The apocalyptic symbolism of Andrej Belyj 9783111396804, 9783111034256

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SLAVISTIC PRINTINGS AND REPRINTINGS edited by C. H. V A N S C H O O N E V E L D Indiana University

274

A N D R E J BELYJ (1880-1934)

THE APOCALYPTIC SYMBOLISM OF ANDREJ BELYJ by S A M U E L D. C I O R A N McMaster University Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

1973

MOUTON THE HAGUE · PARIS

© Copyright 1973 in The Netherlands Mouton & Co. N.V., Publishers, The Hague No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers

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For Sharon

PREFACE

Of all the Russian symbolists, Andrej Belyj offers the greatest challenge for interpretation. His problematic manipulation of enigmatic language, cosmic imagery and aesthetic theory presents untold problems for exegetical study. Yet, in spite of the differences, both aesthetic and ideological, which separate Belyj from others of his era, he shares with them the eschatological mentality of the pre-revolutionary period—the search for the new Adam in a resurrected spiritual paradise on earth. In a crisisridden age obsessed with religious symbolism, the Apocalypse, that most symbolic and mystical of biblical texts, had an enormous effect on both writers and thinkers alike. Belyj was among those who, like Vladimir Solov'ev, Dmitrij Merezkovskij, Yasilij Rozanov and Aleksandr Blok, borrowed freely from both the atmosphere and archetypes of this biblical source. Belyj's widespread use of these apocalyptic symbols was perfectly conscious. Inasmuch as he constantly employed them with an awareness of their content and sphere of significance, they must be viewed as extremely meaningful for both his personal philosophy and his aesthetic creativity. His acceptance of the two primordial principles of order and chaos, or good and evil, influenced him towards a patterning of dualistic concepts and directed him to that fertile source of archetypal opposites, the Book of Revelation. Thus, the pairing of Christ and Antichrist, Virgin and Harlot, Heaven and Abyss, deeply impressed itself upon his aesthetic mentality. In fact, the basic dramatic tension in his works arises from his unsuccessful attempt to reconcile this opposition. Belyj and Blok, in particular, experienced not only the historical apocalypse of their generation, but more poignantly than the others they were aware of their own individual or personal apocalypse. This personal feeling of being crucified at the intersection of two ages gave an undeniably eschatological turn to their work. Thus, Belyj's eschatological symbolism is not a mere stylistic feature of his work, but reflects the author's

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PREFACE

own essentially apocalyptic sensibility. In other words, there is an intimate connection between the sphere of collective ideas being expressed in the historical eschatology of the pre-revolutionary period and the psychological or emotional eschatology of the author himself. This is the essential content of the "family apocalypse" which Belyj as a child experiences in the tug-of-war between his parents, or which he imagines through his "cosmic memory" in Kotik Letaev. It also underlies his "flight" to the Steiner colony in Switzerland and his consequent crucifixion when he must leave his wife Asja and Dornach in order to report for military duty in Russia in the middle of the First World War. A genius of excess and exaggeration, a victim of paranoia and megalomania, Belyj must be judged not only within the flamboyant context of his literary generation, but within the magnitude of his sincere attempt to realize the original cosmic wholeness of the individual. By returning to the cosmic origins of man, he thought to remove that destructive opposition between Christ and Antichrist which had for so long divided him. But although his work sought to recapture this vision of universal oneness, it never proceeded, in reality, beyond the portrayal of destructive opposites. This book has no pretensions to being an exhaustive study of Andrej Belyj. In view of this symbolist's imposingly complex aesthetic output, not to mention, of course, the bewildering array of symbolist theories he formulated, such a task seems daunting. Instead, the purpose of the text is to disentangle and trace only one of the many complex elements in Belyj's work. However, it is my belief that the theme of apocalypse dominates this symbolist's creativity and perhaps holds the key to the writer as a whole.

TABLE O F C O N T E N T S

Preface

5

I. The Context II. The Family Apocalypse III. Towards a Theory of Symbolism IV. The Call of Eternity V. The Woman Clothed in the Sun VI. The Pastoral Apocalypse VII. The Urban Apocalypse VIII. The Eternal Return IX. In the Imitation of Christ

9 26 43 71 92 112 137 160 180

A Chronological Bibliography of the Works of Andrej Belyj A Selected Bibliography of Secondary Sources

196 201

Index

204

I THE

CONTEXT

Out of the welter of intellectual and literary currents sweeping across Russia at the turn of the present century one emerged dominant. Its avowed object was to remove the mask from the imperfect reality of this world by means of a transcendental vision of true reality, whether religious or philosophical, and with a growing impetus it reached out towards final questions and answers. Characterized by a conscious flirtation with both legitimate and illegitimate knowledge, it nonetheless reflected the sincere desire to delve into the final secrets and undo the seals of ultimate knowledge. The "god-seekers", as they were called, ran the gamut of esoteric lore, ranging from the Theosophy of H. P. Blavatsky and the Anthroposophy of Rudolf Steiner to the larger concerns of religion and paganism. Nor were occultism, alchemy, and outright black magic ignored in their search.1 In spite of the wide variety of sources, however, one theme became dramatically pronounced: apocalypse. The atmosphere of the time was such that people came irrevocably to the conclusion that their enigmatic period in history was unravelling itself beneath the sign of The Apocalypse. The "great search" in this most violent and hysterical period of Russian intellectual history rapidly assumed an eschatological nature. Since The Apocalypse increasingly became the standard text of reference for the time, it shaped the imaginative mentality to an enormous degree. Had a different work been more appropriate to the sphere of experience at the 1 The "occult novel", much in vogue at the turn of the century, invariably depicted the pursuit of personal salvation or revelation through the study and uses of the occult sciences. No fewer than four of the major writers of the decadent-symbolist persuasion were involved in the extensive presentation of alchemical processes, black magic, and esoteric pagan ritual: Smerf bogov (Julian Otstupnik) and Voskressie bogi (Leonardo da Vinci), of Dmitrij Merezkovskij's novel-trilogy, Xrist Antixrist; Valerij Brjusov's Ognennyj angel; Fedor Sologub's novel-trilogy, Tvorimaja legenda; and Andrej Belyj's own Serebrjanyj golitb'.

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THE CONTEXT

turn of the century, it would no doubt have exerted the same fascination. However, Andrej Belyj and Sergej Solov'ev, who came of age under the influence of Vladimir Solov'ev, found it quite within the order of things to indulge in playful fantasies based on apocalyptic motifs: . . . if in those years we had studied Goethe we would have become disciples of Goethe; but inasmuch as we both read The Apocalypse we therefore took from the latter our subject models and arranged them freely. Our schoolteacher, Pavlikovskij, became the servant of darkness (and Sereza, you see, became the disciple of Polivanov, and the hypostasis of the Father-Son-Holy Ghost was played out in three living persons: the father was Lev IvanoviC; the son was Ivan L'voviC; and the spirit was the grandson of Lev IvanoviC.. .)2 From 1900 on apocalyptic themes and imagery figured prominently in the works of both significant and imitative writers. There was literally a flood of material which sought to express the eschatological atmosphere of those times.3 Nor was the exploitation of this material a hegemony of the literary circles. The sudden and overwhelming interest in The Apocalypse, stimulated in the intellectual circles at the turn of the century by Vladimir Solov'ev, Dmitrij Merezkovskij and pthers, also resulted in extensive scholarly activity in this area. Both academics and charlatans took advantage of the wide-spread interest in mystical and religiophilosophical problems to write exegetical works on the biblical prophecies.4 Others gave public lectures and frequented the leading literary and intellectual circles in Moscow and Petersburg centering on the Merezkovskijs, V. V. Rozanov, M. S. Solov'ev (the brother of Vladimir Solov'ev), and later, Vjaceslav Ivanov. Merezkovskij's salon was the most popular at first, for he was the leading literary exponent of the new vogue of "apocalyptic" literature, a claim established by his trilogy, Xrist i Antixrist. These salons and public lectures established the initial contact and the * Andrej Belyj, Na rubeze dvux stoletij, 2nd ed. (Moscow-Leningrad, 1931; Reprint by Bradda Books, Letchworth, 1966), p. 337. 3 D. S. Merezkovskij, Xrist i Antixrist, 1st separate, complete ed. (Petersburg, 1906), but the trilogy was written and serialized in various journals from 1895 to 1905; A. L. Volynskij, Kttiga velikogo gneva (Petersburg, 1904); L. Andreev, "Krasnyj smex", 1904; V. Ropshin [Savinkov], Kori blednyj (Petersburg, 1909); A. Remizov, Pjataja jazva (Petersburg, 1911); V. V. Rozanov, Apokalipsis nasego vremeni (Sergiev posad, 1917); V. Brjusov's long poem, "Kon' bled", 1905; Blok's "Dvenadcat"' and Belyj's "Xristos voskres" both appeared immediately after the Revolution in 1918. 4 N. Morozov, Otkrovenie ν graze i bure. Istorija vozniknovenija Apokalipsisa (Moscow, 1907); S. N. Bulgakov, Dva grada (Moscow, 1911); V. V. Rozanov, Apokalipsiceskaja sekta (Petersburg, 1914); Anna Schmidt, Iz rukopisej A.N. Schmidta (Moscow, 1916)-contains her interpretation of "Revelation" and her visions of the coming Third Testament.

THE CONTEXT

11

succeeding entente between the literary figures and the preachers of the apocalyptic world-view. It was at the Merezkovskijs, for instance, that Belyj and others came in contact with figures like V. Ternavcev, Lev Tixomirov and Anna Schmidt, who were preaching their own individual doctrines of apocalypse. Later at Vjaceslav Ivanov's the same thematics were expounded, only under the guise of "mystical anarchism" and the "religion of the suffering god". Belyj describes these minor "antichrists" in Nacalo veka5 and the Simfonii. The confusion in these circles was increased by the fact that each mystic expounded his own unique apocalyptic theory and sought to proselytize on its behalf. Belyj, although an apocalyptist himself, brilliantly parodied these scrambling mystics in his Vtoraja simfonija.6 Dwelling extensively on the psychological origins of the apocalyptic mentality of those times could lead to an overstatement of the case. However, the course of events which led to and found their climax in the Russian Revolution is nothing if not apocalyptic. One may well ignore as banal or melodramatic the statements of N. Berdjaev, D. S. Merezkovskij and G. Fedotov that the Russian people are eschatologically oriented. However, the very frequency of such statements in itself offers valid proof of a subjective frame of mind which had deeply impressed itself upon the generation of intellectuals at the turn of the century. Thus, Merezkovskij could claim with conviction that the Russian people were especially susceptible to casting the individual circumstances of their history in an eschatological mold: Napoleon is the Antichrist. And the patriarch, Nikon, struggling with Tsar Aleksej, in a similar fashion to the Roman popes for the secular power of the church, is also Antichrist. And Peter I, who in continuing the work of the Muscovite tsars and designating himself the venerable "heir of the ancient Caesars" appropriated for himself the ancient Roman title of "Imperator", and who like Bonaparte following the footsteps of Alexander the Great aspired to India and might have repeated, on the occasion of the Spiritual Regulations, the Words of Napoleon: 'by means of the secular I will govern the spiritual', is for the most sensitive religious part of the Russian people the Antichrist. What does this mean, that in no other people has there ever appeared with such force, seemingly so unreal by its sources, and yet so real by its historical actions, the expectation by the Russian people of the Antichrist, the expectation of the end of the world, and of the Second Coming?' 5 See Andrej Belyj, Nacalo veka (Moscow-Leningrad, 1933; photo-offset by Russian Language Specialities, Chicago, 1966), pp. 138-44. β See Andrej Belyj, Simfonija (2-aja, dramaticeskaja), Sobranie soiinenij, IV (Moscow, 1917), 190-233. 7 D. S. Merezkovskij, ReligijaL. Tolstogo i Dostoevskogo (Petersburg, 1902), pp. 11-12.

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THE CONTEXT

Similarly, Berdjaev discerned in the Russian's preoccupation with eschatology a tendency which distinguished the Russian mentality from that of the West: Apocalypse has always played a large role at the popular level as well as at the highest cultural level among Russian writers and thinkers. In our thought the eschatological problem occupies an immeasurably greater place than in the thinking of the West. And this is connected to the very structure of the Russian mentality which is but little adapted and inclined to cling to any middle-of-theroad culture."8 Furthermore, in outlining the wellsprings of the Russian religious mind, Fedotov singled out eschatology: "Religious cosmology and history, based upon an eschatological background, were the theoretical poles of the Russian mind, devoid as it was of metaphysical or rational thought." 9 Surely those propounding apocalypse and believing in its validity express that very subjective state of mind which in fact was the basic mentality behind the religious searchings in Russia at the turn of the century. Whatever weight may be attached to a national empathy for apocalypse, there can be little doubt of the mounting sense of urgency in literary, religious and philosophical circles which led to a general lack of restraint in the manipulation of apocalyptic motifs borrowed from Biblical and folk sources. Moreover, this obsession was justified by the seeming fulfilment of Biblical prophecies in the historical events in Russia. The sense of the end of a century which had brought no great spiritual progress, coupled with the new and varied influences of Western Europe in the arts and sciences, produced an atmosphere of optimistic expectancy and renewed activity. The world was on the border of a new age which many hoped would be the promised Millennium, whether social or religious. After an age of philosophically unexciting Cernysevskijs, Dobroljubovs and Pisarevs, aesthetically uninspiring Cexovs, Garsins and Nadsons (not to mention the later Tolstoj!), a new philosophical and literary idealism was sought by such figures as Merezkovskij and Volynskij among others: We are in need of and have premonitions of the new, as yet unrevealed, worlds of sensitivity... This thirsting for the unexperienced, in pursuit of the 8

Nikolaj Berdjaev, Russkaja ideja (Paris, 1946), p. 195. G. P. Fedotov, The Russian Religious Mind (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1960), p. 50. 9

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13

elusive nuances and the obscure and unconscious in our sensibility, is the characteristic feature of the coming ideal poetry.. , 10 This search for a new idealism and an emphasis on the nuance was prompted above all as a reaction against the atmosphere of pessimism in Russia at the turn of the century: Towards the end of the nineteenth century in Russia there arose an apocalyptic atmosphere which was connected with a sense of the approaching end of the world and the appearance of the Antichrist, that is, an atmosphere of a pessimistic nature. It was not so much a new Christian era and the coming of the Kingdom of God that was expected as it was the Kingdom of Antichrist. It was a profound disillusionment with the ways of history and a loss of belief in the continuing existence of history's ends.11 Stronger stuff was needed than the "lemonade" that Cexov and contemporary authors could offer. 12 The pessimism of Cexov's generation held no attractive prospects in its philosophy of patience, suffering and work. This stronger drink, as it turned out, was to be concocted in a furious religio-philosophical renaissance seeking to arouse people from their apathy. The new message presented a striking combination of catharsis and salvation. The Judaeo-Christian symbolism of The Apocalypse projecting the future events of the Final Judgment, the Second Coming of Christ, the Destruction of the World and the Antichrist, offered excellent possibilities for both. The imaginative scope of these motifs was limitless. Once the suggestion was made, the individual and collective imagination did its work by interpreting, in the light of apocalyptic symbolism, the birth of the twentieth century, the Russo-Japanese War, the aborted 1905 Revolution, the mass executions and assassinations and finally the 1917 Revolution. If there were going to be a genuine renaissance in religio-philosophical thought, then it would have to offer more exciting possibilities than the positivism and materialism of the latter half of the nineteenth century. The new teaching could not be "lukewarm". 13 It had to be "all-or-nothing", a maximalism of the religious and mystical imagination. In short, the spirit of apocalypse had to infuse the new religious thought: 10 D. S. Merezkovskij, "O pricinax upadka i ο novyx tecenijax sovremennoj russkoj literatury", Polnoe sobranie socinenij, XVIII (Moscow, 1914), p. 217. 11 N. Berdjaev, Russkaja ideja, p. 206. 12 See Cexov's letter to Suvorin, Nov. 25, 1892. 13 See Rev. 3: 15-16: "I know thee by thy works; thou art neither cold nor hot. I would that thou wert cold or hot. But because thou art lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I shall spew thee out of my mouth."

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THE CONTEXT

To remove from religion this element of sacrifice, this transfiguring gaze upon the flesh from frightening spiritual heights, to concentrate all secrets and all joy of life on ceaseless childbirth and cosy family joy, as is done for example by certain contemporary preachers of religion in the pages of newspapers, means to vulgarize religion, means to pour the cold, turbid water of philistinism and bourgeoisie into the flaming furnace of pathos and spiritual creativity. It means to direct the raging Christ of The Apocalypse, with his fiery eyes, with his death-dealing sword of renewal and with his feet of molten bronze which consume all the decayed foundations of life along his path, - to lead this raging Christ to something that is of petty faith and essentially anti-religious.14 History in Russia had reached a point where the future U t o p i a could not be denied, whether this new U t o p i a were to be socio-political or theocratic. The past and present were unanimously condemned. Antichrist - or the bourgeois capitalistic period - was in the ascendancy, after which the advent of the New Jerusalem - or social Utopia - was to be proclaimed. This could not be achieved without bloodshed, pestilence and the Terrible Judgment - or a bloody revolution. Thus, the terms of reference, whether religious or socialist, are freely interchangeable. Both fit the spirit of the time admirably. The dramatic properties and stage effects of The Apocalypse were inherent in the content of the catastrophic events to follow in Russia. More than anyone else, Vladimir Solov'ev created the apocalyptic atmosphere among the religiously oriented intellectuals. The timing was perfect, for in the early spring of 1900, Solov'ev held his last public lecture in the Hall of the City Council in Moscow. The title of the lecture was Ο konce vsemirnoj istorii. The purpose of this last appearance before his death was to warn the world of the end of history and to explain the events of this final stage preceding the super-historical end of the world: My aim is not to pass on to you in abstract reasoning my thoughts concerning the subjects designated in the programme. Such arguments would be partly incomprehensible, partly uninteresting, as long as you have no clear conception of the matter. I would now prefer simply to tell you how I conceive of this matter, that is, the end of world history. A definite resolution of all pertinent questions should emerge by itself from this tale of the final days which I am now going to read to you. This tale is, in its particulars, a creation of my imagination; but all that is vital in it, even if it is the fruit of my imagination, is in any case more so than mine of a loftier and mightier conception which not only presents but also actually creates world history.15 14

A. L. Volynskij, Kniga velikogo gneva (Petersburg, 1904), p. xxi. Vladimir Solov'ev, "O konce vsemirnoj istorii" (vstupit. i zakoncit. slovo i programma), Archives of Lenin Library (Moscow, USSR), MOR/Pxxii/Nr. 6.

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THE CONTEXT

15

These introductory words by Solov'ev were followed by the reading of his apocalyptic tale "Kratkaja povest' ob Antixriste" which also appeared as the conclusion to Tri razgovora (1899-1900). The tale was a recapitulation of the content of the Book of Revelation to which Solov'ev imaginatively added material stemming from his previous teachings on the reunification of the various branches of the Christian Church. The effect was immeasurable upon the impressionable contemporary intellect, including Andrej Belyj, who was present at the lecture. The final years of Solov'ev's life were marked by a development towards the eschatological, as witnessed by his final works: Tri razgovora, including "Kratkaja povest' ob Antixriste", the poem "Panmongolizm" and the introduction to the third edition of his collected poems, Stixotvorenija Vladimira Solov'eva which appeared in Moscow in 1900. Earlier he had believed that a theocracy could be attained within the course of history. But a growing pessimism made him turn to a final transcendental solution of the problem as outlined in The Apocalypse. To this basic theme Solov'ev added his long-cherished hope for the final unity of the Christian Church. He expected the threat of "Pan-Mongolism" and the Antichrist to make the diverse branches of Christianity draw together, and strengthen themselves against the coming onslaught. Solov'ev, the philosopher, was extremely serious in predicting and preaching the end of the world according to his own intuitive exegesis of the apocalyptic Biblical sources and contemporary events. The Antichrist would come to seduce men with his false power, glory and wisdom, after which would follow war and pestilence; Asiatic horsemen would ride against the true believers, but they would be defeated and the Antichrist would be overthrown. In his stead there would come the true Christ proclaiming the Millennium by raising the dead and creating the New Jerusalem. These prognoses were taken literally by the philosopher who expounded them with inspiration and sincerity. This was his fourth and final vision, superceding his three visions or meetings with Sophia, as recorded in his poem "Tri svidanija". In Tri razgovora, Mr. Z. becomes Solov'ev's spokesman in his eschatological descriptions of the end of history, thereby echoing and interpreting the fantastic "Kratkaja povest' ob Antixriste". Lest there be any doubt whatsoever about the seriousness of his aim, Solov'ev himself utters his warnings in the introduction to Tri razgovora: The historical forces reigning over the masses of humanity still have before them a confrontation and intermixing before a new head will be born on the

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THE CONTEXT

self-lacerating beast - the world-unifying power of the Antichrist who will "speak thunderous and lofty words" and will cast a gleaming cover of goodness and truth over the secrecy of extreme lawlessness in the time of its final revelation, so that according to the words of the scripture, even the select, if possible, will be seduced into great trespass. To reveal beforehand this deceitful mask under which is hidden the evil abyss, was my highest intention when I wrote this book.16 Thus, Christianity, or the religious Utopia, has lost all hope of being achieved within any teleological and cosmic concept of history. Only in the eschatological and chaotic conditions of The Apocalypse can the consummation between heaven and earth be attained. The force of Solov'ev's inspired preaching of an apocalyptic state of affairs found eloquent testimony in the writings of others who followed him. An excellent example of this is to be found in his theory of the threat of "Pan-mongolism", of the hordes of riders sweeping down out of the East as the forces of Antichrist to destroy the followers of the real Christ. Again the author's literal attitude is startling, even though he is apparently attempting to use the traditional archetypes as a tangible symbolism for abstract concerns: In all that I say concerning Pan-mongolism and the Asiatic invasion of Europe, one must distinguish the essential from the details. But even the most important fact here does not, of course, possess that unconditional certainty which belongs to the future manifestation and fate of the Antichrist and his false prophet. In the story of Mongol-European relationships nothing is taken directly from the Holy Scriptures, although a great deal here gives evidence to support such a claim. In general this story is a series of probable considerations based on factual information. Personally I believe that this probability is close to certainty, and so it seems not only to me but to other more important persons as well... The important thing for me was to define the forthcoming terrible collision of two worlds more realistically - and in this way graphically show the immediate necessity of peace and sincere friendship among the European nations.17 This same theme recurs in one of the author's final poems, "Pan-mongolizm", written shortly before his death, and Blok's final poem "Skify", 1921, is obviously the continuation of Solov'ev's, thus emphasizing the kinship existing between them in their supra-historical vision. The catastrophic war with Japan seemed to be proof of Solov'ev's predictions 16 17

V. S. Solov'ev, Sobranie socineni], X, 2nd. ed. (Petersburg, n.d.), p. 91. Ibid., p. 90.

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17

and as such initiated a number of works on the chaos which threatened from the East.18 Perhaps the most significant apocalyptic symbol was the Virgin who, under many names, became the central motif for the Symbolists. Called "Sophia", the "Eternal Feminine", the "Beautiful Lady", the "Woman Clothed in the Sun", she was both the inspiration and nemesis of Blok, a divine symbol of the cosmos for Belyj, and the pagan sign of physical beauty for Merezkovskij. But most of all, she was the creation of Solov'ev, in whose individual vision were incorporated all of these manifestations. From Sophia, the divine spirit uniting the heavenly spheres in his philosophy of Godmanhood, and the mystical spirit and erotic inspiration of his "Tri svidanija", she became the Virgin in whose birth pangs and persecutions by the serpent the apocalyptic depiction of the end of the world was prophesied. But Solov'ev himself was also aware of the deceitful faces of the Divine Feminine and warned against them in the same breath: But t h e m o r e perfect a n d intimate t h e revelation of t h e real beauty which clothes t h e Divinity a n d which leads us by m e a n s of this p o w e r t o deliverance f r o m suffering a n d death, t h e finer t h e line separating beauty f r o m its false likeness f r o m t h a t deceptive a n d impotent beauty which will only perpetuate t h e k i n g d o m of suffering a n d death. T h e W o m a n Clothed in t h e Sun is already in travail: she m u s t reveal t h e t r u t h , give birth t o t h e w o r d , a n d lo, t h e ancient serpent is readying its final powers against her a n d w a n t s t o d r o w n her in t h e p o i s o n o u s floods of seductive f a l s e h o o d s a n d deceptions t h a t a p p e a r t o be t h e e n d : at t h e E n d t h e Eternal Beauty will be fruitful a n d o u t of t h e latter there will issue t h e salvation of t h e world w h e n its deceptive likenesses will disappear like t h a t sea-foam which gave birth t o primitive Aphrodite. 1 9

A literal acceptance of The Apocalypse would involve the most pressing problem of ontology: victory over death. The Christian answer is, of course, life after death. Christ will descend into Hell to resurrect the dead for the Final Judgment and the Millennium to follow. Such a belief has 18

Merezkovskij's frenzied article "Grjaduscij xam", in Foljamaja zvezda, No. 1 1905, warns of the "Yellow Menace" and bourgeois sterility in the same breath. Belyj's Peterburg (1916) uses the Mongolian Lippancenko as a focal point for chaos. In Leonid Andreev's "Krasnyj smex", 1904, the war provides the basic source for a surrealistic and horrifying depiction of death and insanity. Even Blok's poetic cycle "Na pole Kulikovom" carries direct associations with the idea of "Pan-mongolism" in returning to the medieval conflicts between Russia and the Mongolian Hordes as the poet's source of inspiration. 19 V. Solov'ev, Stixotvorenija Vladimira Solov'eva, 5th. ed. (Moscow, 1910), pp. xv-xvi.

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been the most cherished, although doubtful, hope of Christianity. Tolstoj, however, could find no way out of the impasse which the spectre of death presented to man. Death was, as for Ivan Il'ic, a hole in the bottom of a dark bag with nothingness beyond, a drop into the abyss. The spectre of Death was "spiritual" only inasmuch as it forced one to re-examine this life more closely. Hence Tolstoj's "religion" was not transcendental or metaphysical in its prospects for humanity, but intensely ethical and bound to this world. At the end of his life, however, Solov'ev fully and unequivocally embraced the doctrine of physical resurrection in its literal meaning. To him it signified victory over evil. The Kingdom of God had to be based on life and not on death, or else it became the Kingdom of Death: The real triumph over evil is in actual resurrection. Only in this way, I repeat, is the Kingdom of God revealed, whereas without this there can only be the kingdom of death and sin and their creator, the devil. Resurrection - only not in a metaphorical sense but in the literal - this is the proof of the true God. 20

Solov'ev was not the only one to proclaim physical resurrection as the basis of his concept of the Kingdom of God. Nikolaj Fyodorov expressed the same belief, for he saw physical resurrection as the only means of achieving the Kingdom of Heaven and the fulfilment of the covenant made between God and man through Christ's example: The nineteenth century has revived faith in evil and renounced faith in goodness. It has renounced faith in goodness. It has renounced the Kingdom of Heaven and abandoned faith in earthly happiness or the Kingdom of Earth... At the same time the nineteenth century is a direct descendant, a true son of the preceding centuries, the direct consequence of the dividing of what is earthly, of the complete distortion of Christianity, whose Covenant involves precisely the uniting of the heavenly and the earthly, the divine and the human. The universal imminent raising of the dead, a task pursued with all one's heart, with all one's mind, with all one's actions - raising of the dead accomplished by means of all the powers and capabilities of all the sons of man, such is the fulfilment of this Covenant of Christ, the Son of God and the Son of Man. 21

The questions of death and resurrection, so central to both Solov'ev's and Fedorov's thought, also became the spiritual problems of the later symbolists and religio-philosophical thinkers, and so obviously that 20

V. Solov'ev, Tri razgovora, X, p. 190. Nicholas Fyodorov, "The Question of Brotherhood or Relatedness...", Russian Philosophy, III, ed. and trans, by J. Edie, J. Scanlan and M. Zeldin (Chicago, 1965), p. 54. 21

THE CONTEXT

19

socialist critics could not but remark on it. Having in mind, no doubt, Nikolaj Berdjaev and Sergej Bulgakov among others, M. Morozov explained the mass desertion of many former socialists to the religio-philosophical camp as a result of the fear of death: "The terror of death has sealed their lips, like a threatening spectre death has arisen and is beating its wings over their heads, and yesterday's Marxists are bowing down to the Holy Trinity, and already instead of Karl Marx they are whispering the name of Christ.. ." 22 The sense of apocalypse provoked many unusual and contrived interpretations. One of the most interesting of these was evolved by V. V. Rozanov who conducted his personal campaign against historical Christianity in favour of a mystically pagan and sensual interpretation of religion. Unlike the other "apocalyptists" of his generation who sought, after a temporary period of destructive catharsis, an ultimately positive vision of eschatology, as in the symbol of Christ's Second Coming, Rozanov welcomed the apocalyptic symbolism of his days as a negative sign of the times: "Here is The Apocalypse... the mysterious book from which your tongue is scorched when you read . . . The entire human structure is dying, is dying and being resurrected again... 2 3 In his basically anti-Christian book Apokalipsis nasego vremeni he praises Revelation inasmuch as it is not a New Testament book and does not distort the real facts concerning Christianity. For him it is proof of the fact that Christianity is not a lifeaffirming religion, but rather one of inevitable death and destruction. Thus, The Apocalypse symbolically reveals that Christ did not plant the Tree of Life but rather the Tree of Death: " . . . he [i.e., the recorder of the Book of Revelation] examined the tree planted by Christ and comprehended with an inexplicable depth for himself and his times that it is not the Tree of Life and forecasts its fate at that very time when the churches had just been born." 24 The Apocalypse was eloquent proof for the failure of Christianity, for people were living through that failure which presaged the end. It was Christianity that was suffering an internal crisis and not simply the peoples and nations of the world. Rozanov was aghast that no one saw where th2 real crisis was taking place: It is horribly apocalyptic ("unrevealed"), horribly strange: that people, nations, humanity are experiencing an apocalyptic crisis. But that Christianity itself is 22 M. Morozov, "Pred licom smerti", Literaturnyjraspad, Kniga I (Petersburg, 1908), p. 285. 23 V. V. Rozanov, "Apokalipsis nasego vremeni", V. V. Rozanov - Izbrannoe (New York, 1956), p. 381. 21 Ibid., p. 381.

20

THE CONTEXT

not experiencing any crisis. This is to such a degree obvious inasmuch as it is being read about in The Apocalypse itself, here "in these very lines", it is staggering - the fashion in which not a single one of the readers or interpretors has noticed this.25 Both the religious atmosphere and sense of doing battle in the name of the true Christ with some hypothetical foe, variously named the Beast, Antichrist, or the Dragon, encouraged a predilection for dualistic concepts and a conscious play upon opposites in this period. This was often carried to exaggerated extremes as in Merezkovskij's trilogy Xrist i Antixrist, the title of which is symptomatic of the multiplicity of opposites that form the content and structure of the work. Merezkovskij exploited this interest in pairs in accordance with the mentality of his time. His articles displayed the same maximalness of dramatic and uncompromising effect: "Iii teper', ili nikogda", 26 "Bes ili Bog".27 These typified the uncompromising "either.. .or" mentality of such desperate symbolists as A. Belyj. One could build antithetical pairs with fair virtuosity and variety in the new religio-philosophical revival which resurrected an entire vocabulary of philosophical and religious abstractions. But such terminology was cold and unfeeling - it lacked the vivid image that could draw on a stock of associations. Striking iconographic archetypes were necessary to take the imagination by storm and The Apocalypse was rich in these: Christ... Antichrist; the Woman Clothed in the Sun... the Harlot of Babylon; Sodom and Gomorrha... the New Jerusalem. The eschatological mentality was further exaggerated by the strange figures who haunted the conscience of the intellectuals of this era. Of these perhaps A. M. Dobroljubov and A. N. Schmidt were the most outstanding. The former, a one-time "symbolist", gave up this world and became a wanderer and sectarian, practicing doctrines similar to the "Molcane" - awaiting revelation and truth in silence and meditation and preaching non-resistance to evil. A. N. Schmidt was even more remarkable in that she, having had personal revelations concerning the divine spirit, presented herself to V. S. Solov'ev as the incarnation of his Sophia: For a long time A. N. Schmidt concealed her theosophic teaching in expectation of the hour of "revelation". And that hour came when she became acquainted with the sophiology of Vladimir Solov'ev. Here her delirium burst brightly 25 26 27

Ibid., pp. 382-83. Voprosy zizni, Nos. 4 - 5 (1905), pp. 295-319. Obrazovanie, N o . 8 (1908), pp. 91-96.

