1906 - 1909 - the years of Bely’s passionate feelings for Lyubov Dmitrievna Blok, who did not reciprocate his feelings and on whom he took revenge in 1906 in the story “The Bush”, and then in “Petersburg”, where she is depicted in the person of the angel Peri, and in memoirs, where it is hidden under the letter Shch. The allegorical revenge story “The Bush” was written in the village of Dedovo, where Bely, having settled with his friend Sergei Solovyov, discovers peasant, heretical Russia. Then he leaves for Paris and returns to his homeland to join the fight against the “expropriators of symbolism”; recovery from unhappy love and books read in Dedov contribute to the creation of his first major novel, “Silver Dove” (1910).
Later, in an article from 1930, Andrei Bely will tell you that he collected the material for the first two novels, written in 1909 and 1912-1913, in the feverish years of 1905-1906, when, overcome with despair, he wandered through St. Petersburg taverns, talked with soldiers, coachmen, workers from the Islands, and then with their grandfather’s peasants. The young man, who grew up in a bourgeois greenhouse, accumulated during this period a stock of gestures and sounds belonging to an alarming reality. In 1908, he hears “the sound of the Dove theme”: the center of the action becomes the village of Tselebeevo, which is in the grip of dark forces commanded by the cruel and predatory leader of the sect. The novel is written in a typical Bely manner: the past, present and future merge into a single whole. Kudeyarov, the leader of the villainous sect, is both Merezhkovsky and Blok, who “offered” his wife to Bely in order to be sure to get him into his network, and the future Rasputin: “He was seen in statu nascendi /in a state of emergence/: here you go” squealing”, “squealing” made sense. It’s the same with St. Petersburg.”
"Silver Dove" was written by Gogol's heir. Gogol - the author of Little Russian stories and "Terrible Vengeance", Gogol, in whose works the elements of mirages and witchcraft are poured, Gogol, whom Bely revered as the father of Russian apocalyptic literature and mentioned - the only one - at the beginning of his first collection of articles, published in 1909 and entitled “Green Meadow”. Russia here is likened to Katerina from “A Terrible Vengeance” - a captive of a sorcerer who rushes about like crazy across the steppe, while her husband rests exhausted on a green Russian meadow...
“Silver Dove” (Bely) stands at the beginning of a whole historiosophical line in Bely’s work, which found expression in his trilogy “East and West”. But this same “Dove” is a poem about the Russian space, dried up, as Gershenzon puts it, by the channels of Europeanization. The hero of the novel. Daryalsky, visiting his bride on a very “European” Russian estate, falls into the hands of sectarians - “pigeons” who obey a certain carpenter. The sect of “doves” was copied by Bely from the Khlysty (not without the influence of Merezhkovsky, who depicted the sectarians and their frantic prayers in “Peter and Alexei”). Scenes of witchcraft (catching) and erotic-mystical zeal are written with amazing skill.
So, Daryalsky flees from the West (personified by the rogue general and the Kabbalist student), but perishes at the behest of the East. Bely takes the form for depicting this convulsing, rough and magical Russia from Gogol, from his Little Russian stories written in rhythmic prose. The language of "Dove" is also convulsed, reared, and sometimes disfigured beyond recognition. The merchant Eropegin, who saw how the sectarians killed Daryalsky (they trampled him underfoot in the bathhouse), is given poison that leaves him speechless: he can only utter the meaningless syllable “otr”, reminiscent of the noun “wind”, the verb “oter” and the name Daryalsky - Peter. The atmosphere of mystery, whispers, and suspicions surrounding Daryalsky evokes the fantastic stories of Gogol, as well as Dostoevsky’s “Demons”: Bely created their “peasant” version.
“Silver Dove” (White), with its repetitions and charms, delighted Blok, who saw the hell of art in the “black sky” of the novel.
Instead of a preface
This story is the first part of the planned trilogy “ East or West"; “it tells only an episode from the life of sectarians; but this episode has independent significance. Due to the fact that most of the characters will meet the reader in the second part “ Travelers", I considered it possible to finish this part without mentioning what happened to the characters in the story - Katya, Matryona, Kudeyarov - after the main character, Daryalsky, left the sectarians.
Many accepted pigeon sect for the whips; I agree that there are signs in this sect that make it similar to Khlysty, but Khlystism as one of the enzymes of religious fermentation is not adequate to the existing crystallized forms of the Khlys; it is in the process of development; and in this sense pigeons, depicted by me, does not exist as a sect; but they are possible with all their crazy deviations; in this sense pigeons mine are quite real.
1910, April 12. Bobrovka.
Chapter one. Village Tselebeevo
Our village
Again, and again, the Celebey bell tower threw loud reflections into the blue abyss of the day, full of hot, cruel sparkles. Swifts fidgeted here and there in the air above her. And Trinity Day, sultry with incense, sprinkled the bushes with light, pink rose hips. And the heat suffocated my chest; in the heat, the dragonfly's wings glazed over the pond, flew into the heat into the blue abyss of the day - there, into the blue peace of the deserts. The sweaty villager diligently smeared the dust on his face with his sweaty sleeve, dragging himself to the bell tower to swing the copper tongue of the bell, sweat and work hard for the glory of God. And again and again the Tselebeevskaya bell tower clinked into the blue abyss of the day; and the swifts fussed over her and wrote eights, squealing.
The glorious village of Tselebeevo, suburban; among the hills and meadows; here and there scattered houses, richly decorated, now with patterned carvings, like the face of a real fashionista in curls, now with a cockerel made of painted tin, now with painted flowers, angels; it is gloriously decorated with fences, gardens, and even a currant bush, and a whole swarm of birdhouses sticking out at dawn on their bent brooms: a glorious village! Ask the priest: how did a priest come from Voronye (his father-in-law was a dean there for ten years), and so: he comes from Voronye, takes off his cassock, kisses his plump priest, straightens his cassock, and now this: “Take care, my soul , samovar." So: over the samovar he will sweat and will certainly be touched: “Our glorious village!” And ass, as said, and books in hand; Yes, and not such a priest: he won’t lie.
In the village of Tselebeevo, there are houses here, here, there, and there: a one-eyed house looks askance with a clear pupil during the day, with an angry pupil it looks askance from behind the skinny bushes; The proud young woman will put up her iron roof - not a roof at all: the proud young woman will put up her green one; and there a timid hut will look out of the ravine: it will look - and by evening it will coolly mist in its dewy veil.
From hut to hut, from hill to hill; from a hill to a ravine, into bushes: further on; you look and the whispering forest is pouring drowsiness onto you; and there is no way out of it.
In the middle of the village there was a large, large meadow; so green: there is a place to walk around, and dance, and burst into tears with a girl’s song; and there is a place for an accordion - not like some city party: you can’t spit on sunflowers, you can’t trample them under your feet. And how the round dance starts here, the pomaded girls in silks and beads, how they whoop wildly, and how their feet begin to dance, the grass wave runs, the evening wind howls - strange and cheerful: you don’t know what and how, how strange, and what’s going on here have fun... And the waves run and run; They will run frightened along the road and will be broken by an unsteady splash; then the roadside bush will sob and the shaggy ashes will jump up. In the evenings, put your ear to the road: you will hear how the grass grows, how the big yellow moon rises above Celebeyev; and the cart of the belated nobleman roars loudly.
White road, dusty road; she runs, she runs; there is a dry smile in it; They don’t tell me to dig it up: the priest himself explained it the other day... “I wouldn’t mind it,” he says, “but the zemstvo...” So the road runs here, and no one digs it up. And that was the case: men came out with spades...
Smart people say, quietly staring into their beards, that they have lived here from time immemorial, but they built a road, and so their feet themselves go along it; the guys are rolling around, rolling around, peeling sunflowers - it’s as if there was nothing at first; well, and then they wave off along the road and never return at all: that’s it.
