I picked up Letters to a Young Poet/The Possibility of Being (A Selection of Poems) by Rainer Maria Rilke in the bargain section at Barnes and Noble a few months before I started reading Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov and studying the other existentialists. I didn’t end up reading it until finishing Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Nietzsche. It turned out to be good timing because according to Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche and Rilke have a lot in common.

They were both in love with the same woman - Lou Salome (who was also friends with Freud - she had some interesting friends and lovers!!). Nietzsche was both famous and dying by the time Rilke’s love affair started with her. She was barely over 20 when her love affair started with Nietzsche and a mature woman by the time of her love affair with Rilke. She was Rilke’s great supporter and confidant, even after the end of their love affair so it is reasonable to assume she had a strong influence on Rilke’s thinking and that Nietzsche’s thinking had a strong influence on that of Salome’s.

According to Kauffman in From Shakespeare to Existentialism, what Nietzsche and Rilke have most in common is a peculiar piety that

…does not consist of any reverent acceptance of some tradition but a rejection of all that has hardened into stereotypes and in the resolve to be open and ready to their own call. Without believing in any god, they feel that if they will be entirely receptive they will be addressed personally and experience a necessity, a duty, a destiny that will be just theirs and nobody elses, but no less their duty than any categorical imperative.

What Nietzsche and Rilke want is a new honesty, and the sin against the spirit is for them the essentially insincere escape into traditional values and cliches. What is old cannot be altogether adequate now, for me, in an unprecedented situation. It is honesty that demands what is still unsaid. Honesty is the new piety.

Rilke’s writes in his First Elegy, “Alas, who is there we can make use of? Not angels, not men; and even the noticing beasts are aware that we don’t feel very securely at home in this interpreted world.” According to Kaufmann, William James had stressed how important it is that men feel at home in the universe. But the new piety, the new honesty of Nietzsche and Rilke rule out the older piety.

I find this interesting because there is a passage in the New Testament (Luke 9:58 and Matthew 8:20) that has always fascinated me. (It’s a saying attributed to Jesus): “The foxes have their holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no where to lay his head.” What does that mean, exactly? Why are the foxes and birds at home, but not the Son of Man? There is no security for the Son of Man. Why? Because he is open to experience? That makes sense to me. Nietzsche’s and Rilke’s new piety does not permit a sense of security because it is too easy to reduce experience to our preconceived ideas of it when we seek security. We must be willing to live dangerously in order to be open to experience.

I highlighted a few things in Rilke’s letters. One, of course, being the “live the questions” that is so often quoted. It’s in the fourth letter to Franz Xaver Kappus (the young poet) sent July 16, 1903:

…..If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly noticeable, those things can unexpectedly become great and immeasurable. If you will love what seems to be insignificant and will in an unassuming manner, as a servant, seek to win the confidence of what seems poor, then everything will become easier, more harmonious, and somehow more conciliatory, not for your intellect - that will most likely remain behind, astonished - but for your innermost consciousness, your awakeness, and your inner knowing.

You are so young; you stand before beginnings. I would like to beg or you, dear friend, as well as I can, to have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day. Perhaps you are indeed carrying within yourself the potential to visualize, to design, and to create for yourself an utterly satisfying, joyful, and pure lifestyle. Discipline yourself to attain it, but accept that which comes to you with deep trust, and as long as it comes from your own will, from your own inner need, accept it, and do not hate anything.

And something I touched on several months ago about relationships from the same letter (I’ve been slowly making my way through the poetry so have taken a long time to read this book):

Perhaps the sexes are more closely related than one would think. Perhaps the great renewal of the world will consist of this, that man and woman, freed of all confused feelings and desires, shall no longer seek each other as opposites, but simply as members of a family and neighbors, and will unite as human beings, in order to simply, earnestly, patiently, and jointly bear the heavy responsibility of sexuality that has been entrusted to them…

….Therefore, dear friend, embrace your solitude and love it. Endure the pain it causes, and try to sin out with it. For those near to you are distant, you say. That shows it is beginning to dawn around you; there is an expanse opening about you. And when your nearness becomes distant, then you have already expanded far; to being among the stars…

Be good to those who stay behind, and be quiet and confident in their presence. Do not torment them with your doubts, and do not shock them with your confidence or your joy, which they cannot understand. Try to establish with them a simple, sincere mutual feeling of communion, that need not change if you yourself change. Love the life that is theirs, although different from yours…

I also appreciated this from the sixth letter (December 23, 1903):

….ask yourself, dear Mr. Kappus, whether you have really lost God. Is it not rather true that you have not yet possessed him? For when could that have been? Do you think a child can hold him, him whom men can bear only with great effort and whose weight crushes the aged ones? Do you think that the one possessing him could lose him like a little stone? Or do you not rather agree that he who might have him could be lost by him? However, if you conclude that he did not exist in your childhood and not before that, if you surmise that Christ was deluded by his yearning and that Mohammed was betrayed by his pride - and if you, with great dismay, feel that he does not exist, even during this hour, while we are speaking of him, what right have you then to miss him, like someone out of the past, him, who never existed, and to seek him as though he were lost?