THE CONTEXT

21

into flame: for her, the Christianity of the "Third Testament" had been the Christianity of the Holy Spirit designated by the second coming and the mysterious marriage of Sophia of the Divine Wisdom, of the heavenly Church of Christ, of the world-soul (which she, like a pearl, calls "Margaret") with her Groom in eternity, Jesus Christ (whose mystical name is "Raphael"). And that is not all: with a fanatical conviction characteristic of madness, Anna Schmidt felt herself to be the earthly embodiment of "Margaret", whereas her beloved Groom, the new embodiment of Christ-Raphael, was Solov'ev.28 She struck people with the force and evident sincerity of her teachings as well as the spiritual power of her personality. Belyj was not the only one who, having met her personally, was both repulsed and attracted by her personality and what she stood for. Belyj was doubtless frightened by the possibilities that her brand of naive charlatanism, jurodstvo and sincerity could seduce him spiritually, thus revealing the dangers of excess inherent in his own attraction to both mysticism and apocalypse.2" What had started out as a philosophical revival on the one hand, and an aesthetic renaissance on the other, soon attempted to join the Biblical "Word" to the artistic "word". Literature assumed the burdens not merely of religious and philosophical dogmas, but further sought a marriage between religion and art which could create new being. The range of problems was to extend beyond the narrowly aesthetic and deal with the harmonizing of the spiritual and the physical. The physical properties of the aesthetic word were to be united with the spiritual properties of the religious Word to pioneer, according to Volynskij, the new era: This striving of literature to become the divine word - to delve down to those roots of life which can be called religious, to be renewed in its artistic methods and to create the new man with a new body and a new soul, is especially noticeable when studying contemporary literature. All there is in it of the living is permeated, - either consciously or unconsciously - by this idea. The spirit of the new time with its problems demands its workers and bearers. And the contemporary artists appear as the pioneers of a new historical movement. Seized by the new spiritual fermentation they painfully seek out below the ancient layers of the obsolete physical-spiritual, that which responds to the requirements of the spirit. One might say that the whole problem of the new art consists of depicting such a person in whom both of these powers - spiritual and physico-spiritual - would be brought into possible harmony, would be united in an artistic whole, reconciling the contrasts of both origins and allowing for their unavoidable temporary dissonances.30 28 29 30

S. Makovskij, Na Parnase Serebrjanogo Veka (Munich, 1962), p. 52. See A. Belyj, Nacalo veka, pp. 119-30. Volynskij, Kniga velikogo gneva, p. xiv.

22

THE CONTEXT

The "young symbolists" who made their appearance after 1900 (Belyj, Blok, Vjac. Ivanov) were intensely aware of the fact that they were about to cross the border from one generation to the next, from one age to another. As such they were deeply impressed by the eschatological context of their position as the heralds of the new era. They were aware of the approach of the End and the onslaught of the Beginning as symbolized by the sunset and sunrise, Consecrating themselves to the visions of Solov'ev, they sought to become the precursors to the Second Coming: Nietzsche grips the foremost ranks of Russian youth with the slogan that "the time of the Socratic man has passed"; the works of Vlad. Solov'ev appear, attracting the first interest towards religio-philosophical paths. The eternal makes its appearance in the temporal line of the dawns of the rising century. The mists of melancholy are suddenly torn asunder by the red sunrises of new days. Merezkovskij begins to write his studies of Tolstoj and Dostoevskij in which he expresses the thought that the very spiritual structure of man is being reborn and that our own generation is faced with the choice of the road between renascence and death. His slogan - "either we or no one" - becomes the slogan of some of the youth, coinciding with the ancient prophecies of Agrippa von Nettesheim and the "book of brilliances" concerning the significance of the year 1900 as the turning point of the era. And we blended these slogans with the visions of Solov'ev concerning the Third Testament, the Kingdom of the Spirit. The failure of the old ways is experienced as the End of the World; the tidings of the new era - as the Second Coming. We sensed the apocalyptic rhythm of the time. Towards the Beginning we strive through the End.31 Some of the poets never overcame this crippling sense of the End. For one, in particular, it created an insurmountable feeling of ruin that grew and was nourished on itself to the final tragedy of the poet. This was Aleksandr Blok. Komej Cukovskij, in his memoirs, sensitively discerned the tragic "once-and-for-allness" that was so characteristic of Blok: "And that was the kind of person he was in his creative work: he lived restlessly and destructively. All of his creative work was saturated with an apocalyptic feeling of the end - of an unavoidable end already 'at the doorstep'.32 This "feeling of the end", so characteristic of Blok, was shared just as intensely by Belyj. But at the border of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries they were motivated by a naive optimism and youthful hope in the future. This was what made them turn their backs 31

Andrej Belyj, Vospominanija ob Aleksandre Bloke (Letchworth: Bradda Books, 1964), p. 15. 32 Kornej Cukovskij, Ljudi i ktiigi (Moscow, 1958), p. 526.

THE CONTEXT

23

on the decadent blind-alley of esoteric aestheticism and individualism propagated by Brjusov, Bal'mont and others. Thus, in the motifs of transfiguration, resurrection and renewal they found those ready-made archetypes which enabled them to overcome temporarily the spiritually crippling pessimism and malaise which the Russian decadents had borrowed from their French counterparts. Β. V. Mixajlovskij has pointed out this significant change from a sense of the pessimistic End, typical of the 1890's, to the inspiration of the ecstatic beginning which marked the so-called "young generation" of symbolists of the post-1900 period: . . . the diffuse mysticism of Nietzsche appeared to be a station midway on the road to a religious world-view. At the same time the symbolists grew cold to the pessimistic philosophy of Schopenhauer which had reigned over the minds of the decadents. Instead of an atmosphere of despair, depression, extreme pessimism, motifs of destruction typical of the decadents of the 1890's, there appeared in the work of the "young symbolists" an elevated ecstatic mood, motifs of rebirth, renewal, a tense expectancy of some grand revolution in the fate of the world and mankind, faith in a new era of history.33 The highly mystical, symbolic and gnostic fabric of apocalyptic material could do no less than appeal to the new symbolist movement in Russia once the religious point of departure had been established by Vladimir Solov'ev, Dmitrij Merezkovskij and others. The exegesis and revelation of the final truths and mysteries, as well as the resolution of the metaphysical and aesthetic impasse at which the positivists and decadents had arrived, found its natural focal point in an eschatological sensibility. For only this would allow the final non-rational leap over history and the world, beyond the restrictive bounds of time and space, into eternity and the transcendental sphere by means of some apocalyptic transfiguration. Yet what commenced as an optimistic revolt against the bleak prospects of the nineteenth-century mentality soon turned to pessimism and despair. The positive archetypes of Christ, the Virgin and the New Jerusalem rapidly took on the characteristics of pairs - Antichrist, Harlot and Babylon. These parallels were obvious and organic to the mentality of the period. Blok's "Beautiful Lady" became a prostitute; Dar'jal'skij, the protagonist of Belyj's Serebrjanyj golub', found not Christ but the Antichrist in his search among the Russian sectarians; the seemingly cosmic order of the city of Petersburg in Belyj's novel 33

Β. V. Mixajlovskij, Russkaja literatura XX-ogo veka (Moscow, 1939), p. 221.

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THE CONTEXT

of that name erupted in chaos, revealing the abyss below this modern-day Babylon. However, there was more inherent reason for the failure to realize the New Jerusalem, to turn the Word into flesh, than simply the course of historical events. New being cannot be created by words without deeds. The word of Christ was powerful because it was supported by an entire mythology of deeds. The "god-seekers" had only the "deedless" word, or more precisely many words, as the socialist critic Petr Juskevic pointed out, thus rendering themselves ineffectual in their esoterism and irrelevancy: The fact is essentially that contemporary mysticism, as a product of a purely and a narrowly intellectual creation, as a product of a small social group maintaining itself like a thin phosphorescent film on the surface of society, cannot emerge from the stage of moods and words. I am not talking, of course, about individual profound natures - there are usually exceptions everywhere - I am talking about the phenomenon in general. There can be no talk about the correspondence between the word and deed for these pure professionals of the word, for whom the whole essence, in the final analysis, is the word. N o t only did they have the word in the beginning, but it is also to be found in the middle and will, furthermore, be in the end. In spite of all their bombastic reflections concerning the Logos and the Word which has become flesh, their own word can never become flesh.34

The failure to hurdle the final barriers, to create new being and make the word into flesh was in converse ratio to the magnitude of the attempt. Cexov's "failure" was slight inasmuch as he, in full conscience, knew he could offer only lemonade. The symbolists' failure, on the other hand, was great because they offered the drink of life which turned out to be only lemonade in the end. The grandness of the attempt was matched by the grandness of the failure. The twentieth century defeated all their hopes, the gloriousness of which made the defeat more bitter still. Thus they never penetrated through the apocalyptic End to the Beginning, but instead, like Blok, they perished amid the destruction of the End, without the twentieth century consummating their hopes of a new beginning: The Twentieth Century... More shelterless More terrifying than a life of gloom (More black and ominous 84

P. Juskevic, "O sovremennyx filosofsko-religioznyx iskanijax", Literaturnyj raspad, Kniga 1, p. 120.

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THE CONTEXT

Becomes the shadow of Lucifer's wing). The smoking conflagrations of the sunset (Prophecies concerning our time), The terrifying spectre in the heavens, Of an awesome trailing comet, The ruthless end of Messina (Elemental forces are invincible), And the relentless roar of the motor-car, The terrifying consciousness Of old beliefs and modest hopes deceived, And the first flight of the airplane Into the emptiness of unknown expanses... ("Vozmezdie")3*

35

A. A. Blok, Sobranie socinenij, III (Moscow-Leningrad, 1960), p. 305.

II

T H E FAMILY APOCALYPSE

The content of the new symbolism at the turn of the century in Russia was religious and the form was eschatological; for it emerged pre-eminently as an interpretation of the historical or cultural signs of the time in accordance with an apocalyptic syndrome. This atmosphere of eschatology at the intersection of the two ages was as dualistic as the content of The Apocalypse itself, presenting a curious mixture of pessimism and optimism typical of the biblical prophecies contained in Revelation and Daniel. Only from the depths of pessimism, from the chaos to be wreaked by the forces of Antichrist, could hope be born for the ascendancy of Christ and the new Millennium. In other words, it was necessary to experience the catharsis of the End before proclaiming the Beginning. Both Solov'ev's and Merezkovskij's eschatological teaching accepted this ambivalent spirit of unavoidable chaos preceding final harmony as essential to the rebirth of the new theocracy. Within this frame of reference, it is interesting to discover that commentators on the historical mentality of those periods which produced the biblical literature of apocalypse arrive at similar conclusions to those of the Russian symbolists. Furthermore, the similarity extends even to this very ambivalent teaching of cosmic destruction and creation which obsessed the Russian symbolist mind in general, and Belyj in particular: The times are in the hand of God. The forces of evil are rampant, but they are doomed. The darkest moment always presages the dawn. Thus for the apocalyptist the interest was not primarily to scourge the nation - still less the individual - for its sins, but, and this is particularly clear in "Daniel" and "Revelation", to nerve men to stand firm. Together with the attempt at encouragement, this battle cry to faith and hope, and often obscuring it, is the ever-felt conviction that all history is the result of the interplay of invisible but tremendously potent angelic forces, some with, some against G o d - a curious "combination of creation and destruction". 1 1

M. S. Enslin, The Literature of the Christian Movement (New York, 1956), p. 354.

THE FAMILY APOCALYPSE

27

Thus, the acceptance of the apocalyptic frame of reference would seem to carry with it a scheme of duality in which destruction and creation, chaos and harmony, would achieve an almost Heraclitean function. Belyj was among those of his generation who inherited a two-edged sword from the so-called 'older symbolists'. The primary sense of pessimism Belyj identified with the spirit of Schopenhauer (Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung). But it was through the theurgic anarchism of Nietzsche (Also sprach Zarathustra) and the process of individuation outlined by Erich von Hartmann (Die Philosophie des Unbewusstens) that Belyj claimed to have reached the prophetic vision of apocalypse in Solov'ev: Namely in 1899-1900 a change took place in the aspect of my world-view: the philosophy of contemplation was replaced with seekings of a religious nature. From Schopenhauer I proceeded in one direction towards the tragic world-view of Nietzsche, and in the other direction through Hartmann to Vladimir Solov'ev.2 Whatever the process of development that Belyj may have chosen to depict as his philosophical journey to Solov'ev, most significant here is the fact that he typically locates his own spirit of division on the border of the twentieth century, thereby affirming the two basic principles of pessimism and optimism, chaos and cosmos, as being the starting-point for all his future attempts to create a synthesized world-view. This inherent duality of the apocalyptic era demanded its martyrs, and Andrej Belyj was not the least of those who presented perhaps the most exaggerated and passionate hypostasis of the religious searchings of his generation. He expressed, not only in his work, but perhaps even more eloquently in his personal actions, an anarchical pessimism typical of the end of the nineteenth century and an optimistic religious idealism which ushered in the twentieth century. This double experience proved excruciating for most of the younger symbolists, alternately plunging them into the depths of despair and raising them to the heights of ecstasy. The eschatological tenor of the times elicited a similar response in those who sought to capture the premonitions of the cataclysmic events to come. The prophets of revelation sought union among themselves in order to expound the terms of apocalypse and Belyj was foremost among those whose youthful impulses were directed towards a 2

Belyj, Vosponinanija ob A. A. Bloke, p. 17.

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THE FAMILY APOCALYPSE

romantic idealization of a "collective" of like-minded seekers who rather resembled some holy order in search of the Grail, or in Russian terms, the mythological city of Kitez: "I dreamed of a quiet, righteous life of us all together, somewhere oif in the forests, or on the banks of the Svetlojar, waiting for the reappearance of Kitez (or the Grail). " a It would be difficult to mistake in these early postures of Belyj the obvious similarities with the religio-social communes of Christians who in the early centuries of persecution after the death of Christ also sought in the mutual union of similar minds the Word of transfiguration and salvation until Christ's Second Coming. In fact this is precisely the content which one will discover in one of Belyj's earliest works, "Prisedsij: otryvok iz nenapisannoj misterii"4. A commune of disciples of apocalypse (slugi ozidanija) led by the prophets Il'ja and Nikita await Christ's Coming on a deserted seashore. They have waited many long years and the Saviour has not yet appeared unto them and Il'ja begins to despair whereas Nikita is still filled with ecstatic hopes and visions. When one of the disciples claims that he has just seen and spoken to the One they have expected for so long, a division arises between the followers of Nikita who believe that this is the false Christ or Antichrist, and the followers of Il'ja who wish to proclaim Christ's Coming. Nikita lays a curse upon Il'ja and his followers, those who believe in Christ's Coming, and takes his own followers away. The Prisedsij appears to Il'ja and tells him to inform the others of His arrival. But the fragment ends ambiguously, for it is unclear whether He Who Has Come has indeed come to announce the Millennium or whether God has changed his mind since no one believes the prophet Il'ja when the Saviour's arrival is announced, and life goes on as before. This early tale of Belyj's proved to be quite symptomatic for the entire future of the eschatological direction in Russian symbolism. Alliances of symbolists and decadents alike were formed under the leadership of various 'prophets' according to the belief in the advent of Christ or Antichrist. Each 'commune' of believers or unbelievers excommunicated the other according to their own principles of belief and disbelief, and, of course, no one could ever say for certain whether Christ (or Antichrist, for that matter) had indeed come. Consequently, in this period of contradictions and dissonances, caught between pessimism and optimism, Belyj perceived of himself as a Dionysian figure 3

Ibid., This fragmentary work was probably written as early as 1898, but did not appear until five years later in the journal Severnye Cvety, 1903, pp. 2-25.

4

THE FAMILY APOCALYPSE

29

who was descending into the chaos to draw forth the musical sound of the mysterium and to create the new commune: And amidst these dissonances I was torn asunder, like Dionysus, descending into this chaos in order to bring forth out of it the musical sound of the mysterium, attempting to overhear in the Choir of contradictory opinions the completely new problem of sociality, the new commune.5 The external atmosphere of apocalypse in pre-revolutionary Russia complemented and nourished a personal sense of eschatology in Andrej Belyj. The result was a series of literary and critical works that are eminently epistemological and teleological in nature. Belyj's creativity revolves around the search for a total and occult knowledge which is concerned with meaningful ends. In this search for a total knowledge which would support the upward-spiralling superstructure of his intuited symbolism, Belyj involved himself in all manner of philosophical, religious and psychological investigation. But invariably this search was directed towards the individual in whose microcosmic emotionalism was to be found the key to the secrets of the macrocosmos. Belyj's teleological system was not restricted to this worldly realm but was meant to encompass all of the cosmos, to be a finite explanation of the infinite. In other words, the individual was the reflection or soundingboard of the entire cosmos. Increasingly, Belyj came to the conclusion that it was through the minute study of the individual in all of his physiological and mental processes that one could penetrate the enigma of life and, moreover, create new life. The individual was a living projection of the cosmos, born of the same ether, and man, therefore, as an individual, is constituted of the same elements as the cosmos. Having been born of the cosmos, and eventually returning to it to be reborn, he is in fact a child of the universe, a part of an eternal chain of creation and destruction of which his personal life is a reflection. Thus, in his life he experiences the Heraclitean cosmic tension between chaos and order, and the events of his life are the symbols or signs of this connection. According to the religious interpretation of history at that time by the Russian symbolists, Belyj constantly sought, whether consciously or unconsciously, the role of disciple or initiate for himself. The ritualistic demands of any mystical teaching invariably require the neophyte to apprentice himself to some "spiritual father" and collective, and Belyj 5

Ibid., p. 104.

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THE FAMILY APOCALYPSE

did not hesitate to fulfill this role in his own search for a transfiguring theory of symbolism. This search for initiation into the higher realm led him variously to Merezkovskij's apocalyptic synthesis of flesh and spirit, Vjaceslav Ivanov's orgiastic Dionysianism, and, ultimately, to Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy. Being intensely Russian, however, Belyj constantly sought to pay his respects to the pan-religious philosophy of his original Russian "spiritual father", Vladimir Solov'ev. Belyj's faith in mentors whom he believed more profound and omniscient than himself was invariably mystically inspired and then rationally disappointed when no great apocalyptic resolution or podvig was achieved. Only Solov'ev remained inviolate for him, while he discovered feet of clay in his former idols, Merezkovskij, Brjusov, Vjaceslav Ivanov and even Steiner. That Solov'ev survived most of Belyj's other teachers may be due to the fact that he was probably the first spiritual influence in the misty genesis of Belyj's symbolist awareness and the early death of the philosopher prevented any personal or psychological clashes that were invariably at the root of Belyj's other disaffections. Boris Bugaev's "rebirth" as a neophyte of symbolism required a rebirth in his personality as well. To signal this transformation a ritual change of name seemed necessary. Boris Bugaev's pseudonym - Andrej Belyj - was supposedly the invention of Mixail Sergeevic Solov'ev (brother of Vladimir Solov'ev), according to Belyj himself,6 and was merely the result of sound combinations and not any attempt at allegory. Even if Belyj is taken at his word the pseudonym rapidly assumed allegorical proportions beyond its original conception. The choice of the colour 'white' as the surname of the symbolist was more propitious than might be assumed at first glance. The name has been interpreted by many as being derived from the apocalyptic colour 'white', one of the colours of the four horsemen of The Apocalypse and the colour of catharsis as in the typical symbolist leitmotif of the snowstorm. But what is perhaps the real significance of this colour-pseudonym in casting light upon the symbolist as the initiate designate is also to be found in Revelation. Here the "white stone"7 of revelatory knowledge gives its recipient access to the hidden knowledge of final things: He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give 6 See Andrej Belyj, Na rubeze dvux stoletij, 2nd ed. (Moscow-Leningrad, 1931; reprint by Bradda Books, Letchworth, Hertfordshire, 1966), pp. 486-487. 7 Further discussion of this particular motif as the Greek omphalos will be made in Chapter IV in connection with Belyj's Third Symphony, Vozvrat.

THE FAMILY APOCALYPSE

31

him a white stone and in the stone a new name written which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.8 Whether the choice of his pseudonym was a product of divine intuition or pure coincidence, Belyj immediately sensed himself to be one of the chosen, a recipient of the holy stone and consequently an initiate into the higher realm. Nor can there be much doubt about the symbolist's mentality in this regard when the biblical text above is compared with the following pronouncement of Belyj's: I am beginning to realize that at some time in the future I will reveal myself in a new name to those close to me. The white stone which has been given to me will bloom forth like fragrant lilies and roses. I myself will become like a lily of the field, softly swaying in the green meadow.9 Consciously aware of his role as an initiate-designate, as one who has signified his entry into a religious brotherhood with the acceptance of his new "religious appellation", Belyj took one further step in order to legitimize his new priestly calling. This final step was a return to childhood to discover those fateful signs and events which were to shape his future role among men. Thus, for Belyj, the neophyte, the three basic hagiographical motifs were to be fulfilled: the awareness of the struggle of Christ and Antichrist in those historical times; the assumption of the role of initiate; and finally, the divine signs manifested in his early life that his role was indeed foreordained. The intense involvement with personal experience as a microcosmic reflection of the cosmic processes became an increasingly strident note in Belyj's writing. Most of his aesthetic work is obviously based on personal experiences, including his family relationships. At the centre stands the poet-author himself and his memoirs 10 are eloquent testimony to his introverted line of investigation. This extensive study of the "self" will reveal the final answers, or so it seemed to Belyj. Consequently, he reorganizes and "symbolizes" the data of his personal history, in order that it may reflect his ultimate view of the world. This 8

Revelation, 3 : 17. Belyj, "Lug zelenyj", Lug zelenyj (Moscow, 1910), p. 14. 10 See "Vospominanija ob Aleksandre Bloke", Zapiski mectatelej, VI-VII (1922), pp. 5-122; in spite of the fact that this is ostensibly about Blok, Belyj plays an almost co-starring role; Na rubeze dvux stoletij (Moscow-Leningrad, 1930), Nacalo veka (Moscow-Leningrad, 1933), Mezdu dvux revoljucij (Leningrad, 1934). These are the major texts of Belyj's memoir literature. 9

32

THE FAMILY APOCALYPSE

creative and dramatic interpretation of his life comes to permeate all of his work in which the historical apocalypse of his age and the cosmic apocalypse of time and space give form to the creative interpretation of the individual. The creative source of Belyj's personal sense of apocalypse is his own experience as a child. His overwhelming sense of duality, or cleavage, between antipodal spirits, arises out of what he called his "family apocalypse". The tug-of-war between his parents in which he found himself played a decisive role for him in forming a psychological sublimation of apocalypse. Before proceeding with this point it might be well to elucidate what might appear as a major illogicality. Belyj reorganizes his childhood experiences relatively late in his creative work, and, therefore, according to a mature and sophisticated philosophical view of symbolism. The question here is whether one may speak of any "childhood influences" in a chronological development of the author's creative consciousness. Obviously, the child cannot communicate these sophisticated concepts of apocalypse by pointing out their symbolic topoi. Can one accept Belyj's symbolized portrayal of the apocalyptic trauma of his childhood as valid? First of all, inasmuch as Belyj consciously chooses to depict his childhood in this manner and sees the significant events of this trauma in apocalyptic imagery, it is certainly indicative of his eschatological orientation. By a process of "reverse chronology" or by tracing the motifs and symbolism back to his earliest works, one will discover that the schematics of apocalypse have always been in strong evidence. Furthermore, Belyj was somewhat of a "psychological symbolist" who was intensely aware of himself and the implications of his physiological and mental makeup. In "psychoanalyzing" himself he sought to reveal the probable organic origins of his apocalyptic mentality by associating the events of his childhood with the various religious or mythical themes which seemed most likely to correspond to the apocalyptic syndrome. Thus perhaps it will not seem to be too serious an inconsistency if one chooses to view Belyj's later depictions of his childhood as an organic genesis of eschatology in the author. Belyj was a consummate psycho-metaphysician in that he managed to develop in those works dealing with his childhood the very elements which were later to constitute the focal point of his creative work and philosophy: a sense of emotional cleavage between two antipodal forces withhimself caughtin between. In this process of "transformation" of empirical data into mythological signs or symbols may be found one of the

THE FAMILY APOCALYPSE

33

major keys to Belyj's method of symbolization which will be dealt with in the succeeding chapter. In a sense, this is Belyj's own attempt to exert his volition over the data of life and to transform them - through his creative imagination - into a meaningful system of cosmic signs and symbols. None of Belyj's biographers has failed to point out his "father-complex". Indeed, Belyj himself did as much on many occasions in both his memoirs and aesthetic works. He has, in effect, offered the reader more than ample psychological data to encourage psychoanalysis of this relationship. However, for both the reader and Belyj this relationship is most significant as a personal justification of his own development and philosophy. In looking back over his early life Belyj can conjure up out of the dark past only the figure of his father: When I turn to the distant past it is as if the primordial images of memory are cast up to me out of my subconscious only to be submerged once again in the arising darkness. I struggle to distinguish something in this darkness. I struggle to return to the primordial glimpses of self-awareness, but I do not have enough strength. At times out of the abyss of darkness only the image of my father emerges for me.11 The actual figure of his father and the father-son conflict does not come to dominate Belyj's work until somewhat later. The most outstanding example of this particular relationship appears, of course, in the Oedipuscomplex of Nikolaj Apollonovic Ableuxov in the novel Peterburg (1911-1916).12 Subsequently, Belyj's father, a renowned mathematician, appears more or less as himself in Kotik Letaev (1918), "Prestuplenie Nikolaja Letaeva", 1921-22, and the three major volumes of Bely's memoir literature which have already been mentioned (Na rubeze dvux stoletij, Nacalo veka and Mezdu dvux revoljucij). However, if closer examination of Belyj's earlier works is made then it will be noticed that in many of them a father-son relationship is present in variation. In Belyj's first symphony, Severnaja simfonija (Pervaja, Geroiceskaja) (1903), the young knight wooing the princess appears to be doomed because he cannot escape the curse of evil and chaos associated with his satyrlike father. Perhaps even more typical is the relationship which comes to light in such works as Belyj's third symphony, Vozvrat (1905) and the fragmentary excerpt, "Past' noci". In both cases the blood-relationship 11 12

Belyj, Na rubeze dvux stoletij, p. 19. More attention will be paid to this point in Chapter ΥΠ.

34

THE FAMILY APOCALYPSE

of father and son is exchanged for that of a naive child (Belyj?) and either an omniscient Old Man {starik) or prophet. In fact it is precisely this childlike naivete that binds the ingenuous Dar'jal'skij to his evil "spiritual father", Kudejarov, in Serebrjanyj goluV (1909). In general, however, the father-figures in Belyj's works are overwhelmingly demonic and usually the harbingers of chaos and destruction beneath the seductive mask of order and harmony. The divide between his dogmatic and ultra-rational father and his sensitive but hysterical mother planted the first seeds from which there was to spring forth the feeling of cleavage in Belyj's sensibility. He never ceased to return to this original source of disharmony in these two figures who represented for him two completely opposite types and principles: It is difficult to find two people as contradictory as my parents; my physically powerful and clear-headed father, and my mother suffering from hysteria and nervous attacks, at times completely ill; the esteemed husband, credulous like a child; and my mother, overly nervous, almost still a girl; a rationalist and yet something rather irrational; strength of thought and tornadoes of contradictory feelings exhibited in the strangest of occurrences; the man of science who was without will-power in everyday life, running out of the house to the university and the club; and my mother who filled the entire house with her laughter, crying, music, pranks and caprices.13 The continual quarrelling between the parents, for whom Belyj apparently served either as scapegoat or prize, gave rise to his own personal feeling of crisis. Provoked by the raging of his father on the one hand, the hysteria of his mother on the other, a resultant sense of crisis gave birth to his first premonitions of apocalypse, the premonitions of the destruction and end of the world: The first impressions of being were the divide between mother and father, the divide between me and them and the crisis of our apartment outside of which there was not any other world yet. And so I was filled with an apocalyptic mysticism of the end before becoming acquainted with The Apocalypse. Mysticism was the empiricism of that life for me. Consequently, already at the age of seven when I had absorbed the maid's stories about "doomsday", I responded with all my heart to the "trumpet of judgement". I was only waiting for my father to "sound the trumpet" with an argument and my mother to reply with her nerves, and - it would be the end, the end to everything!14 13 14

Ibid., p. 71. Ibid., pp. 72-73.

