Petersburg / Edition 1

by Andrei Bely, Robert A Maguire, John E Malmstad

Overview

Andrei Bely's novel Petersburg is considered one of the four greatest prose masterpieces of the 20th century. In this new edition of the best-selling translation, the reader will have access to the translators' detailed commentary, which provides the necessary historical and literary context for understanding the novel, as well as a foreword by Olga Matich, acclaimed scholar of Russian literature.
Set in 1905 in St. Petersburg, a city in the throes of sociopolitical conflict, the novel follows university student Nikolai Apollonovich Ableukhov, who has gotten entangled with a revolutionary terrorist organization with plans to assassinate a government official–Nikolai's own father, Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov. With a sprawling cast of characters, set against a nightmarish city, it is all at once a historical, political, philosophical, and darkly comedic novel.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253202192
Publisher:	Indiana University Press
Publication date:	01/22/1979
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.98(d)

About the Author

Andrei Bely (1880–1934), born Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev, was a Russian novelist, poet, and literary critic. His other works include The Silver Dove and Kotik Letaev.

Robert A. Maguire was the Boris Bakhmeteff Professor Emeritus of Russian and Eastern European Studies at Columbia University. He was author of Exploring Gogol and Red Virgin Soil: Soviet Literature in the 1920's.

John E. Malmstad is Samuel Hazzard Cross Research Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. He is author of Andrey Bely: Spirit of Symbolism and Mikhail Kuzmin: A Life in Art.

Olga Matich is Professor Emerita of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Berkeley. She is editor of Petersburg/Petersburg: Novel and City 1900 – 1921 and author of Erotic Utopia: The Decadent Imagination in Russia's Fin de Siècle.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

in which an account is given of a certain worthy person, his mental games, and the ephemerality of being

It was a dreadful time, in truth, Of it still fresh the recollection ... Of it, my friends, I now for you Begin my comfortless narration. Lugubrious will be my tale ...

Pushkin

Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov

Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov was of venerable stock: he had Adam as his ancestor. But that is not the main thing: it is more important that one member of this venerable stock was Shem, progenitor of the Semitic, Hessitic, and red-skinned peoples.

Here let us make a transition to ancestors of an age not so remote.

Their place of residence was the Kirghiz-Kaisak Horde, whence, in the reign of the Empress Anna Ioannovna, Mirza Ab-Lai, the great-great-grandfather of the senator, valiantly entered the Russian service, having received, upon Christian baptism, the name Andrei and the sobriquet Ukhov. For brevity's sake, Ab-Lai-Ukhov was later changed to Ableukhov, plain and simple.

This was the great-great-grandfather who was the source of the stock.

* * *

A lackey in gray with gold braid was flicking the dust off the writing table with a feather duster. A cook's cap peeped through the open door.

"Looks like himself's already up...."

"He's rubbing himself down with eau de cologne, he'll be taking his coffee pretty soon...."

"This morning the fellow who brings the mail was saving there was a letter for the master all the way from Spain, with a Spanish stamp on it."

"I'm going to tell you something: you shouldn't stick your nose in other people's letters...."

The cook's head suddenly vanished. Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov proceeded into the study.

* * *

A pencil lying on the table struck the attention of Apollon Apollonovich. Apollon Apollonovich formed the intention: of imparting a sharpness of form to the pencil point. He quickly walked up to the writing table and snatched ... a paperweight, which he long turned this way and that, deep in thought.

His abstraction stemmed from the fact that at this instant a profound thought dawned on him, and straightaway, at this inopportune time, it unfolded into a fleeting thought train.

Apollon Apollonovich quickly began jotting down this unfolded thought train. Having jotted down the train, he thought: "Now it's time for the office." And he passed into the dining room to partake of his coffee.

By way of preliminaries, he undertook an insistent questioning of the old valet.

"Is Nikolai Apollonovich up yet?"

"No indeed, sir, he's not up yet...."

Apollon Apollonovich rubbed the bridge of his nose in dissatisfaction:

"Er ... tell me: when, tell me, when does Nikolai Apollonovich, so to speak...."

