Пише: Игор Ђурић
„Impure spirits undoubtedly exist, but their apprehension can be very different.“
Dostoevsky
Igor M. Djuric
DOSTOEVSKY: the impure force (Demon) IN ME!
Translated into English by
Djuradj I. Djuric.
djura2707@gmail.com
Forty
years ago, right about the time of my transition from primary to secondary
school, I have read my first Dostoevsky: one of his books. The book was called The Karamazov Brothers and after reading
it, I did not know where there was more confusion: in the book or in my head.
Out of the whole book, one character was particularly impressionable to me,
Ivan Karamazov, and he left a deep trace in me at that time. Besides the devil
which tortured him and frightened me, the stories about The Grand Inquisitor, which I did not understand at that time, the
innocent child tears to which I did not pay any attention since I was a child
myself, the word that remained in my memory as the keyword is: a poem. Ivan Karamazov wrote a poem.
My
modest notions up until then were telling me that the poem was some sort of
poetry. Something similar to Pushkin. However, Ivan was retelling his poem,
there were no verses or rhymes, but there was some confusion – which was, in a
way, easier and suited me. I instantly desired to have my own poem and to
recite it to someone in lunacy and hallucination. I started creating it,
writing some of it down in a black notebook I always carried around with me, in
a leather officer’s satchel.
We
were young, we amused ourselves the only ways we knew and were capable of, so
we also went to dances characteristic for those times. It was an adjacent
village, a great village, where us town folks used to go, and it was nearby, we
could walk to it for a couple of kilometers through picturesque tree-lined
alleys and tame nature. We walked in smaller groups while joking, laughing,
singing, falling in love and courting. We returned to our homes in the same
manner after the dance.
Right
about that time, the time I have met Ivan and were creating my own poem, on a
summer evening, by accident, a girl in whom everyone was in love with,
including myself, and was the elusive dream of all boys and lads, came to the
dance with me. How we found each other, myself and her, to go by ourselves to
the dance, to this day I do not know. I only remember thinking that the fact I
have read Dostoevsky and came up with my poem, would help me in winning her
heart over.
I
mentioned the great writer to her. She looked at me inquisitively but confused.
I was also narrating her my poem while walking next to her. What I was saying:
today I do not know. It was sure: I did have my own poem. It was probably about
unfortunate love, the absurdity of life, world peace and the inevitable
suicide. I was narrating it enthusiastically, with passion, almost like Ivan. I
was speaking constantly and she kept silent. I thought that this was a good
sign: she must be fascinated.
When
we arrived at the hall where the dance was taking place, she looked at me
pityingly, stroked my hair and said:
-
You’re fine.
In
our circles, when someone is considered a fool, they say that he is fine. And:
vice versa!
And
she walked away from me. She did not even dignify me with a glance. It appeared
that she did not even consider me obnoxious, she just did not take me seriously
and considered that I was a loser. I returned home alone, to be precise, with
my poem. The written pieces of that illusion were burned down with my home in
1999 when the impure forces came down on my country and my home.
The
moral of the story: if you want to conquer women’s hearts and be amusing in
your social circle – never mention Dostoevsky. Actually, do not mention any major
writers but this one by no means. If you can: do not mention him ever – if you
are not mentioning him to yourself. I followed that rule later through life:
and I have had women and friends. Today, therefore, by my own recommendation, I
mention him to myself.
That
described experience, I surely did not count as a loss in my heart. No! That,
and some other thing as well, opened my eyes and relieved my soul. I
comprehended that I do not have to renounce myself but instead separate some
matter inside of me. While my life paths have not been going side by side at
all times, they sometimes had to cross paths, which are presented by the
different life choices, but those intersections were only cases which have never
become rules. Admittedly, I have never separated my dreams from reality but I
have never again shared my dreams with those who do not dream.
My former
unfulfilled love later married some good-looking but dullish scoundrel who has
never heard of Dostoevsky or read a single line of any book in his lifetime but
has ruined her life and removed the smile from her lips. They say that she
later remained alone and empty, with her beauty only visible in fading traces. She
lived her life as many fatal women from the narratives of Fyodor Mikhailovich. I, however, did better
both in love and in life, and consider that Dostoevsky (and some other)
contributed to this: he ennobled me spiritually, strengthened me and beautified
me on the inside, taught me that kindness is the basis of everything and that it is reflected in the forgiveness of
other people’s happiness and that beauty is invincible (it will conquer the world) if it is on
both sides – inside and outside, so I did not even have to mention him, it was
implied that I am desirable.
*
Twenty years ago I wrote the next lines
in my journal:
I
am reading Dostoevsky’s books once again. All of them, for the third, fourth
time. This reminded me of my young days and those windy and cloudy times in
Istok when I was reading Dostoevsky and had no one to share what I have read
and not understood.
I was
walking down the streets, with long and disheveled hair, drinking in the
evenings and sometimes rollicking. All of that to show the contempt to human
stupidity and the incompetence to love each other unconditionally – I was
thinking at the time.
I went
back to read Dostoevsky a lot of times. His nihilism, the understanding of the
worthless and yet opulent human soul, the dilemmas he starts – all of this is
sometimes too much for a young soul but stimulative and intriguing at the same
time.
In each human, there is
something strange and undefined. Surely, the good and the evil as well. A human
is maybe sometimes not evil just because he fears the punishment, both human or
divine. Otherwise, the human is an embodiment of evil. Just witness what he
turns himself into during wartime when there is a good possibility that he will
not answer for his actions and misdeeds?!
Centuries-old
and universal dilemmas are set and opened by F. Mikhailovich.
That is how I used to write at the age of thirty. I
just got out of war and into a refuge. The war was bloody: the evil inside of humans
has woken up. Peace was filthy: the human residue has come to light. I sought consolation
and questions to my answers in Dostoevsky’s works. I did not know any better
(and it was probably not possible) in such a grey and meaningless time.
That year, on my birthday, my father
gave me a book he has kept for years: Poor
Folk. On its last page it was written: Read
on August 23, 1963, while resting in the woods above Istok, by Milisav Djuric.
No wonder that, a few years later, I wrote my first published novel Kolona based on the grounds and motives
of the book Crime and Punishment. I
was approaching my forties. In the Notes
from the Underground, He wrote: forty
years – that is the deepest old age, to live as long is improper, insipid and
immoral... He wanted to become an insect at that age, when he realized how
people can be like, and how Kafka, following his trail, was becoming a bug
later.
*
Right now I am over fifty years old, and at that age, Dostoevsky is calling
his heroes old men – without an allegory. But He is still there: inside of me.
He is beating me from the inside, not to come out but to announce the existence
of an impure force, the necessity of a punishment for the crime itself and the
disagreement to any compromise. He is reporting to be alive – checking if the
same applies to me.
Who is Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky?
He is the greatest writer in the history of world literature!
A master in front of all the great
masters of Russia and the rest of the world. A genius of god’s providence. The
others were maybe smarter or more educated – he did his best because he knew something
that could not be learned. He gained – and then gave. He pulled out from the
depths, he looked from the above. Every width is narrow to him! André Gide
wrote that several of the greatest rivers
sprung out of him, however, it is more accurate to say: he is the spring
for all of the rivers that streamed after him. Gogol tailored his Overcoat just so Dostoevsky could come
out of it.
This was a man who was possessed by the
unholy one. Those demons were making him possessed. In order to survive, he had
to pour it into books through his quill. Dostoevsky did not write – he fought
with the demons, both inner and
personal, and universal and of all Russia. In that struggle he sought the good,
therefore he sought God and angels. It is up to us to determine, each for
himself, whether we have found what we have been looking for! And also what we
have found – from that – inside of us!
