102. TBK. Epilogue & USS Independence

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The Brothers Karamazov

Epilogue 2.
p883 [Dmitri to Alyosha] “...I hate America already! And though they may be wonderful at machinery, every one of them, damn them, they are not of my soul. I love Russia... I love the Russian God, though I am a scoundrel. I shall choke there!”...

What’s interesting about what “America” meant to Europeans around this time is that the average American was still pretty traditional and old fashioned. Even in 1880 a huge percentage of the population lived on subsistence agriculture was not that different from what Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy were familiar with. It would turn out that Americans were actually as bad as Europeans believed them to be, but that wouldn’t be proved until after Spindletop and all the mass consumerism (and fast food) of the 20th century.

While Dostoyevsky did “finish” The Brothers Karamazov, it still, at the end, feels as unfinished as Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy. One supposes that, had Dostoyevsky lived longer, he would have eventually tried to interest some periodical in carrying the further adventures of those crazy Karamazov brothers. And I would be just as interested in learning more about the complex Lise, the delightful Madame H., and of course the tragic soap opera queens, Katerina and Grushenka. And with all the philosophy out of the way -- perhaps -- the story might have flowed more smoothly.

In my edition of this book, the Afterword by Sara Paretsky maintains that “...only active love was possible for Russia -- and humanity’s -- salvation, and that active love was most possible through Orthodox Christianity.” But isn’t the love of Katerina for Dmitri, and even of Grushenka for Dmitri, examples of a kind of “active love” -- perhaps a love distantly related to the saving love for Faust of his doomed Gretchen? While I much prefer the Austen women to Dostoyevsky’s women (with the exception of Madame H.) I have to say I prefer Dostoyevsky’s women to the nonsensical women of Goethe’s Faust. (It would be fun to film versions of either The Magic Mountain or Doctor Faustus with the women represented by manikins or life size marionettes.)

It is truly amazing how many cases of parricide have been in the news in the past week since I finished reading this. I guess Dostoyevsky was right about the younger generation (and most of these killers have been teens) going to hell in a hand-basket. 

Up Next

Before we move on to our next book (On the Move by Oliver Sacks), I'm going to take this opportunity to add in one of my longer contributions.

USS Independence

Recently the wreck of the USS Independence was rediscovered on the floor of the ocean near San Francisco. The local paper told just enough of her story to start me thinking. Here is some of what should have been said.

In 1938, following the Japanese invasion of China and the German annexation of Austria, the U.S. Congress enacted The Naval Act of 1938, also known as the Second Vinson Act. (Carl Vinson was a Democratic congressman from Georgia and the Chairman of the House Naval Affairs Committee. There is currently a nuclear powered supercarrier named for him. This is an honor usually reserved for Presidents.)

“The 1938 Act specifically authorised the construction of 105,000 tons of battleships (the first three Iowa Class ships were built under this authorization), 68,754 tons of cruisers, 38,000 tons of destroyers and 13,658 tons of submarines...” -Wiki

That “68,754 tons of cruisers” included 32 light cruisers of the Cleveland-class. Light cruisers are an odd sort of support ship, not the sort of ship to get anyone excited. The most notable thing about this item in the list was that there were so many of them ordered. And “light” here refers to the size of their main guns, not the size of the ships; these light cruisers were as big as and as fast as the heavy cruisers (CAs) that bore the brunt of the fighting during the dark days, or rather dark nights, of 1942. The difference was that the Cleveland-class ships mounted 12 6” guns instead of the CAs 9 8” guns. Their secondary battery consisted of 12 more dual purpose 5” guns in twin turrets. These 5” guns, along with a large number of smaller anti-aircraft guns, made them an excellent anti-aircraft asset for a fleet that was then quite vulnerable to air attack.

In June of 1940, following the brief and disastrous Battle of France, Congress passed the even larger Two-Ocean Navy Act, also known as the Vinson-Walsh Act. Now faced with the prospect of confronting both a victorious Germany in the Atlantic and a dangerous Japan in the Pacific, this Act authorized the construction of 18 large aircraft carriers (CVs) of the Essex- class, and an additional 2 Iowa-class battleships (BBs) (bringing the total authorized to 7 of which only 4 would be completed by the end of the war) plus 5 even larger Montana-class BBs (their construction would be cancelled because there simply weren’t enough shipyards to build them and the Essex CVs at the same time). There were also to be 6 super heavy cruisers of the Alaska-class (only 2 would be completed), 27 more cruisers, 115 more destroyers and 43 more submarines.

There was really only one problem with the construction program funded by the Vinson bills, the major elements -- BBs and CVs -- were not scheduled to start joining the fleet until 1944 and the grand fleet, or fleets, envisioned by the Navy would not fully exist until 1946. Until then the U.S. Navy would only have its existing six large fleet carriers -- plus the small and slow U.S.S. Ranger, which would be relegated to service in the Atlantic and Mediterranean during the war.

The ex-Secretary of the Navy -- a chap by the name of Franklin Delano Roosevelt -- began to worry about that period until 1944 when no new CVs would be joining the fleet. He suggested to the navy that it might be a good idea to convert some of these large, fast, Cleveland-class CL hulls to aircraft carriers to fill that gap. Now the Navy had learned, from its experience with the smaller U.S.S. Ranger, that small carriers were inferior to large carriers in every way. What they wanted were the big Essex-class ships that were on the way. On 12 October 1941 the Navy told the President, “No.” Roosevelt pointed out that he was talking about what the Navy needed and asked them to reconsider, they then admitted, on 25 October, that such a conversion of CLs could result in new carriers reaching the fleet much sooner. In January of 1942, after Pearl Harbor, the Navy ordered the first conversion of a Cleveland-class CL. In February they ordered two more conversions. In March another three. By June 1942, two U.S. Navy CVs had been sunk and a third had just rejoined the fleet after months spent at the Bremerton shipyard to repair damage from a Japanese torpedo; the Navy ordered a final three conversions bringing the number of ships in what would be known as the Independence-class to nine. In October 1942 the last operational U.S. carrier in the Pacific retreated to Nouméa, New Caledonia for extensive repairs from bomb damage suffered at the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands. Saratoga, the only other heavy carrier not sunk, was again under repair from another torpedo hit. (There’s another great story to tell about the sister ships Saratoga and Lexington, Kagi and Akaga... maybe later.)

By 1943 the Enterprise and Saratoga had rejoined the fleet and they were joined by the first of the Essex-class heavy carriers -- their construction had been expedited after Pearl Harbor -- as these ships became available. But the Independence-class ships, now designated Light Fleet Carriers (CVLs) entered service faster and by November 1943 all nine ships were in commission and providing excellent service. For Operation Galvanic in November 1943 (the invasion of the Gilbert Islands including Tarawa) the Fast Carrier Task Force consisted of 6 CVs and 5 CVLs. During the Battle of the Philippine Sea (arguably the decisive naval battle of the war) the U.S. Fifth Fleet was constructed around 7 CVs and 8 CVLs.

