Dostoevsky

by Frank, Joseph

  Not only was Dostoevsky’s artistic mastery self-evident, but the thematic issue that that the book posed—whether a murder to destroy a monstrous evil could morally be justified—was placed before the same readers practically every time they opened their newspapers. One official after another fell victim to the revenge of the Populists, who had declared war on the tsarist regime; and on April 2 an attempt was made on the life of the tsar himself. In 1866, when Alexander had escaped assassination, there had been a huge outpouring of national support for the government and widespread rejoicing at the tsar’s good fortune. Nothing even remotely similar occurred this time. As a government commission noted two months later, “especially noteworthy of attention is the almost complete failure of the educated classes to support the government in its fight against a relatively small band of evildoers. . . . They [the educated classes] are . . . waiting for the results of the battle.”20 Dostoevsky had been almost hysterical on hearing of the failed assassination in 1866, and we may presume that he was also upset this time as well. One episode in the memoir literature has been plausibly linked to this event.

  M. V. Kametskaya, the daughter of Anna Filosofova, recalls hearing the doorbell of their apartment ring one day, and when she went to greet the visitor, there was Dostoevsky, “embarrassed, apologetic, [who] suddenly understood that all this was not necessary. He stood before me, his face drained of color, wiping the perspiration from his brow and breathing heavily from having hurried up the stairs. ‘Is Mama home? Well, God be praised!’ Then he took my head in his hands and kissed me on the brow: ‘Well, God be praised! I was just told that you had both been arrested!’ ”21 A rumor had spread in the city that both mother and daughter had been taken into custody. Although Kametskaya does not specify the date of this visit, it has credibly been placed on the day of the assassination attempt.22 Indeed, it would not be long before the authorities decided to put a stop altogether to the activities of Filosofova. In November 1879 she was politely but firmly requested to go to Wiesbaden, where she often vacationed, and not to return. Alexander II told her husband that it was only in gratitude for his services that she had not been sent to a much less pleasant place of exile.

  Work on The Brothers Karamazov continued without a pause, and on April 17 Dostoevsky left for Staraya Russa, where he could continue writing in relative tranquility. The immense success of the sections already published convinced him that his book was touching an acutely aching nerve in the public. If Dostoevsky had any doubts on this score, they would have been dissipated by a letter he received from the influential editor Sergey Yuriev, who had just acquired permission to launch his new journal, Russian Thought (Russkaya Mysl’). In urging Dostoevsky once more to contribute a novel, he wrote that it would not only “embellish his pages” but also serve to drain “the moral abscess which is eating up our life.”23

  1 DVS, 2: 444–445.

  2 Ibid.

  3 Ibid., 445.

  4 Ibid., 446.

  5 Letopis zhizni i tvorchestvo F. M. Dostoevskogo, ed. N. F. Budanova and G. M. Fridlender, 3 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1995), 3: 303–306.

  6 PSS, 30/Bk. 1: 247.

  7 DVS, 2: 377.

  8 Ibid., 553.

  9 Ibid., 377–378.

  10 Letopis, 3: 306.

  11 DVS, 2: 178.

  12 Ibid., 192–193.

  13 Ibid., 193.

  14 Ibid., 378.

  15 PSS, 25: 60.

  16 I. Volgin, Posledny god Dostoevskogo (Moscow, 1986), 75–76; also, Letopis, 3: 308.

  17 E. M. de Vogüé, Le roman Russe (Paris, 1910), 269.

  18 Ibid., 270–271.

  19 PSS, 30/Bk. 1: 59; March 28, 1879.

  20 Franco Venturi, Roots of Revolution (New York, 1966), 633.

  21 DVS, 2: 380.

  22 Letopis, 3: 312.

  23 Ibid., 314.

  CHAPTER 54

  Rebellion and the Grand Inquisitor

  Dostoevsky would remain at Staraya Russa until July 17, hard at work on his novel. He was then writing Book 5 of Part 2, “Pro and Contra,” which contains Ivan’s rebellion against God’s world and the Legend of the Grand Inquisitor. His life during this period was spent entirely tied to his desk, turning out chapter after chapter of his final masterpiece. To avoid misunderstandings that might lead to objections, and perhaps censorship, each section sent to his editor Lyubimov was accompanied by a letter of explanation. These provide a running self-commentary on his ideological and artistic aims that are unique in the corpus of his work.

