The Petty Demon (49 page)

2
. Fedor Sologub,
Melkii bes
(reprint ed.; Letchworth, Eng.: Bradda Books, 1966), 69. All subsequent references to the novel, placed in the article in
parentheses, are to this edition.

3
.
Ibid
., 211. Some of the vocabulary that Sologub uses to describe this dance echoes that used by Innokenty Annensky in his essay
“Dionis vlegende i kul’te” describing elements of the Dionysiac cult intended to induce ecstasy: “… agonizing dances, whirling
(a ritual act), running, wild howling, the heady noise of flutes … intoxicating drinks.” Annensky uses the word
khorovod
, a folk dance form, to refer to the Maenads’ dance. See
Vakkhanki, tragediia Evripida
, tr. Innokentii Annenski (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia Imperatorskoi Akademii nauk, 1894), LXX-LXXI, LXXVII. Subsequent references
to this book are placed in parentheses.

4
. G.J. Thurston, in his article “Sologub’s
Melkiy bes,” Slavonic and East European Review, 1 (Jan. 1977)
sees the connection between Dionysus and
The Petty Demon
, but
he
does not work out the implications of this allusion for an interpretation of the novel. The authors of this paper formulated
their interpretation without knowing of Thurston’s work. We are delighted, however, that he confirms the general direction
of our argument.

5
. Irene Masing-Delic sees these perfumes as “symbols of the flesh ‘transsubstantiated’ into ethereal beauty.” See “‘Peredonov’s
Little Tear’—Why Is It Shed?,” below. Annensky emphasizes the intimate connection between Dionysus and nature. The aim of
Dionysiac ritual, he writes, was to fuse man with nature and Dionysus was associated with the forces of nature (LXXI, LXXVII).

6
. Stanley Rabinowitz has stressed this derivation in his article “Fedor Sologub’s Literary Children,” note 22 (see below.)
Pyl’nik
also means “dust coat” or “duster,” perhaps indicating simultaneously Peredonov’s obsessive perception of Sasha—a symbol
of beauty and innocence—as the omnipresent, hateful dust. Masing-Delic suggests that Sasha’s surname hints at his ultimate
surrender to the “realm of
dust”
(114). Dionysus was the god of the vine, the bringer of fruit.

7
. Rabinowitz sees these “ever-present flowers and sweet perfumes” as creating “a climate of sensuality which can only accelerate
Sasha’s physical desires.” Though the discussion of cyclamen perfume reflects Lyudmila’s own feelings, it can also be interpreted
as an “allegory” about “the course of Sasha’s own sexual growth.” See below.

8
. Ivanov-Razumnik, O
smysle
zhizni:
F. Sologub, L. Andreev, L. Shestov
, 2d ed. (St. Petersburg: n.p., 1910; reprint ed., Letchworth, Eng.: Bradda Books, 1971), 47. It is also curious that Dionysus
was associated with fragrance—Annensky mentions this twice in his essay on Dionysus (LXXX and LXXIII).

9
.
Sobranie sochinenii
in 12 vols. (St. Petersburg: Shipovnik, 1909–1912), X, 217.

10
. The narrator tells us that Peredonov specifically did not like the colors of the sunset, fire red and gold (320).

11
.
Sobranie sochinenii
, X, 210. This is only one of many points in common with Nietzsche. In
The Birth of Tragedy
, Nietzsche praises the Greek “man of culture” for his unalienated, celebratory view of life which differs so radically from
that of modern man. See
The Birth of Tragedy
, tr. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1967), 59–61.

12
. Nicholas Berdyaev,
Dream and Reality: An Essay in Autobiography
, tr. Katharine Lampert (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1951), 162. Thurston also remarks on this incident, 38–39, n. 41.

13
. See Nt. 3. Thurston posits this play as “the most important source available to Sologub,” 39. He is particularly strong
on noting parallels between the
Bacchae
and the novel, especially the identification between Dionysus’, and Sasha, and Pentheus and Peredonov.