By the end of the war the surviving Enterprise and Saratoga would be joined by no less than 17 Essex-class heavy carriers, but during the years when the U.S. fought its way across the Pacific to Japan, it was the Independence-class ships that bore more than their fair share of the load. In fact the only U.S. fleet carrier lost after 1942 was the Independence-class U.S.S. Princeton during the Battles of Leyte Gulf.

And this is just one of the reasons that it would be impossible to overemphasize FDR’s role in winning the Pacific War.

Coda: The Cleveland-class ships displaced 11,000 tons and so represented in total 99,000 tons of shipping. The first CVL was commissioned 14 January 1943 and the last 17 November 1943.

In June 1942, at the same time the U.S. Navy ordered the final 3 Cleveland conversions, the Imperial Japanese Navy ordered the conversion to a supercarrier of the third Yamato-class battleship. The 65,000 ton Shinano was formally commissioned on 19 November 1944 at Yokosuka. She was still being fitted out when she was ordered to sail 300 miles to Kure where she would complete fitting and receive her air group. On 28 November, in route to Kure, Shinano was attacked by the submarine U.S.S. Archerfish. Struck by four torpedoes, she sank at 10:57 (military time) on 29 November.

In truth, the loss of Shinano was not all that significant. The crucial battles of the Philippine Sea and Leyte Gulf had already been fought and lost. When she sank she was carrying not naval aircraft but 50 rocket propelled kamikaze flying bombs and six suicide boats that she was supposed to deliver to Okinawa or the Philippines.

The Independence CVLs were second rate carriers, but they were there when needed and it would have taken more than four torpedoes to sink them all. There are actually advantages, in a battle, in having more flight decks, in having your valuable aircraft in more baskets. If given the choice, I imagine the Navy would rather have had 4 more Essex-class CVs than the 9 Independence-class conversions. But the IJN would have been much better off building 6 ships like the Independence in 1943 rather than the giant Shinano late in 1944.


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101. TBK. Bk XII. 6, 12. & Architecture old and new

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The Brothers Karamazov

Book XII. 6.
p805 [The prosecutor's speech at the trial] “What, after all, is this Karamazov family, which has gained such an unenviable notoriety throughout Russia?” he continued. “Perhaps I am exaggerating, but it seems to me that certain fundamental features of the educated class of today are reflected in this family picture -- only, of course, in miniature, ‘like the sun in a drop of water.’ [Did he throw this in for Goethe?] Think of that unhappy, vicious, unbridled old man, who has met with such a tragic end, the head of a family! Beginning life of noble birth, but in a poor dependent position... A low person, a toady and buffoon, of fairly good though undeveloped intelligence, he was above all a moneylender who grew bolder with growing prosperity. His abject and servile characteristics disappeared, his malicious and sarcastic cynicism was all that remained. On the spiritual side he was undeveloped, while his vitality was excessive. He saw nothing in life but sensual pleasure. He had no feelings for his duties as a father. He ridiculed those duties... He was an example of everything that is opposed to civic duty, of the most complete and malignant individualism: ‘The world may burn for all I care, so long as I am all right.’ And he was all right; he was content, he was eager to go on living in the same way for another twenty or thirty years...”

p806 “...he was a father, and one of the typical fathers of today... Many of them only differ in not openly professing such cynicism, for they are better educated, more cultured, but their philosophy is essentially the same as his...”

I hadn’t realized until now to what extent Fyodor represented bourgeois values to Dostoyevsky. He really is the epitome of the new, middle class man -- without culture or values. 

“Now for the children of this father...”

p807 “The elder [of the younger two, Ivan] is one of those modern young men of education and intellect who has lost faith in everything. He has denied and rejected much already, like his father... [He then quotes Smerdyakov as saying,] ‘Everything in the world is lawful according to him, and nothing must be forbidden in the future -- that is what he always taught me.’ [And] ‘If there is one of the sons that is like Fyodor Karamazov in character, it is Ivan.’ ”
...
“Then there is the third son. Oh, he is a devout and modest youth, who does not share his older brother’s gloomy and destructive theory of life. He has sought to cling to the ‘ideas of the people,’ or to what goes by that name in some circles of our intellectual classes. He clings to the monastery, and was within an ace of becoming a monk. He seems to me to have betrayed unconsciously that timid despair which leads so many in our unhappy society, who dread cynicism and its corrupting influences and mistakenly attribute all the trouble to European enlightenment, to return to their ‘native soil,’ to the bosom, so to speak, of their mother earth. Like frightened children, they yearn to fall asleep on the withered bosom of their decrepit mother; to sleep there forever in order to escape the horrors that terrify them.

p808 “For my part I wish the young man every success. I trust that his youthful idealism and impulse toward the ideas of the people may never degenerate, as often happens, on the moral side into gloomy mysticism, and on the political into blind Chauvinism. These two elements are even a greater menace to Russia than the premature decay, due to misunderstanding and gratuitous adoption of European ideas, from which his elder brother is suffering.”
...

How often does an author get to openly explain the concept behind his characters? I still think it’s Pavel, not Ivan, who is most like the father, but otherwise this analysis is quite accurate. The degree to which “this” time in Russia differs from earlier periods is something I can’t comment on, but I do have doubts about. The myth of the “good old days” is so prevalent throughout history.

Ivan characterizes the bourgeois tendency toward nihilism while Alyosha shares the spirit that will lead to International Communism (and Fascism and even Islamic fundamentalism) -- the need to believe in something to make the world seem less meaningless. 

This may be random (even for me) but I’m going to quote a passage from God’s Hotel by Victoria Sweet that I happened to just read, 

p56 [Describing a patient at Laguna Honda whose life she had just saved by attempting to follow the example of Hildegard of Bingen  (1098–1179)] By the end of that week, she was opening her eyes at the sound of my voice and even at the sound of my footsteps... her face was beginning to acquire a shape, and when I sat down in the chair by her bed, she looked at me. Not only did she look at me; her eyes looked into mine with recognition and love -- a particular kind of love. Not the love of a parent for a child or a lover for the beloved, but of a subject for his ruler -- trusting, all will resigned. I recognized the look. It was the transference. 

p57 The transference is the name that the psychiatric profession, Sigmund Freud in particular, gave to the emotion that the patient transfers to the doctor during treatment. It is the love that he or she felt for his or her parents -- not the rational love, but the irrational love for the all-powerful father/mother in a three-year-old’s life. This transference was the key to psychic healing, the key to psychic change, Freud wrote, because it made the doctor what the doctor was not -- all-powerful. After the transference, the words, the nod, the blink of the doctor’s eyes would be all-important to the patient, would mean acceptance or rejection, pride or guilt, self-love or self-hate. And Mrs. McCoy, I saw by that flicker in her eyes, had fallen in love -- which is what the transference really is -- with me, her doctor. Not, of course, with me, the person, but with Me, the doctor-the being sitting in the chair by her bed.

