One of the most infuriating things about this novel was seeing Katerina Ivanovna try to remain with Mitya despite the latter's constant disrespect to her. The mere fact that he chose Grushenka over her should have given Katerina enough reason to go immediately to the public procurator with Mitya's "mathematically" incriminating letter. But instead she waited until Ivan's reputation was in jeopardy to finally cut ties with "that monster and murderer" (881).
This woman's silly mind games puts her at number 2 on my list of exasperating and obnoxious characters (Mrs. Khokhlakova, of course, occupies the number 1 spot). But I cannot understand just what she was thinking! Obviously, her affections proved more loyal to Ivan, or else she would not have condemned Mitya to save him. But why bother protecting Mitya in the first place? She claims that she "wanted to save him, because he hated me so much and despised me so much" (880). Is Katerina a masochist who enjoys be tormented, or does she feel that being a victim gives her some form of moral superiority, the way Christ was spit on by the crowd? Perhaps she wanted Mitya to feel that he owed her one.
Remember her earlier monologue in the "Crack-up in the Drawing Room" chapter. It was here that Katerina announced her plan to "shadow him relentlessly" until he became disillusioned with Grushenka and crawled back to her. "I shall be his god, to whom he will say his prayers....And may he perceive all his life that I shall be faithful to him and to the promise I gave him, even though he was unfaithful and false to me." (248) In other words, it was Katya's intention to kill Mitya with kindness.
When she took his money and bowed to him, Katerina was humiliated by Dmitry's charity. Like Snape who was saved from werewolf/Lupin by his archenemy James, she hated being in his debt. And after Grushenka reminded her of her debt to Mitya, she resolved to place Mitya in an equally inferior position by turning the other cheek and giving him her cloak in addition to her tunic. Some think that Christ's admonition against revenge is an invitation to be weak, but when it is directed towards a person who truly feels regret, it can be a very painful revenge. Nothing hurts a remorseful criminal worse than being forgiven by someone who has every right to hate him. In Katerina's mind, Mitya would have to live his life out knowing that he owed his salvation to her silence, and that would be enough for her - to have him spend everyday silently praising the goddess who delivered him from his just death.
Movie: When reading the book, I did not envision it snowing; but then again it is Russia.I remember Isham telling us that when he was translating a novel, Dostoevsky had to change the amount of snow being described, because what would seem like much snow in the author's native country would seem like a slight frost to a Russian.
And about the miniseries, did you notice that as Dmitry is being led to the prison, Katerina is standing with Ivan and Grushenka with Alyosha? What does this symbolize? Grushenka and Alyosha both believe in Mitya's innocence, but then again so does Ivan. Do you think that Ivan's close encounter with Mitya is meant to be taken as a subtle apology for having uttered the philosophical theory which (according to Smerdyakov) placed his brother in the situation he is in?
Friday, April 27, 2012
Friday, April 20, 2012
Neurochemistry in Dostoevsky's Writings
During Dostoevsky's time, Russia was undergoing a subtle-kind of enlightenment. Still very much a medieval country, Russia's government was very autocratic and valued religious tradition over modern scientific thought. Yet there was an unofficial class of society, the intelligentsia, who studied the progressive theories and political philosophies of Europe, and tried to revolutionize their country through their public writings. One of the issues which the intelligentsia - who are represented by Rakitan in the book - seek to resolve is the issue of whether human beings can truly be held responsible for their actions, or if their actions are simply the result of external forces which influenced their development.
In Chapter 4, Rakitan attempts to enlist Mitya's help in using the publicity of the latter's trial to advance the cause of nature over nurture. "He wants to write something with a progressive tendency," says Mitya, "that says something like: 'He couldn't help committing murder, he'd fallen prey to his environment." (752) But Rakitan's presence raises the debate to a level much more fundamental than nature vs. nurture: it is a question of whether men are influenced by spiritual forces or by a more natural force.
Mitya associates Rakitan's brand of socialism with chemistry by referring to its adherents as "Bernards", a reference to Claude Bernard, a chemist who appears to have regarded humans as more as animalistic beasts than as spiritual beings. (752, 1008n3) Mitya hints to Alyosha that chemistry, with its new theories regarding the influence of neurotransmitters over human action, threatens religion's monopoly on moral teaching. "Your Reverence, you must move over a little, chemistry is coming!" (753) Mitya seems to have been somewhat persuaded by Rakitan's argument when he comments that there are devils with tails "in the nerves inside my head". (753) But he cannot admit that God and spirituality are completely dispensable in the grand scheme of human survival. When he looks forward to spending his life in penal servitude, Mitya professes that he will need the belief in God to sustain him, to help him believe that his life is not void of meaning. (756-57) Dostoevsky himself would understand the necessity of having a spiritual belief system in order to persevere, seeing as he himself was faced with the type of banal existence which Mitya contemplates.
