Oh what a night indeed!
for my full review of Jersey Boys!
Tuesday, 3 July 2012
Sunday, 1 July 2012
Petersburg, Andrei Bely
Petersburg is a novel by the lesser well-known St Petersburg
based author from the turn of the twentieth century, Andrei Bely. His most
notable novel, Petersburg, a tale of
parricide and loyalties amid a bourgeois establishment precedes the 1905
revolution with underlying references to mutinies, riots, strikes and petitions
that are engulfing a city and its surrounding provinces on the verge of descent
into a dark Russian winter with biting winds, permanent snow and a frozen Neva.
Russian literature has a
reputation for being lengthy and relentless with intense text so heavy it can
at times feel like a full raincloud in a summer storm is encircling your head.
The stories depict misery and struggle regardless of the subject whether the
backstreets of Sennaya Ploschad (the inhabitants of which include Raskolnikov
and his victim in Dostoevsky’s Crime and
Punishment) or the high society balls of Moscow in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.
It would be false and deceptive, disrespectful to these books to deny that they
are not trying reads that do not require perseverance, concentration, moral and
philosophical reflection- indeed, reading them is an embodiment of the mental and
physical struggles faced by the characters. Not only were there struggles in
the novels but also within the world in which their authors were writing. Dostoevsky’s
journey through the Neva gate and on towards Siberian austerity following his
arrest for offences against the state provided the material for his novel House of the Dead. Bely’s novel whilst
retaining this struggle- the main narrative which follows student Nikolai
Apollonovich as he is entrusted with the task of assassinating his Senator
father involves a severe examination of the merits of family loyalty and the
effects of remorse on the brain and the body- attempts to balance sorrow with
the Romance of the title city, St Petersburg whose bridges, canals, prospects
and statues have provided solace and comfort for many individuals as well as a
silent muse for artists throughout history. Reminiscent of the verse of Pushkin
Petersburg is a devoted description
to the city, its history as well as its potential directing the reader’s
attention towards remnants of the city’s past, The Bronze Horseman and Nevsky
Prospect, which have guided the inhabitants throughout the decades, the winters
and the revolutions.
Petersburg does not suffer from the prejudices sometimes faced
by other Russian works such as The House
of the Dead, The Brothers Karamazov or even the plays of Muscovite Chekhov,
the latter being the scribe of a play a friend of mine left uttering the remark ‘well
now I feel awful about everything in the world ever.’ Bely’s work benefits from
being less eminent although it remains a challenging read and demands no less
attention particularly as much of the text is broken, disjointed, a symbol of
the anguish suffered by the plights of the characters who have fallen victim as
much to the hypnotic beauty of St Petersburg as to the stimulation of its politics.
It is however perhaps an easier introduction than the daunting task of War and Peace… As well as this, its main
character is St Petersburg, an intellectually vibrant, naturally vivacious
and historically overpowering city.
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