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The Brothers Karamazov
p195 [Fyodor to Alyosha] “...I mean to go on in my sins to the end, let me tell you. For sin is sweet. All abuse it but all men live in it. The only difference is that others do it on the sly and I do it openly... And your paradise, Alyosha, is not to my taste, let me tell you that. It is not the proper place for a gentleman, your paradise, even if it exists. I believe that I fall asleep and don’t wake up again, and that’s all. You can pray for my soul if you like. And if you don’t want to, don’t, damn you! That’s my philosophy. Ivan talked well here yesterday, though we were all drunk...”
...
p197 “...you love him [Dmitri] and I am not afraid of your loving him. But if Ivan loved him I would be afraid. But Ivan loves nobody, Ivan is not one of us. People like Ivan are not our sort, my boy. They are like a cloud of dust. When the wind blows, the dust will be gone . . .
Fyodor lives a life consistent with Ivan's stated philosophy, yet he doesn't care for Ivan. You think of Alyosha as being the odd-man-out in this family but that is actually Ivan. This of course is based on Alyosha's insistence that he is a Karamazov too, though we don't really see any confirmation of this. Fyodor is really just expressing the discomfort people have with the "intellectual" -- the person who thinks about life rather than wallowing in it. (Says the person who identifies with Ivan.)
Bk IV. 4.
p204 [The divine Madame Hohlakov to Alyosha] “...Your brother is in there with her [Katerina] now, not that dreadful brother who was so shocking yesterday, but the other, Ivan. He is sitting with her talking. They are having a serious conversation. If you could only imagine what’s passing between them now -- it’s awful. I tell you it’s lacerating; it’s like some incredible tale of horror. They are ruining their lives, for no reason anyone can see. They both recognize it and revel in it...”
...
“...she [Lise] is so ill, Alyosha, she has been so ill all night, feverish and moaning! I could hardly wait for the morning and for Doctor Herzenstube to come. He says that he can make nothing of it, that we must wait. Herzenstube always comes and says that he can make nothing of it. . . .”
...
p208 [Madame H. about Alyosha just having been bitten on the finger by a strange boy] “...and perhaps the boy was rabid.”
[Lise] “Why, Mother! As though there were rabid boys!”
“Why not, Lise, as though I had said something stupid! The boy might have been bitten by a mad dog and he would become mad and bite anyone near him... [Sadly, this is true.] Do you still feel the pain?”
“It’s nothing much now.”
“You don’t feel afraid of water?” asked Lise. [I missed this first time but she is funny here as rabid animals (including people) are supposedly afraid of water.]
...
[Madame H. about Katerina again] p209 “... It’s the most fantastic thing. She loves your brother, Ivan, and she is doing her best to persuade herself that she loves your brother Dmitri. It’s appalling! I’ll go in with you, and if they don’t turn me out, I’ll stay to the end.”
Way ahead to the break in speeches at the end of the trial, the mention of nihilism made me do some research and Alexander II was assassinated the year after The Brothers K. was published... so “nihilism” and revolution was certainly a timely concern. But what does nihilism mean in this respect. Look at all the different kinds of nihilism in the Wiki article. I want to make a distinction between philosophical and political nihilism. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche were interested in philosophical nihilism, and this was shared by Dostoyevsky and Mann. But, while Dostoyevsky seems to see nihilist motivation behind the murderous actions of Pavel, the political nihilism that resulted in Alexander II’s assassination would seem to be the result of a rejection of the church and state status quo of the age, not a rejection of “meaning” in any of the other senses. Political nihilists cared very much about their political goals, enough to risk their lives. I would think they might have been fans of Tom Paine, for example, rather than Feuerbach. In fact, the American Revolution would seem to be the model for their cause.
Frankly, I'm not sure why this note is here. I may copy it to the trial but on the outside chance that there is a reason (not obvious to me at the moment) that I thought of this here, I'm leaving it here as well.
