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The Psycho-Spiritual Turn: The Double, “Mr. Prokharchin,” “The Landlady,” and “A Novel in Nine Letters”

Thomas Gaiton Marullo

in Fyodor Dostoevsky-The Gathering Storm (1846-1847): A Life in Letters, Memoirs, and Criticism

This chapter centers on Fyodor Dostoevsky's final break with Vissarion Belinsky and his circle, as well as his increasing struggles to stay afloat, internally and externally. It provides a unifying ... More

This chapter centers on Fyodor Dostoevsky's final break with Vissarion Belinsky and his circle, as well as his increasing struggles to stay afloat, internally and externally. It provides a unifying analysis of the novels The Double, Mr. Prokharchin, The Landlady, and A Novel in Nine Letters, which Dostoevsky wrote in 1847. It also explains how the lead characters in Dostoevsky's novels confused readers with timeworn portrayals of mania and madness, roguery, and romance that related little to contemporary life. The chapter explains The Double, Mr. Prokharchin, The Landlady, and A Novel in Nine Letters as a significant exercise in which Dostoevsky probed minds, hearts, and souls to understand human faults and failings. It talks about Dostoevsky's assertion that his four works did not portray political, social, and economic injustices that wreaked havoc on society, but rather the psychological and spiritual traumas of individuals that eroded humankind.Less

Pride before the Fall: Belinsky and the Aftermath of Poor Folk

Thomas Gaiton Marullo

in Fyodor Dostoevsky-The Gathering Storm (1846-1847): A Life in Letters, Memoirs, and Criticism

This chapter focuses on Fyodor Dostoevsky's increasingly tense ties with Vissarion Belinsky, Nikolai Nekrasov, Ivan Turgenev, Ivan Panaev, and other figures of the Russian literary world. It begins ... More

This chapter focuses on Fyodor Dostoevsky's increasingly tense ties with Vissarion Belinsky, Nikolai Nekrasov, Ivan Turgenev, Ivan Panaev, and other figures of the Russian literary world. It begins with a piece about Dostoevsky's tortuous tie to Belinsky as a stance of love and hate that haunted him throughout his life. It also recounts Dostoevsky's conflicted feelings over Belinsky, particularly during the eighteen or so months of their close relationship. It then discusses how Dostoevsky saw Belinsky as a mentor and guide, even as a parental figure who extended the life lessons of father Michael and mother Maria in his childhood, adolescence, and youth. Finally, the chapter looks at Dostoevsky's disagreement on Belinsky's attempt to bend him to his aesthetic will and to make him a critic of political and social ills.Less

Havens from the Storms: The Vielgorskys, Beketovs, and Maykovs

Thomas Gaiton Marullo

in Fyodor Dostoevsky-The Gathering Storm (1846-1847): A Life in Letters, Memoirs, and Criticism

This chapter deals with the negative reception of Fyodor Dostoevsky from writers and critics in response to the success of Poor Folk and the failures that followed quickly. It discusses the ... More

This chapter deals with the negative reception of Fyodor Dostoevsky from writers and critics in response to the success of Poor Folk and the failures that followed quickly. It discusses the Vielgorskys, Maykovs, and Beketovs as the three families who proved to be Dostoevsky's salvation from personal and professional storms from 1846 to 1847. It also mentions Mikhail Vielgorsky who was a wealthy count, composer, and writer of romances that Dostoevsky visited in early 1846. The chapter recounts how the colorful Maykovs came into Dostoevsky's life in the first two years after the publication of Poor Folk in early 1846. It talks about the Beketovs, who enjoyed personal and professional success and provided solace and support for Dostoevsky.Less

Introduction

Thomas Gaiton Marullo

in Fyodor Dostoevsky-The Gathering Storm (1846-1847): A Life in Letters, Memoirs, and Criticism

This chapter recounts Fyodor Dostoevsky's popularity as a young Russian writer in early 1846 after his publication of Poor Folk. It elaborates how Dostoevsky was hailed as a savior, a prophet, and an ... More

This chapter recounts Fyodor Dostoevsky's popularity as a young Russian writer in early 1846 after his publication of Poor Folk. It elaborates how Dostoevsky was hailed as a savior, a prophet, and an idol whom God had chosen to lead Russian literature from alleged deserts to promised lands during his time. It also mentions Vissarion Belinsky and Nikolai Nekrasov, who had been educated in the school of hard knocks and were particularly taken with Dostoevsky. The chapter describes Belinsky and Nekrasov as romantics, staunch realists, and avid proponents of progressivism in Russian literature and life from 1846 to 1847. It then explains how Dostoevsky was alien or indifferent to sociopolitical discussions despite the cosmopolitan formation of his early years.Less

