Dostoevsky’s Dialectics and the Problem of Sin

Northwestern University Press

Studies in Russian Literature and Theory

Series Editors
Robert Belknap
Caryl Emerson
Gary Saul Morson
William Mills Todd III
Andrew Wachtel
Dostoevsky’s Dialectics
and the Problem of Sin

Ksana Blank

Northwestern University Press / Evanston, Illinois

Northwestern University Press
www.nupress.northwestern.edu

This book has been published with the support of the

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Copyright © 2010 by Northwestern University Press.

Published 2010. All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Blank, Ksana.
Dostoevsky’s dialectics and the problem of sin / Ksana Blank.
p. cm. — (Studies in Russian literature and theory)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8101-2693-0 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor,
1821–1881—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 1821–1881—
Philosophy. 3. Dialectic in literature. 4. Sin in literature. 5. Paradox in
literature. I. Title.
PG3328.Z7P5323 2010
891.73'3—dc22
2010000281

o The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for
Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
 Contents

Note on the Transliteration and Sources vii

Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 3
Approaches to Dostoevsky 3
Why Dialectics? 7
A Model for Dostoevsky’s Dialectics 9
Thesis, Antithesis, and Sin 10
The Principle of Dvuedinstvo (Duality-in-Unity) 13
Antinomies of Goodness, Beauty, and Truth 14
Bakhtin’s Dialogism and Dostoevsky’s (Non-Hegelian) Dialectics 16
How This Book Is Structured 18
A Word on Methodology 21

PART I: The Dialectic of Goodness

Chapter One “If You Don’t Sin, You Can’t Repent; If You Don’t
Repent, You Can’t Achieve Salvation” 27
Controversies About the Epilogue to Crime and Punishment 27
Saint Andrew of Crete and Dostoevsky’s Great Sinners 31
Raskolnikov at the Doors of Repentance 35

Chapter Two A Ray of Light in the Abyss 40

Dmitry Karamazov’s Journey to the Underworld 40
The Turning Point 46
The Way of the Grain 48
Chapter Three “The Devil Begins with Froth on the Lips
of an Angel” 52
The Cherub Alyosha Karamazov 52
From Saints to Sinners: The Spectrum of Possibilities 56
The Novel’s Ending in Light of the Projected Sequel 61

PART II: The Dialectic of Beauty

Chapter Four The Corridor of Mirrors in The Idiot 69
Krasivoe and Prekrasnoe: Two Conceptions of Beauty 69
Beauty and Charm (Prelest’) 73
Beauty, Passion, and Compassion: The Novel’s Finale 76

Chapter Five A Grain of Eros in the Madonna, a Spark of Beauty

in Sodom 80
Madonna and Sodom 80
The European Aesthetic Ideal of the Madonna 83
The Madonna Cult in Russian Literature 85

PART III: The Dialectic of Truth

Chapter Six Dostoevsky’s Case for Contradictions 97
Pravda and Istina, Two Conceptions of Truth 97
High and Low Truth (Pravda) in Notes from Underground 99
The Birth of Polarities in “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man” 105

Chapter Seven Antinomic Truth (Istina) 111

The Principle of Contradiction in Russian Religious Thought 111
Pavel Florensky and Mikhail Bakhtin on Antinomic (Dialogic) Truth 116
Two Truths in The Brothers Karamazov: Pro and Contra 118

Concluding Notes 121

Notes 125
Selected Bibliography 151
Index 163
 Note on the Transliteration and Sources

My transliteration of Russian in the main body of the text follows a modi-

fied Library of Congress system designed to make the text more readable
to a general audience. I use commonly accepted anglicized versions of the
Russian names and surnames, such as Sergei Askoldov, Nicholas Berdyaev,
George Florovsky, Pavel Florensky, Semyon Frank, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Nich-
olas Lossky, Vladimir Lossky, Dmitry Merezhkovsky, Vasily Rozanov, Vladi-
mir Solovyov, Evgeny Trubetskoy, and others. Bibliographical references
retain the transliteration system used in the titles cited: in the notes and
bibliography, Russian names and titles are transliterated according to the
unmodified Library of Congress system, without diacritics.
References to Dostoevsky’s works appear in parentheses in the text and
are by volume and page number (for example, 7:155) to F. M. Dostoevskii,
Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh (Complete Works in Thirty
Volumes), Leningrad: Nauka, 1972–90, hereafter cited as PSS. Where the
publishers have divided a volume into two bound parts, an additional num-
ber appears after the volume number (for example, 29 / I:27).

Listed below are the standard translations of Dostoevsky’s work used in the
text:

Fedor Dostoevsky. “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man.” In The Best Short

Stories of Fyodor Dostoevsky. Translated by David Magarshack. New York:
Modern Library, 2001, 263–85.

Fyodor Dostoevsky. “The Brothers Karamazov”: A Novel in Four Parts with

Epilogue. Translated and annotated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volo-
khonsky. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1990.

———. “Crime and Punishment”: A Novel in Six Parts with Epilogue. Trans-
lated and annotated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. New York:
Vintage Books, 1993.

vii
 Note on the Transliteration and Sources

———. The Idiot. With an introduction by Richard Pevear. Translated by

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. New York: Vintage Books, 2003.

———. Notes from Underground. Translated and annotated by Richard Pe-

vear and Larissa Volokhonsky. New York: Vintage Books, 1994.

All biblical quotations are from the King James Version, as this version is
used in Pevear and Volokhonsky’s translations of Dostoevsky.

viii
 Acknowledgments

The central idea in this book—the coincidence of opposites in Dostoevsky

and their reciprocal interactions—first came to me in the mid-1990s, when
I was teaching courses on Dostoevsky at Hunter College in New York and
taking Tai Chi classes in the evening. Unexpectedly, I realized that the latter
was having an effect on the former: “focusing the mind on the movement”
enabled me to visualize some recurrent patterns in Dostoevsky’s artistic
method. Their dynamics have occupied my thoughts ever since.
During the past ten years, I have presented the ideas in this book at
many conferences, including the Durham European Literature Sympo-
sium (Durham, 1998), the International Summer Institute for Semiotic and
Structural Studies (Imatra, Finland, 1999), the International Symposium
on the Studies of Bakhtin (Xiangtan University, China, 2004), the Inter-
national Symposium on Hierotopy: Studies in the Making of Sacred Space
(State Tretiakov Gallery, Moscow, 2004), the Thirteenth Symposium of the
International Dostoevsky Society (Budapest, 2007), and National AATSEEL
Conventions (St. Louis, 1999, and San Francisco, 2008). I am grateful for the
feedback I received at these international forums.
Some of these ideas were expanded into articles and became the bases
for chapters 1, 2, and 7 of this book:

“Saint Andrew of Crete and Dostoevsky’s Great Sinners,” in Aspects of Dos-

toevsky’s Poetics in the Context of Literary-Cultural Dialogues, ed. Katalin
Kroó, Géza S. Horváth, and Tünde Szabó, Dostoevsky Monographs, a Series
of the International Dostoevsky Society, vol. 3 (St. Petersburg: Dmitrii Bu-
lanin, forthcoming).

“ ‘Putem zerna’: motiv elevsinskikh misterii v romane ‘Brat’ia Karamazovy,’ ”

in Word, Music, History: A Festschrift for Caryl Emerson, ed. Lazar Fleish-
man, Gabriella Safran, and Michael Wachtel, Stanford Slavic Studies, vols.
29–30 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2005), 416–32.

ix
 Acknowledgments

“The Rabbit and the Duck: Antinomic Unity in Dostoevskij, the Russian Re-
ligious Tradition, and Mikhail Bakhtin.” Studies in East European Thought
59, nos. 1–2 (June 2007): 21–37.

I take this opportunity to thank the editors and publishers for their permis-
sion to reprint revised material.
Many colleagues gave useful comments and advice, among them—
Alexei Lidov, Liu Wenfei, Konstantin Isupov, and Olga Meerson. Their en-
thusiasm and curiosity encouraged me to proceed with this project. I thank
Dalia Geffen for her assistance in preparing the manuscript for submission.
I would like to acknowledge the warm support of my colleagues at
the Princeton University Slavic Department, where I have been teaching
since 2000, and to thank them, as well as our students, for the stimulating
intellectual environment they created. My special thanks to Michael Wach-
tel for his careful reading of the manuscript and his comments on style, and
to graduate student Jason Strudler who helped to translate the chapter origi-
nally published in Russian.
My most profound gratitude goes to Caryl Emerson, who read all the
chapters as they were written and then the entire work, helping me to tune
my voice in English and to keep that elusive addressee, the “informed but
general reader,” always in view. She provided invaluable comments and gave
encouragement at every stage. Her keen interest, expertise, unfailing sup-
port, and friendly counsel made this project possible.
I would like to thank the Northwestern editorial staff for the support
and advice I received from acquisitions editor Mike Levine, assistant acquisi-
tions editor Jenny Gavacs, and especially senior project editor Serena Brom-
mel. My special thanks also go to the anonymous readers. Their general
comments as well as stylistic suggestions helped to crystallize the exposition,
which greatly improved the book.
Finally, I am very much obliged to my family—my mother, Ludmila,
my husband, Gregory, and my daughter, Julia, for their patience and support.
I dedicate this book to the memory of my brother, Sergei Dovlatov, and our
father, Donat Mechik.

x
Dostoevsky’s Dialectics and the Problem of Sin
 Introduction

The path up and down is one and the same.

—Heraclitus

A PPROA CH ES T O D O S T O EV S KY

For Dostoevsky, the problem of sin is central, vital, and twofold. While rais-
ing the most fundamental questions about human nature, Dostoevsky tends
to give contradictory sets of answers. On the one hand, his work epitomizes
the idea that people are inherently good since they are created in the image
of God. Even when they question the existence of divine law, rebel against
the very idea of sin, and commit crimes for either egotistical reasons or for
the sake of humanity, deep inside themselves they remain conscious of hav-
ing transgressed moral law and feel remorse. The intensity of this remorse
may vary from one character to another, but many find themselves unable
to endure the burden and come to realize the necessity of repentance. This
side of Dostoevsky’s philosophy is optimistic and bright; it is a philosophy of
hope. On the other hand, the writer is famous for the “darker side” of his
art, for what Russians call dostoevshchina—the gloomy aspect of the human
soul, a contradictory mode of thinking and feeling, those shady depths of the
human psyche where good intentions turn into evil, love into hatred, and
beauty inspires a desire to corrupt. Dostoevsky’s double vision has attracted
the attention of readers, critics, and scholars ever since he began to publish
his works. Starting in the early twentieth century, the problem of the coexis-
tence of the brighter and darker aspects in Dostoevsky was identified from
three major perspectives, all of which retain their relevance in Dostoevsky
studies today.
1. The first tradition, prominent in the writings of twentieth-century
Russian religious thinkers, emphasizes the brighter, revelatory, and epi-
phanic sides of Dostoevsky. This tradition originated in Dmitry Merezhkov-
sky’s Tolstoy and Dostoevsky (1901–2) and Nicholas Lossky’s Dostoevsky and
His Christian Understanding of the World (1944).1 In the past two decades,
this affirmative spirit has predominated in Russian scholarship: in works by
Tatiana Kasatkina, Boris Tikhomirov, Anastasia Gacheva, Ivan Esaulov, and

3
 Introduction

many others. Among recent Western studies, such a perspective is endorsed

by James Scanlan in his Dostoevsky the Thinker (2002). Scanlan regards
Dostoevsky as a Christian thinker whose religious convictions were sturdy
and consistent and in whose works a dominant voice advocating goodness,
justice, and love is always foregrounded. If the writer gives voice to darker
forces, this is part of his larger strategy to prove these voices erroneous and
ill fated: he “always kept his sights on the opposite of what he believed and
sought to establish his own positions by demonstrating the failure of their
antitheses.”2 According to Scanlan’s view, there is no reason to assume that
Dostoevsky shared the ideas of all his characters. “For all his attention to
opposing ideas,” he writes, “Dostoevsky did not spend his life torn between
conflicting possibilities. He depicted such tension in his fiction for dramatic
purposes, but his other writings provide unambiguous indications of which
side he was on.”3
2. Members of the second camp focus on the conflict between Dosto-
evsky’s brighter and darker sides. They emphasize that the world, as Dosto-
evsky presents it, is full of contradictions and that aspects of this contradic-
tory whole are irreconcilable. This tradition also goes back to the Russian
religious renaissance of the early twentieth century. Among the very first
publications on this issue were essays by Vyacheslav Ivanov and Sergei Bul-
gakov, timed to coincide with the staging of Dostoevsky’s novel Demons at
the Moscow Art Theater (MKHAT) in 1914.4 Ivanov and Bulgakov stressed
that Dostoevsky’s portrayal of human nature had tragic overtones because
of his belief that human consciousness was fragmented, the human soul
was split in two, and faith in God always coexisted with doubt and disbe-
lief. Ivanov saw Dostoevsky’s contradictions as irresolvable. In a later ver-
sion of his essay “Dostoevskii i roman-tragediia” (“Dostoevsky and the
Novel-Tragedy,” 1916), Ivanov concludes that all of Dostoevsky’s novels are
predominantly tragedies in both form and content.5 In the words of Steven
Cassedy, the author of Dostoevsky’s Religion (2005), this pessimistic flavor in
an otherwise sanguine view of the writer’s philosophy is attributed to the fact
that “by the turn of the century Russian intellectual life had been thoroughly
infected with the Nietzsche bacillus.” 6 He maintains that Russian religious
thinkers’ approach to Dostoevsky was biased because they considered his
and Nietzsche’s ideas completely compatible.
Philosophers of this camp—Sergei Askoldov (1871–1945), Nicho-
las Berdyaev (1874–1948), Sergei Bulgakov (1875–1944), Pavel Florensky
(1882–1937), George Florovsky (1893–1971), Semyon Frank (1877–1950),
Vladimir Lossky (1903–58), and Evgeny Trubetskoy (1863–1920)—were the
first to call attention to the antinomies that lie at the core of Dostoevsky’s
works.7 In Greek, antinomiva is a contradiction between two statements, each

4
 Introduction

of which is reasonable, valid, and legitimate on its own. George Florovsky,

for example, discusses the antinomy of freedom in Dostoevsky: the most sa-
cred gift human beings possess is their personal freedom, but at the same
time freedom is a great temptation, for unlimited freedom is dangerous,
always running the risk of turning into its opposite—the destructive force of
self-will. Love is another Dostoevskian tragic antinomy. Love presumes free
choice, but its closest neighbor is sexual passion, which can enslave.8
3. The third camp considers the two sides of Dostoevsky a natural and
unavoidable outcome of the writer’s personal oscillation between faith and
disbelief. The prime example of this position is A. Boyce Gibson’s mono-
graph The Religion of Dostoevsky (1973).9 Gibson defines Dostoevsky’s
religion as a sort of processual Christianity: “Lacking a theology, and spas-
modically racked by a kind of anti-theology,” Dostoevsky was “a Christian in
process.”10 Gibson claims that Dostoevsky’s religious views lack consistency
as a matter of principle: “Everything he wrote is unmistakably his own, but
there are no set views which can be ascribed to ‘Dostoevsky’; everything he
set down must be related to a particular phase of his growth or to the char-
acters chosen to express it.”11
This line of reasoning has received a recent advocate in Steven
Cassedy. He argues that Dostoevsky’s portrayal of the world is dynamic and
vibrant. Beliefs and objects in the world have limited duration: “We inhabit
them, so to speak, for a time—maybe as an experiment, maybe for the thrill
of it, or maybe because at a given moment we truly embrace them—but
there is nothing to keep us from inhabiting others later in the same day.”12 If
James Scanlan defends Dostoevsky’s consistency in religious matters, Steven
Cassedy demonstrates that in Dostoevsky’s nonfiction writing, “the author
repeatedly adopts a position one day only to adopt a position later that calls
into question or flatly contradicts the first position.”13 Gibson and Cassedy
see this inconsistency not as a failing, but the consequence of a healthy life
process.
Apart from these three directions in Dostoevsky studies, we must lo-
cate Mikhail Bakhtin’s more formal, now classic treatment of Dostoevsky’s
dialogism and polyphonism (Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 1929 / 1963,
trans. 1984).14 Bakhtin claims that Dostoevsky’s double vision is the writer’s
major artistic achievement. He writes:

Where others saw a single thought, he was able to find and feel out two
thoughts, a bifurcation; where others saw a single quality, he discovered in it
the presence of a second and contradictory quality. Everything that seemed
simple became, in his world, complex and multi-structured. In every voice he
could hear two contending voices, in every expression a crack, and the read-

5
 Introduction

iness to go over immediately to another contradictory expression; in every

gesture he detected confidence and lack of confidence simultaneously; he
perceived the profound ambiguity, even multiple ambiguity, of every phe-
nomenon.15

Bakhtin emphasizes that Dostoevsky’s polyphony—a multiplicity of per-

spectives—is eternal and coexistent, that is, all contradictory sides of a given
whole are simultaneously present. He polemically declines to take into ac-
count the moral aspect of Dostoevsky’s fictional writing, declaring from the
outset that he is interested solely in its formal artistic structure. His reluc-
tance to address ethical issues may have been prompted by the politics of his
time—Bakhtin himself later suggested this was the case—but it has been
perceived by many as indifference to Dostoevsky’s moral dimension, for
which Bakhtin has been repeatedly criticized.16
In Bakhtin’s opinion, Dostoevsky locates himself on a single plane with
his characters and leaves to them the possibility of uttering the final word
about themselves and the world. His definition of this authorial position
seems paradoxical: “Not only does the novel give no firm support outside the
rupture-prone world of dialogue for a third, monologically all-encompassing
consciousness—but on the contrary, everything in the novel is structured to
make dialogic opposition unresolvable [bezyskhodnoe]. . . . And this is not a
weakness of the author but his greatest strength.”17 That paradox leads to a
question. How, then, is one to link this abdication of authorial moral judg-
ment with the fact that Dostoevsky was a believing Christian who refuted an
atheistic or relativistic point of view on the world?

This book offers an approach to Dostoevsky that allows us to reconcile sev-

eral major arguments of the three camps: (1) Dostoevsky was a believing
Christian, (2) his religious beliefs are expressed in antinomies, and (3) his
Christian views are processual and dynamic. My subsidiary aim is to bridge
these three approaches with a variant of Bakhtin’s dialogism.
I focus on Dostoevsky’s “oxymoronic” treatment of polarities. Dosto-
evsky’s universe is populated by righteous sinners and sinful righteous men.
His characters tend to seek suffering rather than well-being and to find plea-
sure in humiliation. They are capable, at one and the same time, of contem-
plating two abysses: the heavenly and the infernal. In his characters’ hearts,
love borders on hatred, pleasure on pain, virtue on sin.
I argue that in Dostoevsky’s philosophy and theology, various oppo-
sites are outwardly mutually exclusive, but inwardly they are indivisible and
inseparable—and therefore they must be approached synchronically. In
his universe, opposites form a single unity and cannot exist or be cognized
without each other. The pros and contras involved in this eternal dialogue

6
 Introduction

form a single, antinomic whole. For Dostoevsky, grasping the two aspects
of this single whole simultaneously was an inherently Christian endeavor.
Consequently, the message in his novels is twofold: one must be able not
only to differentiate between opposites—good and evil, faith and disbelief,
love and egotism—but also to recognize their inseparability and interdepen-
dence vis-à-vis a dynamic, constantly changing temporal background. This
idea, as I will show further, has a crucial significance for our understand-
ing of Dostoevsky’s literary works. As Gary Saul Morson properly notes, “To
grasp a Dostoevsky novel is to identify and resolve the paradoxes on which
it depends.”18

W H Y DI A L ECT I CS ?

The inseparable wholeness of contrary parts is made possible by what I call

Dostoevsky’s “dialectics.” In Western practice, this word is often understood
to mean an alternation of thesis and antithesis, an “overcoming” or removal
of the contradiction in a synthesis, which in its turn is transformed into a
new thesis, after which follows a new antithesis. This triad, thesis-antithesis-
synthesis, is usually associated with Hegel.19 In its classical sense, however,
dialectics has a broader and more general meaning: “the philosophy of meta-
physical contradictions and their solutions.”20 Kant and Hegel were not the
only philosophers whose thought turned to contraries. The method has a
very ancient genealogy.
Heraclitus (sixth century b.c.) advocated the interdependence of
opposites. Among his fragments, we find: “Immortals are mortal, mortals
immortal, living the others’ death, dead in the others’ life” (fragment 92);21
“The beginning and the end are shared in the circumference of a circle”
(fragment 99);22 “Graspings: wholes and not wholes, convergent divergent,
consonant dissonant, from all things one and from one thing all” (fragment
124).23 All opposites, he taught, are harmoniously unified by a single sub-
ject—Logos, which can signify “word,” “meaning,” “reason,” “truth,” and
“law.” Heraclitus does not specify how opposites are linked or how one shifts
to the other; nor does he delineate the modes of opposition. In his writ-
ings, contradictions, dichotomies, polarities, and binaries converge. But his
dialectics of opposites had an extraordinary influence on other pre-Socratic
thinkers. When Hegel designed his dialectics, he claimed to have incorpo-
rated the ideas of Heraclitus.
The philosophy of Heraclitus’s contemporary, the Chinese thinker Lao
Tzu (sixth century b.c.), is strikingly similar: the harmonious conjunction
and endless interaction of opposites (yin and yang) are produced and gov-
erned by a single principle—Tao, the Way of the Universe. Lao Tzu char-

7
 Introduction

acterizes the Tao in paradoxes and contradictions: “The Tâo that can be
trodden is not the enduring and unchanging Tâo. The name that can be
named is not the enduring and unchanging name. [Conceived of as] having
no name, it is the Originator of heaven and earth; [conceived of as] having a
name, it is the Mother of all things.”24
Christian dialectics found elaboration in Saint Paul’s concept of the
“power of the weak.” A few examples will suffice from Paul’s Letters to Cor-
inthians—those that Dostoevsky underlined in his own Bible: “As unknown,
and yet well known; as dying, and, behold, we live; as chastened, and not
killed; as sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as
having nothing, and yet possessing all things” (2 Cor. 6:9–10); “Whenever
I am weak then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:10); “For we are glad, when we are
weak and ye are strong: and this also we wish, even your perfection” (2 Cor.
13:9).25
In the early sixth century, Christian dialectics was elaborated by the
Neoplatonist Dionysius the Areopagite. He put forward the dichotomy of
positive (cataphatic) and negative (apophatic) theology, and considered the
knowable and the unknowable complementary realms:

God is therefore known in all things and is distinct from all things. He is
known through knowledge and through unknowing. Of him there is concep-
tion, reason, understanding, touch, perception, opinion, imagination, name
and many other things. On the other hand he cannot be understood, words
cannot contain him, and no name can lay hold of him. He is not one of the
things that are and he cannot be known in any of them. He is all things in all
things and he is no thing among things. He is known to all from all things and
he is known to no one from anything.26

The fifteenth-century German theologian and mathematician Nicholas of

Cusa posited his theory of the coincidence of opposites.27 He taught that the
resolution of a conflict of opposites takes place through a confluence of the
absolute maximum and the absolute minimum.
Similarly to the dialectics of Heraclitus, Saint Paul, Dionysius the Are-
opagite, and Nicholas of Cusa, Dostoevsky’s dialectics, as his philosophy of
contradictions, is based on the principle of the coincidence of opposites. This
principle in Dostoevsky was first noted by Nicholas Berdyaev: “Dostoevsky
was a Gnostic; his work is a system of knowing, a science of the spirit. His
conception of the world was in the highest degree dynamic, and we must
look at it in that way; the internal contradictions of his work will then vanish,
and it will verify the principle of coincidentia oppositorum.”28
The mere fact that contradictions exist in Dostoevsky’s novels, or that
contradictory qualities exist in his characters, is in itself insufficient to con-

8
 Introduction

sider Dostoevsky’s method a dialectical one. Any good writer attempts to

create multifaceted images. Dialectics is a method that investigates relation-
ships between polarities. To appreciate Dostoevsky’s dialectics, we need to
introduce its model.

A MOD EL F O R D O S T O EV S KY ’ S D I A L ECTI CS

Some dialecticians have provided a metaphor or a visual image of their

method. Hegelian dialectics has been compared to a spiral. Heraclitus,
speaking of the essential unity of opposites, compared their relationship to
the tension in the string of a bow or a lyre (fragment 78),29 which creates
coherence and responsiveness between the two parts of the instrument.30
In ancient Chinese philosophy, dialectical change is represented by the yin-
yang diagram:

This Chinese symbol of cyclical change illustrates the idea that an attainment
of the outermost boundary inevitably leads to a radical turnabout and initi-
ates the transition to its diametric opposite.31 The name of this diagram—Tai
Chi—roughly translated from the Chinese means “The Ultimate Boundary.”
Yin and yang symbolize two opposite sides of a single whole.32 The black
yin is associated with darkness, passivity, and the feminine element. The
white yang, its masculine counterpart, connotes brightness and activity. Yin
and yang are polar manifestations of the earthly and heavenly aspects of the
Tao—the Way of the Universe, the source of all things, the endless coming
into being and passing away.
Among the most important lessons of this diagram is that opposites are
porous and able to interact with each other. The black and white hemicycles
have three analogous phases of development. The initial pivoting phase—
the first move out of the center—is followed by the phase of wholeness,
when the qualities are fully grown. Finally, there is a disclosing phase, when
the qualities approach their extremes, expand, and exhaust themselves.
Upon reaching its extreme stage, each energy transforms into its polar op-
posite. The two spots—a black dot on a white background and a white one
on black—indicate that at the highest level of its growth, each of the two en-

9
 Introduction

ergies already contains the seed of its opposite. Yin and yang are constantly
passing one into the other, one receding and the other swelling. Ultimately
they exchange places and the cycle begins anew. In such a model, lightness
and darkness do not strive to defeat each other but, acknowledging their
reciprocity and interdependence, “fuel” each other.
Not only humanist philosophers have been drawn to this visual image.
Niels Bohr used the yin-yang image as an illustration of the complementar-
ity of particle and wave.33 The famous Soviet filmmaker and theorist Sergei
Eisenstein relied on this diagram when speaking about the dynamism of a
cinematographic line, which shows “the transition of separate acts, separate
placements and the entire course of the action as a whole into its oppo-
site.”34 In Bohr’s quantum theory and Eisenstein’s cinematography, the yin-
yang circle serves as an ideograph—a graphic image of the idea.
Unlike Leo Tolstoy, his great rival in moral metaphysics, Dostoevsky
was not familiar with Oriental philosophy.35 Nevertheless, to make the func-
tions of Dostoevsky’s dialectics maximally clear, I use the yin-yang diagram
as an illustration of its dynamics. The Chinese model of change helps us
see that contradictions as Dostoevsky presents them are not random, arbi-
trary, or perverse, but internally structured and balanced. For our purpose,
it helps to formulate and answer three basic questions: How, in Dostoevsky,
does the antithesis stand in relation to the thesis? What is the nature of
their dynamic reciprocity? What are we to make of the resultant dialectical
whole?

TH ES I S , A NT I T HES I S , A ND S I N

There is a particular reason the yin-yang model is appropriate for the dis-
cussion of Dostoevsky’s dialectics. In traditional Christianity, good and evil,
virtue and sin, faith and disbelief, are clearly separated and diametrically
opposed. In Dostoevsky’s treatment of these binary pairs, counterparts are
contrasted but presented as interdependent. Thus, Dostoevsky’s religious
philosophy is built on the idea that man’s way to God may lie through sin and
crime. Speaking about Dostoevsky’s religious views, the twentieth-century
Russian philosopher Sergei Askoldov observes that his novels portray sin and
the fall as the best ground for future religious achievements.36 The religious
thinker Pavel Florensky also points out that Dostoevsky’s attitude toward
sin is highly ambivalent: “Dostoevsky rediscovered, after Apostle Paul’s an-
tinomies, the salvational dimension of the fall [spasitel’nost’ padeniia] and
blessedness of sin.”37 Neither of these philosophers suggests that Dostoevsky
justifies his characters’ crimes. Sin has a salvational dimension not because
we should see the innocent victims as sacrifices, but because sinning brings

10
 Introduction

one so close to spiritual death that the only way out is a radical turn in a dif-
ferent direction—a process that in Orthodox Christianity is called metavnoia
(metanoia, a radical change of one’s mind). For that reason, Nicholas Ber-
dyaev, who shares Askoldov’s and Florensky’s view of Dostoevsky’s doctrine
of sin, hastens to warn us: “Only an immature or enslaved mind would de-
duce from Dostoevsky’s thesis that we must choose to follow the path of
wickedness in order to enrich our consciousness and profit from a new ex-
perience.”38
Dostoevsky’s teachings about sin have deep roots in Christian doc-
trine, where the opposition of sinfulness and righteousness is represented
antinomically. Divine judgment is understood here in two contrasted ways:
as retribution (salvation of the righteous and punishment of sinners) and as
mercy (forgiveness).39 Dostoevsky elaborates on this theological paradox. He
dwells on the second part of the antinomy by showing that the way to God is
open to sinners. At the same time—and this is essential—he does not reject
the first part of the antinomy. His novels suggest that sinning is destructive,
that “sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death” (James 1:15).
Vasily Rozanov was the first Russian philosopher who noticed that
Dostoevsky broadened and deepened Christian paradoxes. In a lecture de-
livered in 1909, Rozanov presented Dostoevsky as a “dialectical thinker.” I
allow myself a lengthy quotation from this lecture, since it remains virtually
unknown to the Western reader:

It is said that dialectics was created by Plato and Hegel, but long before them
there was the chameleon, changing its colors imperceptibly to the eye and
having no definite, constant color—and thus providing an example of what
I would call organic dialectics. What is dialectics? It is “yes” and “no” cross-
ing into each other, helping each other out, remaining on friendly terms with
each other, although also quarreling with each other in the most embittered
way. . . . The best example of a dialectical thinker in our country, and per-
haps in all of world literature, is F. M. Dostoevsky. Look at his flexibility. . . .
He is so flexible that one would like to make him less so. He himself suffered
from this flexibility: for it is something infernal—you cannot stop at anything
and cannot stand firm on a single assertion, you fly headlong from every the-
sis, and fly, and fly—and end up flying into an assertion that is absolutely op-
posed to the original thesis. . . . You must agree that in such situations one
can say neither “yes” nor “no”; you must agree that here, “yes” and “no” are
woven together into some monstrous unity. Is prostitution chaste? Nowhere
in the world can you find two answers to that question, but Dostoevsky has
shown us Sonya Marmeladova, and through this Christian image he shatters
the Old Testament commandment “Do not commit adultery”: and shatters
it in a way that the Gospels themselves could not have done. “The righteous

11
 Introduction

harlot” [pravednaia bludnitsa] has become a possible phrase in our language.

Is there something positive in drunkenness? But through Marmeladov, Dos-
toevsky compelled Russia, and finally the entire world, to hear the confession
of a drunkard, to hear, to faint and to weep over that confession. . . . Dosto-
evsky terribly broadened and terribly clarified the Gospels for us. For a long
time he has been called “a great Christian writer”—but this epithet has a pe-
culiar and keen-edged meaning: he was the first to show us, artistically, in im-
ages, in such real-life artistic visualization [v stol’ real’noi zhivopisi], the un-
punishability of vice, the nonguiltiness of crime, he showed us and proved
to us the great “forgive” of the Gospels. . . . “Forgive everyone and every-
thing for everything.” . . . But since he is a dialectician, alongside that “let
us forgive everything” of his, he also triggered, with his flexible visualization,
such indignation, such embittered disgust directed toward a huge number of
human personality types, that no one else could have possibly succeeded at
it; again utterly as it is done in the Gospels, where at the end of that “let us
forgive everything,” the otherworldly light is also shown, eternal and inex-
tinguishable, where all the “drunkards and adulterers” will burn and not be
consumed.40

Proceeding from Florensky, Berdyaev, and Rozanov, I take one further

step to suggest that in Dostoevsky’s dialectics, sin plays the role of a prime
mover. Of course, sinning per se is dynamic, for it implies transgressing
boundaries and exceeding of limits. By analyzing the progression of his he-
roes toward these limits, Dostoevsky reveals a fundamental principle: reach-
ing the ultimate boundary brings one back to a new beginning. The process
is endless, for, as Dostoevsky’s novels demonstrate, human beings are always
presented with a choice: freedom constantly opens to them those winding
paths that lead to both abysses, celestial and infernal. The way Dostoevsky
portrays his characters’ constant movement up and down the same road is
reminiscent of Heraclitus (hence the epigraph to this introduction) and the
early Orthodox Church fathers’ wisdom:

A brother asked Abba Sisoes, “What shall I do, abba, for I have fallen?” The
old man said to him, “Get up again.” The brother said, “I have got up again,
but I have fallen again.” The old man said, “Get up again and again.” So then
the brother said, “How many times?” The old man said, “Until you are taken
up either in virtue or in sin. For a man presents himself to judgment in the
state in which he is found.”41

Occupying a central place in his dialectics, Dostoevsky’s treatment of sin is

intimately tied to his attitude toward human judgment. Over and over again
he demonstrates why the law “do not judge” is so important: our judgments

12
 Introduction

can only be partial, one sided, and frozen in time. We have opinions (views),
but there are always valid counteropinions (counterviews), and as it happens
they too deserve attention. In this respect the yin-yang model is especially
helpful because in Dostoevsky the entire paradigm is constantly in flux, thus
depriving us of a stable or stationary platform from which we might pass
definitive moral judgment.
According to Dostoevsky, sin is central to all things because it causes
division within wholeness, thus giving birth to dualities, binaries, and an-
tinomies. This split and disjunction distress the human soul, heart, and mind
and impede our quest for the most precious values: truth, goodness, beauty,
freedom, and love. The loss is enormous, yet it is not tragic, for it is comple-
mented by an apparent gain—a sense of life’s complexity and fullness. Dos-
toevsky seems to suggest that the loss of innocence is not tragic for yet an-
other reason—the painful condition of dividedness stimulates man’s search
for wholeness (tsel’nost’).

TH E PRI NCI P L E O F D V UE D I N S T V O
( D UA L I T Y-I N-U NI T Y )

In Chinese philosophy, the unity of yin and yang suggests the dual nature of
wholeness. Christian Orthodox philosophy knows a similar concept. In the
Russian idiom, this special type of unity is traditionally referred to as dvued-
instvo (duality-in-unity or duality-in-oneness). The principle is fundamental
for the Christological dogma of the two natures of Christ—his full human-
ity and full divinity, “indivisible and inseparable” as defined in a.d. 451 by
the council of Chalcedon.42 As mentioned earlier, this special wholeness also
reveals itself in the harmony of apophatic (negative) and cataphatic (posi-
tive) theologies, understood as two complementary ways to God.43 During
the Russian religious renaissance of the early twentieth century, the prin-
ciple of duality-in-unity inspired the concepts of Godmanhood (bogoche-
lovechestvo), Sophia (the connecting principle between spirit and matter),
“theurgy,” “intuitive knowledge,” and “sacred corporeality,” posited and
developed by Vladimir Solovyov, Sergei Bulgakov, Semyon Frank, Dmitry
Merezhkovsky, Pavel Florensky, and Vyacheslav Ivanov.
Duality-in-unity (of heavenly and earthly, spiritual and sensual, sacred
and profane) governs Dostoevsky’s Christian universe as well. It actualizes
itself as an alternation of two mirrorlike processes: a downward motion caus-
ing schism, division, and rupture, and the upward striving toward a resto-
ration of wholeness. The ever-changing equilibrium of these two motions
makes Dostoevsky’s universe antideterministic.44
Each chapter of this book considers an unstable equilibrium of two

13
 Introduction

opposites. Such are the relationships between transgression and repentance

(chapter 1 on Raskolnikov); between the two abysses, heavenly and infernal
(chapter 2 on Dmitry Karamazov); between actuality and potentiality (chap-
ter 3 on Alyosha Karamazov); between passion and compassion (chapter 4
on Nastasya, Myshkin, and Rogozhin); between two aesthetic canons (chap-
ter 5 on iconographic and more secular Western representations of the Ma-
donna); between high and low truth / pravda (chapter 6 on the Underground
Man); between religious and epistemic truth / istina (chapter 6 on the Ri-
diculous Man); between monist and dualist worldviews (chapter 7 on Dos-
toevsky, Bakhtin, and Russian religious thought of the Silver Age); between
pros and contras (chapter 7 on Ivan Karamazov and the elder Zosima); and,
as a whole, between Dostoevsky’s philosophy of hope and the darker side of
his work.
For the Western mind, the idea of the duality-in-unity may sound par-
adoxical, if not absurd. Conversely, Christian Orthodox tradition, to which
Dostoevsky belongs, allows paradoxes, contradictions, and antinomies; it
embraces them and treats them as subjects of philosophical meditation.

A NT I NO M I ES O F G O O DNES S, B EAUTY, A ND TRUTH

In my examination of Dostoevsky’s dialectics I draw on three conceptual

sources: (1) Dostoevsky’s antinomism, remarked upon by Russian religious
philosophers (Nicholas Berdyaev, Sergei Bulgakov, George Florovsky, Se-
myon Frank, Vyacheslav Ivanov, and Vasily Rozanov); (2) Dostoevsky’s dia-
logism, as expounded by Mikhail Bakhtin; and (3) the idea of a dynamic in-
terdependence of opposites, familiar from Chinese philosophy. I view these
sources as complementary.
In the three parts of this book I proceed from three major antinomies
that these Russian thinkers traced in Dostoevsky’s work. They can be sum-
marized as follows:
The antinomy of goodness. Thesis: The way of moral excellence is the
best and healthiest way; sinning is destructive. Antithesis: Sinning ( falling)
may bring a person closer to God.
The antinomy of beauty. Thesis: The only source of positive beauty is
the moral ideal of Christ. Antithesis: This ideal is unattainable on earth. The
human heart can encompass different kinds of beauty.
The antinomy of truth. Thesis: Truth is one, wholesome, and eternal.
Antithesis: Opposing truths collide with one another; contradictions are in-
herent in human nature and can never be wholly eliminated.
We must keep in mind that in the antinomy, two ideas are juxtaposed
as contradictory but are at the same time united into a single conceptual

14
 Introduction

whole. Sergei Bulgakov clarifies this point: “An antinomy testifies to the
equal significance, equal strength, and at the same time, to the inseparabil-
ity, unity, and identity of contradictory assumptions.”45
With the exception of Rozanov, these thinkers see Dostoevsky’s antin-
omies and paradoxes as overwhelmingly tragic. Duality-in-unity enables us
to take a different approach to Dostoevsky’s antinomies and to see opposites
(light / darkness, thesis / antithesis) as balanced in a harmoniously structured
dialectic whole. I argue that in Dostoevsky, this relationship between op-
posites is dynamic, which is why they must be viewed in motion. Each part
of the binary pair contains the potential for a transition toward its opposite.
The harmonious balance of yin and yang, clearly evident in the Tai Chi dia-
gram, reflects the special nature of the whole in Dostoevsky’s dialectics.
It was my goal to demonstrate that the black dot on a white background
and the white dot on black possess a powerful potential. This dot is the lever
that enables one part of the antinomy to turn into its opposite. Touch that
lever, as Dostoevsky shows, and the tiniest atom of unrepentant sin can lead
to the corruption of an entire planet of innocent people; the “little spider of
lust” can lead to violence or even to murder. The reverse is also true: a spark
of light in the darkness can show a sinner the way to spiritual renewal.
My interest lies only in those instances where these dynamics are set
in motion. Although I do not consider those cases where no development
occurs (Marmeladov, Svidrigailov, Fyodor Karamazov), one may legitimately
ask what it is precisely that precludes a given character or situation from
developing. To this question about the initiation of motion I suggest that the
answer depends on one’s chosen perspective. It may be understood as Dos-
toevsky’s authorial intent. One can also say that the dynamics of Dostoev-
sky’s novels are fueled by the mental and spiritual energy of his characters. A
third possible answer stems from Chinese thought and allows us to reconcile
the former and the latter, concluding that the cause resides simultaneously
in the author’s design and the character’s will, both being equally valid. In
Chinese philosophy, the coexistence of events is understood differently than
in the West. In his introduction to the ancient Chinese source I Ching (The
Book of Changes), Carl Gustav Jung contrasts the Western notions of chance,
cause, and effect with a principle of Chinese thought he calls “synchronic-
ity.”46 He explains that “causality” describes the purportedly objective logic
of a “sequence of events,” whereas “synchronicity” describes a “coincidence
of events in space and time” and a “peculiar interdependence of objective
events among themselves as well as with the subjective (psychic) states of
the observer or observers.” The notion of “synchronicity” allows us to view
Dostoevsky’s authorial plan, his characters’ freedom, and, we may add, the
role of chance as aspects of mutual causality governing the development of
his plots.47

15
 Introduction

B A KHT I N’ S D I A L O G I S M A N D D OSTOEVSKY’ S
( N O N-HEG EL I A N) DI A L ECT I CS

In the opening pages of his Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, Bakhtin notes

that dialogicality should not be confused with Hegelian dialectics. In dialec-
tics, he explains, the relations between thesis and antithesis are “mechanis-
tic”; their conflict is canceled in a synthesis. As a result, the whole process of
“becoming” inevitably strives toward finalization.
Specifically, Bakhtin comments on Boris Engelhardt’s essay “Dostoev-
sky’s Ideological Novel” (“Ideologicheskii roman Dostoevskogo”), in which
Engelhardt discusses the dialectical triad environment (social elements), na-
tive soil (the accumulation of national and folk culture), and earth (higher
reality). Bakhtin agrees that Hegelian dialectics is present in Dostoevsky’s
world.48 But he challenges Engelhardt’s claim that in Dostoevsky, the ele-
ments of this triad arrange themselves into a “unified dialectical sequence
(dialekticheskii riad), as stages along the path in the evolution (stanovlenie)
of a unified spirit.”49 In Dostoevsky’s open-ended novels, Bakhtin insists,
there is neither dialectical becoming nor the author’s synthesis absorbing
other consciousnesses.50
I stress here that I totally agree with Bakhtin that in Dostoevsky there
is no “becoming” or “synthesis” in a Hegelian sense.51 In Dostoevsky’s dialec-
tics, I suggest, we find the inseparability of opposites, their interpenetration,
and their ability for reversal. Here opposites do not emerge as stages; they
do not cancel each other out in a synthesis. Each part contains a kernel of its
opposite that can potentially lead to a radical change. The antithesis is thus
born from inside the thesis, growing out of it organically, like a grain or a
seed. The major principle of Dostoevsky’s dialogism advanced by Bakhtin—
the principle of “coexistence and mutual interaction” (sosushchestvovanie i
vzaimodeistvie)—remains fundamental for what I call Dostoevsky’s dialec-
tics.
The main distinction between Bakhtin’s dialogical approach to Dos-
toevsky and the dialectical approach offered by this book is that Bakhtin
studies the “coexistence and mutual interaction” of unmerged voices and
consciousnesses on the level of speech. The object of his attention remains
the word itself. Whether by design or out of caution, in this book, Bakhtin
does not touch upon religious questions. Dostoevsky’s dialectics, understood
here as a method for operating with Christian dichotomies, permits us to
coordinate Bakhtin’s dialogism with central aspects of Dostoevsky’s religious
philosophy—a project that we know was important to Bakhtin, although he
was not able to pursue it in Soviet Russia.52
The discussion of Dostoevsky’s dialectics enables us to supplement

16
 Introduction

Bakhtinian dialogism by clarifying two more issues, the first of which is the
special nature of unity in Dostoevsky that Bakhtin hinted at but did not
elaborate. Trying to find an analog to the “multiplicity of unfused conscious-
nesses” and to define the special type of unity in Dostoevsky’s novels, Bakhtin
cautiously attempts to draw Christian parallels, first with the Orthodox idea
of sobornost’ (spiritual community) uniting sinners and righteous men, and
then with the world of Dante’s Divine Comedy, where both the damned and
the saved find refuge.53 He immediately rejects both comparisons, however,
perhaps anticipating that these parallels would not be welcomed by Soviet
censorship in the late 1920s. The definition that he provides, “a higher unity,
so to speak, of the second order, the unity of a polyphonic novel,” tells us
very little.54 Nor is the matter clarified in his later statement: “Unity not as
innate one-and-only, but as a dialogic concordance of unmerged twos or
multiples.”55 Part of the problem lies in the fact that unity, from the point of
view of dominant Western thought, presumes the presence of finalizability
or closedness. Aristotelian logic tells us to choose one or the other: either
unity (wholeness) or unfinalizability (usually unstructured and potentially
chaotic). The idea of an “unfinalized unity” presents itself as a logical para-
dox. Gary Saul Morson and Caryl Emerson note the absence of a terminol-
ogy that would answer to Bakhtin’s needs: “We lack a vocabulary for this
kind of unity, which is one reason it is so hard to convey. We give the name
‘structure’ to static unities, . . . but we lack a comparable term for the unity
of event, and for the different kinds of ‘eventness.’ ”56 The dynamic structure
of the yin-yang diagram provides us with a visual image of what Bakhtin calls
“unfinalized unity,” thus clarifying the open-ended nature of the whole for
which he could not find a convincing metaphor.
The proposed model also enables us to revisit productively Bakhtin’s
chronotope of the threshold. Crossing the threshold, he argues, always rep-
resents a critical moment in the lives of Dostoevsky’s characters. I suggest
that crossing the threshold in Dostoevsky is processual; this process has a
beginning and an end, each marked by a dot (a point).
This book discusses many dots (points) in Dostoevsky, both dark and
bright. Among the dark dots that have the potential to seduce, to corrupt,
and to lead to destruction are the images of the “insect of lust,” the atom of
the lie, the trichina contaminating humanity. Among the bright dots are the
dying grain leading to resurrection, the “little onion” (a single good deed)
with redemptive potential, the star in a night sky, the ray of light in the abyss,
the spark of beauty in Sodom—all of which show the way out of darkness
and despair.
In Dostoevsky’s Christian philosophy, the dot on a contrasting back-
ground has an axiological meaning. Here, Russian religious thought comple-

17
 Introduction

ments the proposed dialectical model. The most concise philosophy of the
dot was provided by Pavel Florensky in his “Symbolarium” (the dictionary
of symbols), a huge project of which he completed only one article, titled
“The Dot” (“Tochka”). Florensky sees this symbol antithetically—as a point
of nothingness and as a point of wholeness. In its negative sense, the “point
of darkness” (the vanishing point of linear perspective in visual art)—the
black hole, absence, and emptiness—annihilates reality. “The point of light”
(which characterizes the inverse perspective) serves to “generate reality”
and to “extract it from non-being.”57
These two dots function in Dostoevsky’s Christian universe as two bea-
cons: the dark one as a signal of warning, the bright one as a source of guid-
ance and inspiration. This latter image constitutes the kernel of religious op-
timism in Dostoevsky’s art, where light dominates over darkness not because
his novels end on a happy note but because they are open ended.