Dostoevsky devised all of his books in
a few minutes, standing in front of a firing squad (and he believed in God at
that moment lustfully kissing the cross),
shaped them, in his epileptic agonies (and saw God at that moment) – after that the easy part remained:
to write those books. His personality was shaped by gambling debts and the
coldness of Siberia, his faith came from ungodliness and his soul was ground by
the catharsis of the one who went from the bottom, to the incomprehensible and
unattainable heights.
He
is, like his mother Russia, a play of
nature, and not of reason – as he states himself in The Demons. What he was given – he was given by the Creator. What
he took – he returned to the people! For some a mystic, for others an apostle
of Orthodoxy and the rest a heretic. Actually, he was a Russian, therefore: all
of that and much more. In any case: a son of Russia which is one big misunderstanding. Tolstoy wrote, in a
letter to N.N. Strakhov, that they elevated
Dostoevsky into the rank of a prophet and saint exactly the man who died in the fieriest process of the
inner fight of good and evil.
Dostoevsky
is less of an Orthodox apostle and more a sacred warrior of Orthodoxy (it is necessary for a Russian Christ to
shine as opposed to the Occident (The
Idiot)). Dostoevsky is less of a Russophile and more of a Slavophil (the Slavophil ideal is a union in the spirit
of true and broad love, without lies or materialism, and based on a personal
generous example (Political
inscriptions)). He is a Slav first and then a Russian and he is more of a
pagan than a Christian (Russia will,
alongside Slavdom, and while leading it, say a grand word to the entire world
(Political inscriptions)). He is an
Orthodox pagan and an old believer on the path of Christ. For him, Christ is
the proof that God exists and Orthodoxy is proof that the Russian nation exists
and that it is the nation – the one who bear God. And: vice versa!
He
was not a nationalist even though they accused him of being one, and today they
still sporadically blame him concerning that matter, and not because of the
fact that one nationalist can hardly conquer the world without a single grain
of gunpowder, therefore with his spirit, and he did just that. If he is a
nationalist, then he is some sort of a universal, ecumenical nationalist. He
proved that literature can change the world. It can change: not necessarily
transform it. Therefore, he was not narrowly limited but unlimitedly susceptive.
He
materializes idealism and idealises matter. He only peaks into the human soul,
with one eye, through an ajar door, but never opens the door all the way and
never opens his other eye, even when he can, even when we would like that. With
him, eventually, victims become villains and tormentors become God’s angels. With
him, witticism and wordplay turn to clear and mobile images where we can see
how rusalkas with flower wreaths on their heads, with their dancing, warn the
Russian folk about the trouble that will befall on them. With him, calmness is an enormous force, love will
conquer the world and love is a pity. He is the son of nature and one of
the world’s wonders.
The
Prince of Darkness with Dostoevsky?
The greatest connoisseur of
the human soul (although, only peaking with one eye), most of all, of the
Russian soul which deserves to be described the most, the same soul that is, at
the same time ready for the greatest evil and good in itself (because reason is never capable of
separating good from evil), for the greatest crime and even greater
sacrifice, for a total collapse and an unrivaled exploit, the soul that finds
itself in its best light through catharsis, through purification in performing
and regret because of the performed. Thus, he equally had to ogle with God and
the devil (the two lords). Because it
is unlikely to believe in the devil and not to believe in God. It is, in our century, reactionary to
believe in God, and I am the devil, and because of that, I can (The Karamazov Brothers). There are laws
about self-destruction and self-defence: except
for God, the devil equally rules over mankind (The Idiot).
As
we have stated, he sought the devil in the human by proving the existence of
God. The devil appears in Dostoevsky’s works in the form of an incident,
vaguely and sickly, with a question mark present at all times, whether it is
reality or hallucination. Yegor Efimov’s devil has artistic aspirations: he
offers superior mastery of playing music for the soul. The unholy of Nikolai
Stavrogin occurs in different faces and
various characters, but is one and the same, while Ivan’s devil has a human
character and the look of a worn-out nobleman. Myshkin’s is an unknown: is it a
demon or the pre-epileptic state?! The
impure spirit is great and dreadful, and he does not have hooves or horns which
you have invented for him (The Idiot).
This is why it is no wonder that, in my novel Klinicki zivot, ten years ago, I have dealt with Fyodor’s devil:
THE DEVIL: … and … but I have talked with
Fyodor Mikhailovich in Siberia in 1852, when from coldness, hunger and
exhaustion… but that is not something to talk about… later he described me as a
charming and witty worn-out nobleman, even though, to my liking, he exaggerated
with my philosophizing because I talk and intellectualize only what is enough
for me to achieve my goal and persuade “the party”… what… you also deem that I
philosophize too much… I have no idea what has gotten into you all… you talk
and philosophize about me and afterwards, I am the guilty one. Or, as in 1692,
the governor of the Massachusetts state mister William Phips, when he came to
calm the incident in Salem, which truth to be told got out of control, stated: “enough
is said about the devil…”. With all of you who want to become writers,
there is always a problem: how to be original?! In 1923, I even told Thomas
Mann at the Berghof mountain resort and spa to try and be more original and
does not mention me, let alone to quote me. He did not listen to me and did
both tendentiously conveying my words that my popularity is essentially a
German occurrence. And, truth to be told, I am not like that. I am a
Russian soul. I always also did my best with the Russians. The Germans are too
rigid. The English are nonimaginative. The French are uncultured. You Serbians
are insidious and the Italians are frivolous. The Spaniards, on the other hand,
are unreliable. But the Russians, oh, the Russians have a soul. The Russian soul
is worth the struggle. And they always give it for almost nothing and for the
pure desire to collapse. After all, they are all revolutionaries, they all want
to tear down the old and build the new. Continuously… Well, ok, I am a man, it
is true. If we are going, to be honest, a man, ohoho, I would say with certainty:
a man! But this surely is not a reason for your unimaginativeness. Admittedly,
it is true that I equally love to bestride both men and women, depending on how
I feel at the moment. (Did you ever hear about the devil purchasing a soul from
a woman?) Furthermore, I exist more as an idea and less as a creature, but for
God sakes, what are we talking about, this all likes a forced drama text… I
expected more from you as an intellectual since you are already indulging in
various observations. Damn it, Ivan is a literary character, fiction… how could
I… I am real, after all… and eventually, if we are already mentioning
Dostoevsky, I prefer Nikolai Stavrogin, he is my character, my deed. The impure
force!! Huh?! I would disagree but it has an artistic heaviness to it. How
nicely does he say: I believe in the impure spirit, I believe in a canonical
sense, I believe in the personality of the impure spirit, not the allegory, and
I do not feel any needs to extort confirmations from anyone… Fascinating
and enchanting, although someone can notice something pathetic in it as well.
It does not matter, it is art after all and you cannot have art without the
pathetic factor. No, I had not been speaking with Ivan, he is already a bit of a
corny character…
*
God
with Dostoevsky?
Fyodor’s
Highest Force?!
It all exists, only we do not understand
anything (The Idiot)!
I
write these lines in the period of the coronavirus,
in times when people start to understand that, even though they cannot see something with the naked eye, or
understand with their intellect, that something
can either give them life or take it away and by doing so, the purpose as well.
