The Petty Demon (52 page)

6
. The tensions in Gippius’s paradoxial religiosity are well defined in Olga Matich’s
The Religious Poetry of Zinaida Gippius
,
München 1972.

7
. The
persona
of
She
is masculine.

8
. The question as to whether Peredonov is a “portrait” of the author may be answered in similar terms. Peredonov may well
be Sologub “without the latter’s intellect, talent and passionate self-criticism” (Gornfeld) but in this difference lies their
incommensurability.

9
. K. Chukovskii, “Putevoditel’ po Sologubu,”
Sobranie sochinenii v shesti tomakh
6 (M. 1969), p. 342.

10
. Omry Ronen has interestingly deciphered the names
Ojle
,
Ligoj
and
Mair
in his “Toponyms of Fedor Sologub’s
Tvorimaja Legenda
,”
Die Welt der Slaven
13, 1968, pp. 307–316.

11
. The expression is taken from Richard F. Gustafson’s “The Suffering Usurper: Gogol’s
Diary of a Madman
,”
The Slavic and
East European Journal
9, 1965, pp. 268–280. Peredonov’s situation is remarkably similar to Poprishchin’s as defined in this
fine study. The allusions to Poprishchin are manifold in the novel; cf. the
Spanish
hairstyle Peredonov wants to acquire before
his wedding, Varvara’s desire “
po-frantsuzski nasobachit’sia
,” etc.

12
. For a characterization of the Demiurge, see
The Encyclopedia of Philosophy
3, New York & London 1967, title “Gnosticism.”

13
. The puppet motif was not only frequently used by the Symbolists but also discovered by them in other writers, e.g., Chekhov,
whose characters in
The Cherry Orchard
, according to Bely, are “automatons.” See his “Vishnevyi sad,”
Vesy
2, 1904, p. 48.

14
. Cf. A. Belyi, “Liudi poshli of pyli: vot kosmogoniia Sologuba”; “Dalai-Lama iz Sapozhka,”
Vesy
3, 1908, p. 66.

15
. He and many others in town are “hylic,” i.e., “fleshly beyond redemption.” See
Baker’s Dictionary of Theology
, Grand Rapids,
Mich., 1960, p. 163.

16
. For a discussion in stylistic terms of the
realia-realiora
tension in Sologub’s world, see Carola Hansson,
Fedor Sologub
as a Short-Story Writer
, Stockholm 1975 (Stockholm Studies in Russian Literature 3).

17
. Christ belongs to the “eternal messengers” which the true God at times sends to earth with a revelation of the truth.
Others are Buddha and Zoroaster.

18
. In this pose Pylnikov appears as a variant of the paintings of Bacchus and St. John, as presented in D. Merezhkovsky’s
“historical romance”
Leonardo da Vinci
(1902). Both these “divine figures” are androgynous, “fair as a woman” and point, smiling
mysteriously, to something beyond themselves. See pp. 458–462 in the New York 1976 ed.

19
. For a discussion of the androgynous being as the model of the future “superman” and similar ideas of the times, see, N.A.
Nilsson, “Strindberg, Gorky and Blok,”
Scando-Slavica
4, 1958, pp. 23–42.

20
. Cf. Hans Jonas,
The Gnostic Religion
, Boston 1963, p. 59: “The very creation of Eve and the scheme of reproduction initiated by it subserve the infinite further
dispersion of light …”

21
. A. Blok stressed that the function of the Lyudmila episode was the demonstration of the “spiritualized flesh.” See his
“O realistakh,”
Sobranie sochinenii
, 8 vls., Moskva & Leningrad 1962, vol. 5.—Lypdmila’s perfumed world is comparable to Trirodov’s alchemistic wonderland
(The Created Legend).—Her
name has the “flavor” of a heathen goddess’s name.

22
. Galina Selegen suggests that the creation of the
nedotykomka
may have been inspired by J.K. Huysman’s novel
En route
, where a similar creature appears. See her
Prekhitraia viaz’, Simvolizm v
russkoi proze: “Melkii bes” Fedora Sologuba (Washington 1968), p. 87.

23
. The Demiurge is “clearly a polemical caricature of the Old Testament God,” the
Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(op.
cit.)
states. For a discussion of “revengeful Adonai” versus “allgood Lucifer,” see J. Holthusen,
Fedor Sologubs Roman-Trilogie
, The Hague 1960.

24
. In the view of the gnostics Cain and Esau are positive figures, whereas Abel becomes their “whipping-boy.” Interestingly
enough Abel has retained his “gnostic status” in J. Olesha’s
The Cherry Stone
, where the well-adapted Soviet communal leader of a “flock” of obedient citizens
(pastva)
is celled
Avel’
.