H OW T HI S BO O K I S S T R U CT URED

My discussion is organized around the plotlines and epilogues of Dostoev-

sky’s three great novels—Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1868),
and The Brothers Karamazov (1881), as well as two shorter works—Notes
from Underground (1864) and “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man” (1877).
The thematic organizing principle is the classical triad of goodness, beauty,
and truth, traditionally perceived as a single unity. Pavel Florensky stressed
the inseparability of its parts: “This metaphysical triad is not three different
principles, but one principle. It is one and the same spiritual life, but seen
from different points of view.”58 Generally, each part of the triad is set against
its negative counterpart: good against evil, beauty against ugliness, truth
against falsehood. In a traditional system of rigid and uncompromising hier-
archies, goodness, beauty, and truth are seen as unwavering ultimate values
that can triumph insofar as their dark counterparts are suppressed or de-
stroyed. In Russian literature and culture, this view dominates in Tolstoy’s
moral philosophy as well as in various utopias: religious and political.
For Dostoevsky the thinker, the idea of the existence of absolute cate-
gories was a rich source of inspiration. Goodness, beauty, and truth are fre-
quent subjects of rumination in his Diary of a Writer. His literary works,
however, prove that it is impossible to realize the absolute on earth. Dos-
toevsky the artist shows that the world we live in is polarized. This book
focuses on Dostoevsky the artist and his polarized universe.
Part 1 analyzes the dialectic of goodness. Chapter 1, “If You Don’t Sin,
You Can’t Repent; If You Don’t Repent, You Can’t Achieve Salvation” (on

18
 Introduction

Rodion Raskolnikov) and chapter 2, “A Ray of Light in the Abyss” (on Dmi-
try Karamazov), investigate Dostoevsky’s idea that falling into the abyss of
sin may bring a person closer to God. In my analysis of Raskolnikov’s and
Dmitry Karamazov’s journeys from sin to repentance, intertextual connec-
tions are introduced: the Old Russian “Tale of Andrew of Crete” (late six-
teenth century) and the ancient Greek myth of Demeter. The use of these
intertexts and the dialectical method allow me to reconsider the issue of
Raskolnikov’s resurrection in the novel’s epilogue, which to this day remains
problematic. They also help to make Dmitry Karamazov’s moral renewal at
the end of The Brothers Karamazov more persuasive.
Chapter 3, “The Devil Begins with Froth on the Lips of an Angel”
(on Alyosha Karamazov), takes a close look at the reverse process.59 Alyosha
is traditionally viewed as a saintly character, created by Dostoevsky in ac-
cordance with the conventions of hagiography. As the author informs us in
the novel’s preface, Alexey’s biography was meant to consist of two parts,
the second of which was conceptually the most important. The sequel to
The Brothers Karamazov, in which Dostoevsky, according to several testi-
monies, planned to turn his protagonist into a political criminal and a regi-
cide, was never written. Soon after completing the first part, the writer died.
This chapter delves into the issue of potentiality and artistic plausibility in
Dostoevsky and reinterprets the ending of The Brothers Karamazov in light
of its projected sequel.
Part 2 deals with the paradox of beauty as verbalized by Dmitry Kara-
mazov—“the ideal of the Madonna” (pure, celestial, innocent beauty) and
“the ideal of Sodom” (passion, carnal desire) are not mutually exclusive;
one single heart may have room for both. Naturally, this paradox originates
from the fact that beauty can incite contrasting feelings: purely aesthetic or
spiritual admiration as well as sensuality or lust. Chapter 4, “The Corridor
of Mirrors in The Idiot,” examines several factors that contribute to the am-
bivalent nature of beauty: its dual position vis-à-vis goodness (depending on
which scale is chosen—ethical or aesthetic) and in relation to two neighbor-
ing notions, charm (prelest’) and passion (strast’), both of which contain a
“dark element” of sensuality that tarnishes “pure beauty.” The final section
examines the rivalry between Myshkin and Rogozhin as personifications of
two types of love—compassion and carnal passion—both inspired by Nas-
tasya Filippovna’s ambivalent beauty. It also discusses the symbolism of the
novel’s finale, where the two rivals are brought together at the deathbed of
their bride.
Chapter 5, “A Grain of Eros in the Madonna, a Spark of Beauty in
Sodom,” further analyzes the dual nature of beauty by discussing the aes-
thetic feminine archetype based on the cult of the Madonna. This French

19
 Introduction

medieval literary tradition, revived in European romantic poetry, made its

way to Russia, but its reception was controversial, as can be seen in the argu-
ment surrounding the cult status of Raphael’s Sistine Madonna. Dostoevsky
was the heir of several traditions—Russian and western European, romantic
as well as realist. While he remains sensitive to the antagonism between the
spiritual and the sensual aspects of beauty, he bridges these elements in his
heroines, thus creating a peculiar feminine type of “saintly sinner”: Sonya
Marmeladova in Crime and Punishment, Nastasya Filippovna in The Idiot,
Grushenka in The Brothers Karamazov. I argue that a “spark of beauty in
Sodom” is Dostoevsky’s paradigmatic image of salvation that beauty prom-
ises to grant.
Part 3 delves into the dialectic of truth by differentiating between two
Russian concepts of truth—pravda and istina. The difference between the
two is often noted in studies of Dostoevsky. I emphasize that each of these
notions has a set of two contrasted meanings: pravda can be either “high”
or “low”; istina can be used either in the religious sense or in the epistemic.
Chapter 6, “Dostoevsky’s Case for Contradictions,” has a twofold goal: to
consider the interaction between the “low pravda” (the Underground) and
the “high pravda” (the high ideal) in Notes from Underground and to focus
on the relationship between the “religious istina” and the “epistemic istina”
in “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man.” Both stories object to the socialist
plan of re-creating a Golden Age on earth by touching upon the issue of
human contradictoriness. Notes from Underground suggests that the con-
struction of a socialist heaven is an unfeasible enterprise, for humanity is
not always looking for happiness and a sense of well-being; the human heart
and mind are contradictory. However, human contradictoriness is not ran-
dom, irrational, or chaotic. “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man” explains in
more detail why a return to the Golden Age is impossible. The story of the
protagonist’s corruption of the Golden Age planet (an obvious allusion to the
biblical story of man’s fall) suggests that the consequences of original sin are
enormous: corruption splits wholeness, thus giving rise to polarities.
Chapter 7, “Antinomic Truth (Istina),” delves deeper into the two ap-
proaches to istina: religious and epistemic. In The Brothers Karamazov, this
dichotomy is exemplified in books 5 and 6, where the elder Zosima and Ivan
Karamazov argue over the existence of evil in the world. I claim that for
Dostoevsky, pro and contra constitute one single truth. From the point of
view of Aristotelian logic, this is a paradox—and paradoxes, being obstacles
on the way to truth, must be avoided. However, the Aristotelian approach
to contradictions is not the only one available in the history of ideas. In
this chapter I focus on the Christian tradition of antinomian monodualism.
According to the writings of Pavel Florensky, Semyon Frank, and other

20
 Introduction

twentieth-century Russian thinkers, truth (istina) is antinomic. It tolerates

doubt and is able to sustain in itself both a thesis and an antithesis without
dissolving them in a synthesis.

A W OR D O N M ET HO D O L O G Y

Any examination of duality in Dostoevsky requires that the traditional ap-

proach be complemented by more formal tools. In this respect, structur-
alism can be helpful, yet somewhat lacking. Structuralists (as well as post-
structuralists) favor form over content and construction (or deconstruction)
over creation; generally they are not interested in the spiritual dimension of
artistic works. The formal method also falls short for discussion of Dosto-
evsky because it examines static binaries, whereas in Dostoevsky’s world, as I
argue, opposites are not static; they enter into a dynamic relationship.
For this reason, this book combines features of both the traditional
and formal approaches. It is traditional in the sense that it assumes the
supremacy of spiritual reality in Dostoevsky’s work, and it is structural, or
formal, in that it focuses on the writer’s peculiar treatment of opposites.
And yet it exceeds the limits of both approaches, being concerned with the
dynamic processes taking place within each part of the triad. It traces the
characters’ curved paths to goodness; it delves into the interrelations of two
kinds of beauty, their causes and consequences; it investigates how contrast-
ing aspects of truth argue and overlap with each other. I define this method
as “dialectical.”
Although the nouns “dialectics” and “dialectic” are often used inter-
changeably, I distinguish between them: the former refers to a philosophy
of change, opposition, and conflict, whereas the latter refers to the recipro-
cal relationship between binary opposites. This is why, in the title Dosto-
evsky’s Dialectics, I use the word in the plural, whereas in the titles of the
three parts I use it in the singular. At crucial junctures, I explicate Russian
terms or dichotomies that translate into English poorly, such as pokaianie
and raskaianie (repentance), krasivoe and prekrasnoe (beauty), and istina
and pravda (truth).
In my analysis of the dialectic of goodness, the dialectic of beauty, and
the dialectic of truth, which form the titles of three chapters, I proceed from
my understanding that in Dostoevsky’s fluid binaries, the antithesis does not
posit itself as an autonomous external domain of evil, ugliness, and false-
hood. Instead, an antithetical force springs from the very depth of the thesis,
first as the molecule of a seemingly harmless opposite. Thus, in Dostoevsky,
the antithesis of goodness appears in the form of an atom of pride or egoism

21
 Introduction

hiding at the core of the best intentions but eventually corroding the human
soul. The antithesis of beauty arises under the guise of “a little spider of
carnal lust,” a grain of sensuality that has enough power to divert the human
heart from “the ideal of the Madonna” to “the ideal of Sodom.” The an-
tithesis of truth emerges in the form of an irresolvable paradox, ruining the
human mind. Each of the seven chapters centers on a particular topic and a
particular character or set of characters, and in each novel, special attention
is allotted to the epilogue or the end.
Even though Dostoevsky’s philosophy of contradictions is reminiscent
of the dialectics of Heraclitus, Lao Tzu, and several other thinkers, I do not
suggest the possibility of these dialecticians’ direct influence on Dostoevsky.
I do, however, emphasize that Dostoevsky did not invent his dialectics. He
discerned the functioning of its laws in the natural world and the world of
ideas and clothed them in artistic garb. Traces of this dialectics appear in
various literary sources belonging to quite different traditions, among them
biblical, folk Russian, Chinese, ancient Greek, and medieval French. There-
fore I bring these sources into my discussion of Dostoevsky.
Dostoevsky believed that duality, as well as motion, are natural condi-
tions for the human soul. Shortly before his death, he wrote to his friend
Yekaterina Yunge:

Why do you write about your duality [dvoistvennost’]? But that’s the most
ordinary trait of people . . . who are not entirely ordinary, however. A trait
peculiar to human nature in general, but far, far from occurring in every
human nature in such force as with you. That’s precisely why you are so kin-
dred to me, because that split in you is exactly the way it is in me and has
been all my life. It’s a great torment, but at the same time a great delight
too. It’s a powerful consciousness, need for self-evaluation, and the presence
in your nature of the need for moral obligation toward yourself and toward
humanity.60

Perhaps because of his love for duality, when he lived in St. Petersburg Dos-
toevsky always rented apartments in corner houses that faced intersections.
I must emphasize, however, that it is not my goal to consider contradictions
that characterized Dostoevsky as a person. I am interested in Dostoevsky as
a creative author—that is, the intellectual and spiritual intersection of the
dualities and contradictions that we, his readers, find in his works.
As is clear from this summary, the book is not a philosophical inquiry
but rather a literary study. I do not set myself the task of deducing any “ab-
solute formula” for Dostoevsky that might explain all his work. This is in the
spirit of my subject; Dostoevsky deplored absolute formulas of all sorts. I
intend to show that there exists a certain general pattern that is important

22
 Introduction

for understanding Dostoevsky’s religious philosophy as well as the paths he

plotted for his characters. If there are Dostoevskian characters who do not
seem to fit this pattern (and such do exist), if there are Dostoevskian plots
whose dynamics are different from those that I consider, it only proves once
again that Dostoevsky’s universe is infinite—and therefore infinitely broader
than any of its interpretations.

23
 Chapter One

“If You Don’t Sin, You Can’t Repent;

If You Don’t Repent, You Can’t Achieve Salvation”

C ON TRO V ER S I ES A BO U T T HE E P I L OGUE TO
C R IM E A N D P UN I S H ME N T

The Russian philosopher Sergei Askoldov observed that the works of Dosto-
evsky can be seen as artistic illustrations of two biblical episodes: the parable
of the prodigal son and that of the adulterous woman.1 Crime and Punish-
ment, its plot based on the progression from sin to spiritual renewal, defi-
nitely conforms to this metaphoric definition. Having committed murder,
Raskolnikov experiences disgust. Weakened physically and psychologically,
he is besieged by doubts, realizing that his plan to become a new Napoleon
has failed. His torments and exhaustion lead him to a series of confessions,
the first of which is addressed to the prostitute Sonya Marmeladova. Assum-
ing the role of Raskolnikov’s spiritual instructor, Sonya—whose full name
in Greek, Sophia, means spiritual wisdom—gives him the following advice:
“Stand in the crossroads, bow down, and first kiss the earth you’ve defiled,
then bow to the whole world, on all four sides, and say aloud to everyone: ‘I
have killed!’ ” (420). Raskolnikov follows her advice. Finding himself in Hay-
market Square among poor and drunken people, he kneels down and kisses
the earth thrice. Although he does not confess aloud publicly, his kneeling
and kissing of the earth convey the symbolic value of a penitential gesture.
Soon after, Raskolnikov goes to the police and informs the officials that he
killed the old pawnbroker and her sister, Lizaveta. These three confessional
acts lead the reader to expect that Dostoevsky is guiding his hero to a spiri-
tual metamorphosis.
The ending of Crime and Punishment, however, has become the sub-
ject of incessant scholarly controversy. Some claim that the epilogue is an
artificial appendix to the novel, and thus a reflection of the writer’s fail-
ure. They argue that the religious conversion of the arrogant Raskolnikov
is unexpected, unpersuasive, and implausible. Konstantin Mochulsky’s re-

27
 Chapter One

action is especially harsh: the renewal “is promised, but is not shown. We
know Raskolnikov too well to believe this ‘pious lie.’ ”2 Like Mochulsky, Lev
Shestov does not believe in Raskolnikov’s moral resurrection.3 In the opin-
ion of Ernest Simmons, the moralistic ending of the novel and the protago-
nist’s metamorphosis are not sufficiently motivated; they are “neither artis-
tically palatable nor psychologically sound.”4 Michael Holquist points to a
disjunction between the temporal structure of the novel and its epilogue.5
Joseph Frank formulates his observations in the following way: “It would be
a daunting task to find an adequate artistic image of a possible new Raskol-
nikov. This task could hardly be undertaken in his brief concluding pages;
and so the epilogue, if by no means a failure as a whole, invariably leaves
readers with a quite justified sense of dissatisfaction.”6
Other scholars defend the epilogue. Thus, Gary Rosenshield under-
takes an analysis of its narrative structure to show the continuity between
the text of the novel and its final section.7 He demonstrates that Raskolnikov
has the potential for a spiritual transfiguration and argues that this potential
motivates his transition to a “new life.” In Rosenshield’s view, the role of any
novelistic epilogue is to create a sense of closure. As he writes, “For every-
thing in it is designed to give a note of finality and a sense of resolution to
that which has proceeded.” The epilogue of Crime and Punishment, in his
view, supports this general rule.8 In a more recent article titled “In Defense
of the Epilogue of Crime and Punishment,” David Matual proceeds analo-
gously, considering all those episodes that serve as links between the text of
the novel and its ending. He points out that Raskolnikov’s compassion for
the humiliated and the injured, his disgust toward the crime he committed,
and his childhood reminiscences create the psychological motivation for his
future resurrection.9
It can be argued, however, that the question of Raskolnikov’s moral re-
newal at the end of Crime and Punishment remains open.10 The issue of the
protagonist’s resurrection is complicated by the fact that he does not repent.
In the epilogue Dostoevsky writes that Raskolnikov tried to convince every-
body that he had sincerely repented (raskaialsia): “And to the question of
what precisely had prompted him to come and confess his guilt, he answered
directly that it was sincere repentance [chistoserdechnoe raskaianie]” (536).
We know that the jurors took Raskolnikov’s argument on faith: “That he had
not made use of what he had stolen was attributed partly to the influence
of awakened repentance [raskaianie], partly to the not quite sound state of
his mental capacities at the time the murder was committed” (536–37). But
a few lines down Dostoevsky insists that Raskolnikov does not repent: “If
only fate had sent him repentance [raskaianie]—burning repentance, that
breaks the heart, that drives sleep away, such repentance as torments one
into dreaming of the noose or the watery deeps! Oh, he would have been

28
 “If You Don’t Sin, You Can’t Repent . . .”

glad of it! Torments and tears—that, too, was life. But he did not repent [ne
raskaivalsia] of his crime” (544).11
The word “repentance,” used in this passage numerous times, de-
mands close examination. Russian has two words for “repentance”—pokai-
anie and raskaianie—which derive from the same root and often are used
interchangeably. Their difference, however, is important. The word raska-
ianie describes the state of the soul; it is an internal regret about a commit-
ted sin (similar to the English word “remorse” or “contrition”). Pokaianie is
used in two senses. It designates the act of confessing one’s sins and admit-
ting one’s guilt, and thus represents a single moment of verbal expression.12
Theologically, pokaianie may also imply a lengthy spiritual journey. The Or-
thodox scholar John Chryssavgis explains:

The “dialectic” of beginning and end underlying repentance is important.

Every manifestation of life has an eschatological dimension, even while, par-
adoxically, repentance gives rise to restoration, to a return to man’s original
state. Everything tends towards and expects the “end,” even while being a
matter of the here and now. To repent is not merely to induce a restoration of
lost innocence but to transcend the fallen condition.13

In its second sense of a process, repentance ( pokaianie) implies a spiritual

reorientation, which in Greek is called metanoia (metavnoia)—a fundamental
transformation, a radical change of one’s mind and thoughts. The Orthodox
tradition does not contain the Western idea of penance. Its rough equiva-
lent—epitimia (Greek and Russian)—implies not a punishment imposed by
the church authorities, but a way of spiritual healing, an internal passage of
the soul toward the restoration of its wholeness. In the Orthodox Church,
repentance is timed to coincide with Great Lent and is exercised through
prayers and fasting.
What is crucial, however, is that in spite of the differences between
raskaianie (a deep feeling of remorse) and pokaianie (a confession of one’s
guilt), these two notions are interdependent. In and of itself neither guaran-
tees a successful radical turnabout. Here we confront the dialectic of repen-
tance: telling the truth about one’s misdeed without experiencing contrition
empties the ritual of its content. Equally, a feeling of remorse is only the first
step; without verbalizing one’s guilt, without a ritualized act of repentance,
metanoia cannot occur.
Raskolnikov confesses his murder to Sonya and to the police and kisses
the earth in the Haymarket Square, but he does not feel contrition and does
not intend to plead guilty before God. In the epilogue he questions him-
self: “Now, what do they find so hideous in my action? . . . That it was an
evildoing? What does the word ‘evildoing’ mean? My conscience is clear.

29
 Chapter One

Of course, a criminal act was committed; of course, the letter of the law
was broken and blood was shed; well, then, have my head for the letter of
the law . . . and enough!” (544). Significantly, Raskolnikov keeps the Gospel
given to him by Sonya under his pillow and does not open it.
Robert Belknap tackled the theme of “unrepentant confessions” in
Dostoevsky,14 differentiating between two types of confessions: apologetic
(“I did it and I was right”) and repentant (“I did it and it was wrong, I am
sorry”). As Belknap shows, the speeches of the Underground Man and Fyo-
dor Karamazov belong to the category of unrepentant confessions. This
observation is very keen, and the list of Dostoevskian “unrepentant confes-
sions” can be continued: the petit jeu in The Idiot, Stavrogin’s confession to
Tikhon in The Devils, and the dead people boasting about their sins in the
short story “Bobok” (1878). In light of Belknap’s observation, it can be said
that Raskolnikov’s case is not unique.
And yet Raskolnikov clearly differs from other Dostoevskian characters
who confess but do not repent. This difference is suggested by the very title
of the novel. The question of what constitutes Raskolnikov’s “punishment”
is not as simple as it may seem. Is it the jurors’ verdict? Siberian exile? The
labor camp? Or is it Raskolnikov’s internal feeling of failure? His physical
and psychological weariness? The bankruptcy of his ideas and plans? To be
sure, all these constitute parts of his punishment. But the acme of Raskol-
nikov’s crisis, an experience that turns out to be the most unbearable for
him, is revealed symbolically in his apocalyptic dream.
Lying in bed in a Siberian hospital, Raskolnikov dreams that the whole
world is doomed to fall victim to some terrible pestilence spreading from
Asia to Europe, when “everyone was to perish, except for certain, very few,
chosen ones. Some new trichinae had appeared, microscopic creatures that
lodged themselves in men’s bodies” (547). People contaminated by this virus
become possessed and go mad, unable to tell good from evil. They gather
into armies and begin to kill each other. There are “only a few people who
could be saved; they were pure and chosen, destined to begin a new genera-
tion of people and a new life, to renew and purify the earth; but no one had
seen these people anywhere, no one had heard their words or voices” (548).
As with all dreams in Dostoevsky, this one is many layered. The imag-
ery of a military invasion of Europe echoes Raskolnikov’s Napoleonic plans.
The motif of violence and spilled blood ties in with his earlier dream about
being a child and watching a horse beaten to death, a dream that filled him
with revulsion toward his planned crime. The idea of contaminating the
whole world with a small particle of sin has intertextual resonances—it is
fully realized in Dostoevsky’s story “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man,” dis-
cussed in part 3. Although Raskolnikov does not repent, his dream shows
that internally, and perhaps subconsciously, he is tormented by a feeling of

30
 “If You Don’t Sin, You Can’t Repent . . .”

guilt. His dream suggests that Raskolnikov’s unrepentant sin begins to con-
taminate the whole world. The absence of people who could purify the earth
clearly reflects his own inability to become pure. It is thus significant that his
delirium takes place during the time of Great Lent, the traditional period of
repentance, which is meant to lead to a renewal.
Let us now draw two extraliterary connections and consider two texts
that shed additional light on the epilogue of Crime and Punishment. These
texts belong to different literary traditions and time periods, but both focus
on the issue of repentance. One of them is the Great Canon of Saint Andrew
of Crete, the most famous penitential text of the Orthodox Church. Another
is a late sixteenth-century Russian folktale, “The Legend of an Incestuous
Man” (“Legenda o krovosmesitele”), which claims that the author of the
Great Canon was a sinner who became a saint.

S A IN T A NDR EW O F CR ET E A ND D OSTOEVSKY’ S
GRE AT S I NNER S

Composed in the seventh century, the Great Canon of Repentance (Velikii

pokaiannyi kanon) is still sung every year in the Orthodox Church during
the first and fifth weeks of Great Lent. Its authorship is attributed to Saint
Andrew, a Byzantine poet and hymnologist and the archbishop of Crete.
Consisting of 250 odes, the canon contains numerous images from the Old
and New Testaments, but its emotional tuning and deep lyricism give it a
very personal flavor. In this highly poetic text, the process of repentance ac-
quires the form of a double dialogue. The author of the canon addresses
God, asking him to cleanse him and to forgive his sins. Simultaneously, he
admonishes his soul, addressing it as many as a hundred times, asking it to
“make confession to God,” “to abstain from past brutishness,” and “to offer
to God tears of repentance.”15 He invokes his soul to “be watchful” and “be
full of courage.”16 Over and over again he exclaims: “My soul, O my soul,
rise up! Why art thou sleeping? The end draws near, and soon thou shalt be
troubled.”17
In Dostoevsky’s time, just as in our time, as well as centuries ago, this
ancient text was known to all Orthodox believers. What is even more sig-
nificant for our discussion is that Dostoevsky perceived the Great Canon as
one of the best examples of Orthodox spirituality. In the notes to his Diary
of a Writer, he contrasts two types of humanity (gumannost’): European and
Russian. In Dostoevsky’s view, the former is shaped by the chivalric code of
honor and the principles of the Enlightenment; the latter is oriented toward
inner accomplishments: overcoming one’s pride and restoring spiritual
wholeness. Dostoevsky addresses his opponents twice, suggesting that they

31
 Chapter One

read the Canon of Saint Andrew of Crete in order to be enlightened spiritu-

ally, not just intellectually.18
Saint Andrew of Crete was familiar to Dostoevsky’s contemporaries
not only through the text of the canon, but also from the Byzantine life of
this saint, in which Andrew is presented as an ascetic and a man of faith.
Curiously enough, this hagiographic work was not as popular in Russia as an
Old Russian legend, in which Andrew is presented as a great sinner (a de-
bauchee and a murderer) who became a great saint.19 This legend, with the
generic title “The Tale of St. Andrew of Crete,” was written anonymously
at the end of the sixteenth century. In the seventeenth through nineteenth
centuries, it circulated in Russia in five redactions, each having dozens of
versions.20 At the beginning of 1860, two versions of it, both titled “The Leg-
end of an Incestuous Man,” were published in Monuments of Old Russian
Literature (Pamiatniki starinnoi russkoi literatury), compiled by the Peters-
burg historian Nikolai Kostomarov.21
Here is a brief summary of the legend’s plot. Before the protagonist
is born, his parents learn from an oracle that their son, named Andrew, will
kill his father, marry his mother, and corrupt three hundred maidens. When
Andrew is born, his father tells his servants to baptize the baby, cut his belly,
and throw him into the sea. The child survives in the waters and finds his
way to a convent, where nuns nourish him with goat’s milk. When the boy
turns fifteen, he begins to seduce nuns young and old, thus corrupting three
hundred maidens, some of whom yield to him “voluntarily,” others “invol-
untarily.” Eventually they grow angry and chase him away. Andrew travels
to Crete, where he is hired as a gardener, without suspecting that his master
is in fact his father. As luck would have it, while doing some work in the
garden, Andrew accidentally kills his master (namely his father) and soon
marries the man’s widow (his own mother). After the wedding, the woman
notices traces of a healed wound on the belly of her young husband and
asks him about the origin of the scar. Andrew tells her the story of his child-
hood, which makes her lament and wail: “I am not your wife, but I am your
mother; you, my beloved son Andrew, killed your own father in my garden.”
The mother advises Andrew to leave the house, find a confessor, and
confess his sins. Andrew seeks out a priest, but the priest refuses to forgive
the incestuous man. Andrew reproaches the priest for not understanding
the essence of Christianity: “Christ came into the world to call sinners to
repentance; but you, Master, do not want to forgive me in my sins.”22 Seeing
that he cannot persuade the priest to forgive him, Andrew kills his confessor.
The same ill luck befalls a second priest, and then a third as each refuses to
accept Andrew’s confession and forgive his sins.
In desperation, Andrew makes plans to see a bishop and threatens the
inhabitants of Crete: “If I am not forgiven, I will go to a faraway country to

32
 “If You Don’t Sin, You Can’t Repent . . .”

the czar’s horde and will gather a great army, and will burn the city of Crete,
and will take its inhabitants into captivity, and will kill the bishop. The Gods
and our God, the lover of mankind, do not want the death of sinners and
expect them to repent.”23 Frightened by Andrew’s words, the bishop tells
him to come see him together with his mother and gives them both moral
instruction. After that, the wise bishop orders that a cellar be dug in the
ground, where Andrew will be put in chains and locked up. He promises
Andrew that as soon as the cellar is filled with earth, his sins will be forgiven.
Andrew spends thirty years in the cellar, and during these years he composes
the Great Canon, “which is sung during Great Lent.” After being freed from
his underground prison, Andrew hands the text of the canon to the bishop.
The bishop reads the canon aloud to all Orthodox people. At that moment
the great sinner receives forgiveness, and when the bishop dies, Andrew is
appointed the new bishop of Crete.
Published twice (both times in two versions) at the beginning of
1860—first in Kostomarov’s collection and then in the March issue of the
literary journal Sovremennik—the legend and the image of its protagonist,
Andrew of Crete, became very popular in Petersburg literary circles.24 In the
same March issue of Sovremennik, the famous critic Nikolai Dobrolyubov
published an essay on the Russian clergy and signed it with the pseudonym
Andrei Kritsky (Andrew of Crete).25 The ironic flavor of this pseudonym was
much appreciated by his contemporaries who knew that Dobrolyubov had
converted from Christian Orthodoxy to radical socialism. In 1872 the legend
was published once again in Kostomarov’s Istoricheskie monografii i issledo-
vaniia (Historical Monographs and Investigations).26
After his return to St. Petersburg from Siberia at the end of 1859,
Dostoevsky avidly absorbed the literary developments of the time, and it
is clear that “The Legend of an Incestuous Man” did not escape his atten-
tion.27 The works he wrote in the 1860s and 1870s contain many motifs of
this legend. Thus, for example, the major conflict in The Adolescent comes
from the fact that its protagonist, Arkady Dolgoruky, as a boy is abandoned
by his parents. The plot of The Brothers Karamazov is based on a story of
a parricide. Andrew’s fate echoes in the plotlines of all three brothers Kara-
mazov, abandoned by their father. Like Andrew, Alyosha spends his youth in
a monastery. Like Andrew, Dmitry plunges into debauchery. Like Andrew,
Ivan rebels against religious authorities.
Several components of the legend’s plot are conspicuously present
in Dostoevsky’s conception of his novel The Life of a Great Sinner (Zhitie
velikogo greshnika)—a project that he developed but never carried out. Ac-
cording to Dostoevsky’s plan, the protagonist of this novel was meant to be
a “13-year old boy, who had participated in a criminal offence, already fully
conscious and debauched [razvitoi i razvrashchennyi].”28 The early youth of

33
 Chapter One

this character was supposed to have taken place in a monastery.29 The whole
plot of The Life of a Great Sinner was conceived as a progression from crime
to repentance and salvation. Dostoevsky’s plan was never realized, but ac-
cording to a general agreement among Dostoevskian scholars, the central
motifs of this project formed the basis of his novels The Devils, The Ado-
lescent, and The Brothers Karamazov. As Konstantin Mochulsky writes,
“Dostoevsky’s majestic conception The Life of a Great Sinner is the spiritual
center of his work: like a subterranean spring, with its waters it nourishes his
great novels.”30
To paraphrase Mochulsky, we may say that the Old Russian legend
about the sinner-saint Andrew of Crete is an even deeper subterranean
spring that nourishes Dostoevsky’s great novels. The legend conveys two
ideas that would become central in his religious philosophy. According to
the first one, man’s way to God may lie through sin and crime. The second
idea specifies and complements the first: in and of itself the fall does not
guarantee resurrection. The radical turnabout (metanoia) may be achieved
only through a long process of repentance.
The legend contains noticeable traces of European sources—the an-
cient Greek myth of Oedipus and the medieval German “Legend of Pope
Gregory.”31 But as a whole, it is dominated by the Eastern Christian spirit
in its focus not so much on sudden and unexpected changes of fortune as
on the belief in the omnipotence of repentance as a spiritual feat with the
potential to redeem the most terrible sins. It reflects a seemingly strange
correlation between the fall and the resurrection. As John Chryssavgis for-
mulates this theological idea, “The greater the fall, the deeper and more
genuine the repentance and the more certain the resurrection.”32 Russian
folk belief expresses it similarly in the proverb, “If you don’t sin, you can’t
repent; if you don’t repent, you can’t achieve salvation” (Ne pogreshish’—ne
pokaesh’sia; ne pokaesh’sia—ne spasesh’sia).
However simple, short, and outwardly sacrilegious, the Old Russian
legend of Saint Andrew contains a philosophical interpretation of sin and
repentance. It seems to suggest the same idea: extremes are interrelated;
the more terrifying the sin, the more dynamic the road back through repen-
tance. It also seems to claim that the lyrics of the Great Canon of Repen-
tance could not have been composed by a righteous man. Such powerful
poetry could have been born only in the soul of a person who had touched
the very bottom of the abyss of sin. Finally, the legend demonstrates that
repentance is a process, and the mere act of verbalizing one’s guilt is insuffi-
cient. Andrew of Crete confesses to one priest, then to a second, and then to
a third. Not receiving a remission of his sins, he continues to commit terrible
crimes, thus proving that his confessions lacked the temporal dimensions
of repentance as a journey. His genuine repentance takes place during his

34
 “If You Don’t Sin, You Can’t Repent . . .”

thirty years of imprisonment. Only after spending all that time beneath the
earth, holding long conversations with God and his own soul and composing
the Great Canon, is Andrew forgiven. The legend masterfully illustrates that
repentance is a liminal state. It requires a slow pace and prolonged solitude.
In Russian Christian culture the name Saint Andrew of Crete is as-
sociated with the name of another liminal persona—Saint Mary of Egypt
(sixth century), a former harlot who spent forty-seven years in repentance in
a desert and after her death was canonized as a saint. The names Saint An-
drew of Crete and Saint Mary of Egypt are connected for two reasons: the
Great Canon includes forty odes glorifying Mary, and her vita is tradition-
ally read together with the canon. Her vita that Dostoevsky mentions in his
novel The Adolescent might have influenced images of female sinners in his
other works: Sonya Marmeladova in Crime and Punishment, Nastasya Filip-
povna in The Idiot, and Grushenka in The Brothers Karamazov.
According to her vita, Saint Mary’s spiritual journey begins at the door
to a temple, which she tries to enter but cannot as she is pulled back by some
invisible mighty force. After several attempts, she gives up, realizing that her
unclean life bars her entrance. As she stands weeping, she sees an icon of
the Theotokos above her and begins to pray to the Mother of God that the
entrance of the church be opened to her. The door opens and she enters the
temple. Mary’s crossing of the temple’s threshold is symbolic. Here the be-
ginning of repentance is associated with the image of an open door, of exit-
ing one sphere of life and entering another. This liminal, threshold status of
repentance is reflected in many Christian Orthodox texts, including the fa-
mous Byzantine hymn “Open to Me the Doors of Repentance” (“Pokaianiia
otverzi mne dveri”).33
Let us recall the particular significance that Bakhtin ascribes to the
chronotope of the threshold in Dostoevsky’s works. Although Bakhtin does
not attach any moral significance to the crossing of a threshold, he empha-
sizes that “Dostoevsky always represents a person on the threshold of a
final decision, at a moment of crisis, at an unfinalizable—and unpredeter-
minable—turning point for his soul.”34

RA S K O L NI KO V AT T H E DO O R S O F REP ENTA NCE

In Crime and Punishment, the threshold appears as a central image in both

a literal and a metaphorical sense. The depiction of Raskolnikov’s two visits
to the old pawnbroker is abundant in details of the gates, staircase, door-
bell, and the door of the old woman’s house. After Bakhtin, the image of
the threshold, the doors, and the stairs in Dostoevsky attracted the atten-
tion of many scholars. William Rowe examines this image in all of Dosto-

35
 Chapter One

evsky’s works and points out that “the intensity of Dostoevskian staircase
drama reached a peak in Crime and Punishment.”35 Some scholars argue
that such detailed descriptions of the staircase and entrance to the apart-
ment are determined by Raskolnikov’s psychological condition right before
the murder and serve to create suspense. Bitsilli, for instance, concludes that
the staircase is “a symbol of the agonizing and ‘heavy’ psychical process suf-
fered by all Dostoevsky’s heroes.”36 In her essay “Threshold in Dostoevsky,”
Dominique Arban considers the threshold, among other things, a symbol of
interdiction.37 The crossing of the threshold of the old pawnbroker’s house
becomes the critical moment in Dostoevsky’s novel not only from the psy-
chological point of view of the protagonist-murderer. As is often noted, ety-
mologically, the Russian noun “crime” ( prestuplenie) relates to the idea of
“threshold crossing,” “stepping over,” and “transgressing.” In Raskolnikov’s
case, it means stepping over moral borders.
In light of what has been said about the liminal status of repentance,
we may conclude that Raskolnikov’s passage is bounded by two thresholds.
In the beginning of the novel, we see him at the threshold to a crime. In the
epilogue, he is at the door to repentance. The liminal condition in which
he is left in the epilogue is unstable. We know that having committed the
crime, Raskolnikov, as he himself claims, could not step over the first thresh-
old: “The old woman was merely a sickness. . . . I was in a hurry to step over
principle, but I didn’t step over, I stayed on this side” (274). It is not clear
whether Raskolnikov will be able to step over the second threshold and re-
pent. According to Dostoevsky, a sinner may return to God. But this sphere
of potentiality is shaky and full of loopholes: it does not imply the automatic
transformation of potentiality into actuality. As Dostoevsky points out in the
epilogue, Raskolnikov’s transformation is the subject of another story:

Seven years, only seven years! At the beginning of their happiness there were
moments when they were both ready to look at those seven years as if they
were seven days. He did not even know that a new life would not be given
him for nothing, that it still had to be dearly bought, to be paid for with a
great future deed. . . .
But here begins a new account, the account of a man’s gradual renewal,
the account of his gradual regeneration, his gradual transition from one
world to another, his acquaintance with a new, hitherto completely unknown
reality. It might make the subject of a new story—but our present story is
ended. (551)

The expression “only seven years,” with the italicized word “only,” becomes
less disturbing when one recalls two other lengthy sojourns—Saint Andrew’s
thirty years in the cellar and Saint Mary’s forty-seven years in the desert.

36
 “If You Don’t Sin, You Can’t Repent . . .”

The novel ends with a scene in which Raskolnikov and Sonya are look-
ing at each other, speechless: “They wanted to speak but could not. Tears
stood in their eyes. They were both pale and thin, but in those pale, sick
faces there already shone the dawn of a renewed future, of a complete res-
urrection into a new life” (549). The way Raskolnikov and Sonya are de-
picted in this final scene is reminiscent of an icon on which Saint Andrew
of Crete (a former sinner) and Saint Mary of Egypt (a former harlot) are
depicted together.
Raskolnikov’s throwing himself at Sonya’s knees in the epilogue is only
the initial moment in his potential spiritual rebirth. “The dawn of a renewed
future” that shines in their pale faces gives promise of salvation, but the
question whether the first ray of dawn will lead Raskolnikov to a full renewal
is not answered in the novel. In the epilogue, Dostoevsky hints at two possi-
bilities: a positive and a negative outcome, both presented metaphorically in
Raskolnikov’s visions. One is delineated in his delirium, mentioned earlier—
the apocalyptic picture of the world perishing from a strange plague caused
by “some microscopic creatures.” A positive potentiality is encoded in his
vision of a Golden Age:

From the high bank a wide view of the surrounding countryside opened out.
A barely audible song came from the far bank opposite. There, on the bound-
less, sun-bathed steppe, nomadic yurts could be seen, like barely visible black
specks. There was freedom, there a different people lived, quite unlike those
here, there time itself seemed to stop as if the centuries of Abraham and his
flocks had not passed. (549)

Using Bakhtin’s terminology, we may call this embedded text an “idyllic

chronotope” or a “historical inversion” that symbolizes an innocent state
of man and the world.38 Raskolnikov’s two visions—nocturnal and diurnal,
one of the end of the world and the other of its beginning—function in the
epilogue as two omens of two contrasted potentialities. These two mirror-
like possibilities create a sense of balance in the epilogue, and also of its
openness.
In his book on Dostoevsky, Bakhtin wrote that the epilogue of Crime
and Punishment is “conventionally monologic,” which led some scholars to
suspect that Bakhtin was criticizing the ending of the novel.39 It is signifi-
cant, however, that in the expression “conventionally monologic,” the stress
falls not on the second word but on the first: the epilogue is monologic only
conventionally (nominally, outwardly). In essence, it is dialogic.40 Bakhtin’s
interpretation of the novel’s ending supports his basic concept of the open-
endedness of Dostoevsky’s polyphonic novels and the lack of any finalizing
function of the authorial ideas in them. The epilogue of Crime and Punish-

37
 Chapter One

ment is no exception to this general rule; it does not offer a resolution. In

this respect, the controversy in Dostoevsky scholarship about the epilogue
of Crime and Punishment, mentioned in the beginning of this chapter, only
proves that the ending of the novel is open and thus allows various interpre-
tations. Both camps are right—those who see a possibility of Raskolnikov’s
renewal and those who doubt that he will be (or was) reborn.
Just as in his other works, in Crime and Punishment Dostoevsky con-
veys the idea that there exist in the world no absolutely righteous people and
no absolute sinners. Every sinner, even the worst one, contains in his heart a
luminous spark. This spark may grow into a light, but it may also die out, as
it does in Svidrigailov, who commits suicide. Dostoevsky shows that the sin-
ner and the just man are similar in that both must be aware of the existence
of tiny dots. The difference between them is one of memory and momen-
tum: the sinner must remember that a spark of light has enough potential to
initiate a process of resurrection, whereas the just man must not forget that
a seed of evil has enough power to lead him to the edge of the abyss.
As with any organic growth, both processes begin with a microscopi-
cally small detail. This idea is contained in the biblical epigraph to The
Brothers Karamazov about the kernel of wheat that, having fallen into the
earth, brings forth much fruit.41 The consequences are potentially global in
scope. In keeping with the parable embedded in this novel, told by Grush-
enka to Alyosha, a little onion can be sufficient to drag a sinner out of hell:

Once upon a time there was a woman, and she was wicked as wicked could
be, and she died. And not one good deed was left behind her. The devils took
her and threw her into the lake of fire. And her guardian angel stood thinking:
what good deed of hers can I remember to tell God? Then he remembered
and said to God: once she pulled up an onion and gave it to a beggar woman.
And God answered: now take that same onion, hold it out to her in the lake,
let her take hold of it, and pull, and if you pull her out of the lake, she can go
to paradise, but if the onion breaks, she can stay where she is. (352)

The woman is almost saved, but at the last moment other sinners try to get
hold of the onion in order to be saved too. The old woman pushes them
away, loses hold of the onion, and falls back into the lake. This parable il-
lustrates that a single virtue contains enough power to outbalance a person’s
wickedness and thus to lead to salvation. But the parable does more than
that. It proves that potentiality is not necessarily realized: a tiny virtue may
initiate a new turn and may be sufficient for salvation, but it does not become
a sufficient condition for a change to occur. The latter fact is vital because the
point initiating a new turn of growth or waning is always a moment of the
character’s free choice.

38
 “If You Don’t Sin, You Can’t Repent . . .”

The idea that the way to righteousness and even holiness is open to
every sinner applies to all sinful characters in Crime and Punishment—the
murderer Raskolnikov, the drunkard Marmeladov, the prostitute Sonya, and
the lecher Svidrigailov. But the dynamics of their journey along this path is
different in every case. Thus, while talking about the reasons for his drink-
ing, Marmeladov plunges into self-castigation. He addressed his confession
to Raskolnikov, but also to a third party—God: “Yes! There’s nothing to pity
me for! I ought to be crucified, crucified on a cross, and not pitied! But cru-
cify, O judge, crucify, and having crucified, pity the man! And then I myself
will come to you to be crucified, for I thirst not for joy, but for sorrow and
tears!” (23). Marmeladov confesses his sins but does nothing to give them
up. Svidrigailov is also given a chance and has his “little onion”—he commits
a good deed when he leaves a large amount of money to Sonya’s family. But
he does not go further. He decides to take his own life and thus bars the way
out. Stavrogin’s fate in The Devils resembles Svidrigailov’s. He has enough
courage to confess his terrible sin to the elder Tikhon, but he is too weak to
go further and commits suicide instead. Dead people in the story “Bobok,”
who sinned while alive, boast about their “defeats” in their final dwelling
place, the cemetery. One of them, named Plato, wisely suggests that they
all have been given a chance to “catch up” (spokhvatit’sia) before their final
and ultimate death comes, that they still have time to repent. But none of
them does. Unlike the grain of wheat in the biblical epigraph of The Broth-
ers Karamazov, bobok (literally, the bean) does not bring forth any fruit.
The Old Russian legend of Saint Andrew of Crete shows that repen-
tance is a mystical process—it takes a long time and occurs in the darkness,
beneath the earth, in places where one is left alone and has a chance to
enter into dialogue with one’s soul. And then, if it so happens that a spark
of light shows the way out, one must decide whether to follow it. But this
will be the topic of our next chapter, in which we consider another sinner—
Dmitry Karamazov.

39
 Chapter Two

A Ray of Light in the Abyss

D M I T RY KA R A M A Z O V ’ S JO U RNEY TO TH E
UND ERWO R L D

The biblical epigraph to The Brothers Karamazov—“Verily, verily, I say unto

you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone:
but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit” (John 12:24)—allows various inter-
pretations: it can be seen as a strictly Christian message, or it can be under-
stood in a broader sense, as a general observation about opposites and their
dynamic relationship. But in both senses, the idea of death being a gateway
to a new life applies to Dmitry Karamazov’s fate, to his progression from sin
to moral renewal.1
The narrator of The Brothers Karamazov introduces Dmitry in rather
negative terms: “He spent a disorderly adolescence and youth: he never fin-
ished high school; later he landed in some military school, then turned up
in the Caucasus, was promoted, fought a duel, was broken to the ranks, pro-
moted again, led a wild life, and spent, comparatively, a great deal of money”
(11). Fyodor Karamazov’s reaction to his son’s sudden arrival supports this
description of Mitya’s good-for-nothingness: Fyodor “simply concluded that
the young man was frivolous, wild, passionate, impatient, a wastrel who, if
he could snatch a little something for a time, would immediately calm down
though of course not for long” (12). Further in the novel, Dmitry presents
himself to his younger brother Alyosha in even harsher terms: “I am just a
brute of an officer who drinks cognac and goes whoring” (107).
Soon, however, it becomes clear that Dmitry is a subtle and complex
character, and that among the three brothers Karamazov his evolution is the
most dramatic. His progress toward repentance is much more dynamic than
that of Raskolnikov. In contrast to Raskolnikov, Dmitry, who is not guilty of
murder, at the end of the novel conceptualizes (and overemphasizes) his
own guilt: “We are all cruel, we are all monsters, we all make people weep,
mothers and nursing babies, but of all—let it be settled here and now—of
all, I am the lowest vermin!” (509).

