The Dedalus Book of Russian Decadence E-Book

Kirsten Lodge

• Herausgeber: Dedalus
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

The sensationalism and morbid pessimism that characterized French decadence in the late nineteenth century quickly attracted converts throughout Europe, including Russia. The Dedalus Book of Russian Decadence: Perversity, Despair and Collapse brings together horrifying, dramatic and erotic short stories and poetry, most of which have never before been translated into English, by the most decadent Russian writers. It includes scandalous writings by the well-known authors Valery Briusov, Leonid Andreyev, Fedor Sologub and Zinaida Gippius and acquaints English-speaking readers with the forgotten writer Aleksandr Kondratiev. These writers explore the darkest depths of the unconscious, as their characters experience sadism, masochism, rape, murder, suicide, and, in a story by Gippius, even passionate love for the dead.

Leseprobe

This collection is dedicated to Oliver Lodge.

ABOUT THE EDITOR

Kirsten Lodge (Ph.D., Columbia University) is currently working on a book on decadence in central and eastern Europe. Her collection of Czech decadent poetry in English, Solitude, Vanity, Night, is forthcoming. She is also the author of Translating the Early Poetry of Velimir Khlebnikov.

ABOUT THE TRANSLATORS

Margo Shohl Rosen has published her translations of Russian literature in The London Review of Books, American Poetry Review, and most recently, Lions and Acrobats: Selected Poems of Anatoly Naiman.

Grigory Dashevsky, a professor of Latin at Moscow University, is a poet and a translator from English, French and German. His translations into Russian include Fr. Yates’s Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, Z. Bauman’s Freedom (both from English) and Hannah Arendt’s Men in Dark Times (from English and German).

DISCLAIMER

Despite the best endeavours of the editors, it has not been possible to contact the rights holders of the texts in copyright. The editors would be grateful, therefore, if the rights holders could contact Dedalus.

Acknowledgements

I wish to express my gratitude to Ilya Vinitsky, who introduced me to Oliver Ready in 2004, thus initiating the chain of events that led to the publication of this anthology. I am thankful to Oliver for putting me in touch with Eric Lane at Dedalus Books, and to Eric for his enthusiastic support of the project from its inception. Thanks also to B. Tench Coxe for his suggestions for both the poetry and prose translations, and Grigory Dashevsky for carefully checking the translations of the poems against the originals and offering his comments. The translators are deeply indebted to Simon North for diligently combing all of the texts for Americanisms, Emily Mitchell for her assistance with colloquial British English in “Moon Ants” and “The Sting of Death,” and Craig Beaumont for acting as our consultant on British English. We also wish to acknowledge Frank Miller’s aid in rendering torture instrument vocabulary into English. Of course, we are fully responsible for any remaining deficiencies in the collection.

Kirsten Lodge

Contents

Title

Dedication

About the Editor and Translators

Disclaimer

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Valery Briusov: The Last Martyrs

Briusov: Oh, cover your pale legs!

Briusov: Presentiment

Briusov: Messalina

Briusov: Now That I’m Awake

Fyodor Sologub: For me alone my living dream

Briusov: The Slave

Sologub: Because she hadn’t studied hard…

Briusov: The Republic of the Southern Cross

Briusov: The Coming Huns

Briusov: We are not used to bright colours…

Briusov: Distinct lines of mountain peaks…

Sologub: The Sting of Death

Sologub: O death! I am yours…

Sologub: Since I fell in love with you…

Briusov: Hymn of the Order of Liberators in the Drama Earth

Sologub: The Poisoned Garden

Briusov: With a secret joy I would die…

Zinaida Gippius: Follow Me

Sologub: What makes you beautiful?…

Sologub: Light and Shadows

Sologub: My tedious lamp is alight…

Sologub: Death and sleep, sister and brother…

Sologub: You raised the veil of night…

Gippius: The Living and the Dead (Among the Dead)

Sologub: O evil life, your gifts…

Gippius: Everything Around Us

Gippius: The Earth

Gippius: Moon Ants

Sologub: To the window of my cell…

Gippius: Song

Gippius: The Last

Leonid Andreyev: The Abyss

Alexander Blok: I am evil and weak…

Dmitry Merezhkovsky: Children of Night

Sologub: Captive Beasts

Andreyev: In the Fog

Blok: What will take place in your heart and mind…

Gippius: Her

Merezhkovsky: Calm

Andreyev: The Story of Sergey Petrovich

Blok: On the Eve of the Twentieth Century

Blok: We are weary…

Blok: The moon may shine, but the night is dark…

Alexander Kondratiev: Orpheus

Blok: The Doomed

Sologub: God’s moon is high…

Merezhkovsky: Pensive September luxuriously arrays…

Kondratiev: In Fog’s Embrace

Gippius: Rain

Blok: The Unknown Woman

Gippius: Starting Anew

Kondratiev: The White Goat

About the Authors

Copyright

Introduction

The depravity and despair of decadence that burgeoned in France in the latter half of the nineteenth century had gripped all of Europe, including Russia, by the century’s close. Originating in the superbly refined and subtly perverse poetry of Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine and finding its quintessential expression in Gustave Moreau’s sensual paintings of Salomé dancing for the lecherous King Herod, decadence gained widespread popularity in France in 1884 after the publication of Joris-Karl Huysmans’s novel Against Nature. Against Nature, which became known as “the breviary of the decadence,” gives expression to the movement’s fundamental tenets: that modern-day civilisation is in decline, that reality as it exists is contemptible, and that the decadent hero, who is neurotic and sexually deviant, must create an alternative world for himself alone. Des Esseintes, the main character of Against Nature, retreats to a house outside of Paris, where he has his surroundings constructed in accordance with his whims. The cabin of a ship, for instance, is built within his dining room, and he spends hours sitting inside it, watching mechanical fish swimming in an aquarium placed between the porthole of the cabin and the dining room window, so that the water subtly changes hue with the varying sunlight. He can thus pretend to be travelling and enjoying nature without having to deal with the annoyances and ugliness of reality. This image of pseudo-sailing exemplifies the decadent cult of the artificial: artifice for the decadents is superior to nature.