It’s a lot of power, the transference. Mrs. McCoy’s transference to me meant she would wait, during the day, for my footsteps; she would stay alive for that reason. Her transference to me meant she would hang on my every word and try to please me. If I asked her, she would bestir herself; she would make an effort. She would sit up in bed and feed herself; she would exert herself and get stronger. She would go without complaint to rehabilitation; she would take her first steps, to please me. She would be pleasant to the nurses... She would participate in the life of the ward. Her transference to me meant she would live and not die. 

Isn’t this the same thing that Zossima and the monks were seeking with God? That the lost Germans of the Teens and Twenties were looking for in Hitler? That numberless people have found in their gurus or faith healers or cult leaders? 

[About Dmitri] “...While his brothers seem to stand for ‘Europeanism’ and ‘the principles of the people,’ he seems to represent Russia as she is. Oh, not all Russia, not all! God preserve us, if it were! Yet, here we have her, our mother Russia, the very scent and sound of her. Oh, he is spontaneous, he is a marvelous mingling of good and evil, he is a lover of culture and Schiller, yet he brawls in taverns and plucks out the beards of his boon companions. Oh, he, too, can be good and noble, but only when all goes well with him. What is more, he can be carried off his feet, positively carried off his feet by noble ideals, but only if they come of themselves, if they fall from heaven for him, if they need not be paid for. He dislikes paying for anything, but is very fond of receiving, and that’s so with him in everything. Oh, give him every possible good in life (he couldn’t be content with less), and put no obstacle in his way, and he will show that he, too, can be noble. He is not greedy, no, but he must have money, a great deal of money, and you will see how generously, with what scorn, he will fling it all away in the reckless dissipation of one night. But if he has no money, he will show what he is ready to do to get it when he is in great need of it...”

Dmitri has the attitude toward money of the dissipated gentry, not of the bourgeoisie. Grushenka, on the other hand, shares Fyodor’s bourgeois values when it comes to money. Who does he remind me of? Tolstoy’s Oblonsky in Anna Karenina to a small degree. I know there are literary English gentry perpetually in need of funds due to their spendthrift ways, but particular instances don’t come to mind just now.  

[Again Rakitin is quoted about the Karamazovs,] p810 “...‘The sense of their own degradation is as essential to these reckless, unbridled natures as the sense of their generosity.’ And that’s true, they need continually this unnatural mixture. Two extremes at the same moment, or they are miserable and dissatisfied and their existence is incomplete. They are wide, wide as mother Russia; they include everything and put up with everything...”

Book XII. 12.
p855 [Fetyukovitch, the defense attorney,  about Smerdyakov] “... He cursed and jeered Russia. He dreamed of going to France and becoming a Frenchman... I believe that he loved no one but himself and had a strangely high opinion of himself. His conception of culture was limited to good clothes, clean shirts and polished boots. Believing himself to be the illegitimate son of Fyodor Karamazov... he might well have resented his position, compared with that of his master’s legitimate sons. They had everything, he nothing. They had the rights, they had the inheritance, while he was only the cook and valet... 

Again, Pavel represents the “New Man,” the bourgeois spirit as opposed to the traditional gentry, peasantry, and clergy. He is striving and not happy in his “place.” He thinks he deserves better but is without “culture.” And this emphasis on his illegitimacy reminds me of John the Bastard in Much Ado About Nothing. The concept of “legitimacy” is interesting here.

I’m not really writing about the trial itself, but I have to say that Fetyukovich did an excellent job of casting doubt on the guilt of his client. From my experience as a juror on a U.S. criminal case, I’ll say that if I were on this jury I could not find Dmitri guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt, of murder and especially not of robbery. 

Another thought about Pavel and his parents. What does Dostoyevsky mean by having this crucial character be the child of the nihilistic Fyodor and the saintly (in a very unusual sense) Lizaveta? She is simple and holy in a way even Zossima and Father Ferapont couldn’t touch. He lives the “everything is lawful” philosophy Ivan merely talks about.

Architecture old and new
I’m sitting in an unusual location in the Bank Cafe -- one of the three really comfortable chairs, but this one is up on the mezzanine overlooking the main floor and the stairs down to the lower level, but also looking up a bit into the sky-lit lantern. This is a “new” architectural space; I can see the structure of the building including some massively reinforced moment frames; someone went nuts with a lighting catalog and included all sorts of trendy fixtures; there’s an area carpeted with Interface FLOR carpet tiles. From here I can see three variations on the Navy Chair. In the lower level there is a bleacher section next to the stairs where you can sit on beanbags or on the wood flooring. This isn’t fussy but is a tactile space that is comfortable and accessible. 

The building that houses my gym is in the same position as this building but in the diagonal block. It is a beautiful example of high end architecture from the early 20th century with the most beautiful lobby I’ve ever seen. But as much as I love taking people there to awe them with the space, it is a standoffish sort of beauty. As is only appropriate for a busy lobby, it is a place where you might glance at the beauty around you but where you are not encouraged to linger. 

I wish we had a good example of Richard Rodger’s architecture in the area just so I could get a feeling for how “comfortable” it is. Is the purity of the engineering just lovely to look at or does it make you want to hang out and really enjoy the space? 


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100. TBK. Bk XI. 10. & Bookshelf

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The Brothers Karamazov

Bk XI. 10.
p756 [Ivan tells Alyosha about his visitor.] “And you are convinced that there has been someone here?” asked Alyosha.  

“Yes, on that sofa in the corner... And he is myself, Alyosha. All that’s base in me, all that’s mean and contemptible. Yes, I am a romantic. He guessed it... He told me a great deal that was true about myself, though. I would never have admitted it to myself. Do you know, Alyosha,” Ivan added in an intensely earnest and confidential tone. “I would be awfully glad to think that it was he and not I.”

“He has worn you out,” said Alyosha, looking compassionately at his brother.

“He’s been teasing me. And you know he does it so cleverly, so cleverly. ‘Conscience! What is conscience! I make it up for myself. Why am I tormented by it? From habit. From the universal habit of mankind for seven thousand years. So let us give it up, and we shall be gods.’ It was he who said that, it was he who said that!”