40
 A Ray of Light in the Abyss

Dmitry first attempts to formulate his own spiritual complexity in a

series of confessions to Alyosha, when he is trying to formulate the strange
quality of his soul:

And whenever I happened to sink into the deepest, the very deepest shame
of depravity (and that’s all I ever happened to do), I always read that poem
about Ceres and man. Did it set me right? Never! Because I’m a Karamazov.
Because when I fall into the abyss, I go straight into it, head down and heels
up, and I’m even pleased that I’m falling in just such a humiliating position,
and for me I find it beautiful. And so in that very shame I suddenly begin a
hymn. Let me be cursed, let me be base and vile, but let me also kiss the hem
of that garment in which my God is clothed; let me be following the devil at
that time, but still I am also your son, Lord, and I love you, and I feel a joy
without which the world cannot stand and be. (107)

Dmitry remarks that he planned to begin his “confession of an ardent heart

in verse” with Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” (“An die Freude,” 1785). But in fact, he
begins it with another poem by Schiller—“The Eleusinian Festival” (“Das
Eleusische Fest,” 1798).
Dmitry’s recitation of this poem is traditionally seen in terms of the
literary connections between Dostoevsky and Schiller.2 It is significant, how-
ever, that the poem celebrates an ancient festival of great importance in and
of itself. The Eleusinian Mysteries, which revolved around the ancient Greek
cult of the fertility goddess Demeter (in the Roman version, Ceres), excited
the imagination of many poets and writers, both in classical antiquity and in
more recent times. Thus, the themes treated in “The Eleusinian Festival”
can be viewed outside of their Schillerian context. Their inclusion in our
discussion of Dostoevsky permits us to look at the epigraph to The Brothers
Karamazov and Dmitry’s evolution from a different—mythological rather
than Christian—perspective, thereby revealing ancient Greek motifs in The
Brothers Karamazov. The Demeter myth, moreover, exhibits the same dia-
lectics we discussed in the introduction. By invoking Dmitry’s image of two
abysses open to a single human heart, we may formulate this dynamic in the
following way: the darker the abyss, the greater chance of seeing a ray of
light in it.
The link between the names Dmitry Karamazov and the Greek god-
dess of the earth Demeter, first pointed out by the poet Vyacheslav Ivanov,
has been noted by Dostoevsky scholars on several occasions.3 The signifi-
cance of this myth and ritual for the structure of The Brothers Karamazov,
however, deserves a more thorough examination.
The earliest mention of the Eleusinian Mysteries appears in what is
known as the “Homeric Hymn to Demeter,” a text that describes how the

41
 Chapter Two

young goddess Persephone was abducted by Hades, ruler of the Kingdom

of the Dead.4 Overcome by sorrow, Persephone’s mother, Demeter (which
means “Mother Earth” in Greek), sets off in search of her daughter. Deme-
ter wanders for nine days without food or drink. Eventually, she stops in
Eleusis, a settlement not far from Athens. There, she learns that Hades had
married Persephone and was concealing her in the Kingdom of the Dead.
Demeter falls into a rage. She announces to the gods that until her daughter
is released, the earth would be cursed, and not one sprout would emerge
from it. Hunger prevails upon the earth. All that was living verges on death.
Forced to acquiesce to Demeter’s demands, Zeus orders Hades to release
Persephone to her mother. Hades does so, but not without first offering her
pomegranate seeds to eat so that she would be impelled to return to her
bridal chamber. Rejoicing at the return of her daughter from the Kingdom
of the Dead, Demeter presents Triptolemus, the son of the Eleusinian king,
with grains of wheat and teaches him to sow wheat across his fields. From
that point forward, Persephone is permitted to remain on earth with her
mother for nine months every year. During that period, the earth blossoms
and bears fruit. However, bound by her bridal vows to Hades, Persephone is
required to spend the winter months in the underworld with her husband.
This myth lies at the core of the Eleusinian sacraments. The mysteries
were conducted over the course of nearly two millennia, from the fifteenth
century b.c. to the end of the fourth century a.d., when the temple of
Demeter in Eleusis was destroyed and its cult officially banned by order of
Emperor Theodosius. Every year, on the fifteenth day of the autumn month
of Boedromion, a procession of hundreds moved along the Holy Road from
Athens to Eleusis, re-creating the wanderings of Demeter. The first stage of
the sacraments was open to all: gentlefolk and slaves, men and women. Dur-
ing the ritual, each participant would become Demeter and set off in search
of the vanished Persephone. The happy meeting of the two goddesses sym-
bolized the joy of finding life after the sorrow of loss.
Other stages of the mysteries were open only to the chosen few. Pres-
ervation of their secrets was a condition of participation. According to Aris-
totle, Aeschylus, a citizen of Eleusis by birth, nearly paid with his life for
supposedly revealing these secrets in his tragedies.5 Nonetheless, we know
that the symbolism of light and darkness plays an essential role in this part
of the ritual. During the third orgy, the participants proceeded through dark
labyrinths, which symbolized the Kingdom of the Dead. In the end, in the
sudden blinding light of torches, they were shown the holy symbol of re-
newal—a spike of wheat. At this moment some mysterious formulas, whose
meaning remains hidden to us, were uttered.6
The writers of classical antiquity stressed the fact that participation
in the sacraments guaranteed happiness and bliss in the afterlife. This

42
 A Ray of Light in the Abyss

particular aspect of the mysteries is discussed at the end of the “Hymn to

Demeter”:

holy rites that are not to be transgressed, nor pried into,

nor divulged. For a great awe of the gods stops the voice.
Blessed is the mortal on earth who has seen these rites,
but the uninitiate who has no share in them never
has the same lot once dead in the dreary darkness.7

Similar confirmation is found in the works of other ancient Greek authors,

who believed that only those who had passed through the Eleusinian Mys-
teries could find their way to the abode of the blessed—the Elysian Fields—
after death.8
Thus, Demeter’s gift held a dual significance for people—they re-
ceived practical knowledge (the science of tillage and sowing) and esoteric
knowledge (the mystery of death turning into life). As James Frazer notes,
the cult of Demeter held not only an agrarian significance but an eschato-
logical one as well: “The thought of the seed buried in the earth in order to
spring up to new and higher life readily suggested a comparison with human
destiny, and strengthened the hope that for man too the grave may be but
the beginning of a better and happier existence in some brighter world un-
known.”9
Traces of the ancient Greek myth of Demeter and the Eleusinian ritu-
als are widespread in ancient literature. References to them permeate the
works of Aristophanes and Euripides, Pindar and Sophocles. Aristotle, Plu-
tarch, and Pausanias mention the mysteries as well. Ovid recounts the tale
of Persephone’s abduction in his “Metamorphoses” and “Fasti.”10
At the end of the eighteenth century, the Eleusinian Mysteries once
again attracted attention following a sensational discovery made in Russia
in 1777, when Christian Friedrich Mattei found the oldest surviving man-
uscript of the “Homeric Hymn to Demeter” (dating from the medieval
period) in the archives of the Moscow Imperial Library. Soon after Mattei
unshelved this manuscript, he carried it with him to Germany.11 This dis-
covery sparked interest in the ancient myth first among the German intel-
lectual elite and later among the Russians. In August 1793, Novalis wrote to
Friedrich Schlegel: “For me, you were the high priest of Eleusis. Through
you, I came to learn Heaven and Hell, through you I have tasted of the Tree
of Knowledge.”12 The young Hegel dedicated a poem titled “Eleusis” (1796)
to his friend Friedrich Hölderlin, where he asserted that the desecrated al-
tars of Elysium were now being raised anew in the hearts of men. Schil-
ler turned to the myth of Demeter not only in his poem “The Eleusinian
Festival,” but also in the ballad “The Plaint of Ceres” (“Klage der Ceres,”

43
 Chapter Two

1796), which Zhukovsky translated into Russian in 1831. Goethe developed

the theme of the Eleusinian Mysteries in one of his “Roman Elegies” (“Rö-
mische Elegien,” 12, 1795).13 Ivan Turgenev’s translation of this erotic elegy
into Russian was published in Nekrasov’s Petersburg Collection (Peterburg-
skii sbornik, 1846)—the very journal in which the young Dostoevsky had his
literary debut with the novella Poor Folk.
The idea that death is followed by resurrection is of course known in
many ancient cults. The Eleusinian sacraments, however, stand out because
of their particular closeness to Christianity. According to the Gospel of John,
the words about the grain falling to the earth were spoken when Christ was
informed about the arrival of Greeks who came to hear him speak:

And there were certain Greeks among them that came up to worship at the
feast: The same came therefore to Philip, which was of Bethsaida of Galilee,
and desired him, saying, Sir, we would see Jesus. Philip cometh and telleth
Andrew: and again Andrew and Philip tell Jesus. And Jesus answered them,
saying, The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified. Verily,
verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it
abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. (John 12:20–24)14

The fact that Dostoevsky chose the Gospel passage about the grain
falling into the ground as the epigraph for The Brothers Karamazov speaks
to its crucial significance for the novel. Later, he twice places Christ’s words
in the mouth of the elder Zosima, and in both contexts the quotation relates
to Dmitry. In response to Alyosha’s question about the meaning of Zosima’s
bow to Dmitry in the monastery, the elder answers enigmatically:

Do not be curious. Yesterday I seemed to see something terrible . . . as if his

eyes yesterday expressed his whole fate. He had a certain look . . . so that I
was immediately horrified in my heart at what this man was preparing for
himself. Once or twice in my life I’ve seen people with the same expression
in their faces . . . as if it portrayed the whole fate of the person, and that fate,
alas, came about. I sent him to you, Alexei, because I thought your brotherly
countenance would help him. But everything is from the Lord, and all our
fates as well. “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth
alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” Remember that. (285)

The meaning of Zosima’s words is clarified only at the end of the novel. He
foresees Dmitry’s fate, his future sufferings, and his spiritual evolution. At
the end Dmitry will say of his spiritual metamorphosis, “A new man has
arisen in me” (591).

44
 A Ray of Light in the Abyss

The third reference to the fallen grain in The Brothers Karamazov re-
lates to Dmitry as well, albeit indirectly. When a mysterious visitor, whose
story bears some resemblance to Dmitry’s, comes to Zosima and tells him
the story of a perfect crime, the elder urges him to confess and recites the
biblical words about the fallen grain. In this episode, the image of the dying
and resurrected grain carries the Christian symbolism of a progression from
sin (moral death) to repentance and the beginning of a new life.
Dostoevsky’s inclusion of Eleusinian motifs in the novel suggests that
the image of the dying and resurrected grain can be considered not only
from the biblical but also from a mythological perspective. Such a perspec-
tive is endorsed in Vyacheslav Ivanov’s interpretation of Dostoevsky’s novels,
which advances his concept of “realistic symbolism” and his theory of myth.15
According to Ivanov, “realistic symbolism” leads the soul of the observer
away from the earthly plane to a higher reality (a realibus ad realiora). At
the same time, the opposite process occurs: grasping the features of higher
reality by means of intuition, the artist incarnates them in earthly images (a
realioribus ad realia). Ivanov observes that in ancient religions, primitive
myths were created in similar fashion, through the union of a symbolic sub-
ject (podlezhashchee-simvol) and a verbal predicate (for example, “the sun is
born,” “the sun dies”).
In Ivanov’s view, Dostoevsky’s overarching ideas can be compared to
such ur-myths. He argues that at the heart of his great novels lies the mytho-
logical image of Mother Earth. At the heart of Crime and Punishment he
discerns a mythological “revolt against Mother Earth.” The ur-myth in De-
mons, in his opinion, involves an act of violence committed by some dark
element against the eternal feminine principle (Psyche, Soul, or Russia).
Although Ivanov does not single out any concrete ur-myth in The Brothers
Karamazov, we can use his terminology to suggest that the “subject-symbol”
of The Brothers Karamazov is the grain of wheat, whereas its “predicate” is
death and resurrection.
Ivanov views Dmitry Karamazov rather pessimistically. He observes
that in spite of Dmitry’s closeness to the earth, he constantly risks becoming
a victim of Ahriman—the spirit of destruction and the black abyss.16 To be
sure, Dmitry is subject to the influence of dark forces. But here I propose a
shift in the focus of Ivanov’s argumentation: despite Dmitry’s baseness, a ray
of light resides in his soul. The fact that he begins to recite a poem about the
goddess Ceres and to praise God in a moment of “the very deepest shame of
depravity” speaks to his ability to see light against a background of darkness.
This ability reflects one of Dostoevsky’s most important ideas: the infernal
abyss, despair, and hopelessness are not absolute; in the underground’s dark-
ness, there is always the potential for light to emerge.

45
 Chapter Two

TH E T U R NI NG P O I NT

The idea of light emerging from the depths of darkness appears in the three
stages of Dmitry’s symbolic descent into the underworld, a descent that re-
veals parallels with the myth of Demeter. The first stage is Dmitry’s trip to
Mokroye, which he himself perceives as a descent into hell: “ ‘To hell?’ Mitya
suddenly interrupted, and burst into his abrupt, unexpected laugh . . . ‘tell
me: will Dmitry Fyodorovich Karamazov go to hell or not? What do you
think?’ ” Interpreting Mitya’s question in a Christian context, the coachman
responds, “You see, sir, when the Son of God was crucified on the cross and
died, he went straight from the cross to hell and freed all the sinners suf-
fering there” (412). The coachman’s words contain a clear allusion to the
apocryphal legend of Christ’s descent into hell.17 The goal of Mitya’s “descent
into hell,” however, is the pursuit of the “abducted” Grushenka. The orgies
of wine, song, and dance in which Mitya immerses himself evoke Greek bac-
chanals rather than any depiction of hell known from the Christian tradition.
Tellingly, Dostoevsky opens the chapter “Delirium” with the phrase “What
began then was almost an orgy, a feast of feasts” (432).
Significantly, Dmitry’s is not the only name revealing a connection
with the earth. His beloved’s full name, Agraphena, consists of two roots, the
first of which (agra) means “earth” in Greek, and the meaning of the second
(phen) corresponds to the verb “to show.” Agraphena, like Persephone, is
an earthly deity.18 Dmitry calls her the “queen of the earth” (406). Grushen-
ka’s last name—Svetlova—connotes light and determines her symbolic role
vis-à-vis Dmitry and Alyosha. Instead of seducing Alyosha, as he expects,
Grushenka resurrects him by “giving him an onion.” Although she does se-
duce Mitya, for him she also becomes a ray of light in the dark kingdom. In
Mokroye, Mitya walks out into the fresh air and thinks of Grushenka with
the hope that all is not quite lost: “Yet it was as if a ray of some bright hope
shone on him in the darkness” (437).19
The second stage of Dmitry’s journey to the Kingdom of the Dead be-
gins with his torments—in Russian mytarstva—a word that Dostoevsky uses
in two senses, secular (“physical ordeals”) and religious (“ordeals of a soul
after death”). Dmitry’s three torments provide the titles to the three chap-
ters of book 9, The Preliminary Investigation: “The Soul’s Journey Through
Torments: The First Torment” (“Khozhdenie dushi po mytarstvam. Mytar-
stvo pervoe”), “The Second Torment” (“Mytarstvo vtoroe”), and “The Third
Torment” (“Tret’e mytarstvo”). At the end of the judicial trial, physically,
mentally, and psychologically exhausted by the jurors’ interrogations, Dmitry
falls asleep and has a strange dream. This vision torments him, not so much
in the literal sense as in the religious. He dreams that he is riding through
the steppes: “And it seems to Mitya that he is cold, it is the beginning of

46
 A Ray of Light in the Abyss

November, and snow is pouring down in big, wet flakes that melt as soon
as they touch the ground.” He dreams of empty villages and old women on
the road with thin, emaciated, brown faces. One of them is especially thin
and withered. She holds a child in her arms, and its bare arms are freezing
from the cold. “But why is the child crying?” asks Mitya. “The wee one’s
cold, its clothes are frozen, they don’t keep it warm,” the coachman answers.
“Why are the people poor, why is the wee one poor, why is the steppe bare,
why don’t they embrace and kiss, why don’t they sing joyful songs, why are
they blackened with such black misery, why don’t they feed the wee one?”
Dmitry continues, still failing to comprehend (507). This dream triggers a
metamorphosis in his soul by making him realize that he too is guilty for the
sufferings in the world. At this moment his heart turns toward “some sort of
light,” “towards the new, beckoning light” (508).
The symbolic nature of Dmitry’s dream permits a variety of interpreta-
tions. Significantly, this dream vision once again takes us back to the Deme-
ter myth, to the moment when the goddess, having lost her daughter, lays
a curse upon the earth, as a result of which cold and hunger set in. This
moment, which tells of the terrible misfortune that befalls the earth, is men-
tioned only briefly in Schiller’s “Das Eleusische Fest” (“The Eleusinian Fes-
tival”): “Keine Frucht der süßen Ähren / Lädt zum reinen Mahl sie ein” (No
fruit of the sweet spike [of wheat] / Welcomes them to a fresh meal). In “The
Hymn to Demeter,” this episode is illustrated in greater detail:

For mortals she ordained a terrible and brutal year

on the deeply fertile earth. The ground released
no seed, for bright-crowned Demeter kept it buried.
In vain the oxen dragged many curved plows down
the furrows. In vain much white barley fell on the earth.
She would have destroyed the whole mortal race
by cruel famine and stolen the glorious honor of gifts
and sacrifices from those having homes on Olympus,
if Zeus had not seen and pondered their plight in his heart.20

Dmitry does not know how to interpret his dream, but he senses that his
vision of earthly desolation and of a suffering mother and child conveys some
important truth, a truth he had been unable to grasp earlier. Consequently,
he perceives his dream as a good omen. The chapter ends with Dmitry’s call
to the jurors and the audience: “ ‘I had a good dream, gentlemen,’ he said
somehow strangely, with a sort of new face, as if lit up with joy” (508).
This critical moment helps him to embark on the final and most diffi-
cult stage of his descent into the underworld, and the most literal one—his
descent to the mines. The prospect of spending several years in a forced-

47
 Chapter Two

labor camp no longer frightens him. He shares with Alyosha his new convic-
tion that an encounter with God is possible not only within “higher spheres”
but also in the “lower depths”:

If God is driven from the earth, we’ll meet him underground! It’s impos-
sible for a convict to be without God, even more impossible than for a non-
convict! And then from the depths of the earth, we, the men underground,
will start singing a tragic hymn to God, in whom there is joy! Hail to God and
his joy! I love him! (592).

The word “joy,” occurring twice in this passage, recalls the intonation of
Schiller’s “Ode to Joy.” But one also senses a different type of rhetoric here.
The Church Slavonic term sretim that Mitya uses (here translated simply as
“we’ll meet”) adds an unmistakable biblical flavor to his words; his statement
“if God is driven from the earth, we’ll meet him underground” echoes the
epigraph about the grain that dies in order to be reborn.
Dmitry’s new conviction signals a new stage in the moral evolution that
has taken place between his first confession to Alyosha and his last. If earlier,
full of youthful idealism, he praised God for the life’s readily available gifts,
now he realizes that even in a state of deprivation it is possible to sing God’s
praises. Formerly, Dmitry was amazed by human soul’s dual capacity to con-
template the dark and the bright abysses simultaneously. Now he realizes
something else: darkness may be a gateway to light.

TH E WAY O F T HE G R A I N

The theme of the Eleusinian sacraments ties together not only the epigraph
of The Brothers Karamazov and Mitya’s three-stage journey to the under-
world, but also other layers of the novel. For example, the motif of a mysti-
cal encounter with a lost child first appears in the novel’s opening, during
Zosima’s conversation with the pious women in the monastery. When one
woman, overcome by sorrow at the death of her child, turns to Zosima, the
elder replies with the words of the prophet Jeremiah: “This . . . is Rachel of
old ‘weeping for her children, and she would not be comforted, because they
are not.’ This is the lot that befalls you, mothers, on earth” (50). The elder
does not continue the quote, though it is precisely in its continuation that the
suffering mother can find relief: “Thus saith the Lord; Refrain thy voice from
weeping, and thine eyes from tears: for thy work shall be rewarded, saith the
Lord; and they shall come again from the land of the enemy. And there is
hope in thine end, saith the Lord, that thy children shall come again to their
own border” (Jer. 31:16–17).

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 A Ray of Light in the Abyss

The motif of the encounter with a lost child is further realized in the
story of the Snegiryov family and Ilyusha’s death. In the concluding episode
of The Brothers Karamazov, the scene at the stone, Alyosha gives moral
instruction to a group of twelve young boys. Kolya Krasotkin asks Alyosha
cheerfully if they will all rise from the dead and see Ilyusha and each other
again. Alyosha responds “half laughing, half in ecstasy” that they certainly
will and says: “Well, and now let’s end our speeches and go to his memo-
rial dinner. Don’t be disturbed that we’ll be eating pancakes. It’s an ancient,
eternal thing, and there’s good in that, too” (776).
The ending’s intonation is problematic, for it stands out against the
rest of the novel, and Alyosha’s “half-ecstasy” creates an overwhelming con-
trast with Captain Snegiryov’s wailing over his lost son. A closer examina-
tion of this scene is offered in the next chapter, so here I mention only the
relevance of the Demeter myth to this final episode. In Alyosha’s appeal to
eat pancakes at the memorial dinner (an ancient pagan rite assimilated by
the Orthodox Church), the shadow of the grain image (the novel’s “subject-
symbol,” as Vyacheslav Ivanov would call it) flashes before our eyes for the
last time.
Robert Louis Jackson has demonstrated that Alyosha’s speech in the
epilogue resembles the general mood of Schiller’s “Ode to Joy.”21 The echo
of another of Schiller’s poems can also be heard in this scene—that of his
aforementioned “Klage der Ceres” (“Plaint of Ceres”). This ballad consti-
tutes the sorrowful monologue of Mother Earth, who hopes for a meeting
with her daughter:

Knüpfet sich kein Liebesknoten

Zwischen Kind und Mutter an?
Zwischen Lebenden und Toten
Ist kein Bündnis aufgetan?

Is there no knot of love tied

Between mother and child?
Is there no alliance opened
Between the living and the dead?22

In Schiller’s ballad, the meeting between mother and daughter is realized

allegorically as the organic transformation of nature in the spring. In the
Greek myth, the bond unifying the living and the dead takes a more concrete
and more symbolic form of a grain.

As is often noted, Ivan and Alyosha represent two contrasting paths to God.
Ivan, striving to achieve everything through the powers of the mind, exem-

49
 Chapter Two

plifies the rational, epistemic, “Western” path to knowledge of God. Con-

trolled by reason, whose insights alone he trusts, Ivan is eventually driven
into a moral trap. Alyosha’s path is intuitive, through the heart. He perceives
the elder Zosima’s words without the slightest skepticism or doubt. In doing
so, he acts as heir to the Eastern patristic tradition of “taking the mind into
the heart.” Dostoevsky emphasizes the fact that Alyosha is not a mystic, but
a realist. For him, faith—not miracle—is primary.
The eldest of the Karamazov brothers, Dmitry, possesses neither Ivan’s
intellectual strength nor Alyosha’s spirituality and intuition. With few excep-
tions, such as Robin Feuer Miller’s book on The Brothers Karamazov, he
is generally perceived as less complex.23 Dmitry is a reveler, a voluptuary, a
swinger between emotional extremes, a “brute of an officer,” as he calls him-
self. But the motifs of the Eleusinian Mysteries allow us to discern in Mitya’s
fate a third possible path toward God: the path of empirical knowledge.
Mitya discovers God through personal dramatic experience, which turns out
to be mystical in a way that he himself does not expect. In his descent into
the underworld, one can trace the logic of the Demeter myth.
Summing up, we can say that in The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan em-
bodies the Western Christian tradition and Alyosha that of Eastern Christi-
anity, whereas Dmitry represents the ancient Greek tradition. Like the three
brothers, these three branches of world culture are bound together with fa-
milial ties. Regardless of how Dostoevsky may have felt about the Western
Church, he could not deny the fact that Eastern and Western Christianity
were “siblings.” Dostoevsky saw a kinship and continuity between antiquity
and the Christian world. In a letter to his brother, Mikhail, he placed Homer
on the same level as Christ: “Homer (a legendary person, incarnated as God,
perhaps like Christ, and sent to us) can be a parallel only to Christ, and not
to Goethe.”24 In the brotherhood of Dmitry and Alyosha, Dostoevsky might
well be presenting ancient Greek and Christian Orthodox traditions.
Dostoevsky personally trod the paths to God of the three Karamazov
brothers. Like Alyosha, he strove to grasp the truth through the Orthodox
patristic tradition of “thinking with the heart.” Like Ivan, he was tortured his
whole life by doubt. Like Dmitry, he arrived at his mature faith as a result of
imprisonment and hard labor, which, as it happened, played a mystical role
in his spiritual evolution. Dostoevsky went the path of the dying and resur-
rected grain and experienced a “second birth” in his Siberian exile. For him,
these years represented a journey to the underworld, similar to that in the
Eleusinian Mysteries. Perhaps that is what Vyacheslav Ivanov had in mind
when he wrote that “through initiation into the sacrament of death, it would
seem that Dostoevsky was brought to a knowledge of that whole secret, as
Dante was through his penetration into the sacred shrine of love.”25

50
 A Ray of Light in the Abyss

This renewal did not occur suddenly. Having returned from exile, Dos-
toevsky wrote to his brother, “Well, how can I impart my mind to you, my
understanding, everything that I lived through, what I became convinced of
and what I dwelt on all of that time? I will not undertake that. Such work
is positively impossible. . . . What happened with my soul, with my beliefs,
with my mind and heart in those four years—I will not tell you. It would
take a long time to tell.”26 Like the participants in the Eleusinian Mysteries,
Dostoevsky does not disclose the secret of the light revealed to him in the
underworld.

51
 Chapter Three

“The Devil Begins with Froth on the Lips

of an Angel”

TH E CHER U B A LY O S HA KA R A MA Z OV

Grigory Pomerants has observed that the Dostoevskian universe, like that
of Dante, is a fluid system with no clear-cut borders: here characters jump
from one orbit to another, and the boundary between the earthly life and the
afterlife is elusive and unsteady.1 In this constantly fluctuating world, Alyosha
Karamazov plays the role of a spiritual anchor. Unlike his passionate brother
Dmitry, who is prone to oscillations between the two abysses, Alyosha stands
firmly on the ground. In contrast to his morally unrestrained father, he is “se-
rene and even-tempered.” Devoid of pride and passions, Alyosha is pure at
heart, humble, and meek. His moral well-being harmonizes with his physical
vigor: he is “a well-built, red-cheeked nineteen-year-old youth, clear-eyed
and bursting with health” (25).
Alyosha’s faith is unblemished by doubt, for unlike his brother Ivan,
he does not attempt to rationalize divine justice. Very early in life he comes
to realize that “immortality and God do exist,” and this strong conviction al-
lows him to embrace his faith. Introduced by the narrator as “an early lover
of mankind,” warmhearted and sympathetic, Alyosha loves everyone and is
loved back: “He possessed in himself, in his very nature, so to speak, artlessly
and directly, the gift of awakening a special love for himself ” (19). Alyo-
sha does not judge people but rather appeals to the best sides of their soul.
Those around him greatly appreciate his invariably beneficial influence. His
father Fyodor, his brother Dmitry, the seminarist Rakitin, Grushenka, and
Madame Khokhlakova all call him an “angel” or “cherub.”
Because of Alyosha’s angelic nature, his love of all, his wisdom, and his
piety, he has been called “an echo” or “emanation” of his spiritual mentor.2
Indeed, Alyosha is a miniature Zosima, except that he does not have the
elder’s life experience. In spite of his youth, however, people with whom he

52
 “The Devil Begins with Froth on the Lips of an Angel”

interacts always listen to his words of wisdom, appreciate his forgiveness,

and never doubt Alyosha’s moral superiority and his right to forgive.
Since the novel’s publication, critics and scholars have agreed that in
Alyosha, Dostoevsky portrayed a religious ideal of sanctity. Vasily Rozanov
calls him the “moral instructor,” “prophet,” and “guiding star” of Russia’s fu-
ture resurrection.3 Another religious thinker, Nicholas Lossky, writes that
Alyosha Karamazov’s name has become synonymous with purity of heart
and capacity for active love.4 This line of reasoning dominates in Dostoevsky
studies today, both in Russia and in the West.
It is frequently noted that in creating Alyosha, Dostoevsky followed
the literary conventions of the hagiographic genre.5 Specifically, Valentina
Vetlovskaya has demonstrated that this character is shaped according to the
“Life of Saint Alexey, Man of God”—a Byzantine vita adapted in Russian
folk versions. Vetlovskaya enumerates several factors that support this con-
nection. In the preface to the novel, the author refers to Alyosha’s biogra-
phy as his zhizneopisanie, which in Russian signifies “vita.” His preliminary
characterization contains several obligatory attributes of the hagiographic
hero: absence of pride, indifference to worldly goods, fanatical modesty, and
chastity. As a child, Alyosha cannot bear to hear conversations about women
that other boys have and never wants “to show off in front of his peers” (20).
Among his most essential attributes are “desire for seclusion, the unchild-
like pensiveness and concentration. . . . His alienation from the playfulness
and joyfulness typical of children”—all common hagiographic motifs.6 Sig-
nificantly, other characters refer to Alyosha as “a Man of God.” At novel’s
end, following the elder Zosima’s advice to leave the monastery, Alyosha is
ready to go into the world. That too, Vetlovskaya writes, creates a parallel
with Saint Alexey, who leaves his parental home and embarks upon a long
journey. Finally, the contrast between the “light of love,” as personalized
in Alyosha, and the “darkness of earthly malice” that surrounds him in his
hometown is a hagiographic feature that highlights the opposition between
the ideal hero and the sinful world in which he lives.
Alyosha’s connection with this ancient tradition, noted by Vetlovskaya,
is illuminating yet problematic. The first problem concerns artistic plausi-
bility. By the seventeenth century, the Russian hagiography had given way
to more secularized works of literature. Abandoning the fundamental prin-
ciples of the genre, writers began to pay more attention to their characters’
individual traits and thus to evince more concern with the contradictions
and inconsistencies in human nature.7 Some scholars observe that the lack
of shading in Dostoevsky’s “saintly” characters empties them of psychologi-
cal truth.8 Indeed, compared with the novel’s “dialectical,” full-blooded, and
vibrant characters, Alyosha seems one-dimensional. Strangely for a Dosto-

53
 Chapter Three

evskian character, he appears neither complex nor evolving. If there is any

development in his personality, it is conflictless, a progression from “good”
to “best.”
When facing temptations, he manages to overcome them without
strenuous effort. Thus, saddened by the rumor of an “odor of corruption”
following the elder Zosima’s death, he gives up his ascetic regime, but a few
days later his spiritual integrity is restored. Alyosha easily resists other temp-
tations. He remains immune to his father’s cynical speeches and Dmitry’s
paradoxical observations about beauty and love; he resists Ivan’s arguments
against divine justice. Having listened to Ivan’s poem “The Grand Inquisi-
tor,” he sums it up cheerfully: “Your poem praises Jesus, it doesn’t revile
him . . . as you meant it to” (26). It is not quite clear whether Alyosha’s light-
hearted reaction to Fyodor’s, Dmitry’s, and Ivan’s confessions stems from his
spiritual integrity or from the fact that his life experience is still limited.
The second problem with Alyosha’s status as a “saint” relates to Dosto-
evsky’s declaration that this character is only partly realized. In the first lines
of The Brothers Karamazov, the author informs us Alyosha is the protago-
nist of his book and that his biography consists of two novels. He further ex-
plains: “The main novel is the second one—about the activities of my hero
in our time, that is, in our present, current moment. As for the first novel, it
already took place thirteen years ago and is even almost not a novel at all but
just one moment from my hero’s early youth. It is impossible for me to do
without this first novel, or much in the second novel will be incomprehen-
sible” (3–4).
Dostoevsky’s plan was only half realized. The “first novel”—that is, the
first part of Alyosha’s biography—was published in December 1880 under
the title The Brothers Karamazov. The second one was never written. On
January 28, 1881, the writer died.
The author’s prefatory statement makes it clear that Alyosha was origi-
nally conceived as an evolving character. It calls attention to three important
factors: Alyosha’s story as given in the novel is incomplete (it is an introduc-
tion, “just one moment from my hero’s early youth”); without this introduc-
tion the main (unwritten) part of his biography would not be understand-
able; the introduction and the main part represent one single whole: “My
novel broke itself into two stories ‘while preserving the essential unity of
the whole’ ” (4). These three factors admonish us to exercise caution when
claiming that in Alyosha Dostoevsky portrayed a religious ideal of sanctity. As
the author was creating his protagonist, he already knew that his character
would undergo a further evolution; he already had an idea of possible twists
and turns in his hero’s life. Although the sequel to The Brothers Karamazov
was never written, the author’s awareness of Alyosha’s future fate must have
had an impact on the way this character is portrayed.

54
 “The Devil Begins with Froth on the Lips of an Angel”

There is another reason that Alyosha’s evolution in the novel is incom-

plete. The parallels between the two Alexeys (their early piety, chastity, and
diligence in learning) are limited to the introductory part of the saint’s vita.
What makes Saint Alexey’s vita stand out in hagiographic literature is the
fact that he spends all his life in disguise, moving from one city to another,
concealing his true identity from everybody, including his parents and his
bride.9 Dostoevsky’s protagonist does not leave home until the very end of
the novel. His spiritual wandering lies ahead—beyond the covers of the
book.
One can argue that had Dostoevsky been able to write the sequel to
the novel, the “Life of Saint Alexey” would form its basis. In this regard we
must recall that the hagiographic canon presents two master plots: a straight
path from virtuousness to sanctity and a curved progression from sin to spiri-
tual renewal. The former, more conventional, is typified in the “Life of Saint
Alexey.” The latter, less popular, is exemplified by the “Life of Saint Mary of
Egypt” and the Russian version of the “Life of Saint Andrew of Crete,” dis-
cussed in chapter 1. Of the two master plots, Dostoevsky was clearly more
interested in the latter, which is more challenging morally and more exciting
artistically.
The story of a spiritual conversion is essential to many of Dostoevsky’s
sinners, including Rodion Raskolnikov and Dmitry Karamazov, discussed in
the previous two chapters. The same master plot lies at the core of Dostoev-
sky’s Life of a Great Sinner (1869–70), conceived as a story of the hero’s oscil-
lation between faith and disbelief rather than a story of becoming. Dostoevsky
sums up the central concept of this grandiose project as the hero’s “fall and
rising.”10 He stresses this idea in his working notebook: “The state of oscilla-
tion is what constitutes the novel” (Eto-to sostoianie kolebaniia—ono i sostav-
liaet roman).11 Examining Dostoevsky’s preliminary notes to this novel, G. B.
Ponomareva comments on its structure: “Here all boundaries merge, ‘falling’
gives rise to ‘ascent’; ‘terrible villainy’ gives rise to a ‘great deed’ (podvig).”12
The issue of vacillation between faith and disbelief was of great importance
to Dostoevsky. In a letter dated March 25, 1870, he wrote to his friend Apol-
lon Maikov: “The overall title for the novel is The Life of a Great Sinner. . . .
The main question, which is pursued in all the parts, is the same one that I
have been tormented by consciously and unconsciously my whole life—the
existence of God. Over the course of his life the hero is alternately an athe-
ist, then a believer, then a fanatic and sectarian, then an atheist again.”13 As
previously mentioned, though Dostoevsky’s project of writing The Life of a
Great Sinner was not realized, he recycled many of its ideas into his novels A
Raw Youth, The Devils, and The Brothers Karamazov, written in the 1870s.14
The theme of the “traumatic search for faith, and return to faith,” as Robert
Belknap notes, “shapes the lives of the three brothers Karamazov, Zosima,

55
 Chapter Three

his brother, the mysterious stranger, and, in more problematic ways, several
other characters in The Brothers Karamazov.”15 This issue would surely have
remained central in the sequel to Dostoevsky’s last novel.

F RO M S A I NT S T O S I NNER S : TH E SP ECTRUM OF
POS S I BI L I T I ES

Speculating on the prospective sequel to The Brothers Karamazov is a diffi-

cult task, for it concerns the realm of sheer potentiality. The matter is com-
plicated by another factor. As Gary Saul Morson observes, in Dostoevsky
every event is generally rooted in a “field of possibilities.”16 Plowing the field
of possibilities might be as infeasible as looking for the proverbial needle in
a haystack. How can one predict what would happen to Dostoevsky’s hero
beyond the book’s covers? The range of possibilities may be endless: Alyosha
could become a saint, a revolutionary, a bourgeois, or a moneylender. And
yet not all of these options would be artistically convincing.
I agree with Morson’s assumption that Dostoevsky’s world is not ruled
by deterministic principles, that more than one event is possible at any par-
ticular moment, and that “intentions need not be linear.” Nevertheless, I
would argue that the number of these possibilities is not endless in Dosto-
evsky: the spectrum of potential outcomes has two distinct spikes—what
is expected at any moment of a given literary character and what is dia-
metrically opposed to this expectation. This latter possibility should not be
equated with arbitrariness or irrationality.
In my view, the roots of what is diametrically opposed can be detected
in those particular moments of the character’s life that Bakhtin calls the
“points of non-coincidence.” He writes on Dostoevsky: “One cannot apply
to him the formula of identity A = A. In Dostoevsky’s artistic thinking, the
genuine life of the personality takes place at the point of non-coincidence
[tochka nesovpadeniia] between a man and himself, at his point of depar-
ture beyond the limits of all that he is as a material being.”17 This statement
conveys a paradoxical idea that in Dostoevsky, personality embraces in itself
not only what is characteristic of that person, but also what is opposite to it,
what is least expected.
In The Brothers Karamazov, almost every character has moments of
“non-coincidence” with him- or herself. We may recall the seductress Gru-
shenka. Having heard about Zosima’s death, she suddenly forgets her plan
to seduce Alyosha and feels compassion for him. Her “little onion” (a small
good deed) helps Alyosha to overcome his despondency. At novel’s end, the
capricious and impulsive Grushenka suddenly announces that she will follow
Dmitry to Siberia: an adulteress is transformed into a faithful bride. Analo-

56
 “The Devil Begins with Froth on the Lips of an Angel”

gously, at the trial, unexpectedly for everybody and for herself, the generally
upright and self-sacrificial Katerina Ivanovna testifies against Dmitry, thus
affecting his fate in the worst way.
We may recall moments when Dmitry and Ivan “do not coincide with
themselves.” We first see Dmitry in the scandalous scene in the monastery,
when enraged at his father, he exclaims: “Why is such a man alive?” (74). The
text gives no moral or psychological motivation for the fact that at the final
moment Mitya did not kill his father. He himself is incapable of explaining
to his cross-examiners this remarkable twist of fate: “Whether it was some-
one’s tears, or God heard my mother’s prayers, or a bright spirit kissed me
at that moment, I don’t know—but the devil was overcome” (472). Armed
with a Euclidian mind and Aristotelian logic, Ivan is always consistent in
his reasoning. Yet he too exhibits “non-coincidence” with himself when his
rational abilities fail him and he yields to hallucination in the form of a con-
versation with the devil. In Dmitry’s case the point of “non-coincidence” is a
work of grace; in Ivan’s, the work of the devil.
These four examples from The Brothers Karamazov should suffice to
show that moments of “non-coincidence” are neither chaotic nor random.
They follow the same paradigm of a move from established personality traits
to their opposites: from unpredictability to faithfulness (Grushenka), from
faithfulness to betrayal (Katerina Ivanovna), from extreme fury to sudden
sobriety (Dmitry), and from cold reasoning to madness (Ivan). In each case,
the point of “non-coincidence” leads to dramatic consequences.
While there are no visible contradictions or internal tensions in the “an-
gelic” Alyosha, there is a potentiality for his “non-coincidence with himself ”
that remains unrealized in the novel. During their conversations with Alyo-
sha, Dmitry and Ivan comment on some tiny flaws in his “angelic” character.
Dmitry, who believes that all Karamazovs are contaminated with the virus
of lust, observes: “I am that very insect, brother,—he says to Alyosha,—and
those words are precisely about me. And all of us Karamazovs are like that,
and in you, an angel, the same insect lives and stirs up storms in your blood”
(108). Dmitry’s words echo a few chapters later, when Alyosha, distressed
by the elder Zosima’s death and disturbed by the mischievous rumors ac-
companying it, meets the seminary student Rakitin. Cynical, revengeful, and
believing the worst of human nature, Rakitin suggests to Alyosha that they
visit Grushenka, a woman of ambiguous reputation. His motive is insidious:
Grushenka promised him money for bringing the young novice to her house.
When Alyosha calmly agrees, Rakitin anticipates his “fall from the saints to
the sinners.” However, things turn out differently at Grushenka’s; she does
not seduce Alyosha. Dmitry’s remark about the “insect of lust” in Alyosha’s
blood receives no further elaboration.
Ivan also sees “a little devil” in Alyosha’s heart. In the chapter “Rebel-

57
 Chapter Three

lion,” Ivan delivers a long and feverish speech about the unjust suffering
of children, which causes Alyosha to stumble. After telling the story of a
general who ordered his dogs to hunt a little boy to death, he asks Alyosha:
“Well . . . what to do with him? Shoot him? Shoot him for our moral satis-
faction?” Alyosha’s first reaction, “Shoot him!” receives sarcastic comments
from Ivan: “A fine monk you are! See what a little devil is sitting in your
heart, Alyoshka Karamazov!” (243). Like Dmitry’s remark, however, Ivan’s
observation points only to a latent, not a manifest trait in Alyosha. The text
of the novel gives no indication that the “little devil” ever disturbs Alyosha’s
heart again.
One can say that Alyosha’s not yielding to temptations serves as proof
of his integrity and wholeness, or that Dmitry and Ivan are projecting their
own anxieties and weaknesses onto their younger brother. A different case
can also be argued: Dmitry’s and Ivan’s remarks about the “vile insect” and
the “little devil” hiding in “angelic” Alyosha were meant to have conse-
quences in the novel’s sequel.
We do not have much information about Dostoevsky’s plans to con-
tinue the novel; his working notebook, which might have contained the
drafts of these plans, is lost. But we have several testimonies that outline
the directions into which Alyosha’s fate could have been channeled. In her
memoirs and a private letter, Anna Dostoevsky thus mentions that her hus-
band intended to write a sequel in which Alyosha would experience a com-
plex psychological drama with Lise Khokhlakova.18 Dostoevsky’s Austrian
biographer Nina Hoffmann, who interviewed his widow in 1898, confirms
this argument by suggesting that Alyosha would marry Lise, but then their
marriage would be ruined by the “sinner Grushenka.”19
Aleksei Suvorin (1834–1912), a journalist and publisher of the jour-
nals Novoe vremia and Istoricheskii vestnik provides another piece of evi-
dence. In 1881, shortly after Dostoevsky’s death, he stated in an obituary
that Dostoevsky planned to make his hero Alexey Karamazov a socialist.20 In
his diary, Suvorin expands on this idea, claiming that the writer planned to
turn Alyosha into a political criminal. He records a conversation with Dos-
toevsky that took place on February 20, 1880, soon after an explosion in the
Winter Palace organized by the revolutionary Stepan Khalturin. According
to Suvorin’s diary, when Dostoevsky heard about this incident, he became
extremely agitated: “He spoke on the subject for a long time, and spoke en-
thusiastically. He said immediately that he would write a novel with Alyosha
Karamazov as a hero. He wanted to lead him through the monastery and
make him a revolutionary. He would commit a political crime. He would
be executed. He would seek truth and in these quests he would naturally
become a revolutionary.”21
Suvorin’s testimony is supported by other sources. On May 26, 1880,

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 “The Devil Begins with Froth on the Lips of an Angel”

the Odessa newspaper Novorossiiskii telegraf informed its readers of rumors

circulating in St. Petersburg’s literary circles that in the second volume of
The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky’s hero Alyosha, “under the influence
of some special psychic processes taking place in his soul, arrived at the idea
of a regicide.”22
These testimonies have not received much attention in Dostoevsky
studies. In her book on The Brothers Karamazov, Vetlovskaya writes that
Suvorin’s version is inexact and implausible: “The idea that Dostoevsky, who
had associated his hero with Alexey, the Man of God, could cardinally recon-
sider the given image and turn a saint into a revolutionary seems extremely
strange (if not impossible).”23 Elsewhere Vetlovskaya does accept this possi-
bility, although with reservation: “It is possible that subsequently Alyosha
will turn from the ‘correct road’ once more. All this is possible. But if Alyo-
sha does turn from this road, then it would certainly be in order for him to
enter onto it later, once and for all. It is precisely this outcome that the logic
of the artistic narrative demands.”24 Vetlovskaya’s reservation is understand-
able, for, as mentioned in the beginning of the chapter, in the whirling cos-
mos of The Brothers Karamazov, Alyosha’s saintly figure creates a sense of
stability, enabling the reader to find balance in this dynamic world.
One group of scholars does find Suvorin’s testimony convincing, how-
ever. Among them is Dostoevsky’s biographer Leonid Grossman, who ac-
cepts the possibility of Alyosha’s transition from faith to atheism and political
activity. Grossman believes that Alyosha’s prototype was Dmitry Karakozov,
infamous for his unsuccessful attempt on the life of Czar Alexander II in
April 1866.25
In Dmitry Blagoi’s view, the harsh political reality of the late 1870s
and early 1880s led Dostoevsky to reconsider his original plan of writing a
novel about the hero’s spiritual quest and switch to a scenario of the hero’s
fall.26 Blagoi considers the political instability of the time and Dostoevsky’s
concern about political terrorism, which was growing more widespread in
Russia. In early 1878, the young terrorist Vera Zasulich shot and seriously
wounded General Trepov, the governor of St. Petersburg. Dostoevsky at-
tended her widely publicized trial, in which a sympathetic jury found her
not guilty. Zasulich’s case was won by A. F. Koni, Dostoevsky’s close friend
and a consultant for The Brothers Karamazov. On February 22, 1880, the
writer witnessed another event—the public hanging of the terrorist Ippolit
Mlodetsky.27
Blagoi undertook a comprehensive analysis of the regicide hypothesis.
He begins his essay by doubting Suvorin’s claim, writing that such a claim
is totally unexpected, fantastic, and sensational and that it is hard to believe
Dostoevsky would transform his tenderly loved hero into a revolutionary.28
Blagoi even writes that Suvorin could have invented this as a literary mystifi-

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 Chapter Three

cation, but immediately he draws back, claiming that such a paradoxical idea
could hardly occur to anyone except Dostoevsky. Nevertheless, as a whole,
his article supports the likelihood of Suvorin’s testimony.
More recently, James Rice has examined Suvorin’s version of the se-
quel by concentrating on the psychological aspect of Alyosha’s prospective
crime.29 Rice believes that this turn of events would be perfectly justified
by the fact that Alyosha, just like his mother, is prone to hysteria. In Dosto-
evsky, Rice maintains, humbleness and meekness easily turn into criminal
violence. Alyosha is especially vulnerable because he is tainted with Kara-
mazovism (karamazovshchina), a seed of lust and evil capable of causing a
“storm” in his soul.
Setting aside psychological motivations and the political circumstances
of the time examined by Rice and Blagoi, I stress that Alyosha’s conversion
to socialism and anarchism seems artistically, not just topically, plausible. In
fact, the narrator introduces the possibility of Alyosha’s joining atheists and
socialists:

As soon as he reflected seriously and was struck by the conviction that im-
mortality and God exist, he naturally said at once to himself: “I want to live
for immortality, and reject any halfway compromise.” In just the same way,
if he had decided that immortality and God do not exist, he would immedi-
ately have joined the atheists and socialists (for socialism is not only the labor
question or the questions of the so-called fourth estate, but first of all the
question of atheism, the question of the modern embodiment of atheism, the
question of the Tower of Babel built precisely without God, not to go from
earth to heaven but to bring heaven down to earth). (26)

The conditional “if,” a metaphor of bifurcation much favored by Dostoevsky,

hints at two possible roads for Alyosha.
There is another indication of Alyosha’s potential to become a revo-
lutionary—his ambitions and desire for sacrifice. The narrator introduces
Alyosha as “honest by nature, demanding the truth, seeking it and believing
in it, and in that belief demanding immediate participation in it with all the
strength of his soul; demanding an immediate deed [skoryi podvig], with
an unfailing desire to sacrifice everything for this deed, even life” (26). As
Morson notes, the repeated phrase “immediate deed” “links Alyosha first
of all to terrorists, who also are prepared to sacrifice life to make a sudden
change.”30 In the religious context, the words podvig and podvizhnichestvo
(heroic conduct, self-sacrifice) imply continuous ascetic activity rather than
an immediact act of heroism.
There are other reasons for stating that Alyosha’s move from the mon-
astery to the barricades would be artistically plausible. As Robert Belknap

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 “The Devil Begins with Froth on the Lips of an Angel”

observes, Karamazovism is not a mere collection of attributes: it permits

incompatible characteristics to coexist in a single man. It is a “paradoxical
force, which rests on the contradictory and fluctuating presences of intel-
lect and lechery, vileness and pride, love of life and self-destruction, half-
wittedness and revolt.”31 Belknap’s definition applies to all the Karamazovs
except for the youngest son. Alyosha’s fall “from saint to sinner” would tes-
tify to his blood relationship with his family.
Alyosha’s conversion to socialism would not destroy the artistic and
ideological structure of The Brothers Karamazov. On the contrary, it would
create several additional links. It would connect with the novel’s crime core,
the story of Fyodor’s murder. Two issues—Alyosha’s killing of the czar and
Dmitry’s not killing his father—would then mirror each other, for on the
symbolic level, regicide and parricide are related crimes. In Russian culture,
the czar has always been perceived as a father figure, an analogy reflected in
an ancient traditional form of addressing the czar as batiushka, or “father.”
Alyosha’s trial would also be linked with the theme of Ivan’s rebellion
against God. By murdering Fyodor Karamazov, Smerdyakov enacts Ivan’s
idea that “all is permitted if there is no God.” Introducing regicide as an
attempt to correct the social order would challenge Ivan’s other assertions—
about justice.
Finally, Alyosha’s transformation into a revolutionary would relate to
Ivan’s poem “The Grand Inquisitor.” As Robert Belknap has demonstrated,
the poem’s main source lies in the Russian radical tradition: Dostoevsky dis-
credited radical ideas by likening Ivan to the Grand Inquisitor, associating
him with the devil, portraying Rakitin as a parody of Ivan, and portraying
Kolya Krasotkin as a parody of both Ivan and the Grand Inquisitor.32 More-
over, Alyosha’s political crime would support the parallel between the Eu-
ropean Inquisition and Russian socialism, which Dostoevsky himself had in
mind.33
Now we have to approach a subtler question: What can the possibility
of Alyosha’s fall from “saint to sinner” mean for the reader? And how does
this possibility affect our perception and interpretation of the novel? Does
it convey a sense of the future tragedy and despair? Or does it somehow
support the bright, Christian dimension of the novel? And more specifically,
how does it relate to the novel’s optimistic ending?