Why don’t you think of him as the coming one, who has been at hand since eternity, the future one, the final fruit of a tree, with us as its leaves? What is keeping you from hurling his birth into evolving times and from living your life as though it were one painful beautiful day in the history of a great pregnancy? Don’t you see that everything that happens becomes a beginning again and again? Could it not be his beginning, since a beginning in itself is always so beautiful? If, however, he is the most perfect one, would not what is less than perfect have to preceed him, so that he can choose himself from great abundance? Would not he have to be the last one,in order to envelop everything within himself? And what sense would our existence make, if the one we longed for had already had his existence in the past?

I also earmarked a few poems for various reasons. I would like to see how others have translated these and perhaps I’ll dig more deeply into them at a later date: “Early Apollo”; “David Sings Before Saul”; and “Death Experienced”.

I made a challenge with my son that ended in my reading The Bluest Eye for the second time. What an absolutely wonderful book. I remember seeing Miss Saigon in London. My friend wanted me to tell her all about it and when I got to the end, I couldn’t tell her without crying. My daughter tells me I cry at everything - movies, commercials, silly tv shows. That’s sort of true. But there are some things that really get at me and make it so I almost can’t talk. Toni Morrison novels do that to me. My son didn’t understand what happened to Pecola and while I was trying to explain it, I started crying. It’s just completely overwhelming.

At the beginning of the novel, Claudia says, “There is really nothing more to say - except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how.”

The why is difficult to handle because we’re all implicated in it. We’re all at fault for what happens to Pecola Breedlove and that’s both difficult to understand and difficult to accept. We want to accept that how we define beautiful is good and to see ourselves as beautiful, and therefore good. What we don’t want to accept is that what we see as ugly, bad, and wrong is often a reflection of the part of ourselves that we don’t want to acknowledge.

Unfortunately, we have projected what it is we cast off in ourselves onto those we deem to be somehow inferior:

It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question. The master had said, “You are ugly people.” They had looked about themselves and saw nothing to contradict the statement; saw, in fact, support for leaning at them from every billboard, every movie, every glance. “Yes,” they had said. “You are right.” And they took the ugliness in their hands, threw it as a mantle over them, and went about the world with it.

I know that to try and understand The Bluest Eye in terms of Nietzsche is to be reading something into it that isn’t there. But I can’t help myself!! Especially after reading What Nietzsche Really Said.

Morrison clearly has a problem with the Western idea of God in terms of the Black Community. An example in The Bluest Eye is when Cholly is a boy and is at a community gathering, waiting for the father presiding over the event to break the watermelon. He wonders whether the father who is in charge of breaking the watermelon and is holding his hands over his head ready to let it fall might look like God? But immediately thinks to himself, “no”. “

God was a nice old white man, with long white flowing hair, flowing white beard, and little blue eyes that looked sad when people died and mean when they were bad. It must be the devil who looks like that - holding the world in his hands, ready to dash it to the ground and spill the red guts so that niggers could eat the sweet red insides. If the devil did look like that, Cholly preferred him. He never felt anything thinking about God. And now the strong, black devil was blotting out the sun and getting ready to split open the world.

A god who holds the world in his hands, ready to dash it to the ground so that people can enjoy themselves is a god that is involved in the world, not an abstract God like the white God who looks sad when people die and looks mean when they are bad. Nietzsche admired the older forms of paganism because they allowed an individual to be an individual. What he didn’t like about the paganism that infiltrated Christianity was that it was abstract and turned the individual into something impure, unworthy, and separate. This was true of Kierkegaard, too.

Throughout the book, Morrison references the Black American tendency toward joyful expression and how this gets turned into an evil tendency by Western idealism. Nietzsche is against is Kant’s idea that Morality is something categorical, dictated by authority (whether that authority be God or Reason), and largely prohibitive (”Thou shalt not!”) Nietzsche is not against individual morality - that which is based upon the particular circumstances and temperament of a specific person or persons. It’s not that people should be free to kill or steal or whatever. What he rejects is morality as a category, not the accepted rules of civilized behavior. He writes over and over again to “Become who you are!”