This reminds me of Ivan's comment that if God did not exist, man would be justified in creating Him. It is true that it does nothing in the way of proving God's existence to say that He is comes in handy when we are in need of a reason to transcend our boring, earthly existence. But it supports the notion that the invention of God was inevitable in the history of the human race, that we are not equipped by nature to keep from going crazy in a nihilistic world - and therefore have no choice but to create a mythology which will serve as a type of analgesic in times of suffering.
In Chapter 4, Rakitan attempts to enlist Mitya's help in using the publicity of the latter's trial to advance the cause of nature over nurture. "He wants to write something with a progressive tendency," says Mitya, "that says something like: 'He couldn't help committing murder, he'd fallen prey to his environment." (752) But Rakitan's presence raises the debate to a level much more fundamental than nature vs. nurture: it is a question of whether men are influenced by spiritual forces or by a more natural force.
Mitya associates Rakitan's brand of socialism with chemistry by referring to its adherents as "Bernards", a reference to Claude Bernard, a chemist who appears to have regarded humans as more as animalistic beasts than as spiritual beings. (752, 1008n3) Mitya hints to Alyosha that chemistry, with its new theories regarding the influence of neurotransmitters over human action, threatens religion's monopoly on moral teaching. "Your Reverence, you must move over a little, chemistry is coming!" (753) Mitya seems to have been somewhat persuaded by Rakitan's argument when he comments that there are devils with tails "in the nerves inside my head". (753) But he cannot admit that God and spirituality are completely dispensable in the grand scheme of human survival. When he looks forward to spending his life in penal servitude, Mitya professes that he will need the belief in God to sustain him, to help him believe that his life is not void of meaning. (756-57) Dostoevsky himself would understand the necessity of having a spiritual belief system in order to persevere, seeing as he himself was faced with the type of banal existence which Mitya contemplates.
This reminds me of Ivan's comment that if God did not exist, man would be justified in creating Him. It is true that it does nothing in the way of proving God's existence to say that He is comes in handy when we are in need of a reason to transcend our boring, earthly existence. But it supports the notion that the invention of God was inevitable in the history of the human race, that we are not equipped by nature to keep from going crazy in a nihilistic world - and therefore have no choice but to create a mythology which will serve as a type of analgesic in times of suffering.
Friday, April 13, 2012
Did Kolya Actually Read Anything?
In Book X, we are introduced to precocious little Kolya Krasotkin, who seems to dazzle everyone with his encyclopedic knowledge and professorial vocabulary. Kolya is indeed well-spoken and obviously possesses above average intelligence. But I wonder just how well-read the boy actually is? We read him think to himself "And what if he discovers that that issue of The Bell ... is the only thing in it I have read?" (710) This statement implies that out of every volume or text passed down to him by his father, Kolya has only read this single literary journal. This seems at odds with what the narrator initially led us to believe about him.
Let us examine the first mentioning of Kolya's reading habits on page 660: "His father had left behind him a book-cupboard in which there was a number of books; Kolya was fond of reading and had already read some of them on his own." We learn further on page 663 that Kolya "had read the section dealing with the founders of Troy in Smaragdov's History". So Kolya has indeed read from texts in the cupboard other than The Bell - our narrator has established that beyond doubt. But I still wonder - has Kolya ever actually finished a book?
The boy is embarrassed to confess to Alyosha that he only read a reference to Eugene Onegin after he had implied that he had read the entire novel. It seems to me that Kolya's thought about only reading The Bell, combined with his fear at appearing less well-read than he appears, is indicative of the fact that he has never read an entire book cover-to-cover. He is one of those sycophants and pretenders who skims books which intellectuals would read, borrows a few phrases to impress people, and polishes his speech to make everyone believe that he is a prodigy. Professor Isham mentioned in class that he remembered speaking more grown up in his adolescent years as a means of feeling more mature. I myself remembering trying to sound like a braniac at the dinner table, but all I was really doing was making a fool out of myself. In the end, that is what Kolya is doing to himself, and when the time comes when his pretended knowledge is called upon, he will be left without a leg to stand on.
Let us examine the first mentioning of Kolya's reading habits on page 660: "His father had left behind him a book-cupboard in which there was a number of books; Kolya was fond of reading and had already read some of them on his own." We learn further on page 663 that Kolya "had read the section dealing with the founders of Troy in Smaragdov's History". So Kolya has indeed read from texts in the cupboard other than The Bell - our narrator has established that beyond doubt. But I still wonder - has Kolya ever actually finished a book?
