Russh~n Literature L VIII (2005) 29-45 www.elsevier.com/locate/ruslit Elsevier

T H E O S O P H Y A N D H I S T O R Y IN A N D R E J B E L Y J ' S PETERBURG: L I F E IN T H E A S T R A L C I T Y

M A R I A C A R L S O N

Andrej Belyj's symbolist novel Peterburg (Petersburg) was first published in the journal Sirin in 1913-1914 and subsequently reissued as a single volume in 1916. Among its more knowledgeable early reviewers was Belyj's colleague, the philosopher Nikolaj Berdjaev (1874-1948), who needed no prodding to recognize Peterburg as an "astral novel" that explored the "prome~uto6nyj mir me~du duchom i materiej". 1 The critic R.V. Ivanov- Razumnik (1878-1946) echoed Berdj aev' s evaluation, pointing out that, "hie znaja teosofii, nel'zja ponjat' ni otdel'nych mest, ni vsego romana [Peter- burg] v ego celom". 2 Other contemporaries also recognized the debt of Belyj's novel to the Theosophical doctrine of Mme Helena Blavatsky (1831- 1891), the movement's founder; her heir as leader of the movement, Mrs. Annie Besant (1847-1933); Charles W. Leadbeater (1847-1934); and Dr. Rudolf Steiner (1861 - 1925), later founder of the Anthroposophical Society.

Belyj saw in Theosophy a systematic and meaningful explanation of what seemed to be chaotic, even absurd, events. He saw consolation. In this article, I would like to attempt a reading of the larger themes of Belyj's novel based on the Theosophical world view I believe he embraced during the writing of his proposed trilogy, Vostok ili Zapad (East or West).

Belyj and Theosophy

Andrej Belyj first encountered Theosophy in 1896, but studied it seriously only after 1903. He joined the Moscow Theosophical circle of Kleopatra

0304-3479/05/$ - see front matter © 2005 Published by Elsevier B.V. doi: 10.1016/j.ruslit.2005.07.002

30 Maria Carlson

Christoforova (d. 1934), and in that lively circle he met several key Russian Theosophists, including Anna Minclova (1860-1910?) and Elena Pisareva (1853-1940?). Both Minclova and Pisareva were members of the German Section of the Theosophical Society, then headed by Dr. Rudolf Steiner. They were the first to bring Steiner's work to Belyj's attention. 3 Belyj even- tually came to prefer Dr. Steiner's more rationalized, and even "Christian- ized", occidental Theosophy (termed "Anthroposophy" after 1913) to Mine. Blavatsky's and Mrs. Besant's neo-Buddhistic, oriental Theosophy.

After a sequence of doctrinal disagreements between Dr. Steiner and Mrs. Besant, the latter withdrew the German Section's charter in January 1913, Steiner left the Theosophists to found his own Anthroposophical Society that same February. Andrej Belyj chose to follow Dr. Steiner, becoming one of the Anthroposophical Society's founding members. There- after his spiritual development remained linked to Dr. Steiner, in whose work Belyj saw the legacy of the speculative philosopher, Vladimir Solov'ev (1853-1900).

Belyj's interest in and knowledge of Theosophical doctrine is strongly reflected in both of the two completed volumes of his unfinished trilogy. He first conceived of the novel that became Peterburg in 1908-1909 as the second part of a projected trilogy, Vostok ili Zapad. He completed the first volume of the trilogy, Serebrjanyj golub' (Silver Dove), in 1909, and began work on the second volume not long afterward. In the context of the over- lapping history of the Theosophical and Anthroposophical movements pre- cisely at the time of the trilogy's conceptualization and realization, it is not useful here to distinguish between the "Theosophical" and "Anthroposo- phical" layers of Belyj's second novel: first, because Anthroposophy did not formally exist when Belyj began writing Peterburg, and second, because Steiner's system, especially prior to 1913, was heavily based on extant Theo- sophical doctrine to which he himself contributed significantly. In this paper, then, I will use the single term "Theosophical" to describe those elements derived from the "secret doctrine".

Mind over Matter: Theurgy and Cerebral Play

Belyj's major novel grows out of a "theurgic" act. The "theurg", or creator, "works like a god" (Gk., theos = god and -ergos = working). He imitates on a lesser level the divine creation of the universe through the power of con- scious, focused Thought, expressed as Word and assuming Form. This idea of focused creative thought is at the root of the novel's "mozgovaja igra" (cerebral play). The cerebral play of the author creates the novel and its characters; within the novel, the cerebral play of the created characters in turn creates the novel's environment and its other characters.

Theosophy and History in Andrej Belyj 's 'Peterburg' 31

Cerebral play derives from the fundamental occult (theurgic) notion that consciousness creates form, i.e., that i f properly focussed, thought can give rise to objective, corporeal being. Unlike scientific positivism, which claims that matter creates thought (thought as electric impulses caused by chemical reactions in the matter o f the brain, for instance), this fundamental principle o f many occult systems claims that, on the contrary, thought creates matter. Consider the operative analogy (and analogy, not deduction, is the basic mode o f logic in mythic and occult thought): God abstractly thinks the universe, and then the force o f his Divine Thought, expressed through the Divine Word, brings the universe into material being. By analogy, man is capable o f a similar act. Mine. Blavatsky explains this in Isis Unveiled:

As God creates, so man can create. Given a certain intensity of will, and the shapes created by the mind become subjective. Hallucinations, they are called, although to their creator they are real as any visible object is to anyone else. Given a more intense and intelligent concentration of this will, and the form becomes concrete, visible, objective; the man has learned the secret of secrets; he is a MAGICIAN. 4

The implications for the author-magician (or symbolist-theurg) who, like a god, creates the universe o f Peterburg, are manifold, for not only does the author create, through thought and word, his characters and their uni- verse, but his characters take on a reality o f their own and they, in turn, also possess the power to create. In Chapter I, sub-chapter "Strannye svojstva" ("Strange Qualities"), we learn that Senator Ableuchov has this power:

MO3FOBalt arpa HOCI.tTeJ[II 6pl4.rlJItlaHTOBblX 3HaKOB OT.rlHHH/1aCb

cTpaHHblMH, BeChMa cTpaHHblMH, qpe3Bblqa~HO cTpaHHblMtt CBO~CTBa-

Mn: nepennan KOpO6Ka ero cvanoBHnaca '~peBOM Mbtc~tennbtx o6pa3oa [italics mine - M.C.], BonnottlaBtunxca rovHac ~Ke B 9TOT npH3pa,~nbi~ MHp.