A little black girl wanting blue eyes is not becoming who she is, she is denying who she is in a society that understands physical beauty as virtue. In the 1960s, physical beauty was defined as the blond haired, blue eyed female. The definition may be changing, but we in the west still tend to equate physical beauty with virtue and it isn’t a virtue!! Being beautiful according to societal standards of beauty does not make you more virtuous than someone who doesn’t. The problem with equating physical beauty to virtue is that if you don’t happen to meet the standard, this doesn’t just define what you look like. It also defines the value of your very being (existence).

Morrison writes:

Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another - physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in delusion. In equating physical beauty with virtue, she stripped her mind, bound it, and collected self-contempt by the heap.

It’s as though society is saying “Thou shalt not be black”. Kierkegaard said that the individual has to be willing to go against the ethical. In a society that defines physical beauty in terms of the ethical, you have to go against the ethical because otherwise society has the potential to negate you.

I started wondering - if Nietzsche and Kierkegaard are both so totally against philosophy because they believe it obscures the individual and turns the individual into something “unworthy”, does philosophy itself contribute to the ability of certain people to dominate others? I don’t know the answer to this, but I do know that Kierkegaard was against Hegel and Nietzsche was against Kant and that there is a lot of evidence that both had racism hardwired into their ideas of morality. Kant said Morality was a product of Practical Reason rather than of Divine Origin, but it’s really just the same thing since both are considered “absolute authority” (or an imperative category as Kant put it). Kant claimed that being non-white was morally inferior to being white. Nietzsche was likely a racist (he was also sexist), but it doesn’t seem as though his racism was “hardwired” to his ideas on morality at all. In fact, just the opposite! I don’t know - it’s an interesting consideration.

I think I am probably going to read everything differently now that I have a better grasp on existentialism.

Interesting 8 episode series on Vonnegut:

Part 1

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5EqOiye7zI&hl=en&fs=1]

Part 2

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8e4SjzcoAI&hl=en&fs=1]

Part 3

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uf6WQs1WnHg&hl=en&fs=1]

Part 4

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-dwAwsmQF4&hl=en&fs=1]

Part 5

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nznHJFjfZ74&hl=en&fs=1]

Part 6

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3ikvCT3858&hl=en&fs=1]

Part 7

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahOo41WiIeY&hl=en&fs=1]

Part 8

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGK26wL3E7s&hl=en&fs=1]

On Thursday, I bought two books: Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut and The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin. I went to the bookstore specifically to get Vonnegut’s book and caught out of the corner of my eye on another shelf, Le Guin’s which had been recommended to me several years ago by Nacho of WoodMoor Village Zendo. I’ve just read both introductions and found something interesting…

Vonnegut writes of Campbell in the Editor’s note to Mother Night:

To say that he was a writer is to say that the demands of art alone were enough to make him lie, and to lie without seeing any harm in it. To say that he was a playwright is to offer an even harsher warning to the reader, for no one is a better liar than a man who has warped lives and passions onto something as grotesquely artificial as a stage.

And, now that I’ve said that about lying, I will risk the opinion that lies told for the sake of artistic effect - in the theater, for instance, and in Campbell’s confessions, perhaps - can be, in a higher sense, the most beguiling forms of truth.

LeGuin writes in the intro. to The Left Hand of Darkness:

…Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist’s business is lying….Fiction writers, at least in their braver moments, do desire the truth: to know it, to speak it, to serve it. But they go about it in a devious way, which consists in inventing persons, places, and events which never did and never will exist or occur, and telling about these fictions in detail and at length and with a great deal of emotion, and then when they are done writing down this pack of lies, they say, There! That’s the truth!

They may use all kinds of facts to support their tissue of lies. They may describe the Marshalsea Prison, which was a real place, or the battle of Borodino, which really was fought, or the process of cloning, which really takes place in laboratories, or the deterioration of personality, which is described in real textbooks of psychology and so on. This weight of verifiable place-event-phenomenon-behavior makes the reader forget that he is reading a pure invention, a history that never took place anywhere but in that unlocalizable region, the author’s mind. In fact, while we read a novel, we are insane - bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren’t there, we hear their voices, we watch the battle of Borodino with them, we may even become Napoleon. Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.

Is it any wonder that no truly respectable society as ever trusted its artists?….

I talk about the gods; I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth.

The only truth I can understand or express is, logically defined, a lie. Psychologically defined, a symbol. Aesthetically defined, a metaphor….

A metaphor for what?

If I could have said it non-metaphorically, I would not have written all these word, this novel; and Genly Ali would never have sat down at my desk and used my ink and typewriter ribbon in informing me, and you, rather solemnly, that the truth is a matter of the imagination.

