90. TBK Bk VI. 1. & "Knocking on Heaven's Door"

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The Brothers Karamazov

Book VI. 1. Zossima's brother & The Mysterious Visitor
p323 [Zossima to Alyosha] “... Make haste to find him [Dmitri], go again tomorrow and make haste, leave everything and make haste. Perhaps you may still have time to prevent something terrible. I bowed down yesterday to the great suffering in store for him.”
...
“Alyosha could not help asking: “Father and teacher, your words are obscure. . . . What is this suffering in store for him?” His voice trembled with emotion.

“Do not inquire. I seemed to see something terrible yesterday . . . as though his whole future were expressed in his eyes. A look came into his eyes -- so that I was instantly horror-stricken at what that man is preparing for himself. Once or twice in my life I’ve seen such a look in a man’s face . . . reflecting as it were his future fate, and that fate, alas, came to pass. I sent you to him, Alyosha, for I thought you could help him. But everything and all our fates are from the Lord...”

I was going to comment after the previous paragraph but decided to wait, and Zossima/Dostoyevsky has made one of my points. This is, again, my beloved Cassandra syndrome: If you can see the future you can’t change it. 

My other point has to do with Dostoyevsky believing this kind of prognostication is possible. This instance, with Dmitri, is easier than the other instance (with the woman suddenly hearing from her son), but, while the Dmitri instance is perhaps just a literary device, it does seem that Dostoyevsky is arguing for a mystical view of reality.  

[Zossima then continues to speak about Alyosha] “This is what I think of you: you will go forth from these walls, but will live like a monk in the world. You will have many enemies, but even your foes will love you. Life will bring you many misfortunes, but you will find your happiness in them, and will bless life and will make others bless it -- which is what matters most... [Zossima tells Alyosha and those present why Alyosha’s face is so dear to him.] At the dawn of my life when I was a child I had an elder brother who died before my eyes at seventeen. And later on in the course of my life I gradually became convinced that that brother had been for a guidance and a sign from on high for me. For had he not come into my life, I should never perhaps... have become a monk and entered on this precious path. He appeared first to me in my childhood and here at the end of my pilgrimage, he seems to have come to me again....”

[I’m going to give you parts of Zossima’s life story for what it says about Dostoyevsky’s faith and understanding of Orthodox Christianity. This passage is supposedly from Alyosha’s notes so is not in quotes,] p325 ...There were two of us, my elder brother, Markel, and I. He was eight years older than I was, of irritable temperament, but kind-hearted and never ironical. He was remarkably silent, especially at home with me, our mother, and the servants. He did well at school, but did not get on with his schoolfellows, though he never quarreled, at least so my mother told me. Six months before his death, when he was seventeen, he made friends with a political exile who had been banished from Moscow to our town for freethinking, and led a solitary existence there. This man was a scholar who had gained distinction in philosophy. Something attracted him to Markel and he used to come to see him. He spent whole evenings with my brother during that winter, until he was summoned to Petersburg to take up his post again. He had powerful friends.

p326 It was the beginning of Lent, and Markel would not fast, he was rude and laughed at it. “That’s all silly and there is no God,” he said, horrifying my mother, the servants, and me too. For though I was only nine, I was aghast at hearing such words. We had four servants, all serfs. I remember my mother selling one of the four, the cook, who was lame and elderly, for sixty paper roubles, and hiring a free servant to take her place.

In the sixth week in Lent, my brother, who was never strong and had a tendency to consumption, was taken ill... [Thomas Mann jots down a note while reading this.]  I suppose he caught cold. Anyway the doctor, who came, whispered to my mother that it was galloping consumption and that he would not live through the spring. My mother began weeping, and careful not to alarm my brother she entreated him to go to church, to confess and take the sacrament, as he was still able to move about. This made him angry, and he said something profane about the church. He grew thoughtful, however; and he guessed at once that he was seriously ill... 

p327 Three days passed and Holy Week came. And on Tuesday morning my brother began going to church. “I am doing this simply for your sake, Mother, to please and comfort you,” he said. My mother wept with joy and grief. “His end must be near,” she thought, “if there’s such a change in him.” But he was not able to go to church long. He took to his bed. After that he had to confess and take the sacrament at home.

