Brain Game: Research On The Stream Of Consciousness And Images In Andrey Bely’s Petersburg

Andrey Bely(Андрей Белый)is a leader in symbolism and modernism in the Silver Age of Russia.His novel Petersburg was the first stream-of-consciousness style work in Russian literature,and was hailed by Nabokov as one of the four major Western works of the 20 th century.Based on the theory of symbolism and existential philosophy,combined with specific historical context,creative psychology and novel traditions,this article will explore how Bely shows the multiple dimensions of history and reality through the stream of consciousness.The issues studied in this article will be expanded from four parts:The introduction focuses on the conception called "brain game" proposed by Bely,and then systematically combs the research results of Petersburg in academic circles at home and abroad.In general,the Russian academic circles pay attention to the study from the perspective of linguistics and semiotics,and domestic scholars pay more attention to the mythology,poetics and narrative theory of the works.The first chapter analyzes the free association triggered by sound in Petersburg.Bely reinterpreted Tchaikovsky’s three-act tragic opera The Queen of Spades,showing the opposition between the real world and the spiritual world through a series of highly symbolic "spiritual symphonies".At the same time,the ticking sound of the bomb timer in the text also effectively foreshadows the patricide plot,and has its realistic significance on the time level,symbolizing the rejection of the Eastern lineage and the impending disaster of Petersburg.The second chapter discusses that Petersburg,as a "novel of stars",through the use of the symbol of "astral" in anthroposophy,to realize the organic integration of the imagined illusory space and the real material world.Bely tries to explain a kind of conscious activity that can exist outside the human body.False hallucinations infinitely expand the character’s ability to perceive conscious space.The shadowy nightmare makes the individual fall into the abyss of perception and become an appendage of consciousness.The third chapter explains how Bely develops his "brain game" on the city of Petersburg from a world map.Bely revealed the historical scene of the coexistence of order and chaos in the modern picture of Petersburg,reflected on the existence of terrorism and anti-international behavior in the 1905 revolution,and finally called for the reconstruction of the Russian national spirit while lamenting the declining heroism.