Russian Author

Kotik Letaev

---

By Andrei Bely
Translated by GERALD J. JANECEK

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 1999 Northwestern University Press. All rights reserved.
ISBN: 0-8101-1626-X

---

Chapter One

The Labyrinth of Delirium

A time of inexpressible anguish ...
All is in me ... and I am in all.

—F. Tyutchev

"Thou—art."

The first "thou—art" grips me in imageless deliria; and—

— in age-old, immemorially familiar ones: inexpressibilities, unprecedentednesses of consciousness lying in the body, the mathematically precise sensation that you are both you and not you, but ... a kind of swelling into nowhere and nothing, which all the same is not to be mastered, and—

—"What is this?" ...

Thus would I condense in a word the unutterability of the rising of my infant life:—

—the pain of sitting in organs; the sensations were horrible; and—thingless; nonetheless—age-old: immemorially familiar—

—there was no division into "I" and "Not-I," there was no space, no time ...

And instead of this there was:—

—a state of sensations in tension; as if everything were expanding-expanding-expanding: spreading and smothering; and everything was beginning to rush about in itself as wing-horned storm clouds.

Later a semblance arose: a sphere experiencing itself; the sphere, many eyed and turned inward, experiencing itself, sensed only—"inside"; it sensed invincible distances: from the periphery to ... the center.

And consciousness was: a growing consciousness of the unencompassable, an embracing of the unencompassable; the invincible distances of space created a horrible sensation; sensation was running from the circumference of the spherical semblance—to grope: inside itself ... farther; as sensation, consciousness inside itself ... crawled: inside itself; a vague knowledge was being attained: consciousness was being transferred; it rushed from the periphery to the center like wing-horned storm clouds; and—it was tormented.

—"That's not allowed."

—"Without end."

—"I'm being pulled over ..."

—"Help ..."

The center—was flashing:—

—"I'm alone in the unencompassable."

—"There is nothing inside; everything is—outside ..."

And it was snuffed out again. Consciousness, expanding, ran back.

—"That's not allowed, that's not allowed: Help ..."

"I'm—expanding ..."—

—that's what the little child would have said if he could have spoken, if he could have understood; but—he could not speak; and—he could not understand; and—the little child cried out: why?—they were not understanding, they did not understand.

. . . . . . . . .

The Formation of Consciousness

In that far-distant time "I" didn't exist ...—

—There was a sickly little body; and consciousness, embracing it, experienced itself in impenetrable unencompassability; nonetheless, being penetrated by consciousness, the body puffed up with growth, like a Grecian sponge absorbing water; consciousness was outside the body; in place of a body there was a sense of an immense chasm: of consciousness in our meaning of the word, where there was still no thought, where still appearing ...—

—(if these sensations had remained for me in my future days and if their full intelligence had arisen in this dark place and illuminated my body; if I could have turned my gaze into myself and illuminated myself—then I would have seen: our sky; the clouds there run on thunders in my sky of spiritual-soulness in a white outpouring; and the outpouring—are windy and branching; and—they leaf out; everything is thrown about by thoughts; and all of this is reflected: in the sky above us; that's why it speaks to us; and that's why we recognize it ...)—

—where there was still no thought, where still appearing to me were: the first bubblings of delirium.

. . . . . . . . .

Foam was formed for me: warmth was foaming up for me; and I was tormented by a red heat-glow; the drenched body was bubbling over with consciousness (bones in acids hiss with bubbly foam); and up foamed ... the first image: my life began to bubble with images; and up on these foams for me foamed:—

—things and thoughts ...

. . . . . . . . .

The world and thought are only the foams: of menacing cosmic images; blood pulsates with their flight; thoughts are lit by their fires; and these images are—myths.

Myths are ancient being: like the continents, like the seas, these myths rose up to me once; the baby wandered in them; he was also delirious in them like everyone at first: everyone wandered in them; and when they collapsed, then everyone became delirious from them ... for the first time; in the beginning—they lived in them.

Nowadays the ancient myths have fallen away below us as seas; and as oceans of deliria they rage and lick the firmness: of lands and consciousnesses; visibility was appearing in them; "I" and "Not-I" was appearing; and separatenesses. But the seas advanced: a fateful legacy, the cosmos burst into actuality; in vain one hid in the shreds of actuality; everything melted in unprotectedness: everything was expanding; the lands were disappearing in the seas; consciousness was being torn up in myths of the horrible Progenitress; and the floods bubbled.

