Abstraction

‘St Petersburg is the most abstract of cities,’ said the Underground Man.

Sure enough, after a week or so back in the northern capital, I’ve settled on what it is about this city that is so odd. And I think I finally understand what the Underground Man was on about.

It’s the straight lines. There are straight lines everywhere in St Petersburg. The city was conceived abstractly, planned abstractly, and executed abstractly, according to abstract principles. You can’t avoid the rules of geometry anywhere. According to legend, Peter the Great instructed his city planners and architects that no matter where the viewer was standing, a majestic panorama be visible.

They succeeded. As an ensemble, no other city matches Petersburg’s relentless architectural brilliance. With clever sharp turns in apparently straight roads, they opened up facades that would otherwise have been visible only on the slant.

There are triangles everywhere. The two famous needles (at the Admiralty and Peter and Paul Fortress) start from broad bases and disappear into thin points at the apex. Right angles, perfect half-circles, squares and obelisks jut, recline, and poke wherever you look. Even the cobblestones seem to be arranged according to some kind of higher Euclidean principle. Ivan Karamazov no doubt approved.

There are a few things that, eventually, make this all a bit disturbing.

First, compared with cities that, like Moscow, began as a village, then added a fortress (Kremlin), then spread ever outwards, Petersburg’s abstract origins, its enforced beauty, can be repressive. Paris’s city centre was also reconstructed according to geometrical rules – chiefly so that, after the street battles at the end of the Commune of 1870-71, the authorities could quickly suppress any future uprisings. But Paris also retains the quiet, meandering, medieval streets that make it so charming. No one would go for a Romantic weekend just to walk the pompous Champs Elysées.
Moscow, of course, immediately strikes the visitor with its massive, intimidating boulevards and prospects, its Stalin-era skyscrapers and towering monoliths. But alongside all of this monumentalism are small, fifteenth-century churches, monasteries, and other subversive streets, sneaking their way into the heart of the capital. In Amsterdam, the city on which Peter modelled his new capital, the water and the city come together in some kind of cosy compromise. The water in Amsterdam isn’t an enemy that has been conquered by classical architecture, as it has in Petersburg. It’s a friend that is welcome on the doorstep. In Venice, civilisation isn’t enforced, either. It’s organic.

Second, compared with the rampant chaos of Russian life, Petersburg’s abstractness feels all the more absurd and paradoxical. The angular facades are a triumph of architectural principles. But behind them, some dark Russian soul hides in the corner, axe in his hand, driven mad by the angles. Petersburg’s is a totalitarian beauty, which suppresses the Other. Is that why the underbelly of this city – its Dostoevskian underground – is, like its metro system, so deep and maniacal?

Third, with the onset of the White Nights, even the shadows take on sharper, more menacing angles. You seek them out, in order to escape the relentless sun. But you rarely find any solace in them. Midnight begins to feel like six o’clock in the evening, and, having just escaped the winter, you’re suddenly oppressed by ubiquitous yellow, chased by reflections, robbed of sleep.

What can you do? Head to the water. Listen to the sea lapping at the granite along the Neva, always threatening to overwhelm the city. Stand next to the Bronze Horseman as he peers aggressively into the distance, and remember just what kind of dictator decided to build his city in the middle of a northern river delta. Just why this city seems to have driven so many people insane. And just why, like a drug, something compels you to come back.