Petersburg
by Andrei Bely
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Book Summary Information
Author: Andrei BelyTranslator: John Elsworth
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); Russian (Original Language); English (Published)
Format: Deluxe Edition
Published: 2009-05-01
ISBN: 1901285960
Number of pages: 570
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Book Reviews of Petersburg
Book Review: Selecting the Right Version is Important
Summary: 5 Stars
Petersburg is a novel of impressions rather than events. Using brilliant colors but indistinct outlines and shifting realities, Andrei Bely depicts a Russian nation on the verge of collapse. The unforgettable setting is St. Petersburg, the capital of Czarist Russia, in October 1905. Russia's military defeat by Japan earlier in the year has set off a wave of political paranoia, intellectual disquiet, and social unrest. Caught up in this are a father and son, Apollon and Nikolai Ableukhov. The father is a high government official, passionless and inflexible. The son is a student of philosophy, his father's antithesis in every respect.
Among Nikolai's many dilettantish involvements is his connection to an unnamed revolutionary "Party." As the novel begins, this is the furthest thing from his mind as he is madly in love with Sofia Petrovna, an officer's wife. Then, out of nowhere, comes an emissary from the Party with a mysterious package and orders which Nikolai must not fail to carry out... orders to assassinate his own father!
Bely writes with the fervid intensity of Dostoevsky, but from the philosophical perspective of fellow modernists such as James Joyce. Petersburg has, in fact, been compared with Ulysses for the way in which a city becomes the central character in the novel. But Bely's novel is vastly more readable. It is a shame that it wasn't discovered by the English-speaking world until long after the author's death.
It is important to note that there are two versions of the novel. Bely was, for some reason, unhappy with the original version published in 1914, so in 1922 he shortened it drastically. This shortened version was the one first translated into English by John Cournos. I read it several years ago, and found it to be disjointed and difficult to follow. Subsequent translators have returned to the original 1914 edition. The most recent such translation is by John Elsworth from Pushkin Press, and is the one I am reviewing. It is an enormous improvement over Cournos's version, crafted in beautiful but intense prose, and well worth the time spent on the additional 200 pages.
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