84. TBK. Bk IV. 2-7.

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The Brothers Karamazov

Bk IV. 2.
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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83. TBK. Bk IV. 1. & Last of October

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The Brothers Karamazov

Part Two. Book IV. 1.
The sensuality of the ascetic. Reading the monk’s recitation of their ritual fasting along with the account of the monk/recluse’s even more austere diet, I couldn’t help thinking how exquisite each bite of these simple and common foods must be in the circumstances. The most common bread -- or mushrooms -- must taste like ambrosia, like the rarest dish on Lucius Licinius Lucullus’s table. Who is the real voluptuary here?

And here’s another thought I don’t recall having before: What amazing inventions religions are even if there is nothing at all behind them. To have created the most extreme examples of Jewish or Christian or Islamic mysticism out of nothing, that is truly an amazing thing. All the more as there is nothing in nature to really suggest it. Well, honestly, you’d have to push it even further back than that since Christianity and Islam are so derivative. The origin of mysticism is older and probably comes as much from South Asia as from the Near East. But, none of that matters to my point. Wherever it started, the people who got that ball rolling were exceptional. And to keep the ball moving all these millennia with no real support -- nothing visible to the senses. Again, amazing.

Of course there is subjective support for people willing to endure the sensory and dietary restrictions, to put themselves in a self-induced altered state of consciousness. And I suppose this is why David Hume was such a threat to the status quo as he sought to question the relation between cause and effect. The religious attribute their altered states to their God. Is this also why intoxicants are so problematic for the religious? A chemical “cause” for a religious “effect” is a kind of blasphemy. 

Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m wrong there about Hume, it’s not the mystic but the analytic man who has a problem with the breakdown of cause and effect in general. Attributing the cause of spiritual experience to God is a special case. 

p184 [Zossima, shortly before his death] “Love one another, Fathers,”... “Love God’s people. Because we have come here and shut ourselves within these walls, we are no holier than those that are outside, but on the contrary, but from the very fact of our coming here, each of us has confessed to himself that he is worse than the others, than all men on earth. . . . And the longer the monk lives in his seclusion, the more keenly he must recognize this fact. Else he would have had no reason to come here. When he realizes that he is not only worse than, but that he is responsible to all men for all and everything, for all human sins, national and individual, only then can the aim of our seclusion be attained. For know, dear ones, that every one of us is undoubtedly responsible for all men and everything on earth, not merely through the general sinfulness of creation, but each one personally for all mankind and every individual man. This knowledge is the crown of life for the monk and for every man. For monks are not a special sort of men, but only what all men ought to be. Only through that knowledge, our heart grows soft with infinite, universal, inexhaustible love. Then every one of you will have the power to win over the whole world by love and to wash away the sins of the world with your tears. . . . Each of you keep watch over your heart and confess your sins to yourselves unceasingly. Be not afraid of your sins, even when perceiving them, if only there be penitence, but make no conditions with God... Be proud neither to the little nor to the great. Hate not those who reject you, who insult you, who abuse and slander you. Hate not the atheists, the teachers of evil, the materialists -- and I mean not only the good ones -- for there are many good ones among them, especially in our day -- hate not even the wicked ones....”
...
p185 When Alyosha happened for a moment to leave the cell, he was struck by the excitement and suspense of the monks who were crowding about. All were expecting that some miracle would happen immediately after the elder’s death. This anticipation showed itself in some by anxiety, in others by devout solemnity. Their suspense was, from one point of view, almost frivolous, but even the most austere of the monks were affected by it...

p186 “We shall see greater things, greater things yet!” the monks... repeated.

p187 ... This Father Ferapont was that aged monk so devout in fasting and observing silence who has been mentioned already, as antagonistic to Father Zossima and the whole situation of “elders,” which he regarded as a pernicious and frivolous innovation... many of the visitors looked upon him as a great saint and ascetic, although they knew that he was crazy. But it was just the craziness that attracted them.

Father Ferapont never went to see the elder. And although he lived in the hermitage his superiors did not make him keep its regulations. He was excused because they thought he was crazy. He was seventy-five or more, and he lived in a corner beyond the apiary in an old decaying wooden cell...

...It was simply a peasant’s hut, though it looked like a chapel, for it contained an extraordinary number of ikons with lamps perpetually burning before them -- which people brought to the monastery as offerings to God...

Foucault’s view of the mysterious element of madness is evident here. 

