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Russian Novel Teaching

January 2021

Brothers Karamazov Lecture Brothers Karamazov Lecture

Louise Cowan

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Recommended Citation Recommended Citation Cowan, Louise, "Brothers Karamazov Lecture" (2021). Russian Novel. 22. https://digitalcommons.udallas.edu/cowanteach_rusnov/22

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The Brothers Karamazov represents Dostoevsky’s

solution to the search that his entire life represents. As

an educated man, an intellectual, even in a backward

Russia, he was preoccupied with the question of God’s

existence–and even more, with the question of Christ’s

redemption of the human. He had tried to depict what

the follower of Christ must be like throughout his

writings, beginning with the negative Notes from

Underground, going on to locate Christian faith in Sonya,

a prostitute, who reads to the murderer Raskolnikov the

story of Lazarus. He tried the image of a perfectly good

man in The Idiot, only to find that goodness as we can

conceive of it is not only insufficient but turns rapidly to

something negative and destructive. In the Possessed,

now spoken of more frequently as Devils, he showed in

the figure of the beautiful but spiritually dead Stavrogin

the way in which human nobility and idealism can turn

into something very much like the antiChrist.

A short story; Dream of a Ridiculous Man, uncovers

for Dostoevsky the secret ingredient to Christlike

love: in this story

a man, in despair, intending to shoot himself, is

walking the streets of Petersburg when he is

accosted by a child, very much in distress, crying for

assistance. Something is wrong with the child’s

mother; and the pitiful young thing begs the man to

come with her to help. The man refuses, reasoning

that if he is about to commit suicide nothing shoudl

matter; but when he goes back into his lonely room,

he cannot get the child out of his mind. He raises the

gun to his temple; but suddenly finds himself

transported through space . . . . What he discovers

in this story is that suffering is an ineradicable part

of Christlike love. . . that the angelic imagination, as

Allen Tate has described it, is fatally misleading.

(What Jacques Maritain has called “angelism”) (And,

if you have not read it, what William Lynch treats of

in his Christ and Apollo, where he speaks of “going

through the finite.” It is this path through the

finite that induces the kind of suffering that

Dostoevsky shows us in his final novel, In The

Brothers Karamazov, he confronts the question

directly in the person of the three brothers, all of

whom must be crucified, so to say, if they are to

find the path to liberation.

According to many authorities, one can consider any

one of the three brothers the hero of the novel. We can

trace the course of each and find that it has its own

complication and resolution, its own peripeteia, its

anagnorisis. [Explain Aristotle’s Poetics]

But I think we can see that Alyosha is indeed the

real protagonist; it is he who connects all the other plot

lines; it is he whose inner development we watch

intimately. The parallel plots concerning his brothers’

progress are like the minor plots of Shakespeare, echoing

and extending the issues in the major plot. And yet the

situations of the two brothers are woven into Alyosha’s

life so that one cannot separate them.

These three plots are brought together with such

intricacy, such motion, that the reader is made fairly

dizzy putting the entire story together. For even though

Alyosha is the protagonist, the whole story is not simply

concerned with one of the brothers' lives: the entire

action must involve them all. What is the meaning of

Dostoevsky's peculiar use of fragmentation, dividing the

parts of the human psyche into separate faculties? D’s

novel The Idiot shows this phenomenon most clearly:

Myshkin and Rogozhin.

it was present also in The Devils: Shatov, Kirillov;

Stavrogin-Peter-Tikhon

and in Crime and Punishment:

Raskolnikov--Svidrigailov-- Razumihin

Part of the reason may lie, as we have been indicating, in

D's insight into the fragmenting nature of modernity.

