96. TBK. Bk X. 5-6. & "This Dog's Life"

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The Brothers Karamazov

Part Four. Book X. 5.

Maybe this reading I can learn the point of young Kolya. 

p637 [Kolya to the room but mainly to Alyosha] “The study of the classics, if you ask my opinion, is simply a police measure, that’s why it has been introduced into our schools... Latin and Greek were introduced because they are a bore and because they stupefy the intellect...”

“And yet he is first in Latin himself,” cried one of the boys.
...

Kolya apparently has picked all this up from the always annoying Rakitin, but he reminds me more of Pavel. I think he must represent the younger, nihilist influenced generation for Dostoyevsky. That last bit about him excelling at Latin yet attacking the teaching of the Classical languages, reminds me of Michel Foucault. Foucault was very much the man of the future Dostoyevsky was afraid of. (Yet he could have gone mano a mano with Father Ferapont when it comes to self-mortification. That actually sounds like a fun idea.)

The way my books, or in this case stories, keep relating to each other -- something like snakes biting each other’s tails -- is becoming exhausting. (He states, not really complaining.) “Teddy” by J.D. Salinger turns out to be a wonderfully brief exposition of The Perennial Philosophy. But this is (as it often is) a male version of that philosophy where the goal is to transcend and get off the damn wheel. But if everything, including us, is God. And if We’ve gone to such trouble to dream/Create this reality, why are we so keen to leave the audience? 

There are times when I like to step back from an artistic experience and view it from the perspective of the creators (author or actors -- TV shows, especially after a couple or more seasons, like to re-juggle the parts so that the actors have something new to do. These re-jugglings are not always popular with the fans, but I try to view them from the perspective of the actors going stale (insane) from playing the same part for so long. Some examples: the Buffybot; Dark Willow; Dark Piper; about every other season of Eureka.) And yet any theatrical experience (defined as generously as possible) is best experienced from the seats. Transcending “reality” or “Maya” means leaving the seats behind for something more “profound.” Transcendence is fundamentally leaving the theater. How does this make sense when we’re the ones (One?) who created the theater and the play? You could even argue that it is counterproductive making people aware that they are only “actors” in a play. 

How does this relate to The Brothers K.? The Perennial Philosophy and Dostoyevsky’s crisis of Christianity -- that everything is permitted -- are connected by a particularly loathsome (from the perspective of the naive Christian -- dovetail joint. If everything is God then where is the evil? But if there is no evil, what is all this phenomena that we apprehend as evil? It’s all enough to make you want to wear weighted chains and a hair shirt.

Part Four. Book X. 6.

p640 [Kolya, talking with Alyosha, claims he is “an incurable Socialist”]

“A Socialist?” laughed Alyosha. “When have you had time to become one? Why, I thought you were only thirteen?”

Kolya winced.

“In the first place I am not thirteen, but fourteen, fourteen in two weeks.” He flushed angrily. “And in the second place I don’t understand what my age has to do with it. The question is what are my convictions not what is my age, isn’t it?”

I’m wondering if I was as much of an ass at this age. This is when I went through my Marxist phase while reading The Communist Manifesto and when I refused to be confirmed in the Lutheran faith, after my parents hauled me around to anyone in the San Fernando Valley religious community who was supposed to be “good with youth.” By the time I finished high school I’d switched to utopian socialism (which is the closely related secular cousin of Dostoyevsky’s utopian Christianity. In fact they even overlap in places.)

Dostoyevsky makes Kolya seem a bit of a fool, manipulated by the even worse Rakitin, but Zossima was urging his flock of Fathers and monks to appeal to this very tendency of young people to be drawn to naive  utopian  dreams.  Dostoyevsky seems to see Christian utopianism as more anchored in tradition and God, but from the perspective of the 21st century the two traditions seem equally bankrupt... though just as tempting as ever. 

...
p642 [Alyosha] “...Not long ago I read a criticism, made by a German who had lived in Russia, of our students and school boys. ‘Show a Russian schoolboy,’ he writes, ‘a map of the stars, which he knows nothing about, and he will return the map next day with corrections on it.’ No knowledge and unbounded conceit -- that’s what the German meant to say about the Russian schoolboy.”

