Читать книгу The Little Demon - Fyodor Sologub - Страница 4

This novel, "The Little Demon," was begun in 1892 and finished in 1902. It originally appeared in 1905 in the periodical "Voprosi Zhizni," but without its final chapters. It was first published in its complete form in March, 1907, in the "Shipovnik" edition.

There are two dissenting opinions among those I have seen expressed in print as well as among those I have chanced to hear personally:

There are some who think that the author, being a very wicked man, wished to draw his own portrait, and has represented himself in the person of the instructor Peredonov. To judge from his frankness it would appear that the author did not have the slightest wish to justify or to idealise himself, and has painted his face in the blackest colours. He has accomplished this rather astonishing undertaking in order to ascend a kind of Golgotha, and to expiate his sins for some reason or other. The result is an interesting and harmless novel.

Interesting, because it shows what wicked people there are in this world. Harmless, because the reader can say: "This was not written about me."

Others, more considerate toward the author, are of the opinion that the Peredonovstchina portrayed in this novel is a sufficiently widespread phenomenon.

Others go even further and say that if every one of us should examine himself intently he would discover unmistakable traits of Peredonov.

Of these two opinions I give preference to the one most agreeable to me, namely, the second. I did not find it indispensable to create and invent out of myself; all that is episodic, realistic, and psychologic in any novel is based on very precise observation, and I found sufficient "material" for my novel around me. And if my labours on this novel have been rather prolonged, it has been in order to elevate to necessity whatever is here by chance; so that the austere Ananke should reign on the throne of Aisa, the prodigal scatterer of episodes.

It is true that people love to be loved. They are pleased with the portrayal of the nobler, loftier aspects of the soul. Even in villains they want to see a spark of nobility, "the divine spark," as people used to say in the old days. That is why they do not want to believe the picture that confronts them when it is true, exact, gloomy, and evil. They say: "It is not about me."

No, my dear contemporaries, it is of you that I have written my novel, about the Little Demon and his dreadful Nedotikomka, about Ardalyon and Varvara Peredonov, Pavel Volodin, Darya, Liudmilla, and Valeria Routilov, Aleksandr Pilnikov and the others. About you.

This novel is a mirror—very skilfully made. I have spent a long time in polishing it, I have laboured over it zealously.

The surface of my mirror is pure. It has been remeasured again and again, and most carefully verified; it has not a single blemish.

The monstrous and the beautiful are reflected in it with equal precision.