Certainly part of it is attributable to the modern

tendency to “go underground” and hence project a part

of oneself on others. But even further, Dostoevsky was

deeply aware of the diabolical; as a poet, a seer, he knew

that the devil’s kingdomwas the realm of falsity, that

Satan is the one who says “I am not.” This negative

world constantly attempts to take on the real world, to

assume it. The double, then, as Dostoevsky presents it to

us in many of his writings, is an appearance of that

falsity that marks the antiworld of Satan. Smerdyakov ,

the Grand Inquisitor, Ivan’s visitor are certainly doubles

in this sense of Ivan’s troubled soul; Dmitri is a double of

his father; Fr. Zossima works hard to keep Alyosha from

being a double.

But part of the reason for all this plurality also lies

in the Russian concept of sobornost. Dostoevsky writes

about this unity in his Diary of a Writer; he exhibits it in

his novels.

We are to see it exhibited more clearly in The Brothers K.

than in any of his other works. Each of the brothers

longs for that fulness of being that is to be found in

sobornost (the concept is something like the earthly

counterpart of the mystical body). Smerdyakov is so

embittered, his life so stunted, that he cannot even

conceive of this sort of relationship. I am the vine; you

are the branches. If a branch be cut away from the vine,

it will wither.

In a sense, Ivan's “poem”, his Legend of the Grand

Inquisitor, comes out of this deep longing for unity: for

the good of his fellowmen. The injury of a person by

another person is an atrocity, an offense against the

good of the whole. Ivan ends by having to defend

mankind against the creator God who apparently will

make light of human suffering.

Alyosha exhibits the true way to sobornost: love in action;

not yearning, not eros, not resentment (which comes of

disillusionment), but acts of love, done with cheerfulness,

merriment, joy.

It is this path to the simplicity of wisdom and the union

with all living things in love that each of the brothers

must take. The novel is open ended; we don't know how

all of it will turn out. The novels "bleeds" over into life, as

we might say.

________________________________________________________

But the basic theme of the two books that we read for

today is to be found in the word that Mme. Kokhlakov

first introduces: nadryv, laceration. It is a difficult

Russian word to translate, ranging in its meaning all the

way from laceration to hysteria, from exacerbation to

self-torment. But behind all its meanings lies the

concept of pride:

buffoonery implies behaving absurdly out of

shame

laceration implies torturing oneself out of pride

Every character in this section of the novel is involved in

some way with this kind of laceration. Fr. Ferapont first

introduces the thing itself, with his fierce pride in his

asceticism, his envy and downright hatred of Fr Z, his ill

will toward visitors, his intense self-satisfaction in his

own virtue.

He goes without food, punishes his body to lacerate

himself out of pride.

(Though I give my body to be burned and have not love, I

am nothing.) Alyosha sees Fr. Z again (who is the direct

antithesis of laceration. He has moved beyond his

suffering and has lived so long in his faith and love that

he has developed a quiet cheerfulness even about his

illness and approaching death. He reiterates his charge to

Alyosha to be near his brothers, promising not to die

until Alyosha is with him, so that he can say his last

word to this disciple who loves him.

Alyosha goes from spiritual father to the house of his

biological father, Fyodor, who is in a vile mood. He is

worrying about whether Grushenka will come to him,

expresses his resentment of Dmitri and his fear of Ivan.

Ivan is not like us, he tells Alyosha. Ivan loves nobody.

Fyodor is bitter–in a bad mood. But when he accuses

himself of being spiteful, Alyosha replies, “You are not

spiteful, but twisted.”and kisses his father on the shoulder

as he leaves. On the way to see Lise, he is hit by a

stone–and encounters in the boy who throws the stone

instead of lacerations, real suffering. Ilusha has been

humiliated so badly that he cannot recover from the

wound; he is quite literally crushed–for his father’s

honor. He throws a stone that hits Alyosha; the other

boys tell Alyosha that this is a bad boy, a dangerous one.

They have teased him by calling him “wisp of tow.”

(His father a retired captain in the military, had been

pulled by the beard by Dmitri Karamazov in front of his

son; the boy is ashamed for his father.) But if we analyze

his behavior, we see that it does not at all stem from self

laceration. He is truly suffering–out of love and an

innate nobility. He loves his father and is jealous for his

honor. (The stone throwing incident with Alyosha–and

the badly bitten finger (163).

