The Petty Demon (46 page)

The question of motivation is important. The sense of motion out-of-control conveyed by rumor and the instinctiveness of the
desire to marry are indications that reflective, rational behavior is somehow absent from the cosmos of the novel. Yet, at
least an appearance of cause-and-effect motivation can be found. At the outset, the basic intrigue unfolds as a conflict between
Peredonov’s quest for a promotion and the attempts of various townspeople to marry him. Peredonov’s visits to the town officials,
his attempts to find Volodin
a wife, his frequent attendance at church, as well as Varvara’s arranging for the forgery of the letters and Vershina’s maneuvers
to get Peredonov into her garden all fit into the development of this intrigue and are thus provided with a seemingly clear
motivation. It is true that these events are at times accompanied by other, seemingly unmotivated acts, such as Peredonov’s
molesting his cat, soiling his walls, teasing his students, and, especially, by malicious town gossip—all of which seem to
originate in pure spite. But, at least for the first part of the novel, this secondary strain is subordinate to and integrated
within the mainline development of Peredonov’s quest and the attempts to marry him. It is possible to say that the image of
the cosmos which emerges in this part of the novel is one in which there exists a certain logic to human behavior.

However, about the time of the appearance of the
nedotykomka
, the uninterrupted, sequential development of this intrigue is broken, and many small episodes, having very little to do
with Peredonov’s quest for promotion or attempts to marry him, are introduced, Just prior to the spirit’s appearance an incident
in which Peredonov steals a pound of raisins and blames his servent is related; Sasha is introduced and Peredonov visits his
lodgings. Just after the
nedotykomka’s
appearance the narration shifts to the story of the tarring of Marta’s gates and then to Peredonov’s meeting with the headmaster
of the school. Now too the erotic affair between Sasha and Lyudmila gets underway. In a word, the narration becomes fragmented,
and events are neither a development of the main intrigue nor are they provided with a clear motivation. The rational ordering
of the world of
The Petty Demon
is revealed as an illusion; chaos, within which the
nedotykomka
has its existence, replace cosmos.

The motif of insanity, which often accompanies the presentation of the grotesque, plays a significant role in
The Petty Demon
. Peredonov suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, and this affliction is portrayed with clinical accuracy. He lives in suspicion
and fear of both people and objects, and his most specific fear is that he will be poisoned. In taking measures to defend
himself, Peredonov displays an amazing degree of activity. Serious aberrations in conceptual thinking are evident in Peredonov’s
portrayal, and these are perhaps best reflected in his language: words take on a literalness and acquire magic properties.
Medically speaking, the central event in Peredonov’s insanity is the appearance of the
nedotykomka;
this Signals the point at which he enters into a fantasy world and begins to have hallucinations.
³²
The accuracy of Sologub’s depiction of paranoia caused one of his contemporaries to cite the novel as an example of new,
psychological, rather than sociological, realism.
³³
However, it seems that like
byt
and motivation, psychological verisimilitude is another mask in the novel. It provides a protective veil and an acceptable
explanation for outrageous behavior and fantastic creatures. This is most strongly suggested by the objectivity of the
nedotykomka:
the spirit is a fact of the world of the novel and not solely of Peredonov’s fantasy. The indication is that Peredonov’s
insanity grants him a vision of the truth that the world is chaotic, hostile, destructive, and evil.

The true face of the cosmos of
The Petty Demon
is revealed at the masquerade. Most of the weird creatures whom the reader has met one by one in the course of the novel
are now gathered together under one roof. The masquerade includes the motif of insanity in two ways: it suggests that the
entire town is insane, more like a madhouse than provincial Russia, and it removes the protective veil of “insanity” from
what Peredonov perceives and reveals
that his vision of the cosmos is accurate. A conflict of appearance and reality is evident in the very announcement of the
masquerade. Rumors circulate that the prizes will be a cow for the best female costume and a bicycle for the best male costume.
But, as soon as the townspeople have become enthusiastic about the prizes, it is discovered that in reality only a fan and
an album will be given. Even so, almost the entire town turns out for the event. The possible gaiety and festivity of the
occasion is dampened from the beginning by the knowledge that the hall seems a little dirty and the crowd is already slightly
drunk:
poshlost’
has invaded the realm of the exotic.

