Andrey Bely was, and is, a poet rather than a novelist. His prose
from the very beginning exhibits in its extreme form the Symbolist
tendency towards wiping away the difference between poetry and prose:
in his later novels his prose becomes distinctly metrical, it is
prose after all only because it cannot be devided into _lines_; it
can be devided into _feet_ very easily. But, though such prose is
essentially a hybrid and illegitimate form, Bely has achieved with it
things that have probably never been achieved with the aid of
anything like his instruments. The first of the series of his big
novels appeared in 1909: it is the _Silver Dove_, a story of Russian
mystical sectarians and of an intellectual who gets entangled in
their meshes. At its appearance it sold only five hundred copies. His
next novel _Petersburg_ (1913) had not a much greater success. The
third of the series is _Kotik Letaev_ (1917). The three novels form a
series unique in its way. Those who can get over the initial
difficulties and accustom themselves to the very peculiar proceedings
of the author will not fail to be irresistibly fascinated by his
strange genius. The first novel, the _Silver Dove_, is in my opinion
the most powerful of the three. It combines a daring realism, which
is akin to Gogol both in its exaggerations and in its broad humour,
with a wonderful power of suggestion and of "atmosphere.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25