“And not you, not you?” Alyosha could not help crying, looking at his brother. “Never mind him, anyway; forget him. And let him take with him all that you curse now and never come back!”
...

p758 [Alyosha] ...As he fell asleep he prayed for Dmitri and Ivan. He began to understand Ivan’s illness. “The agony of proud determination. Conscience!” God, in whom Ivan disbelieved, and His truth were gaining mastery over his heart, which still refused to submit. “Yes,” the thought floated through Alyosha’s mind. “Yes, if Smerdyakov is dead, no one will believe Ivan’s evidence; but he will go and testify anyway.” Alyosha smiled softly [?!?]. “God will conquer!” he thought. “Ivan will either rise up in the light of truth, or . . . he’ll perish in hate, revenging on himself and on everyone his having served a cause he does not believe in,” Alyosha added bitterly. And again he prayed for Ivan.

Isn’t it curious that the word “conscience” contains the word “science,” meaning knowledge? The notion that Ivan’s visiting devil was an aspect of himself, an aspect eager to tell him the things he didn’t want to hear, is not so far from my idea that the Hindu goddesses represent aspects of the feminine. That “God” is really the best of us and the “devil” the worst, is also not far from the notion that we create both in our own image. It also explains why people are always creating religions to validate their personal tendencies -- too often for pedophilia and the like. And it explains why religions are not universal since not all people are the same.  

Bookshelf
(This content would have been more at home in my After Ryecroft blog, but I guess it will fit here, as a sort of distraction before the trial.)

I’ve written about the cafes I frequent, but mostly I’m at home. Across from the Ikea chair in which I’ve written (or at least published) most (all) of these blog posts, is a bookshelf I’ve had since I was a child in Boulder, Colorado. I helped stain and varnish this piece of furniture when it first arrived at our house. On the lower shelf, right and left sections, is my encyclopedia from those Boulder years, which I’ve written about before. But on the top shelf, at the moment, is most of my large format fiction. (My small format fiction is in another bookcase.) 

My apartment is full of books. If you walked into my apartment that particular shelf would not necessarily attract your attention (though it actually should given its central location. I believe that on a feng shui bagua, it would be in the position for “wealth” -- which is why I have a gold lamp sitting on it). There is a bookshelf to the right full of military history that you (to your regret, I imagine) would think was equally important -- and I can’t dispute that -- and to the left is a shelf of the non-fiction authors that I swear by. And yet that shelf of fiction...

From this distance, across my small room, what catches your eye, because of the dust cover, is A Suitable Boy, by Vikram Seth (an amazing book); the older translation of Remembrance of Things Past by Proust; the Tales of the City volumes by Armistead Maupin; and then two volumes of Pynchon, of which I’ve read only one, Vineland. Less prominent is a Sci Fi title -- Child of Fortune by Norman Spinrad --  and several volumes by David Lodge (Paradise News and Nice Work) and Tides of War and Last of the Amazons by Steven Pressfield. And I just noticed three Martha Grimes mysteries in the Richard Jury series. 

It’s worth noting that there are a number of books here that I have never read: The First Man in Rome by Colleen McCullough, Mason & Dixon by Pynchon, Ulysses by James Joyce. 

Sitting in the middle of these books, of course, is Mann -- my 1948 edition of Doctor Faustus and the new edition of The Magic Mountain I bought at Powell’s in Portland.

From Pynchon to Mann, with Lodge and Maupin and Seth in between (speaking figuratively), it is amazing how my life is encapsulated in this shelf of books.

Though I could say the same for the non-fiction shelf to the left, but I would have to move over to the sofa to get the same view. 


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99. TBK. Bk XI. 9.

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The Brothers Karamazov

I have to apologize in advance. This post is way too long but it really can't be broken up. It's also my favorite part of the book, for reasons that should become obvious if you were with me for Doctor Faustus.
   

TBK Bk. XI. 9.
p734 [Ivan’s brain fever crisis (In case you didn't follow that link, a quick Wiki search on Brain Fever turns up a variety of illnesses that could have been called this in the 19th century -- including Meningitis and Scarlet Fever -- about which it says, “infectious disease whose symptoms can include paranoia and hallucinations.”] And so he was sitting almost conscious himself of his delirium and... looking intently at something on the sofa against the opposite wall. Someone appeared to [him to] be sitting there, though goodness knows how he had come in, for he had not been in the room when Ivan came into it, on his return from Smerdyakov. [Goethe has Mephisto enter in the form of a dog. Dostoyesvsky here, and Mann in Doctor Faustus, has the character become aware of a presence in the room. In Adrian’s case, it is a sudden feeling of cold while reading Kierkegaard that alerts him to the demonic presence. I now wonder that he didn’t have him reading The Brothers K.] This was a person or, more accurately speaking, a Russian gentleman of a particular kind, no longer young, about fifty, with rather long, thick dark hair... 

p735 In brief there was every appearance of gentility on straitened means. It looked as though the gentleman belonged to that class of idle landowners who used to flourish in the times of serfdom... But after a gay youth, becoming gradually impoverished on the abolition of serfdom, he had sunk into the position of poor relative, wandering from one good old friend to another... 

The countenance of the unexpected visitor was not so much good-natured, as accommodating and ready to assume any amiable expression as the occasion might arise... 

Ivan was angrily silent and would not begin the conversation. The visitor waited and sat exactly like a poor relation who had come down from his room to keep his host company at tea, and was discreetly silent, seeing that his host was frowning and preoccupied. But he was ready for any pleasant conversation as soon as his host should begin it. All at once his face expressed solicitude.

“I say,” he began to Ivan, “excuse me, I only mention it to remind you. You went to Smerdyakov’s to find out about Katerina but you left without finding out anything about her. You probably forgot . . .” [This is something only Ivan could know.]

p736 “Oh, yes,” said Ivan and his face grew gloomy with uneasiness. “Yes, I’d forgotten . . . But it doesn’t matter now. Never mind, till tomorrow,” he muttered to himself. “But you,” he added, addressing his visitor, I would have remembered it myself in a minute, for that was just what was tormenting me! But you, why do you interfere? You act as though you prompted me, and that I didn’t remember it myself.”

“Don’t believe it then,” said the gentleman, smiling pleasantly. “What’s the good of believing against your will? Besides, proof is no help to believing, especially material proof. Thomas believed, not because he saw Christ risen, but because he wanted to believe, before he saw. Look at the spiritualists, for instance. . . . I am very fond of them . . . Only would you believe it, they imagine they are serving the cause of religion, because the devils show them their horns from the other world. That, they say, is material proof of the existence of another world. The other world and material proof, what next! And if you come to that, does proving there’s a devil prove that there’s a God? I want to join an idealist society, I’ll lead the opposition in it. I’ll say I am a realist, but not a materialist, he-he!”