She crashed with a dry smile into the large green Celebey meadow. All sorts of people are driven past by an unknown force - carts, carts, carts loaded with wooden boxes with bottles of the breech for "wine drinking"; carts, carts, people on the road are driving: the city worker, and the man of God, and the “Sicilist” with a knapsack, the policeman, the gentleman in the troika - the people are pouring in; a crowd of Tselebeev's huts came running to the road - those that were worse and worse, with crooked roofs, like a group of drunken guys with their caps pulled to one side; there is an inn here, and a tea shop - over there, where the ferocious scarecrow has clownishly spread his arms and shows his dirty rags as a broom - over there: a rook is still cawing on it. Further on there is a pole, and there is an empty, large field. And he runs, a white and dusty path runs across the field, grinning at the surrounding expanses - to other fields, to other villages, to the glorious city of Likhov, from where all sorts of people wander, and sometimes such a cheerful company rolls up that God forbid: in cars - a city mamzel in a hat and a strekulist, or drunken icon painters in fantasy shirts with Mr. Schubent (the devil knows him!). Now it's to the tea shop, and the fun has begun; these are the Tselebeevsky guys who will come up to them and, oh, how they bawler: “For gaa-daa-mi goo-dyy... praa-hoo-dyaya-t gaa-daa... paaa-aa-gib yayaya, maa-aa-l-chii- ii-shka, paa-gii-b naa-vsii-gdaa..."
Daryalsky
On the golden morning of Trinity Day, Daryalsky walked along the road to the village. Daryalsky spent the summer visiting his grandmother, young lady Gugoleva; the young lady herself had a very pleasant appearance and even more pleasant morals; the young lady was Daryalsky's fiancée. Daryalsky walked, bathed in heat and light, remembering yesterday, joyfully spent with the young lady and her grandmother; Yesterday he amused the old woman with sweet words about antiquity, about the unforgettable hussars and everything else that old women are pleased to remember; he himself amused himself with a walk with his bride through the Gugol oak trees; He enjoyed picking flowers even more. But neither the old woman, nor the hussars of her unforgettable memory, nor the dear Dubrovs and the young lady, even more dear to him, today aroused sweet memories: the heat of Trinity Day pressed and suffocated the soul. Today he was not at all attracted to Martial, open on the table and slightly covered with flies.
Daryalsky - isn’t the name of my hero remarkable to you? Listen, this is Daryalsky - well, the same one who rented Fedorov’s hut with a friend for two summers in a row. As a girl, wounded in his heart, for two summers in a row he searched for the surest way to meet his beloved young lady here - in the Tselebeevsky meadows and in the Gugol oak groves. In this he surpassed everyone so much that in the third summer he moved to Gugolevo, to his grandmother’s estate, to Baroness Todrabe-Graabena. The old woman, decrepit in days, had a strict opinion about marrying her granddaughter to a young man, who, in her opinion, had the wind whistling not only in his head, but (most importantly) in his pockets. From childhood, Daryalsky was known as a simpleton, having lost his parents and, even earlier, parental resources: “boss by boby!” - the sedate people snorted; but the girl herself held other opinions; and after a long explanation with the grandmother, during which the cunning old woman more than once squirmed on the chair, drinking water, the beautiful Katya went straight to the Celebey priests that she was a bride, and Daryalsky moved to a rich estate with a park, with greenhouses, with roses, with marble cupids overgrown with mold. So the young beauty managed to convince the decrepit old woman of the pleasant qualities of the passing young man.
From childhood, Daryalsky was known as an eccentric, but, they say, he went through an academic institution where, from year to year, a dozen of the wisest people, in who knows what languages of the most indecent kind, deign to parse rhymes instead of sciences - by God! And Daryalsky was a hunter of this kind of poems, and he himself excelled in them; wrote about everything: and about lily heel, and about myrrh of lips, and even... oh polyeleos nostrils. No, don’t think about it: he himself published a book, with many pages, with an image of a fig leaf on the wrapper; It was there that the young piita spread all about the lily heel and about the girl Gugoleva in the form of a young goddess as is without clothes, and the Tselebeevsky priests praised the priest out of spite: the priest swore that everything was only about naked women and Daryalsky wrote; his comrade justified him (his comrade still rented a dacha in Tselebeevo) - justified him: the fruit of inspiration is not naked women, but goddesses... But, I ask, what is the difference between a goddess and a woman? Whether it’s a goddess or a woman, it’s all the same: who else, if not women, were the goddesses themselves in ancient times? Women, and of a nasty nature at that.
Daryalsky's friend was very modest: he bore a non-Russian surname and spent his days and nights reading philosophical books; Although he denied God, he nevertheless went to the priest; and pop is wow; and the authorities are nothing; and he’s completely Orthodox, but his last name is Schmidt and he didn’t believe in God...
Again Daryalsky broke away from his thoughts, already approaching the church; he walked past the pond, reflected in the deep blue water: he broke away and again went into thoughts.
When there are no clouds, the high sky, so high and deep, is fresh and as if lifted higher; the meadow embraces this crystal, mirror and clean pond with its shaft, and how sad ducks swim there - they swim, they come out onto the land to nibble the mud, they twirl their tails, and they sedately, sedately walk along behind the quacked drake, carrying on their incomprehensible conversation; and hanging over the pond, hanging, stretching out its shaggy arms, the hollow birch tree has been hanging for many decades, but it won’t say what it has seen. Daryalsky wanted to throw himself under it and look, look into the depths, through the branches, through the shining tow of the spider, stretched high there - there, when the greedy spider, sucking flies, is motionless spread out in the air - and it seems as if he is in the sky. And the sky? And his pale air, pale at first, but if you look closely, completely black air?.. Daryalsky shuddered, as if a secret danger threatened him there, as it threatened him more than once, as if a terrible secret, hidden in the sky for centuries, was secretly calling him, and he He said to himself: “Hey, don’t be afraid, you’re not in the air - look, sadly the water is squelching by the bridge.”
On the walkway, healthy legs stuck out from under the red, tucked hem, and hands rinsed the linen; and who rinsed it is not visible: whether it is an old woman, a woman, or a girl. Daryalsky looks, and the bridge seems so sad to him, even though it is day, although the festive bell is ringing in the clear sky. Clear sunny day, clear sunny water: so blue; If you look, you don’t know whether it’s water or sky. Well done, she'll get dizzy, move away!
And Daryalsky left, and he walked away from the pond, to the village, to the clear temple, wondering where sadness entered his soul, which, as in childhood, comes from God knows where, and attracts and carries away; and everyone calls you an eccentric, and you, without noticing it at all, speak out of place, so that they smile at your speech, shaking their heads.
Daryalsky walked along, thinking: “What the hell do I want? Isn't my bride pretty? Doesn't she love me? Haven’t I been looking for her for two years already: I found her, and... away with you, wonderful thoughts, away...” It was only three more days since he became engaged to his beloved; he thought about how lucky he was in the stupid meeting, where he smiled with a sharp word at the beautiful young lady; how he then hit on her; but the beauty was not given to him right away; Finally, he got her little white hand; here is her gold ring on her finger; it still unusually shakes his hand... “Dear Katya, clear,” he whispered and caught himself that it was not a tender girlish image in his soul, but something—some kind of divorce.
With such thoughts he entered the temple; the smell of incense, mixed with the smell of fresh birch trees, many sweaty men, their greased boots, wax and persistent red, so pleasantly rushed into the nose; he was already preparing to listen to Alexander Nikolaevich, the sexton, who was beating a drum roll from the left choir, and suddenly: in the far corner of the church, a red scarf with white apples fluttered over a red calico basque; some woman looked at him stubbornly; and he already wanted to say to himself: “Oh yes, woman,” to grunt and become dignified, so that he could immediately, forgetting everything, begin to bow to the Queen of Heaven, but... he did not grunt, did not become dignified, and did not bow at all. A sweet wave of inexplicable horror burned his chest, and he no longer felt that he was turning pale; that white as death, he can barely stand on his feet. Her eyebrowless face covered in large mountain ash looked at him with cruel and greedy emotion; What it, this face, said to him, how it responded in his soul, he did not know; there was only a handkerchief red with white apples fluttering there. When Daryalsky woke up, Alexander Nikolaevich, the sexton, had already drummed out his shot from the left choir; and more than once Father Vukol came out to the pulpit and a sunbeam ran in his red hair and on a silver robe woven with blue bouquets; the priest was now kneeling behind the open gates of the altar; and already sang “dori nosima chinmi”; and the five daughters of the landowner Utkin - that one, there and that one - alternately turned their round, turnip-like faces to Daryalsky and then stood decorously, sticking out their lips capriciously, to the point of obscenity, while the sixth (an old maid) with a bush of ripe cherries on hat bit her lips in annoyance.
