The Petty Demon (51 page)

Thus Peredonov is yet another “injured and insulted” petty clerk of Russian literature, one of those who “stung” by vanity,
attempt to redress both social and metaphysical wrongs by aspiring to a higher post and who in these acts of “usurpation”
are led to their ruin. Their limited imagination sees in the table of ranks the “ladder of being” where they discover “symbols
of real value,” “a way of defining a person.”
²⁸
Peredonov, like his predecessors, believes that he will acquire a personality by becoming an “important personage.” The higher
ranks to him offer the right of unquestioned being.

Peredonov’s combined career pursuit and identity quest show fatal misconceptions, as might be expected. Thus he confuses the
concepts “self-knowledge” and “renown.” Seeking an identity, Peredonov does not choose the Socratic path of “knowing himself”
but hopes that renown will show him who he is. He dreams of inducing reactions of awe and terror by flinging out threats, which would make other people into mirrors of his self, reflecting his grandeur and thus proving his existence. Peredonov
twists the proverb “knowledge gives power” into “renown gives power over being.” The
znatnye
, he believes, have control over reality (335) and the
nedotykomka
does not plague them (343). Following the inertia inherent in all untransformed matter, Peredonov chooses “being known” instead
of “knowing.” Had he broken “automatism” and chosen the active alternative, he might have reached the goal of his quest: to
attain a sense of reality. Renown, the substitute of knowledge, escapes him.

To be known implies uniqueness. The identity of a “distinguished” person cannot be mistaken, and such a person’s “place” in
life is safe from usurpation. An anonymous “nobody” is constantly threatened by the danger of being “replaced” by someone
equally undistinguished and undistinguishable. Peredonov, the faceless nonentity, is haunted by fears of being “replaced,”
i.e., having his “place” or “post” taken from him.

As a “Darwinian” Peredonov knows that “not everyone can be an inspector” (210). In the “struggle for existence” (210) there
are only two alternatives: to usurp another’s place or to have one’s own usurped, to replace or be replaced. Peredonov chooses
the first alternative but does not enjoy his usurpation
activities. His aggression is a “flight forward,” and he sees his denunciations and murder as “defense measures” (340, 415).
As a “man in a shell” Peredonov dislikes “expansion” and favors “shrinking.” Had there been a nook dark enough to hide him
from “inspection,” he would have chosen to hide.

Peredonov’s persecution phobias are of course based on misconceptions, but they are not entirely unreasonable. Observing life
in his town, Peredonov sees that “replacement” is eminently easy amongst “puppets” and “animals,” which have no unique and
irreplaceable identity. Substitution constantly takes place.

Observing the marriage market and himself taking part in the “exchange of goods” (218), i.e., partners, Peredonov sees how
easily the “merchandise” changes hands. There is no such thing as a non-eligible partner or an irreplaceable one. Anyone may
be coupled with anyone else in that dance (macabre) where a change of partner merely leads to a new “tour.”

Peredonov takes an active part in the “replacement games” in town, amateurishly playing his role of usurper. For example, by
punishing children who are not his own, he usurps paternal rights. Here, perhaps, he again unwittingly imitates the Demiurge,
who punishes his “children” frequently under the same pretext which also Peredonov uses, i.e., that it is “for their own good.”

Peredonov also usurps marital rights, replacing Mr. Gudaevsky in Madame Gudaevskaya’s bed. But whereas the Demiurge, in his
usupration acts, goes free from punishment, being on the top of the hierarchy of oppression, Peredonov is pursued by nemesis
(260). Perhaps it tells him that just as easily as he replaces others, is he himself replaced. Replacement is possible anywhere—in
Varvara’s bed and at school, where the director “whets his teeth” (79), obviously planning Peredonov’s “pulverization.” But
“pulverization” also threatens from the “director of the universe,” from him who instituted the whole “replacement principle”
by denying men a unique and irreplaceable identity.

Pursued by nemesis, Peredonov develops into a Golyadkin senior, yet another petty clerk “bitten by the bug of desire to be
somebody.”
²⁹
He acquires his rival and double in Volodin who as amorphous as the
nedotykomka
and, therefore, like her capable of metamorphosis. Volodin is so devoid of inner content (his chest rings hollow when he
beats his fist against it) that he can absorb foreign content into himself, which, in fact, he does in regard to Peredonov,
whose speech and gestures he imitates (the scene of the proposal to the Adamenko girl). Even Peredonov has his “ape.”