THE FAMILY APOCALYPSE

35

But the sense of cleavage in the child did not stem only from an antipathy between his mother who feared that the child would take after his "cranial" (lobastyj) father, who, in turn, feared that the child was too stupid to grasp any rational knowledge. Belyj felt most poignantly the love that his strange parents had for him. But this in no way mitigated his suffering, for he could reject neither parent in favour of the other. Their love for him only served to further sunder him. He writes: "The love of my parents tore me into two parts early in life."15 The dramatic explosion of a "family apocalypse" is depicted by Belyj in "Prestuplenie Nikolaja Letaeva".16 Throughout this fragmentary work he casts his father variously as a Scythian, Tartar and even Chinese, as an Asiatic figure whose coefficient is destruction or chaos. Apocalyptically, for Belyj, he represents the end of the world or the traditional threat of catastrophe emanating from the East: . . .he then ran a plump hand over his full-cheeked face; turning around he tried to catch a glimpse of his own profile (and the profile was Scythian), stern, with a curly beard, seemingly beast-like.. . 1 ? And winking at me with his Tartar eyes he pronounced in a respectful whisper...18 . . .and papa couldn't control himself: with a caustic narrowing of his slanted Chinese eyes which were bloodshot like red lead, he blinked.. . 1 9

The child's world is first threatened with imminent destruction at the hands of the father during one of the frequent quarrels between the parents. Until now the child's imagination has conjured up only the likeness of a Scythian in his father when chaos strikes and dismembers the orderly house: "Oh Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord! Let it pass, let it pass, let it pass! Save us and have mercy, save us and have mercy, oh, Lord, Lord, Lord!" And suddenly I am enveloped in puffs of the red horror of thunderous Chinese Typhoons and through my fingers covering my ears I hear: "Fifteen seconds are l e f t ! . . . " Oh! Oh! Oh! I open my eyes and I see - bang! - a leg falls, then a head and an arm; the foot on the floor, the arm towards the washbasin. 15

Ibid., p. 73. This fragmentary work appeared in Paris in Sovremennye zapiski, Nos. 11-13 (1921-22). 17 Ibid., No. 11 (1921), p. 68. 18 Ibid., No. 12 (1921), p. 70. 19 Ibid., No. 13 (1922), p. 102. 16

36

THE FAMILY APOCALYPSE

A nail, rusted to a yellow colour, strikes against the tin-plate of the washbasin. "Bang!" Out of the gaping mouth a bloody tongue issues with its tip pointing down; eyes fly off into the air; and a handkerchief describes an arc flying out of the pocket; "he" runs about hunchbacked, swirling about, shaking his hands and with the rusty-orange nail pounds against the iron bed, basin and tin-plate; with his five-fingered hand he seizes the lighted lamp and stands with this lamp, trying to smash it on the floor and shatter the glass shade, pouring forth a blackbloody flame and pall of smoke, and then plunge into the flames and clouds of smoke.20 Thereupon, mere likeness becomes horrifying reality for the child as his father assumes the frightening dimensions of a real Scythian: . . .The walls flew off in red circles; and papa - threatening with his lance furiously, sharply pressing a shaggy horse with his legs, chases off into the expanse of the distant past - like a hunch-backed Scythian after a Persian, or more likely, the flesh of a Persian! And the sun bursts into flame, and the steppes are smoky with the holocaust, and the Persian takes to his heels, pressing his head to the horse's mane and throwing his shaggy hand behind his neck, holding a shield of stretched hide. Against the horse there suddenly resounds the blow of a ponderous lance, shattering the shield and impaling the Persian against the mane of the staggering horse - his neck pierced through.. , 21 While writing "Prestuplenie Nikolaja Letaeva" Belyj was greatly influenced by Ivanov-Razumnik and his theory of "Scythianism". But this association with Ivanov-Razumnik and company is by no means a departure in Belyj's work. In fact, it only affirms the continuation of these motifs, which go back to Solov'ev and his "Pan-mongolizm" and "Kratkaja povest' ob Antixriste", where "Scythianism" was projected as the agent of a destructive apocalypse, heralding the end of the world. In this light, it is obvious that Belyj is in the process of "mythologizing" his family circumstances according to an apocalyptic framework. What most commentators on Belyj have failed to point out is the inherent paradox in his treatment of his father. Belyj's father lived in an ultra-rational and dogmatic world of weights, measures and figures. Everything was for him subject to the rigid laws of cause and effect. In other words, Nikolaj Bugaev created for himself a world of mathematical and mechanistic harmony: 20 21

Ibid., N o . 13, p. 114. Ibid., N o . 13, p. 115.

THE FAMILY APOCALYPSE

37

. . . his favourite phrases: "Everything is the measure of harmony!" "There really is harmony, you know, there really is proportion!"... "The world of worlds, that is what we are; our root is the integer and the integer is the harmony of proportion." "Thus everything is the harmony of proportion." I know that papa lives a life of conservation of measures and weights.. , 22 Yet, in spite of an orderly world-view which he preached continually to those about him, the father destroyed this very harmony of form in all of his actions. His excessive attempts to base everything on rationality and science undermined his world. His "Scythianism" and his eccentric manner betrayed the ambivalence of his nature, thus splitting him also between chaos in his actual life and delusive harmony in his world-view. This paradox is extended by Belyj to his mother, with whom he equates music. Belyj, the child, is repulsed by the disharmony of his father's chaotic nature and attracted by the harmony of his sensitive mother playing Beethoven, Schumann and Chopin on the piano: . . . when mother stayed home and nobody was visiting us, she would sit down to play Chopin's Nocturnes and Beethoven's Sonatas. Holding my breath I would listen from my bed and what I then experienced would be contrasted to the atmosphere I lived in. The drama of our home disappeared together with my opressive position in it.23 Here, Belyj perceives the constant duel between mother and father: his mother, with the "harmony" of her music, struggles with the "disharmony" of the father's Scythian nature: . . . our papa is a Scythian. He doesn't like perfume and says, "I don't need them. I don't smell of anything." But all the same he smells of Antonov apples, of partially extinguished tallow candles and dust - at times of all three together. And he doesn't listen to music. Mama fights him with music.. , 24 Thus, one could see, as Belyj apparently does, a paradoxical struggle between form and formlessness, cosmos and chaos. The seemingly ultra-rational exterior of the father is only a mask which hides the real irrational interior of his Scythian nature, whereas the hysterical and -2 23 24

Ibid., N o . 11, p. 78. Belyj, Na rubeze dvux stoletij, p. 182. Belyj, "Prestuplenie Nikolaja Letaeva", Sovremennye zapiski. N o . 11 (1921), p. 73.

38

THE FAMILY APOCALYPSE

nervous nature of the mother is dissipated in the internal harmony of her music. This struggle against the father with music reveals, through the elemental power of music, the real origins of both harmony and disharmony for Belyj. Belyj's relationship with his parents also crystallized for him his own position; he was caught between the two extremes of order and chaos, and had to synthesize the two, to bring the two extremes together. From his intuited "family apocalypse", Belyj transferred his sense of destructive and tragic cleavage to his own age and characterized his own creative strivings within the framework of this duality. The end of the nineteenth century led to the beginning of the bright and promising twentieth century, whereby the old would be destroyed and the inexpressibly new would be created. Thus, the apocalyptic situation of being caught "on the divide"25 between two ages practically overpowered Belyj and the others of his generation; he writes: "We experienced our 'apocalypse' on the border of two centuries."26 This tragic position Belyj interpreted over and over again as the "scissors" (noznicy) - he and the others were caught between the two open blades of the old and the new which they must somehow or other bring together to achieve a dialectically new synthesis. But no doubt the scissors also presented an aptly chosen metaphor for the danger of the task at hand: In a great deal we, the children of the divide, are incomprehensible. We are neither the "end" of a century, nor the "beginning" of the new, but caught between the centuries in our souls we are the scissors between the two. We must be dealt with keeping in mind this problem of the scissors: we cannot be explained either according to the criteria of the "old" or the "new".27 The "scissors" concept, in fact, came to illustrate the basic problems of Belyj's search for a new life-transfiguring symbolism. Not only did they symbolize the end of one age and the beginning of the next, but they became the sign under which he, in his search for total knowledge, turned to formal literary and philosophical studies after completing his degree in the faculty of natural sciences. Hence the two blades of 25 Many of Belyj's titles are symptomatic of this "on the divide" predicament: Na rubeze dvux stoletij; Mezdu dvux revoljucij; a series of critical articles published in Vesy under the title of " N a perevale"; three major articles, "Krizis zizni", "Krizis mysli", "Krizis kul'tury", published jointly under the title Na perevale (Berlin, 1923). 26 Belyj, Na rubeze dvux stoletij, p. 73. 27 Ibid., p. 167.

THE FAMILY APOCALYPSE

39

the scissors, one representing his scientific and the other his non-scientific studies, could be employed as the weapon of total knowledge with which he would cut the Gordian knot of the final mysteries of man and the cosmos: I, a student of the natural sciences, working in a chemistry laboratory and having completed the course in anatomy, was the following type of person: Ostwald and the Basics of Chemistry by Mendeleev in one hand, The Apocalypse in the] other. If the Basics of Chemistry and literature on Darwinism had

not been part of my reading I would not have allowed myself to write in such an openly religious-symbolistic manner.. , 28 By extension the "scissors" also came to symbolize the first principles of light or harmony and darkness or chaos between which he sought to resolve the conflict by producing a new synthesis of the two. Mention has already been made of Solov'ev's influence on Belyj - a fact which Belyj places precisely at the border of the nineteenth and twentieth century. It is perhaps worthwhile reiterating at this point the apocalyptic import which his meeting with Solov'ev in 1900 exercised upon Belyj: "In the spring of 1900 I had a conversation with him [Solov'ev] which consequently had a decisive influence on me: from this time on I lived with a feeling of the End as well as with a sensation of the paradise of the new and final era proclaimed by Christianity." 29 Thus, the symbolist's constant repetition of his tragic and apocalyptic "on the divide" situation both in regard to his parents and to his historical time, led to an almost psychopathically narcissistic trend in his work. His constant reinterpretation of his personal experiences in terms of cosmic myths and processes continued to nourish this boundary situation. Both Carl Jung and Mircea Eliade have recognized this basic connection which the human being effects between his world of personal mythologizing and the crisis-ridden boundary situation which he interprets for himself: One has only to take the trouble to study the problem, to find out that, whether obtained by diffusion or spontaneously discovered, myths and rites always disclose a boundary situation of man - not only a historical situation. A boundary situation is one which man discovers in becoming conscious of his place 28 Andrej Belyj, "Pocemu ja stal simvolistom i pocemu ja ne perestal im byt' vo vsex fazax moego idejnogo i xudozestvennogo razvitija", Puskinskij Dom, Arxiv Ivanova-Razumnika, F79/Op. 3/Nr. 62, p. 13. 29 Belyj, Vospominanija ob A. Bloke, p. 17.

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THE FAMILY APOCALYPSE

in the universe. It is primarily by throwing light upon these boundary situations that the historian of religions fulfils his task and assists in the researches of depth-psychology and even philosophy.30 Crucified at the point of intersection of his parents' love on the one hand, and at the boundary of two centuries on the other, Belyj increasingly recognized his "ego" or "centre" as concomitant to both suffering and cleavage. Hence, all of his work, this basically minutely repetitious and super-emotional "memoir literature", exhibits yet another basic problem of his creativity - the search for "seff awareness" (samosoznanie). Where did others stop and he begin, where did his ego become fully conscious of itself and independent of the unconscious cosmic processes out of which it had arisen? This line of thought came to dominate his work increasingly; Kotik Letaev and Zapiski cudaka are the most extreme representatives of this introverted vision. A sense of personal crisis and cleavage was not all that Belyj extracted out of his family relationship. The general atmosphere and byt of the stuffy, bigotted and comfortable bourgeois professordom during the 1880's and 1890's brought forth a profound sense of anarchical revolt in Belyj. He himself was almost suffocated by the narrow-mindedness and boredom of this milieu which esteemed itself so highly, yet which was so completely incapable of social creativity either in word or deed. It could not escape the depressing sameness or monotony which was its legacy from a long affiliation with French positivism and scientific empiricism. The disease of this professorial world was for Belyj merely symptomatic of the general intellectual disease of those times and, in particular, the professorial wife was a symbol of this ingrown social group: The professor's wife appears in the front ranks. I have seen many types, lived in many different circles, but such a horrible, dull, uninteresting life as that established by the professor's wife of the 1880's, I, who have long since escaped from such women, I can frankly say that I have never seen another such life. Merchants, officers, artists, revolutionaries, workers, peasants, priests, they all live more beautifully than the average professor's wife. In no other group was this monotony preserved with such despotism, nor was deviation from the norm punished with such precise cruelty. (I experienced this cruelty myself.)31

30

Mircea Eliade, Images and Symbols, trans. Philip Mairet (London: Harvill Press, 1961), p. 34. 31 Belyj, Na rubeze dvux stoletij, pp. 39-40.

THE FAMILY APOCALYPSE

41

Russian intellectual society was in precisely the same doldrums preceding the turn of the century as Germany experienced during her Biedermeierzeit or France during the Empire. It was up to the enthusiastic and anarchical youth to epater le bourgeois and pull the rotten supports out from under the edifice built on mechanistic materialism. Belyj was no different in this respect than the French romanticists and decadents. The yellow scarves of Theophile Gautier and company found their echo in the "shocking rumours" which Belyj spread about the sightings of centaurs and fauns in Moscow,32 and depicted later in the "red domino" of Peterburg. The action amounted to the same regardless of the form it took. It represented essentially a romantic revolt against the confines of dogmatic and bourgeois thinking, a desire to negate the old and promulgate the new on the ashes of the old. Consequently, his father and the latter's circle of professorial friends came to represent the old byt which was in the process of decay and self-destruction. It would die out just as Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks' dynasty could no longer perpetuate itself, being sick both in body and spirit. This revolt against a society locked in positivism and for which Belyj found the living archetype in his own family, he expressed in terms dialectically opposed to materialism and empiricism, in terms mystical and religious. He based his goals on both religious and intensely individualistic criteria in order to do battle in the most overt terms with a de-humanized and industrialized society: Either society is a machine devouring mankind, a locomotive roaring madly and using human bodies for fuel. Or society is a living, whole, unrevealed Being covered as though with a veil, a sleeping Beauty who will be aroused from her sleep at some time. 33

The extreme emotionalism which Belyj made a prerequisite of art and symbolism arose out of his emotional responses to both his personal trauma and his age. Belyj was by nature given to outbursts of hysteria which became for him further evidence of the crisis of the individual. He reacted to all intellectual stimuli with an almost psychopathic hypersensitivity. But it was also out of this physiological and mental sensitivity that he extracted another basic tenet for his concept of art: the importance of the "crisis-experience" (perezivanie). In focusing attention upon himself and his own processes, Belyj became obsessed with the 32 33

See Valerij Brjusov, Dnevniki (1891-1910) (Moscow, 1927), p. 134. Belyj, "Lug zelenyj", Lug zelenyj (Moscow, 1910), p. 5.

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THE FAMILY APOCALYPSE

crisis of emotional experience in the individual. "Prestuplenie Nikolaja Letaeva" focused attention on this very aspect in Belyj's relationship with his parents, and out of this arose his first premonitions of apocalypse. In order to give these emotional experiences concrete form he interpreted them according to tragic myth and exaggerated their apocalyptic import. His "identification" with Christ and His passion and crucifixion is probably the most dominant of the religious myths that will appear in his work as will be shown in the succeeding chapters. Thus, through the age itself and through his own personal experience, Belyj arrived at an eschatological scheme of things. The sense of cleavage and a resultant destructive duality summoned forth a sense of personal crisis for which Belyj discovered a parallel in The Apocalypse both in the symbolic content and emotional experience. As a result of this he chose to put the questions in religiously symbolic terms and to search for a religious solution. But his religious search was to be understood in a much broader sense, in the literal meaning of the word "religion", as the "linking up" or "tying together" of all things. Inasmuch as The Apocalypse was a finite expression of the infinite cosmic struggle, it was wilfully employed both as a means of symbolic depiction and for the communication of deeply personal experiences as well.

III TOWARDS A THEORY OF

SYMBOLISM

A conservative estimate would place the volume of Belyj's theoretical and critical articles over a period of some thirty years at approximately three thousand pages, hardly an insignificant output considering that his fame has rested primarily on his aesthetic prose, and secondarily on his poetry. In any work as syncretic and occult as Belyj's the study of the theoretic materials can provide the necessary additional means to penetrate into his complicated literary creativity. This is not to suggest that Belyj's theoretical literature is any less enigmatic. Quite the contrary, for it too presents the reader with a confusing array of knowledge, metaphysical, mystical and psychological, which often defies any strictly rational or reliable categorization. For Belyj, a theory of symbolism increasingly became synonymous with epistemology or a theory of knowledge. The search for a system of symbolism did not merely involve finding one ready-made rational formula, but rather a long, and at times, tedious picking of one's way through all schools of thought, including idealism, positivism and especially the then-burgeoning study of psychology. The task would be relatively simple had Belyj lighted solely upon some form of Platonic symbolism of Forms or a Kantian noumenal-phenomenal distinction, and constructed his own hypotheses accordingly. But his search for "total knowledge" was precisely that: an attempt to involve all areas of human knowledge in some grand synthesis. This search was to lead him through the strangest combinations of likes and unlikes. Plato, Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Leibniz, Kant, Schopenhauer, Herbert Spencer, Nietzsche, Erich von Hartmann, Wilhelm Wundt, Madame Blavatsky, Rudolf Steiner - these represent but a partial list of the various sources of knowledge which Belyj attempted to assimilate during his lifetime. Strangely enough, in spite of the unlikeliness of these sources and the fact that Belyj continued to define and re-define his terms of symbolism during more than twenty-five years, the basic elements and problems

44

TOWARDS A THEORY OF SYMBOLISM

which were operative in his view of symbolism remained unchanged. The reconciliation of contradictions or opposites, the fusion of inner and outer experience (or metaphysical and empirical evidence), the all-consuming desire to unite all things according to a legitimate and coherent epistemological system, the creation of the new man and the the new era - these are the most significant characteristics which distinguish his view of symbolism. The basically unchanging content of his aesthetic creation only serves to underline the fact that Belyj, in his terms, arrived not at a final system of "symbolism", a realization of the Oneness of all things, but rather at "symbolization", a method of becoming or attaining symbolism. Ultimately, Belyj is unable to achieve the creative synthesis of opposites, the prerequisite of his symbolist world-view, and, thus, resolve the dramatic tension in his works. His major articles dealing with symbolism and art were, for the most part, written between 1904 and 1909. This period represents more than any other the ascendancy of the theoretician of symbolism in Belyj. The years 1907-1909 were especially intensive, for it was during this time that he was allied with Brjusov and the journal Vesy as its chief theoretician. The fierceness with which he attacked the other symbolists, the ardour with which he defended his own abstractions of symbolism - his Beautiful Lady - resulted in a period that was aesthetically barren, but which cast the theoretic die for the literary works to follow: Here is the outline of that platform of the symbolists; it determined those three years (1907-1909) for me and came crashing into my relationships with people. I have never lived such a parched and abstract existence as in those years when I gave both love and hate to the slogans, my 'Beautiful Lady'.. , 1 This period of theorization is significant in several ways. Belyj's work has been schematized according to diverse criteria, ranging from the aesthetic and biographical to the political. While all of these considerations are, of course, valid in their own frame of reference, another general scheme might be advanced which puts the period of theorization in its proper perspective as the time of greatest ferment. Belyj's work, previous to 1904, which included Severnaja simfonija, Vtoraja simfonija, Vozvrat (written in 1903 but not published until 1905), "Prisedsij" and Zoloto ν lazuri, is essentially atheoretic in that Belyj is first groping his way about, both in the aesthetic medium and the ideology of symbol-

1

Belyj,

Mezdu dvux revoljucij,

p. 217.

TOWARDS A THEORY OF SYMBOLISM

45

ism. It represents essentially a period characterized by feeling with the emphasis on personal intuition and mystical revelation. The succeeding period of theorization, 1904-1909, is doubly significant in that it produced no major literary works2 but rather a long series of somewhat tedious articles on theories of cognition, the task of art and the workings of symbolism. Simultaneously, this period betrays the personalism and emotionalism of the author disguised in ultra-rational and scientific terminology. However, after 1909 Belyj attempted to unite both personal experience and rational metaphysics in his succeeding literary works: Peterburg, Kotik Letaev, Zapiski cudaka and Moskva/Maski. Ironically enough this particular formulation reveals the same tripartite "dialectic" that is operative in Belyj's works, both aesthetic and critical. From a "thesis" of relatively simplistic emotional experience and optimistic faith in symbolism, he turned to the "antithesis" of syncretic and occult theorizing occasioned by the failure of a naively conceived symbolism. The result was a "synthesis" of an emotional and theoretic system of symbolization in the post-1909 period. As in the Hegelian scheme, where the synthesis still contains the qualities of the thesis and antithesis, Belyj's also carries both the vices and virtues of mystical intuition and ultra-rational theory. Belyj himself perceived the progression of this dialectic in comparing the significant articles of 1904 (the height of an optimistic and emotional symbolism) and of 1909 (a more sober and theoretical symbolization): In the article "Simvolizm kak mirovozzrenie" [sic] the world-view is promised "this very evening". The progression of thoughts is simple: thesis, plus antithesis plus synthesis. In the article of 1909, "femblematika smysla", a worldview is promised in principle; the "synthesis" is still only a nomenclature, a summary of wanderings through a series of fictitious syntheses. In the first youthful article, I, a mere titmouse, want to set fire to the sea with a spark; in the latter article I only resolve the possibility of such a conflagration in a future which is misty for me and which does not belong to me personally, but to an entire culture. 3

2

The poetry collections, Urna (Moscow, 1909) and Pepel (Moscow, 1909), as well as the novel Serebrjanyj goluV, 1st separate edition (Moscow, 1910), come at the end of this period. Belyj had obviously been at work on them, but only managed to finish them at the last moment, realizing in despair how deeply he had immersed himself in his theoretic wanderings. The final Symphony, Kubok metelej (Moscow, 1908) Belyj considered a much belated work that belonged to the earlier period of the other Symphonies. 3 Belyj, Nacalo veka, pp. 329-330. Belyj actually means the article "Simvolizm kak miroponimanie".

46

TOWARDS A THEORY OF SYMBOLISM

In dealing with Belyj's theories of symbolism it is well to keep in mind that they were not formulated as a mere mental puzzle or an exercise in epistemology. Chapter II has illustrated the obsessive and definitely emotional character of Belyj's thought. His theorizing displays the same characteristics, and only the constant awareness of his psychopathic obsessiveness and extreme emotionalism will enable the reader to comprehend the melodrama of exaggerated personal suffering which Belyj is constantly enacting. Not only was symbolism a personal faith for Belyj, but like an early Christian among sceptics and persecutors, he had to defend his faith and "proselytize among the infidel". These "non-believers" included the representatives of the other literary factions of the day, including the "false prophets" such as Vjaceslav Ivanov, Dmitrij Merezkovskij and Georgij Culkov, who were defiling the true spirit of symbolism. The ferocity of his attacks caused him in later and more subdued years a great deal of remorse, but he also attempted to justify his actions on the grounds of a nervous illness which apparently poisoned those years between 1907 and 1909 and almost led him to commit suicide: I returned from abroad, dry, malevolent, fanatic, having wasted everything except the world of ideas and Utopias concerning our phalanx of warriors for the cause. I had not yet overcome my suicide mania but I did not throw myself into the river. But those two years wasted on arguing, were they not, in fact, self-torture... ?4 The goal of symbolism was to aid in creating the new man and the new culture, yet the only way to create the new was on the ashes of the old. The Babylonian towers which had been erected by narrow dogmatism and pompous faith had to be levelled so that out of their ashes the new could arise. This apocalyptic "dogma" of creation through destruction was the principal teaching which Belyj inherited from the most influential of his soul-mates, Nietzsche. Thus, he hearkened to the preaching of Zarathustra when the latter proclaimed Nietzsche's creative anarchism: The creator seeks companions and not corpses, nor flocks and believers. The creator seeks fellow-creators who will inscribe new values on new tablets... The creator seeks companions, and such as will know how to whet their scythes. They will be called annihilators and scorners of good and evil. But they are the harvesters and celebrants.5 4

Belyj, Mezdu dvux revoljucij, p. 208. Friederich Nietzsche, Also sprach Zarathustra, pp. 289-290. 5

Werke, 2 vol. (Munich, 1955), II,

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This apocalyptic spirit reinforced Belyj's religious zeal throughout his life, but nowhere more strongly than in the second period outlined above. Symbolism was not only an aesthetic doctrine, but it was also used as a means of spiritually overthrowing the old and ushering in the new. Since symbolism is essentially a problem of epistemology or cognition for Belyj, and the early years of childhood are those in which the cognitive faculties are developed and influenced, then these earliest years are of great significance in forming later attitudes and providing the potential for development in one direction or another. Quite obviously Belyj finds in his own childhood games and modes of perception the elements of a future symbolism, and thus, he can adamantly proclaim that he never became but always was, in fact, a symbolist: To the question of how and WHEN I became a symbolist, I can honestly reply: I NEVER, NOR IN ANY FASHION, BECAME, but always WAS a symbolist (before any encounter with the words "SYMBOL", "SYMBOLIST"). In the games of a four-year-old child what later became a conscious symbolism of perception was the most immediate fact of a child's consciousness.6 The child's imagination, his power of perception and association, stimulated by the surrounding objects and circumstances, enables him to distinguish a visual connection between the concrete object and the symbolic image which it evokes. Thus, for instance, the dark knots in the wooden walls of Kotik Letaev's bedroom become black Moors staring down from the wall.7 This play of the child's powers of imagination is only a primitive series of associations, but for Belyj it signifies the first gropings towards a primordial symbolism, and is, therefore, to be considered a serious game. Moreover, this serious play of the youthful symbolist's imagination was especially attracted to biblical symbols because they impressed him with their "transparency" and ethical value. But above all they captivated him with the serious content which he intuited in them: At the age of seven or eight I experienced the coming of the Holy Ghost in two or three sections of the hardwood floor and thus, I, Boren'ka, the symbolist, concentrated my SERIOUS PLAY in THEURGY which later became conscious symbolism. Beginning as Boren'ka, the symbolist, and ending as Andrej Belyj, I perceived in Christian symbols a special category of symbols which were distinguished by their purity and nobility. In beach pebbles many c 7

Belyj, "Pocemu ja stal simvolistom...", p. 1. See Belyj, Kotik Letaev pp. 148-149.

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especially prize the translucent ones over all others. Similarly, I saw a special translucence in biblical symbols and my moral and aesthetic feelings were also attracted to t h e m . . . Thus, I would define my PLAYFUL approach to Christianity, but I repeat: I WAS PLAYING SERIOUSLY. 8 In the games of the child, who is first using his powers of perception, such associations are especially attractive, for they are a means of organizing and interpreting experience. The image, as a primitive means of ordering and expressing experience and, hence, as a unit of cognition, is a step towards the ultimate comprehension of reality for a child. Fairy-tales or myths give a semblance of meaning to the vast body of inchoate experience which assails him and thus they signify a step towards the eventual permanence of that totality of experience which will be expressed in a semantic union between feeling and image. This primitive form of symbolism in the child's perception of reality underlies the aesthetic intent of Kotik Letaev which will be discussed in Chapter VIIL Belyj's early approach to symbolism owes a great deal to Platonism. In one of his initial articles, "Okno ν buduscee", 19049, he presents us with a simile which appears to have its inspiration in Plato's similes of the Line, Sun and Cave (Republic, Books 6 and 7): A ray of light can pierce a row of transparent glasses. It cannot spread reality on them. Glass must be changed into a mirror after having been covered with an amalgam. Only then will the boundlessness of the world be overcome in the mirror's surface. This is what knowledge ought to be, for a concept is the glass whereas the mirror is the concept raised to the idea. Everything has its shadow. This shadow of the idea is a concept. But a concept is not an idea. An idea can be contiguous with a concept, as being in contact with the circumference at one point only. This possibility of a fleeting contact is the source of eternal delusions because they confuse the idea with the concept. The problem of the logical process of thought is to raise the elucidated concept to the idea as if by transference of the concept along the circumference to the point of contact. 10 The concept referred to is actually the lowest form of an object o r particular, an almost visible object which is not yet a symbol of anything 8

Belyj, "Pocemu ja stal simvolistom..", pp. 10-11. Belyj, Arabeski (Moscow, 1911), pp. 139-46. This article is perhaps one of the most fascinatingly syncretic and imaginative of all of his articles. 10 Ibid., p. 139. 9

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else. By turning the glass into a mirror one can study this concept and follow the reflection back to its source. The mirror then becomes a symbol reflecting the higher reality. This is much like Plato's cave simile in which the prisoner glimpses only the shadowy outlines of forms through a curtain in the cave and accepts this as the only reality (Belyj's simile in which the forms or ideas pass through glass). But upon emerging from the cave the prisoner catches the reflection of the sun and planets in the water and in nature, hence discovering in these the sensible reflections of the higher reality. Light plays the most important role both in Plato's Sun image and Belyj's visual reflection of light, representing that which the senses can perceive as a reflection of the ultimate intelligible Good. The "Image-symbol" represents the union between sensual and intelligible knowledge, just as Plato's particular visual forms reflect the corresponding Forms of Absolute Goodness. Socrates explains the metaphysics of the Forms to Glaucon: We distinguish between the many particular things which we call beautiful and good, and absolute beauty and goodness. Similarly with all other collections of things, we say there is corresponding to each set a single, unique Form which we call an "absolute" reality... And we say that the particulars are objects of sight but not of intelligence, while the Forms are the objects of intelligence but not of sight.11 This means of cognition in which Belyj is able to close the disparate scissor blades of empirical and metaphysical knowledge is first presented simply in the function of the symbol, and consequently of symbolism: "In art we cognize ideas by raising the image to the symbol. Symbolism is the method of depicting ideas in images." 12 Yet Belyj is not content merely to state this Platonic system of cognition. To it he adds another extremely emotional note which is significant in that it betrays the essentially chaotic substratum to his outwardly harmonious system. Typically of Belyj, it is a maximalist condition that is added. The symbolist is faced with a duality of light and darkness, either of which may be promulgated in symbolism. Thus, the images employed by him potentially contain both life and death, the possibility of fulfilment or failure. He is faced with the task of refashioning the image into the symbol of life: 11 12

Plato, The Republic, trans. H. D. P. Lee (Penguin Books, 1965), p. 271. Belyj, "Okno ν buduscee", p. 139.

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The surrounding life is a pale reflection of the struggle of human, living forces with fate. Symbolism deepens either darkness or light: it turns possibilities into actualities, it endows them with being. Together with this, the artist is turned into a definite fighter (for life and death) in symbolism. The possibility of fulfilment does not owe its realization only to the existence of these opposing forces. The artist embodies in the image the fulness of life or death; the artist cannot but refashion the very image of visibility. After all, in that image life and death are united and the refashioned image is the symbol.13 The image is potentially invested with either Christ or Antichrist and becomes a bomb which can explode in the artist's hands. There is no better example of the explosiveness of the symbol than in Peterburg where it is depicted as the time-bomb in the sardine tin. This basic acceptance of the Platonic doctrine of Forms also clarifies what Belyj was later to say concerning "form" and "content" in art. He proceeded beyond the rudimentary concept of form as rhetoric, or aesthetic device, and content as the ideas expressed, to a metaphysical fusion of the two, thus foreshadowing the later Russian Formalists: We can only say that the sum total of the elements called form, appears as the content of our consciousness and thus, the metaphysical contradiction of content to form is a passing contradiction. The forms of art are themselves the result of content for us. No content exists outside of form.14 In Platonic thought eidos is both form and idea, for it signifies the sensual category of objects which is only the reflection of the higher reality of intelligible ideas which are united in the Good or the Absolute.15 By this same process of abstraction Belyj was later able to contend that his language (ordinarily "form") was also the content of his work, inasmuch as it represented the intelligible expression of the sensual form. The early formulation of symbolism proved to be uniform and simplistic, reflecting the connection of the imperfect particulars of time and space with the perfection of eternity and infinity: "In symbolism as a method which unites the eternal with its spacially finite and temporal manifestations we encounter the epistemology of Platonic ideas."16 But the later formulation of the principles underlying the symbol is much 13

Belyj, "Simvolizm (Na perevale)", in Arabeski (Moscow, 1911), p. 245. Belyj, "Smysl iskusstva", 1907, in Simvolizm (Moscow, 1910), p. 222. 15 See W. K. C. Gutherie, The Greek Philosophers (London: Methuen and Co., 1962), pp. 88-90. 10 Belyj, "Simvolizm kak miroponimanie", p. 225. 14

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more complex and developed. The two articles, "Smysl iskusstva", 1907, and "Simvolizm", 1909, reflect the increasingly dialectical nature assumed by the symbol. Following are two excerpts from these articles which, besides displaying the increasing complexity of Belyj's approach during these years of exclusive theorizing, also reveal two new and significant attitudes towards symbolism. In the first Belyj writes: The living symbol of art borne by history through the ages refracts within itself multiple sensations, multiple ideas. It is the potential of an entire series of ideas, feelings and emotions. From this unravels the triadic formula, or the triple sense, so to speak, of the symbol: (1) the symbol as an image of visibility arousing our emotions with the concreteness of its features which we discern in surrounding reality; (2) the symbol as an allegory expressing the ideological significance of the image: philosophical, religious, social; (3) the symbol as a summons to the creation of life. But the symbolic image is neither one, nor the other, nor the third. It is the living wholeness of the experienced content of consciousness.17 On the other hand, in "Simvolizm" he not only augments the same concepts, but confuses them as well: And inasmuch as the symbol is an image converted by "crisis-experience" the symbolists point to the threefold principle of the symbol. Every symbol is a triad "abc" where " a " is the indivisible creative oneness in which are contained two items ("b" is the image of nature incorporated in sound, colour, word, and "c" is the "crisis-experience" freely arranging the material of sounds, colours and words in order that this material would completely express the "crisis-experience"); here freedom is not tyranny but a subjection only to that norm of creativity which not being given from within by any laws whatsoever, brings its goals into being.18 The elements of Platonism are still recognizable in spite of the more complex form in which they now appear. However, Belyj has added something more, namely the triadic contours of synthesis and the important element of the "crisis-experience" (perezivanie). In placing the above two excerpts together, not only are the disparity and juggling in Belyj's definitions of symbolism emphasized, but the leitmotifs to which he continually returned throughout his life also come to light. The basic configuration for his scheme of the symbol is triadic in both cases. This is significant, for it reveals the basic problem of Belyj's work: 17 18

Belyj, "Smysl iskusstva", p. 205. Belyj, "Simvolizm", p. 245.

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the awareness of opposites, and above all, the attempt to produce a dialectic of symbolism whereby a synthesis of opposites will be achieved. In Platonism the two categories of empirical and transcendental forms are kept separate, although the former may lead to the latter. While accepting this duality of perception, Belyj refused to forsake the empirical for the transcendental. The two must be amalgamated or synthesized. This obsession with synthesis for the sake of Oneness (Edinstvo) is the position at which Belyj arrives during the period of theorization. Hence, in both cases, primacy is awarded to synthesis or oneness. In "Simvolizm" the letter "a" represents the spirit of indivisiveness created in the symbol; in "Smysl iskusstva" the vehicle for synthesis of the various parts of the symbol is the content of the crisis-experience. The symbol is not composed of two heterogeneous parts, but is supposed to produce a homogeneous unity. This striving for synthesis or oneness at all costs represents the major striving of Belyj's aesthetic-theoretic activity. He applies its principles to all aspects of art and theory until it becomes the major tenet of his symbolism, reducible to a single sentence in postulating a pre-Formalist aesthetic: "And thus it can be said that the external canon of the symbolist school, as a growth in the seed, is contained in one sentence: there is an indivisible oneness in poetry between content and form; content is harmony." 19 Here the Platonic eidos is once again invoked as well as the Pythagorean harmony of cosmic music. This is doubly significant when one remembers that Pythagoras' basic configuration of the harmonics is the triangle (tetraktys).

The other original quality which Belyj imparts to his theory of symbolism is the crisis-experience dominating both "Simvolizm" and "Smysl iskusstva". In the former it is element "c" of the "abc" triad, whereas in the latter it represents the general spirit which unites the three elements of the symbol into one. While Belyj's obsession with synthesis is the motivating force in his creativity, the element of crisisexperience is certainly the most powerful source from which he draws all the motifs of his work. The striving for a resolution of opposites is dealt with rationally or philosophically, whereas the occupation with crisis-experience makes Belyj a victim of his emotions. It is, in fact, this very predilection for crisis-experience which eventually becomes the all-encompassing centre of attention. Belyj felt that his study of the natural sciences and empirical psychology would prevent him from 19

Belyj, "O simvolizme", Trudy i dni, Nr. 1 (1912), p. 19.

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becoming a mystic and an intuitionist. But he unconsciously uses empirical psychology in particular to evolve a pseudo-scientific theory of cognition which makes the spiritual processes of the individual ego its primary concern. In other words, Belyj arrives at an extremely complex and pseudo-scientific justification for feeling. This fact explains why his theory of symbolism, in spite of the mass of empirical data and philosophical reasoning which confronts the reader, is suggestive nonetheless of mysticism and religion. Consequently, Belyj is able to insist upon the most intimate relationship between the crisis-experience and religion, thereby affirming, perhaps, his own real attraction to the primacy of religion over philosophy: "In the crisis-experiences and not in dogmas lies the basis of religion and its universality."20 The psychological studies of Wilhelm Wundt not only provided Belyj with much of the material for his own concept of the crisis-experience, but also offered a further method of closing the opposing blades of empirical and psychical knowledge, hence bridging the gap between "subject" and "object". Wundt outlines the three major theses of his empirical psychology concerning the sources of cognition, the interconnectedness of psychical processes and the inclusiveness of "objective content" and "subjective process" in the following manner: (1) Inner, or psychological experience is not a special sphere of experience apart from others, but is immediate experience in its totality. (2) This immediate experience is not made up of unchanging contents, but of an interconnected system of occurrences; not of objects, but of processes, of universal human experiences and their relations in accordance with certain laws. (3) Each of these processes contains an objective content and a subjective process, thus including the general conditions both of all knowledge and of all practical human activity. 21

On the basis of these three points Wundt claims that the empirical psychology of "immediate experience" is supplementary to the natural sciences and serves as the foundation for the mental sciences. Furthermore, since this type of psychology is attempting to interrelate both "subjective" and "objective" knowledge, it is essential to both ethics and knowledge, which in their turn form the basis of philosophy. The most significant concept in these three points is that of psychological experience (and consequently of inner cognition) being composed of 20

Belyj, "Religioznoe osnovanie individualizma", Svobodnaja sovest', Kniga II (Moscow, 1906), p. 279. - 1 Wilhelm Wundt, Outlines of Psychology, trans, by J. C. Judd, 2nd rev. Eng. ed. of 4th rev. Germ. ed. (Leipzig, 1902), pp. 16-17.

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"immediate experience" for this idea allows Wundt to unite inner and outer experience and to see no essential distinction between the two: " . . .psychology, as the science of immediate experience, recognizes no real difference between inner and outer experience, but finds the distinction only in the different points of view from which unitary experience is considered in the two cases."22 This psychological theory allowed Belyj to unite the psychical realm with the physical realm through immediate inner experience in the conviction that the inner crisis-experience evokes the external visual image and, thereby, provides a method of symbolization: The experienced content of consciousness is not limited by the sphere of feelings only, or by processes of volition, or even by processes of thought. This experienced content is the indivisible oneness of these processes, and is related to the form of inner feeling, i.e., to time. In our inner feeling there must be something similarly related both to crisis-experience as to the content of inner experience, as well as to the phenomenon of visibility in order that a relation exist between the former and the latter. This contingency, which is connected with reason, gives birth to a scheme of the concepts of reason, i.e., symbolism in a broader sense of the word. Directed towards the relatedness of the facts of external experience with those of internal experience, it also gives birth to symbolism in a narrower sense of the word. The process of constructing models of "crisisexperiences" by employing visual images is a process of symbolization.23 This inner experience, which is the area of the crisis-experience or Wundtian "immediate experience", conforms to what personal psychologists now call the "unconscious" or "subconscious". It is the same area that Carl Jung considers to be the storehouse of the inherited forms of our intuition or "collective unconscious" from which emerge the mythic forms of cognition which Belyj is to manipulate so extravagantly in Kotik Letaev. However, it was also essential to the concept of the crisis-experience to discover meaningful unities and interrelationships in the subconscious in order to justify the cognitive value of this area of experience. Through Wundt, Belyj was also able to arrive at a complex formulation of the sum of the crisis-experiences as a series of unities and once again display his own preoccupation with unity: The division into subject and object represents form, order. The content of this form embraces both representation and volition in an indivisible oneness. If to 22

Ibid., p. 9.

23

Belyj, "Smysl iskusstva", pp. 205-206.

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this w e add the w o r d s o f Wundt concerning representation as an individual activity, as well as the thought dealing with a certain unity inextricably lying at the basis of psychic processes a n d manifesting itself as the ability to give us the internal and external terms o f reality, then w e must also consider the s u m o f our crisis-experiences t o be a series of such unities. 2 4

Thus, Belyj was indebted to Wundtian psychology for the support which it lent the symbolist's convictions. The immediacy of personal experience, psychology as a totality of psychical processes and a union of inner and outer experiences, and finally, "scientific" laws underwriting the genuineness of the artist's psychical experience: these lines of intersecting concerns between psychologist and symbolist sketch a diagram for a theory of symbolism in which a synthesis and unity of all processes, both intellectual and emotional, can be effected. The concept of art was also to come under the sway of of these complicated theories and, as the chief vehicle of symbolism, fell naturally within the domain which Belyj marked out for the symbol and the crisis-experience. Since romanticism, classicism and realism in art reflected a metaphysical position peculiar to each of the corresponding world-views, therefore new forms of cognition promulgated by the symbolist approach demanded a new method in art: With a change in the theory o f cognition, the relationship to art also changes. Art is n o longer a u t o n o m o u s form, nor can it be s u m m o n e d t o the aid o f Utilitarianism. It b e c o m e s the road t o the most essential cognition - a religious cognition. Religion is a system o f symbols which have consequently been unravelled. 2 5

Nor is it surprising that Belyj attached a religious as well as a philosophical significance to art, for it was to reveal the new and transfiguring truths concerning man, the spirit and the universe. This grand sweeping vision was a product of the idealist tradition and Hegel had expressed the same reverential concept of art which characterized Belyj's own approach: "[Art] fulfills its highest task when it has joined the same sphere with religion and philosophy and has become a certain mode of bringing to consciousness and expression the divine meaning of things, the deepest interests of mankind and the most universal truths of the spirit."26 24

Belyj, "O celesoobraznosti", Arabeski (Moscow, 1911), pp. 105-106. Belyj, "Simvolizm kak miroponimanie", p. 225. 26 G. F. Hegel, "Lectures on Aesthetics", Hegel - Selections, ed. and trans, by J. Loewenberg (New York, 1957), p. 314. 25

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In defining the nature of art Belyj was willing to go one step further than Hegel by investing art with a teleological force. Art is not merely revelatory, but is directed towards specific goals, principally the manifestation in itself of the unconditional principle at work in the universe. Thus, art is an instrument in the hands of the artist, not only for catching glimpses of the millennium (so typical of Belyj's early works), but also for the active realization of it: The essence of art is that which reveals the unconditional principle by means of one or another form. The significance of art is the manifestation of the goals of this principle: it is possible to examine teleology in the correspondence of the forms of creativity; and, furthermore, the connection of teleology with more general principles. It must be remembered that in formulating the problem in such a fashion the deepening of the significance of art immediately subordinates art to more general norms. In aesthetics, a supra-aesthetic criterion becomes apparent and art becomes not so much art (techne) as a creative revelation and transfiguration of life. 27

Belyj was quite aware of the supra-aesthetic role with which he was investing art. Nor did he have any qualms about declaring that symbolic art was the new faith and religion, not as a credo or religion of aesthetics in the decadents' sense, but quite literally in the accepted sense of religious belief. Belyj purposely avoids a strictly aesthetic appraisal of art, assigning to it instead the domains of philosophy, religion and culture in general, in order to give it a much broader significance: If we can propose for art one or another essence, then this essence will be set forth by us as our faith. True, faith can carry the seal of an immediate persuasiveness, especially if we fortify it with reference to the meaning of art - in this regard our religious credo comes into its own right especially if this credo is expressed in artistic images. Here we will be concerned with artistic insight, the metaphysics of art, with religion, but not with the logics of art.28

This is precisely the reason why he attacked many of the other symbolists who refused to liberate symbolism from the concept of a mere literary school and ignored all strictly supra-aesthetic concerns: " . . . the entire sin of later symbolism originated in its refusal to emerge from a restricted literary school as well as in its exaggerated desire to ignore all ethical, religious and generally cultural problems... " 2 9 " 28 29

Belyj, "Smysl iskusstva", p. 199. Ibid., pp. 201-202. Belyj, "Problema kul'tury", Simvolizm (Moscow, 1910), p. 9.

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Within Belyj's theory of cognition, the tension between external and internal experience and the dependence of the former on the latter presents art with its task. It is the aesthetic duty of art to arrange freely the visual images as models of the inner experiences, to "translate" and "order" in a significant manner: The method of expression is artistic symbolism, which is realized in the freedom of direction taken with the visual images as models of the inchoate crisisexperiences of inner experience. This freedom is expressed in the choice of images and in their transformation according to a certain scheme which is not coincidental with the direction of change in the symbols.30 Belyj, therefore, envisaged art's function beyond the narrow confines of a literary school or mere aesthetic doctrine. Its domain properly coincided with that of religion. As a faith, philosophy, and a means of cognition, it must transform life and be the vehicle for directing humanity towards the Great Symbol. As might be suspected, the role of the artist in Belyj's symbolism is of the utmost importance. His obsession with the inner experience of the individual made him naturally turn to the psyche of the artist himself in whom should be heightened the consciousness of his inner processes. As has already been pointed out, Belyj's work represents infinite symbolic variations upon the theme of his own ego. This narcissistic tendency determined the course of his symbolism by introverting it upon himself. One of his closest friends, Ellis-Kobylinskij, commented most successfully upon this chief characteristic of his work - the transformation of the personal ego of the author into a unified symbolic ego: This basic feature [of Belyj's work] is the all-consuming endeavour which grows out of the final stage of his "ego" to turn symbolism, as perception, into the symbolics of clairvoyance and secret ritual, as well as to transform the contemporary aesthetic world-view, which having pronounced itself to be symbolism, into a synthetic system and a world-view. This basic feature represents a purely practical endeavour and consequently has led Belyj essentially to the necessity of trespassing beyond the boundaries of "symbolic art" and dealing with the final mysteries of occultism and and above all the horrible question concerning the realization of this process. This is one of the unavoidable stages which is the legacy of theurgic activity and the necessity of transforming, not only the perceptive and creative consciousness, but the entire "ego" as well, into a living, indivisible and single symbolic "ego". In this feature and in this endeavour is concentrated the innermost essence of A. Belyj.31 30 31

Belyj, "Smysl iskusstva", p. 205. Ellis—Kobylinskij, L. L., Russkie simvolisty (Moscow, 1910), pp. 314-315.

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Belyj was no doubt aware of this direction in his work, which became increasingly the symbolism of the individual portrayed in metaphysical and mythological terms. The future art must make its goal the search for the ego. Hence, the artist must recreate everything anew, and in order to accomplish this he must first create himself, or discover and delineate his own ego: We must forget the present, we must create everything anew. For this we must create ourselves. And the only incline along which we can clamber is ourselves. At the summit our Ego awaits us. Here is the answer for the artist: if he wishes to remain an artist without ceasing to be a human being, he must become his own artistic form. Only this form of creativity can promise us salvation. Herein lies the path of the future art.32 In other words, the artist himself must become the form and content of his own work, or as Belyj says, the artist is his own "Word become Flesh". The artist's life is elevated in essence to the status of a symbol or a means of symbolization: The word must become flesh. The word, once it has become flesh, is a symbol of creation and the genuine nature of things. Romanticism and classicism in art are a symbol of this symbol. The two paths of art converge in a third: the artist must become his own form: his natural "ego" must converge with creativity; his life must become artistic. He himself is the "word become flesh". The existing forms of art lead to the tragedy of the artist. The victory over tragedy is the incorporating of art into the religion of life. Here the artist is comparable to the mighty Atlas supporting the world on his back.33 Belyj is suggesting that the life of the artist must be oriented in accordance with the symbolist "faith". The word "faith" may be used in this instance because Belyj is advocating a doctrine that is essentially religious. If one believes in a certain credo, one must practice the precepts of that credo and conduct oneself accordingly. This religious ethic becomes an aesthetic ethic for Belyj in his symbolist world-view and the consequences will be obvious in his work. The individual lives in a world of symbols, perceives the world symbolically in his experiences and, consequently, identifies himself with those symbolic archetypes which 32 33

Belyj, "Buduscee iskusstva", p. 453. Belyj, "Simvolizm", Lug zelenyj (Moscow, 1910), p. 28.

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are most meaningful to his own spiritual condition at that particular moment. In other words, the artist lives symbolically in his own creation. Thus, it will be seen in the following chapters that Belyj symbolizes himself variously as an incarnation of Dionysus and Christ; his father is a Scythian in "Prestuplenie Nikolaja Letaeva"; Dr. Dorionov in Kotik Letaev is the minotaur; the princess in Severnaja simfonija and Svetlova in Kubok metelej are manifestations of the Woman Clothed in the Sun. This represents his symbolic method of interpreting personal existence and inner experience in the light of images whose content can be deepened and broadened to a symbol. Art and the artist must function in the intermediate realm between chaos and order, between the Antichrist and the real Christ, and the artist who experiences his own symbolic existence must include these opposites in his own inner experience. He faces the excruciating experience of the split between two antithetical realms and the tension between opposites.34 While stimulating creativity this role of intermediary also bears tragedy with it. The heights of ecstasy and joy become real only through experiencing the depths of agony and despair. The pain of the "betweenness" of man was expressed by Nietzsche,35 who struck a responsive chord in Belyj's own definition of the tragic role of the poet in the Dionysian-Apollonian opposition formulated by the philosopher. The symbolist artist, left with the legacy of synthesizing the visual Apollonian form of classicism with the Dionysian spirit of romanticism, is caught between the two: But h o w e v e r w e might veil c h a o s , w e remain eternally o n the border between it a n d life. T h i s mixture o f content (the spirit o f D i o n y s u s ) with visualness (the spirit o f A p o l l o ) represents our tragedy, t h e m o t i o n o f the h a n d s t o the eyes w h e n a blinding light deprives u s o f sight a n d o u r eyes are filled with circular aberrations w h i c h w e accept as the real expression o f c o n t e n t . 3 6

One of the most interesting paradoxes of Belyj's creativity - the opposition of a chaotic content to a harmonious form - is not at all surprising in the light of this Apollonian-Dionysian relationship. If "form" and "content" are indivisible, as Belyj has proclaimed they are, then chaos 411

Much could be made of Belyj's attraction to what appears to be a major Heraclitean doctrine. According to the Greek thinker struggle and destruction are the paradoxical origins of cosmic creation, for everything is born of strife and everything is in constant flux. By inference, then, creativity is at its summit where destruction is greatest. 35 "Man is a rope, tied between animal and superman - a rope over the abyss." Nietzsche, Also sprach Zarathustra, II, 281. Belyj, "Simvolizm kak miroponimanie", p. 231.

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and harmony are not strange bed-fellows since they form part of the same "symbol" and make up the two aspects of synthesized oneness. The greater the rift, however, between these two, the greater the distance from the heights to the depths, the more sublime the possibilities for creativity. Hence, chaos must not be denied, but rather absorbed and used as a creative stimulant. Belyj was no doubt impressed with the basic teaching of Nietzsche's Zarathustra: "I say unto you: man must still possess chaos within himself in order to give birth to a dancing star. I say unto you: you still possess this chaos in yourself."37 This inner chaos is possessed by both Dar'jal'skij and Nikolaj Ableuxov in Serebrjanyj goluV and Peterburg. Both are creative and promising but are unable to escape the legacy of chaos which brings them to an unfortunate end. In 1909 Belyj's theoretic writings culminated in the lengthiest and most obscure of all his articles, "Emblematika smysla". Although this was not his final endeavour in the realm of symbolist theory, nothing which he was to write afterwards could ever surpass this prodigious, if at times unsuccessful, attempt to synthesize all the sources of knowledge into the occult triangle or pyramid of the Symbol. This article represents Belyj's attempt to put forth the basic tenets which will lead to symbolism as a world-view, both scientific in the logic of its development and creative in its affirmation of the inner life of the individual. It is, in effect, his desire to make the Word of the Trinity become flesh, to reassert the union of the three-in-one which is manifested in the principle of unity, whether in Solov'ev's concept of "Total-Unity" or Plato's "Absolute". Thus, the irresistible cosmic centre of attraction remains, as always for Belyj, the principle of Oneness. By 1909 Belyj's position on symbolism has shifted. He was no longer formulating a complete system of symbolism as such, but was attempting to outline the theoretic prerequisites for such a system. In order not to create a dogmatic doctrine based exclusively on any one area of knowledge, he denies the exclusive franchise of any single discipline over another: Our task consists of clearly illustrating why a theory of symbolism cannot be constructed only out of the natural sciences, or only out of psychology, or even out of a theory of knowledge, jurisprudence or existence. Furthermore, this theory cannot be derived from mythologizing, aesthetics, ethics or religion.. . 3 S 37

Nietzsche, Also sprach Zarathustra,

38

Belyj, "Emblematika smysla", Simvolizm (Moscow, 1910), p. 50.

II, 284.

TOWARDS A THEORY OF SYMBOLISM

In fact, all systems of knowledge must be incorporated into the synthesis. To pierce the veil of the future, however, Belyj turns great cultures of the past, for all the past is brought to its zenith symbolist world-view. Symbolism represents, therefore, a return origins of all arts and religions, a rediscovery of the birth of primeval oneness with the cosmos:

61 grand to the in the to the man's

. . .today it is as if we are experiencing all of the past. India, Persia, Egypt as well as Greece and the Middle Ages become alive and ages which are closer to us pass before us. They say that in important moments of life there passes before a person's spiritual gaze his entire life. Today the entire life of humanity is passing before u s . . . We really are sensing something new but we sense it in the old, for in the repressed abundance of the old is the novelty of so-called symbolism.39 This return to the knowledge of the past betrays Belyj's increasing interest in the occult knowledge of the East, that fertile source for the synthetic theosophy of Madame Blavatsky. Indirectly, the bankruptcy of Western philosophy and religion in their modern manifestations of materialism and scientific positivism is indicated by Belyj's desire to embrace the philosophical and religious teachings of ancient India: " . . . the teaching concerning the new man and the coming fate of Aryan culture is a summons to the creation of the personality and a reflection of obsolete, ethical forms. All of this we may encounter in those philosophical and religious currents of India which are as old as the world itself." 40 In spite of his professed aversion to the juggling of obscure and lifeless jargon after several years of bitter critical debate in symbolist circles, Belyj himself was still incapable of escaping that admixture of religious vocabulary and theoretic phraseology so characteristic of his work. "Emblematika smysla" presents the reader with an interesting alternation between Belyj's abstract arguments with Western thinkers and his manifestly religious imagery in constructing the basis of the new symbolist world-view: " A cognitive judgment is furthermore the emblem of symbolic oneness ('Let there be') as well as a duality ('The Word is Flesh'), and both a trinity ('The Word will be Flesh'), and a quaternity ('Let the Word be Flesh'). 'Is' stands in the same relationship to both 'Let' ('Let there be') and to ' W o r d - F l e s h ' ('the Word is Flesh')." 41 In spite of this confusing opposition of philosophical and mystical language, the pervading atmosphere of "Emblematika smysla" remains eschatological, for the : 9

'

40 41

Ibid., p. 50. Ibid., p. 50. Ibid., p. 95.

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final consummation of his "religion of the Symbol" clearly depends upon apocalypse for its manifestation: "The religion of the symbol . . . is the religion of the end of the world, the end of the earth, the end of history. Christianity will be elevated to the religion of the end in The Apocalypse. "42 At the apex of Belyj's occult triangle stands the Symbol which resembles the essentially indescribable "One-in-All", the as yet unmanifested logos of the symbolist religion. The similarity between the Oneness, the Symbol and the Hebrew Yah-Weh, or the Platonic Absolute, is immediately discernible in that all defy final definition, and the concepts, names or images applied to each can only be imperfect symbols of them. Thus, Belyj's Symbol is none other than the godhead of the new symbolist religion: "The Symbol itself is, of course, not a symbol. The concept of the Symbol, and its image, are symbols of the Symbol. In relation to the concept and the image of the Symbol is the manifestation." 43 This concept of the Symbol-Absolute crowning the entire system Belyj may well have borrowed from Theosophy as well as from the other obvious sources in Plato, Hegel and Solov'ev. This principle is the first fundamental of Madame Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine (1887) where it appears in metaphysical terms as the "One Absolute", and in religious terms as "Parabrahm": Thus, then, the first fundamental axiom of the Secret Doctrine is this metaphysical One Absolute - Be-ness - symbolized by finite intelligence of theological trinity... Parabrahm (the One Reality, the Absolute) is the field of Absolute Consciousness, i.e., that Essence which is out of all relation to conditioned existence, and of which conscious existence is a conditioned symbol. But once that we pass in thought from this (to us) Absolute Negation, duality supervenes in the contrast of Spirit (or consciousness) and Matter, Subject and Object.44 In fact, Belyj makes several important references to Blavatsky's doctrine45 throughout his article when dealing with the concept of Oneness, referring to both Parabrahm and the holy Book of Dzyan which is the textual source for the Theosophist's Secret Doctrine. The function of the Symbol as godhead in Belyj's system is further revealed in the hypostasis or Visage (Lik) descended from the Symbol. Although God, in the Hebrew-Christian tradition, and Brahma, in the 42

Ibid., p. 106. Ibid., p. 133. 44 H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, I (Pasadena, California; Theosophical University Press, 1963), pp. 14-15. 45 See Belyj, "Emblematika smysla", pp. 73, 105. 43

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63

Indian tradition, represent the first stage in the formation of the Absolute Oneness, they remain unmanifested. Christ and Brahman are the first manifestations or Visages of the godhead which man can behold. Preserving the homogeneity of this essentially religious system, Belyj claims, therefore, that a theory of symbolism must unite the Visages of all religions into the single One: "The image of the Symbol appears in the manifested Visage of a particular principle. This Visage appears in various forms in religions, and the task of a theory of symbolism in regard to religions consists of uniting these central images of religions into a single Visage." 46 Thus, Christ, Brahman, Dionysus and the pseudohistorical Zarathustra are actually emanations of the Oneness as visualized under varying historical and cultural conditions. In their manifestations of Oneness they must be united into the single figure, the universal one Son. As symbols of the Symbol, these hypostases become increasingly dominant in Belyj's aesthetic works. The semi-divine or "Godmanhood" nature of Dionysus appears in both the figure of Dar'jal'skij in Serebrjanyj golub' and, more ironically, in Nikolaj Ableuxov in Peterburg. Kotik Letaev represents Belyj's attempt to mythologize the child-adult's experience within the framework of both Christ and Zarathustra, while Zapiski cudaka is manifestly a passion play leading to Belyj's crucifixion in the imitation of Christ. The work of art should contain the Visage of Christ in his mixed human and divine incarnation as the central ethic or ideal human embodiment of the Symbol. The Visage of which Belyj speaks cannot be mistaken for anything else except this idealization, for its presence immediately invests art with the Godmanhood ethic. The search for a theory of symbolism in this article becomes essentially a search for Oneness, a reuniting of man, who has lost his cosmic origins, with the macrocosmos. This oneness with the cosmos is expressed in the image of the microcosmic man of whom Dionysus, Christ or Buddha serve as exemplars. The loss of man's oneness with the universe is the cataclysmic discovery made by both Dar'jal'skij and the Ableuxovs, and the first attempts to resurrect the microcosmic man appear in Kotik Letaev, where the child's prenatal impressions and cosmic memory of his lost origins stimulate a return to the past. This principle of the oneness of the individual and the universe is the third fundamental of Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine which draws on the Buddhist tradition for its formulation of Yoga: "The fundamental identity of all Souls with the Universal Over16

Ibid., p. 133.

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Soul, the latter being itself an aspect of the Unknown Root; and the obligatory pilgrimage for every Soul - a spark of the former - through the Cycle of incarnation (or "Necessity") in accordance with Cyclic and Karmic law during the whole term." 47 Although Kotik Letaev, in which this fundamental principle is fully expanded, was completed seven years after the writing of "Emblematika smysla" Belyj makes it quite clear in 1909 that Theosophy has provided him with further mystical evidence of his own intuition of Divine Oneness between man and cosmos. In his formulation he, like Blavatsky, quotes from the Book of Dzyan to support the concept of eternal return and rediscovery: " . . .we depart from ourselves . . . to [find] ourselves, just like Adam Cadmus, away to the universe where I, you, and he are one, where mother, father and son are one, as in the words of the holy book 'Dzyan': 'because mother, father and son became one again' (1st stanza). And this one is the symbol of an undisclosed mystery."48 Belyj chooses to outline his system of symbolism through the occult triangle. This triangle, or pyramid, consisting of many sub-triangles which represent particular disciplines or areas of knowledge, is more than an attempt to arrange the theories and methodologies of the arts and sciences in support of symbolism. Beyond what is a scientifically triangular cognition of the Symbol lies another aspect, the religious or mystical. As an occult symbol the triangle is a representation of the Christian trinity, the three-in-one aspect of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. In theosophical terms, Blavatsky describes it as "the Manifested Logos" 49 or the visible incarnation of the Absolute (variously Christ, Buddha, etc.). This doctrine of the three-in-one or the Oneness of the three aspects, whether the Father-Son-Holy Ghost of Christian tradition, the fathermother-son of classical tradition, or the Atma-Buddhi-Manas (SpiritSoul-Intelligence) of Buddhism, underlies Belyj's large triangle. The Trinity is, therefore, a symbol of Oneness and consequently a symbol of the Symbol: "The big triangle is a symbol of our tripartite nature, but the three-in-one is a symbol of oneness. Oneness appears before us in the form of a symbol and thus in referring to it in cognitive terms or in terms of creativity we speak of it in the language of symbols. In this sense must be understood the judgment: 'That which is One is the Symbol'."50 47

Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, I, 17. Belyj, "Emblematika smysla", p. 78. 49 See H. P. Blavatsky, Collected Writings, X, 1st ed. CAdyar, Madras: Theosophical Publishing House, 1962), p. 351. 50 Belyj, "fimblematika smysla", p. 98. 48

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65

The pyramid further illustrates Belyj's concept of the triadic contours of the symbol which has already been discussed. If the symbol represents the resolution of opposites into a new synthesis, then the Symbol at the top of the triangle contains the resolution of chaos and order, the lower corners of the triangle: "In the lower corners of the pyramid is situated chaos, and proceeding from it, order. In order and chaos our existence is torn apart and only symbolic oneness can return both value and meaning to existence. Then existence will be transformed and elevated."51 Belyj's pyramid graphically resolves the destructive duality of chaos and order, for they meet and are absorbed by Oneness, out of which they formerly proceeded when the world became. This real oneness of the apparent duality between chaos and order is transferred by Belyj to the world of individual experience, where he beholds the real cosmos beyond the chaos of personal experience: " . . . we will see that the chaos of crisis-experiences is not chaos at all, but rather cosmos. The musical elements of the world can be heard in the roar of the chaotic waves of life. These elements are the content of some power which is causing us to create beautiful forms." 52 Within a metaphysical world of lifeless forms and abstract concepts, Belyj is introducing the idea of the "emblem" as some visible or manifested sign which graphically illustrates the theory. In order to communicate the meaning of the doctrine of the three-in-one as Oneness, he calls upon the emblem of the Father-Son-Holy Ghost, and the manifested Logos is similarly reflected in the emblem of Christ. As such the emblem always represents a unity or oneness. However, the emblem itself is not a unity, but in its illustrative function only stands for the concept: "The emblem is always an emblem of a certain oneness. That very concept which derives the emblematics of concepts from oneness must occupy the summit of the classification of emblematic concepts. This oneness is in itself no longer an emblem but rather that which arouses our concept of constructing a system of emblematic concepts."53 Every category of activity within the arts and sciences possesses its own system of emblems which, if interpreted properly, will direct man to the ultimate Symbol, for these emblems are monads of meaning which are transcendentally reflective of Oneness in spite of their apparent plurality. They function in art as the images of divine figures and, therefore, transform art into religion: "In art the images of supermen and gods become 51 52 53

Ibid., p. 116. Ibid., p. 111. Ibid., p. 92.

