Radical Relativity
Uni-original perspectives on Dostoevsky's Besy
By Janet Bruesselbach
Belated term paper for Great Books
Taught By Jim Hosney, Crossroads School
"This is not a conclusion/not a revolution/just a
little confusion" - Tori Amos, "Ode to the Banana King"
Because
of certain inherent limits, and the individual nonverbal nature of some ideas,
many voices quoted within the following text are allowed to speak more for
themselves, within categories fragmented beyond phrases into words. It is the unendable end of extreme postmodernism. Don't expect sense, just enjoy the ride and hope you leap the gaps.
Unfortunately, it is only recently that I discovered I wrote this entire monstrosity around the wrong scientific metaphor. Maxwell's demons fit the subject much better and also give more meaning to the discussion of entropy in section 4. I won't be writing anything about this connection, but take the thematic error as yet another instance of the imperfection of this nevertheless thought-rich collection of purposeless work. -JB, 1/13/04
1.
Because of its
allegorical tendencies and nebulous philosophy, it can be difficult to say what
Besy is about. Ultimately the focus
comes to rest on a particular group of men for their responsibility for an act
of violence, hinted at throughout the novel. Dsotoevsky more generally attempts
to encompass within one work the whole idea of a microrevolution, itself
generated by the idea of a microrevolution in the kind of Russian-doll infinity
with which Dostoevsky is so apt. The fivesome's very group nature and number,
as well as each individual, are archetypes, although this nature contributes to
their weakness as characters and their marginality to the story. Near the end
they begin to be referred to a s the "fivesome", thus uniting them
with a pattern that this paper also wishes to follow: the law of fives. Bearing
a great deal of similarity to the kind of political thought Dostoevsky mocks (although
he also mocks the response and exploitation of it) the law of fives states that
everything is connected to everything else through the number five. The law
reveals the arbitrary application of meaning and the appeal to human thought of
extremes, particularly those at either end of the entropic arrow[2]. Somehow, the
fivesome pattern can be recognized throughout literature, but the archetypality
of Dostoevsky's is not to be presumed. When Liputin professes to believe other
than Pyotr's lies, he divorces such belief from action, and the illusion of
connections becomes arbitrary:"I even think that instead of many hundreds
of fivesomes there is only our one in all Russia, and there isn't any
network...no, sir, I'm not running. we have every right to leave off and form a
new society."(555)[3]
A particular context
that reoccurs in the beliefs and discussions throughout the book is that of
Everything: explaining it, understanding it, fixing it. Everything, being an
entirely mental concept, is used in contrast to the amount which the thinker
may or may not be actually doing. A political thinker who wants to encompass
Everything inevitably assumes, or demands, a worldwide conspiracy. Demons is notable for its use of the Radical as a type,
although the narrator only hints at this division until the chapter "Our
People", which distinctly separates the individuals who feel as if
everyone else at a particular gathering is in a dangerous position of power by
being involved in a worldwide socialist organization. In their minds, many of
them are, but their sole link to such a structure, Pyotr Stepanovich, is
undependable - the only power he holds is the vague reputation of power. This
is a particularly biting commentary on the nature of politics.
The fine line between
chaos and order, the inherent discord of human thought, is consisten which what
Joyce Carol Oates observes to be Dostoevsky's "fascination with vast,
complex structures"[4]
Such an organic shape (reembling neuron links and inexplicable variations in
the universe's shape) is crucial to the ideal international terrorist
organization, such as that the devil Shigalyov "too theoretically--
developed a picture of Russia covered with an infinite network of
knots...active groups...spreading its side-branchings to infinity..."[5]Indeed, one of
the symptoms of Besy's archetypal
town's possession by ideology is a desire for an extreme of discord, or an
inversion of order: "disorderliness of mind became fashionable"[6] Therein lies
the demonic principles of inversion and negation, discussed below.As it turns out, the narrator's writing the story is
proof of the failure of transition between theory and practice.
Dostoevsky clearly
approaches both radicals and reactionaries with no little irony, satirizing the
treatment governments give to political groups as "vast anti-natural,
anti-state society of some thirteen members"[8], a
public-voice mimickry bitterly inspired by his own experiences. Of course,
everyone knows the Illuminati have 13 board members. Speaking earnestly, the
validity of this statement depends partially on the assumption that states are
natural; without its political polarity it becomes nonsensical bullying. The
prideful insistence on one's own importance is a driving force of ideological
possession.
Entropy appears to be
an increase in organization, although the apocalyptic beliefs of
revolutionaries deny its inevitability. The bureaucratic stage of illuminated
history represents this tendency toward complication through division, and is
most apparent in the struggles of modernists with Dostoevsky's writing. Chaos
theory may also serve as a belated paradigm for the effect of Besy: complexity is equivalent in appearance to
disorganization. Thus it is impossible to tell in first few chapters what is
and isn't relevant. In fact, the second law of thermodynamics in particular is
a great aid in pretending to explain the devastating nature of ideas on those
who should be controlling them. Mayor Lembke protests the burning of his with
"it couldn't have caught fire from a word"(547) Humans are complex
entropy machines which delogify causes and effects -- thus sound energy (a
word, quite biblically) becomes a fire. Lembke later ridiculously ( an
ironically) abstracts a physical event, possessed by extreme reactionarism:
"the fire is in people's minds, not on the rooftops."[9] Thus it is a
bad idea to underestimate what Stepan Trofomovich calls the "non-material
power of beauty"[10]
- or to overestimate it, or value it more than however is natural. The generational
comparison/relationship between Stepan and Pyotr highlights the difference
between believing in absolute non-material power and absolute material power;
Dostoevsky demonizes one of these and satirizes the other, but argues toward
the former as a human context. Here's another theme, portentious of the age of
bureaucracy: the claim about the "divided nature of people in our
time"[11]
which can be interpreted as alienation, the attempted separation between person
and thought, person and the material world, person and god, and political
groups into "us" and "them", as revealed by the ironic
title of one chapter, "Our People", which reveals the possessive
assumptions of an association of socialists. Idealism as well is a division,
although normative statements like Livermore's "higher metaphysical
dialogue is not meant to be regarded in abstraction from the overall
context"[12]
don't help much, even if we accept contemporary division as a problem, or
pridefully possess "our time". Nevertheless, Livermore's ideal is a
good one.
A "divided
nature" is, like many recognizable patterns in Besy, an idea without an ideal. Jones insists that this is
impossible, but certainly some perspectives allow it. The higher metaphysical
dialogue in Besy particularly
discusses the issue;. The liberal paradigm Stepan claims that a "liberal
without any aim" is "higher"[13], in his
critical and hypocritical way, and it is this kind of justification through
thought from which the striving, anarchist tropes of the next generation are
derived, as Dostoevsky might or might not argue. Such a liberal might aim,
within the linear context of his lifetime, towards something indefinite for the
purpose of not reaching it; such nonsensicality is apparently infectious.
