Petersburg German Edition eBook Andrey Bely
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Petersburg German Edition eBook Andrey Bely
I thought is was brilliant. Like a dark and ancient dream, the city descriptions were always shifting, hazy and a bit frightening. The city really is the star in this novel, but Bely’s characters definitely drew me in with their sordid hallucinations and often convoluted logic and actions. And it was funny and tragic as well. A truly mesmerizing glimpse of Petersburg, 1905. Wonderful.Product details
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Petersburg German Edition eBook Andrey Bely Reviews
The writing (in translation) has a unique style to it, with oft-repeated, sometimes lurid, descriptions of the city of Petersburg and the people who populate it. The plot is hardly compelling. Nothing of consequence happens until the very end of the book. Rather, the story serves only to illuminate the bizarre psychology of the two main characters, the father and son Ableukhov, and the people they interact with. Not a novel for everyone.
Horrible translation.
Petersburg is very Dostoevskian, so you must be ready for long interior monolgues, great descriptions of the atmosphere and a healthy dose of Russian history. Anyone who loves, Tolstoy, Chekhov or who sympahtizes with the lies told to Russians by the Bolsheviks will like this. It evokes the incredible stagnation of a bureacracy ignorant of all around it.
One interesting read.
I agree with one of the reviewers who found this book "painful" to read, yet Nabokov compared it to Joyce! How could he e wrong? Well, he read the book in Russian! So what I did is to dig deeper to find another version. I am happy to say that the Maguire&Malmstad Petersburg gives justice to the book. First, it lacks the fairly pathetic introduction that the Penguin classic version has. The intro is sneaked as urtext and all it does is to vomit on Stalin and the 1937 events, which happened after Bely's death. It also has the presumption of telling the reader what to think about the book, what to "see" and what to expect. In contrast the Maguire&Malmstad version has a meaningful and helpful introduction, the translation is thoughtful and appropriate English is used to translate the improbable Symbolist verbiage used by Bely. I read both, and I feel I read a great book )M&M) and an awful one (Penguin). I very strongly recommend reading this book in its good version!
Petersburg was originally published between 1913 and 1914 in installments by Sirin in its literary miscellany of the same name, and then in book form in 1916. Obviously dissatisfied with the first edition, Bely began revising it almost immediately, but during the revolutionary and civil war period, he could find no one interested in publishing a revised second edition. Bely emigrated to Berlin temporarily, where he found a publisher, and made massive cuts to the novel. The revised novel was published in 1922 (the authoritative text for this translation), and was reprinted in the Soviet Union in 1928 with minor changes made by Bely and extensive modifications made by the Soviet censors. The 1928 edition was reprinted in 1935, but with the growing demand that literature conform to the standards of Socialist Realism, Petersburg was virtually ignored until, with the gradual easing of restrictions after Stalin's death, it regained a certain respectability.
The novel takes place over a short period of time in the autumn of 1905. Although Russian cultural activity was gaining more and more prominence on an international scale, political and social unrest were on the rise domestically. Demand for reform was rampant, and even outright revolution was being advocated in some circles. Commencing in January 1905, a series of strikes, assassinations, and uprisings had occurred. The widespread feeling among the populace that the old values were inadequate for a burgeoning modernity, and that Russia was teetering on the edge of an abyss, becomes apparent early in the novel in this beautifully poetic passage
From the fecund time when the metallic Horseman had galloped hither, when he had flung his steed upon the Finnish granite, Russia was divided in two. Divided in two as well were the destinies of the fatherland. Suffering and weeping, Russia was divided in two, until the final hour.
Russia, you are like a steed! Your two front hooves have leaped far off into the darkness, into the void, while your two rear hooves are firmly implanted in the granite soil. (64)
As Maguire and Malmstad note, this prophetic meditation on Russia's destiny is similar to several lines in Pushkin's poem, The Bronze Horseman. Both Bely and Pushkin raise the issue stemming from Peter the Great's Westernizing innovations had Peter's western influences detached Russia from her native traditions and divided her in two, the peasants on the one hand and the Westernized elite on the other, setting her on an unknown course that would eventually lead to destruction?
The plot is rather simple, a political thriller paced by a ticking time bomb that Nikolai Apollonovich Ableukhov, a university student who has become entangled in a revolutionary terrorist organization, agrees to plant in his father's house, the senator, Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov. Underlying the apparent simplicity, however, is a very complex text with intricately woven plots and subplots on many levels. Petersburg is suspenseful, socially relevant, political, psychological, philosophical, and historical, and loose ends come together in the myriad of characters who populate the novel, ranging from the powerful and privileged to the poor and discontented, through whom Bely paints a vivid picture of Petersburg society. There are double agents, terrorists, journalists, secret police, government officials, and society people. Peter the Great is himself evoked through the images of the Bronze Horseman and the Flying Dutchman. Many characters confront a personal crisis the family crisis triggered by his wife's flight to Spain with her Italian lover in the case of the senator; the love crisis of his son, Nikolai Apollonovich, as a result of his broken relationship with Sofia Petrovna; and the consciousness crises experienced by both Nikolai, who has rejected Kant, and Dudkin, who has become disillusioned with Nietzsche, each searching for a new meaning in life. These personal crises are intensified by, and representative of, the real social, political and governmental crises within Russia herself.
As a paradigm of Russian Symbolism, with no omniscient narrator, Bely demands that his readers be attentive, astute, and perceptive. Using synecdoche as a mode of expression, Bely often will not provide an image as a whole-we see a piece of attire, a prominent feature, a segment
Rolling toward them down the street were many-thousand swarms of bowlers. Rolling toward them were top hats, and the froth of ostrich feathers.
Noses sprang out from everywhere. (178)
Earlier in the novel, Bely depicts another crowd scene
Contemplating the flowing silhouettes, Apollon Apollonovich likened them to shining dots. One of these dots broke loose from its orbit and hurtled at him with dizzying speed, taking the form of an immense crimson sphere-
-among the bowlers on the corner, he caught sight of a pair of eyes. And the eyes expressed the inadmissible. They recognized the senator, and, having recognized him, they grew rabid, dilated, lit up, and flashed. (14)
The present is chaos, precariously moving on an apocalyptic path. Apollon Apollonovich recognizes the chaos and sees the crowd in fragments because of his sense of isolation and vulnerability in a Russia at the brink of radical change. The dots and spheres also form a leitmotif through which the apocalyptic themes of the novel are presented. The sphere is crimson, a color associated with revolution and danger. An ominous feeling, together with a sense of apprehension and disorientation, permeates the novel. The sense of insecurity we experience as we read through the novel parallels the sense of insecurity the inhabitants of 1905 Petersburg must have endured.
Vladimir Nabokov calls this novel one of the four great novels of the 20th century and I have to agree that this is a remarkable feat of writing. The agitation and animation of life in a city on the verge of revolution blows and storms across every page. What is the mind of a city, and how does it refract through individual consciousnesses? Bely moves across the various strata of urban Petersburg life effortlessly and compellingly, and gives us disturbance in myriad different registers. These are not characters as the readers of more traditional novels are used to finding them their bodies and minds expand to fill the vast spaces of the looming steppes, and the stars move through their dreaming spirits. Add shades of Dickens and Poe, and you will have a sense of the delirious deliciousness that this novel holds.
I thought is was brilliant. Like a dark and ancient dream, the city descriptions were always shifting, hazy and a bit frightening. The city really is the star in this novel, but Bely’s characters definitely drew me in with their sordid hallucinations and often convoluted logic and actions. And it was funny and tragic as well. A truly mesmerizing glimpse of Petersburg, 1905. Wonderful.
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