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the emblems of value. Dante's Beatrice is just such an emblem, and the images of Christ and Buddha as well. Art, in this instance, becomes mythology and religion. At the centre of art there must appear the living image of the Logos, i.e., the Visage."54 The essential difference between the emblem and the symbol in Belyj's system is determined by their origins. If any image (including the Symbol) is definable in cognitive terms, according to a scientific or metaphysical theory of knowledge, it is immediately classifiable as an emblem: "Finally, we call any definition of artistic or other symbols, in the terminology of cognition, emblems. The very definition of the Symbol as of some ungiven oneness we also call an emblem in the terminology of cognition." 55 However, the image becomes a symbol when it can be defined as a unity of experience, having its origin in the soul: We suggest the following nomenclature. Defining the symbolic image as a unity of experience which is produced in illustrative terms, we will call this unity an artistic symbol. But a unity of experience which takes the form of an image in our soul we will call a symbolic image of experience. The symbolic image of experience may, after all, not be produced in illustrative terms. It is an image of our soul and, as such, occupies a position in a system of similar images. A conscious system of symbolic images of experience is a religious system and it reaches its culmination in religion.56 In this light the emblem appears to be a cerebral sign originating in the intelligence, whereas the symbol is a spiritual sign arising out of personal experience. The distinction may be illustrated in the following fashion. When Christ appears as a graphic, iconic representation of some religious truth (for instance, the Word become Flesh), He is an emblem. However, when He is experienced directly by the individual, as in some inner revelation, He is a symbol. This final definition of the symbol as a total unit of inner experience reflects Belyj's general disenchantment with the arid philosophizing of the preceding years and once again reaffirms the personal experience of the author as the point of entry into universal oneness: " . . . individual experience strives to become universal experience. The oneness of individual processes becomes a symbol of an entire series of unities. Individual experience becomes, so to speak, the norm for an entire series of experiences... " 57 61 55 66 47

Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid.,

p. p. p. p.

79. 138. 137. 108.

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67

Just as the religious mystic perceives God or the Absolute intuitively, not intellectually, Belyj is emphasizing what is ultimately a mystical perception of the Symbol in personal experience. He is not conceiving of the Symbol but ultimately intuiting it. Whereas the emblems of cognition are conditional, since they are based on the specialized methodology of each discipline, the symbols of personal experience are unconditional, for they are the most immediate intuitions of the unconditional principle of Oneness.58 Belyj's formulation of symbolism is apocalyptic, for it depends upon those supernatural forces which will create the world anew in the Second Coming of Christ. As such, it must remain a future doctrine which awaits the culmination of the historical cycle before it can be announced. Realizing that his theory of symbolism depended upon the end of history, Belyj found it necessary to restrict himself to a present-day "symbolization", a forerunner or precursor to the higher stage of symbolism. If symbolism is the Word which will have become Flesh at the end of history, then symbolization is the Word in the process of becoming Flesh. Unable to penetrate the realm of the future symbolism, he had to be content to work towards its realization in the present symbolization. The religious inspiration and material of "Emblematika smysla" reflect the influence of Theosophy on Belyj. The occult and Eastern knowledge which Blavatsky and her followers had assembled in their synthesis was externally attractive to him. Yet he was aware of the shortcomings of Theosophy just as he was able to perceive the pitfalls along the road which symbolism had followed until 1909. Thus, it should be made clear, as Belyj indeed does, that Theosophy is of value, but only during his time, for it, like his own prolegomena to a theory of symbolism, is still only a precursor to the final knowledge: Theosophy is the system of systems, it is like an extra-terrestrial look at the world and the nature of man. It neither transforms nor overcomes and its significance is in its elaboration. It elaborates what is otherwise incomprehen58

Paul Tillich points out that very function of the religious symbol which is operative in Belyj's system: "Religious symbols are distinguished from others by the fact that they are a representation of that which is unconditionally beyond the conceptual sphere, they point to the ultimate reality implied in the religious act, to what concerns us ultimately... They must express an object that by its very nature transcends everything in the world that is split into subjectivity and objectivity. A real symbol points to an object which never can become an object. Religious symbols represent the transcendent but do not make the transcendent immanent. They do not make God a part of the empirical world." See Paul Tillich, "The Religious Symbol", Daedalus, LXXXVII, N o . 3 (1958), pp. 4 - 5 .

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sible, and systematizes the sum-total of what appear to be incomprehensible images, forms and norms. The present theosophy appears before us alternately in the form of gnostic synthesis and the offspring of what was at one time ancient magical, theurgic and religious systems. Its real nature is in the fact that it has not yet risen to the task of true theosophy. In the present era theosophy is only the threshold to a series of both modern and ancient currents which, although in the process of being resurrected, are still obscure in our time.59 Following the direction of Theosophy, Belyj also sought to return to the Hermetic traditions of the past. Consequently, he was not willing to ignore the earth in his search for the heavenly vision, but desired the same divine yet mundane union of heaven and earth which he sought in the Godmanhood vision of the Christ figure. Just as Dar'jal'skij's search for the rediscovery of the chthonic Mother Earth in the depths of Russia leads to his ritual sacrifice at the hands of the sectarians, so Belyj also envisages the trials of the symbolist hierophant who must face death in the search for meaning: .. .the heaven of cognition, like the earth of life has become today the firmament in which the earth and heaven are united into oneness. Thus, Nietzsche was right in summoning us to remain true to the earth.This earth is the symbolic earth of Adam Cadmus. Hermetic wisdom has not defined in vain the symbolic compound of this earth into which the Moon, Sun, Venus and Jupiter enter. It is formed by the Zodiac, and Adam Cadmus appears as the human figure here. Significantly, activity causes us to see the mystery in life where the journey in search of meaning resembles the trials of a neophyte who is subjected to the threats of death in earth, water and fire.60 "Emblematika smysla" was not only Belyj's introduction to a symbolist world-view, but it also introduced the succeeding aesthetic works. The motif of the search for meaning or Oneness characterizes the dilemma of the heroes of Serebrjanyj golub\ Peterburg and Kotik Letaev. The Dar'jal'skijs, Ableuxovs and Letaevs all reflect the essential position of Belyj in the article: at the conclusion of a personal and negative apocalypse they seek to return to the origins of knowledge which will help them to effect the positive apocalypse of the future. From a destructive duality they turn towards the Symbol or Oneness to resolve chaos and order which, in the language of the occultists, Theosophists and Anthroposophists alike, signifies the reunion of man with the cosmos. 59

Belyj, " E m b l e m a t i k a s m y s l a " , p. 82.

60

Ibid., p. 72.

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69

In dealing with Belyj's usage of the "image-symbol" it is well to keep in mind that his symbolistic method is not meant to suggest a one-to-one relationship, a strict equivalency of symbol to sign in which each symbol has but a single meaning. On the contrary, Belyj means to employ his symbols as a totality or synthesis in which the maximum area is encompassed.61 A symbol, therefore, can be both monistic and pluralistic in that it still contains the antithetical poles of its original ingredients which have become synthesized into a single symbol or concentrated into one image. Belyj's symbols must be regarded as multivalent, possessing both poles of thesis and antithesis which are united in a synthesis - essentially an Hegelian dialectical definition of the symbol which Belyj arrived at by his own devious route. On the basis of this multivalency of the symbol as a combination of opposites, it is hardly surprising to discover that Belyj's symbolic imagery revolves around the myths of The Apocalypse where the religious symbols of cosmic order, Christ, the Woman Clothed in the Sun and the New Jerusalem, are opposed to the symbols of chaos, the Antichrist, Harlot and Babylon. Towards the end of his life Belyj felt that the influence of Biblical imagery struck a responsive chord in his soul, that there was a "psychic affinity" here. Nor did he accept Biblical or apocalyptic imagery entirely on the basis of intuition. In typical fashion, he was able to theorize the greater acceptability of such imagery. Thus, apocalyptic symbols reflect in the artist the degree of his emotional and sensual acceptance of reality. While creating a symbol, the artist, dependent upon his mental, moral or emotional resources, realizes a personal symbol of one or another of these spiritual activities which will be, so to speak, parallel to his work. Thus, the images of The Apocalypse are symbols in which the richness of the sensual acceptance of reality is vividly expressed.62 Belyj's symbolism was a product of both empirical knowledge and what can really only be called "religious knowledge" or faith. But Belyj preferred to see it as not belonging exclusively to either domain. His 61

Mircea Eliade makes an eloquent plea for the multivalency of the symbol which elucidates Belyj's approach. If the symbol is restricted to one narrow meaning, then its value as a means of cognition is diminished: "Images by their very structure are multivalent. If the mind makes use of images to grasp the ultimate reality of things, it is just because reality manifests itself in contradictory ways and therefore cannot be expressed in concepts... It is therefore the image as such, as a whole bundle of meanings, that is true, and not any one of its meanings, nor one alone of its many frames of reference. To translate an image into a concrete terminology by restricting it to any one of its frames of reference is to do worse than mutilate it - it is to annihilate, to annul it as an instrument of cognition." - Eliade, Images and Symbols, p. 15. 42 Belyj, "Smysl iskusstva", p. 225.

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symbolism was a result of the grand synthesis of both domains of knowledge and faith, and he, in his chosen role of John the Precursor, had to proclaim the new teaching and defend it against all heretics: . . . the sign of the Symbol for me was not the sign of the Symbol of faith or abstract knowledge, but rather the sign of concrete and true knowledge, as well as a faith based on knowledge. Symbolism, standing before me like a harmonious theory of knowledge and creativity, was a symbol of the FAITH and KNOWLEDGE of the new age, which, perhaps, would embrace the future century. I raised the sign of the centuries and defended it against the future Arians, Nestorians and other sectarians which I have already perceived to be diverting the path of the future.63 In coming to terms with the concept of the symbol and symbolism, Belyj proceeded from an early position of Platonic Forms and mystical intuition through complex theories of cognition to evolve his own syncretic formulation of the symbol in a semi-empirical theory, similar to that of Wundt's "immediate experience". The course traversed by Belyj did not change the earlier concepts of symbolism to any significant degree, but rather deepened and theorized their origins. His immersion in personal psychology and occult theories of knowledge should not be interpreted as a major departure in his "progress" as a symbolist, but rather as a search for legitimate and total knowledge to validate the first phase of romantic and naive symbolism. Belyj's aesthetic works after 1909 turn increasingly towards the vision of the microcosmic man, or man in harmony with the macrocosmos and Eternity. This was not intended as some pessimistic escape but rather as an affirmation of the principle of the Second Coming of Christ in whom he found his idealized symbol of the perfect microcosmic man, the union of Heaven and Earth. In one mode or another all of Belyj's work reveals the attempt to synthesize the finite and infinite realms. The non-consummation of this creative act is reflected in the continuing apocalypse of his works regardless of the theoretical position he may be defending at the time.

63

Belyj, "Pocemu ja stal s i m v o l i s t o m . . . p . 67.

IV THE CALL OF E T E R N I T Y

At the turn of the century Belyj and the other young symbolists naively and romantically rushed to the banner of symbolism, for in their youthful idealism and enthusiasm, they believed that symbolism would, somehow or other, apocalyptically herald and create the new man and the new culture. There was no sophisticated or comprehensive ideology of symbolism, either as a philosophical or a literary platform, but only the incorporeal world of inner "rustlings, sounds and movements": In general we did not think about form at all, nor did we even think about literary style too much. The problem which obsessed us was the problem of inner sight and sound - the world of intangible rustlings, sounds and movements according to which we tried to divine the approaching era.1 Culturally creative manifestations of symbolism were impossible so long as it was only an atmosphere and a premonition of things to come. The new temple could not be erected by those who were as yet unable to differentiate between building bricks and abstractions: Our youthful strivings towards a dawn, regardless of what form it may have appeared in and whether in ideology, in life, or in personal relationships, were rather like some plan for a communal existence within new dimensions of time and space. And understandably enough, when the conversation turned to concrete materials for the construction of this existence there arose confusion and difficulties unknown to those who are able clearly and soberly to divide life into everyday functions as well as abstract analysis of ideas which are not linked to life.2 These were the basic conditions under which Belyj's early works were created. His cycle of four Symphonies, in particular, was the product of 1 2

Belyj, Vospominanija ob A. Bloke, pp. 34-35. Ibid., p. 181.

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an intuitive symbolism which had not yet been subjected to any rigorous ideological code. Nonetheless, they represented the first attempts to realize the working hypotheses in both form and content of a literaryphilosophical doctrine which, although a compromise with the current methods, would indicate what direction was to be taken: "And we see and hear only the unformulated in forms. The established forms become a means of indicating what must yet be formulated; there begins a special type of symbolism characteristic of our time in which is disclosed the methods for the formation of the new forms of life." 3 Belyj's symphonic cycle has been, in general, critically ignored or summarily dismissed as Juvenilia. The most notable exception to this tendency was Ivanov-Razumnik who, in a very perceptive analysis of Belyj's early work, recognized the apocalyptic and cosmic tendencies of the author. 4 The Symphonies, upon close examination and comparison with Belyj's later writings, prove that his work is "of a whole". In fact, the Symphonies contain all of the major themes and problems of his later and better known novels. Indeed, it is even difficult to claim that these early attempts are exceptionally "naive" or "unpolished" in view of the fact that they are part of a corpus of work written by a neurotic constantly possessed of visions which were strung between irreconcilable extremes of the demonic and the divine. Nor are they free of the "cerebral talent" (myslennyj talant) which tends towards excess, Belyj's greatest aesthetic sin.5 It can be maintained that the Symphonies incorporate his prevailing apocalyptic imagery and thematics in the most schematic fashion. In later years he managed to overcome this lack of subtlety to a certain degree by abandoning the mythical landscapes projected in the Symphonies, but preserving all of the primary ideas. The Symphonic Cycle was written over a period of eight years (19001908), but nonetheless preserves an inner unity of atmosphere, style and even theme.6 The introduction to Severnaja Simfonija carefully outlines the three basic concerns which are operative in that particular work, namely, the creation of a series of moods, satire, and finally, ideology. Typically, for Belyj, the synthesis of all three elements leads to symbolism: "Finally, the careful reader perhaps will perceive beyond the musical 3

Belyj, "Lug zelenyj", p. 13. Ivanov-Razumnik [R. V. Ivanov], Aleksandr Blok. Andrej Belyj (Petersburg, 1919). 5 Ibid., p. 5. c Simfonija (2-aja, dramaticeskaja) (Moscow, 1902); Severnaja Simfonija (1-aja, geroiceskaja) (Moscow, 1903), written in 1900 but published only after Simfonija (2-aja); Vozvrat (Tret'ja simfonija) (Moscow, 1905); Kubokmetelej (Cetvertaja simfonija) (Moscow, 1908). 1

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and satirical significance also the ideological significance which, while appearing to dominate, destroys neither the musical nor satirical meaning. The combination of all three aspects in one passage or element leads to symbolism."7 Nor did this "symbolic trinity" apply only to Belyj's Northern Symphony, for it is the general formula for all of the Symphonies. Behind this formula there exists an even more general source which provides the dramatic tension, namely, Belyj's nemesis, the crisis of the individual caught between two irreconcilable extremes and filled with the apocalyptic sense of being "on the divide". In discussing the characters of his Symphonies, Belyj summarizes their common origin in the following manner: "Clearly the author [Belyj refers to himself] is depicting on the divide of two centuries people of the divide who bear in their souls the scissors of two struggling eras: the revolutionary and catastrophic with the evolutionary and complacent." 8 Thus, a sense of catastrophic crisis permeates the atmosphere of the symphonic cycle, cleaving the heroines and heroes between the forces of Christ and Antichrist. Consequently, the structure of all the Symphonies is based upon symbolic triads in which the various figures are hardly more than archetypal representations of apocalyptic motifs. The fable is, in each case, an allegorized apocalypse complete in itself, and the atmosphere, crisisridden and expectant, is likewise expressive of an eschatological frame of mind. Belyj's Simfonija (2-aja) is his early masterpiece of satire, in which the mad scramblings and excesses of the Moscow mystics are depicted. Belyj makes it quite obvious whom he has in mind, for the pseudonyms which he appends to each character are quite transparent. Thus, both Merezkovic and Drozzikovskij represent Merezkovskij (who for Belyj was "two-faced", a natural hypocrite); Emeljan Odnodum is none other than Tolstoj; the Petersburg mystic is V. V. Rozanov; the tall blond-haired mystic, alias Sergej Musatov and friend of Merezkovskij, is probably the noted apocalyptist, Vasilij Ternavcev. Belyj takes great delight in parodying the wild and diverse schemes of these apocalyptists who are attempting to bring about the real apocalypse: 2. In every block there lived a mystic; this was well known to the b l o c k . . . 4. One of them was a specialist in The Apocalypse. He travelled to northern France to carry out enquiries concerning the possibility of the coming beast's appearance. 7

Belyj, Simfonija (2-aja, dramaticeskajä),

1917), p. 126. 8

Belyj, Nacalo veka, p. 138.

Sobranie epiceskix poem, Kniga I (Moscow,

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5. Another studied the mystical haze which was beginning to thicken over the world. 6. A third person took to the kumys health cure in the summer; he was attempting to bring about the resurrection of the dead on a practical basis. 7. A fourth travelled about the monasteries interviewing the monks. 8. One waged a war in print with a Petersburg mystic; another was huffing at the sparks of well-being. 9. Drozzikovskij travelled about Russia and gave lectures in which he intimated and insinuated that there were powers. 10. One got the impression that he knew, but he shifted the burden of knowledge to the prophet with the blond beard. 11. For some who were ignorant, his lectures resembled a chest with jewels locked up in it. 12. He had read six lectures already and had prepared the seventh.9 But the real significance behind this satire becomes apparent when one realizes the extent to which this mystical mentality has so completely captivated the minds of all. Apocalyptic mysticism is not the exclusive domain of one or two crack-pots, but "every block possessed its own mystic". Madmen, bandits, intellectuals, clerks, peasants - these are but a few of those who are seized with apocalyptic premonitions and create an air of expectancy in Moscow. Nor are the numbers of the mystics alone significant, for the earnestness with which they propagate their eschatological doctrines sways all of Moscow. Although Belyj is apparently satirizing the apocalyptists, he is still very much attached to their mystical circles, and possesses first-hand experience of the eschatological mentality and terminology operative during those times. In fact, one might well discern a satiric portrait of Belyj in the "fair-haired" apocalyptist in the Second Symphony. Thus, the entire symphonic cycle reflects in various guises the eschatological searchings out of which Belyj has constructed his earliest works. The naivete of Anna Schmidt's acceptance of her mystical role as the World Soul and Vladimir Solov'ev's ardent apocalyptic teachings on Sophia and the Christ-Groom create the sense of the end of this world and the resurrection into the new which underly the basic, dramatic tension of the symphonic cycle. This is apparently Belyj's hypothesis in dealing with the fanatic apocalyptists: From 1901 on my interest in people concerned with religio-philosophical problems was especially evident... The fanatical figure of Anna Nikolaevna Schmidt aroused my imagination as an artist. She struck me with the absurd scheme of her delirium concerning herself as the incarnation of the World Soul. 9

Belyj, Simfonija (2-aja), pp. 260-261.

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From this point of view, I began to reread carefully the verses of Vladimir Solov'ev which afforded her the material for her delirium. This is the origin of the figure of the Solov'ev-fanatic in my Simfonija (2-aja) - a fanatic armed with Schmidt's delirium and directed with this delirium towards a worldly woman. In those years I wanted to write a series of Symphonies and place in them a welter of religio-philosophical eccentrics but the colours did not suffice and so in search of them I began to look everywhere for people who could serve as material for the future Symphonies. This is why I was interested in Merezkovskij, Rozanov, not as writers but as people. I listened carefully to the rumours about Novoselov and Ternavcev, who were interpreting The Apocalypse. Apocalyptists especially interested me, for my future Symphonies were to reflect them.. . 10 The Symphonies were not produced in isolation by any means. They elicited a mutually apocalyptic response from others of the young symbolists, notably Blok, who, ignoring Belyj's obvious satire, responded with a mystical review of Simfonija (2-aja) that is probably unique in Russian literary criticism: All of this I have dreamed at one time. Or rather it was a reverie on the indistinct and sparkling line that separates a short sleep of repose and the eternal sleep of life. Awakening suddenly after labours and cares, I would go up to the window and see off in the distance in sharp silhouettes the unknown contours of buildings. And up above a curtain billows, ready to fall, hiding from me the twilight of divine knowledge... "Morning is approaching but it is still night" (Isaiah). Night's music is vague. Flashing stars ring, dawns come and go, pearls trickle down - the incarnation is approaching. She arises and whispers above your ear - my beloved, my gentle one, is that you ? . . . I say that this is not a book. Let a reader of the human heart divine its meaning, or a wayfarer hurry on his way or a monk pray. "I have already dreamed this dream". 11 In works teeming with princesses, knights, swans, mystics, serpents, madmen and sorcerers, who are set against both the realistic landscape of a university chemistry laboratory and the cosmic landscape of constellations and the mystical north, it is important to evaluate the relationship of the author to his creation. Is he purely satiric in his distance or ironic in his proximity? This is a significant question in determining Belyj's own attitude to the far-fetched topoi and circumstances which he depicts already in his earliest works. In the forward to the Second Symphony 10

Belyj, Nacalo veka, p. 138. A. Blok, "Andrej Belyj. Simfonija (2-aja, dramaticeskaja)", V, 345. This review first appeared inNovyj put', Nr. 3 (1903). II

Sobranie

socinenij,

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he quite explicitly designates the second meaning behind the work to be satiric: "The second meaning is satire. Here certain excesses of mysticism are being ridiculed. The question arises whether my satirical relationship to people and events, the existence of which is dubious for many, is justifiable or not. Instead of giving an answer, I would advise looking more closely at the surrounding reality."12 Obviously Belyj wants to ridicule the extremes that mysticism was guilty of in its frenzied activity, the type of exaggeration which he depicted in one specialist of The Apocalypse who goes to Northern France in search of the apocalyptic beast, discovers it in a small child who soon dies from a stomach disorder, thus destroying Sergej Musatov's eschatological hopes.13 At the same time Belyj's "healthy" satire may only be a mask for a more sinister irony which is, according to Blok, the disease of his generation: "The most lively and sensitive children of our century are afflicted with a disease unknown to physical and spiritual doctors. This sickness is akin to spiritual ailments and can be called 'irony'. Its manifestations are the attacks of feverish laughter which begin with a devilishly mocking, provocative smile and end in violence and blasphemy."14 In other words, is Belyj not only satirizing others, but himself at the same time? The faith in a naive world of mystical and apocalyptic premonitons and hopes which the omniscient artist propagates, can also create a backlash of irony to hide the author's self-consciousness and aesthetic impudence. This is the very same irony which led Solov'ev to inject humorous asides amid the three visions of Sophia in his poem "Tri svidanija", such as the references to Nekrasov's poetry and the depiction of himself walking in the Egyptian desert wearing a top-hat. Blok's play, Balagancik, is another example of the irony that parodied the author himself. While Belyj stated that he did not suffer from this disease,15 one is justifiably sceptical of such claims. Ivanov-Razumnik makes an important point when he suggests what Belyj's real relationship was to the ideas of the Moscow mystics: "Andrej Belyj was laughing, not at the ideas of the 'Moscow mystics', but at their actions. They were in a great rush but did not apply themselves properly to the work at hand and this was their sin and mistake. Andrej Belyj shared their faith and their ideas." 18

12 13 11 15 16

Belyj, Simfonija (2-aja), pp. 125-126. Ibid., p. 294. A. Blok, "Ironija", Sobranie socinenij, V, 345. Belyj, Nacalo veka, pp. 296-298. Ivanov-Razumnik, Aleksandr Blok. Andrej Belyj, pp. 47-48.

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Belyj is probably closer to the apocalyptic ideas expressed in his symphonic cycle than the satire may suggest, but irony forces him to protect his own position. Nor is this irony evident only in the more obvious satire of Simfonija (2-aja). It runs through the other Symphonies in a series of leitmotifs which at first seem irreconcilable with the seriousness of the depiction. Thus, the recurrent laughter and smiling of the giant in Simfonija (1-aja) becomes more comprehensible when it is interpreted as romantic or symbolic irony: 17. The giant bared his white teeth and laughed, laughed till he cried... 18. Then I cowered and said in a trembling voice. 19. "Oh, what a young fool I am, a mere barn-owl or a broken down barrelorgan. . ."17

The same ironic phrase "but it only seemed so" (no eto toVko kazalos') appears again and again, especially in Vozvrat and Kubok metelej, suggesting the irony of the impossible mystical situations and at the same time preserving the author from any literary embarrassment. In the fourth Symphony, Kubok metelej, Adam Petrovic is thoroughly immersed in his vision of the Divine Feminine, incarnate in Svetlova, the wife of the engineer. To his militant question of who can prevent him from thinking only of his idealized vision, an "invisible somebody" answers ironically: "Who can forbid me to think only of her? Yes, think only of her."... An invisible someone whispered to him in the snow and wind: "Think about her? Why, of course, no one can."18

Yet, in spite of the fact that Belyj satirizes the Moscow mystics, the disciples of the Divine Feminine, and in general the apocalyptic expectancy of his time, all of these motifs figure most prominently not only in his later work, but in his early work as well. This is, after all, the same author who wrote the unabashedly ultra-mystical articles "Apokalipsis ν russkoj poezii", "Svjascennye cveta", and "Okno ν buduscee"; published the mysterium, "Prisedsij"; spent almost four years in the Rudolf Steiner colony in Dörnach, Switzerland, and eventually underwent an almost Christ-like hypostasis in his own works. Nor can one ignore the fact that the world which Belyj depicts in his works invariably assumes a dualistic quality, caught between reality and fantasy, an "it-only17

Belyj, Severnaja simfonija (1-aja, geroiceskaja), Sobranie epiceskix poem, Kniga I

(Moscow, 1917), p. 14. 18

Belyj, Kubok metelej (Cetvertaja simfonija) (Moscow, 1908), p. 50.

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seemed-so" world. In the Symphonies, therefore, Belyj appears to be occupying an ambiguous position: he is treating both satirically and seriously those very themes and ideas which are closest to him. The reader should not be led astray by the blatant satire of the Second Symphony, or the subtle irony of the other Symphonies, and made to think that the content or ideas expressed therein are in some way not the author's. Perhaps what Belyj had to say in the introduction to Kubok metelej removes the disguise of satire from all of his Symphonies. Here is revealed the true origin of the atmosphere and content of the Symphonies, not in artistic formulae, but rather in the personal experience of the author himself: Before me two roads were marked out: the road of art, or the road of analysis of crisis-experiences themselves, the breakdown into their constituent parts. I chose the second road and thus, I am perplexed as to whether this Symphony is an artistic work or a document of the contemporary soul's condition of consciousness, which is perhaps of interest for the future psychologist ? This concerns the very essence of the Symphony itself.19 Most significant in concentrating attention upon the personal origins of Kubok metelej (and by implication the preceding Symphonies) is the conclusion at which Belyj arrives, namely that the ostensibly artistic piece of work is more likely a "document of the contemporary soul's condition of consciousness". In other words, it partakes quite intimately of the realm of psychology, being a product of the artist's inner spiritual experience. The main characters in the symphonic cycle all share the common denominator of the search-motif. They are the Parsifalian figures who are caught between Good and Evil and are seeking some apocalyptic resolution of their dilemma. The young melancholy knight in the Northern Symphony is caught between the "gloomy catholic" and the holy princess: "The young knight yearned for transcendental visions, but in his soul there arose dark, inherited forces." 20 Sergej Musatov in the Second Symphony cannot distinguish the true Christ image and that of the Antichrist. Xandrikov in Vozvrat is attempting to escape from the evil lecturer, Cenx (the servant of the evil serpent), and thus seeks refuge with Dr. Orlov (the personification of omniscient eternity). In Kubok metelej Svetlova seeks the Christ-Groom who is summoning her to eternity and resurrec19 20

Ibid., p. 1. Belyj, Severnaja simfonija, pp. 52-53.

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tion, but she cannot escape the temptation of the Luciferian figure, Svetozarov. This search is prompted by a typically apocalyptic syndrome in almost all cases: the expectation of the end, usually catastrophic, and the advent of the new age, as signified in the symphonic cycle of birth, death, resurrection and rebirth. Such a situation provided Belyj with his favourite character-crisis tension: people caught on the border of two ages. Hence, in the Northern Symphony, the young knight's father, who possesses the features and pagan nature of a satyr, leaves this legacy to his son as a temporary foil to the vision of the new and holy age symbolized in the young princess. Similarly, the young princess' father, who fears the knights of darkness in his own realm, flees to the north, forsaking his country. He sings to the sunset but is too impotent to realize these symbolic songs. His daughter, however, overcomes her father's impotence, returns to the gloomy kingdom and spreads the holy light of her divine message. The structural contours of the symphonic cycle are, not surprisingly, triadic. Furthermore, it can be demonstrated that Belyj is chiefly concerned with apocalyptic triads, which follow naturally from his formulation of the problem. In various guises there appear in the Symphonies the oppositions of unlike qualitites whether good and evil, light and darkness, or Christ and Antichrist, who do battle to determine the future course of the world. The tension which is created by the juxtaposition of these opposites is reflected in one or more central figures who are blessed with a vision of the otherworldly, but are, nonetheless, caught between the antipodal forces. For the sake of conformity these antipodal forces can be called Christ and Antichrist, for this formulation is symbolic not only of an opposition in spirit, but perhaps even more importantly, of a delusive and seductive spirit masquerading as truth. A short summary of the fable of the various symphonies should reveal the basic material forming their common triadic configurations. In the Northern Symphony, a young king ascends his dying father's throne and receives the following legacy: "You are to build a tower and summon my people to the heights... Lead them to the heights but do not forsake t h e m . . . It is better to fail with them, my son !"21 But, fearing the darkness of his kingdom, he flees to the north and builds a lonely tower. A daughter is born to him and his wife. Like her father, the daughter

21

Ibid. p. 21.

