The visualization of characters’ appearance in A. Bely's novel “Petersburg” (formulation of the topic)

The artistic features of literary portraits by A. Bely’s contemporaries most frequently become the object of research [Адамян / Adamyan 2009; Адамян / Adamyan 2010; Афанасьева / Afanas’yeva 2016].

The elements of characters’ appearance in his artistic prose occasionally become the subject of articles and theses; however they are most commonly viewed as part of a general character analysis. There are several studies dedicated to the specifics of portrait in A. Bely’s prose, which outline the most common features of his style of depicting characters’ appearance. Several works can be highlighted in regards to the peculiarities of portrait features in A. Bely’s works [Бабиева / Babiyeva 2009; Барковская / Barkovskaya 1996] and the unorthodox perception of human appearance, in which the portraits are analyzed more thoroughly (scholars have voiced various opinions on the exact reasons of portrait deformations in A. Bely’s texts).

Virtually all scholars of A. Bely’s novel “Petersburg” who analyzed the peculiarities of character images and their transformation in text point out that it lacks coherent, comprehensive portraits. L.A. Novikov writes, that the characters are defined by “not the external portrait (it is miserly, schematic even: a singular feature, a gesture, a manner of speaking, etc.) but the contents and the thoughts, introduced into the narrator’s mind, that either complement or contradict it” [Новиков / Novikov 1990, 108]. Bely’s imagery, as well as that of other ornamentalists, is vague and lacks clear outlines. While Novikov speaks about certain visual imagery leaning towards cubism, i.e. crystallization and “decrystallization”, L. V. Lazarenko in their works analyzes the portrait features through the prism of A. Bely’s views on the sculpturality of human body [Лазаренко / Lazarenko 1999; Лазаренко / Lazarenko 2002 a], Lazarenko sees the roots of this approach in the writer’s anthroposophical views: “At the very roots of his appearance, a man does not oppose the natural world, but originates from it”

[Лазаренко / Lazarenko 2002 b, 175]. Thus, the “evident or latent” dialogue with the “dead” physicality of the city becomes actualized in this written work.

In her work “The Prophet of Facelessness: the Principles of Characters Depiction in Andrei Bely’s Novels” N.V. Kafidova points out that the feeling of impersonality and lack of connection between the internal and external movements of characters in S. Pshibyshevskiy’s prose that Bely analyzes in his article “The Prophet of Facelessness” [Белый / Bely 1994 a] can paradoxically be attributed to Bely’s own texts: “While accusing Pshibyshevskiy of “preaching the facelessness”, of destroying personality and substituting it with gender (thus waking the beast in man), and while calling for heroism, Andrey Bely after a few years becomes a “prophet of facelessness” himself. Though he uses quite different methods of depersonalizing characters in his novels” [Кафидова / Kafidova 2005, 76]. Depersonalization of characters becomes a feature of the character system, in which all characters only serve to create the image of the protagonist. In the subjective worldview of the protagonist any other character becomes faceless. The images can be described as something incomplete, appearing in front of the reader and suddenly vanishing, transforming one into another. An image of a character in A. Bely’s texts lacks integrity, it never stays within its defined borders and leans toward impersonality. Yu. A. Pechenina in her works highlights the “transparency” and “phantomness” of Petersburg. The primary methods of depicting the city “include the methods of depicting characters and drawing the city-scapes, the linguistic means of fusing figure and space” [Пе-ченина / Pechenina 2009, 143]. After conducting this analysis Yu. A. Pechenina draws a conclusion that the nouns used to depict a character from outside fused in a specific manner into locative and ontological sentences to create an effect of alleged visibility. In such space the animate transforms into shapes and figures, while the inanimate receives an independent dynamic; the depiction of characters can be interpreted by the readers only within the space of Petersburg. The linguistic analysis of Yu. A. Pechenina points out that the borders between the city and the characters gradually get erased.