Whilst waiting for the usurped identity, Peredonov guards his own. Worthless as it is, there are even more worthless ones
(Volodin’s). For the purpose of identification he paints the letter P all over his body, an idea which is not entirely absurd.

Peredonov lives in a world where all personal value may be read from similar signs as the letter P. Uniform buttons, cockades,
pins, epaulettes and collars determine who you are and what you are “worth.” The dead souls of Peredonov’s town prop up their
hollowness by insignia of rank and thus indicate who they are. Peredonov accept the conventional meaning of these signs which
to him are as incomprehensible as any others. All of reality is to him a system of signs which he cannot decipher. He merely
imitates established patterns and models, e.g., the example of the town official Veriga.

Before his wedding Peredonov rouges himself, because he believes that ruddy Veriga does; he plans to put on a corset—an item
which props up a disintegrating form—for the same reason. He chooses Veriga as the idol of his fetishistic cult because he
recognizes him to be what he himself would like to
be: a successful usurper. Veriga will presumably reach his goal, a governor’s post (132, 157), whereas Peredonov does not
reach his, the inspector’s post (178). This difference between Peredonov and Veriga applies generally. Peredonov is a singularly
unfortunate “devil” in a world where many a “man” realizes his dreams.

Amongst the genuine philistines, the Verigas and Volodins, these “darlings of the gods,” Peredonov is not an innocent child,
but a weeping devil thrown into a world where he is as lost as the purest child. Like any innocent child, Peredonov interprets
reality (and language) literally and is therefore lost in a world of conventional form and hypocritical lies. Peredonov is
victimized by the Demiurge’s true accomplices: the race of human adults, the liars and hypocrites, the descendents of Abel.
These are so evil that even “devils” of Cain’s lineage compare favorably. “There’s so much evil among men that often old Satan
suddenly will cry like an offended child.”
³⁰
Peredonov is no worse than a “wicked child.”

To sum up: Peredonov’s concept of identity as well as his “model of the world” are reflected in the hierarchy of cards in
those games he likes to play but always loses. Some cards have a “face”; knaves, queens and kings are the “big-eyed inspectors”
(281). The majority of cards lack a face and are marked only by conventional signs and numbers. These are the “inspected”
ones which lose all value when confronted by a
“face
card.” People are to Peredonov “cards” (342).
³¹
Schoolboys, e.g., are neglible quantities, recognizable only by their coat buttons. Peredonov aspires to becoming a “face
card.” Above these there is only the ace, so important that his face cannot even be imagined, as is the case also with the
Demiurge. But the Ace needs no face. As a “walking belly” it represents to Peredonov the pinnacle of being—existence as constant
feeding (141). This ability remains, after all, the only criterion for reality and identity which Peredonov can wholeheartedly
embrace. But is he to be blamed for his pitiful conclusions, or his Saturnine creator who devours his own children? Is he,
to repeat the public prosecutor’s, Avinovitsky’s, question—“a criminal or a victim? (143).

Naturally a sympathetic or antipathetic view of Peredonov must remain a matter of personal attitudes. Within the context of
the novel it would appear however that the reader is not asked to castigate Peredonov but rather to feel pity for him, as
well as all mankind, humiliated by the “human condition.” The reader is perhaps also encouraged to experience fear—not at
the grandeur of Peredonov’s misfortunes, but at their humiliating pettiness, which increases their horror. In other words:
the reader is offered the opportunity to experience the catharsis which is denied Peredonov himself. Pity and fear would save
the reader from sharing in “peredonovism” rather than “laughter” which, presupposing the distance of superiority, precludes
identification.

Peredonov’s existential situation appears too complex to
be
(only) laughed at, in the spirit of enlightenment—however bitterly. The light which could illumine Peredonov is not the light
of reason; reason could dispel Peredonov’s misconceptions of reality but not change his attitude towards it. Peredonov needs
thinking less than feeling and perceiving—i.e., he needs the illumination of the Spirit, the source of knowledge beyond reason.
“Animals” cannot be taught anything but to “sit,” but they can be enchanted by “music.” The Dionysiac frenzies and their purifying
fires could perhaps transform the dancing doll Peredonov into at least a dancing satyr.