Ah… The power of metaphor!

C.S. Lewis: Beyond Narnia

I went through a big C.S. Lewis phase last year. I guess this must have been a left-over film on my Netflix – maybe one that wasn’t available until later?

It’s a docudrama – fairly well done and a good intro. to Lewis.

Spoiler Warning!! These are the final notes on Prof Herbert Dreyfus’ lectures on Brothers Karamazov from the webcast for his class Existentialism in Literature and Film. (page numbers here refer to the translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.)

I am so grateful to have been able to listen in on this lecture series. I would have gotten a lot out of the book without it, but I learned so much more by taking the time to listen to the 12 hours of lectures - especially about existentialism of which I knew nothing.

Picking up with the third interview between Ivan and Smerdyakov…

Smerdyakov tells Ivan that he murdered Fyodor and was Ivan’s instrument. This “hit man” so to speak. Ivan had said it was OK to murder because he claimed that God is dead and that all things are permissible.

Many critics incorrectly say that Smerdyakov is repentant and therefore commits suicide. He is reading Isaac the Syrian which is the same book Grigory was reading when his son died. Isaace the Syrian is a Father Ferapont sort of person. Smerdykov is reading it because it is gloomy. Not because he has converted to a dark side of Christianity. If he had repented, then surely he would have said something about having killed Fyodor in his suicide note. But all his suicide note says is that he has killed himself and he blames no one.

Alyosha understands what is going on. If Smerdyakov kills himself, then there will be no evidence that Ivan is involved. Ivan is basically Smerdyakov’s god who has failed him and now he hates Ivan. Committing suicide puts Ivan in a horrible position. Ivan knows without a doubt that Dmitri is innocent, yet if Dmitri is in Siberia for a crime he didn’t commit and Ivan is to blame for this, Ivan will suffer a horrible isolation. This is the worst kind of suffering - the kind that keeps you stuck in your wrong and your misery and won’t let you experience joy. (Contrast this with the suffering of Zosima’s mysterious visitor.)

At some point, Ivan asks Smerdyakov if he believe in God since his is giving back ther money, and Smerdyakov responds “No, I don’t blieve in God. That’s why I’m giving it back”. Ivan was his God and Ivan repudiated him.

Ivan used to say that everything is lawful and now he is upset. Smerdyakov has lost his God and his motives. He wants Ivan to kill him but Ivan won’t so he kills himself as a way to get back at Ivan. It’s not totally unlike his torture of cats.

According to Dostoevsky, nobody can commit a crime and feel OK about it. And that people cannot feel OK about it is a proof of the existence of God. If God were dead, all would be lawful. (Of course, Woody Allen tends to turn this notion on its head in many of his movies.)

Ivan claims that the basest moment in his life is when he stands on the stairs listening to his father. That was a total detached relationship to his father - being the detached spectator. And of course, this is right before his father was killed.

The question left open is this: Is there a way to existentialize church? In the Grand Inquisitor, Jesus claims that church gets in the way of a relationship with God. But the Inquisitor claims that if you can get everyone to agree philosophically, then the church can be important.

Kolya, the leader of the boys, represents young Russia. Both Alyosha and Rakitin are battling for his allegiance. Rakitin, of course, is teaching about neurons and a disbelief in God. But Alyosha believes the amount you believe in God and feel the connectedness is the amount of love you have for mankind. Like Grushenka, Kolya thinks Alyosha despises him and as soon as he realizes that Alyosha regards him highly, he becomes Alyosha’s angel rather than Rakitin’s devil.

When Ilyusha dies, his body smells sweet. Many critics immediately think this points to a flaw in Zosima since Zosima smelled so bad. But it doesn’t. Dostoevsky never writes anything against the laws of chemistry and physics. Ilyusha’s dead body has open windows, flowers, and although it doesn’t say so, it is highly likely his body was washed. It was also a cool day. Zosima’s body wasn’t washed and there were no flowers (washing and flowers were not traditionally provided for monks). It was a warm day, and the windows are closed. Dostoevsky would not have provided these details if he were trying to create some sort of magical comparison between the sweet smell of Ilyusha and the stench of Zosima. Both were saints because in their own ways, they helped bring agape love into the world. Both create miracles of love. What happened to their body after death had nothing to do with any supernatural understanding common at the time.

Alyosha gives a speech at the stone where Ilyusha had asked to be buried. This is significant because Jesus gives Peter the keys tot he kingdom at a rock. There are 12 boys and Jesus had 12 disciples - again this is Dostoevsky banging you over the head with the existentializing of a typical Christian notion - this time the church. Alyosha is founding the existential church through the youth of Russia at the funeral. (See p.774). The way he does this is by creating a shared childhood memory among the boys.

