Bakhtin, Dostoevsky, and the Status of the "I" Barbara Z.

Thaden, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (dosto studies ,8,1987) Mikhail Bakhtin has been given a place in the canon of modern literary theory because, according to Julia Kristeva, he began the deconstruction of character and mimesis, thereby invalidating Russian Formalism's assumptions of representation and transcendence and becoming a precursor of poststructuralism. The semiotics of Kristeva and the deconstruction of Derrida have as one of their main tenets the decentering or break-up of the unified "I" or transcendental ego, based on the theories of Freud, Nietszche, Lacan, and others. Both Kristeva and Derrida wish to expose the fallaciousness of Husserl's transcendental Being and ego, a last remnant of metaphysical idealism, because this is a product and prisoner of logic, law, theology, and the masculine - hence the term "phalologocentric," denoting the law/logic of the father, which is seen by both Kristeva and Derrida as tyrranous. Kristeva writes that Western individualism "is linked to the substantialist, casual, and atomistic thought of Aristotelian Greece and has strengthened throughout centuries this activist, scientistic, or theological aspect of Western culture."(1) To this she opposes the semiotic, or preverbal, feminine and maternal communication between mother and infant, which is not yet a prisoner of phalologocentrism. To Derrida, "Consciousness is the experience of pure auto-affection. It calls itself infallible and if the axioms of natural reason give it this certitude, overcome the provocation of the Evil Spirit, and prove the existence of God, it is because they constitute the very element of thought and of self-presence... God's infinite understanding is the other name for the logos as self-presence."(2) The assumption of presence and of the transcendental ego has, for Derrida, been the foundation and the error of Western metaphysics. Kristeva links Bakhtin with this movement to deconstruct the transcendental ego, which for both Kristeva and Derrida is equivalent to escaping phalologocentrism, or the tyranny of the masculine, the theological, and the transcendential. According to Kristeva, Bakhtin shows that Dostoevsky is one of the first authors to break up the unified "I" by presenting nonintegrated speaking subjects, such as the narrator in Notes from Underground; the character is not objectified, and the author offers no final solution to the contradictory ideologies that clash in the novel. Kristeva writes, "There is no third person to bring unity to the confrontation between the two; they do not culminate in a stable "I" which would be the "I" of the monologic author."(3) For this reason, Dostoevsky's texts are no longer ideological, because there is no unity of mind to validate any ideology. This decentering of the "I", which takes into account unconscious as well as linguistic forces, causes us to rethink our conception of authors and characters. The author no longer has 200 complete control over the work, as the result of unconscious forces and the "slipperiness" of language. Characters are no longer unified and defined, but become disunified speaking subjects; the author no longer presents the character as a whole, because neither characters nor persons are unified, definable entities, but are rather fragmented clusters of contradictory desires which have no "meaning." Modern fiction therefore no longer presents characters but presents the language of disunified "speaking subjects." For Kristeva, "this is a split subject, divided between unconscious and conscious motivations, that is, between physiological processes and social constraints. It can never be identified with anything like Husserl's transcendental ego."(4) Bakhtin claims that Dostoevsky was the first author of the polyphonic novel which presents speaking subjects instead of defined characters, and in which the author's voice, instead of controlling the discourse from above, descends into the polyphony of clashing ideologies and sounds with no more authority than the voices of characters with different views. Critics such as

Roland Barthes see in this polyphony the "death" of the author and the birth of the reader. The author is no longer the "father" of the work, dictating its meaning, but simply another character, another voice in the polyphony, "another figure sewn into the rug; his signature is no longer privileged and paternal, the locus of genuine truth, but rather, lucid. He becomes a 'paper author'...(5) The author no longer explains or judges his characters, or tries to fit them into some moral framework, but merely presents them and lets them speak for themselves. Critics such as Rene Wellek have been understandably perturbed by this interpretation of Dostoevsky. Wellek writes that "Bakhtin is simply wrong if he denies... the authorial voice of Dostoevsky, his personal angle of vision... Dostoevsky makes a clear judgment about the values of the points of view presented by the speakers."(6) Wellek, like many critics, feels that Dostoevsky never loses control of his characters, and that his writing is not "carnivalesque" because Dostoevsky reveals himself in his work as "a man of deep commitment, profound seriousness, spirituality, and strict ethics".(7). My purpose here is to show how Bakhtin, although he can be seen as a precursor if modern semiotics and deconstruction, does not deny the authorial voice in Dostoevsky, does not claim that Dostoevsky has lost control of his characters, and does not completely deconstruct the "I." While Bakhtin does claim that Dostoevsky is "carnivalesque", critics such as Kristeva transgress Bakhtin by claiming the takes Dostoevsky out of the realm of ethics and into the realm of free play and "jouissance." A semiotic or deconstructive reading of Notes from Underground, for example, would find a series of contradictions with no resolution, Kristeva writes: Dostoevsky's "model" lacks unity of speaker and of meaning: it is plural, antitotalitarian and anti-theological. It. thus exemplifies permanent contradiction, and could never have anything in common with Hegelian dialectic. Its logic, Bakhtin tells us, is that of the dream: the continuance of contradiction and/or the coexistence of high and low, of 201 virtue and vice, of the true and the false, or faith and transgression, of the sacred and the profane."(8) The author never enters the work to resolve these contradictions. He simply presents a voice, but offers no synthesis. Bakhtin does make this claim, but at the same time claims that Dostoevsky's intentions are apparent in the work. Notes from Underground illustrates this contradiction. It has been variously interpreted, as, for example, the first neo-romantic novel of the alienated anti-hero, a precursor to such later neoRomantic novels as The Stranger, The Immoralist, and Nausea, in which the author can be presumed to at least partially identify with his hero, or, as Rene Girard claims, as an indictment of the non-committed, isolated man, as a biting satire of a ridiculous man, more in the tradition of Swift than a precursor of Camus. Bakhtin places Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground somewhere between these two poles, in the tradition of Menippean Satire, whose most representative examples are Petronius' Satyricon and Rebelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel, While Menippean satire does expose ideologies, its purpose is to deflate their excessive power without destroying them. In the same way, the carnival restores a balance, but does not overthrow hierarchies; at the end of carnival, all return to their prior positions. Kristeva overemphasizes the revolutionary character of carnival, while Bakhtin finds carnival is an integral part of a hierarchical and theological society, and has lost ground since society has become more fluid and secular.(9) Revolution takes itself much more seriously than carnival.

