“Outwardly it’s the truth! But inwardly it’s a lie!”
- D.F.K.
Greetings, intrepid readers! By now you should be at or near the end of Book 2 of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. As always, feel free to participate regardless of how far you’ve gotten, but please keep spoilers labeled so that new readers have a chance to discover the material on their own.
Last week we talked about the history of our (certain little) family, with special focus on the book’s ostensible hero, Alyosha. This week feels more like a stage play, with long, dramatic conversations taking place in a single location, the town monastery. Hopefully that also meant an easier, more engaging read.
This week I’m also including a “Characters Appearing in This Section” segment below, to make conversation easier.
Notes and Comments:
There’s plenty of meaty intrigue in Book 2 that we can unpack in the comments, but since so much of this chapter is devoted to seemingly esoteric arguments about Church and State, I thought I’d give a quick primer about the role of religion in late 19th century Russia, and in Dostoevsky in particular. I promise this will be painless!
First, the dominant religion of Russia at this time is Orthodoxy, borrowed directly from the Byzantine Church in the 10th century. Like Catholicism, Orthodoxy believes itself to be the central, continuous version of Christianity, from which all other sects are merely branches. Unlike in Catholicism, the vertical hierarchy is less pronounced (there is a Patriarch, but he has less power than the Pope) and lacks anything like a doctrine of infallibility.
Also like Catholicism, Orthodoxy puts a high premium on ritual, here expressed in a more directly sensual form of worship: incense, icons, architecture, chant, etc. According to the medieval chronicles, Kievan Rus’ conversion to Eastern Christianity was decided on beauty alone. Rusian emissaries to Byzantium, on seeing the Hagia Sophia, said:
We knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth. For on earth there is no such splendor or such beauty, and we are at a loss how to describe it. We know only that God dwells there among men, and their service is fairer than the ceremonies of other nations. For we cannot forget that beauty. Every man, after tasting something sweet, is afterward unwilling to accept that which is bitter, and therefore we cannot dwell longer here.
Keep this in mind as we continue through the novel, because it forms one of Dostoevsky’s major themes.
One long-running theme in Russian Orthodoxy also borrowed from the Greek is the way that suffering leads to purification (this is a pre-Christian idea: look at Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus for an early example.) The centrality of this idea in Russian Orthodoxy is cemented in the very first Russian saints, the martyrs Boris and Gleb, who are venerated as страстотерпцы (“those who bear their suffering,” usually translated as “passion-bearers”). Suffering is the fire through which we are cleansed, and Dostoevsky will make the most of that dramatic potential.
The major schism between Orthodoxy and Catholicism took place in the 11th century, and the Orthodox stereotype of Rome, still persistent in D.’s time, was that of a political hierarchy more focused on earthly power than devotion. For Dostoevsky, there is also a direct line of influence from Catholicism’s arrogance and capital-P Pride to the non-religious, rational strain of post-Enlightenment Europe that positions capital-M Man at the center of the universe. We’ll see more of this in the novel, as well.
There was a second, Russia-specific schism in the 17th century, this time over church reforms initiated by the Patriarch Nikon. Long story short: Nikon was trying to curb Russian Orthodoxy’s drift from the rest of the Eastern church (distance + time = small changes that accumulate), but local believers thought the reforms were changing the Russian church into something new and radical. These holdouts called themselves “Old Believers,” and they were violently suppressed once Nikon aligned with the then-Tsar Aleksei, uniting Church and State against heresy.
The Old Believers who survived fled to the distant north, and their story would end there, except for their “re-discovery” in the late 18th and 19th centuries, which ignited the imagination of historians and capital-R Romantics as a time capsule of an earthier, more authentic Russia. They became, in a manner of speaking, “folk heroes”: if you remember last week’s illustration of the “holy fool,” that’s a detail from one of many 19th century paintings commemorating an Old Believer martyr.