The memory is eternity in time and therefore sacred. Most memories get redefined, but these sorts of childhood memories don’t get redefined, they help you redefine everything else. It interprets all of your other experiences.

On p. 775-776, Kolya asks, “Shall we rise from the dead and be together again?” Alyosha, of course, can’t answer this. But he can say that in this life they will rise and tell each other all that has been. Zosima tells the peasant woman that her child is an angel of God. But Dostoevsky doesn’t believe this. He believed there was no way to know such things. And he also doesn’t believe they will meet again in an afterlife because there is no way to know if there is an afterlife. What matters is what happens in this life.

There is a big fuss about burying Ilyusha under the stone where he wants to be buried or in the church. Alyosha agrees that Ilyusha should be buried in the church. The main reason Dostoevsky points this out is likely because Dostoevsky does not like the massochistic emphasis in Christianity. If Ilyusha had been buried under the rock from which Alyosha gives the speech, that would have far too much massochistic emphasis. He wants the church to be founded on the incarnation alone.

What does it mean to be a Karamazov is the same as asking, what does it mean to be a human self?

The trial is clearly a big joke. Dostoevsky was not a big fan of psychology because it works within a specific framework: it works from the assumption that man is sinful, that human nature is selfish and it has no understanding whatsoever of transformation. And because it has no understanding of transformation, Dostoevsky believes it has absolutely no understanding whatsoever of anything that is important.

We know the prosecution is wrong because we know Dmitri is innocent. He claimed that the Karamazovs need an unnatural mixture of good and bad impulses. But we know this is incorrect. They don’t need and want these contradictions - they have them and are aware of them. It is the the contradictions that make us human. The secular has to make one side of the contradictions “bad”. But the sacred does not need to do this. It can accept both.

From a detached, rational side, the sensual impulses look like the “bad side”. But this side, according to Dostoevsky, is important because it is this side agape love comes from. There are lots of ways to interpret the Karamazovs. The only way to see them as “good” is if you understand that they can be transformed by love. When this happens, the earthy side becomes positive.

The last thing in the book is a cheer for Karamazov. The boys (young Russia) cheer Alyosha Karamazov. The boys are going to go out into the world and make the transformation and bit by bit, this transformation will transform everybody. And this will be the demagicalization of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Spoiler Warning!! Finally finished with The Brothers Karamazov. These are the continued notes I took from Prof Herbert Dreyfus’ lectures on Part IV of Brothers Karamazov through the webcast for his class Existentialism in Literature and Film. (page numbers here refer to the translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.)

Dostoevsky’s View of Suffering: Crucifixion and Resurrection

There are two kinds of suffering. One of them is about a self-torment: brooding about bad things that have happened. This is a masochistic martyrdom that Dostoevsky has no sympathy for. Examples are Father Ferapont; the Grand Inquisitor; Katarina Ivanovna; Ivan. Christianity is about a different kind of suffering that leads to joy (crucifixion that leads to resurrection). The self-torment type is a crucifixion that only leads to self-isolation and only leads to death (no resurrection).

Dmitri demonstrates the right kind of suffering (Zosima bows down to his suffering). Zosima distinguishes two sorts of suffering early on in the book. There is the sort based on pride that does not require consolation and gets worse and worse. The other is the sort of a mother who loses her child that does require consolation and can potentially turn to joy. One kind of suffering that everybody has (the Dmitri represents) is that the human being is a contradiction.

Grushenka makes as similar bow to Dmitri’s suffering as does Zosima. Right after she does this, she undergoes a physical ailment which brings on a spiritual transformation which is a sort of purification of his darkside. There has to be an expiation of your crimes - which can include desires (like wanting to kill your father) or that you did actually do it. If you don’t do this, you cut yourself off from everyone and have to live a lie and you can no longer relate to people in an honest way (and this creates the existential Hell of isolation).

The Christian view that Dostoevsky is trying to existentialize is that when Jesus died on the cross, he died for everyone. Dreyfus says he has a difficult time understanding why one individual would take on the suffering for all of us or why we would even want someone to do this for us. (How can someone else purify our crimes for us?) He doesn’t feel that Dostoevsky is successful in existentializing this view but that he makes an earnest attempt.

