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Fyodor Sologub (1863-1927) - pseud. of Feodor Kuzmich Teternikov |
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Russian poet, novelist, translator, and playwright, a pessimist with a morbid sense of humour, and a significant figure of the Symbolist movement. Fyodor Sologub became in Russia one of the four best-known writers in his time with Andreyev, Kuprin, and Gorky. In the West, Sologub is best know for his novel The Petty Demon (1905-1907). A central symbol in Sologub's poetry and prose is the contrasting image of light and darkness to illustrate beauty hidden behind vulgar reality. Death, demonism, mental instability, and general rejection of life were his recurrent themes. I take a piece of life, coarse and poor, and create from it a delightful legend—because I am a poet. Whether it linger in the darkness; whether it be dim, commonplace, or raging with a furious fire—life is before you; I, a poet, will erect the legend I have created about the enchanting and the beautiful. (from The Legend Cteated, authorized translation from the Russian by John Cournos, Martin Secker, 1916, p. 11) Fedor
Kuz'mich Teternikov (Fyodor Sologub) was born in St.
Petersburg. Both of his parents were of peasant orgin. His father, a
tailor and a shoemaker, died of tuberculosis when Sologub was
four. Sologub and his younger sister Olga were brought up by their
mother, who was illiterate and worked as
a servant and laundry woman in the home of the aristocratic Agapov
family. They gave Sologub an access to the family's home library. At the age of
twelve Sologub wrote his first poem. However, poverty and humiliations,
not
writing, marked Sologub's childhood. His mother beat him regularly with
birch switches.
She died in 1894. Many of Sologub's stories are about children ('Light
and Shadows,' 'To the Stars,' 'In Captivity,' 'The Two Gotiks'), but
they are not always as dark as was his childhood. In 'Light and
Shadows' a twelve-year-old boy, Volodya, becomes obsessed in casting
shadows on the wall. This leads him and his mother to madness. After
graduating from the St. Petersburg Teachers' Institute in 1882, Sologub
worked as a teacher in provincial schools in Northern
Russia for twenty-five years. He taught mostly mathematics. The poetry
he wrote was rejected by St. Petersburg journals. In
1892 he returned to St.
Petersburg. There he was employed first as a teacher at the
Rozhdestvensky City School and then appointed inspector (deputy head)
for
the Andreyevsky City School. In 1907 Sologub devoted himself entirely to literature. His sister died in June of the same
year -
the loss left deep
marks on Sologub's poetry. "Forgotten are wine and merriment, /
Abandoned are armour and sword. / Alone he descends to the dungeon, /
And refuses to light a lamp." ('Fedor Kuz'mich Sologub' by Donald Rayfield, in Reference Guide to Russian Literature, edited by Neil Cornwell, Fitzroy Dearborn, 1998, p. 762) From 1908 Sologub lived with Anastasia
Nikolayevna Chebotarevskaya, a literary critic and translator of Stendhal, Maupassant and Mirbeau; officially they
married in 1914. She co-authored several of Sologub's plays. As a writer Sologub started his career in the 1880's in
magazines and published his first collection of poetry, Stikhi,
in 1886. By 1889 he had begun to translate the poetry of Verlaine. His
reputation as an "archetypal decadent" stemmed from his early fiction, which is characterized by the blending of reality and
fantasies, quietly demonic spirit, world-weariness, and existential
despair. Bad Dreams (1895), Sologub's first novel, appeared in serial form in Severnyi vestnik;
Tolstoy dismissed the work as "impossible, slovenly nonsense." (A History of Russian Symbolism by Ronald E. Peterson, John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1993, p. 18) Many of
the views Sologub expressed at that time echoed the pessimistic
philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer; Akim Volynsky, an influential poet
and literature critic in Severnyi vestnik, dubbed him "the Russian Schopenhauer." (Ibid., p. 18) All of the leading
Russian Symbolist journals published Sologub's poems and his stories attracted a large number of
readers. Sologub's double role as a decadent poet and a respected civil servant was ridiculed by his literary friends. In Maxim Gorky's story 'Fairy Tale' the hero, Mister "Smertyashkin" (Mister Death) makes his living by writing gloomy verses for obituaries and in memoria; critics took it as a parody of Sologub's fascination with decay and death. The Symbolist poet and novelist Andrey Bely wrote in 1907: "He is the singer of death: but he sings of death with all the tendernss of a prayer, all the ardour of passion; he speaks of death the way a passionate lover speaks of his beloved." ('Introduction' by Susanne Fusso, in To the Stars and Other Stories by Fyodor Sologub, Columbia University Press, 2022, p. xi) The antiheroes of Sologub's tales have much in common
with Joris Huysman's notorious Duc Jean Des
Esseintes from A Rebours (1884). Des Esseintes seals himself
off from the world so hermetically that he does not even dare to go on
a journey since he is afraid of being disappointed by reality.