Therefore,
we will not see God or understand Him, but His purpose we must seek by
believing. There is God, even if we do not see him. God exists even though we
do not comprehend the essence of the Creator or the Created. It is up to us,
whether we want Him or not, what kind of God we want and what to expect from
him?!
God-man
– man-God – the crucified philanthropist?!
Christ or Antichrist?!
The
foundations of religion and philosophy in Dostoevsky’s literature lie in the
question: whether we should love Christ and believe in him as the second among
Gods or as the first among humans?!
Dostoevsky
questions whether God created humans or if humans created God?! And, if the
latter is true (in: the answer) whether humans created God based on
themselves?!
The
answers to these dilemmas he sought in suspicious places: he did not seek the
human in God – but the God in the human!
Also,
he sought the non-existence of the existent God in the same place!
In humans and people, he
sought deicide! And he found it! He sought it with them because they all sought
and found God in themselves and their misdeed. With nothing but the act of
murder, they ended up with Him and with the faith in Themselves.
He
sought it in Karamazovness and Rogózhiness!
In
the Old Believers crossing oneself with two fingers: he found it!
However
you put it, God is a human and a human is God. There is God even if there isn’t
one. This only speaks about the perfection and complexity of the state.
Everything we do is the God's will and if there is no God, then that is also
his will and at that moment we are gods ourselves because we decide: each human
for himself!
Can
God be believed in and the Freewill kept?
Even
if Christ returned to Earth, among people, the church and the system through
which oligarchy rules would not allow for the established order of things to
change or be disrupted and would crucify him again or burn him as a blasphemer.
This is what Dostoevsky says through the lips of Ivan Karamazov. The impure
forces add: Christ without the Earthly
empire cannot stay on Earth. In the text Germany and Rome he writes about the same topic and in the same way
and even adds that Rome elevated its holy
power above justice and God.
We are slaves of the imposed
system of our "freedoms" and "rights". We cannot doubt our
"freedom" and can never seek a balance between the bread, the games
and freedom, because we are hungry in order to be free and fed up if we do not
question our non-freedom, but instead play by the rules.
The Great Inquisitor states that there
are three forces in the world that keep mankind in obedience, and they are: miracle, secret and authority. The
secret lies in the fact that Rome was
received by Him, the emperor's sword – authority! The authority lies in the
possibility of the Church to forgive sins and crimes in the name of God! The
miracle will reflect in the fact that a miracle cannot exist even if it does!
We should not, however, forget the fact about which church Dostoevsky
specifically talks about, when he speaks in this manner because Roman Catholicism is no longer Christianity and atheism is
healthier than Roman Catholicism (Demons).
Why does Dostoevsky seek God
in human evil and the filth of the human soul?
Firstly,
he does not seek it in the truth or evidence because as he says: if it is true that Christ does not exist,
then it is better with Christ than with the truth (Demons)! Besides that, Dostoevsky sought God because, in order to believe in God, God is necessary
(Demons). However, the basis of
God seeking is the knowing of your people
(by doing this, also knowing the human of those people). For him: God is pain, in the fear of death. Whoever
conquers pain and fear, he will become a god. (Demons). A human will be free when
it is all the same to him whether he lives or not-lives, and if he is bold enough to kill himself, he
will become a god but only the one who kills himself for the sake of killing fear (Demons).
If
God is our father then we are children who resemble their father in everything
and in the evil as well! Prince Myshkin considers that the essence of
Christianity and the apprehension of God are found in the God as our born father and the Christmas joy for the sake of our
children belief – for the sake of man: The
essence of religious sense does not belong to any wisdom, any violation or
crime, or any atheisms; there is something out of the ordinary there and will
forever be out of the ordinary; but the major thing is that you will notice
that, before all and in the clearest way, on the Russian heart…
Secondly, the problem is the embodiment of God
– that necessity to see him in order to believe. A human is constantly trying
to impose and give God a shape, to limit him with a form and by doing so is
heading in the wrong direction. God is, either: everything – or: nothing! God
cannot be “something”. Especially cannot be: “someone”! Therefore, the divine
and non-divine cannot be separated on this world – if there is a God.
Everything must be his deed or there isn’t one! Actually, he is the beginning
and the end of the world but does not necessarily have to be the case of events
in-between the beginning and the end. He is in the root of everything, in the
foundation, but does not have to be in the final form. If there is one: his
will is everything around us and inside of us. If there isn’t one (which is
also his deed), then people are right for devising him. In-between the question
if there is or isn’t one – it is hard to survive.
God and nature – yes – it is one and the same (isn’t this what, with a bit of missing in
the head and phallic in the leg, Marya Timofeevna Lebyadkina, is saying), but,
perhaps it isn’t (we state, none the less flawed). God created himself through
everything that exists. A human is also nature. However, are human actions a
part of nature (and: God)?! Yes! They are! If God is everything (having created
everything) that he created the devil inside of a human. God speaks through a
human and his actions! God speaks through the yurodivy (Holy Fool) divine man!
God speaks through Dostoevsky as well!
In
the search for God, no limitations (forms) can be set because if something is
of shape, then it is limited, and yet again, something else exists as well at
the other side of that border (form). The form is limited in space (but space
is also involved in the shaping because without space a form cannot be imagined
in the human imagination) and the idea of God and his work must be unlimited as
nature (Universe), and God must be sought in that unlimited state (immensity and infinity are necessary to us (Demons)). Because of this Dostoevsky
seeks and finds God in the stench of the old man Zosima’s body, the same amount
as in the unfair and unjustified little tear of Ivan’s child, in the epileptic
foam which comes out of Prince Myshkin’s mouth, in the unfortunate fate of
Marya which the same Myshkin kissed, in the suffering of the little girl
Matryosha who killed God, in the cut
throat of Timofeevna, in the bloody eyes of Rogózhin or the shattered head of
Lizaveta Ivanovna!
Dostoevsky
wrote that if there isn’t a God,
everything is allowed and I deem this differently (I do not claim that my
notion is correct, only that it is mine): if there is a God, everything is
allowed. The calculation is clear: if there is a God, then people are immortal. If there isn’t one, then everything that
remains for us is an animal instinct which is susceptible to evolution and survival
of the stronger and more resistant one, which is to a certain extent, fair.
However, if there is a God, he created us as we are, good and evil, capable of
doing evil without any restrictions and being equally good.
Only
the “divine man” does evil without a visible reason, the “non-divine”, animal
man, does evil for the sake of survival. With that human evil, about which
Dostoevsky speaks, it is obvious (typical Russian) that people often do the
greatest misdeeds to themselves and that they are their own greatest
executioners. This, either, is not characteristic for an animal man who
animalistically survives but is the characteristic of the servant of God who
seeks a purpose of his existence. With the divine-human, everything is allowed:
from me, the same as on me! We are all obliged to, in our lifetime, kill at
least one grandmother-usurer, like Raskolnikov, and for the well-being of
mankind and great deeds, and to carry a cross on our shoulders for that. But
are, in the same manner, obliged to, as the grandmother-usurer, take a hit from
an axe in the back of the head, when the time for that comes. Symbolically, of
course, both! If necessary: for real as well!
The
anarchistic, nihilistic and before all ungodly idea that everything is allowed, for our higher goals, Dostoevsky
delivers through Ivan Karamazov, Raskolnikov and Stavrogin. This idea was,
therefore, once deeply rooted in Dostoevsky himself. And, insofar as where his
post-socialistic and post-revolutionary heresy, in the phase of his return to
Christianity, should be sought – then it is in the foundation of the idea that
there are no boundaries once everything is permitted.