Thus Dostoevsky both sympathizes with and satirizes the Underground Man, because, as in carnival, his purpose is not to destroy a position, but to expose it; even though he does not agree with the Underground Man, he allows him to have his say. In Menippean satire the author is not above, but part of, the general derisive laughter. In Rabelais and His World, Bakhtin emphasizes that no one is excluded from the laughter of carnival; "everyone, including the carnival's participants" is within its scope.(10) While the negative satirist mocks from above, carnival laughter emphasizes the equality of all; those who laugh are also those laughed at. We are to laugh at the underground Man and at ourselves as well, to regain a balanced perspective on the human condition. Attempting to destroy a position assumes an unsympathetic superiority, while exposing its weaknesses does not. But how are we to intuit that Dostoevsky does not agree with his first person narrator, and that what we have here is satire and not serious polemic? Does the author have control over the work, and can we understand the author's intentions, or, as Rene Wellek feels, is Dostoevsky's voice and personal angle of vision not apparent in the Bakhtinian interpretation of Dostoevsky? Since all we have within the text is the Underground Man's vision, since we have no monological authorial voice to explain, interpret, and judge the character, how are we to 202 arrive at a "theme" for the work outside of the main character's thesis? A poststructuralist would deny a unified author who can somehow convey his intentions through the medium of language, which is always escaping the author's grasp and deflecting its own desires. There is no meaning outside and above textuality, and language itself cannot be chained down to one meaning, because meaning is context bound but context is boundless.(11) Thus to claim that Dostoevsky "means" something different from what his words mean is both correct and incorrect. It is correct in that the words themselves are inherently ambiguous, and one possible interpretation might happen to coincide with the author's purpose. It is incorrect in claiming that the reader can somehow phenomenologically connect with the author's mental intentions - poststructuralists reject the phenomenological view of reading, popularly expounded by Georges Poulet, in which the reader connects with the "consciousness" of the author through his work.(12) However, more traditional critics such as Wayne C. Booth point out that irony, for example, does not depend on linguistic clues so much as on a "collusion" or understanding between author and reader. Only a mature reader will grasp irony because only she has the "necessary information."(13) We do not understand, for example, the irony of "crazy like a fox" unless we know something about the characteristics traditionally ascribed to foxes. While our knowledge of foxes is also a "text" it is not a linguistic feature of the work. Dostoevsky's irony depends on this "collusion", of course, but he also provides at least one linguistic clue to his irony -his introductory note, which presents the Underground Man as a fictional, but inevitable, product of society. Some readers claim that this note identifies the author with the Underground Man, because of the similarities in their ages and circumstances; others claim that this "editor" is not Dostoevsky at all, but an "editor" similar to the "editor" in The Scarlet Letter, The Sorrows of Young Werther, and Lolita. However, this note is signed "Fyodor Dostoevsky", which distinguishes it from such fictional introductions as that by the "editor" John Ray, Jr. in Lolita and the unsigned introductions to the other two novels; furthermore, the last three "introductions" imply that the work which follows is somehow true, whereas Dostoevsky's note identifies the work as fiction. Dostoevsky felt it necessary to differentiate himself from the narrator in Notes because naive readers had confused Dostoevsky's opinions with those of his previous first person narrators. He had written to his