A thought-ark—was being built; consciousnesses from the world which had gone away below us floated past it to ... a new world.

The fateful floods still rage in us (the threshold of consciousness is unstable): be careful—they will gush out.

We Arose in the Seas

In us are worlds—of seas: of "Mothers"; and they rage in redfrenzied gangs of deliria ...

My childhood body is a delirium of "mothers"; outside it there is only an eye; this eye is a bubble on a flying whirlpool: it would appear and ... it's gone; only my head is in the world: my feet are still in the womb; the womb has bound my feet: and I sense myself to be—snake legged; and my thoughts are snake-legged myths: I am experiencing titanicity.

All thoughts are like whirlpools: the ocean beats in each one; and it pours into the body—like a cosmic tempest; childhood thought arising resembles a comet; now it falls into the body; and—its tail turns bloody; and—it pours out in rains of bloody carbuncles: into the ocean of sensations; and in between body and thought, in a whirlpool of water and fire, someone has catapulted the baby; and—the baby is frightened.

. . . . . . . . . .

—"Help ..."

—"No strength"

—"Save me ..."

. . . . . . . . .

—"It's growth, madame."

. . . . . . . . .

—"Help ..."

—"No strength"

—"Save me ..."

. . . . . . . . .

The little child does not know how to shout like this (he will shout like this later); snakes are crawling—in him, around him; they are filling his cradle; and—they hiss in his ears.

You have heard this hiss—in a quiet midday hour when everything is still and the sun is shooting rays ...

You have heard this whistle already: the whistle of pines.

. . . . . . . . .

I continue to envelop with words the very first events of life:—

—to me sensation is a snake: in it—desire, feeling, and thought run away into one immense, snake-legged body: of the Titan; the Titan is smothering me; and my consciousness is tearing out: it has torn out—it is gone ...—

—with the exception of a certain point, precipitated—

—into nillions of aeons!—

—to master the measureless ...

It—did not attempt to master.

. . . . . . . . .

This is—the first event of being; remembering holds it firmly; and precisely describes it; if it is such (and it is)—

—prebody life is exposed at one of its edges ... in the fact of memory.

The Old Woman

The first semblance of an image was an accretion onto the imagelessness of my states.

It was not a dream: a dream is what one wakes up from; I, though ...—had not waked up yet; actuality and dream did not alternate with each other in my given world. The givenness itself was posed as a difficult question ...

Unawakednesses swarmed up for me to wakedness—

—I both lived

and struggled in bubblings!—

—unawakednesses, not similar to dreams ...

No, they are not dreams, but—I would say—

—spyings behind one's back; and—the desire to start from place; not rushings in whirlwinds of meaninglessness, being developed thousand-wingedly, momentarily, and falling apart into thousands of tornados flying thousand-wingedly—not such rushings into "I" (with space lying inside it), but ...—a movement in something: in my own self (for me space had already become established) ...—

—if I moved—it was beginning, it was becoming established—most of all behind my back: something like that; it—was not me, but was—so fiery, red: spherical and searing; in a word—old-womany: why? I could not say.

Imagelessness was forming into an image: and—an image was formed.

Inexpressibilities, unprecedentednesses of consciousness lying in the body—the sensation that you are both you and not you, but a kind of swelling—was experienced now approximately thus:—

—you are not you, because next to you an old woman—has half stuck to you: spherical and searing; that's her swelling; and you—no: you are all right, okay, nothing to do with it ...

—But everything was becoming old-womany.

I was again being filled up with the old woman: this is the way a turkey fills up its slackened wattle—to bright red puffiness; this extension or extenuation in the surrounding, devouring, crawling, bustling, whirlpool emptiness was turning out to be: invisibly lying down, hugging, sucking; all you had to do was move and this frankly old-womany thing lying next to you—

—would quickly dash away; for a moment it would become visible to me:—

—as if the dark itself had melted in fiery slashes: a lightning centipede would spread out in fire-horned flocks and run around in the distressed, black firmness ...—

—then the frenzied sphere would flame up and ...—

—the darkness would fall apart into a red world of circling carbuncles ...

. . . . . . . . .