If there are no people, there is no God –
the impure forces speak in a humanistic manner, on the other hand. The people
have endured but have not betrayed God. God was betrayed by educated people.
What do we need God for if we do not have divine men who make the people that
belong to God, to whom God belongs to?! As they are, as there are! What do we
need God himself if there is no God?! What do we need Dostoevsky for without
God! At last, as one of his heroes said: If
there is no God, what kind of a captain am I? Seeking God is the aesthetic
principle, the moral principle, the direction of every national movement… God
is a synthetic personality of a whole nation… the sign of one nation’s downfall
is when gods become common… (Demons).
Dostoevsky
desires to stop time because that is
the only way of reaching eternity.
Every man should be happy and then he will no longer require time because time is an idea that will shut down in our
mind and is not an object and whoever
teaches people that everyone is good, he will bring the world to an end,
and yet again, the one who taught them,
He is the one they crucified (Demons).
If time is stopped, then God can be found in that immobility and non-space,
because without time there is no movement, without movement there is no space
and without space, there is no form – which means that God's constant creation
of infinity would also stop.
*
The
magic of the literary procedure and artistic achievement of Dostoevsky?!
Realism
is but a filler for pupils and students. Modernism is for postgraduates. A
psychological novel is for doctoral candidates. Dostoevsky’s literature – that
is a harmonized chaos! It is colors poured out and spilled all over the place
which eventually merge into a most vivid rainbow! It is a nightmare after which
the awakening does not bring relief! It is a murderer, a suicide man, a deicide
and an angel of God in one man. It is: our God against all of us – our God in
all of us – our God, the best and worst in all of us! Human faiths do not
intertwine in his books – with him, worlds are colliding!
Each
one of us (and by that I mean US) who has read the novel Crime and Punishment wished for Raskolnikov to get away without
punishment, for the committed bloody
murder. And not just that, we actually felt sorry that he did not take more
money and gold, that he did not spend what he has taken and that he did not
spend it exactly thе way he planned and to what
purpose he meant it. We all took Raskolnikov’s side and no one mourned the
grandmother (and not even the misfortunate Lizaveta). In that right there, the
genius of a literate should be sought (in the fact that he forced us to love
the villain and to keep his side) – that is where we find the familiarity with
the human soul and character: not the description but the familiarity!
Dostoevsky
achieves what does not go hand in hand for a lot of people: he places a saint’s
halo on human sediments and spiritualizes them even in their greatest vulgarity
and crime. He finds a human even where there isn’t one, unlike Tolstoy who
seeks a human only in virtues and sinlessness or Gogol who finds him where a human
actually is. Gogol discovers, Tolstoy accuses and passes judgment, Dostoevsky
only seeks the good in the places where it is hardest to find: in the nineteenth-century human who is
morally committed to being a mainly characterless being (Notes from the Underground), in the evil
and at the bottom, for example, in the swing of the axe by Raskolnikov, the
knife of Rogózhin or the strength of Smerdyakov’s hit, in the desire of the
poor Netochka Nezvanova that death comes for her mother as soon as possible or
in the sneakiness of Pyotr Stepanovich and Rakitin, in the humiliated, insulted
or miserable people.
He,
admittedly, finds the good without much seeking, in good itself – he seeks and
finds the good in the angelic goodness of Alyosha, Sonya or Myshkin (because
some, in them, saw a human for the first
time). He, in similar places, also finds love (they do not love with love itself but with pity)! Raskolnikov and
Sonya – that is the greatest and deepest written love story in world
literature, it is the description of the essence of love. And it is written
along the way, with just a few lines at the end of the book. Written in agony
and downfall, described in mud and at the bottom, love pure as a tear because
there is not a shred of interest in it, but only pain and suffering.
In
his works, it cannot be separated where the love starts and where the passion
ends or where the debauchery is hiding – while, it is more clear, love, and
passion and debauchery, are vices, it only depends from which side we are
looking at them. With Dostoevsky, there is no romantic love because he deemed
that there isn't such love in real life as well. With him, love is a struggle,
the tearing, suffering, masochism (rarely: sadism), and before all sacrifice
and renunciation. Love is with him, even when there is one: compassion! When
the romance appears occasionally, it is on the edges of illnesses and
hallucinations. That is the scene when two rivals, Myshkin and Rogózhin, spend
together their last night of friendship next to the body of a slaughtered woman
whom they both love.
In the novels and tales of
Dostoevsky, there are almost no happy women, especially a pretty and happy
woman. Strong and beautiful women exist. Both of them, the misfortunate ones,
and the men, in some sort of delirium, try harder to escape from happiness, to
curse it, then to settle in the gentleness and harmony of love, even when they
can do so. And all of this because we do not comprehend what kind of women they
are, at any moment: harlots or saints?! Of course, now I know: with him, they
are both, at the same time and in one!
Dostoevsky
does not seek absurdity! He only goes to the limit, he only performs where no
one else will, because it is impassable and dangerous! He is a sacred warrior
who (voluntarily or not – is the question?) goes to the impossible and suicidal
missions. He knows in advance that he has led a war he cannot win because he is
leading it against himself. In such a war, you cannot win because even if you do:
you have defeated yourself.
Dostoevsky does not bother,
in his works, with the descriptions of nature or the exterior – the descriptor
– (if we exclude the greyness of the city, the darkness that kills, the filth
of the buildings in which crippled people are trying to survive, but this
portrayal of his is more felt through the atmosphere then through the painting
of an image), he does a bit more, therefore, when describing the interior but
he is a top-notch master of describing a personality through physiognomy,
atmosphere or a particular gesture, when it is necessary to create an image of
a man in a certain situation or a certain condition, when an individual has to
be set aside from a wider context or a company, when he has to present the
psychological or physical condition of a personality (hero) about whom (who) he
is speaking with only one described movement or gesture.
It
was important for Dostoevsky to describe how his heroes look like but it was
more important for him to clarify minutely their characters. The character of an
individual is the essence of a human and not his appearance, although it is
desirable that the outer appearance and character match to a certain extent,
and that is what Dostoevsky aspired for.
Through
describing the behavior of one of his heroes (individuals) he gives and quite
easily reveals his current psychological state or hints another state which will
be from essential importance for the development of the action and the book
itself. By doing so, and on a sharp boundary between common sense and
hallucination, he juggles in his literary process even though we expect, at any
moment, that he will fall into the abyss of his own ambition to, at all costs,
reveal the sick state of his soul, and this never happens even though there is
no safety net under him, which would save him from the fall.
Most
of his heroes do not have a sense of measure, whatever that measure is supposed
to refer to. They almost always go to the very end: burning all bridges behind
themselves and often getting the reader to an angry state. Just about when we
think that everything can be resolved peacefully and in a good manner, those
outbursts of the lack of a decent measure and the extremeness of behaving or
speaking come forward, in a, at the same time, hysterical laughter and crying,
and unreasonable actions. Eventually, we always forgive them everything. His
characters in novels hate the ones who do them good and love their executioners
and oppressors, so it is sometimes difficult to understand them even when we
forgive them. They come to life and become human only when the last shred of
hope dies in them (or when they kill it with their own actions).
Besides
the fact that, sometimes, in a formal sense, he fails, like the sporadic
compositional, clumsy introduction of characters in the story or action which
narratively appear outside of the context of the same story, with Dostoevsky,
it eventually turns out brilliantly even though no one can explain: why?