...I remember that he used to cough all night and sleep badly, but in the morning he dressed and tried to sit up in an arm chair. That’s how I remember him sitting, sweet and gentle, smiling, his face bright and joyous, in spite of his illness. A marvelous change passed over him, his spirit seemed transformed...
...
“Don’t cry, Mother... Life is paradise, and we are all in paradise, but we refuse to see it. If we would, we should have heaven on earth the next day.”
...
Friends came to see us. “Dear ones,” he would say to them, “what have I done that you should love me so? How can you love anyone like me, and how was it I did not know, I did not appreciate it before?”

When the servants came in to him he would say continually: “Dear, kind people, why are you doing so much for me, do I deserve to be waited on? If it were God’s will for me to live, I would wait on you, for all men should wait on one another.”

p328 Mother shook her head as she listened. “My darling, it’s your illness that makes you talk like that.”

“Mother darling,” he would say, “there must be servants and masters, but if so I will be the servant of my servants. And another thing, Mother, every one of us has sinned against all men, and I more than any.”

Mother smiled at that, smiled through her tears. “Why, how could you have sinned against all men, more than all? Robbers and murderers have done that, but what sin have you committed, that you hold yourself more guilty than all?”

“Mother, little heart of mine,” he said (he had begun using such strange caressing words at that time)... believe me, every one is really responsible to all men for all men and for everything. I don’t know how to explain it to you, but I feel it is so. And how is it then that we went on living, getting angry and not knowing?”

In this mood he would get up every day, more and more sweet and joyous and full of love. When the doctor... came he would ask, joking: “Well, Doctor, have I another day in this world?”

“You’ll live many days yet,” the doctor would answer. “And months and years too,”

“Months and years!” my brother would exclaim. “One day is enough for a man to know all happiness. My dear ones, why do we quarrel, try to outshine each other and keep grudges against each other? Let’s go straight into the garden, walk and play there, love, appreciate each other and glorify life.”

This could have been written to illustrate the chapter of Being Mortal I just read. 

“Your son cannot last long,” the doctor told my mother, as she accompanied him to the door. “The disease is affecting his brain.” [Mann madly writes more notes.] 

The windows of my brother’s room looked out into the garden... with old trees in it which were coming into bud. The first birds of spring were chirping and singing in the branches. And looking at them and admiring them, my brother began suddenly begging their forgiveness too. “Birds of heaven, happy birds, forgive me, for I have also sinned against you.” None of us could understand these words at the time, but he shed tears of joy. “Yes,” he said, “there was always such a glory of God about me: birds, trees, meadows, sky, only I lived in shame and dishonored it all and did not notice the beauty and glory.”

p 329 “You take too many sins on yourself,” Mother used to say, weeping.

“Mother darling, it’s for joy, not for grief I am crying. Though I can’t explain it to you, I like to humble myself, for I don’t know how to love enough. If I have sinned against everyone yet all forgive me, too, and that’s heaven. Am I not in heaven now?”

He died the third week after Easter. He was fully conscious though he could not talk; up to his last hour he did not change. He looked happy, his eyes beamed and sought us, he smiled at us, beckoned us....

This is perhaps the best expression of the utopian Christianity 
Dostoyevsky seems to have believed in. And this account is strikingly similar to the account of the person dying of AIDS in Anne Lamott’s Small Victories. And, as I already mentioned above, it is a perfect illustration of Atul Gawande’s position (chapter 4 of Being Mortal)  that our perspective on life changes radically when we are very old or very ill.