14
. Nietzschean themes appear in Merezhkovksy’s poetry as early as 1892. One of Lyudmila’s dreams recalls the myth of Leda
and the swan. Some elements of the landscape in the dream may have been suggested to Sologub by Merezhkovsky’s poem. The latter
can be found in: D.S. Merezhkovksy,
Sobranie stikhov, 1883–1920g
.(reprint ed., Letchworth, Eng.: Bradda Books, 1969), 77–79. The “Song of the Bacchae” was first published in 1894 in
Severnyi vestnik
, No. 12, 42. On Nietzsche’s influence on the Silver Age, see Ann Marie Lane, “Nietzsche in Russian Thought, 1890–1917” (Ph.D.
dissertation, University of Wisconsin at Madison, 1976), Chapter One; Bernice G. Rosenthal, “Nietzsche in Russia: The Case of Merezhkovksy,”
The Slavic Review
, Sept. 1974, 429–52.

15
. For a complete list of writings about Nietzsche in Russia during this period, see Richard D. Davies, “Nietzsche in Russia,
1892–1917: A Preliminary Bibliography, Part 1,”
Germano-Slavica
, Vol. II, No. 2 (Fall 1976), 107–46. Davies points out that much of the Russian intelligentsia undoubtedly read Nietzsche
in the original German or even in French translations (108).

16
. Anastasiia Chebotarevskaia, “Aisedora Dunkan v prozren’iakh Fridrikha Nichshe,”
Zolotoe runo
, 4 (1908), 83.

17
.
The Birth
, 38. In the preface to the English translation of
The Petty Demon
of 1916, Sologub emphasizes that Peredonov represents the lonely, isolated individual, incapable of directing himself into
“the general path of universal life.” This notion is similar to Nietzsche’s “gospel of universal harmony” and “the mysterious
primordial unity,” 37 in
The Birth
.

18
. See especially
Vakkhanki
, lines 72–82, 378–86, 416–31, 902–11.

19
. Thurston refers to several passages in the
Bacchae
in which Dionysus betrays a sexual ambivalence, and, like Sasha, is described as pretty, with a fair, delicate skin, flushed
cheeks, and the aroma of perfume. Also like Sasha, he spends all his time in the company of females. See 39–40 for these details
and others that we have noted.

20
. See
Vakkhanki
, lines 453–59, the
Homeric Hymn to Dionysus
, or Vases Like the Pronomos Vase (ARV2 1336). See also the description of Dionysus on p. 5 of Annensky’s translation. Annensky
points out that Dionysus was a mixture of masculine and feminine features (XCVIII), and that Praxiteles’ statue of Dionysus
shows him as a beardless, beautiful youth (XCIX).

21
. Thurston notes that in their frenzied drinking, dancing, and singing, they were behaving like maenads under the impact
on them of the “Dionysian” Sasha (37). Annensky recounts a number of legends connected with Dionysus involving three sisters
on LXXXIV, LXXXVII.

22
. Myths about Dionysus tend to feature the god in a sexually ambivalent disguise entering new cities and causing great social
disruption until his cult is accepted.

23
. For a discussion of cross-sex dressing in Dionysiac cult and the broader effects of Dionysus’ undermining of traditional
gender restriction, see Clara Galllini, “II travestimo rituale di Penteo,”
SMSR
, 34 (1968), 211–28 and C.P. Segal, “The Menace of Dionysus: Sex Roles and Reversals in Euripides’
Bacchae,” Arethusa
, 11 (1978), 185–202. In the
Bacchae
the king Pentheus believes that Dionysus sexually corrupts his female followers, but he is proved wrong. Instead, he succumbs
to the suppressed female element in himself,
dresses as a woman, and is destroyed by the mad and masculinized women of his city.

24
. See Vsevolod Setchkarev,
Studies in the Life and Work of Innokentii Annensky (The
Hague: Mouton, 1963), 223. Merezhkovsky compares the bacchae to dogs in his poem “The Song of the Bacchae.” See p. 4 of our
text.

25
. Annensky,
Vakkhanki, LXXI
, LXXVII.

26
. Thurston makes the connection between Peredonov’s visit to Sasha and the subsequent appearance of the
nedotykomka
(36). Rabinowitz has noted this verbal connection. Sasha and the
nedotykomka
are further connected through the verb “to squeal.”

27
. Pentheus, unlike the chorus in the
Bacchae
, cannot see the bestial side of the god until he goes mad. Peredonov typically sees the Dionysiac in a threatening guise.
Another whole series of animal images plays a major role in the novel in the characterization of Peredonov and the town. But
these images are used differently by Sologub to dehumanize his grotesque characters in the Gogolian tradition. See Masing-Delic,
111.

28
. This article is found in the collection
Tear, kniga o novom teatre
(St. Petersburg: Shipovnik, 1908). See p. 191.

29
. E.R. Dodds,
Euripides’ “Bacchae”
(2d ed., Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1960), xiv.

30
. Thurston has pointed out that the snake was one of Dionysus’ symbols, 39.

31
. See the discussion above of Merezhkovsky’s poem “Leda.”

32
. S.A. Tokarev,
Religioznye verovaniia vostochno-slavianskikh narodov XIX—nachala XX v
. (Leningrad: AN SSSR, 1957), 51.

33
. See Masing-Delic on the novel’s puppet and dance motifs, 110. Thurston also notices Peredonov’s inability to experience
ecstasy, 30, 40.

34
. Thurston interprets the masquerade as “a comic version of a Dionysian Festival” (40). He also elaborates on the many parallels
between the
Bacchae
and the masquerade scene, 41–43. In his article “The Theater of One Will,” Sologub views the masquerade as a means of engaging
the spectator in play-acting, a hybrid form between play and spectacle. It could serve as a stepping-stone toward the higher
attainment of “mystery”
(tainstvo)
in the theater. See 183.

35
.
Vakkhanki
, lines 1084–85.

36
. Kay Louise Robbins notes the satirical import of this costume: “The disguise, as a projection of the individual’s interior,
evokes satire as Yulia Gudaevskaya, the notary’s wife, a thin dry woman who engages in promiscuous affairs, comes dressed
as an
ear of fertile courn….” See “The Artistic Vision of Fedor Sologub: A Study of Five Major Novels” (Ph.D. dissertation, University
of Washington, 1975), 73. Annensky mentions that an ear of grain
(kolos)
played a role in Dionysiac mystery (XCIV).

37
. René Girard,
Violence and the Sacred
(Baltimore: John’s Hopkins Press, 1977). See especially his interpretation of the
Bacchae
using this approach, 119–42.

38
. A full explanation of Girard’s terms or his theory is impossible here. In “mimetic competition” each member of a community
desires what his neighbor has, and is drawn by this desire into a proliferating process of imitation of the other that culminates
in violence.

39
. In
The Birth of Tragedy
Nietzsche sees this ability at the heart of the Dionysian experience (see 64).

40
. Thurston views Volodin as Peredonov’s scapegoat rather than his double, 42. On the god’s victim as his ritual double in
Dionysiac myth, see H.P. Foley, “The Masque of Dionysus,”
TAPA
110 (1980), 130, n. 2. The parallels between Sologub’s novel and the
Bacchae
become very complex here, since Peredonov does not become the god’s victim like Pentheus, but instead adopts Dionysus’ own
role as sacrificer. Similarly, in the masquerade the role of Dionysus is split between Sasha and Bengalsky.

41
. In terms of a Girardian analysis, Peredonov’s success in taking the violence of the community on himself, and obscuring
its culpability through this action, might imply that he has temporarily succeeded through his sacrifice in establishing his
own anti-Dionysiac “religion” in the community.

42
. For the most complete discussion of the essential amorality of Dionysiac religion and its ambiguities, see R.P. Winnington-Ingram,
Euripides and Dionysus: An Interpretation of the “Bacchae”
(Cambridge, Eng.: The University Press, 1948).

43
.
The Birth
, 53.