“Yes, that’s perfectly right.” Kolya laughed suddenly. “Exactly right! But this German did not see the good side, what do you think? Conceit maybe, that comes from youth and will be corrected if need be. But, on the other hand, there is an independent spirit almost from childhood, boldness of thought and conviction, and not the spirit of those sausage makers, groveling before authority. . . . But this German was right all the same. Hurray the German! But Germans need strangling all the same. Even though they are so good at science and learning they must be strangled.”
...
Well that’s interesting. Of course I note that he’s seconding my views of mid to late 19th century Germans as expressed in the section of this blog about Doctor Faustus. And there’s nothing really surprising about animosity between Germans and Russians. The 20th century would give them both ample opportunities for strangling each other.

This bit with Kolya is even more Russian than the rest. 

After doing a little reading about Dosoyevsky's life, I now see in Kolya a good deal of the young Fyodor Dostoyevsky. And, there is a good deal of the somewhat older, but still very young Fyodor in Rakitin as well... I didn't see that coming.

Small Victories 

"This Dog's Life"
It just occurred to me that religious people trying to make sense of life -- as part of God’s plan -- reads about the same as pre-Copernican astronomers trying to make sense of the movement of planets, you end up with really convoluted thinking. It’s like the flip side of the Argument From Design -- trying to find a purpose and intention in everything. We are good at seeing faces in things and in finding causes for the most perplexing effects.  A child sleeping in her bed is hit by a stray bullet fired by someone who has no idea she even exists, but people still ask, “Why her?” God is sending us just as much cancer, or whatever, as we can stand to make us stronger and so that we will seize the day. 

I tend to think of the Mount St. Helens eruption as a counter to this kind of thinking. If you were on the wrong side of that peak that day in 1980 you were simply dead, and for 57 people this was certainly true, but there are always the random exceptions. Here are some interesting stories I ran into. I especially like the first story, the one where people were saved by a combination of geography and a guy’s fondness for breakfast. At least no one is claiming that Jesus made them especially hungry that morning... while enthusiastically annihilating virtually every speck of life within miles of them.

p130 Having a good dog is the closest some of us are ever going to come to knowing the direct love of a mother or God, so it’s no wonder it knocked the stuffing out of me and Sam when Sadie died. I promised Sam we’d get another puppy someday, but secretly decided not to ever get another dog. I didn’t want to hurt that much again, if I could possibly avoid it. And I didn’t want my child’s heart and life to break like that again. But you don’t always get what you want; you get what you get. This is a real problem for me. You want to protect your child from pain, and what you get instead is life, and grace. And while theologians insist that grace is freely given, the truth is that sometimes you pay through the nose. And you can’t pay your child’s way.
...
p132 She [Sadie] lived with us for more than a decade, saw us through great joy and great loss. She consoled us through friends’ illnesses, the death of Sam’s grandparents. She and I walked Sam to school every day. She was mother, dad, psych nurse. She helped me survive my boyfriends and the tinny, hollow loneliness in between. She helped Sam survive his first mean girlfriend. She let my mother stroke her head forever. She taught comfort. 
...
Just the other day a friend posted a photo of her dog (a chihuahua, no less) sitting in the passenger seat of her car. The text was “Dog is my copilot.” I am so much more comfortable with “Dog” instead of “God” in this role. If people wanted to attribute all the spiritual qualities they force on God to “Dog” instead, I would go along happily. If they tried it with cats I might balk, but there are even a few cats (Maru) who may have near divine qualities. 

“God,” on the other hand, seems to me to be an ephemeral extrapolation and magnification of a dog’s good qualities into thin air. Into the cosmic ether. As a pantheist, I can’t totally reject this notion. But why can’t you imagine these qualities inside yourself instead? 


In one of the stories I’ve skipped, Lamott made it very clear how she was personally devastated by the death of friends and of relationships to an extent that I can hardly imagine. In the past I’ve been pleasantly surprised to learn that I am not completely unfeeling, but losses just don’t affect me the way they do her. As a result, I really can’t judge what she finds necessary, given her heightened sensitivity to loss. Of course dogmatic religions don’t tend to give individuals freedom to believe or not based on their personalities. And I suppose I should make clear that I'm not using "dogmatic" in any special way here.