E.V. Shakhmatova points out the particularities of creating a material portrait: “A. Bely used to voice the idea of calling his novel “A Game of Mind”, since the real world, the events and the characters were perceived by him as mental images. For him the material world was nothing more than a reflection of a thought; mind over matter. The mental forms were objectified in the “astral plane” and then gained the ability to materialize” [Шахматова / Shakhmatova 2014, 15]. Considering the aforementioned approaches to analyzing the portrait characteristics, some common tendencies may be highlighted, based on the scholarly experience. The lack of coherent descriptions of appearance, unclear boundaries and vague imagery, the influence of “cinematic” poetics on the descriptions are often pointed out. Researchers frequently use the terms “portrait” and “portrait details”, while highlighting their unorthodox nature. Generally, a portrait in the “Petersburg” novel is analyzed from the standpoint of its aesthetic and ideological features, however, some frequent comments and conclusions seen in the scholarly works of the last decade bring to light the evident con- tradictions and lack of a thorough analysis of characters’ visual features in the novel.

This article aims to uncover the common patterns of introducing the elements of character description into the text and to define the peculiarities of their function within the structure of a character’s image in the novel “Petersburg”.

Generally, for the entirety of the novel A. Bely does not refuse depicting characters’ appearance completely, but the methods of portraying it attest to the deformation and weakening of the novel’s visual imagery.

The descriptions of characters’ appearance in the “Petersburg” novel are simple, concise and possess low levels of detalization: “Оно показалось ему сплошь в морщиночках, источивших щеки, лоб, подбородок и нос; издали можно было принять то лицо за лицо скопца, скорей молодого, чем старого; а вблизи это был немощный, хилый старик” (Не thought it was covered with tiny wrinkles on both cheeks, forehead, chin and nose; from afar you could think it was the face of a young eunuch, but from up close it was a face of a feeble, frail old man) [Белый / Bely 1994 b, 161]. Even after concentrating on a character’s appearance, more often than not the visual image will stay vague and unclear, as seen in the example above. The appearance of the same character from afar and from up close turns out to be diametrically opposite. The “image” might shift to the field of thoughts, feelings, psychological states and impressions of the things observed in that moment: “Столь же мало здесь связи и смысла, сколь мало этой связи и этого смысла между угловатодлинной и печальной фигурой подпоручика в темно-зеленом мундире, слишком резвыми жестами и задорной, льняной бородкой помолодевшего лица, будто вырезанного из пахучего кипариса. Никакой связи и не было; разве вот - зеркала: на свету они отражали - угловато-длинного человека с помолодевшим вдруг личиком: угловато-длинное отражение с помолодевшим вдруг личиком, подойдя вплотную к зеркальной поверхности, ухватило себя за белую тонкую шею - ай, ай, ай! Никакой вот связи и не было между светом и жестами” (There was no more connection and meaning than the awkward, tall and sad complexion of the second lieutenant had, in his dark green uniform, with his fast gestures and cheerful flaxy beard on his younger face, as if cut from fragrant cypress. There was no connection at all; except, say, mirrors: in the light they reflected an awkward and tall person with a younger face^-, and suddenly the awkward and tall reflection with a younger face came up to the mirror and grabbed itself by the thin white neck - oh my! There was no connection between the lighting and the gestures) [Белый / Bely 1994 b, 192]. As a result of such methods of describing appearance features, the visual imagery weakens considerably. The author deliberately accentuates other elements in the structure of characters’ image in the novel.

When describing the appearance of a character, Bely mixes the common traits of human appearance and the details of their surroundings that point out various characteristics of an object - color, texture and other visual features: “...и субъект (так сказать, обыватель) озирался тоскливо; и глядел на проспект стерто-серым лицом” (and this subject (a commoner, so to speak) was looking around him and stared at the street with his erased grey face) [Белый / Bely 1994 b, 14]; “.. .под фонарем Аполлон Аполлонович стоял, чуть покачивал серо-пепельным своим ликом” (Apollon Apollonovich stoon under the lamppost, slightly swaying his ashen gray face) [Белый / Bely 1994 b, 191]. At one point in the novel there is an image of a clown with an erased, “chalky” face: “На фоне совершенно зеленой и будто бы купоросной стены - там! -стояла фигурочка, в пальтеце, с меловым застывшим лицом: будто - клоун; и белыми улыбалась губами” (Against a green, almost brassy wall - right there - stood a shape in a shabby coat with a frozen, chalky face: as if a clown; and smiled with its white lips) [Белый / Bely 1994 b, 392].