A metaphor, now used in
a different context in colloquial speech and here based on the highway journey
of exemplary idealist Stepan Trofomovich, indicates that teleology is more
faith-based than literal: "a high road is something very, very long, which
one sees no end to - like human life, like the human dream. There is an idea in
the high road..."Thus the tendency examined in Demons is the affinity for literalism and self-fulfilling
prophecy. The narrator mocks his metaphor by extending it to the inverse:
"Traveling by post is the end of any idea Vive le grande route..."[14]
Time is particularly
important to political radicalism, typically condensable into statements like
"the future is now." Nevertheless, the uncertainty, and
unattainability, of the present perfect leads to a consistent anticipation,
which makes Dostoevsky's description of Shigalyov, the practical political
prophet (whose plans include the division of people into knowledgable and
ignorant, with much culling through death to create such a firm border) all the
more refreshingly ironic: "he looked as if he were expecting the destruction
of the world, and not just sometime, according to prophecies which might not be
fulfilled, but quite definitely, round about morning, the day after tomorrow,
at ten-twenty-five sharp."[15]
It is difficult to say whether specific hopes and anticipations increase or
decrease the chances of something happening, although time specificity and
mobthink seems to have created such a situation at the climactic Fete scene:
"If everyone was expecting [a scandal], how could it not take place?"[16]
Inevitability of plot due to the narrator's temporally locative statements
contributes to an oppressive mood. It is the inevitability of Kirillov's
suicide that allows him to donate his responsibility - or is it the
interpersonal relationship, the demand from outside, that causes Kirillov's
anticipation of death to be accurate? Like Stepan Trofomovich in his allegory,
Nikolai Stavrogin speculates to Shatov the meaningless tautology that
"nations are moved by the unquenchable desire to get to the end, while at
the same time denying the end."[17]
Nations are a failed ideal of "divided people". Apocalypse is a
personification of time (see below). Many critics have noted the theme of
apocalypse in Demons, which would
continue in Dostoevsky's other works, but is particularly tied to political
teleology.
Russia's perceived
conflict between western and eastern values and cultures is exemplified by the
temporal perspectives revealed through the statements of each. Dickens's
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" reflects a
western historical tendency to perceive the present as an extreme. "May
you live in interesting times" is a Chinese curse - uneventful harmony is
favored over apocalyptic assumptions. When Kirillov claims to experience a
release from time, it is not only connected to his potential epilepsy but to
the possession by Western extremity of the present. All change is measured by
time, but change itself is as much an "idea" as Kirillov claims time
is, thanks to the human nature of discord; "What our troubled time
consisted of, and from what to what our transition was -- I do not know, and no
one, I think, knows..."[18]
claims the narrator, who, although caught up in context as usual, admits his
own inability to unite.
Pyotr Stepanovich's
tendency toward absurdly radical statements also allows for intriguing thoughts
against which moderation can be compared (and seen as dull). For instance, in
response to Shigalyov's particularly parodical totalitarian ideal, the nihilist
leader proclaims "He is perhaps least distant of all from realism, and his
earthly paradise is almost the real one...if indeed it ever existed."
Apocalyptic hope is here based on precedent, historical pattern: either the
past or future as ideal, but static and possibly instantaneous like Kirillov's
moments or a singularity, and the present as some sort of extreme, or great
harbinger of crisis - itself, possibly, only mental and instantaneous. The
reader of Demons is often drawn to find tendencies toward prediction of
Russia's political extremism in the following century. organization rules over
existence and triumphant, miraculous technology over conscience; where an
abstract concept of man determines the concrete living man..."(67)
(concrete living man is just a consciousness, others are ideas.)
Idealism involves the
probably evolutionarily generated desire humans have to refuse present
satisfaction, or homogeny. Thus it is particularly hard for an idea to really
lack an ideal, ineffective as it may be; Malcom's discord"implies a
dynamic principle...often the Idea,or guiding principle, is closely associated
with 'the ideal.'"[19]
The literary critic attempts to approximate the unitary fragment or guiding
principle, a character (merely a personified idea, regardless of realist
approach) or idea (closely connected in Besy) within a chaotic network, and divide it from its
context; a fruitless search, but preferable to the violent cycle induced by any
antithetical (negational yet mimicking) principle. With that guiding principle
comes the antithetical concept of error, which we criticize; yet that guiding
principle's extreme is itself criticized:"concrete, tangible, and
uniquivocal value, present-day man, is sacrificed to an abstract and illusory
value, that is, the promise of absolute justice in the
future...Verkhovensky...the embodiment of such mistakes."[20] Whether
Dostoevsky intended this or not becomes important to us, regardless of how
impossible, how ironically ambivalent, and how ideologically irrelevant such an
opinion is.
The basis of radical
nihilism, or the parent, is the liberal mindset represented by Stepan
Trofomovich Verkhovensky, a close friend of the narrator; the interiorizing
aesthetes he apersonifies who "without actually doing anything are
nevertheless able to feel themselves the prophets and architects of a new
order."[21]
The reassurance that inactive social theorizing (future-contemporization)
provides towards one's own present importance is something Kirillov attributes
to all humanity, and his explanation for the attraction of Christianity.
"one on a cross
believed so much [he anticipated paradise]... they both died, and did not find
either paradise or resurrection. What he said would not prove true. Listen:
this man was the highest on all the earth, he constituted what it was to live
for. Without this man the whole planet with everything on it is-- madness
only."[22]
"Ambition can scarcely be
taken for achievement"[23]
the same way characters can scarcely be taken for real people, but it is this
misinterpretation of the idea as preeminent that also causes the reactionary
fear of new, revolutionary, and nihilist ideas. Shatov, who serves as somewhat
of a parody of Dostoevsky's own political position, thus develops a kind of
anti-Reason. "society must always find an explanation for everything"[24] he states
and, as usual, though he be possessed and obsessed by reactionary thoughts and
his own contextual traps, he and every other character is never absolutely
wrong. Criticism aims at correction, without desiring it. Concerning the trap
of abstraction, Jones seems to ercognize a pattern:"ideal of
harmony...distorted by man...Stavrogin speaks of theis great ideal as a great
illusion. But this by no means implies that it should be supressed or that it
can be. The idea that some great illusions may be more essential to man than
trivial truths is often repeated in Dostoevsky."[25]
If a person reads Besy didactically, the principle of "people before
principles" may organize it. Consider, for instance, the narrator's
inevitable judgement that there are better illusions to life than the
acknowledgement of a universal will to survive ( will which, we note, Kirillov
attempts to counter):"[Pyotr] had only held up crude fear and the threat
to their own skins, which was simply impolite. Of course, there is the struggle
for survival in everything, and there is no other principle, everybody knows
that, but still..."(551)
More interesting, and
confusing in that distinctive Dostoevsky way, is the fear characters have of
their own beliefs - coupled with the belief that one's context, one
organization by an idea, is beyond one's recognition; yet only such beliefs,
ideas one "feels" instead of "thinks", are truly worthy of
action. "If Stavrogin believes, he does not believe that he believes. And
if he does not believe, he does not believe that he does not believe."[26] The
reasoning as to why certain thoughts become actions is perhaps beyond our
perspective as well, or, as the narrator and Shatov discuss,"'strange that
with us such things not only enter our heads, but even get carried out,' I
observed./'paper people' Shatov repeated"[27] Shatov's
answer may be acircumspect, but he seems to recognize the dependence of these
fictional characters on intellectuality. More importantly, Shatov's statements
self-refer to his own context and that of the reader, who, hopefully, will be
reminded not to be too hasty in deriving the meaning of life from Dostoevsky.
Shatov sstill slightly misplaces his metaphors, deriving his only feeling of
unity from individual identity as he acknowledges, for better or worse, his
context - on several levels: "I am a wretched, boring book"[28] He is,
rather, one voice in it, a voice which aids the reader in expanding our understanding
of context. One cannot criticize without recognition, and one must have a
quality to recognize it. Similarly, philosophers such as Marx, with whom Besy's demonized materialism[29] can be
associatated, can demonstrate that the developments a philosopher makes are
based on zer historical context, a tautological uselessness similar to the
anthropic principle of cosmology.
