by George Cummins IV
Dostoevsky The prophet
Part One - Dostoevsky’s life
Part Two- Dostoevsky’s polyphonic novel and some words about its illumination in the critical literature
Part Three- Dostoevsky, like as a singer of the insulted and humbled people; the first meeting with D.’s figure
Part four – Analysis of some Heroes, and some necessary comments on D.’s work, situated inside of some main motives
Subpart - More motives
Part five - The Grand Inquisitor
First I must say by your leave, that my English is still in progress, I am coming from Czech Republic, and this is my first real try to transform my ideas and thoughts and knowledge only in English, except some useful material that I used to prepare this work.
At first I will talk little about the chronology of Dostoevsky’s life, problems in D’s poetics, and form some analysis about of the first real D. novels, difficulties in understanding his heroes, and meanwhile, about general topics and motives. During the presentation I will present my own opinions. Well, certainly I could not make a complex picture of D., but an adumbration only.
Part One - Dostoevsky’s life
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born in October the 30th in Moscow, where he started an education, and in St. Petersburg he went to Military Engineering School. Besides mathematics he studied Shakespeare, Victor Hugo, Pascal, E. T. A. Hoffmann. One year he had to repeat. From the beginning of his life there could been seen that his spirit is aiming to something else, new and fresh; revolutionary. In the future, D. will have a great position as an extraordinary and prominent writer with many original motives and an especially original style and new hopes for the whole Russia and world, therefore will grow up many legends and even a jokes typically attacking his personal feels and descriptions of the heroes behavior used as a tool from a multiple literary devices.
His father Mikhail, a violent alcoholic, who served as a doctor at the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor in Moscow , was killed by his peasants for a his cruel treatment in June 1839, and death of his mother, Maria in 1837 on of tuberculosis, shortly after he started his Military School was a strong tough. Dostoevsky was an epileptic and his first seizure occurred when he was 9 years old, his illness will be prominent in The Idiot and other books.
After finishing the Engineering School he worked during June and July in 1844 on a translation of Balzac’s Eugenie Grandet and then begins his literary work with his first novel named The Poor Folks, which had complete success in the naturalistic school of that time that dominated by the critic Visarion Belinksy. His second novel, The Double is changing Russian literature to a new dimension, D. shows that his mind was turned to the other philosophical direction way. Now he meets Petrashevsky and other Russian anarchists and joins their famous Friday groups for discussions philosophy and politics.
In April 1849 he is arrested for political subversion (participation in the Petrashevsky circle) and was sentenced to death by firing squad. At the last moment he is reprieved, leaves to Siberia on Christmas eve. There follow four years of exile in Omsk. Next five years he serves in a in military disciplinary battalion, in Semipalatinsk in Siberia. He describes later to his brother the dilapidated barracks, which, as he put in his own words “Should have been torn down years ago”:
“"In summer, intolerable closeness; in winter, unendurable cold. All the floors were rotten. Filth on the floors an inch thick; one could slip and fall...We were packed like herrings in a barrel...There was no room to turn around. From dusk to dawn it was impossible not to behave like pigs...Fleas, lice, and black beetles by the bushel…”
During the exile his ideas was completely changed, developed, his concentration inside only in his spirit gave him the courage to endure. He published a lot of major works, like Netocka Nezvanova – shortly after The Double, then Uncle’s Dream, Notes from Unknown, Crocodile (which is a great parody of first communist novel “What we have to do?” the by Russian socialist Chernishevsky) , and in 1860 he begins to publish a novel Notes from a Dead House, which is told by a fictional narrator but most of all there are experiences from the exile.
In February 1857 he marries a widow Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva, his first wife. He resumes publishing. This marriage was not successful, many of her personality treats where an inspiration for his female heroes. Also his close friend Polina Suslov will provide material for his heroiness, with he will travel with her across the Europe during his period full of debts, when he will be trying to escape from his creditors.
Finally in December 1859 he is permitted to move to St. Petersburg, the most fantastic city in the world, like he says. He is publishing many other works like a Winter notes on Summer Impression and starting the periodical The Epoch, his Notes from Underground, where we discover his first hero, anti-hero. Now he works on his other masterpiece Crime and punishment, in April, 1959 his first wife dies.