TH E NO V EL’ S ENDI NG I N L I G HT OF TH E
PROJ E CT ED S EQ U EL

At the very end of the epilogue, just before he leaves town, Alyosha makes a
farewell speech to the boys. He urges them to maintain their friendship and

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 Chapter Three

to remember the day of Ilyusha’s funeral, which united them in a feeling of

brotherly love. He calls them “my little doves” and “my little children.” Full
of tender emotions bordering on sentimentality, he exclaims: “Ah, children,
ah, dear friends, do not be afraid of life! How good life is when you do some-
thing good and rightful!” (774–76). The boys call out that they love Alyosha.
Many have “tears shining in their eyes” (776). Gradually, they begin to share
Alyosha’s intoxication:

“Karamazov!” cried Kolya, “can it really be true as religion says, that we

shall all rise from the dead, and come to life, and see one another again, and
everyone, and Ilyushechka?”
“Certainly we shall rise, certainly we shall see and gladly, joyfully tell
one another all that has been,” Alyosha replied, half laughing, half in ec-
stasy.” (776)

The novel ends with a triumphant announcement: “ ‘And eternally so, all our
lives hand in hand! Hurrah for Karamazov!’ Kolya cried once more ecstati-
cally, and once more all the boys joined in his exclamation” (776).
Alyosha’s speech contrasts with the dramatic events of the final chap-
ters. Captain Snegiryov and his wife weep, crushed by their child’s death.
Dmitry is sentenced to twenty years of hard labor in Siberia; Ivan succumbs
to brain fever. Alyosha only quickly refers to his brothers, “one of whom is
going into exile, and the other is lying near death” (774). Not to mention
that his father has been recently murdered.
Despite this incongruity, there is general agreement among Dosto-
evsky scholars that the conclusion of The Brothers Karamazov affirms the
value of life. “The book ends on this boyish note of innocence and optimism,
providing a welcome relief, similar to the epilogues of eighteenth-century
plays or operas, to all the tragic tensions that have gone before,” writes Jo-
seph Frank.34 The commentators of the novel in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii
(Complete Works) point out that the stone at which Alyosha delivers his
speech has a symbolic meaning, “the edifice of a new harmony.”35 Robin
Feuer Miller elaborates on the scene’s religious symbolism. The twelve
boys, Alyosha’s followers, recall the twelve apostles of Jesus.36 She maintains
that the scene has an iconic quality—despite the sadness of the events, it is
“hauntingly optimistic.” She writes that in spite of the fact that all the boys
are guilty and contributed to Ilyusha’s suffering, they accept their brother-
hood and make their compact founded on memory. The word “memory,”
repeated thirty times in this passage, serves as a key concept of Alyosha’s ap-
peal: memories “become, literally, the seeds that, having died, bear fruit.”37
Robert Louis Jackson also interprets the ending symbolically. He con-
siders Alyosha’s speech at the stone as an indirect answer to Ivan’s passion-

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 “The Devil Begins with Froth on the Lips of an Angel”

ate monologue about the suffering children. For Ivan, this issue represents a
stumbling block in his acceptance of the world’s disharmony, yet in Alyosha’s
speech, “The suffering of the child is ultimately a basis for union and har-
mony, both in an immediate and in a higher sense.”38
These interpretations support the novel’s optimistic spirit and dissolve
the bitter aftertaste of its final chapters. And yet there is something unset-
tling in this ending—specifically, in the way Alyosha speaks.
As Jackson notes, Alyosha’s exaltation resembles the intonation of
Schiller’s poem “Ode to Joy” (1785): “Here at the end of The Brothers
Karamazov is a scene that borders on the kind of romantic Schilleresque
Brüderschaft, or sentimental brotherliness, that Dostoevsky, at other mo-
ments in his earlier works, knew how to parody mercilessly in heroes who
had lost contact with Russian reality.”39 The insightful Schilleresque connec-
tion Jackson notes leads us to a new difficulty. Alyosha’s exaltation contrasts
with the religious tradition he belongs to. “To every thing there is a season,”
reads the book of Ecclesiastes, “A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time
to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to
gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from em-
bracing.”40 Obviously, the funeral is “the time to mourn,” and in this sense
Alyosha’s speech at the stone, full of joy and excitement, is out of place. It
contrasts with the sobriety of the Orthodox burial rite. His half-laughter,
half-ecstasy about the imminent resurrection is confusing, for the kernel
of Christian doctrine, Resurrection is a mystical event; the Gospels speak
about it only obliquely.
In the Russian tradition, there is a clear distinction between a funeral
rite (Christian Orthodox panikhida) and a funeral meal (pominki). The
former is marked by grief, whereas the latter (which bears traces of pagan
custom) is a time to celebrate the memory of the deceased with food and
drinks. But even while drinking at pominki, people traditionally do not clink
glasses—as if to show that they are not drinking out of a feeling for the joy
of life. It is significant that Ayosha’s speech is delivered outside, at a place
where Ilyusha wanted to be buried, and happens before the funeral meal—
it ends with the invitation to the memorial dinner. For this reason, his Schil-
lerian ecstasy at the stone is unordinary, to say the least.
The Schilleresque overtones of Alyosha’s speech are unsettling for yet
another reason—this scene is cast in the ecstatic voice of Dmitry Karama-
zov; and the Schiller connection in Dostoevsky is traditionally interpreted
as an emblem of Karamazov-like intoxication with the joy of life.41 But the
highly emotional tone of the Sturm und Drang rhetoric is foreign to Alyo-
sha. He is introduced as a very “quiet boy,” “not very effusive, not even very
talkative” (19). When he hears about his father spitting on an icon, he bursts
into tears, but even then he does not say a word. In all other episodes of the

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novel, he exhibits reserve and self-control, functioning mainly as a listener,

not a speaker. Although Alyosha’s sudden exaltation in the epilogue serves as
a point of connection with his brother Dmitry, it stands out as a point of his
“non-coincidence with himself.”
Writing about the contradiction between the exuberance of the end-
ing and the tragic event in the novel, Jackson assumes that Alyosha’s speech
marks the point of his transition from the novel’s first part to its second:
“What is certain is that the ending of the first volume of The Brothers Kara-
mazov novel forms a bridge to something new and unknown.”42 Jackson thus
prepares readers to see the epilogue’s ending not so much as a closure to the
novel as a gateway to its sequel.
It is important to stress that Alyosha’s speech at the stone recapitulates
the theme of “Russian boys.” This theme is originally introduced by Ivan
in his conversation with Alyosha; Russian boys, Ivan says, talk about uni-
versal questions: “Is there a God, is there immortality?” Those who do not
believe in God talk about socialism and anarchism (234). Further, the theme
of Russian boys receives elaboration in book 10, titled “Boys,” which nar-
rates Alyosha’s encounter with the young socialist Kolya Krasotkin and his
schoolmates. Significantly, Dostoevsky planned to place the theme of Rus-
sian boys at the center of the sequel to The Brothers Karamazov. After his
speech at the Pushkin celebration on June 8, 1880, he told a group of stu-
dents: “I have yet to write The Children, and then die.”43 We may conclude
that Alyosha’s monologue addressed to the boys belongs not so much to the
world of The Brothers Karamazov as to the world of The Children. Alyosha
insists that the boys should preserve the memory of this moment “whatever
may happen later in their life,” “even twenty years afterwards,” even if they
will “become wicked later on.” His message refers to the future. This speech
thus establishes a link between the present moment and the moment in the
grown-up boys’ lives when they may go through their own (very possibly
criminal) trials in an attempt to resolve “eternal questions.” Jackson’s read-
ing of the epilogue therefore can be augmented: besides celebrating a Schil-
leresque brotherhood, Alyosha’s speech celebrates the brotherhood of the
Russian boys who, in Ivan’s words, discuss the “accursed questions” about
God, immortality, socialism, and anarchism.
If we are to believe Zosima’s prediction, Alyosha’s path will not be
straight but will eventually lead him to the light. When the elder blesses
Alyosha as he goes into the world, he warns him:

I give you my blessing for a great obedience in the world. You still have much
journeying before you. And you will have to marry—yes, you will. You will
have to endure everything before you come back again. And there will be
much work to do. But I have no doubt of you, that is why I am sending you.

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 “The Devil Begins with Froth on the Lips of an Angel”

Christ is with you. Keep him, and he will keep you. You will behold great sor-
row [gore], and in this sorrow you will be happy. (77)

The dialectics of sorrow and happiness, of good and evil, of fall and resur-
rection, seem to await Alyosha on his way, suggesting that only by tasting
both halves of a whole can one acquire wisdom. As V. A. Kotel’nikov notes,
“Righteousness includes the experience of falling and rising, the experience
of overcoming sinfulness. The latter, having no positive existential content,
is destined to be transformed into the energy of repentance and great deed
[ podvig].”44 This statement may sound paradoxical, but it conforms to the
idea expressed earlier: Dostoevsky suggests that the way to God may lie
through sin.
Through Zosima’s teachings, Dostoevsky keeps reminding us that evil,
as part of the world, is not to be feared. The philosopher Nicholas Lossky
clarifies this:

The elder suggests that one should not to be afraid of people’s sinfulness;
one ought to love man “also in his sin, for this likeness of God’s love is the
height of love on earth.” This suggestion is based on the idea, unconveyable
in general terms, that there is no absolute evil in the world, as there is no ab-
solute egotism. In the structure of any deed there is always at least a minor
component of unselfish love toward some objective value. That is why, when
one sees the abyss of evil in the world, one must not be led to despair and de-
jection. . . . The discernment of goodness in the act of evil-doing . . . leads not
to the loss of differentiation between good and evil, but on the contrary, to a
clearer distinction between them.45

A grain of goodness in evildoing and a grain of evil in a righteous deed are

two sides of the same coin.
Speaking about passages from sin to spiritual renewal in the previous
two chapters, I have traced a particular paradigm in Dostoevsky: the lower
one falls, the higher one might rise. If we reverse the dialectic—the higher
one rises, the lower one might fall—we can see what this would mean for
Alyosha. Dostoevsky seems to be saying that the road to righteousness is
no less risky than the road to sin: those who dedicate their lives to God—
monks, elders, Grand Inquisitors—find themselves more vulnerable to evil
than those who do not make commitments. The idea that the greatest reli-
gious achievements are generally accompanied by the most terrible temp-
tations, as exemplified in patristic literature, pervades Dostoevsky’s work.
Thus, when Ivan inquires of the devil whether he has ever tempted “the
ones who eat locusts and pray for seventeen years in the barren desert,” the
latter responds: “My dear, I’ve done nothing else. One forgets the whole

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 Chapter Three

world and all worlds, and clings to such a one, because a diamond like that is
just too precious; one such soul is sometimes worth a whole constellation—
we have our own arithmetic” (645).46 The greatest danger in Alyosha’s po-
tential evolution lies not in his flaws, but in his impeccable goodness.
Suvorin’s account of Dostoevsky’s admission about Alyosha’s becom-
ing a regicide is merely one possibility of what could occur to this character
in the sequel to The Brothers Karamazov. Artistically and ideologically, this
possibility seems very Dostoevskian. To be sure, this hypothetical turn of
events does not provide a dark closure for the novel, for in Dostoevsky’s
novels there are no closures and no final outcomes; there is always a possi-
bility of hope, and then of disaster, and then again of hope, and so on. As
Bakhtin has demonstrated, in Dostoevsky’s open-ended novels all characters
have open-ended fates. To that we may add that Alyosha’s case is special.
Raskolnikov’s and Dmitry’s fates are open, yet somewhat complete, whereas
Alyosha’s open fate lacks completeness. The difference is crucial. Raskolni-
kov’s and Dmitry’s plotlines are brought to a halt when these characters have
already set out on a new road. Although their future is unknown, the fact
that the process has already started gives the reader a sense of a new, posi-
tive turn in the character’s fate. Conversely, Alyosha’s finalization remains
within the spectrum of potentiality.
This brings us back to the novel’s epigraph from John 12:24: “Verily,
verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die,
it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” This epigraph,
summarizing the novel’s essence, relates to many of its characters, first of
all to Dmitry, who struggles through darkness toward light. But we cannot
say that it refers to the novel’s protagonist, Alyosha, unless we consider the
main—unwritten—part of his biography.

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 Chapter Four

The Corridor of Mirrors in The Idiot

K R A S I V O E A ND P R E K R A S N O E : TW O CONCEP TI ONS
OF B E AU T Y

As publicist and editor of Vremia, in his polemics with the literary journals
Russkii vestnik, Sovremennik, and Otechestvennye zapiski, Dostoevsky had a
strong aesthetic platform, making confident, sanguine, straightforward judg-
ments: “Beauty is inherent in everything healthy, everything living most fully,
and it is an essential need of the human organism. It is harmony, the guaran-
tee of peace, it embodies the ideals of man and mankind.”1 In his response
to the socially minded critics who proclaimed the uselessness of pure art in
general and Pushkin’s poetry in particular, Dostoevsky advocated the benefit
(pol’za) of beauty: “Beauty is useful because it is beauty, because in mankind
there is an eternal need for beauty and for its highest ideal. If a nation pre-
serves the ideal of beauty and the need for it, then there is a need for health,
a norm, and this is a guarantee of the highest development of this nation.” 2
In Dostoevsky’s fictional world, however, the notion of beauty is mul-
tifaceted. Dostoevsky’s approach to beauty is dialectical not only because
he presents various aesthetic viewpoints and opinions, including those that
may be contrary to his own, but also because in real life, as an object of our
perception and reflection, beauty does not exist in isolation; it is inseparable
from other spheres of life, which have their own polarities and challenges.
This chapter considers beauty in its complex relation to three adjacent no-
tions—(1) goodness, which reveals the opposition between physical beauty
and moral beauty, (2) charm ( prelest’), which endows beauty with both in-
spirational and destructive powers, and (3) passion, an emotion that can be
viewed in positive or in negative terms.
The famous expression “Beauty will save the world,” often referred
to as Dostoevsky’s personal creed and prophecy, remains double-edged and
double-voiced in The Idiot. Neither the author of the novel nor his charac-
ters ever formulate this idea in an affirmative way (as in another famous for-
mulation, “Everything is permitted if God does not exist,” from The Broth-

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 Chapter Four

ers Karamazov). It is jotted down by a secondary character, Ippolit, in the

form of a question addressed to Prince Myshkin:

“Is it true, Prince, that you once said ‘beauty’ would save the world? Gentle-
men,” he cried loudly to them all, “the prince insists that beauty will save the
world! And I insist that he has such playful thoughts because he is in love
now. Gentlemen, the prince is in love; as soon as he came in today, I was con-
vinced of it. Don’t blush, Prince, or I’ll feel sorry for you. What beauty will
save the world? Kolya told me what you said.” (382)

Ippolit’s question hangs in midair. Myshkin neither supports the idea of

beauty’s redemptive potential nor objects to it. Earlier in the novel, he ex-
plains his reservations: “Beauty is difficult to judge; I am not prepared yet.
Beauty is a riddle” (77).
In the drafts to the novel, the phrase “Beauty will save the world” is
followed by an enigmatic note, “Two kinds of beauty” (dva obrazchika kra-
soty), allowing a multiplicity of readings—this statement can imply the di-
chotomy of ideal and earthly beauty, or it can allude to beauty’s redemptive
and destructive powers.3
In his foundational monograph Dostoevsky’s Quest for Form, Rob-
ert Louis Jackson views the “two kinds of beauty” not as objectively posited
but as subjectively experienced: “To Dostoevsky it is not beauty that is am-
bivalent, but man who experiences two kinds of beauty—not only the true,
higher beauty, but also a low order of aesthetic sensation.”4 Jackson observes
that writer’s understanding of beauty is reminiscent of the ancient Greek
canon. As is clear from Dostoevsky’s essay “Mr. — bov and the Question of
Art” (1861), Jackson maintains, the aesthetic ideal for Dostoevsky was the
sublime beauty of the Apollo of Belvedere, Venus of Milo, and Venus of
Medici.5 At the same time, Jackson stresses, Dostoevsky’s aesthetics is based
on the Orthodox concept of image (obraz) and therefore is inherently Chris-
tian: “The icon, particularly the iconographic representation of the Ma-
donna, appears in Dostoevsky’s artistic universe as a religious-aesthetic sym-
bol of great importance—a literal image of beauty toward which man turns
in reverence and longing.”6 He concludes that “the Platonic and Christian
ideals of beauty—the ideal of pure beauty and the image of the Madonna—
merge for Dostoevsky in the ‘image of pure beauty’ (Aglaya’s expression in
The Idiot) of Pushkin’s ‘Poor Knight’ ”7
This merging of Ancient Greek and Christian aesthetic canons may
be one of the reasons the prophecy “Beauty will save the world” remains
double-edged in The Idiot, for in these two aesthetics systems beauty occu-
pies different positions vis-à-vis goodness.
Although every component of the triad goodness-beauty-truth has an

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absolute value, how one sees their interrelationship is contingent upon the
chosen perspective. Thus, the ancient Greek canon, with its purely aesthetic
approach, tends to establish the supremacy of beauty over goodness; it extols
and worships the beauty of the human body. Conversely, Christian ethically
inflected aesthetics foregrounds goodness; it introduces a dialectical compo-
nent by differentiating between the higher type of beauty and the lower—
spiritual and physical, celestial and earthly—yet viewing both as aspects of
one unified whole, or rather of one unified two-worldliness (dvumirnost’).
In the Christian tradition, which upholds with the notion of sin, beauty is
relegated to a secondary position vis-à-vis goodness.
The relationship between these two approaches to beauty—aesthetic
and ethical—has recently become an object of scrutiny in cultural and lin-
guistic studies.8 N. D. Arutiunova writes:

Ethics tends to associate beauty not so much with harmony as with the ele-
mental forces and passions that urge a person to break covenants, taboos and
laws. Beauty becomes a temptation; it lures a person from his true path and
distracts him from goodness. In the great Triad this forms a contradiction, ig-
niting a struggle for the spheres of influence both in man’s inner world and in
the lexicon he uses. Beauty represents the most contradictory component of
the Triad. Exterior beauty and attractiveness come into contradiction with a
person’s moral image.9

The complex correlation of beauty and goodness led to the appearance of

two words in the Russian language—krasivoe and prekrasnoe, the former
referring to external physical beauty and the latter, containing the super-
lative prefix pre-, generally implying moral goodness.10 Both of them are tra-
ditionally translated into English as “beauty” or “beautiful.”
For Leo Tolstoy, the distinction between krasivoe and prekrasnoe
serves as a point of departure for his aesthetics. He begins his treatise What
Is Art? with a long discussion of the way the Russian adjective krasivyi dif-
fers from its European equivalents. In other European languages, he writes,
the words “beau,” “schön,” “beautiful,” and “bello” refer to the quality of
the form but also convey the idea of goodness, as can be seen in the expres-
sions “belle âme, schöne Gedanken, beautiful deed.” According to Russian
traditional phraseology, Tolstoy notes, the word krasivyi can only be used in
reference to what is perceived visually:

Beautiful (krasivyi) may relate to a man, a horse, a house, a view, or a move-

ment. Of actions, thoughts, character, or music, if they please us, we may say
that they are good, or, if they do not please us, that they are not good. But
beautiful can be used only concerning that which pleases the sight. So the

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word and conception “good” includes the conception “beautiful,” but the re-
verse is not the case; the conception “beauty” does not include the concep-
tion “good.” If we say “good” of an article which we value for its appearance,
we thereby say that the article is beautiful; but if we say it is “beautiful” it
does not at all mean that the article is a good one.11

Tolstoy recalls that in the time of his youth (mid-1850s), no Russian would
be able to understand the expression krasivaia muzyka (beautiful music) or
krasivyi postupok (beautiful action), for in Russian, the word krasivyi can
refer only to a visual experience. In the second half of the nineteenth cen-
tury, he maintains, under the influence of European aesthetics, this situation
gradually began to change.
The distinction between krasivoe and prekrasnoe is dramatized in The
Idiot, whose characters personify various types of beauty. Dostoevsky con-
ceived Christlike Myshkin as a “positively beautiful man” (polozhitel’no pre-
krasnyi chelovek). Immediately before he began working on The Idiot, in
a private letter, Dostoevsky shared the major concept of his future novel,
expressing concern about the complexity of the task:

The main idea of the novel is to portray a positively beautiful man. There is
nothing more difficult in the world, and this is especially true today. All writ-
ers—not only ours but Europeans as well—who have ever attempted to por-
tray the positively beautiful have always given up. Because the task is an in-
finite one. The beautiful is an ideal, and this ideal, whether it is ours or that
of civilized Europe, is still far from having been worked out. There is only
one positively beautiful figure in the world—Christ—so that the phenom-
enon of that boundlessly, infinitely good figure is already in itself an infinite
miracle.12

Here Dostoevsky uses the word prekrasnyi, for only this word can be used as
an attribute of Christ; the adjective krasivyi is totally inappropriate.13 In the
Gospels, this word has rather negative connotations of something superficial
and ornamental.14
In contrast to Prince Myshkin’s positive beauty, Nastasya Filippovna’s
beauty is ambiguous. Myshkin is struck by her portrait, bearing traces of
passion and suffering in her face, by a mixture of “boundless pride and
contempt, almost hatred”: “That dazzling beauty was even unbearable, the
beauty of the pale face, the nearly hollow cheeks and burning eyes—strange
beauty!” (79–80).
The Idiot amalgamates discussions of various types of beauty: spiri-
tual and physical, divine and human, prekrasnoe and krasivoe, all coexisting,
multiplying, and reflecting in each other. Here, beauty has the potential to

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 The Corridor of Mirrors in The Idiot

act in both ways—to save and to destroy, to inspire faith and to cause disbe-
lief, to awaken love and to arouse carnal passion.

B E AUTY A ND CHA R M (P R E L E S T ’ )

Jackson’s observation that Dostoevsky’s aesthetics is based on the absolute

beauty of Christ finds strong support in The Diary of a Writer. However,
this assumption is complicated by the fact that Dostoevsky expressed doubts
that the religious ideal could be adequately portrayed in a work of art. While
reflecting on Ernest Renan’s book The Life of Jesus, he wrote that Christ “is
still the ideal of human beauty, an unattainable type, never to be repeated in
the future.”15 Dostoevsky’s own literary works suggest that absolute values—
goodness, beauty, and truth—are attributes of the ideal world only. Trans-
ported to our earthly plane, they inevitably begin to bifurcate. As a result,
the boundary between good and evil curves, and “positive beauty,” although
still potent, coexists with its dark counterpart.
The Idiot conveys the idea that artistically represented images of Christ
can have an adverse impact on the beholder. Dostoevsky touches upon this
problem most effectively in the discussion of Hans Holbein’s painting The
Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb, specifically in Myshkin’s observation
that this work can make one lose faith, which further echoes in Ippolit’s re-
mark about the dominance of suffering and the lack of beauty in Holbein’s
painting. The discussion of Holbein’s canvas in The Idiot has attracted much
scholarly commentary. For us, the important lesson is that physicality must
be represented in art with caution; otherwise it can destroy the beauty of
the ideal. Dostoevsky thus presents us with a paradox: art has the power
to convey ideal images, but at the same time it has the power to distort the
ideal by making it “too human.” The divine aspect becomes blurred because
artistic resources, whether linguistic or pictorial, are limited. According to
Dostoevsky, a work of art can inspire awe and faith, but it can also break the
human heart and can cause it to lose hope.
From the diary of his wife, we know that Dostoevsky deeply admired
European art, but his impressions were mixed. The naturalistic mode of de-
piction in Western art, very different from the ancient canon of Orthodox
iconography, noticeably confused him. While visiting an art gallery in Basel,
Dostoevsky was stunned by Holbein’s depiction of the decaying body of
Christ. Myshkin’s idea that this painting could make one lose faith in Christ’s
Resurrection was in fact Dostoevsky’s own observation.16
This idea might have occurred to Dostoevsky even before he visited
Basel, for he could have been familiar with Nikolai Karamzin’s description
of this painting in his Letters of a Russian Traveler: “In Christ deposed from

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the cross nothing divine can be seen; instead he is depicted thoroughly natu-
rally as a dead person. Legend has it that Holbein portrayed him from a Jew
who had drowned.”17 In his Letters, Karamzin also tells the story of another
Holbein painting, the portrait of Lais, a famous Thessalonian courtesan,
which the inhabitants of Basel mistook for a painting of the Madonna; it
was placed in the church altar and worshipped as an icon.18 As a writer of
the Enlightenment, Karamzin was not particularly concerned with Christian
themes and was more oriented toward Western culture than Dostoevsky, so
his comments on Holbein’s paintings could be read as casual or even ironic.
For Dostoevsky, the representation of sacred images and their effect on the
viewer raised a much more serious issue.
This issue arises again in another episode—also extensively dis-
cussed19—when Aglaya reads Pushkin’s poem “The Poor Knight.”20 In Push-
kin’s poem the mystical vision of the Madonna produces a dual effect on
the knight, both inspiring and seductive. His enchantment by the celestial
image, however spiritual, borders on obsession. His soul is burned; he re-
frains from looking at and speaking with earthly women (“S toi pory, sgorev
dushoiu, / On na zhenshchin ne smotrel, / I do groba ni s odnoiu / Molvit’
slova ne khotel”). He lives in seclusion, silence, and grief (“vse bezmolvnyi,
vse pechal’nyi”) and eventually goes mad (“kak bezumets umer on”).
Although the poem’s medieval setting was conventional for its time,
Pushkin did not succeed in publishing the original version, titled “A Leg-
end” (“Legenda,” 1829), because censors took offense at its irreverent stance
toward a religious subject and banned it. It was published only in 1837 after
Pushkin’s death, in much shorter form, as part of his unfinished drama Scenes
from the Age of Chivalry. In the original version, seized by passion for the
Mother of God, the knight stops praying to God (“Nest’ mol’by Ottsu, ni
Synu, / Ni sviatomu Dukhu vvek”). Obsessed with his mystical vision, he falls
into spiritual captivity. While gazing at the icon, he sheds tears in his grief
(“provodil on tsely nochi / Pered likom presviatoi, / Ustremiv k nei skorbny
ochi, / Tikho slezy l’ia rekoi”). When he dies, his soul is almost seized by the
devil (bes), who cunningly remarks: “He did not pray to God, / He did not
observe Lent / It was wrong of him to make passes at / the mother of Christ”
(On-de bogu ne molilsia, / On ne vedal-de posta, / Ne putem-de volochilsia /
On za matushkoi Khrista).21 The knight’s soul is saved only thanks to the Ma-
donna’s benevolent intercession. There is a good possibility that Dostoevsky
knew the original version of Pushkin’s “Poor Knight.”22
But even the shorter, censored version of Pushkin’s poem quoted in
The Idiot expresses the idea of seduction. While reading this poem, Aglaya
emphasizes its courtly spirit. By changing the letters A. M. D. (Ave Mater
Dei) to A. N. B. (Ave Nastasya Barashkova) in the fifth stanza, she implies

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 The Corridor of Mirrors in The Idiot

that Myshkin has chosen her rival as his Lady. Aglaya’s coquettish prank
springs from jealousy, for she herself pretends the role of the prince’s Lady.
When she speaks of the Madonna’s “pure beauty,” she hints at Nastasya Fil-
ippovna’s controversial reputation in society as a fallen woman.
The theme of enchantment by beauty in Pushkin’s poem and Dosto-
evsky’s novel correlates closely with the twofold notion of prelest’ (charm).
In Russian secular culture, this word has a positive meaning, associated
with elegance, refinement, and grace—elements of feminine fashion that
were imported into Russia from France in the late eighteenth century. In
the Russian religious context, however, the idea of enchantment has always
had negative connotations. For this reason the Orthodox ascetic tradition
understands prelest’ as spiritual captivity. In his Iconostasis, Pavel Florensky
comments on the negative aspect of this notion:

Prelest, of course, brings images that stir passions in us. But our real danger
lies not in the passions but in our appraisal of them. For we may, if caught in
prelest, take the passions as something directly opposite to what they really
are. Usually, we would see our sinful passions as a dangerous weakness,
thereby finding the humility that heals us of them. In prelest-stirred passions,
however, we see them as attained spirituality, as sacred energy, salvation and
holiness. Thus, where ordinarily we would seek to break the grip of our sinful
passions—even if our attempts were weak and futile—in prelest, driven by
spiritual conceit, spiritual sensuality, and (above all) spiritual pride, we seek
to tighten the knots that bind us. An ordinary sinner knows he is falling away
from God; a soul in prelest thinks it is drawing ever closer to Him, and while
angering Him thinks he is gladdening Him.23

Pushkin’s poor knight is enchanted by the Virgin Mary in both secular and
religious senses. Sergei Bulgakov argues that this poem reflects the spirit of
“mystical eroticism” characteristic of medieval Catholicism, which Pushkin
expresses with elegance and grace.24 We will look closer at this issue in the
next chapter. For now, it is important to note that the ambivalence of prelest’,
positive in a secular sense and negative in a religious context, contributes to
the distressing ambivalence of beauty in the novel.
Can beauty save the world according to The Idiot?
Scholars frequently note that in spite of his meekness, kindness, and
ability for compassion, Myshkin saves no one.25 Both Myshkin and Ippolit
claim that the naturalistic representation of Christ in Holbein’s painting can
make one lose faith. The enchantment with the Madonna’s beauty in Push-
kin’s poem leads the poor knight to insanity. Nastasya Filippovna’s seductive
beauty leads Rogozhin to a crime. The idea that “beauty can save the world”

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does not find much support in The Idiot. But neither is it refuted. To phrase
it differently, the idea is both proclaimed and subjected to doubt.

B E AU T Y, PA S S I O N, A ND CO MPA SSI ON:

TH E NO V EL’ S F I NA L E

On March 12, 1868, Dostoevsky formulated the three major driving forces
of the novel: “(1) Passionate and spontaneous [strastno-neposredstvennaia]
love—Rogozhin, (2) Love out of vanity—Ganya, (3) Christian love—the
Prince.”26 Ganya quickly dropped out as a contender, and the motif of love
out of vanity disappeared. Rogozhin and Myshkin’s rivalry remained, being
modeled as a rivalry between sensual passion (strast’) and compassion
(sostradanie).
Like many other key concepts in Dostoevsky, the Russian word strast’
(passion) is ambivalent, but its duality is treated differently in the Eastern
Christian culture than in the Western. The West endorses the idea of imita-
tio Christi: sharing Christ’s passion is considered a moral virtue. Refined in
European chivalric literature, the concept of “love-passion” has been associ-
ated with ardor and zeal and thus acquired sublime overtones. The musical
form of the Passion, developed in Germany in the seventeenth and eigh-
teenth centuries, is an invention of Western Christian culture. In Eastern
Orthodoxy, passions are associated with martyrdom, but also with sinfulness.
In the Philokalia (the Greek manual for spiritual perfection), “passions” are
synonymous with “sins”: anger, jealousy, hatred, lust. As a result, the words
sladostrastie (literally, sweet passion) and its more archaic equivalent, liu-
bostrastie (literally, love-passion), generally translated into English as “sen-
suality” or “voluptuousness,” sound very negative in Russian.27 It is implied
that man should be obsessed neither by the sweetness of love nor by its
torments, for passions make one unfree. Like obsessions, passions are de-
monic, whereas freedom is divine.
This idea receives full realization in the plot of The Idiot. The destruc-
tive power of passion eventually leads to the tragic outcome, Rogozhin’s
murder of Nastasya Filippovna, an outcome anticipated from the very start.
General Epanchin remarks on Rogozhin: “A passion, an ugly passion, if you
like, but all the same it smacks of passion, and we know what these gentle-
men are capable of when they’re intoxicated” (32). Nastasya Filippovna is
fully aware of this side of Rogozhin’s personality and in some way is at-
tracted to it: “You have strong passions, Parfyon Semyonovich, such pas-
sions as would have sent you flying to Siberia, to hard labor . . . you’re pas-
sionate in everything, you carry everything to the point of passion” (214).

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 The Corridor of Mirrors in The Idiot

Only Myshkin, who is immune to passions, underestimates their damaging

potential:

Is Rogozhin not capable of brightness [nesposoben k svetu]? He says he loves

her in a different way, that there is no compassion in him, “no such pity.”
True, he added later that “your pity is maybe still worse than my love”—but
he is slandering himself. Hm, Rogozhin over a book—isn’t that already “pity,”
the beginning of “pity”? Isn’t the very presence of this book a proof that he
is fully conscious of his relations with her? And his story today? No, that’s
deeper than mere passion. Does her face inspire mere passion? And is that
face even capable of inspiring passion now? It inspires suffering, it seizes the
whole soul, . . . and a burning, tormenting memory suddenly passed through
the prince’s heart. . . . And for him, the prince, to love this woman passion-
ately—was almost unthinkable, would almost be cruelty, inhumanity. Yes,
yes! No, Rogozhin was slandering himself; he was an immense heart, which
is capable of passion and compassion. When he learns the whole truth and
when he becomes convinced of what a pathetic creature this deranged, half-
witted woman is—won’t he then forgive her all the past, all his suffering?
Won’t he become her servant, her brother, friend, providence? Compassion
will give meaning and understanding to Rogozhin himself. Compassion is the
chief and perhaps the only law of being for all mankind. (229–30)

If Rogozhin’s love has no room for compassion, Myshkin’s has no room for
Eros. His sexuality is blocked. “I can’t marry anybody, I’m unwell,” he ad-
mits (37). His love for Nastasya Filippovna turns out to be as deficient as
Rogozhin’s. He fails to save her, spiritually or physically. As Rowan Williams
observes, “Myshkin’s undialectical goodness is destructive.”28 The rivalry
between the spiritual and sensual aspects of love, personified in the figures
of Myshkin and Rogozhin, creates tension in the novel and justifies Nas-
tasya’s constant oscillation between her two admirers. Satisfied neither by
Myshkin’s meekness nor by Rogozhin’s thirst, she is unable to find a heart in
which two types of love—sensual and sublime—are united into a whole.
The idea of reconciling these two aspects of love does not surface
until the novel’s final scene, when two men come up the stairs of Rogozhin’s
house and see Nastasya lying motionless in Rogozhin’s bed. Around her are
ribbons, laces, diamonds, flowers, an expensive dress made of white silk. She
resembles a sleeping beauty, whose sleep they try not to disturb. Her body is
still untouched by death. Rogozhin makes up another bed in the same room
for himself and for Myshkin, so that they can sleep next to each other—
a plan Rogozhin devised earlier that day, before he murdered Nastasya, as
mentioned twice in the text. “Let her lie here now, next to us, next to me

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and you,” he says to Myshkin (608). Their previous exchange of crosses, in

Rowan Williams’s opinion, was emptied of its meaning.29 Now their brother-
hood is reinforced: when Myshkin weeps, “tears flowed from his eyes onto
Rogozhin’s cheeks”; each time Rogozhin “had a burst of shouting or rav-
ing,” Myshkin “quietly hastened to pass his trembling hand over his hair and
cheeks, as if caressing and soothing him” (611). In this final scene of The
Idiot, a scene of deep tenderness, the two unfortunate lovers come together,
now over the destroyed beauty they once admired, and they both weep.

The Idiot was conceived in August 1867. Subsequently it underwent nu-

merous revisions, but the idea of the final scene came to Dostoevsky only
a year later. On October 4, 1868, he jotted in his notebook, “Rogozhin and
the Prince beside the corpse.” He added a word in Latin, “Finale.” On the
margin he wrote, “Not bad” (Nedurno).30 A few weeks later, when Dosto-
evsky envisioned the novel’s final scene, he wrote to his friend A. N. Maikov
that the conclusive part of The Idiot was the most important: “Now, when I
see everything as through glass, I have become bitterly convinced that never
before in my literary life have I had a single poetic idea better and richer
than the one that has now become clear to me for the fourth part, in the
most detailed plane.”31 On the same day Dostoevsky wrote to his niece Sofia
Ivanova, to whom he dedicated the novel: “Lastly, and (most important) for
me is that this fourth part and its conclusion are the most important things in
the novel, that is, the whole novel was practically written and conceived for
this denouement.”32 Dostoevsky’s admission that he had never had a better
and richer poetic idea is intriguing, for by that time, he had been a profes-
sional writer for almost twenty-five years.
In Hermann Hesse’s opinion, the “secret of this terrifying book” lies in
the fact that the role of the destroyer here belongs not to a criminal but to
a childlike, good-hearted, and benevolent man. Hesse notes that the world
Myshkin lives in is different from the world of others:

The highest reality in the eyes of human culture lies in this dividing up of the
world into bright and dark, good and evil, permissible and forbidden. For
Myshkin the highest reality, however, is the magical experience of the re-
versibility of all fixed rules, of the equal justification for the existence of both
poles. The Idiot, thought to its logical conclusion, leads to a matriarchy of the
unconscious and annihilates culture. It does not break the tables of the law, it
reverses them and shows their opposites written on the back.33

It is tempting to say that the tragic outcome in The Idiot is caused by this
reversibility. One can see Nastasya’s death, Rogozhin’s delirium, and Mysh-
kin’s insanity as the darkest closure a novelist can provide. And yet there is

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a strange harmony in the scene where the two rivals meet at the deathbed
of their bride. The ending is cathartic. The discord accumulated over the
course of the novel leads to a catastrophe, but at the same time, all the ten-
sion of the dissonant voices resolves in a quiet chord. To continue the musi-
cal analogy: the unstable dominant seventh transforms into a stable tonic.34
In spite of its tragic darkness, the final scene of The Idiot paradoxically
functions as a promise of light. Myshkin’s compassion, previously rejected
by Nastasya Filippovna as unnecessary, is now poured with all its tender-
ness into Rogozhin, who needs it the most. Bakhtin writes of Myshkin: “His
brotherly love for his rival, a person who made an attempt on his life and
who has become the murderer of the woman he loves; this brotherly love
toward Rogozhin in fact reaches its peak immediately after the murder of
Nastasya Filippovna.”35 Further, he adds, “The final scene of The Idiot—
the last meeting of Myshkin and Rogozhin beside Nastasya Filippovna’s
corpse—is one of the most striking in all of Dostoevsky’s art.”36
This scene is indeed striking. Speaking rationally, Myshkin’s “positive
beauty” could not save Nastasya from Rogozhin’s knife, nor can it now res-
urrect her. To be sure, Myshkin is not Christ, but in this final scene, his
compassion stands out as positively Christlike, for it has the potential to save
and resurrect Rogozhin, who faces fifteen years of hard labor in Siberia—a
journey that in Dostoevsky’s open-ended novels is always full of challenges
and unexpected turns.
As in Crime and Punishment, in The Idiot too the future fate of char-
acters is concealed from us: on the final pages both Raskolnikov and Rogo-
zhin are facing the unknown. The “dawn of a renewed future” shining on
Raskolnikov’s face in the epilogue gives us hope that, supported by Sonya’s
love, he will find the strength to overcome the most severe challenges. Mysh-
kin’s compassion toward the murderer Rogozhin has a similar regenera-
tive power. In the conclusion, Dostoevsky informs the readers that during
his trial, Rogozhin was “taciturn” (molchaliv) and “heard out his sentence
sternly, silently, and ‘pensively’ ” (zadumchivo) (612). This comment suggests
that after the final catastrophe, Rogozhin’s passions began to transform into
their opposite—silence and pensiveness, thereby signaling the beginning of
a new turn. In this sense, The Idiot is no exception to Dostoevsky’s master
plot—the story of a sinner, his fall and potential rebirth.

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 Chapter Five

A Grain of Eros in the Madonna, a Spark of

Beauty in Sodom

M A D O NNA A ND S O DO M

While Tolstoy argues that beauty is not genuine when its goodness is doubt-
ful, Dostoevsky conveys the idea that the human heart has enough room for
the ideal of the Madonna and that of Sodom. Mitya Karamazov’s declaration,
as part of his confession to Alyosha, represents a concise formula of Dosto-
evsky’s dialectic of beauty:

Beauty is a fearful and terrible thing! Fearful because it’s indefinable and it
cannot be defined, because here God gave us only riddles. Here the shores
converge, here all contradictions live together. I’m a very uneducated man,
brother, but I’ve thought about it a lot. So terribly many mysteries! Too many
riddles oppress man on earth. Solve them if you can without getting your feet
wet. Beauty! Besides, I can’t bear it that some man, even with a lofty heart
and the highest mind, should start from the ideal of the Madonna and end
with the ideal of Sodom. It’s even more fearful when someone who already
has the ideal of Sodom in his soul does not deny the ideal of the Madonna
either, and his heart burns with it, verily, verily burns, as in his young, blame-
less years. No, man is broad, even too broad, I would narrow him down.
Devil knows even what to make of him, that’s the thing! What’s Sodom? Be-
lieve me, for the vast majority of people, that’s just where beauty lies—did
you know that secret? The terrible thing is that beauty is not only fearful but
also mysterious. Here the devil is struggling with God, and the battlefield is
the human heart. (108)

The struggle between opposite principles was well known before Dosto-
evsky. Mitya’s terrible secret and Dostoevsky’s discovery consist in the fact
that man’s polar ideals interact with one another. Before we examine their
relations, we must specify terminology.

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 A Grain of Eros in the Madonna, a Spark of Beauty in Sodom

The word “Sodom” has been associated with vice and corruption since
ancient times. It should be noted, however, that in nineteenth-century Rus-
sia, this word was synonymous with the word “bedlam” and signified “noisy
uproar,” “confusion,” “tumult,” “brawl,” “shouting,” and “commotion.”1 Dos-
toevsky uses the word “Sodom” in this sense in Poor Folk (1844), Netochka
Nezvanova (1849), The Village of Stepanchikovo (1859), “A Nasty Story”
(1862), “The Crocodile” (1865), Crime and Punishment (1866), The Eternal
Husband (1870), and The Devils (1871).
Crime and Punishment’s “Sodom” reigns in the noisy Haymarket
Square, with its smoky pubs and cheap brothels on the adjacent streets, full
of drunkards, prostitutes, and criminals. By merging the romantic concept of
“pure beauty” and the portrayal of Petersburg slums in one narrative, Dos-
toevsky produces a literary hybrid that Donald Fanger called “romantic real-
ism.”2 A similar paradigm can be found in Gogol’s story “Nevsky Prospect,”
but if Gogol is concerned with the schism between ideal and earthly reality,
Dostoevsky is more concerned with the point of their intersection.
In The Idiot, “Sodom” is a frenzy of scandals and frustrated passions,
with its climax at Nastasya Filippovna’s name day party when Rogozhin and
his crew come “with noise, clatter, and shouting.” Myshkin is stupefied;
General Epanchin groans, “It’s bedlam, bedlam!” (Eto Sodom, Sodom!)
(169). As the commotion increases, Nastasya begins to brag of her shame-
lessness, proclaiming, “And now I want to carouse, I’m a streetwalker! I sat
in prison for ten years, now comes happiness!” (170). Dazzled by her uncon-
ventional behavior, Rogozhin screams in a frenzy, “She’s mine! It’s all mine!
A queen! The end!” (170). Eventually, the thirst for possessing Nastasya’s
beauty leads him to killing the object of his desire.
Nastasya Filippovna has a reputation of a courtesan, but her beauty
has some saintly feature. Vyacheslav Ivanov suggests that Dostoevsky mod-
els her portrait on Rafael’s Sistine Madonna. He maintains, “Beauty who
comes down upon earth to save the world (‘it is beauty that will bring the
world salvation’), but then, like the Ashtaroth of the Gnostics, becomes im-
prisoned in matter and desecrated—she, the ‘Eternal Female’ herself, who
is depicted, in The Idiot, by the symbolic figure of Nastasya Filippovna.”3 It
must be noted that Ivanov does not view Nastasya’s beauty as demonic. The
English translation of this passage contains a regrettable confusion, for in
the Russian original, Ivanov does not use the name Ashtaroth (the prince of
hell); he uses Akhamot, thus referring to the “younger” (fallen) Sophia, who,
according to Gnostic cosmology, descended from the divine Pleroma and
with whose aid humanity can recover the lost knowledge. Characteristi-
cally, Raphael’s Sistine Madonna is portrayed as descending from a heav-
enly space.
This chapter offers to see Nastasya’s ambivalent beauty within a larger

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literary paradigm—the European aesthetic ideal of the Madonna. An excur-

sion into the history of this phenomenon should help us unravel (at least
partly) the paradox of “the ideal of the Madonna” and “the ideal of Sodom”
proclaimed by Dmitry Karamazov. In Dmitry’s definition, these two ideals
are not mutually exclusive; both can be present in a single heart. For Dosto-
evsky, I claim, this paradox has further, and more serious, implications: artis-
tic (as a problem of the representation of beauty in art) and philosophical (a
“spark of beauty in Sodom” as an image-paradigm of salvation4).
Let us now pause on the expression “the ideal of the Madonna,” which
is often understood in a broad sense as an iconic image of the Mother of
God (Russian, Bogoroditsa or Bogomater’). Although this identification may
be to some extent appropriate, the difference between the Western portray-
als of the Madonna and the Eastern Orthodox iconographic representation
of the Mother of God is important. The very name Virgin Mary suggests
an emphasis on virginity, whereas the name Bogoroditsa, coming from the
Greek Theotokos, conveys the idea of motherhood, birth, and blood rela-
tionship. The late medieval and Renaissance European artists portray the
Virgin Mary as young, attractive, and nicely dressed; her beauty is soft and
feminine. On Greek and Russian icons, the stylized beauty of the Mother of
God has no traces of sensuality. The pictorial means serve to express the idea
of asceticism; physicality becomes abstract; flesh is depicted with no consid-
eration of the laws of anatomy; hair is hidden under a maphorion (a holy
veil); and much attention is given to the eyes—the windows to the soul. Sig-
nificantly, in these two pictorial traditions, the images are put into different
spatial contexts. Icons portray the Mother of God against transfigured (dei-
fied) reality depicted symbolically and schematically, whereas Renaissance
Madonnas are generally depicted against everyday background, elegant and
pleasing to the eye.
In his book on Dostoevsky, Grigory Pomerants observes that the ex-
pression “the ideal of the Madonna,” coined by Dmitry Karamazov, is closely
related to Western culture. He notes that the Russian word Bogoroditsa or
Bogomater’ would not be appropriate here, for Bogoroditsa stands outside
secular culture, outside the male-female relationship, and therefore cannot
be opposed to Sodom. Conversely, the Madonna, resonating with the cult of
the Lady and belonging to the “earthly sky” (zemnoe nebo), can.5
Following Pomerants, I consider “the ideal of the Madonna” as a ro-
mantic archetype of feminine beauty popular in European literature and the
visual arts since the Middle Ages. Further, I discuss the emergence of this
cult among Russian romantic poets in the 1820s and its subsequent subver-
sion during the realist period of Russian prose; against this literary back-
ground, Dostoevsky, an heir of both traditions, romantic and realist, devel-
oped his own concept of beauty’s ambivalence.