At the turn of the century decadence flourished in the work of Russian writers of various schools: hence this anthology groups Leonid Andreyev, who frequented Maxim Gorky’s Realist circle, and Alexander Kondratiev, who did not consider himself part of any school, with the other writers included here, who identified themselves primarily as Symbolists. Symbolism derived from the same French models as decadence, but it emphasised different thematic and stylistic concerns, evoking the poet’s inner world or a mystical world beyond our own through suggestion and the use of poetic symbols. More ambitious than their French counterparts, many of the Russian Symbolists hoped to transfigure the fallen world, which they found execrable, either by the power of their own creative will or with divine aid. However, their mood would vacillate from yearning for a miracle to black despair, and this is when they would enter into the decadent mode. In this collection, this sense of hopelessness after faith in an imminent miracle is most evident in the poetry of Zinaida Gippius and Alexander Blok. If the world could not be transformed, the alternative was to withdraw from it. For the decadents there were several ways to escape from deplorable life: these included the creation of art or an artificial environment, sexual deviation, madness and suicide. The authors included in this collection dramatise these various alternatives.

A powerful will is necessary to create an ideal environment, and the decadents’ worship of the will is related to their stance of extreme individualism. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, it was widely believed that European civilisation was in decline, or “decadence”: that is, society was becoming increasingly fragmented. It was no longer unified by higher values, such as religion. Individuals were becoming increasingly isolated in an age of declining morals. Many deplored this fact, while others upheld individualism as a positive principle. Commentators frequently compared their age to the final days of the Roman Empire and predicted imminent collapse. Decadents also looked back to the Roman Empire for inspiration and found it not only in images of decay and decline, but also in the dramatic personalities of the cruel Roman emperors, whose every whim became reality. They became prototypes of glorified egoism, with their unbridled cruelty, perverse pleasures and excessive indulgences. Decadents often took individualism to the extreme of solipsism. Valery Briusov is a case in point. He believed that the individual could truly know nothing outside of himself—his own thoughts, feelings and desires. For Briusov it is even impossible to be certain that the outside world actually exists. The confusion of dream or fantasy and reality is thus central to many of his stories, including “Now That I’m Awake…” (1902).

In this dramatic tale of demonic savagery, egoism merges with sadism as the narrator gives full reign to his cruel fantasies—at least within an environment he believes to exist only in his imagination. He asserts that he has always preferred dreams to reality, and boasts that he has learnt to control his dreams. Above all, he likes to torture people in his dream world, never relinquishing control of the narrative of agony. However, the line between dream and reality becomes blurred: this is the diary of a psychopath.

“Art” and madness are likewise closely linked in Fyodor Sologub’s first published short story, “Light and Shadows” (1894). In Sologub’s story, young Volodya discovers art as a means to escape from the monotonous reality of school and the useless lessons he is forced to learn. After finding a booklet giving directions on how to make shadow figures on a blank wall, Volodya soon masters the examples provided and begins to create his own, more complex figures. He is driven to indulge in these creations at the expense of his schoolwork and even his health. Like a writer, he invents narratives, personalities and feelings for his figures. Soon, however, they take on their own, independent reality. He senses their unbearable sadness, and he is overwhelmed. Volodya’s obsession is contagious: his mother, too, begins to make shadow figures secretly in her room, and shadows soon start to pursue her as well.

Sologub is more optimistic about the power of art and the artist’s will in some of his poems. In “My tedious lamp is alight …” (1898), for instance, he prays for inspiration to create the perfect work, which will grant him immortality. The artist, he implies, has the potential to become a deity, and the creative will can work miracles. In “For me alone my living dream …” (1895), he imagines the sadomasochistic world of his dreams, established by force of will, and full of revelry, sex and whipping. The artist’s will is omnipotent, capable of transfiguring reality—or at least creating a second world within the realm of literature.

Of the various escape routes from reality, suicide is by far the most popular in these works by writers of a decadent bent. “O death! I am yours,” Sologub exclaims in a well-known early poem, rejecting life as unjust and disdainful. In his story “The Sting of Death” (1903), two friends nurture an ever-growing attraction to death, which one boy depicts as a comforting, faithful and beautiful lover. The poetic register of his description contrasts sharply with the colloquial language of the rest of the story. In “The Poisoned Garden” (1908), seductive death is personified as a femme fatale. The Beautiful Lady of this stylised tale is herself like the poisonous, carefully cultivated flowers of her garden, flowers that recall Des Esseintes’s attraction to horticulture and predilection for real flowers that appear to be artificial. This story demonstrates that Sologub shared with Oscar Wilde the decadent attraction to fairy tales as a genre divorced from reality. Within the fairy tale the writer is free to polish an artificial, archaic style and to use motifs and characters symbolically, without locating them within a specific historical context. The result is a stylistic gem sparkling with Beauty, Love and Death. At the same time Sologub’s story, published shortly after Russia’s failed revolution of 1905–07, is clearly concerned with class conflict. It is a rare example of a fairy tale mingled with Marxism, in which the main characters are revolutionary activists, each in their own way.