More self
referentiality is generated every time a revolutionary, following Shatov's
"paper people" observation, speaks like writing (nearly self-aware as
writing), as Pyotr Stepanovich oftern does: "and, in parentheses..."[30]. Or, in the
situation in which he claims "I don't know how to speak"[31] you stop
wanting to read, Pyotr gets so pedantic in describing his cunning plan to bore
you. This syntactical representation of character is part of what Bahktin
compared to "polyphony": words are ideas, which mimic the mind that
chooses them, which has a quality. Only through the repetition of this word
does it develop an idea; thus the more radical a character's ideas are conveyed
as, the more he tends to repeat words and phrases. Says Kirillov: "'my
feeling is that I cannot be like any other. Any other thinks, and then at once
thinks something else. I cannot think something else, I think one thing all my
life.'"[32]
It is this kind of striving for extremity that characterizes the voices of
radical revolution.
2.
Another typical
critical statement by Jones, who is particularly obsessed with the strife of
people's dissatisfaction and idealism, both insists on a problem and proposes
an unnecessary completion via Kirillov: "Perhaps the most interesting,
though heretical, solution to this prediscament is to be found in Kirillov,
who, for all his eccentricity and outlandishness, for all the incoherence of
his arguments, nevertheless offers a radical solution to the basic existential
problems of the novel which is not altogether absurd...seems to mean that if
man were freed from pain and fear he would perceive and understand that all is
good."[33]
It is dealing with absurdity, or what Jones later, critically, posits "the
basic problem of how man can adjust to a reality which he does not understand
at which at every step seems to deny that ideal"[34] that also
draws Albert Camus toward an examination of Kirillov. His babblings anticipate
existentialism as much as Neitzche, historically adding to his association with
timelessness, both historical and clinical. ."[42] In a prophetically pomo way, Kirillov
manages to realize for Stavrogin the small value of originality, and its
contextual nature: "many thoughts are there all the time, and suddenly
become new."[1]
Camus accepts that text, and writing, manipulates time; the variability of time
connects Kirillov strongly to relativity, discussed more below. The supremacy
of subjectivity and its extreme of solipsism confirm Camus's observation that
possession by an idea is relatively more valuable to an inevitably alone
consciousness than humanization, and ideological suicide superior to one
without reason - an action which may not exist except beyond the event horizon
of madness. Kirillov, of course, is still attached to human pathos and natural
value judgements, although he does so with a kind of gleeful originality. We
get a sense, therefore, of his having somehow incomprehensibly transcended
Stavrogin's regret that they discuss "old philosophical places, the same
since the beginning of the ages"[35]
The draw of Kirillov's statements derive more from their familiarity than from
their originality; demonstrating that his insistence on the solution of his own
suicide need not be connected to ideas at all, and the insistence he has toward
it is a symptom of his acknowleged extremism.
Transvaluation does not
have to be felt to be true, although it is easier to think it than to do it.
Kirillov seems to have accomplished it by being absolutely radical - and this
is meant in the mathematically metaphorical sense. A radical is the positive
option between the two possibilities every number has for a square root. In
insisting that "everything is good", Kirillov is radicalizing the
world. No woder, then , that his language is fractured; a fractal-like squaring
of a radical results in the same value as the squaring of its inverse. We
cannot, however, pin the value of language in any such universal rule.
Dualisms drive
philosophical arguments, but "in the actual experienc eof Dostoevsky's
characters, phenomena are not always easily assignable to these
principles."[36]
What actual experience, when their very words refer to their textual nature?
When Stavrogin visits
Lebyadkin, the latter comments on the former's ability to condense ideas into
sentences, which can possess an individual. Kirillov's inability to construct a
complex sentence indicates his isolation from the communicative aspects of
language and a radical splintering of the materialist's dependency on the
self-supporting slogan. , instead working with fragments of the relationship
implied by a sentence.
Contradiction, much
like irony, depends on the relativity of truth and the nonsensical capacities
of language, while also offering a sense of confusion that battles our reason's
tendency to dualize, and negate.
Jones notes the frequent and thematic "inner contradictions and
ambivalence"[40]
of Dostoevsky. For instance
there's the classic, with a particular temporal twist, of "perhaps I'm
lying now; certainly I'm also lying now."[41] Kirillov seems from some perspectives
to embody a contradictory combination of order and chaos:"you want to
build our bridge, and...declare yourself for the principle of universal
destruction." "'What? What did you say...ah, the devil!'" [2]
replies Kirillov, failing to connect th cause-effect idea of that sentence and
echoing Pyotr. Yet this can be
quite explained away if we acknowledge bureaucratic entropy or, for that
matter, the inherent disunity of word and thought, especially concerning
structural engineers.
Kirillov is
described as isolated and socially inept, and sometimes insane. Social ineptitude is a personality
feature often overlooked by socialists and writers, and is sometimes taken as a
Problem by psychologists and critics, as part of a general tendency toward
absolute unacceptance. Actually,
Kirillov himself is accused of absolute unacceptance, as evidenced by his
suicide: the "idea which Kirillov could not bear was that of utter
meaninglessness"[37]. Yet Kirillov himself, again echoing
Neitzsche, has his own subjective argument against this: :"I'm bound by nothing," he repeats. "There was just my will, and now
there is just my will."
Kirillov himself, note, does not judge his own social abilities; it is
always the other perspectives allowed by the polyphonic narrative of the novel
that claim this.
Kirillov's fractured
languagenonverbal vs. verbal ideas; "structural engineer" and
organizational entropy. In the fifth part of his chapter on Demons, Jones notes
Kirillov's "lack of psychological balance...special irony of the fact that
Kirillov is a structural engineer, whereas he cannot even structure his own
ungrammatical, muddles speech, is worthy of note."[43], taking such
apparent contradiction as a distinctive form of discord. Dostoevsky, as an
engineering student, once designed a fortress with no windows or doors[44], an amusing
tale more exemplary, and less metaphorical, than his obession with complex
structures. Cerny attributes to this Dostoevskian anti-hero an interpretation
representing "Incomprehensibility, absurdity, strangeness and abnormality
of the human world"[45],
a manifestation of the Fifth, or Bastard.
"'Yes, scoundrels, maybe.
You know these are only words.' /'all my life I did not want it to be only
words. This is why I lived, because I kept not wanting it. And now, every day I
want it not to be words.'/Well, each of us seeks a better place.'"(615)
"Language seems to be
dying out" in Kirillov (Pevear and Volokhonsky, xxiii).[46]
Kirillov: "a remarkable
structural engineer"..."shuffling his words...confused when he had to
put together a longer phrase." (91) Kirillov repeats his words and ideas.
each sentence is constructed then destructed as he speaks. Like Shatov, he can
take the same idea, briefly condensed, and put it into several contexts.
"'It's a great pity that
I'm not able to give birth,' Kirillov answered pensively, 'that is, not that
I'm not able to give birth, but that I'm not able to make it so that there is
birth...or...No, I'm not able to say it.'" (581) Even Tikhon, another holy hermit (a group that also includes
Marya Timofeevna the mad mystic) understands the nature of inadequate
interpersonal abilities which, perhaps, have little to do with the structure of
a person's mind at all, at least what they can observe (thus, it is
contextual). Converses Tikhon,
"I feel the degree of your sincerity and, of course, am much to blame for
not knowing how to approach people..."
Then again, social inadequacy
could, by all observable appearances, be a difference in perspective, or
intelligence: "I don't owe you any accounting, and you're not capable of
understanding my thoughts...there's nothing here for you to know..."[47] The illusion we call Kirillov obviously knows how to think, let us remove
our criticism of him for a moment, and understand what he shares with many
other revolutionaries: insistence on limitation of thought. "I don't
reason about these points that are done with. I can't stand reasoning. I never
want to reason..." proclaims (although perhaps only for the moment, which
makes pattern recognition all we have in lieu of truth for this novel) this
antisocial shadow of Stavrogin.