Zossima relates the story of Job, the thing that first awakened a spiritual feeling in him as a child. I have to say this is a genius story for any cult. Instead of promising benefits and good things to the cult followers, it praises the example of someone who was thoroughly screwed by his deity. Once your followers except that, there’s nothing you can do that will drive them away. And then there’s the story of Isaac where God just messes with him in the most devious way... but it’s all good in the end because God was just fooling around, Yo. 

p331 Afterwards I heard the words of mockery and blame, proud words: “How could God give up the most loved of His saints for the diversion of the devil, take from him his children, smite him with sore boils so that he cleansed the corruption from his sores with a potsherd -- and for no other object except to boast to the devil! ‘See what My saint can suffer for My sake.’ ” But the greatness of it lies in the very fact that it is a mystery -- that the passing earthly show and the eternal verity are brought together in it. In the face of the earthly truth, the eternal truth is accomplished. The Creator, as on the first day of creation He ended each day with praise: “that is good that I have created,” looks upon Job and again praises His creation... 

What a dick. Now this does pass my “God as novelist” test, it makes a great story. But would you expect the characters treated like this in a novel to worship their creator? Odysseus might be fine with what Homer did with him but Homer didn’t make him look like a sap, kept his family intact and I don’t recall a single boil. Now Agamemnon... if I were Homer in Hades I would not turn my back on him. 

... It’s the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy. The mild serenity of age takes the place of the riotous blood of youth. I bless the rising sun each day, and, as before, my heart sings to meet it. But now I love even more its setting, its long slanting rays and the soft tender  gentle memories that come with them, the dear images from the whole of my long happy life -- and over all the divine Truth, softening, reconciling, forgiving! My life is ending. I know that well. But every day that is left me I feel how my earthly life is in touch with a new infinite, unknown, but approaching life, the nearness of which sets my soul quivering with rapture, my mind glowing and my heart weeping for joy.
...
[From the story of the Mysterious Visitor] p346 ... “That life is heaven,” he said to me suddenly, “that I have long been thinking about... In fact, I think of nothing else.” He looked at me and smiled. “I am more convinced of it than you are...”
...
“Heaven,” he went on, “lies hidden within all of us -- it lies hidden in me now, and if I will it, it will be revealed to me tomorrow and for all time.”
...
“And we are all responsible to all for all, apart from our own sins. You are quite right in thinking that. And it is wonderful how you could comprehend it in all its significance at once. And in truth, so soon as men understand that, the Kingdom of Heaven will be for them not a dream, but a living reality.”
...
“...this dream will come to pass without doubt. It will come, but not now, for every process has its law. It’s a spiritual, psychological process. To transform the world, to recreate it afresh, men must turn into another path psychologically. Until you have become really, in actual fact, a brother to everyone, brotherhood will not come to pass. No sort of scientific teaching, no kind of common interest, will ever teach men to share property and privileges with equal consideration for all. Every one will think his share too small and they will be always envying, complaining and attacking one another... it will come to pass, but first we have to go through a period of isolation.”

p347 “What do you mean by isolation?” I [Zossima] asked him.

“Why, the isolation that prevails everywhere, above all in our age -- it has not fully developed, it has not reached its limit yet. For everyone strives to keep his individuality, everyone wants to secure the greatest possible fullness of life for himself. But meantime all his efforts result not in attaining fullness of life but self-destruction, for instead of self-realization he ends by arriving at complete solitude. All mankind in our age is split up into units. Man keeps apart, each in his own groove; each one holds aloof, hides himself and hides what he has, from the rest. He ends by being repelled by others and repelling them. He heaps up riches by himself and thinks, ‘How strong I am now and how secure.’ And in his madness he does not understand that the more he heaps up, the more he sinks into self-destructive impotence. For he is accustomed to rely upon himself alone and to cut himself off from the whole; he has trained himself not to believe in the help of others, in men and in humanity, and only trembles for fear he should lose his money and the privileges that he has won for himself. [I wish he would stop describing me.] Everywhere in these days men have ceased to understand that the true security is to be found in social solidarity rather than in isolated individual effort. But this terrible individualism must inevitably have an end, and all will suddenly understand how unnaturally they are separated from one another. It will be the spirit of the time, and people will marvel that they have sat so long in darkness without seeing the light. And then the sign of the Son of Man will be seen in the heavens. . . . But, until then, we must keep the banner flying....”

