The Stony Dance: Unity and Gesture in Andrey Bely's 'Petersburg' by Timothy s> Langen (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS I45 by A. E. Kaufman and the other by N. V. Drizen (pp. 277-88) and, second, the manifestos of the major literary movements (pp. 288-374). An index (pp. 375-433) gives the names of the figuresmentioned in the dictionary,their dates of birth and death and a brief specificationof their interests.Finally, a systematic index (pp. 434-38) arrangesthe groups according to their literary schools, the particular spheres of their intellectual activity, their political outlook, their sociological character,and the forms which their organizations took, e.g., whether they were private circles, public societies, dining clubs or unions of professionalwriters. A special feature of this work are the illustrationswhich total more than a hundred. Some reproduce the title-pages of literary works composed by members of the groups; others portray individual members; but the most interestingof them all are the groupphotographs.As one looks along the rows of serious,bearded faces, one wonders how many of their possessorsrealized that their world was soon to be swept away. Dr Shruba has brought together a treasure-house of primary sources sufficient to create several works of narrative and analysis. Those who will write them will owe him a profound debt of gratitude. Imperial College London C. L. DRAGE Langen, Timothy. TheStony Dance:Unit andGesture inAndrey Bely's'Petersburg'. Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL, 2005. xiv + I9I pages. Notes. Bibliography.Index. $75.95. How might Belyi's Petersburg be categorized?Tragicomedy, thriller,novel of ideas, political satire,historicalnovel, chronicle of family life?It is all of these and more, and there is no single term, or even combination of terms, that can adequately describe the protean nature of this unique work. As Timothy Langen points out, it is a novel, whose author 'neverseems comfortablewithin any single genre nor any single style, nor system of thought' (p. xii) and in which everything appears as 'real and yet not quite real' (p. 6). One of the many difficulties confronting commentators is the impossibility of knowing when to stop decoding, so rich is the novel in its symbolismand allusions,not least in its reflection of the legacy of earlier Russian writerssuch as Pushkin, Gogol', Tolstoi and Dostoevskii. Add to this the influence and presence of philosophers and thinkers such as Schopenhauer, Bergson, Nietzsche and Rudolf Steiner and you might be inclined to agree with Mandel'stam'sassessment that Belyi left behind him not 'a sense of organic wholeness' but 'a pile of broken stones' (quoted on p. xii). The aim of this new study is to argue precisely the contrary:Langen sets out to show that Petersburg, far from being structurallyincoherent, is in fact 'a sustained meditation on the nature of unity' (p. xiv). To this end he divides his analysis into three parts, each focusing on a particularway in which the question of unity can be explored and illuminated:the unity that derivesfrom objects,from patternsand, above all, from gestures. Langen sees Petersburg as characterized by restless, frenetic movement, in which 'it is impossible to tell what is standing still and what is racing by' 146 SEER, 85, I, 2007 (P. 158). His own analysisis itself constantlyon the move, searchingfor ideas and patternsthat link and bind the whole together.Throughout, he drawsour attentionto Belyi'suse of contrastin the novel, with the constantinterplayand counterpoint of flesh and spirit,turbulenceand stasis,gesture and the spoken word, Dionysian disintegrationand Apollonian calm, the transcendentaland the quotidian, revealing its hidden connecting threads. At times Langen's analysisdoes not fully convince. In his discussion,for example, of the episode in which Apollon Apollonovich offers to escort a young girl home, Langen arguesthe case for his belief in the primacyof gesture,with his claim that it is the walk in silence that 'carriesthe real meaning here'. And yet, a few lines later, we are told that the verbal element the formal addressto the girl - 'carriesthe same level of significance'as the gesturalelement (p. ii6). We are also told that 'what is unusual is the extent to which [Petersburg's characters] interprettheir world as if it were a book' and that these characters'confront the same interpretivedifficultiesas the novel's readers', except that for the characters'the consequences are much...