Bely often violates the classical notion of perceiving the surroundings with various sensory organs in his novel, making vision an instrument of other sensory organs (leading to the creation of epithets such as “rustling-red”, “pleading”, etc.): “Домино шло вперед на него протянутым, умоляющим корпусом, шло вперед на него с протянутой красношуршащей рукой и чуть-чуть взвилось с ниспадающей от сутулых плеч головы его прозрачное кружево” (Domino was walking towards him with a stretched, pleading body; it walked with a stretched, rustling-red hand and the transparent lace slightly rose from its head, falling from its slanted shoulders) [Белый / Bely 1994 b, 158-159]; “Николай Аполлонович бросился к домино, как будто его он хотел прикрыть пестрым халатом, но опоздал: яркошуршащий шелк незнакомец пощупал рукою” (Nikolay Apollonovich rushed to domino, as if he wanted to cover it with his bright robe, but he was too late: the stranger touched the rustling-bright silk with his hand) [Белый / Bely 1994 b, 81].

One of the features of visual description of characters in A. Bely’s novel is the feeling of characters not having control of their bodies. The figures in the novel not only “walk” or “rush”, but also “get sculpted” and “black out”, along with the buildings they “get outlined” by an unseen artist’s hand: “Изредка проходила черная тень полицейского, вычерняясь в светлый туман и опять расплываясь; и вычернялись, и пропадали в тумане там заневские здания; вычернялся и опять в туман уходил Петропавловский шпиц. Какая-то женская тень давно уже вычернялась в тумане: став у перил, не уходила в туман, но глядела прямо на окна желтого дома” (Occasionally a black shadow of a policeman passed by, blacking out into the bright mist and fading again; and the buildings on the otehr side of Neva blacked out and faded; and the spire of the Peter and Paul Fortress blacked out and faded into the mist. A shadow of some woman has been blacking out for some time now, but it didn’t fade into the mist and instead kept staring into the windows of the yellow house) [Белый / Bely 1994 b, 122]. This tendency can be marked as the characters’ inclination to merge with the world and to assimilate to it. On the other hand, the vocabulary that Bely uses to describe the behaviour of the characters infiltrates their surroundings. While building the image of the city, Bely uses the same details he uses to describe the actions of the characters, thus making his Petersburg anthropomorphic: “На Васильевском Острове, в глубине семнадцатой 88

линии из тумана глядел дом огромный и серый” (On the Vasilyevsky Island, in the depths of the seventeenth row, a huge grey house stared at something) [Белый / Bely 1994 b, 18]; “...поуменьшился сад и присел за решеткой” (.. .the garden grew smaller and crouched behind the bars); “.. .многоэтажные груды уже присели за фабриками” (the many-storied piles crouched behind the factories); “где принизились берега, где покорно присели холодные островные здания” (.. .where the banks were low, where the cold island buildings crouched obediently) [Белый / Bely 1994 b, 17].

The descriptions of the characters’ appearances, introduced into the novel, do not provide the reader with a graphic visual image. At the same time many external features lean towards hyperbolization, an intentional and numerous emphasizing of certain details: “Аполлон Аполлонович повернулся и увидел -тот самый взгляд; голова сенатора мгновенно передернулась тиком, кожа дрянно так собралась в морщинки над черепом и чуть дернулись угии ” (Apollon Apollonovich turned around and saw the same look; the senator’s head instantly twitched with a tick, the skin nastily formed wrinkles above the skull and the ears twitched slightly) [Белый / Bely 1994 b, 223]; “...голая, как колено, поверхность громадного черепа да два оттопыренных уха ей напомнили что-то” (.. .the surface of that huge skull, naked as a knee, and the two protruding ears seemed to remind her of something) [Белый / Bely 1994 b, 400]; “Незнакомец поднял глаза и - за зеркальным каретным стеклом, от себя в четырехвершковом пространстве, увидал не лицо он, а... череп в цилиндре да огромное бледно-зеленое ухо ” (The stranger raised his eyes and saw not a face behind the mirrored glass of the carriage, but a skull in a top hat and a huge pale green ear, no further than eight inches from himself) [Белый / Bely 1994 b, 21-22]; “...из отверстия двери на незнакомца просунулся, будто кинулся, голый череп с увеличенных размеров ушами; череп и голова Александра Ивановича едва не стукнулись лбами” (...the huge skull with increased in size ears almost rushed at the stranger from the opening in the door; the skull and Aleksandr Ivanovich’s head almost knocked foreheads) [Белый / Bely 1994 b, 92]; “Паршивенькая фигурка низкорослого господинчика составляла главное содержание силуэта второго; лицо силуэта было достаточно видно: но лица также мы не успели увидеть, ибо мы удивились огромности его бородавки^-, так лицевую субстанцию заслонила от нас нахальная акциденция” (The feeble figure of the man with low stature made up the primary portion of the silhouette of the other one; the face of that silhouette was visible: but we couldn’t see this face, for we were surprised by its huge wart; thus, this impudent accident obscured the face from our vision) [Белый / Bely 1994 b, 33]. One might get an impression that something constantly diverts attention from the faces; even though the character has a face, the huge wart jumps to the foreground, obscuring most visual features.

