The red jester

What was Bely's project in his ambiguous novel Petersburg? For the first time, this study firmly places Bely's work at the heart of the European Modern ( die Moderne). It argues that with its concern for the spiritual and its desire to create new aesthetics, the novel helped reshape fundamental views of reality, of the Self, and of consciousness. Theories of Freud and Jung as well as the aesthetics of the Viennese Secession are used to elucidate Bely's approach to the narrative. The author also presents Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy as the prism through which Bely reflects modernist ideas.