Sologub's portrayals of the children have arisen debate – children are often haunted by
abnormal psychic experiences and a longing for death. Some critics regard their innocence in a
decadent milieu as a contrast to the corruption of Russian society. The sexual
undertones of Sologub's work and correlation of sex and death was noted
in 1909 by G.S. Nezlobin in his study The Pornographic Element in
Russian Literature.
Thus Sologub's reputation as the "incomparable
Russian pornographer" was secured, or as Anastasia Chebotarevskaya
summarized his image: "A maniac, a sadist, a morbid, maimed talent with
psychopathic leanings." (Poets of Hope and Despair: The Russian Symbolists in War and Revolution, 1914-1918 by Ben Hellman, Brill, 2018, p. 6) Melkii bes (The Petty Demon), his most famous
novel, Sologub started during the years when he was a provincial
schoolteacher. The work, completed in 1902, was published in 1907,
dramatized in 1909 as a five-act tragedy, and republished in 1926 with
a print run of 5000 copies. Set in a provincial Russian town, the story
tells of an ambitious teacher, Peredonov, who is plagued by
disillusionment. "The Russians are fools. They have invented only the
samovar and nothing else." (Ibid., translated by Andrew Field, Random House, 1962, p. 78) Nothing in the outside world interests him. Gradually Peredonov is driven into
paranoia and violence; he is teased by a grey creature, called the nedotykomka.
"It hid somewhere near, sometimes showed itself, stuck its head out
from behind a table or someone's back, and then hid again. It seemed
that it was waiting for something. It was terrifying." (Ibid., p. 252) The
beautiful servant-girl Varvara tricks Peredonov into marriage. In a
fit of delirium and rage Peredonov cuts the throat of his friend.
In the introduction to the fifth edition Sologub wrote: "It once seemed
to me that Peredonov's career was finished and that he would not leave
the psychiatric hospital where they placed him after he had cut
Volodin's throat. But very recently rumors have reached me to the
effect that Peredonov's mental illnes proved to be only temporary and
that after a short time he was released. Rumors, of course, cannot be
depended upon. I mention them only because in our times even the
improbable occurs." (Ibid., p. 353) Peredonov has been characterized as an evil incarnation of Gogol's civil servants, but also Dostoevsky influenced Sologub's characters. The Petty Demon was reissued in 1933, and after a long interval, it was published in 1958 in Siberia, with a note stating that the novel shows the rotting of the bourgeois society. V tolpe (1907) told on the incident in which more than 1,000 persons, including many children, were trampled to death at the coronation of Nicholas II. Plamennyi krug (1908, Circle of Flame), Sologub's collection of poems, was a kind of manifest of his belief that a poet is a seeker of mysteries, the forces of Eros and Creation. Sologub was an enormously productive poet. The years from 1896
to 1908 is considered his best period. His collected works,
published in St. Petersburg in 1913-14, had nineteen volumes, the five
last volumes comprising works written over a period of about two years.
In 1916 the composer Sergei Rachmaninov put music to one of his poems,
'All wish to sing.' A lot of Sologub's poems are untranslatable (as exemplified in The Concise Encyclopaedia of Modern World Literature, 1963): Lilá, lilá, lilá, kachála, Its translation loses the rhythmic beats of the words: She poured, poured, poured swung Around
1906 Sologub had developed an active interest in the theater. Like many
Symbolist playwrights, he drew much inspiration from the Western
European medieval tradition. Popeda smerti (1908, The Triumph
of Dead),
perhaps Sologub's best play, was based on the Legend of Bertha of the
Big Foot. Critics were confused by its message – the play starts with a
satiric prologue and then continues in a serious tone. Dar mudrykh pchel
(1907, The Gift of the Wise Bees)
drew on the Greek myth of Laodamia, who asks the skulptor
Lysippus to create her dead lover in wax. Both works expressed a belief
that beyond the surface of reality there lay the realm of
transcendental beauty. One of Sologub's less popular plays, Zalozhniki zhizni (1912, Hostages of Life), was produced by Vsevolod Meyerhold; both Sologub and Meyerhold advocated the idea of pure theater, that did not strive to replicate every detail of reality. Hostages of Life was the first modernist play to be staged at the Imperial Aleksandrissanky Theater, but the critical reaction was less positive. In 'The Theatre of One Will' (1908) Sologub called for a theatre in which the actor serves as automata, expressing with slow and graceful movements and calm recital the poet's vision. Sologub's controversial novel, The Created Legend (1914), appeared originally in several parts, and finally in an authorized German translation. The main story lines are set in Russia on the eve of the revolution of 1905 and in a fictious kingdom, called the United Isles of the Mediterranean. Again Sologub blended fantastic and supernatural occurrences with everyday, played with the conventions of narrative, and had references to contemporary ideas, events, and movements, such as Black Hundreds, satanic rites in honor of Lucifer, and an anti-Semitic group. The critics, Maxim Gorky including, were not happy with the sado-masochist thematics. Together
with Gorky, Leonid Andreyev, and others, Sologub published a collection of
essays
entitled Shchit: Literaturnyi sbornik
(1915, The Shield), which dealt
the situation of the Jewish minority. In order to learn of the views of
his compatriots on the Jewish question, Sologub and Gorky drew up
a questionnaire. Their concern was caused by anti-Semitic agitation and
numerous pogroms which were often organised and carried out by the
secret police and the cossacks. "Russia is not only for those who are
Russians by language and birth," stated Sologub in his article, 'The
Fatherland for All', "she is for all who live under her sovereign
dominion. No one in Russia in benefited by the unequal rights of her
various peoples; this inequality does not add to our political power,
it only supports our ideological disorder." (The Shield,
edited by Maxim Gorky, Leonid Andreyev, and Fyodor Sologub, with a
foreword by William English Walling, translated from the Russian by A.