Dmitri calls his sentence to Siberia a crucifixion. If he tries to escape, then he will be running away from his crucifixion. There is also a discussion about Dmitri not being ready to go to Siberia - Alyosha believes that such a cross is too much for Dmitri and the refusal to carry the cross will be enough. It’s enough that Dmitri remembers that he was eager to go to Siberia and suffer. Dmitri demonstrates that you can suffer, that it isn’t up to you - everyone has desires that will make you suffer. But Dmitri provides an example for how to suffer. You have to be receptive to the suffering rather than willful of it. In this way, Dmitri suffers for all because he provides an example of how all should suffer. (It is likely the Dostoevsky planned to demonstrate this better in the second novel that he never was able to write.)

Dmitri says on p. 591:

Even there, in the mines, underground, you can find a human heart in the convict and murderer standing next to you, and you can be close to him, because there, too, it’s possible to live, and love, and suffer! You can revive and resurrect the frozen heart in this convict, you can look after him for years, and finally bring up from the cave into the light a soul that is lofy now, a suffering consciousness, you can revive an angel, resurrect a hero! And there are many of them, there are hundreds, and we’re all guilty for them! Why did I have a dream about a ‘wee one’ at such a moment? ‘Why is the wee one poor?’ It was a prophecy to me at that moment! It is for the ‘wee one’ that I will go. Because veryone is guilty for everyone else. For all the ‘wee ones,’ because there are little children and big children. All people are ‘wee ones.’ And I’ll go for all of them, because there must be someone who will go for all of them….Oh, yes, we’ll be in chains, and there will be no freedom, but then, in our great grief, we will arise once more into joy, without which it’s not possible for man to live, or for God to be, for God gives joy, it’s his prerogative, a great one…

Dmitri isn’t taking on their suffering, he shows them how to suffer the right way - with humility rather than with pride. Will Dmitri be able to take on all of the forms of suffering: purification, expiation, and exemplary sacrifice? Rakitin (the existentialized devil) tries to talk him out of this suffering by saying that as long as we are bunch of neurons, then it really doesn’t matter whether we suffer or not - might as well do what is most fun. (Dmitri explains it to Alyosha on p. 589 - “Imagine; it’s all there in the nerves, in the head, there are these nerves in the brain…”) Rakitin proposes a resurrection of a sort - the new (materialistic/enlightenment) man arising. Alyosha thinks the neurons are doing their wiggling thing and that is fine, but it doesn’t contradict the existential experience and meaning we have. Alyosha refuses to engage in a discussion of neurons and changes the subject and Dmitri forgets all about the neurons and is back to the existential experience of feeling like he is a new man (which sounds like Rakitin’s new man, but is not the same.)

Ivan is the example for getting suffering wrong. Dostoevsky would like to establish early on a certain relationship between Ivan and Dmitri. On p. 264, Dostoevsky writes: “Ivan turned suddenly and went his way without looking back. It was similar to the way his brother Dmitri had left Alyosha the day before, though the day before it was something quite different. This strange little observation flashed like an arrow through the sad mind of Alyosha…For some reason he suddently noticed that his brother Ivan somehow swayed as he walked, and that his right shoulder, seen from behind, appeared lower than his left. He had never noticed it before.” (His right shoulder is lower than his left indicates that Ivan is carrying a cross.)

Before Dmitri’s trial, he Ivan says, “tomorrow the cross, not the gallows”. Ivan wants to face his dark side and confess his involvement and suffer for it. But out of pride, he tries to punish himself which is a way to show he is better than everyone else (by showing that he is as bad as everybody else). He turns his confession into an “I’m better than you are”.

On p. 601-602, Alyosha tells Ivan that he is not the murderer of his father. “You’ve said to yourself many times while you were alone during those two horrible months.” Alyosha is sort of throwing cold water on Ivan’s need to be better than others by confessing his bad side. Ivan responds with a cold smile, “I cannot bear prophets and epileptics, messengers from God especially, you know that only too well. From this moment on I am breaking with you, and I suppose, forever. I ask you to leave me this instant, at this very crossroads.” Ivan wants to confess to show that he is the aloof, perfect judge of himself and everyone else in the universe. The devil points out Ivan’s convoluted motives.

Ivan comes upon a drunken peasant who is singing “Ah, Vanka’s gone to Petersburg; and I’ll not wait for him” which upsets Ivan terribly. Vanka is a nickname for Ivan and the peasant is basically singing the guilt of Ivan. (Smerdyakov claimed that Ivan knew Smerdyakov was going to kill his father because he went to Moscow - and this sort of “magical” occurrence is very uncharacteristic of Dostoevsky.) He kicks the peasant who falls unconscious in the snow. Later, Ivan wants to confess and has an immense feeling of joy in his heart which makes it seem he could be saved. He notices the peasant he had kicked and picks him up and carries him. But the desire to confess doesn’t last very long. Dostoevsky believes that you can only make such confessions impulsively. As soon as you say “wait until tomorrow”, the confession will not happen. (As soon as the decision to wait was made, Ivan’s joy dissipated immediately.)