Yet how can one avoid repeating one's thoughts, regardless of your act
of will? Is an idea a cause-effect
relationship? Why does everyone
seem to want to control them?
Pyotr, liar and comic, forbids: 'There are things, Vervara Petrovna, of
which it is not only impossible to speak intelligently, but of which it is not
intelligent even to begin speaking."[3] Particularly telling is the nature of
one's relative perspective in such judgements: "In my view, it's better
not to think, but just to do it."[4] Claims Pyotr, about murder, as it
happens. Says Joyce Carole Oates,
only partially correct and somewhat chillingly, "contemporary terrorism is
probably fueled by an amoral zest for action"[48]
K: "the idea ate
me?...not me the idea? That's good. You have some small intelligence. Only you
keep teasing, and I am proud."
Pyotr: "if he starts
thinking - nothing will happen."(621)
Literal language
3.
Besy's characters are more humanized than personified, and the
crucial difference between these echoes the difference between realism and
allegory, a literary and artistic form (classically depending on unity) that
Dostoevsky mocks but can also resemble whenever the mythological sensations of Besy extend themselves to mental "planes." Cerny claims Dostoevsky himself places
principles above people allowing his literature to be anything but realist in
the Western sense:"'eternal' problems of human existence, its meaning,
limits, purpose, freedom...humans serve...only as attitudes from which to study
these supra-personal problems."[49]
An insistence on immutability is part of what contributes to the concept of
relativity, discussed below, and its dependence on an absolute.
literature as allegory
- myth and realism
"element of
mystery and/or ambiguity has the function of drawing attention to the
allegorical nature of the 'madness'" being questioned[50] Joyce Carole
Oates: "Plot-and plotting itself-is metaphor"[51]
"demons in it do
not appear, and the reader might
otherwise overlook them... distortions of the human image, the human
countenance" (Pevear xv)
At Tikhon's:
"malicious being, scoffing and 'reasonable', 'in various faces and
characters, but one and the same..."(686) "I myself in various
aspects and nothing more." T: "believe canonically in a personal
demon, not an allegory..."(687)
"exaggeration"
of "mystification" to "give the status of demons to mere
ideas"(xvii) Describes evils of act of personification; Dostoevsky intends
the characters to be bearers of ideas (which the translators interpret as
"demons") which can be shared, if communicated, and released by God,
as in the epigram. Distortions of the human image are those ideas of humans
that develop in individuals' minds - the characters themselves included, as the
Five echo together a stereotype of the radical, and each individual an
exclusivity of a social personality, less in conversation, when polyphpny
flourishes, and more when discussed by others. For example,
"Shigalyovism" and the way in which Kirillov is inevitably,
Hamlet-like, interpreted as "mad." It is telling that an actual
organization of five does not appear until after the climax of the town's plot
(the fete and the fire) and each of them goes by a single name: their relatives
may have a history and character, but they themselves are most clearly ideas of
people. Cerny calls them "five Platonic ideas incarnate..ontological
entities"[52]epigram
by Pushkin: "it must be a demon's leading us" blame? Shatov: "we
are all guilty"
The allegory appears to
have "neither order nor plan"[53]
10 Stepan Trofomovich's
allegorical poem: "ends with a chorus of souls that have not lived yet but
would very much like to live a little"..."altogether inanimate object
gets to sing about something Generally, everyone sings incessantly...squabble
somehow indefinitely, but again, with a tinge of higher meaning."
civilized youth: "greatest desire is to lose his reason as quickly as
possible (a perhaps superfluous desire)...other "youth represents death,
and all the nations yearn for it...Tower of Babel suddenly appears and some
atheletes finally finish building it with a song of new hope...the proprietor
of, shall we say, Olympus flees in comical fashion...mankind...takes over and
at once begins a new life with a new perception of things." (ibid. 10)
Literalizing speech,
negatively - again aspect of materialism, manifest allegory/cliche (45)
"perversions which
occur when a geniune ideal is stripped of its transcendent nature and reduced
to the purely earthly"[54]
Censored/despecified
locations.
Lebyadkin's absurd
poetry. Varvara: "nonsensical allegories"
"Not an allegory,
simply a leaf...a leaf is good. everything is good.' (238)
"theme of
confusion between fantasy and reality"[55]
Fedka: "Pyotr
Stpanovich is an astrominer, and has learned all God's planids..."
"he imagines a man and then lives with him the way he imagined him."
(D driven by character - internal, allegorical state.)
Lyamshin goes mad.
"'I had quite a different idea of him,' [Pyotr] added pensively."(605)
In the indroduction to
the English edition of Bakhtin's work, Wayce C. Booth observes that
"nothing is more human than the love of abstract forms"(xiii) Though
the characters in Demons are demonized allegorical figure, their ideation is
shared by every reader; it might only be viewed as perverse.
4.
Wayne C. Booth,
attempting to reorient a paradigm, writes: "people in action cannot be
reduced to mathematical figures or equations, and neither can 'imitations of
action'." On the contrary, fiction is the place in which they can. It isn't the fully realist aims of fiction that make it
pleasing, but the "false" or rather fantastical ones; in the case of Demons, the mythological (according to, among others, Joyce
Carol Oates) , or somewhat real allegorical aspect that contradicts
Dostoevsky's realism. That figurative language is false is only a scientific
perspective on the experience of reading, a myth of the illusion through
technology of absolute truth. Thus abstract figuration is also valid, through
scientific metaphor. Given free reign to fantastical figuration, interpretive
possibilities both become Pyotr, or Lebyadkin, ridiculous, and more fun than an
idealization of the "real". Although admitting one's own falsity is
demonized by Dostoevsky, extremity is the soul of criticism - once somewhat
hypocritical, why not continue?
Dostoevsky represents
well the realistic sensation of decentralization inherent in public information
flow, confronting the human desire for form: "everyone was tormented by
the impossibility of drawing anything general and unifying from the whole
tangle that presented itself".[56]
Until Lyamshin comes clean -- the stereotypical double-crossing Jew who has,
despite Pyotr's "idea of him"[57],
gone mad from guilt, and believes in the international network, a conspiracy
theory - at which point we still depend on his perspective.
Nikolai Stavrogin says
"Nothing in the world ever ends"[58] And denies
through absurd belief the mortality of persons and by extension
personifications. Applying an entirely appropriate synecdoche, if Stavrogin's
absolute statement is "true", the world itself has no end. .The
interpretation could also depend on the dimension through which we read the
world: temporal or physical, which as part of relativity ony offer two ways of
measuring the same nature. According to Hawking, the universe has no boundary,
but a beginning and only possibly (depending on the measurements) end in the
narrative sense. "World", however, indicates a living perspective,
and perspectives, being mortally human, end, unless they are that of a incomprehensible
and omnipotent god, both begin and end. The beginning may be difficult to
perceive, distant to memory, and the end is unexpected. It is understood that
anything beyond that which we can measure is beyond the boundary of our world,
but without that limit, the belief of
infinity is possible. (entropy) Of course, all Stavorogin's statements attempt
to clamp onto an absolute belief out of boredom, regardless of its truth.
Relativity is the
chosen paradigm for analyzing Besy,
whatever the term might individually conjure up. The novel's plot is based on
social relativity, considering the comparisons that can be made between every
character, the dramatic tendencies, and the familial relationships between
individuals that ties the allegorical network together. The father and son
relationship between cultural anaccomplisher Stepan and apathetically comedic
nihilist leader Pyotr Verkhovensky cements a good deal of political polemics;
the siblings Darya and Ivan Shatov, and his estranged wife, who relates to
Nikolai Vsevolodovich, son of Varvara Petrovna Stavrogin, and so on. The
narrator is friend to Stepan, and every other character for that matter (or is
it that only friends of the narrator, in context, are characters?). Alexei
Nilyich Kirillov is related only as a former traveling companion to Shatov. It
is these relationships that generate enjoyment of the realism in Besy.