The wordsmiths of the early 20th century “continued in Chekhov’s footsteps, who used to substitute an entire description of a character’s appearance with one accentuated detail that had heightened associativity, using Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky’s artistic experience as the foundation” [Шишкина / Shishkina

1987, 51]. In F. Sologub’s novel “The Petty Demon”, for example, it is only a tendency, but in A. Bely’s “Petersburg” and L.N. Andreyev’s novel “Sashka Zhegulev” a single sketchy detail of a character’s appearance, repeated multiple times, becomes a cue for the emotional tone of the entire text:

...судорожно закатились каменные глаза, обведенные синевой; кисти рук, одетые в черную замшу, подлетели на уровень груди, будто он защищался руками. И корпус откинулся, а цилиндр, стукнувшись в стенку, упал на колени под оголенною головой... Безотчетность сенаторского движенья не поддавалась обычному толкованию; кодекс правил сенатора ничего такого не предусматривал... Созерцая текущие силуэты - котелки, перья, фуражки, фуражки, фуражки, перья - Аполлон Аполлонович уподоблял их точкам на небосводе; но одна из их точек срываяся с орбиты, с головокружительной быстротой понеслась на него, принимая форму громадного и багрового шара, то есть, хочу я сказать <...> созерцая текущие силуэты (фуражки, фуражки перья), Аполлон Аполлонович из фуражек, из перьев, из котелков увидал с угла пару бешеных глаз: глаза выражали одно недопустимое свойство; глаза узнали сенатора; и, узнавши, сбесились; может быть, глаза поджидали с угла; и, увидев, расширились, засветились, блеснули [Белый / Bely 1994 b, 21].

The eyes are the leitmotif of the entire novel, strengthened by repetitions in certain necessary moments. The eyes get “detached” from the character and cover the entire appearance of the person, which prevents the reader from forming a complete image of this character.

A detail, which substitutes the whole and is increased to an immense size is a paradoxical hint at impersonality that also helps establish the “tone” of the text. The noses are a symbol of the crowd, a rustling “millipede”: “Сосредоточенно побежали там лица; тротуары шептались и шаркали; растирались калошами; плыл торжественно обывательский нос. Носы протекали во множестве: орлиные, утиные, петушиные, зеленоватые, белые; протекало здесь и отсутствие всякого носа. Здесь текли одиночки, и пары, и тройки- четверки; и за котелком котелок: котелки, перья, фуражки; фуражки, фуражки, перья; треуголка, цилиндр, фуражка; платочек, зонтик, перо” (The faces ran about intently; the pavements whispered and shuffled galoshes; some commoner’s nose drifted along solemnly. The noses passed along numerously: noses like beaks of eagles, ducks, roosters, green noses and white noses; even the lack of any nose passed along here. Singular noses, pairs, trios and quartets; top-hat after top-hat: top-hats, feathers, peaked caps, peaked caps, peaked caps; a cocked hat, a cylinder hat, a peaked cap; a handkerchief, an umbrella, a feather) [Белый/Bely 1994b, 17].

N.M. Gurovich in her thesis on the subject of character portrait in the structure of an epic written work on the material of M. Yu. Lermontov and N.V. Gogol’s work calls A. Bely the continuator of the grotesque tradition of portrait descriptions and puts him in line with such writers as F.M. Dostoyevsky, N.S. Leskov, A.M. Remizov.

