The Petty Demon

by Sologub, Fyodor

  Only the children, tireless and eternal vessels of God’s happiness on earth, were lively and ran and played. But sluggishness descended even upon them, and some sort of faceless, invisible monster, nestling behind their shoulders, looked out now and then with its menacing eyes on their suddenly dulled faces. (p. 141)

  Here Sologub strikes a major theme which Sasha’s characterization vividly realizes. Because of the omnipresence of a demonic energy in life, all beauty is ultimately rendered invalid and all things, even the purest, face gradual and inevitable extinction. This destructive force reaches its most devastating impact when it strikes Sasha, but is is already forecast in Lyudmila’s tale about the cyclamen, “which gives pleasure and induces desires, both sweet and shameful, and stirs up the blood” (p. 245). This tale is an allegory which refers specifically to “spring’s awakening” in the child. Lyudmila’s attribution of three colours to the flower and the corresponding sensations which they provoke—all in order of the increasing intensity of their sensuality—actually charts the course of Sasha’s own sexual growth. That the flower’s own transformation from joy, to desire, to passionate love represents the extermination of childlike beauty is verified during the remainder of the novel. Once again the imagery works on two levels: Lyudmila’s flowers are as much “fleurs du mal” as they are fragrant blossoms of beauty and enchantment.

  References to Sasha’s increasingly destructive strength or to his unattractively “heavy, awkward hands” (p. 359) indicate the child’s continuing degeneration. But nothing signals this process as blatantly as the symbolic scene in which Lyudmila leads Sasha into a ravine in order to continue their amourous games. The languid atmosphere and the specific vocabulary which Sologub uses to convey the setting are highly suggestive. The description of the “warm, heavy air … [which] recalled that which was irrevocable, [where] the sun, as if sick, was shining dully … in the pale, tired sky, [where] dry leaves lay peacefully on the warm earth, dead” (p. 350) signals the final realization in Sasha of the corruption to which Sologub had earlier doomed all things, in the scene of similar colouring and tonality cited above. “Irrevocable” suggests Sasha’s permanently lost innocence; the lifeless leaves imply the extinction of a once-blossoming plant, of Sasha-the-flower-himself.22 Images of heat and warmth, which the writer formerly used in a positive manner, are now exclusively negative. Significantly, it is here, against the background of exhaustion and death, that the child’s transformation reaches its apex. Its accomplishment confirms the ultimate sense of disaster which continually hangs like a pall over the novel. If peredonovshchina—the constant slippage of all phenomena into an intensified state of corruption and decay—represents the major component of Sologub’s philosophical vision in The Petty Demon, then it is Sasha’s psychological metamorphosis which demonstrates the potency of this vision.

  To be sure, a story-like reading of Sasha’s emotional maturation as a metaphysical allegory about the movement of all things in life toward poshlost’ is possible. But unique to The Petty Demon is the notion that ideal childhood, the integrity of whose borders Sologub had always reverentially distinguished, itself resembles—even if only partially—the grown-up world. Sasha’s less complicated counterparts in the author’s shorter fiction are unanimously terrified as their precious spring-like existence approaches its termination. Adulthood is base and sinful and these characters invariably resist it. In Sasha’s case, however, the soothingly clear distinctions between good and evil, which the child symbolizes in the stories, are far from firm. The portrayal of Sasha precisely in this gray area helps make The Petty Demon Sologub’s most disquieting work. It is here, through Sasha, that Sologub first seriously contemplates the existence of original sin; a possibility which leads to the highly disturbing idea that everything in life is inherently evil. Otherwise stated, through a psychological portrayal of a child who is unable to distinguish firmly between an exclusive like or dislike of his sexuality, Sologub helps raise the disturbing metaphysical question of whether the beautiful ideal can be possible at all in a world where the absolute is lacking.