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also learns to sing songs to the sunset. When her impotent father has perished trying to reach his former kingdom, her mother gives her over into the protection of eternity before following her husband. A young knight becomes enamoured of her, but he is a victim of his father's pagan satyric nature, as well as of his evil courtier-magician, who performs black masses. The knight loses the love of the princess who returns to her father's kingdom preaching new truths and turning her country into a world of light and goodness. After death the knight and princess are united in the realm of eternity. The Fourth Symphony, Kubok metelej, has approximately the same allegorical fable, thus bringing the Symphonies' full cycle. Both Adam Petrovic and the engineer's wife, Svetlova, are possessed of a vision: he with that of the Divine Feminine, and she with that of the Christ-Groom. This acts as the grounds for a common mystical attraction. But a third figure, the demonic and powerful Colonel Svetozarov, comes between them. Svetlova is involuntarily attracted to and repulsed by this frightening figure. Adam Petrovic is killed in a duel with Svetlova's husband, but is resurrected in eternity and there he meets Svetlova, who has become a nun. In the final part Belyj identifies Svetozarov with the the Luciferserpent figure whom Svetlova destroys, whereupon she becomes the "Woman Clothed in the Sun". Belyj's Third Symphony, Vozvrat, is a cyclic account of the struggle between good and evil, eternity and time. Xandrikov, a master's candidate in chemistry, is threatened by the evil Cenx who is a lecturer in chemistry and his immediate superior. Xandrikov's wife dies and he becomes increasingly unbalanced because of his melancholy nature. Eventually he sees the psychiatrist, Dr. Orlov, his spiritual benefactor who will save him from Cenx. His condition deteriorates and finally he enters Dr. Orlov's sanitorium. Feeling the approach of his mortal enemy, Cenx, and believing that Dr. Orlov, his saviour, has returned to eternity and the other world, Xandrikov leaps into the middle of the lake whose surface symbolizes the border separating him from the eternal world. But this "realistic" action has a "fantastic" counterpart in the first part of the Symphony. In this fantasy-allegory a child lives peacefully by the sea, having no fear of anything, for an old man is there with him. But the waters are invaded by a serpent who first awakens fear in the child. It becomes apparent that the child's eternal fate is to experience the struggle between good and evil, eternity and time, and, thus, he is sent into this world and then returns to his happy childhood world only to repeat the same cycle in this re-enactment of the eternal struggle between

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the cosmos of his childhood landscape and the chaos of his adult incarnation. The Second Symphony offers the most explicit illustration of these apocalyptic triads, inasmuch as Belyj is overtly dealing with the apocalyptic mentality of his time. In this work he provides us with triadic situations on multiple levels in the lives of various characters. The "golden—bearded ascetic", Sergej Musatov, is caught between what he believes to be the genuine apocalyptic vision and what, in fact, mockingly reveals itself to be the false vision of the Antichrist. Believing that he has discovered the "Woman Clothed in the Sun" in the wife of a Moscow official, he is ecstatic when he sees her beautiful son, for this is for him the Christchild exemplified in The Apocalypse. But this entire vision collapses when he learns that the child is not a boy, but a girl - the parents prefer to dress their daughter as a boy. Furthermore, the husband is continually described by the author as a rude "centaur", thereby identifying him as a pagan force and servant of the Antichrist.22 The same catastrophic apocalypse greets both the young philosopher who tries to unite Plato and Kant and goes insane, and the young democrat, Krjuckov, whose divine vision of his beloved is so befouled by reality that he commits suicide. This short summary should serve to indicate the apocalyptic direction and form of Belyj's early work. In these Symphonies the actual fable establishes a pattern of apocalypse arising out of a combination of individual symbols (Woman Clothed in the Sun, Serpent, Antichrist, White Horse) with a general atmosphere of death, destruction, resurrection and rebirth. If one had to designate the most significant message of the symphonic cycle, the conclusion that Belyj arrives at in each individual Symphony, it would be the theme of immortality through death in time and resurrection in eternity. This "call of eternity" (zov vecnosti) appears again and again in the Symphonies, for instance, as the haunting and inescapable summons which draws Sergej Musatov irresistably towards the beyond: "And so it began . . . deepening . . . arising . . . exactly like rays from an unknown world, rising and falling."23 Nor is Adam Petrovic in Kubok metelej free of this mysterious affliction: "His pale hands stretched out into the blizzard, just as in his childhood years at some time. Friends smiled but he did not see them. He ran past them somewhere. It was as if he were being called, just as in his childhood years, somewhere."24 The call of 22 23 24

Belyj, Sim/onija (2-aja, dramaticeskaja), Ibid., p. 182. Belyj, Kubok metelej, p. 30.

pp. 296-298.

S2

THE CALL OF ETERNITY

eternity represents variously a longing to escape from this earthly realm into the otherworldly, suppressed religious-erotic desires for union between the Divine Feminine and the Christ-Groom, and the search for real being. Whatever the specific motivations, the summons from beyond nourished an intuitively mystical mood in Belyj and the other symbolists. Thus, time becomes merely a Platonic reflection of the eternity beyond, an endless flow of events which are real only inasmuch as they shadow mythically and symbolically the forces of eternity: "Time, like a river stretched out endlessly, and in the flow of time was reflected misty Eternity." 25 If time (as well as space) is regarded as a mirror of eternity, then it is possible to understand why Belyj in all of his Symphonies, especially Vozvrat and Kubok metelej, depicts two realms, the eternal and the temporal, and extends the myths and personal premonitions of the eternal into the temporal. Consequently, in Vozvrat the main figures in Xandrikov's temporal drama are the obvious reflections of the figures from the child's eternal drama: the servant of the serpent and the lecturer, Cenx, are one; Dr. Orlov and the old man are the same; the apocalyptic dragon or serpent becomes Vladislav Denisovic Drakonov from Zmeevoe Logovisce (Snake Hollow); the child's friend, the crab, has its counterpart in Xandrikov's best friend, the physicist. The symbol of time is a pale woman dressed in black robes. She is, once again, not only a pale reflection of eternity but its herald as well: 2. It was a pale woman in black. 3. All in long robes she leaned over the lonely princess like a darkened silhouette. She whispered strange things in a fluting whisper. 4. This was higher than happiness or sorrow. The mark of eternity was reflected in her smile.26 Although time is the pale reflection of eternity and, hence, a representative of higher being, it is, nonetheless, a preparation for death which is the sphere of some Nirvana-purgatory lying between time and eternity: "Once the knight heard a rustling of clothing behind him. There stood the pensive woman in black and in her profound eyes was reflected the abyss of timelessness. And he understood that this was death." 27 Time is the

25

Belyj, Serernaja simfonija, p. 41. See also Simfonija (2-aja), p. 183, where the same motifs occur for both the concept of time as a reflection of eternity, and the woman in black as the symbol of time-eternity. 26 Ibid., p. 41. " Ibid.. p. 93.

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guide through death to eternity, and it is only by dying that one is able to attain the eternal sphere: 4. The calm woman looked into the eyes of the queen with timelessness. 5. She brushed against her with her black, airy robes and summoned to the transcendental. 6. She pressed closer to the princess' cheek with her pale, worldly face. 7. She whispered about the great unknown and the imminent joy.28 When we compare the fate of the major characters in the Symphonies, it becomes quite obvious that they are resurrected into the new life only after a necessary death and sojourn in timelessness. In the Pervaja Simfonija the young knight is spurned by the princess until he dies and is brought into eternity to be reunited with her. In Kubok metelej Adam Petrovic's attraction to Svetlova is unconsummated in this life and it is only after he has been killed in a duel with her husband that he is resurrected and united with her in immortality. Vozvrat is perhaps the best example of rebirth through death. Xandrikov rows out to the middle of the lake where he answers the call of eternity by plunging into the water, thereby penetrating into the next world: Xandrikov untied the boat, clanking the chain. And so he pushed off and was carried out to the centre of the lake. It seemed to him that he was floating between two heavens. An upside-down reflection followed him... Something sounded: "Come to me . . . come to me" . . . The boat was rocking. Spreading out from the boat were circles suffused with a violet-crimson colour. And he made up his mind. "I am coming to y o u " . . . And in an instant the emerald-golden water, murmuring, rushed into the boat, which scooped it up, and then flowed out like melting rubies. He clasped his hands and plunged into the abyss of emerald gold. Xandrikov's reflection rushed towards him, protecting the border from his intrusion, and he fell into its embrace.29 This particular instance of death and resurrection deserves special attention, for in Vozvrat, as the title implies, Belyj is propagating a doctrine of eternal return, a cyclic creation and dissolution of forms. Significantly enough, he has chosen the symbol of the lake (or sea in the child episode) to depict this repetition, for not only is the lake's glassy surface a suggestion of some Platonic reflection of the other world, but the waters themselves represent the classic creation-dissolution-creation symbol, which is 18 29

Ibid., p. 42. Belyj, Vozvrat, p. 123.

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traditionally associated with the figure of Aphrodite Anadiomene, the legend of the Deluge and the rites of baptism. Eliade explains the multivalency of this symbol which informs Belyj's own usage: The Waters symbolize the entire universe of the virtual; they are the fons et origo, the reservoir of all the potentialities of existence; they precede every form and sustain every creation. The exemplary image of the whole creation is the island that suddenly "manifests" itself amidst the waves. Conversely, immersion in the waters symbolizes a regression into the pre-formal, reintegration into the undifferentiated mode of pre-existence. Emergence repeats the cosmogonic act of formal manifestation; while immersion is equivalent to a dissolution of forms. That is why the symbolism of the Waters includes Death as well as Rebirth.30 In the Symphonies Belyj is ultimately concerned with the cosmic issues of time, space, eternity, infinity, life, death and resurrection, all of which are also the final questions of The Apocalypse. His cosmic and mythic imagery embraces astrology as well as the basic elements of fire, water, earth and air, and often its implementation obscures the mutual eschatological content unless the hidden symbolism can be penetrated. An elucidation of some of these symbols will help to show not only the categories of Belyj's early symbolism, but also the eschatological context in which he is placing them. Belyj's Vozvrat, in which the major leitmotifs and figures generally correspond to the theme of eternal return and immortality, is especially rich in this occult symbolism. The constellation of Herakles is especially significant in this regard for it is the star under which Xandrikov returns to his childhood, and the frame of reference becomes clear when the significance of this particular symbol is examined within the context of Vozvrat. Herakles represents the heroization of a mortal in search of immortality, but this search for eternity and god-like status in Greek mythology could only be consummated through great suffering and the famous twelve "labours" of Herakles. Begot of Alkmene by Zeus through deceit, Herakles consequently incurred Hera's wrath. It was she who sent the two monstrous serpents to destroy the infant Herakles in his crib but the child strangled the serpents and passed his first trial. In Vozvrat the approach of the serpent first destroys the child's sense of well-being and gives forewarning of the suffering and madness which await the child in its incarnation as Xandrikov. In fact, Xandrikov's increasing mental derangement parallels the same destructive madness 30

Mircea Eliade, Images and Symbols, p. 151.

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which Hera visits upon Herakles. The presence of the crab in the mythological landscape of the child in the Symphony appears to have been likewise inspired by the myths surrounding Herakles although traditionally the crab is also one of Herakles' adversaries rather than his friend However a further significance of the crab derives from the fact that it is the zodiacal sign of Cancer, and thereby associated with the immortality of the soul and the incarnation of the soul into reality. Thus, the Heraklean archetype provides an excellent summary of the symbolic import of the entire Symphony and the significance of Xandrikov's cyclic destruction and creation. Nor can the meaning of suffering be ignored which Belyj was only too ready to dramatize in his own life, for the connections between himself and Xandrikov and the child are fairly obvious: Xandrikov is a student of chemistry; the child is fair-haired and subjected to repeated apocalypse. Although it is by no means necessary to accept this relationship as a one-to-one identification between Belyj and his literary characters, the author is surely participating spiritually in their fate: And the old man was already approaching him, piercing him with the chasms of his eyes. He raised his hands above the child's head and in his hands was a wreath of scarlet roses, a wreath of bloody fires. He silently kissed the pale-white child, laying on his head these bloody fires. He added with a bitter but loving whisper: "I crown you with suffering.. ." 31 The eagle which the old man promises will come to save the child from the serpent in Vozvrat appears to Xandrikov both as Dr. Orlov (Dr. Eagle) whose sanitorium is located at Orlovka (Eagleville) and as the stranger who takes him there. The usual symbolic significance of the eagle derives from the associations of "height" and closeness to the sun. For Belyj, this obviously refers to the hypnotic depths of the heavens and hence of eternity, and to the sun as the primary principle of the universe.32 The symbolism of names, so essential to Belyj, as has already been shown, is clearly manifest in Kubok metelej. Here Svetlova ("the Radiant One", and therefore "the Woman Clothed in the Sun", fulfills her role by crushing the head of the serpent) is invariably associated metaphorically with the sun. On the other hand, the spirit of darkness, and consequently the serpent, appears in the guise of Svetozarov ("the Fading of 31

Belyj, Vozvrat, p. 37. See C. G. Jung, "Christ, A Symbol of the Self", Collected pp. 64-65. 32

Works, IX, Part II,

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the Light"), who is usually depicted in terms of the moon, the secondary and sinister reflection of the sun, and ultimately, the Antichrist: "Mourning, she slipped away from the colonel [Svetozarov] just like the sun falling into timelessness. Svetozarov, like the moon, floated effortlessly after her." 33 The "call of eternity" which obsesses all of Belyj's heroes in the symphonic cycle, with its concomitant death and resurrection, stands in direct relationship to the millennium of The Apocalypse. The aspirations of Belyj's cosmic and eschatological symbolism are mutual: escape from and destruction of the forces of the Antichrist or serpent, and the attainment of immortality in the resurrected life. The homogeneity of the two spheres of the cosmic and eschatological is revealed, therefore, in the particular syndrome of the symbols which Belyj chooses to manipulate. All of the Symphonies betray an obvious orientation towards the future. The progression is from past to present with the ultimate goal in some future realm of timelessness, namely, eternity and the new millennium. Even the cyclic movement of Vozvrat embodies an upward spiral which, although self-repeating, nevertheless represents some positive progression. This movement towards the future also signifies an eschatological direction in which the figures of this temporal realm either aspire towards or are earthly incarnations of the eternal figures. Hence, the princess of the Pervaja Simfonija and Svetlova of Kubok metelej are temporal incarnations of the "Woman Clothed in the Sun"; the young knight and Adam Petrovic in the respective Symphonies represent the Parsifalian or Herculean figure who, through his search, is admitted to this realm by some higher Grace. These disciples of the apocalyptic future are the transitional creatures who have crossed the divide from the old into the new, from time into eternity. They are the children of the sun or the first principle of light, and therefore, of God in the universe. In Belyj's terms, they are symbolically the "white children" whom he portrays at the end of the Pervaja Simfonija when the last night will fall before the morning star heralds the millennium of eternal light: 2. "White children... We shall not die, but soon we shall be transformed, in the twinkling of an eye, as soon as the sun arises." 3. "It's already dawn." 4. "White children"! 33

Belyj, Kubok metelej, p. 87.

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5. And they regained consciousness... And saw that their dream was not a dream because He was standing there, causing the stems of the reeds to rustle and He whispered to them all that they had seen in their dream... 6. And already in the distance was heard the voice of the strange old man who was summoning them all to the white j o y . . . 7. He struck the silver bell.34 The fact that the children are "white" and that they are "children" casts further light on Belyj's essentially apocalyptic scheme. The archetype of the child is one of the most intricate and interesting in Belyj's works, as witnessed by "Past' noci", Vozvrat, Kotik Letaev, "Prestuplenie Nikolaja Letaeva", and the extensive memoir literature on his childhood recorded in Na rubeze dvux stoletij. Although this will be discussed in detail in a later chapter, it should be noted here that Belyj projects into his child archetype that innocent, yet true knowledge which, although available only to the new-born, brings extreme vulnerability to danger. The combination of this innocence and defencelessness becomes a divine symbol of rebirth and resurrection, as in Vozvrat. The child is more aware of his "in-between" nature, threatened on the one hand by the forces of darkness, and protected on the other by the forces of light. This primordial opposition of the cyclic struggle is impressed on the pure intuition of the child in Vozvrat who exhibits this premonition: Child:

I'm afraid... already it is impossible to peer into the depths from the cliff. A dreamlike horror is nestled there among the red coral. Old Man: That is nothing... It only seems so. Child: The wind whispers to me that I will perish, and you have come to save me from the dreamlike dangers... The wind whispers to me that the future is inescapable. I'm afraid, I'm afraid, you have again appeared in these places... I'm afraid that this has already happened at some time before and ended sadly... I'm happy that you are here... I love you, old man, but I'm afraid. Old Man: Be calm. Go to sleep and forget. The horror has come crawling here underwater even before my time.35 34

Belyj, Severnaja simfonija, pp. 120-121. Belyj, Vozvrat, p. 24. Jung has described the archetype of this "eternal child" in such a way as to heighten the understanding of it in Belyj's concept of the "white children": "Consciousness hedged about by psychic powers, sustained or threatened or deluded by them, is the age-old experience of mankind. This experience has projected itself into the archetype of the child, which expresses man's wholeness. The "child" is all that is abandoned and exposed and at the same time divinely powerful; the insignificant, dubious beginning, and the triumphal end. The "eternal Child" in man is an undescribable experience, an incongruity, a handicap, and a divine prerogative; an imponderable that determines the ultimate worth or worthlessness of personality." C. G. Jung, "The Psychology of the Child Archetype", trans, by R. F. C. Hull, The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, IX, Part I, pp. 178-179. 35

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Equally significant with the child archetype of Belyj's "white children" is the epithet "white", often referred to as one of the four apocalyptic colours (white, red, black, pale). Like most of Belyj's symbols, "white" is multivalent, encompassing a series of related concepts. As can be judged from the usage of the "white children" in the Pervaja Simfonija, it symbolizes not only the conquering horseman of The Apocalypse36 but also the purity and rebirth of the children of the future, the children of the Third Testament. The Fourth Symphony, Kubok metelej, adds yet another dimension to the colour when it appears in the leitmotif of the snowstorm and the aerial white horseman, a symbol of both a regenerative catharsis and God's messenger. It is the Bride, the symbolist's conception of the Christ of the Second Coming, who comes in the snowstorm in the moment of final revelation: Oh Storm, you trumpeting horn and voice of God! What blessed tidings, to our hearts you speak, to our hearts you speak. Trumpeting horn, trumpeting, find your place in the heavens and speak, speak forth. Say, oh our prayer, oh our imminent intercessor - "God is with you." Thunder, thunder forth, you horns of the whirlwind! Louder, louder, proclaim the Bride, louder - the Bride is the tempest! Behold the Bride is coming, clothed in the snow and howling wind. Behold, the tempest, the one and only Bride, is coming like the snow. Let us pray to the storm. 37

As shown earlier in Chapter II, the colour white, as apotheosized in Belyj's pseudonym, discloses the receiver of revelatory knowledge as well as the condition or atmosphere of final revelation and manifestation. Thus, the young princess in the Pervaja Simfonija, a "white child", has received this spiritual knowledge in her white tower and prepares to go out into the world with the message of light in order to vanquish darkness: 1. The years passed and the day finally arrived. The princess descended from the heights of the tower, fulfilling the heavenly behest. She went forth to dispel the gloom. 2. She took up a long rod and to the top of it made firm a gleaming Crucifix. She proceeded by way of the forests, bearing the Crucifix over her head. 38 3e

"And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer." (Revelation, 6:2). 3 ' Belyj, Kubok metelej, p. 43. 38 Belyj, Severnaja simfonija, p. 88.

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The "white stone" motif already discussed in connection with Belyj's pseudonym appears again in Vozvrat where Belyj at first seems to be playfully mixing reality and fantasy, but, in fact, has a more serious symbolic intent in mind. The child apparently confuses the white stone with the old man and vice versa: A white stone resembling a person was visible in the distance on the shore, just as if an old man had become frozen, hunched over and pondering. The child laughed, crinkling his blue eyes, looked at the stone and said: "I know you... You are just pretending..." But the white outline did not move. After all, it was only a stone.39 Later when the old man appears to the child and then departs, the white stone also disappears, hence proving its ontological link with the old man.40 Apparently Belyj has in mind not only the "white stone" of revelation as to be found in "Revelation", but also the Greek mythological "omphalos", the white stone which the inhabitants of Delphi held sacred as the symbolic centre of the world and as the symbolic link between the three realms of the dead, man and the gods. Consequently, the white stone within this context signifies the three stages of birth, death and rebirth as encountered in Xandrikov's earthly sojourn, his death and his subsequent rebirth as the child. This symbolic content of the white stone or "omphalos" is further maintained by its apparent connection with the old man who represents both eternity and omniscience; he is aware of the recurring fate of the child and must prepare him for his journey into time and greet him at his return into eternity. The gatekeeper between the two realms of eternity and time, the old man has full knowledge of the birth-death-rebirth cycle which the child is subject to in all of his incarnations. This multivalency of white also illuminates Belyj's relationship with Valerij Brjusov to a certain degree. Here was an opposition of spirits literally as obvious as black and white. Belyj realized that Brjusov was not really with the symbolists, but was, in fact, a "Black Magician".41 Whereas Belyj championed the "Woman Clothed in the Sun", Brjusov was for the forces of evil: The style of the intellectual duel between Brjusov and myself was characterized by one argument. I affirmed that "light will conquer darkness" and V. Ja. 39

41

Belyj, Vozvrat, p. 8. Ibid., p. 13. Belyj, Vospominanija ob A. Bloke, pp. 139-140.

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[Brjusov] replied that "gloom will conquer light and you will perish". I recall one typical conversation with Brjusov when he, with a completely serious pathos, exclaimed: "What are you saying, Boris NikolaeviC, after all it is said in Revelation that the serpent will be doomed to death. And so are you against the Serpent, against the weakest? As for me, I pity the Serpent, the poor Serpent - I am for the Serpent!"42 In this regard their relationship was clear: Brjusov was the Black Magician or participant in the black mass (as witnessed by Ruprecht in Brjusov's novel, Ognennyj angel), whereas Belyj was the White Magician, taking part in the heavenly mysteria of revelation. The Symphonies reveal something more than Belyj's first attempts at symbolism and a resultant cosmic-eschatological landscape. Behind most of the Symphonies, in particular the Second Symphony, there lurks that sense of tragedy which is provoked by the author's physical location between the eternal vision and the temporal reality. One cannot ignore the fact that Xandrikov's temporal life is catastrophic, even though it has its counterpart in the child's eternal existence. In the Second Symphony this sense of tragedy and catastrophe is even more pronounced in the fates of the young philosopher, the democrat and the mystic. The vision of the other-worldly may bless the seer with ecstasy, but may bring madness as well. This is the curious legacy of ecstasy and despair, the proper ingredients for a metaphysical irony of which Belyj himself is a victim, in the self-parody inherent not only in the Symphonies, but in his later works as well. The visionary author becomes, in fact, quite literally the "fool-in-Christ" because of his belief in the "call of eternity" and the disparity between this and the world at large. Nowhere does Belyj say this more eloquently than with his symbol of the "fool's cap": I sit beneath the window. Praying, I press against the grate. In the azure blue All has grown still and sparkles. And from afar the summons: "I am so near to you, my poor children of the earth, in this golden, ambering hour..."

42

Ibid., pp. 152-153.

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And beneath the murky window behind the grate of the prison I wave my cap to her: " "soon, soon we shall meet..." From the radiant crosses threads of gold calm me... But that same melancholy, thoughtful summons: "manifest thyself - I would kiss you..." Full of joyful torment the fool grows silent. Quietly from his hands to the floor falls the fool's cap. ("Vecnyj zov", 1903)" The sense of sacrificial death and resurrection which Belyj first begins to treat in his early Symphonies and continues through Vozvrat and Kubok metelej will find its natural outcome in the Dionysian archetype to be encountered subsequently in Serebrjanyj golub'. No doubt under the influence of Vjaceslav Ivanov's "religion of the suffering god" in the period between 1905 and 1909. Belyj's natural attraction to the "call of eternity" predisposed him to the sacrifical passion of Dionysus as an early hypostasis of the resurrected Christ of the Second Coming which succeeds the Dionysian archetype in the later works, Kotik Letaev (1918) and Zapiski cudaka (1922). Belyj's Symphonies contain, therefore, the basic motifs and problems which infuse his entire work with their most characteristic features: the cleavage between antipodal forces, the attraction of the eternal or otherworldly, the inherent tragedy of ecstasy and despair - all of which is given an unmistakable eschatological turn.

"

Belyj, Zoloto ν lazuri (Moscow, 1904), pp. 19-20.

ν THE WOMAN CLOTHED IN THE

SUN

Of the many aesthetic and philosophical banners graced with esoteric symbols and raised by the decadent-symbolist movement to various divinities, there emerged one in particular which captured the literary imagination of the early twentieth century. The banner was that of the Divine Feminine, and her followers, the knights of the Beautiful Lady, inscribed her insignia upon their literary shields. Foremost among these were Aleksandr Blok and Andrej Belyj, who were following the philosophical and mystical doctrines of Vladimir Solov'ev. Solov'ev was among the first to announce her appearance, and his involved philosophical concept of Sophia as the "world soul" or "logos" set off a chain reaction which led to a rebirth of the cult of femininity among the younger symbolists.1 By proclaiming her presence, Solov'ev initiated the search for the earthly incarnation of the divine spirit: Let it be k n o w n : the eternal feminine D r a w s night to the earth in her incorruptibility. In t h e steadfast light o f the n e w g o d d e s s T h e heavens have united with the deeps. ( " D a s Ewig-Weibliche'', 1898) 2

His dual formulation of Sophia - mystical and intuited in his poetry, philosophical and rational in his metaphysical works - proved to be the basis for the numerous interpretations which the Divine Feminine underwent. While Blok's poetry reflected a completely personal and mystical intuition of the Beautiful Lady, Belyj's involved the entire spectrum, from mystical to philosophical and cultural. Thus, the figure of Sophia became perhaps the most multivalent of symbols for the 1

See especially V. S. Solov'ev's "Smysl ljubvi", 1894, and Ctenija ο Bogocelovecestve

(1881). 2

V. S. Solov'ev, Stixotvorenija,

p. 155.

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diverse strivings of the symbolists. Above all, it came to represent the new era under whose aegis heaven and earth would be united: "The symbol of the 'Woman Clothed in the Sun' became for some the symbol of the divine tidings of the new era, the union of earth and heaven. It became the symbol of the symbolists, the annunciation of the Being, Wisdom or Sophia which several of us identified with the rising dawn." 3 The connection between the Divine Feminine and the Woman Clothed in the Sun is immediately discernible, for the latter kills the serpent and in so doing prepares the way for the Second Coming, the "rising dawn" of which Belyj speaks. In fact, whereas Blok uses the less overtly eschatological symbol which he calls the Beautiful Lady, Belyj immediately plunges into the apocalyptic syndrome of the Woman Clothed in the Sun. Belyj's vision of Sophia was principally drawn from the work of Solov'ev, who, through his vision of the world soul incarnate in Sophia and the impending struggle between the Woman Clothed in the Sun and the Beast, warned the world of the approaching apocalypse: But from the immortal heights of Platonism and Schellingism Solov'ev glimpsed the rosy smile of the World Soul. He also understood the sweetness of the "Song of Songs" and the banner of the "Woman Clothed in the Sun". And thus he descended from the philosophical heights into this world in order to show the people the dangers threatening them and the joys of which they were ignorant... Powerful and mighty, he did battle against the terror; it seemed as though he were not turning pages but in fact tearing the mask from the truth which the enemy had concealed.4 In this regard Belyj was a much closer disciple of Solov'ev than Blok, for he, like his teacher, was torn between the purely aesthetic vision and the philosophical formulation. In the symbol of the Divine Feminine he discerned not merely a mystical reflection of the poet's intuition, but an entirely new culture. On this basis he went one step further than Blok and interpreted the latter's "Stixi ο Prekrasnoj Dame" not as immature romanticism, but as the well-springs of a new and living philosophy: In other words, I mean to say that the theme of the "Verses of the Beautiful Lady" is not at all a product of the romanticism of immature excesses, but an overwhelming and up until this time undisclosed new theme of living philosophy, a theme of the New Testament, of the Anthropos and Sophia; 3 4

Belyj, Vospomirtanija ob A. Bloke, p. 17. Belyj, "Apokalipsis ν russkoj poezii", 1905, Lug zelenyj (Moscow, 1910), p. 224.

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it is the problem of the anthroposophical culture of the coming era whose storm was reflected in the World War of 1914 and the Russian Revolution of 1917-1918.5 The symbol of the Divine Feminine, in whatever incarnation she may have appeared, became the early symbolists' Symbol of symbols, the representation of the first principle of light in the universe, the spirit of harmony and the bond between heaven and earth. She was the ascending star in the symbolists' constellation, the Morning Star referred to in Relevation: We know from the very beginning that in comprehensively approaching the symbolics of redemption the symbolists perceived with their own eyes that Sublime Symbol which crowned a system and which invariably arose before anyone perceiving the Ens realissimum, or before anyone who by means of ecstatic clairvoyance raised his spirit to the thresholds of the divine kingdom of eternal light, absolute rhythm and perfect harmony. This is the Primordial Symbol, this is the Sublime Visage - the Visage of the Eternal Feminine, the Visage of the Madonna!6 Belyj was feverishly concerned with this arch-symbol, drawing on Solov'ev as well as the classical and religious sources for the motif. However, as an overt symbol the Woman Clothed in the Sun belongs, above all, to his early work, namely the Symphonies and his articles of 1904-1905. 7 In his later works, it becomes weaker as an autonomous image, although the concentration of meanings informing it are retained in other symbols. The subsequent female figures in his writings become perverted (Matrena in Serebrjanyj goluV) or satiric (Sophia Petrovna in Peterburg).8 This tendency is also discernible in Blok's work, for his celebration of the Divine Feminine during the first four or five years of the twentieth century degenerated into the vision of the prostitute of his later poetry. A comparison of Belyj's and Blok's relationship to the Divine Feminine casts light on the essential differences separating them both as symbolists and personalities. Blok's perception of the feminine principle is mainly personal, intuitive and passive. For she represents above all an "atmosphere", a "shadow": "I sense Her above all as an atmosphere. I think it is possible to catch a glimpse of Her, but not incarnate in any person, 5

Belyj, Vospominanija ob A. Bloke, p. 37. Ellis [L. L. Kobylinskij], Russkie Simvolisty (Moscow, 1910), p. 336. 7 Namely, "Apokalipsis ν russkoj poezii", Vesy, II (1905), Nr. 4, pp. 11-28; and "Lug zelenyj", Vesy, II (1905), Nr. 8, pp. 5-12. 8 The notable exceptions to these are the portrayals of his wife, Asja Turgeneva, in Zapiski cudaka, and both Serafima and Eleonora in Moskva and Maski. 6

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and that person herself would not know whether She was present in her or not. Only fleetingly (in a burst of feeling) is it possible to catch a glimpse of Her, as if of a Shadow, in another person." 9 At the same time Blok adds to this the other main theme of his poetry, the apocalyptic theme of the end. He feels that the concept of the end of the world and of the Beautiful Lady are mutually explanatory and unavoidably connected to history: "The greatest concept with which we can invest her is the End of the World and, thus, this concept is unmistakably connected with Her. In the Holy Scripture allusions to Her are also unmistakably connected with the end. These two concepts (She and the End) in their interrelationship throw a clearer light on the entire picture of present and past." 10 This explains, in part, his progression from the vision of the Beautiful Lady to that of the end of the world, for the first represents the initial mystical impetus towards the new world, whereas the second, under the duress of scepticism and disillusionment, offers an apocalyptic exit from the human and social predicament. It was unusual for Blok to comment so forthrightly upon his poetry, especially upon the concept of the Beautiful Lady, but he was forced to by the insistent Belyj who deluged him with questions concerning the nature of his premonitions of Her. Herein lies the essential difference in the nature of the two poets, for where Blok was at first willing to receive his vision passively, Belyj immediately plunged into a dialectical and theoretical involvement with the Woman Clothed in the Sun: How do you relate the atmosphere surrounding her with the religio-dogmatic teaching of the Church? How do you interpret the myths of the pagans concerning her? What relationship does she possess, in your opinion, with the Mother of God, with Christ, and the question of the End of the Word? Does her manifestation take place symbolically or incarnate in the soul of the people, society or an individual person? Is what you discern in life on the faces of people concerning her moving towards consummation or do we have here only life-like forms? Are these genuine forms or only pre-forms? Can the pre-form become that of which it is a pre-form or not? How does the image of Astarte suit her? Could there be a difference between the spiritual Astarte and Artemis? I could go on and on asking questions but answers to the above questions will satisfy me. I repeat - it is important for me to hear from you a logical elucidation of everything concerning her, because here there is a multitude of intersecting paths.11 9 10 11

V. N. Orlov (ed.), Aleksandr Blok i Andrej Belyj. Perepiska (Moscow, 1940), p. 35. Ibid., p. 35. Ibid., p. 33.

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The very multiplicity of Belyj's questions suggests, in part, the exaggerated breadth of the problems and the depth of the significance which he attached to this central image. Unlike Blok's record of vague and passive sensations, Belyj's portrayal exudes optimism, faith in the future and a willingness to sally forth to do battle with the Beast. In other words, the Woman Clothed in the Sun becomes for him a positive and militant symbol labouring to bring about the apocalyptic future, the advent of which is signified in her sufferings and birth pangs. With this in mind the apocalyptic symbolism which Belyj projects in the Woman Clothed in the Sun immediately assumes a wide social and cultural meaning. His feminine figure is central not only to his theoretic or philosophical position, but also to his reflections on history and modern society at large. But behind these philosophical and cultural roles, there lies concealed the inescapable mysticism of the personal vision which gives birth to the apocalyptic symbol, a mysticism which rides the crest of religio-erotic love and passionate patriotism. For Belyj, to be a disciple of Solov'ev was to be a disciple of Plato. Solov'ev had enlarged upon Plato's ideas and broadened the metaphysical basis underlying his Sophia, or strictly speaking in Platonic terms, Love. In the Symposium Socrates and Diotima offer a philosophical outline of love in which it is defined as the love of beauty (i.e., the "good") not yet possessed and also the spirit operative between mortality and immortality, or the empirical and transcendental spheres.12 This was especially important for the symbolists, for on this point Solov'ev was able to promulgate his doctrine of Godmanhood, the meeting of God and man, and of the spirit of Sophia, which variously as the "world soul", the "bride of Christ" (that is, the logical fulfilment of Christ on earth) and the divine logos manifesting itself in the universe, would con12 "What then is Love?" I asked; "Is he mortal?" "No." "What then?" "As in the former instance, he is neither mortal nor immortal, but is a mean between the two." "What is he, Diotima?" "He is a great spirit (daimon), and like all spirits he is intermediate between the divine and the mortal." "And what," I said, "is his power?" "He interprets between gods and men, conveying and taking across to the gods the prayers and sacrifices of men and to men the commands of the gods and the benefits they return; he is the mediator who spans the chasm which divides them, and therefore by him the universe is bound together, and through him the arts of the prophet and the priest, their sacrifices and mysteries and charms, and all prophecy and incantation, find their way. For God mingles not with man; but through Love all the intercourse and converse of gods with men whether they be awake or asleep, is carried on. The wisdom which understands this is spiritual; all other wisdom, such as that of arts and handicrafts, is mean and vulgar." Plato, Symposium, Dialogues of Plato, I, trans, by B. Jowett, 4th ed. (Oxford, 1964), pp. 534-535.