“Listen.” Ivan suddenly got up from the table. “I seem to be delirious . . . I am delirious, in fact. Talk any nonsense you like, I don’t care! You won’t drive me to fury, as you did last time. But I feel somehow ashamed... I sometimes don’t see you and don’t hear your voice as I did last time, but I always guess what you are saying, for it’s I, I myself speaking, not you. Only I don’t know whether I was dreaming last time or whether I really saw you...

“I am so glad you treat me with such familiarity,” the visitor began.

“Fool,” laughed Ivan. “Do you think I should stand on ceremony with you? I am in good spirits now, though I’ve a pain in my forehead . . . and on the top of my head . . . Only please don’t talk philosophy, as you did last time. [Now that's honest.] If you must stay, talk of something amusing. Gossip. You are a poor relative, you ought to gossip. What a nightmare to have! But I am not afraid of you. I’ll get the better of you. I won’t be taken to a madhouse!”

p737 “How charming, ‘poor relative.’ Yes, I am in my natural shape. For what am I on earth but a poor relative? By the way, I am listening to you and am rather surprised to find you are actually beginning to take me for something real, not simply your imagination, as you persisted in declaring last time . . .”

“Never for one minute have I taken you for reality,” Ivan cried with a sort of fury. “You are a lie, you are my illness, [so similar to Adrian’s case with his syphilis] you are a phantom. It’s only that I don’t know how to destroy you and I see I must suffer for a time. You are a hallucination. You are the incarnation of myself, but only of one side of me . . . of my thoughts and feelings, but only the worst and most stupid of them [This is another way of saying that we create the devil in our own image]. From that point of view you might be of interest to me, if only I had time to waste on you . . .”

“Excuse me, excuse me, I’ll catch you. When you called out to Alyosha under the lamp post this evening: ‘You learned it from him! How do you know that he visits me?’ you were thinking of me. So for one brief moment you did believe that I really exit,” the gentleman laughed blandly.

“Yes, that was a moment of weakness . . . But I couldn’t believe in you. I don’t know whether I was asleep or awake last time. Perhaps I was only dreaming then and didn’t really see you at all . . .”

“And why were you so surly with Alyosha? He is so good; I’ve treated him badly over Father Zossima.”

“Don’t talk of Alyosha! How dare you, you flunky!” Ivan laughed again.

“You scold me, but you laugh -- that’s a good sign. But you are ever so much more polite than you were last time and I know why: that great decision of yours . . .”

“Don’t speak of my decision,” cried Ivan savagely.

“I understand, I understand. It’s all very noble and charming. You are going to defend your brother and sacrifice yourself . . . It’s chivalrous.”

p738 “Keep quiet, I’ll kick you!”

“I won’t be altogether sorry, for then my object will be attained. If you kick me, you must believe in my reality, for people don’t kick ghosts. Joking apart, it doesn’t matter to me, scold if you like, though it’s better to be a trifle more polite even to me. ‘Fool, flunky!’ What words!”

“...I am poor, but . . . I won’t say very honest, but . . . It’s an axiom generally accepted in society that I am a fallen angel. I certainly can’t conceive how I can ever have been an angel. It I ever was, it must have been so long ago that there’s no harm in forgetting it. Now I only prize the reputation of being a gentlemanly person and live as I can, trying to make myself agreeable. I really love mankind, I’ve been slandered! Here when I stay with you from time to time, my life gains a kind of reality and that’s what I like most of all. You see, like you, I suffer from the fantastic and so I love the realism of earth. Here, with you, everything is circumscribed, here everything is formulated and geometrical, while we have nothing but indeterminate equations! I wander about here dreaming. I like dreaming. Besides, on earth I become superstitious. Please don’t laugh. That’s just what I like, to become superstitious. I adopt all your habits here; I like going to the public baths, would you believe it? I go and steam myself with merchants and priests. What I dream of is becoming incarnate once and for all in the form of some merchant’s wife weighing two hundred and fifty pounds, and of believing all she believes. My ideal is to go to church and offer a candle in simple-hearted faith, this is the absolute truth. Then there would be an end to my sufferings. I like going to the doctor too; in the spring there was an outbreak of smallpox and I went and was vaccinated in a foundling hospital -- if only you knew how I enjoyed myself that day. I donated ten roubles for the Slavs! . . . But you are not listening. Do you know, you are not at all well this evening? I know you went to that doctor yesterday . . . Well, what about your health? What did the doctor say?”

p739 “Fool! Ivan cried.
...
“The devil has rheumatism!”

“Why not...? I put on fleshly form and I take the consequences. Nothing human is beyond the possibility of Satan.”

“What, what? Nothing human is beyond . . . That’s not bad for the devil!”

“I am glad I’ve pleased you at last.”

“But you didn’t get that from me,” Ivan stopped suddenly, seemingly struck. “That never entered my head, that’s strange.” [Ivan hasn’t payed much attention to his dreams.]

“It’s original, isn’t it? This time I’ll be honest and explain it to you. Listen, in dreams and especially in nightmares, from indigestion or something else, a man sometimes sees such visions, such complex and real actuality, such events, even a whole world of events, woven into such a plot, with such unexpected details from the most exalted matters to the last button on a cuff, as I swear Leo Tolstoy has never invented. [Funny. But true.] Yet such visions are sometimes seen not by writers, but by the most ordinary people, officials, journalists, priests. . . . The subject of dreams is a complete mystery. A statesman once confessed to me that all his best ideas came to him when he was asleep. Well, that’s how it is now, though I am your hallucination, yet just as in a nightmare, I say original things which have not entered your head before. So I don’t repeat your ideas, yet I am only your nightmare, nothing more.”

p740 “You are lying. You are trying to convince me you exist independently and are not my nightmare. You are trying to convince me that you are a dream.” [What?]

