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Dostoevskii and the Divided Conscience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Aileen Kelly
Aileen Kelly*
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University of Cambridge
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Extract

In the decade between the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, many of the Russian radical intelligentsia believed that Dostoevskii had anticipated their moral dilemmas. Critics, such as D. S. Merezhkovskii, argued that the experience of that turbulent period confirmed Dostoevskii's discovery about the nature of moral choice: Namely, there existed no single system of beliefs, no coherent ethical code, that could resolve all problems of ends and means and that this was so because, on some of the most fundamental issues of moral choice, the promptings of reason and feeling could not be reconciled. To be internally consistent, any ethical systems (and the religious and political creeds that embodied them) must therefore ignore or deny some of the moral imperatives rooted in man's nature. No system of belief, however compelling, could thus confer immunity from guilt, doubt, or self-contempt.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , Summer 1988 , pp. 239 - 260
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1988

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References

1. See Aileen Kelly, “Attitudes to the Individual in Russian Thought and Literature, with Special Reference to the Vekhi Controversy” (D. Phil, diss., Oxford University, 1970), chap. 8.

2. See, for example, Pomper, Phillip, Sergei Nechaev (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1979), p. 217ff.Google Scholar

3. Pike, C., “ Formalist and Structuralist Approaches to Dostoevsky,” Jones, Malcolm and Terry, Garth, eds., New Essays on Dostoevsky (London: Paul Elek, 1983), p. 200.Google Scholar

4. Wellek, René, ed., Dostoevsky: A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1962), p. 5.Google Scholar Wellek's dismissal of Mikhail Bakhtin is based on a crude misunderstanding—that Bakhtin's view that the authorial “voice” participates in unresolved dialogue, based on the acknowledgement of perpetual contradiction and struggle, makes Dostoevskii out to be a relativist; “Bakhtin's View of Dostoevsky: ‘Polyphony’ and ‘Carnivalesque, '” Dostoevsky Studies [Klagenfurt] 1 (1980): 35. Bakhtin'sreal position, however, is equally far removed from Wellek's view that Dostoevskii is “objective” only “in the sense that he knows how to expound ideas of which he disapproves “—an observation that “does notrefute the fact that Dostoevsky makes a clear judgment about the values of the points of view presented by the speakers [in the novels]” (“Bakhtin's View of Dostoevsky,” p. 33).

5. Dalton, Elizabeth, Unconscious Structure in The Idiot: A Study in Literature and Psychoanalysis (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979), p. 159.Google Scholar

6. Sandoz, Ellis, Political Apocalypse: A Study of Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971, p. 170 Google Scholar; Linnér, Sven, Starets Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov: AStudy in the Mimesis of Virtue, Stockholm Studies in Russian Literature, no. 4 (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1975), pp. 189, 237Google Scholar.

7. Jones, Malcolm, Dostoevsky: The Novel of Discord (London: Cambridge University Press, 1976), pp. 37–38.Google Scholar

8. Robert Jackson, “The Testament of F. M. Dostoevskij,” Russian Literature 4 (1973): 87, 99. Jackson asserts that Dostoevskii's “belief in a viable human existence was based on the clearest acknowledgment of … evil, yet on the necessity of permanently negating it through constant striving “—a formulation of the problem that “implies the need for a ‘leap’ in faith and action “—surely an orthodox Christian position?See the same inconsistency in his essay “Dimitrij Karamazov and the ‘Legend, '” Slavic and East European Journal 11, no. 3 (1965): 257–267, where, after emphasizing the polyphony of Dostoevskii's lastnovel and warning the reader not to subsume “all of Dostoevsky under one truth, to hear for example, Alesha and not Ivan,” he concludes, monologically: “It is the truth and therefore the reality of the ideal of Christ and of man's constant yearning for it that renders incomplete the Grand Inquisitor's view of man; that in the end, makes viable man's tragic actuality. “