25
. Cf. Peredonov’s horror vision of a fortress built by angry men in red shirts (p. 317).—In Sologub’s works there often
appear “wicked sorceresses” whose function it is to veil the vision of true reality from eyes yearning to see it. Such an
“evil witch” is Lepistinya (“The Earthly to the Earth”) or the Old Woman (“The Poisoned Garden”) who wants to hinder the Youth
from looking into the enchanted garden by pulling the “curtains” of his “windows.”

26
. Paranoiac motifs are very common in symbolist literature. The agents of Bely’s novels are not only connected with the
Third Section. Blok’s poem
Est’ igra …
(1913) deals with metaphysical secret agents.

27
. J.W. von Goethe:
Wer nie sein Brot mit Tränen ass
.

28
. Gustafson, p. 272.

29
. Gustafson, p. 279.

30
. Quoted from O. Tsekhnovitser’s
“Predislovie,”
included in the Bradda edition, p. 20.

31
. Cf. Peredonov’s vision of people as “cards” with Chekhov’s early story “Whist.”

32
. Tsekhnovitser drew a line of development from Lermontov’s “great Satan” to Sologub’s
The Petty Demon
. “Predislovie,” p. 14.

33
. For a discussion of this poem, see my paper, “Limitation and Pain in Bryusov’s and Blok’s Poetry,”
The Slavic and East European Journal
19, 1975, pp. 388–402.

34
. Op. cit., p. 77. Another example of a blatant “revaluation” of the times is L. Andreev’s “Judas Iscariot” (1907).

35
. The alabaster amphora made transparent by an inner light of fire is the symbol Merezhkovsky chose for the ideal relationship
between spirit and matter, content and form, the inner and the outer. See his programmatic article “On the Reasons for the
Decline and on the New Tendencies in Contemporary Russian Literature.”
(Polnoe sobranie sochinenii
5, Moskva 1914, [reprint] Hildesheim & New York 1973, p. 217.).

S
TANLEY
J. R
ABINOWITZ

A
MONG THE MANY
thematic components of the prose fiction of Sologub, one in particular is repeated with remarkable constancy: the theme of
the child. A detailed investigation of this theme leads to the complex metaphysical issues which pervade Sologub’s work; it
also provides a key to understanding his highly idiosyncratic vision of reality.
¹
Vyacheslav Ivanov’s famous contention that “the child is the central point of [Dostoevsky’s] doctrine concerning the world
and concerning man,”
²
is equally true of Sologub; indeed, it might serve, if one were interested in the problem, to initiate an extremely fruitful
comparison of the two writers.
³
Children appear in well over half of Sologub’s sixty-odd short stories in his Decadent-Symbolist period of 1894–1914,
⁴
where they are, by and large, the author’s major focus of attention. Furthermore, in each novel of this period
(Bad Dreams
, 1895;
The Petty Demon
, 1905; the trilogy
The Created Legend
, 1907–14;
Sweeter than Poison
, 1912), children play a crucial, if not
a central
role. Sologub’s use of these characters is especially interesting from a structural point of view, for while the child is
almost invariably the hero
in
his stories, this same character in his larger works serves an ancillary function: he is always closely and vitally associated
with the adult-hero who is now at the center.
⁵
Any attempt to understand the behaviour of Sologub’s protagonists, as well as the ideas and issues they embody, must take
into account the special position which the child assumes.

With few exceptions, Sologub’s stories read like elaborations of Ivan Karamazov’s litany of child abuse before his rebellion
of the
The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor
. Imprisoned by his earthly existence, the child is tormented by a wide range of forces which Sologub is careful to define
as inevitable and unvanquishable. In this sense they are, like Ivan’s children, a movingly effective device for uncovering
life’s irrational and terrible evil. Arguing Sologub’s inheritance of an important component of Dostoevsky’s philosophy by
noting his similar use of the child to express and justify his metaphysical rebellion against the insensitive laws of the
universe, R.V. Ivanov-Razumnik claims that Sologub

intentionally limits the field of his artistic creation by this circle of [children’s suffering] just as Ivan Karamazov with
the same circle outlined his ethical questions. And the reason is the same. The absurdity, meaninglessness of life, its evil,
its horror can be seen more clearly in children who still, speaking in Ivan’s words, have not eaten the apple and are still
not guilty of anything.
⁶

Children, however, are more than mere vehicles for expressing moral outrage in Sologub’s fiction; they exist not only to pose
ethical questions. The earliest stories betray the author’s profound concern with the purely personal dimensions of childhood.
Works such as “Shadows” (1894), “The Worm” (1896), “In Captivity” (1896), and “To the Stars (1904) are essentially dramatizations
of the emotional trials, of the late-juvenile of early-adolescent state which Sologub views as the most complex and crucial
period in the development of human consciousness.
⁷
Whatever else they may accomplish, the best examples of the writer’s short prose make abundantly clear the inseparability
of Sologub’s interest in the psychic world of children from his broader philosophical concerns. The terrible anguish of a
youngster on the border of two conflicting states—sexual innocence and sexual maturity—inevitably indicates a more general
sense of ontological malaise which results from life’s “fatal contradictions.”

