MYSTICS OF PETERSBURG

Babylon on Neva

Evgeny Ivanov often addressed in his notes the topic of Petersburg mystic. "And now the golden ship of the sun constantly approached the City, sitting on the waters of many rivers of Neva and its canals, pour in the sea". The city of (Copper) Horseman. Night and Dawns, changing colors, awake the Horsemen into the images of four Horsemen of Apocalypse, and the city - to the wife - fornicator sitting on many waters. The mystery of the city is revealed in floods

Petersburg for Ivanov - a city of the Horseman. Or Horsemen - both Copper Horseman, and Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

To this theme devoted the only more or less Ivanov's known work - etude "the Horseman. Something about the city of Petersburg"

"The secret of our city in flooding opens. It is a secret of the Demon flying on a motionless racer, and a city life in dreams of disturbing it and its double, the mad Evgenie sitting on a marble lion".

So, in one of early writing-books there is a small sketch which it would be possible on-Blok style to name "Terrible world". For Ivanov is was a "deification" of Petersburg-Babylon.

"March 21. Today coming back from the University I have seen at Semionovsky hardstand a sort of apotheosis. It was daytime, spring weather, ? degree above zero, the sky rather cold , with clouds, but the blueness is seen, for all that of spring. And the puddles, puddles and boggy dirt with pits and bumps from the snow still not melted. From Nikolaevskaya street the carrier went, "draught" somehow describing a monograms, and inside 2 factory boys of years 15 - 16, drunk, pale, painful by sight, in one jackets, and on knees of them the girl of around 8 years, pale-greeny, somehow bloated, drunk and sang songs. Here It".

Source: Olga Fetisenko. "From a diary of the Petersburg mystic"