  On May 7, Dostoevsky sent off the first half of Book 5. He describes his intention as “the portrayal of the uttermost blasphemy and the seed of the idea of destruction in our time in Russia among the young people uprooted from reality, and, along with the blasphemy and anarchy—the refutation of them, which is now being prepared by me in the last words of the dying elder Zosima.” He characterizes these convictions of Ivan “as a synthesis of contemporary Russian anarchism. The rejection not of God, but of the meaning of His creation. All of Socialism has sprung from and began with the denial of the meaning of historical reality and ended in a program of destruction and anarchism.”1

  Dostoevsky reserved a separate book for Zosima’s preachments; “Pro and Contra” thus refers only to the inner debate taking place in Ivan between his recognition of the moral sublimity of the Christian ideal and his outrage against a universe of pain and suffering (and on a world-historical scale, by his questioning of the moral foundations of both Christianity and Socialism in the Legend of the Grand Inquisitor). The Populists had restored the morality of the Christian God (independently of their own opinions about his divinity) that had been negated in the previous decade; and they were now applying it to his own creation. Indeed, they were rejecting “the meaning of historical reality” that he had presumably established in order to correct his work in light of the very Christian principles he had proclaimed. Ivan’s protest against God’s world is thus couched in terms of the Christian value of compassion—the very value that Dostoevsky himself (or Myshkin in The Idiot) had once called “the chief and perhaps the only law of all human existence” (8: 192). “My heroes take up the theme,” Dostoevsky continues in his letter to Lyubimov, “that I think irrefutable—the senselessness of the suffering of children—and derive from it the absurdity of all historical reality.”2 Reason or rationality cannot cope with the senselessness of such suffering, and Zosima will respond to it only with a leap of faith in God’s ultimate goodness and mercy.

  Invoking the considerable authority of Pobedonostsev, Dostoevsky attempts to counter in advance the usual charges made against him. He informs Lyubimov that, while some of the characters in Demons had been criticized as pathological fantasies, they “were all vindicated by reality and therefore had been discerned accurately. I have been told by [Pobedonostsev] about two or three cases of arrested anarchists who were amazingly similar to the ones depicted by me.” All the tortures that Dostoevsky portrays through Ivan’s feverish words were taken from newspaper accounts or from historical sources for which he was ready to give the exact reference. He also assures the editor that his pages do not contain “a single indecent word,” but worries that some of his details might be softened. He “beg[s] and implore[s]” that the expression used in describing the punishment inflicted on a child—“the tormentors who are raising her smear her with excrement for not being able to ask to go to the bathroom at night”—be retained. “You mustn’t soften it . . . that would be very, very sad! We are not writing for ten-year-old children.” (The wording was not changed.) And then, turning to a larger issue, Dostoevsky reassures the editor that “my protagonist’s blasphemy . . . will be solemnly refuted in the following (June) issue, on which I am now working with fear, trepidation, and reverence, since I consider my task (the rout of anarchism) a civic feat.”3

  There were ample precedents in Dostoevsky’s work for his thematic focus on the problem of theodicy raised by Ivan—the problem of the existence of evil and suff
ering in a world presumably created by a God of love. No Judeo-Christian reader can help but think of the book of Job in this connection, and Dostoevsky’s creation is one of the few whose voice rings out with an equal eloquence and an equal anguish. Although there is no explicit reference to Job in the notes for these chapters, his name appears three times in other sections, and Zosima will narrate the story of Job, stressing its consolatory conclusion, in his departing words. Dostoevsky, we know, had written to his wife in 1875 that “I am reading Job and it puts me into a state of painful ecstasy; I leave off reading and I walk about the room almost crying. . . . This book, dear Anna, it’s strange, it was one of the first to impress me in my life. I was still practically an infant.”4 This recollection is then attributed to Zosima, who recalls hearing the book of Job read aloud in church at the age of eight, “and I feel as I did then, awe and wonder and gladness. . . . Ever since then . . . I’ve never been able to read that sacred tale without tears” (14: 264–265). Nourished by Dostoevsky’s own grief over the loss of his son Alyosha, this magnificent chapter drew as well on feelings that had been stirring within him throughout his life.5