Bk IV. 5.
p210 ...Alyosha felt instinctively that a character like Katerina’s must dominate, and she could only dominate someone like Dmitri, and never a man like Ivan. For Dmitri might at last submit to her domination “for his own happiness” (which was what Alyosha would have liked), but Ivan . . . No, Ivan could not submit to her. Such submission would not give him happiness. Alyosha could not help believing that of Ivan... Another idea, also, forced itself upon him: “What if she loved neither of them...?”
p211 It must be noted that Alyosha had felt ashamed of his thoughts and had blamed himself when they kept recurring to him during the last month. “What do I know about love and women and how can I decide such questions?” he asked himself reproachfully...
...with whom was Alysosha to sympathize? And what was he to wish for each of them? He loved them both, but their desires were conflicting. He might go astray in this maze, and his heart could not endure uncertainty, because his love was always of an active kind. He was incapable of passive love. If he loved anyone, he wanted at once to help him. And to do so he must know what he was aiming at... he found nothing but uncertainty on all sides...
p213 [Katerina to Alyosha with Madame H. and Ivan present] “...I’ve already decided, even if he marries that -- creature... whom I never , never can forgive, even then I will not abandon him. I will never, never abandon him!” she cried, breaking into a sort of pale, hysterical ecstasy... I will go away to another town... but I will watch over him all my life... When he becomes unhappy with that woman, and that is bound to happen, let him come to me and he will find a friend, a sister. . . . Only a sister, of course, and so forever; but he will learn at least that that sister is really his sister, one who loves him and has sacrificed her life to him. I will gain my point. I will insist on his knowing me and confiding entirely in me, without reserve...” “I will be a god to whom he can pray. He owes me that for his treachery and for what I suffered yesterday because of him and the promise I gave him... I will become nothing but a means of his happiness... an instrument for his happiness . For my whole life, my whole life. And he will see it all his life? That’s my decision. Ivan fully approves.”
Sounds like a Country song.
p214 [Ivan] “...Your life, Katerina, will be spent in painful brooding over your own feelings, your own heroism, and your own suffering. But in the end that suffering will be softened and will pass into contemplation of the fulfillment of a bold and proud design. Yes, proud it certainly is, and desperate in any case, but a triumph for you. And the consciousness of it will at last be a source of complete satisfaction and will make you resigned to everything else.”
This was unmistakably said with some malice and obviously with intention. He spoke ironically. [No shit.]
...
[Katerina] “...I’m upset. I didn’t sleep last night. But with two such friends as you [Alyosha] and your brother [Ivan] I feel strong -- for I know -- you two will never desert me.”
“Unfortunately, I must return to Moscow -- perhaps tomorrow -- and leave you for a long time. It’s unavoidable,” Ivan said suddenly.
p215 “Tomorrow -- to Moscow!” Katerina’s face was suddenly contorted. “But -- but how fortunate,” she cried in a voice suddenly changed. In one instant there was no trace left of her tears. She underwent a transformation, which amazed Alyosha. Instead of a poor, insulted girl, weeping in a sort of “laceration,” he saw a woman completely self-possessed and even exceedingly pleased, as though something agreeable had just happened.
“Oh, not fortunate that I am losing you, of course not,” she corrected herself suddenly, with a charming society smile. “Such a friend as you are could not think that. I am only too unhappy at losing you.” ... “But what is fortunate is that in Moscow you will be able to see my aunt and sister and tell them all the horror of my present position. You can speak freely to my sister, but spare my aunt. You will know how to do that... I will run at once to write the letter [that Ivan is to explain to her relations],” she finished suddenly, and took a step as though to go out of the room.
“And what about Alyosha and his opinion, which you were so desperately anxious to hear?” cried Madame Hohlakov. There was a sarcastic, angry note in her voice. [Yea, Madame H.]
p216 [Alyosha] “...What I see is that you don’t love Dmitri at all . . . and never have, from the beginning. . . . And Dmitri has never loved you . . . and only respects you. . . . I really don’t know how I dare to say all this, but somebody must tell the truth . . . for nobody here will tell the truth.”
“...you’re torturing Ivan, simply because you love him -- and and torturing him because you love Dmitri through ‘self-laceration’ -- with an unreal love -- because you’ve persuaded yourself.”
...
“You . . . you . . . you are a little religious idiot -- that’s what you are!” Katerina snapped. Her face was white and her lips were moving with anger.
Ivan suddenly laughed and got up. His hat was in his hand.