Most appropriate to the
political drive of the novel is moral relativism, usually contrasted with moral
idealism; it is most well, described as a negation of moral absolutism. A good
summary of philosophical and moral
relativism can be found at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Moral relativity holds that judgements of right and wrong - whose ultimate aim,
remember, could be justice -are contextual. Stavrogin in particular experiments
with the malleability of concepts of good and bad, and how guilt and responsibility
are thus inferred, in his confession: first the stealing of a wallet, raping of
little Matryosha, and her subsequent death. Stavrogin's tendency to commit
crimes against morality, logic, protocol, and all manner of contexts only
ironically demonstrate that perhaps even acknowledging one's context cannot
free one from it. Albert Camus, in his examination of Kirillov and similar
Dostoevskian modern men, includes relativism in his three potential responses
to absurdity, defined but of course combinable as soon as an individual
recognizes one: "aesthetic indifference governed by nihilistic relativism
and negation of values;" an extreme version of which Stavrogin follows and
Kirillov professes, "ethical acceptance of a tragic world in which
humanistic universal concepts of value must be individually created;" the
narrator, perhaps, accepts this, and the inevitable conflict that ensues, or,
like Tikhon and possibly Shatov ("I will believe in God") religious hope."[59] Shatov seems
to himself recognize a nationalist need for relativity: "when many nations
start having common ideas of evil and good, then the nations die out and the
very distinction between evil and good begins to fade and disappear.
Reason...has always confused them."[60] A particular
moral perspective, which demonstrates the problematics of absolutism, holds the
life, and death, of one person to be infinitely valuable; thus Dostoevsky's
condemnation of the petty political assassination on which his expansive novel
is based is excellently described as tragic prophecy by Cerny, in that Russia
possesses"seventy million legitimate reasons not to believe in self-appointed saviors... for Dostoevsky
only one reason sufficed...Ivanov."[61], the victim
of the real political murder. Yet as Fish is to again note(and here with more
prophetic irony by Dostoevsky), moral relativity allows us to acknowledge the
potential reason - the ideology driven by cause and effect creation - behind
acts that, in one context, are atrocious. For Dostoevsky, mental illness,
because it doesn't release a soul from guilt, is irrelevant. Pyotr uses the
same kind of moral equivalency in guilt to silence co-conspirators:"one
would think it should make no difference now -- one fivesome, or a
thousand."[62]
Cerny summarizes,"In denying the religious moral law which postulated man
as being of absolute and nonrelative value, the social revolutionaries
extrapolated a kind of moral relativity, the dependence of human value on a
higher value, that of revolution."[63]
Thus is moral relativism connected to scientific relativity.
Einsteinian relativity
began with the theory, called special relativity, that in order for speed to be
measurable, light must have an absolute speed, and in order for light to have
an absolute speed, time must vary. It thus places subjective observation as
equivalent to objective. Additionally, it means that time stands still at the
speed of light, or would if t were possible for matter to do so instead of
approaching an infinite inertia; instead, the closer to the speed of light one
travels, the less time is seen to pass by a slower observer. General relativity
relates observed time to gravity. Light is a common metaphor for truth, and,
supposeing we extend this metaphor, everyone will see truth differently, it is
impossible for any observer to reach the truth, and, if the situation is grave
enough, truth can't escape. Relativity is quite reassuring; previously speed
had been comparative, but relativity limits it to an ultimate, a concept of
truth much similar to political ideals, increasingly unattainable but providing
a definite temporal orientation.
Kirillov
"I do not
recognize changes and non-changes."[64]
abstract by Liputin:
"reasons for the increase or restriction of the spread of suicides in
society."(94) 114 "two prejudices" : "pain" and
"the other world". (structure?)
115 "'each man
cannot judge except by himself' he said, blushing. 'there will be entire
freedom when it makes no difference whether one lives or does not live. That is
the goal to everything.'"
"'my feeling is
that I cannot be like any other. ANy other thinks, and then at once thinks
something else. I cannot think something else, I think one thing all my
life.'"[65]
"not future
eternal, but here eternal...moments...when time suddenly stops, and will be
eternal."[66]
Can't measure time w/out time - relativity and Marx.
NVS: "You keep on
insisting that we are outside space and time."[67]
"Time isn't an
object, it's an idea."[68]-K
If anything can be used to demonstrate Kirillov's lack of sense (only one
perspective; the narrator's) it is this statement. He has negated knowledge
that wasn't true in the first place
Shigalyov "looked
as if he were expecting the destruction of the world, and not just sometime,
according to prophecies which might not be fulfilled, but quite definitely,
round about morning, the day after tomorrow, at ten-twenty-five sharp."[69]
'when did you find out
you were so happy?'...'on tuesday, no, wednsday...I stopped my clock, it was
two thirty-seven.' 'as an emblem that time should stop?'"[70] Contradiction
Confession: clock stops
in robbed official's house
"structures of
life have disappeared...structure of time"[71]
The chronicle: "'a
certain view, a direction, an intention, an idea, throwing light on the entire
whole, the totality.'...'impartiality - that's the only tendency.'...'there's
nothing wrong with a tendency,' Shatov stirred,"and it's impossible to
avoid...'" (129)
Stepan: "'to make
the the truth more plausible, it's absolutely necessary to mix a bit of
falsehood with it.'" 'along with happiness, and in the exact same way and
in perfectly equal proportion, man also needs unhappiness! Il rit.'(216)
everything is good.'
'Everything?' 'Everything. Man is unhappy because he doesn't know he's happy,
only because of that." transvaluation. (238)
"'"I know
your works: you are neither cold nor hot! Would that you were cold or hot! And,
because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my
mouth."'" (635) Thus Stepan Trofomovich, who has believed in the
beauty of balance, understands absolute belief.at an extreme end of life.
Absolutes
Any definite statement
might, as Ozolins notes concerning characters (and critics) presume "whole
is generalized and made absolute..."[72] Vaclav
Cerny, who demonizes Dostoevsky, claims the entirety of an author's works are
required to judge them, perhaps so that the relative contexts can be compared,
and recognize an extreme and its tendency toward an absolute truth like the
speed of light, or any uniting context and assumption to which an individual
author is prone. "Kirilov...possessed with the idee fixe of reaching the
level of absolute being, to dethrone God or replace him (God probably does not exist anyhow)"[73]
"The whole law of
human existence consists in nothing other than a man;s always being able to bow
before the immeasurably great."[74]
"untie all hands
and give mankind the freedom to organize socially by itself."(408)
presumption of power. Absolute equality depends on absolute difference, but
both are entirely abstract.