  Not the least important characteristic of Sasha’s behaviour is the ambivalence he exhibits toward his own sexual awakening. His actions often reveal a response to maturity which is based not entirely on fear and remorse. Like Lyudmila, although initially cautiously and confusedly, he enjoys being “immersed in passionate and cruel dreams” (pp. 356–57). Rather than avoiding or rejecting the pangs of desire, Sasha frequently accepts them, while displaying a willing participation in acts during which they are satisfied. In another example of his awareness of his emotional metamorphosis, Sasha intuits the effect of Lyudmila’s perfume—”sweet but strange, enveloping, radiantly misty, like a golden, early, though sinful sunrise behind a white haze” (p. 243). The imagery here is obvious and, as in the allegory of the cyclamen, refers to Sasha’s sexual transformation. The seeming harmlessness of the perfume’s white mist (like Sasha’s own purity) conceals a dangerously sensual world of desire, yet the child shows no resistance to being transported by the potion’s scent to Lyudmila’s realm of erotic pleasure, where the new age of passion commences. We later learn that a “shameful and passionate feeling was aroused in him” (p. 356). However, instead of opposing this form of initiation into the adult world, as one might expect in a Sologub story, Sasha almost encourages it, by dreaming: “If I could fall down at her feet as if by accident and snatch off her shoe and kiss her lovely foot.” The loss of shame and the “fall from grace,” which previously carried such categorically harmful connotations, here contain an element of sweetness. Consequently the child’s complicity in, as well as enjoyment of, “spring’s awakening” tend to put its former implications into a new light. Indeed, whatever the extent of Lyudmila’s role in Sasha’s “adulteration”—and it should not be under-estimated—Sasha’s own culpability would appear to place at least some of the burden of guilt on his shoulders.

  The various ambivalences, which the penetration of the child’s psyche reveals, necessarily mark a change in regard to the Sologubian ideal which this character had previously symbolized. To the extent that Sasha demonstrates a potential for it, if not a predisposition toward it, genuine evil may be a part of this beauty. Certainly this hidden, unknown force may explain both Peredonov’s and Lyudmila’s intense curiosity toward this “mysterious person” (p. 236). The former’s interest is a result of a paranoic fear that beneath the seeming guise of a harmless student could lie a threatening deceiver. The latter’s concern is based on an erotic urge to lead the boy to the exciting brink of sin without his ever actually reaching it, although “herself not noticing, Lyudmila awakened in Sasha the first, albeit still vague manifestations of yearning and desire” (p. 240). Whether she understands it or not, Lyudmila’s growing need to clothe the boy in different costumes implies an unnaturalness or inadequacy in Sasha which heretofore did not exist. The ability of Sasha, by the end of the book, to camouflage skillfully a less-than-ideal appearance behind a mask of unspoiled innocence and perfection suggests the alarming possibility that beneath what may seem to be the beautiful absolute could easily lie its polar opposite.

  In this sense, Sasha would appear to differ from the children of Sologub’s stories at least insofar as through them the writer indicates the presence of a higher, flawless reality. Beneath Sasha’s exterior he evidently uncovers a somewhat less-than-perfect state. Robert Maguire, noting a somewhat related reversal of roles in the novel’s protagonist, observes that “it is likely that Peredonov is an unconscious parody of [Vyacheslav] Ivanov’s idea of the artist.”23 What Maguire means, of course, is that Sologub’s character, far from performing the traditional Symbolist role of penetrating the higher spheres of reality to find beauty, instead descends into the lowest realms of life, where he envisages ugliness and poshlost’. To the extent that Sasha’s depiction is as contrary to that of the customary Sologubian child as Peredonov’s is to the normal Symbolist-hero, an affinity between the two may be plaus
ible. With its increased signs of taintedness which can be only cosmetically disguised, Sasha’s beauty is open to question. The very vocabulary Sologub uses to convey the child’s aggressive behaviour while adorned as the geisha seems to confirm such doubt. Two words in the sentence “geisha, iurkaia i sil’naia, vizzhala pronzitel’no, tsarapalas’ i kusalas’” (p. 395)—“iurkaia” and “vizzhala”—have been used previously to describe the quintessence of peredonovshchina, the nasty and foul nedotykomka. Indeed, one might argue that Sasha’s gradual but inevitable sexual maturity serves as a thematic counterpart to Peredonov’s increasing acts of vileness and destruction. The process of each runs as two parallel lines and these lines finally intersect during the masquerade ball. Here the triumph of Sasha’s sexuality is complete when he convincingly acts the role of the geisha, much as Peredonov’s destructiveness reaches its peak when he sets fire to the club and prepares to murder Volodin.