(T
HE
S
UFFERINGS OF A
T
ORMENTOR
)
^*

I
RENE
M
ASING
D
ELIC

T
HE PROTAGONIST OF
Sologub’s novel
The Petty Demon
,
²
the sadistic schoolteacher Peredonov, has evoked diametrically opposed reactions—love and hatred—in two Russian writers:
Zinaida Gippius and Evgeny Zamyatin. The latter, in his essay “Fyodor Sologub,”
³
sees the Russina
Professor Unrath
⁴
as the epitome of the seemingly indestructible philistine, that “mold” (221) which grows everywhere without being cultivated.
⁵
He notes that the author punishes Peredonov with immortality. To die is the fate of the tragic and romantic hero, Zamyatin
argues, to live that of the vulgar man. Peredonov is not worthy of being “killed,” only of being whipped—with the lashes of
satire. To Zamyatin the novel is a romantic writer’s satire on the “philistine snout,” Peredonov not qualifying for the name
homo
erectus
as he is a mere wheedling, tail-wagging and cowardly beast. The “Scythian” Zamyatin rejects Chichikov’s famous statement
that there is no merit in loving the virtuous and that it is considerably more difficult, thence laudable, to love the wicked.
Zamyatin demands hatred for the ugly, common and “immortal” philistine snout which distorts the ideal image of man; he does
so in the name of love for the future man who will have overcome the Peredonov within himself.

Zinaida Gippius in her essay (cf. footnote 1) likewise evaluates Peredonov as a poor specimen of a human being; nevertheless
she proposes a different treatment of him than the one Zamyatin was to suggest later. The “vulgar fool” (41) Peredonov deserves
sympathy, even love in her view. As a poet of metaphysical anxiety and unceasing unrest, Gippius cannot be accused of taking
up a “Chichikovian” position in regard to human deficiencies, in spite of her “love” for the pettily wicked Peredonov.
⁶
But having described his own soul as a dull satiated snake
(She
, 1905), the poet would feel some sympathy for the spiritual dullard Peredonov.
⁷
This doe not mean that Gippius’s self-critical poet should be seen as “another Peredonov,” their spiritual development obviously
being on different levels.
⁸
Still, the problem of spiritual insufficiency, whatever its degree, was one which occupied Gippius. As a religious poet and
thinker, she is interested in an aspect of Peredonov‘s existence, which Zamyatin—more concerned with man than God—does not
heed: the “injustice” of having been born a petty, shabby, limited creature. Repulsive Peredonov’s morality is of less concern
to her than the motivation of Him Who created the “living Peredonovs.” Gippius takes up the stance of a God-fighter to fling
out the question:
“How did He dare
to create this creature? And how will He
answer for him?”
(43)

In her critique of the Creator Gippius extends the Ivan Karamazov arguments against the given world order: “It is incumbent
upon us to justify ‘the little tear of the tormented child’ because we must know: for what crime? why? for what purpose? But
similarly it is incumbent … upon me to justify each of Peredonov’s elephant tears …” (43).

Gippius claims as her own the discovery that Peredonov’s situation is to be equated with that of the “tormented child” within
the context of the theodicy problem. She even denies the author himself, i.e., Sologub, any knowledge of Peredonov’s sufferings,
subtitling her essay “What Sologub Doesn’t Know.” But K. Chukovsky rightly pointed out that Sologub “does know”; he sees Peredonov’s
“little tear,” and even “positively drowns the novel in the tears of this morose sufferer,” as the critic put it.
⁹
To judge from Chukovsky’s facetious tone he does not take Peredonov’s sufferings much to heart; nevertheless he gives a penetrating
explanation of them. Peredonov’s misfortune, the critic declares, is that he lacks the gift of creatively transforming reality
and therefore cannot conjure up the wondrous land
Ojle
where tortured minds may find rest.
¹⁰
Here is indeed the key to Peredonov’s situation.