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 A Grain of Eros in the Madonna, a Spark of Beauty in Sodom

TH E EU R O P EA N A ES T HET I C I DEA L OF
TH E M A DO NNA

The cult of the Madonna dates from medieval times, when, imported from
Byzantium by pilgrims and crusaders, it was established in the south of
France. For the next three centuries this cult was developed and refined in
the poetry of Provençal troubadours. In their songs, medieval poets cele-
brated the Beautiful Lady, whose image they modeled on the archetype of
the Madonna (Occitan, “Ma domna” = “My Lady”). The Lady was repre-
sented as a moral ideal and a stimulus for the poet’s spiritual perfection.6
One particular aspect of this artistic canon must be stressed. Judging
from a long-standing controversy in medieval studies, courtly “love-passion”
was an ambivalent phenomenon, amalgamating both spiritual strivings and
erotic desire. In his Love in the Western World, Denis de Rougemont views
troubadours’ devotion to the Lady as an allegory for spiritual longings. He
notes that this type of love does not imply physicality but serves as a meta-
phor for mystical experience. Here the key concepts of desire (desir), mercy
(merce), and joy (joi) serve to describe the relation “which a soul entertained
with its God.”7 At the same time, de Rougemont does not deny the sensual
aspect of the Madonna cult; he notes that “this poetry was being produced
in an atmosphere highly charged with passion,”8 that “the cultivation of pas-
sionate love began in Europe as a reaction to Christianity (in particular to
its doctrine of marriage),”9 and that troubadours’ rhetoric was “supremely
ambiguous.”
Some medievalists make more explicit claims that courtliness (cor-
tezia) is an idealization of Eros and sensuality. Johan Huizinga comments
that the sacred status of Eros in the Middle Ages resulted from the overall
development of European civilization: “Eroticism, in order to be culture,
had to find at any price a style, a form, which could hold it in bounds, an
expression that could veil it.”10 In his recent book on the history of beauty,
Umberto Eco writes about medieval sensuality in the lyrical poems of the
Carmina Burana.11
According to René Nelli, the courtly dialectic of divine and profane
love signaled the influence of Arabic poetry, where spiritual communion
was compared to the consummation of sexual desire.12 Nelli also identifies
the oscillation of “love-passion” between the two types of love—courtly and
chivalric—as another cause of this ambivalence. Courtly love is platonic or
semiplatonic, mystical, contemplative, and unconsummated, implying a dis-
tance between the marital and social status of a man and that of a woman—
the Lady is married to someone else (the suzerain). Chivalric love repre-
sents an idealized Eros, involving the idea of submission to the Lady, but in
real life practiced among “equal” lovers.13

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The idea of bridging two kinds of reality, the high and the low, lies at
the very core of medieval symbolism. Consequently, the celebration of the
Lady realizes itself in both directions, downward and upward—as a secu-
larization of the Virgin Mary and as an idealization of the earthly beloved.
In the songs of troubadours, the spiritual and the erotic organically blend.
Geneviève Brunel-Lobrichon and Claudie Duhamel-Amado note that in the
troubadours’ poetics, the word “joy” may refer to the attainment of a sub-
lime moral elevation or may express erotic enjoyment, but these two mean-
ings do not exclude each other, for troubadours were familiar with the Bible
and knew from Ecclesiastes’ adage that there is “a time to embrace and a
time to refrain from embracing.”14 In their love poetry, there is no conflict
between Eros and spirituality.
The medieval cult of the Madonna and of “love-passion” had a tre-
mendous impact on Western European art, providing Dante, Petrarch, and
eventually romantic poets with a sophisticated and gracious love rhetoric
and the image of the beloved placed on a pedestal. It also established the
ideal of womanhood in European prose. According to Eric Trudgill’s study
of the origins and development of Victorian sexual attitudes, the cult of the
Madonna in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century English novels
such as Thackeray’s The History of Henry Esmond and Collins’s Hide and
Seek emerged because of the social conditions and moral principles of the
time: “For the Victorian idealist frightened by sex, devoted to motherhood,
and troubled by religious doubts the Virgin Mother, as a feminine archetype,
combined immaculate sexual purity, perfect motherly love and a vehicle for
pent-up religious emotions.”15 Madonna’s chastity and devotion made her an
emblem of femininity in French literature of the time. It is for this reason
that Abbé Prévost’s Manon Lescaut was banned upon its publication in 1731
as too controversial in the moral sense.
This cult remained influential not only in literature and arts but also in
everyday life. The “Madonna braid”—a hairstyle in which the hair is parted
in the center and arranged smoothly on either side of the face, as in Ital-
ian representations of the Madonna—became fashionable in Europe.16 The
models that Raphael used were particularly in vogue, as described by the
French critic and historian Hippolyte Taine: “The fair maiden—lowered
eyes, blushing cheeks, purer than a Raphael Madonna, a kind of Eve inca-
pable of a Fall, whose voice is music, adorable in her candour, gentleness
and kindness.”17 Even portraits of the majestic Queen Victoria display some
of these features.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, due to female emanci-
pation, reforms in women’s education, and a more liberal view of sex, the
aesthetic ideal of the Madonna began to fade.18 In mid-nineteenth-century
English literature a new feminine archetype appeared, antithetical to Vic-

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 A Grain of Eros in the Madonna, a Spark of Beauty in Sodom

torian purity but at the same time genetically related to it—the image of
the repentant Magdalene. In Trudgill’s words, “By 1853 she was establish-
ing herself as a feminine archetype almost equal to the Madonna, almost
equally motherly. From representing the antithesis of the Victorians’ purity
ideal the Magdalene was fast becoming an essential constituent of it: after
the years as taboo she was quickly becoming a totem.”19 The Magdalene re-
mained in vogue during the 1850s and 1860s. Several factors—moral, social,
and literary—led to her idealization: the writers’ desire to win compassion
for the outcast and the “Victorian idealist’s need to believe in the perfect
purity of womanhood, to believe that whatever sinful man might do to stain
her, woman’s natural character was that of the Madonna.”20 Gradually, this
idealization became outmoded, and by the 1880s, just like the ideal of the
Madonna, it declined because society was “confused in its views on feminine
unchastity.”21
Originated in troubadours’ poetry, the “ideal of the Madonna,” with
its delicately eroticized spirituality, underwent a long evolution in European
literature, but it had not appeared in Russian secular literature until the end
of the eighteenth century.

TH E M A DO NNA CU LT I N R U S S I A N L I TERATURE

The elements of European courtliness entered Russian everyday life only

with the reforms of Peter the Great and the spread of French culture among
the Russian aristocracy. In early eighteenth-century Russia, woman was thus
granted a new status: she was put on a pedestal and treated with refined man-
ners and gallantry. During this period, a new, Western, “light” type of poetry
came into fashion via Ukraine and Poland. In their “love verses” (liubovnye
virshi), Russian poets began to praise “a graceful Lady” (liubeznaia dama)—
intelligent, morally impeccable, physically attractive, and inaccessible.22 The
poetic genre of romance became fashionable and poets began to praise the
pitiless vladychitsa (mistress), tiranka dorogaia (a feminine version of “ty-
rant”). Veselovsky sees this literary persona as a “great-granddaughter of a
medieval Lady of chivalric times.”23 Yet the Russian vladychitsa resembled
her European great-grandmother only vaguely. In 1781 the poet Aleksan-
der Sumarokov ridiculed this literary type: “Esli devushki metressy / Brosim
mudrosti umy; / Esli devushki tigressy, / Budem tigry tak i my” (If the girls are
mistresses, / Let us put aside our wise minds; / If the girls are tigresses, / Let
us also be tigers).
The European aesthetic cult of the Madonna did not fully emerge in
Russia until a later period, when Russian poets experienced the influence
of the early German romantics—optimistic and sensitive to the presence

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of the divine element in nature—who embraced life with joy and blessings.
One particular model, Raphael’s Sistine Madonna (1515–19), acquired a cult
status in Russia. The emergence of this cult owed to the popularity of Lud-
wig Tieck and Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder’s Herzensergießungen eines
kunstliebenden Klosterbruders (Outpourings of an Art-Loving Friar, 1797).
The story of Raphael’s vision of the Virgin Mary and the artist’s subsequent
creation of the altar image of the Sistine Madonna, featured in the opening
of the book, established a model of poetic inspiration for the Russian poets
of the 1820s.24
In 1820 the Russian poet Wilhelm Küchelbecker went to Germany,
where he met with Ludwig Tieck and visited the Dresden Art Gallery. Four
years later he published his travel notes in the literary almanac Mnemozina,
of which he was an editor. Küchelbecker’s description of Raphael’s Sistine
Madonna was rendered in a most reverential tone: “A mysterious tremor
crept into my soul! Before me was a vision—not of this world: heavenly pu-
rity, an eternal, divine tranquility on the foreheads of the Child and the Vir-
gin: they filled me with terrible awe: how can I, the slave of earthly passions
and desires, dare to look at them?”25 Küchelbecker thus describes a mystical
revelation that opened up his soul.
In the same year, the literary almanac Polar Star (Poliarnaia Zvezda)
published Vasily Zhukovsky’s travel notes in which he described his journey
to Germany and his visit to the Dresden Art Gallery in 1821.26 During his
first visit to the gallery, he did not dare to approach the Madonna, as it was
surrounded by visitors. When he finally got near, he sat on the gallery bench
and spent a whole hour admiring Raphael’s painting. This hour, in his words,
was one of the happiest of his entire life. Like Küchelbecker’s, his experi-
ence was revelatory: “This is not a painting but a vision; the more you gaze
at it, the more vividly you become convinced that something extraordinary is
taking place in front of you.”27 Andreas Schönle compares Zhukovsky’s per-
ception of the Madonna to a sacred ritual, a consummation of the vision of
the divinity, during which the beholder undergoes a process of transforma-
tion, purification, and elevation.28 Zhukovsky endowed Raphael’s Madonna
with the epithet “a spirit of pure beauty” (genii chistoi krasoty)—an expres-
sion he had earlier coined in his poem “Lalla Ruk” (1821). In the spirit of
the courtly love tradition, his poem and essay were addressed to a Beauti-
ful Lady—Grand Duchess Aleksandra Fedorovna, the wife of Nicholas, the
future czar of Russia (reigned 1825 to 1855).
After the publication of Küchelbecker’s and Zhukovsky’s travel notes,
Pushkin, a good friend of both, wrote a series of poems alluding to “the ideal
of the Madonna”: “I Remember a Wonderful Moment” (“Ia pomniu chudnoe
mgnoven’e,” 1825), “Her Eyes” (“Ee glaza,” 1828), “The Poor Knight” (“Zhil

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na svete rytsar’ bednyi,” 1829, 1835), and “Madona” (spelled in the French
manner with one “n”; 1830). This romantic ideal coexisted in Pushkin’s works
of the 1820s with other types of feminine beauty—the Slavic fairy-tale hero-
ine in Ruslan and Ludmila (1820), the exotic Zemphira and Mariula in The
Gypsies (Tsygany, 1824), and the pensive Tatiana in Eugene Onegin (1821–
31). Representing Pushkin’s tribute to the European literary convention, his
Madonna poems are not numerous, but they are widely known.
The famous “I Remember a Wonderful Moment” is dedicated to Anna
Kern—a young married woman with whom the poet was in love.29 The ex-
pression “a spirit of pure beauty” (genii chistoi krasoty), generally seen as a
reference to Zhukovsky’s “Lalla Ruk,” also refers to Zhukovsky’s description
of the Sistine Madonna.30 In his essay, Zhukovsky stresses the uniqueness
of his encounter with divine beauty: “I looked at it several times, but only
once did I see it the way I needed to.”31 Pushkin structures the poem as two
visions of “genii chistoi krasoty,” both of which are revelatory. The poem
“Her Eyes” is also courtly in spirit. It praises two Beautiful Ladies, Aleksan-
dra Rosset and Anna Olenina. Like “I Remember a Wonderful Moment,” it
contains a reference to the Sistine Madonna: Olenina’s gaze is compared to
the gaze of an angel in Raphael’s painting.
Some scholars suggested that in “Madona,” addressed to his fiancée,
Natalie Goncharova, whom he married a few months later, Pushkin also re-
fers to a painting by Raphael, but there is no consensus as to which one.32
Here the poet thanks the Creator for sending him his Madonna—“the pur-
est model of the purest charm” (chisteishei prelesti chisteishii obrazets). Ser-
gei Averintsev observes that the expression “the purest charm” (chisteishaia
prelest’) contains a “delicate contradiction,” for in Slavonic the word prelest’
is associated with seduction.33 Like other poems mentioned, it is character-
ized by courtly ambiguity.
Pushkin’s poem “The Poor Knight,” embedded in The Idiot, was dis-
cussed in the previous chapter. We may just add that Anna Akhmatova sug-
gested that in this poem Pushkin alluded to Raphael’s vision of the Sistine
Madonna as presented in Wackenroder’s Herzensergießungen eines kunstli-
ebenden Klosterbruders.34 In fact, the poem can be seen as a multiple refer-
ence, not only to the German source but also to Küchelbecker’s and Zhuk-
ovsky’s travel essays.
One can recall other poems of this Golden Age of Russian poetry fea-
turing the courtly cult of the Lady. Under the influence of German roman-
tics who idealized the medieval past, chivalric themes entered Zhukovsky’s,
Lermontov’s, and Delvig’s poems of knights and their Beautiful Ladies.35
But as a whole, with the rise of Russian realism, the archetype of the Ma-
donna disappears from Russian literature. It finds its place neither in Push-

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kin’s Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin (1831) nor in Lermontov’s Hero
of Our Time (1841). Gogol inverts the paradigm of the encounter with the
Madonna. In “Nevsky Prospect” (1833–34), he links the duality of beauty to
fear and madness. In this story, the artist Piskarev falls in love with a woman
resembling Perugino’s Madonna. He follows her but is soon struck with hor-
ror: the woman turns out to be a prostitute. The rupture between the sub-
lime ideal and base reality produces a terrifying effect on Piskarev and leads
him to suicide.36
In his influential essay “A View of Russian Literature in 1847” (“Vzgliad
na russkuiu literaturu v 1847 godu”), which surveys new literary trends that
replaced the interest in “pure art,” Vissarion Belinsky dedicated a whole sec-
tion to the Sistine Madonna. Belinsky recalls the particular role Zhukovsky’s
essay played in forming the romantic ideal of beauty in Russian literature.
He speaks of the days of his youth when he passionately read and reread this
essay, learning it almost by heart. Recently, he writes, he visited the Dresden
Art Gallery sincerely anticipating a revelation, but experiencing complete
disillusionment. The more closely he examined the painting, the clearer it
became to him that the romantic ideal Zhukovsky had described and the
real painting had nothing in common. Belinsky saw in the Sistine Madonna
only the “idéal sublime du comme il faut” (sublime ideal of propriety). He
writes: “Religious contemplation was expressed only in the face of the divine
child, but a contemplation that was characteristic specifically of Catholic
Christianity of the time.”37 A few months later he shared his impressions
with his friend Vasily Botkin, also a literary critic: “What nonsense our ro-
mantics wrote about her, especially Zhukovsky.”38
Like Gogol, Leo Tolstoy was suspicious about the grain of sensuality in
a Madonna-type beauty, though did not sense anything mystical in it. Sensual
love in Tolstoy always leads to tragedy, disaster, or suicide; sensual beauty is
associated with evil and sin. Even in his major novels, physically beautiful
characters are generally morally flawed, as, for example, Hélène Kuragina in
War and Peace, Tolstoy’s “troublemaking Helen of Troy.” Spirituality is the
gift of those who are physically imperfect, like the ungraceful and homely
princess Maria, the tongue-tied and gawky adolescent Natasha Rostova, and
the awkward, obese Pierre Bezukhov. Tolstoy believed that passions must
be eradicated. As epigraphs to “The Devil” (1889) and “Kreutzer Sonata”
(1890), his final verdict on romantic love, he used the biblical words “Who-
soever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with
her already in his heart” (Mt 5:28).
Tolstoy was aware of the cult status of the Sistine Madonna in Russia.
While visiting the Dresden Art Gallery in 1857, he jotted in his diary: “I ran
down to the gallery. The Madonna deeply affected me instantly [srazu sil’no

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 A Grain of Eros in the Madonna, a Spark of Beauty in Sodom

tronula menia].”39 Years later, in a private conversation with the Russian phi-
losopher Sergei Bulgakov, Tolstoy cynically commented on Rafael’s painting.
Bulgakov writes:

In our conversation, I incautiously expressed my feelings for the Sistine,

and just mentioning them was sufficient to trigger a fit of choking blasphe-
mous anger on his part bordering on possession. His eyes blazed with an ill-
tempered fire and he began to choke with blasphemy: “Yes, they took me
there, they sat me on this Folterbank [German “torture bench”—K. B.], I
rubbed and rubbed my a[rse], but couldn’t incubate anything. What of that:
a wench gave birth to a babe, a wench gave birth to a babe, that’s all, what’s
so special about it?” And he was searching for new sacrilegious words; it was
painful to witness these convulsions of the spirit.40

While narrating this episode, Bulgakov tells the story of his own experience
while visiting the Dresden Art Gallery in 1898. At first glance, he “accepted
the Sistine Madonna into his heart” ( prinial ee v serdtse).41 He was under
the influence of Marxist ideas at that time and perceived this moment as a
spiritual prophecy stimulating his return to Christianity.
In Bulgakov’s second encounter with the painting, in 1924, however,
the revelation did not recur (vstrecha ne sostoialas’). He felt only bitter dis-
appointment:

Why should I be cunning or conceal the truth: I did not see the Mother of
God. Here was beauty, nothing but marvelous human beauty, with all its re-
ligious ambiguity, but . . . there was a lack of grace. To pray in front of this
image?—but this would be an insult and impossibility! For some reason, my
nerves were tormented most by those little angels and the luscious [parfumer-
naia] Barbara in a mannered [pritornoi] pose with a coquettish half-smile. . . .
Perhaps this is not even the Virgin, but just a splendid young woman, full of
charismatic beauty and wisdom. There is no Maidenhood here, still more,
there is no Eternal Maidenhood [Prisnodevstvo], on the contrary, what reigns
supreme here is its negation—femininity and woman: sexuality [pol].42

Finding himself in agreement with Tolstoy this time, in the depiction of the
Sistine Madonna Bulgakov sensed “a male feeling, a male manner of being
in love and a male lustfulness.”43 He reiterates that after seeing Raphael’s
painting for the second time, he felt that all Western paintings of the Re-
naissance period were characterized by the same naturalism and “secular-
ized mysticism.” Pushkin, he claims, reflected these features of European art
in his “Poor Knight.” Bulgakov concludes his essay with the idea, reminis-

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cent of Dmitry Karamazov’s, although phrased in a more sophisticated way:

“Beauty, ambiguous and seductive, blankets the spiritual world with a rosy
cloud, while art becomes the sorcery [magiia] of beauty.”44

According to Anna Dostoevsky’s reminiscences, Dostoevsky admired the

Sistine Madonna. While living in Germany in 1867 and working on the first
draft of The Idiot, he frequently visited the Dresden Art Gallery, spending
hours in front of the Madonnas by Raphael, Murillo, Correggio, and Hans
Holbein.45 During his sojourn in Europe, he tried to find a reproduction
of Raphael’s painting, to no avail. In 1879 he received one as a gift, and
after that the Sistine Madonna adorned the wall of his study.46 But sensual
aspects of the Madonna-type beauty did not escape his attention. In some
of his characters, this type of beauty arouses not inspiration but sensuality.
In Crime and Punishment, Svidrigailov, telling Raskolnikov the story of his
acquaintance with his young bride-to-be, says:

And you know, she has the face of a Raphael Madonna. Because the Sis-
tine Madonna has a fantastic face, the face of a mournful holy fool [skorb-
noi iurodivoi], has that ever struck you? Well, hers is the same sort. As soon
as they blessed us, the next day, I came with fifteen hundred rubles’ worth: a
set of diamonds, another of pearls, and a lady’s silver toilet case—this big—
with all kinds of things in it, so that even her Madonna’s face began to glow.
(479–80)

Realizing that the girl’s innocence stirs up Svidrigailov’s sexual interest,

Raskolnikov reacts with indignation: “In short, it’s this monstrous difference
in age and development that arouses your sensuality!” (480). A moment later
he interrupts Svidrigailov again: “Stop, stop your mean, vile anecdotes, you
depraved, mean, sensual man!” (482).
The peculiarity of Svidrigailov’s sexual tastes can be explained by the
fact that he is a “sensualist” (sladostrastnik), a debaucher. Yet, this character
is too complex to be molded into a single category. He exhibits astonish-
ing generosity when he offers Raskolnikov money for Katerina Ivanovna’s
funeral and expresses his willingness to sponsor the placement of three of
Marmeladov’s stepchildren in an orphanage, settling 1,500 rubles on each.
He seems to be genuinely in love with Dunya.
Svidrigailov’s reaction to the girl’s likeness to the Sistine Madonna thus
can be read in two different ways. Using Dmitry Karamazov’s phraseology,
one can say that in Svidrigailov’s heart, “the ideal of the Madonna” gave way
to “the ideal of Sodom.” But if one accepts the philosopher Lev Karsavin’s
line of reasoning about Fyodor Karamazov, it can be argued that Svidrigailov,

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 A Grain of Eros in the Madonna, a Spark of Beauty in Sodom

like Fyodor, is able to discern “pure beauty” in Sodom. In the ruminations

on feminine beauty that Fyodor shares with his sons over cognac, Karsavin
discerns an “ideology of love,” which he examines with attention and respect.
In Karsavin’s view, the wide spectrum of Fyodor’s erotic tastes, which range
from “coarse” to “pure” beauty, testifies not so much to his promiscuity as
to the fact that his heart is sensitive to purity and light.47 Karsavin might be
right, but it is hard to pass a moral judgment on Svidrigailov because here
Dostoevsky presents information mostly indirectly. Thus we recall Luzhin
retelling the story of a deaf and dumb girl of fourteen found hanging in the
attic and the rumors that she was cruelly abused by Svidrigailov. His night-
mare about a five-year-old prostitute just before his suicide suggests that he
had remorse for some terrible misdeed. His attitude toward the saintly pros-
titute Sonya Marmeladova is not very clear either. All these instances imply
that Svidrigailov’s interest in innocence and purity might be unhealthy.
Sonya has been compared to the icon of Bogoroditsa (Mother of
God).48 I would say that the saintly Sonya, appearing “in the midst of pov-
erty, rags, death, and despair” (183) is rather a “Madonna in Sodom.” So is
Nastasya Filippovna, whose portrait, in Nadezhda Krokhina’s words, is an
attempt to express in words the ambivalent femininity of the Renaissance
Madonnas.49 Can their beauty save those around them—Raskolnikov, Svid-
rigailov, Myshkin, Rogozhin? Dostoevsky seems to give a twofold answer: it
can, but will not necessarily, for, being dialectical, Madonna-type beauty has
two potentials: the “spark of light” can lead to salvation, whereas the “grain
of Eros” can enchant, seduce, and destroy.
Dostoevsky’s theme of the ambivalence of beauty was later developed
by Alexander Blok in his lyrical drama The Stranger (Neznakomka, 1907),
which opens with two epigraphs from The Idiot.50 One of them refers to the
episode where Myshkin is looking at Nastasya Filippovna’s portrait and is
struck by her extraordinary beauty. The second epigraph represents part of
the conversation that takes place between Myshkin and Nastasya Filippovna
at the moment of their acquaintance when they both are haunted by the
feeling that they have seen each other before.
The composition of Blok’s drama, structured as “three visions,” re-
inforces the idea of a mystical encounter with feminine beauty. Bearing a
similarity to the “Beautiful Lady” in Blok’s earlier cycle “Verses About the
Beautiful Lady” (1904), the Star Maria incarnates a celestial ideal of eter-
nal feminine. At the same time she is antithetical to it. Maria is a “fallen
star” who has descended from the sky to the earth, seeking the consumma-
tion of human passions. Her three appearances—in a cheap tavern among
drunkards, in empty streets on the outskirts of the city, and at a noisy salon
party—evoke Dostoevsky’s female “saintly sinners”—Sonya Marmeladova,

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Liza from Notes from Underground, Nastasya Filippovna—in St. Peters-

burg’s Sodom.
Tat’iana Elshina notes that Blok’s Stranger (the Star Maria) inherited
from Dostoevsky’s heroine her beauty, her sexual appeal, and her seeming
availability.51 She writes:

The image of beauty, as Dostoevsky and Blok present it, has its own dialec-
tics. Dostoevsky thought that beauty would save the world, but he also knew
that beauty was not only a frightening but also a mysterious force. Blok knew
this too when he was repeating Dostoevsky’s famous maxims word for word:
“Beauty is a terrible thing.” 52. . . The first appearance of beauty captivates us
as if the devil’s struggle with God suddenly comes to a pause, as if someone
wants to initiate people into a world of absolute values. But in the earthly
vale, beauty, removed as it is from the source of God’s light, is strangely dis-
torted, infected with demonism, as it becomes involved in the struggle of
the dualistic, contradictory earthly forces. The dramas of Nastasya Filippovna
and the Stranger take place in an urban space, which is traditionally struc-
tured between two poles—the Church and the pub. . . . On the social plane
Nastasya Filippovna is a fallen woman, but in the metaphysical sense she is
the image of purest beauty, captured by the prince of this world. . . . The
Stranger is also fallen, though not a woman but a star, and her fall is not so-
cial but cosmic.53

Having made an appearance at a noisy St. Petersburg salon party, among the
guests preoccupied with food, drinks, and talks, the Star Maria ascends back
to the sky. In the final scene of the drama guests are looking for her, but to
everyone’s surprise, there is no one at the dark curtain; there is only a bright
star shining in the dark sky.54
Vasily Rozanov, who was the first to speak of Dostoevsky’s dialectics,
ended his public lecture delivered in 1909 in the following way:

What has remained after Dostoevsky?

The beauty of things.
Flap your wings in such a way that your flap, and your flight, and your
point of destination all become beauty, undeniable from any perspective, and
then fly wherever you want. Fly to anarchy, fly up to the sky, fly to the Gos-
pels. With his dialectics Dostoevsky incinerated all ugliness and opened total
freedom, unlimited freedom to all kinds of beauty. But this beauty lies so
high that nobody can snatch it [nikto ne umeet vziat’].55

The apparition of beauty in Sodom—a spark of light amid the dark-

ness—is Dostoevsky’s image-paradigm of the salvation that beauty prom-

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 A Grain of Eros in the Madonna, a Spark of Beauty in Sodom

ises. In the previous chapters, we have seen that this spark of light glimmers
on Raskolnikov’s face in the epilogue of Crime and Punishment as an omen
of his future resurrection; it shines for Dmitry Karamazov when he finds
himself in total darkness and comes to realize that “one is guilty for all”;
but it flees from Svidrigailov and Rogozhin, who, seized by carnal passions,
strive to possess it. In the next chapter, we will see that this spark of light
tantalizes the protagonist of Notes from Underground and beckons the Ri-
diculous Man on his way to truth.

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Dostoevsky’s Case for Contradictions

P R AV D A A ND I S T I N A , T W O CO NCEP TI ONS
OF TRU T H

The Russian language possesses two words for “truth.” Often considered
synonyms, they differ in their etymology. The root of pravda carries moral
overtones, linked as it is to the words pravyi (right or correct), pravednyi
(righteous), and spravedlivost’ (justice). Istina, on the other hand, is asso-
ciated with the idea of “being” or “essence.” Istina is what “IS”; its root is
similar to the verb “to be” in other languages—the English “is,” the German
“ist,” the French “est,” the Greek “estin,” and the Russian “est’.”1 Because
of their different semantic nuances, the use of these words is determined by
the context.
Although the very idea of truth implies unity and wholeness, both
pravda and istina each have two sets of divergent meanings. An eminent
scholar of cultural linguistics, N. D. Arutiunova, observes that pravda is “un-
stable, ambiguous and highly contradictory.”2 Resting on two poles, high and
low, pravda can stand for morality and justice, but it can also stand for an
unembellished reality—as in the idiomatic expressions golaia pravda (naked
truth) and gor’kaia pravda (bitter truth).
Similarly, istina can be employed in two different senses: it can rep-
resent an object of faith or an object of rational knowledge. The religious
istina is transcendent and therefore is achieved by the subject (the religious
conscience) intuitively or through revelation. Conversely, an epistemic is-
tina is something to be sought after and discovered by the subject (rational
mind) through theoretical or empirical knowledge. Arutiunova comments
on the dual nature of istina: “Truth (istina) is a sign of uniqueness and sin-
gularity [znak edinstvennosti] and at the same time a sign of doubling [znak
dvoeniia],” for “the earthly world stands against the celestial world, the real
world against the ideal world, the temporary against the eternal, phenom-
enon against the noumenon, ontology against metaphysics, visible against

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invisible, the world of objects against the world of ideas (prototypes).”3 In

other words, truth subordinates to the principle of duality-in-unity.
Traditionally, each truth posits itself by separating itself from its op-
posite. The moral pravda opposes itself to the baseness of the “naked truth,”
whereas the low pravda stands in opposition to the high ideal. Similarly, the
two istinas—epistemic and religious—define themselves by negating each
other. The former disclaims the value of the revelatory experience; the latter
renounces the significance of rational cognition.
Dostoevsky departs from this tradition. His works advocate the whole-
ness of truth, viewing the counterparts not in their negation of each other,
but in their constant dynamic interplay. This chapter examines Dostoevsky’s
short works Notes from Underground (1864) and “The Dream of a Ridicu-
lous Man” (1877), where different aspects of truth, as well as various truths,
coexist, argue, and depend on each other.
These Petersburg stories, written thirteen years apart, contain many
parallels and analogies. Their nameless protagonists are educated and re-
sentful nihilists. Through the heroes’ feverish monologues, both stories de-
velop Dostoevsky’s objections to positivism, rationalism, and socialism. In
both stories, Dostoevsky questions the validity of a utopian master plan,
concluding that a re-creation of the Golden Age on earth is impossible.
Each work explores this rather straightforward message at different levels,
with the earlier narrative only hinting at the cause of this impossibility and
the later text spelling it out. Both are written for and published in journals
that Dostoevsky edited or wrote, and thus must be viewed in their polemical
contexts.
In his writings, Dostoevsky uses the word “truth” in all four senses. His
Underground Man embodies the lower, darker truth of life: inner malice
and perversity. Significantly, the Underground Man identifies his confession
as a “loathsome truth” (omerzitel’naia pravda). He views this crude pravda
as disgraceful, a cause of shame:

In every man’s memories there are such things as he will reveal not to
everyone, but perhaps only to friends. There are also such as he will reveal
not even to friends, but only to himself, and that in secret. Then, finally, there
are such as a man is afraid to reveal even to himself, and every decent man
will have accumulated quite a few things of this sort. That is, one might even
say: the more decent a man is, the more of them he will have. At least I
myself have only recently resolved to recall some of my former adventures,
which till now I have always avoided, even with a certain uneasiness. Now,
however, when I not only recall them but am even resolved to write them
down, now I want precisely to make a test: is it possible to be perfectly can-
did with oneself and not be afraid of the whole truth [pravda]? (39)

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The Underground Man’s “loathsome truth” contrasts with the “high” moral
truth to which Dostoevsky refers in a draft of his Diary of a Writer: “Truth
[pravda] is higher than Nekrasov, higher than Pushkin, higher than the na-
tion [vyshe naroda], higher than Russia, higher than everything, and there-
fore we must aspire only to truth, and must search for it, in spite of all those
benefits that we may lose because of it, and even in spite of all these perse-
cutions and oppressions to which we might be subjected because of it.”4 No
doubt, in Dostoevsky’s system of values, the moral truth occupies the highest
place.
In Notes from Underground (hereafter referred to as Notes), Dosto-
evsky demonstrates that high and low truths are not easily separated, for
each contains an element of its opposite, thus forming an apparent contra-
diction. In “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man,” he takes this idea a step fur-
ther and explains why this must be so. This story’s plot, essentially the pro-
tagonist’s dream, suggests that oppositions and contradictions inhere in the
world and in human nature as the result of original sin.

H IGH A ND L O W T R U T H ( P R AV D A ) I N N O T E S
FROM UNDERGROUND

The evolvement of Notes was influenced by the publication of Nikolai Cher-

nyshevsky’s novel What Is to Be Done? (1863). Chernyshevsky wrote it in
less than four months while incarcerated in the Peter and Paul Fortress for
his radical socialist activities. The appearance of this work, which was pub-
lished solely through the negligence of the censors, created a great scandal
in Petersburg’s intellectual circles. Revolutionary in spirit and ideology, the
novel portrayed the construction of a new socialist society and the rise of a
generation of “new people.”
By the time Dostoevsky returned from Siberian exile (1849–59), his
socialist aspirations of the early 1840s had fully dissipated and his attitude
toward the activities of Russian radicals had become skeptical. In Notes, he
entered into open polemics with Chernyshevsky and his forerunners—Euro-
pean positivists and utilitarians. Specifically, Dostoevsky opposed the theory
of “rational egoism,” popularized in the midcentury Russian radical milieu.
Relying on the utilitarian ethics of Spencer, Mill, and Bentham, whose ideas
had prepared the ground for Russian socialism, Chernyshevsky believed
that “profit” and “self-interest” were the sole motivations for human actions
and that evil existed in the world because people were ignorant of their true
intentions. Assuming human beings to be rational, he claimed that if people
understood their real interests, they would immediately stop committing
crimes and grasp that it is “profitable” to be good.

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The Underground Man challenges this philosophy. He rejects the

idea that people consistently strive for personal happiness and that creating
good necessarily makes them happy. Such assertions, he claims, are based
on a rational view of human nature, whereas human beings are capable of
freely choosing to act irrationally. Objecting to the philosophy of “rational
egoism,” the protagonist of Notes posits counterarguments: People cannot
be calculated with mathematical formulas. They are capable of committing
irrational acts and do not necessarily seek profit, or, rather, they consider it
profitable to prolong striving and postpone consummation, even to the point
of embracing destruction. Besides logic and rationalism, there exists “one’s
own free and voluntary wanting, one’s own caprice, however wild, one’s own
fancy, though chafed sometimes to the point of madness” (25). Sometimes
people find pleasure in pain and suffering.
Since its publication, Notes has been viewed as Dostoevsky’s darkest
work. He has been repeatedly criticized for its emphasis on the gloomy,
nasty, and unhealthy aspects of reality—the unattractive lower truth of life.
Dostoevsky was extremely disappointed by the critics’ reaction because he
originally meant this story to contain both dark and bright elements. Besides
testing the validity of the socialists’ utopian agenda, Dostoevsky aimed to
test another dangerous idea—the nihilistic rejection of the ideals and moral
norms—typical of 1860s Russian liberal circles.5 In a letter dated March 26,
1864, he complained to his brother, Michael, “The swinish censors, where
I mocked everything and sometimes blasphemed for the sake of effect—it
was permitted, and where I deduced from all of that the need for faith and
Christ—it was prohibited.”6 Unfortunately, the passages cut off from the
Notes have been lost.
In 1875, annoyed by the label “the poet of Underground,” Dostoevsky
attempted to respond to critics’ reproaches. In his draft responses, which
remained unpublished during his lifetime, he wrote that although there was
some truth to his portrayal of the Underground (ibo tut pravda), his reader-
ship failed to recognize the reason for his emphasis on the darker side of life.
His whole purpose, he maintained, was to demonstrate that the existence of
an Underground was rooted in a total annihilation of faith, in the fact that
for nihilists there was “nothing sacred” (nichego sviatogo).7
Not until the late twentieth century did the brighter aspect of this
work receive attention. Thus Malcolm Jones observes that the Underground
Man’s baseness is coupled with his sensitivity to ideals: “It is in lofty ideals
and aspirations derived from George Sand, Schiller, Lermontov, Nekrasov
and social Romanticism that he [the Underground Man] finds his own.”8
In and of itself this reference does not allow us to speak of Dostoevsky’s
dialectics. What makes this discussion possible, though, is the fact that the
Underground Man constantly oscillates between the two poles, the high and

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the low. From the very beginning, he insists that he is torn by contradictory
elements:

I was conscious every moment of so very many elements in myself most op-
posite to that. I felt them simply swarming in me, those opposite elements.
I knew they had been swarming in me all my life, asking to be let go out of
me, but I would not let them, I would not, I purposely would not let them
out. They tormented me to the point of shame; they drove me to convulsions,
and—finally I got sick of them, oh, how sick I got! (5)

He maintains that he never “managed to become anything: neither wicked

nor good, neither a scoundrel nor an honest man, neither a hero nor an
insect” (5). Paradoxically, in the moments when he is “capable of being con-
scious of all the refinements of ‘everything beautiful and lofty’ ” (7), he is able
to perform the most dishonorable deeds. The more conscious he becomes
of the “beautiful and lofty,” the deeper he descends into the Underground.
Such a turn of events gives rise to new contradictions: he begins to find plea-
sure in humiliation and despair.
Part 2 of Notes provides numerous examples of the Underground
Man’s contradictions in action. He speaks about the opposing phases of his
life, which constantly alternate: after a “little debauch” come dreams of the
“beautiful and lofty,” in which he experiences “faith, hope, love” (56). At such
moments he sees himself as a hero, “almost on a white horse and wreathed
in laurels” (57). Soon after that, he returns to debauchery: “Either hero or
mud, there was no in-between. And that is what ruined me, because in the
mud I comforted myself with being a hero at other times, and the hero [in
me] covered up the mud” (57). These words echo the Russian idiom “from
mud to princehood” (iz griazi v kniazi), which aptly expresses the idea of a
sudden reversal. Even more significant, however, is that although these two
conditions of his life—“mud” and “princehood”—are separate, each one
contains an element of its opposite:

Remarkably, these influxes of “everything beautiful and lofty” used also to

come to me during my little debauches; precisely when I was already at the
very bottom, they would come just so, in isolated little flashes, as if reminding
me of themselves, and yet they did not annihilate the little debauch with their
appearance; on the contrary, it was as if they enlivened it by contrast. (57)

Characteristically, the Underground Man turns from debauchery to “every-

thing beautiful and lofty” by a spark (57). As he explains, the change is sig-
naled by a little dot—it happens by means of “isolated little flashes” (ot-
del’nymi vspyshechkami).

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Most conspicuously, these sudden twists reveal themselves in the Un-

derground Man’s series of encounters with the prostitute Liza. Consider the
emergence of a light in the darkness—a candle flame in a brothel room—
and Dostoevsky’s mention of “some point” (or dot) (kakaia-to tochka) that
tortures the Underground Man as he wakes up:

The room—narrow, small and low . . . was almost totally dark. The candle-
butt burning on the table at the other end of the room was about to go out,
barely flickering every now and then. In a few moments it would be quite
dark.
It did not take me long to recover myself; everything came back to me at
once, without effort, instantly, as if it had just been lying in wait to pounce on
me again. And even in my oblivion there had still constantly remained some
point,9 as it were, in my memory that simply refused to be forgotten, around
which my drowsy reveries turned heavily. (87)

Right after noticing that point, as if resolving to let it grow, the Underground
Man begins his conversation with Liza, in which he advocates a virtuous way
of life, and Liza listens to him attentively. Although the Underground Man
later confesses that the tirade addressed to Liza was no more than a dishon-
orable game, he simultaneously insists that his feelings for her were genuine
and that he “precisely wanted to evoke noble feelings in her” (109). Logically
speaking, these two explanations are mutually exclusive: either he is playing
a dishonorable game or he is expressing genuine noble feelings. Yet para-
doxically, both of these statements appear to be true.
The Underground Man succeeds in evoking kindness and compassion
in Liza’s heart. But as soon as he realizes that, he initiates a new wicked turn:
“There’s virginity for you!—he exclaims—There’s the freshness of the soil!”
(110). The next moment he feels an irresistible urge to insult Liza, to spit on
her, to drive her out, to strike her. Following the alternation of bright and
dark phases, their roles are transposed, as he realizes with chagrin that Liza
now has become the heroine and he “the crushed and humiliated creature”
(124). When she returns to the Underground Man with an open, forgiving
heart, as we may guess, and full of hope for a new virtuous life, he insults
her deeply by pressing money into her hand for her visit, thus confirming
her status as prostitute. We do not find out whether she begins a new life
or whether, having been insulted, she loses hope and sinks into despair.
But we do know that the Underground Man’s journey continues. The final
lines of the story read: “The notes of this paradoxalist do not end here. He
could not help himself and went on. But it also seems to us that this may
be a good place to stop” (130). His switches from sympathy to insults and

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from violence to compassion become endless, just like the conversation he

conducts with himself and his imaginary listeners. In Bakhtin’s words, the
Underground Man’s dialogue turns into an “inescapable perpetuum mobile
of the dialogized self-consciousness.”10 Constantly oscillating between “the
lower truth” and the “higher moral truth,” he does not find a way out of the
Underground.
The Underground Man’s endless oscillation, generally perceived by
Dostoevsky scholars as evidence of the story’s gloominess, becomes less
disturbing if we recall the famous entry made in Dostoevsky’s notebook on
April 16, 1864, the day after his wife’s death. He writes in it that the ulti-
mate goal of humankind is Christ’s paradise, but because of his duality and
his “transitional” (perekhodnoe) condition, man constantly negates this goal
(20:173). Dostoevsky concludes: “Man strives on earth for an ideal which
is contrary to his nature” (20:175). This entry, made when Dostoevsky was
working on Part 2 of Notes, is exemplified by Underground Man’s oscillation
between two truths, “the higher” and “the lower.”
The Underground Man’s oscillation acquires a new meaning when
contrasted with Chernyshevsky’s treatment of binaries in What Is to Be
Done? As Irina Paperno demonstrates, all layers of this novel—ideological,
structural, and artistic—are built on the principle of the reversal of binary
oppositions:

The basic structural principle of this novel is the organization of its narrative
world in terms of contrasting qualities, a world of Hegelian contradictions as
it were. Almost every quality discussed in the novel is reflected in the mir-
ror of its opposite: good writer is opposed to bad writer, good reader to bad
reader, man to woman, blonde to brunette, passion to coldness, cleverness
to simplicity, altruism to egoism. A mechanism that is meant to resolve these
oppositions, to reconcile (in Hegelian terms, aufheben) the contradictions, is
then offered; after a series of formal operations, a quality is identified with or
transformed into its direct opposite: weakness turns into strength, ugliness
into beauty, vice into virtue, and so forth.11

We may assume that Chernyshevsky’s neo-Hegelian dialectics, featured in

What Is to Be Done?, was a tribute to the Russian intellectual life of the time.
In the late 1830s, the Russian intelligentsia perceived Hegel’s philosophy as
the cutting edge of European thought.12 During the 1840s, it was still ex-
tremely fashionable among intellectuals in Russia. Some people worshipped
it; others debunked it. Although it was never fully accepted as a whole, all
social, literary, and philosophical questions revolved around Hegel. During
the following decades, the authority of Hegelian philosophy over Russian

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intellectual life diminished, but its oblique influence remained palpable. Ac-
tive members of Stankevich’s circle, Vissarion Belinsky and Mikhail Bakunin,
were the first to discuss Hegel’s ideas in writing.
Chernyshevsky shared Belinsky’s respect for Hegel, but his attitude
toward him was twofold. He adopted the dialectical idea of the constant
change of forms but rejected Hegelian idealism in favor of everyday reality.
He viewed striving for absolute perfection as pathological.13 Instead of the
abstract absolute, Chernyshevsky promoted a less distant ideal—the Crystal
Palace, an embodiment of the new socialist utopia, a symbol of social jus-
tice and equality. This building, constructed in 1851 for London’s Crystal
Palace Exhibition, epitomized industrialization, technological achievement,
and scientific progress. Chernyshevsky poeticized this topos—in his novel,
the palace, lit by an everlasting sun, is surrounded by gardens full of fragrant
lemon trees.
In his rebellion against the “forever indestructible” Crystal Palace,
the Underground Man refuses to believe in “an edifice at which one can
neither put out one’s tongue on the sly nor make a fig in the pocket” (35).
His predisposition to contradictions makes him a typical Dostoevskian in-
habitant of St. Petersburg—an ambivalent city, which, according to Russian
literary myth has two faces, one bright and the other dark; a city of magnifi-
cent imperial palaces and terrible slums, of white summer nights and dark
winter days.14 For the inhabitants of mid-1860s St. Petersburg, the name
Crystal Palace evoked not only the London Exhibition but also a local es-
tablishment: Petersburg’s own Crystal Palace was an infamous tavern near
Haymarket Square. In Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky’s next novel, this
tavern serves as the setting where Raskolnikov almost confesses to Zametov
that he killed the old pawnbroker.
The socialist construction of the new Eden required the total elimi-
nation of the dark truth of life—evil, poverty, and suffering—by means of
some global inversions and revolutions. Dostoevsky undermines this type of
dialectics by making his protagonist constantly oscillate between the high
and the low, thus suggesting that the low truth of the Underground cannot
be easily dissolved in favor of the new Eden. Notes is Dostoevsky’s first liter-
ary work that demonstrates the mutual dependence of opposites. It under-
cuts Chernyshevsky’s simplistic vision of binaries by introducing the fact of
life—Petersburg reality with its dives and brothels. It must be stressed that
Dostoevsky’s story does not debunk ideals; it repudiates an oversimplified
view on human nature.
Although primarily portraying the dark truth of life, the story conveys a
feeling that the Underground’s obscurity is not all-encompassing, for a spark
of light—a candle, a star, a pair of shining eyes, a bright hope—may sud-
denly appear in the dark. The Underground Man responds to it, although

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he finds no way out of life’s contradictions, leaving the reader to speculate:

is this character an exception or does Dostoevsky’s portrayal of him suggest
that human nature is inherently contradictory? The next section will tackle
this question.