Charlotte of Zinaida Gippius’s “The Living and the Dead (Among the Dead)” (1897) is repelled by the physicality of life. She is disgusted by the sickliness of her brother-in-law and nephew, and above all by the prospect of marrying a butcher. She is nauseated by the bloody carcasses, flesh and bits of bone that fill the butcher shop where her fiancé indifferently slices meat with a butcher knife. She prefers to spend time alone in her room, where she observes the cemetery through blue stained glass that softens everything she sees. The delicate blue glass, which she associates with the cemetery and death, contrasts with the red and yellow glass in her father’s dining room—colours associated with the butcher shop. Fleeing the earthly world she despises, she dreams of the “light-blue world” of death, filled with peace and love.

Death is not always conceived in such mystical terms in Gippius’s work. The narrator of her “Moon Ants” (1910) strives to comprehend suicide, only to conclude that it is impossible to predict or understand. People may attempt suicide for the most insignificant reasons, and they may not even know why they have decided to kill themselves. The narrator of “Moon Ants” is astounded at how many people have been killing themselves recently, and he is obsessed with the phenomenon, which he traces back to the failed revolution. Had life in Russia at the turn of the twentieth century become so harsh and hopeless that it unleashed an epidemic of suicide? The narrator of “Moon Ants” offers an alternative explanation: people have become weaker—so weak, in fact, that they kill themselves at the slightest provocation. Like the moon ants in H. G. Wells’s novel The First Men in the Moon, they crumple up and die the moment they are touched.

It was widely believed at this time that humanity was degenerating. The theory of degeneration was a logical extension of Darwinism, which argued that evolution takes place in a natural environment. Proponents of degeneration theory such as Cesare Lombroso and Max Nordau reasoned that mankind was completely estranged from nature in modern society, and therefore removed from the life-threatening factors necessary for evolution by natural selection to take place. The comforts of urban life, they argued, were causing regression to earlier stages of development. Mankind was becoming weaker, sicklier and more prone to nervous ailments of all kinds. Nordau’s Degeneration (1892), published simultaneously in two Russian translations in 1894, became one of Europe’s bestsellers, fuelling popular fears with its warning of an epidemic of degeneration. The narrator of “Moon Ants” expresses similar qualms, imagining a plague of weakness and suicide to which he himself may fall prey. Many other stories in this anthology are also accounts of contagion leading to death. The contagion may involve the spread of ideas, as in “The Sting of Death,” or of disease, as in Leonid Andreyev’s “In the Fog” (1902). In addition, it was believed that asymmetrical facial features were symptomatic of degeneration, that it was hereditary and that artists were particularly degenerate; thus the irregular features Volodya and his mother share in “Light and Shadows” should be understood within the context of the European obsession with degeneration.

Andreyev treats the issues of lust and prostitution, which were considered to be symptomatic of degeneration, in the stories “In the Fog” and “The Abyss” (1902). In “In the Fog,” Pavel’s father, who, the author tells us, represents the prevailing views of his time, expresses his fear of “civilisation’s darker side.” He warns his son against phenomena typically associated with degeneration, including alcoholism and, above all, debauchery, which causes venereal diseases that lead to debility, insanity and death. Pavel, however, feels he has already been corrupted. His “filthiness” permeates his entire being like the yellow fog outside, and he can escape neither one. Like his sense of being corrupted, his view of women is also typically decadent: he is attracted to them, but at the same time overwhelmingly disgusted and horrified by them, and he believes them all to be hateful, vulgar and deceitful. His misogyny is reflected in the fact that he completely forgets women—whether his mother or a prostitute—the instant he turns away from them.

In “The Abyss,” Andreyev shows what may happen when the veil of culture is suddenly lifted. A young couple on a walk, Nemovetsky and Zina, speak romantically of pure love and eternity until they are caught at dusk in a field among prostitutes and drunken men. An unfortunate incident entirely changes Nemovetsky’s perception of the young woman, and he falls into the “abyss” of irrational, bestial instinct. Like “In the Fog,” this story sparked controversy upon its publication; Andreyev’s explicit treatment of the themes of prostitution, venereal disease and rape were considered scandalous by some critics, while others defended him for bringing to light moral problems that society must address. When Lev Tolstoy’s wife berated Andreyev for depicting the most abject human degradation and slandering humanity in “The Abyss” rather than praising the miracle of God’s world, Andreyev responded that civility is deceptive, and beneath it lies a beast straining to devour itself and every living thing around it the moment it breaks out of its chains. It is impossible, he wrote, to “slander” a humanity that has on its conscience such heinous crimes as those committed during recent imperialist wars. Several years later, Andreyev vividly portrayed the cruelty and madness of war in his novella The Red Laugh, inspired by the shocking bloodshed of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5.

In “The Story of Sergey Petrovich” (1900), Andreyev applies his skill in describing a character’s psychological vacillations to an ordinary man who happens to have read some of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra. We have heard a lot about men who read Nietzsche and think they are supermen, but what about those who realise they are part of the herd? As Andreyev wrote in his diary about the story, Nietzsche teaches Sergey Petrovich to rebel against injustice—against nature and humanity.