p188 It was said (and indeed it was true) that he ate only two pounds of bread in three days... The four pounds of bread, together with the sacrament bread, regularly sent him on Sundays after the late mass by the Father Superior, made up his weekly rations. The water in his jug was changed every day. He rarely appeared at mass. Visitors who came to do him homage saw him sometimes kneeling all day long at prayer without looking around. If he addressed them, he was brief, abrupt, strange, and almost always rude. On very rare occasions, however, he would talk to visitors. But what he said was often a complete riddle. And no pleading would induce him to add a word of explanation. He was not a priest, but a simple monk. There was a strange belief, chiefly however among the most ignorant, that Father Ferapont had communication with heavenly spirits and would only converse with them, and was therefore silent with men.
...
...in spite of his strict fasting and great age, Father Ferapont still looked vigorous. He was tall, held himself erect, and had a thin but fresh and healthy face... He was dressed in a peasant’s long reddish coat of coarse convict cloth... and had a coarse rope around his waist. His throat and chest were bare. Beneath his coat, his shirt of the coarsest linen showed almost black with dirt, not having been changed for months. They said that he wore irons weighing thirty pounds under his coat. His bare feet were in old slippers almost falling to pieces.
...
p190 “I went to the Father Superior on Trinity Sunday last year, I haven’t been since. I saw a devil sitting on one man’s chest hiding under his cassock; only his horns poked out. Another had one peeping out of his pocket with such sharp eyes, he was afraid of me. Another devil settled in the unclean belly of one. Another was hanging round a man’s neck and he was carrying him about without seeing him.”
...
“...I can see through them. When I was coming out from the Superior’s I saw one hiding from me behind the door. He was a big one, a yard and a half or more high, with a thick long gray tail. And the tip of his tale was in the crack of the door and I was quick and slammed the door, pinching his tail in it. He squealed and began to struggle, and I made the sign of the cross over him three times. And he died on the spot like a crushed spider. He must have rotted there in the corner and he must be stinking. But they don’t see, they don’t smell....

[A visiting monk] “Your words are terrible! But, holy and blessed Father,” ... is it true, as they noise abroad even to distant lands, that you are in continual communication with the Holy Ghost?”

“He does fly down at times.”

p191 “How does he fly down? In what form?”

“As a bird.”

“The Holy Ghost in the form of a Dove?”

“There’s the Holy Ghost and there’s the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit can appear as other birds -- sometimes as a swallow, sometimes a goldfinch and sometimes as a blue-tit.”

“How do you know him from an ordinary tit?”

“He speaks.”
...
“And what does he tell you?”

“Why, today he told me that a fool would visit me and would ask me silly questions...”
...
“Do you see this tree?” asked Father Ferapont after a pause.
...
“You think it’s an elm, but for me it has another shape.”
...
“...You see those two branches? In the night it is Christ holding out His arms to me and seeking me with those arms. I see it clearly and tremble. It’s terrible, terrible!”
...
Though the monk returned to the cell he was sharing... in a bewildered state, he still cherished at heart a greater reverence for Father Ferapont than for Father Zossima. He was strongly in favor of fasting, and it was not strange that one who kept so rigid a fast... should “see marvels.” His words seemed certainly queer, but God only could tell what was hidden in those words. And were not stranger words and acts commonly seen in those who have sacrificed their intellects for the glory of God? ....

Really, I would love to know what Foucault made of all this, he must have read it.  And, again, I have to point out that Pavel’s mother exceeded Ferapont in everything that he takes pride in (and he does take pride in his austerities). Of course she most exceeds him in being silent. She seemed much more “saintly” to me and of course much closer to nature. Which makes me wonder what the purpose of monks and “Fathers” really is. She seemed to have been honored and provided for in much the same way the monks are but without the status and mumbo-jumbo. 

p192 [Zossima to Alyosha] ...”Are your people expecting you, my son?”
...
“Haven’t they need of you? Didn’t you promise someone yesterday to see them today?”
“I did promise -- to my father -- my brothers -- others too.”

“You see, you must go. Don’t grieve. Be sure I shall not die without your being by to hear my last word. To you I will say that word, my son, it will be my last gift to you. To you, dear son, because you love me. But now go keep your promise.”

So Zossima is Alyosha’s other father. The profound one as opposed to the profane one. 

p193 [Father Paissy to Alyosha] “Remember always, young man,” ... “that science which has become a great power in the last century, has analyzed everything divine handed down to us in the holy books. After this cruel analysis the learned of this world have nothing left of all that was sacred. But they have only analyzed the parts and overlooked the whole, and indeed their blindness is marvelous. Yet the whole still stands steadfast before their eyes, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Has it not lasted nineteen centuries? Is it not still a living, a moving power in the individual soul and in the masses of the people? It is still strong and living even in the souls of atheists, who have destroyed everything! For even those who have renounced Christianity and attack it still follow the Christian ideal. And neither their subtlety nor the ardor of their hearts has been able to create a higher ideal of man and virtue than the ideal given by Christ of old. When it has been attempted, the result has been only grotesque. Remember this especially, young man, since you are being sent into the world by your departing elder. Maybe, remembering this great day, you will not forget my words, spoken from the heart for your guidance because you are young and the temptations of the world are great and beyond your strength to endure. Well, now go, my orphan.”

This is a very interesting passage. The bit about even atheists having Christian values is certainly true for people like Richard Dawkins and I who still have the values we were raised with if not the beliefs. I will have to come back to this reference to Alyosha as an “orphan” and of the significance of the death of his real father at the hands of a person with the values of a Foucault. 



Last of October

As the October calendar is coming to an end, Halloween decorations are showing up everywhere. I've never been fond of this decorating for seasons and events fetish. Occasionally someone truly talented will be behind such decorations and that I do appreciate, but mostly it's just something people do by rote. It reminds me of the way the people at the Berghof in The Magic Mountain would do the same in a desperate attempt to gain some control over the unreal passage of time there. And really it is the same thing. Do people really care about Halloween or are they just trying to grasp a moment in time before another year hurdles past. I'm sure "retirement" homes -- of all sorts -- are heavily into decorating for all possible occasions.