TH E BI RT H O F P O L A R I T I ES I N “ TH E D REA M OF A
RID IC U L O U S M A N”

The protagonist of “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man”—a “Russian progres-

sive and a despicable citizen of Petersburg”—asserts that before he found
the truth, he had been convinced that “nothing in the whole world made any
difference”: “it made no difference whether the world existed or whether
nothing existed anywhere at all.” Rendered in Russian as vse ravno (literally,
all is the same, all is equal), this expression comes up four times at the be-
ginning of his confession. The Ridiculous Man’s fantastic journey to another
planet and his personal participation in the corruption of its innocent inhabi-
tants opens his eyes. He witnesses the birth of opposites—past and present,
good and evil, love and hatred.
The story’s dual setting—the shining Golden Age planet and gloomy
Petersburg—establishes a major dichotomy of light and darkness that un-
derlies the whole narrative. R. W. Phillips aptly comments on this duality:
“[The Golden Age’s] radiance illuminates about half the story; the other half,
like the other side of the moon, remains in darkness.”15 More significantly,
the spheres of light and darkness penetrate each other, suddenly appearing
as a bright star of hope on the black St. Petersburg sky or as a sinister virus
of evil contaminating the luminous planet.
The dynamics are set in motion from the very start. Unable to experi-
ence life, the Ridiculous Man decides to commit suicide and thus plunge
himself into the absolute darkness of nonbeing. He leaves his room and
goes out in the “coldest and most dismal rain that ever was, a sort of men-
acing rain,” where the gaslight shedding a light upon the dark streets only
oppresses his heart further. As the darkness becomes more and more con-
densed, he suddenly notices a little bright star in the “fathomless” black sky,
which somehow triggers in him the idea of killing himself. An encounter
with a lost crying girl spurs his final decision. Instead of helping the little
girl, the Ridiculous Man chases her away. Later this interaction tortures him.
He is overwhelmed not only by remorse but also by his own inconsistency:
it turns out that his claim that nothing makes any difference is false. Having
returned to his wretched little attic room, the Ridiculous Man sits down at
the table, lights a candle, and, staring at his revolver, imagines a hypothetical
situation: he has committed a crime and is transported to another planet. He

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asks himself whether he would feel shame for his crime (presumably for not
helping the lost child). The rest of “The Dream” answers his question.
Thinking about his life and death in terms of the interaction of light
and darkness, the Ridiculous Man assumes that as soon as he loses con-
sciousness, the whole world will be extinguished. The world is indeed ex-
tinguished, but in an unexpected way: instead of committing suicide, the
Ridiculous Man suddenly falls asleep and dreams of shooting himself. At
that point the St. Petersburg gloom turns into a blackness even more ter-
rifying than that of the night sky: “It seemed as though with my shot every-
thing within me was shaken and everything was suddenly extinguished, and
a terrible darkness descended all around me” (271). A fantastic being takes
the Ridiculous Man on a cosmic journey across space, and they fly through a
complete darkness: “It was a pitch-black night. Never, never had there been
such darkness” (273). And then suddenly he notices a bright little star in the
sky, evidently the same star he had seen in St. Petersburg. The Ridiculous
Man begins to wonder: he had shot himself through the heart because he
expected “complete non-existence,” and now he is taken by “a being, not
human of course, but which was, which existed” (273). The words “being,”
“to be,” and “to exist” permeate this passage and suggest the existential na-
ture of his crisis. Significantly, the scene suddenly unfolding before his eyes
re-creates events from the opening of the book of Genesis (Russian Kniga
Bytiia, literally The Book of Being / Existence). The beginning of the Ridicu-
lous Man’s dream coincides with the six days of Creation.
As he approaches the star, the Ridiculous Man witnesses the emer-
gence of a world from nothingness, the birth of light and life: “A sweet, nos-
talgic feeling filled my heart with rapture: the old familiar power of the same
light which had given me life stirred an echo in my heart and revived it, and
I felt the same life stirring within me” (274). He then witnesses the birth of
the earth and the ocean. Soon after that nature appears: tall, beautiful trees
stand “in all the glory of their green luxuriant foliage and their innumerable
leaves,” and “the lush grass blazed with bright and fragrant flowers”(275).
The dazzling light on the planet makes the Ridiculous Man recall the shade
existing on his native planet and in his native St. Petersburg.
He asks his guide about suffering on this planet: “On our earth we can
truly love only with suffering and through suffering! We do not know how
to love otherwise. We know no other love. I want suffering in order to love”
(275). There is no suffering on the star, however. Lit by everlasting light, the
Golden Age planet is inhabited by “children of the sun,” who know no mala-
dies, no torments, and, most importantly, no sin. They dance and sing, glo-
rifying nature and earth. Labor does not cause them any fatigue, and death
is painless. The Ridiculous Man enjoys life alongside these happy “children
of the sun,” watching them, admiring them, and trying to share their bliss.

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Metaphors of light saturate this part of the text: “The eyes of these happy
people shone with a bright lustre. Their faces were radiant with understand-
ing” (275). At that moment, the bright phase of the dream is brought to a
completion.
The Ridiculous Man’s ecstasy evaporates when he becomes nostalgic
for the planet Earth, where life had both light and shade. He is overwhelmed
with love for the inhabitants of the Golden Age planet, but precisely at the
moment when his joy reaches its zenith, a black seed appears at the center
of the white background: “And in my love for them, too, there was a sharp
pang of anguish: why could I not love them without hating them?” (279).
This seed of anguish leads to the least expected and most distressing out-
come. Abruptly, seemingly without any motivation, as if identifying himself
with the serpent seducing Adam and Eve, the Ridiculous Man corrupts this
planet. As usually happens in Dostoevsky, the catastrophe is triggered by a
very small device: “Like a horrible trichina, like the germ of the plague in-
fecting whole kingdoms, so did I infect with myself all that happy earth that
knew no sin before me” (280). As a seed of corruption, the Ridiculous Man
infects them all.
The consequences turn out to be global—the Fall gives rise to polari-
ties. Life on the Golden Age planet now knows both light and shade. Love
begins to coexist with jealousy, kindness with cruelty, shame with virtue,
brotherhood with egoism, humanism with hatred, justice with criminality:
“They came to know sorrow, and they loved sorrow. They thirsted for suf-
fering, and they said that Truth could only be attained through suffering”
(281). The planet now resembles Earth. Here sickness coexists with well-
being and sorrow with joy.
Seeking wholeness, the Ridiculous Man enters a stage of purification.
He experiences remorse and eventually seeks redemption. At this new stage,
as if identifying himself with Christ, he implores the planet’s inhabitants to
crucify him. They refuse, and at that moment he suddenly wakes up. The
dream turns out to be prophetic. The Ridiculous Man claims that he has
discovered the truth (istina) and sets forth to preach this truth to people
on Earth. The question he had raised earlier is now answered: the conse-
quences of a crime committed against a little child on Earth remain valid
on another planet. However tiny, the evil in his heart was potent enough to
corrupt a whole planet of innocent children.
The idea that everyone is responsible for the evil that exists in the world,
foundational to Dostoevsky’s theology, was developed a few years later in The
Brothers Karamazov.16 The elder Zosima verbalizes this idea repeatedly in
his talks and homilies. In the excerpt “Of Prayer, Love, and the Touching of
Other Worlds,” he makes a statement that summarizes the Ridiculous Man’s
crime:

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See, here you have passed by a small child, passed by in anger, with a foul
word, with a wrathful soul; you perhaps did not notice the child, but he saw
you, and your unsightly and impious image has remained in his defenseless
heart. You did not know it, but you may thereby have planted a bad seed in
him, and it may grow, and all because you did not restrain yourself before the
child, because you did not nurture in yourself a heedful, active love. (319)

Zosima’s statement concludes with the same imagery of a planted seed: “God
took seeds from other worlds and sowed them on this earth, and raised up
his garden; and everything that could sprout sprouted, but it lives and grows
only through its sense of being in touch with other mysterious worlds; if this
sense is weakened or destroyed in you, that which has grown up in you dies.
Then you become indifferent to life, and even come to hate it” (320). Zosi-
ma’s words, echoing the novel’s epigraph about grain that dies and is reborn,
convey the central idea of many of Dostoevsky’s works: small things, both
good and bad, have great consequences. “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man”
is a story of a bad seed planted on virgin soil. Paradoxically, the consequences
of the corruption are twofold: although the Fall marks the end of the happy
Age of Innocence, it gives rise to a new, more conscious, experience—the
knowledge of good and evil.
Like most of Dostoevsky’s mature narratives, “The Dream” ends on a
bright turn. Having regained his hope in life, the protagonist continues his
journey without fearing obstacles. He concludes by declaring his intention
to proclaim the truth and do good: “And—I did find that little girl. . . . And
I shall go on! I shall go on!” (285). After his conversion, the Ridiculous Man
overcomes what earlier tortured him the most—the sense of being ridicu-
lous in other people’s eyes: “I love all who laugh at me more than all the
rest. Why that is so I don’t know and cannot explain, but let it be so” (284).
He concludes that “in one day, in one hour, everything could be arranged
[vse ustroitsia] at once! The main thing is to love your neighbor as yourself”
(285). He does not specify how everything could be arranged; his phrasing
merely suggests that everything could be arranged by itself, without human
intervention or attempts to reshape the world.
The Ridiculous Man claims that as a result of his journey to the Golden
Age planet, he has found the truth (istina), stressing that his perception was
visual, that he “did not invent it with his mind”: “I have beheld [literally,
“saw” videl] the Truth.17 I have beheld it and I know that people can be
happy and beautiful without losing their ability to live on earth” (284). He
insists that he has seen the living image (zhivoi obraz) of this truth. The liv-
ing truth he is referring to can be understood in one of two ways: as the
part of his dream that concerns the glory of the Golden Age or as his entire

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dream, which includes the episode of corruption. The way one understands
this expression affects the interpretation of the story’s central message.
Robert Jackson, for example, identifies the living truth with the “truth
of absolute moral beauty” of the Golden Age people:

Does the ridiculous man include the “awful truth” [uzhasnaia pravda] of his
corruption of paradise, that is, his fall, in his conception of the Truth? Quite
clearly he does not. His juxtaposition of the words pravda and istina suggests
an effort to distinguish a lower earthly truth of the flesh from a higher Truth
of beauty and spirit. Truth for the narrator is first of all aesthetically and spiri-
tually transfigured reality. His dream reveals to him the Truth that is Beauty.
It is a good dream. A bad dream, the ridiculous man seems to suggest, is no
dream at all.18

In Jackson’s interpretation, the Ridiculous Man’s dream is “the age-old search

in darkness for light,” a purely aesthetic experience.19 He reads this story as
a paradox: “The ridiculous man has seen the truth—the truth of absolute
moral beauty—yet he does not want to return to it.”20
I propose a different reading. Significantly, Dostoevsky does not jux-
tapose istina and pravda. In the Eden story, he employs these two words
interchangeably, using both with negative qualifiers:

For what happened afterwards was so awful, so horribly true [sluchilos’ do

takogo uzhasa istinnoe], that it couldn’t possibly have been a mere coinage
of my brain seen in a dream. Granted that my heart was responsible for my
dream, but could my heart alone have been responsible for the awful truth
[uzhasnaia pravda] of what happened to me afterwards? Surely my paltry
heart and my vacillating and trivial mind could not have risen to such a reve-
lation of truth [pravdu]! Oh, judge for yourselves: I have been concealing it
all the time, but now I will tell you the whole truth [i etu pravdu]. The fact
is, I—corrupted them all! (280)

Referring to this episode of his dream as to something “horribly true” (do

uzhasa istinnoe), the Ridiculous Man uses the word “true” in both senses:
religious and epistemic. It is religious because the story of the original sin
represents an essential component of biblical history, and it is epistemic be-
cause this episode dramatizes man’s acquisition of moral knowledge.
At story’s end, the protagonist turned prophet insists that the episode
of corruption was fundamental to his spiritual journey. He admits: “Do you
know, at first I did not mean to tell you that I corrupted them, but that was
a mistake—there you have my first mistake! But Truth [Istina] whispered
to me that I was lying, and so preserved me and set me on the right path”

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(284). This statement allows us to assume that the living truth the Ridicu-
lous Man claims to have seen is internally ambivalent: it includes both the
“good” and the “bad” aspects of his dream.
In the Ridiculous Man’s story, the two meanings of the word istina,
earlier delineated as religious (intuitive) and epistemic (rational), con-
verge. Through his personal participation in biblical events, by witnessing
the happy life on the Golden Age planet and his contamination of innocent
people, the Ridiculous Man learns the religious truth epistemically.
Among other things, he learns that the Age of Innocence had ended
and the Fall of Man resulted in the world’s dividedness into opposites. Dos-
toevsky’s objection to socialists thus sounds pessimistic: it is not possible to
restore Eden on Earth. Nevertheless, the story’s overall message is positive.
It suggests that the darkness is not all-encompassing, that a star in the noc-
turnal sky may show the way out for those walking in the darkness. One just
needs to be aware of binaries and to act responsibly when presented with a
choice.

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 Chapter Seven

Antinomic Truth (Istina)

TH E PRI NCI P L E O F CO NT R A D I CTI ON I N RUSSI A N

RE L IGI O U S T H O U G H T

The preceding chapters have continually focused on various opposites: good

and evil, different types of beauty and various types of truth. This chapter
addresses Dostoevsky’s treatment of opposite logical arguments (contradic-
tions) and places it into a broader intellectual context.1
The formal systematization of relations between opposite elements
found its expression in Aristotelian logic, which remained dominant in
Western thought for almost two millennia.2 This logic is based on the four
laws necessary to avoid contradictions in judgments: the law of identity, the
law of noncontradiction, the law of the excluded middle, and the law of suf-
ficient reason. The first three laws of Aristotelian logic constitute the basics
of the Western theory of oppositions.
According to the law of identity, which is expressed by the formula
A = A, the subject of our judgment must be identical to itself and have only
one identity. The law of noncontradiction requires that one and the same
judgment cannot be simultaneously affirmative and negative, true and false.
This law is expressed by the formula A cannot be equal to non-A. According
to the principle of the excluded middle, one has either “A” or “not A”; there
is no third possibility.
Aristotle’s formula and his defense of the law of noncontradiction rep-
resent his polemic against the pre-Socratics3 and account for his reputation
as the founder of modern science and of scientific philosophy.4 Since his
time, science has considered contradictions as obstacles to truth (istina, as
described in the previous chapter). Dialecticians, however, did not perceive
contradictions as an obstruction. They have found many means for resolving
contradictions, of which the Hegelian dialectical “overcoming” / “out-up lift-
ing” (German, Aufhebung) is only one possibility. In the introduction, I men-
tioned Heraclitus’s Logos, the ancient Chinese Tao, and Nicholas of Cusa’s

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coincidence of opposites (coincidentia oppositorum), all of which deal with

antinomies.5
We recall that in Greek, antinomiva is a contradiction between two
statements, each of which is reasonable, valid, and legitimate. In Russia, the
theory of antinomies was developed by the thinkers of the early twentieth-
century Russian religious renaissance: Sergei Askoldov, Nicholas Berdyaev,
Sergei Bulgakov, Pavel Florensky, George Florovsky, Semyon Frank, Vladi-
mir Lossky, and Evgeny Trubetskoy. Their philosophical views were formed
on the one hand by Eastern Orthodox patristics and on the other by the
legacy of Dostoevsky, on whose work many of them commented extensively.
As noted in the introduction, they were the first to notice that Dostoevsky’s
world is full of paradoxes and antinomies. The ideas, expressed by Dosto-
evsky in literary form in his novels, received philosophical substantiation in
their writings. These thinkers were also well read in Western philosophy,
especially in German, and knew Kant and Hegel well.
Pavel Florensky was the first to draw attention to Kant’s theory of an-
tinomies. In his lecture “Immanuel Kant’s Cosmological Antinomies,” deliv-
ered in 1908 and published a year later in Bogoslovskii vestnik (Theological
Messenger), Florensky provides an account of his understanding of Kantian
antinomies, as well as a criticism of Kant’s approach.6 In Florensky’s view,
the very idea of the possibility of antinomies of reason is one of the most
fruitful of Kant’s ideas. But in Kant’s presentation of the proofs of the four
antinomies he finds a “great number of omissions, lapses, and even real mis-
takes.”7 In his monumental work The Pillar and Ground of the Truth (1914),
Florensky channels Kant’s ideas in a different direction. An accomplished
theologian and mathematician, Florensky does not draw a firm line between
reason and faith. He claims that antinomies are inherent not so much in the
dichotomy of reason and faith but in reason itself.
Florensky refutes the principle of self-identity—which lies at the
root of Aristotelian logic and Kantian proofs—as a “tautological formula,”
a “lifeless, thoughtless, and therefore meaningless equality,” a “completely
empty schema of self-affirmation,” and the “blind force of stagnation and
self-imprisonment.”8 Instead of the law of self-identity, he advocates the
principle of “contradiction” as a fundamental property of truth (istina). In
chapter 7 of The Pillar, titled “Contradiction,” Florensky asserts: “A ratio-
nal formula can be above the attacks of life if and only if it gathers all of
life into itself, with all of life’s diversity and all of its present and possible
future contradictions,” “if and only if it foresees, so to speak, all objections
to itself and answers them.”9 The truth (istina), Florensky concludes, is self-
contradictory; it presupposes its own negation:

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 Antinomic Truth (Istina)

Therefore, truth is truth precisely because it is not afraid of any objections.

And it is not afraid of them because it itself says more against itself than any
negation can say, but truth combines this self-negation with affirmation. For
rationality, truth is contradiction, and this contradiction becomes explicit as
soon as truth acquires a verbal formulation. . . . The thesis and the antithesis
together form the expression of truth. In other words, truth is an antinomy,
and it cannot fail to be such.10

The next four pages of Florensky’s work contain complex mathematical for-
mulas and logical diagrams proving that truth is an antinomy.11
Florensky the theologian points out that antinomies lie at the very core
of Christian doctrines. They permeate Holy Scripture, especially the reli-
gious dialectic of the apostle Paul. Florensky provides several examples of
dogmatic antinomies, including the two natures united in Christ (divine ver-
sus human); the relation of man to God (predestination versus free will); sin
(“through the fall of Adam” versus “through the finitude of the flesh”); and
retribution (as “applied to all according to their works” versus “free forgive-
ness of the redeemed”).12 Florensky’s list is by no means exhaustive, but it is
highly suggestive. Unlike Old Testament law, the New Testament abounds
in parables, which are difficult to grasp logically. It narrates the glory of a
humiliated, ridiculed, and crucified Christ. It proclaims two seemingly in-
compatible truths, according to which Christ is fully God as well as fully
human. It propagates the idea of the “power of the weak.” It suggests that
one should love one’s enemies. Florensky insists that these are not inconsis-
tencies, but vital, living (zhivye) dogmas offered to the religious mind.
In the following years Florensky emphasized that antinomism was an
inherent quality of any life-giving thought (zhivaia mysl’). In a course of lec-
tures delivered in 1921, he argued that unlike heresies, which are always
one sided, genuine religious thought is always antinomic: “And any living
way of thinking [zhivoe myshlenie] relies on contradiction and lives by it.
And the more alive it is, the sharper the contradictions. Religious thinking
does not mitigate, but posits simultaneous Yes and No. Every Yes is the No
of the Other. And when it is achieved, by the act of faith the person rises
above reason, and again is perceived as a single whole.”13 For Florensky, the
antinomicity of truth is not necessarily a factor that disorients or destabilizes
the work of the mind. By providing freedom of choice, of thought, of inter-
pretation, of doubt, by keeping the mind awake, it preserves the mind’s san-
ity and protects it from stagnation. The constant necessity of confronting an
opposite assures the vitality of Christian dogmatics and guards against desic-
cated dogmatism. Florensky differentiated between dogmatics as a vital sys-
tem of Christian beliefs (dogmaty) and dogmatism as a set of authoritative
opinions, imposed and accepted without any proof, doubt, or criticism.14

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Other representatives of the Russian religious renaissance also con-

tributed to the theory of antinomies. In spite of his numerous disagreements
with Florensky, Berdyaev shared Florensky’s view on antinomism as a fun-
damental quality of Christian thought. In his Philosophy of Freedom (1911),
he validated the antinomic nature of religious consciousness. In his largely
negative review of Florensky’s Pillar, titled “Stylized Orthodoxy” (1914),
Berdyaev wrote:

The most valuable thing in f[athe]r Florensky’s book is his doctrine of antino-
mism. Religious life is essentially antinomic; it encompasses in itself theses,
which seem incompatible and contradictory to reason, and mystically [tainst-
venno] overcomes these contradictions. The antinomism of the transcendent
and immanent is unsolvable and unbridgeable rationally; it can be defeated
in religious experience and can be overcome in it. The contradictions are rec-
onciled in the highest spiritual enlightnment [vysshee ozarenie].15

Like Florensky and Berdyaev, Sergei Bulgakov took a stand against the Ar-
istotelian and Kantian approach to contradictions and antinomies. As he
wrote in Svet nevechernii (Unfading Light, 1917), “Antinomy does not imply
a mistake in reasoning or the overall falsity of a given epistemological mis-
conception, which can be clarified and thus eliminated. Orderly [vpolne za-
konomernye] antinomies are inherent to reason.”16 Vladimir Lossky shared
this point of view, arguing that the unsolvability of antinomies should not be
perceived as an intellectual trap. On the contrary, this unresolvability serves
as a beneficial spiritual stimulus:

The dogmas of the Church often present themselves to the human rea-
son as antinomies, the more difficult to resolve the more sublime the mys-
tery which they express. It is not a question of suppressing the antinomy by
adapting dogma to our understanding, but of a change of heart and mind en-
abling us to attain to the contemplation of the reality which reveals itself to
us as it raises us to God, and unites us, according to our several capacities, to
Him. The highest point of revelation, the dogma of the Holy Trinity, is pre-
eminently an antinomy.17

In his Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, Lossky traces the roots of
Christian Orthodox antinomism in Christian dogma and Greek patristics.
His chapter “The Divine Darkness” centers on the dichotomy of positive
(cataphatic) and negative (apophatic) theology, the knowable and the un-
knowable, which lies at the heart of the teachings of Dionysius the Areop-
agite. The chapter “God in Trinity” focuses on the antinomicity of unity and
trinity. A further discussion titled “Uncreated Energies” demonstrates that

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the distinction between divine essence and divine energies, crucial to the
teachings of the fourteenth-century Greek theologian Gregory Palamas, is
also antinomic: his idea of the inaccessibility of God on the one hand and of
the possibility of approaching him through his uncreated energies (netvar-
nye energii) on the other.18
In the late 1930s, the Russian philosopher Semyon Frank proposed the
term “antinomian monodualism” (or “antinomism”) to cover this complex of
paradoxes. By “antinomian monodualism,” Frank understands a fundamen-
tal ontological principle of uniting opposites, which differs both from their
dualistic separation and from their monistic synthesis. Frank calls this prin-
ciple “the unity of separation and undivided wholeness (or mutual penetra-
tion)” (edinstvo razdeleniia i slitnosti [vzaimoproniknoveniia]). He writes:

With this we arrive at a conclusion of the greatest significance; namely, that

the only adequate ontological framework for wise ignorance, insofar as it is
expressed in antinomical knowledge, is antinomian monodualism. It does not
matter what logically graspable opposites we have in mind: unity and diver-
sity, spirit and flesh, life and death, eternity and time, good and evil, Cre-
ator and creation. In the final analysis, in all these cases the logically sepa-
rate, based on mutual negation, is inwardly united, mutually permeating; in
all these cases the one is not the other but it also is the other; and only with,
in, and through the other is it what it genuinely is in its ultimate depth and
fullness. This makes up the antinomian monodualism of everything that ex-
ists; and in the face of this monodualism every monism and every dualism are
false, simplifying, distorting abstractions, which are not able to express the
concrete fullness and concrete structure of reality.19

To demonstrate that this type of unity is completely different from Hegelian

synthesis, Frank points to the “necessity, in relation to the unknowable, of
not negating negation in the usual logical sense, but of overcoming it—by
becoming conscious of its essence—in such a way as to preserve it in its
proper place of being.”20 In his monodualistic approach Frank thus combines
features of both dualistic and monistic approaches to opposites. Monodual-
ism simultaneously separates and reconciles dualism and monism, but rec-
onciles them differently than the Hegelian synthesis does: not by negating
the negation, but by contemplating thesis and antithesis in their inseparabil-
ity and indivisibility.
Although the philosophers of the Silver Age wrote extensively on Dos-
toevsky, Florensky’s ideas on the “antinomical truth” and Frank’s concept of
“antinomian monodualism” have never been considered in relation to the
concept of truth (istina) in Dostoevsky and to the major artistic principle of
Dostoevsky’s poetics, to which Mikhail Bakhtin gave the name dialogism.

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According to Bakhtin, the concrete manifestation of dialogic unity—

the idea of “dialogic truth”—was Dostoevsky’s invention, which had no
precedent in the history of ideas. The single exception Bakhtin finds is in
classical antiquity: in the Socratic dialogue and its derivative genre, Menip-
pean satire. We see, however, that the idea of dialogic truth is inherent in
the Russian religious tradition.

PAV EL F L O R ENS KY A ND M I KH A I L B A KH TI N ON
A NT I NO M I C (DI A L O G I C) T R UTH

The affinity between Florensky’s “antinomic truth” and Bakhtin’s “dialogic

truth” is fundamental for our understanding of the connection between Dos-
toevsky’s religious philosophy and his dialogism. Despite the fact that Flo-
rensky and Bakhtin worked in different fields, their theories and approach to
the world reveal numerous similarities. Some general affinities have already
been noted.21 Let us point out one more parallel. In his essay “Reason and
Dialectic,” published in 1914 as an appendix to The Pillar, Florensky wrote:

The dialectical development of thought cannot be represented by a simple

one-voiced melody [odnogolosoiu melodiei] of disclosures [raskrytii]. Spiri-
tual [dushevnaia] life, and especially religiously organized life, is an incom-
parably more coherent [sviaznoe] whole, more like a fabric or a lace, where
threads are interlaced in multifarious [mnogoobraznye] and complex designs.
Similarly, the dialectic is also an evolvement not of a single theme, but of
many themes, intertwining with each other and transforming into each other,
and again diverging from each other. And just as in life, where a singular
unified whole is formed only by a variety of functions and not by separate
abstract principles, so in dialectic, only the contrapuntal elaboration of the
basic melodies allows one to delve deeply and vitally into the subject being
studied.22

Florensky’s concept of dialectic clearly complements Bakhtin’s work on Dos-

toevsky. Curiously, in this passage (originally from the introductory speech
at the presentation of his dissertation “On Spiritual Truth,” eventually pub-
lished under the title The Pillar and Ground of the Truth), Florensky is de-
fining his own method, to which he gave the name dialectic.23 As we can see,
dialectic in Florensky’s definition and dialogism in Bakhtin’s are strikingly
similar. What is more, Florensky’s musical terminology is clearly analogous
to Bakhtin’s concepts of polyphony and multivoicedness.24
There are reasons to assume that by the time Bakhtin began working
on his book on Dostoevsky, he had become familiar with Florensky’s work. In

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the late 1910s and early 1920s, Bakhtin was associated with Petrograd philo-
sophical circles.25 In 1916 he entered the Petersburg Religious-Philosophical
Society, where he met with Lev Karsavin. During the early 1920s he asso-
ciated and polemicized with the philosopher and religious thinker Sergei
Askoldov, the founder of the Brotherhood of Saint Seraphim, a society heav-
ily influenced by Pavel Florensky’s ideas. But even if Bakhtin’s work on Dos-
toevsky was influenced by Florensky’s ideas, it should not be held against
Bakhtin that he did not credit his source. Like many Russian authors of this
period, he was indifferent to the issue of intellectual property. Florensky an-
alyzed antinomism in its theological context, whereas Bakhtin—who, after
all, was hoping to get his book published in atheistic Soviet Russia—focused
on the artistic structure of Dostoevsky’s novels. He dissociated the subject of
his discussion from any religious issues, and he had good reasons for doing
so. He most probably began writing his book on Dostoevsky in 1922—the
year when Berdyaev, Bulgakov, Lossky, and Frank were expelled from Rus-
sia and the “Florenskian” Brotherhood of Saint Seraphim was dissolved.
We recall that Bakhtin stated that dialogic opposition, unresolvable in
Dostoevsky, was “not a weakness of the author but his greatest strength.”26
Florensky’s doctrine clarifies why this is so from the theological (and, one
might say, mathematical) point of view. A single thesis cannot pretend to
represent the whole truth, because this type of wholeness is the wholeness
of a closed system. The genuine and vital (zhivaia) truth always remains
open; it includes in itself the possibility of its negation, even in the form
of a minor doubt. As soon as it closes the gate to doubt and leaves no room
for freedom, it turns into an arrogant assertion, into the indisputable for-
mula A = A.
Bakhtin warns that the dialogicality should not be confused with anti-
nomism.27 It must be pointed out that well read in German philosophy and
particularly fond of Kant, Bakhtin understands antinomism in the Kantian
sense. Unlike Kantian antinomism, which excludes the possibility of any in-
terpenetration of thesis and antithesis, Florensky’s concept of the “antinomic
truth” highlights their interdependence and nonresolution, which makes it
strikingly similar to Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism.28 Curiously, in the mid-
1920s, when Bakhtin was working on his book on Dostoevsky, Florensky
stated that the concept of the “antinomic truth” was central to his religious
philosophy.29
Florensky’s view of antinomic unity clarifies the Bakhtinian idea of
unfinalizability (nezavershennost’) and openness (otkrytost’), which Bakhtin
claimed was one of the major artistic principles governing Dostoevsky’s
novels. Antinomic unity is open and unfinalizable. It is open in the sense
that no thesis can be considered true until its antithesis is also a part of the
system. It is unfinalizable because the thesis and the antithesis are involved

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 Chapter Seven

in eternal interaction. The process of interaction is endless and has no ulti-

mate goal.

TW O T R U T HS I N T H E B R O T H E R S K A R A M A Z O V :
PRO A ND CO NT R A

Steven Cassedy observes that we can better understand thinkers’ ideas and
beliefs if we analyze the structure of their antinomies. After analyzing the
difference between Dostoevsky’s and Kant’s antinomies, Cassedy argues that
in Kant, though thesis and antithesis have the same origin in faith, both make
sense in the realm of reason, whereas in Dostoevsky, thesis and antithesis are
based on two distinct faculties: faith and reason. “In Dostoevsky,” he main-
tains, “the thesis makes sense only if it comes from a position of faith, while
the antithesis makes sense only if it comes from an absence of faith.”30 In his
view, therefore, the model of Dostoevsky’s universe depends on the choice
of premise. In this world, “thesis and antithesis offer no clever Kantian solu-
tion, since they remain on opposite sides of the faith-reason divide.”31 As
Cassedy observes, “To put it simply, Kant’s antinomies demonstrate the di-
vide between reason and faith and thus lead us to recognition of that divide;
Dostoevsky’s antinomies, by contrast, even in their simplest form, start with
the divide as a premise and lead nowhere.”32
I would argue that Dostoevsky’s antinomies lead us everywhere, for
each of them gives birth to a set of new ones. Let us look at books 5 and 6 of
The Brothers Karamazov. Ivan deals with contradictions in a Kantian, that is,
“Western,” way: he tries to resolve them.33 The very title of book 5 sets up an
opposition of pro and contra. Ivan’s mind operates in Aristotelian binaries.
He does not find congenial the Orthodox idea stating two truths—(1) man
is inherently good; (2) man is inherently flawed—because these two state-
ments, to him, constitute a plain contradiction. Trying to solve the problem
of the existence of evil in the world, he seeks a way out of contradictions and
cannot find it. He cannot accept the world created by God because violence
and evil exist in it. Eventually, his Euclidian mind and Aristotelian logic lead
him into an intellectual trap, which causes him to lose control of his most
precious gift: his mind.
Zosima exemplifies an alternative approach to contradictions. Signifi-
cantly, he sees through Ivan’s problem from the start; he notes that if the
contradictions cannot be resolved in Ivan “in a positive way,” they will never
be resolved “in the negative way” either (70). He suggests that one must not
search for a way out of an apparently contradictory truth. One must accept
the entire contradictory picture as somehow valid and true.
Book 6, “The Russian Monk,” testifies that theodicy (a vindication of

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 Antinomic Truth (Istina)

divine justice) is a problem more characteristic of the Western tradition. Ac-

cording to the Christian Orthodox tradition, God does not need our justi-
fication. Juridical terminology and imagery are rather foreign to Eastern
Christianity. Hence Zosima’s interpretation of Job’s sufferings: “But what is
great here is this very mystery—that the passing earthly image and eter-
nal truth here touched each other. In the face of earthly truth, the enacting
of eternal truth is accomplished” (292). Zosima preaches that one should
be neither the advocate of God nor “the judge of one’s fellow creatures.”
One should not judge one’s neighbor because there are neither absolute sin-
ners nor absolutely righteous men. Everyone is “guilty in everything before
everyone.” Zosima’s indirect answer to Ivan is that one should not fear evil,
and one should love the sinner: “Brothers, do not be afraid of men’s sin, love
man also in his sin, for this likeness of God’s love is the height of love on
earth” (318–19).
There is beauty in Zosima’s arguments, but this beauty does not imply
that in The Brothers Karamazov, the truth verbalized by the elder triumphs
over Ivan’s truth. Dostoevsky constructs the arguments of his characters in
such a way that their truths are not just conflicting but are also mutually
fulfilling. Zosima’s teachings reveal their wisdom only in the context of Ivan’s
philosophy. Divorced from the problems occupying Ivan’s mind, they sound
rosy. Without Ivan’s pain for the suffering children, Zosima’s model of the
world remains incomplete, anemic, and devoid of “earthly truth.” His mysti-
cal discourse, which breaks all laws of Aristotelian logic, acquires meaning
only when it is juxtaposed with Ivan’s reasoning.
In the characters of Zosima and Ivan, Dostoevsky shows how two
contradictory statements can each be valid. He constructs an antinomy in
which thesis and antithesis are inseparable. Ivan is right in his attempt to
attain truth by understanding divine design. Zosima is right in his claim
that truth is unattainable because humans are unable to understand divine
design. As mentioned in the introduction, a very similar antinomy lies at
the core of the cataphatic and apophatic theology of Dionysius the Areop-
agite.34 Similar antitheses and paradoxes permeate Heraclitus’s fragments
and Lao Tzu’s sayings.
Presenting Zosima’s thesis and Ivan’s antithesis (or vice versa: Ivan’s
thesis and Zosima’s antithesis35) to his readers, Dostoevsky stands on both
sides and for both sides simultaneously. Moreover, he sees both books as
culminating points of the novel. In a letter to his editor N. A. Liubimov
dated May 10, 1879, Dostoevsky calls book 5, “Pro and Contra,” the culmi-
nation of the novel. In this letter he points out that Ivan’s arguments about
the unjust suffering of the children are “irrefutable” (neoproverzhimy),
which means that Dostoevsky accepts their validity.36 Similarly, while work-
ing on book 6, “The Russian Monk,” in a letter to Liubimov dated August 7

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 Chapter Seven

(19), 1879, Dostoevsky calls this book the culmination of the novel. He then
adds: “It’s obvious that many of my elder Zosima’s teachings (or better to
say the manner of their expression) belong to his personage, that is, to the
artistic depiction of it. Although I quite share the ideas that he expresses,
if I personally were expressing them, on my own behalf, I would express
them in a different form and a different language.”37 The last observation
is essential. It shows that the antinomic view on the nature of things can be
expressed in various modes. Zosima’s Christian ideas are expressed in mono-
logic form, by means of monologic language (one reason they are so often
discounted): book 6 consists of Zosima’s homilies dictated to Alyosha and
recorded by him. Conversely, Dostoevsky in his novel remains dialogic: he
engages Zosima’s truth in a dialogue with Ivan’s truth.
Zosima is not bothered by contradictions and accepts both the good
and the evil that reside in the world. But Zosima’s wisdom cannot pretend
to be the ultimate truth in the novel because it is contingent upon its an-
tithesis—Ivan’s rebellion. The inner truth in The Brothers Karamazov takes
neither side and does not rest in the middle. It includes both, a thesis and its
antithesis, involved in a dialogue.
Of course, being a Russian writer, Dostoevsky was preoccupied with
the question What is truth? If he were a monologic thinker, his answer would
correspond to the formula “Truth is this, and nothing else.” The shortest,
most efficient route to it would be the best. But truth, according to Dos-
toevsky, is contradictory, which is why he permitted no shortcuts. Events
must spread out horizontally, in a commixture of good and evil, brightness
and darkness, before they are judged vertically. Dostoevsky shows us the
lengthy, crooked, and veiled routes of this pulsating mixture.

120
 Concluding Notes

As we have seen, in Dostoevsky’s dialectics, sin plays the role of a prime mover,
for the writer is concerned with the dynamic nature of transgression. Akin to
a microscopic virus—emerging, spreading, mutating, causing pandemics—
sin is dangerous because of its ability for expansion and growth. According to
Dostoevsky, a tiny sin is capable of infecting and destroying the whole planet.
For this very reason, one is responsible for all. We recall that having cor-
rupted the Golden Age planet the Ridiculous Man confesses: “Like a hor-
rible trichina, like the germ of the plague infecting whole kingdoms, so did I
infect with myself all that happy earth that knew no sin before me” (280). In
a Siberian hospital, Raskolnikov has a nightmare of another pandemic—the
world is affected by a terrible pestilence spreading from Asia: “Everyone was
to perish, except for certain, very few, chosen ones. Some new trichinae had
appeared, microscopic creatures that lodged themselves in men’s bodies”
(547). Contaminated by this virus, people lose their ability to tell good from
evil. The idea that a tiny microorganism has the potential to cause global
catastrophes is part of Dostoevsky’s moral philosophy.
The connection between Dostoevsky’s dialectics and the problem of
sin has yet another dimension. For centuries, Western theology and philos-
ophy has seen Adam’s Fall as the most macabre event in biblical history,
which resulted in God’s curse of the earth, Eve’s painful childbirth, and Ad-
am’s mortality. Characteristically, Robert Burton opens his seminal treatise
Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) with a discussion of original sin, claiming
that it transformed man into a miserable being haunted by fear and despair.
In his monumental study of the Western guilt culture of the thirteenth to
eighteenth centuries, the modern French historian Jean Delumeau ap-
proaches this idea from a similar perspective: “Christian civilization placed
the Fall at the center of its preoccupations and construed it as a catastrophe
initiating all history.”1 “For an entire civilization, Original Sin had become
a sort of deus ex machina,” he maintains, “constantly used as the final and
definitive reason for all that goes bad in the universe.”2 Even Machiavelli,
Montaigne, and Michelangelo, he claims, “most often felt fragile and sinful,

121
 Concluding Notes

susceptible to melancholy, and anguished by the rapid decline of an aging,

decrepit world.”3 Delumeau further argues that the emphasis on the origi-
nal sin, dominating Western culture for many centuries, in fact represents
a divergence from the early Church tradition, specifically from Saint Paul’s
doctrine of sin:

In any case, the result was a type of preaching that spoke more of the Pas-
sion of the Savior than of His Resurrection, more of sin than of pardon, of
the Judge than of the Father, of Hell than of Paradise. There was thus a true
deviation from Saint Paul’s tidings that “where sin abounded grace did much
more abound” (Rom. 5:20). Hence one might consider whether the rejec-
tion of an oppressive doctrinal campaign was one of the causes of the “de-
Christianization” of the West.4

To borrow Delumeau’s phrasing, Dostoevsky, like Saint Paul, “speaks a lan-

guage of hope.”5 In his dialectics, he follows the early Church tradition, dem-
onstrating that sin and grace both abound on earth, putting an emphasis on
the coming of the second Adam—Christ’s redemption of sins.
It is important to stress that unlike Western theology, Christian Ortho-
dox thought does not operate with the notion of the original sin. It does not
teach that man shares guilt for the Fall of Adam. Rather, as a result of this
event, man is born into a fallen world and therefore becomes susceptible to
sinning. Dostoevsky takes this argument a step further. He seems to sug-
gest that the consequences of Adam’s fall were twofold. The Fall resulted
in man’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden, but at the same time, tasting
of the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge opened his eyes, put into
focus the world’s dual nature, highlighted the proximity of good and evil,
sin and grace, thus stimulating man’s conscience, strengthening his aware-
ness, and allowing him the dignity of free choice. A neo-Orthodox thinker,
Dostoevsky presents the idea of world’s fallen-ness not as the cursed and
desperate condition of man subjected to sickness and death but as a dialec-
tical experience of the world’s vibrant oppositions. In this world, polarities
flow into each other. Though Eve’s childbearing causes excruciating pangs, it
gives way to the celebration of a new life. Adam’s death returns him to dust
but further opens the gate to Resurrection. The day is extinguished in night
and then a new day begins.
Dostoevsky’s works confirm the Good News of Christianity—the tri-
umph of light over darkness. This Christian truth coexists and interacts re-
ciprocally in his novels with another, bitter, but also Christian truth, accord-
ing to which the world is constantly threatened by chaos and apocalypse.
Both processes take place synchronically and continually. Biblical history is

122
 Concluding Notes

linear in its exposition but its events are actualized every day and every hour.
At the very moment when the Christian world is celebrating Easter, wars are
being fought and the tears of innocent children are being shed. The truth
(istina), as Dostoevsky presents it, consists not in the fact that one of these
realities negates another. The dialectic truth insists that both of these reali-
ties are real.

123
 Notes

INTRODUCTION

1. See Dmitrii Merezhkovskii, L. Tolstoi i Dostoevskii, Literaturnye pamiat-

niki Series, ed. E. A. Andrushchenko (Moscow: Nauka, 2000), and Nikolai Los-
skii, Dostoevskii i ego khristianskoe miroponimanie (New York: Izdatel’stvo imeni
Chekhova, 1953).
2. James Scanlan, Dostoevsky the Thinker (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University
Press, 2002), 231.
3. Ibid., 4.
4. Ivanov’s essay “Osnovnoi mif v romane ‘Besy’ ” (“The Central Myth in
the Novel ‘The Possessed’ ”) and Bulgakov’s essay “Russkaia tragediia” (“Russian
Tragedy”) were published in the monthly literary / political magazine Russkaia
mysl’.
5. For the English version of this essay, see Vyacheslav Ivanov, Freedom and
the Tragic Life: A Study in Dostoevsky, trans. Norman Cameron, ed. S. Kon-
ovalov, foreword by Sir Maurice Bowra (New York: Noonday Press, 1952).
6. Steven Cassedy, Dostoevsky’s Religion (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
2005), 3.
7. On Dostoevsky and Russian religious philosophers of the Silver Age, see
recent articles: A. G. Gacheva, “Tvorchestvo Dostoevskogo i russkaia religiozno-
filosofskaia mysl’ kontsa XIX—pervoi treti XX veka,” in Dostoevskii i XX vek, ed.
T. A. Kasatkina (Moscow: IMLI RAN, 2007), 1:18–96; Elena Novikova, “ ‘Mir
spaset krasota’ F. M. Dostoevskogo i russkaia religioznaia filosofiia kontsa XIX—
pervoi poloviny XX veka,” in Dostoevskii i XX vek, 1:97–124; Mikhail Aksenov
Meerson, “Rozhdenie Filosofii iz Dukha Literatury na stsene russkogo persona-
lizma,” in Dostoevskii i XX vek, 1:125–42; B. N. Tikhomirov, “Diskussionnye vo-
prosy interpretatsii khristianskogo mirovozzreniia Dostoevskogo v svete rabot
V. V. Zen’kovskogo,” in Dostoevskii i XX vek, 1:199–216.
8. Georgii Florovskii, “Religioznye temy Dostoevskogo,” in O Dostoevskom:
Tvorchestvo Dostoevskogo v russkoi mysli, 1881–1931, ed. E. L. Novitskaia
(Moscow: Kniga, 1990), 386–90.

125
 Notes to Pages 5–8

9. A. Boyce Gibson, The Religion of Dostoevsky (Philadelphia: Westminster

Press, 1973).
10. Ibid., 76.
11. Ibid., 209.
12. Cassedy, Dostoevsky’s Religion, 108.
13. Ibid.
14. Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, ed. and trans. Caryl
Emerson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984).
15. Ibid., 30.
16. Caryl Emerson has noted the “beneficence” of Bakhtin’s readings, how
Bakhtin remains relatively aloof toward the vertical axis of Dostoevsky’s world
and the characters’ religious epiphanies, rarely analyzing scenes of radical trans-
formation. See Caryl Emerson, “Word and Image in Dostoevsky’s Worlds: Rob-
ert Louis Jackson on Readings That Bakhtin Could Not Do,” in Freedom and
Responsibility in Russian Literature: Essays in Honor of Robert Louis Jack-
son, ed. E. C. Allen and G. S. Morson (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University
Press; New Haven, Conn.: Yale Center for International and Area Studies, 1995),
245–66.
17. Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 18.
18. Gary Saul Morson, “Paradoxical Dostoevsky,” SEEJ 43, no. 3 (Fall
1999): 471.
19. For a detailed discussion of Hegel’s dialectics, see G. W. F. Hegel’s
Science of Logic, trans. W. H. Johnson and L. G. Struthers, with an introduc-
tory preface by Viscount Haldane of Cloan, vol. 1 (New York: Humanities Press,
1966).
20. The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, ed. Lesley Brown, 2 vols.
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 1:660.
21. Charles H. Kahn, The Art and Thought of Heraclitus: An Edition of the
Fragments with Translation and Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1979), 71.
22. Ibid., 75.
23. Ibid., 85.
24. Lao Tsu, “The Tao Te Ching,” in The Sacred Books of China: The Texts of
Taoism, trans. J. Legge, ed. F. M. Muller (New York: Dover Publications, 1962),
1:47.
25. See Geir Kjetsaa, Dostoevsky and His New Testament, Slavica Norvegica
Series 3 (Oslo: Solum, 1984), 52–60.
26. Pseudo-Dionysius, “The Divine Names,” in his Complete Works, trans.
Colm Luibheid (New York: Paulist Press, 1987), 108–9 (872A).
27. Nicholas of Cusa, On Learned Ignorance, translation and appraisal of De
Docta Ignorantia by J. Hopkins (Minneapolis: Arthur J. Banning Press, 1981).