brother in 1846, after publishing Poor Folk, that the public didn't "understand anybody who writes in my way. They are used to seeing to author's phiz [face] in everything; I haven't shown mine. It doesn't even occur to them that it is Devushkin speaking, and that Devushkin can't speak in any other way."(14) Thus the note does not signal autobiography, nor is it part of the fictional "text." While Dostoevsky claims he is not writing in his own voice, "I haven't shown mine" does not necessarily mean he has not revealed his opinions on the subject; any satirist can reveal his opinions through those of a "naive" or idiosyncratic narrator. Dostoevsky also controls his discourse, according to Bakhtin, 203 through the technique of double-voiced discourse, whereby the author uses another's speech in another's language to express authorial intentions - this is part of Bakhtin's basic tenet that discourse is always the product of a personality, a speaking subject, in a context. Discourse is the product of a speaking subject/narrator in a novel, and also a product of the author writing the novel. The fact that the narrator's discourse is transcribed by the author changes its meaning: "The speech of another, once enclosed in a context, is - no matter how accurately transmitted always subject to certain semantic changes."(15} This double-voiced discourse creates "dialogic tension between two languages and two belief systems, and permits authorial intentions to be realized in such a way that we can accurately sense their presence at every point in the work."(16) The "speech" of the Underground Man is enclosed in the context of a fictional work, bounded by an introductory and an end note by the author (who in the end note does appear to have some characteristics of a fictional editor). Bakhtin writes that we should be able to "sense" this second level of discourse, the intentions of the author as differentiated from the intentions of the narrator, and that if we fail to do this we have failed to understand the work. However, in Notes from Underground, the narrator is aware of his ludicrousness: "There is literally nothing we can say about the hero of 'Notes from Underground' that he does not already know himself"(17), writes Bakhtin, which adds another level of irony and is responsible for creating the "dialogic" nature of the novel - the author has an opinion, but he does not claim to be in possession of the truth about his character. The author and the character engage in a dialogue through the technique of double-voiced discourse, which is not resolved within the text itself. Through the technique of double-voiced discourse Dostoevsky, according to Bakhtin, retains control of the work, but the novel does not become monological because the character is still free, in the sense that his ideas are not shown to be wrong by some authorial voice within the text, or even "above" the text, as in caustic satire. But how can a character who is satirized have any freedom? Bakhtin explains that Dostoevsky can write parody which does not destroy the other's language, but preserves it whole and intact, because the narrator's language was once "internally persuasive" to the author and so it "mounts a resistance to this process and frequently begins to sound with no parodic overtones at all."(18) While Dostoevsky 's biography will confirm that he once espoused several of the philosophical notions of the Underground Man, the idea that the other's language "mounts a resistance" is a psychological and not linguistic concept which claims that the author can so thoroughly control language as to express his intentions through the opposing language of a character who is not obviously wrong or naive. Perhaps because Bakhtin, like Dostoevsky, was subject to censorship and had to write indirectly, as when he published under the names of his friends and also (according to Katerina Clark and Michael Holquist in their 1984 biography), in formally aligning his theories to a certain extent with Soviet Marxism, he has more faith in the perceptibility of indirect intentions than critics in the West who deal with more

204 monologic works. Although this is a semantic concept which cannot be linguistically explained, Bakhtin does feel that Dostoevsky controls the text and that his intentions are evident throughout the work. Bakhtin also seems to feel that double-voiced, or indirect polemic, may be more effective than monologic or direct polemic. For example, Dostoevsky leaves it to the reader to intuit that the Underground Man's greatest failure is his inability to relate to other people - that he is "monologic" and not "dialogic" in his relationships with others. The idea of accepting the other as a "thou" is central to both Dostoevsky and Bakhtin. While the Underground Man ceaselessly judges and/or manipulates those both above and below him, Dostoevsky does not allow us to so easily judge the Underground Man. The Notes are incomplete, and this incompleteness of the self, according to Bakhtin, "is the necessary condition of its freedom. 'I' exist as a project (zadannost') that can only be realized in the fullness of time by God's grace."(19) While critics such as Kristeva have seen in this incomplete "I" the break-up of the idea of a central ego, Bakhtin seems to view this incomplete "I" in quite a different way. The character in Dostoevsky becomes a speaking subject, for Bakhtin, because for the first time the character is regarded, in Buber's terms, as a "Thou" and not an "It." Dostoevsky does not objectify the character, finish the character, or judge the character, because, as Bakhtin writes, "in a human being there is always something that only he himself can reveal... something that does not submit to externalizing secondhand definition."(20) The "character" disappears because to view a person, or a speaking subject, as a character is to be above him, to control him, judge him, and speak not only for him but about him in a superior way. Dostoevsky allows his characters to speak for themselves because of his profound respect for the other in his otherness; he presents a speaking subject because only a speaking subject, in all its unfinalizability, is a true "other." According to Bakhtin, Dostoevsky does not present "characters" but "pesonalities"; he discovered "a new integral view on the person"(21) and realized that "personality is not subordinate to (that is, it resists) objectified cognition and reveals itself only freely and dialogically (as thou for -I)(22). To present a character is to present a stasis, while a personality is open-ended. This Bakhtinian view of personality has less in common with materialistic than with transcendental views of the ego, such as that of Karl Jaspers, in which "the individual is seen as this unique existent, the being who freely transcends what he already is and creates himself, as it were, through the exercise of his freedom." (23) Deconstructionists claim that because the self is constituted by language, and does not exist prior to language, the "cogito" of Descartes is basically an illusion. Man falsely imagines that concepts exist prior to language, that we create and control language, and that therefore some reality or "transcendental signified" exists outside of and prior to language, which is the basic fallacy of Western metaphysics. However, perhaps even the conception of the "I" as constituted by lan205 guage, which Bakhtin at least partially accepts (as does Dostoevsky, in Notes from Underground), does not have to take us outside the Judeo-Christian tradition and Western metaphysics. For Bakhtin, the self "never coincides with itself" because it is always in the process of becoming, because the final word has not yet been spoken, nor will it be spoken by man. To Bakhtin, the "I" is an act of grace, a gift from the other, in much the same way that this is true for Buber. Dialogue and interaction are necessary for the "I" to even exist, both for Dostoevsky and for Bakhtin. For example, Caryl Emerson has translated this passage from

