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

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The Brothers Karamazov

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Small Victories 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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