Some of the writers featured in this collection had some hope for the future, though not necessarily for themselves. They sensed the imminent collapse of the culture they represented. In his programmatic 1894 poem “Children of Night,” Dmitry Merezhkovsky, speaking for the generation writing at the turn of the century, proclaims that there is hope—but not for us. This generation will perish beneath the first rays of the sun that will shine for the new era that will replace it. Similarly, in the classic poem “The Coming Huns” (1905), Briusov’s lyrical “I” welcomes the “barbarians” that are destined to destroy contemporary civilisation just as they had once razed Rome. The belief that history was cyclical was prevalent at the time: civilisations, it was believed, are born and age like human beings, only to die and be replaced by healthy fledgling societies. Contemporaneous civilisation awaited its “barbarians” with mixed feelings, as they represented both its death and the panacea for its “sickness.” The speaker of Briusov’s poem is resigned to his fate, prepared to collect the fragments of high culture and attempt to preserve them for future generations, retreating with them to caves like the early Christians. Briusov composed this poem at a critical juncture in Russian history, during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5 and the failed 1905 Revolution. After Russia’s catastrophic defeat at the Battle of Tsushima in May 1905, in his correspondence Briusov likened the Japanese to the barbarians who brought down Rome, and this may be one reason the barbarians in this poem come from the East (the phrase “over Pamirs as yet unexplored” refers to the steppes between Mongolia and southern Russia). Another reason for their eastern origin is that the Mongols who ravaged Rus’ in the thirteenth century had also invaded from the East. In the 1903 essay “The Triumph of Socialism,” Briusov compared the revolutionary masses to barbarians as well; this is thus another significant subtext of “The Coming Huns.”

In “The Last Martyrs” (1906), Briusov sets the victory of the revolutionaries, whom one of the characters explicitly calls “barbarians,” in the future. In this story there is a clear division between the representatives of high culture and the “barbarian” revolutionaries. The narrator belongs to a sect that worships mysterious “Symbols,” a detail that suggests the group is modelled on the Symbolist movement. Briusov’s over-the-top description of their final orgiastic rites in the face of death, however, may be read as a parody of certain Symbolists’ views, particularly those of Vyacheslav Ivanov, with his ideal of mystical communion through Dionysian celebration. The sectarians, like typical decadents, are highly sensitive, refined individuals who have dedicated their lives to luxury and the cultivation of their souls. In one character’s words, they are “the hothouse flowers of humanity.” In the view of the emissary of the revolutionaries, however, they are mere degenerates, and as such they must be mercilessly cut out of the body of society. The emissary thus reiterates Nordau’s proposed solution to the problem of degeneration: the extermination of all those who are infected and thus weaken society. With great prescience Briusov condenses the cruel rhetoric of power against those it deems undesirable, a rhetoric strikingly similar to that of later Soviet and Nazi campaigns against those they labelled “degenerate.”

Is it to this sort of violence that Briusov is referring when, in “The Republic of the Southern Cross” (1905), he mentions that the government takes “decisive measures in a timely fashion” to prevent the spread of the epidemic outside of the capital city? Indeed, such is the solution that Whiting and his followers attempt to implement in Star City. In any case, “The Republic of the Southern Cross” warns us that the advance of civilisation, even if it does not lead to its collapse at the hands of barbarians, may lead to barbarism nonetheless. Star City’s overemphasis on reason, order and regulation, combined with its luxury and debauchery, contributes to the outbreak of a disease called “contradiction.” The government’s attempt to place total control over the population leads to the eruption of the repressed irrational, and in the end people are dancing around bonfires like cavemen, indulging in orgies and at each other’s throats. This breakdown of order is reflected in a disintegration of style from an objective, distanced language typical of newspaper reporting throughout most of the work, to a more emotional and literary style in the description of the loss of the last vestiges of morality and law. Like Andreyev in “The Abyss,” Briusov depicts the brute instincts of humanity lurking beneath the veneer of culture.

Alexander Kondratiev tells very different tales of aggression and rape. Unlike Briusov and Andreyev, he treats violation not as an act of brutality, but as a natural part of the mythical pagan world of gods and goddesses, who behave like satyrs and nymphs. His tales are comparable to the decadent writings of the French author Pierre Louÿs, whose novel Aphrodite was a bestseller in 1896, and whose work Kondratiev translated into Russian. Both Kondratiev and Louÿs are remarkable for their playful depictions of the sensuality of the ancient world. The decadents were attracted to the pagan gods because they associated them with the body and sensuality, free and naïve before Christianity fettered the passions. Just as Sologub’s story “The Poisoned Garden” offers the reader a retreat from reality into the fantastic and beautiful world of the fairy tale, Kondratiev’s myths draw the reader into a finely crafted and subtly perverse created world.

The stories and poems included here will give the reader an overview of decadence in Russian literature at the turn of the twentieth century, with its prominent themes of perversity, despair and collapse. Despairing of the state of society, wavering in their hope for a miracle, the Russian decadents had a vague presentiment of impending perdition. They expressed their sense of futility in stories of madness and suicide, and they took egoism to extremes in fantasies of sexual aberration. They found solace in art, which they worshipped as a cult, and they had a particular predilection for highly stylised, timeless genres such as the fairy tale and myth. The importance of Russian decadence has been underestimated, and it is hoped that this anthology, which includes many works never before translated into English, will bring it the recognition it deserves.

The Last Martyrs

Valery Briusov

An Undelivered Letter, Consigned to Flames by the Executioner

Preface

This letter was written to me by my unfortunate friend, Alexander Athanatos, several days after his miraculous rescue, in response to my insistent urging that he should describe the astounding scenes of which he was the sole surviving witness. The letter was seized by agents of the Provisional Government and destroyed as subversive and immoral. Only after my friend’s tragic death, when his remaining belongings were delivered to me, did I find among his papers a draft of this account, and still later I learnt what had happened to the letter itself.

