Fyodor Dostoevsky: The Brothers Karamazov
The Dostoevsky novel typically functions as follows: You will have a chapter, maybe two, with events. Characters will be moving around, events will happen, often characters are on some sort of mission that they feel is of dire importance. Something happens, however, whether the character reaches his or her destination or not. The character will be stopped, someone will appear and tell the character to sit, or there will be a group that will exclaim, "Oh! How good of you to show! We were just talking about X, and were just wondering what your thoughts would be!"
From here the actual Dostoevsky novel begins, which is to say a long, long, rediculously deep conversation that will last a minimum of three chapters. These conversations between outwardly average or slightly unusual characters who reveal a much greater depth (or lack thereof) of character in their speech are what make up the novel itself. The essential nature of a personality type is spelled out in the conversation it takes part in, no matter what the subject. Even the typically uninteresting types become more interesting as they come up to problems and issues in their ideas that the reader sees through the outside-of-dialog description. What is amazing in Dostoevsky, and why people continue to read him, is the depths that he goes to in these characters: the choices they make and ways in which they carry themselves in conversation are consistent and believable, even if they tend to be of the more uncommon types (this, of course, is because uncommon people make better stories - but even when they seem common a high depth can be reached).
The Brothers Karamazov is considered Dostoevsky's best novel because it has the best conversations. The classic is that in the tavern. So two brothers walk into a bar...one is an atheist and the other a monk. Except, the atheist claims to accept God, but only reject the world. Ivan Karamazov's argument against the world of God's, and against the future redemption of mankind, is one of the most famous conversations in literature.
However, I will not be discussing it, for there is a conversation in this book I find more interesting. It features Ivan, and is in fact his last conversation. The other conversant is the devil.
-----
Ivan Karamazov is, it seems to me, the ultimate enemy of Dostoevsky's ideal. Dostoevsky, as the disenchanted socialist, found value in the simpler life of the Russian peasant, outside the overintellectualism that had come from Europe to contaminate Russia's learned elite (very many of the characters in Dostoevsky's novels are affected by this post-Enlightenment pre-postmodernist idealism). Ivan is an intellectual, but not so simple as those who read books from Europe and call themselves intellectual. He is a man concerned with life, but disenchanted with the efforts of man. He is brilliant, refined, but approachable, affable. He has a genuine concern for others. That is what makes him such a dangerous enemy; he seems to be one with those who care, yet he cannot on conscience accept the establishment and the simple way of life. This is his objection in "Rebellion": he cannot accept the Christian God on principle. The world cannot be something of God's for if it is God is unjust. But this is not the simple argument of an intellectual, but a powerful story of the horrors of the world, of tortures and of misery, a world without meaning and without any justice. How can one leave things to God in this world where children suffer senselessly and they are often the ones who get off lightly? His story shakes his brother, the pious Alyosha, to the core, as it would to anyone who hears him speak it.
But at the time of the conversation of my interest, Ivan is not the bold rebel from before. He is losing it. His brother Dmitri is on trial for a crime Ivan knows he didn't do. The real murderer was responsible because of Ivan himself, or at least that's how he feels. This realization hits him on the same day as the immediate and crushing onset of long-dormant brain fever. The result is that Ivan, in his solitude and perhaps his final moments of sanity, is confronted with the first among angels and the worst among beings.
Who is the devil? He carried something of a refined look, though down on his luck. A fashionable man turned out of his place, though he cannot really live the life of an independent. One looking to the past and one's old place and trying to relive it, though that is clearly not possible.
Who is the devil to Ivan? Or, better, who is the devil to man? "...what am I but a poor relation?" He says in response to Ivan's abuse, in that amicable and terribly irritation manner one might expect, when kindness is used as an acute insult. You call me unreal, he seems to say, and yet you feel deep down that I am always there. I am a part of you. But I am not the demon you want me to be. Instead I am so much more...human. "You are angry with me even for being able to catch cold, though it happened in a most natural way." This is in the context of Ivan's continual challenges as to this individual's existence, since Ivan knows very well who the fellow represents.
He (the devil) chatters away about the most trivial events: his going to get a cure for his nose, for instance. His treatment of traveling to earth to reach a party carries the exact same nonchalance. His casualness in Dostoevsky's language is perhaps his most characteristic and yet understandable quality: he talks like one who likes to reflect on 'everyday life' with a sort of amusement, even as he argues that that everyday life makes him normal.