Despite the undeniable mixture of abstract and intimate elements in Sologub’s child-centred stories, it would be inaccurate
to argue the predominance of an emotional perspective in them.
⁸
Nor, for that matter, do these sketches of childhood provide a thoroughly satisfactory literary portrayal of this perspective.
The Soviet critic M. Dikman views Sologub as the creator of a fictional world where “that which was earlier a state, a psychological
situation, becomes a philosophical position, a myth.”
⁹
Only A. Gornfeld’s observation of Sologub’s somewhat depersonalized embodiment of the child in his short fiction suggests
the imbalance which exists between these psychological and philosophical positions. “It is impossible,” he writes, “to say
that in [Sologub’s children] there exist many different images: all of them in essence are fused into one image.”
¹⁰
And his further contention that “the child” is not so much a person as he is an object of fate—a necessary conclusion of
[Sologub’s] conception of life,”
¹¹
rightly emphasizes the writer’s intent to invoke the child in a manner which resembles Ivan Karamazov’s strategic presentation
of children.

Only when Sologub turns to the novel—namely to
The Petty Demon—do
we find a considerably more personal and specifically psychological treatment of the child. Nowhere in Sologub is the child’s
inner chaos better understood and more subtly depicted, nor indeed the psychological and metaphysical levels more effectively
integrated, than in this, his most highly regarded fictional work.
¹²
This may partially be explained by the difference in genre, but Sologub’s failure to delve as elaborately into the peculiar
realm of the young psyche in his other novels suggests that he is guided here by more than formal considerations alone. Indeed,
The Petty Demon
occupies a singular position in Sologub’s
oeuvre
. No other of his works discusses so candidly and convincingly the philosophical basis of what is to Sologub, life’s tragic
sense. That this same work should contain the writer’s frankest investigation of complex youthful emotions is more than coincidental.
Sologub’s honesty about the psychological world of children reflects, and goes hand in hand with, his openness in revealing
a skeptical and disquieting vision of reality.

Seen against the background of his predecessors in the stories, the central child figure of
The Petty Demon
, Sasha Pylnikov, alerts us to a critical stage in Sologub’s thought and helps us to appreciate the unique quality which characterizes
this novel. Most of the stories which contain children were written before 1905, the year that Sologub published
The Petty Demon
in the periodical
Questions of Life
. Up until this time, Sologub’s work reflects the writer’s growing pessimism, which in many respects
The Petty Demon
, and Sasha in particular, epitomize. But after 1905 (and certainly by 1907, when
The Petty
Demon appeared in a separate edition) Sologub’s writing assumes a more upbeat mood, the seeds of whish can be found already
in Sasha’s role in the novel. There is, admittedly, something contradictory and ambiguous about the child’s combination of
fear and faith on Sologub’s part, but it is just this unsettling mixture which constitutes the novel’s special quality.
The
Petty Demon
—if we cast our glance most fixedly on its central child character-stands on the brink of two fairly distinct psycho-philosophical
states of mind in Sologub.

Of all Sologub’s children, Sasha Pylnikov, the gymnasium student who becomes the object of Lyudmila’s amorous advances, is
the most genuinely three-dimensional. His characterization exemplifies the writer’s most artistically original and psychologically
sophisticated portrayal of the confusion, ambivalence and emotional turmoil which typify the transition from boyhood to manhood.
Lyudmila’s observation that “the best age for a boy is fourteen-fifteen, he can still do nothing and doesn’t really understand,
yet he senses everything, absolutely everything,”
¹³
undoubtedly echoes Sologub’s own sentiments. His use of pre-pubescent children betrays an enjoyment of those tense climactic
moments before change is finally affected and transition ultimately achieved. The frequent appearance of the child-adolescent
in Sologub’s fiction demonstrates the author’s delectation in the perfect mixture of, and balance between, the two starkly
diametrical opposites which this unique state represents, however brief it may be. Sologub’s penchant for capturing the heightened
moment, when the Dostoevskian combination of psychological and metaphysical antipodes is at its peak, seems best gratified
in the incipient struggle between child-like and adult forces within the newly awakened youth.
¹⁴
Sologub was not a writer who specialized in scenes charged with dramatic tension and excitement, yet where such moments do
exist, they are most likely to involve children. Sasha Pylnikov represents the fullest realization of this element of drama
in Sologub’s prose.

