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384 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1913
Solitary street lamps were metamorphosed into sea creatures with prismatic spines”
And now, as he looked pensively into that boundlessness of mists, the man of state suddenly expanded out of the black cube in all directions and soared above it; and he desired that the carriage should fly forward, that the prospects should fly towards him – prospect after prospect, that the whole spherical surface of the planet should be gripped by the blackish-grey cubes of the houses as by serpentine coils; that the whole of the earth squeezed by prospects should intersect the immensity in linear cosmic flight with rectilinear law…
He runs and hears as if there were,
Just behind him, the peals of thunder,
Of the hard-ringing hoofs’ reminders, –
A race the empty square across,
Upon the pavement, fiercely tossed;
And by the moon, that palled lighter,
Having stretched his hand over roofs,
The Brazen Horseman rides him after –
On his steed of the ringing hoofs.
And all the night the madman, poor,
Where’er he might direct his steps,
Aft him the Bronze Horseman, for sure,
Keeps on the heavy-treading race.
Alexander Pushkin
Petersburg is a dream
“Petersburg does not exist. It merely seems to exist.”
“O Russian people, Russian people! Do not let the the crowds of slippery shadows come over from the islands!” [p.30]
“O Russian people, Russian people!
Do not let the crowds of fitful shadows come over from the island.” [p.36]
Petersburg, Petersburg!
Sediment of mist, you have pursued me too with idle cerebral play: you are a cruel-hearted tormenter; you are a restless ghost; for years you used to assail me; I would run along your terrible Prospects and my impetus would carry me up on to that cast-iron bridge which starts from the edge of the world and leads to the limitless distance; beyond the Neva, in the green distance of the other world—the ghosts of islands and houses rose, seducing me with the vain hope that that land was real and not—a howling endlessness that drives the pale smoke of clouds out on to the Petersburg streets.
This shadow arose by chance in Senator Ableukhov’s consciousness, receiving there its ephemeral existence; but Apollon Apollonovisch’s consciousness is a shadow consciousness, because he too is possessed of ephemeral existence, being the product of the author’s imagination: needless, idle cerebral play.And Petersburg is no too-serious text, the parallels between Bely and Dostoyevsky's respective novels are done so to parodic effect. While Raskolnikov is a thinker, his crime is only vaguely planned, and the the murder of Lizaveta surprises even himself; Nikolai's crime is yet to be committed, he has killed no one, but is burdened with an almost absurd guilt, a guilt for uncommitted crime which remains avoidable by simple inaction. Further parody is drawn from the too-obvious parody on Freud's Oedipus Complex. Frued, a contemporary of Bely, published his Three Essays on Sexuality, wherein he laid down much of the foundation for his Oedipal theory, in 1905 - curiously the same year which begins Petersburg. The geographically-distant mother whom Nikolai seems to worship, the emotionally-distant father whom Nikolai seems to hate, and Nikolai's apparent love-aversion and coy-distancing tactics in his relationship with Sofya are laughable, and make our guilt-racked protagonist the very red domino (clown) as which he disguises himself.