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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84. TBK. Bk IV. 2-7.

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The Brothers Karamazov

Bk IV. 2.
p195 [Fyodor to Alyosha] “...I mean to go on in my sins to the end, let me tell you. For sin is sweet. All abuse it but all men live in it. The only difference is that others do it on the sly and I do it openly... And your paradise, Alyosha, is not to my taste, let me tell you that. It is not the proper place for a gentleman, your paradise, even if it exists. I believe that I fall asleep and don’t wake up again, and that’s all. You can pray for my soul if you like. And if you don’t want to, don’t, damn you! That’s my philosophy. Ivan talked well here yesterday, though we were all drunk...”
...
p197 “...you love him [Dmitri] and I am not afraid of your loving him. But if Ivan loved him I would be afraid. But Ivan loves nobody, Ivan is not one of us. People like Ivan are not our sort, my boy. They are like a cloud of dust. When the wind blows, the dust will be gone . . . 

Fyodor lives a life consistent with Ivan's stated philosophy, yet he doesn't care for Ivan. You think of Alyosha as being the odd-man-out in this family but that is actually Ivan. This of course is based on Alyosha's insistence that he is a Karamazov too, though we don't really see any confirmation of this. Fyodor is really just expressing the discomfort people have with the "intellectual" -- the person who thinks about life rather than wallowing in it. (Says the person who identifies with Ivan.)

Bk IV. 4.
p204 [The divine Madame Hohlakov to Alyosha] “...Your brother is in there with her [Katerina] now, not that dreadful brother who was so shocking yesterday, but the other, Ivan. He is sitting with her talking. They are having a serious conversation. If you could only imagine what’s passing between them now -- it’s awful. I tell you it’s lacerating; it’s like some incredible tale of horror. They are ruining their lives, for no reason anyone can see. They both recognize it and revel in it...”
...
“...she [Lise] is so ill, Alyosha, she has been so ill all night, feverish and moaning! I could hardly wait for the morning and for Doctor Herzenstube to come. He says that he can make nothing of it, that we must wait. Herzenstube always comes and says that he can make nothing of it. . . .”
...
p208 [Madame H. about Alyosha just having been bitten on the finger by a strange boy] “...and perhaps the boy was rabid.”

[Lise] “Why, Mother! As though there were rabid boys!” 

“Why not, Lise, as though I had said something stupid! The boy might have been bitten by a mad dog and he would become mad and bite anyone near him... [Sadly, this is true.] Do you still feel the pain?”

“It’s nothing much now.”

“You don’t feel afraid of water?” asked Lise. [I missed this first time but she is funny here as rabid animals (including people) are supposedly afraid of water.]
...
[Madame H. about Katerina again] p209 “... It’s the most fantastic thing. She loves your brother, Ivan, and she is doing her best to persuade herself that she loves your brother Dmitri. It’s appalling! I’ll go in with you, and if they don’t turn me out, I’ll stay to the end.”

Way ahead to the break in speeches at the end of the trial, the mention of nihilism made me do some research and Alexander II was assassinated the year after The Brothers K. was published... so “nihilism” and revolution was certainly a timely concern. But what does nihilism mean in this respect. Look at all the different kinds of nihilism in the Wiki article. I want to make a distinction between philosophical and political nihilism. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche were interested in philosophical nihilism, and this was shared by Dostoyevsky and Mann. But, while Dostoyevsky seems to see nihilist motivation behind the murderous actions of Pavel, the political nihilism that resulted in Alexander II’s assassination would seem to be the result of a rejection of the church and state status quo of the age, not a rejection of “meaning” in any of the other senses. Political nihilists cared very much about their political goals, enough to risk their lives. I would think they might have been fans of Tom Paine, for example, rather than Feuerbach. In fact, the American Revolution would seem to be the model for their cause.

Frankly, I'm not sure why this note is here. I may copy it to the trial but on the outside chance that there is a reason (not obvious to me at the moment) that I thought of this here, I'm leaving it here as well.