Besides that, he presented the world literature with the most vivid side
(main-side) characters (whose face
typicality is in reality diluted with water) like Sonya Marmeladova, Kolya
Krasotkin, Smerdyakova, general Ivolgin, Ippolit, Stepan Trofimovich, Kirillov,
Lebedyev, Svidrigailov, Ferdýshchenko or Anton Lavrentievich in the form of
narrators of impure temptations.
All
of this proves, this unrestraint of side characters who often take over the
main role, that he was indeed a yurodivy (Holy Fool) genius who wasn't aware of
his genius. His side characters often bestow the reader with irony, humor and
even truth. They are often the most interesting to the readers. They are in
their essence, as all Dostoevsky's characters: philanthropists. Through their
abasement, they become better, more dignified and more truthful. By forgiving,
they love and fight against hatred.
The
dialogues (or: monologues) in his storytelling are often without any sense, at
first sight. They are mostly sick or meaningless rattling. We do not even know
what and to what purpose his heroes are speaking. Sometimes monologues (before
all) can to be prolonged, even a bit boring, but isn’t the irony of a sick man
long and hard for the household?! Those monologues are, after all, pronounced
by sick people so how are they expected to have measure and tact?! But, step by
step, word by word, replica by replica, and in the last few sentences we reach
the point, the unraveling and the goal: we understand what Dostoevsky, through
thoughts, monologue, conversation or polyphony of his literary characters, wanted
to tell us and what he wanted to teach us.
He
is capable of fully unearthing a human’s character in three sentences of a
dialogue. Besides that, he is a master who, with his literary process from a
peaceful cabinet atmosphere, on a few pages, elevates the scandal to
unprecedented proportions and by doing so startles his readers with twists
which enrich the imagination. Dostoevsky is, finally, a far better master of
dramatic unraveling then plot.
However,
the most important characteristic and greatest quality of books Dostoevsky
wrote lies in the fact that the literature isn’t boring to read (as great books
can be). On the contrary, it is interesting, with a lot of twists, it is
original, even though some motives or characteristic types of people are
repeated in different books: fatalism, coaxing of children and socializing with
them, children around sick people, children at a funeral, conversations with
the devil, getting drunk with and squandering of entrusted and someone else’s
money, mystical women and their rivals, mass drunkenness and bacchanalias with
triplets which carry a fatal woman into a new life but are really leading her
into a downfall, the authoritative, simple-minded and a little bit lost generals
and noblewoman, the conflict between parent-offspring, wasters and criminals,
monks and old people, murders for which everyone knows they will happen and
they do happen, people who, with their kindness and honesty, disarm the evil of
the environment which then, unconditionally opens their soul and gives them its
trust.
After
all and before all, he was a realist, he basically wrote crime and love books,
detective – judicial plots, there are intrigues, gossips, imputations,
scandals, the running away of the bride in front of an altar, here and there,
there are hints of erotica and even more debauchery and perverted people,
therefore those are stories about common people, fairy tales about life and
about unusual (former) people, of course – and after that, psychological and
philosophical themes (what you will never truly find in Dostoevsky's novels and
stories, is that someone is doing something: specific!). All of this
contributed that Dostoevsky can be read by a broader reading audience
(admittedly: with different success and different end results for the reader,
about which, there will be a few words at the end of this essay).
Dostoevsky
himself, in a brief homage dedicated to Gogol, in the novel The Idiot, when he speaks about the
ordinary and unusual people and about how writers mainly determine to write
about the latter, even though we rarely meet them in real life, states: What should a novelist do with average
people, perfectly ordinary, and in what way should he present them to the
reader, for them to be interesting in any way? To completely bypass them in a
story, is not an option, because ordinary people are constantly and mostly
links necessary in a chain of every-day life events; to evade them, means to
violate the truthfulness. To fill novels with, on the other hand, real types,
or simply, for the sake of curiosity, with strange and made-up people, would be
unrealistic and even uninteresting. You just need to find interesting and
average people – Dostoevsky concludes.
Before
writing a novel, it is important what you are going to give your attention to:
the act, the characters or the atmosphere (the form). Once you pick, then you
will maybe succeed in bringing one of them to the end, with the help of a
second one. You can only fantasize about the third one. All three in one novel
could only be performed by Dostoevsky. Most likely, unconsciously and
instinctively, hence, with the help of the genius inside him.
In the shorter literary
forms, he is variably good but not as good as he is in novels (however, it is
far from bad or average). Here, he showed a different mastery: he was capable
of directing the reader completely into the characters and the story, with only
two or three sentences at the beginning of the story. He is more emotional
here. And more distinct, of course. As in the unfinished novel Netochka Nezvanova (that is a “shorter
form” for him even though it expands on over 200 pages). He obviously needed
more space, he was seeking width to develop the story and to ornament it with
finesses, and so the novel is his form (even when it is epistolary as Poor Folk). However, his short stories
are not on the level of what is expected from him and maybe they are even handicapped:
because how can anything be compared and valued after his great novels?!
Poetry
is when the words are a form and the form is symbolism! The novel is when the
words are symbolic and the form is words. Dostoevsky is when the words are
psychology, symbolism is philosophy and the form are ordinary people and their
every-day lives. And all of this has to be without form and symbolism with him!
Only letters miraculously arranged into prosaic words!
Art
does not aspire to either truth or beauty. Art seeks a spirit. And: plays. Plays
spirit games. When someone says: “this is a beautiful painting” – he insults!
When someone says: “you wrote the truth” – he slanders. Art does not teach,
does not overshadow, does not provoke emotions. It only encourages the spirit!
Sometimes an evil one – the impure! Only when someone is silent, does not say
anything, in front of a painting, over a book, only when he has more questions
than answers inside of him, only then can art be doubted. Only doubted!
Literature
is: writing what everyone knows but most of them cannot think of. Or: what
everyone knows but a few of them want to say. The literature will first and
foremost be what we experience by just reading a book. Or: what we have
experienced many times but were never able to find a name and purpose to it (each page I have read was almost already familiar
like I have experienced it a long time ago… in unexpected forms (Netochka Nezvanova). Everything above
stated is, at the same time, Dostoevsky: he has written what we all know but
could not think of, what we have all experienced inside of us but could not
define or describe it.
Dostoevsky’s
novels are life because in them there are equally life and death, sorrow and
happiness, sickness and health. There are also such things in the novels of
other writers, some will say: with right. Yes! But with no one so deep and yet
simple as with Dostoevsky; with no one as with him: so natural and so vital. There,
all humans are worth the attention, whether they are epileptic or morally
stumbled petty noblemen who lie and jester for a cup of vodka, fatal women,
prostitutes (street ones and public ones,
colorful ones), monks, bandits, mediocrities, common citizens, countryfolk,
officers, aristocracy, students, people who sell their golden teeth in order to
drink that money away, liers who do not lie out of interest or malevolence but
entirely out of artistic necessity, sick young men whom the environment hates
and laughs at because of failed suicide attempts – they are all valuable! We
love humbled and arrogant, the murderers and murdered, crooks and moribund
children, liers and truth lovers, the devils and angels – equally.
*
Where
lies the magnificent and genius psychology in the writings of Dostoevsky?!
The
“psychological” with him should be sought in “the literary” and not in “the
human”! He is a great literate who certainly sought “the human” in a man, and
not the psychological, but the literary in him! He wrote books brilliantly and
the psychology revealed and betrayed itself.
Dostoevsky,
in his Memoirs from the House of The Dead,
writes how it did not surprise him how some convicts came to borrow money from
him more than once and stole from him, even though they did not return the previously
taken money to him, because they are like that by their nature, but what made
him angry was that they honestly thought they were making a fool out of him,
that he is not aware of the deceit and that he does not see that they laughing
behind his back. They were not aware that he knows everything but that he is
allowing their nature to be natural.