But why establish himself as normal? "God preserve me from it, but one can't help complaining sometimes. I am a slandered man...I have naturally a kind and merry heart." And here is where Dostoevsky brings his greatest skills to the task, for here is where the King of darkness makes his case as not being the King of darkness but as being a good citizen.
And so in a rather crafty move the devil takes all the blame for evil and shifts it on to God. Just arguing predestination or fate would have been to obvious and, worse, not interesting. But here the devil allows himself to be just an ordinary man, doing what he can.
And with his description, you can believe him.
Satan's tragedy here is one of being aware, of seeing the life of man from the outside. This possibility is not isolated to him alone. One point that must be remembered is that Ivan does not believe in the devil, and spends much of this conversation announcing the fact. But if so then the devil represents something in himself, that sadness at seeing the simple but heartfelt life of the average peasant and realizing the great sadness in the worn out saying, "Ignorance is bliss." This sadness appears in a man like Dostoevsky, when he spends his youth in the socialist discussion groups, talking up the improvement and Enlightenment of humanity and their eventual perfection, oblivious of the dreaminess of those statements. When Nietzsche's madman declares God is dead, the people around him act as though it's no news. But do they realize what this means? "I come too early, my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men...and yet they have done it themselves! The Enlightenment tried to replace God with Reason, but without a God what is Reason? Can it possibly replace the eternal? Thus the easiest solution would be to never take that leap, as the peasant does not. But for those who can survive it...well for Nietzsche, they are those with power.
This devil...this bad half of Ivan at this point becomes quite too much for poor Ivan to bear. A good part of this debate is the devil telling stories, Ivan getting caught up, then getting angry or declaring the devil's non-existence once again. By this point, however, as one reads, one can see, not the words, but the shape of the devil's statements as they come. He twists logic around his finger, argues in any way as seems fit, but above all else does not allow himself to take the "tragedy" seriously. He does not, however, contradict himself as Ivan grows more and more enraged.
(The lengthy quotes I am using are necessary to help demonstrate the way Dostoevsky does his work, as my hastily typed descriptions can not nearly do justice to his style. Even with them, though, the work is incomplete unless the whole chapter is read.)
In spite of all this, the devil claims to know that "at the end of all things I shall be reconciled." Yet previously, when Ivan challenged him as to whether he even believed in God, he admitted frankly, "I don't know." Even the devil has his faith, though without God it's difficult to say in what. All he has according to the story is his task which he must do in the hope that it will bring him salvation. In this light the devil makes himself out to be positively pious.
The end, the final insult, is the devil's appropriation of Ivan's story of the "Geological Cataclysm," a story that is so positively Nietzschean that one has to put forth conscious effort to keep in mind that Nietzsche had never read The Brothers Karamazov, and Dostoevsky would never have heard of Nietzsche. In short, men will deny god and finally accept themselves as the mortal, finite beings they are, and in so doing come to value the life they live as the only life that matters, finally becoming gods in their own right. The devil's own dream, perhaps. Ivan, in his rage, throws a glass of water at the devil, and in so doing finally seems to concede his existence as the chapter ends.
-----
That was one conversation from The Brothers Karamazov, and a short one at that (only one chapter). It is not even the most famous, as I have said. "The Grand Inquisitor" is a chapter that has its own secondary literature, and it stands as only one third of the conversation between Ivan and Alyosha in the tavern. One must read these conversations as wholes to see the depth of character contained within.
Next will likely be Crime and Punishment, as I am spending my time split between finishing that (I'm going for having read the whole book in four days) and going back over Nietzsche's works so that I might write a quality essay on the death of God. Also, it's late and I don't feel like reading over this, so don't mind the errors and out of place obscurities (the overall obscurity can't be helped :) ), those will be fixed in time.
From here the actual Dostoevsky novel begins, which is to say a long, long, rediculously deep conversation that will last a minimum of three chapters. These conversations between outwardly average or slightly unusual characters who reveal a much greater depth (or lack thereof) of character in their speech are what make up the novel itself. The essential nature of a personality type is spelled out in the conversation it takes part in, no matter what the subject. Even the typically uninteresting types become more interesting as they come up to problems and issues in their ideas that the reader sees through the outside-of-dialog description. What is amazing in Dostoevsky, and why people continue to read him, is the depths that he goes to in these characters: the choices they make and ways in which they carry themselves in conversation are consistent and believable, even if they tend to be of the more uncommon types (this, of course, is because uncommon people make better stories - but even when they seem common a high depth can be reached).