And, immediately, without awaiting an answer, he looked at the clock and proceeded to his coffee.

It was precisely half past nine.

Every morning the senator inquired about the times of his awakening. And every morning he made a face.

Nikolai Apollonovich was the senator's son.

In a Word, He Was Head of a Government Institution ...

What, then, was the social position of the person who has arisen here from non-being?

I think the question is rather out of place: Ableukhov was known by all Russia for the eminent expansiveness of the speeches that he delivered. These speeches noiselessly effused certain poisons, as a result of which the proposals of an opposing camp were rejected in the appropriate place. With Ableukhov's installation in a responsible position, the Ninth Department became inactive. With this particular Department Apollon Apollonovich did dogged battle, both through official papers and, where necessary, through speeches, in an effort to promote the import of American haybalers into Russia. (The Ninth Department did not favor their import.)

Apollon Apollonovich was head of a Government Institution. Oh, uhhh, what was its name?

Were one to compare the wizened and utterly unprepossessing little figure of my elder statesman with the immeasurable immensity of the mechanisms managed by him, one might perhaps lapse into naive astonishment for quite some time. But then, after all, absolutely everyone was astonished at the explosion of the mental forces which poured forth from this particular cranium in defiance of all Russia.

My senator had just turned sixty-eight. And his pallid face recalled a gray paperweight (in a moment of triumph), and papier-mâché (in an hour of leisure). The stony senatorial eyes, surrounded by blackish green hollows, looked more blue and more immense in moments of fatigue.

On our part let us add: Apollon Apollonovich was not in the least agitated when he contemplated his ears, green all over and enlarged to immense size, against the bloody background of a Russia in flames. Thus had he recently been portrayed on the title page of a gutter rag, one of those trashy humor rags put out by the kikes, whose bloody covers in those days were spawned with staggering swiftness on prospects swarming with people....

Northeast

In the oak dining room the wall cuckoo clock had already cuckooed. Apollon Apollonovich had sat down before his porcelain cup and was breaking off warm crusts of bread. Over coffee — even then, even then — he would have his little joke:

"Who is the most respected of them all, Semyonych?"

"I suppose, Apollon Apollonovich, that the most respected of them all is an Actual Privy Councilor."

Apollon Apollonovich smiled with his lips only:

"You suppose incorrectly: a chimney sweep ...

The valet already knew the way the riddle ended, but he kept quiet about it.

"But why, if I may venture to ask?"

"People make way for an Actual Privy Councilor, Semyonych...."

"I suppose that's so...."

"A chimney sweep. ... Even an Actual Privy Councilor will make way for him: a chimney sweep can get you all dirty."

"So that's what it is, sir."

"Yes, precisely. Except that there is an even more respected occupation...."

And then and there he added:

"A cesspool cleaner ..."

"Ugh ..."

And a gulp of coffee.

"Well, Apollon Apollonovich, there were times when Anna Petrovna ..."

But with the word "Anna Petrovna" the gray-haired valet stopped short.

* * *

"The gray coat, sir?"

"Yes ..."

"And the gloves, sir?"

"Let me have the suede gloves...."

"Kindly wait a moment, sir. Your Excellency, your gloves are in the chiffonier: Shelf B — northwest."

Only once had Apollon Apollonovich taken note of the trivia of life: he had made an audit of the household inventory. The inventory was registered in proper order and a nomenclature for all the shelves, large and small, was established: there appeared shelves labelled with the Latin letters A, B, C. And the four corners of each shelf received the designation of the four corners of the earth.

Putting away his spectacles, Apollon Apollonovich would note in the register, in a fine, minute hand: spectacles, shelf B and NE, that is, northeast. As for the valet, he was given a copy of the register.

* * *

In the lacquered house the storms of life flowed noiselessly on; here, nonetheless, the storms of life did flow destructively on.

A long-legged bronze rose up from the table. The lampshade did not glow in a delicately decorated violet-rose color (our age has lost the secret of this tint): the glass had darkened with time, and so had the delicate painting thereon.