Bk IV. 5.
p210 ...Alyosha felt instinctively that a character like Katerina’s must dominate, and she could only dominate someone like Dmitri, and never a man like Ivan. For Dmitri might at last submit to her domination “for his own happiness” (which was what Alyosha would have liked), but Ivan . . . No, Ivan could not submit to her. Such submission would not give him happiness. Alyosha could not help believing that of Ivan... Another idea, also, forced itself upon him: “What if she loved neither of them...?”

p211 It must be noted that Alyosha had felt ashamed of his thoughts and had blamed himself when they kept recurring to him during the last month. “What do I know about love and women and how can I decide such questions?” he asked himself reproachfully...

...with whom was Alysosha to sympathize? And what was he to wish for each of them? He loved them both, but their desires were conflicting. He might go astray in this maze, and his heart could not endure uncertainty, because his love was always of an active kind. He was incapable of passive love. If he loved anyone, he wanted at once to help him. And to do so he must know what he was aiming at... he found nothing but uncertainty on all sides...

p213 [Katerina to Alyosha with Madame H. and Ivan present] “...I’ve already decided, even if he marries that -- creature... whom I never , never can forgive, even then I will not abandon him. I will never, never abandon him!” she cried, breaking into a sort of pale, hysterical ecstasy... I will go away to another town... but I will watch over him all my life... When he becomes unhappy with that woman, and that is bound to happen, let him come to me and he will find a friend, a sister. . . . Only a sister, of course, and so forever; but he will learn at least that that sister is really his sister, one who loves him and has sacrificed her life to him. I will gain my point. I will insist on his knowing me and confiding entirely in me, without reserve...” “I will be a god to whom he can pray. He owes me that for his treachery and for what I suffered yesterday because of him and the promise I gave him... I will become nothing but a means of his happiness... an instrument for his happiness . For my whole life, my whole life. And he will see it all his life? That’s my decision. Ivan fully approves.”

Sounds like a Country song.

p214 [Ivan] “...Your life, Katerina, will be spent in painful brooding over your own feelings, your own heroism, and your own suffering. But in the end that suffering will be softened and will pass into contemplation of the fulfillment of a bold and proud design. Yes, proud it certainly is, and desperate in any case, but a triumph for you. And the consciousness of it will at last be a source of complete satisfaction and will make you resigned to everything else.”

This was unmistakably said with some malice and obviously with intention. He spoke ironically. [No shit.]
...
[Katerina] “...I’m upset. I didn’t sleep last night. But with two such friends as you [Alyosha] and your brother [Ivan] I feel strong -- for I know -- you two will never desert me.”

“Unfortunately, I must return to Moscow -- perhaps tomorrow -- and leave you for a long time. It’s unavoidable,” Ivan said suddenly.

p215 “Tomorrow -- to Moscow!” Katerina’s face was suddenly contorted. “But -- but how fortunate,” she cried in a voice suddenly changed. In one instant there was no trace left of her tears. She underwent a transformation, which amazed Alyosha. Instead of a poor, insulted girl, weeping in a sort of “laceration,” he saw a woman completely self-possessed and even exceedingly pleased, as though something agreeable had just happened.


“Oh, not fortunate that I am losing you, of course not,” she  corrected  herself  suddenly, with a charming society smile. “Such a friend as you are could not think that. I am only too unhappy at losing you.” ... “But what is fortunate is that in Moscow you will be able to see my aunt and sister and tell them all the horror of my present position. You can speak freely to my sister, but spare my aunt. You will know how to do that... I will run at once to write the letter [that Ivan is to explain to her relations],” she finished suddenly, and took a step as though to go out of the room.

“And what about Alyosha and his opinion, which you were so desperately anxious to hear?” cried Madame Hohlakov. There was a sarcastic, angry note in her voice. [Yea, Madame H.]

p216 [Alyosha] “...What I see is that you don’t love Dmitri at all . . . and never have, from the beginning. . . . And Dmitri has never loved you . . . and only respects you. . . . I really don’t know how I dare to say all this, but somebody must tell the truth . . . for nobody here will tell the truth.”

“...you’re torturing Ivan, simply because you love him -- and and torturing him because you love Dmitri through ‘self-laceration’ -- with an unreal love -- because you’ve persuaded yourself.”
...
“You . . . you . . . you are a little religious idiot -- that’s what you are!” Katerina snapped. Her face was white and her lips were moving with anger.

Ivan suddenly laughed and got up. His hat was in his hand.