“My dear fellow, I’ve adopted a special method today, I’ll explain it to you afterwards. Wait, where did I break off? Oh, yes! I caught cold then, only not here but someplace else.”
...
p741 [The visitor tells an odd story about catching a cold and being cured by “Hoff’s malt extract.” But there are problems when he tries to write a letter of thanks to the newspapers] “...I was prompted by a feeling of gratitude. But it led to no end of trouble. Not a single paper would take my letter. ‘It would be very reactionary ,’ they said. ‘No one would believe it. The devil does not exist. You’d better remain anonymous,’ they advised me. What use is a letter of thanks if it’s anonymous?... ‘It’s reactionary to believe in God today,’ I said, ‘but I am the devil, so people can believe in me.’ ‘We quite understand that,’ they said. ‘Who doesn’t believe in the devil? Yet we won’t print your letter, it might injure our reputation. As a joke, if you like.’ But I thought as a joke it wouldn’t be very witty. So it wasn’t printed. And do you know, I am angry about it to this day...”

p742 ‘...Before time was, by some decree that I could never make out, I was predestined ‘to deny’ and yet I am genuinely good-hearted and not at all inclined to negation. ‘No, you must go and deny. Without denial there’s no criticism and what would a newspaper be without a column of criticism?’ Without criticism it would be nothing but one ‘hosannah.’ But hosannah is not enough for life. The hosannah must be tried in the crucible of doubt and so on, in the same style. But I don’t interfere in that, I didn’t create it, I am not answerable for it. [Implicit here is God’s responsibility for both good and evil.] Well, they’ve chosen their scapegoat; they’ve made me write the column of criticism and so life has been made possible. We understand that comedy; I, for instance, simply ask for annihilation. No, live, I am told, for there’d be nothing without you. [Close to my position that evil is necessary to promote story] If everything in the universe were sensible, nothing would happen. There would be no events without you, and there must be events. So against the grain I serve to produce events and do what’s irrational because I’m commanded to. For all their indisputable intelligence, men take this farce as something serious, and that is their tragedy. They suffer, of course . . . But then they live, they live a real life, not a fantastic one, for suffering is life. Without suffering what would be the pleasure of life? [We have to ask ourselves here how Settembrini had never read this? He would have had even less excuse than I have.] Life would be transformed into an endless church service; it would be holy, but tedious. But what about me? I suffer, but still, I don’t live. I am x in an indeterminate equation. I am a sort of phantom in life who has lost all beginning and end, and who has even forgotten his own name. You are laughing -- no, you are not laughing, you are angry again... But I repeat again that I would give away all this superstellar life, all the ranks and honors, simply to be transformed into a merchant’s wife weighing two hundred and fifty pounds and set candles at God’s altar.”

“Then even you don’t believe in God? asked Ivan with a smile of hatred.

“What can I say -- that is, if you are in earnest . . .”

“Is there a God or not?” Ivan cried with savage intensity.

“Ah, then you are in earnest! My dear fellow, upon my word I don’t know. There! I’ve said it now!”

“...No, you are not someone apart, you are myself, you are I and nothing more! You are rubbish, you are my fancy!”

“Well, if you like, I have the same philosophy as you. That is true. ‘I think, therefore I am,’ I know that for a fact. All the rest, all these worlds, God and even Satan -- all that is not proved, to my mind. Does all that exist of itself, or is it only an emanation of myself, a logical development of my ego which alone has existed forever? But I must stop talking, otherwise, I think, you will jump up and start beating me.”

I must say that this is some of the best philosophy I’ve read anywhere. It makes me want to locate the final resting places of Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer... even Hume and Nietzsche (not to mention the 20th century windbags) and piss on their graves. Was Nietzsche influenced by this to make his later books more novel like and readable? Admittedly, I haven’t read those books in over 40 years, but I believe they were still too vague and filled with impenetrable terminology. Perhaps that’s just a German thing. Or a German in translation thing. 

p744 “You’d better tell me an anecdote!” said Ivan miserably.

“There is an anecdote on our subject, or rather a legend, not an anecdote. You reproach me with unbelief, yet you yourself don’t believe. But, my dear fellow, I am not the only one like that. We are all confused over there now and all the result of your science. Once there used to be atoms, five senses, four elements; and everything hung together somehow. There were atoms in the ancient world even, but since we’ve learned that you’ve discovered the chemical molecule and protoplasm and everything else, we had to lower our crest. There’s complete confusion, and, above all, superstition, scandal; there’s as much scandal among us as among you, you know; a little more in fact. And spying, also, for we have our secret police department where private information is received. Well, this legend belongs to our middle ages -- not yours, but ours -- and no one believes it even among us, except old ladies of two hundred and fifty pounds, not your old ladies I mean, but ours. We have everything you have. I am revealing one of our secrets out of friendship for you, though it’s forbidden. This legend is about Paradise. There was, they say, here on earth a thinker and philosopher. He rejected everything, Laws, Conscience, Faith, but above all, the Future Life. He died; he expected to go straight to darkness and death and he found a future life before him. He was astonished and indignant. ‘This is against my principles!’ he said. And he was punished for that. That is . . . You must excuse me, I am just repeating what I heard, it’s only a legend . . . He was sentenced to walk a quadrillion miles in the dark. And when he had finished that quadrillion, the gates of heaven will be opened to him and he’ll be forgiven . . .”

I loved the way that paragraph started out but the ending is kind of lame. I would think by “in the dark” he meant out of God’s light, but this isn’t obvious here.

“And what tortures have you in the other world besides walking a quadrillion miles?” asked Ivan with a strange eagerness.

p745 “What tortures? ah, don’t ask. In the old days we had all sorts, but now they are chiefly moral punishments -- ‘the stings of conscience’ and all that nonsense. We got that, too, from you, from the softening of your manners. And who’s the better for it? Only those who have no conscience, for how can they be tortured by conscience when they have none? But decent people who have conscience and a sense of honor suffer. Reforms, when the ground has not been prepared for them, especially if they are institutions copied from abroad, cause nothing but trouble. [Dostoyesvsky really can’t leave the end of serfdom alone.] The ancient fire was better. Well, this man, who was condemned to the quadrillion miles, stood still, looked round and lay down across the road. ‘I won’t go, I refuse on principle!’ Take the soul of an enlightened Russian atheist and mix it with the soul of the prophet Jonah, who sulked for three days and nights in the belly of the whale, and you get the character of that thinker who lay across the road.”

“What did he lie on there?”

“Well, I suppose there was something to lie on. You are not laughing?”

“Good!” cried Ivan, still with the same strange eagerness. Now he was listening with an unexpected curiosity. “Well, is he lying there now?”

“That’s the point, he isn’t. He lay there almost a thousand years and then he got up and started walking.” 

What a fool!” cried Ivan, laughing nervously. “Does it make any difference whether he lies there forever or walks a quadrillion miles? It would take a billion years to walk it?” 

“Much more than that, I haven’t got a pencil and paper or I could work it out. But he finished walking long ago and that’s where the story begins.”

“What, he accomplished it? But where did he get the billion years to do it?”

“Why, you keep thinking of your present earth! But your present earth may have been repeated a billion times. [Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence?] Why, it’s become extinct, been frozen, cracked, broken to bits, disintegrated into its elements, again ‘the water above the firmament,’ then again a comet, again a sun, again from the sun it becomes earth -- and the same sequence may have been repeated endlessly and in exactly the same way in every detail, most unseemly and insufferably tedious . . .” 

p746 “Well, well, what happened when he finished walking?”