From all sides golden pier glasses swallowed the drawing room in greenish mirror surfaces. They were crowned by the wings of cute little golden-cheeked cupids. A small mother-of-pearl table glittered.

Apollon Apollonovich flung open the door, resting his hand on the faceted, cut-glass knob. His step tapped along the gleaming panels of parquetry. From all sides leaped cabinets with porcelain baubles. They had brought these bibelots from Venice, he and Anna Petrovna, some thirty years earlier. The remembrance of the misty lagoon, the gondola, and an aria sobbing in the distance flashed inappropriately through the senator's head.

He immediately shifted his eyes to the grand piano.

There, from the yellow lacquered lid, sparkled tiny leaves of bronze incrustation. And again (oh, tiresome memory!) Apollon Apollonovich recalled: a white Petersburg night; in the windows the racing river; and the motionless moon; and the thunder of a Chopin roulade: the memory that Anna Petrovna now and then used to play Chopin (never Schumann). ...

Tiny leaves of incrustation — mother-of-pearl and bronze — sparkled on the little boxes and on the little shelves that stood out from the walls. Apollon Apollonovich seated himself in an Empire armchair, where tiny garlands curled their way over the pale azure satin of the seat. And from a small Chinese tray his hand seized a packet of letters, still sealed. His bald head inclined over the envelopes.

And the envelopes were torn open one after the other: an ordinary one delivered by mail, with the stamp stuck on askew:

"I see, I see, fine ...

"A petition ...

"A petition, another petition...."

In due time, later, sometime or other ...

An envelope of heavy paper, and with a monogram, with a seal on the wax.

"Hmmm ... Count W. ... What's this?

"Hmmm...."

Count W. was head of the Ninth Department.

Next, a tiny pale pink envelope. The senator's hand trembled; he recognized this script. He scrutinized the Spanish stamp, but did not unseal the envelope.

"But wasn't the money sent?

"The money will be sent!!!"

And Apollon Apollonovich, thinking it was a pencil, extracted an ivory nailbrush from his waistcoat and was preparing to make a notation with it....

"?"

"The carriage is here, sir."

Apollon Apollonovich raised his bald head and departed from the room.

* * *

Over the grand piano hung a reduced copy of David's "Distribution des aigles par Napoléon Premier."

The picture represented the imperious Emperor in laurel wreath and ermine-trimmed royal mantle.

Cold was the magnificence of the drawing room, because of the total absence of rugs. The parquetry gleamed. Had the sun illumined it for even an instant, one would have squinted involuntarily.

But having things cold was elevated into a principle by Senator Ableukhov.

It left its imprint on the master of the house, on the statues, on the servants, even on the dark brindle bulldog, who made his residence somewhere in the vicinity of the kitchen. In this house everyone felt ill at ease, deferring to the parquetry, pictures, and statues, smiling, ill at ease, and holding their tongues. Everyone bowed and scraped and wrung cold hands in an access of sterile obsequiousness.

With the departure of Anna Petrovna the drawing room grew still, the piano lid was lowered; no more the thunder of roulades.

* * *

When Apollon Apollonovich descended to the vestibule, his gray-haired valet, descending to the vestibule as well, kept glancing at the venerable ears, while gripping a snuffbox, the Minister's gift.

Apollon Apollonovich stopped on the staircase.

Apollon Apollonovich searched for the right word:

"What has, well, you know who, been up to ... been up to?"

"?"

"Nikolai Apollonovich."

"He's getting along just fine."

"And what else?"

"It's his pleasure to shut himself up in his room and read books."

"And read books?"

"He walks around his rooms, sir."

"Walks around? And? How so?"

"In a dressing gown, sir."

"I see. Go on."

"Yesterday he was waiting for ..."

"Whom?"

"A costumer."

"What do you mean, a costumer?"

"A costumer, sir."

* * *

Apollon Apollonovich rubbed the bridge of his nose. His face lit up and suddenly became senile.

"Mmm. Did you ever have a harrowing experience?"

"?"

"But you were brought up on a farm, weren't you? So you must have had a harrow."

"Yes, sir, my parents had one."

"There, you see, and you didn't even know."

