The Petty Demon

by Sologub, Fyodor

  The significant interrelation of levels in The Petty Demon can be appreciated when one realizes that Sasha’s movement from a condition of passive innocence to a state of heightened sexual awareness occurs against the background of Peredonov’s and Lyudmila’s peculiar worlds. The specifically personal struggle within a child between conflicting temptations toward adult sin and boyhood purity is indivisibly linked to a more general opposition between life’s vulgarity and cruelty and some transcendent ideal which must be found to counteract it. Peredonov symbolizes the former, Lyudmila and her “legend in creation” the latter. The Sasha episode of The Petty Demon best exemplifies Dikman’s observance of co-existing psychological and metaphysical planes in Sologub. “Philosophical reflections about the world and about man,” she writes, “are inseparable from the spiritual world of Sologub’s lyrical hero … and they become a personal, intimate theme.”15 Indeed, in terms of the writer’s use of the child, The Petty Demon most fully realizes an objective which Sologub would later state in his preface to the collection of verse, The Fiery Circle (1908): “I want the intimate to become the universal.” The psycholgical polarities in the individual child reflect and repeat the metaphysical dualities of the world. Sasha’s internal drama, his conflict, to use the poet Blake’s terms, between innocence and experience, is externalized in the collision between Lyudmila’s spiritual realm of dream, poetry and the lyrical mood and Peredonov’s material world of byt and banality.16 On a deeper level, Sologub conceives the child’s emotional disjuncture as no less than the contrast between the ideal and the real, the ability of beauty to maintain its integrity, or to exist at all, in the face of earthly powers.

  The distinction between “moment” and “movement” defines the fundamental difference in Sologub’s portrayal of the major child-figure in The Petty Demon. In his short stories, Sologub chooses to click the shutter, as it were, on the precise instant of the young self’s recognition of psychological transition, preferring to concentrate on the atmosphere of fright which it induces. The ultimate strength of many a child-centered story in Sologub lies less in its success as a psychological character-study than in its effect as a mood piece. In The Petty Demon, however, Sologub departs from this somewhat detached and abstract approach, exemplifying rather than symbolizing the process of “spring’s awakening.”17 The writer concentrates on the development of a character as he experiences the awareness of his own sexual maturity and as he undergoes the conflicting emotions resulting from this self-discovery. In switching his narrative focus onto Sasha Pylnikov, Sologub not only presents a more personalized portrait of childhood by delving into the inner workings of the blossoming adolescent’s mind; he also acknowledges the complexity of the child’s emotional world as well as the integrity of his personality. Among the major. Russian writers, only Dostoevsky before him had so extensively depicted the special psychological tensions of youth.18 As V. Ilin has noted,

  Sologub was impressed most of all by [Dostoevsky’s] astonishing and uncanny details devoted to children’s nightmares, tragedies and defects. In this sense, Sologub must be considered as the successor of Dostoevsky, who was the first both to reveal this new existential child’s world and to make it the subject of great literature.19

  The existential world of the child, which Ilin conjures up, is epitomized in The Petty Demon. Sasha represents Sologub’s attempt to have the child function on more than an abstract, symbolic level by assuming more complex human characteristics as he experiences the concrete pain of inevitable personal growth.

  In the characterization of Sasha, Sologub is concerned with a young boy’s gradual maturation, marked by the latter’s growing consciousness of his own sensuality and physical attractiveness. Sologub traverses a broad range of sexual development in this “raw youth” from the time that Sasha “still had never been curious to find out whether he appeared attractive or ugly to people” (p. 247) until his wildly flirtatious behaviour as a geisha who, quite dexterous in sensual matters, “curtsied, lifted her small fingers, giggled in a choked voice, waved her fan, tapped now one man and now another on the shoulder with it” (p. 388). Beginning with his bashful kissing of Lyudmila’s elbow and proceeding to his considerably bolder contact with other parts of her body, Sasha becomes more deeply involved with a young woman who rouses within him the first feelings of passion and desire. The immediate uniqueness of this episode lies in its focusing upon the shameless dynamics of young love. This is a subject which Sologub had never treated before, and one which, as we will observe, he handles with unquestionable originality. Sologub subtly relates Sasha’s discomforting manipulation by Lyudmila and his awkward engagement in sensuous games, his bitter-sweet reactions to his blossoming sexuality, and his troubled thoughts over “impossible dreams” and “contradictory feelings.” Such scenes demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of the young adult’s psyche, years before Freudian theory had penetrated widely into literature. The steady transformation of what initially are unclear stirrings and confused impulses in Sasha into more precisely and better perceived sensual desires creates a convincing glimpse into the world of experience.