  Sasha’s aunt does not necessarily admit to any change in her nephew’s beauty even though she remarks ironically that “he is exactly the same child as he was, or is he so spoiled that he is deceiving [me] even by his face?” (p. 400). However, her doubt meaningfully re-enforces the schoolmaster Khripach’s wise observation that “appearances are sometimes deceptive” (p. 200), a remark that plants an inescapable note of suspicion in the reader’s mind concerning any final determination about the characters. Whether recognized or not by Sasha’s aunt, the mere suggestion of the possible illusiveness of the absolute, the implication that the seeds of evil may be contained within, and nurtured by, beauty itself, seriously challenge the existence of any redemptive ideal or absolute harmoniousness.

  As the major figure to intimate the deceptiveness of a previously assured incarnation of innocence, Sasha best indicates the lack of fixity and uncertainty which pervade Sologub’s world view. He is the character who most unambiguously establishes the importance of the theme of reality and illusion which is first sounded in the novel’s opening paragraph and then reverberates throughout: “it seemed as though people were living peacefully and harmoniously in this town. Even happily. But it only seemed that way” (p. 37). Sasha’s characterization strikes at the very core of the neurotic dualism and instability which permeate the narrative tone and overriding philosophy of The Petty Demon. This instability extends to the stylistic level of the book, whose dual-leveled imagery, double entendres and numerous puns signal a breakdown in the integrity of language itself: words no longer communicate clear and unqualified meaning. The depiction of Sasha reflects the nervous interplay and deep-seated ambiguity which exist between the demonic and “Dionysian” forces continually at work in the novel. In this sense the Sasha episode may be considered to represent the structural and philosophical center of The Petty Demon. Both Peredonov and Lyudmila need Sasha, both vie for control of him, in order to prove the predominance of their respective world views. Through him Peredonov attempts to demonstrate that all must be dragged down into the mire, while Lyudmila tries to establish that in order to have beauty man need only create it.

  Sasha’s transformation surely gives some credence to Peredonov’s suspicions, if not to his extreme reactions: evil does threaten everything, even the absolute of beauty. In its own way, the child’s metamorphosis questions just how “mad” Peredonov actually is, as does Lyudmila’s observation that “only in madness is there happiness and wisdom” (p. 361). But more importantly, Sasha’s characterization challenges the absolute validity of beauty itself. Indeed, through this figure the writer finds that truth and beauty are not necessarily the same. The child serves as a persuasive example of the applicability of a Peredonov-oriented ideology, which insists that a world ruled by necessity is artificial, false and ultimately corrupting. However, in questioning the absolute integrity of the ideal, Sologub, through the character of Sasha, in no way argues that man can exist without it. As the central focus of Lyudmila’s dream, the child shows that her illusory vision of beauty is still purer than Peredonov’s mundane and vulgar reality. Her corruption is less harmful than his deliberate destruction of the boy. Sologub manipulates Sasha in The Petty Demon to prove that although beauty must inevitably be soiled by the evil inherent in man, paradoxically—and tragically—man needs the very thing which he himself destroys. It is true that when Lyudmila corrupts her ideal she complies with the world as it necessarily is and thereby substantiates its power. But her stubborn insistence on believing nevertheless in the inviolabilty of Sasha’s beauty, demonstrates a faith and an individual will which are even stronger and more compelling than the “truth.” So important is Lyudmila’s need to love a beautiful image of Sasha that she believes in the child despite the change which she helps to effect in him.