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95. TBK. Bk IX. 8. & "The Last Waltz"

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Jump back to Previous: The Brothers K. Bk VIII. 3,6. & "Falling Better"

The Brothers Karamazov

Book IX. 8.
p588 [Dmitri’s dream on the night his father is murdered and he is interrogated for the crime. To the peasant driver of a cart on the steppes] “Why are they crying? Why are they crying?” Dmitri asked, as they dashed by.

“It’s the babe,” answered the driver. “The babe is crying.”

“Dmitri was struck by his saying, in his peasant way, “the babe.” He liked the peasant’s calling it a “babe.” There seemed more pity in it.

“But why is it crying?” Dmitri persisted stupidly. “Why are its little arms bare? Why don’t they wrap it up?”

“The babe’s cold. Its little clothes are frozen and don’t warm it.”

“But why is it? Why?” Dmitri still persisted.

“Why, they’re poor people, burned out. They’ve no bread. They’re begging because they’ve been burned out.”

“No, no.” Dmitri still did not understand. “Tell me why it is those poor mothers stand there? Why are people poor? Why is the babe poor? Why is the steppe barren? Why don’t they hug each other and kiss? Why don’t they sing songs of joy? Why are they so dark from black misery? Why don’t they feed the babe?”

And he felt that, though his questions were unreasonable and senseless, yet he wanted to ask just that, and he had to ask it in just that way. And he felt that a passion of pity, such as he had never known before, was rising in his heart, that he wanted to cry, that he wanted to do something for them all, so that the baby should cry no more, so that the dark-faced, dried-up mother should not weep, so that no one should shed tears again from that moment. He wanted to do all this at once, at once, regardless of obstacles, with the recklessness of the Karamazovs. 

...his heart glowed, and he struggled forward toward the light, and he longed to live, to live, to go on and on, toward the new beckoning light, and to hurry, hurry now, at once!
...
p589 “I’ve had a good dream gentlemen,” he said in a strange voice, with a new light, as of joy, in his face.”

This is Ivan’s, and especially Zossima’s, utopian Christian -- heaven on earth once we all are Awakened -- ideal re-voiced by Dmitri. As we saw that Zossima was once like Dmitri, we now see Dmitri wanting to become Zossima. Now that would be a miracle. 

And isn’t this more than a little like Hans Castorp’s dream in "Snow"? Again I wonder about Dostoyevsky’s influence on Mann. But there is one way that they are very dissimilar. I skipped a bit of the above passage. Here is the paragraph at the bottom of page 588, 

“And I’m coming with you. I won’t leave you now for the rest of my life, I’m coming with you,” he heard close beside him Grushenka’s tender voice. And his heart glowed...

As with Goethe, but as opposed to Mann, woman here is leading man toward the good rather than leading him to the devil. 

p590 [Dmitri as he is leaving for prison] ...“Gentlemen, we’re all cruel, we’re all monsters, we all make men weep, and mothers, and babes at the breast, but of all, let it be settled here, now, of all I am the lowest reptile! I’ve sworn to reform and every day I’ve done the same filthy things. I understand now that such men as I need a blow, a blow of destiny to catch them as with a noose, and bind them by a force from without. Never, never, should I have risen by myself! But the thunderbolt has fallen. I accept the torture of accusation, and my public shame. I want to suffer because by suffering I shall be purified. Perhaps I shall be purified, gentlemen? ...I accept my punishment, not because I killed him [his father] but because I meant to kill him, and perhaps I really might have killed him...”


Small Victories 

"The Last Waltz"
Accounts of living with cancer like this one always astonish me because I can't imagine putting up with it all. I have never broken a bone, I was in the hospital once to have my tonsils removed but I was too young to remember anything about it. I've not been particularly ill for forty years. People who seek death through suicide puzzle me because I wonder why they are in such a rush -- except when the reason is obvious -- but people who go through multiple rounds at the oncology theme park, puzzle me even more... I just can't see myself clinging to such an unpleasant life. 

