Андрей Белый: автобиографизм и биографические практики - [90]

The first beast is the gorilla, who was already in the previous two novels, in which he was evoked almost as a fatal harbinger of fate. In «The Baptized Chinaman» Kotik imagined himself as a bloodthirsty gorilla because of the crime he committed on his parents. In «The Moscow Eccentric» the gorilla appears on one occasion, i.e. when the fierce Mandro is embodied in him. In «Moscow in Jeopardy» it’s the hirsute occultist and demonologist Pchač (168 MJ), who Lizaša meets in the home of Madame Evigkajten and behind whom, as came out in «The Moscow Eccentric», is hidden Mandro himself (ME 227). Mandro is a human being deprived of every human value for committing one of the three crimes against humanity as mentioned by Aristotle, i.e. incest. The gorilla is present elsewhere in the novel, as a symbol of age, cruelty, of the caves (MJ 228, 237). Its image and its meaning are strengthened by the presence of other primates, e.g. the baboon and the gibbon (MJ 233), which are evoked in a sort of evil Sabbath when Mandro, thinking about the fact that men of his time were living just like gorillas, baboons and gibbons of ancient times, mimics the nauseating acts done to his daughter.

The octopus is the second beast which symbolizes terror. It had not appeared in previous novels, while here embodies the fear emanating from the hypostasis of Mandro, i.e. in the characters whose names are puns (Dorman, Ordman, Droman, Mrodan), or Dr. Donner: «Gibel’ gibnuvšego mira o Donnere <…>, groznaja fantasmagorija <…>, imaginacija blizjašejsja social’noj katastrofy» (MJ 176). It is his reflection that appears when Mandro looks in the mirror.

The effect of crowding of wild and disturbing beasts in «Moscow in Jeopardy» is strengthened by the presence of «monsters» scattered throughout the novel. While in «The Moscow Eccentric» the expression «monster» («urodeč») is used only twice and in both cases it is used by Lizaša to Mitja, the unfaithful son of Korobkin (ME 80, 231), in some places in «Moscow in Jeopardy» Belyj names more generally the «freaks of nature» («urody prirody», MJ 85, 122, 124, 144, 163, 209, 243), an expression which mainly refers to the hunchback Višnjakov and to the dwarf Jaša Kaval’kas, servants of Mandro’s, and to the monstrous giants of Easter Island. They are all that remains of an ancient civilization disappeared together with the island under the sea, a threat («podzemnyj udar») which, the author declares, now affects the European capitals which, dissolute and abandoned to the excesses of the foxtrot, could disappear, swallowed up by giant cracks in the ground.

Not even the only prerogative of Korobkin which remained unchanged in the two previous novels, i.e. the continuous comparison with the dog Tomočka, remains immune to the advancement of terror. Korobkin looks like the dog in his poses and some behaviours, but the weakness and tenderness which in «The Baptized Chinaman» were linked to his father are no longer mentioned. Sometimes the comparison is not made explicitly by use of the word «dog» («pes», «sobaka») as happened in «The Moscow Eccentric», but the comparison becomes evident when Korobkin instead of articulating words «barks» and «howls» (MJ 70, 72, 113, 133, 156). Korobkin no longer looks just like a dog, but has literally become one. He thus reveals the interior feral soul which recalls the «yellow threat» flowing in the veins of Apollon Apollonovič in «Peterburg» and which could be guessed using Belyj’s technique of scattering «clues» throughout the novel. This happens also in «The Baptized Chinaman» when his father’s look is now that of a distracted dog (BC 8) or that of a bloodhound (BC 59).

Another element that makes the dog shift to the sphere of terror develops alongside the two novels of the series «Moscow». In «The Moscow Eccentric» a square is generically named the «Square of the dogs» (Sobač’ja ploščad’ka). It is close to the square of calves, «Teljač’ja ploščadka» (ME 175). Korobkin’s antagonist (the Professor Zadopjatov), who has an affair with the wife of his colleague and therefore represents a danger, lives there. The square’s name is evoked again in «Moscow in Jeopardy» at a moment that is crucial for the narrative structure of the text: the author steps in and speaks directly, calling himself «I, the author of the novel “Moscow”» («Ja, avtor romana “Moskva”», MJ 178). He claims not to be omniscient and not to know some aspects of the world that he described and about which, as he says, he collected a lot of information. He does not know who is the mysterious character willing to help Mandro leave the country and therefore take his «mandraščina» around the world, but is aware of the fact that he lives in Sobač’ja ploščad’ (MJ 179).

The comparison between the three novels allows highlighting the evolution of Belyj’s narrative technique. The description of the characters taken from his own biography is different in the three texts. In «The Baptized Chinaman» they are presented in a realistic and reliable way, despite the alterations due to literary representation. According to Philippe Gasparini’s theory, the work can be considered an autobiographical novel whose elements are grouped into two categories: the first relates to the explicit elements, such as the identity of the protagonist (which can be traced through extratextual analysis), the paratext, the intertext and the metatext; the second is related to the narrative structures and the category of time.