The Petty Demon (3 page)

With his marriage to Chebotarevskaya, Sologub’s formerly restrained and almost austere life-style altered, at least externally.
At her insistence a larger apartment was rented, visitors now included not merely poets, but politicians, artists and entrepreneurs.
Noisy parties and masquerades, at which Sologub, sad and perplexed, wandered about like a lost sheep, appeared to be his wife’s
inspiration, Chebotarevskaya suffered from some psychological malady early on in their marriage and her condition deteriorated
over the years. Thus, Sologub had to care for her, just as he earlier had cared for his invalid mother and his sick sister.

In 1907, after the enormous success of his novel
The Petty Demon
, Sologub began the serialization of his greatest and most bizarre work,
The Created Legend
(1907–1913).
¹⁰
During its serialization
The Created Legend
provoked the critics’ ire as few other novels ever did in the history
of Russian literature. Initial perplexity gave way to general dismay and eventually ended in universal outrage. Many readers
attacked Sologub for turning his back on the earlier brilliant portrayal of Peredonovism to indulge himself in his own willful
fantasies: “[Russian social thought] … has lost a great master who, after Gogol, represents the most remarkable portrayer
of that entire astounding slime of triviality of which Russian life is composed.”
¹¹
Gorky was in a perfect frenzy over Sologub’s novel. Struggling for social conscience in literature, Gorky felt that writers
like Sologub were anathema to the moral dignity and political future of society in Russia. He promptly cut off his affiliations
with the journal that began the serialization of the novel, calling it “indecent”. His letters were filled with expressions
of disgust over the content of Sologub’s work and he was particularly horrified at what he was later to call, in his address
at the 1934 Congress of Writers, the presence of “eros in politics”. This deviation was best exemplified in Sologub. Several
letters to Lunacharsky in December of 1907 highlight his reactions and explain some of the origins for the animosity between
Sologub and Gorky:

You know, that rotten, bald-headed bastard by the name of Sologub is having his novel
The Created Legend
printed in the almanac
Shipovnik
. In the novel you find his hero, an indubitable sadist, and a certain woman who is a social democrat and a propagandist.
She comes to him, strips naked, and after suggesting first that he photograph her, she then gives herself to the beast, gives
herself like a chunk of cold meat. Anatoly Vasilievich, he ought to have his face smashed in for that! Get the book and read
it. By God, you must!
¹²

… You can say the filthiest things possible about Sologub and it would still not be enough for his vile, slimy, froglike soul!
¹³

If there were socially committed critics like Gorky who felt that fantasy and eroticism were incompatible with politics, others
found the novel more or less symptomatic of their times: “This derangement of the imagination, this capricious mixture of
the real with pure fantasy, the involuntary manifestations here and there of an erotic sensibility which is not entirely healthy,
finally this disjointed and nervous, translucent style which reminds one of a careless first draft or comments for a notebook—all
this represents the incontestable symptoms of a sick age.”
¹⁴

Indeed, how was the reader supposed to react to Sologub’s hero, Grigory Sergeyevich Trirodov? He could not only communicate
with spirits from the beyond, raise dead children from freshly dug graves back to a zombie-like existence, reduce his enemies
to glass prisms, and concoct powerful potions in his secret laboratory, but he was also involved in politics, actively aiding
various democratic and revolutionary organizations, as well as operating a very avantgarde school where both children and
instructresses ran about in the altogether. Moreover, what did the reign of Queen Ortruda in the distant kingdom of the United
Isles have to do with the plan of this modern-day poet-alchemist? And what could be more absurd than
he, a Russian commoner, applying officially for the position of King of the tiny island kingdom in the Mediterranean after
the demise of Ortruda? Finally, Sologub must have left readers shaking their heads in disbelief when Trirodov, in order to
escape the brutal attack of the militant Black Hundred organization on his estate, takes refuge in his garden green house-which
is actually a cleverly concealed spaceship-and blasts off into space. The fact that an old adversary, Peredonov, from
The Petty Demon
, is resurrected in
The Created Legend
as the vice-governor, certainly added to the general muddle. As one reader aptly mused: “It is difficult to find a parallel
to this novel in the past of our literature … The reader, bewildered and wracking his brains, is given the task of trying
to decide whether this is not some kind of joke.”
¹⁵

With his typical perverseness, Sologub himself was not forthcoming with any explanations. As reticent about the import of
his fiction and poetry as he was about his own person, he seemed to feel that each reader was free to interpret it however
he wished. As far as he was concerned, the introductory paragraph to
The Created Legend
explained all that required explaining:

I take a piece of life, coarse and barren, and from it I create an exquisite legend, for I am a poet. Whether life, dull and
common, stagnates in the gloom, or bursts forth in a raging fire, I, the poet, will erect above you, life, my legend which
is being created, my legend of the enchanting and the beautiful.