I also think of this decorating as a female thing, and while I want to support it because I know it is in defense of life and this world, I really would be happier avoiding it all together. Or so I believe. Perhaps there is a retirement home for curmudgeons that guarantees no seasonal decorations or celebrations of trivial calendar based events. I like the idea of this but I wonder if I would find the other curmudgeons too exasperating. 

Isn't this the time to open up, as in Lamott's story "The Last Waltz" (which we sill get to soon) rather than bonding with like minded rocks and islands. (That Simon and Garfunkel song raised these same concerns back when I was a teen -- so I really haven't changed at all.)

I don't see myself in one of those places in any case (for one thing I couldn't afford it). I expect to be holding my building together for at least the next 12, maybe 18 years. After that, the way I look at it now, I will have a year to year option to extend my lease on life. 



And on a tangent, when rushing through Walgreens around the holiday season, I can't help noticing the weird ass holiday crap they stock. Not only is it weird, but most of it is made in China. What must they think of us? Who are these strange Americans who buy this inexplicable shit? I imagine them coming over here to see just how strange we are in our natural habitat; the way I imagine going to Beijing to see how millions of Chinese drivers get along on their roads.

(I should mention here, for those of you who have joined me since The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft blog, that these little musings are in the spirit of that book by George Gissing.)

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82. TBK. Bk III. 6-11.

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The Brothers Karamazov

Book III. 6.
I can’t help thinking, with Pavel, his mother, and the story of Gregory and Marfa’s child in mind, that the gene pool in a Russian village of serfs must be quite shallow. I wonder if this is another instance where the local farmers know to bring in distant studs for their animals but marry way too close to home generation after generation. Or perhaps, as in On the Black Hill, the farmers are actually smarter about this than society would let on. 

We’ve been teased with the idea that Pavel is possibly another Karamazov brother, but it seems we are not to hear any more about it at the moment.

p139 ...He [Pavel Smerdyakov] was a young man of about twenty-four, remarkably unsociable and self-contained. Not that he was shy or bashful. On the contrary, he was conceited and seemed to despise everybody.

p140 ... He was brought up by Gregory and Marfa. But he grew up "with no sense of gratitude," as Gregory expressed it. He was an unfriendly boy, and seemed to look at the world with suspicion. [Just to refresh your memory, he is probably Fyodor's natural son by the ascetic dwarf and Fyodor gave him the name Smerdyakov which means Stinker.] In his childhood he liked to hang cats and bury them with great ceremony. He used to dress up in a sheet as though it were a surplice, and sing and wave some object over the dead cat as though it were a censer. [I wonder how much of this is psychology and how much a comment on religion] All this he did on the sly, with greatest secrecy. Gregory caught him once and beat him. He shrank into a corner and sulked there for a week. "He doesn't care for you or me, the beast," Gregory used to say to Marfa. "He doesn't care for anyone." Then speaking directly to the boy, he asked: "Are you a human being? You're not a human being. You grew from the mildew in the bathhouse. That's what you are." [This is the man who's only natural child was a "monster" in his own words, and who turned to religion after the child died and who raised Pavel upon finding him and his dying mother and seemed to view it as God making up for the mistake of the natural child] Smeryakov, it appeared afterwards, could never forgive Gregory those words. Gregory... began teaching him the Scriptures. But this teaching came to nothing. At the second or third lesson the boy suddenly grinned.

"What are you grinning for?" asked Gregory, looking at him threateningly from under his glasses.

"Oh, nothing. God created light on the first day, and the sun and moon, and stars on the fourth day. Where did the light come from on the first day?"

Definitely sounds like Ivan's half brother. What's interesting about this, if you are willing to interpret the meaning of "day" rather loosely, is that, according to the Big Bang theory, the universe would have begun as a hot plasma and it would have taken considerable time for stars to form.

Gregory was thunderstruck. the boy looked sarcastically at his teacher... Gregory could not restrain himself. "I'll show you where!" he cried, and gave the boy a slap on the cheek. The boy took the slap without a word, but withdrew into his corner again for some days. A week later he had his first attack of the disease to which he was subject all the rest of his life -- epilepsy.

[This from Wiki about epilepsy, "The ancient Greeks had contradictory views of the disease. They thought of epilepsy as a form of spiritual possession, but also associated the condition with genius and the divine. One of the names they gave to it was the sacred disease."]
...
...[As part of his scant education] Fyodor Karamazov gave him Evenings in a Cottage near Dikanka.

[Wiki translates this as Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka. It's a collection of short stories by Gogol.]

p141 Smerdyakov read a little, but didn't like it. He did not once smile, and ended by frowning.

"Why? Isn't it funny?" asked Fyodor Karamozov. 

Smerdyakov did not answer.

"Answer, stupid!"

"it's all untrue," mumbled the boy.

"Then go to the devil! You have the soul of a lackey. Wait. Here's a book, Universal History. It's all true. Read it."