The service is over; coming out with a cross, the priest began to present pot-bellied prosphoras to the landowner Utkina, her six ripe daughters and those of the men who were richer and more important, who had a newer jacket and squeaky boots, who, with the wisdom of their mind, managed to put together rich huts, accumulate money by secretly selling wine or masterful deals - in a word, the one whose temper is bigger and tighter than others; they approached the honorable cross gracefully and decorously, not without dignity, bowing their bearded faces with hair cut into brackets, saturated with the smell of wooden oil; and when the eminent villagers left the pulpit, the priest quite resolutely walked around with a cross on the noses of the crowded zipuns (it was not for nothing that the “teacher” hissed, as if the priest had cut her, Shkurenkova, in the teeth with the cross, so that her teeth hurt for a long time). Daryalsky was already approaching the cross, the priest was already holding out the cross to him with one hand, and the other hand was stretching out for the prosphora, when suddenly the gaze of the wondrous woman burned him again; Her red, smiling lips trembled easily, as if freely drinking his soul; and did not remember how he venerated the honorable cross, and how the priest called him for a pie, and what he answered to the priest: he only remembered that a pockmarked woman asked for his soul. He insisted in vain, evoking the image of Katya in his soul: “Good bride, my good bride!” – the beloved image turned out to be as if drawn with chalk on a school board: the evil teacher erased it with a sponge, and now there was an emptiness there.
A pockmarked woman, a hawk, with eyebrowless eyes, not a gentle flower from the bottom of her soul, and not at all a dream, or a dawn, or a honey ant, but a cloud, a storm, a tiger, a werewolf, instantly entered his soul and called; and her smile awakened her tender lips, drunken, vague, sweet, light sadness, and laughter, and shamelessness: just like the crater of a thousand years of past, for a moment removed, resurrects the memory of something that has never happened in your life, awakens the unknown, terribly familiar in dream face; and the face rises in the image of an unprecedented and yet former childhood; So that’s what your face is like, pockmarked woman!
So Daryalsky thought - he didn’t think, because his thoughts took place in his soul without his will; and she had already left the church, and the carpenter Kudeyarov trailed behind her with his sick face, lowering the entire gear into the yellow washcloth of his beard; pushed Daryalsky, looked - for a moment: his face looked, from which something indistinct went into my soul - some kind of divorce. Daryalsky does not remember how he came out onto the porch; I didn’t hear the loud cries of the Tselebeevskaya bell tower and the swifts squealing as they fidgeted back and forth over it. Whitsuntide day sprinkled light, pink rosehips, and flies landed in flocks of ringing emeralds on the sun-kissed backs of faded zipuns.
A passing guy, clutching an accordion, pressed it to his stomach, and dust softly flew up from his feet in silent explosions; So he muttered something on the road; there were carts along the road; the unoiled wheels squealed and creaked; the iron roofs of the huts and the windows embittered by the fire (those that were not covered with a pillow) cast away the brilliance of the sun. In the distance, portly girls in green, blue, canary and even gold basques on thick waists were performing in pairs; they put stupid boots like stumps on their feet and now acted like peahens. Thin branches of weeping birches moved from time to time above the cemetery. Someone whistled, and the bushes echoed with the whistle. Domna Yakovlevna, the daughter of the late Tselebeevsky priest, an old maid, was bending over her parents’ grave; The church watchman came out of the currant tree and, putting his hand to his eyes, watched the girl from afar; not being on good terms with her, he grumbled loudly, as if into space, but so that Domna Yakovlevna could hear his words: “I should dig up the bones and clear out the place; and it’s so cramped, and here you have to take care of the bones...” Then, coming closer, he affectionately pulled off his cap and jokingly remarked: “What, have you come to visit dad? There is something to visit: the remains must have rotted..."
“Ugh, you devilry!” - thought Daryalsky and began to rub his eyes: whether he slept or not slept there, in the temple; whether he dreamed it or not; nonsense: he must have taken a nap - it’s not good to dream at noon; No wonder the Scripture says: “Deliver us from the demon at midday”...
And, twirling his mustache, Daryalsky went to the priest, forcibly evoking the image of Katya in his soul, and in the end he memorized his favorite lines from Martial; but Katya turned out not to be Katya at all, and instead of lines from Martial, unexpectedly for himself, he began to whistle: “Goodyy zaa gaa-daa-mii praa-hoo-dyayat gaa-daa... Paa-gii-b I, maal-chii-shka , paa-gib naa-vsii-gda..."
This is how this day began unexpectedly for Daryalsky. From this day forward we will begin our story.
Cabbage pie
It was the priest who grunted, letting Alexander Nikolayevich, the sexton, pass through one more each and snacking on saffron milk caps, collected in the fall by the virtuous priest and numerous children of little or less.
Popadya graduated from three classes of the Likhovsky gymnasium, which she always liked to remind guests of; She also played the waltz “Irreturnable Time” on a broken drunken piano; she was plump, fat, with crimson lips, brown eyes like cherries on a very delicate, almost sugar-like face, dotted with yellow freckles, but with a double chin. And now she was cracking jokes about the priest’s life, about the gray-legged zipuns, and about Likhov, fussing around the steaming pie and cutting huge chunks with immense walls and a very thin layer of cabbage. “Anna Ermolaevna, have another pie!.. Varvara Ermolaevna, why so little?” - she turned alternately to the six ripe daughters of the landowner Utkin, who had formed a pleasant flower garden around a neatly set table; and there was a bird chirping, coming from six open pink mouths, and squeaking about all the news happening in the area; the deft priest barely had time to put on the pie, sometimes giving spanks to a butt that turned up at the wrong time, slobberingly chewing the edge and with an unwashed nose; at the same time, she chattered more than anyone else.
“Have you heard, mother, that the police officer said that these very Sicilists appeared not far from Likhov, scattering their vile sheets; as if they want to go against the tsar in order to take possession of Monopoly and solder the people, as if the tsar sent letters everywhere, printed in gold letters, calling on the Orthodox to fight for the Holy Church: “Proletarians, unite!”; they say that from day to day the Likhovsky archpriest is waiting for the tsar’s message to send it around the district ... - So Alexander Nikolaevich, the sexton, suddenly blurted out, twitched his rowan nose and was embarrassed when six girls’ heads, fixed on him, clearly expressed extreme contempt ...
- Pfa! – the priest grunted, pouring liquor for Alexander Nikolaevich. “Do you know, brother, what a proletarian is?” And, seeing how the place on the sexton’s forehead where eyebrows should have been (the sexton didn’t have eyebrows) formed an arc, the priest added graphically: “So, so, brother: the proletarian is the one who, therefore, flies over all points, even if he flies into the chimney...
- Well, leave it alone, Father Vukol! - whispered the passing priest, turning her words not to the pleasant and at the same time humorous meaning of the priest’s explanation, but to the rowan tree, for which her husband had already reached out more than once; to which the priest muttered: “Pfa!” - and missed another one each with Alexander Nikolaevich, the sexton; then they both ate some saffron milk.