No
matter how hard he tried, he often could not manage to discover what was really
going on in the minds of the villains: I
particularly cannot remove from my memory a father slayer… He would mention his
father occasionally in our conversations; while speaking about the hereditarily
healthy constitution in their family once, he added:
-There, for example, my father did not complain until his
death, that sometimes is hurting him (Memoirs from the House of The Dead).
The
Russians, even when they are slaughtering each other for the sake of personal
and low benefit, before the swing the knife, they say: Lord, forgive me for Christ’s sake (The Idiot). Or, a man wants to kill another man with whom he, just
a couple of hours earlier, fraternized and exchanged crosses. So, who can
understand such people?!
Even
those who love and are familiar with Dostoevsky are not entirely sure where to
seek the clarification of the myth about his psychology?! A myth is, hence, the
repetition of what we hear and read. Most commonly, those repetitions are true
and with a background, but our misunderstanding does not justify it since,
because of that, we started to accept figments while putting a psychological
label on them.
In
the beginning, indeed, you do not understand much. And: at the end! And: in the
middle! But, that is why Dostoevsky exists, to read him your entire life, from
the early age until you judgment day, over and over again, constantly
discovering some new dimensions, but perfectly (mis)understanding him at all
times. You always (mis)understand Dostoevsky, (mis)understand what is necessary
at that moment and that age. Dostoevsky's genius lies in his simplicity, in the
fact that whoever reads him can feel his great spirit but not necessarily
understand what he's talking about – because, between sentience and
understanding, there is a great difference. He explained the riddles of the
human soul with simple words and acts he describes – but only in the form of a
question. He does not provide answers. He provides sentience. Not – sentiment,
but – sentience! It is not found out: it is felt!
He
does not clarify to us – he presents to us, so take it or leave it, take
whatever you need, if you need it – it is a matter of choice. Outside of his
novels and characters, in his writings, letters, political and
theoretical-literary texts, in life itself, with Dostoevsky, there is no clue
of genius nor psychology. He is a genius only when, through his characters
(people), creating a novel or a story, when he is describing ordinary life. In
everything else, he is mediocre and tedious. Childish. He only whines and demands,
complains and self-pities! However, as soon as the socializing with prince
Myshkin, Raskolnikov, Stavrogin or Ivan Karamazov starts, an upcoming wave of
spirituality is felt, and an unrestrained, uncontrollable and God-given genius
familiarity of the human soul! Even idiots are genius in his works and shame and nonsense reaches genius.
Dostoevsky
did not, while writing Crime and Punishment,
for example, think about how he is a great writer who can penetrate the human
psyche and who will dissect the inner human in his book. He did not have an
idea about that. He only tried as best as he could in the given circumstances,
weighed down by deadlines and debts (he writes to his brother: if his novel
does not succeed that he will hang
himself). It is correct: he flirted with psychology but always in the
borders of predictability. His genius created in spite of him and he was
unaware of that, he did not always have an idea about what he was creating. He
was often just the body which unconsciously executed commands of the spirit.
Dostoevsky
was not aware of his genius until the very end, as he was not fully aware of
what he was creating, namely, what kind of a work he is creating – thus he did
not aspire to the psychology he has given us. He only wrote how he was able to
and how he thought he was supposed to. Admittedly, it should be said, he
faithfully and thoroughly described the condition in which a sick man before
his epileptic attack was, but that is not psychology but neurology. Therefore,
he did not cheat, he did not use tricks or his craft excessively, he did not
stick to theory and did not “get a read” on people. If he had been doing that,
he would have been a genius fraud, and since he did not, he was a genius
literate, or, to be more precise: a genius who knows people!
However,
he is a man who has suffered, was sick (grabbed, snatched and stricken) and
wounded by life. Therefore, there is not a more important literary character in
his works which is not in a serious sick state of mind and spirit. In a
disturbed state of consciousness. With a darkened soul! In the darkness! In a walking
unconsciousness! Often, the body is also sick with these people but this is not
a primary with Dostoevsky. A physical illness is but a cause of a mental
disorder. The soul and the head – that is what gets sick with Dostoevsky and
his literary heroes.
The
characters of Fyodor’s books are not (all) mad and mentally disturbed
personalities but mostly the people who were lost in self-searching, god’s ((Holy Fool) yurodivy god’s people) or
devil’s vassals (at the same time): Raskolnikov, Ivan, Stavrogin, Myshkin, Rogózhin.
Those are not sick and unfortunate people but they are sick in their
misfortune! They are soulfully inconsistent with themselves and with the world.
They are hurting mentally but not mentally ill! They are not mentally disturbed
but mentally lost and soul-astray, perhaps only in the head not completely put in order and with a disturbed order in
their head. They resist common sense because that is how they want to reach
where a normal human cannot. They are sickly passionate but love more than they
desire! Admittedly, there are, here and there, some mind disturbed, without an allegory, in the true, medical sense,
how general Epanchin noticed at some point. There are those from the underground, the life underground,
which is often a world below the radar, invisible to the system and society,
except for the black chronicles and Siberian convoys.
He
is not merciful to his heroes. Most of them will either end up in Siberia, in
serious illness or dead. A good part of them do not deserve such an ending,
because they were not bad but only unfortunate, but he obviously did not have a
second choice because those people were loved but married to an evil fate. In
other words: that is how God ordered!
There
is no psychology just for the sake of psychology with Dostoevsky: definitely –
there is only Human in opposition to God! Even though many ingenious people,
such as Nietzsche and Freud, referred to him and his psychology later, he was
and remained just the writer who Knew.
There
is no psychology just for the sake of science! There is only a, to bare skin
undressed, human (such as was given God) and who will make life more beautiful when he does something good and righteous (Alyosha).
Where he truly attempted to (consciously) deal with psychology in his
literature, which is, according to myself, in the book Notes from the Underground, he was the least successful. On the
other hand, where he played the string of emotion – he enlightened us with a
perfect psychological accident of a little girl, Netochka, who is suffering
immensely but who desires evil on her mother and thinks badly of her, only
because she is good and out of pure love.
If
realism should be sought with Dostoevsky anywhere, then it should be done in
Dostoevsky’s "psychological". The greatest psychology with him is
found in the most realistic descriptions, primarily of people and afterwards
the situations. That is not theoretical but practical psychology. The undressed
man is, with other writers, dressed in a lot of layers and his nudity is never
reached which is the difference between Dostoevsky and them. Dostoevsky’s
psychology is natural, it was not aspired for, but came itself, silently and
unobtrusively. This is why the path by which we arrived (or: by which it
arrived) to it (to: us), is incomprehensible to others.
*
Political
and historic lessons of Dostoevsky?
Impure forces (Demons) is a book in which Dostoevsky, in an extraordinary manner,
described the national self-destruction which led the Russians to the edge of
disaster and disappearance. It speaks about how the demons and impure forces with all the poisons, impurities, satans
and screechers (drekavac), multiplied in the great and dear patient, in Russia.
This is a book that warned. Serbians should read Demons. In that book, they can find the description and the image
of what has been happening to us in the last century on the national and
spiritual level: unseen national self-destruction and auto-chauvinism. The big
problem of Russians and Serbians is that they turned atheism into a new
religion – they replaced one religion with another, for a long period.
