The Petty Demon (2 page)

Sologub was not an obliging person when pestered for biographical material. Perhaps his reticence was provoked as much by
modesty or shyness as by embarrassment over his less-than-auspicious origins. Perhaps he sensed as well that people were more
“curious” than “interested” in him. Critics frequently complained that he was a “Mister Incognito” or that he had no “genealogical
table”. In fact, it was only when he had passed the age of fifty and his wife, Anastasia Nikolaevna Chebotarevskaya, published
a brief biographical outline of her spouse in 1915 that the wider world became more familiar with the unremarkable origins
of a very remarkable writer. Most of our information about the writer Sologub comes from eyewitness accounts of contemporaries,
whereas the first thirty years or so of his life is still mainly locked up in Soviet archives. Some of that material has found
its way into print and has been incorporated into M. Dikman’s introduction to the anthology of Sologub’s verse published in
the Soviet Union in 1975.
⁷

Sologub’s father was a former serf who died of tuberculosis in 1867, four years after the birth of Fyodor. The family had
moved to St. Petersburg after the Emancipation where the father tried to eke out a living as a tailor. Fyodor’s mother was
a peasant. The mother, completely without means, bundled up Fyodor and a younger sister, Olga, and went off to work as a servant
in the home of a cultured, yet sympathetic family that also provided for the young Fyodor’s education. Fyodor’s family ties
were very close but very oppressive at the same time. Although there was a good deal of affection between mother and son,
she beat and punished him for every possible misdemeanor. Sologub frequently recalled those vicious whippings and said that
his youth was composed of the “hell of thrashings and the paradise of dreams.” These beatings were administered by the mother
well into Sologub’s manhood, according to material quoted by Dikman in the introduction cited above. Psychologists may find
some interesting connection between this particular fact and the additional fact that Sologub never married until after the
death of his mother and his sister—when he was already forty-five. These whippings—which occupy such a salient role in most
of Sologub’s works, particularly in
The Petty Demon
and
The Created Legend
, permeated most of his earlier life, at home, in the parish school, even at the pedagogical school where he was regularly
whipped at the request of his mother and his landlady even after the age of sixteen. School was not an entirely happy experience
for the youthful Sologub. Although he was a diligent and excellent student, he felt awkward and isolated among his classmates
who frequently made him the butt of their jokes. His readings during those years included the democratic critics like Belinsky,
Dobrolyubov and Pisarev. His favorite Russian poet was Nekrasov; his favorite Russian novelist was Dostoevsky. In later years,
he was to recall that the three works which had the most enduring impact on him had been Shakespeare’s
King Lear
, Defoe’s
Robinson Crusoe
and Cervantes’
Don Quixote
.

He completed his teacher training in 1882 and at the age of nineteen he took his family with him to his first post in the
small provincial town of Krestsy (Novgorod Province). His mother died two years later. Sologub was convinced at a very early
age that his genuine calling was literature. His first verses were written in 1875 and he even began a novel in 1879 which
he never completed. He worked zealously at perfecting his literary skills and the sources for his inspiration were close at
hand: the petty vulgarity of life in a small provincial town and the meddlesome incompetence and tyranny of school officialdom.
Much of this material he was able to incorporate into a series of novels. His first novel,
Bad Dreams
(1894), depicts the life of a young provincial schoolteacher who experiences the same disparity between visions of a lyrical
idealism and the nightmare of soul-destroying provincial life as did the youthful Sologub. During the three years he spent
in Krestsy, Sologub began to submit the first specimens of his poetry to various publishers and he made a modest debut in
print in 1884.

During the years of vulgar existence in Krestsy and his subsequent provincial postings, Sologlub nurtured an almost escapist
hope that literature would somehow deliver him from such a miserable existence which threatened to endure for the rest of
his life. After three years in Krestsy he moved with his sister to Velikie Luki where he taught for four years. This represented
little improvement over the coarse philistinism of his previous post. But Chebotarevskaya later claimed that the years in
Velikie Luki provided the principal inspiration for the novel
The Petty Demon
. From all accounts, Sologub was a dedicated teacher and he had many altercations with the authorities on matters of curricula,
pedagogical methodology and ethics. But tiring of the ceaseless conflicts there, he moved on to the Pedagogical Seminary in
Vyterga. It was here that he became deeply interested in the French Symbolists and began to translate Verlaine.

Bearing in mind his literary ambitions, Sologub always tried to keep abreast of the literary and artistic scene in the capital
by subscribing to newspapers and journals. He was among those who were sensitive to the first echoes of the “new art” that
was poised to invade Russia from France and which had already begun to inspire the early prophets of Russian modernism, Merezhkovsky
and Minsky. He made a special trip to St. Petersburg in 1889 to meet both Merezhkovsky and Minsky. On that occasion he did
have a long conversation with Minsky on literary matters and Minsky invited Sologub to submit some verses for publication
in
The Northern Herald
, the leading journal for modernism in those days.

Sologub’s fondest dream now centered on moving to the capital in order to further his literary ambitions. In 1892 he received
a teaching post in a St. Petersburg school and settled permanently in the city. Here he met frequently with Dmitri Merezhkovsky,
Zinaida Hippius and Nikolai Minsky. Thanks to this connection he became a regular contributor to
The Northern Herald
. Both his first novel,
Bad Dreams
, and his first major story, “Shadows,” were printed in this journal. He also contributed poetry, articles and reviews. His
literary pseudonym was conceived in the editorial offices of this same journal.

Almost from the very beginning, Sologub seemed to be a curious phenomena in Russian Symbolism, for reasons other than his
background, profession or appearance. While other modernists like Bely, Blok, Bryusov and Balmont were to trace meteoric trajectories
across the heavens in their pursuit of everything from Aestheticism to Zoroastrianism, Fyodor Sologub seemed to remain the
fixed star, introverted, isolated and immutable.

