While his contribution to politics over the years helped him climb the social ladder, he is looked down on by the masses for the same reason. He is described as an unattractive man, but one with a significant amount of power and control. The plot centers around Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov, a senator and a decorated officer at the Institution. What is Andrei Bely’s Petersburg about?Īt over 500 pages, Petersburg is a long novel but covers a period of only 24-hours. I plan to rectify this oversight, and as I finish up Petersburg, I am already preparing myself to read War and Peace soon. I have never read anything about the Russian culture or history, and only after a few pages of reading Petersburg, I realized I have missed out on a big part of my literary journey. I’m glad I found this when I was halfway through the novel, but I won’t lie, it did throw me off a little. Had I known that this novel is compared to James Joyce’s masterpiece, I would have thought twice before picking it up. Petersburg is also known as the Russian Ulysses. Interestingly, over the years, many comparisons have been drawn between Bely’s Petersburg and Ulysses. Reading Petersburg is like attending a Broadway musical. He has the uncanny ability to ever so often pause and push the story in the background, while he takes center stage and talks directly to the reader as the story resumes, he disappears, but only for a bit, and always lurking in the corners eager to jump back in. Bely tells his story with theatrical flair. The book is said to be one of the greatest works of Russian literature. It is an ode to the personalities who have helped shape the Russia we know today – an amalgamation of East and West.
Petersburg by Andrei Bely is not so much of a travelogue on the second largest city of Russia as it is a glimpse into the rich historical and cultural past of the vast land that has made massive contributions to the world of art. Petersburg was one of the eight books I had ordered to satiate my travel appetite after reading an article on Lonely Planet.
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