The Dream of a Ridiculous Writer – Fyodor Dostoevsky

Katy Masuga

in Henry Miller and How He Got That Way

This chapter studies Fyodor Dostoevsky, another of Miller's writing influences, showing him as a way to prevent the paradox of simultaneous living and creative expression in writing. It shows how ... More

This chapter studies Fyodor Dostoevsky, another of Miller's writing influences, showing him as a way to prevent the paradox of simultaneous living and creative expression in writing. It shows how Miller's writing considers the question of how a text is read and also examines the importance of distinguishing between the writer and the persona.Less

Conclusion

Thomas Gaiton Marullo

in Fyodor Dostoevsky-The Gathering Storm (1846-1847): A Life in Letters, Memoirs, and Criticism

This chapter recounts how Fyodor Dostoevsky was decidedly not on the straight and steady path that Pushkin and Gogol, Turgenev, and Tolstoy appeared to travel to glory and fame in 1846 and 1847. It ... More

This chapter recounts how Fyodor Dostoevsky was decidedly not on the straight and steady path that Pushkin and Gogol, Turgenev, and Tolstoy appeared to travel to glory and fame in 1846 and 1847. It elaborates Dostoevsky's feelings of going off the rails in literature and life when he published The Double, Mr. Prokharchin, The Landlady, and A Novel in Nine Letters after he released Poor Folk. It also describes the disturbed and deranged characters, complex and convoluted plots, and winding and windy prose of Dostoevsky's four works that caused former admirers and fans to lose faith in him and look elsewhere for solutions to national problems. The chapter speculates about scenarios of what would have happened if Dostoevsky had handled the success of Poor Folk in a more humble and judicious way.Less

Notes from the borderlands: repressing the returned

in Representing Epilepsy: Myth and Matter

This chapter discusses the borderlands of epilepsy. It reviews the monks, Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and the untimely death of Arthur Thomas Myers. These ideas and ... More

This chapter discusses the borderlands of epilepsy. It reviews the monks, Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and the untimely death of Arthur Thomas Myers. These ideas and disparate events are all part of the circuit of culture that shapes epilepsy narratives well into the twentieth century. This chapter shows the success of Fyodor Mikhailovitch Dostoevsky in negotiating from the borderlands an enunciative position that compelled medical engagement and dialogue that goes some way in addressing the unliveable oppositions confronting Myers. It also suggests the conflict faced by Myers as a physician and an epileptic at the end of the nineteenth century.Less

A Narrow Escape into Faith: Dostoevsky’s Idiot and the Christology of Comedy

John Givens

in The Image of Christ in Russian Literature: Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Bulgakov, Pasternak

This chapter argues that one of Dostoevsky's bleakest faith narratives, The Idiot, deploys comedy as an apophatic device that reveals in the actions of its comic Christ figure, Prince Myshkin, the ... More

This chapter argues that one of Dostoevsky's bleakest faith narratives, The Idiot, deploys comedy as an apophatic device that reveals in the actions of its comic Christ figure, Prince Myshkin, the possibility of faith even in the face of the death and tragedy that close the novel. Dostoevsky's exploration of the “ridiculous man” Myshkin is an exercise in negative Christology par excellence. Comedy becomes in The Idiot the unexpected vehicle for a quite serious exploration of the nature and challenges of belief. The truth, Fyodor Dostoevsky implies, must be asserted indirectly, or even negatively. More specifically, the ostensibly negative aspects that attach to Dostoevsky's comic Christ figure may actually constitute a kind of apophatic discourse that reveals Christ anew to an unbelieving public. In this reading, comedy serves a serious Christology in The Idiot, one that changes how the novel's conclusion must be understood.Less

Christ Outside the Truth: Negative Christology in Demons and Brothers Karamazov

John Givens

in The Image of Christ in Russian Literature: Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Bulgakov, Pasternak

This chapter compares Demons and Brothers Karamazov as apophatic discourses that underscore the difficulty of belief, even among those who profess faith. Both of these novels demonstrate how the ... More

This chapter compares Demons and Brothers Karamazov as apophatic discourses that underscore the difficulty of belief, even among those who profess faith. Both of these novels demonstrate how the apophatic exercise can lead as easily to unbelief as to belief. If doubt is faith's constant companion, then for Fyodor Dostoevsky it is also a kind of dangerous but necessary goad. Indeed, unbelief is so strongly and convincingly articulated in his works precisely because it is also capable of revealing faith both dramatically and compellingly. Readers often learn the most about faith in Dostoevsky's works apophatically, that is, by discovering what it is not. It is within this context that the chapter explores two of the writer's most important Christological novels: Demons and The Brothers Karamazov, the latter of which reveals how the writer's apophatic approach is more pronounced than in any other novel.Less