  Sasha’s responses are either conveyed via internal monologue (as is his early sense that Lyudmila “came and went … and left only … a vague excitement in my soul, which is creating a sweet dream,” p. 235) or reported by the omniscent narrator (as is his later query: “What is this mysteriousness of the flesh? How could he sweetly sacrifice his blood and his body to Lyudmila’s desires …?” p. 362). Yet in each case they reveal undeniable insights into his own psychological growth and emotional condition which had not been admitted, or not so clearly expressed, in the case of Sologub’s other children. To be sure, Sasha’s experience with Lyudmila reveals more than Sologub’s awareness of the child’s capacity for deep, complicated emotion; L.N. Tolstoi, for one, had already treated this phenomenon in his Childhood (1852). Rather, the incident demonstrates an acknowledgement of this character’s own awareness of his ability to arouse passionate interest while he himself experiences erotic desire. In this sense, Sologub expands considerably the dimensions and possibilities of literary portraiture of the child. He handles the theme of the child as a sexual subject in a new way by viewing the problem largely through the child’s eye. No longer is the latter’s characterization limited to a conflict free sexuality as observed from a removed or dispassionate third-person perspective.

  Such a perspective is conspicuously present, for example, in Tolstoi’s description of Nikolenka Irtenev’s inner development in Adolescence (1854). “But none of these changes which had taken place in my outlook on things struck me more than the one in which I had ceased to see a housemaid of ours merely as a servant of the feminine gender, and began instead to view her as a woman,”20 the narrator reflects. The grown-up Nikolenka’s recollection of the time when he first noticed Masha’s enticing voluptuousness and strove to imitate his brother’s sexual advances to her is characterized by sobriety and distance. Yet precisely such qualities preclude the kind of convincing evocation of those complicated feelings and tense emotions, so prevalent in Sologub’s depiction of a similar psychological passage. Dostoevsky’s literary account of such a moment, “A Little Hero” (1857), also eliminates, or at least diminishes, the sense of tortured anxiousness and fearful confusion which accompany the youngster’s awareness of his amorous feelings toward an older woman and his realization that his childhood had ended. For all three writers the incident is virtually identical; however, Sologub’s narrative technique and his emphasis on the sexual aspects of the maturation process signal his originality.

  William Rowe notes that images such as the sun, drops of water and sweet fragrances highlight both Dostoevsky’s and Sologub’s accounts of the child’s emotional growth.21 But Sologub’s imagery creates a provocatively sensual and suggestively erotic atmosphere which more effectively captures the child’s innermost thoughts and desires at this stage. The frequent references to heat which accompany the Sasha-Lyudmi
la relationship reinforce the boy’s awakening passion as he increasingly burns with excitement in the presence of his young temptress. Lyudmila’s “torrid African dreams” about Sasha, her bright, sunny room with its colourful wallpaper, all create an exotic, tropical and seductive background, more conducive to Sasha’s ripening sexuality. Her ever-present flowers and sweet perfumes also provide a climate of heightened sensuality which can only accelerate Sasha’s physical desires. Her spraying him with fragrant scents, like the moistness of her chamber, contributes to the sticky, vapourish atmosphere, so suited to their erotic carnal games. This spraying also recalls an act of baptism—in this case into Lyudmila’s avowed religion of the flesh.

  But the imagery works on yet another level. The negative connotation of heat and fire in the novel—Peredonov’s incendiary act at the masquerade ball and the book’s epigraph, “I wished to burn her, the wicked witch,” are but a few examples—suggests the decidedly destructive aspect of Sasha’s ardent love. Lyudmila loves to sprinkle Sasha with drops of perfume, yet she also perversely delights in the drops of Christ’s blood as He hangs from the Cross. And the same seductive charms which lure the boy into Lyudmila’s world of pleasure, also hypnotize him, much as Peredonov is mesmerized by Vershina as she entices him into her luxuriant garden. Sasha is very much the victim in his erotic escapades, rendered submissive and helpless by the very things which have stimulated and attracted him. Thus the imagery which Sologub employs to describe the inception of first love implies the bitter-sweet, contradictory nature of Sasha’s private adventure while also integrating it into the broader thematics of the novel. The unmistakably decadent view of sex as a sweet and pleasurable experience which is nonetheless connected to decay, perversion and ultimately death, penetrates the very core of Sologub’s nightmare of a once-beautiful world condemned to corruption and poshlost’.

  On the narrative level, Sologub achieves a unique effect in portraying Sasha Pylnikov, an effect which his predecessors fail to realize with their overly articulate and emotionally steady characters. Sasha’s conflict is related not necessarily through clearly articulated utterances, but rather through the recounting of his vague and ambivalent feelings, his timid, hesitant movements and his often faltering speech—all of which more persuasively conveys the confusion and sense of incomprehension which the child experiences at this crucial stage in his life. By eliminating the emotional control and rather even tone which predominate in Tolstoi’s and Dostoevsky’s renditions, Sologub presents more dramatically the sense of growing catastrophe as the distressing process of adolescent maturation continues.