Daryalsky smoked silently on the corner of the table, every now and then taking a sip of mountain ash, and was already tipsy, but his strange intoxication did not dispel his thoughts; Although he came to the pie because he didn’t want to go to Gugolevo at all, he was so gloomy that everyone involuntarily stopped talking to him; in vain did the Utka young ladies try to chat with him; their languid gazes turned to him in vain, fanning themselves with lace handkerchiefs with obvious coquetry; they adjusted their décolleté with obvious coquetry; or they hinted quite transparently at the heart of Daryal and the naughty Cupid who pierced it; Daryalsky either simply did not answer, or hummed completely inappropriately, or clearly agreed with the girls’ hints about the state of his heart, omitting any playfulness; and he didn’t pay any attention at all to the girl’s eyes, much less to the girl’s décolleté, which was captivatingly turning pink from the end-to-end pussy. For two years Daryalsky wandered around in these places, and no one could say for what purpose; business people assumed at first that there was a goal, that there should be a goal, and that this goal was anti-government; There were also curious spies who liked to joke and, on occasion, inform (most interested in Daryalsky was the deaf-mute Sidor, the first gossip in the area, who could not utter a single word except the unintelligible “ Apa, apa”, - but expressing himself intelligibly with gestures) - well, here it is: but neither Sidor nor any others found anything harmful in Daryalsky’s behavior; then they decided that his appearance in these places had a different meaning and that this meaning was marriage; then every girl in the area imagined that she was the object of love’s sighs; All six of Utkin’s daughters imagined this; and although each of them aloud called her sister Daryalsky’s subject, she privately concluded otherwise; and that is why everyone was struck like thunder by his matchmaking with Katenka Gugoleva, the baroness’s richest granddaughter; no one imagined that, to put it frankly, a cloth snout would be able to get into the crowd. I must make a reservation that the expression “ cloth snout" was used in relation to my fellow in a special way: for a part of the body, colloquially called, if I may say so, " snout“, to put it simply, was not cloth at all, but, so to speak, “velvet”: drooping black eyes, a tanned face with a solid nose, scarlet thin lips, pubescent with a mustache, and a cap of ashen curly curls constituted the object of the secret desires of more than one young lady, a girl, or a young widow, or even a married woman... or, pardon the expression, well, let's say... let's just say it straight... the priest herself. We were surprised and gasped, but soon got used to it; Daryalsky’s stay in our area was determined by itself; They no longer followed him, and it was difficult to follow him: not everyone was allowed into the Baroness’s estate. There were, however, other people here who better understood what my hero needed (whether it was love or something else), where the longing gaze of his velvet eyes was directed, how lustfully and passionately he looked forward in front of himself at the time when ahead there was not a single girl on the horizon, and the horizon glowed and glowed with the evening dawn; They also understood many other things about Daryalsky and, so to speak, surrounded it with an invisible network of glances for some unknown purposes; these were simple people, uneducated at all: well, about them later, let’s just say: there were such people; Let’s also say that if they understood the subtleties of pyitic beauties, if they read what was covered under the fig leaf drawn on the cover of Daryalsky’s book, yes: they would smile, oh, what a smile! They would say: “He is one of ours...” Well, now is not the time to talk about that at all; but it’s time to introduce these eminent celebeites themselves.
On a golden morning of a sultry and stuffy Trinity, Daryalsky, the same man who rented Fedorov’s hut, walks along the road in the direction to the village of Tselebeev. He often visited his friend Schmidt, who was a summer resident from Tselebeevsk. Schmid spent his days and nights reading philosophical books. Now, next door, in Gugolevo, next door, Daryalsky lives with him, in neighboring Gugolevo. Her granddaughter Katya, his fiancée, lives on the estate of Baroness Todrabe-Graaben. Three days have passed since they got engaged, but the Baroness does not like this simpleton. Daryalsky goes to church for services, the road lies past a pond, and the water in it is crystal clear, clean. On the shore there are birch trees, in which the human gaze drowns, through the branches, through the blue sky. Simultaneously with this wonderful feeling, fear creeps into the heart, one begins to feel dizzy from the bottomless blue abyss, and the air, if you look closely, is completely black.
The temple smells of incense, which is mixed with the smell of birch, men's sweat and the smell of greased boots. Daryalsky was preparing to listen to the divine service, when suddenly he saw one woman in a red scarf looking intently at him. The woman’s face is eyebrowless, chalk white, all rippled. The pockmarked woman began to penetrate him like a werewolf, with quiet laughter and sweet peace. Everyone has already left the church... The pockmarked woman comes out, followed closely by the carpenter Kudeyarov. The carpenter looked at Daryalsky strangely, captivatingly and coldly, and followed the pockmarked woman in a red scarf, who was his worker. In the depths you can see the hut of the carpenter Kudeyarov. He makes quality furniture that is ordered from Moscow itself. The carpenter works during the day and goes to the priest in the evenings. The carpenter is quite well-read in the Holy Scriptures, but at night a strange light comes from the carpenter’s hut. It is not clear what they are doing there, whether they are praying or playing around with their worker Matryona, and various guests from outside are visiting along the well-trodden paths.
It’s not for nothing that Kudeyar and Matryona pray at night; the powers of heaven blessed them to become the head of a new faith, dovelike, and therefore spiritual. Hence the name of the Dove faith. And faithful brethren from the surrounding area had already organized themselves, and even in the city of Likhov in the house of the very rich miller Luka Silych. The strong onion miller was away when a carpenter came to his house in search of the sacraments of the new faith. Upon arrival, Luka did not know that a brotherhood of pigeons had settled in his house. He felt that something was happening in the house and heard rustling noises at night and began to feel bad, he began to dry out before his eyes and could not think that it was his wife who was adding a potion to his tea, according to the carpenter’s instructions.
At midnight, the pigeon brethren gathered in the bathhouse of Luke’s wife, Thekla. The walls were decorated with birch branches, the table was covered with red satin, on which a heart was embroidered, and a silver dove, which came to life during the carpenter’s prayers, jumped up on the table, cooed and raisined its beak.
Daryalsky spent the whole day in Tselebeevo and was returning to his Beloved Katya through the forest, when night fear came over him and wolf eyes, he saw fiery ones, and rushed about in horror, running away from the nightmare.
Katya, tired and with blue circles under her eyes, was waiting for Daryalsky. Her ashen hair fell onto her pale face, the evil baroness sat in proud silence, she was filled with anger at her granddaughter. The footman drank tea and was also completely silent, he did not dare to break the silence. Daryalsky walked in with a light and calm pace, as if there had been no yesterday’s nightmare and the emu had imagined everything. But this lightness is deceptive; the witch’s gaze will be pulled into the abyss, and passions will play out.
Three horses with bells broke a bush and stopped near the baroness’s house. General Chizhikov came to the baroness about whom they told different things that he was an agent of the third department, but he did not come on his own, but together with Luka Silych. Why he came to the baroness was not clear. Daryalsky looked out the window and could not understand what they needed here. There was also a third human figure with the guests, wearing a hat with a small flattened head. This was Daryalchsky’s classmate who appeared on those days when something bad happened to him. Eropegin shows the bills to the baroness, demands payment and says that the securities are worthless. The Baroness is ruined.
Out of nowhere, a creature with an owl's nose and - Chukholka - appears in front of the baroness. The baroness drives the guests away in a rage, and then Katya and Daryalovsuky are already approaching her, the baroness slaps Peter in the face. The sound was as if the earth had fallen into an abyss. Daryalovsky says goodbye to a beautiful and beloved place that he will no longer have to walk through. Daryalovsky drinks in Tselebeevo, and asks the carpenter all about Matryona. And near the old oak tree I finally met her. She looked at him with her sidelong eyes and invited him to come in. Another person is already approaching the oak tree. A beggar named Obram with a tin dove on a staff. Tells about pigeons and dove faith to Daryalovsky. Darialovsky joins them.
Luka Silych Eropegin returned to Likhov, dreaming of the delights of his housekeeper Annushka. He stood on the platform and looked sideways at the elderly gentleman. With a slender back like a young man's. On the train, Pavel Pavlovich Todrabe-Graaben, a senator in the bankruptcy case of the baroness, his sister, met him. No matter how much Luka Silych fussed, he understood that he could not cope with the senator and he would not see the baroness’s money either. A gloomy man approaches his house, and the gate is closed. Eropegin realized that something was wrong at home. He let go of his wife, who wanted to go to the priest, and he went around the rooms himself and found pigeon objects in the chest. Vessels, different clothes and much more when suddenly Annushka came into the dovecote room, hugged him tenderly and said that she would come to him at night and tell him everything, and at night she mixed a potion into his glass, Eropegin had a stroke and lost his speech.