Gippius correctly depicts Peredonov as a being deeply wronged by his creator. But whereas she offers God an opportunity to
“explain Himself,” Sologub’s deity is the Demiurge of the Gnostics whose evil intentions are only too clear. The “Satanist”
and “Lucifer worshipper” Sologub created a poetic world which would seem to find its best explanation in Gnostic-Manichaean
terms. The critique of the Demiurge’s faulty creation—our imperfect world and those clay puppets called human beings–forms
the all-dominating thematics of Sologub’s works in any genre. The novel
The Petty Demon
is no exception, demonstrating in full detail the situation of one of the Demiurge’s victims: the clumsy, gross and particularly
unsuccessful creation which was labelled Peredonov.

The task of this study is to discuss the specific causes and attributes of Peredonov’s sufferings and to link these into a
picture of this existential situation in the Demiurge’s evil world. Its aim is to show how Peredonov’s situation may be compared
to that of the “tormented child” (in spite of the fact that Peredonov himself is a tormentor of children); it should demonstrate
that Peredonov’s life forms a critique of “divine powers,” identified here with the Demiurge. In order to achieve this aim
Peredonov’s problematics may be divided into two interlinked categories. His fundamental problem is that his soul is captured
in the prisonhouse of his body, so that he cannot attain true knowledge
(gnosis)
of reality. He attempts to rectify his situation by engaging in a quest for an identity (self-knowledge) during which he
becomes a “suffering usurper.”
¹¹

Peredonov’s soul is imprisoned in his body—as is that of most men. In their compact grossness, human bodies cannot but trap
the spirit. The Demiurge’s creative work was “presumptuous and blundering” in its entirety but this characterization applies
particularly to the creatures called human beings.
¹²
To make
them
, the Demiurge chose coarse clay as raw material which he shaped into crude and graceless forms. He then “deposited” in these
“clay receptacles” a “spark of life.” He himself was not the source of this “life energy” but stole it from the transcendent
Spirit, the “living God” of the novel (300). The Living God is the true God Whose image the Demiurge has usurped in his pursuit
of power. But in vain does the usurper compete with the Spirit—his creative failures give him away. His creatures ought not
to be called men as they are but barely animated clay puppets, “golems,” “homunculi,” “Frankenstein monsters.”

A glance at the outer form of the inhabitants of Peredonov’s symbolic town
proves that the Demiurge’s creative talents are indeed limited. Many an “accident” takes place in his “laboratory.” Often
the wrong “parts” have been put together, as may be seen from crooked smiles, disproportionate eyes and heads which do not
fit their bodies. In some cases the puppets have been daubed with too much “paint,” in others with too little. The result:
ruddy and greenish faces.

The “spark of life,” without which these clay figures would “crumble to dust,” is too feeble to move their heavy frame. They
are therefore provided with a “mechanism” which propels them forward. Consequently their movements are jerky. The puppets
are run on “electric batteries” and pulled by “strings.” Their imitation of life is often successful, but at times a battery
runs out, or a string snaps. Then it is evident that the Demiurge’s creatures are “automatons.” Prepolovensky, e.g., is a
“faulty phonograph” who repeats the same story over and over again, until somebody takes off the “cracked record,” i.e., interrupts
him.
¹³
To sum up: the puppets are programmed—not for that complex form of being called “life,” but for the existential mode of “dancing.”

A dance is a series of formalized step, which are repeated over and over again. Thus it is a movement which puppets may master,
whereas the unpredictable movements of life lie beyond their capacity. The frequently recurring dance motif of the novel serves
to emphasize the mechanical quality of marionette life. The motif reaches its apogee in the tumultuous scenes of the masked
ball, when the puppets run amok, demonstrating yet another creative failure in the Demiurge’s handicraft. When the puppets
are overwound, control over their movement is lost.

Aesthetic and mechanical defects are not the only ones in the Demiurge’s clay creatures. They are also fragile and perishable
in spite of their apparent sturdiness. They are easily “broken,” they “crumble” and disintegrate, and, in addition, engage
in mutual destruction.