HpHI-IaB BO BHIIMaHIle 9TO CTpaHHOe, BeCbMa cTpaHHOe, qpe3BbI-

qa~HO cTpaHHOe O6CTOIITenbCTBO, JDmme 6b~ AnonnoH AnonnoHoBIlq He OTKH,/IblBaJI OT ce6. HI, I OjIHOH npaa~IHO~ MblC/1H, npo~Ion~Kaa H

npaa~iHI, le MblCnH HOCI4Tb B CBOe~ ronone: H6o Kaa~aa npaa~IHa~ Mr~csn, paaBnBanacb ynopHo B npocTpaHCTBeHHO-BpeMeHH6fi 06pa3, npo~IomKas CBOH - T e n e p b yale 6eCKOHTpOnSHble -- )Ie~CTBH;I BHe ceHa-

TOpCKOfi ronoBt , l. Anon~loll AFIOJI/1OHOBtlH 651/1 B HBBeCTHOM CMblC/1e KaK 3eBC: rI3 e r o

ronoBbl BhITeKanH 6orH, 6OrHHn n reaHH. Mbi y~e BH/IenH: O)IrtH TaKO~ reHrifi (HeaHaKOMeU C ~epHI, IMH yCHKaMH), BOBHHKaa KaK o6pa3, 3a6btmu~crn6ooa~ ~lanee npaMo y~Ke B >KenTOBaTbPX HeBCKrrX npo- cTpaHCTBaX, yTBepa~aas, HTO Bbltuen OH -- H3 HIaX HMeHHO: He Ha ce- HaTOpCKOfi ronoBbI; npa3~Im, ie MblC/1H oKasanHcb H y 3TOrO HeBHa- KoMua; H Te npaa~lHbie MbICnH o6/1a~ianH Bce TeMH ~ae CBO~CTBaMH.

Y6eranH n ynpoHH~/1HCb. (34-35) 6

32 Maria Carlson

Senator Ableuchov himself is not consciously aware of his capacity to generate thought-forms or that he has in fact done so, for the Senator is an unenlightened prisoner of scientific positivism. He reads the philosopher Auguste Comte, whose positivist philosophy Mme. Blavatsky had banished to "irremediable darkness" almost thirty years before. 7

Belyj encourages the reader to follow the chain of the Senator's pro- jected thoughts back to its origin. The terrorist Dudkin is the result of the Senator's cerebral play, as is the Senator's yellow house and the Senator's unsatisfactory son. And the Senator himself is the result of "the author's" cerebral play:

Mix yBrt~eni~ B aTO~ rnaBe cenaTopa ArneyxoBa; ym~enn MbI H npa3~i~bie MbICnH cenaTopa B m~e ~OMa ceHaTopa, B an~e ci, ma ceHaTopa, Tome HOC~llI~ero B l~OaOBe CBOH ripa3aHbie MbICYIrI; BHlle.rlrt MbI, HaKOHer~, eme npa3~Hy~ TeHb -- He3HaKOMI~a.

~)Ta TeHb CYtyqa~HO BO3HHI~qa B COsHanHn ceHaTopa ArneyxoBa , noayqHna TaM OBOe 3qbeMepHoe 6~,iwne; HO COaHaHHe Anonnona Anosi- nOHOBnqa eCTI, TeHesoe co3naHHe, nOTOMy qTO n OH -- orna~aTem, 3qbeMepHoro 6bITg~ n nopo~,~eHHe qbaHTa3nH aBTopa: HenymHaa, npa3)xHa~, MO3roBa~ nrpa. (56)

But whom should the reader regard as the above-mentioned "author"? Is the "author" simply the novel's narrator? Or is the "author" in fact "Andre i Belyj" (who is himself the result of Boris Bugaev's creative cerebral play)? Or should we be seeking the "author" of Petersburg, the city in which our shadow-characters lead their ephemeral existence? Is not the real "author" of Peterburg (the novel) also the "author" of Petersburg (the city) - Peter the Great himself?. After all, the city of Petersburg in which Dudkin, the Senator, Nikolaj Apollonovir, Sof'ja Petrovna, Lippan~enko, Si~narfnr, and all the other characters live and act, and which they in turn shape and populate with their own cerebral play, exists only as a consequence of Peter the Great's "cerebral play" in 1703, as expressed in Aleksandr Pu~kin's own moment of cerebral play, explicitly and implicitly cited throughout the novel's text, the narrative poem, 'Mednyj vsadnik':

Ha 6epery IIyCTblHHblX BO.rlH CTO~IJI OH~ ]]3JM Be.rlHKHX HOJIH~ H aaa~b rn~)xen [...]

H )xyMa~ OH: OTcenb rpo3rITb Mb~ 6y~eM tuae~y, 3)~ecb 6yz~eT ropo;a 3a.rlOmeH.