Katya, together with Yevseich, sends letters to Tselebeevo - Daryalovsky is hiding. Schmid, the well-read and sophisticated one, looks at Darialovsky’s horoscope and says that big trouble awaits him. From all this, Pavlovich goes west to Gugolevo, and Darialovsky replies that he is going to the East. He spends all his time with the pockmarked woman Matryona, they are getting closer to each other. The pockmarked witch has bewitched Dpryalovsky, and for him there is no one more beautiful than Matryona. The carpenter found the lovers and became angry with them; he was angry that everything would pass without him, and he was even more angry that Matryona was in love with Darialovsky. He puts his hand on Matryona’s chest, and from Matryona’s chest a golden ray comes out, from which the carpenter weaves a golden tow. Lovers are entangled in a golden web and cannot get out of it...
Daryalovsky became an assistant to the carpenter, in the carpenter’s hut, and he and Matryona love each other and pray with the carpenter at night. And it seems like out of all this chant a child is born, turns into a dove, then rushes at Daryalovsky like a hawk and rips out his chest. Daryalovsky’s soul felt heavy, he thought about life and remembered the words of Paracelsus, which say that an experienced hypnotist can use love powers for his own purposes. A coppersmith came from Likhov to visit the carpenter. During the prayer, it seemed to Daryalovsky that there were not three of them, but someone else was next to them. I saw Sukhorukov and realized that he was the fourth one. In the tea shop there was a whisper from Sukhorukov and the carpenter. This coppersmith brought a secret potion for Eropegin, with which Annushka sings to him.
The carpenter complains that Daryalovsky turned out to be very weak, but he cannot be released. And Darialovsky glances sideways at the coppersmith along with Yevseich, listens to what they are whispering about and decides to leave for Moscow.
The next day, Darialovsky and Sukhorukov go to Likhov. Keep an eye on the coppersmith, someone is also watching Daryalovsky and chasing him. Daryalovsky is late for the train to Moscow and cannot get a hotel room. At night he encounters a coppersmith and spends the night in a European house. Eropegin is trying to tell him something. Anushka locks Darialovsky in the bathhouse. Four people are stomping around near the door and at Daryalovsky’s request to enter, they enter and a blinding blow knocks him off his feet. Four stooped backs grew together, their sighs were heard, they bent over some object. Then the crunch of a crushed chest and ribs and everything became quiet...
The clothes were removed from the body, wrapped in something and carried away; a woman with fluffy hair walked in front of the procession with an image of a dove in her hands.
The summary of the story “Silver Dove” was retold by A. S. Osipova.
Please note that this is only a summary of the literary work “Silver Dove”. This summary omits many important points and quotes.
"Silver Dove" (1909) - a story by the outstanding symbolist writer A Bely (1880 - 1934) - is dedicated to the historical destinies of Russia, the relationship between the intelligentsia and the people. Following Gogol's traditions is organically combined with innovative principles. narratives characteristic of symbolism.
Andrey Bely
Silver Dove
INSTEAD OF A FOREWORD
This story is the first part of a planned trilogy "East or West"; it tells only an episode from the life of sectarians; but this episode has independent significance. Due to the fact that most of the characters will meet the reader in the second part of "Travelers", I considered it possible to finish this part without mentioning what became of the characters in the story - Katya, Matryona, Kudeyarov - after the main character , Daryalsky, left the sectarians. Many accepted pigeon sect for the whips; I agree that there are signs in this sect that make it similar to Khlystism: but Khlystism, as one of the enzymes of religious fermentation, is not adequate to the existing crystallized forms of the Khlysty; it is in the process of development; and in this sense pigeons The sects I depicted do not exist; but they are possible with all their crazy deviations; in this sense pigeons mine are quite real.
A. Bely
CHAPTER ONE. VILLAGE TSELEBEEVO
Our village
Again and again, into the blue abyss of the day, full of hot, cruel sparkles, the Celebey bell tower threw loud cries. Swifts fidgeted here and there in the air above her. And Trinity Day, sultry with incense, sprinkled the bushes with light, pink rose hips. And the heat suffocated my chest; in the heat, the dragonfly wings glassed over the pond, flew into the heat into the blue abyss of the day - there, into the blue peace of the deserts. The sweaty villager diligently smeared the dust on his face with his sweaty sleeve, dragging himself to the bell tower to swing the copper tongue of the bell, sweat and work hard for the glory of God. And again and again the Tselebeevskaya bell tower clinked into the blue abyss of the day; and the swifts fussed over her and wrote eights, squealing. The glorious village of Tselebeevo, suburban; among the hills and meadows; here and there scattered houses, richly decorated, now with patterned carvings, like the face of a real fashionista in curls, now with a cockerel made of painted tin, now with painted flowers, angels; it is gloriously decorated with fences, gardens, and even a currant bush, and a whole swarm of birdhouses sticking out at dawn on their bent brooms: a glorious village! Ask the priest: how did a priest come from Voronye (his father-in-law was a dean there for ten years), and so: he comes from Voronye, takes off his cassock, kisses his plump priest, straightens his cassock, and now it’s: “Take care, soul mine, samovar." So: over the samovar he will sweat and will certainly be touched: “Our glorious village!” And ass, as said, and books in hand; Yes, and not such a priest: he won’t lie.
In the village of Tselebeevo there are houses here, here, there, and there: a one-eyed house looks askance with a clear pupil during the day, with an angry pupil it looks askance from behind the skinny bushes; The proud young woman will put up her iron roof - not a roof at all: the proud young woman will put up her green one; and there a timid hut will look out of the ravine: it will look, and in the evening it will coolly mist in its dewy veil.
From hut to hut, from hill to hill; from a hill to a ravine, into bushes: further - more; you look and the whispering forest is pouring drowsiness onto you; and there is no way out of it.
In the middle of the village there was a large, large meadow; so green: there is a place to walk around, and dance, and burst into tears with a girl’s song; and there is a place for an accordion - not like some city party: you can’t spit on sunflowers, you can’t trample them under your feet. And how the round dance starts here, the pomaded girls, in silks and beads, how they whoop wildly, and how their feet begin to dance, the grass wave runs, the evening wind howls - it’s strange and fun: you don’t know what and how, how strange, and What's so funny about that... And the waves run and run; They will run frightened along the road, will be broken by an unsteady splash: then the roadside bush will sob, and the shaggy ashes will jump up. In the evenings, put your ear to the road: you will hear how the grass grows, how the big yellow moon rises above Celebeyev; and the cart of the belated nobleman roars loudly.
White road, dusty road; she runs, she runs; a dry smile in her; They don’t tell me to dig it up: the priest himself explained it the other day... “I would,” he says, and he himself is not averse to it, but the zemstvo...” So the road runs here, and no one digs it up. And that was the case: men came out with spades...
Smart people say, quietly staring into their beards, that they have lived here from time immemorial, but they built a road, and so their feet themselves go along it; the guys are rolling around, rolling around, peeling sunflowers - it’s as if there was nothing at first; well, and then they wave off along the road and never return at all: that’s it.
She crashed with a dry smile into the large green Celebey meadow. All sorts of people are driven past by an unknown force - carts, carts, carts loaded with wooden boxes with bottles of breech for "wine drinking"; carts, carts, people on the road are driving: the city worker, and the man of God, and the “Sicilist” with a knapsack, the policeman, the gentleman in the troika - the people are pouring in; a crowd of Tselebeev's huts came running to the road - those that were worse and worse, with crooked roofs, like a group of drunken guys with their caps pulled to one side; there is an inn here, and a tea shop - over there, where the ferocious scarecrow has clownishly spread his arms and shows his dirty rags as a broom - over there: a rook is still cawing on it. Further on there is a pole, and there is an empty, large field. And he runs, a white and dusty path runs across the field, grinning at the surrounding expanses - to other fields, to other villages, to the glorious city of Likhov, from where all sorts of people wander, and sometimes such a cheerful company rolls up that God forbid: in cars - a city mamzel in a hat and a strekulist, or drunken icon painters in fantasy shirts with Mr. Schubent (the devil knows him!). Now it's to the tea shop, and the fun has begun; these are the Tselebeevsky guys who will come up to them and, oh, how they bawler: “For gaa-daa-mi goo-dyy... praa-hoo-dya-t gaa-daa... paaa-aa-gib yaya maa-aa-l-chii-ii -shka, paa-gii-b naa-vsii-gdaa..."