At Mme K’s house, Alyosha asks her to bind up his

bleeding finger; and it is then that she uses the word

laceration to describe Katerina Ivanovna’s relation with

Ivan (165). And Alyosha is introduced to its perversity

when he talks with KI.(170) He sympathizes with her,

thinks her a good person—then sees the change in her

face when she turns from tears and woundedness into

someone gloating over a conquest. He talks with Lisa,

indicates that he plans to marry her despite her crippled

condition, despite her perverseness. KI tells Alyosha about

the incident with Capt Snigirov when Dmitri pulled his

beard in public. She wants to send money to the

destitute family and asks Alyosha to take it to them. The

scene is one of heart-rending destitution. Capt Snegirov,

who is no doubt cut to the quick, alternates between a

fawning abjectness and a bitter pride (183) The

mother is mentally ill; a sister is crippled; Ilyusha is

sinking into an illness aggravated by the stone that hit

him in the chest (186-88). Capt. Snegirov first accepts

the money then tramples on it. (193-4)

Later, when Alyosha tells Lisa about the family and

its misery, she listens and understands. “You think like

a martyr,” Alyosha tells her. (200)–and we have to see

that the martyr is entirely different from the person

given to nadryv. (Lisa’s behavior may look the same; but

D is telling us that it has entirely different roots.) Alyosha

admits to Lisa his own suffering (partly over his brothers,

losing his elder, an approaching crisis of faith. This too is

not a laceration but something that wells up from his

soul).(202)

He goes on from this visit with Lisa to encounter a

severe ordeal in his conversation with his brother Ivan.

Ivan’s is the most severe laceration in the novel: he has

tormented himself with his case against God by collecting

stories of child abuse from the newspapers and has dwelt

on them to the point of derangement.210

When we see the careful way in which Dostoevsky

has prepared us to read this section we should be all the

more alarmed at the widespread tendency to lift the

section out of the novel and read it as a religious and

political tract. The Grand Inquisitor fable represents a

major laceration on Ivan’s part, resulting in an allegory

created partly to exacerbate his own wounds and

partly to hurt this brother that he loves. But, just as the

views of all the other characters are their own and not

Dostoevsky’s, so is this section of the novel dramatically

suited to its narrator.

Because the Grand Inquisitor section is essentially a

battle between two “old men,” two spiritual fathers, as

we could speak of them–Ivan’s ninety-year old Grand

Inquisitor and Alyosha’s saintly advisor, sixty-five year

old Fr. Zossima–we need to lead up to the Grand

Inquisitor section (the most famous part of the book) by

seeing its context.

(We see from reading D’s novels that it is incarnation

(kenotic love) and resurrection that he emphasizes, not

goodness and immortality.)

Ivan: a noble, good young man without faith (in despair)

without under-standing of the “scandal” of

Christianity–his battleground is the most fully depicted

for us in the novel. Turned toward abstraction, he yet

retains the noble and good longing for the earth. His

pride in his sense of justice is what renders him abstract.

These two brothers, sons of the same mother (Sophia)

confront each other in what is a life struggle.

At this point we need to take up the Argument from

Structure:

cf (Gloucester, Polonius) Ivan

The way the story is told:

Reader Dostoevsky–author–narrator–Ivan–Grand

Inquisitor “poem”

Ivan is the author of this poem containing the

portrait of Christ

This is Ivan’s Christ. You may think Ivan

understands Christ sufficiently well to represent him

truthfully. But that is what we have to decide

from a close reading.

The beginning of the dialogue between brothers:

To get to know someone and then to say goodbye

thirst for life. Sticky little leaves

I accept God but I do not accept his world

how one can love one’s neighbors (does not

understand infused

virtues (faith, hope, charity)

the preoccupation with children

through the newspapers

Ivan’s dwelling on atrocities (violation of proportion;

hearsay. If we were there, we would work, or give

our lives: it would be bearable. The sick imaination

is not bearable.