His verse was not experimental in form, but tended to be almost “classical” in its technical clarity, restraint and immaculateness.
The content of those same verses did not vary greatly over the succeeding years. Rather they were seemingly subjected to endless
variations on the same themes: rejection of this vulgar world of time and space, escapism into artificial realms fashioned
in the poet’s own fantasy and the desire to transform earthly existence. Such were the abiding leitmotifs of Sologub’s verse:

A heavy pall of gloom and the inescapable odor of death clung to most of Sologub’s verse. Death seemed the one noble consolation
in a life often portrayed by Sologub as a vulgar and hideous, yet seductive wench, who lured man to the false charms of this
world:

So overpowering was the scent of death and decay in Sologub’s verse, so complete the depressing aura of pessimism, that many
years later, Maxim Gorky wrote what many critics took to be a most biting parody of Fyodor Sologub’s preoccupation with death.
The hero of Gorky’s “Fairy Tale” was a certain Mister “Smertyashkin” (Mister Death) who makes his living at first by writing
gloomy verses for obituaries and
in memoria
. However, his talent for somber verse is exploited by his wife and her enterprising paramour to make a sensation and a financial
fortune on the literary scene. Subsequently, the term “Smertyashkiny” became synonymous in Russian literature with the “dealers-in-death,”
namely those writers and poets who during the pre-revolutionary era seemed to trade on the general pessimism and gloom of
society to make a living.
⁸

Sologub did not give up his teaching responsibilities as he began to move in the glittering circles of young aspiring poets,
writers and artists in St. Petersburg through the later 1890’s. Particularly with the publication of his first book of verse
in 1896, there seemed little doubt that Sologub had become heir to the French decadent tradition in Russia.

In 1899 Sologub received a promotion as school-inspector for the Andreyevsky Civic School in the capital. Despite his acquaintanceship
with the leading representatives of literary and aesthetic modernism in Russia, Sologub, withdrawn, and somehow ridiculous
(after all, he was not only a decadent poet, but a teacher and a school-inspector as well!) never seemed to be entirely accepted
by his literary colleagues who often made fun of him behind his back. His regular Sunday receptions, hosted by himself and
his chronically-ill sister, Olga, were something of a contrast with those of other patron-practitioners of the arts:

At the Merezhkovskys’ everyone spoke loudly, at Sologub’s in a hushed voice; at the Merezhkovskys’ people argued excitedly
and even passionately about the church, at Sologub’s they deliberated over verses with the impartiality of masters and connoisseurs
of the poetic craft. In the host’s study, where stood somber, somewhat cold, leather furniture, the poets sat decorously,
obediently read their verses at the behest of the host and then humbly listened to the master’s judgments which were precise
and stern, but almost always benevolent, yet at times cutting and merciless if the versifier had dared to come forth with
frivolous and imperfect verses. This was the Areopagus of the Petersburg poets.
⁹

If the person of Sologub was ignored or belittled by many, then the name was certainly to be reckoned with increasingly after
the turn of the century. His poems, in particular, appeared in all of the leading Symbolist journals of the era, including
The Scales, The New Path, Questions of Life, World of Art
and
The Golden Fleece
. Despite the pejorative epithets leveled at him by Gorky and others, Sologub was also a frequent contributor of works to
the popular political and satirical feuilletons of the day (
The Spectator, The Hammer, The Devil’s Post
, etc.). In addition, he was always prepared to contribute appropriate works to miscellanies and anthologies in benefit of
various
charitable and humanitarian cause, in particular the struggle against antisemitism and the campaign for women’s rights. This
meddling of a decadent poet and “pornographer” in political and social questions no doubt contributed to the general confusion
surrounding Sologub.

The year 1907 witnessed a turning-point in Sologub’s life for several reasons. He suffered a personal tragedy in the death
of his sister to whom he had been very devoted. The same year, however, Sologub’s reputation reached its zenith with the complete
publication of his novel,
The Petty Demon
, which met with almost universal acclaim in Russia. Like his earlier novel,
Bad Dreams
,
The Petty Demon
drew on Sologub’s pedagogical experiences in the provincial backwoods of Russia. In the “hero” of the novel, Peredonov, a
rural teacher, Sologub incorporated all the vicious and petty vulgarity imaginable. Few characters in Russian fiction can
even pretend to the ignoble and spiritual void represented by Peredonov who endowed Russian literature and social criticism
with the term of “Peredonovshchina” (i.e., “Peredonovism”). In 1907, Sologub also completed twenty-five years of pedagogical
service and retired, now able to devote himself entirely to literary activity thanks to a state pension and the critical acclaim
accorded
The Petty Demon
. Rumors circulated to the effect, however, that his resignation was forced on him because of the apparent erotic motifs in
the novel which included hints of the seduction of a young schoolboy by the beautiful and sensuous Lyudmila.

About the same time, Sologub added to his laurels in prose and poetry by developing an interest in theater and drama, writing
half-a-dozen or so popular plays during the inter-revolutionary period for the leading theaters and directors (including Meyerhold).
In 1908, Sologub’s personal fortunes rose as well, for at the not-so-tender age of forty-five he became acquainted with and
married the writer-critic, Anastasia Nikolaevna Chebotarevskaya. Young, vivacious, extremely eccentric, Chebotarevskaya took
Sologub’s career in hand, actively aiding him with his literary work and doing her utmost to promote his literary fortunes.
In fact, in 1911, she gathered together and edited a number of critical reviews and articles on Sologub’s work (mostly favorable!)
and published it under her own name.