How I would actually respond to such a situation is an interesting question, like how I would behave in battle -- another experience I've avoided. Perhaps I would cling to life as hard as everyone else, but I just can't imagine it. And as with battle, I'd be happy to never find out. Though I reserve the right to speculate that it might be good for me to find out. It would be kind of frustrating to suddenly become bold in life just at the end... too late for all the fun and exciting aspects of boldness that I've also always considered not quite me. 

p261 ...You had the sense that she was still a pretty tough customer... though she was visibly softer... My guess is that what got into Carol was the knowledge of how loved she is, and therefore, how safe, and you could feel that she was very thankful to have this knowledge, even at its exorbitant cost.

p262 ...Her hair is shorter now, the grayish curls cropped close to her head, and she doesn't look like the same old person, because she isn't: hard has become soft, tough has grown more tender, and after all that chemo, all that dehydration, dry has grown lush again.

Lamott makes a good argument in this story, that I have so brutally truncated, that Carol's life expanded in positive ways because of her unsuccessful battle with cancer. As with Zossima's brother and Ken in Lamott's "Knocking on Heaven's Door," Carol's unsuccessful battle turns into a successful life plot-twist. Even I could believe that her life might have been worse had she remained "healthy." Besides playing into that old "Good luck? Bad luck? Who knows?" meme, this forces you to question what it is that contributes to a "good" life. 

The values that bless Carol in the end are very much the values of Alyosha and Zossima, and not the Karamazov sensuality or Father Ferapont's prickly aloofness and desire for mortification. 

Jump to Next: TBK. Bk X. 5-6.  & "This Dog's Life"

94. TBK. Bk VIII. 3, 6. & "Falling Better"

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Jump back to Previous: The Brothers K. Bk VII. 1-2 & "Market Street"

The Brothers Karamazov

Book VIII. 3.

I love this episode with Madame Hohlakov and the gold mines. First, it’s such a brilliant way to get rid of the inane Dmitri. Second, it’s so wonderfully Jane Austen-like. But I wonder what Dostoyevsky means by it. (I know I keep saying this.) The notion of all Dmitri’s problems being solved by wealth derived from resource exploitation. That bit about the modern, emancipated women of the future. Hohlakov actually has a point, but what does Dostoyevsky think of her point? It certainly is at variance with utopian Christianity -- and it seems to be related to the shock of Zossima’s reversal of fortune. I think Dostoyevsky actually prefers Dmitri’s (and Greshenka’s) doomed saving of each other.]

It occurs to me that Fyodor, the father, is the apotheosis of Ivan’s nihilist ideas. Ivan proclaims wild ideas but is the mildest of men. Dmitri is a creature of impulse and emotion. But Fyodor is the one without morals, who lives a completely materialistic and amoral life. He is what Zossima and Dostoyevsky  see as the result of a secular world view. And what “divine” justice to have him slain by his bastard child.

And what does the similarity between Zossima and Dmitri mean? (I'm thinking here of Zossima before the duel and his becoming a monk.) Zossima doesn’t quite say it, but the reason he bows to Dmitri is that he sees, in Dmitri, himself at the time of his great awakening (or was it the Mysterious Visitor he saw. Maybe both). But Dmitri remains an impulsive oaf to the end. For all his good qualities, he is and will always be a loose canon. Katerina and Grushenka (and Dostoyevsky) are eager to accommodate and follow him, but that is because of that perplexing (to me) desire for “laceration.” Christianity either fuels this or takes advantage of this trait in people.

Book VIII. 6.

p476 [I’ve been skipping through sections with enough plot to cause Mann to faint in despair, but this exchange is worth noting. Andrey is the peasant driving Dmitri through the night in search of Grushenka who has gone to meet her “officer”] “Faster, Andrey! Faster” Dmitri cried again.

“May I ask you something, sir?... Only I’m afraid of making you angry, sir.”

“What is it?”

“Well, Fenya threw herself at your feet just now, and begged you not to harm her mistress... So you see, sir . . . I am taking you there . . . Forgive me sir, it’s my conscience...”

Dmitri suddenly grabbed him by the shoulders from behind.