But Smeryakov did not get through ten pages of the history. He found it dull. So the bookcase was closed again.
...

p142 [He is sent to Moscow to be trained as a cook] ...Moscow itself had little interest for him; he saw very little there, and took scarcely any notice of anything. He went once to the theater, but returned silent and displeased with it. On the other hand, he came back to us... well dressed, in a clean coat and clean linen. He brushed his clothes most scrupulously twice a day and was very fond of cleaning his smart calf boots with a special English polish, so that they shone like mirrors.

He turned out to be a first-rate cook. Fyodor Karamazov paid him a salary, almost the whole of which Smerdyakov spent on clothes, pomade, perfumes, and such things. But he seemed to have as much contempt for the female sex as for men; he was discreet, almost unapproachable, with them...

p143 If it had occurred to anyone to wonder at the time what the young man was interested in, and what was on his mind, it would have been impossible to tell by looking at him. Yet he would sometimes stop suddenly in the house, or in the yard or street, and stand still for ten minutes, lost in thought. Studying his face one would have said that there was no thought in it, no reflection, but only a sort of contemplation.
...
There are a good many "contemplatives" among our peasants. And Smerdyakov was probably one of them. And he was probably greedily hoarding up his impressions, hardly knowing why.

What an odd section. What an odd character. I wonder if the description of his interest in his personal appearance is meant to suggest bourgeois values? My first time through, I mostly ignored Pavel but he is certainly important to Dostoyevsky.    

Book III. 7-8.
Better and better. Both ideas and intense plot and characterization all at the same time. I suspect serialization would have been the cure for the New Novel... but that’s not fair since I still haven’t actually read those people. Fyodor is such a great Christian character, like Goethe’s Faust he is a challenge to the forgiving nature of God and can only be forgiven through the mysterious working of the female heart... which Dostoyevsky is also playing with in Katerina. Of course all this is the view of several questionable men: Goethe and Dostoyevsky. How much is just wish fulfillment is a reasonable question. 

Back to the popular nature of this book, it’s interesting what Dostoyevsky chooses to use to entertain his audience. Along with love and sex and debauchery, we also have a fair amount of theology here. The Christians would be interested in the debate between Pavel and Gregory, while the liberals would find Ivan of interest. Everyone gets something.

Book III. 7.
p144 [Story about a Russian soldier captured and "threatened with an immediate and agonizing death if he didn't renounce Christianity and follow the Mohammedan faith." The soldier refuses, is tortured and dies.] 
...
"Well, my opinion is," Smeryakov began suddenly, and unexpectedly, in a loud voice, "that if that solder's exploit was so very great there would have been, to my thinking, no sin if he had in such an emergency renounced, so to speak, the name of Christ and his own christening. By doing this he would have saved his life, for good deeds. And through these good deeds he could, through the years, have atoned for his cowardice."

"How could it not be a sin? You're talking nonsense. For that you'll go straight to hell and be roasted like mutton," put in Fyodor Karamazov.
...
p145 "As for mutton, that's not so. There'll be nothing in hell . . . And there shouldn't be either, if it's according to justice," Smerdyakov maintained stoutly.
...
"...For as soon as I say to those enemies: 'No, I'm not a Christian, and I curse my true God,' then at once, by God's high judgement, I become accursed and am cut off from the Holy Church. It is exactly as though I were a heathen. At that very instant, not only when I say it aloud, but when I think of saying it, before a quarter of a second has passed, I am cut off. Is that so or not, Gregory?"

A variation on this line of reasoning will be central to the tragedy of Dmitri later on.

...

"Ivan," cried the old Karamazov suddenly, "stoop down, I want to whisper to you. . . . He's got this all up for your benefit. He wants you to praise him. Praise him."
...
"...For at the very moment I have become accursed, at that same highest moment... my christening is taken off me and becomes to no avail..."
...
"And if I've ceased to be a Christian, then I told no lie to the enemy when they asked whether I was a Christian or not a Christian. I had already been relieved by God Himself of my Christianity by reason of the thought alone... And if I have already been discharged, in what manner and with what sort of justice can I be held responsible as a Christian in the other world for having denied Christ... If I'm no longer a Christian, then I can't renounce Christ, for I've nothing then to renounce. Who will hold an unclean Tartar responsible, Gregory, even in heaven, for not having been born a Christian? And who would punish him for that... [and so on]
... 

Book III. 8.
p149 [Fyodor] "...Smerdyakov always pokes himself in now, after dinner. It's you he's so interested in, Ivan. What have you done to fascinate him?" he added.

p150 "Nothing whatever," answered Ivan. "He likes to think well of me. He's a lackey and a low person. Raw material for revolution when the time comes."

"Revolution?"

"there will be others and better ones. But there will be some like him as well. His kind will come first, and better ones after."

"And when will the time come?"

"The rocket will go off and fizzle out. So far the peasants are not very interested in listening to these soup-makers."

"Ah, but a Balaam's ass like that thinks and thinks, and only the devil knows what he's thinking."

"He's storing up ideas," said Ivan smiling.