The significant interrelation of levels in The Petty Demon can be appreciated when one realizes that Sasha’s movement from
a condition of passive innocence to a state of heightened sexual awareness occurs against the background of Peredonov’s and
Lyudmila’s peculiar worlds. The specifically personal struggle within a child between conflicting temptations toward adult
sin and boyhood purity is indivisibly linked to a more general opposition between life’s vulgarity and cruelty and some transcendent
ideal which must be found to counteract it. Peredonov symbolizes the former, Lyudmila and her “legend in creation” the latter.
The Sasha episode of The Petty Demon best exemplifies Dikman’s observance of co-existing psychological and metaphysical planes
in Sologub. “Philosophical reflections about the world and about man,” she writes, “are inseparable from the spiritual world
of Sologub’s lyrical hero … and they become a personal, intimate theme.”
¹⁵
Indeed, in terms of the writer’s use of the child, The Petty Demon most fully realizes an objective which Sologub would later
state in his preface to the collection of verse, The Fiery Circle (1908): “I want the intimate to become the universal.” The
psycholgical polarities in the individual child reflect and repeat the metaphysical dualities of the world. Sasha’s internal
drama, his conflict, to use the poet Blake’s terms, between innocence and experience, is externalized in the collision between
Lyudmila’s spiritual realm of dream, poetry and the lyrical mood and Peredonov’s material world of byt and banality.
¹⁶
On a deeper level, Sologub conceives the child’s emotional disjuncture as no less than the contrast between the ideal and
the real, the ability of beauty to maintain its integrity, or to exist at all, in the face of earthly powers.

The distinction between “moment” and “movement” defines the fundamental difference in Sologub’s portrayal of the major child-figure
in
The Petty Demon
. In his short stories, Sologub chooses to click the shutter, as it were, on the precise instant of the young self’s recognition
of psychological transition, preferring to concentrate on the atmosphere of fright which it induces. The ultimate strength
of many a child-centered story in Sologub lies less in its success as a psychological character-study than in its effect as
a mood piece. In
The Petty Demon
, however, Sologub departs from this somewhat detached and abstract approach, exemplifying rather than symbolizing the process
of “spring’s awakening.”
¹⁷
The writer concentrates on the
development
of a character as he experiences the awareness of his own sexual maturity and as he undergoes the conflicting emotions resulting
from this self-discovery. In switching his narrative focus onto Sasha Pylnikov, Sologub not only presents a more personalized
portrait of childhood by delving into the inner workings of the blossoming adolescent’s mind; he also acknowledges the complexity
of the child’s emotional world as well as the integrity of his personality. Among the major. Russian writers, only Dostoevsky
before him had so extensively depicted the special psychological tensions of youth.
¹⁸
As V. Ilin has noted,

Sologub was impressed most of all by [Dostoevsky’s] astonishing and uncanny details devoted to children’s nightmares, tragedies
and defects. In this sense, Sologub must be considered as the successor of Dostoevsky, who was the first both to reveal this
new existential child’s world and to make it the subject of great literature.
¹⁹

The existential world of the child, which Ilin conjures up, is epitomized in
The Petty Demon
. Sasha represents Sologub’s attempt to have the child function on more than an abstract, symbolic level by assuming more
complex human characteristics as he experiences the concrete pain of inevitable personal growth.

In the characterization of Sasha, Sologub is concerned with a young boy’s gradual maturation, marked by the latter’s growing
consciousness of his own sensuality and physical attractiveness. Sologub traverses a broad range of sexual development in
this “raw youth” from the time that Sasha “still had never been curious to find out whether he appeared attractive or ugly
to people” (p. 247) until his wildly flirtatious behaviour as a geisha who, quite dexterous in sensual matters, “curtsied,
lifted her small fingers, giggled in a choked voice, waved her fan, tapped now one man and now another on the shoulder with
it” (p. 388). Beginning with his bashful kissing of Lyudmila’s elbow and proceeding to his considerably bolder contact with
other parts of her body, Sasha becomes more deeply involved with a young woman who rouses within him the first feelings of
passion and desire. The immediate uniqueness of this episode lies in its focusing upon the shameless dynamics of young love.
This is a subject which Sologub had never treated before, and one which, as we will observe, he handles with unquestionable
originality. Sologub subtly relates Sasha’s discomforting manipulation by Lyudmila and his awkward engagement in sensuous
games, his bitter-sweet reactions to his blossoming sexuality, and his troubled thoughts over “impossible dreams” and “contradictory
feelings.” Such scenes demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of the young adult’s psyche, years before Freudian theory
had penetrated widely into literature. The steady transformation of what initially are unclear stirrings and confused impulses
in Sasha into more precisely and better perceived sensual desires creates a convincing glimpse into the world of experience.