Sologub, then, was exerting his will, his creative fantasy over the coarse material of this world and transfiguring it into
something beautiful and divine.

Sologub’s final major prose works,
Sweeter Than Poison
(1912) and
The Snake Charmer
(1921), display little of the willful and exquisite fantasy of either
The Petty Demon
or
The Created Legend
. Both of the later novels deal with the tragic fates of two women, the first a petite bourgeoise and the second a factory
worker. Perhaps as a result of the criticism of his trilogy, Sologub appeared to return to more solid ground in these works.
In
Sweeter Than Poison
we find ourselves once more in a provincial setting where greed, vulgarity and philistinism are rampant among the gentry
and townsfolk. However, Sologub’s last novel,
The Snake Charmer
, is more remarkable in that the heroine of the novel and the “charmer of snakes” is an attractive young girl from the working
classes, Vera Karpunina. She is convinced that she has a holy mission to destroy a “nest of snakes” at her factory—namely,
the factory owners and their toadies. The factory owner becomes hopelessly enchanted with Vera. In return for her favors,
she extracts a promise from him that he will deed the factory to her so that she can then pass it on to the workers. No sooner
does Vera receive the deed than she is murdered by her jealous fiancé who knew nothing of her self-sacrificing designs. Perhaps
this novel represented Sologub’s half-hearted and clumsy attempt to accommodate himself to the Revolution. At the same time,
one must not forget that “democratic themes” were always very much in evidence throughout all of Sologub’s novels.

Throughout his entire literary career, Sologub was prepared to write parodies and satires directed at the Tsarist regime.
But with the outbreak of World War I, he joined the ranks of other writers who put aside their animosities and wrote very
nationalistic and patriotic pieces. He might have been encouraged by the hope that eventually the War would change things
and lead to a more democratic society. In fact, Sologub greeted the February Revolution with very positive feelings and threw
his support behind the Constitutional Democrats and Social Revolutionaries. His stated ideal was that of a “European Humanitarian
Civilization”. However, he was not in sympathy with the October Revolution. Nevertheless he did involve himself in literary
affairs after this Revolution and he became a leading member of a literary faction that called for independence and freedom
in artistic expression. But that faction was short-lived. Together with his wife he joined a professional union of translators.
In March of 1918 he helped to found and then became the first president of a writers’ organization that Was supposed to help
writers live and work during those difficult years of War Communism. Because of disagreements within the organization itself,
Sologub and his wife resigned and practically disappeared from the literary scene. Suffering material and artistic privations
they applied to leave the Soviet Union in 1920. There is disagreement on whether permission was actually granted to Sologub
and his wife to emigrate. In his correspondence Gorky claimed that it was not granted. In September of 1921, after several
previous unsuccessful attempts, Sologub’s wife committed suicide by flinging herself off a Petrograd bridge. Sologub was utterly
crushed and he plunged into even deeper isolation. Nevertheless, he managed somehow to integrate himself partially into the
new world of the Soviet Union. He served in various administrative capacities on literary bodies until his death in 1927.
He was even the recipient of a number of more or less ritual honors. After the Revolution, for reasons that are apparent,
Sologub confined himself mainly to translation and administrative duties. While his “Impossible Dream” might have fallen on
deaf or coarsened ears before the Revolution, it would now have been drowned by the cacophony of revolutionary thematics and
aesthetics. Those who desire a simplistic metaphor, but perhaps an apt one, might be tempted to say that Aldonsa, that vulgar
wench of reality, now reigned over the ephemeral and exquisite Dulcinea. And, Sologub, who had emerged out of obscurity bespectacled,
balding, slightly ridiculous and improbable, departed from whence he came.

Although Soviet critics willingly concede Sologub a place in the hierarchy of Russian literature for
The Petty Demon
, they have not hastened to publish his work. Too talented to ignore, too problematic to accept unequivocably, Sologub’s works
have made but fleeting appearances on the Soviet literary scene since the Revolution. With the exception of Sologub’s inclusion
in various anthologies, the only works to be reprinted since his death in 1927 are
The Petty Demon
(1933; 1958) and two anthologies of his verse (1939; 1975, reprinted 1978). Yet his literary legacy consists of seven novels,
almost eight stories, several novellas, half-a-dozen plays and more than a dozen books of poetry.