“Are you a driver?” he asked frantically.

“Yes, sir . . .”

“Then you know that one has to make way for people. What would you say about a driver who wouldn’t make way for anyone, but would just drive on and crush people? No, a driver mustn’t run over people. One can’t run over a man. One can’t spoil people’s lives. And if you have spoiled a life -- punish yourself . . . If you’ve spoiled, if you’ve ruined anyone’s life -- punish yourself and go away.”

Dmitri is talking about himself and “making way” for the officer, Grushenka’s first love. But how in hell is poor Andrey supposed to understand this? I first read this from Andrey’s point-of-view and was completely confused. 

...
[Dmitri to Andrey] ...“Tell me, will Dmitri Karamazav go to hell, or not? What do you think?”
...
p477 “So you see, sir, who it is hell’s for,” [“the mighty of the earth, the rulers, the chief judges, and the rich men...”] said Andrey... “But you’re like a little child . . . That’s how we look on you . . . And though you’re quick tempered, sir, yet God will forgive you for your kind heart.”

“And you, do you forgive me, Andrey?”

“What should I forgive you for, sir? You’ve never done me any harm.”


“No, for everyone, for everyone. You here alone, on the road, will you forgive me for everyone? Speak, simple peasant heart!”

“Oh, sir! I’m afraid. Your talk is so strange.”

But dmitri did not hear. He was frantically praying and muttering to himself..

“Lord, receive me, with all my lawlessness, and do not condemn me, for I have condemned myself. Do not condemn me, for I love Thee O Lord. I am a wretch, but I love Thee. If Thou sendest me to hell, I shall love Thee forever and ever. . . . But let me love to the end. . . . I love her and I can not help loving her. Thou seest my whole heart. . . . I shall gallop up, I shall fall before her and say: 
You are right to pass on and leave me. Farewell and forget your victim . . . Never torment yourself about me!’ ” 


Small Victories 

"Falling Better"
Great title. What is life but learning to fall better. Of course you could put an interesting twist on that if you capitalized the “Fall.” The idea that religion may be man’s greatest invention is growing on me. It is no less irritating that humans will believe literally any story you can dream up, but that people choose to believe the “good” stuff about themselves and their nature -- and against all evidence to the contrary -- is at least impressive. 

p231 We celebrated Good Friday that night. It's such a sad day, all loss and cruelty, and you have to go on faith that the light shines in the darkness, and nothing, not death, disease, not even the government, can overcome it. I hate that you can't prove the beliefs of my faith. If I were God, I'd have the answers at the end of the workbook, so you could check to see if you're on the right track as you go along. But nooooooo. Darkness is our context, and Easter's context: without it, you couldn't see the light. Hope is not about proving anything. It's choosing to believe this one thing, that love is bigger than any grim bleak shit anyone can throw at us.

Jump to Next: TBK. Bk IX. 8. & "The Last Waltz"

93. TBK. Bk VII. 1-2 & "Market Street"

Jump to Introduction & Chronology
Jump back to Previous: God's Hotel

The Brothers Karamazov

Part Three. Book VII. 1.

Of all the odd incidents in this novel, perhaps the most inexplicable for me is Zossima’s rapid corruption after death. For me, it’s amusing and enlightening in how it shows the fickleness and back-biting of even the most "holy" monks. But what does Dostoyevsky mean by it? I’m only going to repeat a few revealing passages, but, to sum up the situation in a few words, Zossima died and he began to rot in less than a day when it was anticipated he would be immune from such a fate due to his saintliness. 

...
And this was followed by a shower of criticism and blame of Father Zossima. “His teaching was false; he taught that life is a great joy and not a vale of tears,” said some of the more unreasonable. “He followed the fashionable belief, he did not recognize material fire in hell,” others, still more unreasonable, added. “He was not strict in fasting, allowed himself sweet things, ate cherry jam with his tea.... Is it for a monk of strict rule to drink tea?” could be heard among some of the envious. “He sat in pride,” the most malicious declared vindictively... 