The boy is embarrassed to confess to Alyosha that he only read a reference to Eugene Onegin after he had implied that he had read the entire novel. It seems to me that Kolya's thought about only reading The Bell, combined with his fear at appearing less well-read than he appears, is indicative of the fact that he has never read an entire book cover-to-cover. He is one of those sycophants and pretenders who skims books which intellectuals would read, borrows a few phrases to impress people, and polishes his speech to make everyone believe that he is a prodigy. Professor Isham mentioned in class that he remembered speaking more grown up in his adolescent years as a means of feeling more mature. I myself remembering trying to sound like a braniac at the dinner table, but all I was really doing was making a fool out of myself. In the end, that is what Kolya is doing to himself, and when the time comes when his pretended knowledge is called upon, he will be left without a leg to stand on.
Thursday, April 5, 2012
The Public Procurator
Friends, I apologize for not posting a blog last week, it was inexcusable. The good news is that I am now reading "Crime and Punishment" and am half-way through the book. I also happened to notice a couple of similarities between the murder by Raskolnikov of a pawnbroker and the murder mystery in which Dmitry Fyodorovich now finds himself. For starters, Dmitry was seriously contemplating suicide shortly before being found by the police; in "C&P" a painter who is wrongly accused of the pawnbroker's murder is found preparing to hang himself before being apprehended by the police. I wonder if this is Dostoevsky's way of hinting to his fans that Dmitry is not the killer?
Returning to my theory that Smerdyakov may be the killer, I would like to point out that Dr. Varvinsky mentioned that Smerdyakov's fit is lasting much longer than most epileptic episodes (587). This increases my suspicion that he is faking to avoid being accused of the murder. Also, in "C&P" Raskalnikov suffered a long series of fainting spells while trying to process the reality that he had actually murdered another human being.I believe that Smerdyakov's "fit" may be a genuine physical response to his having killed Fyodor and that the reason it appears so long to the Doctor is that his previous one was a fake; the doctor of course puts the chronology of the fake fit and that of the real one together!
Now, I turn your attention to the public procurator Ippolit Kirillovich. It is interesting that Dostoevsky puts his age at 35 - the very same age as Porfiry, the magistrate who engages Raskalnikov in a game of wits! This may be a deliberate comparison, or else Dostoevsky simply likes his sleuths to be middle-aged. His mind, we are told, is "very solid," and he possesses "a special knowledge of the human soul, a special gift for the analysis of the criminal and of his crime." (581) It is interesting that Dostoevsky describes this special analytical power as "artistic" because John Douglas, the former head of the FBI's profiling unit - whose job is remarkably similar to Kirillovich's - in his book "Mindhunter", more than once compared forensic profiling to the ability of an art appreciator to step into the mind of a painter and feel empathy with how he felt applying his brush to canvas. This is a clear example of hoe Dostoevsky was both a competent psychoanalyst and far ahead of his time in the field of studying the human mind.
Returning to my theory that Smerdyakov may be the killer, I would like to point out that Dr. Varvinsky mentioned that Smerdyakov's fit is lasting much longer than most epileptic episodes (587). This increases my suspicion that he is faking to avoid being accused of the murder. Also, in "C&P" Raskalnikov suffered a long series of fainting spells while trying to process the reality that he had actually murdered another human being.I believe that Smerdyakov's "fit" may be a genuine physical response to his having killed Fyodor and that the reason it appears so long to the Doctor is that his previous one was a fake; the doctor of course puts the chronology of the fake fit and that of the real one together!
Now, I turn your attention to the public procurator Ippolit Kirillovich. It is interesting that Dostoevsky puts his age at 35 - the very same age as Porfiry, the magistrate who engages Raskalnikov in a game of wits! This may be a deliberate comparison, or else Dostoevsky simply likes his sleuths to be middle-aged. His mind, we are told, is "very solid," and he possesses "a special knowledge of the human soul, a special gift for the analysis of the criminal and of his crime." (581) It is interesting that Dostoevsky describes this special analytical power as "artistic" because John Douglas, the former head of the FBI's profiling unit - whose job is remarkably similar to Kirillovich's - in his book "Mindhunter", more than once compared forensic profiling to the ability of an art appreciator to step into the mind of a painter and feel empathy with how he felt applying his brush to canvas. This is a clear example of hoe Dostoevsky was both a competent psychoanalyst and far ahead of his time in the field of studying the human mind.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)