From the accounts of Sologub’s wife, we know that
The Petty Demon
was begun in the early 1890’s and was completed in 1902. Only after an effort of several years was Sologub then able to get
it published (in incomplete form) in the journal
Questions of Life
(1905, Nos. 6–11). In 1907 the first complete and separate version appeared and this was rapidly followed by
five
reprintings. The novel was prepared for the stage and travelled about Russia, playing to enthusiastic audiences. Almost overnight
Sologub became the toast of Russian letters and joined the popular troyka of Gorky, Kuprin and Andreyev. To this very day
The Petty Demon
is considered to be one of the great classics of Russian literature. The novel appealed to pre-revolutionary and Soviet critics
alike and for very similar reasons: it was a masterful sociological exposé of provincial manners in Tsarist Russia, unmasking
the hypocrisy, the bigotry and the philistinism that was symptomatic of Russian provincial society and officialdom. Most critics
immediately seized upon what they perceived as the obvious affinities between
The Petty Demon
and Gogol’s nineteenth-century masterpiece,
Dead Souls
. In his foreword(s) to the novel, Sologub himself seemed to insist that his depictions of provincial society were drawn with
fidelity, that they had been based on first-hand experience. Most critics were prepared, for the moment at least, to overlook
the other suspect themes in Sologub that touched on eroticism and sado-masochism. Furthermore, most readers were unaware of
any deeper meanings in the novel because their appetites were satisfied by what they believed to be “naturalistic detail”.
Sologub did try to indicate in at least one interview that the novel could be read as a generalization and that Peredonov’s
madness was a reflection of something else: “Peredonov’s madness is not a chance occurrence, but rather a general malady and
it represents the daily life of present-day Russia.”
¹⁶
But, unlike the ponderously significant novels of Merezhkovsky with their complex religious and pagan themes, with grandiose
archetypes drawn from across the centuries, Sologub’s novel was read at face-value by most. The deeply buried mythological
and symbolic strata of the novel eluded the general readership. Symbolic personification and archetypes were just as important
to the literary creativity of Sologub as they were to Merezhkovsky, Bely and Blok. His aesthetic mythologization was perhaps
more obscure and idiosyncratic, but, as several of the critical essays contained in the appendix at the end of this volume
indicate, Sologub had a conscious sense of the symbolic patternings which he was weaving into the sociological fabric of the
text.

The bizarre, gray little creature of indeterminate shape and form, the
nedotykomka
, that seems to be a figment of Peredonov’s incipient madness, has long intrigued readers and critics—and bedevilled translators.
Theories on the identity and the significance of this enigmatic creation abound with the same vigor as the little beastie
displays in scurrying across the pages of the novel and through the deranged mind of Peredonov. Readers will find several
explanations of the
nedotykomka
in the critical appendix of this edition. Some of the debate focuses on whether the
nedotykomka
is an autonomous being or the sum total of Peredonov’s neuroses and vulgarity
rolled up into a single musty gray bundle which dissolves into dust or dissipates into thin air at every attempt of Peredonov’s
to touch, trap or destroy it. It has already been pointed out that, like other Symbolist writers of his generation, Sologub
was also attracted to the idea of the symbolic incarnation, embodiment or personification of the artistic idea. The creation
of his
nedotykomka
would seem to offer ample proof of this. English readers in particular, however, have been troubled by the exact meaning
of the word in Russian. The actual form
nedotykomka
cannot be found in the usual reference texts and dictionaries and the closest variant one is apt to discover is
nedotyka
which signifies a touchy, prickly, sullen or even clumsy person. One source does provide the actual word used by Sologub.
¹⁷
Nedotykomka
appears to be a regional variation on
nedotyka
and carries the same basic meaning. Two things may be of interest here. First of all, the variation used by Sologub is, in
fact, accredited to the Novgorod region where he held his first teaching posts. Secondly, Sologub’s variant is also a synonym
for
nedotroga
which is a flower bearing the Latin name of
Impatiens non me tangere—or
, in simple English: “touch-me-not.” Readers of the text will immediately discern the two-fold applicability of Sologub’s
choice of
nedotykomka
. Peredonov is constantly described as being sullen, touchy and even awkward. At the same time, the elusive
nedotykomka
is a genuine “touch-me-not” who defies all Peredonov’s attempts to lay his hands on it. Linguistically, at least, this may
shed some light on the identity of the
bête grise
in Peredonov’s diseased world.