A review by maymfw
Petersburg by Andrei Bely

5.0

Within Petersburg there is presented by Bely the unilateral moment of dissonance; a dissonance which seeps into the structure of things relations, of particular and universal, of dissolved and affirmed negations as parsed in multi-layered moments into the concrete manifold of uneven and discontinuous perspectives and simplex disjunctities. This is not to say that the work is fractured, or rather that it is grounded in the stringing together of abstractions and ineffable shapes- instead what is presented here is the continuous integration of relations, their servitude under frameworks and the assimilation of frameworks under them. The slight visages or shades of ontological forms are articulated amongst a vast array of interlaced structures and grand rivalrous appraisals. Inasmuch as the city as living being is affirmed so too are the distinct atoms of its moments- its symbols, people, culture and strata- born in a sludge like negation, slung amongst anxiety. Petersburg is in many ways a festival of being; a monument to becoming, apprehension and mediation etched into the literary cannon of an era befit for its grand and articulate wallowing in the rhythm of pacing people and the vibrant colours of the quasi-Nietzschean figure. It is, as such, a work which inspires in purity the reflection and emancipation of movement itself- owed only its further propagation.