“You are mistaken, my good Alyosha,” he said, with an expression Alyosha had never seen on his face before -- an expression of youthful sincerity. “Katerina has never cared for me! She has known all the time that I cared for her -- though I never said a word of my love to her -- she knew, but she didn’t care for me. I have never been her friend either, not for one moment. She is too proud to need friendship. She kept me at her side as a means of revenge. She revenged with me and on me all the insults which she has been continually receiving from Dmitri ever since their first meeting. For that first meeting has rankled in her heart as an insult -- that’s what her heart is like! She has talked to me of nothing but her love for him. . . . I am going now. But, believe me, Katerina, you really love him. And the more he insults you, the more you love him -- that’s your ‘laceration.’ You love him just as he is. You love him for insulting you. If he reformed, you’d give him up at once and stop loving him. But you need him so as to contemplate continually your heroic fidelity and reproach him for infidelity. And it all comes from your pride... I will forgive you later, but now I don’t want your hand. ‘Your thanks, lady, I do not desire,’ he added in German with a forced smile, showing, however, that he could read Schiller, and read him till he knew him by heart -- which Alyosha would never have believed...

Dostoyevsky really does a number on Katerina here. But what I see in Katerina is an almost Christian desire for “self-laceration” and humiliation. What Katerina says here is so similar to what Madame H. says to Zossima in an earlier chapter (Bk II. 4.). And Madame H. was saying all that in a very similar and not entirely sincere fashion. Also, this complicated love of Katerina for Dmitri reminds me of Marcel’s jealousy fueled loves in Proust. 

This does make me curious about Dostoyevsky's relationship with women. Between Katerina, Lise, and Grushenka, one would have to think that Settembrini was wise in trying to warn young Hans off Slavic women.

p217 “You have done no harm. You behaved beautifully, like an angel,” Madame Hohlakov whispered ecstatically to Alyosha. “I will do my best to prevent Ivan from going to Moscow.”

Her face beamed with delight, to Alyosha’s great distress.
...
[About Katerina] “But she has been crying -- she has been wounded again,” said Alyosha.

“Never trust a woman’s tears, Alysoha. I am never for the women in such cases. I am always on the side of the men.”
...
[Madame H. after hearing that Katerina is having “hysterics”] p220 “... Hysterics are a good sign, Alyosha. It’s an excellent thing that she is hysterical. That’s just as it ought to be... But I am delighted, delighted, delighted!...”


Bk IV. 7.

... p248 [Lise to Alyosha after they’ve agreed to an engagement] “I know your brothers and your father are worrying you?” [Curious place for a question mark]

“Yes, my brothers . . .” murmured Alyosha.

“I don’t like your brother Ivan, Alyosha,” said Lise suddenly.

He heard this remark with some surprise, but did not answer it.

“My brothers are destroying themselves,” he went on. “My father, too. And they are destroying others with them. It’s ‘the primitive force of the Karamazovs,’ as Father Paissy said the other day. A crude, unbridled, earthly force. Does the spirit of God move above that force? Even that I don’t know. I only know that I, too, am a Karamazov. . . . Me a monk, a monk! Am I a monk, Lise? You said just now that I was.”

“Yes, I did.”

“But perhaps I don’t even believe in god.”

“You don’t believe? What is the matter?” asked Lise quietly and gently. But Alyosha did not answer. There was something too mysterious, too subjective in these last words of his. Their meaning was perhaps obscure even to him but yet it tormented him.

“And now on top of it all, my friend, the best man in the world is going, is leaving the earth! If you knew, Lise, how bound up in soul I am with him! And then I shall be left alone. . . . I shall come to you, Lise. . . . For the future we will be together.”

“Yes, together, together! We shall be always together, all our lives! Listen, kiss me.”

Alyosha kissed her.

“Come, now go. Christ be with you!” ... I’ll pray today for him and you. Alyosha, we shall be happy! Shall we be happy, shall we?”

“I believe we shall, Lise.”
...

[Madame H. fills in Alyosha about Katerina] “She is still delirious. She has not regained consciousness... Herzenstube came, and he was so alarmed that I didn’t know what to do for him. I nearly sent for a doctor to look after him. He was driven home in my carriage...” 

What a Marianne Dashwood he is.


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