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

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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. 


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85. TBK. Bk V. 2. & True confession

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The Brothers Karamazov

Book V. 2. Pavel the lackey
 p253 “Poetry is rubbish!” said Smerdyakov curtly. 

“Oh, no! I am very fond of poetry.” [Maria who he is playing the guitar and singing to, though we don’t know why.]

“So far as it’s poetry, it’s rubbish. Consider, who ever talks in rhyme? And if we were all to talk in rhyme, even though it were decreed by the government, we wouldn’t say much would we? Poetry is no good, Maria.” [On the other hand it would put an end to a lot of vapid small talk. And if you stretch this to include rap...]

“How clever you art! How is it you’ve gone so deep into everything?”...

“I could have done better than that. I could have known more than that, if it had not been for the circumstances of my birth. I would have been capable of shooting a man in a duel if he called me names because I am descended from a stinking beggar and have no father... Gregory blames me for rebelling against my birth, but I would have welcomed their killing me before I was born so that I might not have come into the world at all... Can a Russian peasant be said to feel, in comparison with an educated man? He can’t be said to have feelings at all, in his ignorance. From my childhood up when I hear ‘a wee bit,’ I am ready to burst with rage. I hate all Russia, Maria.”

So much here. On the one hand, it’s nonsense because Dmitri (just to grab hold of the example provided by the book) has the “advantage” of birth but gains nothing by it in an intellectual sense. Pavel, as we will see, even has an intellectual advantage over Ivan who has both birth and education. 

But in so far as Pavel represents the freed Russian serf, the man set free from the blinders of religion and class -- who questions the assumptions of Russian society and the natural superiority of the gentry -- he shows the psychological dangers of that kind of liberation. In a society of Merit, Pavel would be free to rise to a higher level -- rather like Rakitin who also lacks all nobility but is clever enough.

To digress, I think today the problem is not so much the Pavels and Rakitins as the dimwitted peasants (and Dmitris) who have a hard time making their way in such an anti-Tory world (in Ford Madox Ford’s sense of Tory.)

...
“...In 1812 there was a great invasion of Russia by Napoleon, first Emperor of the French, father of the present one, and it would have been a good thing if they had conquered us. A clever nation would have conquered a very stupid one and annexed it. We would have had quite different institutions.”

Dostoyevsky is full of interesting ideas here. What strikes one when thinking about the various invasions of Russia (from the west) is the futility of it all. But what if Napoleon had been successful? Even if only for a few years. What if the Napoleonic Code had been introduced in a large section of Russia after 1812? ]

p254 “Are the French so much better than we are? I wouldn’t change someone I know for three young Frenchmen,” observed Maria tenderly... [One of these two has designs. But only one.]

...
“But you are just like a foreigner -- just like a most gentlemanly foreigner. I tell you that, though it makes me blush.”

“If you care to know, the folks there and ours here are just alike in their vices. They are swindlers, only abroad the scoundrel wears polished boots and here he grovels in filth and sees no harm in it. The Russian people need beating, as Fyodor Karamazov said very truly yesterday, though he is mad, and all his sons, too.”

So Pavel’s fondness for clothes and hair care products marks him as the representative of bourgeois values... I wondered what that was about. This actually plays well with Christopher Tietjens tendency to wear crude clothing -- the distinction between what one “is” and how one wishes to “appear.”

“You said you had such respect for Ivan!”

“But he said I was a stinking lackey. [Dostoyevsky describes Pavel’s singing at the start of this section as follows, “It was a lackey’s tenor and a lackey’s song.” I wonder about the Russian word translated here as “lackey.” I suspect this is the same attitude Christopher Tietjens had about MacMasters. “Subservient” might be the better term] He thinks that I might get out of hand. But he is mistaken there. If I had a certain sum of money in my pocket, I would have left long ago. . . . Dmitri is lower than any lackey in his behavior, in his mind, and in his poverty. He doesn’t know how to do anything, and yet he is respected by everyone. I may only be a soup maker, but with luck I could open a cafe in Moscow. My cooking is something special. And there’s no one in Moscow except foreigners, whose cooking is anything special. Dmitri is nothing but a beggar, but if he were to challenge the son of the first count in the country, that nobleman’s son would fight him. Though in what way is he better than I am? He is more stupid than I am. Look at the money he has wasted!”

I love the way Dostoyevsky has the “least” of his characters speak the truth, Pavel here, but also Madame H. and Fyodor K. as well.

“It must be lovely, a duel,” Maria observed suddenly.
...
“It must be so dreadful and so brave, especially when young officers with pistols in their hands pop at one another for the sake of some lady. A perfect picture! Ah, if only girls were allowed to look on, I’d give anything to see one!”

“It’s all right when you are firing at someone, but when he is firing straight at you, you must feel pretty silly. You’d be glad to run away, Maria.”...


True confession
I'm going to latch on to that incidental bit of music at the beginning of this chapter to talk about music myself. I tend to think that everyone in my music loving age cohort (those fucking Boomers) is as fond of Pop music as I am, but occasionally I’m reminded that this is, in fact, far from true.