9. Jones, Dostoevsky, p. 192.

10. Drouilly, Jean, La Pensée politique et religieuse de Dostoievski (Paris: Libraire des cinq continents, 1971), p. 455.Google Scholar

11. Morson, Gary S., The Boundaries of Genre: Dostoevski's Diary of a Writer and the Traditions of Literary Utopia (Austin: University of Texas, 1981).Google Scholar

12. Meijer, Jan, “The Author of Brat'ya Karamazovy,” The Brothers Karamazov by F. M. Dostoevski]: Essays by Jan van der Eng and Jan M. Meijer, Dutch Studies in Russian Literature, vol. 2 (The Hague: Mouton, 1971), p. 44.Google Scholar

13. Ronald F. Fernandez, “Dostoevsky, Traditional Domination and Cognitive Dissonance,” SocialForces 49 (December 1970): 299–303, 302; Robert Jackson, The Art of Dostoevsky: Deliriums and Nocturnes (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981), p. xi.

14. Jones, Dostoevsky, p. 191.

15. Frank, Joseph, Dostoevsky: The Years of Ordeal, 1850–1859 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UniversityPress, 1983), p. 117.Google Scholar

16. In his monumental study of Dostoevskii's epilepsy, James Rice demonstrates that, although Dostoevskii's records of his seizures do not refer to this aura (whose content, according to Rice, had both sexualand religious overtones), there is no reason to question the evidence of contemporaries to whom he confidedthis experience or to doubt that it was the source for his depiction of Myshkin's seizures. Rice, James L., Dostoevsky and the Healing Art: An Essay in Literary and Medical History (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1985), pp. 83–86.Google Scholar

17. Dostoevskii, Fedor M., Idiot, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh (Leningrad: IzdanieNauka, 1972) 8: 188 Google Scholar. (This collection will hereafter be referred to as PSS.)

18. See the records of Dostoevskii's seizures in Rice, Dostoevsky and the Healing Art, pp. 287–298.

19. Letter to N. D. Fonvizina, February 1854, in Dostoevskii, , Pis'ma, ed. Dolinin, A. S. (Moscow: Academia, 1928–1959) 1: 142.Google Scholar

20. Frank, Years of Ordeal, p. 161.

21. PSS 8: 433.

22. Ibid. 8: 192.

23. See Frank, Joseph, Oostoevsky: The Seeds of Revolt, 1821–1849 (London: Robson, 1977), pp. 182ff.Google Scholar

24. See Dostoevskii's notebook for 1863–1864 in Neizdannyi Dostoevskii. Zapisnye knigi i tetradi: 1860–1881, vol. 83 of Literaturnoe nasledstvo, (Moscow: Nauka, 1971), p. 176; “Dnevnik pisatelia “ (1876), PSS 22: 83. (Hereafter Literaturnoe nasledstvo will be cited as L.N.)

25. MS4: 154.

26. Notebook, 1861–1862, L.N. 83: 149; PSS 23: 58.

27. Nikolai Berdiaev, Dostoevsky, trans. Donald Attwater, 5th ed. (New York: Meridian, 1960), p. 25. Comparisons of Dostoevskii with Gogol’ are not always admiring. See LinneVs comment, “Was Dostoevsky aware of how close he came to Gogol in his reasoning? The distrust of institutional change harboured by both is combined with a colossal faith in the effect of attitudinal change within the individual. Although they excel in drawing man as his own caricature, they have a boundless faith in his ability to improvehimself,” Mimesis of Virtue, p. 226, n. 6.

28. Draft of a letter to M. Katkov, September 1865, Pis'ma 1: 419.

29. To S. A. Ivanova, 13 January 1868, Pis'ma 2: 71.

30. Miller, Robin Feuer, Dostoevsky and the Idiot: Author, Narrator, and Reader (Cambridge: HarvardUniversity Press, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31. To S. A. Ivanova, 6 February 1869, Pis'ma 2: 160.