Peter, then, may be considered the original "author" of Petersburg. There would be no Peterburg, the novel, if Peter the Great had not first

Theosophy and History in Andrej Belyj's 'Peterburg" 33

brought Petersburg, the city, into being through the theurgic act of projecting his creative and forceful will. His willful thought (mysl') led to an enormous series of subsequent willful thoughts, documented in an extensive body of "Petersburg texts", of which Belyj's novel is the last, culminating expression. It is important that the reader, like Nikolaj Apollonovi6, ask some important questions:

A KaKrte-To Bce ~ e TyT 6bl.rltt port ce6a MblC.rlHBIIIttX MblCJle~; MblCJIttJI

MbIC/II4 He OH, HO... ce6s Mb~CnVI Mucarmn... KTO 6un aBTOp MBICJIe~? (313)

Thought-Forms

The cerebral play of the author and the characters is not idle, for it generates "mysle-obrazy" (or "myslennye obrazy" [thought-forms]), and these thought- forms are capable of assuming material being." "Thought-forms" are a well- known Theosophical concept defined in two popular texts known to Belyj: Mrs. Annie Besant and Charles W. Leadbeater's influential little volume,

, 10 Thought-Forms (1901), and Leadbeater s Man, Visible and Invisible (1902). "Thought-forms", also called "artificial elementals", are images and forms, produced by human thoughts and emotions, usually too fine to be seen in the physical world, but becoming palpable, independent, and even capable of action on the "astral plane". Thought-forms are themselves composed of "astral matter", and they live out their "ensouled lives" on the astral plane. These thought-forms, projected onto the astral plane by human minds, are capable of affecting life on the physical plane on which humans live.

The quality of the thought or the emotion being projected determines the color of the thought-form; the nature of the thought or emotion deter- mines the thought-form's shape; while the definitiveness of the thought or emotion determines the clarity of that shape. 11 Dr. Rudolf Steiner incor- porated many of Besant's and Leadbeater's ideas on thought-forms and color into his chapter on "Thought-Forms and the Human Aura" in his early vol- ume Theosophy (1904). 12 Belyj was familiar with the fundamental Theoso- phical concept of the thought-form and its manifestation in astral matter on the astral plane. The astral city of Petersburg in Belyj's "astral novel" is populated by such thought-forms.

Belyj had carefully studied Mrs. Besant's seminal volume, The Ancient Wisdom, in which she closely describes the astral plane and the thought- forms, or artificial elementals, that populate it. The passage in which Apollon Apollonovi6 "precipitates" Dudkin is actually a "scientifically" concrete description of the generation of thought-forms onto the astral plane based on Mrs. Besant's descriptions. Belyj also commented on the process in one of

34 Maria Carlson

his Theosophical entries in the occult 'Kommentarii' to his article 'l~m- blematika smysla':

Bca acTpa~bHan aTMOCc~epa BOKpyr Hac HanOYfHeHa "ucKyccmaetmbtMu 9~e~tenma~a~tu" [artificial elementals]; cI¢.aaabmancb B oario ue~oe, 9TH 3.rleMeHTa.rll~l o6pa3yroT HatU, IOHa~bHyro, KaaCCOByIO H HH3OO aT- Mocqbepy, T. e. np.3My, Hn)~na-ayanbno-npeaoM~nmmyro ~sm nac o6taeqenoaeqecKne r~e. H qyBcTBa, Bnr~ o6paTno .a ~bu3u,tec~yto aTMOCqbe3py ~KH3HI4. OHI4 BbI3bIBalOT H yKper~nmT 6blTOBbIe qbOpMbI )KH3HH.

The Astral Plane

Even the casual reader who does not embrace Theosophy must soon become aware that the Petersburg of Belyj's novel is no ordinary city. Aside from the predisposition of one of its major sculptural monuments to gallop down the streets of the city at night (as once happened in another famous literary work), the reader finds a Petersburg of murk, silhouettes, mists, fogs, vapors, shadows, mirages, smoke, and phosphorescences. Rooms mutter, whisper, and laugh, while automobiles play roulades on the road. Buildings cower, and Vasil'evskij Island, where live the workers whom Senator Ableuchov fears, looks at the Senator in fright, while he looks back at the Island in fear. The Neva River seethes and shrieks, the houses gaze at passersby with their amber eyes, and the spires of the city gore the Northern sky. The residents are not "themselves" at all: in some cases they are insects (millipedes and myriapods and even spiders); in other cases they turn into other people or even into black soot on the windowpane, before disappearing altogether. Sometimes they are no more than hats and mustaches and sleeves and um- brellas - bits and pieces of people that to the Russian reader are reminiscent of both Gogol's synecdochic fragments of Peterburgians and of Dostoevskij's human ant heap. What kind of city is this that behaves in such a strange, even phantasmagoric, manner? Clearly it is not a city experienced in three physical dimensions by people exercising five physical senses.

Physical senses and dimensions, as occultists point out, are not the only (or even the best) measure of reality. For the Theosophist (or Anthropo- sophist), the three-dimensional physical plane of dense, corporeal matter in which most people live their conscious lives is just one of several planes, and the lowest and coarsest one at that. There are other, more subtle planes of existence: after the physical plane come the astral and the mental planes, followed by four spiritual planes (seven planes altogether). These various planes of existence, Mrs. Besant tells us, are "concentric interpenetrating spheres, not separated from each other by distance, but by difference of

Theosophy and History in Andrej Belyj's 'Peterburg' 35

constitution. As air permeates water, as ether permeates the densest solid, so does astral matter permeate all physical [matter]. The astral world is above us, below us, on every side of us, through us". 14 She explains that "the astral world is a definite region of the universe, surrounding and interpenetrating the physical, but imperceptible to our ordinary observation because it is composed of a different order of matter". 15 The seven planes of being all exist simultaneously, occupy the same space, and are, in fact, differing di- mensions, or states of consciousness. Only the physical plane is visible to the average human being, but other planes can be contacted by those who are spiritually trained, mentally ill, drugged into an altered state of conscious- ness, or in a trance or dreaming.