Dostoevsky was initially unimpressed with Old Believers (possibly because of how much certain intellectuals worshiped them) and penned a less-than-flattering depiction of them from his stint in a Siberian prison (House of the Dead, 1862). Over time, and with more familiarity, he begins to warm to their severity and ecstatic asceticism — less extremely than some of his contemporaries, but, as in The Idiot (1869) with real admiration.
(As a side-note, D. was genuinely impressed by the Life of Archpriest Avvakum, a 17th century work of autobiographical hagiography (seriously!) only rediscovered and reprinted in the mid-19th. Avvakum not only details the hardships he and other Old Believers had to endure for their faith, but he does so in angry, colloquial, sometimes vulgar language. It’s a really great read, and that surprising mix of high faith and low vulgarity can be seen in Dostoevsky, as well.)
It’s worth keeping all these in mind as part of a 19th century dialogue about the role of religion in the state and in society. A lot has happened in the years leading up to The Brothers Karamazov. The previous emperor, Nikolai I, had established the central doctrine of Russia to be “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality,” fully solidifying the Church-State relationship. The more populist wing of leftist intellectuals was trumpeting the Old Believers as a tradition of resistance against the state, while the “authenticity” of Old Believer life implicitly challenged mainstream Orthodoxy. A new generation of religious philosophers (like Solovyov, who I briefly mentioned last week) were engaged in public debates about the future of religion, while Russia and Rome were engaged in a long-running feud over Catholicism in Russia-occupied Poland. Religion was everywhere, and Dostoevsky couldn’t resist the opportunity to insert torn-from-the-headlines polemics into his novel.
Questions for Discussion:
Dostoevsky’s plot devices would never get him published in the 21st century: here the major conflicts of the novel are introduced in an almost offhand manner by secondary characters. We don’t actually meet such central figures as Grushenka or Katerina Ivanovna, but we spend a lot of time with Miusov (who — spoiler! — will basically disappear after this.) Why do you think he chooses to introduce the major conflict so obliquely?
So much of Book 2 is given over to Ivan describing his article to the monks at the monastery. How do you read/understand the basic gist of his argument? Why do you think Ivan is getting at?
There are all sorts of “deceptions” in Book 2, but none more striking than the various “self-deceptions,” as Zosima diagnoses Lise. What do you make of this theme so far?
The key dramatic moment in this section is Zosima’s bowing to Dmitri. What do you think is going on there? What about Rakitin’s dismissive interpretation of it?
For Next Week:
Are people still comfortable with the pace? Do you think we can knock off the slightly-longer Book 3 by next Monday? Don’t be embarrassed if we need to slow down: this is a dense, dense book. Conversely, let me know if we’re moving too slowly. Feedback is necessary, so let’s discuss this in the comments.
Characters Appearing in this Section:
(An asterisk indicates a newly introduced character who remains important later in the novel.)
- the Karamazov family: Fyodor, Alyosha, Dmitri, and Ivan
- brief mention of Smerdiakov, their servant*
- Miusov, Petr Alexandrovich
- Kalganov, Petr Fomich: Miusov’s nephew
- the women:
- the Khokhlakovs (Hohlakov): Lise (Liza)* and her mother
- Nastasia, a grieving mother; discusses her husband Nikita and deceased son Alexei
- Prokhorovna, a widow; discusses her missing son Vasily (Vasenka) and neighbor Bedryagin
- unnamed widow from Vyshegore; mentions her daughter Lizaveta
- a possessed woman
- Maximov*, another impoverished landowner
- the monastery:
- the Elder Zosima
- Various monks: Father Iosif, the librarian; Father Paissy; Father Isidor
- Rakitin*, a young seminarian
- Porfiry, a novice who assists Zosima
- Dmitri’s off-stage love triangle:
- Katerina Ivanovna*
- Agrafena Alexandrovna (Grushenka)*
- Samsonov*, Grushenka’s “patron”
- a so-far unnamed “captain”*, the “poor but honorable man” Dmitri drags by his beard
Previous entries in this series:
- Announcement
- Introduction
- Book 1