The Carriage Flew into the Fog

An icy drizzle sprayed streets and prospects, sidewalks and roofs.

It sprayed pedestrians and rewarded them with the grippe. Along with the fine dust of rain, influenza and grippe crawled under the raised collars of a schoolboy, a student, a clerk, an officer, a shady type. The shady type cast a dismal eye about him. He looked at the prospect. He circulated, without the slightest murmur, into an infinity of prospects — in a stream of others exactly like him — amidst the flight and din, listening to the voice of automobile roulades.

And — he stumbled on the embankment, where everything came to an end: the voice of the roulades and the shady type himself.

From far, far away, as though farther off than they should have been, the islands sank and cowered in fright; and the buildings cowered; it seemed that the waters would sink and that at that instant the depths, the greenish murk would surge over them. And over this greenish murk the Nikolaevsky Bridge thundered and trembled in the fog.

On this sullen morning the doors of a yellow house flew open. The windows of the house gave onto the Neva. And a gold-braided lackey rushed to beckon the coachman. Gray horses bounded forward and drew up a carriage on which was depicted a coat of arms: a unicorn goring a knight.

A jaunty police officer passing by the carriage porch gave a stupid look and snapped to attention when Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov, in a gray coat and a tall black top hat, with a stony face resembling a paperweight, ran rapidly out of the entryway and still more rapidly ran onto the footboard of the carriage, drawing on a black suede glove as he ran.

Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov cast a momentary, perplexed glance at the police officer, the carriage, the coachman, the great black bridge, the expanse of the Neva, where the foggy, many-chimneyed distances were so wanly etched, and whence Vasilievsky Island looked back at him in fright.

The lackey in gray hastily slammed the carriage door. The carriage flew headlong into the fog; and the police officer who had happened by glanced over his shoulder into the dingy fog, where the carriage had flown headlong.

He sighed and moved on. The lackey looked there too: at the expanse of the Neva, where the foggy, many-chimneyed distances were so wanly etched, and whence Vasilievsky Island looked back at him in fright.

Here, at the very beginning, I must break the thread of my narrative, in order to introduce the reader to the scene of action of a certain drama.

Squares, Parallelepipeds, Cubes

There, where nothing but a foggy damp hung suspended, at first appeared the dull outline, then descended from heaven to earth the dingy, blackish gray St. Isaac's Cathedral: at first appeared the outline and then the full shape of the equestrian monument of Emperor Nicholas I. At its base the shaggy hat of a Nicholas grenadier thrust out of the fog.

The carriage was flying toward Nevsky Prospect.

Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov was gently rocking on the satin seat cushions. He was cut off from the scum of the streets by four perpendicular walls. Thus he was isolated from people and from the red covers of the damp trashy rags on sale right there at this intersection.

Proportionality and symmetry soothed the senator's nerves, which had been irritated both by the irregularity of his domestic life and by the futile rotation of our wheel of state.

His tastes were distinguished by their harmonious simplicity.

Most of all he loved the rectilineal prospect; this prospect reminded him of the flow of time between the two points of life.

There the houses merged cubelike into a regular, five-story row. This row differed from the line of life: for many a wearer of diamond-studded decorations, as for so many other dignitaries, the middle of life's road had proven to be the termination of life's journey.

Inspiration took possession of the senator's soul whenever the lacquered cube cut along the line of the Nevsky: there the numeration of the houses was visible. And the circulation went on. There, from there, on clear days, from far, far away, came the blinding blaze of the gold needle, the clouds, the crimson ray of the sunset. There, from there, on foggy days — nothing, no one.

And what was there were lines: the Neva and the islands. Probably in those distant days, when out of the mossy marshes rose high roofs and masts and spires, piercing the dank greenish fog in jags — — on his shadowy sails the Flying Dutchman winged his way toward Petersburg from there, from the leaden expanses of the Baltic and German Seas, in order here to erect, by delusion, his misty lands and to give the name of islands to the wave of onrushing clouds.

Apollon Apollonovich did not like the islands: the population there was industrial and coarse. There the many-thousand human swarm shuffled in the morning to the many-chimneyed factories. The inhabitants of the islands are reckoned among the population of the Empire; the general census has been introduced among them as well.