Bakhtin's Estetika Slovesnogo Tvorchestva: No nirvana is possible for a single consciousness. A single consciousness is a contradiction in terms... I am conscious of myself and become myself only while revealing myself for another, through another, and with the help of another... Separation, dissociation, and enclosure within the self is the main reason for loss of one's self. Not that which takes place within, but that which takes place on the boundary between one's own and someone else's consciousness, on the threshold... Thus does Dostoevsky confront all decadent and idealistic (individualistic) culture, the culture of essential and inescapable solitude, the illusory nature of solitude. The very being of man (both external and internal) is the deepest communion. To be means to communicate... To be means to be for another, and through the other, for oneself.(24) While the above can be seen as a Marxist position, a Christian position, or both, it is a vision which celebrates the "I" in communion with others, and this communion suggest a transcendent, spiritual sphere ("idealistic" is used as a synonym for "individualistic", not "metaphysical"). We can compare this to Dostoevsky: "After Christ's appearance, it became clear that the highest development of personality must attain to that point where man annihilates his own "I", surrenders it completely to all and everyone without division or reserve... When man has not fulfilled the law of striving toward the ideal, i.e. has not by love offered his "I" in sacrifice to people..., he experiences suffering and has called this condition sin."(25) The similarity of these two passages should remind us that it is possible to criticize egotism without destroying Western metaphysics. While there are many reasons for aligning Bakhtin with modern critical theory, it is also possible to see in him a deep spiritual communion with the author he spent much of his life studying. Perhaps he is not stepping outside the Judeo-Christian tradition but taking it back to its roots in the communal vision of the New Testament. While Kristeva claims, for example, that carnival is "anti-Christian and anti-rationalist"(26), Bakhtin himself finds carnival elements in Christianity, with dialogism responsible for its birth and a characteristic of its basic texts.(27) Similarly, the type of "moral relativism" which Bakhtin is accused of assigning to Dostoevsky, the moral relativism of the carnival spirit and of Menippean satire, may have more in 206 common with traditional ethics and metaphysics than at first appears. The Underground Man speaks "the word with a loophole" which "is the retention for oneself of the possibility for altering the ultimate, final meaning of one's own words"(28) because the refuses to become a character, an "it". Every one of his positions can be judged, and is judged, by the author just as in any ironic or satiric work; however, the total personality is not subjectable to any definitive judgment by the author. The Being who "can be neither objectified nor reduced to the conclusion of a demonstration or proof"(29) is, according to Jaspers, a transcendent being, not a "product" of language, ideology, unconscious forces, or social and economic conditions, but a "process" which transcends those forces. Thus to link Bakhtin solely to the atheistic and anti-metaphysical movements of semiotics and deconstruction, or to dismiss him as antithetical to Dostoevsky's high moral seriousness, it to ignore Bakhtin's deep spirituality. Perhaps Bakhtin 's celebration of the "I" in communion with others can help to bridge the gap between the traditional and Bakhtinian interpretations of Dostoevsky, and show that dialogism 'and the carnivalesgue are not incompatible with moral

purpose. We can remember the existential maxim that not to take a position is to take a position. Not to judge monologically is to make a serious statement about the worth and dignity of the individual and to celebrate the birth, not the death, of the "I", which is - or can be - the result of its spiritual communion with others. NOTES 1. Julia Kristeva, Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art , ed. Leon S. Roudiez, trans. Thomas Gora, Alice Jardine, and Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), p. 91. 2. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), p. 98. 3. Julia Kristeva, "The Ruin of a Poetics", in Russian Formalism, ed. Stephen Bann and John E. Bowlt (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1973), p. 111. 4. Leon S. Roudiez, introduction to Desire in Language, p. 6. 5. Rolan Barthes, "From Work to Text", in Textual Strategies, ed. Josue V. Harari (New York: Cornell University Press, 1979), p. 78. 6. Rene Wellek, "Bakhtin's View of Dostoevsky: 'Polyphony' and 'Carnivalesque', Dostoevsky Studies 1 (1980), p. 32-33. 7. Ibid., p. 37. 8. Kristeva, "Ruin", p. 111.