What I find interesting in this is how difficult it is to rule a Cargo Cult. The core belief of a Cargo Cult is that if you copy the actions of the people who seemed to command the appearance of cargo ships full of all kinds of wonderful things, then you can command the appearance of your own ships. The problem, of course, is getting the ritual just right. The failure of the ships to appear means that the person in charge doesn’t have the ritual quite right so he becomes disgraced and someone with a “better” idea of the ritual steps in. All religions have this character since what they are promising is something that is paid off in the “next” life. It’s only when they try to promise things in this life or expect some sign of favor -- after death for example -- that they can truly be put to the test. Zossima didn’t fail his expectations (I’m bound to say), but he failed the expectations of the people around him. And what Dostoyevsky shows is how very far from “heaven on earth” people, even particularly religious people, are. Why Dostoyevsky is making my point is what I least understand here. 

Book VII. 2.
 ...
p389 [At this point in the story our strange and mysterious narrator -- sometimes omniscient, sometimes not -- is suddenly all up in our business. Here it is the narrator speaking about Alyosha, who has been stunned by the reversal of fortune suffered by his master,] ...My hero had faith, a faith steady and steadfast, but still I am not going to apologize for him.

...it was not a question of miracles. There was no frivolous and impatient expectation of miracles in Alyosha’s mind... what he saw before all was one figure -- the figure of his beloved elder, the figure of that holy man whom he revered with such adoration. The fact is that all the love that lay concealed in his pure young heart for everyone and everything had, for the past year, been concentrated -- and perhaps wrongly so -- on one being, his beloved elder... But, again it was not miracles he needed but only “the higher justice” which had been in his belief outraged by the blow that had so suddenly and cruelly wounded his heart...
...
p390 ... I will not, however, forget to mention something strange which came for a time to the surface of Alyosha’s mind at this fatal moment. This new something was the harassing impression left by the conversation with Ivan, which now persistently haunted Alyosha...
...
p392 [Alyosha to Rakitin who has come to pester him,] “I am not rebelling against my God. I simply ‘don’t accept His world.’ Alyosha suddenly smiled a forceful smile. [This was Ivan’s line.]
...
[Alyosha accepts some sausage from Rakitin] “What! You’re going to eat it! Why, it’s a regular mutiny with barricades!...
...
[Alyosha accepts Rakitin’s suggestion that they go to visit Grushenka.] “And how glad she will be, how delighted,” he [Rakitin] murmured, but he lapsed into silence again. And indeed it was not to please Grushenka that he was taking Alyosha to her. He was a practical person and never undertook anything without a prospect of gain for himself. His object in this case was twofold: first a revengeful desire to see “the downfall of the righteous,” and Alyosha’s fall “from saint to sinner,” and in the second place he had in view a certain material gain for himself... [Grushenka has promised him 25 rubles if he brings Alyosha to her.]

“So the critical moment has come.” he thought to himself with spite, “and we shall catch it on the hop, for it’s just what we want.” 

Rakitin is like a particularly pathetic Mephisto. (I'm thinking of Adrian's tour guide of Leipzig, who leads him astray to the house of ill repute, in Doctor Faustus.)

Dostoyevsky, in his role as novelist, needs to shake Alyosha up here so he can interact with Grushenka as he wouldn’t normally do. Could Dostoyevsky have dreamed up the quickly rotting elder just for this purpose? I suggest this only because it seems to go against what Dostoyevsky  wants to do as a Christian utopian. If story caused this plot development then it is a perfect example of my view of story as the driving force in the universe. If even Dostoyevsky falls prey to turning against his Christian paragon in the name of story, then story is a mighty force indeed. 

Small Victories 

"Market Street" 
That believing in God is less nonsensical than believing in George W. Bush is a pretty weak argument. She would have done better suggesting that the presidency of Bush 2 proves the existence of the Devil which, ipso facto, confirms the existence of God. (Though Ivan's visitor in Bk XI. 9. rightly calls into question this notion.)

This eagerness to believe in an authority figure (I admit she may have just written this as a joke) or, failing that, an imaginary source of universal solace, is kind of sad. Lamott and I probably agree on the majority of social and political topics but, like a child, she needs a parental deity -- with a plan -- always watching out for and supporting her.