"'here is
everything, there is nothing further'" (116)
"'...That's the
whole thought, the whole, there isn't any more!'.(238)
"devil take it, do
you understand what nothing means?"[75] "I know
nothing, nothing, nothing a all. Adieu. Avis a lecteur!"[76]
Like the rest of this discussion between Pyotr and Lembke, this statement in
French (a habit characteristic of the elder Verkhovensky's speech) is intended
to draw the reader's attention to zer readership and to the statements by the
characters. In this evasion, the reader of any plot is cued to pay attention to
Pyotr's contradiction, and excontextual lies . The same line cued zem in the
previous paragraph to Stavrogin's extreme relationship to the uncertain radical
movement: "Stavrogin is something totally the opposite- I mean totally...avis
a lecteur!" Even Lembke has
commented that "readers are as stupid as ever, intelligent people ought to
shake them up..."[77]
invoking the dangerous moral context implied by "ought" or
"should"; Lembke has a spiderman complex (with great power, comes
great responsibility)
Error is the basis of
all science because measurement is the basis of all science. The more measurements one has, with
more and more entropy-generating instruments, the better a recording you will
get, but all theories can only be supported by evidence that is always an
approximation. It is a
"divided nature" that allows measurements to appear in terms of numbers,
but no physical object can really fit a rational number. The demands of science bear an inherent
idealism; social science is thus all the more frustrating. Instances of this measuring idealism
appear in Besy: social engineer
Shigalyov "looked as if he were expecting the destruction of the world,
and not just sometime, according to prophecies which might not be fulfilled,
but quite definitely, round about morning, the day after tomorrow, at
ten-twenty-five sharp."[5] Cerny notes that, quite tragically considering
the uncontrollable human penchant to believe in truth, "longing for a true
story is behind the susceptibility of characters to political prophets" [6]
like Shigalyov, like Pyotr... like Dostoevsky. The same critic measures concepts about Dostoevsky to be
"numerous, innumerable" [78]
Truth, knowledge,
subjectivity
"revelation of
'truth' assumes the proportions of exorcism"[79] It isn't the
relative sizes of the ideas that matter here, but the equivalency.
When, due to its
non-ideological basis (empty quality rather than quantity), Tikhon terms the
rape of Matryosha the Worst Crime (in moral relation to what?) Stavrogin
replies"'let's quit putting a yardstick to it'"[7]
Shatov "lost his
sense of measure"(39)
"distortions of
the human image, the human countenance, and their force is measurable only by
the degree of the distortion."[8]
Censored/despecified
locations.
Concerning the former
scientific metaphors, I really must apologize and allow Shatov to speak for me:
"I myself am only half-science, and therefore I especially hate it."[9]
Shigalyov: "All
creators of social systems from ancient times to our year 187- have been dreamers,
tale-tellers, fools who contradicted themselves and understood precisely
nothing of natural science of that strange animal known as man."
5.
The fragment of Demons concerning Kirillov's eventual suicide exemplifies a chaotic
beauty and a feast for pattern recognition. In narrative terms, it is confusing
and, if intellectually analyzed, most reveals how little a confusing narrative
situation interrupts the realism of description. As Jones notes, dislocation of
point of view "increases the complexity of the view of reality..."
adding, and figuratively following Bahktin's metaphor, an "elusive but
effective discordant note..."-the distinctive "inconsistency in the
point of view of the narrator" of Besy that includes "intimate descriptions of scenes
which he did not witness...Kirillov's suicide is but one such episode."[80] awkward
narrator's transition from Pyotr's fleeing to a deliberately inventive-seeming
last scene w/Kirillov.
"you can't give me gifts
-- fool!"(610) can't balance ultimate gift.
P: "You, with your
intelligence, have only now understood that everyone's the same, that no one's
better or worse, but just smarter of stupider...it follows that there even
oughtn't to be any non-scoundrels?"(614) K: "Can it be that your kind
have convictions?"(614) "You want to bring me down to philosophy and
ecstacy and produce a reconciliation..."(615)
"'God is necessary, and
therefore must exist.'...'But I know that he does not and cannot exist.'...'Don't
you understand that a man with these two thoughts cannot go on living?'"
(615) why not? Division between thoughts, ideas and beliefs. Economical
materialism is the root of possession: in order for ideas to take hold, the
idea that all ideas must be materially useful and necessary must take hold.
"If there is no God, then
I am God."(617) Solipsism is logically supported by a relativistic
universe. Yet Kirillov, who often generalizes his own thoughts, believes
himself doomed by a confrontation with his contradictions, such as the
persistence of values, based in his central self-value: "To kill someone
else would be the lowest point of my self-will, and there's the whole of you in
that. I am not you: I want the highest point, and I will kill myself."...""Man
has done nothing but invent God, so as to live without killing himself; in that
lies the whole of world history up to now." (617-18) "There is
nothing hid that shall not be revealed. He said that."(618) penultimate man. Dostoevsky hints that Christian
belief is instinctual, so a character portrayed with greater relative
intelligence claims to be aware of this, only so at odds with it that he
concludes self-destruction. "one on a cross believed so much [he
anticipated paradise]... they both died, and did not find either paradise or
resurrection. What he said would not prove true. Listen: this man was the
highest on all the earth, he constituted what it was to live for. Without this
man the whole planet with everything on it is-- madness only."(618) "the
laws of nature did not pity even this
One...whole planet is a lie, and stands upon a lie and a stupid
mockery."(618) "To recognize that there is no God, and not to
recognize at the same time that you have become God, is an absurdity, otherwise
you must necessarily kill yourself...once you recognize it you will not kill
yourself but will live in the chiefest glory." understands but doesn't
feel, thus makes himself an example? "It is my duty to believe that I do
not believe. I will begin, and end, and open the door." (619) Still the
trans-individual abstraction must be described in terms of figurative language,
the basis of allegory. "You'll see yourself that all that is hid shall be
revealed! And you will be crushed... I believe! I believe!"(619) Christ's
optimism aims for an ideal of truth at an ultimate temporal point, but the
optimistic statement is inherently not true, depending again on faith much like
the promise of paradise. Candles. Kirillov hiding: nonsensical nonverbal
riddle. biting echoes Stavrogin. "'Now, now, now, now ...' /ten times or
so." (625) Hypocritically, Kirillov is still hesitating in suicide,
perpetually perceiving the present as personal apocalypse but not acting on the
perception. pause of five minutes before returning. Now the already
undependable narrative becomes a one-sided perspective from Pyotr, as if
neither author nor reader is able to reach Kirillov's extreme state of mind;
Kirillov is "the other" to Pyotr, beyond the event horizon but still
experiencing his own time.. "death must have occured instantly"(625)
Kirillov has chosen the "instant", after which, as God through
solipsism, the world will have reached a timeless moment.
The fragmented tendencies of
this particular text are attributable to the proliferation of ideas in its
development, which in their transmission into action become ideals and thereby
unattainable. The reader might derive some wholeness from it, as it must be,
having both beginning and end. Its ideology otherwise is an entertaining and
inevitable contradiction.
Bibliography,
Annotated and Otherwise
Ideals are beautiful
and evil is only false beauty. Discusses in a somewhat unstructured manner how
Dostoevsky understands ideals as favorable against materialism, but the
materialization of ideals results in their perversion. Each of the characters
is demonic in the sense of misinterpreting ideals, twisting a shared, probably
religious, ideal interior into something that reduces communication. A chapter
is spent discussing the role of Stavrogin: his overpretty "masklike"
exterior and the materialization of his ideas by the other characters. In
particular she examines Kirillov's attempted transvaluation (while persuing her
own extremes in the applications thereof: "in denying the existence of
evil as a real, rather than subjective, phenomenon, Kirillov also denies the
need for compassion."(71) , and how extreme ideation is symptomized by
interpersonal awkwardness. Anderson also discusses the definition of falsity,
which is linked to Dostoevsky's use of non-dualistic doubles, semantically
manifesting as irony.
Bakhtin, Mikhail. Problems of
Dostoevsky's Poetics ed, trans. Caryl Emerson. Theory and history of
literature, Volume 8. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota press, 1984.
Argues towards the
"polyphony" of Dostoevsky's novel, his ability to capture ideas
interacting in dialogues between several psyches, or the inner profusion of
voices and multiple perspectives. Thus Dostoevsky's works are based on social
interaction of internal harmonies and discords, without conforming to a single
author's or hero's perspective. Unity derives from perception of inner
division. The critic is fighting against the unpopularity of discussing
Dostoevsky at all during his time in Eastern Europe.