"You see, I know he can't stand me, nor anyone else, even you, Ivan, though you think he has a high opinion of you. Worse still with Alyosha. He despises Alyosha. But he doesn't steal, and that's one thing. And he's not a gossip. He holds his tongue and doesn't talk about us in public. He makes excellent fish pies too. But, damn him, is he worth talking about so much?"

"Of course he isn't."

"And as for the ideas he may be hatching, the Russian peasant, generally speaking, needs beating. That I've always maintained. Our peasants are swindlers, and don't deserve to be pitied, and it's a good thing they are still flogged sometimes. Russia is rich in birches... I stand up for the clever people. We've given up beating the peasants, we've grown so clever, but they go on beating themselves. And a good thing too..."
...
"...At Mokroe I was talking to an old man, and he told me 'There's nothing we like so much as sentencing girls to be whipped, and we always give young men the job of beating them. And the girl he has whipped today, the young man will marry tomorrow. So it suits the girls, too,' he said. There's a set of de Sades for you! But it's clever anyway... Alyosha, don't be angry that I offended your Superior this morning. I lost my temper. If there is a God, if He exists, then, of course, I'm to blame, and I will have to answer for it. But if there isn't a God at all, what do they deserve, your Fathers? It's not enough to cut their heads off, for they keep back progress. Would you believe it, Ivan, that idea torments me? No, I see from your eyes that you don't believe me. You believe what people say, that I'm nothing but a buffoon...

p151 "...Ivan's arrogant. . . . I'd make an end of your monks, though, all the same. I'd take all that mystic stuff and suppress it, once and for all, all over Russia, so as to bring all the fools to reason. And the gold and the silver that would flow into the mint!"

"But why suppress it?" asked Ivan.

"That Truth may prevail. That's why."

"Well, if Truth were to prevail, you know, you'd be the first to be robbed and suppressed."

"Ah! I daresay you're right. Ah, I'm an ass!" cried the old Karamazov striking himself lightly on the forehead.

"Well, your monastery may stand then, Alyosha, if that's how it is. And we clever people will sit snug and enjoy our brandy. You know, Ivan, it must have been so ordained by the Almighty Himself. Ivan, speak, is there a God or not? Speak the truth, speak seriously..."
...
p152 "No, there is no God."

"Alyosha, is there a God?"

"There is."

"Ivan, and is there immortality of some sort, just a little, just a tiny bit?"

"There is no immortality either."
...
"There's absolute nothingness then. Perhaps there is just something? Anything is better than nothing!"

"Absolute nothingness."

Alyosha, is there immortality?"

"There is."
...
"God and immortality. In God is immortality."

"H'm! It's more likely Ivan's right. Good God! To think that faith, what force of all kinds, man has lavished for nothing on that dream, and for how many thousands of years. Who is it laughing at man? ..."
...
"It must be the devil," answered Ivan smiling.

"And the devil? Does he exist?"

"No, there's no devil either."

"It's too bad. . . . Damn it all, what wouldn't I do to the man who first invented God! Hanging on a bitter aspen tree would be too good for him."

"There would have been no civilization if they hadn't invented God," said Ivan.

"Wouldn't there have been? Without God?"

“No. And there would have been no brandy either..."
...
p153 [Fyodor about Zossima (or possibly someone else)] "...He's a Jesuit, a Russian one, that is. But since he's an honorable person there's a hidden indignation boiling within him at having to pretend holiness."

"But he believes in God."

"No. Didn't you know? Why, he tells everyone himself..."

"... But I respect him. There's something of Mephistopheles about him, or rather of 'The hero of our time.' . . . Arbenin, or what's his name? . . . You see, he's sensual..."

[It seems that Arbenin is a character in the verse play Masquerade by Lermontov. From Wiki, "The hero of the drama, Arbenin, is a wealthy young man endowed with a rebellious spirit and a strong will. Born into high society, he strives in vain to gain independence and freedom. He lives by the laws of his society, and, in trying to defend his honor while blinded by jealousy and pride, ends up murdering his wife."

A quick search on “Arbenin” turns up this nest of things to look into from 
A Fallen Idol is Still a God: Lermontov and the Quandaries of Cultural Transition by Elizabeth Allen:

Notes to Pages 124-135
26. Makogonenko, for instance, argues that, by the mid 1830s, Lermontov, having discovered "the distance and alienation of Romanticist ideals from reality," had begun to "overcome" Romanticism (123). Thus, in order to explain whence and why evil has appeared and triumphed," Lermontov followed in the path of Pushkin and turned to Realism because "only realism could fulfill this task," as it had already done for "Pushkin the realist" (138).
27. ...I would note that by exposing the dangers of what might be termed a cultural ideology -- that is, the rigid, exclusionary embrace of a set of reigning ideas and ideals of a culture during a particular era -- Masquerade anticipates what Gary Saul Morson has labeled the later nineteeth-century "tradition" of the "negatively philosophical" Russian novel. Exemplified by such works as Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, Dostoyevsky's The Devils, and Tolstoy's War and Peace, this tradition, Morson contends, assailed "the faith in abstract ideas and ideologies so common among intelligentsia in pre-revolutionary Russia" ("Philosophy," 151) Although Morson stresses the blindness to the realities of Russian life wrought by political, social, and religious ideologies that these renowned Russian authors depicted, Lermontov's play arguably prefigures the tradition they established by illustrating how an ideology born of Romantic culture could be as pernicious as ideologies born of any other source. 