One of the Karmazov redeeming features is that they are impulsive; and because they are impulsive, they occasionally do really good things. (Alyosha is always doing impulsive good things - he never reflects and never doubts his spontaneous responses.)

Ivan confronts the Devil.

Ivan’s devil is not an existentialized Devil. This Devil plays a role in Ivan’s psychic constitution. This is Ivan talking to himself. It’s his dark side externalized and talking to him. The Devil tells Ivan the same thing about impulsiveness. When Ivan enters the room, he feels something cold, revolting, etc. and there is a touch of ice on his heart. (The Catholic conception of evil is cold and detached - not hot and fire). What is cold and revolting is Ivan. The more you become unable to love and be impulsive, the more you become unable to move. (Satan is frozen in ice at the bottom of hell, flapping his wings chilling everyone in Hell according to Dante.)

The Devil is the side of Ivan that is rational and European. Ivan knows the Devil is his hallucination and calls him the incarnation of himself - the worst and most stupid side of himself. Ivan wants to deny this stupid, lackey side but at the same time, he wants the Devil to be real. He tells the Devil that he would like to believe in the Devil because he wants to put the lackey side of himself outside of himself. (It’s easier to say the Devil made me do it than to say “I” did it). He doesn’t want to take responsibility for his lackey side but the trade off for not accepting this responsibility (and seeing the Devil as real) is that he’ll go crazy. The Devil is a real psychological manifestation that occurs when you refuse to incorporate the darker parts of yourself. It gives Ivan a new insight to himself. (Whenever the devil is around, the angel (Alyosha) comes and drives the devil away.)

The Mel Gibson Passion sort of crucifixion is the wrong sort of crucifixion according to Dostoevsky because this sort of crucifixion does not lead to resurrection. It leads to death. And this is the sort of crucifixion Ivan is experiencing. (According to the narrator, Ivan, although impeccably dressed, looked like a dying man.) Ivan says, “Have you any water, give me a drink for Christ sake”, he suddenly clutched his head.” This is Dostoevsky beating us over the head with the crucifixion of Ivan because Jesus asked for water in the Gospel of John. Suffering the wrong way is suffering with pride, to prove something, to show you are better than other people. And this suffering may be a crucifixion, but it will lead to death rather than resurrection.

The only person who has a right to say what is going on with Ivan is Alyosha who says on p. 655, he says:

“The torments of proud decision, a deep conscience!” God in whom he did not believe, and his truth were overcoming his heart, which still did not want to submit. “Yes”, it passed Smerdyakov dead, no one will believe Ivan’s testimony; but he will go and testify!” Alyosha smiled gently: “God will win!” he thought. “He will either rise into the light of truth or…perish in hatred, taking revenge on himself and everyone for having served something he does not believe in,” Alyosha added bitterly, and again prayed for Ivan.

God is the connectedness of everything. God is winning out with Ivan because Ivan is starting to realize the connectedness of things (realizing he is implicated in the murder through his disconnectedness). For God to be gaining control would mean that Ivan would begin to recognize his responsibility in the world, but Ivan is still resisting that sort of interdependence. Pretending to accept the relatedness in order to look good would make Ivan perish in hatred. He either has to accept the fundamental truth that all creatures are interrelated, or else he will destroy himself and everyone else who questions his purity and perfection. Alyosha’s prayer for Ivan is a meditation on compassion and understanding of Ivan so he can help him.

Ivan’s Interviews with Smerdyakov

He made a deal with Smerdyakov to leave town so that Smerdyakov can fake a fit and kill the father. If Ivan hadn’t gone to Moscow, the old guy wouldn’t be murdered and he also knows deep in his subconscious that by leaving town, the old man would be killed. His attempt to say he is not responsible (”I’m leaving”) is what made the murder possible. He has three interviews with Smerdyakov that helps to clear up Ivan’s murky understanding of his responsibility.

Smerdyakov gets all of his meaning from Ivan: motivation, philosophy, how people should be, etc. Smerdyakov’s relationship is like a sick paradoy of Alyosha’s relationship to Zosima. Dmitri talks about Smerdyakov as though he has no self of his own. Grigory said that he is not a person - that he grew from the mildew in the bathhouse. The last time he had any self was when he was torturing the cats. (He is also the one who told Iluyusha to put a pin in the meat and put it in the dog which makes him seem like an animal sadist toward cats and dogs.) The only way he has any humanity at all is through a parasitic relationship to Ivan , taking on Ivan’s characteristics.