126
 Notes to Pages 8–13

28. Nicholas Berdyaev, Dostoevsky, trans. Donald Attwater (New York: Me-
ridian Books, 1968), 13.
29. Kahn, Art and Thought of Heraclitus, 65.
30. For a discussion of these images, see G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and M. Scho-
field, The Presocratic Philosophers, 2nd ed. (1957; repr., Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1983), 192–93.
31. This idea is characteristic of various strands of Chinese thought.
32. There is an ancient Chinese tradition of commentary on Tai Chi. The
idea is first mentioned in the Book of the Master Mo in the fourth century b.c.
and in the Book of the Master Chuang in the third century b.c. Some scholars
suggest that yin and yang were first used as philosophical terms in chapter 5 of ap-
pendix 5 of the I Ching. See Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 2:274.
33. Later, when Bohr was knighted for his achievements, he used this dia-
gram in his coat of arms.
34. See S. M. Eizenshtein, “Rezhissura,” in Izbrannye proizvedeniia (Mos-
cow: Iskusstvo, 1966), 4:653–64.
35. Late in life, Tolstoy remarked ironically of Dostoevsky: “He ought to
have acquainted himself with the teaching of Confucius or the Buddhists; that
would have calmed him down. It is the chief thing everyone should know.” See
Maxim Gorky, Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Andreev, trans. Kather-
ine Mansfield, S. S. Koteliansky, and Leonard Woolf (London: Hogarth Press,
1968), 64–65.
36. S. A. Askol’dov, “Dostoevskii kak uchitel’ zhizni,” in O Dostoevskom:
Tvorchestvo Dostoevskogo v russkoi mysli, 1881–1931, ed. V. M. Borisov and
A. V. Roginskii (Moscow: Kniga, 1990), 258.
37. P. A. Florenskii, “Iz avtobiograficheskikh vospominanii,” Voprosy litera-
tury, no. 1 (1988): 159. The translation is mine.
38. Berdyaev, Dostoevsky, 93–94.
39. See Pavel Florensky’s examples of dogmatic antinomies in his Pillar and
Ground of the Truth, trans. B. Yakim, with an introduction by R. F. Gustafson
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997), 121–23.
40. V. V. Rozanov, “Na lektsii o Dostoevskom,” in Vlastitel’ dum: F. M. Do-
stoevskii v russkoi kritike kontsa XIX–nachala XX veka, ed. N. Ashimbaeva (St.
Petersburg: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1997), 261–62. The translation is
mine.
41. The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection, Cistercian
Studies 59, trans. Benedicta Ward, SLG, with a preface by Metropolitan Anthony
Bloom, rev. ed. (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1984), 219–20.
42. Vladimir Lossky writes: “The two natures of Christ, without being mixed,
nonetheless know a certain interpenetration. The divine energies radiate the di-

127
 Notes to Pages 13–16

vinity of Christ and penetrate His humanity: the latter is therefore deified from
the moment of the Incarnation, like an iron in a brazier that becomes fire though
remaining iron by nature. The Transfiguration partially reveals to the Apostles
this blazing of divine energies irradiating the human nature of their Master.”
See Vladimir Lossky, Orthodox Theology: An Introduction, trans. Ian and Ihita
Kesarcodi-Watson (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1989), 98.
43. Pseudo-Dionysius, “Divine Names,” 108–9 (872A).
44. It is important to stress that the principle of duality-in-unity is inher-
ently Christian and must not be confused with Gnostic dualism. On Gnostic ele-
ments in Dostoevsky, see Boris Tikhomirov, “Nasledie Dostoevskogo i gnostiche-
skaia traditsiia,” in XXI vek glazami Dostoevskogo: Perspektivy chelovechestva.
Proceedings from the International Conference, Chiba University (Japan), Au-
gust 22–25, 2000, ed. Toefusa Kinosita and Karen Stepanian (Moscow: Graal’,
2002), 298–303.
45. See Sergei Bulgakov, “Antinomiia ikony,” in Pervoobraz i obraz: Sochi-
neniia (Moscow: Iskussvo, 1999), 2:262. The translation is mine.
46. See Jung’s foreword to The I Ching, or Book of Changes, Bollingen Se-
ries XIX, trans. Richard Wilhelm and Cary F. Baynes (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1969), xxi–xxxix. Also see C. G. Jung, Syncronicity; an Acausal
Connecting Principle, trans. R. F. C. Hull (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1973).
47. Jung’s principle of syncronicity has much in common with Bakhtin’s con-
cept of coeventness (sobytiinost’). On polyphony as a theory of creativity, see
Gary Saul Morson and Caryl Emerson’s “The Unity of Creative Eventness,” in
Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1990), 256–59.
48. Ibid., 9. See B. M. Engel’gard, “Ideologicheskii roman Dostoevskogo,”
in Izbrannye trudy, ed. A. B. Muratov (St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo S.-Peterburg-
skogo universiteta, 1995), 270–308.
49. Ibid., 25.
50. Ibid., 26. The original 1929 edition of Bakhtin’s book on Dostoevsky
(Problemy tvorchestva Dostoevskogo) containted another reminder that in Dos-
toevsky there is no dialectical synthesis. This passage was removed from the
1963 edition. See Mikhail Bakhtin, “Three Fragments from the 1929 Edition of
Problems of Dostoevsky’s Art,” appendix 1 in his Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poet-
ics, 279.
51. I would not go as far as to suggest that it was Dostoevsky’s goal to under-
mine Hegelian dialectics, for we do not know to what extent he was familiar with
Hegel. Such claims have been made, however: in his article “Hegel and Dosto-
evsky,” the Estonian philosopher of physics V. P. Khut argues that not only was
Dostoevsky familiar with Hegel’s ideas but also challenged them. Specifically,
Khut points to the fact that in Dostoevsky, opposites are not stages, but camps

128
 Notes to Pages 16–18

(stany); here contradictions are resolved not by means of a linear “sublation”

(when opposites absorb each other), but by means of the intensification of their
contrast. Khut further defines Dostoevsky’s methodological principle as “analogy
against contraposition” (analogiia na fone protivopostavleniia) and compares it to
Niels Bohr’s principle of complementarity. See V. P. Khutt, “Gegel’ i Dostoevskii
(K voprosu o vliianii idei Gegelia na tvorchestvo Dostoevskogo),” Uchenye zapi-
ski Tartuskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta 787 (1989): 91–103. (Trudy po filo-
sofii, 33). F. G. Nikitina suggests that Dostoevsky might have first learned about
Hegel from the members of Petrashevsky’s circle, who criticized German phi-
losophers, especially Hegel, for their concern with abstract ideas and alienation
from real life. See F. G. Nikitina, “Dostoevskii protiv Gegelia,” in Dostoevskii i
mirovaia kul’tra, Al’manakh 20 (Moscow: Serebrianyi vek, 2004), 132–47.
52. The testimony is from Sergei Bocharov, writing in 1993 of discussions
he had with Bakhtin in the summer of 1970, five years before Bakhtin’s death:
S. G. Bocharov, “Ob odnom razgovore i vokrug nego,” Novoe literaturnoe oboz-
renie 2 (1993): 70–89, esp. 71–72. In this discussion, Bakhtin remarks that every-
thing created under the “unfree sky” of the Soviet period was “morally flawed.”
When Bocharov asked, “What could be morally flawed in your book on Dosto-
evsky?” Bakhtin replied that he “couldn’t speak directly about the main ques-
tions,” that he had “severed form from the main thing.” The abridged English
translation renders the relevant passage this way: “[Bocharov]: ‘What main ques-
tions, M. M.?’ [Bakhtin]: ‘Philosophical questions. What Dostoevsky agonized
about all his life—the existence of God.’ ” See Sergei Bocharov, “Conversations
with Bakhtin,” trans. Stephen Blackwell and Vadim Liapunov, PMLA 109, no. 5
(October 1994): 1009–24, esp. 1012. In the recent years, the topic “Bakhtin and
religion” has attracted the attention of many scholars, both in Russia and in the
West. See, for example, Ruth Coates, Christianity in Bakhtin: God and the Ex-
iled Author (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Alexandar Mi-
hailovic, Corporeal Words: Mikhail Bakhtin’s “Theology of Discourse” (Evans-
ton, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1997); S. M. Felch and P. J. Contino,
eds., Bakhtin and Religion: A Feeling for Faith (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern
University Press, 2001); N. D. Tamarchenko, “Estetika slovesnogo tvorchestva”
Bakhtina i russkaia religioznaia filosofiia (Moscow: Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi
gumanitarnyi universitet, 2001; Keril (Caryl) Emerson, “Russkoe Pravoslavie i
rannii Bakhtin,” in Bakhtinskii sbornik: Bakhtin mezhdu Rossiei i zapadom, ed.
D. Kuindzhich and L. Makhlin (Moscow: RGGU 1991), 2:44–69.
53. Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 27.
54. Ibid., 16.
55. Ibid., 289.
56. Morson and Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics, 256.
57. See Pavel Florenskii, “Symbolarium (slovar’ simvolov),” in Sochineniia
v chetyrekh tomakh, eds. Hegumen Andronik (A. S. Trubachev), P. V. Floren-

129
 Notes to Pages 18–28

skii, and M. S. Trubacheva (Moscow: Mysl’, 1996), 2:564–90. Vasily Rozanov

elaborates on a similar image—a bright ray of light: “The composition of this
‘white ray’ in ‘dark Dostoevsky’ is almost as complex as the composition of simple
white light as we know it.” He lists its three major components: “the Face [lik] of
Christ,” which Dostoevsky viewed as an indisputable celestial beauty; his sense of
Russian identity; and his “subjectively religious pantheism” (as in his ruminations
on the Ursa Major constellation in The Diary of the Writer). See V. V. Rozanov,
“Razmolvka mezhdu Dostoevskim i Solov’evym,” in Vlastitel’ dum: F. M. Dosto-
evskii v russkoi kritike kontsa XIX-nachala XX veka, ed. N. Ashimbaeva (St. Pe-
tersburg: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1997), 253. The translation is mine. In
his book on Dostoevsky, Grigory Pomerants elaborates on the importance of the
dot (point) in Dostoevsky in reference to the radical point of transformation in
the evolution of his characters. Borrowing the expression tochka bezumiia (point
of frenzy) from a poem by Osip Mandelshtam, he speaks of the “points of con-
science” (tochki sovesti) in Dostoevsky’s characters, which delineate the develop-
ment of the plot. He suggests that these dots resemble the liminal stage in rites
of passage as described by the anthropologist Arnold van Gennep, the stage in
which a person experiences metamorphosis. In other words, Pomerants views
these points as sharp ends and beginnings, but simultaneously as a continuum.
See Grigorii Pomerants, Otkrytost’ bezdne: Vstrechi s Dostoevskim (Moscow:
ROSSPEN, 2003), 157–59.
58. Florensky, The Pillar and Ground of the Truth, 56.
59. The title of this chapter is borrowed from Grigory Pomerants’s book on
Dostoevsky. The whole sentence reads: “The devil begins with froth on the lips of
an angel who has entered the struggle for goodness, truth, and justice.” See Grig-
orii Pomerants, Otkrytost’ bezdne, 108. The translation is mine.
60. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Complete Letters, 5 vols. (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis,
1991), 5:189.

CHAPTER ONE

1. Askol’dov, “Dostoevskii kak uchitel’ zhizni,” in Borisov and Roginskii, O

Dostoevskom, 253.
2. Konstantin Mochulsky, Dostoevsky: His Life and Work, trans. with an in-
troduction by Michael A. Minihan (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1967), 312.
3. Lev Shestov, Dostoevskii i Nitsshe (Berlin: Skify, 1923), 71–72.
4. Ernest J. Simmons, Dostoevsky: The Making of a Novelist (London: Ox-
ford University Press, 1940; repr., London: J. Lehmann, 1950), 152–53.
5. Michael Holquist, Dostoevsky and the Novel (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1977), 100–101.

130
 Notes to Pages 28–32

6. Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky: The Miraculous Years, 1865–1871 (Princeton,

N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995), 147.
7. Gary Rosenshield, Crime and Punishment: The Techniques of the Omni-
scient Author (Lisse: Peter de Ridder Press, 1978), 110–31.
8. Ibid., 117.
9. David Matual, “In Defense of the Epilogue of Crime and Punishment,” in
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment,” ed. with an introduction by Har-
old Bloom (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 2004), 105–14.
10. This chapter is based on my paper “Ot pokaianiia k raskaianiiu: drev-
nerusskaia “Povest’ ob Andree Kritskom’ i velikie greshniki Dostoevskogo” pre-
sented at the 13th Symposium of the International Dostoevsky Society, Budapest,
Hungary, July 2007. It is forthcoming under the title “Saint Andrew of Crete and
Dostoevsky’s Great Sinners” in Aspects of Dostoevsky’s Poetics in the Context
of Literary-Cultural Dialogues, eds. Katalin Kroó, Géza S. Horváth, and Tünde
Szabó, Dostoevsky Monographs, a Series of the International Dostoevsky Society,
vol. 3 (St. Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin).
11. In all these instances italics are mine. In Constance Garnett’s and David
Magarshacks’s translations of the novel, the word raskaianie is rendered as “re-
pentance.” Jessie Coulson uses the word “remorse” in his translation.
12. Renata Gzhegorchikova, “O raskaianii, pokaianii i drugikh aktakh, sviaz-
annykh s chuvstvom viny,” in Sokrovennye smysly. Slovo. Tekst. Kul’tura. Sbornik
statei v chest’ N. D. Arutiunovoi, ed. Iu. D. Apresian (Moscow: Iazyki slavianskoi
kul’tury, 2004), 560.
13. John Chryssavgis, Repentance and Confession in the Orthodox Church
(Brookline, Mass.: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1990), 6.
14. R. L. Belknap, “The Unrepentant Confession,” in Russianness: Studies on
a Nation’s Identity, Studies of the Harriman Institute, in honor of Rufus Mathew-
son, 1918–1978, ed. R. L. Belknap (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1990), 113–22.
15. Frederica Mathewes-Green, First Fruits of Prayer: A Forty-Day Journey
Through the Canon of St. Andrew (Brewster, Mass.: Paraclete Press, 2006), 3.
16. Ibid., 69.
17. Ibid., 105.
18. See Fedor Dostoevskii, “Zapisnaia tetrad’ 1875–76 goda,” PSS, 24:184
and 24:195.
19. E. K. Romodanovskaia, Russkaia literatura na poroge novogo vremeni:
Puti formirovaniia russkoi belletristiki perekhodnogo perioda (Novosibirsk: VO
Nauka, 1994), 39–40.
20. See O. A. Belobrova, “Andrei Kritskii v drevnerusskoi literature i isk-
usstve,” in Trudy otdela drevnerusskoi literatury, ed. D. S. Likhachev (St. Peters-
burg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 1999), LI, 206–20, and M. N. Klimova, “Opyt tekstologii
povesti ob Andree Kritskom,” in Drevnerusskaia rukopisnaia kniga i ee bytovanie

131
 Notes to Pages 32–35

v Sibiri, ed. N. N. Pokrovskii and E. K. Romodanovskaia (Novosibirsk: Nauka,

1982), 46–61.
21. “Legenda o krovosmesitele,” in Pamiatniki starinnoi russkoi literatury,
ed. Nikolai Kostomarov (St. Petersburg: Izd. Kushelev-Bezborodko, 1860–62),
2:415–17.
22. Ibid., 416.
23. Ibid., 416–17.
24. “Iz mogil’nykh predanii. Legenda o krovosmesitele,” prepared for publi-
cation by Nikolai Kostomarov, Sovremennik 80 (March 1860): 209–29.
25. It was entitled “Zagranichnye preniia. O polozhenii russkogo dukho-
venstva” and published in Sovremennik 80 (March 1860): 1–19.
26. N. I. Kostomarov, Istoricheskie monografii i issledovaniia (St. Peters-
burg, 1872), 1:313–15.
27. Kostomarov’s collection also contained “The Legend of a Drunkard,”
which influenced Marmeladov’s plotline in Crime and Punishment. See L. M.
Lotman, “Romany Dostoevskogo i russkaia legenda,” in Russkaia literatura,
no. 2 (1972): 129–41. Less than two pages long, this legend is about “a man who
drank in the early morning during holy days and praised God with every cup he
downed.” When the man dies, God sends his angel to take up the drunkard’s
soul. Brought to the heavenly gates, the drunkard meets several saints and asks
them to let him enter paradise. He begins to argue successively with Saint Peter,
Saint Paul, King David, and King Solomon. None of them opens the gate, pre-
senting the same reason over and over again: “The drunkard cannot enter Para-
dise.” All four boast about their own virtuousness. The drunkard has his counter-
arguments; he reminds them that the apostle Peter betrayed Christ, that the
apostle Paul threw stones at the great martyr Stephen, that King David fell in
love with the wife of Uriah and thus was responsible for the death of his soldier,
and that King Solomon bowed to idols and rejected Christ. In other words, the
drunkard reminds these four saintsmen that they have sinned in their earthly
lives. Eventually, during his argument with Saint John the Theologian, the drunk-
ard manages to convince him of the necessity to love one’s neighbor and prompts
him to open the gate.
28. Fyodor Dostoevsky to A. N. Maikov, March 25 (April 6), 1870, PSS, 29 /
I:118. The translation is mine.
29. Ibid., 117.
30. Mochulsky, Dostoevsky: His Life and Work, 403.
31. This legend became the basis of Thomas Mann’s novel The Holy Sinner
(1951). Mann knew it from the medieval collection “Gesta Romanorum” (thir-
teenth century), but his major source was the poem “Gregorius” (ca. 1190) by
Hartmann von Aue (1165–1210).
32. Chryssavgis, Repentance and Confession, 6.
33. In some translations from Greek it is rendered as “Gate of Repentance.”

132
 Notes to Pages 35–41

34. Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 61.

35. William Rowe, “Dostoevskian Staircase Drama,” in Patterns in Russian
Literature II: Notes on Classics (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1988), 67.
36. P. M. Bitsilli, “K voprosu o vnutrennei forme romana Dostoevskogo,” in
O Dostoevskom: Stat’i, ed. Donald Fanger (Providence, R.I.: Brown University
Press, 1966), 53.
37. Dominique Arban, “ ‘Porog’ u Dostoevskogo (Tema, motiv i poniatie),”
in Dostoevskii. Materialy i issledovaniia, ed. V. G. Bazanov, vol. 2 (Leningrad:
Nauka, 1976).
38. See Mikhail Bakhtin, “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the
Novel,” in The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin, ed. Mi-
chael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University
of Texas Press, 1981), 146–51, 224–42.
39. See Matual, “In Defense of the Epilogue,” 106.
40. Bakhtin writes: “If a certain partiality on the part of Dostoesvky the jour-
nalist for specific ideas and images is sometimes sensed in his novels, then it is
evident only in superficial aspects (for example, in the conventionally monologic
epilogue to Crime and Punishment) and is not capable of destroying the powerful
artistic logic of the polyphonic novel. Dostoevsky the artist always triumphs over
Dostoevsky the journalist.” Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 92.
41. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground
and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit” (John 12:24).

CHAPTER TWO

1. This chapter was published in Russian under the title “ ‘Putem zerna’:
Motiv elevsinskikh misterii v romane ‘Brat’ia Karamazovy’ ” (“ ‘By Way of a Grain’:
The Motif of Eleusinian Mysteries in ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ ”) in Word,
Music, History: A Festschrift for Caryl Emerson, Stanford Slavic Studies, ed.
Lazar Fleishman, Gabriella Safran, and Michael Wachtel, vols. 29–30 (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2005), 416–32. After this book was completed, I found
an article by Katalin Kroó, which approaches the same topic from a different per-
spective. See Katalin Kroó, “Eshche raz o taine gimna v romane ‘Brat’ia Karama-
zovy” (“Elevsinskii prazdnik”—misteriia gimna), in Dostoevskii i mirovaia kul’tra,
170–92.
2. According to Alexandra Lyngstad, “The Eleusinian Festival” should be un-
derstood as the triumph of humanity, completing its development from a primi-
tive state to a highly developed culture. She notes that in Dostoevsky’s novel,
where the Karamazovian element emerges as a sort of cannibalism, the theme of
the caveman’s transformation into a civilized and noble creature has a special sig-
nificance. Dostoevsky and Schiller come to similar conclusions: the overcoming
of primitive savagery is possible only through man’s union with earth. See Alex-

133
 Notes to Pages 41–43

andra H. Lyngstad, Dostoevskij and Schiller (The Hague-Paris: Mouton, 1975).

E. I. Lysenkova notes a further aspect of “The Eleusinian Festival”—the problem
of man’s abjectness, his helplessness and weakness, a problem that Mitya Kara-
mazov’s soul rebels sharply against. She writes that according to Schiller and Dos-
toevsky, the escape from this abject state can be found in the union between man
and Mother Earth. E. I. Lysenkova, “Znachenie shillerovskikh otrazhenii v ro-
mane F. M. Dostoevskogo ‘Brat’ia Karamazovy,’ ” Dostoevskii i mirovaia kul’tura,
no. 2 (1994): 176–98. E. A. Trofimov has made interesting observations about
Schiller’s poem in his article “Mir Zhukovskogo v tvorcheskom osmyslenii F. M.
Dostoevskogo,” Dostoevskii i mirovaia kul’tura, Al’manakh 10 (1998): 142–49.
3. Ivanov, Freedom and the Tragic Life, 142.
4. The title “Homeric Hymn” does not mean that the author of this hymn is
Homer. Myths designated as Homeric are generally considered to date from the
seventh to sixth centuries b.c. and are now regarded as a largely anonymous col-
lection of works. Some scholars believe that they were written by Hesiod, but this
proposition is disputed. They are distinguished from Orphic hymns, which were
composed in either the late Hellenistic or the early Roman era and had a par-
ticular significance for Orphism and its mystery cult.
5. See N. J. Richardson, ed., The Homeric Hymn to Demeter (Oxford: Clar-
endon Press, 1974), 76.
6. Ibid., 26.
7. Helene P. Foley, ed., The Homeric Hymn to Demeter: Translation Com-
mentary, and Interpretive Essays (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1994), 26, 477–82. Mention of the cleansing and transformation that went along
with participation in the Mysteries appears in Plato’s Phaedo, in Socrates’ speech:
“Whereas truth to tell, temperance, justice, and bravery may in fact be a kind
of purification of all such things, and wisdom itself a kind of purifying rite. So it
really looks as if those who established our initiations are no mean people, but
have in fact long been saying in riddles that whoever arrives in Hades unadmit-
ted to the rites, and uninitiated, shall lie in the slough, while one who arrives
there purified and initiated shall dwell with gods.” See Plato, Phaedo, trans. and
ed. David Gallop (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 16. As A. F. Losev and
A. A. Takho-Godi note in their commentary to the Russian edition of Phaedo, the
Eleusinian Mysteries, as well as the rites of the Pythagoreans and Orphists, are
among the sacraments Socrates refers to. See Platon, Fedon, trans. S. A. Anan’ina
et al. (Moscow: Mysl’, 1999), 430.
8. See George E. Mylonas, Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries (Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1961), 140, 284–85.
9. J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, 3rd ed. (London: Macmillan and Co.,
1912), 7:90.
10. See Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 68–86, as well as Diether Lauenstein,
Die Mysterien von Eleusis (Stuttgart: Urachhaus, 1988).

134
 Notes to Pages 43–50

11. See Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 65.

12. Novalis, Briefwechsel mit Friedrich und August Wilhelm, Charlotte und
Caroline Schlegel, hrsg. von J. M. Raich (Mainz: Kirchheim, 1880), 3.
13. Inspired by the archaeological discoveries of the Englishman E. D.
Clark, Goethe supported the idea of transporting the statue of a caryatid the ar-
chaeologist had found in Eleusina (on the site of the Eleusinian Mysteries) to En-
gland. To this day, the statue resides in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge
University.
14. The biblical scholar Aleksandr Lopukhin has noted, “If the pagans also
began to heed the words of Christ, then it means that even they were able to
comprehend their meaning somewhat, since—just as in their Mysteries—grain
served as a symbol of life.” Tolkovaia Bibliia ili Kommentarii na vse knigi sv.
Pisaniia Vetkhogo i Novogo Zaveta. Vtoroe izdanie (Stockholm: Institut perevoda
Biblii, 1987), 432. The translation is mine.
15. Ivanov, Freedom and the Tragic Life, 49–50. See also his “Dostoevskii i
roman-tragediia,” in Borozdy i mezhi. Opyty esteticheskie i kriticheskie (Moscow:
Musaget, 1916), 61–62.
16. Ibid., 142.
17. See the commentary to Fedor Dostoevskii, PSS, 15:575.
18. The likeness of the names Agraphena and Persephona is doubled in the
likeness of the names Agrippina (by which Grushenka’s Polish fiancé refers to
her) and Proserpina (the Latinized version of Persephona).
19. Naturally, Mitya and Grushenka are characters in a novel and not actors
in a Greek drama. The scene should be understood not as a literal staging of the
meeting between Demeter and Persephone, but as a symbolic one.
20. Homeric Hymn to Demeter (305–13), 18.
21. Robert Louis Jackson, “Alyosha’s Speech at the Stone: The Whole Pic-
ture,” in A New Word on “The Brothers Karamazov,” ed. Robert Louis Jackson
(Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2004), 234–53.
22. I thank Jason Strudler for his translation of the lines from Schiller’s
poems.
23. Robin Feuer Miller, “The Brothers Karamazov”: Worlds of the Novel
(New York: Twayne Publishers, 1992), 26–36.
24. Dostoevsky, Complete Letters, 1:62. Letter 28 to Mikhail Dostoevsky,
dated January 1, 1840, the same letter in which Dostoevsky speaks of his senti-
ments regarding Schiller, which had become “dear to him, some sort of magical
sound calling forth so many reveries.” For more on Dostoevsky and Homer, see
T. G. Mal’chukova, “Dostoevskii i Gomer,” in Filologiia kak nauka i tvorchestvo
(Petrozavodsk: Izdatel’stvo Petrozavodskogo universiteta, 1995), 90–118.
25. Ivanov, “Dostoevskii i roman-tragediia,” in Borozdy i mezhi, 56. The
translation is mine. In Ivanov’s essay on Dostoevsky, there is no mention of the
Eleusinian Mysteries. They are mentioned in another one of his works, Dionis

135
 Notes to Pages 51–55

i pradionisiistvo (Dionysus and Ur-Dionysianism). For this observation, I thank

Michael Wachtel, who also drew my attention to the fact that the epigraph to
Ivanov’s poem “Krasota” (“Beauty”) is taken from “The Hymn to Demeter.”
See also Michael Wachtel, Russian Symbolism and Literary Tradition: Goethe,
Novalis, and the Poetics of Vyacheslav Ivanov (Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1994), 52–53.
26. Fyodor Dostoevsky to Mikhail Dostoevsky, letter 29, written between
January 30 and February 22, 1854, PSS, 28 / I:167, 171. The translation is mine.

CHAPTER THREE

1. Grigorii Pomerants, “Zamysel Gogolia i roman Dostoevskogo,” in Dosto-

evskii i mirovaia kul’tura, Al’manakh 7 (Moscow: Klassika plius, 1997), 88.
2. See Victor Terras, A Karamazov Companion: Commentary on the Gene-
sis, Language, and Style of Dostoevsky’s Novel (Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1981), 94–95, and Bitsilli, “K voprosu o vnutrennei forme,” 498.
3. V. V. Rozanov, “O legende ‘Velikii inkvizitor,’ ” in O velikom inkvizitore:
Dostoevskii i posleduiushchie, ed. Iu. Seliverstov (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia,
1991), 79. The translation is mine.
4. N. O. Losskii, Bog i mirovoe zlo (1946; repr., Moscow: Respublika,
1994), 198.
5. V. E. Vetlovskaia, Poetika romana “Brat’ia Karamazovy” (Leningrad:
Nauka, 1977), and Valentina Vetlovskaya, “Alyosha and the Hagiographic Hero,”
in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov,” ed. Harold Bloom (New
Haven, Conn.: Chelsea, 1988), 151–68. Also see Margaret Ziolkowski, Hagiogra-
phy and Modern Russian Literature (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1988), 163–68.
6. Vetlovskaya, “Alyosha and the Hagiographic Hero,” esp. 152–56.
7. See D. S. Likhachev, “Problema kharaktera v istoricheskikh proizvedeni-
iakh nachala 17 veka” and “Otkrytie tsennosti chelovecheskoi lichnosti v demo-
kraticheskoi literature 17 veka,” in Izbrannye raboty v trekh tomax (Leningrad:
Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1987), 3:5–25, 141–50.
8. See Sven Linnér, “Portrait of a Saint: Moral Ideal and / or Psychological
Truth,” in Critical Essays on Dostoevsky, ed. Robin Feuer Miller (Boston: G. K.
Hall, 1986), 194–204.
9. In his early youth he leaves Rome, takes a boat to Magnalia, then to
Edessa. He spends seventeen years in the vestibule of one of the town’s churches
until one day he learns that his status as a saint has been publicly acknowledged.
This news spurs his decision to leave Edessa and set off to Tars, “for nobody knew
him there.” His shining angelic face is not revealed until the moment of his death.
See “Zhitie i deianiia cheloveka bozhiia Aleksiia,” in Vizantiiskie legendy, ed. S. V.
Poliakova (St. Petersburg: Nauka, 2004), 158.

136
 Notes to Pages 55–60

10. Fedor Dostoevskii, “Nabroski i plany, 1867–1870,” PSS, 9:139. The

translation is mine.
11. Ibid., 130. Although the Russian word kolebanie is usually translated as
“hesitation,” in this context its meaning is closer to “oscillation.”
12. G. B. Ponomareva, “ ‘Zhitie velikogo greshnika’ Dostoevskogo (struktura
i zhanr),” in Issledovaniia po poetike i stilistike, ed. V. V. Vinogradov (Leningrad:
Nauka, 1972), 71. The translation is mine.
13. Dostoevsky, Complete Letters, 3:248.
14. This is a common view shared by scholars. See, for example, Ponomareva,
“ ‘Zhitie velikogo greshnika’ Dostoevskogo,” 86.
15. Robert L. Belknap, The Genesis of “The Brothers Karamazov”: The Aes-
thetics, Ideology, and Psychology of Text Making, Studies of the Harriman Insti-
tute (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1990), 49.
16. Gary Saul Morson, “Conclusion: Reading Dostoevsky,” in The Cam-
bridge Companion to Dostoevskii, ed. W. J. Leatherbarrow (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2002), 212–34.
17. Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 59.
18. Anna Dostoevsky, Dostoevsky: Reminiscences, trans. and ed. Beatrice
Stillman, with an introduction by Helen Muchnic (New York: Liveright Publish-
ing, 1975), 410.
19. N. Hoffmann, Th. M. Dostojewski. Eine biografische Studie (Berlin:
Ernst Hofmann, 1899), 425–27.
20. See commentaries to The Brothers Karamazov in PSS, 15:485.
21. A. S. Suvorin, Dnevnik, ed. N. A. Roskina, D. Reifild, and O. E. Ma-
karova (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Nezavisimaia gazeta, 1999), 351–52, 453–54. The
translation is mine.
22. Dostoevskii, PSS, 15:485, 586. The translation is mine.
23. Vetlovskaia, Poetika romana, 191. The translation is mine.
24. Vetlovskaya, “Alyosha and the Hagiographic Hero,” 168.
25. L. Grossman, Dostoevskii, Zhizn’ zamechatel’nykh liudei Series (Mos-
cow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1962), 512–15.
26. D. D. Blagoi, “Put’ Alekseia Fedorovicha Karamazova,” in Ot Kantemira
do nashikh dnei, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1979),
2:337–68.
27. See Joseph Frank, “Terror and Martial Law,” in Dostoevsky: The Mantle
of the Prophet, 1871–1881 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002),
475–96.
28. Ibid., 347.
29. James Rice, “Dostoevsky’s Endgame: The Projected Sequel to “The Broth-
ers Karamazov,” Russian History/Histoire Russe 33, no. 1 (Spring 2006): 45–62.
30. Gary Saul Morson, “The God of Onions: The Brothers Karamazov and the
Mythic Prosaic,” in Jackson, A New Word on “The Brothers Karamazov,” 111.

137
 Notes to Pages 61–66

31. Robert L. Belknap, The Structure of “The Brothers Karamazov” (1967;

repr., Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1989), 25–26.
32. See chapter 8 “Dostoevsky’s Attitudes Shaped the Attitudes of His
Characters and His Readers” in Belknap’s Genesis of “The Brothers Karamazov,”
127–58.
33. See Dostoevsky’s speech addressed to the students of St. Petersburg Uni-
versity in which he summarizes the main idea of the Grand Inquisitor by drawing
links between Catholicism and socialism, in Dostoevskii, PSS, 15:198.
34. Frank, Dostoevsky: The Mantle of the Prophet, 703.
35. Dostoevskii, PSS, 15:586.
36. Miller, The Brothers Karamazov: Worlds of the Novel, 132–33.
37. Ibid., 133.
38. Jackson, “Alyosha’s Speech,” in Jackson, A New Word on “The Brothers
Karamazov,” 237.
39. Ibid., 247. For Schilleresque overtones of the novel’s ending, also see
Lyngstad, Dostoevskij and Schiller, 108.
40. Eccl. 3:4–5.
41. See Lyngstad, Dostoevskij and Schiller.
42. Jackson, “Alyosha’s Speech,” in Jackson, A New Word on “The Brothers
Karamazov,” 250.
43. A. M. Slivitskii, “Iz stat’i ‘Iz moikh vospominanii o L.I. Polivanove (Push-
kinskie dni),’ ” in F. M. Dostoevskii v vospominaniiakh sovremennikov, ed. K. I.
Tiunkin, 2 vols. (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1964), 2:354–56. The
translation is mine.
44. V. A. Kotel’nikov, “Pravednost’ i grekhovnost,’ ” in Poliarnost’ v kul’ture,
ed. V. E. Bagno, T. A. Novichkova, and general editor D. S. Likhachev (St. Pe-
tersburg: Institut russkoi literatury [Pushkinskii dom], 1996), 38. The translation
is mine.
45. Losskii, Bog i mirovoe zlo, 192. The translation is mine.
46. In his book on Dostoevsky, Grigory Pomerants expresses this idea in the
following way: “In Dostoevsky’s mythology, on each step leading to Hell an angel
stands ready to extend his hand. . . . Likewise, on each step leading to Heaven
there is a devil ready to extend his foot to trip you up. And even on the very last
step into Hell, when the fire, so to speak, licks at Stavrogin’s very feet, there is
still a chance to be saved. But the lower one goes, the harder it becomes to grab
a helping hand, the stronger the inertia, the more exertion it takes to break away.
It takes an unprecedented repentance.” Pomerants, Otkrytost’ bezdne, 95. The
translation is mine.

138
 Notes to Pages 69–74

CHAPTER FOUR

1. Fedor Dostoevskii, “G-n –bov i vopros ob iskusstve,” in “Stat’i i zametki

1845–1861,” PSS, 18:94. The translation is mine.
2. Ibid., 102.
3. This note appears in “Notebook #10,” the closest to the final version of
the novel, and was made when the first portions of the novel had already come
out. PSS, 9:222. See also P. N. Sakulin and N. F. Bel’chikov, eds., Iz arkhiva F.M.
Dostoevskogo, Idiot: Neizdannye materialy (Moscow: Gos. isd-vo khudozh. lit-ry,
1931), 102.
4. Robert Louis Jackson, Dostoevsky’s Quest for Form: A Study in His Phi-
losophy of Art (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1966), 64.
5. Ibid., 46.
6. Ibid., 48.
7. Ibid.
8. N. D. Arutiunova, ed., Logicheskii analiz iazyka. Iazyki estetiki: Kontsep-
tual’nye polia prekrasnogo i bezobraznogo. The Russian Language Institute of
the Russian Academy of Science (Moscow: Indrik, 2004).
9. N. D. Arutiunova, “Istina. Dobro. Krasota: Vzaimodeistvie kontseptov,”
in Logicheskii analiz iazyka. Iazyki estetiki: Kontseptual’nye polia prekrasnogo i
bezobraznogo, ed. N. D. Arutiunova, The Russian Language Institute of the Rus-
sian Academy of Science (Moscow: Indrik, 2004), 14. The translation is mine.
10. As Anna Wierzbicka notes, the word prekrasnyi is frequently used to ex-
press the highest appreciation and moral admiration. See A. Vezhbitskaia, Iazyk.
Kul’tura. Poznanie (Moscow: Russkie slovari, 1996), 84.
11. Leo Tolstoy, What Is Art? trans. Aylmer Maude (Indianapolis: Hackett
Publishing, 1996), 21.
12. Dostoevsky to S. A. Ivanova, January 1, 1868, in PSS, 28 / II:251. Quoted
in English in Frank, Miraculous Years, 274.
13. Arutiunova, “Istina. Dobro. Krasota,” 16.
14. Ibid., 13. Arutiunova’s comment applies to both Russian and English
translations of the New Testament. She refers to the following passage: “Woe
unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto white sepulchers,
which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones,
and of all uncleanness” (Mt 23:27).
15. Fyodor Dostoevsky, A Writer’s Diary, trans. and annotated by Kenneth
Lantz with an introduction by Gary Saul Morson (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern
University Press, 1992), 128.
16. Anna Dostoevsky, Dostoevsky: Reminiscences, 134.
17. Nikolai Karamzin, Letters of a Russian Traveler, trans. Andrew Kahn (Ox-
ford: Voltaire Foundation, 2003), 127–28. The Karamzin connection was noted
in T. A. Kasatkina, “Pushkinskaia tsitata v romanakh Dostoevskygo,” in Pushkin

139
 Notes to Pages 74–75

i teoretiko-literaturnaia mysl,’ ed. Iu. Borev, S. Bocharov, and N. Gei (Moscow:

IMLI, 1999), 344.
18. Ibid., 128.
19. See T. A. Kasatkina, “Pushkinskaia tsitata v romanakh Dostoevskygo,”
and Galina Ermilova, “ ‘Pushkiskaia tsitata v romane ‘Idiot,’ ” in Roman Dosto-
evskogo “Idiot”: Razdum’ia, problemy, ed. O. V. Boronina and V. N. Makogoniuk
(Ivanovo: Ivanovskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 1999), 60–89; and Aleksandra
Toichkina, “ ‘Rytsar’ bednyi’ Pushkina v ‘Idiote’ Dostoevskogo,” in Boronina and
Makogoniuk, Roman Dostoevskogo “Idiot,” 90–97.
20. A long section in the notebooks for the novel is titled “The Poor Knight.”
See Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Notebooks for “The Idiot,” ed. with an introduction
by Edward Wasiolek, trans. Katharine Strelsky (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1967), 217–19.
21. The translation is mine. It is virtually impossible to provide an adequate
English translation of the words volochilsia and matushka, used here in refer-
ence to the Mother of God. In Russian the last two lines of this stanza sound both
courtly and scandalous—or rather, scandalous because of their courtly tone.
22. Ganna Bograd suggests that Dostoevsky might have known the original
version of Pushkin’s poem from Nikolai Pavlishchev, who was married to Push-
kin’s daughter Olga. Pavlishchev was close to both Pushkin and Delvig in 1829
and therefore would have known about the censorial prohibition to publish this
poem in Delvig’s magazine. Bograd also notes that in The Idiot, Prince Myshkin’s
benefactor is Nikolai Pavlishchev. See G. L. Bograd, “Pavlovskie realii v romane
F. M. Dostoevskogo ‘The Idiot,’ ” Stat’i o Dostoevskom 1971–2001, ed. B. N.
Tikhomirov (St. Petersburg: Serebrianyi vek, 2001), 158–59. One stanza of this
banned poem was published in Sovremennik: “Traveling to Geneva, / At a cross on
the road, / he saw the Virgin Mary, / the mother of Christ (Puteshestvuia v Zhenevu /
Na doroge u kresta / Videl on Mariiu devu, / Mater’ gospoda Khrista). The transla-
tion is mine. This stanza was quoted in A. D. Mikhailov’s “Uvazheniie k zhensh-
chine,” an article that traced the development of the courtly ideal of the Lady in
western European literature. The article was published in Sovremennik 2 (1866):
275–319 and 3 (1866): 92–129, a few months before The Idiot was conceived.
The article remains unsigned; the name of the author was established later. This
stanza echoes in Dostoevsky’s novel, when Myshkin travels to and from Geneva.
23. Pavel Florensky, Iconostasis, trans. Donald Sheehan and Olga Andrejev
(Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996), 48.
24. See S. N. Bulgakov, “Vladimir Solov’ev i Anna Shmidt,” in Tikhie dumy,
sostavlenie, podgotovka teksta i kommentarii V. V. Sapova, posleslovie K. M. Dol-
gova (Moscow: Respublika, 1997), 71. The translation is mine.
25. This is another central issue in the scholarship on The Idiot. Many schol-
ars agree that as theologically understood, Christ cannot be a character in the
novel. See, for example, the chapter “The Gaps in Christology: The Idiot,” in

140
 Notes to Pages 76–79

Holquist, Dostoevsky and the Novel, 102–23. Olga Meerson argues that the “pos-
itively beautiful man” is not Christ, because the figure of Christ is not typological,
but personal. See Ol’ga Meerson, “Khristos ili ‘Kniaz’-Khristos? Svidetel’stvo gen-
erala Ivolgina,” in Roman F. M. Dostoevskogo “Idiot”: Sovremennoe sostoianie
izucheniia, ed. T. A. Kasatkina (Moscow: Nasledie, 2001), 42–59.
26. See commentaries on The Idiot in Dostoevskii, PSS, 9:363.
27. The Russian chapter title “Sladostrastniki” in The Brothers Karamazov
sounds much stronger than the English “Sensualists” in Pevear and Volokhon-
sky’s translation. The word connotes the idea of an “indulgence in the sweetness
of lust,” and in the context of the Russian spiritual tradition sounds extremely
negative.
28. Rowan Williams, Dostoevsky: Language, Faith, and Fiction (Waco, Tex.:
Baylor University Press, 2008), 145.
29. See Williams’s chapter “Exchanging Crosses: Responsibility for All,” in
Language, Faith, and Fiction, 151–88, where two parallel scenes are contrasted,
one from Crime and Punishment and the other from The Idiot. Williams argues
that the former is an act of responsibility: Sonya Marmeladova exchanges her
cross for Lizaveta’s and later gives it to Raskolnikov, thus establishing a connec-
tion between the murderer and the victim, thus prompting Raskolnikov’s spiri-
tual renewal. In the latter, Myshkin, purchasing a cross from a drunken soldier
and then exchanging crosses with Rogozhin, lacks a sense of responsibility vis-à-
vis both parties; thus he creates no connections that could bring about positive
results. These two episodes, Williams observes, anticipate the idea that “everyone
is guilty for everyone,” later developed in The Brothers Karamazov.
30. Dostoevsky, Notebooks for “The Idiot,” 242.
31. Dostoevsky, Complete Letters, 3:103.
32. Ibid., 100.
33. Hermann Hesse, “Thoughts on The Idiot by Dostoevsky,” in My Belief:
Essays in the Life and Art, ed. with an introduction by Theodore Ziolkowski,
trans. Denver Lindley (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1974), 90–91.
34. As Robin Feuer Miller notes, “Although Dostoevsky often had difficulty
in deciding how a novel should end, once he had decided, he gave himself up,
with relish, to the preparation of a powerful scene. A reader of Dostoevsky hears
no hammers at the end of the novel” (i.e., at the end of The Idiot). See Robin
Feuer Miller, Dostoevsky and “The Idiot”: Author, Narrator, and Reader (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981), 43.
35. Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 173.
36. Ibid.

141
 Notes to Pages 81–83

CHAPTER FIVE

1. Vladimir Dal’, Tolkovyi slovar’ zhivogo velikoruskogo iazyka, 4 vols. (1882;

repr., Moscow: Russkii iazyk, 1880), 4:260.
2. Donald Fanger, Dostoevsky and Romantic Realism: A Study of Dosto-
evsky in Relation to Balzac, Dickens, and Gogol (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1965).
3. Ivanov, Freedom and the Tragic Life, 97. On the sophiological nature of
Dostoevsky’s formula “beauty will save the world,” see V. V. Zen’kovskii, “Prob-
lema krasoty v mirosozertsanii Dostoevskogo,” in Esteticheskie issledovaniia:
Metody i kriterii, ed. K. M. Dolgov (Moscow: IF RAN, 1996), 164.
4. I borrow the term “image-paradigm” (an image-idea) from Alexei Lidov,
who coined this term in a series of articles on Hierotopia (creation of sacred
space in art). As he explains, the image-paradigm is similar to an idiomatic ex-
pression, which cannot be understood from the individual meanings of its ele-
ments, because the meaning rises from the interaction of its parts. He writes,
“For the Byzantines such an irrational and at once ‘hiero-plastic’ perception of
the world could be the most adequate reflection of its divine essence. It does not
concern any mystic but a special type of consciousness, in which our categories
of the artistic, ritual, spatial were interwoven in an inseparable spiritual whole.”
See Lidov, “Sviatoi lik—sviatoe pis’mo—sviatye vrata: Obraz-paradigma ‘bla-
goslovennogo grada’ v khristianskoi ierotopii,” in Ierotopiia: Sravnitel’nye issle-
dovaniia sakral’nykh prostranstv, ed. A. M. Lidov (Moscow: Indrik, 2009), 157.
5. Pomerants, Otkrytost’ bezdne, 138. The translation is mine.
6. Andreas Capellanus’s twelfth-century treatise The Art of Courtly Love
describes the ennobling effect of “courtly love” (the term “amour courtois” was
first used by Gaston Paris in his article “Etude sur les romans de la Table Ronde:
Lancelot du Lac,” Romania 12, no. 2 [1883]: 509): “Love causes a rough and un-
couth man to be distinguished for his handsomeness; it can endow a man even of
the humblest birth with nobility of character; it blesses the proud with humility;
and the man in love becomes accustomed to performing many services gracefully
for everyone.” See Andreas Capellanus, The Art of Courtly Love, with an intro-
duction, translation, and notes by John Jay Parry (1941; repr., New York: W. W.
Norton, 1969), 31.
7. Denis de Rougemont, Love in the Western World, trans. Montgomery
Belgion, rev. and augmented edition (1940; repr., Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1983), 166.
8. Ibid., 96.
9. Ibid., 74.
10. Johan Huizinga, The Autumn of the Middle Ages, trans. Rodney J. Payton
and Ulrich Mammitzsch (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 132.
11. Umberto Eco, Histoire de la beauté, translated from the Italian by

142
 Notes to Pages 83–87

Myriem Bouzaher, Latin and Greek translations by François Rosso (Paris: Flam-
marion, 2004), 158.
12. René Nelli, L’Erotique des troubadours (Toulouse: Edouart Privat,
1963), 52–60.
13. Ibid., 63–78, 105–8.
14. Geneviève Brunel-Lobrichon and Claudie Duhamel-Amado, Au temps
des troubadours: XIIe–XIIIe siècles (Paris: Hachette Littératures, 1997), 38. The
translation is mine.
15. Eric Trudgill, Madonnas and Magdalenas: The Origin and Development
of Victorian Sexual Attitudes (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1976), 257.
16. New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 1:1658.
17. Quoted in Trudgill, Madonnas and Magdalenas, 258.
18. Ibid., 266–71.
19. Ibid., 289.
20. Ibid., 291.
21. Ibid., 306.
22. A. Veselovskii, Liubovnaia lirika XVIII veka (St. Petersburg: Tipographiia
Iasnogorodskogo, 1909), 69–92.
23. Ibid., 119. The translation is mine.
24. I thank Michael Wachtel for drawing my attention to Tieck and Wacken-
roder’s book. It was translated into Russian in 1826 by S. P. Shevyrev, V. P. Titov,
and N. A. Mel’gunov, members of the Moscow circle Lovers of Wisdom, and pub-
lished under the title Ob iskusstve i khudozhnikakh: Razmyshleniia otshel’nika,
liubitelia iziashchnogo, izdannye L. Tikom.
25. See V. K. Kiukhel’beker, Puteshestvie, dnevnik, stat’i, Literaturnye pa-
miatniki Series, ed. B. F. Egorov (Leningrad: Nauka, 1979), 33. The translation
is mine.
26. Like Küchelbecker, during this journey Zhukovsky made the acquain-
tance of Ludwig Tieck.
27. V. A. Zhukovskii, “Rafaeleva ‘Madonna,’ ” in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i
pisem. Dnevniki, pis’ma-dnevniki, zapisnye knizhki 1804–1833 (Moscow: Iazyki
slavianskoi kul’tury, 2004), 13:188. The translation is mine.
28. Andreas Schönle, Authenticity and Fiction in the Russian Literary Jour-
ney, 1790–1840 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), 103.
29. The poem was written when Pushkin lived in Mikhailovskoe and vis-
ited the neighboring estate of Trigorskoe, where he enjoyed the company of his
friends and the young ladies Anna Osipova, Anna Vulf, and Anna Kern. As Larisa
Volpert observes, in the atmosphere of gallantry reigning in Trigorskoe, Pushkin
was courting one young lady after another, thus acquiring the reputation of a Don
Juan. L. I. Vol’pert, Pushkin i psikhologicheskaia traditsiia vo frantsuzskoi litera-
ture (Tallinn: Eesti raamat, 1980), 9–20.
30. The ambiguity of this poem reveals itself in Pushkin’s private correspon-

143
 Notes to Pages 87–89

dence with his friends, the poet Petr Viazemskii and Aleksei Vulf, where Anna
Kern is referred to as “the Whore of Babylon.” See Pushkin’s letter to A. N. Vulf
(May 7, 1826), in The Letters of Alexander Pushkin, translated with a preface,
introduction, and notes by J. Thomas Shaw (Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1967), 309. Commenting on this “discrepancy” in 1898, Vladimir Solovyov
writes that the addressee of the poem was neither “a spirit of pure beauty” nor
“the Whore of Babylon”; the former epithet is just a tribute to poetic convention-
ality, and the latter to Pushkin’s cheerful buffoonery (veseloe balagurstvo). See
Vladimir Solov’ev, “Sud’ba Pushkina,” in Pushkin v filosofskoi kritike, ed. R. A.
Gal’tseva (Moscow: Universitetskaia kniga, 1999), 18–19.
31. Zhukovskii, “Rafaeleva ‘Madonna,’ ” 13:188. The translation is mine.
32. See G. M. Koka, “Pushkin pered Madonnoi Rafael’ia,” in Vremennik
Pushkinskoi komissii (Leningrad: Nauka, 1964), 38–43.
33. Sergei Averintsev, “Tsvetiki milye brattsa Frantsiska: Ital’ianskii katolit-
sizm russkimi glazami,” Pravoslavnaia obshchina, no. 38 (1997): 97–105. Most
conspicuously Pushkin is toying with the word “prelest’ ” in his “Gavriiliada”
(1821), a blasphemous poem written when Pushkin was a student and for which
he was later persecuted. In it he uses expressions “prelestnyi angel” (charming
angel), “prelesti” (this word which when used in plural is a euphemism for fe-
male body parts), “prelestnaia Eva” (charming Eve), “prelestnaia nagota” (charm-
ing nakedness), and “ona greshit, prelestna i tomna” (charming and languid, she
gives way to sin).
34. Akhmatova’s observation was later supported by E. G. Gershtein and
V. E. Vatsuro. See Gershtein and Vatsuro, “Zametki A. A. Akhmatovoi o Push-
kine,” in Vremennik pushkinskoi komissii (Leningrad: Nauka, 1972), 46.
35. Medieval imagery saturates Zhukovsky’s poems “Rytsar’ Togenburg”
(“Knight Togenburg,” 1818), “Perchatka” (“The Glove,” 1831), and “Bratou-
biitsa” (“Fratricide,” 1832); Lermontov’s “Perchatka” (“The Glove,” 1829); and
Del’vig’s “Vzdokh trubadura” (“The Troubadour’s Sigh”), most of which are trans-
lations from German. Also see Baratynsky’s poem “Madona” (1835).
36. George Siegel comments that Gogol’s “Nevsky Prospect” is not only the
first treatment of the saint / sinner aspect of femininity, it also became the source
of all Russian literary fallen women. See Siegel, “The Fallen Woman in Nine-
teenth Century Russian Literature,” Harvard Slavic Studies, no. 5 (1970): 83.
37. V. G. Belinskii, “Vzgliad na russkuiu literaturu v 1847 godu,” in Polnoe so-
branie sochinenii, vol. 10 (Moscow: The Russian Language Institute of the Rus-
sian Academy of Science, 1955), 306–8. The translation is mine.
38. V. G. Belinskii to V. P. Botkin, July 7, 1847, in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii,
vol. 12 (1956), 384. The translation is mine.
39. Lev Tolstoi, “Dnevniki 1847–1894,” August 5, 1857, in Sobranie sochi-
nenii (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1985), 21:189. The translation is
mine.