I believe that this faithful and—as far as I can judge—dispassionate narrative of one of the most distinctive events of the beginning of that momentous historical movement now called by its adherents the “World Revolution” ought not to be consigned to oblivion. Of course, Alexander’s notes cast light on just a small fraction of what happened in the capital city on the memorable day of the uprising, but nonetheless, for future historians they will remain the only available source of certain facts. I believe that awareness of this circumstance compelled the author to weigh his words with special care and, despite his rather florid style, to remain within the bounds of strict historical accuracy.

In conclusion, I cannot but express my gratitude to the country that gave me refuge and my joy that there exists a place on earth where freedom of the printed word has been preserved, and where it is possible to boldly proclaim one’s opinions without being obliged to extol the Provisional Revolutionary Governments.

I

You know that I, like so many others, was completely unprepared for the outbreak of revolution. True, there had been vague rumours that a general uprising was planned for New Year’s Day, but the recent anxious years had taught us not to believe too much in such threats.

The events of that night took me completely by surprise. I wasn’t planning to celebrate the New Year, and was peacefully at work in my room. Suddenly the electricity went off. By the time I got a candle lit, I could hear the wooden crackle of gunfire outside the window. We were all familiar with those sounds by then, and there was no mistaking it.

I got dressed and went out.

In the pitch darkness of the winter night I more divined than saw a heaving crowd of people on the street. The air was one continuous din of movement and voices. The nearby gunfire had not abated, and it seemed to me that bullets were hitting the wall just above my head. After each volley, joy at having escaped death flooded my heart.

But my desire to see for myself what was transpiring was greater than my fear. I hovered in the doorway of my building with a clutch of other dumbfounded spectators like myself. We exchanged terse questions. Suddenly, like a flood from a breached dam, a mass of people swept towards us, bowling along in panic-stricken horror with shouts and cries. I had no choice but to be swept along with them, or else be trampled.

I saw myself on Glory Square. The town hall was burning, and the light of its flames illuminated the surrounding area. It reminded me of a line from Virgil: dant clara incendia lucem.1 You know how big that square is. And now it was so full of people that one could hardly move. I think there must have been several hundreds of thousands of people there. Their faces, lit up by the flickering red flames, were strange, unrecognisable.

I asked many people what had happened. It was amusing to hear all the contradictory and absurd answers. One man said that the workers were slaughtering the wealthy. Another, that the government was exterminating all the poor to put an end to the revolutionary movement. A third, that all the buildings had been mined and were being blown up one by one. A fourth tried to convince me that this wasn’t a revolution at all, but that there had been a terrible earthquake.

It was just then, when a good one quarter of the city’s population was gathered on the square in front of that flaming building, talking, exclaiming and fretting, that the terrible event you read about in the paper took place. We heard the hollow rumble of a gun volley, a fiery line cut through the darkness, and a shell crashed down into the thick of the crowd. Wails rose above every other noise, immediately deafening, like a physical blow. But just at that moment a second shell exploded. Then another, another, and another…

A panicked ministry had ordered the commander of the Central Fortress to shoot into any crowds that gathered.

Once again the senseless stampeding began. Amidst the careering shrapnel of grenades, under the threatening rumble of gunfire pierced by the heart-rending cries of the wounded, people were rushing madly among the stone walls, trampling the fallen, beating anyone in their way with their fists, scrambling up onto windowsills, onto lamp-posts, again falling down and in their frenzy sinking their teeth into the legs of whoever was nearby. It was horror and chaos, a maddening hell. How it was that I finally ended up on Northern Boulevard, I don’t know.

Here I met with a detachment of revolutionaries.

There weren’t all that many of them, about three hundred, not more, but they were an organised army within the tumultuous crowd. They were able to recognise one another by the red armbands they wore. Their measured movement put a stop to the flow of people. The mad flight ceased, and the crowd quietened down.

In the light of pitch torches that made the surroundings look strange and archaic, a man climbed onto the base of the statue of the North and signalled that he wanted to speak. I was standing rather far away, pressed up against a tree, and could catch only the general sense of his speech. The individual words died away before reaching me.

The speaker called for calm. He announced that the normal flow of life would not be disturbed and that no citizen was in any kind of danger. That what was occurring in the capital was occurring at that hour throughout the country: everywhere power was temporarily in the hands of militia units. That only a small number of people were to be executed—all who belonged to the overthrown government, “equally hateful to all of us,” and that those people had already been sentenced by the Secret Tribunal.

In conclusion, the orator said something about the day that had been awaited for thousands of years and about the freedom of the people having finally been won.

In general the speech was of the most ordinary kind. I thought the crowd was going to throw that windbag to the ground, drive him away like a buffoon making jokes in a moment of danger. But instead I heard vehement shouts of approval from all around. The people, who a moment before had been wavering, confused and timid, were suddenly transformed into a whole army of irrational and self-sacrificing insurgents. They lifted the speaker onto their shoulders and began to sing a revolutionary hymn.

Then I suddenly felt I needed to be not in this crowd, but with people who thought as I did, with my closest friends. The image of the Temple arose in my heart, and I realised that the place of every believer that night was close to those Symbols our generation had made sacred.

I ran off down the boulevard as quickly as I could through the moving crowd. Everywhere militiamen, preferring not to turn the electricity back on for the present, were lighting torches. Patrols went by, establishing order. Here and there I saw little rallies like the one at which I had been present.

Occasional volleys stuttered somewhere in the distance.

I turned onto dark Court Avenue, and finding my way among the labyrinth of old streets almost by intuition, arrived at the entrance to our Temple.

The doors were locked. The area was deserted.

I gave the pre-arranged knock on the door, and I was let in.

II

The stairs were weakly lit by a lamp.