  Sasha’s unique structural position in The Petty Demon, as the person whose fate the two major characters vie to control, shows Sologub’s condemnation of certain contemporary social and ideological outlooks. As the quintessential representative of a society where respect is gained soley by rise in position and power and where interest in higher spiritual values is all but gone, the emblematic Peredonov exhibits his greatest evil when he abuses children and denies the child in others. To the person who considers the ultimate achievement in life to be his treasured inspectorship, any absence of the all-pervasive poshlost’ of this world or any trace of the intangibly non-earthly is deemed threatening and unnecessary. Peredonov’s malicious teasing of the peasant Misha Kudriavtsev, his bullying of the harmless Kramarenko, the innocent Antosha Gudaevsky, and the defenseless brother of Marta, Vladia, and, finally, his unceasing torment of Sasha Pylnikov himself are, in fact, but individual examples of society’s more widespread and even fiercer hostility toward any form of beauty whatsoever. This is demonstrated at the masquerade ball where the crowd’s perpetration of collective evil against the geisha, as it symbolically destroys the unique beauty which she represents, validates one of the narrator’s saddest admissions and most bitter social commentaries: “truly in our age it is beauty’s lot to be tainted and violated” (p. 102). Sasha’s function in this scene, as well as in the novel at large, is to suggest (recalling the argument, if not the apocalyptic overtones of Dostoevsky’s Idiot and The Devils) that in a society where the concept of beauty is absent or defiled, man is reduced to a beast and is doomed to inevitable disaster. Beauty’s place is preserved—and by extension, spiritual transformation is assured—only in a world which is oblivious to the petty concerns of everyday life and which reserves a place for the adoration of the non-material. Lyudmila’s appreciation—indeed, idolatry—of an ideal perfection, ephemeral and decadent though it may be, signifies a joyous diversion and ecstatic escape from vulgar and demeaning byt. By ignoring (as Peredonov cannot) the phenomenal realm of foul nature and ugly matter, which she does for example during her walk with Sasha to the ravine, Lyudmila seems to negate, or at least to undermine, its ultimate importance.

  Lyudmila’s incarnation of the ideal in the person of the child mirrors nothing less than Sologub’s similar practice in his fiction. Through her, the writer restates a Dostoevskian belief that “beauty will save the world,”24 not so much because it is truthful, but rather because it is the touchstone of a faith without which man’s vision would be hopelessly bleak and his individual will totally powerless. “If the entire world lies in the bonds of necessity, then what of my freedom which I also feel as a necessary law of existence?,” Sologub would later ask in his article “Art in Our Day.” “The Symbolists’ individualism was not a rebellion against social mindedness, but a revolt against mechanical necessity, against an excessively materialistic world view.”25 The writer might have easily been talking about Lyudmila as well. On its most vital philosophical level, The Petty Demon rehearses the struggle for faith in light of a nightmarish vision of reality which does everything to disprove it. Insofar as the object of this faith is itself ambiguous in The Petty Demon, we might infer that Sologub believed it could be gained, to use Dostoevsky’s words, “only through the crucible of doubts.
”26 If this is the case, then Sasha fulfills his function perfectly.

  Sasha Pylnikov ultimately suggests a need for faithfulness to an ideal of beauty, the loyalty to which transcends the truthfulness of this beauty. As such, the boy’s characterization reflects Sologub’s agreement with Dostoevsky’s feelings about his ideal, namely that “even if it were proved to me that Christ was outside the truth, I would still prefer to remain with Christ than with the truth.”27 Yet having said this, we must acknowledge that the portrayal of Sasha represents a fictively demonstrated “proof” which Sologub would never again allow himself to repeat. In his next novel, the trilogy The Created Legend, he returned to his “abstract musings” by rendering his most symbolic child-portraits: that of the hero’s mysterious son, Kirsha, and of the eerie, supernatural “quiet children.”

  NOTES

  * From Canadian Slavonic Papers, 21 (1979), 514, n.22, pages 503–519. Reprinted by permission of the editorial board and the author.

  1 Sologub’s literary children rarely received the serious attention of his contemporaries. The critic Iu. Steklov cited them to prove that Sologub’s “works evoke interest mainly for psychiatrists” (Iu. Steklov, “O tvorchestve Fedora Sologuba,” Literaturnyiraspad. 2 vols. [St. Petersburg, 1908]. II, 166); V. Kranikhfel’d charged Sologub with being unable “to refrain from his piquant mystical experiences” when portraying children (V. Kranikhfel’d, “Fedor Sologub,” in V mire idei i obrazov[St. Petersburg, 1912], p. 45); and L. Voitlovskii claimed that these characters “were cheap imitations of Dostoevskii” (L. Voitlovskii, “Sumerki iskusstva,” Literaturnyi raspad, II, 50).

  2. V. Ivanov, Freedom and the Tragic Life (New York, 1960), p. 95.

  3. In addition to the works cited in this article which deal with Dostoevsky’s influence on Sologub, two others should be noted: A. Dolinin, “Otreshennyi: K psikhologii tvorchestva Fedora Sologuba,” Zavety, 1913, no. 7, pp. 55–85, and A. Zakrzhevskii, Podpol’e Psikhologicheskie paralleli (St. Petersburg, 1911), pp. 29–54.