The introduction by
Wayne C. Booth emphasizes the post-modernist elements of such an approach to
poetics, especially the way in which it denies the human tendency toward
unitary, abstract meaning. In fact, wholeness and unity can be perceived as an
illusion perpetuated by art; "illusion", however, conveys a belief in
falsity from an ideal. Booth still abstractly dualizes in terms of
"centripetal" (unifying) forces and "centrifugal"
(entropic) forces in thought, although I must note that centrifugal force is an
illusion created by inertia. The critic refreshingly insists on the inability
of a musical analogy to convey a universal (the universe in a novel) truth.
Boertnes, Jostein. "The
Last Delusion in an infinite series of delusions: Stavrogin and the Symbolic
Structure of The Devils." Dostoevsky Studies 4 (1983) 53-67
Camus, Albert, trans. Justin
O'Brien. The Myth of Sisyphus and other essays. New York: Knopf, 1955.
pq2605.c15
Camus perceives Dostoevsky's
characters as "modern" men because they question the meaning of their
own existence, particularly focusing on Kirillov because of his preferable
assumption of an idea within the framework of solipsistic nihilism. He claims
there are three responses to "absurdity": "aesthetic
indifference governed by nihilistic relativism and negation of values; ethical
acceptance of a tragic world in which humanistic universal concepts of value
must be individually created; religious hope."(95) all three are embodied
by various characters in Demons.
Cerny, Vaclav. Dostoevsky and
his Devils. trans. by F.W. Galan. Ann Arbour: Ardis, 1975.
An unabashedly
opinionated Czech critic. Rebellion against perceived insitutionalized views of
D, based on Socialist ideals; literary understanding cannot seek out in works
only what is useful, and it needs be seen that Dostoevsky himself is corrupted
- effectively he is Possessed. stresses importancce of author's ideology and
whole canon of work. concepts about Dostoevsky "numerous,
innumerable" (17) May or may not be aware that he himself is being
parodized, but more than aware that Dostoevsky parodizes himself. Considers
Kirillov one of the three most fascinating Demons, a Dostoevkian anti-hero, and
claims Dostoevsky creates evil characters far better than good, thus
perpetuating a Romantic form of writing. Humanity can be seen as the ultimate
virtue, in our current context. Claims Marx was unknown to the author, but
claims Dostoevsky attacks requisite materialism (which may be true - but one
can also interpret it as an attack on the imposition of a single, atheistic,
wordview). Dostoevsky is hypocritical because Demons postulates atheism. Also
mentions the prophetic nature of the novel, towards philosophical and political
movements.
Fish, Stanley. "Don't
Blame Relativism". The Responsive Community, vol. 12, issue 3. http://www.gwu.edu/~ccps/rcq/Fish.pdf
Fletcher, Angus. Allegory: The
Theory of a Symbolic Mode. Ithaca, London: Cornell University Press, 1964)
A structuralist
analysis of the form and fuction of literary allegory. Allegory attempts to
universalize a narrative. One chapter discusses the prevalence of daemonic (or
supernatural) imagery, in order to create a sense of ideology as a higher
realm. Another important element is the enigmatic, distancing quality of
allegorical storytelling - symbols cannot be directly stated, it is their
relationship to others that reveals their meaning. Inherent in allegory is
doubling, since an allegorical symbol must have at least two levels of meaning.
Allegory occurs as such in a Christian context, although it is derived from
myth.
Hawking, Stephen W. A Brief
History of Time. New York: Bantam Books,
1988-1996.
The most popular crash
course in Cosmology ever. Hawking describes most complex physical theories
through metaphor, with the occasional tendency to extend metaphors too far.
Science is the quest for the Theory of Everything, to find universal laws, and
Hawking demonstrates that the divided and contradictory schools of thought in
Physics only approximate a predictable universe - in fact, Quantum mechanics
defines an unpredictable universe, and is rather at odds with relativity in
situations such as black holes. Einsteinian relativity is founded on
observations that at different speeds light (by which all speed is measured
and, for that matter, all observations made) will appear to have traveled
different distances. It is easier to accept that the time in which the distance
was crossed differs rather than the speed, depending on speed. Thus the only
objective time is a subjective personal time, and each person's reality is
different depending on their speed when they observe events, via light. In
fact, the only constant by which to judge velocity and therefore time is the
speed of light itself, almost unattainable by matter, at which time (to a
slower observer) can be seen to stop. General relativity attributes the same
time-varying factor to gravity; in a black hole, time can be said to slow to
the almost-attainable state of complete stasis, except that such a state is
unobservable because light cannot escape a black hole. The amount of
abstraction involved in believing in Relativity, much less inventing it, is
enough to make a human wish for God..."the more you think about it, the
harder it gets"
Hawking describes
entropy, or the perpetual increase of chaos due to energy dispersal, as being
simply as aspect of the direction of the arrow of time: psychological entropy
in particular proves this, since in order to remember the past instead of know
the future we must create eddies of organization within our minds and release
energy in the process. Regardless of its direction, the arrow of time moves
from one kind of homogeny and extremity to another; in between is all variation
and development. Hawking thus describes an almost anthropomorphic universe,
with an ultimate end that is not entirely teleological and, like the
nihilists', leaves no room for humanity. The universe is "boundless but
finite" due to the limitations of relativity.
Jones, Malcom B. Dostoevsky:
The Novel of Discord. London: Paul Elek,
1976.
Examines Dostoevsky's
examination of the discordancy of human nature and the chaotic, confusing
nature of his writing. He claims to isolate the "centrifugal"
principles (see Bahktin). Applies the same uniting principle of an idea that
the "demons" have to Dostoevsky. In order to perceive discord, one
has to recognize harmony. Even if the idea of harmony and organization is an
illusion, that doesn't make it meaningless; Jones argues that Dostoevsky works
from the perspective that illusion of harmony is preferable to true discord,
while such idealism can be twisted. Discord, or a principle of negation ,a
driving aspect of human nature, is also beautiful from some perspectives; in
this way Jones's ideas are similar to Anderson's and Cerny's. The discord in
Dostoevsky is also apparent in the difficulty of categorizing his characters or
situations within a dualist structure. His principles of complexity, otherwise
known as discord (or rather Chaos, which is often confused with discord: see
Shea and Wilson) are the "inappropriate", the "irrelevant",
the "enigmatic"(similarly to Fletcher's "allegory"), the
"unpredictable"(observe the discord between relativity and quantum
physics), and "dislocation of the point of view", that is, an
uncohesive narration deriving from somewhat of a transcendence of relativistic
subjectivity through writing; and a sacreligious sixth, coincidence, exemplary
of the creation of meaning through chaos.
Demons Jones regards as a "novel of travesties"; the
plot depends on contradictory and deceiving dialogue and belief, which he
qualifies as Inappropriate. The plot, he notes, is discordantly difficult to
tell from digression, and the undependable narrative defies the desired
cohesiveness of storytelling. Jones focuses on Kirillov as a
"solution" to existential issues of time.
Jones, M.V. "The Narrator
and Narrative Technique", in
Leatherbarrow, William J., ed.
Dostoevsky's The Devils: a critical companion. Evanston: Northwestern
University Press. 1999.
The most relevant in a
recent cllection of essays. Jones here focuses on the unreliable nature of the
narrative, which sometimes claims to be a personal chronicle and is sometimes
fiction on the part of the narrator. Dostoevsky uses Guvenov(?) to distance
himself from opinionated characterization, or demonization. Jones believes the
most philosophically revealing beliefs come from Shatov and Kirillov, whom he
sees as peripheral to the "plot."( part of a tendency toward favoring
exception). Similarly to Vladiv, he recognizes an "implied author"
and the potential complexity of organizing the narration of the text in any way
different from the long and varied ramble it is. Examining Bahktin's thesis, he
claims it over-homogenizes, because the narrator's situation provides a
confusing unity, and Dostoevsky's point is orchestrated by him.