207

9. Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevskys poetics, trans. Caryl Emerson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), p. 131. 10. Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene Iswolsky (Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1968), p. 111. 11. Jonathan Culler, On Deconstruction (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982), p. 123. 12. Georges Foulet, "Phenomenology of Reading", New Literary History 1:1 (Oct. 1969). 13. Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), p. 300-308. 14. Jessie Coulson, Dostoevsky: A Self Portrait (London: Ox ford University Press, 1962), p. 36. 15. Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), p. 340. 16. Ibid., p. 314. 17. Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, p. 115. 18. Dialogic Imagination, p. 348. 19. Milton Ehre, "Review of M. M. Bakhtin's The Dialogic Imagination, Poetics Today 5:1 (1984), p. 174. 20. Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, p. 59. 21. Ibid., p. 58. 22. Ibid., p. 298. 23. Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy Vol. VII (New York: Image Books, 1963), p. 428-429. 24. Caryl Emerson, "The Outer World and Inner Speech: Bakhtin, Vygotsky, and the Internalization of Language", Critical Inquiry 10 (Dec. 1983), pp. 311-312.

25. Konstantin Mochulsky, Dostoevsky: His Life and Work, trans. Michael A. Minihan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), p. 261. 26. Kristeva, Desire, p. 79. 27. Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, p. 135. 28. Ibid., p. 233. 29. Copleston, p. 429.

Le Retournement. Du spirituel dans La Douce et Le Rve d'un homme ridicule Jacques Catteau, Universit de Paris-Sorbonne Mixail Baxtin a fait de Bobok, la Douce et du Rve d'un homme ridicule des "oeuvres-clefs" de la cration romanesque de Dostoevskij.(1) A partir de cette trilogie de nouvelles fantastiques, il a cherch et retrouv dans les cinq grands romans de l'crivain les formes libres de la mnippe et de la carnavalisation. Ce faisant, il a orient l'clairage sur les genres et les formes, sur ce qu'il appelle la vision littraire de Dostoevskij. Il nous a blouis par la sagacit et la cohrence thorique de sa construction, mais... aveugls aussi. Quelle est la signification profonde de ces nouvelles du Journal d'un crivain? Baxtin analyse le comment, il ne dit pas le pourquoi. O se loge le spirituel dans son tude? Aurait-il nglig la profession de foi de l'auteur du Journal d'un crivain de dcembre 1876, juste un mois aprs la publication de la Douce: Le but principal du Journal a t jusqu' prsent d'clairer dans la mesure du possible l'ide de l'originalit de notre individualit spirituelle nationale et de la faire ressortir autant que possible des faits que prsente l'actualit.(2) Quelle est la finalit spirituelle des nouvelles la Douce et le Rve d'un homme ridicule en particulier? Quelle rvlation Dostoevskij voulait-il apporter au lecteur et par quelles voies? Quelle thmatique abordait-il enfin aprs des annes de tergiversations? On ne peut rpondre cette interrogation qu'en replaant la Douce et le Rve d'un homme ridicule la fois dans l'histoire de l'volution de la cration romanesque et dans l'histoire du lent cheminement de Dostoevskij vers l'quilibre spirituel des Frres Karamazov. Encore une fois les structures et les genres ne peuvent tre abords sans qu'on prenne en considration la formidable puissance spirituelle qui les suscite et les anime. x x x Aprs le Journal d'un crivain de 1873, Dostoevskij se tourne nouveau vers le roman. De juillet septembre 1874, il s'interroge sur la composition. L'Adolescent, Arkadij, est enfin promu hros central et narrateur: ce sera une confession-chronique. Le 14 octobre, le romancier se souvient des reproches que Straxov lui avait faits sur l'excessif foisonnement des personnages, sur la multiplication outrancire des scnes et des vnements dans les Dmons: 36 Pour le contenu, l'abondance et la diversit des ides, vous tes le premier, et

