Андрей Белый: автобиографизм и биографические практики - [83]

«Peterburg, Peterburg!

Osaždajas’ tumanom, i menja ty presledoval prazdnoju mozgovoju igroj: ty – mučitel’ žestokoserdyj; ty – nepokornyj prizrak; ty, byvalo, goda na menja napadal; begal ja na tvoich užasnych prospektach i s razbega vzletal na čugunnyj tot most, načinavšijsja s kraja zemnogo, čtob vesti v beskrajnjuju dal’; za Nevoj, v potusvetnoj, zelenoj tam dali – povosstali prizraki ostrovov i domov, obol’ščaja tščetnoj nadeždoju, čto tot kraj est’ dejstvitel’nost’ i čto on – ne vojuščaja beskrajnost’, kotoraja vygonjaet na peterburgskuju ulicu blednyj dym oblakov».[668]

Thus here the narrator seems to be re-experiencing Evgenij’s flight. This city is a cruel chimera that haunts its inhabitants with nocturnal visions and drives them insane.

In chapter six, once again in the moonlit night, the statue charges out into the streets on its way to Dudkin, raising a terrible din as it goes. Belyj orchestrates this passage with Puškin’s onomatopoeia, especially variations on «grom» and «grochot», as the horseman thunders his way up the stairs to the bomb thrower’s lonely garret. There in a downright apocalyptic experience, Dudkin falls at his feet and addresses him as «Master». Having realized the destructive essence of the revolution, he is now forgiven. He chooses to make common cause with the city’s founder, who seems to grow into Russia’s historical Destiny. The horseman pours his boiling bronze into Dudkin’s veins and gives him the strength to murder Lippančenko, the instigator of the terror, in the following, penultimate chapter. His will to revolt is broken. As he sits astride the bloody corpse of the terrorist leader, like Evgenij, he appears to have completely lost his mind.[669]

«Peterburg» has two heroes – the potential parricide Nikolaj Ableuchov on the mainland side, and Dudkin from the islands. Nikolaj’s attempted assassination comes to nothing, and he falls ill with typhoid fever but survives – by emigrating. In the epilogue he resurrects in a different guise far from the diseased city. Dudkin, however, perishes. Because he remains in Petersburg, he can only follow Evgenij’s example. Russia gives birth to madness. The deeper meaning of the epigraph from Puškin to chapter four – «Ne daj mne Bog sojti s uma…»[670] – becomes apparent in the middle of the novel – insanity is ever lurking in the tsar’s capital as both a threat and mental liberation.

2

Belyj’s novel has an autobiographical background. As is clear from his memoirs, his narrator’s apostrophe is close to what he himself experienced in Petersburg in the wake of 1905 – a summary of the failure of Symbolism in which the Symbolists are disguised as terrorists. It is as though Belyj himself stepped into «Mednyj vsadnik» as he worked on Peterburg. His recurrent metaphors of flight from a Russia ensnared in the toils of evil in the period during which he conceived and completed the novel in 1910–1913 suggest an identification with Evgenij’s panicky attempt to escape.

In November 1910 Belyj delivered a lecture at the Religious-Philosophical Society in Moscow entitled «Tragedija tvorčestva u Dostoevskogo» that was both his commentary on the crisis of Symbolism and the starting point for his novel. In his talk he interprets Dostoevskij’s works in the light of the aspiration of the great Russian writers in general to integrate art and life. By way of introduction he comments on Lev Tolstoj’s flight just a few days before from Jasnaja Poljana in an attempt to finally bring his life and ideas into harmony. By this act Tolstoj seemed to be pointing to a resolution of the creative conflict that had overpowered Dostoevskij.[671]

Belyj explains that Dostoevskij rushed into death in the middle of his work on «Brat’ja Karamazovy». The Karamazov essence had frightened him, and he «ubegaet v užase».[672] Thus it was as though at the end of his life he had been transformed into an anxiety-ridden Evgenij fleeing from his oppressor. In Belyj’s view this was Symbolism’s own problem as well in the national dimension. What the movement needed was to break away from the Russian morass and seek a new way of life.

Only a few weeks later, in December 1910, Belyj took flight himself in what his memoirs repeatedly describe as «begstvo».[673] Accompanied by Asja Turgeneva, he set off for foreign cultures: Tunisia, Egypt, and Palestine. The trip climaxed in his experiences in March 1911 at the foot of the Sphinx and the pyramids at Giza outside Cairo. Here the emerging idea behind the novel acquired further contours, for the massive piles of stone he encountered were later incorporated into the cityscape of «Peterburg».

The mighty Sphinx and its shifting expressions seemed to take on certain features of the Bronze Horseman. In «Egipet», an article written later that year just before he began working on «Peterburg»,[674] Belyj summarized his impressions, noting that the Sphinx made him feel the proximity of «terror» and «provocation» – the emerging theme of the novel. Like Dudkin, he was able to look into the cosmic dimension and sense how from its very beginning down through evolution, humanity had fled in terror: «My ubegali ot prarodimogo užasa i togda, kogda byli komočkami slizi; dalee ubegali my, stavši podobiem červej, a kogda my stali obez’janami, bezdna legla meždu nami i