Daryalsky
On the golden morning of Trinity Day, Daryalsky walked along the road to the village. Daryalsky spent the summer visiting his grandmother, young lady Gugoleva; the young lady herself had a very pleasant appearance and even more pleasant morals; the young lady was Daryalsky's fiancée. Daryalsky walked, bathed in heat and light, remembering yesterday, joyfully spent with the young lady and her grandmother; Yesterday he amused the old woman with sweet words about antiquity, about the unforgettable hussars, and about everything else that old women like to remember; he himself amused himself with a walk with his bride through the Gugol oak trees; He enjoyed picking flowers even more. But neither the old woman, nor the hussars of her unforgettable memory, nor the dear Dubrovs and the young lady, even more dear to him, today aroused sweet memories: the heat of Trinity Day pressed and suffocated the soul. Today he was not at all attracted to Martial, open on the table and slightly covered with flies.
The story “Silver Dove” is the first large-format work of Andrei Bely, not counting such specific creations of his as symphonies, works of a largely experimental nature, where the author’s search for form was self-sufficient, which was emphasized by the frankly literary origin of their plots, steeply mixed with mysticism and fairy-tale conventions. Unlike symphonies « Silver Dove" is a book about real life, about modernity, about Russia in a turning point revolutionary era, about its choice of a historical path to the future, about the fate of the Russian intelligentsia, who have lost faith in former spiritual values and are trying to find salvation for themselves in unity with the people.
“Silver Dove” was conceived by the writer in 1907, at the decline of the revolutionary wave, and after intensive preparatory work in the spring of 1909, Bely began creating the text. The publication of the story was carried out in the magazine “Scales” essentially in parallel with the work of the author. During his lifetime, Bely published the story twice more: the first time the publication was carried out partially in the collected works of the author from the publisher V.V. Pashu-ka-nis (vol. VII, 1917), but due to the death of the publisher, only four chapters were published; the second time - a complete separate edition of “Silver Dove” was published by the Epoch publishing house in Berlin (1922).
It is noteworthy that in all cases Bely practically did not correct the original text, which is very uncharacteristic of his early works. This is explained by two circumstances. Initially, “The Silver Dove” seemed to the author to be only the first part of the “East or West” trilogy he had conceived, but the plan turned out to be unrealized: the author’s attention and hard work were connected with other creative plans, and the life of the sectarians described in the story ceased to interest him. In addition, apparently, “Silver Dove” not only to most critics, but also to the author himself, after the novel “Petersburg” (1912), a complex and large-scale work, the largest phenomenon of symbolist prose, seemed to be a work of secondary importance.
Meanwhile, without in any way detracting from the role of “Petersburg” in the work of Andrei Bely and in the art of Russian symbolism in general, it must be said that “Silver Dove” has important independent significance and as a landmark work in the spiritual evolution of the greatest symbolist artist, which, without a doubt, , was A. Bely, and as a vivid reflection of the moral quest of the Russian intelligentsia in the crisis era of Russian history. It is significant that, creating “Silver Dove” under fresh impressions of the events of the First Russian Revolution, Bely leaves the very picture of the revolutionary battle “behind the scenes” of the work, barely outlining, as it were, a shadow of unrest in the rural community. Partly because the time has not yet come to comprehend the events of the revolution (in “Petersburg” he will do this deeper and more expressively using urban material), but primarily because the revolution itself has always interested and attracted Bely not as a socio-political cataclysm, but as a kind of a suprasocial phenomenon, as a rapid and large-scale process of spiritual renewal of life. This is what the story “Silver Dove” is dedicated to.
At the center of the story is the fate of Pyotr Petrovich Daryalsky, a man of a completely new formation, in some ways even (and this is natural) a double of the author himself. Since childhood, he had a passion for reading, instead of going to the gymnasium, he ran away from home to museums and libraries, where he sat over books all day long, studying the tomes of J. Boehme, J. Eckhart, E. Swedenborg, K. Marx, F. Lassal and O Comta (in full accordance with the memoirs of A. Belogo “At the turn of two centuries”, although the names are taken from the text of “The Silver Dove”), tormented by dawns and unclear desires, joined the new art, but also in the poetic field, judging by everything, not finding satisfaction, Daryalsky in search of answers to what tormented him damned questions about the secrets and meaning of existence go to the people. Walking among the people- a long-standing form of educational and propaganda work of the revolutionary democrats of Russia in the 19th century, which is why they received the nickname populists. Their fate and struggle is a long-standing theme of Russian literature. The story of Daryalsky, however, is decisively different from the traditional stories of going to the people in that it repeats them exactly the opposite: its goal is the spiritual salvation of the hero himself by joining the natural forces of the people. In this regard, it can be argued that the real main character of the story is not the loser Daryalsky, but Russia with its difficult and full of problems life. This conclusion is also supported by the fact that knowing about the future death of Daryalsky in the finale of “Silver Dove”, after all, Bely was planning a trilogy, where important ties were to be untied without his participation.
Bely intended to give his epic work the title “East or West.” Let's explain it.
Emperor Peter the Great at the beginning of the 18th century. carried out a number of important transformations in Russia: the creation of a regular army and navy, the opening of the Academy of Sciences, and the intensive construction of industrial enterprises. Under him, Russia waged persistent wars for the possession of seaports; he even went to the extent of creating a new capital of the state on the Baltic Sea. All this was intended to promote the development of trade with European states and reorient the very development of Russia in a Western manner, which was stubbornly resisted by supporters of the traditional eastern orientation of Rus'. Since then, the confrontation in public life between the heirs of Peter the Great’s idea of rapprochement with Europe, called Westerners, and their opponents, called Slavophiles, has become one of the characteristic features of Russian reality over the centuries and has essentially survived to this day. True, it must be admitted that the absolute dichotomous division of opponents is rather an area of polemics and journalism, while in search of specific ways for the country to move, the most far-sighted politicians have always sought compromises, realizing that the West also has its own advantages (activity, creativity, desire for progress with all the petty-bourgeois pathos of Western civilization), and in the East (the strength of religious principles, extremely important for the spiritual life of the Russian people, trust in order, discipline and restlessness that characterize the external life of Muscovy, despite the fact that in such a way of life certain features of barbarism are quite noticeable) . Therefore, to be precise in the description, we should talk about confrontation mainly Westerners and mainly Slavophiles.
For A. Bely, the most prominent representative of the younger generation of Symbolists, as well as for his co-religionists in the new art, who proclaimed the ultimate goal of their movement to be a decisive transcendence of aesthetics and the spiritual transformation of Russia, the choice of the path to a new spiritual homeland was more relevant than ever before. The drama of the situation was aggravated by the crisis of revolutionary events and the subsequent political reaction. In difficult conditions, the idea of spiritual renewal received contradictory interpretations in numerous social and journalistic publications: moral self-improvement was proposed as a panacea for future troubles, and, on the contrary, the idea of conciliarity as a specific religious manifestation of the Russian collectivist spirit, almost anecdotal mystical anarchism and the zeal of sectarians, spiritualistic seances and the latest theosophical-anthroposophical teachings. Almost all of this is reflected in “Silver Dove”: in Daryalsky’s past – work on himself, an attempt at self-realization in science and art, disappointment in the practical opportunities provided to the individual by modern society; Daryalsky's summer resident friend Schmidt appears in the story as the bearer of anthroposophical beliefs, but this road is still not recognized hero of Bely; the buffoonish appearance of the exponent of mystical anarchism Chukholka, Pyotr Petrovich’s university colleague, excludes a serious attitude towards him on the part of the hero, but above all, of course, the author himself.