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summate the marriage between the heavenly and earthly. 13 Sophia, therefore, became an active force, not only as an intercessor between man and God, but also as the spirit of His logical complement in each man which would lead to Godmanhood: For God this othersidedness (i.e., the universe) has taken for centuries the form of the perfect feminine, but He wanted this image not only for Himself but also to be realized and incarnated in every individual being who was capable of union with it. Towards this realization and incarnation strives the Eternal Feminine herself, for she is not merely a passive image in the mind of God but a living spiritual being possessing in fullness both power and action. The entire universal and historical process of her realization and incarnation is in the magnificent multiplicity of forms and stages.14 Accordingly, she also represented the central doctrine of Solov'ev's philosophy, "total-unity" (vseedinstvo), in which she figured as an "individualization of total-unity", a symbol of the attempt to overcome the false idea of divisiveness: And here is the first, basic law: if in our world divisive and separate being is both fact and reality, and oneness is only a concept and idea, then on the other hand reality belongs to oneness or more precisely, to the total-unity, whereas divisiveness and isolation exist only potentially and subjectively. From this it follows that the existence of this person in the transcendent sphere is not individual in the sense of our worldly real existence. There, i.e., in truth, the individual person is only a living and actual ray of light, an indivisible ray of a single ideal source of light - the single being. This ideal figure or personified idea is only the individualization of the total-unity which exists indivisibly in each of its individualizations. Thus, when we imagine the ideal form of any object, then the all-one being itself is communicated to us in this form.15 This complicated Solov'evian concept did not escape Belyj, who also makes it the centre of his metaphysical symbolism. Similarly, he identifies the spirit of the Woman Clothed in the Sun with unity and denies any real divisiveness as illusory : There is no divisiveness. Life is all of one. The appearance of plurality is only an illusion... Plurality arises as the wherewithal of unity - just like the variation in the fibres of one and the same fabric which is dictated by the same 13

See especially the 7th and 8 th Lectures of Solov'ev's Ctenija ο Bogocelovecestve which reveal her multiple theological formulations. M Vladimir Solov'ev, "Smysl ljubvi", Sobranie socinenij V. S. Solov'eva, VII, p. 46. 15 Ibid., pp. 44-45.

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principle. The veil is torn from the world and these factories, people and growths will disappear and the world, like a sleeping beauty, will awaken to wholeness and shake her pearly headdress. Her visage will catch flame like the •dawn and her eyes will be like azure, cheeks like snowy wisps of clouds, lips like fire. The beauty will arise and begin to laugh. The black clouds enveloping her will be pierced by her rays. They will burst forth in flame and blood and the outline of the dragon will be reflected on them and thus the defeated dragon will be scattered amid the pure heavens.16 Belyj proceeds to make art the bearer of unity in the name of the Woman Clothed in the Sun. The goal of poetry is to discover the transcendental reality of oneness, and the visage of the Woman Clothed in the Sun, as representative of this unity, also becomes synonymous with the poet's muse. Thus, art and religion intersect in the discovery and manifestation of the total-unity operative in the universe behind the illusory mask of plurality: "The goal of poetry is to find the visage of the muse, which expresses the world-oneness of universal truth. The goal of religion is to manifest this oneness. The image of the muse is transformed by religion into the integral visage of Humanity, the visage of the Woman Clothed in the Sun. Art, therefore, is the shortest path to religion, for here humanity... is united with the oneness of the Eternal W o m a n . . . " 17 By choosing to make his variation on the Divine Feminine the Woman Clothed in the Sun, Belyj immediately becomes involved in the entire apocalyptic syndrome surrounding this religious symbol. Consequently, the motifs of Beast, Serpent and Harlot achieve prominence as the demonic opponents of the divine principle which she embodies. Each of these becomes symbolic concentrations in Belyj's early aesthetic and theoretic writings, encompassing, variously, industrialized or dehumanized society, determinism or mechanistic materialism, the forces of chaos threatening from the East, erotic love, mortality and vulgar time. Nor do art and the artist escape declension within this systematized apocalyptic symbolism. Belyj, in tracing the past and present history of Russian poetry, warns that in the future Brjusov's poetry might deny the Woman Clothed in the Sun, the unity and immortality as exemplified in Puskin's work, and become enslaved instead to the Great Harlot, the demonic and chaotic aspect of Lermontov's work: "If the animality of Brjusov's muse is to be understood in the sense of creation, then at its feet there can appear both the moon and stars as at the feet of the

16 17

Belyj, "Apokalipsis ν russkoj poezii", pp. 222-223. Ibid., pp. 230-231.

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Woman Clothed in the Sun. But if this animality clearly tends towards "brutishness", then its pedestal will be the crimson beast - the Great Harlot". 18 The Woman Clothed in the Sun was for Belyj very much a natural reaction and antidote to the social atmosphere of the times and must also be considered in this regard. Representing for Belyj, as she did, the spirit of light, freedom and beauty, a conflict with the materialistic and industrial society of Russia on the eve of the 1905 Revolution seemed inevitable. The war with Japan, the abortive Revolution, the reprisals, the squalor of the life of the factory-workers - all of this became a symbol (unified in the haze of the factory smoke) of a diseased urban society hiding the still slumbering figure of the Divine Feminine or Beauty: "The visage of the Beauty is enveloped with the misty shroud of a mechanistic culture, a shroud woven out of black smoke and the metal wires of the telegraph... A pall of black death in the form of factory furnaces is enveloping awakening Russia, this Beauty who has been in deep slumber until now." 19 The general symbolism of his article, "Lug zelenyj", cannot be mistaken in this regard, for it clearly sets up an antithesis between the "green meadow", a virgin Russia and her innocently wholesome people, and the demonic factory smoke of the cities, a materialistic evil inflicted by the West. When the Beauty awakens she will choose between the mechanism of the West, symbolized in the city, and hence death, or the religious society made up of individuals, the Russian obscina which will bring new life: Only when all will be removed which has been hindering this sleep will the Beauty herself choose the way of either conscious life or conscious death, either the way of a teleological development of all individuals through a mutual penetration and union in an intimate and consequently religious existence, or the way of automatism. In the former instance, society will be transformed into an obscina. In the latter, society will devour humanity.20

Hence, even sociality falls under the banner of Belyj's Woman Clothed in the Sun. In the same way that for Solov'ev Sophia represented an individuation of total-unity, symbolizing in her separate manifestations the one transcendental principle, so for Belyj, too, she designates the transcendental ideal in which individuals are united into one whole in their society. As a religious and philosophical principle of total-unity, light 18 19 20

Ibid., p. 236. Belyj, "Lug zelenyj", pp. 5-6. Ibid., p. 6.

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and love, this feminine spirit should invest society with her spirit: "Here is the origin of the symbolization of social goals and the understanding of society as an individual organism - the 'Woman Clothed in the Sun'. The religious principle crowns the social principle."21 This formulation of a religious society was, of course, beyond the pale of reality in Russia. It did not attempt to come to any realistic terms with the down-to-earth and materialistic revolution which was in preparation. No entente existed between the mystical-religious revolution promulgated by Merezkovskij, Belyj or even Blok, and the leaders of a revolution that sought to remedy the basic ills of physical destitution and social injustice. Neither Belyj nor any other symbolist could offer a concrete solution, and this failure to make the revolutionary word flesh was ultimately the gravestone of symbolism. The disastrous Russo-Japanese War and the Revolution of 1905 confirmed the apocalyptic premonitions of Belyj and the symbolists. In commenting upon Leonid Andreev's tale, "Krasnyj smex",22 Belyj also locates the source of threatening chaos in the East - in China, Manchuria or Japan - the very source that his precursors Solov'ev and Merezkovskij pointed to in their prophetic warnings.23 The war with Japan drew everyone's attention to the destruction approaching the Western World: "The spectre of the Mongolian invasion has sprung up threateningly. A whirlwind has blown over European civilization, stirring up clouds of dust. Covered with dust the light has become red. The world conflagration has surely begun." 24 The haunting and terrible Eastern phantom was concentrated in the dragon or serpent, the apocalyptic symbol of the chaos threatening the Woman Clothed in the Sun.25 Belyj leaves no doubt about the particular symbolic content which he discerns in this war. For him it is clearly a symbolic manifestation of the cosmic war between the world soul and the world terror: "It must be remembered that the red dragon approaching us from the East is transparent. These are misty clouds and not reality. Nor is there any war at all - it is only a figment of our sick imagination, an external symbol in the struggle of the world soul with the world terror, a symbol of the struggle of our souls with the

21

Ibid., pp. 4-5. A great deal of Belyj's article "Apokalipsis ν russkoj poezii" was, in fact, inspired by Andreev's story, and continual reference is made to it throughout the article. 23 See Chapter I. 24 Belyj, "Apokalipsis ν russkoj poezii", pp. 225-226. 25 See Revelation, Chapter XII. 22

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chimeras and hydras of chaos." 26 Here Belyj obviously sees empirical events only as the shadows which, in a Platonic sense, are cast by the primeval tension between chaos and cosmos in the universe. The Russo-Japanese War was one of the major causes leading up to the 1905 Revolution in Russia. But for the symbolists like Belyj, the war was only a cosmic sign of the events which were still to take place. For these historical events there existed a mystical and prophetic analogy in The Apocalypse. Thus, the Revolution of 1905 was interpreted as a further apocalyptic stage, as the Beast or chaos, which was advancing on the West from the East via Russia. During that bloody Revolution the Woman Clothed in the Sun, whom Belyj identified with the "green meadow" of Russia, sacrificed herself in the cause of light and was temporarily crucified by the powers of chaos and darkness: During those January days so grave for Russia it fell to my lot to experience in Petersburg the entire horror of events. Something which had been slumbering until then suddenly began to stir. The earth trembled underfoot. Somehow or other it was strange to attend the spectacle arranged by a foreign dancer. But I went. She came out, light, cheerful and with a child-like face. And I understood that she was from another world. In her smile was the dawn, in the movements of her body the scent of the green meadow. The folds of her gown as though murmuring were flowing like foamy currents when she surrendered herself to an uninhibited and pure dance. I remember the joyous and youthful face although in the music there resounded laments of despair. But she, in pain, rent her soul asunder and delivered her pure body up to crucifixion before the gazes of thousands. And thus she was borne up to the immortal heights. Through the fire she flew off into the coolness but her face, illuminated with the Spirit flashed with a cold fire - a new, calm and immortal face.27

The correlation of symbols is fairly obvious in this apocalyptic phantasy surrounding the performance by a foreign dancer. The chaos borne from the East to the West is both the cosmic force of darkness, traditionally associated with the East in Russian history and the merciless crushing of the revolt in Petersburg. The Krasavica represents both the cosmic symbol of light and the positive force of the revolution. In a Christ-like fashion, she must be crucified by the despicable forces of destruction (persecuted by the dragon)28 and the reactionary state (the crushing of the 26 27 28

Belyj, "Apokalipsis ν russkoj poezii", p. 227. Belyj, "Lug zelenyj", pp. 8-9. See footnote 25.

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revolution). Having experienced the stations of the cross and undergone crucifixion and burial she, too, like Christ, could be resurrected. Then she would arise and in the Second Coming defeat the powers of darkness in the name of light. This is the entire apocalyptic outline which Belyj invests in the symbol of the Woman Clothed in the Sun in the mystical panegyric concluding "Apokalipsis ν russkoj poezii": We believe that You will reveal Yourself to us, that before us lie neither the mists of October nor the yellow thaws of February. Let them believe that You are still asleep in the icy grave... But no, You have arisen. You yourself promised to appear in the rose light and the soul prayerfully bows before You, and in the dawns, the crimson icon-lamps, your yearning prayer can be overheard. Manifest thyself! The time has come, the world has grown ripe like the golden fruit exuding sweetness, the world grieves without You. Manifest thyself!29

Within this context the title of Belyj's article, "Apokalipsis ν russkoj poezii", reveals a lucid symbolism. Although ostensibly dealing with the history of Russian poetry, Belyj actually formulates an eschatological framework for the historical events in Russia and Europe. This is his attempt to come to terms with the catastrophic events of 1904-1905, to uncover their apocalyptic import and to outline a similar content in the development of Russian poetry. By linking the aesthetic with the sociohistorical, he is able to insist upon a correlation between the two and to demand that the course of Russian poetry adopt goals which are sympathetic with the historical and religious tremors shaking Russia. Historically, the present tension between East and West presages the impending struggle between chaos and cosmos, or the Beast and the Virgin. The role of Russian poetry consists in tearing off a series of masks, the last of which will culminate in the final struggle between good and evil: At first we said that three masks must be removed from the Visage of the Russian muse. The first to be torn away is that of the PuSkinian muse behind which chaos lurks. The second is the half-mask covering the Visage of the Heavenly Vision. The third Mask is the World Mask. The latter is "The Mask of the Red Death" which conditions the world struggle between the Beast and the Woman. In this struggle is the content of all tragedy. Western-European poetry tells us about this struggle. Tragedy is therefore the formal definition 29

Belyj, "Apokalipsis ν russkoj poezii", pp. 246-247.

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of the apocalyptic struggle. Russian poetry, in throwing a bridge over to religion, appears as the connecting link between the tragic world-view of European civilization and the final church of believers who are rallying together to do battle with the Beast.30 Russian poetry had to dedicate itself to identifying the Beast in whatever form he might appear, social, historical or religious. One of the most interesting aspects of the Divine Feminine in the works of both Belyj and Blok is her composite nature. Not only does she appear in both aspects as mother and maiden at various times, but also vacillates between the heavenly vision of the Woman Clothed in the Sun and the Great Harlot. This mother-maiden or Virgin-Harlot polarization is not as strange as it might seem since a passionate faith in the positive aspect fosters a tension between opposites which naturally begets logical antitheses. In Greek mythology this structural division underlies the DemeterPersephone-Hecate formulation of the feminine spirit (i.e., MotherDaughter-Harlot) and similarly in Christian mythology, Mary is simultaneously Mother and Virgin, while Mary Magdalen completes the tripartite nature of Mary in her role as the redeemed harlot. 31 Jung, in outlining the usual syndrome attached to this symbolic relationship,32 refers to those very circumstances which produce the tripartite figure in Belyj's works, namely, fertility, the sense of crisis and danger symbolized in dragons and serpents, and the longing for redemption in paradise or the Heavenly Jerusalem - all of which are the basic motifs of Belyj's Symphonies. Thus far it has been shown that the Woman Clothed in the Sun was associated by Belyj with philosophical principles of total-unity, and the social principles of a religious society. But the major spirit which moves her and inspires the poet must be some form of love, cosmic, religious or erotic. If she is to be the Bride of the Christ-Groom, or the 30

Ibid., p. 246. This tripartite nature of the feminine principle has been the subject of extensive discussion for at least three scholars who are very well-known although generally considered "unorthodox". All three generally agree on the relative areas of influence, whether stated as heaven-earth-underworld or divine-fertile-demonic in the aspects of the maiden, mother and harlot. See Robert Graves, The White Goddess (London, 1962), pp. 61-74 ("The Triple Muse") and pp. 383-408 ("The White Goddess"); C. Kerenyi, "Kore", in C. G. Jung and C. Kerenyi, Essays on a Science of Mythology, trans, by R. C. Hull (New York, 1963), pp. 101-155; C. G. Jung, "Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype", and "The Psychological Aspects of the Kore", The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, IX, Part I. 32 See C. G. Jung, "Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype", IX, Part I, pp. 81-85. 31

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spiritual link between God and man, then she must, in some fashion or other, represent the free force of love operating in the world. This is the personal feeling with which Blok consciously or unconsciously invested her symbolism and the spiritual marriage which Belyj perceived in her descent from heaven to earth: "She must descend to us on earth in order that the earth may be united with heaven in a conjugal ceremony. She appeared as Sophia before Solov'ev in the Egyptian Desert. She shall become the uniting principle - Love. Her homeland shall be not only heaven but the earth as well. She shall become the organism of love."33 As in Plato's Symposium where Socrates and Diotima make it clear that love is not the beloved, but rather the love of the lover for the beloved,34 so for both Belyj and Blok love signifies their attraction to the ultimate through the intermediary of the Beautiful Lady. For both poets, love was to be divested of any overtly erotic meaning. Theirs was not a physical but a spiritual love. In answer to Belyj's insistent questionings concerning the nature of his Beautiful Lady, Blok quite adamantly denied any relationship with the goddess Astarte, thus refusing to associate his vision with any sensual or physical manifestation of love: "She is unique in her manifestations, having nothing in common with anything else; the sensation of Her presence is strange and in the most sublime moments completely different from Astarte." 35 In the introduction to his fourth Symphony, Kubok metelej, Belyj outlined his desire to depict a "holy love", symbolized in the purest elements of gold, sky, wind and storm, unadulterated by erotic or impure intentions : In the present Symphony I wanted to depict the entire range of that special kind of love of which our age has such an obscure premonition, just as earlier Plato, Goethe, Dante had premonitions of it as holy love. If in the future a new religious consciousness is possible, then the path towards it will be only through l o v e . . . This is why I wanted to depict the Promised Land of this love in the storm, god, sky and wind. The theme of the storms - this is that vaguely summoning burst of feeling... but where to? To life or death? To madness or love? And the souls of the lovers dissolve in the storm. 36

This pattern is reflected in Svetlova, the earthly incarnation of the Woman Clothed in the Sun, and hence, of divine love, who is tempted 33 34 35 36

Belyj, "Apokalipsis ν russkoj poezii", p. 224. Plato, Symposium, p. 536. V. N. Orlov (ed.), A. Blok i A. Belyj. Perepiska, p. 36. Belyj, Kubok metelej, p. 4.

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by the erotic love of the Luciferean Svetozarov and attracted by the spiritual love of Adam Petrovic. Nor is this "holy love" typical of the plot of the fourth symphony alone. In the Northern Symphony it exemplifies the eventual relationship between the knight and princess, for although she loves him dearly, she nonetheless spurns him when he attempts to carry her off by force to his castle. In not acknowledging her songs of eternity and "sisterly love" he has damned himself both to banishment from her kingdom and purgatory in timelessness. Thus, the Beautiful Lady or Woman Clothed in the Sun became synonymous with a holy and mystical love as well as the principle of light and beauty attracting both Belyj and Blok. This, then, is her role as Persephone or the Virgin Mary. Subsequent to the formulation of "holy love" there appears the logical complement to the Virgin aspect in a patriotic love for the traditional Mother-figure or the image of Russia. Belyj combines the vision of the virginity of Russia's "green meadow" with the fertility and motherhood of his rodina, thereby intimately linking his own fate to that of his country both as lover and son: I believe in Russia. She will be. We will be. People will be. There will be new times and new dimensions. Russia is a great meadow, green and blooming forth with flowers. When I look at the blue sky I know that this is the sky of my soul. But my joy is even fuller from the realization that the sky of my soul is my native sky. I believe in the heavenly fate of my homeland, of my mother. 37

With the same burst of pathos, Blok projects the holy love of his vision of the Beautiful Lady into the feminine depiction of Russia as both bride and mother in the following image of his homeland as his "wife": Ο my Russia! Ο my Wife! The long road Is painfully clear to us! Our road-like the Tartar arrow of some ancient determination, Has pierced our breast. ("Na pole Kulikovom", 1908)38

The variations on the feminine theme proceeded apace from the positive complementary aspects of the virgin, bride, wife and mother to their negative complementary antipodes of the demonic mother and harlot. Thus, for Blok the ethereal Beautiful Lady assumes the guise of a pros37 38

Belyj, "Lug zelenyj", pp. 17-18. Aleksandr Blok, Sobranie socinenij, III, p. 249.

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titute or a drunken vision in a tavern in the poems "Nevidimka" and "Neznakomka" of 1906. The same trend is discernible in Belyj's later works as well. In Serebrjanyj golub' Dar'jal'skij is in love with the divine and beautiful creature, Katja, but leaves the "cultured life" and goes off into the back-reaches of Russia where he becomes involved with a religious sect. Here he is both spiritually and physically seduced by the ugly pock-marked peasant, Matrena, who helps to kill him when he plans to escape. Seeking spiritual rebirth, Dar'jal'skij finds instead erotic degeneration in the demonic "spiritual mother" of the Silver Doves. Belyj's final series of novels, Moskva (including Maski), presents an integral variation on this same feminine theme. One of the lesser characters, Eleanora, illustrates the harlot-virgin paradox exemplified by Mary Magdalen in the New Testament. In volume I of Moskva Eleanora, a young and innocent girl, falls victim to the incestuous love of her father, von Mandro. From this point on she develops into a fallen woman and a prostitute in volume II. In Maski, however, she is rediscovered by Ivan Korobkin, who in a Christ-like fashion begins her resurrection to her original purity. It would not be surprising, in fact, to discover that she had become the Woman Clothed in the Sun in the final part of the trilogy had Belyj ever completed it. The early symbolism of Belyj and Blok was dominated by the feminine principle, including the complete cycle of complementary and antithetical variations: the Kore-image of the Beautiful Lady, whether virgin or prostitute, and the mother-image, whether divine or demonic. Such an obsession with the female leads one to suspect that more is involved here than simply an aesthetic doctrine. In the introduction to his Kubok metelej, Belyj himself mused that his depictions might be more within the realms of psychology than art.39 Considering Belyj's intense interest in mythological archetypes and the patterns of primordial or subconscious projections, it would not seem unreasonable to seek recourse, in discussing the problem of the feminine principle, to the cultural psychology of C. G. Jung. In particular, Jung's discussion of the "anima-animus" relationship and of the "divine syzygy" would appear to elucidate the well-springs of Belyj's (and for that matter, Blok's) own professed psychological motivation.40 39

See Chapter IV, fn. 19. See especially Jung's "The Syzygy: Anima and Animus", in The Collected Works, IX, Part II, pp. 11-22; and "Concerning the Archetypes and the Anima Concept", IX, Part I, pp. 54-74. 40

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Jung very aptly describes the influence of the anima or female projection in the male in those very terms which certainly characterize both the mentality and work of Belyj: "The anima is a factor of the utmost importance in the psychology of a man wherever emotions and affects are at work. She intensifies, exaggerates, falsifies, and mythologizes all emotional relations with his work and with other people of both sexes."41 At the same time, Jung points out the all-pervasive nature of the "divine syzygy", or the striving for union between the anima (the female principle in the male) and the animus (the male principle in the female), which is observable at all levels of religion and philosophy.42 In view of the deeply religious and mystical experiences of both Belyj and Blok, as well as their mentor Solov'ev, the homogeneity of their collective psychological preoccupation with the feminine principle appears to subject them quite naturally to both impulses of "animaanimus" and "divine syzygy". Keeping in mind the principle of totalunity, whether the union of Heaven and Earth, God and Man, or the Christ-Groom and the Heavenly Bride, one may perceive the vision of a "divine syzygy" or mysterium coniunctionis operative in the strivings of both Belyj and Blok, in which the feminine archetype represented one-half of the wholeness which the poets sought. This "divine syzygy", the striving for consummation between formerly homogeneous but now heterogeneous natures, is the philosophical symbolism inherent in Solov'ev's sophiology and in the Christian symbolism of the ChristGroom and Heavenly Bride. This is the same principle underlying the myth of original oneness of man before he was split into his male and female counterparts as expounded by Aristophanes in the Symposiumt43 or in the Judaeo-Christian tradition of the creation of Eve from Adam's rib. This hermaphroditic principle was very much in vogue within esoteric circles at the turn of the century in Russia, and, in fact, became the all-consuming doctrine of Merezkovskij later in his life.44 Belyj's Kubok metelej exhibits this process of attraction between the anima and animus impulse which in this instance does end quite literally in "divine syzygy". It is never explained why Adam Petrovic is mystically in love with Svetlova, or she with him. The mutual attraction between the two is 41

C. G. Jung, "Concerning the Archetypes and the Anima Concept", The Collected Works, IX, Part I, p. 70. Ibid., pp. 59-60. 43 Plato, Symposium, pp. 521-526. 44 See Merezkovskij's Tajna Trex: Egipet i Vavilon (Prague, 1925); Tajna Zapada: Atlantida-Evropa (Belgrade, 1930); Usus Neizvestnyj (Belgrade, 1931). 12

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presented almost as originating in some transcendental sphere and born of the storm whirling about the lovers. They are guided in their actions by some foreknowledge, some feeling of predestination which is neither questioned nor explained, but merely accepted by both. Each experiences an attraction towards his complementary opposite. Thus, the animaimpulse which Adam Petrovic feels within himself finds its idealized vision in Svetlova: "The tall woman with fiery hair emerged out of the storm walking with an uneven and entreatingly sad movement. Her appearance, like the sky, was distant but close. Her eyes, inexpressibly moist patches of blue, just like worlds f r o m distant spaces encircled by black lashes, were raised searchingly to him. They gave hope. They spoke of the impossible." 45 Svetlova herself is likewise entranced by her own animus-impulse which significantly enough is depicted in this instance replete with icon of the Virgin (obraz Bogorodicy), the "Christ G r o o m " (Lik Zelannyj) and the fulfilment of the holy covenant ( / Slovo stal Plotiju), thus conforming fully to the archetypal triad of the "divine syzygy" as suggested by Jung: A stormy cloud veiled the gleam of the icon-lamp. And once again it began to flicker. And the crimson flame flared up ominously, illuminating the icon of the Virgin. Everything swirled before Svetlova in a pale whirlwind - like a storm, like a storm. She recalled: "And the Word became Flesh." This woman with golden hair had been seeking all her life an incarnation, in smiles, words and deeds. Before her there arose the One Countenance, the Desired One smiled and nodded to her. Again and again. He summoned her with the very same secret.46 This entire psychological striving towards some divine marriage is deeply embedded in their psyches, in their intuited knowledge of the transcendental movement towards union and consummation. Obviously Belyj has in mind, not the individual characters here named Adam Petrovic and Svetlova, but as their names indeed suggest, " A d a m " the first man, and "Svetlova" the "Lady of Light" or the "Radiant One", the primordial male and female counterparts who are mystically

45 16

Belyj, Kubok metelej, p. 14. Ibid., pp. 26-27.

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drawn to one another through some "religious memory" or "collective unconscious": He was thinking about her. She was thinking about him. The snows swirled thickly about and fell thickly. First the snow whipped stingingly and then gently tickled under the collar. He recognized in her his secret. What did she recognize in him? She was dear to him and he to her. Before meeting they had languished for one another, before meeting they had sought one another, before meeting they had prayed to one another, before meeting they had dreamed of one another.47 Thus, if one approaches the feminine principle in Belyj and Blok keeping in mind both the metaphysical desire for total-unity and a psychological expression of the "anima-animus" projection, which strives for oneness as hypostatized in the "divine syzygy", it may help to explain the investiture of their symbolism in the feminine aspect of the Beautiful Lady or the Woman Clothed in the Sun. Just as Christ had to appear at the head of the twelve Red Guards in Blok's "Dvenadcat"', the Divine Feminine had to be the logical leader of the young symbolists in her role as the mystical archetype for the principles of total-unity and light during the early, romantic stage of symbolism. Since love is the moving force between the lover and the beloved, in Platonic terms the striving for, the possession of the beautiful or good,48 the question remains: what did the ultimate achievement of the good or beautiful represent besides the victory of light over darkness? Or more concretely, with what was the lover presented for his devotion to the Divine Feminine? The answer to this question can be found in Solov'ev's "Smysl ljubvi" and Belyj's symphonic cycle. According to Solov'ev, true love not only affirms the first unconditional principle in the universe, but removed the necessity of death: "True love is not only that which affirms in subjective feeling the unconditional significance of human individuality both in the other [the one who loves] and in itself, but also justifies this unconditional significance in reality, actually removing us from the inevitability of death and filling our life with the content of the absolute." 49 This, too, is the message expressed in both the Northern Symphony and Kubok metelej. The "reward" which both the young knight and Adam Petrovic receive is, in fact, Ibid., p. 26. "Then l o v e . . . may be described generally as the everlasting possession of the good." Plato, Symposium, p. 538. 49 V. Solov'ev, "Smysl ljubvi", p. 32. "

48

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immortality. After death they were resurrected in eternity and united with the object of their love in the former earthly realm. This, of course, also corresponds to the popular teaching of Christianity, the doctrine of love of the New Testament: in return for the love of Christ, and hence of God, one receives the gift of immortality, and death is overcome. But there is one important difference between Solov'ev's exposition of sophiology and the position of Belyj and Blok which reveals the inherent danger facing the younger symbolists. The object of Solov'ev's love is Christ, who by sacrificing himself also revealed His love for mankind. Thus, Solov'ev directs his theological love towards Christ (although at the same time he is, of course, also partially responsible for leading the younger symbolists astray with his mystical incantations to the feminine figure of Sophia in his poetry). A re-examination of the material surrounding the depiction of the Woman Clothed in the Sun or the Beautiful Lady further reveals that she has been invested for the greater part with the attributes and deeds of the Christ-figure. Who is spoken of as being crucified in Belyj's article "Apokalipsis ν russkoj poezii"?Not Christ, but the Krasavica. Similarly, she is the one who will be resurrected and who will be the central figure in the Second Coming. She becomes the principle of light and the object of the symbolists' love rather than Christ. In projecting many of Christ's qualities into the figure of the Divine Feminine even the most serious symbolists, not to mention the less dedicated and imitative like Arcybasev, Andreev and Culkov, often fell victim to eroticism and sensuality. This also meant, of course, a lack of sympathy among conservative readers and, consequently, a degeneration of relations between themselves and the public. Nikolaj Berdjaev was probably the only critic astute enough to discern this subtle ambivalence in the direction of the symbolists' strivings and to label it the "cosmic fascination" of that generation: "Vladimir Solov'ev communicated his belief in Sophia to the symbolists. But it is characteristic that the symbolists at the beginning of the century, as opposed to Vladimir Solov'ev, believed in Sophia and awaited her appearance as the Beautiful Lady but did not believe in Christ. And this must be considered the cosmic fascination beneath which that generation lived. Truth for them lay in the longing for the beauty of a transfigured cosmos." 50

50

Nikolaj Berdjaev, Russkaja ideja, p. 230.