Smerydakov wants to commit the murder and go to France to live off of the money and he is only a murderer because he thinks Ivan wants him to be a murderer. Ivan is plugged into Smerdyakov as a way to act out his darkest desires. Smerydakov allows him to take all of his evil impulses and act on them without being responsible for them. He attaches himself to Ivan because like Ivan, Smerydakov has no sense of commitment, no sense of responsibility. What he has is that he is clever, like Ivan.

Ivan can’t stand Smerydakov because Smerdyakov represents the side of himself he can’t stand (the lackey side). But he does sense that there is some sort of connection between them. What he hated the most was the familiarity that Smerdyakov had begun to assume with Ivan - that there was some sort of shared secret between them. Ivan senses it, but doesn’t consciously recognize it because he has the ability to screen out his dark impulses.

This is all set up in Part II, Book 5, Chapter 6: A Rather Obscure One - p. 273. Smerdyakov is explaining to Ivan his plan but Ivan doesn’t really get it. “Something became twisted, as it were, and twitched in Ivan Fyodrovich’s face. He suddenly blushed. “And why after all that do you advise me to go to Chermashnya? What do you mean to say by that? I’ll go and that is what will happen here?” Ivan Fyodorivch was breathing with difficulty. “Exactly right sir”, Smerdyakov said quietly and reasonably, but keeping his eyes fixed on Ivan Fyodorivich. “Exactly right?” Ivan Fyodorovich repeated, trying hard to restrain himself, and his eyes flashed menacingly. “I said it because I felt bad for you. In your place, if it were me, I’d leave the whole thing right now.. rather than sit next to such business, sir…” Smerdyakov replied…. “It seems you’re a perfect idiot, and no doubt… a terrible scoundrel!” Ivan Fyodorivich suddenly got up from the bench. He was about to walk straight through the gate, but suddenly stopped and turned to Smerdyakov. Something strange happened: all of a sudden, as if in a convulsion, Ivan Fyodorivich bit his lip, clenched his fists, and in another moment would certainly have thrown himself on Smerdyakov. The latter, at any rate, noticed it at the same moment, gave a start, and shrank back with his whole body. But the moment passed favorably for Smerdyakov, and Ivan Fyododorovich siliently but in some perplexity, as it were, turned towards the gate.” I’m leaving for Moscow tomorrow, if you want to know…” Ivan couldn’t explain what was happening to him at that moment. He moved and walked as if in spasms.

In the first interview, Smerydakov is extremely weak, almost dying. In the second interview, he is full of pep. In the third interview he is extremely weak again. Smerdyakov feels like Ivan should be congratulating him in his part in killing old Karamazov but Ivan has been avoiding him. It’s as though he’s been unplugged from the host and is dying. When Ivan comes to talk to him, he regains his energy because he is plugged in again and so is much better in the second interview.

There are several levels of responsibility:

• desire that he is dead
• getting out of the way and letting it happen
• set things up so that the murder would happen
• put somebody up to it
• doing the actual killing

Almost finished with Brothers Karamazov, but not quite! So I thought I’d post something I originally posted at Vox. Tony Kushner’s Angels in America is one of my all time favorite made for cable movies and I came across a play Tony Kushner started in 2003 called “Only We Who Guard the Mystery Shall Be Unhappy” which, of course, is a line in The Grand Inquisitor. The first scene of the play is Laura Bush reading to dead Iraqi children who are in their PJs. The story she has chosen to read to them is The Grand Inquisitor.

It gave me goose bumps!! The first scene was printed in The Nation and you can read it here.

[I thought I had seen something about John Cameron Mitchell playing Laura Bush. It was for a presentation of the first scene of Only Those Who Guard the Mystery Will Be Unhappy for a benefit for moveon.org in 2004. Kushner wrote another scene for this event in which Laura Bush fights back and tell hims that Dostoevsky isn't political and is for conservatives. You can read that scene in Salon.]

Spoiler Warning: Brothers Karamazov!!

There is no way I’m going to finish Part IV of the Brothers Karamazov in time to post anything about it today. I just finished reading Ivan’s encounter with the devil which was highly entertaining. I had stumbled upon this YouTube video at the beginning of the book and was unable to appreciate it. But after having read the passage, I have a much better appreciation for it. It’s from a Russian film directed by Ivan Pryrev (who died during the filming) and was directed by Kirill Lavrov who also played both Ivan and Ivan’s devil. Very interesting clip even if you don’t understand Russian but have read the passage in the book.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdKZB2Zn5O8&hl=en&fs=1]