Apollon Apollonovich did not wish to think further. The islands must be crushed! Riveted with the iron of the enormous bridge, skewered by the arrows of the prospects....

While gazing dreamily into that illimitability of mists, the statesman suddenly expanded out of the black cube of the carriage in all directions and soared above it. And he wanted the carriage to fly forward, the prospects to fly to meet him — prospect after prospect, so that the entire spherical surface of the planet should be embraced, as in serpent coils, by blackish gray cubes of houses; so that all the earth, crushed by prospects, in its lineal cosmic flight should intersect, with its rectilineal principle, unembraceable infinity; so that the network of parallel prospects, intersected by a network of prospects, should expand into the abysses of the universe in planes of squares and cubes: one square per "solid citizen," so that....

(Continues…)

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Table of Contents

Foreword ix

Translators' Introduction xxv

A Note on Text and Translation xli

Acknowledgments xlvii

Prologue 1

Chapter the First In which an account is given of a certain worthy person, his mental games, and the ephemerality of being 3

Chapter the Second In which an account is given of a certain rendezvous, fraught with consequences 39

Chapter the Third In which is described how Nikolai Apollonovich Ableukhov makes a fool of himself and his venture 73

Chapter the Four In which the line of the narrative is broken 101

Chapter the Five In which an account is given of the little fellow with the wart by his nose and of the sardine tin with horrible contents 147

Chapter the Sixth In which are related the events of a gray little day 176

Chapter the Seventh Or, the events of a gray little day go on and on 227

Chapter the Eighth And last 277

Epilogue 305

Notes 309

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

One of the four most important works of twentieth century literature. —Vladimir Nabokov

Editorial Reviews

" . . . the most accurate of all the available translations, and certainly the one that facilitates the greatest understanding of the original work."—Michael R. Katz, Middlebury College

"" . . . a translation that captures Bely's idiosyncratic language and the rhythm of his prose, and, without doing violence to English, conveys not only the literal meaning of the Russian but also its echoes and implications.""—The New York Review of Books

"" . . . a jewel-cutter's showcase.""—Kirkus Reviews

"" . . . the most important, most influential and most perfectly realized Russian novel written in the 20th century.""—The New York Times Book Review

""This translation of Petersburg finally makes it possible to recognize Andrei Bely's great novel of 1913 as a crucial Russian instance of European modernist fiction.""—Inquiry

"The most important, most influential and most perfectly realized Russian novel written in the 20th century."—The New York Times Book Review

"This translation of Petersburg finally makes it possible to recognize Andrei Bely's great novel of 1913 as a crucial Russian instance of European modernist fiction."—Inquiry

"All people who go in for the B's–Breckett, Brecht, Buñuel–better get hold of Bely. He came first, and he's still the best."—Washington Post Book World

"The most accurate of all the available translations, and certainly the one that facilitates the greatest understanding of the original work."—Michael R. Katz, Middlebury College

"A translation that captures Bely's idiosyncratic language and the rhythm of his prose, and without doing violence to English, conveys not only the literal meaning of the Russian but also its echoes and implications."—The New York Review of Books

"A jewel-cutter's showcase."—Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

" . . . the most important, most influential and most perfectly realized Russian novel written in the 20th century."

The New York Times Book Review

" . . . a translation that captures Bely's idiosyncratic language and the rhythm of his prose, and, without doing violence to English, conveys not only the literal meaning of the Russian but also its echoes and implications."

The New York Review of Books

"This translation of Petersburg finally makes it possible to recognize Andrei Bely's great novel of 1913 as a crucial Russian instance of European modernist fiction."

Inquiry

" . . . the most accurate of all the available translations, and certainly the one that facilitates the greatest understanding of the original work."

Michael R. Katz

All people who go in for the B's–Breckett, Brecht, Buñuel–better get hold of Bely. He came first, and he's still the best.

Washington Post Book World

" . . . the most accurate of all the available translations, and certainly the one that facilitates the greatest understanding of the original work."

Michael R. Katz]]>