The world of the astral plane, which Theosophists also call the "fourth dimension", exists simultaneously with and in the same space as the physical world, looks very much like it, and is every bit as real. "Astral world sce- ne " x " • ry, e plains Mrs. Besant, "much resembles that of earth in consequence of its being largely made up of the astral duplicates of physical objects. ''16 The inhabitants of the astral plane are not exactly human beings, but the thoughts, feelings, fears, desires, wishes, and impulses that human beings feel or think on the physical plane and then project into astral matter. On the astral plane, these thoughts, emotions, and impulses take on visible, concrete forms and become a living force themselves. "While they maintain a separate existence they are living entities, with bodies of elemental essence and thoughts as the ensouling lives, and they are then called artificial elementals, or thought- forms," Mrs. Besant explainsff The German Theosophist Franz Hartmann adds to our picture of the astral world: "If a man thinks a good or an evil thought, that thought calls into existence a corresponding form or power within the sphere of his mind, which may assume density and become living, and which may continue to live long after the physical body of the man who created it has died. ''18

Thus Senator Ableuchov's fears of assassination and terrorism are projected as thought-forms into the astral matter, and there they mold the astral matter into the shape of the terrorist Dudkin and his sardine tin bomb, both of which become real and interact with the Senator's son. Nikolaj Apollonovir's parricidal thoughts of snipping a vein in his father's neck with a pair of scissors and his fear of the bomb that Dudkin has given him, interact with Dudkin's mad obsession with the Bronze Horseman; these thoughts are projected into the astral plane, where they manifest themselves in Dudkin's murder of Lippan~enko with a pair of scissors to the stomach, from which gasses escape (as from the bomb), leaving Dudkin astride Lippan~enko's body with his right arm outstretched, in the pose of the Bronze Horseman. "These elementals master us if we do not master them, ''19 Hartmann warns.

In the astral world, "though_t and action, will and deed, are one and the 20 same thing," writes Mrs. Besant. The thought on the physical plane simul-

36 Maria Carlson

taneously becomes the deed on the astral plane. The physical and astral planes are not divided from each other except through humans' ability to perceive them; in reality they interpenetrate each other and constantly interact. When human beings engage in cerebral play and send their thoughts and feelings (as "thought-forms") to take on independent astral bodies and existences of their own, they take a risk, since thought-forms have the power to boomerang back and influence the events that occur on the physical plane in ways that are not immediately clear to observers in the physical plane. Such astrally-inspired events may appear arbitrary and incomprehensible to dwellers on the physical plane, but they have their own ineluctable logic in the cosmic scheme of things. Thus Senator Ableuchov, a thought form produced by "the author's" mind, or Dudkin, a thought-form produced by the Senator's mind, live separate lives and affect events and people - as tsarist bureaucrat and radical revolutionary on the physical plane; as ancient Tu- ranian and dooming Horseman on the astral plane, precipitating the astrally- created Revolution of 1905 into physical matter.

Astral matter, or "elemental essence", has considerable fluidity. It con- sists of fogs and shadows and continually changing shapes that appear and disappear as human thought-impulses, positive and negative, benign and evil, constantly massage the elemental essence. Belyj's descriptions of shadows appearing from and disappearing into the St. Petersburg fog echo Mrs. Besant's description of astral matter in Man and His Bodies (the same book that Sof'ja Petrovna is reading in Belyj's novel). Mrs. Besant writes that the astral world is "full of continually changing shapes; we find there 'thought- forms' - forms composed of elemental essence and animated by a thought - and we also notice vast masses of this elemental essence, from which continually shapes emerge and into which they again disappear". 2l She adds that "an astral entity will change his whole appearance with the most startling rapidity". Astral matter "takes form under every impulse of thought, the life swiftly remoulding the form to give itself new expression". =

Astral matter's ability to reshape itself explains why characters in Pe- terburg constantly mutate and change into other forms and persons, reflecting historical, literary, political, and philosophical realities: the Semitic Mongol - the student Lipenskij - Lippanrenko - the yellow face in Dudkin's wallpaper; Si~narfiev - Si~narfn6 - Enfran~i~; Voronkov - Morkovin; the Russian Iva- nov and the Japanese Vonavi; the Bronze Horseman - the Flying Dutchman - the pipe-smoking sailor - the Bronze Guest - he who "dooms irrevocably" - "bronze-wreathed Death". This is why metaphors are realized and why slippers and wallpaper come alive and suitcases reshape themselves and caryatids despair in Belyj's novel. All are the products of Russian thoughts massaging the astral matter throughout Russia's history.

The characters and the events in Belyj's novel, even the seemingly irrational Revolution of 1905 itself, have been precipitated out of the astral

Theosophy and History in Andrej Belyj's 'Peterburg' 37

matter in which they have existed since 1703 and back onto the physical plane of late September - early October 1905. Since that day in May 1703, when the city of Petersburg was founded, generations of Russians - tsars, aristocrats, workmen, bureaucrats, intelligenty, writers, painters, musicians, servants, sailors, spies, yardmen, visitors, and many others - have pas- sionately loved and feared and hated Petersburg, its founder, its streets, its river, and its houses. For two hundred years the tsars who ruled and died in Petersburg, the writers who wrote of Petersburg, the bureaucrats who sent circulars from Petersburg, the anarchists who threw bombs in Petersburg, the workers who toiled in Petersburg, the Decembrists who plotted in Petersburg, the secret police and the double agents who spied in Petersburg, the officers, the society ladies, the foreigners - all sent their thoughts out into the astral plane and their thought-forms created the shadow city of St. Petersburg. This astral St. Petersburg became "the capital of the Shadow Land" (as Si~narfne tells Dudkin). 23