144
 Notes to Pages 89–92

40. Sergei Bulgakov, “Dve vstrechi (1898–1924),” in Pervoobraz i obraz:

Sochineniia, 2:383. The translation is mine.
41. Ibid., 380.
42. Ibid., 382.
43. Ibid., 383.
44. Ibid., 384.
45. See Anna Dostoevsky, Dostoevsky: Reminiscences, 119. On Dostoevsky
and Rafael see K. A. Stepanian, “Dostoevskii i Rafael,” in Dostoevskii i mirovaia
kul’tra, Al’manakh 20 (Moscow: Serebrianyi vek, 2004).
46. In 1879 Dostoevsky received it as a gift from S. A. Tolstaia, the wife of
A. K. Tolstoy. It was handed to him by Vladimir Solovyov. See Anna Dostoevsky,
Dostoevsky: Reminiscences, 325–26. Strangely enough, the reproduction of the
Sistine Madonna now adorns the wall of Leo Tolstoy’s study in Iasnaia Poliana.
47. See Lev Karsavin, “Fedor Pavlovich Karamazov kak ideolog liubvi,” in
Russkii eros ili filosofiia liubvi v Rossii, ed. G. I. Dziubenko (Moscow: Progress,
1991), 355. The translation is mine.
48. Tatiana Kasatkina, Kharakterologiia Dostoevskogo: Tipologiia emotsio-
nal’no–tsennostnykh orientatsii (Moscow: Nasledie, 1996), 228–41.
49. Nadezhda Krokhina, “Ontopoetika romana ‘Idiot’: Tema vechnoi zhenst-
vennosti,” in Boronina and Makogoniuk, Roman Dostoevskogo “Idiot,” 204.
50. This theme first appears in the final sections of Blok’s lyrical cycle “Verses
About the Beautiful Lady” (1904) and his poem “The Stranger” (“Neznakomka,”
1906).
51. Tat’iana Elshina, “ ‘Neznakomaia’ Nastas’ia Filippovna,” in Boronina and
Makogoniuk, Roman Dostoevskogo “Idiot,” 120–21.
52. This is a reference to Blok’s poem “Beauty Is Terrible, They’ll Tell You”
(“Krasota strashna, vam skazhut,” 1913), dedicated to Anna Akhmatova. It con-
tains an allusion to Dmitry Karamazov’s words “Beauty is a terrible thing,” and
“Here all contradictions live together.” The second stanza in Blok’s poem begins
with the line “Beauty is a simple thing, they’ll tell you.” The final stanza reads: “I
am neither terrible nor simple; I am not terrible enough to simply / Kill, I am not
simple enough / Not to know how terrible life is” (Ne strashna i ne prosta ia; / Ia
ne tak strashna, chtob prosto / Ubivat’, ne tak prosta ia, / Chtob ne znat’, kak zhizn’
strashna).
53. Elshina, “ ‘Nesnakomaia’ Nastas’ia Filippovna,” 116. The translation is
mine.
54. Scholars have pointed out other parallels between Blok’s drama and The
Idiot. Pavel Gromov suggests that Blok reinterprets Rogozhin’s sensual passion
and Myshkin’s spiritual feelings for Nastasya in the figures of the Gentleman with
a Bowler Hat (“earthly love”) and the Man in Blue (“celestial love”)—in Gro-
mov’s words, the “two different halves of one single personality disintegrated in
our contemporary world.” See Pavel Gromov, Geroi i vremia: Stat’i o literature i

145
 Notes to Pages 92–105

teatre (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1961), 442. See also Z. G. Mints, “Blok i Do-
stoevskii,” in Dostoevskii i ego vremia, ed. V. G. Bazanov and G. M. Fridlender
(Leningrad: Nauka, 1971), 237.
55. Rozanov, “Na lektsii o Dostoevskom,” 261–70. The translation is mine.

CHAPTER SIX

1. See Pavel Florensky’s discussion of the Russian word istina and the notion
of truth in various languages and intellectual (or spiritual) traditions in The Pillar
and Ground of the Truth,14–20. The translation is mine.
2. N. D. Arutiunova, “Istina i pravda,” in Iazyk i mir cheloveka, ed. N. D. Aru-
tiunova (Moscow: Iazyki russkoi kul’tury, 1998), 569. The translation is mine.
3. Ibid., 558.
4. Fedor Dostoevskii, “Podgotovitel’nye materialy. Dnevnik pisatelia za 1877
god,” PSS, 26:198–99. The translation is mine.
5. One of the first scholars to point this out was Komarovich. See V. L. Koma-
rovich, “ ‘Mirovaia garmoniia’ Dostoevskogo,” in Vlastitel’ dum: F. M. Dostoevskii
v russkoi kritike kontsa XIX-nachala XX veka, ed. N. Ashimbaeva (St. Petersburg:
Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1997), 583–611.
6. Dostoevsky, Complete Letters, 2:100.
7. Fedor Dostoevskii, “Zametki, plany, nabroski,” March 22, 1875 (“Dlia pre-
disloviia),” PSS, 16:330. The translation is mine.
8. Malcolm V. Jones, Dostoevsky: The Novel of Discord (New York: Barnes
and Noble Books, 1976), 58.
9. Italics are mine.
10. See Mikhail Bakhtin on the dialogic quality of the Underground Man’s
monologue in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 227–37, 253–54.
11. Irina Paperno, Chernyshevsky and the Age of Realism: A Study in the Se-
miotics of Behavior (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), 173.
12. V. S. Nikonenko, “Levogegel’ianskoe istolkovanie filosofii Gegelia v
russkoi filosofii XIX veka,” in Istoriia filosofii, kul’tura i mirovozzrenie. K 60-letiiu
professora A. S. Kolesnikova. Seriia “Mysliteli,” no. 3 (St. Petersburg: Sankt-
Peterburgskoe filosofskoe obshchestvo, 2000), 103–13.
13. Paperno, Chernyshevsky, 160.
14. This contribution was made theoretically explicit by the Tartu school se-
mioticians Y. M. Lotman, V. A. Uspensky, V. N. Toporov, and others. See V. N.
Toporov, Peterburgskii tekst russkoi literatury: Izbrannye trudy (St. Peterburg:
Iskusstvo-SPB, 2003).
15. R. W. Phillips, “Dostoevsky’s ‘Dream of a Ridiculous Man’: A Study in
Ambiguity,” Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts 17, no. 1 (Winter
1975): 363.

146
 Notes to Pages 107–12

16. The elder Zosima explains: “For all is like an ocean, all flows and con-
nects; touch it in one place and it echoes at the other end of the world” (The
Brothers Karamazov, 319).
17. In this story, the word “truth” is capitalized when the Ridiculous Man re-
fers to the higher religious Truth that was revealed to him in his dream. For sim-
plicity and consistency, all instances of “truth” appear lowercase in my prose.
18. Robert Louis Jackson, The Art of Dostoevsky: Deliriums and Nocturnes
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981), 290.
19. Ibid., 293.
20. Ibid., 280.

CHAPTER SEVEN

1. This chapter is based on my article “The Rabbit and the Duck: Antinomic
Unity in Dostoevskij, the Russian Religious Tradition, and Mikhail Bakhtin,”
Studies in East European Thought 59, nos. 1–2 (June 2007): 21–37.
2. The idea of pairs of opposite statements is introduced in chapter 6, and
various pairs are examined in chapters 7 and 10, of Aristotle’s Categories and De
Interpretatione, translated with notes by J. L. Ackrill (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1963).
3. Kirk, Raven, and Schofield, Presocratic Philosophers, 186.
4. Jaspers posits that Aristotle equated philosophical cognition and scien-
tific cognition: “This is what came about through Aristotle and ever since has re-
mained a prerequisite. . . . Philosophical cognition is scientific cognition. There is
only one truth. Science is an investigative procedure of the intellect whose results
have universal validity; since the sciences and philosophy are the same, they are
related to philosophy as parts to a whole or as its material, or like consequences
to their basis” (216). He maintains that Aristotle presents “totality, the truth in the
guise of an ordered whole, shown as an existing and attainable goal” (217). See
Karl Jaspers, The Great Philosophers, vol. 3, Xenophanes, Democritus, Empedo-
cles, Bruno, Epicurus, Boehme, Schelling, Leibniz, Aristotle, Hegel, ed. Michael
Ermarth and Leonard H. Ehrlich, trans. Michael Ermarth, Leonard H. Ehrlich,
and Edith Ehrlich, 4 vols. (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1993), 215.
5. Such a welcoming view of oppositions appears to be a much more com-
mon and recurrent view in Eastern philosophy than in Western philosophy. How-
ever, the idea that opposites are inseparable and mutually fulfilling recently be-
came a focus of attention in Western scholarship. In 1981 Graham Priest and
Richard Routley coined the term “dialetheism,” in reference to the doctrines of
pre-Socratic thinkers, such as Heraclitus and Protagoras. They derived the term
from the Greek di, which means “two,” and aletheia, a Greek word for “truth.”
Di-aletheia is thus a two(-way) truth.

147
 Notes to Pages 112–16

6. See Pavel Florenskii, “Kosmologicheskie antinomii Immanuila Kanta,” in

Sochineniia v chetyrekh tomakh, eds. Hegumen Andronik (A. S. Trubachev), P. V.
Florenskii, and M. S. Trubacheva (Moscow: Mysl’, 1996), 2:3–33.
7. Ibid., 26–28.
8. Florensky, The Pillar and Ground of the Truth, 22–23.
9. Ibid., 109.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid., 110–14.
12. Ibid., 121–22.
13. Pavel Florenskii, “Ob orientirovke v filosofii (filosofiia i zhiznechuvstvie),”
in Sochineniia v chetyrekh tomakh, eds. Hegumen Andronik (A. S. Trubachev),
P. V. Florenskii, and M. S. Trubacheva (Moscow: Mysl’, 1999), 3:468. The trans-
lation is mine.
14. This idea goes back to Florensky’s talk titled “Dogmatism and Dogmat-
ics,” which he presented in 1906 at a meeting of the philosophical circle of the
Moscow Theological Academy (Moskovskaia Dukhovnaia Akademiia). See Pavel
Florenskii, “Dogmatism i dogmatika,” in Sochineniia v chetyrekh tomakh, eds.
Hegumen Andronik (A. S. Trubachev), P. V. Florenskii, and M. S. Trubacheva
(Moscow: Mysl’, 1994) 1:550–70.
15. Nikolai Berdiaev, Stilizovannoe pravoslavie (Tipy religioznoi mysli
Rossii) in Sobranie sochinenii (Paris: YMCA-Press, 1989), 3:556. The transla-
tion is mine.
16. Sergei Bulgakov, Svet nevechernii: Sozertsaniia i umozreniia, in Pervo-
obraz i obraz, 1:101. The translation is mine.
17. Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, trans.
from the French by members of the Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius
(Cambridge: James Clarke, 1973), 43.
18. Although Lossky considers antinomism an idiosyncratic feature of East-
ern theology, it is also found in the West, specifically in Nicholas Cusanus’s
fifteenth-century writings. In his Docta Ignorantia (On Learned Ignorance), Cu-
sanus elaborates on the idea of a coincidence of opposites. Nicholas of Cusa, On
Learned Ignorance.
19. S. L. Frank, The Unknowable: An Ontological Introduction to the Philos-
ophy of Religion, trans. B. Jakim (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1983), 97.
20. Ibid., 96–97.
21. On Bakhtin and Florensky, see Katerina Clark and Michael Holquist,
Mikhail Bakhtin (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984), 135–38;
Donatella Ferrari-Bravo, “More on Bakhtin and Florensky,” in Mikhail Bakhtin
and the Epistemology of Discourse, ed. C. Thomson (Amsterdam: Rodopi,
1990), 111–21; and Alexandar Mihailovic, Corporeal Words: Mikhail Bakhtin’s
“Theology of Discourse” (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1997),
99–102.

148
 Notes to Pages 116–18

22. Pavel Florenskii, “Razum i dialektika,” in Sochineniia v chetyrekh to-

makh, eds. Hegumen Andronik (A. S. Trubachev), P. V. Florenskii, and M. S. Tru-
bacheva (Moscow: Mysl’, 1996), 2:141–42. The translation is mine.
23. Originally published in 1914 in Bogoslovskii vestnik (Theological Mes-
senger), edited by Florensky.
24. Concerning Florensky’s essay “Reason and Dialectic,” it is worth not-
ing one more parallel concerning authorial position. Florensky asserts that the
“I” of the author who has chosen dialectic as his creative method must be per-
sonal and simultaneously suprapersonal—“wholesome and generic” (tselostno-
kharakternyi), “concretely general” (konkretno-obshchii), and “symbolically
personal” (simvolicheski-lichnyi) (Florensky, “Razum i dialektika,” 140). He
states: “Let us call this I ‘methodological.’ And since dialectic implies those who
diãlegv ontai, who converse ( pere-govarivaiutsia), who talk (raz-govarivaiut), to
this methodological ‘I’ corresponds the methodological ‘we,’ as well as other meth-
odological personae dramatis dialecticae. It is they who bring into action certain dia-
(pere-, raz-), that is, a methodological environment, which merges its personal
energies with the object” (ibid., 141). The translation is mine. In this regard, it is
significant that The Pillar and Ground of the Truth is written in the form of letters
to a friend. Florensky’s definition of the authorial position is similar to Bakhtin’s,
according to which the authorial position in Dostoevsky’s novels is located on
the same plane as the opinions of his characters. To be sure, as a person, Fyo-
dor Dostoevsky had certain views and beliefs, in which he was either consistent
or inconsistent. But in his novels, his authorial “I” is not only personal; it is also
suprapersonal.
25. Clark and Holquist, Mikhail Bakhtin, 120–45.
26. Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 18.
27. Ibid., 9.
28. According to intellectual historian Randall Poole, Bakhtin’s thought has
connections with both the Eastern tradition of the unknowability of God and with
Kant’s “unknowable thing in-itself.” The Eastern and Western apophatic trends
are merged in Sergei Bulgakov’s Svet nevechernii, which devotes a whole sec-
tion to Kant. Although there is no evidence that Bakhtin was familiar with Bul-
gakov’s book, he might have been familiar with negative theology through Sergei
Askoldov. The apophatic moment in Bakhtin’s philosophy of consciousness, Poole
argues, reveals itself in the unknowability of the self to itself. Randall Poole, “The
Apophatic Bakhtin,” in Bakhtin and Religion: A Feeling for Faith, ed. S. M. Felch
and P. J. Contino (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2001), 151–76.
29. Pavel Florenskii, “Avtoreferat,” in Sochineniia v chetyrekh tomakh, eds.
Hegumen Andronik (A. S. Trubachev), P. V. Florenskii, and M. S. Trubacheva
(Moscow: Mysl’, 1994), 1:40.
30. Cassedy, Dostoevsky’s Religion, 101.
31. Ibid., 104.

149
 Notes to Pages 118–22

32. Ibid.
33. Iakov Golosovker claims that in The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky
polemicizes with Kant and refutes his treatment of antinomies. See Ia. E. Golo-
sovker, Dostoevsky i Kant: Razmyshlenie chitatelia nad romanom “Brat’ia Kara-
mazovy” i traktatom Kanta “Kritika chistogo razuma” (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo aka-
demii nauk SSSR, 1963). In response to Golosovker, Steven Cassedy points out
that we do not possess any proof that Dostoevsky was acquainted with Kant’s
Critique of Pure Reason. It should be noted, however, that the likelihood of Dos-
toevsky’s being acquainted with the translation of this work into Russian is very
high. This treatise came out in Russian in Mikhail Vladislavlev’s translation in
1867. Vladislavlev (1840–90) was Dostoevsky’s friend, coauthor, and close rela-
tive. They first met in 1861 in the house of Mikhail Dostoevsky, whose daughter
Vladislavlev married in 1865. In the mid-1860s, Vladislavlev regularly contrib-
uted to the journals Vremia and Epokha, published by Fyodor Dostoevsky and
his brother Mikhail. Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason does not figure in the inven-
tory of Dostoevsky’s personal library. This fact may be explained by the tense re-
lationship between Dostoevsky and Vladislavlev after Vladislavlev married Dos-
toevsky’s niece. See Dostoevskii, PSS, 28 / II:294, 330. In other words, even if
Dostoevsky was acquainted with the major work of the major German philoso-
pher of the time, he might not have wanted to advertise this fact. Dostoevsky’s
home library did contain Vladislavlev’s book Logika: Obozrenie induktivnykh i
deduktivnykh priemov myshleniia i istoricheskie ocherki logiki Aristotelia, skho-
lasticheskoi dialektiki, logiki formal’noi i induktivnoi, published in 1872.
34. Pseudo-Dionysius, “Divine Names,” trans. Colm Luibheid, 108–9
(872A).
35. If we take into consideration the structure of the novel, book 5: “Pro and
Contra” can be considered as a thesis, and book 6: “The Russian Monk” as an an-
tithesis, not vice versa as Cassedy suggests.
36. Dostoevsky, Complete Letters, 5:83.
37. Ibid., 5:130–31.

CONCLUDING NOTES

1. Jean Delumeau, Sin and Fear: The Emergence of the Western Guilt Cul-
ture 13th–18th Centuries, trans. Eric Nicholson (New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1990), 246.
2. Ibid., 253.
3. Ibid., 556.
4. Ibid., 557.
5. Ibid., 247.

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 Index
The Adolescent [A Raw Youth] (Dostoevsky),
33, 34, 35, 55
adulterous woman, biblical parable of, 22
Aeschylus, 42
Aglaya Epanchin (The Idiot), 74–75
Aleksandra Fedorovna, Grand Duchess, 86
Alexander II, Czar, 59
Alexey, Saint, 55
anarchism, 60, 64
Andrew of Crete, Saint, 31–35, 36, 37, 39, 55
antinomian monodualism, 20, 115
antinomies and antinomism, 4–5, 6, 14–15;
Kantian, 112, 117, 118, 150n33; in Russian
religious thought, 112–16; single whole
and, 7
apophatic (negative) theology, 8, 13, 114,
119, 149n28
Arban, Dominique, 36
Aristophanes, 43
Aristotelian logic, 20, 57, 111, 114, 118; para-
dox absent from, 17
Aristotle, 42, 43, 111, 147n4
Arutiunova, N. D., 71, 97–98
Askoldov, Sergei, 4, 10, 11, 27, 112, 117
atheism, 6, 55, 59, 117
Averintsev, Sergei, 87
Bakhtin, Mikhail, 66, 103, 126n16, 149n24;
on epilogue of Crime and Punishment,
37, 133n40; on dialectics in Dostoevsky,
16–17; on dialogic truth, 14, 115–17; on
Dostoevsky’s double vision, 5–6; on fi-
nale of The Idiot, 79; on points of non-
coincidence, 56; Soviet censorship and,
16, 17, 129n52; on threshold as turning
point, 35
163
Bakunin, Mikhail, 104
“Beautiful Lady,” 83, 86, 91. See also Ma-
donna, feminine ideal of
beauty, 3, 13, 18; antinomy of, 14; antithesis
of, 22; charm (prelest’) and, 73–76; dual
nature of, 19–20, 80, 91; feminine ideals
of, 87, 91; goodness and, 71–72; krasi-
voe as physical beauty, 71–72; Madonna
as European feminine ideal of, 83–85;
moral ideal of Christ and, 14; passion and,
76; prekrasnoe as moral beauty, 71–72,
139n10; romantic feminine ideal in Rus-
sian literature, 85–88; as salvation, 69, 70,
75–76, 81, 82, 92–93; in Sodom, 17, 20,
82, 91–92; truth and, 109; two conceptions
of, 69–73
Belinsky, Vissarion, 88, 104
Belknap, Robert, 30, 55–56, 60–61
Bentham, Jeremy, 99
Berdyaev, Nicholas, 4, 8, 14, 112, 114, 117
Bible, 27, 113, 139n14; 2 Corinthians, 8;
Ecclesiastes, 63, 84; Genesis, 106; James,
11; Jeremiah, 48; John (parable on grain
of wheat), 38, 39, 40, 44, 66, 133n41;
Matthew, 88
binaries, 7, 10, 13, 110; Aristotelian, 118; in
Chernyshevsky, 103, 104; static and dy-
namic, 21. See also opposites, unity of
Bitsilli, P. M., 36
Blagoi, Dmitry, 59–60
Blok, Alexander, 91–92, 145n50, 145n52,
145n54
“Bobok” (Dostoevsky), 30, 39
Bocharov, Sergei, 129n52
The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb
(Holbein painting), 73, 74, 75
 Index
Bogoroditsa [Bogomater’] (Mother of God),
91; in Orthodox iconography, 82
Bogoslovskii vestnik [Theological Messenger]
(journal), 112
Bohr, Niels, 10, 129n51
Botkin, Vasily, 88
Brotherhood of Saint Seraphim, 117
The Brothers Karamazov (Dostoevsky), 18,
20, 34; Alyosha’s speech at stone, 61–64;
biblical epigraph to, 38, 39, 40–45, 48–51,
66; Demeter/Ceres and, 45, 46, 47, 135n19;
ending in light of projected sequel, 61–66;
hagiographic sources and, 53–55; Life of
a Great Sinner and, 55; on responsibility
for evil, 107–8; Schiller’s “The Eleusin-
ian Festival” [“Das Eleusische Fest”] and,
41, 43, 47; Schiller’s “The Ode to Joy” [“An
die Freude”] and, 41, 48, 49, 63; Schiller’s
“The Plaint of Ceres” [“Klage der Ceres”]
and, 43–44, 49; search for faith as theme,
50–51, 55–56; three brothers Karama-
zov as three paths to God, 50; two types
of beauty in, 80; two types of truth in,
118–20; unwritten sequel to, 19, 54, 56.
See also individual characters in
Brunel-Lobrichon, Geneviève, 84
Bulgakov, Sergei, 4, 14, 149n28; dvuedin-
stvo (duality-in-unity) and, 13; on mysti-
cal eroticism in Catholicism, 75; on Sistine
Madonna of Raphael, 89–90; theory of an-
tinomies and, 15, 112, 114
Burton, Robert, 121
Byzantium / Byzantines, 31, 32, 35, 53, 83,
142n4
Cassedy, Steven, 4, 118, 150n33
Catholic Church, Roman. See Christianity,
Western (Catholic)
Ceres. See Demeter / Ceres (Greco-Roman
goddess)
Chalcedon, council of, 13
charm (prelest’), 19, 69, 73–76, 87, 144n33
Chernyshevsky, Nikolai, 99, 103, 104
Chinese philosophy, 9–10, 14, 15, 111. See
also yin and yang
chivalry, Western code of, 31
Christianity, 6, 89; antinomies in doctrines
of, 113–16; beauty in tradition of, 70, 71;
dialectics and, 8, 10, 122–23; Eleusin-
164
ian Mysteries and, 44; emphasis on Fall of
Man, 121–22; pagan antiquity in relation
to, 50; repentance and essence of, 32–33;
Resurrection as kernel of doctrine, 63.
See also Bible; Jesus Christ
Christianity, Eastern (Orthodox), 12, 118;
charm (prelest’) as negative quality, 75;
dvuedinstvo (duality-in-unity) principle,
13–15, 98, 128n44; funeral rites, 63; Great
Canon of Repentance (Velikii pokaian-
nyi kanon), 31, 33, 34, 35; iconography,
37, 73, 82; metanoia concept, 11, 29, 34;
pagan rites assimilated by, 49; passions
viewed in, 76; patristic traditions, 50, 65,
112, 114; emphasis on repentance, 29, 31,
34–35; sobornost’ (spiritual community),
17; Western Christianity compared with,
50, 82, 118–19, 122
Christianity, Western (Catholic), 50, 75, 76,
88, 122; aesthetic ideal of Madonna in,
83–84; socialism compared with, 138n33;
theodicy in, 118–19
Chryssavgis, John, 29, 34
coincidentia oppositorum (coincidence of
opposites), 8, 112
Collins, Wilkie, 84
contradictions, 7, 8, 22; avoided in Aristote-
lian logic, 111; Hegelian, 103; Ivan Kara-
mazov and, 118; original sin and, 99; as
principle in Russian religious thought,
111–16; truth and, 113; of the Under-
ground Man, 101; Zosima and, 118. See
also dialectic(s); opposites, unity of
Correggio, 90
Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky), 18, 20;
Crystal Palace tavern in, 104; epilogue to,
27–31, 37–38, 93, 133n40; Great Canon
of Repentance and, 31, 35; The Idiot com-
pared with, 79, 141n29; Madonna ideal
and, 90–91; revolt against Mother Earth,
45; “Sodom” in, 81; “The Tale of Saint An-
drew of Crete” and, 32–35; threshold of
repentance in, 35–39. See also individual
characters in
Dante Alighieri, 17, 50, 52, 84
Delumeau, Jean, 121, 122
Delvig, Anton, 87, 140n22
Demeter / Ceres (Greco-Roman goddess),
 Index
19, 41–43; The Brothers Karamazov and,
45, 46, 47, 135n19; Schiller’s poems and,
43–44, 49. See also Eleusinian Mysteries
The Devils [Demons; Possessed] (Dosto-
evsky), 4, 30, 34, 39, 55; “Sodom” in, 81
dialectic, 65, 113, 149n24; of beauty, 21, 80,
91, 92; “dialectics” distinguished from, 21;
of goodness, 19, 21; of truth, 20–21
dialectics, 7–9, 15; absence of dialectical
“becoming” in Dostoevsky, 16; Cherny-
shevsky’s neo-Hegelian, 103–4; Christian,
8; Christianity and, 122; “dialectic” distin-
guished from, 21; dialogism and, 16–18;
Hegelian, 7, 16, 111, 128–29n51; liter-
ary sources of, 22; model for, 9–10; non-
Hegelian nature of Dostoevsky’s dialectics,
16–18; oscillation between poles, 100–101,
103, 104; problem of sin and, 121. See also
antinomies and antinomism; contradic-
tions; thesis and antithesis
dialogism, 5, 6–7, 16–18, 115, 116–18
Diary of a Writer (Dostoevsky), 18, 31,
73, 99
Dionysius the Areopagite, 8, 119
Dobrolyubov, Nikolai, 33
Dolgoruky, Arkady (The Adolescent), 33
Dostoevsky, Anna, 58, 90
Dostoevsky, Fyodor: aesthetic philosophy of,
69; antinomies in work of, 4–5, 14, 118;
approaches in studies of, 3–7; on beauty,
92; as Christian thinker, 4, 6, 17–18, 103,
122–23; concept of sin, 10–13, 121–23;
death of, 54; on dualities, 22; European
Madonna cult and, 90; as Gnostic, 8;
Hegel and, 128–29n51; on human judg-
ment, 12–13; paths to God of the three
Karamazov brothers and, 50; radical ideas
attacked by, 61; romantic and realist tradi-
tions in, 82; Siberian exile of, 50, 51; truth
as wholeness in, 98. See also dialectics
Dostoevsky, Mikhail, 100, 150n33
dot, philosophy of the, 17–18, 38, 57, 101,
130n57
“The Dream of a Ridiculous Man” (Dosto-
evsky), 18, 20, 30, 98, 99, 105–10
dualism, 115, 128n44
duality, 13–15, 21–22, 76, 88, 98, 103, 105,
128n44
Duhamel-Amado, Claudie, 84
165
dvuedinstvo (duality-in-unity), 13–14, 15, 98,
128n44
Eco, Umberto, 83
Eisenstein, Sergei, 10
Eleusinian Mysteries, 41–45, 50, 135n13,
135–36n25; in The Brothers Karama-
zov, 48–51; Christianity and, 44; secret of
light in underworld, 51; as triumph of cul-
ture, 133–34n2. See also Demeter / Ceres
(Greco-Roman goddess); wheat, symbol-
ism of
Elshina, Tat’iana, 92
Emerson, Caryl, 17, 126n16
Engelhardt, Boris, 16
Enlightenment, 31, 74
Esaulov, Ivan, 3
eschatology, 43
The Eternal Husband (Dostoevsky), 81
Euripides, 43
evil, good and, 3, 7, 65. See also dialectic, of
goodness
Fall of Man, 84, 107, 108, 110, 113, 121–22
Fanger, Donald, 81
Florensky, Pavel, 4, 10, 11, 20; on anti-
nomic truth, 116–18, 149n24; Bakhtin and,
116–18; on charm (prelest’), 75; on dog-
matism and dogmatics, 113, 148n14; dvue-
dinstvo (duality-in-unity) and, 13; on phi-
losophy of the dot, 18; on prelest’, 75; on
reason and dialectic, 116, 149n24; theory
of antinomies and, 112–14, 127n39
Florovsky, George, 5, 14
Frank, Joseph, 28, 62
Frank, Semyon, 13, 14, 20; theory of antino-
mies and, 112, 115
Frazer, James, 43
freedom / free choice, 5, 13, 38, 113, 122
Gacheva, Anastasia, 3
Gibson, A. Boyce, 5
Gnosticism, 8, 81, 128n44
Godmanhood (bogochelovechestvo), 13
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 44, 50, 135n13
Gogol, Nikolai, 81, 88, 144n36
Golden Age, 20, 37, 98; utopia in “The
Dream of a Ridiculous Man,” 105, 106,
108–10, 121
 Index
Golosovker, Iakov, 150n33
goodness, 13, 18, 19, 130n59; antinomy
of, 14; antithesis of, 21–22; beauty and,
69–71, 80; dialectic of good and evil, 3, 7,
65, 73
Grand Inquisitor, 54, 61, 65
Grossman, Leonid, 59
Grushenka [Agrafena Svetlova] (The Broth-
ers Karamazov), 20, 38, 46, 52, 57, 135n19;
Mary of Egypt and, 35; as sinner, 58; trans-
formation of, 56
hagiography, 19, 32, 53, 55
Hegel, G. W. F., 7, 11, 43, 103–4, 112, 128–
29n51
Heraclitus, 3, 8, 22, 119; “dialetheism” and,
147n5; Logos of, 7, 111; on unity of op-
posites, 9
Hesiod, 134n4
Hesse, Hermann, 78
Holbein, Hans, 73, 74–75, 90
Hölderlin, Friedrich, 43
Holquist, Michael, 28
Homer, 50, 134n4
“Homeric Hymn to Demeter,” 41–43, 47,
134n7
Huizinga, Johan, 83
I Ching (The Book of Changes), 15, 127n32
The Idiot (Dostoevsky), 18, 20, 140n22;
beauty-as-salvation creed in, 69, 70, 75–
76; Blok’s The Stranger and, 91, 145n52,
145n54; finale of, 76–79, 141n34; Hol-
bein painting discussed in, 73, 75; passion
and compassion in, 76–79; Pushkin’s “The
Poor Knight” quoted in, 74–75, 86–87,
89; “Sodom” in, 81; two types of beauty
(krasivoe and prekrasnoe) in, 72–73; love-
passion and love-compassion in, 76–79.
See also individual characters in
istina (truth), antinomies and, 20–21, 112–13,
115; contradiction and, 111–13, 115–17;
religious and epistemic, 20, 97, 107–10.
See also truth
Ivanov, Vyacheslav, 4, 14, 49; on
beauty-as-salvation creed, 81; on Demeter
myth, 41; dvuedinstvo (duality-in-unity)
and, 13; on Eleusinian Mysteries, 135–
36n25; on “realistic symbolism,” 45
166
Jackson, Robert Louis, 49, 62–63, 64, 70, 109
Jesus Christ, 54, 103, 140–41n25; beauty
and, 73; depiction in art, 73–74, 75; de-
scent into hell, 46; Homer compared with,
50; Myshkin compared with, 72, 79; par-
able about grain of wheat, 44; passion of,
76; redemption of sins by, 122; Resurrec-
tion of, 73; Ridiculous Man and, 107; two
natures of, 13, 113, 127–28n42
Jones, Malcolm, 100
Jung, Carl Gustav, 15, 128n47
Kant, Immanuel, 7, 112, 117, 118, 149n28,
150n33
Karakozov, Dmitry, 59
Karamazov, Alexey [Alyosha] (The Broth-
ers Karamazov), 14, 38, 120; angelic or
saintly nature of, 19, 52–56; Dmitry’s con-
fessions to, 41, 80; field of possibilities for,
56, 58–61; incomplete development of,
53–55, 66; intuitive path to God and, 49–
50; novel’s epigraph and, 66; points of non-
coincidence and, 64; speech in epilogue of
Brothers Karamazov, 49, 61–64; tempta-
tions and, 57–58
Karamazov, Dmitry [Mitya] (The Brothers
Karamazov), 14, 19, 93, 135n19; on beauty,
80, 145n52; dream of, 47; Eleusinian mo-
tifs and, 40–45; epigraph to the novel and,
48–49; on ideals of Madonna and Sodom,
82, 90; moral renewal of, 40, 48; points of
non-coincidence and, 57; turning point in
journey of, 46–48
Karamazov, Fyodor (The Brothers Karama-
zov), 15, 40, 52, 61, 90–91
Karamazov, Ivan (The Brothers Karama-
zov), 14, 20; Aristotelian logic of, 118, 119;
“Grand Inquisitor” poem, 54, 61; points of
non-coincidence and, 57; rational path to
God and, 49–50, 57; Zosima’s arguments
and, 119–120
Karamazovism, 60, 61
Karamzin, Nikolai, 73–74
Karsavin, Lev, 117
Kasatkina, Tatiana, 3
Katerina Ivanovna (The Brothers Karama-
zov), 57
Katerina Ivanovna (Crime and Punish-
ment), 90
 Index
Khalturin, Stepan, 58
Khokhlakova, Lise (The Brothers Karama-
zov), 52, 58
Khut, V. P., 128–29n51
Koni, A. F., 59
Kostomarov, Nikolai, 32, 33
Kotel’nikov, V. A., 65
Krasotkin, Kolya (The Brothers Karamazov),
49, 64, 70
Kritsky, Andrei. See Andrew of Crete, Saint;
Dobrolyubov, Nikolai
Krokhina, Nadezhda, 91
Küchelbecker, Wilhelm, 86, 87
Lao Tzu, 7–8, 22, 119
“The Legend of a Drunkard,” 132n27
“The Legend of an Incestuous Man,” 32, 33
“Legend of Pope Gregory,” 34
Lermontov, Mikhail, 87, 88, 100, 144n35
The Life of a Great Sinner [Zhitie velikogo
greshnika] (unwritten Dostoevsky novel),
33–34, 55
“little onion” (single good deed), 17, 38, 39
Liubimov, N. A., 119
Liza (Notes from Underground), 82, 102
Lossky, Nicholas, 3, 53, 65
Lossky, Vladimir, 4, 112, 114–15, 117, 127–
28n42, 148n18
love, 4, 13, 79; as antinomy, 5; in Christian
doctrine, 113; courtly and chivalric, 83,
86, 142n6; egotism interdependent with,
7; for the sinner, 119; free choice and, 5;
hatred in dialectic with, 3, 6, 105, 107; as
passion and as compassion, 76–79; suffer-
ing and, 106
Madonna, feminine ideal of, 19–20, 74;
beauty of, 75; European aesthetic ideal,
83–84; in Western European art , 82–84;
in Russian literature, 85–93, 140n22;
Sodom and, 80–82
Magdalene, as feminine archetype, 85
Maikov, Apollon, 55, 76
Mann, Thomas, 132n31
Marmeladov, Semyon (Crime and Punish-
ment), 15, 39, 90
Marmeladova, Sonya (Crime and Punish-
ment), 11, 30, 141n29; beauty in Sodom
and, 91; Mary of Egypt and, 35; Raskolnik-
167
ov’s confession to, 27, 29; as saintly sinner,
20, 39, 91; in final scene, 37
Mary of Egypt, Saint, 35, 36, 37, 55
Mattei, Christian Friedrich, 43
Matual, David, 28
Merezhkovsky, Dmitry, 3, 13
metanoia (radical change of mind), 11,
29, 34
Michelangelo, 121
Mill, John Stuart, 99
Miller, Robin Feuer, 50, 62, 141n34
Mnemozina (literary almanac), 86
Mochulsky, Konstantin, 27–28, 34
Montaigne, Michel de, 121
Morson, Gary Saul, 7, 17, 56, 60
Moscow Art Theater (MKHAT), 4
“Mr. —bov and the Question of Art” (Dosto-
evsky), 70
Murillo, Bartolomé, 90
Myshkin, Prince (The Idiot), 14, 73, 75, 81,
91, 141n29; beauty-as-salvation creed and,
70; as destroyer, 77, 78; as personification
of compassion, 19, 76–79; positive beauty
of, 72
mythology, Greek, 41–45
Napoleon I, Emperor, 27
Nastasya Filippovna Barashkova (The Idiot),
14, 19; beauty of, 72, 75, 81; beauty in
Sodom and, 91; death of, 81; Madonna
ideal and, 75; as saintly sinner, 20,
91–92
“A Nasty Story” (Dostoevsky), 81
negative (apophatic) theology, 8, 13, 114,
119, 149n28
Nekrasov, N. A., 44, 99, 100
Nelli, René, 83
Neoplatonism, 8
Netochka Nezvanova (Dostoevsky), 81
Nicholas I, Czar, 86
Nicholas of Cusa, 8, 111–12, 148n18
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 4
nihilism, 98, 100
Nikitina, F. G., 129n51
Notes from Underground (Dostoevsky), 18,
20, 93, 98, Chernyshevsky’s neo-Hegelian
dialectics and, 103–5; high and low truth
(pravda) in, 98–105
Novalis, 43
 Index

Oedipus myth, 34 Rakitin (The Brothers Karamazov), 52, 57, 61

Old Russian legends, 19, 32, 34, 39
“Open to Me the Doors of Repentance”
[“Pokaianiia otverzi mne dveri”] (Byzan-
tine hymn), 35
opposites, unity of, 6, 16; good and evil, 115;
Heraclitus and, 7, 9; life and death, 40, 43;
love and hate, 107. See also contradictions;
dialectic(s)
Orthodox Church. See Christianity, Eastern
(Orthodox)
Otechestvennye zapiski (journal), 69
Ovid, 43
Paperno, Irina, 103
paradoxes, 7, 11, 14, 15, 20, 61, 110, 112
passion (strast’), compassion (sostradanie)
and, 19, 76–79
Paul, Saint, 8, 10, 113, 122, 132n27
Pausanias, 43
Persephone (Greek goddess), 42, 43,
135n19
Perugino, Madonna of, 88
Petersburg Collection [Peterburgskii sbornik]
(Nekrasov), 44
Petersburg Religious-Philosophical Society,
117
Peter the Great, 85
Petrarch, 84
Petrashevsky circle, 129n51
Phillips, R. W., 105
Pindar, 43
Plato, 11, 134n7
Plutarch, 43
polarities, 6, 7, 9, 20, 69, 105–10, 122
Polar Star [Poliarnaia Zvezda] (literary al-
manac), 86
Pomerants, Grigory, 52, 82, 130n57, 138n46
Ponomareva, G. B., 55
Poor Folk (Dostoevsky), 44, 81
positivism, 98, 99
pravda (truth), high and low, 20, 97–100,
109. See also truth
pre-Socratics, 7, 111, 147n5
Prévost, Abbé, 84
prodigal son, biblical parable of, 22
Pushkin, Alexander, 69, 89, 99, 140n22,
143–44nn29–30; charm (prelest’) in poetry
of, 75, 144n33; Madonna cult and, 74,
86–88
Raphael, 20, 81, 84, 86, 87
Raskolnikov, Rodion (Crime and Punish-
ment), 14, 19, 104, 141n29; confessions
of, 27; Dmitry Karamazov compared with,
40; at doors of repentance, 35–39; on pan-
demic, 30, 121; moral renewal of, 28, 31,
36–38, 65, 93, 141n29; open fate of, 36–
38, 66; on sensual beauty, 90; as unrepen-
tant sinner, 27–31
rationalism, 98, 100
A Raw Youth. See The Adolescent (A Raw
Youth) (Dostoevsky)
realism, romantic, 81
redemption, 17, 107
relativism, 6
Renaissance, European, 82, 89, 91
Renan, Ernest, 73
repentance, 3, 19; dialectic of beginning and
end, 29; Great Lent and, 29, 31; limi-
nal (threshold) status of, 35, 36; metanoia
(radical turnabout) and, 34; Orthodox
Christianity and, 29, 31, 34–35; as pokai-
anie and as raskaianie, 21, 29; Raskolni-
kov and, 28, 36; transgression in relation-
ship with, 14
resurrection, 17, 34, 38; Alyosha Karamazov
and, 53, 63, 65; death followed by, 44, 45;
of Jesus Christ, 63, 73, 122; Raskolnikov’s
moral resurrection, 28, 31, 36–38, 65, 93,
141n29
Rice, James, 60
Rogozhin (The Idiot), 14, 81, 91, 93; as per-
sonification of carnal passion, 19, 76–79;
possibility of moral renewal and, 79
Romantics, German, 85
Rosenshield, Gary, 28
Rougemont, Denis de, 83
Rowe, William, 35–36
Rozanov, Vasily, 11–12, 14, 53, 92
Russian folk beliefs, 34, 53; Madonna cult
in, 85–93
Russkii vestnik (journal), 69
Sand, George, 100
Scanlan, James, 4
Schiller, Johann, 41, 43–44, 47–49, 63, 100,
133–34n2;
Schlegel, Friedrich, 43
Schönle, Andreas, 86

168
 Index
sensuality / sexuality, 17, 77, 90, 141n27;
beauty tarnished by, 19, 22; as enslaving
force, 5; Madonna ideal and, 82; Victorian
attitudes, 84
Shestov, Lev, 28
Simmons, Ernest, 28
sin and sinners, 3, 11–12; absent from utopia,
106; antinomies and, 14; beauty and, 75,
88, 90; division within wholeness and, 13,
20; Fall of Man and, 113; human judgment
and, 12–13; as infectious agent, 30, 121;
love for the sinner, 119; as moral death, 45;
original sin, 99, 109, 113, 121–22; passions
and, 76; as path to God, 19, 34; repentance
and, 18–19, 29–34, 39, 65; saintly sinners,
11–12, 20, 91; salvational dimension of,
10–11
Sistine Madonna (Raphael), 20, 81, 86, 87;
Belinsky on, 88; Bulgakov on, 89–90; Tol-
stoy on, 88–89
Smerdyakov, Pavel (The Brothers Karama-
zov), 61
socialism, 20, 33, 58, 60, 64; Crystal Palace
ideal, 104; Dostoevsky’s objections to, 98,
110, 138n33; “rational egoism” and, 99;
utopian agenda of, 100, 104
Socrates, 134n7
Sodom, 17, 19, 20–22, 80–82, 91–92
Solovyov, Vladimir, 13
Sophia (spiritual wisdom), 13, 27, 81
Sophocles, 43
Sovremennik (journal), 33, 69, 140n22
Spencer, Herbert, 99
Stankevich, N. V., 104
Stavrogin (The Devils), 30, 39, 138n46
St. Petersburg, city of, 22, 92, 106; Crystal
Palace tavern, 104; Haymarket Square, 27,
29, 81, 104
suffering, 6, 73, 104; of children, 119, 123;
truth attained through, 107
Sumarokov, Aleksander, 85
Suvorin, Aleksei, 58–60, 66
Svidrigailov, Arkady (Crime and Punish-
ment), 15, 38, 39, 90, 91, 93
symbolism, realistic, 45
synchronicity (Jungian concept), 15, 128n47
synthesis, Hegelian, 7, 16, 21, 115
Tai Chi (“Ultimate Boundary”), 9, 15,
127n32
169
“Tale of St. Andrew of Crete,” 19, 32
Tao (the Way of the Universe), 7–8, 111
Thackeray, William M., 84
Theodosius (Roman emperor), 42
thesis and antithesis, 11, 14–15; absence of
synthesis, 21, 128n50; antinomian mono-
dualism and, 115; dialogue of, 120; as ex-
pression of truth, 113; in Hegel, 7; Ivan’s
thesis and Zosima’s antithesis, 119–20;
unfinalized interaction between, 117–18
threshold, chronotype of, 17, 35–39
Tieck, Ludwig, 86
Tikhomirov, Boris, 3
Tikhon, elder (The Devils), 30, 39
Tolstoy, Leo, 10, 18, 80, 127n35, 145n46;
Madonna cult and, 88–89; on two types
of beauty (krasivoe and prekrasnoe), 71–72
Trepov, General Fyodor, 59
troubadours, Provençal, 83, 84, 85
Trubetskoy, Evgeny, 4, 112
Trudgill, Eric, 84, 85
truth, 13, 18; antinomic, 20, 115–17; an-
tinomy of, 14; antithesis of, 22; in The
Brothers Karamazov (pro and contra),
20, 119–20; dialectic, 123; contradiction
and, 112–13, 115–17; dialogic, 116; in
“The Dream of a Ridiculous Man,” 105,
108–10; in Notes from Underground, 99–
100, 103–4; two conceptions of (istina and
pravda), 20, 97–99, as wholeness, 97, 98.
See also istina; pravda
Turgenev, Ivan, 44
Underground Man (Notes from Under-
ground), 30, 98–104
utilitarianism, English, 99
utopias, 18, 98
Veselovsky, A. N. 85
Vetlovskaya, Valentina, 53, 59
Victoria, Queen, 84
Victorian culture, 84–85
The Village of Stepanchikovo (Dosto-
evsky), 81
Vladislavlev, Mikhail, 150n33
Vremia (journal), 69, 150n33
Wackenroder, Wilhelm Heinrich, 86, 87
wheat, symbolism of: biblical parable (Book
of John), 38, 39, 40, 44, 66, 133n41; Eleu-
 Index
sinian Mysteries and, 42, 45; as “subject-
symbol” of The Brothers Karamazov, 45
wholeness, 7, 18, 29, 31, 97, 115, 117; divi-
sion within, 13, 20; polarities and, 107
Williams, Rowan, 77, 78, 141n28
yin and yang, 7, 9–10, 13, 17, 127n32. See
also Chinese philosophy
Yunge, Yekaterina, 22
170
Zasulich, Vera, 59
Zhukovsky, Vasily, 44, 86, 87, 88, 144n35
Zosima, elder (The Brothers Karamazov):
contradictions and, 118–20; Ivan and, 20,
120; as mentor to Alyosha Karamazov,
49–50, 52–54, 64–65; on parable of grain
of wheat bringing forth much fruit, 44–45;
on planted seed of corruption, 107–8
 About the Author

Ksana Blank is a senior lecturer in the Department of Slavic Languages and Lit-
eratures at Princeton University.
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