The disagreements between the parents, who «squabble like roosters» (BC 88), echo in the child. The legacy of the «beast» is inoculated directly from his father, who shows him zoology books with pictures of monkeys and sheep, producing the result of transforming himself into an animal («ja osverjučilsja», BC 182). His head becomes like a sharp beak and a handkerchief waving behind him; as his father points out, it looks like a tail (BC 182).
The parallel between Kotik and animals mainly shows the succession of generations and the transmission of the feral heritage. The mother either complains that his son grows like a fly (BC 83), i.e. fragile among the clutches of the father, unknowingly comparing her son with herself, or she compares it to her husband (BC 96). Kotik feels as though he is an insignificant animal. His mother does not accept him and lets him escape like a mouse (BC 109). The monstrous nature, in her eyes, which the child has inherited from his father, can not be hidden by the feminine clothes which she dresses him up in: the large forehead betrays him and makes him look like an orangutan (BC 184). The attempt to escape this inheritance and, paraphrasing Samé, the projection of himself to the outside, is the cause of the «crime» which is the focal point of the book and gave it its first title («Prestuplenie Nikolaja Letaeva»), i.e. the attempt to distance himself from the sick family dynamics. This interior turmoil – produced by the fracture created by his parents – is shown as a process. Kotik first «wriggles like a worm», thus revealing the condition of a small creature oppressed by his parents; he slowly becomes a gorilla, whose body expands until his skin explodes and the circumference of his head, out of which an unexplored past falls out, enlarges (BC 168). The overcoming of the dependence from them and of the relationship between the parents which affected the child, have in Kotik the effect of being a hopeless man, with no escape, a death omen. The child’s crime is realized by the appearance of his conscience (BC 168), which is here described with devices already used in «Kotik Letaev» where the formation of conscience is described, i.e. through a series of phantasmagoric images on which Belyj’s antroposophic beliefs exert a fundamental influence.
On a poetic level these beliefs are amplified in the dreamlike delirium of the disease. When Kotik falls ill with scarlet fever, fantastic figures and hallucinations crowd his mind. He sees Pfukinstvo, the Scythian with the large gorilla head (BC 172), pass through himself concealed in the body of his father. With this reference to the monkey, which is referred to both father and son, the height of anguish is reached. The gorilla, whose attitude Kotik has inherited from his father, is the ultimate denial of humanity. To deny this, to cancel the fatal gorilla that is about to seize him, causes Kotik such a great suffering, that he feels tormented by lions like the Christians had (BC 214), closed in the mute studio of his father as if he was in a cage. There within, like in a dreadful cave, he forges the strength of his own self-awareness only thanks to the images of his Chinese-like father, baptized and transformed into a samurai warrior with fiery eyes (BC 214).
The animals themselves undergo metamorphosis. In the final chapter, «Om», real or imaginary animals disappear and in their place a mythological animal appears, the elusive bird of paradise, which bears celestial symbolism (BC 216). The threat that remains in the background is that which has torn apart Kotik’s body and in the later novels of the «Moscow» novel series will expand and involve the entire city of Moscow. The bird of paradise, the sirin and the alkonost of Slavic mythology, does not emit the song of death as tradition wants, but roars sinisterly like a tiger, which announces the fatal beasts of «The Moscow Eccentric» and «Moscow in Jeopardy».
In «The Baptized Chinaman» the value attributed to the animal realm, in which man is embodied is not as positive as that evoked by Samé on the basis of ancient Cynicism. Belyj attributes negative meaning to the men-animals, which recalls rather the opinions of Socrates on the devaluation of the body and the soul. The concept of transmission from father to son, and the motive of the generational continuity had for centuries been the center of thought and poetry for the ancient Greeks. Belyj seems to base his analysis on these ideas, however maintaining his own views. He does not show the concept of fatherhood in terms of social, legal and institutional recognition, but as a bond of blood which, as we have seen, is presented in terms of inherited similarities of the body.
Through animal comparison the laws of the father are described – or rather the transfer of a patrimony through blood and body. So is their violation, i.e. the «crime» committed by the son, who tries to get out of the family’s sick dynamics, out of the pact of conscious integration, of the heritage of ancient rules demanded by the fathers, which is at the base of the political redefinition of fatherhood. The violation occurs on his autobiographical body, torn apart by the struggle between «the Scythian and the Persian» (BC 154–155). It gives way to characters created by the literary invention, an I—not-I who Belyj comments and defines in mystifying ways at a paratextual level. Under this point of view, «The Baptized Chinaman» recalls the structure of autofictional works as outlined by Samé.
