The Petty Demon (47 page)

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).

C
HARLOTTE
R
OSENTHAL AND
H
ELENE
F
OLEY

T
HE 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 perfumes
⁵
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 Chebotarevskaya, 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).