Yarmolinsky, Alfred A. Knopf, 1917, pp. 144-145) Following the outbreak of WWI, Sologub began to write
patriotic poems. A soldier dreams in 'Uteshenie Bel'gii' (1914, Comfort
to Belgium): "We hit the German in his mug every day; we want to get
all theway to Berlin and wait there for peace, and hav fun with the
German women, especially the young ones." (Poets of Hope and Despair: The Russian Symbolists in War and Revolution, 1914-1918, p. 152) Sologub hoped that Russian armies would conquer Berlin
before the spring of 1915. He welcomed the February Revolution of 1917,
but he was not enthusiastic about the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and
the poverty and chaos it brought with it. Once
he had to ask the authorities to provide a pair of galoshes for his
wife. In 1920 Sologub requested with Anastasia a permission from Lenin to travel abroad. Most probably their destination would have been Paris. The next year Anastasia had a nervous breakdown and she threw herself from the Anichov Bridge into the River Neva, one day before they were given permission to leave Russia. Her body was discovered only six months later on the bank of Petrovsky Island. She was buried at the Smolensky Cemetery. Sologub's own request to emigrate was denied, and he fell into a long lasting depression. For his deceased wife he wrote a cycle of poems, in which the main theme is resurrection. In a poem from 1926 he called Lenin a "despot" and a "tyrant." Sologub continued to publish verse during the last years of his life, but his other works were censored, and he was dismissed as an old-fashioned writer. Moreover, due to censorship, he had to use Aesopian language to hide his thoughts about the new regime. In 1918 he became the first president of an organization that was established to help writers during the years of the Russian Civil War. Following disagreements with the organization, Sologub resigned. He then served in various administrative positions in the literary scene. The last of his eight slim volumes came out in 1923. In 1927 he was appointed chairman of the Leningrad Writers' Union. In one poem he said: "Whatever they give you, even vomit on a plate, / Eat it and don't bare your teeth." ('Fedor Kuz'mich Sologub' by Donald Rayfield, p. 762) Sologub died in Leningrad on December 5, 1927. He was said never to have been seen laughing during the whole of his life. For further reading: 'Introduction' by Susanne Fusso, in To the Stars and Other Stories by Fyodor Sologub (2022); Poets of Hope and Despair: The Russian Symbolists in War and Revolution, 1914-1918 by Ben Hellman (2018); 'Silence is Golden, Speech is Silver: Corporeality, Sensuality, and "Pornography" in Russian Literature of the Silver Age,' in Libertinage in Russian Culture and Literature: A Bio-history of Sexualities at the Threshold of Modernity The Petty Demon, with an Appendix of Critical Articles edited by Murl Barker (2006); 'Fedor Kuz'mich Sologub' by Donald Rayfield, in Reference Guide to Russian Literature, edited by Neil Cornwell (1998); 'Sologub, Fyodor (Kuzmich)' (pseudonym of Fyodor Kuzmich Teternikov),' in World Authors 1900-1950, Volume 4, edited by Martin Seymour-Smith and Andrew C. Kimmens (1995); A History of Russian Symbolism by Ronald E. Peterson (1993); Fedor Sologub 1863-1927 by Nina Denisoo (1987); Insidious Intent by Diana Greene (1986); Fedor Sologub 1884-1984, edited by Berhard Lauer (1984); Sologub's Literary Children: Keys to a Symbolist's Prose by Stanley J. Rabinowitz (1980); Fedor Sologub as a Short-Story Writer: Stylistic Analyses by Carola Hansson (1975); Prekhitraia viaz' by Galina Selegen (1968); Fedor Sologubs Roman-Trilogie by Johannes Holthusen (1960); O F Sologube: Kritika, stat'i i zametki, edited by Anastasia Chebotarevskaia (1911) Selected bibliography:
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