98. TBK. Bk XI. 4, 8. & "Listening to a Clever Woman"

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The Brothers Karamazov

Book XI. 4.

Here, around p680, Dostoyevsky introduces Claude Bernard as Dmitri's bete noir. He will use “Bernard” as a pejorative term to describe someone of the “new” scientific type. (And may I say that that is a biography worth reading). He is indeed a good person to represent the type of person Dostoyevsky dislikes. Hell, I dislike him too. He is also an excellent example of the Socratic influence that Nietzsche rails against in The Birth of Tragedy. He embodies both the rational ideals of science and the cruelty of vivisection. One could easily see him as the heir of Descartes, in this respect. 


p680 [Dmitri to Alyosha in prison] “Why is it all over with me? Mm! . . . . The fact is . . . If you take it as a whole, I am sorry to lose God -- that’s what it is.”

“What do you mean by ‘sorry to lose God’?”

“Imagine; inside, in the nerves, in the head -- that is, these nerves are there in the brain . . . (damn them!) there are sort of little tails, the little tails of those nerves, and as soon as they begin quivering . . . That is, you see. I look at something with my eyes and then they begin quivering, those little tails . . . And when they quiver, then an image appears . . . It doesn’t appear at once, but an instant, a second, passes . . . and then something like a moment appears; that is, not a moment -- devil take the moment! -- but an image; that is an object, or an action, damn it! That’s why I see and then think, because of those tails, not because I have a soul, and am some sort of image and likeness. All that is nonsense!... It’s wonderful, Alyosha. This science! A new man’s arising -- that I understand. . . . And yet I am sorry to lose God!”
...
“...’But what will become of men then,’ I asked him [Rakitin], ‘without God and immortal life? All things are lawful then, they can do what they like?’ ‘Didn’t you know?’ he said laughing. ‘A clever man can do what he likes,’ he said...”

Here we are yet again. I am so close to inserting Oliver Sacks' "A New Vision of the Mind" here that I can hardly stand it. Instead, I'm going to repeat that paragraph above, where Dmitri talks about perception, when I cover Sacks following TBK. 

...
p683 “...Alyosha, these last two months I’ve found in myself a new man. [Not, I should make clear, the "new man" of science he was just talking about] A new man has risen up in me. He was hidden in me, but would never have come to the surface, if it hadn’t been for this blow from heaven... I am afraid... that the new man will leave me. Even there [in the mines], in the mines, underground, I may find a human heart in another convict or murderer by my side. And I may make friends with him... One may thaw and revive a frozen heart in that convict... one may bring forth an angel, create a hero! There are so many of them, hundreds of them, and we are all to blame for them.... [Here he goes back to the “babe” of his dream] All are ‘babes.’ I go for all, because someone must go for all... Oh, yes, we shall be in chains and there will be no freedom, but then, in our great sorrow, we shall rise again to joy, without which man can’t live nor God exist. For God gives joy; it’s His privilege -- a grand one. Ah, man should be dissolved in prayer! What should I be underground there without God?... If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter him underground. One cannot exist in prison without God; it’s even more impossible than out of prison...” 
...
p685 “Yes, life is full, there is life even underground,” he began again. “You wouldn’t believe, Alyosha, how I want to live now, what a thirst for existence and consciousness has sprung up in me within these peeling walls... [I’m assuming Dostoyevsky is drawing on his own experience in Siberia here, but I wonder at his using the mercurial Dmitri as his mouthpiece. Aside from this speech, there’s no indication that the character Dmitri really changes. I don’t doubt for an instant that, if he were set free at the end with what was left of the 1,500 roubles he would have gone off and had another party. ] I seem to have such strength now, that I think I could stand anything, any suffering, only to be able to say and repeat to myself every moment: ‘I exist.’ In thousands of agonies -- I exist. I’m tortured on the rack -- but I exist! Although I sit alone -- I exist! I see the sun, and if I don’t see the sun, I know it’s there. And there’s a whole life in that, in knowing that the sun is there. Alyosha, my angel, all these philosophies are the death of me. Damn them!...”
...
“You see, I never had any of these doubts before: it was all hidden away inside of me. It was perhaps just because ideas I did not understand were surging up in me, that I used to drink and fight. It was to stifle them in myself, to still them, to smother them... It’s God that’s worrying me... What if He doesn’t exist? What if Rakitin’s right -- that it’s an idea made up by men? Then, if He doesn’t exist, man is the king of the earth, of the universe. Magnificent! Only how is he going to be good without God?... [This notion that man is “good” with God is a mystery to me, and Dostoyevsky even puts this in Dmitri’s mouth.] Who is man going to love then? To whom will he be thankful?... Rakitin laughs. Rakitin says that one can love humanity instead of God. Well, only an idiot can maintain that... But after all, what is goodness? Answer that, Alyosha. Goodness is one thing with me and another with a Chinaman, so it’s relative. Or isn’t it?... A treacherous question!... it’s kept me awake for two nights. I only wonder now how people can live and think nothing about it. Vanity! Ivan has no God. He has an idea...
...
p686 “I said to him [Ivan], ‘Then everything is lawful, if it is so?’ He frowned. ‘Fyodor Karamazov, our father,’ he said, ‘was a pig, but his ideas were right.’ That was what he said... That was going one better than Rakitin.”
...
Again, this notion that God, and in particular the Christian God, is behind all law drives me nuts. The absence or presence of “God” has no effect on the relevance of the Golden Rule, for example. 

Book XI. 8.

Pavel points out a similarity between Ivan and Fyodor. It’s almost like Dmitri has his father’s impetuous and crude characteristics while Ivan has his intellect. Unsaid is that Pavel has his cunning and ruthlessness. I would like to say that Ivan also shows that morality can exist independent of God, but Dostoyevsky is about to blow up the notion that Ivan is not a believer (though a believer in a fairly disturbed sense). 

It's Always Worth While Listening to a Clever Woman
I missed the best place to put this -- following Bk V. 7. "It's Always Worth While Speaking to a Clever Man", these are Pavel's words -- so I'm going to latch onto Rakitin's line above about a clever man doing what he wants.


Germaine Greer is currently in trouble for saying that trans-women are not really women. University students (the Cardiff University Women’s Society, no less) don’t want her to speak on campus because they don’t like her views. 

I’ve found Ms. Greer to be worth reading, or listening to, since she first started publishing. I don’t always agree with her, but The Change and Sex and Destiny are two books I frequently recommend to people. She has a knack for making you examine ideas you thought were well settled. And isn’t that what universities are supposed to do.

The question of what “exactly” a woman is -- and isn’t -- is a can of worms I wouldn’t open... and I can think of a good reason she should be reluctant to open it as well. But it probably is a good topic for university students to be thinking about. Another good question would be “Who should be allowed to marry?” Gay marriage has been much in the news of late, but this question should go much farther than just same sex marriage. Perhaps the better way of phrasing the question is: “Who should be prevented from marrying?”


This latter question would incense many more groups, but both questions are timely and in need of further consideration. One of the side effects of living in our nihilistic/Mephistophelian world, is that when old assumptions are tossed out new norms must be agreed upon. Neither Dostoyevsky nor Greer may be pleased by the result.


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

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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. 

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

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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.

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