When the inebriated Ershova threatens to tear Varvara apart by her legs, this seems a real possibility in regard to a puppet
(65). In a variant text, describing the Gudaevsky household, the parents think that tugging their child in opposite directions,
they have torn him apart! (435) lt is not surprising that Peredonov who agrees that his mistress Varvara should be “pulverized,”
fears ending up between the grindstones of a mill (286). This is in any case the “way of all flesh,” as the Demiurge’s “clay”
is also termed.] It is bound to disintegrate into dust. Dust envelops the cemetery city of “dead souls” in which Peredonov
lives.
¹⁴

As may be expected from such primitive creatures, the range of their activities is limited. As mechanisms they ate only capable
of feeding, coupling and reproducing themselves. In the grossness of these activities they are “animals.” Thus, in addition
to being a “show-booth” where coarse comedies are played, Peredonov’s town is also a “zoological garden,” where (domestic)
animals inhabit stuffy, smelly cages—in the manner of the “captured beasts” of Sologub’s poetry
(We Are Caged Animals
, 1905). In town we find: sheep (Volodin), ducks (Varvara), “scalded puppies” (Grushina’s children), dogs (the Gudaevskys)
and “beasts” of various other kinds, as the favourite address in town,
skotina
, indicates. People do not “agree” but have “sniff contact”;
snjuchat’sja is a
term Peredonov “borrowed” from Gogol’s Poprishch. Grushina makes no distinction whatsoever between a human being and a dog,
on the grounds that neither has a “soul” (338), and she often proves the truth of her words by behaving like a “bitch.” Indeed
the difference between humans and animals is minimal in Peredonov’s town—in the Gogolian tradition.

Superficially Peredonov is no exception in his town. He too is barely illuminated by a “greedy but dull fire” (290), shining
through his eyes,—that
divine spark which flickers helplessly in the bodily prison. He too is a “wound-up puppet” (289, 290), a marionette pulled
by the “strings” of his muscles (72). He too “dances,” as in the scene with Ershova. She is a puppet equipped with a sound
mechanism wherefore she emits squeaky noises at regular intervals
(povizgivala, pokrikivala
, 69)—the morose puppet Peredonov lacks a corresponding sound box. However both are equally subject to the inertia of mechanical
laws; they cannot even “unlock” their embraces when they sit down at mechanically regular intervals to be “recharged.” It
is made plain in the novel that Peredonov’s actions are never motivated by “will,” but merely by mechanical motor impulses
(72).

Peredonov adds to the zoological variety in the novel by being a “pig.” Varvara calls him “swine”
(55)
, emphasizing that this classification is based on close observation. Indeed it is stressed that Peredonov is not any other
animal, e.g., a “bull,” but a “downright swine”
(formennaia svin’ia
, 91), presumably of the Gogolian “demonic” type. Peredonov himself believes that he is one, laying claim to a “human snout.”

Thus Peredonov’s situation is that of all the people in town: a feeble spirit is trapped in a heavy, clumsy and inert body.
The uneven struggle between spirit and matter inevitably leads to the defeat of the spirit. But there is a difference, nevertheless,
between Peredonov and the other townspeople. They are satisfied with their condition, Peredonov is not. He feels uncomfortable
in his “cage”; he is terrified of being a “pig,” whereas e.g., Volodin is eminently happy as a “sheep.”
¹⁵

The Demiurge is not only a “blunderer”—he is also jealous. Forced to endow these creatures with a “spark of life,” as “batteries”
alone cannot maintain their life functions, he ensured that the separate sparks would not fuse into a spiritual fire. The
existence of such a force would threaten his security on the usurped throne. Therefore he placed the “sparks” in bodies which
were designed to make communication between them, as well as contact with outer reality, difficult.

The bodies which the Demiurge gave his creatures are prisonhouses. Their compactness is comparable to that of prisonwalls.
The “windows” of the bodily prison, i.e., the five senses, transmit a minimal amount of information which, in addition, is
distorted. They are “dirty windows” which allow the prisoner a view of a small and ugly corner of the prisonyard, i.e., the
world of
realia
, whereas the vision of the sky, i.e. the realm of
realiora
, is blocked.
¹⁶
The imprisoned “sparks” are thus effectively isolated from reality outside as well as from an exchange of information. Unable
to communicate with each other, barred from correct information, they cannot attain
gnosis
. This is the general human condition, which Peredonov shares (311).