Russian Existentialism, or Existential Russianism

Val Vinokur

in Situating Existentialism: Key Texts in Context

This chapter examines the tension between Russian existentialism and existential “Russianism” by focusing on key moments from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground and The Brothers Karamazov and ... More

This chapter examines the tension between Russian existentialism and existential “Russianism” by focusing on key moments from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground and The Brothers Karamazov and from Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. In particular, it evokes a “Russian existentialism” that avoids the tendency to dwell exclusively on Russian literary angst and instead attends to the range and complexity of the human “about which the Russian novelists ceaselessly wonder.” It also considers “religious” Russian proto-existentialists and literary commentators such as Nikolai Berdyaev and Lev Shestov and locates Emmanuel Levinas within this broader tradition. Furthermore, it discusses the way Dostoevsky and Tolstoy portrayed the cleaving of consciousness—so important to later existentialist thinkers—and raised questions about the meaning of life by dwelling on the issue of theodicy: how to sustain belief in God given the merciless evil that one encounters in the world.Less

Berdyaev’s Insight

Arthur Versluis

in The New Inquisitions: Heretic-Hunting and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Totalitarianism

This chapter examines the thoughts of essayist Fyodor Dostoevsky and political philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev on the relation between communism and Roman Catholicism. In one of his major works, ... More

This chapter examines the thoughts of essayist Fyodor Dostoevsky and political philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev on the relation between communism and Roman Catholicism. In one of his major works, Dostoevsky have suggested that communism had its origin in some aspects of Roman Catholicism. Berdyaev acknowledged that Dostoevsky foresaw the demonic aspect of the Russian Revolution and the demonic metaphysics of revolution. However, Berdyaev believed that it is not so important whether communism has part of its origin in Catholicism and that what matters is the underlying dynamic of heretic-hunting itself. He asserted that the root of the Inquisition was fanaticism and suggested a parallelism with the emergence and growth of communism.Less

The Glory of God Hidden in Creation: Eastern Views of Nature in Fyodor Dostoevsky and St. Isaac the Syrian

Bruce V. Foltz

in The Noetics of Nature: Environmental Philosophy and the Holy Beauty of the Visible

The same bias that allows Lynn White Jr. to posit Western Christianity as normative for the Christian tradition as such allows Western interpreters of Dostoevsky to regard the affirmation of nature’s ... More

The same bias that allows Lynn White Jr. to posit Western Christianity as normative for the Christian tradition as such allows Western interpreters of Dostoevsky to regard the affirmation of nature’s holiness in his writings, deeply resonant of Russian Orthodoxy, as nevertheless somehow pagan and aberrant. In fact, Dostoevsky’s characterization of nature draws upon central features of Orthodox spirituality as a whole: its emphasis upon divine energies at work in the world; its teachings concerning divine logoi uniquely inherent in each thing; its belief that creation represents the first icon of God, albeit obscured through human fallenness; its view of nature as cosmic liturgy, and redemption as cosmic in scope; and its claim that these truths can be apprehended through the ascetic purification of the heart. These insights are articulated eloquently in the writings of St Isaac of Syria, who in fact exerted a strong influence on Dostoevsky’s own thinking.Less

Introduction

in The Ridiculous Jew: The Exploitation and Transformation of a Stereotype in Gogol, Turgenev, and Dostoevsky

This introductory chapter first sets out the book's purpose, to explore the Jewish stereotype in the works of three prominent Russian writers of the nineteenth century—Nikolai Gogol's Taras Bulba, ... More

This introductory chapter first sets out the book's purpose, to explore the Jewish stereotype in the works of three prominent Russian writers of the nineteenth century—Nikolai Gogol's Taras Bulba, Ivan Turgenev's “The Jew,” and Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from the House of the Dead. The focus is on the ways in which Gogol, Turgenev, and Dostoevsky exploit the stereotype of the ridiculous Jew for different literary and cultural ends. The chapter then discusses representations of the Jew as devil and homo economicus, the good Jew, the inscribable Jew, Jewish assimilation and conversion, and the Jewish body. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.Less

Centering and Decentering in Dostoevsky and Tolstoy

Anne Lounsbery

in Life Is Elsewhere: Symbolic Geography in the Russian Provinces, 1800-1917

This chapter begins with a brief look at Leo Tolstoy's symbolic geography. His is an imaginary landscape that is by no means structured around a provintsiia/stolitsa binary and is thus an exception ... More