The true joy and true torment of Daryalsky - an attempt to find true faith and communion with God in a sect pigeons. While Daryalsky, led by the author, makes his fatal way of the cross, let us try to characterize the moral and religious position of Bely himself in those years, so that the conclusions that the reader should draw from the bitter experience of the hero are convincing.
In July 1905, in the magazine “Scales,” Bely published the article “Green Meadow,” which later gave the title to his first book of journalism, which shows how much importance he attached to this article. It is full of Slavophile hopes for the great future destiny of Russia, so far likened to the sleeping beauty Mrs. Katerina (an image from N. Gogol’s story “Terrible Vengeance”), but already awakening to a new life: “Russia, wake up: you are not Mrs. Katerina - what’s wrong with play hide and seek! After all, your soul is Worldwide... I believe in Russia. She will be. We will. There will be people. There will be new times and new spaces. Russia is a large meadow, green, blooming with flowers."
All this is quite in the spirit of those Slavophile judgments that were widely circulated back in the 19th century, from which it followed that the pious and therefore strong and beneficent Russia would fulfill its messianic role in relation to Western Europe, saving it from the soulless atheistic infection of revolutionary storms, about which Bely says without any concealment: “I believe in the heavenly destiny of my homeland, my mother.”
Bely will develop many of his thoughts in “Silver Dove,” uttering them both on behalf of Daryalsky and on behalf of his double narrator. However, views and beliefs change quickly in turbulent revolutionary times; This is also true in relation to Andrei Bely.
Just at the time when the writer began work on the text of “Silver Dove,” the second and, perhaps, the most important collection of his poems, “Ashes,” was published. Analysis of “Ashes” shows that from the gold-azure hopes of the beginning of the century, borrowed by Bely and other younger symbolists from the philosophical teachings of Vl. Solovyov, not a trace remained, and it was they who gave a major emotional mood to the author’s voice in “Green Meadow”. “Ashes” has completely different intonations. Already the epigraph from the poem “Every day - the strength decreases...” by N. Nekrasov, who was called the singer of the people’s grief - “Mother Fatherland! I’ll reach the grave without waiting for your freedom!” – does not fit with the image of victorious, God-bearing Russia from “Green Meadow.” The events of the revolution were not in vain for the artist. Bely generally perceived any revolution skeptically, rightly seeing in it primarily violence and cruelty, therefore “Ashes,” which depicted Russia in revolutionary hard times, is full of tragic motives. The poet’s own commentary – his introductory article to the collection – clarifies this tragic perception of the era: “... an objectless space, and in it the impoverishing center of Russia. Capitalism has not yet created such centers in our cities as in the West, but it is already corrupting the rural community; and that is why the picture of growing ravines with weeds and villages is a living symbol of the destruction and death of patriarchal life. This death and this destruction are washing away villages and estates in a wide wave; and in the cities the delirium of capitalist culture grows. The leitmotif of the collection is determined by the involuntary pessimism that arises from the view of modern Russia...”
This involuntary pessimism in the poems in the collection is reflected in the fact that the image of Russia is revealed in the motives of devastation, death, and despair. In other words, by the time he worked on “Silver Dove,” Bely had undergone a significant evolution and his appeal to his homeland no longer contained tenderness and deification. It is all the more remarkable that he builds the story as a kind of parallel to “The Green Meadow” with abundant quotations and self-repetitions, although “Ashes” has already been written. Bely himself, having conceived the epic “East or West,” already determined for himself the nature of the choice. If in the early 1900s. in the first collection of poems “Gold in Azure” and in symphonies, who embodied his mystical worldview in the spirit of the religious and philosophical teachings of Vl. Solovyov, he demonstrates his ironically negative attitude towards the dead Western civilization and admires the dawns of the East, then the defeat of Russia in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905. and the bloody despotism of the revolution significantly adjusted his position, just like the late Vl. Soloviev. He is imbued with the thought of eastern danger for Russia, and soon (already in the novel “Petersburg”) it will result in the theme Mongolian affairs and threats from the East. In general, the trilogy was supposed, according to the author’s plan, to convince the reader that the true fate of Russia, its true path, is neither with the East nor with the West, but its own path, destined for it alone. But what the author has already comprehended is still unknown to his hero: with faith in Russia, with a thirst for renewal, Daryalsky begins his introduction to the truth of the common people: “...with his life he formed the truth; it was highly absurd, highly incredible: it consisted of this: he dreamed that in the depths of his native people, a dear and not yet lived through ancient antiquity was beating for the people - ancient Greece. He saw a new light, a light also in the fulfillment of the rites of the Greek-Russian Church in life. In Orthodoxy, and in other precisely the concepts of the Orthodox (i.e., in his opinion, pagan) peasant, he saw a new light...”; “...and that’s why he fell so close to the people’s land and fell so close to the people’s prayers for the land; but he considered himself the future of the people: he threw a secret call into the manure, into the chaos, into the ugliness of the life of the people...” (chapter “Who is Daryalsky?”).
The author is in no hurry to convince Daryalsky of the futility of his hopes, that he is mistaken about the people. And we’re not talking about Daryalsky alone. First of all, you need to convince the reader. He, too, like the hero of the story, like the author himself until recently, is completely fascinated by Russia. That is why the words of the carpenter Dmitry are so significant that really now with a man that there will be a coming resurrection of the dead, that a new truth of life will come. This is not the belief of Daryalsky alone. That is why the light spire so victoriously pierces the blue air, and that is why the Tselebeevskaya bell tower so joyfully throws ringing sounds into the sky. Russia is great, its forces are mighty, its soul is alive and its word is soulful - not like the West, for which the only salvation is to humble itself before Russia, before the East: “... the West threw out many many words, sounds, signs to the surprise of the world; but those words, those sounds, those signs - as if werewolves, exhausted, are dragging people along with them - and where? The Russian, silent word, coming from you, will remain with you: and prayer is that word... here the sunset itself is not squeezed into a book: and here the sunset is a mystery; there are a lot of books in the West; There are many unspoken words in Rus'. Russia is what a book is smashed against, knowledge is scattered, and life itself is burned; on the day when the West takes root in Russia, a worldwide fire will engulf it: everything that can burn will burn, because only from the ashen death will the heavenly darling - the Firebird - fly out" (chapter "Lovitva").
It talks about the ashen death of the West, but the reader remembers that the book “Ashes” has already been written - about Russia. And in “Silver Dove” itself, in the most majestic, in the most pathetic places, no, no, yes, and even flashes - as a premonition, as a warning about the danger of succumbing to illusions - the author’s incredulous smile. Here he is painting the green, spacious Tselebeevsky meadow. Image-metaphor, image-symbol. But take a closer look: it was cut in half, violating its harmonious, idyllic integrity and pristine state, by the road leading to the city, to where “the delirium of capitalist culture grows.”
The feeling of disharmony, which reinforces the doubt that Russia is fit to play the role of world savior, also introduces a strange note of nostalgia for the past, which suddenly breaks through in the author’s lyrical digressions. Likened to the proud, majestic and decrepit lackey Yevseich, Russia is seen by the author as frozen over the abyss. Unexpectedly, here Bely appears as a like-minded person of Ivan Bunin, who brilliantly revealed the theme of dying noble nests in these years (the short story “Antonov Apples”, the story “Sukhodol”), and partly of A. Chekhov. Bely is brought closer to Bunin by his understanding of the role of the West in Russian life: the coming world of bourgeois business is equally destructive for both gentlemen and peasants, as it destroys the age-old patriarchal foundations of Russian life. Only in Bunin it was a sincere sadness for the passing Russia, and in this case Bely adds a fair amount of ridicule to the pathos: like in Chekhov’s comedy “The Cherry Orchard” (the duet is the careless owner of the estate Ranevskaya and the businessman-entrepreneur merchant Lopakhin), in Bely Gugolev's mistress, Baroness Todrabe-Graaben, shows complete inconsistency in front of the merchant Eropegin, and the fact that his financial claims subsequently turn out to be fictitious only emphasizes the inability of the former masters of life to do business, their unsuitability for a historically fruitful role.