As with The Brothers K. section above (I originally wrote this about VI. 1., the section about Zossima's brother, but it works here, too), this really boils down to an insistence that God exists because we really need him to exist. 

The passage below takes place at the beginning of the Iraq War.


p279 I tried to pray my way out of the fear and hate, but my mind was once again a pinball machine of blame and ridiculousness... And I wondered if I actually even believed in God anymore. It seemed ridiculous, this conviction that I had an invisible partner in life, and that we were all part of a bigger, less punishing and isolated truth. I lay there gnashing my teeth, sure that what you see is what you get. This was it. This earth, this country, here, now, was all there was. This was where all life happened, the up and the down and the plus and the minus and the world of choices and consequences. Not an easy place, but a place full of significance.

I clutched my cat as I used to when my parents fought, a life preserver in cold, deep water.

But then -- a small miracle -- I started to believe in George W. Bush. I really did. In my terror, I wondered whether maybe he was smarter than we thought he was, and had grasped classified intelligence and nuance in a way that was well above my own understanding or of that of our era’s most brilliant thinkers.

p280 Then I thought: Wait -- George Bush? And relief washed over me like gentle surf, because believing in George Bush was so ludicrous that believing in God seems almost rational.

I decided to start from scratch, with a simple prayer: “Hi!” I said.

Someone or something hears. I don’t know much about its nature, only that when I cry out, it hears me and moves closer to me, and I don’t feel so alone. I feel better... [I assume she’s talking about God and not her cat here, but I would have a tiny bit more faith in the cat] ...Saint Augustine said that you have to start your relationship with God all over from the beginning, every day. Yesterday’s faith does not wait for you like a dog with your slippers and the morning paper in its mouth. You seek it, and in seeking it, you find it. During the Renaissance, Fra Giovanni Giocondo wrote:

No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today. Take heaven!

No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant. Take peace!

...

Jump to Next: TBK. Bk VIII. 3, 6. & "Falling Better"

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

Jump to Introduction & Chronology
Jump back to Previous: The Brothers K. Bk V. 6-7. & "Ham of God"

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.

89. TBK. Bk V. 6-7. & "Ham of God"

Jump to Introduction & Chronology
Jump back to Previous: The Brothers K. Bk V. 5.

The Brothers Karamazov

Book V. 6. Ivan and Pavel
p303 ...at the first glance at him Ivan knew that it was Smeryakov who was on his mind, and that it was this man that he loathed. It all dawned upon him suddenly.

He remembered that before, when Alyosha had been telling him of his meeting with Smeryakov, he had felt a sudden twinge of gloom and loathing, which had immediately stirred anger in his heart... “Is it possible that a miserable, contemptible creature like that can worry me so much?” Ivan wondered.

One of the difficulties for me in blogging this book is the way points Dostoyevsky is trying to make are tied to the characters. I would like to skip this whole section about Ivan and Pavel, but it is too crucial to the story and to what Dostoyevsky is trying to say. (I apologize for any inconsistency in my spelling of the author's name. My spellchecker, and some sources, prefer "Dostoevsky" but my edition of the book and Wiki go with "Dostoyevsky".)

It was true that Ivan had lately come to feel an intense dislike for Smeryakov, especially during the last few years. He had even begun to notice in himself a growing feeling that was almost hatred for the man. Perhaps this hatred was heightened by the fact that when Ivan first came to his father’s house he had felt quite differently. Then he had taken a marked interest in Smeryakov, and had even thought him very original. He had encouraged him to talk, although he had always wondered at a certain incoherence, or rather restlessness, in his mind, and could not understand what it was that continually and insistently worked upon the brain of “the contemplative.” They discussed philosophical questions and even how there could have been light on the first day when the sun, moon, and stars were only created on the fourth day, and how that was to be interpreted. [A Big Bang theory interpretation of this (a bright, hot plasma before stars formed) could be interesting, though perhaps not that appealing to people defending the biblical Creation.] But Ivan soon saw that, though the sun, moon, and stars was an interesting subject, yet for Smeryakov it was of secondary interest. He seemed to be looking for something altogether different. In one way and another, he began to betray a boundless vanity, and a wounded vanity, too, and that Ivan disliked. This was the first thing that made him dislike Smeryakov. [Pavel has something about him of Don John, the “Bastard Prince” in Much Ado About Nothing.]
...
p304 ...But what irritated Ivan most and confirmed his dislike for Smeryakov was the familiarity which Smeryakov began to assume... he had obviously begun to consider -- goodness knows why -- that there was some sort of understanding between them. He always spoke in a tone that suggested that they had some kind of compact, some secret between them, that had at some time been expressed on both sides, only known to them and beyond the comprehension of those around them...