Like shades in one of the circles of Dante’s Inferno, people clustered and moved slowly up and down. The semi-dark made people speak in half-whispers. And beneath the low murmur of voices the presence of something terrifying could be felt.

I made out some familiar faces—Hero was there, and Irina, and Adamantius, and Dimitrius, and Lycius—everyone was there. We exchanged greetings. I asked Adamantius, “What do you think of all this?”

He answered, “I think it is an ultimatum. It is, finally, the collapse of that new world, which, counting from the Middle Ages, has existed now for three millennia. It is an era of new life, which will unify our entire epoch into a single whole with the Russo-Japanese War and Charlemagne’s campaigns against the Saxons. But we, all of us who are caught between the two worlds, will be ground into dust on those gigantic millstones.”

I went upstairs. The barely illuminated temple sanctuary seemed more enormous than ever. The far corners melted away into infinity. The Symbols of our service loomed mysteriously and eerily out of the murk.

Groups of people were scattered here and there in the half-light. From somewhere came the sounds of women hysterically sobbing.

Someone called me. It was Anastasia. She was sitting on the floor. I sat down next to her. She took my hands, and she who had always been so reserved, even in the hours of our saturnalia, fell sobbing upon my neck, and said, “And so, all is finished, all of life, all possibility of living! Generations, dozens of generations have gone into the cultivation of my soul. Only amidst luxury am I able to breathe. I have to have wings, I can’t crawl. I have to be above other people, I suffocate when there are people around me. My whole life is in those delicate, refined emotions that are possible only in the heights. We are the hothouse flowers of humanity; exposed to wind and dust, we’ll perish. I don’t want it, I don’t want your freedom, your equality! I’d rather be your perfidious slave than a comrade in your brotherhood!”

She sobbed and made vague threats, clenching her little fists. I tried to soothe her, saying that it was too early yet to despair, that it was irrational to trust a first impression. The revolutionaries, naturally, were exaggerating their victory. Perhaps tomorrow the government would gather its forces and overthrow them. Perhaps the revolt had not succeeded in the provinces … But Anastasia wouldn’t listen to me.

Suddenly there was a general stir. Many people stood up, others raised their heads. There was a gleam of light, and Theodosius appeared before the altar.

Two deaconesses in white surplices carried tall lamps before him, as always. He wore a snow-white tunic, with his long locks of dark hair flowing loose, and a calm, severe expression.

He took his place at the pulpit, raised his arms in blessing, and began to speak. His voice penetrated like wine to the depths of our souls.

“Sisters and brothers!” he said. “Behold the breaking of a joyous day for us! Our faith cannot die, for it is the eternal truth of being, and our approaching executioners themselves harbour its truth in their very essence. Our faith is the last Mystery of the world, to whom all bow equally through all centuries and on all planets. But now the time has come for us to confess our faith before the ages and all eternity. It is given to us to take the communion of the supreme passion, the final communion before death. Remember how many times we whipped our bodies in a frenzy of sensuality, and how the pain doubled the pleasure of receiving communion. The death-blow will triple our ecstasy; it will magnify it ten times over. The death-blow will throw wide the gates of rapture, such rapture as you have never experienced, and it will dazzle you beyond anything you have ever known. Sisters! Brothers! The moment of our last union will penetrate our entire essence like a bolt of lightning, and our last breath will be a cry of untold happiness. O, last of the faithful, last martyrs for faith, I see it, I see crowns of glory upon your heads!”

I am certain that there was a hypnotic force in Theodosius’s voice and gaze. Swayed by his influence, everyone in the sanctuary seemed transfigured. I saw ecstatic faces. I heard heroic exclamations.

Theodosius commanded us to sing our hymn. Someone sat down at the organ. The air rippled. The melody filled up the dark expanse, poured down among us, bound us all together in its irresistible net into one many-visaged being. Our great poet’s verses burst forth instinctively from our lips, as the ocean instinctively roars in response to the call of the wind. We were the singing strings of a great orchestra; we were the voices of a single organ, glorifying the eternal Mystery and the creative Passion.

III

Somewhat later I was summoned to the Council of Acolytes. We gathered by candlelight in the usual Council meeting room. The divine frescoes on the walls were barely discernible. Theodosius presided over the meeting.

He summarised all that was known about the progress of the uprising. Our situation was hopeless. The entire army had gone over to the revolutionaries. All generals and senior officers had already been arrested and executed. The Central Fortress had been taken by storm. All government buildings—the palace, the parliament and the police stations—were occupied by the militia. News from the provinces confirmed the rebels’ victory in every other city as well.

The question was posed: what should be done? The majority was for surrendering and giving in to the overwhelming force of the revolution.

Theodosius heard out these opinions in silence. Then he took a paper from a casket and invited us to examine it. It was one of Central Militia Headquarters’ proscription lists. In it were named all the acolytes serving in the Council, myself among them. We had all been sentenced to death by the Secret Tribunal.

A bewildered silence fell. Theodosius said, “Brothers! Let us not lead our lesser brothers and sisters into temptation. If we allow all our faithful to know of this list, many will be troubled by doubt. They will wish to buy their own lives through betrayal and apostasy. By keeping it secret, we will give them the great honour of sealing the purity of their faith with a heroic death. Let us allow them to join together with us in our thrice-blessed fate.”

Someone tried to protest, but weakly. Theodosius calmly put the paper with the names up to a candle and burnt it. We watched as the small scroll turned slowly to ashes.

Just then a deaconess knocked at the door. A representative from the militia’s headquarters wished to speak with us.

In came a man, young, confident and self-assured. In the name of the Provisional Government he demanded that we disperse to our homes. The Special Committee, he said, was to examine the statutes of our religious union and determine whether it was a threat to public life.