Wiki has this about Lermontov and Masquerade: 

Arrested, jailed and sent to the Caucasus in 1837, Lermontov dropped "Princess Ligovskaya" and never got back to it. Much more important to him was The Masquerade; written in 1835, it got re-worked several times – the author tried desperately to publish it. Close to French melodrama and influenced by Victor Hugo and Alexander Dumas (but also owing a lot to Shakespeare, Griboyedov and Pushkin), Masquerade featured another hero whose wont was to 'throw a gauntlet' to the unsympathetic society and then get tired of his own conflicting nature, but was interesting mostly for its realistic sketches of the high society life, which Lermontov was getting more and more critical of.
Lermontov's fascination with Byron has never waned. "Having made the English pessimism a brand of his own, he's imparted it a strong national favour to produce the very special Russian spleen, which has been there always in the Russian soul... Devoid of cold skepticism or icy irony, Lermontov's poetry is full instead of typically Russian contempt for life and material values. This mix of deep melancholy on the one hand and wild urge for freedom on the other, could be found only in Russian folk songs," biographer Skabichevsky wrote.]

Book III. 9-10.
[These are plot filled sections that I really am not that interested in so I'm skipping them.]

Book III. 11.
...
p178 “Wait, Alyosha, one more confession to you alone!” cried Dmitri, suddenly turning back. “Look at me... You see here, here -- there’s terrible disgrace in store for me.” (As he said, “here,” Dmitri struck his chest with his fist with a strange air, as though the dishonor lay precisely on his chest, in some spot, in a pocket, perhaps, or hanging around his neck.) “You know me now, a scoundrel, a sworn scoundrel. But let me tell you that I’ve never done anything before and never will again, anything that can compare in baseness with the dishonor which I bear now at this very minute on my breast. Here, here, a dishonor which will come to pass, though I’m perfectly free to stop it. I can stop it or carry it through. remember that. Well, let me tell you, I will carry it through. I won’t stop it. I told you everything just now, but I didn’t tell you this, because even I am not bold enough. I can still prevent it. If I do, I can give back the full half of my lost honor tomorrow. But I won’t prevent it. I will carry out my plan, and you can bear witness that I told you so beforehand. Darkness and destruction! ... The filthy back alley and the she-devil... don’t pray for me, I’m not worth it....”

It has been taking me forever to process this book because it is so different than the rest of the books I’ve been blogging about. The reason I included this passage above is that it is the key to validating and making some sense of something surprising that will follow many books in the future. I couldn’t let it slip by though I didn’t think it pertained to the ideas in the book. 

But I was wrong. What Dmitri is talking about here is a mirror of the shame that will soon plague Ivan. Both of them fall victim of something very like what Pavel was talking about with the soldier denying God to save his life... in the instant that he considered doing such a thing, he was guilty of it in fact. Both Dmitri and Ivan feel themselves dishonored (and “disgraced” may be an even better word for this) not so much for what they do but for what they fail to do... for what they wish for in a moment of weakness.

This relates to the discussion of religion in general and Christianity in particular. This is from Wiki: 

Thus God is nothing else than human: he is, so to speak, the outward projection of a human's inward nature. This projection is dubbed as a chimera by Feuerbach, that God and the idea of a higher being is dependent upon the aspect of benevolence. Feuerbach [1841] states that, “a God who is not benevolent, not just, not wise, is no God,” and continues to say that qualities are not suddenly denoted as divine because of their godly association. The qualities themselves are divine therefore making God divine, indicating that humans are capable of understanding and applying meanings of divinity to religion and not that religion makes a human divine.” 

The force of this attraction to religion though, giving divinity to a figure like God, is explained by Feuerbach as God is a being that acts throughout humans in all forms. God, “is the principle of [man's] salvation, of [man's] good dispositions and actions, consequently [man's] own good principle and nature.” It appeals to humankind to give qualities to the idol of their religion because without these qualities a figure such as God would become merely an object, its importance would become obsolete, there would no longer be a feeling of an existence for God. Therefore, Feuerbach says, when humans remove all qualities from God, “God is no longer anything more to him than a negative being.” Additionally, because humans are imaginative, God is given traits and there holds the appeal. God is a part of a human through the invention of a God. Equally though, humans are repulsed by God because, “God alone is the being who acts of himself.”

I think a less “moral” definition of “divine” could be used here. People see in God what ever divine qualities they wish to see and they aren’t all like puppies and flowers.