mme Tolstoj ct de vous est monotone (...) vous encombrez vos ouvrages et les compliquez trop. Si le tissu de vos rcits tait plus simple, ils agiraient plus fortement...(3) L'auteur des Dmons avait reconnu qu'il souffrait et avait toujours souffert de ce dfaut: Une foule de romans et de rcits distincts se glissent ensemble dans un seul, si bien qu'il n'en rsulte ni mesure, ni harmonie.(4) Et prcisment, ce 14 octobre 1874, pour ne pas tomber dans l'ornire habituelle, le romancier se fixe une rgle imperative: Eviter la faute commise dans l'Idiot et les Dmons, savoir avoir reprsent les vnements secondaires d'une faon incomplte, allusive, romanesque, les avoir tirs en longueur, en actions et en scnes, mais sans la moindre note explicative, avec des nigmes et des allusions, au lieu d'expliquer franchement la vrit. Comme pisodes secondaires, ils ne devaient pas mobiliser l'attention du lecteur; au contraire ils obscurcissaient le but essentiel...(5) Dans le roman achev, l'Adolescent, Dostoevskij a rsolu le dilemme d'une manire dcisive. D'une part, il y a la chronique centre autour et assume par le hros, qui instaure l'unit. Et d'autre part, il y a l'insertion subtile d'histoires trangres ou presque l'action, racontes en "chapitres spars" (6) par des personnages qui leur confrent un caractre de dits ( skaz), de rcits oraux venus de l'immense pays de l'exprience universelle et ternelle, de la sagesse et de la tragdie humaines. Ces nouvelles enchsses dans la chronique, et dont on est "libre de sauter le rcit"(7) sont nombreuses: la tragique histoire d'Olja qui, de souffrance et d'orgueil, finit par se pendre, raconte par sa mre; l'anecdote cocasse et leskovienne de la grosse pierre que l'astuce d'un moujik russe sut faire disparatre, raconte par le conseiller Petr Ippolitovi ; l'apologue de l'ex-soldat, qui ayant avou un pillage, pardonn, plus exactement dclar "noncoupable", ne peut supporter son pch et se pend; et surtout la merveilleuse et cruelle histoire du "petit garon l'oiseau" et du marchand Skotobojnikov qui trouve sa rdemption dans l'amour et le renoncement au monde. On remarquera que ces nouvelles-apologues, pour la plupart, traitent du suicide ou de la rdemption et n'appartiennent pas au narrateur. Units acheves, trangres la chronique, ces nouvelles-apologues signifient la pense et le point de vue suprieur du 'romancier. Le procd sera magistralement repris dans les Frres Karamazov, grce aux deux grands conteurs de Vies et de Lgendes que sont, chacun dans son style, le starec Zosima et Ivan Karamazov. Les chapitres "Le mystrieux visiteur" et "Le Grand Inquisiteur" seront les deux diamants du dernier roman de Dostoevskij. On notera encore que ces deux nouvelles-apolo37 gus traitent du grand thme du paradis sur terre, de la foi ou du refus de Dieu. On n'a pas assez remarqu que cette nouvelle ligne cratrice o chronique et nouvellesapologues s'quilibrent harmonieusement, se manifeste galement dans le Journal d'un crivain de 1876 et de 1877. Le publiciste a retenu les leons et les rgles du romancier de l'Adolescent; il recourt aux nouvelles-apologues, ce sont essentiellement la Douce et le Rve d'un homme ridicule qui traitent des mmes grands thmes et acquirent une valeur exemplaire d'absolu. L'argument qui consiste dire un peu rapidement qu'elles traduisent une nostalgie de romancier trop heureux d'imaginer et de faire une pause dans le flux du discours engag, et qu'elles sont en quelque sorte une respiration d'crivain, ne suffit pas expliquer leur prsence. Ces nouvelles-