D. finished Crime and Punishment and finding the 18-years old stenographer, Anna Grigorevna Snitkin, with her help he writes The Gambler, in a one month only. He is inspired by his own passion to roulette. He invented for himself a great strategy how to win, but he never kept it during the game. Next one year he lives in Europe, and working on The Idiot, then The Devils, (some translation in Constance Garnett’s translation it is called The Possessed). He works on another magazine The Citizen, and begins writing a new novel The Adolescent. In 1875 he is starting he starts to publish the monthly Writer’s Diary.
During his work on his greatest novel The Brothers Karamazov, he meets the great Russian philosopher, Vladimir Solovjov and in the last issue of The Writer’s diary he publishes his famous “Pushikin day speech”, Dostoevsky dies on January 28, 1881.
Part Two- Dostoevsky’s polyphonic novel and some words about its illumination in the critical literature
[Mikhail Bachtin, the famous Russian philosopher, critic, semioticians, (1895-1975) has inspired many thinkers, such as neo-Marxists, structuralists, and others .
An acquaintance, says Bakhtin, with the voluminous literature on Dostoevsky creates the impression that the subject under discussion is not a single author-artist who wrote the novels , but a whole series of philosophical statements made by several authors-thinkers. For example the hero of Crime and Punishment, where the dominant idea is that of Napoleon, Raskolnikov, or Myshkin, the hero of The Idiot, where D. tries for the first time to make a figure full of a power of goodness inside a whirl of intrigue, Stavrogin on which I will tell more soon - in The Devils, or the Grand Inquisitor like an almanac of arguments against a new resurrection of Christ in The Brothers Karamazov. For some scholars D.’s voice merges with the voices of certain of his heroes, for others it is a unique synthesis of all heroes’ ideological voices, and for still others it is simply drowned out by the heroes ‘ voices.
The plurality of independent and emerged voices and consciousnesses and the genuine polyphony of full-valued voices are in fact characteristic of D. novels. In the author’s creative plan Dostoevsky’s principal heroes are indeed not only objects of the authors will but subject of their own directly significant word as well.
Dostoevsky is a creator of the polyphonic novel. He originated an essentially new novelistic genre. Bakhtin says next: It follows therefore that the usual material of psychological bonds psychological traits necessary for the pragmatic development of the plot are insufficient for Dostoevsky’s world : they presuppose the hero’s collectivization and materialization as integral to the authors plan and they connect and combine completed images of people in the unity of monologically perceived and understood value, together with their worlds. The very orientation of the narration – whether it is carried out by the author , a narrator, or one of the heroes must be completely different than in novels of the monological type like Balzac, Flaubert and others.
Before Bahktin, the reader who understood a little bit, gropingly, was Viaceslav Ivanov. [ref.: Borozdy I mezhi, p. 39-40, ] He defined D.’s realism as being based not on cognition , but on “penetration”. The general principle of D.’s idea was to affirm the next means “I” is not as an object but as another subject.
There is another critic; Askoldov , [ ref.: Religious-ethical Meaning of Dostoevsky, 1922] that according to him is a crime (like one of the most important conception but of not of only the plot) a statement in life of the religious-ethical problem. Punishment is the form of its solution. He says more about “scandal” in D.’s novels, that scandal is first and most external manifestation of the pathos of the personality.
One of Askoldov’s later articles is only limited to an analysis of the purely characteristically features of his heroes and does not reveal the principles of their artistic visualization and representation.
Finally there is a brilliant descriptive of the compositional features of D.’s novels by Leonid Grossman: [ref.: Dostoevsky ‘s Poetics, 1925] the basic principle of his novelistic composition, according to Grossmann, is to subordinate polarly incompatible narrative elements to the unity of the philosophical plan and to the whirlwind movement of events; to combine philosophical confessions with criminal adventures in a single artistic creation, to include a religious drama in the plot of a vulgar story, to traverse (…) and new mystery – these were the kinds of artistic tasks with lay before Dostoevsky and which challenged him to complex creative work. (…) His task is to overcome the greatest difficulty facing the artist: to create an integral work of art from heterogeneous , profoundly foreign materials of unequal value. This is why the Book of Job, The revelation of ST. John, the New Testament texts , and everything that feeds the pages of D.’s novels and lends the tone to one or another of their chapters is combined here in a unique way with the newspaper page, the anecdote, the parody, the street scene, the grotesque, and even the pamphlet. He boldly cast into his crucibles ever more elements, knowing and believing that in the heat of his creative work the raw chunks of everyday reality would become visible to the reader...
Part Three- Dostoevsky, like as a singer of the insulted and humbled people; the first meeting with D.’s figure
In the work of D. is intersected a two thematic-plot-ideas on the same level- the first one is social and second one, include personality, motive of “dreaming” and “underground”, that is reaching in the battle for God, represents theme existentialistic.