  The wide variety of feelings which Sasha endures—pain, joy, shame, exhilaration—are all the more significant because they contrast so poignantly with the deadened senses of those characters who people the protagonist’s lifeless realm. Sasha’s personal experience seems particularly refreshing in a loveless, feelingless world of mechanized puppets: the merchant Tishkov thoughtlessly spurts his mechanical rhymes; Vershina’s ward Marta dreams about her virtues dressed as dolls; and Peredonov himself moves slowly and apathetically like a “wound-up doll” (p. 289). Tortuous as it is, the child’s ordeal asserts the existence of natural human feelings, genuine emotional tenderness and the presence of concerns and drives which are neither perverted nor destructive. Sasha’s realization of the full implications of his and Lyudmila’s amorous adventures, coming on the heels of his questions, “And what does she want?,” provokes a reaction of excited animation and free, spontaneous movement, unlike anything else in the book.

  And suddenly he blushed purple and his heart pounded ever so painfully. A wild ecstasy overcame him. He did several somersaults, threw himself on the floor and jumped on the furniture. Thousands of absurd movements hurled him from one corner to another., and his joyful, clear laughter resounded throughout the house. (p. 358)

  Yet despite such happy moments, the broader dimensions which Sasha’s personality attains neither continually evoke simple joy nor do they totally possess positive qualities. With the onset of desire and sexual appetite arises the problem of how this newly acquired strength will be applied—constructively or destructively. Lyudmila characteristically ignores the question when she insists that her and Sasha’s stimulations “were far from coarse, loathsome attainments” (p. 246). Yet in a thoroughly Dostoevskian manner, Sologub acknowledges that beneath desire can lie a drive toward dominance and that hatred as well as love can express affection. That these contradictory tendencies extend to children, too, is seen by Sasha’s perplexed state of mind after he has been kissed by Lyudmila.

  [Her] tender kisses aroused languid, dreamlike thoughts. He wanted to do something to her, pleasant or painful, tender or shameful—but what? To kiss her legs? Or beat her, long and hard, with supple, long twigs? So that she laugh from joy or cry from pain? Perhaps she desired both…. How could he sweetly sacrifice his blood and his body to her desires and to his shame? (p. 362)

  Sasha’s momentary vacillation between the urge to fondle or torture recalls another literary child who exhibits a corresponding capacity for opposing impulses toward love and hate: Liza Khokhlokova in The Brothers Karamazov. Admitting her approval of parricide and her delight in child-suffering, the lame fifteen year-old is more articulate and extreme about her own propensity toward evil. But Sasha at least shares a similar potential for such feeling. Whether it is an expression of Weltschmerz or sadism, the tendency of each toward cruelty is undeniable. In Liza’s case this cruelty comes to light in the chapter significantly entitled “A Little Demon” (“Besonok”), when she personally substantiates Alesha’s observation that “there are moments when people love crime.” With Sasha the revelation occurs when, for example, we learn that “contradictory feelings mingled in his soul—dark and nebulous: perverse because they were premature and sweet because they were perverse” (p. 349). The little demon which is seen harbouring in Liza’s soul is not without its counterpart in Sasha. The predominance of conscious irony as well as the continual use of double entendres in Sologub’s novel make Kokovkina’s reaction to her boarder’s exhilaration particularly meaningful. “Are you possessed or something?” (“chto eto ty besnueshsia!” p. 358), she exclaims. In the root of the verb is found the same “bes” which characterizes Peredonov and which constitutes the book’s very title. The implication here is that Sasha contains within him at least the seeds of evil, and as such he mirrors—as does Liza—the adults, who are more central to the novel’s action and plot.

  By suggesting Sasha’s corrupt tendencies, Sologub’s analysis of the child’s psyche becomes disturbingly double-edged. The novel is built on a series of paradoxes which gradually unfold to jolt and perplex the reader. A fundamental one is connected with Sasha Pylnikov. The very honesty which allows Sologub to reveal the uniqueness of this personality by investigating its complex emotions during “spring’s awakening” also serves to debunk its special status. The Romantic fallacy of the child’s unquestionable innocence is now destroyed. With his inclination toward desire and enjoyment of drives heretofore dissociated from his character, a likeness to an ordinary adult is intimated. Duality pervades everything. Upon further investigation, even the seemingly inviolable purity of childhood must be questioned. Yet it is precisely this discovery of duplicity in Sasha’s emotional world which signals his full importance in the novel. The psychological crisis of conflicting good and evil which Sologub depicts in the individual child mirrors the metaphysical calamity which underlies his larger vision of the world. Sologub’s newly found doubts about Sasha on the behavioural level find their counterpart in his suspicions about life in general on the philosophical plane, and both work hand-in-hand in contributing to the book’s pervasive sense of nervousness and insecurity. It is here that The Petty Demon supports Dikman’s claim of the inseparability of psychological states from metaphysical issues in Sologub’s art. The intimacy which Sologub achieves in his personalized portrait of Sasha adds credence to the more general dimensions of his ideo
logical argument.

  Sasha’s assumption of negative worldly qualities—aggressiveness, deceptiveness, vanity—inevitably results from his continuing integration into adult life. However, beyond its significance as an important factor in the child’s personal history, this metamorphosis contains crucial and far-reaching metaphysical implications. The novel’s pervasive sense of tragic gloom is eventually extended to the world of children in a passage whose tone of inevitable doom resonates with growing intensity throughout the remainder of the work.