The novel is in my reading a religious-philosophical allegory, showing the
path to salvation through both negative and positive instruction. Its satirical elements are centered around the “Volodins”
of the novel who are the true “philistines”—not Peredonov. The novel is filled with the “burning problems” of its day: the
“revaluation of good and evil,” the “salvation through beauty” and the “restoration of human dignity” in a Nietzschean spirit.
Rebellious but humiliated Peredonov represents the whole misery of mankind, dimly becoming aware of its condition.

Peredonov, as a representative of human misery cannot be surrounded by the sombre majesty of “great Satan.”
³²
Comparing the petty demon Peredonov to Pushkin’s Germann (“The Queen of Spades”) as, through many allusions, is often done
in the novel, it is Peredonov’s lack of romantic aura which emphasizes the compelling need for a new human dignity in the
face of “higher powers.” The role of romantic rebel may reconcile man with his situation. The relentless depiction of Peredonov’s
existential struggle precludes a reconciliation with the “human condition.”

Peredonov’s “romance with Fate” is pure imagination—he does not even set eyes on his queen of spades, the elusive princess
Volchanskaya. His bragging lies about having been her lover is the wishful thinking of a man who never was “the darling of
Fate,” old cocotte as she is. All this is essentially true of Germann also, but this bitter truth is hidden under the veil
of romantic events and the hero’s tragic aura. Grotesque Peredonov serves the symbolist “non-acceptance of the world” better
than the romantic Germann.

In his role of “victim without immediate appeal” Peredonov does not stand alone in contemporary literature. In Bryusov’s
poem “The Madman” (1895) Peredonov’s situation is given “in a nutshell.”
³³
Gippius, in her stories about “subhuman creatures” posed the question “how did He dare” more than once. In Merezhkovsky’s
Leonardo da Vinci
, the artist—himself not a model of virtue in the accepted sense—does not condemn a wicked little boy, as he knows him to
be one of “those innocent in their wrongdoing, because by nature formed for evil.”
³⁴

Crudely simplifying a literary debate it could be said that the function of protagonists “by nature formed for evil” is the
following: to demonstrate the need for a sympathy without bounds, a love without limits. These spiritual forces—it was hoped—would
overcome even the crudest evil, the source of which resided in matter. The best manner in which to “vex” the Demiurge was
to “infiltrate” matter with spirituality. Thus “black coal” could be transformed into “brilliant diamonds (VI. Solovyov),
or “mud receptacles” into “alabaster amphoras.”
³⁵
Spiritualization would transform “animals” into (super)human beings who would master their own fate. During the reign of
the Spirit it would finally be acknowledged that the world of
realia
is unreal and this insight would break its evil spell. The power of the Living God would be reinstated and the Demiurge dethroned.
A new World of imperishable beauty would then be bound to arise and in it there would not be a single tear—neither that of
the innocent child, nor the frightened devil.

NOTES

*
From
Scando-Slavica
, 24 (1978), pages 107–124. Reprinted by permission of the editorial board.

1
. The quote refers to Z. Gippius’s essay “Peredonov’s Little Tear.” This and subsequent quotes from the essay are from Sharon
Leiter’s translation in
The Silver Age of Russian Culture
, eds. C. and E. Proffer (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1975).

2
. The edition consulted for this study is:
Melkii bes
, (
Shabby Demon
), Letchworth, Hert.: Bradda, 1966. Page references (in
parentheses) in the text are to this edition.

3
. The article is quoted from
A Soviet Heretic
, Essays by Yevgeny Zamyatin, ed. and transl. by Mirra Ginsburg (Chicago & London,
1970).

4
. For this parallel, see Edmund Kostka, “A Literary Quandary: Fyodor Sologub and Heinrich Mann,”
Glimpses of Germanic-Slavic
Relations from Pushkin to Heinrich Mann
(Lewisburg, 1975).

5
. Cf. Ivanov-Razumnik’s view that the novel was not a satire on provincial life but a horror vision of the “philistinism
of life generally.” See his
O smysle zhizni
(
On the Meaning of Life
), Letchworth: Bradda, 1971, p. 40.