In the sphere of the theme of social sympathy is rhythmical reminded in many D.’s novels and short stories. For example the first work The Poor folk, D. describes the behavior of a father of student Pokrovsky on a son’s funeral. [my translation] “Finally the coffin was closed, they put it on a vehicle a takes away. Carman goes faster. The old man was running behind him with a noisy crying, his crying is jumped and interrupted according to the run. Poor, he lost his hat, but he did not stop to pick it up. His head was completely wet from the rain. The wind was blowing, the frozen drops of a rain was shooting and pricking him to a face. It seemed that the old man the uncomfortable stipulations did not feel, with cry he is running from one side to another . A tails of his coat was blowing like a wings. Street walkers was putting down their hats and cruising themselves. He had have a books with him, that books was falling down into the mud, people noticed that and remind him, but he was running for the following coffin. At the corner he is getting to accompany with an old woman. “
The next similar scene could be seen in a novel The insulted and humbled. And at last in D.’s greatest work The Brothers Karamazov [citation from C. Garnett translation]: “They had not far to carry the coffin to the church, not more than three hundred paces. It was a still clear day, with a light frost. Snegirjov ran fussing and distracted after the coffin, in the short old summer overcoat, with his head bare and his soft , old, wide-brimmed hat in his hand. He seemed in a state of bewildered anxiety. At one minute he stretched out his hand to support the head of the coffin and only hindered the bearers. (…) And the crust of bread, we’ve forgotten the crust! He cried suddenly in dismay. (…) At one moment he stooped down to the coffin and it looked like he will fell inside. “
These scenes demonstrating very well Dostoevsky as a poet of social sympathy , with a deep understanding of human misery. But after all, it seems to be like a grotesque picture. In-inside tragically, picture has outside a comical colorit. His [Dostoevsky’s] psychological constitution inside the personalities are very afraid to be a simply funny or laughter able or ridiculous. On the contrary, the greatness, goodness, and ethics is goes every time together with comic. To master yourself you have to do not be afraid to be funny. On the contrary the demoniacal person in his works, they are very demoniacal proud of themselves and they are afraid to be funny. Even there is a ethic component: the human, that are not afraid to be funny must be in fact good ( !) (Aljosha, The Brothers Karamazov, Mishkin, Idiot) Prince Stavrogin in a political pamphlet The Devils is one of the most terrifying personality in a literature of all time. His demoniacal nature had constrained himself to climacteric all human proper rules and he wants to establish for himself that he can do everything - right in the main sense. He is starting with a peculiar scandals and it find its end in the rape of a child. Matryosha, which she was beaten by her old despotic stepmother. The scene in the S. confession when he is describing that deed is most horrify in all D.’s works, Matryosha after S. first kiss she had became kissing him more with very odd passion and day after she went to S. apartment and with little small wrist she became to threaten S. [it have to made only an ill nerves, as said brilliant Czech critic and writer F.X.Salda] Then she was in a nightmares never stopped crying: “I made a horrible sin before the Lord!” Day after she hanged up herself as S. did as well because he knew that his demoniacal personality will be never under control and this was only one possibility how to stop his self-destruction power that in any case will be destroying others. “Stavros” means in Greek “The Cross”. He seemingly wants to penance himself in Tihkon’s cell, a local priest, before that he wrote a self-confession with many details about his deeds, but Tihkon said during the confession : “ Is not there so much details?” And he knew from the first time, that Stavrogin was afraid to be ridiculous and I can even say “funny”, so he wanted to be a proud of himself and be boast of. After the circumstance in the cell Tikhon in a horrible spasmodic exclamation says to S. :”This is a probably the most terrible sin that you did of all your life!” S. is running away with a cry sentence: “You damned psychologist!” He had married with a completely leprous woman, Maria Lebjadkin, even he was loved by Liza Drozdova. But Stavrogin is loved by another person, by Dasha Satovova, and S. mother in that order wants to marriage D. for her of many years standing friend Stepan Trfimovic. I described this concept of the plot to show how D. prepared most extraordinary conditions and most complicated relates. Uncertainty in theirs self-consciousness characteristic according to a whole scale of nuances from stipulation-less devotedness and humbled to inevitable despotism and hate is typical for D.’s heroes, that demonstrated how sensible D. solved troubles with intersubjective relations right in these micro-units of a social organism. The second D.’s novel is more Gogolian than the first work. Some spirit of Hoffmann include. (Nikolaj Vasiljevic Gogol, lived in 1809-1852, Ukrainian writer who wrote in Russian, author of the play Revizor, many short stories. According to V. Nabokov, he was most strangest prose-poet in worlds history. I should mention his novel Dead Souls.) It reminds Hoffmann, but with very deep psychopathology, about poor officer, with devastating illness, schizophrenia. Inasmuch existential, and as D. said, his all work was most influenced by Gogol short story, The Overcoat. Why I am talking about this vague story where the hero is possessed by maniacal afford to have a new overcoat, I want to show more deeper psychopathology of D.’s heroes as in the case of Stavrogin. His heroes are poor officers, working-men, sufferers, prostitutes, robbers, buffoons, notorious drinkers, but even intellectuals, lawyers etc. But these all are carrying a new cross on theirs shoulders. After finishing The Double, Dostoevsky discovers new dimension of his psychology and in most time psychopathology. He begins to be a writer of genius persons of evil and genius person of goodness.
Part four – Analysis of some Heroes, and some necessary comments on D.’s work, situated inside of some main motives
Dostoevsky goes down to the bosom of human soul, he is do not care about the human like a product of social surroundings, of a certain life conditions, therefore the human of society zoon politicon, but like a human as a personality, as a unique being with its self- inside immanent problems. It is not a retirement from the social thematic, it is rather deeper enlargement of the panorama. For example:
Mr. Procharcin, trampled down and defeatist person had a solid treasure that he kept all time to his dead inside his little straw. The life of the dreamer in The White nights was not ruined according his poorness. During the exile was D. submerge in a deep introspection, analyzing himself, this was, of course reason for more thinking about existential problematics. In Siberia was allowed to read The Bible only and D. had taught how to read many of criminals. When he arrived from Siberia he was completely misunderstood by his important work The village of Stepancikovo and its population. Whole society was living in waiting for the peasants reform when was written The Notes of a Hunter by Turgenev. In this period the literary world wanted to say that even peasant “have got a heart”. Now D. comes with a picture of neo-Tartuffe [play by Moliere, great religious, zeal and fervor. In fact T. is a scheming hypocrite. By allowing Orgon, master of a house, T. use his power as a master] and he is opening the bosom of a despotic and sadists that with hypocrite didactic and “moralist” that tortures his neighborhood. That is very typical for D. In the Notes from the underground he calls himself a “paradoxist”. His Notes is idealistically and in form a sort of a point of intersection of the whole D.’s work. There becomes the novel with “idea”. There, for the very first time, the idea projection itself to with fates and fates with idea. Most of post-Siberia novels has his heroes an idea, but idea had themselves. D. is answering a question where becomes in human soul goodness and evil, love and hate, evil proud and humility, great passion to life, passion for self-destruction and passion for constructive, altruism and egoism, trust and skepticism.
Critic Mikhajlovsky call it D.’s as a “cruelty talent.”
D. most of the had situated his heroes to the insoluble circumstances and leaving them inside this whirl. And say : “Be a personality!”. I must daresay that this enormous talent I can compare it only with Shakespeare. Because L.N.Tolstoj started from Homer’s epos, Dostoevsky started from Sophocles’ tragedy.
Often is discussed about the author’s abnormal heroes, irresponsible behavior situated inside the circumstance in the plot. The real fact is that D. is not a realist, but realist in “the highest level”, that he revelated all deeps of human soul with drawing his heroes - but not only heroes, but even the reciprocity of a relationship where they stirring, from bosom to outside. It seems to be like a expressional style but not exactly. The heroes are disformate in this sense: they are a real criminals (Raskolnikov), sometimes they could make a crime but they did not (Dmitrij Karamazov) , or even they are a moral criminal (Ivan Karamazov, Stavrogin), or else human that are thinking about crime, but they cannot because of theirs illness (Liza Chochlakovova). Very neurotic young, even child person, who loves Alyosha, every time when she see A. Karamazov, she is laughing. Day after she had put her finger inside a door and started to rattle it. Alyosha, was more or less similar to prince Myshkin, but M. was not so concentrated to one destination in his life as Alyosha. Prince Myshkin only passive wandering loved by Aglaja Jepancinova and Nastasja Filipovna with an ominous presentiment about fatal fate of Nastasja.
The human is what he is doing but not what he is thinking about.
Thus, his figures as an individuality all the time and in any case district themselves to realize theirs own personality, to theirs self-realization. And at the second point according to Dostoevsky is the extort society common life is unbearable, therefore a human is searching for a solitude, but he simultaneous cannot handle it and searching from the solitude the right way to society. This antinomy was a crucial insoluble situation for Raskolnikov. His self-realization cause that he was broken away from human common life. And he knew that he needs a punishment, not for the state or the law but for himself, so that can be his moral resurrection.
A similar situation is occurred with another figure of Crime and Punishment. Marmeladov, violent drunker, who spend a money from his daughter, a prostitute for his drinking. He knows about his horrible sin and he is feeling a fright from society and he said the most important question and argument both: “And there is a demand to every human that you must go somewhere, somewhere, but you must!”
There is a very interesting and deep thought about the life “close to the fallow-men”. Versilov from D.s novel Adolescent told to his son that a human is created with natural physical impossibility to love the follow-men. Same in Ivan Karamazov case. He says: “In order to love a your fellow-man he must hide his face, when he shows himself, its gone all the love. For example that I have horrible misery. Other never knows how much I suffer, perhaps he is somebody else and not me, and otherwise a human is rarely obliging that other human is in a suffer. And why he is not obliging? For example I have a disgust face or I had stepped on his foot…”
Real Dostoevskinanism is reaching in figures like mentions ones, Versilov (novel Adolescent), Ivan, Dmirtij, Fyodor Pavlovic ( all from The B. K.), Parfen Rogozhin (Idiot), females, like a Nastasja Filopovna (idiot), Polina Gambler), Katerina ivanovna (B.K.), Aglaja Jepancinova, Idiot). Most of female heroes had inspiration in D. ‘s very passionately fond of love to Apoliniarie Suslovov which she was typical nihilist of the sixties, but his love was not reiterated. But his second wife, who was looking up on D. like a genius writer, she was not mentioned in D. ‘s works at all.
Now I will ask a question myself: “What really D.’s figures wants? His heroes are trying to make an intersubjective relationships with other with the same intensity as are realizing themselves. They always are pressing their hands, unceasingly they are giving a hugs themselves and even more they are falling down before the human suffer, for example the Elder Zosima or Sona, a prostitute is recommending to Raskolnikov after his crime, that he must kiss the earth on the prospect and say: “I am murderer.” And during the penance “to bow to the all human misery”. Only Sona understood R. When he adjudicated to her, she said: “You must be in a horrible suffer”.
Let’s take a look on one person in The Devils, Kirilov, who expose a Christ as an anti-Christ. He considers himself as a Messiah for whole world. He has a theory about “What makes human a slaves in their life?” He says that human are servile perhaps they have got a dread. Most of all a dread of a pain. And that with a afraid of a death and of “just the future of the next world”. His theory wants to make a people a Gods. And what are the attributes of God? Absolute freedom. How to accomplishment it, first you have to get rid of afraid of the pain. And have no afraid of “just the future the next life”. So to increase the human to be a God, someone have to make a suicide because then he had mastered the pain and dread of the next future life. If he will does not exist, that is not necessary, but he was the man who became a God, and with this he redeemed the others. But at last time, when he was killing himself he had scrupled, exactly like a Christ on the cross on Golgotha , but Kirilov with terrifying cry he did it. Most according to the next terrifying person inside the political intrigues for a “revolution”, Petr Verkhovensky. Just here D. shows that absolute real freedom is impossible as the west human can consider.
“Dostoevsky taught me all about human psychology”, said Nietzsche, and it is thru in my opinion. In Europeans times D. have learnt much about the new idealism and culture. In every novel we can debate with every person that has a free voice, but rather there are free people who are capable of standing beside their creator, of disagreeing with him, and even of rebelling against him. Notes from underground we can understand like a introduction for the following new novels. In Crime and Punishment, common anti-hero, is a poor student of law, who lives in terrible small apartment, his study books are dusty covered, he stopped with studying. His reason was that he have no money, but it was not thru. I was talking about “Napoleon Idea”, in his mind grows up an idea of something that reminds Nietzsche’s thinking after his work Human, too much human. He [Raskolnikov]wrote an article about greater people that can corrupt the law because of theirs greater thoughts and tasks and right this people not only can but have to fix a new law for their high thoughts and deeds. This is a typical revolt of irrationalism like in The Notes from Underground. But now begins a real crime, R. made up his mind to kill an old woman, the usurer Alena Ivanovna, where he used to pawn some little things. Before the crime he had a terrible fight in his spirit, and he had a dream about a poor mare which had has to carry a huge carriage and its carman with terrible voice and terrible treatment to force that carriage full of people, but the mare is very poor and week, and the carman is inviting more and more person into the carriage, but the mare cannot move from a place, the carman is lashing the mare and then, suddenly there appears a little child, that is crying and he had whipped out and hugging the poor mare, a lot of people are looking at this scene but nobody did not do anything.
This dream is very important for the murder. It shows how is Raskolnikov swallowed by the idea and the idea has got himself. But he did not kill the usurer only, because the body discovered in the same time her sister, Lizaveta, which was very kind person, almost every year pregnant and maltreatment by Alena. R. killed A. I. by an blunt side of axe. But Lizaveta, when he went near to her she did not nor put a hand before face and was killed by a blade. The second important thing is self-destruction behaviour, the father of Sona, Marmeladov, is telling R. “Do you know why I am drinking? – Because I want to have a more of suffering. I am searching for the rapture!” And he lost his nice work just for drinking. (keep on mind, that he spend the money from Sona’s working, the last money, that should be used for life of her stepbrother and stepsisters. ) Rakolnikov had asked Sona why she believes in God. She answered: “What would I be without God?” R. opposes “What The Lord is giving to you?” And after other obviously expressionistic scene had occurred when the crime was finished, and there in the apartment of the usurer, R. comes in a fever and almost wholly mad and screaming onto the craftsmen who worked there: “Where is the blood? I do not see any blood! The walls are tarred!” Then he goes where Sona lives and with drastic tone he force her to read him the passage from New Testament, where Lazar is resurrected. …
And we can discover with following this enormous story with new note: the idea is a sort of a part of a figure, or else the current person is conception of the whole life with its growing and changing to the finally dead of a hero or dead of the idea. Some heroes dies in that time when they are discovers themselves (Stepan Verchovensky, Stavrogin) so when is the hero like a Christ said “Yes or no. All else is meant.” Because D.’s Heroes are not only good or bad, but like Dmitrij Karmazov said during his confession to Aljosha, “The evil has a fight with goodness and the scene is a human heart”.
Very important for understanding the Ivan Karamazov psychology is his idea, even that he considers himself as an atheist. In a scene in a Elder’s Zosima cell where has to be solved a finances between old father Fyodor Pavlovic Karamazov and Dmitrij Fyodorovic, after another scandal on the almost beginning of the book, when Zosima tells to the old buffoon “mainly do not lay to yourself”, Ivan talks about the possibly crime and new view of a punishment. “The state has not to have inside it the church, but the church has have to have to conceive the state. It make sense in this point, that the criminal is this view not only separation from the law, from the society, but now he is separate from the God. Both together is for Ivan the worse feeling than an execution, and there is definitive possibility to reform.
In The B. K. The Elder Zosima is not very old but week all the novel, but there was a mystery that he have some strange power to recovery somebody’s health and with a great spiritual power. When he died, everyone was waiting for some kind of miracle. There was many legends about the death of a saints when theirs body has an wonderful aroma after they died, but in this death, body of Elder Zosima started to be horribly smelly. This show that just as St. Thomas had got the trust before he saw Christ’s wounds because the realist are in my opinion more fill of trust than somebody else, because St. Thomas would never had a trust even if he would see the wounds; so D. says that for real trust we do not need any miracle at all.
The scandal that I mentioned occurred during the parody on a solving the finance between them. Alyosha, who wants to become a monk, third son of F. P. was afraid from the first time when he had received a message that the deal will be solution in a cell of his beloved “Elder” – the explanation what Elders are is very important for late D. and it needs more words about that – Dmitrij for long time did not come. After a two hours he came and found a beginning of his father’s manners when the [citation: “Old, sentimental, drunk toady meant fornicate buffoon”] with impatient exaggeration shows his humility and humiliation with dirty jokes about “Women monastery” next to Zosima’s hermitage. And then will come to light the moral Freudian relatives between father and son, perhaps there is a very emancipated young woman, Grushenka Svetlova, which she all the time was playing with father and son so peculiar clumsy. She loves Dmitrij, but when she will became a wife of Fyodor Pavlovic, she will have a money stolen by himself, what really belonged to Dmitrij. D. impersonated a sort of poor passion like Alyosha poor goodness. F. P. will promised Grusenka, that “when she will come to his home, she will get 3000 rubles”. The crime will be especially like the others. The murder of F.P. will be an epileptic cook Smerdyakov. In my view is very important the scene where F.P. says that if there would be any person, that would say to him "You are good", then he would stop lying to himself and thus he would never do his buffoon’s cases and he will be believe in himself and after every scandal he would not keep saying to himself "All are of are all worse that me". [citation, C. Garnett] "He got up, and throwing up his hands, declaimed, "Blessed be the womb that bear thee , and the paps that gave thee suck-the paps especially. When you said just now, "Don't be so ashamed of yourself for that is that root of it all, " you pierced right thought me by that remark and red me to the core. Indeed I was always feel when I met people that I am lower than all take me for the buffoon. I am not afraid of my opinion, for you are everyone of you worse that I am." That is why I am buffoon. It is from shame, great elder, its simply over-sensitiveness that makes me rowdy. I I have only been sure that everyone would accept me as kindest, and wisest of men, oh Lord, what a good man I should have been! (...)
Elder was, D. ‘s narrator describe, was one who took your soul, your will into his soul and his will. When you chose an Elder, you renounce your own will and yield it to him in complete submission, complete self-abnegation. This novitiate, this terrible school of abnegation, is undertaken voluntarily , in the hope of self-conquest, of self-mastery, in order to attain perfect freedom. [C.Garnett translation]
Subpart - More motives
In the Notes from underground D. uses motive of a wet snow. In a metamorphosis of a parody on Nekrasov poem “Wet Snow” “The survivor” , underground man, of a fallen soul of a prostitute that became their tormenter , right here is the essence of the story. The wet snow unceasingly hunting the underground man: on a street after scandal with his classmates he is gotten drenched from the snow, he starts a discussion with the prostitute with mention about funeral of one prostitute into the grave full of water. When he with poetical sermon with tears he induced her to a hysterical attack and then to an enthusiastic admiration and then he suddenly scared himself that he goes in his play to much far, he horribly insulted the prostitute and she ran away.
[citation] (…) “Because I’m scoundrel, because I’m most vile, the most ridiculous, the most petty, the most stupid, the most envious of all worms on earth, who are no way better that I, but who, devil know why, are never embarrassed, ; while I will just go on being flicked all my life be every nit-that’s my trait! (…) “They won’t let me…I can’t be… good! (…) “Good-bye” she said, making for the door. (…) “It was silent, the snow was falling vertically down.” (Only a heavy, wet snow without wind can be falling vertically down. )
The second interesting motive is a motive of a spider as a special esthetical function. In all case in D’s work in means a profligacy.
The kissing of the earth in Brothers Karamazov was grow up to a symbol, that makes the general part of Christian trust. Elder Zosima used to tell Alyosha “Be glad when you are falling down to the earth and kiss her. Kiss her and love her forever, love her greedy. Search for this extraction, this ecstasy. Do not be ashamed and love this cry and soak the earth. It is a Gift from the God, and belongs only to the intended. “(…) And in my opinion the kissing the earth by Alyosha has great row of scale a semantic pictures and meanings. It collected reference of a lot of cultures before. It is a pathetic synthesis of a human with universe consider the human as a inseparability. And even, I think, there was a power of a “Karamazov blood”, the highest passion for live and “Karamazov” fornication like vehemence a of a lover giving a hugs to his mistress. Perhaps before that he had a dream of his beloved dead Father Zosima where he had spoken to him, and then he received an invite of Grusenka to her house to drink. But there will be not a “fall of an angel” but on the contrary A. will rise G. to better and deeper think. “Why he was crying? Oh, he was crying in enthusiastic even up to the stars which it was shining to him from a chasm of a space and he “was ashamed”. He was dreaming that all numberless God’s worlds was collected inside his mind. He wanted to forgive to whole, to all the people and pray for them, even for you is somebody praying, he heard a sound. “
Next is most important to fill up the figure of Ivan Karamazov. He was a moral murderer of his father, because of Grusenka and he helped his father when he was attacked by Dmitrij. But he left Stokoprigonevsk, the town where is the plot situated. He was ill and he knew it and his powerful soul was keeping him during all the novel. But under pressure of surroundings and his conscience the illness broke out. First, in his apartment, he had a felt that something is not good on his sofa, like a removed book on a table. After a moment on the same place appear a solid man, in a nice suite around a fifty. (Ivan like all the child of Fyodor Pavlovic was growing up without father and only Ivan had a feeling that he is eating someone else bread. ) The solid man was a hallucination of Ivan, it was a devil, as he called himself. He had a troubles with his knuckles and he is using to go to watering places. They were talking about possibility of God and many mysteries. Devil said to Ivan, that his most favourite dream is if he would became a old fat female middle class citizen, that will in a small church use to burn a candle for a Lord. He even said that when he saw Christ leaving his tomb he almost started to cry “Hosanna!” But he did not and he even do not know if God really exist. At the same time the devil knew that the worse thing will be if Ivan will consider him as a real person.