Jump to Next: TBK. Bk IV. 1. & Last of October

81. TBK. Bk III. 4-5 & October

Jump to Introduction & Chronology
Jump back to Previous: The Brothers K. Bk III. 3. & Butterflies to caterpillars

The Brothers Karamazov


Book III. 4.
How 19th century Russian (I wish it was just that). This reminds me of one of Marianne’s more reflective lines in Sense & Sensibility, “What strange creatures men are.  What do they want from us? Perhaps they see us not as people but as playthings...” (This is a line from the mini-series screenplay, not from the novel, I think.)

p121 [Dmitri] "...Ladies used to be fond of me; not all of them, but it happened, it happened. But I always liked side paths, little dark back alleys behind the main road -- there one finds adventures and surprises, and precious metal in the dirt. I am speaking figuratively, Alyosha... I loved vice, I loved the dishonor of vice. I loved cruelty. Am I not a bug, am I not a poisonous insect? In fact I'm a Karamazov!... You're blushing. Enough of this filth with you... I never bragged of one of them. But that's enough... I'm going to tell you something curious. And don't be surprised that I'm glad to tell you, instead of being ashamed."

p122 "You say that because I blushed," Alyosha said suddenly. "I wasn't blushing at what you were saying or at what you've done. I blushed because I am the same as you are."

"You? That's going a little too far!"

"No, it's true," insisted Alyosha (obviously the idea was not a new one). "The ladder's the same. I'm at the bottom step, and you're above, somewhere about the thirteenth. That's how I see it. But it's all the same. Absolutely the same. Anyone on the bottom step is bound to go up to the top one"

So, presumably, their father is at the top. "Thirteenth" step seems a bit random here; does it have some special significance?


"Then one should not step on the first rung at all."

"Anyone who can help it had better not."

"But can you?"

"I don't think so."

The story of Dmitri and Katerina. Dmitri is in a position to "save" Katerina's disgraced father.

p127 " 'My sister told me,' she began, 'that you would give me 4,500 roubles if I came to you for it -- myself. I have come . . . give me the money!'

"She couldn't keep it up. She was breathless, frightened, her voice failed her, and the corners of her mouth quivered...

"...My first idea was a -- Karamazov one. Once I was bitten by a centipede and laid up for two weeks with fever. Well, I felt a centipede biting at my heart then -- a poisonous insect, you understand? I looked her up and down. You've seen her? She's a beauty. But she was beautiful in another way then. At that moment she was beautiful because she was noble, and I was a cad; she in all the grandeur of her generosity and sacrifice for her father, and I -- a bug! And scoundrel as I was, she was altogether at my mercy, body and soul. [Mephistopheles?] She was hemmed in. I tell you frankly that thought, that venomous thought, so possessed my heart that I was almost overcome. It seemed as if there could be no resisting it; as though I should act like a bug, like a venomous spider, without a spark of pity. I could scarcely breathe. Understand, I would have gone the next day to ask for her hand, so that it might end honorably, so to speak, and so that nobody would or could know. For though I'm a cad, I'm honest [and thus not at the top of the ladder?]. And at that very second some voice seemed to whisper in my ear, 'But when you come tomorrow to make your proposal, that girl won't even see you; she'll order her coachman to kick you out of the yard. "Publish it through all the town," she will say, "I'm not afraid of you." ' I looked at Katerina... I became spiteful, I wanted to play the nastiest swinish trick; to look at her with a sneer, and on the spot where she stood before me to stun her with a tone of voice that only a shopman could use. I wanted to say: 'Four-thousand-five-hundred! What do you mean? I was joking. You've been counting your chickens too easily. Two hundred, if you like, with all my heart. But Four-thousand-five-hundred is not a sum to throw away. You've gone to a lot of trouble for nothing.' But I did not say these words.

p128 "I would have lost out, of course. She'd have run away. But it would have been an infernal revenge. It would have been worth it all. . . . Would you believe it, it has never happened to me with any other woman, not one, to look at her at such a moment with hatred... that hate which is only a hairsbreadth from love, from the maddest love!

"I went to the window, put my forehead against the frozen pane, and I remember the ice burnt my forehead like fire. I did not keep her long, don't be afraid. I turned round, went up to the table, opened the drawer and took out a banknote for five thousand roubles (it was lying in a French dictionary). Then I showed it to her in silence, folded it, handed it to her, opened the door into the hall and stepped back, I bowed. I bowed most respectfully, a most impressive bow, believe me! She trembled all over, gazed at me for a second, turned horribly pale -- white as a sheet, in fact -- and all at once, not impetuously but softly, gently, bowed down to my feet -- not a boarding-school curtsy, but a Russian bow, with her forehead to the floor. Then she jumped up and ran away. I was wearing my sword. I drew it and nearly stabbed myself with it on the spot; why, I don't know. It would have been stupid, of course. I suppose it was from pleasure. Can you understand that one might kill oneself from pleasure? ... I only kissed my sword and put it back in the scabbard -- which I didn't have to tell you, by the way...."

Curiously, what most strikes me about this passage, given the "human" themes Dostoevsky is dealing with here and how little human nature changes over time, is that people -- even officers not on parade -- were wearing swords so recently as this.