“You are mistaken, my good Alyosha,” he said, with an expression Alyosha had never seen on his face before -- an expression of youthful sincerity. “Katerina has never cared for me! She has known all the time that I cared for her -- though I never said a word of my love to her -- she knew, but she didn’t care for me. I have never been her friend either, not for one moment. She is too proud to need friendship. She kept me at her side as a means of revenge. She revenged with me and on me all the insults which she has been continually receiving from Dmitri ever since their first meeting. For that first meeting has rankled in her heart as an insult -- that’s what her heart is like! She has talked to me of nothing but her love for him. . . . I am going now. But, believe me, Katerina, you really love him. And the more he insults you, the more you love him -- that’s your ‘laceration.’ You love him just as he is. You love him for insulting you. If he reformed, you’d give him up at once and stop loving him. But you need him so as to contemplate continually your heroic fidelity and reproach him for infidelity. And it all comes from your pride... I will forgive you later, but now I don’t want your hand. ‘Your thanks, lady, I do not desire,’ he added in German with a forced smile, showing, however, that he could read Schiller, and read him till he knew him by heart -- which Alyosha would never have believed...
Dostoyevsky really does a number on Katerina here. But what I see in Katerina is an almost Christian desire for “self-laceration” and humiliation. What Katerina says here is so similar to what Madame H. says to Zossima in an earlier chapter (Bk II. 4.). And Madame H. was saying all that in a very similar and not entirely sincere fashion. Also, this complicated love of Katerina for Dmitri reminds me of Marcel’s jealousy fueled loves in Proust.
This does make me curious about Dostoyevsky's relationship with women. Between Katerina, Lise, and Grushenka, one would have to think that Settembrini was wise in trying to warn young Hans off Slavic women.
p217 “You have done no harm. You behaved beautifully, like an angel,” Madame Hohlakov whispered ecstatically to Alyosha. “I will do my best to prevent Ivan from going to Moscow.”
Her face beamed with delight, to Alyosha’s great distress.
...
[About Katerina] “But she has been crying -- she has been wounded again,” said Alyosha.
“Never trust a woman’s tears, Alysoha. I am never for the women in such cases. I am always on the side of the men.”
...
[Madame H. after hearing that Katerina is having “hysterics”] p220 “... Hysterics are a good sign, Alyosha. It’s an excellent thing that she is hysterical. That’s just as it ought to be... But I am delighted, delighted, delighted!...”
Bk IV. 7.
... p248 [Lise to Alyosha after they’ve agreed to an engagement] “I know your brothers and your father are worrying you?” [Curious place for a question mark]
“Yes, my brothers . . .” murmured Alyosha.
“I don’t like your brother Ivan, Alyosha,” said Lise suddenly.
He heard this remark with some surprise, but did not answer it.
“My brothers are destroying themselves,” he went on. “My father, too. And they are destroying others with them. It’s ‘the primitive force of the Karamazovs,’ as Father Paissy said the other day. A crude, unbridled, earthly force. Does the spirit of God move above that force? Even that I don’t know. I only know that I, too, am a Karamazov. . . . Me a monk, a monk! Am I a monk, Lise? You said just now that I was.”
“Yes, I did.”
“But perhaps I don’t even believe in god.”
“You don’t believe? What is the matter?” asked Lise quietly and gently. But Alyosha did not answer. There was something too mysterious, too subjective in these last words of his. Their meaning was perhaps obscure even to him but yet it tormented him.
“And now on top of it all, my friend, the best man in the world is going, is leaving the earth! If you knew, Lise, how bound up in soul I am with him! And then I shall be left alone. . . . I shall come to you, Lise. . . . For the future we will be together.”
“Yes, together, together! We shall be always together, all our lives! Listen, kiss me.”
Alyosha kissed her.
“Come, now go. Christ be with you!” ... I’ll pray today for him and you. Alyosha, we shall be happy! Shall we be happy, shall we?”
“I believe we shall, Lise.”
...
[Madame H. fills in Alyosha about Katerina] “She is still delirious. She has not regained consciousness... Herzenstube came, and he was so alarmed that I didn’t know what to do for him. I nearly sent for a doctor to look after him. He was driven home in my carriage...”
What a Marianne Dashwood he is.
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