Андрей Белый: автобиографизм и биографические практики

Belyj, of course, could not help but take the epigraph for his first chapter from the famous concluding lines of the introduction to «Mednyj vsadnik», which after praising Peter’s proud creation segues to the reality of the artificial city, namely the need of the subdued elements and the subdued inhabitants for revenge: «Byla užasnaja pora / O nej svežo vospominan’e. / O nej, druz’ja moi, dlja vas / Načnu svoe povestvovan’e. / Pečalen budet moj rasskaz».[662]

Where Puškin quite obviously was secretly alluding to the 1825 Decembrist revolt, Belyj’s intent was to portray the «October Revolution» of 1905. Both works center on abortive protests in a weather-whipped, Janus-faced city – a dream of empire built on corpses. The Neva seethes and the revolutionary islands are in ferment. Where Puškin had shown how the two revolts mirrored each other by allowing his portrayal of the dual mutiny of Evgenij and the river to contaminate memories of the 1824 flood and the 1825 demonstration on Senate Square, Belyj focuses on terrorism to develop this dual theme.

In Puškin’s poem Evgenij’s revolt ends with him standing before Falconet’s statue of the city founder and miracle worker, shaking his fist and shouting menacingly «Užo tebe!» after which he panics and flees: «I vdrug stremglav bežat’ pustilsja». He thinks he has aroused the statue’s wrath and that it comes to life: «I on po ploščadi pustoj / Bežit i slyšit za soboj – / Kak budto groma grochotan’e.» Wherever he runs through the moonlit night he hears: «Za nim povsjudu Vsadnik Mednyj / S tjaželym topotom skakal».[663] He goes mad with fear and is eventually found dead.

This flight from the oppressor is developed and deepened in «Peterburg»; it climaxes in chapter six, where the bomb thrower Aleksandr Dudkin assumes Evgenij’s role. The epigraph to the chapter, of course, is taken from the two just-quoted lines in Puškin’s poem describing the «chase», Evgenij’s dash through the streets of St. Petersburg strikes the keynote for Belyj’s entire novel.

Belyj’s avenging horseman appears to be split between the ossified Senator Apollon Ableuchov and the statue. Already in the first chapter we see the senator keeping a watch on his subjects as he rides through the city in his carriage. The approaching revolution frightens him, and he wishes he could bind and shackle and freeze every living being to ice. Peter sits astride his horse and bides his time (although we catch occasional glimpses of him in other guises in the taverns of the city). Dudkin, who has arrived from the islands with the bomb that is to ignite the revolt wrapped in a bundle, has dramatic encounters with them both – first the senator in his onrushing carriage in chapter one, and then the statue at the end of chapter two.

As the revolutionary stands before Peter he seems for a moment to have supernatural insights. Belyj echoes the questions Puškin addresses to the statue: «Kuda ty skačeš’, gordyj kon’ / I gde opustiš’ ty kopyta? / O moščnyj vlastelin sud’by! / Ne tak li ty nad samoj bezdnoj / Na vysote, uzdoj železnoj / Rossiju podnjal na dyby?».[664] These six central lines expand to a page and a half in the novel. Whither is Russia bound as she totters on the abyss? Several alternatives are mentioned. Perhaps, as in the famous vision in Dostoevskij’s «Podrostok», rider and horse will vanish out of history into the clouds?[665] Or will they plunge to the bottom of the river? The horse can hardly stay reared much longer. An historical collapse is in the offing that promises destruction and bloody cataclysms – something on the order of a new Tartar Yoke.[666]

The subchapter in which Dudkin has his vision is entitled «Begstvo». There is no such «flight» in the text, however. As Belyj worked on the passage he apparently deleted Dudkin’s terrified dash to escape the statue and its visions but neglected to change the title.[667]

Long before this, toward the end of the first chapter, the narrator steps into the novel and in a direct apostrophe to the phantasmal city makes common cause with the tormented subject of the Empire: