Pushkin Poem on a Bely Novel

. . . shall we strike terror . . . and insolence our mighty neighbor;/ 'Here cut'---so Nature gives command---/`Your window through on Europe" (Pushkin 95). It is the natural destiny of Russia, scapesburg and scratch the Great---man and statue, horseman and " tan Horseman"---to stand as figureic representations of Russian greatness and monuments to the ken and power of the rational Western mind. Part II of the Pushkin poem, however,

strikes a new note . . . : beneath the "western" facade ballad a shadowy world of intangibilities and unrealities, alien to man's reason and understandable notwithstanding to his unconscious being---an "eastern" world. . . . (Bely xv).

This attitude toward the symbolism of Petersburg and the statue of Peter the Great dominates the Bely novel. Symbolically, then, Bely takes the spirit of the second part of the Pushkin poem and extends and expands it. Bely adds the self-aware devices of the Symbolist approach, which gives the symbolism a humor absent in the Pushkin poem, only also gives it a contrived quality.

Both working use symbolism in ways meant to intrigue the reader, but in both cases as much confusion as curiosity is caused. Pushkin sets forth the symbolic power of Petersburg in unquestionable terms in the first part of the poem: "Now, metropolis of Peter, stand thou fast,/ Foursquare, like Russia; vaunt thy splendor!" (Pushkin 97). The statue of Peter the Great, the Bronze Horseman, repr

esents this splendor and second power steadfastness from the beginning to the end of the poem. The city itself suffers mightily from what seems to be an apocalyptic coerce, but the statue remains, survives, and comes to life to chase the beleaguered bureaucrat Yevgeny later the latter hurls a threat at the statue: "Ay, architect, with thy creation/ Of marvels. . . . Ah, beware of me!" (Pushkin 107). Yevgeny, we are told over and over by the narrator, has been driven exhaustively

But if Petersburg is not the capital, then there is no Petersburg. It only appears to exist. However that may be, Petersburg not only appears to us, but really does appear---on maps: in the form of two small circles . . .

with a grim dot in the center; and from precisely this mathematical point, which has no dimension. . . . From this invisible point speeds the official circular (Bely 2).

In Bely, on the other hand, a later version of the country and its symbols is in far more profoundly dire straits. Nikolai the student/ basal flees Russia after trying and failing to blow up his father. In self-imposed exile, Nikolai comes to the conclusion that "Culture is a moldering head: ein truththing in it has died; nothing has remained. There leave alone be an explosion: everything will be swept away" (Bely 292).

Petersburg as a symbol in Pushkin is relatively simple, even with the storm and madness of Yevgeny in the second part of the poem. In Bely, the symbol of the city as center of the Western civilized world is split from the very first page into many contradictions. But Bely the Symbolist is not trying to present an historically or sociologically correct portrait of the city. To the contrary, Bely is determined to let the reader know that the symbol of Petersburg is more important to him than the city itself:

mad by the storm and its aftermath, so it is difficult to know the precise meaning of this threat. However, it seems level-headed to surmise that the statue is meant to symboli
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