32. MS 8: 192.

33. To Maikov, 6 April 1870, and 23 December 1868, Pis'ma 2: 263, 264, 150

34. To Maikov, 28 August 1867, Pis'ma 2: 31; also 21 October 1870, 2: 291. See also letter to Maikovof 23 December 1868, 2: 149, and letters to Strakhov, 5 and 30 May 1871, 2: 357, 364.

35. On Dostoevskii's relations with the major political groupings in Russia in the 1870s, see L. M. Rosenblium, “Tvorcheskaia laboratoriia Dostoevskogo-romanista,” in F. M. Dostoevskii v rabote nad romanom “Podrostok.” Tvorcheskie rukopisi, L.N. 77: 7–55; and idem, “Tvorcheskie dnevniki Dostoevskogo, “ibid., 83: 9–91.

36. For example, see entries in Dostoevskii's notebooks in L.N.: 1875–1876, 83: 439; 1876–1877, 83: 557; 1880–1881, 83: 613 670, 680, and 686. See also, “Dnevnik pisatelia” (1877), PSS 25: 137–138

37. See notebooks in L.N.: 1875–1876, 83: 367, 409; 1876–1877, 83: 574; and “Dvevnik pisatelia “ (1876), PSS 22: 30, and “Dvevnik pisatelia” (1877), PSS 25: 178ff.

38. Notebook, 1875–1876, L.N. 83: 404, 367.

39. “Dnevnik pisatelia” (1876), PSS 23: 75; and notebooks in L.N. 1872–1875, 83: 316;1880–1881, 83: 682; 1875–1876, 83: 424ff.; “Dnevnik pisatelia” (1876), PSS 22: 50ff.; notebooks inL.N., 1872–1875, 83: 316; 1875–1876, 83: 441, 448–449; 1876–1877, 83: 517, 550, 555, 574–575.

40. Notebooks in L.N., 1875–1876, 83: 404; 1876–1877, 83: 623.

41. Quoted in Rosenblium, “Tvorcheskaia laboratoriia Dostoevskogo-romanista,” p. 75.

42. “Dnevnik pisatelia” (1876), PSS 22: 31.

43. Ibid.; also see notebooks in L.N., 1875–1876, 83: 408, 416; and 1876–1877, 83: 522.

44. Both quotations are from letters to Botkin, 8 September and 1 March 1841, PSS 12: 69, 23.

45. A few months after its publication it was quoted in the journal Otechestvennye zapiski by the radicalcritic Nikolai Mikhailovskii with whom Dostoevskii was engaged in friendly polemics at the time (see Rosenblium, “Tvorcheskie dnevniki Dostoevskogo,” pp. 64–65). Some critics, however, maintain that Ivan's challenge is an allusion to the third stanza of Schiller's poem Resignation; see Kostka, Edmund, Schiller in Russian Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1965), p. 243.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

46. “Starye liudi,” Dnevnik pisatelia (1873), PSS 21: 10; notebooks in L.N., 1876–1877, 83: 530, 526, and 1875–1876, 83: 466.

47. “Odna iz sovremennykh fal'shei,” Dnevnik pisatelia (1873), PSS 21: 125–136.

48. Notebook, 1872–1875, L.N. 83: 311.

49. Ibid., 1875–1876, 83: 458; letter to students of 18 April 1878, Pis’ma 4: 17.

50. See the preface in Dolinin, A. S., ed., F. M. Dostoevskii, materialy i issledovaniia (Leningrad: Izdanie Akademia nauk CCCP, 1935)Google Scholar and Rosenblium, “Tvorcheskaia laboratoriia Dostoeskogo-romanista, “and idem, “Tvorcheskie dnevniki Dostoevskogo. “

51. Some examples include Drouilly's substantial study of Dostoevskii's religious and political thought, Kabat's study of Diary of a Writer, and Morson's work on genre. Drouilly's book devotes less than two pagesto a summary dismissal of the significance of the changes in his attitude to socialism in the 1870s (La Pensee, pp. 430–432) and focuses on the contradictions between Dostoevskii's nationalism and his religious belief. Geoffrey C. Kabat's study of the Diary of a Writer, Ideology and Imagination: The Image of Society in Dostoevsky (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978) focuses on the contrast between Dostoevskii'sconcern with concrete social issues and his resolution of them in terms of his messianic ideology. Morson (inBoundaries of Genre) approaches the same work as an exercise in literary genre.