  In mid-May, Dostoevsky provides another explanation for producing such a troubling and powerful condemnation of God. Repeating that Book 5 “in my novel is the culminating one,” he defines “the point of the book” as being “blasphemy and the refutation of blasphemy.” “The blasphemy I have taken as I myself sensed and realized it, in its strongest form, that is, precisely as it occurs among us now in Russia with the whole (almost) upper stratum, and primarily with the young people, that is, the scientific and philosophical rejection of God’s existence has been abandoned now, today’s practical Socialists don’t bother with it at all (as people did the whole last century and the first half of the present one). But on the other hand God’s creation, God’s world, and its meaning are negated as strongly as possible. That’s the only thing that contemporary civilization finds nonsensical.”6

  Dostoevsky had always argued that characters like Stavrogin and Kirillov, who were hardly “realistic” in the sense of being recognizably typical, nonetheless revealed the essence of Russian life, and he now maintains that this presentation of Ivan Karamazov is far from being only an artistic invention. “Thus I flatter myself,” he insists, “that even in such an abstract theme [the rejection of God’s world], I have not betrayed realism. The refutation of this (not direct, that is, not from one person to another) will appear in the last words of the dying elder. Many critics have reproached me for generally taking up in my novels themes that are allegedly wrong, unreal, and so forth. I, on the contrary, don’t know anything more real than precisely these themes.”7 His technique had always been to refute the ideas he was combating “indirectly,” by dramatizing their consequences on the fate of his characters.

  Dostoevsky also offers pointed instructions on how to read his works, and indicates how carefully he created the closely woven texture of his characters. In the Diary, he was writing in his own name and voice, whereas

  now, here, in the novel it is not I who am speaking in distressing colors, exaggerations, and hyperboles (although there is no exaggeration concerning the reality), but a character of my novel, Ivan Karamazov. This is his language, his style, his pathos, and not mine. He is a gloomily irritable person who keeps silent about a good deal. He would not have spoken out for anything in the world if not for the accidental sympathy for his brother Aleksey that suddenly flares up. Besides, he is a very young man. How else could he speak out on what he had kept silent for so long without this particular transport of feeling, without foaming at the mouth. He had strained his heart to the utmost so as not to break forth. But I precisely wanted his character to stand out, and that the reader notice this particular passion, this leap, this literary, impulsively sudden behavior.8

  In response to another criticism by the editor of “a needless particularity,” a euphemism for an indecent detail about the child whose face had been smeared with excrement, Dostoevsky insists that this observation of Ivan’s character is crucial for communicating the complexity he wishes to convey about Ivan’s personality. “If a twenty-three-year-old notices, that means he took it to heart. It means that he turned [the details] over in his mind, that he was an advocate of children, and no matter how heartless he is presented there later, compassion and the most sincere love of children remain in him still.”9 Ivan’s deep-rooted trait of character should influence the manner in which the reader regards him: “This Ivan then obliquely commits a crime . . . in the name of an idea, with which then he was not able to cope; and he gives himself up precisely because, it may be, that once, at some time, his heart, dwelling on the suffering of children, did not overlook such a seemingly insignificant circumstance.”10

  In mid-June Dostoevsky sent off to Lyubimov “The Grand Inquisitor,” accompanied by a commentary. “It finishes up,” he explained, “what the mouth speaking great things and blasphemies says.”11 “A contemporary negator,” Dostoevsky goes on,

  one of the most ardent, comes right out and declares himself in favor of what the devil advocates, and asserts this is truer for people’s happiness than is Christ. To our Russian Socialism, which is so stupid (but also dangerous, because the young generation is with it), the lesson, it would seem, is very forceful—one’s daily bread, the Tower of Babel (i.e., the future reign of Socialism), and the complete enslavement of freedom of conscience—that is the ultimate goal of this desperate denier and atheist!