We knew that these words were a trick—that we had already been sentenced. For a few moments all were silent. I remember the two speeches that followed—Theodosius’s and the emissary’s—by heart. In these two short speeches, two worldviews found full expression.

Here is what Theodosius said:

“The new government speaks its deceitful words to us in vain. We already know that everyone who is present here has been sentenced by the Secret Tribunal to execution. We know that you have already judged our sacred faith an immoral sect. But we do not accept your power and your court. We live on heights of consciousness such as you have never achieved, and therefore it is not for you to judge us. If you are even but a little familiar with the cultural life of your homeland, take another look at those gathered here. What do you see? You see the flower of our time—your poets, your artists, your thinkers. We are your mouthpiece, we are the voice of the wordless, eternally silent whole that is the sum of individuals like yourselves. You are darkness; we are the light born from it. You are the possibility of life; we are life itself. You are the soil that is necessary and right only because we, the stems and blossoms, grow from it. You call upon us to disperse to our homes and wait for your proclamations. We demand that you carry us to the palace in your arms and, kneeling before us, await our commands.”

You know Theodosius. You know all his shortcomings: his hypocrisy and pusillanimity, his petty vanity. But at that moment, as he gave the last sermon of his life, he was truly great and splendid. He seemed a biblical prophet, speaking to the rebellious people, or an apostle during the first days of Christianity, somewhere in the bowels of the Coliseum, amidst a crowd of martyrs about to be led out to the arena to be torn apart by wild beasts.

And here is how the herald answered Theodosius:

“So much the better, if you know your fate. The experience of millennia has shown us that there is no place in the new life for ancient souls. They are a lifeless force that has always destroyed all of our victories up until the present day. On this day of the world’s great transformation we are resolved to make the necessary sacrifices. We will cut out of our body all the dead, all those unfit to be born anew, with the same suffering, but also with the same pitilessness with which one cuts off an infected limb. Why do you lavish praise on yourselves for being poets and thinkers! We have enough strength to give rise to a whole new generation of sages and artists, the like of which the earth has never seen, the like of which you cannot even begin to fathom. He who is afraid of loss has not the strength to create. We are a creative force. We have no need of anything old. We renounce all heritage, because we ourselves will forge our treasure. You are the past, we are the future, and the present is the sword we hold in our hands!”

The room buzzed. Everyone was talking at once. I, too, could not resist shouting, “Yes! You are barbarians without any predecessors. You despise the culture of the ages because you don’t understand it. You boast of the future because you are spiritually impoverished. You are the shot that brazenly shatters the marble of antiquity!”

Finally, the emissary from the militia’s headquarters said in an official tone, “In the name of the Provisional Government I give you until today at noon. By that time you must open the gates of your temple and surrender into our hands. By doing this you will save hundreds of people from a senseless death—people you have lured here through trickery and temptation. That is all.”

“And if we don’t submit?” asked Lycius.

“We will destroy this building to its very foundations with our weapons, and you will all be buried beneath the rubble.”

The emissary went out.

“Destroy the temple!” repeated Lycius. “Our temple, the best of Leander’s architectural creations! With its statues and paintings by the greatest masters! With our entire library, the fifth greatest in the world!”

“My friend,” replied Adamantius, “for them our art is no more than archaeology. For them it is not all that important whether their museums will hold a dozen superfluous antiquities or not.”

Someone expressed regret that we had let the emissary go alive. Theodosius reined in the speaker.

“We are here,” he said, “in order to spill our own blood, not that of others. We are here for the heroic deed of faith, not for murder. Let us not mar the crimson purity of our martyrdom with the black wings of wickedness and revenge.”

IV

The rays of the dawning winter’s day shone weakly through the heavy curtains.

Our temple was magnificently illuminated by the light of all our candles. I had never seen such a festival of lights. There were perhaps several thousand flames.

Theodosius commanded us to celebrate the liturgy.

Never before had he been so majestic. Never had the voice of the chorus sounded so solemn. Never had Hero’s naked beauty been so blindingly dazzling.

The censers’ intoxicating smoke caressed our faces with wispy, cloud-like fingers. The great rituals were performed in a dark-blue, transparent haze of incense before the Symbol. Naked youths, according to their rank, removed the veil from the holy of holies. The invisible choir of deaconesses glorified the Occult Mystery.

The fragrant, searingly sweet wine, only barely inebriating, aroused trembling throughout the body and agitation in the soul. The awareness that this moment was unique, never to be repeated, was inspiring.

And now Hero, in golden sandals, with a single gold serpentine belt about her waist instead of clothing, went forth with twelve sisters garbed likewise, and their silent circle dance wended along the length of the temple. And the magical sounds of the organ and the harmonic, mysterious singing captivated all as she passed, riveting our gaze to her smooth undulations.

Imperceptibly, insensibly, instinctively we were all drawn into the silent circle dance after them. And this circling was more intoxicating than wine, and the movement was more enrapturing than caresses, and the celebration of the service was loftier than any prayer. The rhythm of the music grew faster, and faster grew the rhythm of the dance, and with outstretched arms we sped onward, in a circle, after her, after the unique and divine Hero. And now we were carried away with exaltation, we panted and gasped for breath, inflamed with a mysterious fire, and now we trembled through and through in the shadow of the godhead.

Then Theodosius’s voice was heard: “Come, all you faithful, to make the sacrifice.”

Everyone stopped, froze where they were, motionless. Hero, once again standing near the altar, ascended the steps. Theodosius gestured for a youth, whom I had not noticed until then, to approach. Blushing, the boy threw aside his clothing and stood by Hero, naked as a god, youthful as Ganymede, fair as Balder.