52. Jackson expresses a typical view in defining the content of Dostoevskii's social philosophy after hisexile as “a passionate appeal for a Christian change in consciousness … coupled with a rejection of the pathof action of the socialist and revolutionary forces of his day” (Art of Dostoevsky, p. 13). Jones comments thatDostoevskii was “not altogether immune to the attractions of atheistic socialism” but does not expand on thisstatement (Dostoevsky, p. 195).

53. Konstantin Mochul'skii, Dostoevsky: His Life and Work, trans., M. Minihan (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1967), p. 502.

54. Notebook, 1875–1876, L.N. 83: 438, 446.

55. Ibid., p. 367.

56. “Otvet ‘Russkomu vestniku'” (1861), PSS 19: 131–132.

57. Notebooks in L.N., 1875–1876, 83: 375, 379–380, 447, 449; 1872–1875, 83: 294–295; 1876–1877, 83: 546; 1875–1876, 83: 446, 375, 403. “Dnevnik pisatelia” (1873) PSS 21: 131.

58. Notebooks in L.N., 1875–1876, 83: 386, 420, and 1872–1875, 83: 289; “Dnevnik pisatelia “ (1876), PSS 22: 41. See Ivan S. Turgenev, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem (Moscow-Leningrad: Nauka, 1967) 14: 28–29.

59. See notebook, 1875–1876, L.N. 83: 450.

60. Notebook, 1876–1877, L.N. 83: 546. See also “Dnevnik pisatelia” (1876), PSS 23: 37.

61. “Dnevnik pisatelia” (1876), PSS 23: 73.

62. Podrostok. Rukopisnye redaktsii, PSS 16: 329.

63. “Dnevnik pisatelia” (1876), PSS 22: 43; notebook, 1875–1876, L.N. 83: 463.

64. “Dnevnik pisatelia” (1876), PSS 2: 29–30; notebook, 1876–1877, L.N. 83: 574–575.

65. Notebooks in L.N., 1875–1876, 83: 441; 1876–1877, 83: 611.

66. Letter to M. Katkov, 20 October 1870, Pis'ma 2: 289.

67. Letter to N. Strakhov, 21 October 1870, Pis'ma 2: 294; to Katkov, 20 October 1870, Pis'ma2: 289. PSS 10: 202.

68. PSS 10: 198.

69. Ibid., pp.94, 469.

70. Ibid., p. 165.

71. Podrostok. Rukopisnye izdaniia, PSS 16: 17, 51.

72. Ibid. 13: 171.

73. A. S. Suvorin, DnevnikA. S. Suvorina (Moscow-Petrograd: Frenkel, 1923), pp. 15–16.

74. PSS 14: 290, 214.

75. Berdiaev, Dostoevsky, p. 188.

76. Wasiolek, Edward, Dostoevsky: The Major Fiction (Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1964), pp. 164ff Google Scholar.

77. To N. Liubimov, 10 May 1879, Pis'ma 4: 53.

78. PSS 14: 221.

79. Ibid., 14: 201.

80. Suvorin, Dnevnik, p. 16.

81. See notebook, 1875–1876, L.N. 83: 449.

82. A. F. Koni, Vospominaniia o dele Very Zasulicha (Moscow: Academiia, 1933), p. 139.

83. Notebook, 1880–1881, L.N. 83: 676.

84. Letter to N. Strakhov, 5 December 1883, in L. N. Tolstoi, Sobranie sochinenii v dvadtsati tomakh (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1960–1965) 17: 550.