Dossier

Ivan hates more than he loves

I must have justice

Rebellion

there is one, Alyosha says. You have forgotten him.

227 Ah, the one without sin. As a matter of fact, I

composed a poem about him a year ago.

228 Preface: the Blessed Mother. Mercy for all. Consider

this desire of the unloving: pity instead of

love–rebellion at a situation that causes people to

suffer –to try to fix the blame;

By the time Christ appears, the stage has been set for

him, he comes as the gentle, infinitely compassionate

being

229 He came softly, unobserved, and yet strange to say,

everyone recognized Him.

He performs a public miracle.

Ivan is composing all this, out of his own

tortured mind. Does he know the real character of

Christ sufficiently to portray him?

[ Cf. Last Temptation of Christ; Renan’s humanized

Jesus.]

Here is our situation:

Alyosha Ivan

memory of his mother bitterness at life yet

idealism

knowledge of Fr. Zossima 1, Euclidean

mind–logic

2. Softhearted sensibility

Suffering of children

-

Alyosha’s Christ Ivan’s Christ

Problem: how to help human beings in their suffering

The double:

The Word Words (Tower of

Babel)

Beauty (Active love) Beauty (goodness:

the

Golden Age

Incarnation Abstraction

_________________________________________________________

sky Ideas Ideologies

angel civilization System (bureaucracy)

Mother Russia: culture Insularity

[xenophobia]

earth chthonic presences Demons,

ghosts, phantoms

cosmos God’s world The devil’s world

The novelist Robert Penn Warren had as his great theme

in all his works the discrepancy between World and Idea.

This, he maintained, was Hamlet's problem: we call it

appearance and reality; but that is not really an

adequate name for this most painful of all conflicts:

World vs Idea: the way things are vs the way they

+ought+ to be

For Ivan, this painful opposition manifests itself in the

question of human suffering: what can prevent it? what

can make man happy?

On one hand, we long for the purity of Jesus: his

non-judgmental compassion, his meekness and docility;

his refusal to take part in the passing show of political

life;

on the other, if the human enterprise is to have

meaning, we need

a working political order; we need strong leadership; we

need strength to go on after our own weakness has been

made manifest to us;

So Ivan's tormented mind visualizes this struggle

between the two irreconcilable opposites: both "calling"

themselves Christianity. The meek principle must simply

bow out of the picture; for, indeed, as the Grand

Inquisitor points out, He can be followed only by a few;

only the elect can live up to his demands; only a few can

be made happy by his teachings.

Let's look at some of the questions that arise from this

section:

1. What does the Grand Inquisitor not recognize about

Christ's way that makes human beings not quite so

helpless as the Inq implies?

2. What is the difference between Fr. Zossima's

Christianity and that of the Christ of the Grand

Inquisitor?

The greatest difference one notes between Ivan's

"mythical figures”in his poem is their sadness. Both the

Grand Inquisitor and Christ are melancholy,

compassionate in the sense of pitying the human race.

Fr. Zossima (and increasingly Alyosha) are full of

confidence and hope; delighted with life, living with

mystery, knowing, somehow, that love never fails.

Zossima refers to the Book of Job, in which the deepest

eternal truths come together with the passing earthly

show. Job cries out for Justice; he must learn that he

knows nothing of the ways of divine wisdom and must

repent in dust and ashes.

Fr. Z’s love Secularist’s love

“Active” “Dream”

Christ Grand

Inquisitor

Work, “science” sentiment social plan

discipline Absolute freedom slavery

cheerful Reproachful sad

respectful Pitying impersonally

of the person

Benevolent

suffering; redeems impotent miracle,

mystery,

Authority

individ. Responsibility retreats collectivism

in the world, not of it renounces world capitulates

to world

forgives Expects sinlessness permits sin

but

punishes

deviation

What Ivan has forgotten: forgiveness, grace, active love