Part five - The Grand Inquisitor
Why I am calling Dostoevsky The Prophet? He was planning his literary carrier when he was sixty for twenty years ahead. He plan to continue with The Brothers Karamazov after the highest pronounce himself in The Poem of Ivan. The Grand Inquisitor, and I am obligate to make a small analysis of this 126 years old text in the Chapter five of Book five of B. K.
The legend has become a kind of icon, in some respects similar to the icons of the Eastern Orthodox. An icon presents an unique clustering of symbols, images and representations; the icon which is constituted by Legend of the Grand Inquisitor is just such a configuration of awesome personages, symbols and representations and it burns as brightly now as it did 126 years ago.
All is occurred in the highest inquisition in the Middle Ages in Spain, where suddenly appears a Jesus Christ for second time in the all human period. He had started to recovering a health of people, and had done all the preaching. But he, as in the past, was arrested exactly by the people that he used to recover. There is a reason why. When late in the night the Inquisitor goes to the prison cell where Christ has been taken, he asks: “It is Thou? … Why… art Thou come to hinder us?…Tomorrow I shell condemn Thee and burn Thee at the stake as the worst of heretics.” And then there ensues that famous dialogue in which the Inquisitor points out that Christ’s kingdom – the kingdom that He intended –has been destroyed, of course, and that He is responsible for that. He is responsible because He insisted that He came to make men free. He gave them a terrible gift in that freedom because human being are naturally rebels, week and sinful, and His offer of freedom in place of the ancient, rigid laws , had created havoc among them. Moreover, says the Inquisitor, what human beings want in not freedom but bread: “In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet, and say to us, ‘make us your slaves, but feed us.’ They will understand themselves, at last , that freedom and bread enough for all are inconceivable together…”The Inquisitor admonished Christ that where His church stood, one day the Tower of Babel will be built. What we propose to do, the Inquisitor announces is to feed the sinful million who seek only bread, and to do so falsely in the Christ name. They will marvel at us gods, they will be happy when they are led like a sheep. You, Christ, he says, rejected the three powers that could bind men forever: miracles, mystery, and authority. But we have founded our rule upon them. We are not working with you but with anti-Christ. The Inquisitor ended his terrifying speech : “Dixi, I have spoken. But when in reply Christ softly kissed him on the lips, the Inquisitor shuddered, opened the door and said: “Go, and come no more…Come not at all, never, never!”
Sigmund Freud wrote an article about The B.K. But it was not such good view, it was lopped only in the psychoanalytic and pseudo-philosophical view. I am saying that Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor is a greatest prophet vision of all ages ahead. Not only for 20’s or 21 century.
This fearful legend is a prophetic vision of an ant heap which is demonized, pseudo-Christian socialism. The vision incorporates and synthesizes two themes. One is the theme of Old and New Testament apocalypse, the concept of the approach of the Last Days in great horrors prior to a reversal and culmination in a Day of Light; the greatest miseries, catastrophes, and degradations of human being will be endured before the coming of the Messiah, The New Jerusalem, and The Last Judgment.
Incorporated also in the vision and synthesized with the apocalyptic theme is the theme of communism, specifically the conception that the New Jerusalem will appear in the form of communism, and its characteristic materialism, mechanization, and in any case despiritualization.
It was the intuitive genius of Dostoevsky which discovered the isomorphism of Christian and Marxist apocalypse, in which the proletariat is legitimated as the modern Saints of God, destroying the Babylon of capitalism, and ushering in the new Jerusalem of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and of post-historical World to come. With insight into this isomorphism, D. was able further to predict the appeal of communism to the slave mentality prevailing in feudal, agrarian Russia , rather than to the industrialized and democratized West, as Marx had falsely predicted.
Dostoevsky demonizes Western liberalism as itself spiritually week, and as perniciously delegitimating spiritual beliefs and values; its strength is confined to its technological mechanism of control over nature and human life – a strength which demonized communism takes over from demonized capitalism. Dostoevsky distorts Western liberalism by viewing it in the Hegelian-Marxian tradition in which all politics expresses the master-slave relation, as the choice between submission to authority or rebellion against it.