The Brothers Karamazov is considered Dostoevsky's best novel because it has the best conversations. The classic is that in the tavern. So two brothers walk into a bar...one is an atheist and the other a monk. Except, the atheist claims to accept God, but only reject the world. Ivan Karamazov's argument against the world of God's, and against the future redemption of mankind, is one of the most famous conversations in literature.
However, I will not be discussing it, for there is a conversation in this book I find more interesting. It features Ivan, and is in fact his last conversation. The other conversant is the devil.
-----
Ivan Karamazov is, it seems to me, the ultimate enemy of Dostoevsky's ideal. Dostoevsky, as the disenchanted socialist, found value in the simpler life of the Russian peasant, outside the overintellectualism that had come from Europe to contaminate Russia's learned elite (very many of the characters in Dostoevsky's novels are affected by this post-Enlightenment pre-postmodernist idealism). Ivan is an intellectual, but not so simple as those who read books from Europe and call themselves intellectual. He is a man concerned with life, but disenchanted with the efforts of man. He is brilliant, refined, but approachable, affable. He has a genuine concern for others. That is what makes him such a dangerous enemy; he seems to be one with those who care, yet he cannot on conscience accept the establishment and the simple way of life. This is his objection in "Rebellion": he cannot accept the Christian God on principle. The world cannot be something of God's for if it is God is unjust. But this is not the simple argument of an intellectual, but a powerful story of the horrors of the world, of tortures and of misery, a world without meaning and without any justice. How can one leave things to God in this world where children suffer senselessly and they are often the ones who get off lightly? His story shakes his brother, the pious Alyosha, to the core, as it would to anyone who hears him speak it.
But at the time of the conversation of my interest, Ivan is not the bold rebel from before. He is losing it. His brother Dmitri is on trial for a crime Ivan knows he didn't do. The real murderer was responsible because of Ivan himself, or at least that's how he feels. This realization hits him on the same day as the immediate and crushing onset of long-dormant brain fever. The result is that Ivan, in his solitude and perhaps his final moments of sanity, is confronted with the first among angels and the worst among beings.
Who is the devil? He carried something of a refined look, though down on his luck. A fashionable man turned out of his place, though he cannot really live the life of an independent. One looking to the past and one's old place and trying to relive it, though that is clearly not possible.
Who is the devil to Ivan? Or, better, who is the devil to man? "...what am I but a poor relation?" He says in response to Ivan's abuse, in that amicable and terribly irritation manner one might expect, when kindness is used as an acute insult. You call me unreal, he seems to say, and yet you feel deep down that I am always there. I am a part of you. But I am not the demon you want me to be. Instead I am so much more...human. "You are angry with me even for being able to catch cold, though it happened in a most natural way." This is in the context of Ivan's continual challenges as to this individual's existence, since Ivan knows very well who the fellow represents.
He (the devil) chatters away about the most trivial events: his going to get a cure for his nose, for instance. His treatment of traveling to earth to reach a party carries the exact same nonchalance. His casualness in Dostoevsky's language is perhaps his most characteristic and yet understandable quality: he talks like one who likes to reflect on 'everyday life' with a sort of amusement, even as he argues that that everyday life makes him normal.
But why establish himself as normal? "God preserve me from it, but one can't help complaining sometimes. I am a slandered man...I have naturally a kind and merry heart." And here is where Dostoevsky brings his greatest skills to the task, for here is where the King of darkness makes his case as not being the King of darkness but as being a good citizen.
Before time was, by some decree which I could never make out, I was predestined 'to deny' and yet I am genuinely good-hearted and not at all inclined to negation (Nietzsche, had he a chance to read all of Dostoevsky's works, would have latched on to much of this with a smirk). 'No, you must go and deny, without denial there's no criticism and what would a journal be without a column of criticism?' Without criticism it would be nothing but one 'hosannah.' But nothing 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 meddle in that, I didn't create it, I am not answerable for it.
And so in a rather crafty move the devil takes all the blame for evil and shifts it on to God. Just arguing predestination or fate would have been to obvious and, worse, not interesting. But here the devil allows himself to be just an ordinary man, doing what he can.
