| This is a study of the two best known novels of the Russian Symbolist Fedor Sologub: Melkij bes (The Petty Demon, 1892-1902) and Tvorimaja legenda (A Legend in Creation, 1907-1914). The Petty Demon has always been popular both in The Soviet Union and in the West while hardly anyone reads A Legend in Creation, which Sologub considered his masterpiece. An attempt is made to account for this disparity in the reputations of the two novels.It is suggested that although both The Petty Demon and A Legend in Creation are very unusual novels which violate many nineteenth-century novelistic conventions, they differ in an important respect: in The Petty Demon Sologub is able to create and adhere to a new set of conventions while in A Legend in Creation he is not. A Legend in Creation is a fascinating utopian, mythic fantasy, but too private a work to be widely accessible. Seen historically, Sologub's disregard for artistic conventions in the later novel parallels the general withdrawal of artists from society and the despair of the intelligentsia in Russia after the failure of the 1905 Revolution.Generally, a novel can be seen as the outcome of a dialectic between a set of conventions (the kind of plot, characters, setting, and narration that the well-educated reader expects in a novel), and the writer's individuality. Too great a violation of novelistic conventions will frustrate and disorient the reader, rendering the novel inaccessible to the majority. Too literal an observance of convention can result in a formula novel. |