The gates opened up and swallowed the couple. The curtain closed.

On our knees, we began to sing the hymn.

And Theodosius spoke thus to us: “It is done.”

He lifted the chalice and blessed us.

Ecstatic sounds gushed from the organ and we could no longer restrain our passion. And we fell on one another, and in the sudden dusk of smoky incense lips sought lips, arms sought arms, and bodies other bodies. There was intimacy, intertwining, unity; there were shouts and groans; there was pain and ecstasy. There was the intoxication of a thousand-visaged passion, when you see around you every image, every form, every possibility of celebration, all the contortions of women’s, men’s and children’s bodies, and every possible distortion of faces transfigured with frenzied rapture.

Never, never again have I or has anyone else experienced such passion, such insatiable desire, as we flung ourselves with abandon from body to body, into double, triple and multiple embraces. And we had no need of the flagellants, who on that day were, like everyone else, seized with the ecstasy of passion.

Suddenly, apparently in response to some sign, the heavy curtains that had been covering the windows parted, and the whole interior of the temple was opened to the view of those outside it: everything, including the image of the Symbol, the mysterious frescoes on the walls and the people scattered around in strange combinations on the soft rugs.

The sounds of enraged shouting reached us from outside.

Immediately the first ringing shot pierced the mirrored glass. After the first came more. Bullets whistled by and bored into the walls. The militiamen hadn’t been able to bear the spectacle revealed before their eyes, and could no longer wait for the appointed hour.

But it was as if no one heard the shots. The organ, beneath unseen hands, continued its seductive song. The aroma of incense undulated in the agitated air. And in the clear light of day, as earlier by the light of sacred candles, the passionate celebration continued unabated.

And now Hero, before any of us, suddenly staggered where she stood in the gates of the altar and, lips distorted in pain, fell down. Here and there people paused; a second, and a third, and yet another body sank down, as if in final, utter exhaustion.

A terrible slaughter began. Bullets fell among us like rain, as if gigantic hands were throwing them down upon us by the fistful. But none of the faithful wanted to run or voluntarily disengage from their embraces. Everyone, everyone—even the worthless, even those of little faith, became heroes, became martyrs, became saints. The horror of death was banished from our souls, as if by a magic word. We sealed the truth of our faith with our blood.

Some of us fell, slain. Others, near the fallen bodies, clung ever closer to one another, breast to breast. The dying were still struggling to complete the caress they had begun with a final frenzied kiss. Weakening hands were outstretched in languorous passion. In the pile of writhing bodies it was impossible to tell who was caressing, who dying. Amidst the shouts and cries it was impossible to distinguish passionate gasps from the moans of the dying.

Someone’s lips were still pressing against mine, and I felt the pain of an ecstatic bite that might have been a paroxysm of death agony. In my arms I still held someone’s body, grown cold from rapture or death. Then a heavy blow to the head felled me as well to the heap of bodies, to my brothers and sisters.

The last thing I saw was the image of our Symbol. The last thing I heard was Theodosius’s cry, echoing a thousand times not beneath the temple vaults, but in my own soul’s endless passages, now flooding with darkness:

“Into your hands I commend my spirit!”

1 Bright fires are giving light.

Oh, cover your pale legs!

Valery Briusov, 1895

Presentiment

My love is like a sultry Javan noon

Drenched in noxious scents, as in a dream,

Where lizards laze with heavy lids

And boas coil round the trees.

And you entered the inexorable garden—

For respite, or for sweet delight?

Flowers tremble, grasses pant,

Everything intoxicates and blights.

Let’s go —I’m here —we’ll luxuriate,

Weave orchid wreaths, play, embrace,

Our bodies clinging like a pair of greedy snakes!

The day will fade. Your eyes will close.

That will be death. And I will entwine

Your immobile form in a shroud of vines.

Valery Briusov, 1894

Messalina

Burning with desire, in Rome

I did not find passion,

So I summoned slaves from the Danube lands,

I summoned wild Dacians.

To my chambers, one by one,

My eunuch led all three,

But his efforts were in vain,

They could not satisfy me!

I felt cramped in my bed,

So I wandered around the palace,

And I came upon an unknown room,

Where your bed stands.

Your robes on the floor,

You slept, perfectly limber,

All downy, tenderly naked,

Like coral, and flax, and pearls.

My boy, my boy! Be brave!

In the silence of the night we are alone:

Nestle your compliant body against me,

Press your loins close!

There is passion as yet untapped

In your perplexity…

Let me fall upon your breast,

All will be revealed in ecstasy…

Quiet, quiet! Soon, soon!

Our executioner is near!

Oh, no more strength to feel or see…

My boy, my boy, let me dry your tears…

Valery Briusov, 1903

Now That I’m Awake…

Valery Briusov

The Diary of a Psychopath

Of course, ever since I was a child people have thought me perverted. Of course, I have always been assured that no one shared my feelings. And I got used to lying, used to giving hackneyed speeches about compassion and love, about the happiness of loving others. But deep in the recesses of my heart I was convinced—and I remain convinced even now—that man is criminal by nature. It seems to me that among all the sensations that are called “pleasures,” there is only one worthy of such a name—the one that overcomes a man as he contemplates another’s sufferings. It is my belief that man in his primitive state can lust for just one thing—the pleasure of causing pain to others. Our culture has reined in this natural drive. Centuries of servitude have inculcated in the human heart the belief that it is hard to bear another’s torments. And now people weep quite sincerely over others and sympathise with them. However, this is but a mirage and a sensory illusion.