Since
he was, himself, at a young age, a revolutionary, then the Demons are a book of his revolutionary delusions from adolescence,
even though Dostoevsky was more of a “literary” revolutionary, because he, in The Petrashevsky Circle mainly led
conversations about forbidden books, although it is not the case that sometimes
there wasn’t word about socialism or overthrowing the emperor. This
revolutionary period and family origin of the revenant from uniatism helped
Dostoevsky to later return to the Slavic-Russian-Orthodox path, and according
to him, the only true path. And, even though his adolescent socialism was
utopian, his latter Orthodoxy was sincere and founded on experience. He did not
teach it, he felt it!
Demons are a book in which it can be
read, between the lines, that humanity, one society, and even an individual,
should develop in a evolutionary and dialectical manner and not by dogma or
destruction. With nature and not ideology! With individualism on the
foundations of origin and not anarchism towards the institution of the family!
On the traditional value system and not on the negation of identity! With
evolutionary revolution and not degenerative counter-revolution! Man prospers
by conquering freedom and not by freely conquering!
I was freer in Siberia than all of You were
ever free, when you have gone to Paris or London – says Dostoevsky to the
young pro-European liberals of that time, who glorify Europe (Internationale) and belittle Russia (in
the Russian television show about him). The so-called Russian liberals from the nineteenth century, do not differ by any
means from the present-day Serbian “pro-European” second-Serbia folk (Serbians
who despise Serbia) (except by the time in which they existed). And as same as
the “Russian liberal” is not a Russian but a non-Russian (The Idiot), so is a Serbian “second-Serbia individual”:
non-Serbian. Admittedly, by definition itself, a Serb does not necessarily have
to be Serbian by nationality, the same as how a small number of Russians would
be in the general Headquarters of the October Revolution.
The pattern is the same with
both: to masochistically glorify Europe, to belittle your own country, nation,
identity and religion, while speaking about justice and equality even when it
comes to the pure desire of Europe to enslave and humiliate you, thereby, those
who do that in the name of Europe, live a much better life than the people they
are "fighting" for. They are "fighting" and
"advocating" for the people they despise while shamefully hiding
their origin. They will never allow that anyone
else has their own personal convictions (The Idiot).
Those
Russian liberals, as well as, the Serbian “second-Serbia folk”, before all are lackeys who only look whose shoes to
clean, says Shatov in the Demons, and continues: they would be the first ones to be terribly unhappy if Russia would
somehow suddenly get remodeled, and even if that happened by their terms, and
if it would somehow suddenly get immensely rich and fortunate. They would not
have anyone to hate at that moment, anyone to despise, they would not have
anything to mock. That is only an animal, endless hatred towards Russia, buried
in their organism. And secondly, which means that that topic was important
to him, in the novel The Idiot,
Dostoevsky develops a similar thought: Our
liberal reached so far, that he denies Russia itself, and actually hates his
own mother. Every unfortunate and failed Russian deed brings up laughter and
enjoyment inside of him. He hates folk traditions, Russian history, he hates
everything.
The
rotten western individualism (especially: the Protestant one) has an unnatural
necessity to tear down values on which he was brought up, because with that, he
is actually proving his individualism, and truly, maintaining the system in
life because that individualism is cretinism which is incapable of living
without imposed laws and standards. The creative individualism (for example:
Slavic-Orthodox) draws its strength from its roots, it has to be creative,
often destructive and it has to ennoble the environment that gave birth to him,
with its actions. The most ruinous are indifference and detrition of a man, the
decadence and nihilism, as well. Bishop Tikhon speaks to Stavrogin: A complete atheism is more honourable than
worldwide indifference… a complete atheist stands on the penultimate step
towards perfect faith (regardless if he crosses it or not) and the indifferent
one has ho faith, except for painful fear…
On
the trial of Dmitri Karamazov, the prosecutor with liberal ideas charges
Alyosha for chauvinism, because the latter is closer to church and the values
of traditional Russia and because of that mistakenly attributes all evil to European enlightenment. Hence,
it was not enough that one brother was accused for patricide but for the best among
them, by his soul and deeds, it was stated that he can become a chauvinist: I wish the kind and gifted youngster all the
best, I wish that his young spiritual beauty and aspiration towards national
principles do not transform later, as it often happens, in moral terms into
dark mysticism, and in citizen terms into dull chauvinism…
Yes,
it is true, ungodliness and liberalism with socialistic ideas contributed to
the latter crash of Russia (atheism and
brandy). Dostoevsky deems that the
Russian folk are – the God-bearers and that a Russian cannot be an atheist because at that moment he stops being a
Russian, just like a non-Orthodox believer cannot be a Russian (Demons). Yes! But something else is much
more important in the background and that is the previous crash of the family.
Because: The only thing that is firm is
that underneath which blood flows. The crashing of society at the important
seams especially on the relation of parents and their children. A fortress
cannot be conquered unless the foundations of the rampart are torn down. That
is what Dostoevsky writes about, among other things, in his works, specifically
and for those who have eyes explicitly. Because, it is necessary to have one or two generations of depravity; outrageous
and vile depravity when a human turns into an abominable, timid, cruel, selfish
abomination (Demons).
Besides all that is said,
Dostoevsky did not spare the Russian man in his works (nor the Russian people).
He described them through all of their flaws and vices, as they can be and,
from time to time, were in some of his works. As we said: ready for the most
gruesome and most abominable misdeeds, drunken and mendacious, cowardly and
ingratiating. After all, he loved his nation, even when the people said the
most absurd and completely fantastic lies and lie until lustfulness or self-forgetting, because, he was a part of
them, and so even when he described them in a bad light he did it out of the
desire of somehow warning and fixing them, and not out of hatred or leisure
decadence. The scoundrel in Dostoevsky’s books often regrets what he is doing
and often indulges into misdeed because of, to him, completely unexplainable
reasons.
He
is a visionary! He is a prophet! We have arrived into the age where the carts that deliver the bread for
mankind are without a moral base, have already shut down a good portion of
mankind out of the delivery. That is today’s world led by liberal capitalism
and world rulers in globalization, who started their path of conquering on the
railway and on the wings of the industrial revolution, about which Lébedyev
speaks in the novel The Idiot. We
stepped into an age of cannibalism in which, admittedly, people still do not
literally eat each other but in which, as a final result: consume each other.
While
reading his journals, political texts and letters, an impression is made that
there is no literary glow in them. In his political writings, he mainly deals
with Europe (France, Germany, Vatican). Those are solid and “informed” texts
but nothing more than that. He is very interested in Catholicism to which he
gives a great deal of advantages over Protestantism, regarding perseverance and
efficiency. He also deals with the heritage of the French revolution and the
former ideas of socialism. He even mentions the Herzegovina uprising. In the dialogues or monologues of his heroes
in the novels, he often uses phrases or sentences (and even whole texts) that
he has used in those political and journalistic writings, which he also
ascertains.
In
some of his texts (Political inscriptions),
he represents the stand that three ideas are dominant in Europe, in the second
half of the XIX century, and those are Catholicism, Protestantism and the
Slavic idea: the roman world, Germans
and Slavs (which are the dam to the first ones: Orthodox Russia opposite to Europe). Catholics offered mankind the
new Christ in the figure of a pope and that new Christ agrees with everything just to rule. The Germans do not allow that.
He is fascinated by Bismarck. He even predicts, in some of his texts, what the
latter relationship of Nazis towards Slavs will be (and he writes this
regarding the Serbian-Turkish wars and the German attitude towards that). He
also deals with the Eastern Question
and regarding his outlooks on the former international relations, he advocates
for the alliance of Germany and Russia, because he sees Germany as the rampart
against combat Catholicism.
