A Study On Spatial Narrative Of Petersburg

Andre Bely is a symbolist writer in the Silver Age of Russia,and his novel "Petersburg" is one of his masterpieces.Bely’s "Petersburg" not only inherited Pushkin,Gogol,and Dostoevsky’s writing tradition of Petersburg but also surpassed the writing tradition of Petersburg text in the space construction and text structure with a modernist attitude.With a traditional structure,Nabokov listed it as one of the masterpieces of Western modernist literature along with "The Metamorphosis," "Ulysses," and "In Search of Lost Time".Bely has a keen perception of the huge conflicts behind the city.The city is no longer the background and field of the story but has transformed into the protagonist of the novel.The traditional depiction of the physical space of the city cannot show the division of Petersburg at the turn of the century,the sense of human absurdity,the hidden political violence,and other urban images.As a "form of imagination",the city completely captures the consciousness and soul of the characters,and the broken mental images of the characters also project and create the conceptual representation of the city,which is close to the crisis atmosphere of Russia in the early 20 th century in both reality and imagination.With the shaping of urban physical space and abstract spiritual space,Bely’s thinking on the social crisis and development direction of modernity in Petersburg also surfaced.This paper is divided into six parts in the structure of discussion.The introduction part discusses the domestic and foreign research situation of "Petersburg" and the research review of spatial narrative theory.The first chapter discusses the physical space of Petersburg in Petersburg.This chapter mainly from the illusory living space of the urban space and the alienation of two levels to cut into the analysis of the typical physical space in the novel,excavate its space significance,summed up the Petersburg physical picture is not reflect the real details,but with its symbolic meaning involved in the narrative text.The second chapter discusses the spiritual space of Petersburg in "Petersburg".This chapter analyzes the heterogeneous city conception and the clustered urban experience.The different subject consciousnesses in "Petersburg" conceive their own "city map in mind" and become a certain symbol of the spatial function of Petersburg.Through the extreme perception and experience of the characters in Petersburg,Bely portrays the spiritual space of the transitional group,reflecting the city’s oppression of the residents of Petersburg.Chapter Three discusses the Petersburg social space of "Petersburg".This chapter combines Lefebvre’s ternary dialectics of space and Michel Foucault’s theory of space power to explore the power space of the city over the rule of people and the rebellion and escape of people in the power space,which embodies Bely’s influence on Russia.Criticism of the existing social space and concern for the whereabouts of the Russian nation.The fourth chapter combines the space narrative and critical theories of Bakhtin,Joseph Frank and others,and focuses on the text space in "Petersburg".It is concluded that Bely relies on the unique space-time form,perspective conversion,and juxtaposed spatial form to fully interpret the works.The concluding part concludes that Bely constructed the narrative space and text space of "Petersburg" through a unique form,thereby achieving the harmonious unity of aesthetic value and ideological value.This paper argues that the "Petersburg",in the form of a symbol to depict the urban physical space and spiritual space and general,highlights the illusory nature of the city,to expose the Petersburg oppressive social space,at the same time,by relying on complex text space narrative strategy,reflecting the writer for Russian Petersburg development model in the modernization drive of reflection and criticism.