Book III. 5.
Yes, the doomed soap opera quality of this reminds me of Anna Karenina. The Russians really love this stuff and the rest of the world can’t turn away. Isn’t this part of what fascinated Hans Castorp and appalled Settembrini about the Slavic “East.” These characters make Willoughby and Wickham look quite tame, like a vicar’s daughter’s boogeyman.

p130 [Katerina's father is saved but then dies of disease. Katerina returns to Moscow where she suddenly falls into a fortune. Dmitri continues the story,] "Well, suddenly I receive by mail four-thousand-five-hundred rubles. I was speechless. Three days later came the promised letter... She offers to be my wife, offers herself to me. 'I love you madly,' she says, 'even if you don't love me, never mind. Be my husband. Don't be afraid. I won't hinder you in any way. I will be your chattel. I will be the carpet under your feet. I want to love you forever. I want to save you from yourself.' Alyosha, I am not worthy to repeat those lines in my vulgar words and in my vulgar tone, my everlasting vulgar tone, that I can never cure myself of. That letter stabs me even now... Then I wrote at once to Ivan, and told him all I could about it in a six-page letter and I asked him to go to see her. . . . Why do you look like that? Why are you staring at me? Yes, Ivan fell in love with her; he's in love with her still. I know that. I did a stupid thing, in the world's opinion; but perhaps that one stupid thing may be the saving of us all now. Oh! Don't you see how much she thinks of Ivan, how she respects him? When she compares us, do you suppose she can love a man like me, especially after all that has happened here?"

p131 "But I'm convinced that she does love a man like you, and not a man like him."

"She loves her own virtue, not me." ...

This is all so Christian. This desire for self-abasement. Dmitri and Katerina are really so similar. Dmitri is about to talk about free will, but really they all -- including the monks and fathers and women with religious leanings (perhaps) -- want to give away their will to anyone or anything that will take it. Naphtha would be at home and very comfortable here.

"I swear, Alyosha," he cried, with intense anger at himself, "as God is holy and as Christ is God, I swear that though I smiled at her lofty sentiments just now, I know that I am a million times baser in soul than she. I swear that these lofty sentiments of hers are as sincere as a heavenly angel's. That's the tragedy of it... As for Ivan, I can understand how he must be cursing nature now -- with his intellect, too! To see the preference given -- to whom, to what? To a monster who, though he is engaged and all eyes are fixed on him, can't control his vices -- and before the very eyes of his fiancee. A man like me is preferred while he is rejected. And why? Because the girl wants to sacrifice her life and destiny out of gratitude. It's ridiculous! ... But destiny will win and the best man will hold his ground while the undeserving one will vanish into his back alley forever -- his filthy back alley, his beloved back alley, where he is at home and where he will sink in filth and stench through his own free will and with pleasure... 

p133 "... Damn it, I have some honor! As soon as I began visiting Grushenka, I stopped being engaged and I stopped being an honest man... You see, I went to see Grushenka the first time to beat her. I had heard, and I know for a fact now, that that captain, Father's agent, had given Grushenka an I.O.U. of mine so that she could sue me, so that she could put an end to me. Father wanted to scare me. I went to beat her. I had had a glimpse of her before... I knew , too, that she was fond of money, that she hoarded it, and lent it out at a cruel rate of interest, that she's a merciless cheat and swindler [A bourgeoisie]. I went to beat her, and I stayed. The storm broke. It struck me down like the plague. I'm still plague-stricken and I know that everything is over, that there will never be anything more for me. The cycle of the ages is accomplished... 'I'll marry you if you like,' she said, 'you're a beggar you know. Say that you won't beat me, and will let me do anything I choose, and perhaps I will marry you.' She laughed, and she's laughing still!"
...
p134 "I'll be her husband if she will have me, and when lovers come, I'll go into the next room. I'll clean her friend's galoshes, light their samovar, run their errands." [How many characters in this book have this same fantasy! Or at least like to talk like this.]

p135 "Katerina will understand it all," Alyosha said solemnly. "She'll understand how great this trouble is and will forgive. She has compassion, and no one could be more unhappy than you. She'll see that herself."

October
The weather is still lovely but the leaves at the top of the Japanese maple tree out my window are turning and the potted tree in our alley is down to its last few leaves. And I’m officially shut down for the year when it comes to event greening. Another year is drifting towards its end. 

Beyond the tragic life of leaves, this is also the season when I do a variety of errands to keep my life running smoothly. I take my shoes to the cobbler to have the heels repaired. I schedule my yearly haircut. I schedule my yearly doctor appointment and skin cancer hunt. If I darned socks, I'd be looking to the heels of my socks, but, as it happens, my socks are in fine fettle this year. 

I consider what projects or trips I might take in my slack time between now and next March -- not much this year, though if we really do get the El Nino winter we are being teased with, I may want to finally take the train to Truckee for a weekend (or at least for a couple days) when the snow is good and deep.

Deeper thoughts about what I still want to do with my life will come later. A good, rainy, El Nino winter should be ideal for reflection as well as plowing through my next book subject which I currently believe will be Faust.


Today I took advantage of what is supposed to be our last day this week of unusually hot weather to have lunch out and sit at a table on the sidewalk (in the shade). Then I read a couple chapters of my book while drinking my iced tea. Finally, I put down the book and took in the sidewalk and street traffic and some quite handsome buildings across the way. At this point I was distressed to notice flaws in my vision that I thought might be indications that my peripheral vision might be getting worse... Then I remembered I still had on my reading glasses.

Good news: my eyes aren't noticeably worse. Bad news: my brain may be failing.


Jump to Next: The Brothers K. Bk III. 6-11.