This, I believe, is the full expression of Dostoyevsky's Christian utopianism. As with all utopian notions, it is perfectly sane and yet, over 130 years later, we see no indication that it is closer to realization but instead more confirmations that utopian socialism is still not something we are capable of. Many things, especially various religious and communal tendencies in many individuals, suggest that many of us do want or need “social solidarity,” and yet time and again we fail at implementing anything like it. We seem, as a species, to like things as they are, more or less. And going back to my “God as novelist” notion yet again, the utopia the Mysterious Visitor argues for would be the end of the story -- the “And they lived happily ever after,” following which we put down the book because nothing could be more dull.

And this “social solidarity” Dostoyevsky rightly claims we long for, was also the motivation behind both German Reichs and the Communist International/Soviet experiment. And look how well those adventures turned out.

Also, it’s odd that, given this view, Dostoyevsky would also populate this novel with such wonderful examples of the kind of people who would never go along with this notion; even in the monastery.

Finally, why isn’t this book titled: The Karamazovs? Not only would it then include Fyodor (even Pavel in a way), but it would also point to Karamazovs in the other sense, that all-too-human nature shared by mankind. This isn’t a book about a problematic family of the land-owning class; it’s a book about human nature and eschatology. 

Small Victories 

This post is already too long, but this really does belong here. Sorry. 

"Knocking on Heaven’s Door" 
p194 One of our newer [church] members, a man named Ken, is dying of AIDS. disintegrating before our very eyes... Shortly after Ken started coming, his partner, Brandon, died of AIDS. A few weeks later Ken told us that right after Brandon died, Jesus had slid into the hole in his heart left by Brandon's loss, and had been there ever since... He says that he would gladly pay any price for what he has now; which is Jesus and us.

p195 ...and then a month ago he was back, weighing almost no pounds, his face even more lopsided, as if he'd had a stroke. Still, during the Prayers of the People, he talked joyously of his life and his decline, of grace and redemption, of how safe and happy he feels these days.

[Ranola, a black women raised in the south, finally is able to get past her reservations about Ken while they are singing hyms] p196 I can't imagine anything but music that could have brought this about. Maybe it's because music is about as physical as it gets: your essential rhythm is your heartbeat; your essential sound, your breath. We're walking temples of noise, and when you add tender hearts to this mix, it somehow lets us meet in places we couldn't get to any other way.

I think Ackerman's analysis of music in A Natural History of the Senses is more to the point. 

p197 ... [In  the episode with Ken and Ranola she is holding him up as they sing] He looked like a child who was singing simply because small children sing all the time -- they haven't made the separation between speech and music. Then both Ken and Ranola began to cry. Tears were pouring down their faces, and their noses were running like rivers, but as she held him up, she lay her black weeping face against his feverish white one, put her face right up against his and let all those spooky fluids mingle with hers.

This also takes us back to Madam H. in her meeting with Zossima and to some conversations in The Magic Mountain. 

See! This just goes so well with that last The Brothers K. What could be more of an altered state than dying of AIDS (I really think she should date these stories since they seem to be all over the place chronologically). And again we have the spiritual/metaphysical nature of music -- which relates to Doctor Faustus, not The Brothers K. 

But, again, we have people attributing spiritual phenomena to a particular religion when it is probably simply human -- since people of so many different cultures (see The Perennial Philosophy) seem to share the same kind of experiences. 

Also, isn’t it amusing how in both these stories we see the divisiveness (schismatic-ness) of the devout? (I skipped Lamott's confession that she is indeed a born again Christian and her description of her seatmate on a plane who had said "This is one of the best books I've ever read..." about a book Lamott had negatively reviewed as "hard-core right-wing paranoid anti-Semitic homophobic misogynistic propaganda.") Lamott’s seatmate, like Father Ferapont in The Brothers K., looks down on other people of his own faith. The reverse of the notion of The Perennial Philosophy is the so common believe that the “true” path is a very narrow path that only the elect few can walk. 

Jump to Next: TBK. Bk VI. 2.