The description of the baroness’s family, which in the story personifies the force influencing Russia from the West, is expressive. The surname Todrabe-Graaben itself is not just clearly of non-Russian origin, it is vocative, that is, significant: it is formed by a combination of German roots Tod - death, Rabe - raven, Grabe - grave, thereby emphasizing the deadening, lifeless spirit of Russian-European roots and connections. All the numerous ancestors of the current inhabitants of Gugolev (by the way, located to the west of Tselebeev, as the narrator repeatedly points out) are given a brief and damning description: they were all stupid, wore lace and left Russia at a young age for Nice and Monte Carlo.
At the moment of the decisive choice, Daryalsky’s main opponent turns out to be the youngest of the barons. It is no coincidence that the heroes have deeply apostolic names - Pyotr Petrovich and Pavel Pavlovich. This confrontation between Peter and Paul, traditional for Christian apocryphal literature, is symbolic. Peter's preaching activity unfolded primarily in the East; according to tradition, he was considered the religious teacher of the Jews, Paul, on the contrary, of the pagans. The defeat that Pavel Pavlovich suffered in this battle was predetermined back in the “Green Meadow”, back in symphonies: The West is fading, advancing sunset of Europe, the sorcerer cannot keep the beauty in a daze any longer. The shaven gentleman, his hands in gloves, the setting sun behind him, calls to Peter Daryalsky: “Wake up, come back... You are a man of the West.” What follows is a decisive response: “Go away, Satan: I’m going to the east.”
So, the way of the West is the way of the Antichrist; the conclusion is not so important for Daryalsky as for the author. The first part of his answer to the problem posed is East or West? – is formulated unambiguously sharply: the Western path is unacceptable for Russia in any case.
The true meaning of the author’s position becomes clear when the tragic mistake of Daryalsky’s choice is revealed: the mistake is not in the rejection of the West, not in the focus on the East, but in the very understanding of the problem - “either-or”, the truth lies completely to the side.
Later, in the novel “Petersburg”, one of the main ideological motives of Bely’s narrative will be the motive of the gigantic historical provocation into which Russia was drawn - the provocation of the illusory dichotomous choice of East and West, distracting it from the road to which it was destined by Providence. In “Silver Dove” Bely, as it were, preliminarily draws this provocation on a relatively smaller scale - within the limits of one fate.
The original drama of Daryalsky lies in the fact that, completely unaware of the people, he goes to the hidden truth of God, led only by desire, and at the same time takes wishful thinking. In an effort to join the spiritual element of the people, he joyfully responds to the call of the sectarian brotherhood, goes to them with an open heart in the hope of being cleansed of the city's filth, leaves his bride Katya (a child of civilization) for the blue-eyed Matryona (a child of nature) and does not suspect that he turns out to be a toy in the hands of sectarians, for whom he is just lazy gentleman, which they needed as a suitable object for an incredible experiment.
At the end of the 19th century. Russia lived in anticipation of the appearance of a new Messiah; among the Symbolists, these sentiments were especially widespread. Bely’s sectarians decided not to wait for a miracle, but to create it themselves. The reader of “The Silver Dove” may not immediately notice that Daryalsky was doomed, since he was looking for peace of mind where, in essence, instead of a high action, a pathetic farce was being played out. Take a closer look: in the plot-forming actions of the characters, Bely constructs a gigantic parody of the apocryphal story of the birth of Jesus Christ.
The First Gospel of James the Younger tells that the future Mother of God Mary, dedicated to God, grew up in the Jerusalem Temple until she was twelve years old. According to religious customs, her further stay there was impossible. Then the temple priests, in order to further preserve her virginity, chose her legal husband Joseph the Betrothed, essentially a guardian, the future worldly father of Jesus. From several applicants, Joseph was chosen by a miraculous sign: a dove flying out of his staff pointed to him. That's why members of Dmitry Kudeyarov's sect call themselves pigeons, and on the staff of the wanderer-connector of the Abram sect there is an image of a silver bird. The names of Bethlehem and the village of Tselebeev are consonant.
The distribution of roles is actually grotesque. Kudeyarov appears as the newly-minted Joseph the Betrothed: he is a carpenter, like his prototype, and the shaving cradle, one might say, awaits a new baby god; besides, he, too, is only with his wife, without merging with her in one flesh. But these purely external coincidences are where the rapprochement between the biblical image and the impostor from the rural community ends. First of all, he has quite revealing surname: Kudeyar - a traditional image of a robber in Russian folklore; Joseph steadily gained the title of a righteous man, pleasing to God in deeds and thoughts; he is characterized by hard work, humility, and kindness. Kudeyarov leads the same lifestyle, as if wearing a disguise. His meekness and gentleness instill fear in those around him, and not in vain: at least two ruined lives (Daryalsky and the merchant Eropegin) are on his conscience spiritual shepherd.
The role of the Mother of God has been chosen spirit sect Matryona (colloquially distorted name of Mary), a hazel-faced, blue-eyed woman. The azure in the look is from the Woman Clothed in the Sun Vl. Solovyov, who proclaimed that the new Mother of God was already suffering from childbirth, that a new miracle would soon be revealed to the world. Bely had previously longed to see her innermost features in the image of the blue-eyed Fairy Tale (“Second Dramatic Symphony”), and now she again appeared as a deceptive vision in the world he created. Only this time it is truly deceptive - like blue waves it floats into Daryalsky’s soul in moments of rapture. When the ecstasy passes, then in her form he sees animal And witch. If Pyotr Petrovich had known that in this booth he had a role prepared for him by no less than God himself, he would have understood that nothing worthwhile could come of his idea of joining the people. But the epiphany will come too late. The song of the beggar Abram “Blessed Paradise in the East” - a paradise promising joy and peace to tired souls - was also his song, but instead of a scarlet dawn an ominous blue-black cloud came from the east, darkness spread around, and doubts settled in the soul of Daryalsky - “Do we know what spirit is coming upon us?” The sweetness of joy is replaced by bitterness, shame, fear, and a feeling of the abomination that one has come into contact with. It was as if a scale had fallen from my eyes, and previously dear faces turned into a combination icon painting And pig writing, and instead of sacred love it turned out, according to the carpenter himself, ordinary everyday shame. The last pages of the story - return Daryalsky, his path from East to West. But the fear of exposure pushes sectarians to complete the messianic experiment with the most ordinary criminal crime. The East, therefore, did not turn out to be the promised land for the hero (and the reader draws conclusions).
At the same time, if judged unbiasedly, Bely does not express unconditional, unambiguous judgments. After all, the secret that Daryalsky touched with his soul in the vastness of Russia is not reducible only to ugly sectarian rituals, and the genius of the people is directed towards the true God. On the other hand, the envoy of the West, Pavel Pavlovich, seemed like Satan, that is, the Antichrist, only to the besotted brain of Daryalsky, while the author portrays him, although a mannered, affected person, very far from people's concerns, but, in principle, not devoid of some attractive features: he is not stupid , kindly eccentric, kind, and also a bibliophile.
All the more attractive is the youngest of the baronial family, Katya, Daryalsky’s former, abandoned bride. Smart, sweet, gentle, devoted, ready for sacrifice and forgiveness, she, as if by her very existence, symbolizes the fact that the truly human principle has not been completely killed in Western civilization.
This is how the author’s idea, still barely guessed, appears a synthesis of the best features of the West and the East when Russia chooses its own, true, destined historical path only for it. Already here, in the “Silver Dove”, through the lips of the summer resident Schmidt, the need is proclaimed for the individual, if he wants to reach the heights of perfection, to follow the dictates of anthroposophy, the newest of the occult sciences, accumulating all previous achievements in this area and at the same time being a bridge connecting the theosophists of the West and East. But since the main theme of “Silver Dove” is the denial of the extremes of religious doctrine, Schmidt’s words remain unheard, and the knowledge of the divine essence of the world, the affirmation of a peculiar Yes as opposed to No, dominant in “Silver Dove”, is postponed by the author until other novels.
Avramenko A. P.
Stefanos: Collection of scientific works in memory of A. G. Sokolov M., 2008.