Most of us started listening to Pop and then at some point -- for me it was in 11th grade with Cream -- moved on to “Rock” and assumed a dismissive attitude toward our previous, childish, loves. I, too, fell hard for Rock (and notice that I’m not including the Beatles, who I’d been listening to since 7th grade, as Rock) but I never... well, maybe I did stop listening to Pop for a while, but that didn’t prevent me from enjoying The Bangles in the ‘80s -- and that was even before I had seen Susanna Hoffs.

Amy Grant was even a Christian-crossover-to-Pop sensation (for five minutes) but I still love her voice.  I honestly don’t know if there’s ever been a better time for Pop than the present with Christina Perri, Lady Gaga, Sara Bareilles, No Doubt, and Adele. (I do listen to male vocalists, but I’m trying to keep this focused. #rationalization)

There are three obvious Pop recording artists I left off that list because at least two of them are very controversial and I want to talk about them separately. Kelly Clarkson was discovered on American Idol, for Goat’s sake. How can you take her seriously? Yet she has turned out hit after hit since 2002. Yes, I think Clive Davis played a role in this -- the production of some of her early songs is remarkable in itself -- yet few artists have turned out so many great songs. This summer I “greened” a free concert, put on by a local radio station, and she was the headliner. I made sure I was working an area in the center of the crowd while she was on stage so as to get the best sound. She played a short set, but she sounded great.

Taylor Swift is another artist it’s hard to take seriously. She’s still too young and cute and she’s been turning out hits since 2008 (and Country hits since 2006!). She has a real knack for turning out ear-worms... songs you just can’t get out of your head. “Style” may be the best example. Her voice lacks what I would call definition -- something characteristic that lets you know immediately who’s singing. Adele and Dolores O’Riordan of The Cranberries and even Christina Perri have great definition in this coinage. But then Gwen Stefani of No Doubt lacks definition and she’s one of my favorite vocalists of the past 20 years.

The final controversial artist is Katy Perry. When she came out with “I Kissed a Girl,” like everyone else, I assumed she would be a One Hit Wonder. She famously said that it took a village to produce the “look” you see in photos, videos, and on stage, and I suspect that what she left unsaid was that it also took a village to produce her music, but what a lot of great tunes she is, to some extent, responsible for. And she doesn’t seem to take herself too seriously which I always like in a person (based solely on some of her videos) . 

Anyway, I’m fond enough of their music to not turn up my nose at any of these women. Hell, I’ll even listen to Avril Lavigne... I’m such a slut. 

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82. TBK. Bk III. 6-11.

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The Brothers Karamazov

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Smerdyakov did not answer.

"Answer, stupid!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

...

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

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

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

"Revolution?"

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

"And when will the time come?"

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

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

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

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

"Of course he isn't."

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

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

"But why suppress it?" asked Ivan.

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

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

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

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

"Alyosha, is there a God?"

"There is."

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

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

"Absolute nothingness."

Alyosha, is there immortality?"

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

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

"And the devil? Does he exist?"

"No, there's no devil either."

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

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

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

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

"But he believes in God."

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

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

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

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

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

Wiki has this about Lermontov and Masquerade: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

79, TBK. Bk III. 1-2.

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The Brothers Karamazov

Book III. 1.
Finally we arrive at the house and meet the servants. How is Fyodor not a Foucaultian anti-hero? But, perhaps, rather than relishing the limit-experiences he goes to such trouble to instigate, he holds back at the brink and depends on Gregory to ground him to this world. He flirts with but still holds back from disaster.

p103 Corrupt and often cruel in his lust, like some poisonous insect, Fyodor Karamazov was sometimes, in moments of drunkenness, overcome by superstitious terror and a moral convulsion which took an almost physical form. "My soul simply quakes in my throat at those times," he used to say.

At such moments he liked to feel that there was near at hand, in the lodge if not in the room, a strong, faithful man [Gregory, his servant], virtuous and unlike himself . . . One who had seen all his vices and knew all his secrets, but was ready in his devotion to overlook everything, not to oppose him and above all, not to reproach him or threaten him with anything either in this world or in the next, and, in case of need, to defend him...

In this passage Gregory certainly has a Christ like aspect. And isn't this really the essence of religion? Certainly of Christianity. Someone who knows us completely but forgives us everything and will stand beside us regardless what happens.  

p104 ...Alyosha "pierced his heart" by "living with him, seeing everything and blaming nothing." Moreover, Alyosha brought with him something his father had never known before: a complete absence of contempt for him and a consistent kindness, a perfectly natural, unaffected devotion to the old man who deserved it so little. All this was a complete surprise to the old wretch who had dropped all family ties. It was a new and surprising experience for him, who had until then loved nothing but "evil." And when Alyosha had left him to join the monastery, he confessed to himself that he had learned something he had not till then been willing to learn.

So the vile Fyodor we see in these pages is the moderated version of this character, having been beneficially touched by Christian love... Now that's a scary thought.