apologues jouent le mme rle que les histoires serties dans le roman: "elles expliquent franchement une vrit", une vrit suprieure, ultime marque d'ternit et d'universalit. Toutefois, les rles sont inverss: dans le roman ces nouvelles affirment de plus en plus fortement la voix et le point de vue du romancier et ce, en contrepoint de la polyphonie; dans le Journal o Dostoevskij s'exprime en son nom, ces nouvelles apportent une vrit qui semble venir d'ailleurs, d'en haut. Ce sont des voix anonymes, "invisibles" comme dirait I. Babel', qui montent. On ne peut pas en effet ne pas remarquer que les hros-narrateurs, que ce soit l'trange journaliste de Bobok, que ce soit le mari de la Douce, ou l'Homme ridicule, sont des voix sans nom, comme l'tait l'Homme du sous-sol. Cette volont constante de maintenir l'anonymat doit nous retenir. C'est ainsi qu' partir de 1874, une volution cratrice s'est dessine chez Dostoevskij, qu'il soit romancier ou publiciste: l'insertion dans le discours dominant, quel qu'il soit, de nouvellesapologues thme mtaphysique, porteuses d'une vrit suprieure . x x x D'ordinaire, on considre le Journal d'un crivain comme une tribune o Dostoevskij dit son engagement national et spirituel. Sur le plan crateur, on en fait le laboratoire du romancier. Ce domaine a t amplement explor par la critique: le Journal de 1873 a fourni nombre de matriaux factuels, thmatiques et idologiques pour l'Adolescent et l'ample moisson sur les questions de l'enfance martyre, les tribunaux, la nation et le Christ russes etc. du Journal de 1876, puis de 1877, a nourri les Frres Karamazov. Mais en ce qui concerne les nouvelles du Journal, il faut effectuer une rvolution copernicienne: ce sont les romans qui constituent le laboratoire du nouvelliste-publiciste. Dostoevskij joue sur la mmoire collective de ses lecteurs et il exhume sans vergogne, sans souci de se rpter, "vieilles connaissances", vieux projets, images et thmes dj traits. Ressurgissent fillettes offenses, jeunes femmes fires et humilies, hommes du sous-sol, discoureurs silencieux qui tournent dans la cage de leur humiliation et de leur orgueil et font payer 38 leurs victimes la souffrance qu'ils endurent. Qu'apport le mari de la Douce la stature de l'Homme du Sous-sol? Qu'apport de plus l'Homme ridicule, avant son rve, aux Stavrogin et Kirillov, ou mme Ippolit? Les thmes eux-mmes sont rcurrents: l'ge d'or sous sa forme de guerre fratricide suivie d'une rsurrection est dj dcrit dans le rve de Raskol'nikov l'pilogue et dans les songes de Stavrogin et Versilov. Mme dans le dtail, la pense de l'Homme ridicule propos de l'inanit du remords (son offense la petite fille) la veille du suicide ou du dpart sur une autre plante n'est qu'un dveloppement d'une pense identique de Stavrogin.(8) Tout se passe comme si Dostoevskij nouvelliste rassemblait les mtorites de l'univers romanesque pour en tailler ces bijoux que sont les nouvelles. O est donc la nouveaut, o est la "parole nouvelle" (novoe slovo)? Il faut passer par la forme pour atteindre la substance. Baxtin - que j'admire beaucoup - commet une erreur mthodologique en partant des nouvelles de l'crivain pour remonter aux romans. Dans l'histoire de la cration, c'est le contraire qui s'est produit. Dostoevskij a crit ces nouvelles en partant des romans mais en s'mancipant des contraintes romanesques que sont la fabula, la complexe humanit, l'cheveau des destins, la dure et l'espace vcu. Et ce dgagement du roman, il l'a appelle fantastique. Qu'on ne s'y trompe pas, le fantastique chez Dostoevskij n'est pas l'intrusion de l'insolite dans un monde rel mais la libert pleine de l'criture. Le prologue de la Douce ne laisse aucun doute sur ce point. Certes il y a des pages fantastiques dans les romans (par exemple l'hallucination d'Ivan Karamazov), des rves aussi, mais le fantastique des

nouvelles rside, il faut le rpter, dans la ngation, l'viction des contraintes romanesques. Le temps dans le roman est concentr, acclr, thtralement segment mais il est solidement tabli. L'espace dans le roman est itinraire mmoris, vise en fonction de l'action mais il existe. Dans la nouvelle - voyez le Rve d'un homme ridicule - temps et espace sont clats et la notion de chronotope inapplicable. Dans le roman, s'agite dans un mouvement brownien une humanit surpeuple; la nouvelle aime le huis clos deux ou trois personnages qui ne reprsentent pas tel ou tel individu mais l'homme sans nom, affront une situation exceptionnelle, hors des contingences historiques et libr des ncessaires relations interpersonnages. L'anonymat garantit l'universalisme. La nouvelle entre immdiatement dans la crise sans le long biographisme romanesque, accde brutalement au paroxysme. Les hros y sont au point de rupture, face la mort, la leur, celle de l'autre. Dans le roman, le destin; dans la nouvelle, le tout est possible, immdiatement, mme ce qui parat inexplicable, indicible. x x x Quel est cet indicible? On approchera de la solution lorsqu'on aura relev deux traits communs aux rcits en question. Premirement, la Douce et le Rve d'un homme ridicule mettent en scne des hros qui sont, au dpart, des athes. Le mari de la Douce, et une variante du rcit le souligne encore 39 plus nettement,(9) est un incroyant qui a oubli - oubli freudien et hautement improbable pour un Russe du XIXe sicle - qui est l'auteur du fameux prcepte d'amour: "Hommes, aimez-vous les uns les autres, qui a dit cela? De qui est-ce le testament?"(10) Le hros du Rve est un indiffrent, un tranger au sens camusien du terme: tout lui est gal. Ces hommes sont crass par la puissance de l'inertie (kosnost') comme le dmontre excellemment Liza Knapp.(11) Et voici que, deuximement, ils approchent et reoivent une vrit par des voies irrationnelles: le dlire, le rve, l'hallucination, des voies surrelles, paradoxales. Il y a donc retournement de l'tre, dans l'acception que donne ce terme Vladimir Volkoff.(12) Que se passe-t-il la fin de la Douce: le mari de la suicide tente un bilan des multiples motivations possibles du geste dsespr de sa jeune femme, sans s'arrter aucune, sinon dans un aveu fugitif, aussitt refoul de sa propre culpabilit: "Je l'ai torture, c'est a!"(13) La vrit lui apparat, en ngatif, en creux, dans l'extraordinaire vision finale d'un monde mort, d'un soleil mort, d'un dsert de cadavres. Et avant de retomber dans son indracinable solipsisme, il balbutie inconsciemment sa premire prire. Nous sommes en prsence de l 'acte manqu de la conversion. En revanche, l'Homme ridicule a reu la foi et malgr le spectacle de la dgradation des "enfants du soleil",' il se dclare croyant fervent dans la vrit de cet ge d'or. Mais comment n'aurai-je pas cette foi: j'ai vu la Vrit, je ne l'ai pas dcouverte par une opration de l'esprit, je l'ai vue, vue, et sa vivante image a empli mon me jamais.(14) Peu importe qu'il s'agisse d'un rve, d'un dlire ou d'une hallucination, peu importe mme que le paradis ne soit pas de ce monde, l'Homme ridicule marchera, marchera "pour mille ans s'il le faut", prchant aux rieurs la Vrit. Il s'agit l d'une authentique conversion de nature autre que religieuse - le mot Dieu n'est pas prononc mais le mme prcepte d'amour est repris: "Aime les autres comme toi-mme, voil le principal"(15) - , c'est--dire d'une brusque illumination, d'un miracle, d'un renversement total, tel que le dcrit Joseph Frank dans son ouvrage Dostoevsky, The Years of Ordeal en s'appuyant sur les acquis de la neuropsychiatrie et l'tude de William James Varieties of Religious Experience (16). Le hros du Rve en est fort conscient puisqu'il prcise que ce retournement n'a pas eu lieu par "une opration de l'esprit". C'est du fond de leur