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It would indeed be difficult to hoist a revolutionary banner emblazoned with the mystical Divine Feminine rather than with the figure of Christ. But the Divine Feminine was allowed to usurp that place as the leader of the spiritual and religious revolution for the young symbolists and, thus, deprived them of public sympathy and brought the scorn of the Marxists and socialist critics upon them. In spite of his recognition of Christ's goodness and natural leadership of the working masses, Blok still loved the Beautiful Lady more and turned to her instead in his greatest need: Here, in fact, the question concerning Her relationship to Christ is in order, for Christ is indivisible from society (the people). Let all those who toil come unto me - is a sign of Christ's goodness (and not merely an ethical instance). Christ is also good, but this is not essential to Her, for "the Unfailing Light of the New Goddess" is neither good nor evil but something more than that. I say that I love Christ less than Her and in "praise, thanksgiving and entreaty" always turn to Her.51 This particular statement may explain why later the more mature Blok placed not the Beautiful Lady or any feminine archetype at the head of the twelve disciple-brigands in "Dvenadcat"' but rather the figure of Christ Himself who was more worthy of and comprehensible to a revolution in the name of justice, equality and fraternity. The esoteric symbolism of the feminine principle and her early leadership of the young symbolists led to a blind alley. While the ideas for which she stood were still considered valid, her presence made them unpalatable or incomprehensible to others. This tendency was fostered by the general scepticism rampant among many of the symbolists after 1905 and manifested itself in Belyj's own more theoretical searchings and Blok's "desertion" of the Beautiful Lady.

61

V. N. Orlov (ed.), A. Blok i A. Belyj. Perepiska, p. 35.

VI THE PASTORAL APOCALYPSE

At first glance Belyj's aesthetic output of 1908-1909 presents somewhat of an enigma when compared with the critical and theoretical writings of the same period. A difficult task would seem to confront the critic attempting to find some logical connection between the arid and involved theorizings of Lug zelenyj (1910), Simvolizm (1910) and Arabeski{ 1911), and the pastoral settings of both Serebrjanyj golub' (1910) and Pepel (1909). No external relationship is immediately apparent between the author-critic, Belyj, who was engaged in a literary and theoretic duel to the death in Petersburg and Moscow during the years 1906 to 1910, and either Dar'jal'skij, the intellectual hero of Serebrjanyj golub' who is engulfed by chaos and darkness at the hands of a religio-erotic sect in the depths of Russia, or the "wanderer-prophet-convict" of the poems contained in Pepel who disappears into the infinite reaches of Russia's forests and fields. Closer scrutiny does reveal, however, definite albeit subtle links, for the heroes of both Serebrjanyj golub'' and Pepel emerge as the metaphorical projections of Belyj's own emotional and spiritual crisis in those years. The unbearable atmosphere of the two literary capitals with the constant backbiting in the aesthetic circles, Belyj's inability to find a practicable way out of the impasse at which the symbolists had arrived, the personal trauma of his own life1 - all of this became a self-created prison, a horrible labyrinth, from which the poet-critic sought to escape. Hence the depiction of both the wanderer free from 1 One should keep in mind here Belyj's torturous infatuation with Blok's wife which together with his disappointment in Blok's "betrayal" of the symbolists almost led to a duel. The love triangle between himself and Brjusov over N. Petrovskaja barely escaped a similar outcome. His "nervous illness" in Paris contributed to the spleen so typical of his critical writings after 1907, at which time he was even considering suicide. This period between 1906 and 1910 also saw a degeneration in most of his relationships with the Bloks, Merezkovskijs, Brjusov, etc.

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the city in the vastness of Russia and the escaped convict dominates Pepel and appears somewhat more subtly in Serebrjanyj goluV: Thus my ideological pronouncements concerning this period [1906-1910] are somewhat confused. In introducing them I want to make the reader feel in my pronouncements of those times an "ornateness" which was much more typical of lyric poetry than of articles. But I wrote poems only rarely and these, which were contained in the book Pepel, did not correspond to anything which surrounded me. They did not reflect the Merezkovskijs, the salon of Mme Morozova, the circle of Argonauts, but they did reflect my genuine "ego". The themes of Pepel are my flight from the city in the guise of an unkempt tramp shaking his fist at the cities or the celebrations of the convict - I am this convict.2

Yet another connection between Belyj and his emotional or spiritual incarnation in Dar'jal'skij (and the nameless heroes of Pepel) is revealed in the "disease" which has affected them, although under different circumstances: the persecution complex, the atmosphere of destruction and the sensation of being horribly and hopelessly entangled in some fateful web: "In the novel [Serebrjanyj golub'] is reflected a personal note which tortured me during this entire period: the sick sensation of 'persecution', the feeling of entanglements and the expectation of destruction. This is in the fabula of [Serebrjanyj] Golub', in the ensnarement of the hero of the novel by the sectarians and in his murder while trying to run away from them. In objectivizing my 'disease' in the fabula 1 freed myself from it." 3 Although the aesthetic work of this period reflects a symbolic projection of the author's own psychic condition against a metaphorical landscape of forest, field, air and sky, against the religio-erotic searchings of an intellectual who submerges himself in the people and joins the sectarians, it also draws quite obviously on the flourishing movement of neo-Slavophilism which was once again emerging as a major issue with the intelligentsia at the turn of the century. This rebirth of Slavophilism reopened the traditional debate between the Slavophiles and Westernizers which had been temporarily shelved some forty years before. However, the topics remained the same despite the hiatus: East or West? Russia or Europe? The New Jerusalem in Orthodoxy and the Russian people or in Western civilization and the Roman Catholic Church? Return to the soil and the search for rebirth through a primitive religious 2

Belyj, Nacalo veka, p. 466. Belyj, Mezdu dvux revoljncij, p. 354.

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society or a technological leap into the abyss on the heels of a spiritually decadent Europe? The resurrection of these questions led to a renewed interest in Russia and especially in the Russian people, and became part of. the aesthetic baggage of many of Russia's "wandering writers" who found their leader in Maxim Gorkij. Among the symbolists the example of Aleksandr Dobroljubov was especially impressive, and Merezkovskij's depiction of sectarians and wandering god-seekers in Petr i Aleksej obviously drew on the current interest in "wandering Russia". The criss-crossing of the country by pilgrims and seekers captured the imagination of a time much concerned with the search for new values or for old ones which had been lost. Many believed that the quest led to the simple people who, like some antediluvian tribe, preserved the well-springs of original knowledge unmuddied by the Antichrist civilization of the West. Serebrjanyj golub' represents the first part of Belyj's projected trilogy, Vostok ili Zapad? Its title, in spite of what seems to be an obvious reference to an opposition of geographical spheres, namely Russia's lying between Asia and Europe, contains a rather more sinister significance for the individual. The symbolic opposition referred to by the title is a metaphorical casting of the cosmological antipodes, whether harmony and chaos, reality and illusion, good and evil. The contemporary issues in Belyj's day provided a convenient prospectus for the allegorization of the real cosmic issues and therefore, as will be shown, Dar'jal'skij's social and spiritual drama is, in fact, an enactment of cosmic influences and the playing out of planetary or macrocosmic predictions within the microcosmic man. It is not at all surprising that Belyj did not finish the trilogy, nor was Peterburg even a genuinely logical successor to Serebrjanyj golub' in the simplistic terms which most critics claimed. The only character who reappears in the second novel is Stepka, the son of the scheming storekeeper, who leaves his father and wanders about Russia in the first novel of the projected trilogy and then reappears briefly in Peterburg as the peasant who comes to the city bearing news of the coming apocalypse. The metaphorical landscapes of the two novels are antithetical, for the first is set in rural Russia and the second in urban Russia. But the relationship of the two lies not in this metaphorical statement of geographical thesis and antithesis, but rather in the radically divergent epistemological systems which inform the searchings of the main characters. Where Dar'jal'skij becomes the victim of wilful immersion in pagan sensuality and surrender to unbridled passions, Nikolaj Ableuxov of Peterburg is

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destroyed by the seeming harmony of the West. Thus, neither East nor West can offer refuge for the seeker after true knowledge; the first two novels nullify each other. The impossibility of arriving at a real synthesis of East and West in the geographical terms here set up is made evident by the fact that Belyj was unable to complete the trilogy. Aware that this simplistic opposition of Europe and Russia precluded any resolution, Belyj moved, in his next novel, Kotik Letaev, to an interior landscape of prenatal experience which drew on cosmic memory. In this light it would seem more reasonable to believe that Belyj was not aiming for the ascendancy of either East or West, but rather searching for a more meaningful system of perception which would synthesize the opposition of chaos and cosmos which occasioned both the pastoral and urban apocalypses of Serebrjanyj golub' and Peterburg. Belyj's inability to complete any of his projected trilogies,4 or close the opposing blades of the "scissors", only serves to emphasize the impasse at which he arrived in his article of 1909, "Emblematika smysla". Symbolism still lacks the transfiguring aspect of the trinity or synthesis of opposites and therefore must remain a system of descriptive symbolization rather than the symbolism of the "Word become Flesh". Consequently, the incompletion of all three of his trilogies signifies his tacit admission of failure. As the proposed title of Zapad ili Vostok? indicates, Serebrjanyj golub' is about opposites. The entire structure of the work is projected in a very rigid scheme of antipodal characters, settings and situations, each opposite containing its own independent metaphysic whether representing cosmos or chaos, light or darkness. An opposition is formulated between the provinces of Russia as the East and Europeanized cultured Russia as the West. Baron Todrabe-Graaben and Katja represent the West; Kudejarov and Matrena the East. Strung between the two polarizations is the hero, Petr Dar'jal'skij. Both Baron Todrabe-Graaben and Kudejarov personify the satanic forces in each camp; the two women, Katja and Matrena, the unpremeditated "world souls" of two opposite realms, the focal points of pure love and erotic degeneration between which Dar'jal'skij is split. The dramatic tension between East and West arises out of the search for knowledge and truth. In the fields and forests of Russia it is possible * Zapad ili Vostok ? saw the completion of the first and second parts, Serebrjanyj golub' and Peterburg, whereas the "third" part, Kotik Letaev, actually introduced a new trilogy under the title of Moja zizri. The second part of Moja zizn' was "KreScenyj kitaec" ["Prestuplenie Nikolaja Letaeva"], but apparently no third part was forthcoming. The final trilogy again witnessed only the appearance of two parts, Moskva and Maski.

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to live and experience the fullness of being, from life to death, from ecstasy to despair. What people write coldly and academically in books can be found in real life in Russia's depths. At least this is Dar'jal'skij's argument to the bookish Schmidt and the emotional or physical abandonment which he seeks in returning to the soil where he, in splendid isolation, will be the receiver of the word: O, to live in the fields and die in the fields, repeating to yourself the one spiritual word which no one else knows save he who receives that word and which is received in silence. Here amongst themselves all drink the wine of life, the wine of new joys. Petr was thinking, here the sunset cannot be squeezed into a book and here the sunset is a mystery. There are many books in the West but in Russia there are many unspoken words. Russia is that against which a book shatters and knowledge disintegrates; indeed, life itself is consumed in flames...5 This attempt to experience the origins of mythology and religion rather than to study them reflects Belyj's own paradoxical situation in his theoretic writings of the same period. In Chapter III it has been shown how he arrived at a symbolist doctrine of "crisis-experience" and personal apocalypse through massive theoretic and critical studies. The answer to this antipathy between theorized "crisis-experience" and the mythological well-springs of life is here Dar'jal'skij's plunge into a Dionysian world of released physical and emotional desires. Moreover, this flight to the soil of Russia is the spiritual seduction of his day, the search for freedom from trivial experience which appears to have captivated the Russian intellectuals of the day: Dar'jal'skij recalled his past, Moscow, the snobbish gatherings of fashionconscious ladies and their flatterers, the poets. He recalled their imported French neck-ties, cuff-links, scarves, tie-pins and the entire fashionable brilliance of the latest ideas. One girl shrugged her shoulders when people talked about ancient Russia, but later took off on foot as a pilgrim to Sarov. A socialdemocrat guffawed at the superstition of the people - and how did it all end? He up and left the party only to appear among the xlysty in the North-East. One decadent pasted black paper all over his room and acted strangely. But afterwards he up and disappeared for many years and then presented himself as a wanderer of the fields. O, how many has the rustic dream consumed in secret, ο you Russian field. You smell of resin, grain and sunsets - there is room to cease breathing and die in your expanses, o, you Russian field.®

5 Belyj, Serebrjanyj golub\ II, 2nd ed. (Berlin, 1922; reprint by Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Munich, 1967), pp. 95-96. 6

Ibid., II, p. 96.

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The reader will recognize, no doubt, Aleksandr Mixailovic Dobroljubov in the erstwhile decadent who papered his walls in black but then became the founder of his own religious sect. In fact, a great deal supports the conclusion that A. M. Dobroljubov may have been one of the principle sources of Belyj's inspiration in creating the figure of Dar'jal'skij. Both are former decadent poets turned religious seekers who become involved in the neo-sectarian movement in Russia at the turn of the century. There are also many similarities in the "religious teachings" of both: an attraction to the pagan sensuality of nature; the central function of "silence" as a means of revelation; non-resistance to violence; the search for martyrdom. Furthermore, Belyj himself claimed that he studied such apocalyptic types as Dobroljubov in order to gather material for an entire series of works depicting the religious excesses of those years. However, Belyj also explicitly claimed that the inspiration for Petr Dar'jal'skij was his youthful symbolist comrade, Sergej Mixajlovic Solov'ev.7 Indeed, on the basis of Belyj's statement in his memoirs, the general pattern does seem to fit. In full realization of the temerity of contradicting the author, nonetheless I would like to submit that Belyj himself still provides the basic model for the novel's protagonist; after all, Belyj too was a victim of the aesthetic vascillations and traumas mirrored in his literary creations. At the same time, this hardly destroys any associations with Alexandr Dobroljubov, Sergej Solov'ev-or even Aleksandr Blok for that matter, since Belyj had a great deal in common with all of his symbolist colleagues. Moreover, Belyj was much too concerned with his own personal ego, with his own spiritual development and inner experiences, for us to deny the sublimation of his identity in his heroes. As an exegesis of the cosmic symbolism of the novel will show in the following pages, it would appear likely that Belyj indeed does inform the protagonist, Dar'jal'skij. Dar'jal'skij's retreat from the West is intensified by the conviction that Russia is about to erupt. Whether that eruption will be creative or destructive he cannot say, but the apocalyptic premonitions concerning his own destruction are mysteriously attracted to those of Russia and hasten his final break with the "cultured" and "bourgeois" life of the West : "He was still waiting and still biding his time but already he felt how the muddy and soft earth was clinging to him and reaching out towards him. He knew that in the people new souls had been born, the 7

See Belyj, Nacalo veka, p. 138, and "Vospominanija ο Bloke", Epopeja, No.3 (1922), p. 183.

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fruit had ripened and it was time to shake the fig-tree. There in the depths, in the distance and yet visible, ancient Russia was arising and preparing itself in order to burst forth like thunderous mountains." 8 Whereas Dar'jal'skij formerly wrote erotic poetry, his return to the soil now occasions a feeling of nearness and even passion for the vast expanses of Russia which are reflected indirectly in the poetry of Belyj's Pepel: Mother Russia! To you my songs, Ο mute, inclement mother! Give me leave in solitude and obscurity To weep away my senseless life.

("Iz okna vagona", 1908)9

Thus, Dar'jal'skij is a man who, in terms characteristic of Belyj, is caught on the border of two worlds; the beckoning, outwardly harmonious, but inwardly banal West and the intoxicating freedom and ecstatic sensuality of the nevertheless threatening East: " . . . he was on the border of two worlds so distant from one another - the dear past and the new present, sweetly terrible like a fairy-tale".10 Russia presented him with a vast "green meadow" (lug zelenyj) in which to return to a condition of innocence. But in order to do so one had to understand Russia, grasp its broad expanses - an infinity too great for any one person to comprehend: " . . .but there were expanses and in the expanses there were yet more expanses which were hidden and lay concealed only to reveal themselves again. And as wayfarers approached every point in the distance it would become another expanse. Rus' was an endless multitude of these expanses.. , " u The unawareness of even the necessity of doing so presents grave metaphysical dangers. Dar'jal'skij's free fall through the limitless expanses of his country is a warning of the chaos and destruction which could abide in the depths of Russia. The awareness of this demonic aspect of Russia was especially strong after the events of 1904-1905, and both Serebrjanyj goluV and Pepel reflect the degeneration of the original vision of purity so typical of Blok's Beautiful Lady and Belyj's own Woman Clothed in the Sun. During this period of cynicism and despair Belyj was among those who felt that an "evil eye" was directed towards Russia, and he consequently felt attracted to Shamanism and the theme of bewitched love: 8 9 10 11

Belyj, Serebrjanyj golub\ II, p. 177. Belyj, Stixotvorenija i poemy (Moscow-Leningrad, 1966), p. 164. Belyj, Serebrjanyj golub', II, pp. 9-10. Ibid., I, pp. 81-82.

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After Pepel I was faced with a social theme: the problem of East and West, the Silver Dove, or more precisely, the Tin Dove of the chimeras and seduction enveloping Russia. I found courage in the fact that my fate, inhumanly vile during 1906-1908, was a reflection of the evil delusion over all of Russia "the evil eye which bears hate for Russia" (and sends the Mongols and Jews). What I worked my frustration off in was what I called a fall into Mongolism: I changed my enthusiasm for the sunrise with Shamanism. In place of a love for the distant and the heroic feat I turned to "bewitched and dark love".. - 12

Dar'jal'skij does not join the sectarians intentionally or even completely of his own free will. It is extremely significant that he is irresistably attracted in spite of himself. In fact, psychic forces are operative in his movement from West to East. His relationship with Katja and Matrena makes this obvious, for Belyj takes pains to point out that Dar'jal'skij's engagement to Katja is the result of two years of conscious and rational searching to find a proper wife (or the Woman Clothed in the Sun?). 13 On the other hand, the attraction to Matrena, who is a pock-marked, plump lascivious peasant, springs from some unconscious and irrational source when Dar'jal'skij first sees her in church on Holy Trinity Day: . . . and suddenly in the far corner of the church there swirled a dress, red like snow apples, over a red cotton basque. Some peasant woman was staring at him. He was about to say to himself, "It's only a peasant woman", and then grunt and assume a dignified air so that having forgotten all else begin to bow to the Holy Virgin. But he neither grunted nor assumed a dignified air and did not even bow. A sweet but eerie flood of warmth spread through his chest and he was not even aware that he was growing pale, and pale as death he was barely able to remain on his feet. Her browless face which was covered with large pock marks stared at him in a terrible and greedy excitement. 14

Matrena arouses in him some psychic remembrance of which she is the demonic incarnation. Shaken by this dream-like experience, Dar'jal'skij's first willfully conscious reaction upon leaving the church is that of repulsing some evil spirit, but suddenly the man who believed that he had found peace in the country and a fine bride, is entangled in a cosmic struggle for his soul, torn between his good and beautiful angel, Katja, and the forces of evil incarnate in Matrena. He constantly makes invocations to his good spirit to destroy the evil, but Katja's image is too weak a talisman to overcome the mystical power of the peasant woman: 12 13 14

V. N . Orlov (ed.), A. Blok i A. Belyj: Perepiska, Belyj, Serebrjanyj golub', I, pp. 15-18. Ibid., I. p. 19.

p. 261.

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Dar'jal'skij was just approaching the crucifix and the priest with one hand was stretching it out towards him while the other hand was reaching for the communion bread when suddenly the glance of this wonderous peasant woman scorched him once again. Her red, mocking lips trembled slightly as if freely drinking up his soul. He could not remember how he bent over the holy cross, how the priest offered him the holy water or even what he answered the priest. He only remembered the pockmarked peasant woman had enquired after his soul. In vain he tried to steel himself by summoning up in his soul the image of Katja, - "Oh, my wonderful and good bride!" But the beloved image only seemed to be outlined in chalk on a school blackboard and the evil teacher wiped it off with a brush and now there appeared to be only emptiness there.15 In Chapter V it was shown how the religious search for knowledge invariably projected the feminine figure as the symbol of its striving or the muse of its creations. This lent an unmistakably religio-erotic quality to the searchings of the symbolists. Once again keeping in mind the Jungian references to the "animus-anima" projection and the movement towards cosmic union in the "divine syzygy", the path of Dar'jal'skij becomes clearer. As a child, he was the recipient of some "evil mystery" which has tortured him all his life. He caught the faint rustlings, heard the summoning call, waited for the signs and sought the origins of these mysterious forces. The reader will recognize the same fateful "call of eternity" which bewitched the protagonists of Belyj's earlier works, namely, the Symphonies and the poems of Zoloto ν lazuri. The summons is irresistable, for the poet-seeker has been designated by cosmic forces beyond his control: Again you have peered into my soul, you evil mystery! Again you are looking at me out of the dark past... From childhood, right from my cradle you have pursued me in rustlings... - Right from the first moments of life I was filled with dread and my eyes were directed into the darkness; from the first days of childhood a sweet but mocking song called me in the sunrise and in the gloom... - And I continued to wait and lo, out of the shadows people took form. But I continued to wait for the arrival of that terrible but languorous and summoning one who would come to me from afar out of the darkness... - I waited, I called, but no one came. I grew and became a man, but no one came. I called and then listened - to the rustling of the trees and I understood, but when I spoke of that rustling no one understood me. And just as I was calling someone, the rustling of the trees summoned me and like some unknown and sweet lament above me someone was weeping out of their life - but what, what was the lament about? 16

15 16

Ibid., I, p. 21. Ibid., I, pp. 128-129.

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Initiated through this summons from beyond and plagued by the unravelled mystery of the sunsets and sunrises, Dar'jal'skij consumed all manner of knowledge in his search for the answers to this riddle. Kant, Eckart, Swedenborg, Marx, LaSalle and Comte represented the theoretic extremes of his inquiries, but none of these could provide the answers to his questions. Now he found himself in the fields of Russia, attracted to the sunsets and sunrises, severed from all past attachments in cultured Russia, and still seeking the solution of the mystery: "Here he was a wanderer, alone amid the fields with his strange ideas for which he could not find any unity, but nonetheless always with the sunrise, with its scarlet floods, with its burning, thirsting kisses. And the sunrise promised him some imminence, some approach or other of the mystery."17 It is, of course, not difficult to recognize the figure of a young and earnest Russian symbolist in Dar'jal'skij. In fact, who better than Belyj appears as the eternal seeker after theoretic and mystical knowledge, born beneath a fateful star and unable to find the transfiguring unity involved in his theory of symbolism. As in the Symphonies, Belyj continues to depict this search symbolically as an erotic impulse in his hero. This is his manner of allegorizing cosmic issues, of investing his characters with the cosmic forces of order and chaos which create the tension in the novel. Just as the classical Eros was the offspring and resolution of two opposing forces, of concord and discord,18 Belyj splits his hero between the order and chaos of Katja and Matrena, of West and East. Thus, religio-eroticism and depth of spiritual feeling are combined to make Dar'jal'skij a soul-mate for the sectarians, a suitable person for Matrena to conceive her Christ-child by and thereby perform the "spiritual feat" which is needed to organize and announce the Silver Doves to the rest of the world. Deep in his nature is implanted, therefore, the erotic projection arising out of the psychic workings of a divine syzygy which can be expressed sacrosanctly, as in his relationship with Katja, or sensually, as with Matrena. But above all, this erotic impulse is what causes him to fall victim to the designs of the Silver Doves. One chapter in particular fascinatingly depicts the power of the feminine principle as the focal point of all Dar'jal'skij's strivings. Through a 17

Ibid., I, pp. 58-59. This concept is a classical commonplace. One example may be found in Plutarch: "The beliefs of the Greeks are well known to a l l . . . They rehearse a legend that Concord is sprung from Aphrodite and Ares, the one of whom is harsh and contentious, and the other mild and tutelary." See "De Iside et Osiride", in Moralia. V, tr. F. Babbitt (Camb., Mass, 1962), p. 117. 18

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stream of consciousness technique and hallucinatory flashbacks, Belyj reveals Dar'jal'skij's neuroses. While returning to Katerina's from the priest's house, the hero wanders off the path and gets lost in the swamp at night. During this interior Walpurgisnacht Dar'jal'skij struggles symbolically in the morass of his own repressed desires, remembrances and obsessions. These are spun into a psychic web, the intermingling of Demeter-Persephone-Hecate in the relationships of his mother, Katerina and Matrena, all of whom struggle with one another in trying to rise out of his subconscious.19 By reaching home safely he temporarily overcomes the power of the sensual Matrena and finds sleep in dreams of Katja. 20 One can see only too clearly the interconnection between the lovefertility relation with his mother and the perversion of this in Matrena. If one examines closely the two episodes in the novel in which Dar'jal'skij is described just prior to making love to Matrena, the mother-child relationship becomes obvious. Not only does he weep like a child, but there is even an echo of his hallucinations while lost in the swamp, for Matrena believes that he is sick and earlier while in the swamp he recalls his mother caring for him during an illness. The first indication of this perversion occurs when the two embrace before Kuderjarov's hut: "He burst into tears before this female beast like a big baby who had been abandoned by everyone and his head fell on his knees. In her there was a change and she was no longer a female beast, for her large, tender eyes filled with tears and entered into his soul. Her face was not distorted with any raging passion but sweetly bent over him. - Oh, you are sick! Oh, my dear brother, here is my cross for y o u . . . " 21 And once again during a rendez-vous at the hollow oak: "Petr looked at Matrena and began to weep. She had such fragrant eyes, just like cornflowers. With a heavenly sweetness, whether of the abyss or hell, she had bewitched him, a dove... She seized him, rocked him like a baby and pressed his head to her breast." 22 During these erotic interludes, therefore, Matrena's chthonic nature appears in the merging of both the life-giving and the life-destroying earth-mother. Katerina, on the other hand, plays the role 19

Belyj makes this Demeter-Persephone-Hecate relationship obvious in the names of both Katerina and Matrena Semenovna. Katerina's name is derived from the Greek katharos signifying "cleanliness", "purity" and "spotlessness" both in a literal and moral sense. "Matrena" is traditionally a peasant name connoting motherliness and fertility, whereas the patronymic "Semenovna" betrays the same symbolism of fertility (as in the Russian semena 'seeds'). 20 Belyj, Serebrjanyj golub\ I, pp. 129-134. 21 Ibid., I, pp. 283-284. 22 Ibid., II. pp. 119-120.

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of the pure and undefiled Kore, who is Dar'jal'skij's hope for salvation. She is the spirit of harmony calling him to the light, whereas Matrena summons him irresistibly to the depths. When Dar'jal'skij leaves the home of Baroness Todrabe-Graaben after she has insulted him, he abandons Katerina and destroys the last link holding him to the West and preventing his sinking into the chaos and moral degeneration of the Silver Doves. He gets drunk that same evening, thus releasing all his energies for the new path upon which he is to embark, the path of the freedom of physical expression of the individual, a release from all spiritual and bodily inhibitions. This assumption of a pagan and sensual role is forecast by Dar'jal'skij's meditations upon the similarity between the concepts of ancient Greece and those of Russian Orthodoxy and indigenous belief: He had dreamed that in the depths of his native people and akin to them there beat that distant antiquity which had not yet disappeared in life - ancient Greece. He saw a new light which still existed in the culmination in life of the rites of the Greco-Russian Church. In Orthodoxy and namely in what were the primitive concepts of Orthodoxy (i.e., what in his opinion were pagan) he saw the new light of man in the World of a Coming Greece. 23

This conviction of the advent of Greece's pagan antiquity predisposes him to assume immediately a primitive condition amid nature, returning to the fullness and sensual fertility of the soil. Thus, while he is waiting for Matrena to appear at the oak tree for their first rendezvous, he weaves himself a wreath from the fir-tree, thus crowning himself, the poet, with the laurels of victory over the temptations of the West and also signifying his return to a primitive condition of innocence and original knowledge: Here my hero was already at the ancient oak and his heart ceased beating. Here he imagined that all his days and nights had become mixed up but there was no longer any turning back. Already he found pleasure in his feverish dream and it was better not to think about Katja, for, after all, the past was dead. He grew thoughtful at the forest's edge and suddenly he felt the urge to tear off a fir branch, tie the ends together and put it on his head in place of his hat and he did so. Crowned with these green and thorny laurels . . . he crawled into the tree-hollow.24

Besides the obvious symbolism of the poet's laurels and the conqueror's symbol of victory, there is clearly another set of associations behind Belyj's structuring of this particular episode. Dionysus, in addition to 23 i4

Ibid., I, pp. 174-175. Ibid., I. p. 264.

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being connected with the vine ancl the bacchanalia - one should keep in mind the constant references to Dar'jal'skij's drunkenness and debauchery - is also traditionally associated by the ancients with the pine tree, a symbol of fertility, as he is for example in Euripides' Bacchae,25 There can be little doubt that Dar'jal'skij emerges as a wilful Dionysian figure, for he is connected with all the external symbols of this god: wine, the religious bacchanalia, the pine laurels, a violent sacrificial death, and even the red colour of Dar'jal'skij's shirt (a constant leitmotif!) signifying Dionysus' being torn to shreds and his blood drunk by the initiates. There even exists a subtle connection between Dar'jal'skij as Dionysus and Matrena as Juno, the god's betrayer. Juno is the Roman goddess of feminine power, traditionally connected with sex and womanhood in general (hence a moon-goddess). As such, she is the matrona (note the similarity in names) or presiding deity of the Matronalia or festival of women at the beginning of March. 26 There is an obvious connection between the function of Belyj's Matrena and that of Juno, for the parallels can be extended even further. For instance, Roman women regarded their eyebrows as sacred to Juno 27 and Belyj purposely draws attention to this connection in Matrena who is "without eyebrows" (bezbrovaja). Furthermore, whereas Dionysus' tree is the pine, Juno is considered an oak-goddess, 28 and this fact establishes the mythological symbolism underlying the lovers' tryst at the hollow oak tree. The final link in establishing the mythological framework for the Dionysus-Juno (Hera)· relationship is provided by the eventual fate of Dar'jal'skij in the novel. Just as Juno is reported to have lured Dionysus into a trap where he is torn to shreds by the Titans, Matrena lures Dar'jal'skij into a similar predicament whereupon he is smothered to death by the Silver Doves. Belyj's mythological technique should evoke no particular scepticism on the part of the reader when it is kept in mind that intermittently from 1905 to 1910 he was under the influence of the symbolist Vjaceslav Ivanov, a classical scholar. One of Ivanov's most important mythological studies concerned the Dionysian myth. 29 In the light of this close relation25

See James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, one vol., abridged (New York, 1951),. pp. 448-456. -