This is too much of a stretch (even for me) but I’m reminded here of the relationship between Adrian and his Mephisto in Doctor Faustus. I can’t find my notes on where Mann borrows from Dostoyevsky in that crucial scene in Italy, but is this more of that? (Possibly because I haven’t written them yet since that is near the end of the book when Ivan is suffering from “brain fever”.) 

With a feeling of disgust and irritation Ivan tried to go through the gate without speaking or looking at Smeryakov... [But Pavel gets up and Ivan stops.] And the fact that he did stop, instead of passing by, as he meant to, infuriated him. With anger and repulsion he looked at Smeryakov’s emasculate, sickly face, with the little curls combed forward on his forehead. [The look of a lackey?]]
...
p305 “Get away, miserable idiot. What have I to do with you?” was on the tip of Ivan’s tongue. But to his surprise he heard himself say instead: “Is my father still asleep or is he up?”

He asked the question softly and meekly, and at once, again to his own surprised, sat down on the bench. For a moment he felt almost frightened; he remembered this afterwards... [Just yesterday I read an interesting piece about how our conscious minds are not in control of our decisions, which are actually the result of a subconscious process.]

Book V. 7. Ivan's self-laceration
p313 ...He [Ivan] felt that he had lost his bearings . He was worried, too, by all sorts of strange and almost surprising desires. For instance, after midnight he suddenly had an intense irresistible inclination to go down, open the door, go to the lodge and beat Smeryakov. But if he had been asked why, he could not have given any exact reason, except perhaps that he loathed the valet as one who had insulted him more seriously than anyone else in the world. On the other hand, he was more than once that night overcome by a sort of humiliating terror, which he felt paralyzed him. His head ached and he was dizzy. A feeling of hatred was rankling in his heart, as though he meant to avenge himself on someone. He even hated Alyosha, recalling the conversation he had just had with him. At moments he hated himself. Of Katerina he almost forgot to think, and he wondered at this afterwards, especially as he remembered perfectly that when he had protested so valiantly to Katerina that he would go away next day to Moscow, something had whispered in his heart: “that’s nonsense, you are not going, and it won’t be so easy to tear yourself away as you are saying now.”

Remembering that night long afterwards, Ivan recalled with peculiar repulsion how he had suddenly got up and stealthily, as though he were afraid of being watched, had opened the door, gone out on the staircase and listened to his father stirring down below. He had listened a long while -- some five minutes -- with a sort of strange curiosity, holding his breath while his heart throbbed. And why he had done all this, why he was listening, he could not have said. That “action” all his life afterwards he called “infamous,” and at the bottom of his heart, he thought of it as the basest action of his life. He felt no hatred for his father at that moment but was simply curious to know why he was walking around down there below and what he was doing... Ivan went out onto the stairs twice to listen like this.

Having finished the book does not help me understand Ivan’s feeling here. Even knowing that he will later blame himself for leaving the next day does not help me with what was so “infamous” about this listening on the stairs. I am at a loss. 

Small Victories 

"Ham of God"
p254 ...The problem with God -- or at any rate, one of the top five most annoying things about God -- is that He or She rarely answers right away. It can take days, weeks. Some people seem to understand this -- that life and change take time. Chou En-lai, when asked, "What do you think of the French Revolution?" paused for a minute -- smoking incessantly -- then replied, "Too soon to tell." ... 


I love this Chou En-lai quote. And, No, I don't see any connection with Dostoyevsky. 


Jump to Next: TBK. Bk VI. 1. & "Knocking on Heaven's Door"