I don't know when it was, but I ... spied on her: behind my back—

—as she, describing an arc in space, collapsed directly into my back: out of the hurricanes of a red world, shooting a rain of carbuncles; her white-hot head bent around with its champing mouth and very nasty eyes; I rushed over the precipice; and above me in cliffs of light and heat she fell down—onto my back; and, once she had grabbed my back, she made circles with me in space ...—

—I myself was a circle.

. . . . . . . . .

I think that "old woman" is one of my out-of-body conditions not wanting to accept "I" and living: an isolated, special, age-old life; this life sprouts at times: in senile old women and insane people who lapse into childhood; and—it rushes by in thundery summer lightning during July nights; its cockles rustle in the dust of life:

The wenchy prattle of the Parcae ...
The mousy bustle of life ...

A gossiping woman even now reminds me of the "old woman ": in her there is something "mystical ..."

Burning As If on Fire

My first conscious moment is—a dot; it penetrates the meaninglessness; and—expanding, it becomes a sphere, but the sphere—flies apart: the meaninglessness, penetrating it, tears it apart ...

Flocks of soapy spheres fly out of a light straw ... A sphere would fly out, tremble, play out with sparkle; and—burst; a tiny drop of viscous fluid, puffed up by the air, would begin to play with the lights of the world ... Nothing, something, and again nothing; once again something; all is in me, I am in all ... Such are my first moments ... Then—

—scarcely noticeable torches flashed; darkness began to crawl off me (like skin from a young snake); sensations were separating from skin: they went away under my skin: out fell black-born lands—

—my skin became like ... a vault: space is like this for us; my first impression of it is that it is—a corridor ...—

—later I conceive of our corridor as a remembering of the time when it had been my skin; it would move with me; if you turn around behind—it squeezes together into a hole; ahead it opens up to the light; little passageways, corridors, and alleys are familiar to me later; even too familiar: here is an "I"; and there is an "I" ...

Rooms are—parts of the body; they have been thrown off by me; and—they hang over me, in order to fall apart for me afterward and become: black-born land; I have been forming things inside my body for millennia; and out of my body I throw: my strange buildings—

—(even today:—I am shaping a temple of thought in my head, solidifying it as ... a skull; I will remove my skull; I will make it—the cupola of a temple; the time will come: I will walk through a huge temple; and I will walk out of the temple: as easily as we walk out of a room).

. . . . . . . . .

Sensations were separating from skin: the skin became—a pendule; I crawled in it as if in a long pipe; and after me—they crawled: from the hole; the entrance into life is like this ...—

—At first there were no images, but there was a place for them in the pendule ahead; very soon they opened up: my nursery room; the hole was healing over from behind, turning—into a stove mouth (the stove mouth is—a remembering of something old and long since disappeared: the wind howls in the stovepipe about pretemporal consciousness); between the holes (of my past and future) went a current of surpassing images: they would huddle up, expand, change shape, dash about, and, drenching me with boiling water, they would stick to me (their remnants are the wallpaper: and at night they rush for me as the starry sky rushes past) ... An extremely long reptile, Uncle Vasya, used to crawl out at me from behind: snake legged, mustached, he was then cut into pieces; one piece of him used to drop in on us for dinner, and later I encountered another: on the cover of a very useful booklet, Extinct Monsters; it is called a "dinosaur"; they say—they have died out; I still encountered them: in the first moments of consciousness.

Here is my image of entering into life: a corridor, a vault and darkness; serpents are rushing after me ...—

—this image is akin to the image of a journey through temple corridors accompanied by a bullheaded man with a staff ...—

. . . . . . . . .

All this was etched into me by the voice of my mother:

—"He is burning as if on fire!"

They later told me that I was continually sick: with dysentery, with scarlet fever, and with measles: at exactly that time ...

Doctor Dorionov

I remember a little room: I don't remember the things in it; but—disorder in everything; everything was—tossed about topsyturvy, dug up as ... in my soul—which was palpitating, alarmed, frightened because ...—

—Grandma, shaken by fears, but hiding the fears from me and yet infecting me with fears—is sitting there rolling cigarettes for herself: without a bonnet, bald; her forehead wrinkles up when, raising her eyes above her eyeglasses, she gazes at me frowning—in a brown housecoat which stands out against a wall—of tobacco smoke; and in the flickerings of the candle, the housecoat and bald spot do not seem good to me. I know—it's bad: completely bad even; but why—this I cannot understand; perhaps because Grandma's indecency is open to me (instead of a bonnet with lilac ribbons, an entirely bare head), perhaps because a whole half of the wall is entirely absent: not four walls—three walls; the fourth—has been thrown open in a dark-bottomed grin with a multitude of rooms—

—it's all rooms,
rooms, rooms!—

—step into them and you will not come back, and you will be grabbed by things, it's not yet clear by what kind, but, it seems, by armchairs in severe gray slipcovers which stick out in the deaf-mute dark; the essence though is not in the armchairs, but, so to speak, in the extensions of airy material and in the open possibility of sensing the chilly race of a draft from room to room, of seeing an armchair jump ... in a mirror. In a word—bad rooms!