“Why, at  that moment the gates of Paradise were opened and he walked in. And before he had been there two seconds by his watch (though to my thinking his watch must have dissolved into its elements on the way), he cried that those two seconds were worth walking not a quadrillion miles but a quadrillion of quadrillions, raised to the quadrillionth power! In fact, he sang ‘hosannah’ and overdid it so, that some people there wouldn’t shake hands with him at first -- he’d become too rapidly reactionary, they said. The Russian temperament. I repeat, it’s a legend. I give it for what it’s worth. So that’s the sort of ideas we have on such subjects even now.”

Interesting how “Russian” this devil is and how “German” Adrian’s is in Doctor Faustus. Not only do we create God and the devil in man’s image, but also in our cultural image. We barely try for a universal or even a global deity. 

[Ivan recalls that he made up the quadrillion miles anecdote himself when he was 17.] “...You are a dream! You are a dream not a living creature!”

“From the passion with which you deny my existence,” laughed the gentleman, “I am convinced that you believe in me.”


“Not in the slightest! I haven’t a hundredth part of a grain of faith in you!”

“But you have the thousandth of a grain. Homeopathic doses perhaps are the strongest. [funny] Confess that you have faith even to the ten-thousandth part of a grain.”

“Not for one minute,” cried Ivan. “But I would like to believe in you, “ he added strangely.

p747 “Ah! There’s an admission! But I am good-natured. I’ll come to your assistance again. Listen, it was I who caught you, not you who caught me. I told you your anecdote you’d forgotten on purpose, so as to destroy your faith in me completely.”

“You are lying. The object of your visit is to convince me of your existence!”

“Yes. But hesitation, suspense, conflict between belief and disbelief -- is sometimes such torture to a conscientious man, such as you are, that it’s better to hang oneself at once. Knowing that you are inclined to believe in me, I injected some disbelief by telling you that anecdote. I lead you to belief and disbelief by turns, and I have my motive in it. It’s the new method. As soon as you disbelieve in me completely, you’ll begin assuring me to my face that I am not a dream but a reality. I know you. Then I will have attained my object, which is an honorable one. I will sow in you only a tiny grain of faith and it will grow into an oak tree -- and such an oak tree that, sitting under it, you will long to enter the ranks of ‘the hermits in the wilderness and the saintly women,’ for that is what you are secretly longing for. You’ll dine on locusts, you’ll wonder into the wilderness to save your soul!”

“Then it’s for the salvation of my soul you are working, is it, you scoundrel?”

“One must do some good work sometimes. How ill-humored you are!”

“Fool! Did you ever tempt those holy men who ate locusts and prayed seventeen years in the wilderness till they were overgrown with moss?”


“My dear fellow, I’ve done nothing else. One forgets the whole world and all the worlds, and sticks to one such saint, because he is a very precious diamond. One such soul, you know, is worth a whole constellation. We have our system of reckoning, you know. The conquest is priceless! And some of them, I swear, are not inferior to you in culture, though you won’t believe it. They can contemplate such depths of belief and disbelief at the same moment that sometimes it really seems that they are within a hairsbreadth of being turned upside down.”

Again I’m struck by the sexual -- temptation as seduction -- aspect of all this. How many people have “gone into the wilderness” mostly for the thrill of being tempted?  

p748 “Well, did you succeed or fail? If you failed then you had ‘your nose pulled off your face.’ ”

“My dear fellow,” observed the visitor, “it’s better to fail than not to try at all...” [this sets up a strange story about having your nose pulled and then one about a girl sinner that I’m going to skip.]
...
p749 “...You are really angry with me for not having appeared to you in a red glow, with thunder and lightening, with scorched wings, but to have shown myself in such a modest form. You are wounded, in the first place, in your aesthetic feelings, and, secondly, in your pride. How could such a vulgar devil visit such a great man as you! Yes, there is that romantic strain in you... I make no claim to being equal to you in intelligence. Mephistopheles declared to Faust that he desired evil, but did only good. Well, he can say what he likes, it’s the opposite with me. I am perhaps the one man in all creation who loves the truth and really desires good. I was there when the Word, Who died on the Cross, rose up into Heaven bearing on His bosom the soul of the penitent thief. I heard the glad shrieks of the Cherubim singing and shouting hosannah and the thunderous rapture of the seraphim which shook Heaven and all creation. And I swear to you by all that’s sacred, I longed to join the choir and shout hosannah with them all. The word had almost escaped me, had almost broken my lips . . . You know how susceptible and impressionable I am. But common sense -- oh, a most unhappy trait in my character -- kept me in bounds and I let the moment pass! For what would have happened, I wondered, what would have happened after my hosannah? Everything on earth would have been extinguished at once and no events could have occurred. [Charmed. I'm not going to explain that but I hope someone gets the reference.] And so, solely from my sense of duty and my social position, I was forced to suppress the good moment and to stick to my unpleasant task. Somebody takes all the credit of what’s good for himself, and nothing but evil is left for me. But I don’t envy the honor of a life of idle imposture. I am not ambitious. Why am I, of all creatures in the world, doomed to be cursed and kicked by all decent people? For if I put on mortal form I am bound to be cursed and kicked. I know, of course, there’s a secret in it, but they won’t tell me the secret because then, perhaps, seeing the meaning of it, I might bawl out hosannah, and the indispensable minus would disappear at once, and good sense would reign supreme throughout the whole world. And that, of course, would mean the end of everything, even of magazines and newspapers, for who would buy them. [Why doesn’t this have the reputation of being the finest chapter in literature? (It does have the reputation of being one of the three best chapters in this book, I believe.)] I know that at the end of all things I will be reconciled. I, too, shall walk my quadrillion miles and learn the secret. But until that happens I am sulking and fulfill my destiny even though it is against the grain -- that is, to ruin thousands for the sake of saving one. How many souls have had to be ruined and how many honorable reputations destroyed for the sake of that one righteous man, Job, over whom they made such a fool of me in old days? Yes, until the secret is revealed, there are two sorts of truth for me -- one, their truth, which I know nothing about so far and the other my own. And there’s no knowing which will turn out to be better. . . . Are you asleep?”

p750 “I might as well be,” Ivan groaned angrily. “All my stupid ideas -- outgrown, thrashed out long ago, and flung aside like a dead carcass -- you present to me now as something new!”

“There’s no pleasing you! And I thought I would fascinate you by my literary style. That hosannah in the skies really wasn’t bad, was it? And then that ironical tone like Heine, eh?”

p751 “No, I was never a flunky! How then can my soul beget a flunky like you?”

“My dear fellow, I know a most charming and attractive young Russian gentleman, a young thinker and a great lover of literature and art, the author of a promising poem entitled The Grand Inquisitor. I was only thinking of him!”

“I forbid you to speak of The Grand Inquisitor!” cried Ivan, crimson with shame.