Well, they've chosen their scapegoat, they've made me write the column of criticism and so life was 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...
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...But what about me? I suffer, but still, I don't live. I am x in an indeterminate equation....I repeat again that I would give away all this superstellar life, all the ranks and honors, simply to be transformed into the soul of a merchant's wife weighing eighteen stone and set candles at God's shrine.
And with his description, you can believe him.
Satan's tragedy here is one of being aware, of seeing the life of man from the outside. This possibility is not isolated to him alone. One point that must be remembered is that Ivan does not believe in the devil, and spends much of this conversation announcing the fact. But if so then the devil represents something in himself, that sadness at seeing the simple but heartfelt life of the average peasant and realizing the great sadness in the worn out saying, "Ignorance is bliss." This sadness appears in a man like Dostoevsky, when he spends his youth in the socialist discussion groups, talking up the improvement and Enlightenment of humanity and their eventual perfection, oblivious of the dreaminess of those statements. When Nietzsche's madman declares God is dead, the people around him act as though it's no news. But do they realize what this means? "I come too early, my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men...and yet they have done it themselves! The Enlightenment tried to replace God with Reason, but without a God what is Reason? Can it possibly replace the eternal? Thus the easiest solution would be to never take that leap, as the peasant does not. But for those who can survive it...well for Nietzsche, they are those with power.
This devil...this bad half of Ivan at this point becomes quite too much for poor Ivan to bear. A good part of this debate is the devil telling stories, Ivan getting caught up, then getting angry or declaring the devil's non-existence once again. By this point, however, as one reads, one can see, not the words, but the shape of the devil's statements as they come. He twists logic around his finger, argues in any way as seems fit, but above all else does not allow himself to take the "tragedy" seriously. He does not, however, contradict himself as Ivan grows more and more enraged.
You are really angry with me for not having appeared to you in a red glow, with thunder and lightning, with scorched wings, but 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?...And you keep on saying I am stupid, but, mercy on us! I make no claim to be 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 quite the opposite with me. I am perhaps the one man in all creation who love the truth and genuinely desires good. I was there when the Word, Who died on the Cross, rose up to Heavne 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...[But] what would have happened, I reflected, what would have happened after my hosannah? Everything on earth would have been extinguished at once, and no events could have occured. And so, solely from a sense of duty and my social position, I was forced to suppress the good moment and stick to my nasty task.
(The lengthy quotes I am using are necessary to help demonstrate the way Dostoevsky does his work, as my hastily typed descriptions can not nearly do justice to his style. Even with them, though, the work is incomplete unless the whole chapter is read.)
In spite of all this, the devil claims to know that "at the end of all things I shall be reconciled." Yet previously, when Ivan challenged him as to whether he even believed in God, he admitted frankly, "I don't know." Even the devil has his faith, though without God it's difficult to say in what. All he has according to the story is his task which he must do in the hope that it will bring him salvation. In this light the devil makes himself out to be positively pious.
The end, the final insult, is the devil's appropriation of Ivan's story of the "Geological Cataclysm," a story that is so positively Nietzschean that one has to put forth conscious effort to keep in mind that Nietzsche had never read The Brothers Karamazov, and Dostoevsky would never have heard of Nietzsche. In short, men will deny god and finally accept themselves as the mortal, finite beings they are, and in so doing come to value the life they live as the only life that matters, finally becoming gods in their own right. The devil's own dream, perhaps. Ivan, in his rage, throws a glass of water at the devil, and in so doing finally seems to concede his existence as the chapter ends.
-----
That was one conversation from The Brothers Karamazov, and a short one at that (only one chapter). It is not even the most famous, as I have said. "The Grand Inquisitor" is a chapter that has its own secondary literature, and it stands as only one third of the conversation between Ivan and Alyosha in the tavern. One must read these conversations as wholes to see the depth of character contained within.
Next will likely be Crime and Punishment, as I am spending my time split between finishing that (I'm going for having read the whole book in four days) and going back over Nietzsche's works so that I might write a quality essay on the death of God. Also, it's late and I don't feel like reading over this, so don't mind the errors and out of place obscurities (the overall obscurity can't be helped :) ), those will be fixed in time.
posted by Derek at 10:08 PM
1 Comments:
nice post man, im writing an essay on an analysis of ivan's character through the eyes of nietzsche. this helped me out a bit, do you want me to send it to you when I'm done?
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