This chapter begins with a brief look at Leo Tolstoy's symbolic geography. His is an imaginary landscape that is by no means structured around a provintsiia/stolitsa binary and is thus an exception to the rule that is the subject of this book. The overview of Tolstoy serves as background to a closer analysis of Fyodor Dostoevsky's geography, an analysis focused on Demons—a novel in which both the provintsiia/stolitsa binary and the trope of Russia's empty provinces take on great determinative power. If Dostoevsky at times recapitulates familiar images of the provinces, in Demons he also makes ideological use of them in ways that are strikingly original. He dwells on the essentialized difference between center and periphery in order to underscore how provincial isolation fosters a dangerous kind of intellectual vulnerability.Less

Moral Injury and Moral Repair in Crime and Punishment

Joshua Pederson

in Sin Sick: Moral Injury in War and Literature

This chapter provides an extended reading of Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, which remains perhaps the most sustained, focused meditation on the psychological aftereffects of a criminal act ... More

This chapter provides an extended reading of Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, which remains perhaps the most sustained, focused meditation on the psychological aftereffects of a criminal act in all of world literature. It both explores Raskolnikov's psychology through the moral injury lens and argues that in the figure of Sonya, Dostoevsky gives us a character who models some of the best practices contemporary researchers suggest for the treatment of moral injury. It shows that for Raskolnikov and Dostoevsky, crime is accompanied by a “disease” that looks quite similar to moral injury. Indeed, the chapter asserts that Dostoevsky is a canny observer of abnormal psychology and that Crime and Punishment offers an accurate prefiguration of the sketches of moral injury introduced in Chapter 1. But Dostoevsky's insights do not end there, as the chapter shows.Less

Fear and Trembling and the Paradox of Christian Existentialism

George Pattison

in Situating Existentialism: Key Texts in Context

This chapter examines the paradox of Christian existentialism by tracing how a number of thinkers take on the troubling theme of “the exception,” which is entailed by Søren Kierkegaard’s argument in ... More

This chapter examines the paradox of Christian existentialism by tracing how a number of thinkers take on the troubling theme of “the exception,” which is entailed by Søren Kierkegaard’s argument in Fear and Trembling concerning the “teleological suspension of the ethical.” More specifically, it considers how Kierkegaard treated the problem of “the exception” to systems of universal ethics in his discussion of Abraham’s response to God’s call to sacrifice his son Isaac as a sign of faith. It also discusses the dilemmas raised by Kierkegaard that were later taken up by Fyodor Dostoevsky and Friedrich Nietzsche. Finally, it explores Christian existential theology in the work of Paul Tillich and Nicholas Berdyaev to show how Christian theorists addressed the possibility of faith in a world where God is invisible or absent.Less

Making Suffering Visible

Laura Otis

in Banned Emotions: How Metaphors Can Shape What People Feel

Attempts to manifest one’s suffering visually can turn aggressive if the people who have supposedly caused one’s pain refuse to see the results. Metaphors that suggest how pain looks can convey the ... More

Attempts to manifest one’s suffering visually can turn aggressive if the people who have supposedly caused one’s pain refuse to see the results. Metaphors that suggest how pain looks can convey the cutting, wounding aspects of emotional anguish. Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground associates spite and vengefulness with darkness and dirt and shows how painful encounters can be when a hidden creature reveals himself to others. Franz Kafka’s representation of Gregor Samsa as a monstrous vermin in The Metamorphosis forces Gregor’s family to see the emotions they have aroused by exploiting him. Michael Haneke’s 2005 film Caché depicts a marginalized family determined to make a privileged man see how he has benefited from their deprivation. With a violent literal and metaphoric “cut,” the poor man ensures that the rich one will never stop witnessing the pain he has caused. Manifested visually, emotional pain can show itself through violent transformations of bodies.Less

The Century of Unbelief: Christ in Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature

John Givens

in The Image of Christ in Russian Literature: Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Bulgakov, Pasternak

This chapter contrasts the Jesus of history with the Christ of faith. It charts the growing secularism of Russian culture and society in the nineteenth century, the so-called “century of unbelief.” ... More

This chapter contrasts the Jesus of history with the Christ of faith. It charts the growing secularism of Russian culture and society in the nineteenth century, the so-called “century of unbelief.” The chapter also tracks the rise of secularism in the lives and works of the major writers of the day, in the increasing prominence and influence of the works of the historical school of biblical criticism, and in the advent of a radical materialism. In the face of this secularism, the chapter argues that writers like Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy adopted a quasi-apophatic approach to the question of belief as a discursive strategy. This allowed them to advocate for their faith positions along a via negativa, a method in tune with what Dostoevsky called “our negative age.”Less