Livermore, Gordon. Stepan
Verkhovensky and the Shaping dialectic of Dostoevsky's Devils. in Dostoevsky:
New Perspectives. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1984.
Demonstrates
Dostoevsky's contrasting the concrete and the ideal, or "realia" and
"realoria", the father and son, and the apocalyptic themes, which he
compares to "centers of gravity." Ultimately "realia" and
"realoria" are simply ideas which become united for Stepan and Shatov
briefly before the death of each; but if the synthesis precipitates death, the
dialectic becomes part of a Christian reconciliation with telos, contrasting
the nihilists' ironic connection to life...
Ozolins,Andrejs. "The
Concept of Beauty in The Possessed." In Doestoevsky and the Human
condition after a century, ed. Ugrinsky, Lambasa, Ozolins. Westport: Greenwood,
1986.
Again examining the
conflict of ideal and real, with both being constantly in flux. Human develops
a desire for the opposite of what se experiences (which I see as the basis for
all language being complaint). Ozolins claims the omniscienct narrator allows
the reader to form zer own opinion. Naturallyt, recommends moderation.
Moore, Gene M. "The
Voices of Legion: The Narrator of The Possessed." in Dostoevsky Studies
vol. 6, 1985.
Demonstrates that the
confusion of narration in Demons
reveals the desire for truth inherent in any grasp of a "false" ideal
or materialist philosophy. Dostoevsky attempts to demonstrate that it takes a
village to create a story, or approximate some truth, while also examining the
limitations on discovering that truth via the variable narrator, whose evidence
for the truth of his story falls into four categories: eyewitness, second-hand,
general rumors, and omniscient speculation. (Tracing the difference between
them can be particularly difficult, especially considering the amount of
entropy generated in absolutely remembering conversational details.)
Oates, Joyce Carol.
"Tragic Rites in Dostoevsky's The Possessed." http://www.usfca.edu/fac-staff/southerr/tragic.html.
from The Georgia Review, 1978. Reprinted in Contraries: Essays, 1981.
Oates, being a
mainstream and somewhat realist writer, analyzes somewhat external to the other
criticism and examines realist-illusion-context content. Oates claims the story
derives not from a Realist but a mythical imagination, its plot similar to The
Bacchae in the necessary acceleration of chaos for the sake of cleansing.
Agrees on Dostoevsky's fascination with "vast, complex structures":
the chaotic, as in chaos theory, which manifest in echoes, parodies, multiple
voices and ideas, and indeterminate history. She at least acknowledges Pyotr's
implied homosexuality, but reads the subtlety of Kirillov's motivations
differnly than I. Like Pevear, reads the Demons as the ideas, and those who die
as the pigs in the sometimes-ignored epigram. Like Greek myths, the story
ultimately favors unteleological moderation and humility.
Pope, Richard: "Pyotr
Verkhovensky and the Banality of Evil". in Dostoevsky and the Twentieth
Century: the Liubliana Papers, ed.
Malcom V. Jones. Nottingham: Astra, 1993.
Shea, Robert J. and Wilson,
Robert Anton. The Illuminatus! Trilogy. New York: Dell, 1975.
An unclassifiable work
of what may or may not be fiction or parody, the "Trilogy" seeks to
reveal exactly who controls everything (the Illuminati) and the opposing forces
(Discordians) who may or may not oppose them. It mixes mysticism with almost
every other epic work of mythology, and ultimately, regardless of what one was
on when reading it, one only gets a vague sense of how everything fits
together. The book is also divisible into five parts, correlating to the
Illuminati's five-part analysis of circular history: Chaos, Discord, Confusion,
Bureacracy, and Aftermath. All of these have the same sense of unfathomable
complexity to them, and their seperation into stages belies their crucial
similarities, demonstrating that anything can be different from anything else
if you compare them. Another aspect of Illuminati mysticism is the Law of Fives,
which states that everything is related to everything else through the number
five. Thus 23 is an especially sacred number, consisting of the two numbers
most firmly entrenched in the manners of human thought. Through the
"illumination" aspect of that secret worldwide organization we
discover a connection to relativity and the unapproachability of truth. Usually
one would not feel qualified to reveal any of this information, mostly because
I have no idea where it really came from, although aliens might have something
to do with it. We now return you to formal analysis.
Tunimanov, V.A. "The
Narrator in The Devils." in Dostoevsky: New Perspectives. Englewood
Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1984.
G____v emphasizes his
position as one of many, and thus the chaotic variability of the narrative
moves toward nothing, but rather characters such as Kirillov, who is only
externally readable by the narrator, become readable instead by the reader in
the novel's omnisciently narrated passages.
Vladiv, Slobodanka B. Narrative
principles in Dostoevsky's Besy: a structural analysis. Bern, Frankfurt
am Main, Las Vegas: Lang, 1979.
A rigourously
structuralist semantic examination of Besy in multiple languages, with the majority of the work in
footnotes, that works to complicate but clarify, this pamphlet discusses
meaning and information flow, and overflows with meaningless information..
Could be seen, comparatively, as the opposite of Bakhtin's work. Vladiv
displays a near fanatic belief in the architectural abstract structure of
semantics. Uncertainty is not an Option. The act of communication has four
levels, a unidirectional entrance and exit of consciousness. The structure is
related to the larger theme of requisite unity in art - this is the ultimate
modernist analysis, such as only a semanticist can accomplish. Besy is seen as a highly original narrative format due to its
complex relations between the one narrator and many perspectives. Ambivalence
is still a deciding factor, but Vladiv insists that the work is completely organized
as long as one analyzes closely enough. The "resulting meaning" of
the entire text is non-binary, which is admirable. This analysis itself is
meticulously structured into specifically labeled sections and subsections,
although there is inevitable crossover, a netlike branching of themes.
Knowledge is impressionistic. Characters are "emanations" from other
characters (Kirillov from Stavrogin, Stavrogin from Stepan).
"Emanations" or mental children divide ideas - as ideas get more
divided as assigned to people, they become more absolute and 'radical'. Thus
more characters and more radical ideas. Kirillov is extreme. The formation of
an 'idea'(which is further defined as a component of 'meaning' and of the
communication process) is represented as an organic, even physiological
process, which takes place inside each individual consciousness and is
inseperable from the individual's 'subjectivity'. Often by negating an idea,
Vladiv implies its potential existence. This overly useful pamphlet is a good
example of how organizing (as an organism) the human mind prefers to be.
[1] Pevear and Volokhonsky
[2] see Hawking
[3] p. 555
[7] ibid. p. 385-386
[9] 516
[13] ibid. 34
[21] Anderson 20 [22] 618 [23] Jones, Dostoevsky,
39 [24] Jones, Dostoevsky,
140
[30] 220 [31] 221 [32] 116 [33] Jones, Dostoevsky,
p. 151 [34] Jones, Dostoevsky,
p. 153 [35] 236 [36] Jones,Dostoevksy,
37
[38] ibid. p. 21 [39] ibid. p. 74 [40] Cerny 38
[42] ibid. p. 94 [43] Jones, Dostoevsky,
143
[45] Cerny 22
[50] Vladiv p. 124 [51] Oates [52] Cerny 39
[55] Anderson p. 15
[58] ibid. p. 292
[62] 608 [63] Cerny 48
[65] ibid. p. 116
[67] ibid. p. 250
[74] ibid. p. 655
[79] Vladiv ~130 [80] all Jones, Dostoevsky, p. 45