Satans in the Bud: Symbolist Laughter in Fyodor Sologub’s A Petty Demon

Abstract

Fyodor Sologub was the pen-name for the poet and prose writer Fyodor Teternikov (1863-1927), a self-styled “decadent” who became a leading figure in the Russian Symbolist movement. Sologub’s second novel A Petty Demon created a sensation when it appeared in 1907. It has since defied the best efforts of critics to classify it as either “decadent” or “symbolist.” This study of laughter in the novel shows how Sologub draws from both Baudelaire’s “symbolist” and Nietzsche’s “decadent” theories of laughter to make a highly original contribution to the novel form, arguably the most successful “symbolist novel” in the Russian tradition. It is also a superb expression of its Zeitgeist, reflecting an era much like our own, in which laughter attracted a great deal of philosophical attention.