“And the Geological Cataclysm. Do you remember? That was a poem!”

“Keep quiet, or I’ll kill you!”

“You’ll kill me? No, excuse me, I will speak. I came to treat myself to that pleasure. Oh, I love the dreams of my ardent young friends, quivering with eagerness for life! ‘There are new men,’ you decided last spring, when you were planning to come here, ‘they propose to destroy everything and begin with cannibalism. Fools! They didn’t ask my advice! I maintain that nothing need be destroyed, that we only need to destroy the idea of God in man, that’s how we have to set to work. It’s that, that we must begin with. Oh, blind race of men who have no understanding! As soon as men have all denied God -- and I believe that period, corresponding with geological periods, will come to pass -- the old conception of the universe will fall of itself without cannibalism and what’s more the old morality, and everything will begin anew. [Of course there are always people, like the Surrealists, who long for a bit of cannibalism.] Men will unite to take from life all it can give, but only for joy and happiness in the present world. Man will be lifted up with a spirit of divine Titanic pride and the man-god will appear. [So much Nietzsche here. But how well known was The Birth of Tragedy at this time? Most of his “popular” books were yet to be written. I still can’t figure who was influencing whom or if this was simply synchronicity. In the 1880s Dostoyesvsky was certainly more widely read than Nietzsche.] Extending his conquest of nature by his will and his science, man will feel such lofty joy from hour to hour that he will make up for all his old dreams of the joys of heaven. Everyone will know that he is mortal and will accept death proudly and serenely like a god. His pride will teach him that it’s useless for him to grieve at life’s being a moment, and he will love his brother without need of reward. Love will be sufficient only for a moment of life, but this very consciousness will intensify its fire, which now is dissipated in dreams of eternal love beyond the grave’ . . . And so on and so on in the same style. Charming!”

p752 Ivan sat with his eyes cast downward and his hands pressed to his ears. He began trembling all over. The voice continued.

“The question now is, my young thinker reflected, is it possible that such a period will ever come? If it does, everything is determined and humanity is settled forever. But since, owing to man’s stupidity, this cannot come about for at least a thousand years, everyone who recognizes the truth now may legitimately order his life as he pleases, on the new principles. In that sense, ‘all things are lawful’ for him. What’s more, even if this period never comes to pass, since there is always no God and no immortality, the new man may well become the man-god, even if he is the only one in the whole world. Promoted to his new position, he may lightheartedly overstep all the barriers of the old morality of the old slave-man, if necessary. There is no law for God. Where God stands, the place is holy. Where I stand will become the foremost place . . . ‘All things are lawful’ and that’s the end of it! That’s all very charming; but if you want to swindle why do you want a moral sanction for doing it? But that’s our modern Russian all over. He can’t bring himself to swindle without moral sanction. He is so in love with truth . . .”

...Ivan suddenly snatched a glass from the table and threw it at him.

“Oh, how stupid of you,” cried the gentleman, jumping up from the sofa and shaking off the drops of tea. “He remembers Luther’s inkstand! He takes me for a dream and throws glasses at a dream! It’s like a woman! I suspected you were only pretending to stop up your ears.”

A loud, persistent knocking was suddenly heard at the window. Ivan jumped up from his seat.

“Do you hear? You’d better open,” cried the gentleman. “It’s your brother Alyosha with the most interesting and surprising news!”

p753 “Keep quiet. I know it is Alyosha. I felt he was coming. And of course he has not come for nothing; of course he brings ‘news,’ ” Ivan exclaimed frantically.

“Open, open to him. There’s a snowstorm and he is your brother. Do you realize what it is like outdoors? It isn’t fit for a dog.”

The knocking continued. Ivan wanted to rush to the window, but something seemed to hold back his arms and legs. He strained every effort to break his chains but in vain. The knocking at the window grew louder and louder. At last the chains were broken and Ivan looked round him wildly. Both the candles had almost burned out. The glass he had thrown at his visitor stood before him on the table, and there was no one on the sofa opposite. The knocking went on persistently, but it was by no means so loud as it had seemed in his dream, on the contrary it was quite subdued.

“It was not a dream! No, I swear it was not a dream, it all happened just now!” cried Ivan. He rushed to the window and opened the movable pane. 

It would have been brilliant if he had the sort of dream where you think you wake up but are still actually dreaming. The line above would be when he only thought he was awake and his visitor would tweak him about it.

“Alyosha, I told you not to come.” he cried to his brother. “What do you want? Why have you come?”

“Smerdyakov hung himself an hour ago,” Alyosha answered from the yard.

“Come around to the steps, I’ll open the door at once, said Ivan.

Really, even if this wasn’t such an obvious model for the similar scene in Doctor Faustus, this would still be the best chapter of the book and much more interesting than "The Grand Inquisitor." And as with Faustus, you can understand this as being simply Ivan’s dream or an insight he has into something more profound only because of his illness. Except that the visitor doesn’t seem to tell him anything he doesn’t already think (or does he only think this in the dream) -- he simply rubs Ivan's nose in ideas he no longer believes or has serious doubts about. And that his dream takes a Faust like (but not exactly Faustian) direction tell us that, like Faust, he is desperate to make contact with something that will resolve his doubts. The visitor turns out to be less Mephisto and more study buddy. Really he is Dostoyevsky’s spokesman, calling into question Ivan’s modern, European ideas that Dostoyevsky thinks are leading to nihilism and the downfall of Russia.

For the most part, Dostoyevsky seems to be saying that we need Russian Orthodox Christianity because our life in this world will be thrown into confusion without it. The only point where the book argues for belief itself, that I can think of, is where Alyosha mysteriously knows to assure Ivan that he didn’t murder his father. I suppose we are to think that it was Ivan’s guilt over his role in his father’s death that brought on his “brain fever” in the first place. This doesn’t make Ivan a very good spokesman for ‘all things are lawful’, but as I said before, while Ivan says this, it is Pavel (and Fyodor) who believes it.

I still can’t believe that I read this, so soon after Doctor Faustus, completely by accident. So much for this being a “palate cleanser”. It might be difficult reading this chapter in isolation, but, perhaps with some marginal notes, I would make this required reading for any review of late 19th century philosophy and especially for a study of the works of both Thomas Mann and Nietzsche. Perhaps that bit about cannibalism is a reference to previous nihilistic enthusiasm (most probably influenced by de Sade) but, if not, Bataille and the Surrealists certainly picked up on it later.  

(Moved from an earlier section -- A quick Wiki search on Brain Fever turns up a variety of illnesses that could have been called this in the 19th century including Meningitis and Scarlet Fever about which it says, “infectious disease whose symptoms can include paranoia and hallucinations.”) 


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