... Gregory was cold, dignified and reserved, and spoke, weighing his words, without frivolity. It was impossible to tell at first sight whether he loved his meek, obedient wife, Marfa. But he really did love her, and she knew it. [Omniscient]

p105 Marfa was by no means foolish; she was probably more clever than her husband or, at least, more prudent than he in worldly affairs. Yet she had given in to him in everything without question or complaint ever since her marriage and she respected him for his spiritual superiority. It was remarkable how little they spoke to one another in the course of their lives; they spoke only of the most necessary daily affairs. The reserved Gregory thought over all his cares and duties alone, so that Marfa had long grown used to knowing that he did not need her advice. She felt that he respected her silence, and took it as a sign of her good sense. He had never beaten her but once, and then only slightly... [she had danced in a "Moscow" rather than the village fashion, so obviously needed some kind of a beating.] But there it ended. The beating was never repeated, and Marfa gave up dancing.

I don't know what to make of this. Marfa seems to be a pretty typical Dostoevsky woman, really not so different from Katerina. Is this 
Dostoevsky's ideal?

p106 [Gregory and Marfa's six fingered infant child dies soon after birth] Marfa observed that, from the day of the burial, Gregory devoted himself to "religion," and took to reading the "Lives of the Saints," for the most part sitting alone and in silence... He was fond of the Book of Job, and had somehow acquired a copy of the sayings and sermons of "the God-fearing Father Isaac the Wyrian." [ This is an appropriate quote from Father Issac, "A handful of sand, thrown into the sea, is what sinning is, when compared to God’s Providence and mercy. Just like an abundant source of water is not impeded by a handful of dust, so is the Creator’s mercy not defeated by the sins of His creations."] He read this persistently for years on end, understanding very little of it but perhaps prizing and loving it the more for that. Of late he had begun to listen to the doctrines of the sect of Flagellants settled in the neighborhood. He was evidently shaken by them, but judged it unfitting to go over to the new faith...

p107 Gregory was perhaps predisposed to mysticism. And the birth and death of his deformed child had, as though by special design, been accompanied by another strange and marvelous event... on the very night after the burial of his child, Marfa was awakened by the wail of a newborn baby...

Opening the door of the bathhouse, he [Gregory] saw a sight which petrified him. An idiot girl, who wandered about the streets and was know as... (Stinking Lizaveta), had gotten into the bathhouse and had just given birth to a child. She lay dying with the baby beside her. She said nothing, for she had never been able to speak. But her story needs a chapter to itself.

I'm tempted to skip this description of the ephemeral character Lizaveta, but this passage reminds me of what has been said about Alyosha and I'm wondering what Dostoevsky sees in this.


Book III. 2.
p108 ...Spiteful and diseased, her father used to beat Lizaveta inhumanely [?] whenever she returned to him [after her mother dies]. But she rarely did so, for everyone in the town was ready to look after her as an idiot, and so specially dear to God. Her father's employers and many others in the town... tried to clothe her better, and always gave her high boots and a sheepskin coat for the winter. But, although she let them dress her up without resisting, she usually went away, preferably to the cathedral porch, and taking off all that had been given her -- kerchief, sheepskin, skirt or boots -- she left them there and walked away barefoot in her smock as before.
...
p109 ...She would walk into strange houses, and no one drove her away. Everyone was kind to her and gave her something. If she were given a penny, she would take it, and at once drop it in the alms box of the church or prison. If she were given a roll or bun in the market, she would hand it to the first child she met. Sometimes she would stop one of the richest ladies in the town and give it to her, and the lady would be pleased to take it. She herself never tasted anything but black bread and water... they knew that if she saw thousands of roubles she would not have touched a penny.

It is interesting to compare Lizaveta with Father Ferapont.

She scarcely ever went to church. She slept either on the church porch or climbed over a low fence into a kitchen garden. At least once a week she used to turn up "at home," that is at the house of her father's former employers, and in the winter she went there every night, and slept either in the passage or the cowhouse. People were amazed that she could stand such a life, but she was accustomed to it and, although she was very tiny, she was strong and healthy. Some of the townspeople declared that she did all this only from pride, but that is hardly credible. She couldn't speak, and only from time to time uttered an inarticulate grunt. How could she have been proud?

Lizaveta is impregnated either by Fyodor or by an escaped criminal and her orphan is raised by Marfa and Gregory. This child is Pavel Smerdyakov ("The Stinker"). A surname invented by Fyodor himself. Pavel becomes the third servant in the household when he grows up.

As usual, I wonder what, exactly, Dostoyevsky meant by this character. Lizaveta would seem to be the most Christian and "holy" character in the book... exceeding even Zossima and certainly Father Ferapont. Having, apparently, no intellect to sacrifice to faith, she simply lives this particular Christian ideal almost as an animal. Is she in fact a daughter of Eve? Does she share the knowledge of good and evil or is she still in a state of nature.

This is not an idle question as she is also the mother of Pavel. Dostoyevsky is diabolical in the way he piles plot on plot and hides, in plain sight, the most amazing things thanks to spectacles of distraction. The holy Lizaveta and the unholy Fodor create -- through rape, apparently -- Pavel, who plays a role in The Brothers K. not unlike the role Euphorion plays in Goethe's Faust. (Euphorion is the issue of Faust and Hellena and... well, it's complicated. I'm going to tackle Faust next, but Here's a little taste.)


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