Time, History, and the Astral World

Dr. Rudolf Steiner explained that the astral world, in addition to its many other interesting properties, is also the "inverse unravelling of things", a mirror image of the physical world that works in reverse (Belyj includes an extraordinary number of reflections and mirror images in his novel). Steiner explained:

In the astral world, everything that exists is revealed as it were in a mirror, inversed. In the astral light the cipher 365 must be read backwards: 563. If an event unfolds before us [in the physical world], it is perceived in reverse sequence [in the astral world]. In the astral world the cause comes after the effect, whereas on Earth, the effect follows the cause. In the astral world, the aim appears as the cause - proving that the aim and the cause are identical. 24

History thus simultaneously runs forward in the physical world and backward in the astral world. This chronology controls the world of Belyj 's Peterburg on both the individual and the national level.

Dudkin experiences time backward: "Aleksandr Ivanovi~ pereNvanija eti pere~ival v obratnom porjadke" (98). The enigmatic Si~narfne, an "ob- jectionable elemental" from the astral plane attracted by Dudkin's drinking, smoking, and other questionable acts, tells Dudkin:

H a t u n npoc ' rpancTBa He Bal.UI4; Bce TeqeT TaM B ofpaTnOM n o p ~ K e . . , I,I npocTo tlBanoB TaM - - anoneu ~:a~:ofi-TO, n60 qbaMm~rm 3Ta, n p o q t t -

xaunaa B o6paxHOM nopaaKe - anoncKaa: BonaBn. (299)

38 Maria Carlson

The subchapter "Peterburg" (in Chapter VI) reprises the themes of space, dimension, and time initiated in the epilogue and allows Si~narfne to clearly state the astral situation:

l - I e T e p 6 y p r rtMeeT He Tpl4 rl3MepeHb~l -- qeTmpe ; qeTBepToe -- no~1-

qHHeHO HeI.,13BeeTHOCTI, I H Ha KapTaX He OTMeqeHo BOBCe, pa3Be qTO

TOqKOIO, HrO TOtlKa eCTb MeCTO KacaHHfl n~OCKOCTri 9TOFO 6blTria

m a p o a o f i rlOBepXHOCTH rpoMalIHOrO acTpa.rlbHOFO KOCMOCa; TaK ~ r o r a ~

ToqKa n e T e p r y p r c K r t x npocTpaHcTB aO MrHoBeHHe OKa c n o c o r H a BbIKnHyTb ~ n T e n a 3TOrO 1,13Mepenl4,q. ( 2 9 8 )

The rather literal Sof'ja Petrovna literally experiences the inverse phe- nomenon of"astrality" after her encounter with the White Domino: 25

Codpb~t HeTpOBna JIrtxyrnrta no3a6bma, wro 6bmo. By/lymee ee ynano a qepnoaaTyro nOqb. [...] B qepHOaaTo-cepylo UOqb no3a~H Hee OT- Baanaca KycoK ne)xaanero npomaoro. [...] 3a KyCKOM rteaaanero npo- m~oro OTBa~ri~Cfl r~ secb cero)msmHn~ ~eHb. [...] E~aa ona nepe- ~BHHy~acb ~a.qee, n t t t a onop~,l CO3HaHHtO, e~Ba OHa xoTeyla BbI3BaTb

BHeqaTJIeHHfl Bqepal/.1HeFO ~H~t, -- H BqepaIl lHH~ ~eHb onflTb OTBa.IIH.rIGII.

(174)

First Sof'ja Petrovna's recent flirtation with Nikolaj Ableuchov, then the period of her marriage, then her wedding day (in counter-chronological order), all fall away and she returns to a pre-incarnation state:

B c ~ )KH3Hb npoMeY~bKHyna, H yna.na Bca )KH3Hb, 6y~TO He 6biY~O e m e

n n K o r ~ a ee ~I43HH H 6y/ITO caMa o n a - r t e p o ~ t e H n a ~ a ; ~ 3 n b a y m a .

(174)

In Nikolaj Apollonovir's dream, Chronos-Saturn, Absolute Time him- self in the body of Apollon Apollonovir, informs him that "letoisrislenie be£alo obratno" (239), and Nikolaj re-experiences his past incarnations, again in counter-chronological order, from his aristocratic, pampered Aryan present back through his incarnations as a steppe nomad with Tamerlane, a cruel henchman of the Chinese emperor (his father, Apollon Apollonovir), to his form as a depraved and destructive monster during the Age of Atlantis. Through his dream Nikolaj begins to understand the awful burden of his own fate, who and what he really is, and what role he is destined to play in the "Mongol cause" ("mongol'skoe delo").

On the national level, Russia's astral history in the novel runs backward to the repeated invasions of Slav lands from the East by the horsemen of the Central Asian steppes. When they invaded the Slav lands, the Mongols (or Scythians, or Polovcy, or any other of the many steppe tribes) "caused" an

Theosophy and History in Andrej Belyj's 'Peterburg" 39

"effect" that eventually produced the Muscovite princes and the distinctive features of the Russian autocracy. That autocracy produced Peter, and Peter produced Petersburg, the physical embodiment of Western materialism, imperial control, and stifling bureaucracy. The Petrine idea generated the radicals and terrorists (The Bronze Guest identifies Dudkin as his "synok") and in its turn "caused" the Revolution of 1905. The Revolution of 1905, the result of the disastrous defeat of the Russian fleet in the Straits of Tsushima at the hands of the Japanese navy in May 1905, is "causing" the invasion of Russia by the Yellow Peril (Manchurian caps, yellow faces), a new Mongol invasion. ~26 Russian history will have returned to its starting point as the final "aim", the Mongol domination of Russia, is also the original "cause".

