositions marks Lyudmila’s and Sasha’s relation from its inception. Her puns to Sasha often mix beauty and cruelty: “Do you want me to scent/suffocate you?” (230) Her pun on rozochki (diminuitive of “rose” and of “switch,” 245) makes a Dionysiac reconciliation between beauty and violence. In the Bacchae Dionysus is “beyond good and evil”; for us, as Tiresias says, “he is what we make of him.”29 The boy-god Sasha has an equally disturbing effect. His blushing cheeks, which he shares with Dionysus, hint at innocence and guilt, or something beyond either. Stories of student orgies and drunkenness are mysteriously associated with his presence, and lead to Peredonov’s random and unjust punishments and whippings. Lyudmila’s laughter with Sasha is liberating; for Peredonov the laughter of the Rutilov sisters feeds his paranoia and fear of mockery. In the Bacchae the smiling god brings joy to his followers and humiliating mockery to Pentheus, who, like Peredonov, fears such laughter above all things.

  Lyudmila’s sequence of “torrid African dreams” about Sasha become increasingly destructive, and foreshadow the violence of the masquerade scene. In the first dream, her desire for Sasha is expressed in imagery simultaneously borrowed from Dionysiac cult and biblical Eden—the tree of knowledge (Dionysus was also a tree god) and the snake.30 In the second, Lyudmila lies at the shore of a lake, regal in a golden crown. Sasha as a swan suggests the Greek myth of Leda, impregnated by Zeus in the shape of a swan.31 In Russian folk belief the swan, a former woman, was the most sacred of birds,32 and a metaphor for a bride in folk songs. The mixture of traditions suits Sasha’s ambivalent sexuality. The setting of the second dream introduces a note of decay that
undercuts its passion: “It smelled of warm, stagnant water and slime and grass languishing from the sultry heat.” (212) In the third dream Lyudmila observes Sasha publicly beaten by naked youths. As he laughs and cries, Lyudmila experiences the ecstasy of self-oblivion and death. Like the “affair” between Lyudmila and Sasha, the dream sequence moves from the innocent, mythic realm to mortality and sexuality, from private to public.

  Lyudmila’s passion remains unfulfilled and her pleasure in violence is always tinged with beauty and sensuality. Peredonov’s similar impulses are gross, literal, and unecstatic. He revels in the ugly violence of tearing off wallpaper (57), whipping school boys, performing a mock funeral for his landlady (71), ripping Varvara’s dress (186), and subduing her beautiful body with its harlot’s head to his gross lust (102). The Rutilov sisters, when drunk, sing, dance, and become ecstatic and frenzied like Greek maenads (211); the drunken Peredonov dances like a puppet or mechanical doll (69).33 The Rutilov sisters drink cherry liqueur; Lyudmila asks Sasha on their first meeting if he likes grapes (207). Their drunkenness is by implication Dionysiac, while the vodka-drinking Peredonov never reaches the ecstasy of a union with nature. He fears the country, and feels safe only in closed and stuffy interior spaces.

  The climactic masquerade34 and Peredonov’s “sacrificial” killing of Volodin reveal the destruction that ensues from the denial of the Dionysiac. Euripedes’ Bacchae, the ultimate literary prototype for the festival turned destructive, offers remarkable parallels to Sologub’s text. In the Bacchae, Dionysus revenges himself on Pentheus for rejecting his cult. He dresses the king as a woman and sends him off to be torn apart by his mother, two aunts, and the women of Thebes, who have been maddened by the god. The festive ecstasy of the women explodes into mob violence. In Greek myth, Women (usually three women) often tore apart their children under the influence of Dionysus; in Orphic myths the young god himself is torn and dismembered by Titans.