This device is also widespread in the two subsequent novels, which are the first two volumes of the trilogy «Moscow» («Moskva»), i.e. «The Moscow Eccentric» («Moskovskij čudak»)[697] and «Moscow in Jeopardy» («Moskva pod udarom»).[698] Belyj considered them as first and second part of the first volume of a work of five volumes. In addition to the first two novels Belyj wrote only a third volume, «Masks» («Maski»), which Belyj considered as the second volume of the project that will remain unfinished. These two works also contain a rather strong autobiographical subtext. Therefore, in order to test the interpretative hypothesis proposed in this article, it is useful to compare them to «The Baptized Chinaman» in order to determine whether Belyj used the same rhetoric strategy also in the two works written in the mid-twenties, and how it evolved.[699]
In «The Moscow Eccentric» an ever higher number of animals are mentioned than in «The Baptized Chinaman». They are more than thirty, and they usually are mentioned only once (some of them are the tiger, canary, rooster, turkey, insects, dove, hare, cat, bat, chameleon, ermine, horse, fox, swallow, eagle, etc.). This marks a difference to the previous novel, in which less species were represented repeatedly. The species that marked the protagonists of «The Baptized Chinaman» are all present and recurring more frequently, creating a subtext of parallels between the two works.
Firstly, there are many similarities between the novel’s protagonist, Professor Korobkin, and his antecedent Nikolaj Letaev. Korobkin is also associated with the fly from the very first page of the book: his studio is invaded by flies (ME 9, 10, 11), as well as the staff room at the university, where, like him, also his colleagues spend their time catching flies with their hands (ME 198). The combination reminds us of Nikolaj Letaev, which Korobkin is easily assimilated to because of his profession, character and habits, which in turn evoke Belyj’s father, a renowned professor of mathematics at the University of Moscow. Here, however, the symbolic meaning of the fly hunt, – which in «The Baptized Chinaman», recalls the mother, i.e. the captured fly – disappears. Even Korobkin’s study is like Letaev’s, covered with cobwebs (ME 44, 155, 197, 218) just as the rest of the house of his antagonist, the diabolical Mandro (ME 78) and also the entire city, which is defined as «a network of spider webs» («set’ paučinaja»), in which the characters (e.g. Mandro’s helper Gribikov) are large spiders in the center of the web (ME 219). Applying again the strategy of intensifying the use of the device as already happened in «The Baptized Chinaman», towards the end of the novel the climax of horror is reached. Mandro’s personality is revealed in all its horror and, as it will happen in «Moscow in Jeopardy», begins to take over the city in a diabolical way. Here again the image is made through the representation of the webs and spiders. From a conversation between Madame Evikajten (Ewigkeiten, Mandro’s employee) and Madame Vulevu (an acquaintance of Mandro’s) the incestuous relationship between Mandro and his daughter Lizaša emerges. Kierko, a friend of Korobkin becomes involved in the dialogue between the two and prophetically imagines the «spiders’ spiders» devoured by the most diverse «mandraški» (ME 227).
Even the dog is related to Korobkin, as was Letaev. In order to represent the dog, Belyj uses a large series of diminutives, nicknames collective forms of the words «sobaka» and «pes», a device he utilized also with other animals. The collective forms here define the dog Tomočka, yellow and brown as the environments in which Korobkin lives, who looks just like his master (ME 14, 28, 31, 39, 40, 42, 43, 54).[700] In this view, the play on words that, with typical devices used by Belyj, show how the dog enters the alienated and more intimate world of Korobkin’s are made through mathematics and are very persuasive: the plural of the noun «pes» («psy») sneaks in a formula composed of Greek letters («“psi”, “ksi”, “fi”», ME 55), brackets, modules and other signs. Even after Tomočka’s death, who is crushed by a carriage, Korobkin evokes him (ME 106, 209, 210, 246). Korobkin’s words keep a comparison with a dog up until the last page of the novel (ME 102, 256). The meaning of the comparison with the dog is explained by Belyj even more clearly with the verb «tomničat’», which the National Corpus of the Russian Language (www.ruscorpora.ru) records only in Belyj’s novel, but of which V. Dal’s «Slovar’ živogo velikorusskogo jazyka» gives the following definition: «prikidyvat’sja tomnym, nežnym, slabym; milovidničat’».