Андрей Белый: автобиографизм и биографические практики

Some animals recurring in the two previous novels in relation to some characters, also appear in «Moscow in Jeopardy» but in a more generalized way, causing a kind of invasion of the city «pod udarom», even thanks to the frequency with which they are nominated. Flies and spiders move around it devilishly, almost recreating Kotik’s hallucinated mythological images which he could see in «The Baptized Chinaman». Mandro embodies the «myth of the spider spiders» («mif pauka paukov», MJ 177) and, like Bulgakov’s Voland, transforms the city’s inhabitants into monstrous men, new beasts carried with unprecedented anguish.

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

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

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

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