The costumes are significant. Varvara does not labor over hers; she wears a mask with a stupid face, rouges her elbows, puts
on an apron, and goes as a “cook straight from the stove (347).” This slovenly outfit is similar to her usual dress; thus
she goes as herself though slightly costumed. Grushina chooses to dress as the goddess Diana. Her costume is immodest, but
it has many folds in which she can hide the sweets she steals for her children. The scantiness of this costume reveals that
she has flea bites on her body. She is her vulgar, indecent self and, significantly, her costume is interpreted not as the
goddess Diana, but the dog Dianka. The Rutilov girls do not fuss over their costumes: Dania goes as a Turkish woman, Lyudmila
as a gypsy, and Valeriya as a Spanish dancer. They dress exotically, but not outlandishly, and in this sense they too are
themselves. Sasha, of course, goes as a geisha, and the import of this costume is that it plays on the ambiguous status of
his sex. Neither Volodin nor Peredonov wears a costume. Volodin displays his ram-like, bestial nature by stomping wildly and
by tearing ferociously at Sasha when the crowd attacks him. Peredonov has no need of a costume; he has achieved an inverted
sort of integration in his devotion to petty, spiteful evil, and in him mask and face are one. It is at the masquerade that
the
nedotykomka
too is finally attired in its true garb: the evil serpent.

In all individual instances the costumes worn (or not worn) tend to reveal the identity of the character rather than to hide
it. This is also true of the crowd as a whole: it is drunk, vulgar, spiteful, and bestial. This bestiality, to the point of
mania, is revealed especially in the savage attack it makes on Sasha after he receives the prize for the best female costume.
After the actor Bengalsky has rescued Sasha and taken him from the hall, the final event in the revelation of the true nature
of the town occurs. Peredonov, prompted by the
nedotykomka in
the form of a serpent, sets fire to the clubhouse. The townsfolk have gathered together, their bestial and demonic natures
have been revealed, and, with Peredonov’s arson, the suspicion that this is an inferno becomes a visual reality. The masquerade
is now vested in its mask—fire, which is really its face.

The world of
The Petty Demon
is visually close to that of Bosch’s hell and Bruegel’s proverbs. It is a world in which petty, spiteful evil pervades the
atmosphere and swallows up the characters. The
nedotykomka
is the ruler of this world, and Peredonov is the spirit’s faithful servant. But, he is only the first of many lesser servants,
for the entire cosmos of the novel is populated with petty, spiteful beasts, witches, and devils. The artistic means through
which
poshlost’
and the demonic are integrated is the grotesque.

In
The Petty Demon
one can see a continuation of the tradition in Russian literature which perceives evil as petty; Peredonov may legitimately
be considered
a relative of both Gogol’s Chichikov and Dostoevsky’s Smerdyakov. It is also possible to see in this novel an inversion of
attempts in Russian and world literature to depict the totally good man. In this sense a recent critic’s understanding of
Peredonov as a fin de
siècle
redoing of Don Quixote is justified.
³⁴
But there is no reason why this comparison cannot be extended to include other saintly figures. Peredonov might also be understood
as an inversion of Dostoevsky’s Myshkin. Sologub seems to be attempting to depict the totally evil man in the totally evil
society. In the final analysis it may be possible to understand the novel as a reversal of the Christian myth of redemption
in which Peredonov is an inversion of Sologub’s conception of Christ.

NOTES

*
This study is a revised version of a much longer study which appeared under the same title in R. Freeborn, R.R. Milner-Gulland,
and C.A. Ward, ed.,
Russian and Slavic Literature
(Cambridge, Mass: Slavica Publishers, 1976), pp. 137–74.

1
. Respectively, Victor Erlich,
Gogol
(New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1962), p. 5, and Lee Byron Jennings,
The Ludicrous Lemon: Aspects of the Grotesque in German Post-Romantic Prose
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1963), p. 17. In general, Jennings closely approximates what this study
understands as the definition of the grotesque.

2
. Jennings
(The Ludicrous Demon …
p. 10) says that the grotesque object is perceived as simultaneously ludicrous and fearsome.

3
. Wolfgang Kayser,
The Grotesque in
Art
and Literture
(New York: McGraw Hill, 1963), pp. 32–33, 181, suggests that the grotesque effect in Bosch may be weakened because his paintings
seem to contain a symbology which is decipherable within the usual Christian framework. Kayser postulates a vision of cosmic
absurdity as a condition for the grotesque.

4
. Jennings,
The Ludicrous Demon
, p. 20.

5
. Often in a literary work the creation of the grotesque is accompanied by an uneven narrative style which draws attention
to the vocal texture by employing such devices as verbal nonsense and cacophony. Ludmila Foster defines the literary grotesque
totally in terms of a style which “employs the devices of distortion and shift to create an effect of absurdity of estrangement,”
“The Grotesque: A Method Of Analysis,”
Zagadnienia rodzajów literackich
, Vol. IX No. 1 (Lódz, 1966), p. 81. She also suggests that
in The Petty Demon
the grotesque effect is weakened by the absence of this style. “A Configuration of the Non-Absolute: he Structure and Nature
of the Grotesque,”
Zagadnienia rodzajów literackich
, Vol. IX No. 2 (Lódz, 1967), p. 39.

6
. A.A. Izmailov, “F. Sologub o svoikh proizvedeniiakh,
Birzhevye vedomosti (Oct
. 16, 1906), p. 3. B. Yu. Ulanovskaya maintains that the model for Peredonov was a certain Ivan Ivanovich Strakhov who taught
with Sologub in the Velikie Luki district in the late 1880’s. Ulanovskaya also appears to have located prototypes for Varvara
and Volodin, “O prototipakh romana F. Sologuba
Melkii bes,” Russkaia literatura
, Vol. XII, No. 3 (1969), pp. 181–84.

7
. F.K. Sologub,
Melkii bes, in Sobranie sochinenii
, Vol. VI, S. Peterburg: Shipovnik, 1909–14. All subsequent quotations from
The Petty Demon
will be from this edition and will be indicated by page number in the text.

8
. Gogol is perhaps the best-known Russian author to use the pig in this sense. For a discussion of folk beliefs about common
forms of the devil see S.V. Maksimov,
Nechistaia sila. Nevedomaia sila, in Sobranie sochieneii
, Vol. XVIII (S. Peterburg: Prosveshchenie, 1908–13), p. 11.

9
.
Ibid
., p. 12

10
.
Ibid
., p. 8.

11
. Galina Selegen’,
Prekhitraia viaz’
(Washington: Victor Kamkin, 1968), pp. 147–76, discusses the language of
The Petty Demon
at length.

12
. The names “Vershina” and “Grushina” are interesting. The word “vershina” denotes a “summit” and the phonetically similar
verb “vershit,” is commonly used in the sense of “to sway destiny”
(vershit’ sud’bami)
. Her name thus suggests that she may be the major witch of the novel, and it points to the influence which she has on Peredonov’s
destiny. Grushina’s name is from the Russian word for “pear,” and it adds a comic touch to her delineation.

13
. A.S. Pushkin,
Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v desiati tomakh
, Vol. IV, (Moskva: AN SSSR, 1963), p. 429.

14
. Vladimir Dal’,
Toklovyi slovar’ zhivogo veliko-russkogo iazyka
, vol. III (S. Peterburg, Moskva, 1914), p. 1744.

15
. The word “oboroten’ ” is not an exact equivalence of the English “werewolf.” It has a broader meaning and signifies a
creature which is able to change from a human to an animal or plant nature at will. See Maksimov,
Nechistaia sila
, p. 118.

16
. Maksimov reports similar punning on the part of
rusalki
. See
Nechistaia sila
, p. 118.

17
. See, for example, Sologub, “Belaia sobaka,”
Sob. soch
., Vol. VII, pp. 11–18.

18
. Maksimov,
Nechistaia sila
, p. 260.

19
. Pushkin,
Polnoe sobranie …
, Vol. VI, pp. 319–56.

20
.
Ibid
., p. 341.

21
.
Ibid
., p. 355.

22
. Mikhail Bakhtin maintains that the mouth is most significant in creating a grotesque image of the body,
Rabelais and His World
(Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1968), p. 316.