History also runs back to Peter, who "doomed Russia irrevocably" as surely as the Mongols from the East did, by invading Russia from the West with Western ideas and Western habits that were not compatible with the Russian national spirit. Peter is responsible for the destructive duality be- tween East and West, the steppe and the city, Turanian and Kant, narod and intelligentsia, Slavophile and Westernizer, Godseeker and Godbuilder, Mus- covite and Peterburgian:

C TO~ ,tpeBaTo~ nopbx, KaK npnMqa.qca i< neBcKoiy 6epery MeTan- ~rtqecKrt~ Bca/IHriK, C TO~ qpeBaTO~ jlr~Mri nops~, Ka~ on 6pocHn ~ona na qbnnsisnacKn~ cepbx~ rpannT - aa~Boe paa~eartaacb Potent; na~Boe paaaeanznc~, n cara~,~e cya~6bx OTeqecTBa; na)~Boe pa3aennnacr~, CTpa- ,aa~ n naaqa, ao nocae,anero ~iaca - PoccHa. (99)

In the astral novel, the collective oriental image of an army of "the iron horsemen of Chingiz-Khan" eventually merges with the occidental individual image of the single Bronze Horseman, who descends on Russia from the West. The sound of the Bronze Horseman's metallic hoofbeats on stone ("Torno nekij metallireskij kon', zvonko cokaja v kamen'" [174]; "po kam- njam poneslos' tja£elozvonkoe cokan'e ~erez most: k ostrovam. Poletel v tuman Mednyj Vsadn ik" [301]) 27 are in turn echoed by the hoofbeats of the iron horsemen of the steppes: "No poslu~aj, prisly~ajsja: topoty... Topoty iz zaural'skich stepej. Pribli£ajutsja topoty. Eto - £eleznye vsadniki" (347). But whether the metal horseman, the invader, the destroyer, comes from the East or the West is not, in the end, important. Throughout the novel Belyj constantly returns the reader to those two major turning points in Russian history: to the Eastern "mission" of the "iron horsemen" and the Western "mission" of the Bronze Horseman.

40 Maria Carlson

Russia's Mission and Russia's Karma

A nation's historical past matters in Theosophy, because the past as mani- fested on the astral plane runs "backward" from the past into the present, where it affects events occurring in present time and space. This "inverse unravelling" of history is the mechanism by which the law of karma operates. A nation's history, then, is the accumulation of its karma over centuries, and a nation's karmic debt, positive or negative, will inevitably demand repay- ment.

The law of karma is a Buddhist idea that became a central concept of Theosophy. It is the cosmic law of ethical causation, and it affects both individuals and nations. Positive and negative actions over multiple lifetimes or throughout a nation's history are credited and debited, and the future of the individual or nation is determined by behaviors of the past. Not only the individual, but also the world itself is bound by the ineluctable and inescapable laws of karma. Steiner's statement about cause and effect (cited earlier) results from his belief in karma and is an expression of how it functions. Mine. Blavatsky termed karma "the law of retribution"; Dr. Steiner found in it his theodicy.

National karma was one of the topics that Rudolf Steiner addressed in a private and exclusive meeting with the Russian delegation during a Theosophical lecture cycle in Helsingfors (Helsinki) on 11 April 1912. 28 The purpose of Dr. Steiner's presentation was to outline the role of the Russian national soul in the spiritual salvation of Europe and the world. According to Steiner, Russian spirituality was to be the cosmic force that would initiate the long journey of mankind, which had fallen deep into matter, back to the realm of spirit. For this very purpose, Dr. Steiner told his listeners, Russia "was placed geographically between the European West [...] and the Asiatic East,,. 29

In Dr. Steiner's cosmology, only the Russian national soul could me- diate between the warlike materialism, positivism, and individualism of the West and the destructive, blind collectivity and spiritual passivity of the East. In the West, meanwhile, the rise of positivist and critical philosophies (Kant, Comte) were making it impossible for Europe to receive the Second Coming of Christ and so begin man's ascent out of matter; at the same time, the chaotic destructive urge (Mongols) and the old spiritual cultures (Buddha) of the East must also be superseded, for the task of the Russian national soul "is not to preserve the past [immutability] but to carry new impulses into the

, , 3 0 , , future . The new impulses would arise in Russia, the only culture in which the national spirit was open to the Christ Principle. 31

The forces of darkness will do everything possible to prevent the Rus- sian national soul from manifesting its spirituality. These forces will attempt to "freeze" Russia into inaction and immutability ("mongol'skoe delo") and

Theosophy and History in Andrej Belyj 's 'Peterburg' 41

dense matter (Peter's legacy). Steiner repeatedly stressed Russia's great res- ponsibility to all of humanity and warned the Russian delegates that "your danger will be that the strength of [the Russian national] soul in your per- sonalities can surround you with astral clouds, which would then block your way to the objectively spiritual. Your fire and warmth could spread around you a cloudy aura through which the spiritual would be unable to penetrate. Your very enthusiasm for the spiritual could hinder the spirit from finding its way to you"Y

In the novel Peterburg, Belyj depicts how Russia's largely negative karmic debt comes due with the Revolution of 1905-1906. All of the negative deeds and thoughts that Russia had projected onto the astral plane over centuries of its history were suddenly precipitated back onto the physical plane in the form of the Revolution. The Revolution of 1905-1906 was the culmination of the enormous sequence of astral "effects" and "causes" run- ning backward through history into the present. The Revolution was nothing less than the expression of the collective negative Karma of the Russian people. Only the brief appearance of the etheric Christ, in the form of the White Domino, offers hope that Russia's negative karma might be redeemed by Russian spirituality.