Meanwhile: conscious of the unthinkableness of being there, all the same, in spite of everything, someone had become active there; and—he carelessly fusses among the chairs—sits awhile, walks awhile, lumbers around, and directs—his aimless step, barely perceptible from here, around the distant voids ...

If one is entirely quiet, then the step will not want to come closer, because it prefers to make noise there alone rather than to bother us with the horrible possibility of experiencing the invasion of the step; and—the main thing: to feel—the lack of a wall separating you from the step; it is possible to live in such a situation; moving around is also possible perhaps; but—without making a single noise; make noise, and—it will start: to make noises, to stamp its feet, to get stronger, regenerating rumbles.

I feel the impossibility of further remaining without a single sound: I want to give out a sound; Grandma, giving a shudder like an aspen leaf, threatens me with her hand:

—"None of that: no, no, no!"

I—make a loud click: and oh!—what I did!

It—is occurring, it has already occurred, because the one who has been living there, summoned by the noise, is slogging around already; and he is already getting stronger; from far, far away he answers my summons; and—ti:-te:-ta:-to:-tu!—he makes stomping noises for me: he is that very one (but who, I don't know) ... This happened many many times: out of the darkness the rumbles of the pointless, severe step treaded; if one ran up to the little bed and if, wrapped up, one fell asleep, then nothing would happen: it all would end; already falling asleep, I would be hearing the dissolution of the rumble into a quiet whistle and the snoring of someone calmly sleeping ...

Too late ...—

—out toward me
from the black
rumble ran—

—a quite prosaic fat man with a short neck, blond haired, a healthy fellow: he would turn his paunch around; he would sparkle at me with his gold eyeglasses; and—with his little golden beard; later he appeared also when I was awake: this was Dorionov, Artyom Dosifeevich, my doctor; they later told me that I was continually sick; and at that very time. Doctor Dorionov, I remember—had monstrous galoshes, soled with something hard: and, arriving in the vestibule, he would produce a rumble with them; I always recognized him by the thunder-bearing stomps, by the huge raccoon coat hanging in the vestibule, and by the sharp ring at the entrance door; before he appeared, I would develop: aching leg pains; he would prescribe cod-liver oil; and with this he would slap himself on the knees, rupturing himself with good-natured laughter; it seems he raised canaries at home; and when he heard a song—

a gray-winged swallow hovers
beneath my jamb-framed window—

—then tears would flood his face: he used to play checkers with Father, and he would tease Grandma and maintain that we didn't live on a sphere, but—in a sphere.

. . . . . . . . .

I think that the rushing and the rumbles are: the body's pulsations; consciousness, entering the body, experiences it as a lumbering giant; the events of this dream are explainable to me thus.

And—I think ...—

And I Think ...

--Passages, rooms, corridors, remind us of our body, give us the image of our body; they show us our body; they are the organs of the body ... of the universe, the corpse of which is the world visible to us; we have thrown it off from ourselves: and it has congealed outside us; they are the bones of earlier forms of life among which we walk; the visible world is the corpse of the distant past; we lower ourselves to it out of our genuine state of being—to rework its forms; thus we enter the gateway of birth; passages, rooms, corridors, remind us of our past; they give us the image of our past; they are the organs ... of past life ...—

—passages, rooms, corridors, arising in my first moments of consciousness, transfer me into the most ancient era of life: into the cave period; I experience the life of black voids hollowed out in the mountains with fires and beings running around in the blackness, gripped by fear; the beings penetrate the depths of the holes because winged monsters stand guard at the entrance of the holes; I experience the cave period; I experience life in catacombs; I experience ... Egypt beneath the pyramids: we live in the body of the Sphinx; rooms, corridors, are the voids between the bones of the Sphinx's body; if I chisel into the wall ... I won't find Arbat Street: and—I won't find Moscow; maybe ... I will see expanses of the Libyan desert; in the middle of it stands ... a Lion: he is waiting for me...