In
his text about Foma Danilov who died under heavy anguish but did not want to
renounce Orthodoxy and convert to Islam, Dostoevsky criticizes the Russian
public saying that the nation who does not respect their heroes and martyrs is
not on a good path and how the duty of the elite is to enlighten the same
nation, so it is required for them to urge self-respect and personal dignity
for them. However, how can that be done when the Russian nation itself respects
their roots more and are more dignified than those Russians who are educated?!
The Russian elite is disgusted by their
nation, it angrily hates everything that nation loves and respects, and the
only salvation Dostoevsky sees in the consolidation of the nation and the elite
into one, that the elite forgets the general-human
goals and finds a reconciliation point with
each other.
Suddenly, great deeds can appear, and find
our intelligent forces unprepared, and, won’t it be too late at that moment,
writes Dostoevsky in one of his texts. Someone somewhere already wrote that he,
like Voltaire in France, announced the revolution in Russia (even though, their
existence is more than a century apart) – and that is completely true. The
difference is in the nature of those revolutions which were carried out in
France and Russia, in the heritage which remained after each (not in the ideas
because liberty, equality and brotherhood are more or less in the basis of both
of them), the time context (Voltaire was the
first-morning voice of the revolution which broke out a year after his
death and Dostoevsky prophesized what would happen almost half a century after
his passing away) and the greatest difference is that Voltaire invoked it and
Dostoevsky feared the revolution given that he considered that, in the French
revolution, only a change of government happened and that one powerful social class beat the other! They were right: both of
them!
*
Reading
Dostoevsky should always start “too early”, in times when everyone around you
would tell you that you are too young for that or won’t say anything, except: that you are fine. An “immunity must be
created” for Dostoevsky just like for childhood diseases. With each new and
repeated reading, your immunity will get stronger and more resistant to doubts
and thrills that the reading will bring you.
On
the other hand and definitely: Dostoevsky is not for everyone (no matter in what
moment of a lifetime or what foreknowledge they read it with). That is simply
the order of things and as it should be. Otherwise, its meaning would get lost.
No matter how inaccurate that seems, contradictory to everything written so far
and probably in the idea of what he propagated without a foundation: Dostoevsky
isn’t for the broad folk mass. In fact, he is exactly that but in an another
dimension and without the most important finesses and only in relation to that
concerning beautiful literature. Dostoevsky is for the reading elite in details
and for the broad folk masses in general. Because, with Dostoevsky, the answers
should not be sought, but exclusively questions – as we have stated before. And
the mass seeks answers, unlike individuals who ask questions. With Dostoevsky,
the goal should not be sought but the path to the goal. And the mob seeks for
someone to lead them and not to encourage their orientation.
Concerning
Dostoevsky, forewords, afterwords, critical reviews, articles, books and texts
such as this one, should not be read. In order to get the feel of him (but not
necessarily understand him), Dostoevsky must be only read, constantly read and
after that, if possible: kept quiet! It is important to make an effort that the
books that are being read, be those printed between the two world wars. Because
of the translation and latter censorship.
A human does not have to be
a writer. However, a writer has to be a human, in order to acquire the
conditions to be a great writer (and: human). Everything else, except art,
suffers the inhuman inside and beside. Art seeks a human and rarely finds one.
An artist seeks art inside of him by finding the human. To find a human inside
ourselves means to create art. To write a book. To sing a song. To leaves one’s
soul on a canvas. Dostoevsky’s greatest heritage, as a writer, is that he has
found the human in his works. Dostoevsky’s greatest achievement, as a human, is
that he has found God inside himself.
It
is not important for a writer how many people will read what he is writing, but
who is reading it and for how long the same will be read. Durability is
important, the perseverance of the work, and not current popularity. The recipe
is, therefore, a few chosen people over a long period of time. You do not have
to seek for a spiritual well in your time. You can always carry that cross,
Dostoevsky is in this manner, eternal and universal. In literature, the
quantitative and qualitative value is authenticated by only time.
What
he has experienced and survived while waiting to be executed, in front of a
firing squad, Dostoevsky partially narrated and described in the novel The Idiot: he was thinking about how it
could have been if he did not have to die and how it would, if his life was
returned to him, be infinity and that
he would turn every minute into a century.
He did not manage to turn minutes into centuries, even though he was pardoned
at the last minute, but with that survival from the firing squad, he
perpetuated his name with his latter works, for all the future generations.
Yet, maybe, he did manage to cheat and stop time?!
In his lifetime, he
experienced fame but not success. He struggled through life as hard as he
walked through his literature easily. His personal and social life could not,
and did not manage, to follow his literary genius. However, he also did not
belong in everyday life, among living people: immortality awaited him.
He
was sixty years old when he passed away. Students wanted to carry shackles,
behind the coffin in which Dostoevsky was reposed and in the procession on the
day of his funeral. Those shackles would, in the best manner, symbolize the
life path of a great literate and what he has written about and at the same
time send a message whose essence was apparently understood at that moment, by
those who followed the coffin. Those shackles, which have to be shattered while
carried through life, would be the crown of his greatness. Dostoevsky would
have been a great writer even without those shackles. With them: he is the
greatest.
*
NOTE!
I
have met, walking through the path of my life, rather schooled and educated
people, although many more of the other ones. A good portion of them, during
their life and education, had no contact with Dostoevsky, especially the
younger generations, and even less felt and understood the essence of
Dostoevsky’s works, and those who think they did: did not go beyond the “psychology”
and “heaviness”. However, here and there, I would meet someone who has read and
understood a thing or two. Therefore, it should be understood: Dostoevsky is
quite an overrated creation. As I said at the beginning: a myth!
Today,
now, I think that he is not even that anymore. Over 90% of highly-educated
young people did not even read Dostoevsky. Not even those for whom it was
necessary to, because of the nature of their diploma. The education system they
attended did not force them to do so, the people and the atmosphere which are
current in the society did not even encourage them to at least try, and those
who perform literary-publishing-criticism works even discouraged them with their
ignorance and dead ends.
I wonder: are there in
Serbia, or the entire world, still some youngsters who are just getting to know
Dostoevsky and who think that they have found something relevant for them in
there, something which is so important that they have a need to share it with
the girl they are in love with. I wish they do exist. Although, if they should
be sought anywhere, I would do it in Russia.
As
it can be seen from the written, here, in this text, I do not appear as some
sort of a literary vulture (critic) who might have any material or any other
benefit. I am writing this as someone to whom Dostoevsky was a part of his
youth, intellectual growing up and spiritual maturing, so you should value and
judge this text according to that. Who does not have a special and personal
relationship with Fyodor Mikhailovich, as myself, maybe should not even read
this text.
Besides,
I did not deal with Dostoevsky much, other than his books, except when it was
inevitable – by reading books from other authors who mention him along the way
(that is something). Therefore, with criticism and essays about him, I almost
did not have any contact (either superficially, shortly, mostly on the internet
when it was inevitable) which vastly facilitated this work (because I am not
overly burdened by other people’s opinions). I, simply and only read
Dostoevsky. And: read! And: again! That is why this is only and personally my
judgement, my fate and my verdict!
If
my opinion, somewhere matches someone else’s attitudes, that is not mine or
their (un)success – but the magic of Dostoevsky. When these thoughts do not
match with the generally valid ones, it is again his fault: he knew something
that we did not – because he has brought us together even in our differences.
Forgive me, my brother!
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