Steiner's lecture contains the core themes that emerge from Belyj's Peterburg: the destructive binaries of East and West, irrationalism and logic, spirit and matter, mysticism and positivism, Russia's dark karma impeding Russia's bright mission, immutability preventing new impulses, and the hope offered of the Christ Impulse. Belyj saw all of his own and Vladimir So- lov'ev's mystical intuitions about the new barbarians from the East and the threat of Western positivism and materialism confirmed in Steiner's talks and writings.

Conclusion

In Petersburg's beginning is also its end: "Peterburg ~e opustitsja" (99). The history of Petersburg, as city, as myth, as political actor, as literary text, has ended. Petersburg was an Idea that had manifested and taken shape, but the Idea had been changed by the storms of Russian history. The Bronze Horse- man had galloped away; the Thunder Stone stands empty (Nikolaj Apollo- novi6 observed that, "I kazalos', 6to Vsadnika ne bylo" [203]). The double agent Lippan~enko is dead. On the advice of Si~narfne, the "objectionable elemental", the terrorist Dudkin has completed his passport application to the fourth dimension and descended into madness and, one supposes, astrality. Senator Ableuchov has left the city and retired to the provinces to write his celebrated memoirs and to die.

42 Maria Carlson

Nikolaj ApollonoviG after a trip to Egypt to learn the secrets of the Sphinx, has become a hermit in the Russian countryside, worrying about the enormous karmic baggage he has been carrying around as an Ableuchov. Attempting to reverse his own karma and thereby incrementally to change Russia's, he pursues spiritual knowledge. He has entirely abandoned Kant. "Govorjat, 6to v samoe poslednee vremja on 6ital filosofa Skovorodu", we learn in the penultimate phrase of the novel, in the epilogue (419). 33

Grigorij Skovoroda (1722-1794) was a maternal ancestor of Vladimir Solov'ev's and, arguably, the Eastern Slavs' only completely original philo- sopher. Skovoroda's well-known epitaph is unstated but implicit here: "Mir lovil menja, no ne pojmal." Perhaps Nikolaj Ableuchov's passionate new interest in the occult will reveal "the truth" to him in time for him to escape from the nets of Maya, the delusions of the material world, and the weight of his personal karma. In Skovoroda and Solov'ev, the antithesis of the Kantian critical philosophy he once embraced, Nikolaj seeks the threads of Russia's own, natural evolution, captive of neither East nor West.

"A very slight understanding of the astral world will thus act as a most powerful stimulus to right thinking, and will render heavy the sense of responsibility in regard to the thoughts, feelings and desires that we let loose into this astral realm," warns Mrs. Besant, offering as good a Theosophical moral to Belyj's novel as any. 34 Echoing her thought, Rudolf Steiner offers his own observation and warning, and it hangs ominously over the end of the novel: "What we sow in the astral world we reap on earth in future times. ''35

Some readers may be contemptuous of "occult influences" in literature and the arts, but Peterburg, a novel that begs for detailed commentaries but does not lend itself easily to the extraction of larger meanings, can pro- ductively be read "Theosophically" (as well as in more traditional ways). In setting his novel on the astral plane, Belyj created a coherent and, to the occult mind, a real universe - he described quite concretely what happens in refined matter, perceived through spiritual organs of perception, honed by Theosophical meditations and Anthroposophical studies. An occultist could conclude that Peterburg is actually a "realistic" novel, when read as a concrete depiction of the city as it exists in the fourth dimension, on the astral plane.

Knowledge of Theosophical doctrine by no means explains everything in Belyj's enigmatic novel, and space unfortunately does not permit a detailed "unpacking" of all of the relevant imagery. Still, Theosophy can enhance the reader's understanding of some of Belyj's more inaccessible images and themes. But this is a symbolist novel, after all, and even if we identify the specific Theosophical sources of its imagery, we cannot always assign a single, unambiguous meaning to each image. Moreover, the nature of occult thought itself, with its esoteric cosmogonies and cosmologies, is

Theosophy and History in Andrej Belyj's 'Peterburg' 43

certain to send the reader around in circles: two concentric circles and a dot, to be precise.

NOTES

10

Nikolaj Berdjaev, 'Astral'nyj roman', Bir~evye Vedomosti, 1 July 1916, ~_o 15652. Also in Tipy religioznoj mysli v RossiL Vol. 3 of the Sobranie so6inenij, Paris, 1989, p. 437. Ivanov-Razumnik, 'Andrej Belyj', in Russkaja literatura XX veka (1890- 1910), Ed. S.A. Vengerov, Moskva, 1916, p. 53. For a history of Russian Theosophy, its members, publications, and a survey of Theosophical doctrine, see: Maria Carlson, "No Religion Higher Than Truth': A History of the Theosophical Movement in Russia, 1875-1922, Princeton, 1993. This article is based on ideas and directions suggested in the "Afterword" to this volume. H.P. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, Vol. I, New York, 1877, p. 62. Note that each idle thought becomes "a spatio-temporal form"; in other words, the thought became three-dimensional and real, it begins to exist in both time and space, it assumes material reality and initiates independent actions. All citations are from the "Literaturnye pamjatniki" edition of Andrej Belyj, Peterburg, Moskva, 1981. This edition contains the full text of the original novel as published by Sirin in 1913-1914 and 1916. Page numbers to this edition are given directly in the text. H.P. Blavatsky, 1sis Unveiled, Vol. I, p. 77. "Andrej Belyj" is the literary pseudonym that Boris Nikolaevi6 Bugaev adopted in 1901. Belyj's terms myslennye obrazy, or mysle-obrazy, should be translated as "thought-forms". Robert Maguire and John Malmstad translate this term as "thought-images", while David McDuff translates it as "mental images"; thus both excellent translations lose the obvious Theosophical reference. Both volumes were published in numerous popular editions. While neither was precisely translated into Russian in its totality, Belyj's Theosophical friend Elena Pisareva published popular paraphrases of both books (as Sila mysli i mysle-obrazy and Celovek i ego vidimyj i nevidimyj sostav), which were reissued as popular pamphlets over the course of the first two decades of the twentieth century. See also Leadbeater's The Astral Plane (1895), on which the two later books are heavily based. Thought-Forms also discussed Theosophical color theory, interpreting the meaning of the colors of the projected thought-forms and auras. Much of the color imagery in Peterburg can be "decoded" (or at least enhanced) using Besant's and Leadbeater's color charts and definitions.