. . . . . . . . .

Imagine a human skull:—

—huge, huge, huge, exceeding all dimensions, all temples; imagine ... It rises before you: its porous whiteness has risen up as a temple carved in a mountain; a powerful temple with a white cupola materializes out of the darkness; inimitable are the curvatures of its walls; inimitable are its chiseled surfaces; inimitable are the architraves of columns at its entrance: a colossal, chiseled mouth; a multidentil-columned mouth, the entrance opens up the measureless, dusk-blown halls of the skull's compartments; rocky peaks rise up into the dusk of the vault; the bony vaults echo back and forth in a resonant clamor; and—they reach down to embrace you; and—they form a huge polyphony of the developing cosmos; and ponderously, precipitously, the indentations descend; gazes fall into grins of gorges—multiform holes—of passages leading in rapid lines off into the labyrinth of semicircular canals; you go out to the altar place—above the ossis sphenoidei ... Here is where the priest will come; and—you wait: before you is the interior of the forehead: suddenly it breaks apart; and through the breach made in the gray-black, bewhistled, wind-licked world rush: walls of light and torrents; and they fall like swirls of howling, singing rays: they begin to lash you in the face:

—"He's coming, he's coming; look—he's coming"—

—and the shags of diamond torrents are borne off under your feet: into the cavelike windings of the skull ... And you see that He is coming in ... He stands amidst a radiant roar of rays, amidst the clean facets of the walls; everything is white and diamond; and—he looks ... That Very One ... And—with the very same glance ... which you recognize as ... the one that has been resounding in your soul: immemorially familiar, very cherished, forgettable never ...

A voice:—

—"I ...

It has come, it has come, it has come: It has come—"I ..."

. . . . . . . . .

Picture a skeleton: it has thrown out its arms—bones—in the form of a cross; and—it is motionlessly stretched out, in order to ... rise on the third day ...

Picture:—

—you—tiny-tiny-tiny—defenselessly plummeted into nillions of aeons—to try to overcome them and master them—are gripped by the black whistles of voids and you are rushing forward as a quick-moving point (this is the first breakthrough of consciousness: remembering holds it firmly and precisely describes it); prebody life is horribly and darkly exposed; the old woman is rushing after you; and in a hurricane of the red world she has stretched out her giant arms; and you are unprotected; suddenly --a push: you—itty-bitty have suddenly knocked against the skeletal body of the temple; you escape into the interior of the temple; and you hear how the oceans of the red world are smashing themselves against it: there the old woman has bent down; she cannot enter—

—picture: you are entering; and—you raise your head: to the left and to the right run symmetrical rib-vaults; their surfaces are whimsically arched; they rise up before you like a memory ... of memory; the wonderful arcs of the skeleton temple; in front is a passage ... to the white altar; and the skull is there; from the huge, resonant halls, amid the white splendor of juttings, you turn back—toward the exit; worlds of delirium are burning there; amazement, confusion, fear, seize control: actuality, from which you have fallen, is—still not the world.

And finding oneself in the temple is similar to the question:

—"How? ..."

—"What for?"

—"Why?"

—"How did you get here?"

Light pours forth from the altar: this "I," a priest, is consummating rites there; and—he elevates his arms:

—"I, I."

You have recognized Him.

He stands there as "I": and toward you holds out—the purest hands ... This gesture—the gesture of the visiting Priest—the gesture of elevated arms was imprinted, of course, by the arcs above His eyebrows: upon finishing the radiant matins, the Priest will depart; you will not see him for years ... He will return to his homeland ...

. . . . . . . . .

Contemplation of the skull is strange: and it is the memory of a memory of the splendid skeleton temple hollowed out by our "I" in cliffs of black gloom; in the temple of the body—lie the plans of temples; and from the temple ruins, I believe, will rise: a temple of the body.

Scripture proclaims this to us ...

. . . . . . . . .

Contemplation of the skull consoles, reminds, and—dimly teaches something. The gesture of arcs above the eyebrows is known to us; this is the gesture of the winged "I" risen up from a covered coffin, from a cave, in order to ascend at some time; in order to ... return to its homeland ...

(Continues...)