“A grotesque appearance is commonly considered a deviation from the artistic norm, in which certain details of an image are hyperbolized. The exaggeration of certain forms in a character’s image is seen by the scholars as an attempt of the authors to emphasize some trait of a character, making it visible, which is impossible with a “realistic” portrayal” [Гурович / Gurovich 2009, 33]. Several scholars besides Gurovich separate the grotesque and classic portraits, however such distinction does not take into account the processes that took place in literature at the beginning of the 20th century. Bely’s portrait, for example, can be classified as “grotesque”, however the fact that it is unfinished - and that it will remain this way - is not the only feature of portraits in Bely’s prose. Grotesque portrait in Gogol’s works lacks definitive borders and remains unfinished, yet it retains its characterological function. In Bely’s portraits, on the other hand, this function is reduced to the bare minimum.

Generally, the observations on the peculiarities of including the visual characteristics of characters in the “Petersburg” novel lead to the following conclusions. The creation of characters’ appearance in “Petersburg” is defined by the lack of composure and thoroughness and the absence of the characterological function (the indications of the connection between external changes and internal processes), a tendency to on one hand accentuate certain body parts or facial features (eyes, back, etc.) and to highlight certain details while mixing the features of a character’s appearance and their surroundings and on the other hand introduce portrait details to inanimate objects (i.e. anthropomorphosis).

This is not, by any means, a complete list of peculiarities of portraits in the “Petersburg” novel, however it allows us to actualize a number of theoretical issues.

Evidently, it is impractical to distinguish the external features of characters as a closed integral system. Writing about this peculiarity of visual description of a character, E.B. Eager stated that “different writers have different intrinsic principles of artistic worldview, and these principles influence a writer’s depiction of nature, things and furniture, i.e. the entire artistic and depicting sphere of the art of literature equally” [Tarep / Eager I960, 378]. Ehe depiction of a char- acter’s appearance “is used as one of the expressive moments” [Tarep / Tager I960, 378], and the difference between landscape, interior and portrait within the text structure gets erased. Tager is also the one to make an important notice, that the term “portrait” is a very nominal one, as it has no direct connection to an artistic or sculptural portrait. In regards to “Petersburg” it might be more fitting to call it “verbal plastic”, the visualization of a character’s image with its specific structure and functions within a given literary work.

Besides, it is clear that the notions and reference points that the theory of literature had offered before (the “portrait”, its function and various typologies) can only be applied to interpret the peculiarities of the “Petersburg” poetics only nominally.

Several attempts to interpret the general theory of arts in regards to A. Bely’s prose were presented in “The Craft of Portrait” collected works, published by the State Academy of Artistic Studies in 1928 [The Craft of Portrait 1928] on the subject of the history of artistic portrait and certain arts, which was in a way a reaction to the novel works of literature and art that appeared in the beginning of the 20th century. It is known that interpreting and understanding the portrait forms within the framework of art studies is not always beneficial for the theory of literature, however we think that in the case of symbolist prose N.I. Zhinkin’s understanding of portrait as seen in “Portrait Forms” article takes into consideration the personality of the author, since the “portrait” is not only the “face” of a painting, but rather a reflection of the model’s personality, as well as that of the author, which merge into an entirely new “face” when combined [Жинкин / Zhinkin 1928, 27].

To elaborate on the particularities of appearance visualisation in written works created in different eras one may base their studies on three reference points pointed out by Zhinkin with the example of visual portrait (we do not refer to directly applying art history methods to a work of literature). “Artistic expressive forms” are important for the reader’s perception: these include the way a character is written into the nerrative, the way their traits and features are presented throughout the text (a general description of how the visual features are introduced into the text, the way it was demonstrated on the example of visual features in the “Petersburg” novel) and the “artist’s gesture” [Жинкин / Zhinkin 1928, 28] - the way they use meaningful details, for example, and whether they use or avoid “plastic” imagery or picturesqueness [Вельфлин / Vel’flin 2002, 21 ] (especially for writers that paint or artists that write) - as well as “the gesture in a figurative sense of the word” [Жинкин / Zhinkin 1928, 28]: an artist’s worldview, the times they lived in and their affiliation with artistic schools.

This article deals with certain aspects of the characters’ appearance visualisation and points out the impracticality of analysing portrait as a closed integral system. Thus, the term “visualization of appearance” seems to be the most suitable to denote the visual features in the “Petersburg” novel.