  The difference is that our Socialists (and they are not just underground Nihilist scum—you know that) are conscious Jesuits and liars who do not admit that their idol consists of violence to man’s conscience and the leveling of mankind to a herd of cattle, while my Socialist (Ivan Karamazov) is a sincere person who comes right out and admits that he agrees with the Inquisitor’s view of humanity and that Christ’s faith (allegedly) elevated man to a much higher level than where he actually stands. The question is stated in its boldest form: ‘Do you despise humanity or admire it, its future saviors?’ And all of this for them is allegedly in the name of love of humanity: Christ’s law, they claim, is burdensome and abstract, and too heavy for weak people to bear—and instead of the law of Freedom and Enlightenment, they offer them the law of chains and enslavement through bread.12

  Once more Dostoevsky does everything in his power to allay the fears of his editors. “In the next book the elder Zosima’s death and deathbed conversations with his friends will occur. . . . If I succeed, I’ll have . . . forced people to recognize that a pure, ideal Christian is not an abstract matter but one graphically real, possible, standing before our eyes, and that Christianity is the only refuge of the Russian land from its evils. I pray God I’ll succeed; the piece will be moving, if only my inspiration holds out. . . . The whole novel is being written for its sake, but only let it succeed, that’s what worries me now!”13

  Writing to his journalist friend Putsykovich on the same day, Dostoevsky voices all his trepidation over the reception of his recent chapters: “in my novel I’ve had to present several ideas and positions that, as I feared, would not be much to their liking, since until the conclusion of the novel these ideas and positions really can be misinterpreted; and now, just as I feared, it has happened; they’re caviling at me; Lyubimov sends the proofs and makes notes and puts question marks in the margins. I’ve prevailed, with difficulty, so far, but I very much fear for yesterday’s mailing for June, that they’ll rear up and tell me they can’t print it.”14

  The notes for Book 5 contain passages concerning the Inquisitor that are much more provocative than those eventually used. One of the bluntest challenges to Christ, for example, is the Inquisitor’s charge: “I have only one word to say to thee, that thou hast been disgorged from Hell and art a heretic” (15: 232), but none of this imagery was kept. As Edward Wasiolek has written, these notes contain a much clearer assertion that “it is Christ who is guilty and cruel, and it is the Grand Inquisitor who is kind and
innocent. It is Christ who demands that men suffer for Him, whereas the Grand Inquisitor suffers for men.”15

  Dostoevsky’s notes contain no reference to sources for the Legend, though central of course are the New Testament accounts of the three temptations of Christ by Satan. As for the character of the Inquisitor, the incarnation of spiritual despotism over the conscience of mankind, his prototype can be found in Schiller’s Don Carlos, translated by Mikhail Dostoevsky in the 1840s. The play shares the same justification for the existence of evil in the world, the same answer to the problem of theodicy, that is at the heart of Dostoevsky’s Legend—and indeed, at the heart of his religious worldview. This answer is given in the great scene in which the Marquis of Posa tries to persuade King Philip of Spain to grant freedom of conscience to his Protestant subjects in the Netherlands. Turning to the examples of nature and of the world for his argument, the marquis urges Philip to recognize that God himself allows evil to exist rather than interfere with the moral-spiritual freedom of mankind—the freedom to choose between good and evil:

  . . . Look about you

  At the splendors of nature! On freedom

  Is it founded—and how rich it is

  Through Freedom—He, the great Creator—

  —He—. . . So as not to disturb the enchanting

  Appearance of Freedom—

  He leaves the dreadful army of evils