44 Maria Carlson

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

Besant and Leadbeater, Thought-Forms, Wheaton, IL, 1971, pp. 15-21. Rudolf Steiner, Theosophy (1904). The volume was translated into Russian by Belyj's Theosophical friend, Anna Rudol'fovna Minclova, and published in St. Petersburg in 1910. Andrej Belyj, Simvolizm, Moskva, 1910, p. 498. Cf. Annie Besant, Ancient Wisdom (orig. 1897; Adyar, Madras, 1939); rpt. 1977, p. 70, etc. Besant, Ancient Wisdom, p. 63. Note that Mrs. Besant was not up on the latest science; at the time of her writing, the theory that the medium of ether permeated all space and transmitted light and radio waves was discredited by the end of the 19th century. The movement of thought-forms, however, is understood to occur through the medium of ether. Annie Besant, Man and His Bodies, pp. 34-35. Besant, Ancient Wisdom, p. 65. Besant, Ancient Wisdom, p. 67. Franz Hartmann, An Adventure Among the Rosicrucians, Boston, 1887, p. 83; the Adept [Mahatma] is speaking. Hartmann, p. 90. Consider this in the context of the novels of Dostoevskij, especially The Brothers Karamazov, where the abstract thoughts and ideas of the Kara- mazovs become the concrete, vile acts of Smerdjakov. Besant, Man and His Bodies, p. 39. Besant, Ancient Wisdom, p. 65. The famous medium, Elizabeth d'Esperance (1855-1919) wrote a book about her experience with mediumistic projection into the astral plane: The Shadow Land, London, 1897. Rudolf Steiner, An Esoteric Cosmology. Eighteen Lectures delivered in Paris, France, May 25 to June 14, 1906, Blauvelt, NY, 1987, pp. 59, 60. See note 30. Vladimir Solov'ev had predicted a new barbarian invasion of Russia from the East (Yellow Peril, Pan-mongolism, the New Scythians); his notion found resonance among the Symbolists, especially Andrej Belyj and Aleksandr Blok. Dr. Steiner greatly respected Solov'ev's work and ideas. The vocabulary, imagery, and orchestration of Pugkin's 'Mednyj vsadnik' echo everywhere in Belyj's novel:

Kar 6y)ITO rpoMa rpoxoTaHbe -- TameJIO-BBOHKOe CKaKaHbe [Io HOTpSlCeHHO~ MOCTOBOH.

H, o3apeH ayHoro 6ne~IHO~, Hpocreptun pyKy B abImr~He, 3a nrIr~ rleceTc~l Bca~HIaK Me~Hbl~ Ha 3BOHKO-CKaqyHIeM K o g e .

Belyj was not present at this lecture, although he would certainly have access to the notes and reports of his friends and colleagues, including Margarita

Theosophy and History in Andrej Belyj's 'Peterburg' 45

29

30 31

32 33

34

35

Saba~nikova-Volo~ina, who did attend. Belyj did not meet Dr. Steiner until he attended the latter's lectures in K61n in May 1912, very shortly after the Helsinki lectures. At that time he decided immediately to become one of Steiner's students. Rudolf Steiner, Spiritual Beings in the Heavenly Bodies and in the Kingdoms of Nature. Lectures Read in Helsinki 3-14 April 1912, Hudson, N.Y., 1992, p. 228. Steiner's meeting with the Russians was closed, and the content of his communication to the Russian members was not published until 1968, when they appeared in Vol. 158 of the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner. In Russia the materials were known to Steinerians through notes made by the participants. Belyj, who had not yet met Steiner at that point (they would meet only a month later, on 7 May 1912), knew of the lectures from colleagues. Steiner, Spiritual Beings, p. 229. In 1910 Dr. Steiner claimed that the etheric body (vital life body, life force) of the Christ had never left the earth after the death of Jesus's physical body, but has continued to walk among men, invisible, as the Comforter. Individuals who were spiritually developed could sense him, but not see him. The etheric Christ, said Steiner, would begin to reveal himself during the 20th century (Steiner's Christ Principle, Christ Impulse). As individuals develop their organs of spiritual sight through Theosophy, they will again see the Christ and open their hearts to receive his true, mystical message. In Belyj's novel, the figure of the "tall, melancholy one", the White Domino who comforts Soffja Petrovna, is plausibly an early sighting of Dr. Steiner's etheric Christ. Steiner, Spiritual Beings, p. 227. In a later revision of his 1908 poem about Kantian philosophy, 'Iskusitel", for inclusion in a collection of his complete poems by Sirin (never published), Belyj added several stanzas, including this one:

OCTaBbTe... B :)TOM ~OJIHaHTe Mbi Bce yroneM 6e3 cae2ta! He roBopnTe MHe O KaHTe!! qTo KanT?.. BOT... eCT~... CKoBopo/Ia...

See John Malmstad, A. Belyj: Gedichten. Mtinchen, 1982, p. 225. Besant, Ancient Wisdom, p. 69. Steiner, Esoteric Cosmology, p. 64.

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