dsespoir, de leur dsesprance rationalise que par un sursaut qui dpouille le vieil homme par une manire de "mort" soi, selon l'expression du converti Paul Claudel(17), que les hros accdent la foi. Le mari de la Douce rate sa conversion et demeure jamais sur le palier, le hros du Rve la russit et franchit la porte. Peut-tre le premier, dans son immense effort d'analyse, d'examen, a-t-il trop privilgi l'esprit introspectif et pas assez le dlire qui recle l'clair venu de l'extrieur! Telle est la rvlation des nouvelles du Journal d'un crivain de 1876 et 1877: la saisie du processus irrationnel de la conversion, retournement soudain, immdiat, incomprhensible de la personnalit. Seule l'criture "fan40 tastique", qui privilgie le surrel (rve, dlire, hallucination) et s'exerce dans la fulgurance nue de la nouvelle, permet une telle entreprise. Seul le fantastique qui mime la mort et retourne la vie peut raconter une conversion, une adhsion dfinitive de l'tre. x x x A-t'on jamais rflchi non pas au thme de la conversion mais 1'histoire du thme de la conversion dans la cration dostoevskienne. Il semble qu'en tant qu'crivain, Dostoevskij ne l'ait abord qu'aprs sa propre conversion au peuple russe, telle que la dcrit si profondment Joseph Frank. Et encore il demeurera longtemps silencieux sur sa propre exprience, mme dans sa correspondance avec son frre Mixail comme s'il craignait de n'tre pas compris ou se sentait impuissant la dpeindre. Longtemps, il se bornera dire qu'elle a t et fuira sa description phnomnologique. L'auteur de Crime et chtiment s'en dbarrasse en quelques lignes la fin du roman mais la crise qui ouvre cette conversion est prcisment dcrite comme dans les nouvelles de 1876 et 1877. C'est par le rve du fratricide et de l'lection d'hommes nouveaux que vit Raskol'nikov malade, l'pilogue, que se produit le retournement du criminel, qui accdera Dieu beaucoup plus tard. Ce thme est encore abord la fin des Dmons dans le dlire d'agonie de Stepan Trofimovi mais il ne s'agit pas d'une conversion qui suppose la rsurrection de l'tre intrieur, ce n'est qu'un espar de lucidit. En 1873, dans le Journal d'un crivain, "Une des contre-vrits du temps prsent", Dostoevskij propos de sa propre conversion se montre aussi laconique que dans sa correspondance d'aprs le bagne. En 1874, dans les carnets de l'Adolescent, il tente d'aborder le sujet de front en crant un personnage qui porte significativement le prnom de Fdor et le patronyme de Fdorovi .(18) Ce messager de la prdilection secrte du romancier est le type parfait du converti: fanatique rvolutionnaire, athe la Belinskij, nullement effray par la logique sanglante de la destruction, communiste prt corriger le systme du Christ comme le fut le Petraevec Dostoevskij, il devient subitement chrtien: Mais soudain il est frapp par quelque chose: le nourrisson abandonn. Et immdiatement il se met aimer les enfants et devient chrtien (...) Tu n'est pas loin du royaume de Dieu, lui dit quel-qu'un. Tu as ml le christianisme et le communisme. Mais cet impossible compromis beaucoup le font, il est vrai, aujourd'hui.(19) Par ce personnage de converti, Dostoevskij revenait son projet fondamental, la Vie d'un Grand Pcheur, bauche des annes 1869 - 1870, o les quelques pages rdiges montrent que le romancier, si prolixe dans la description des crimes et mfaits de son hros, ne pouvait encore dpeindre une conversion relate, expdie - dirai-je - en quelques lignes. (20) Dans ce projet demeur jamais dans les limbes de la cration, Fdor Fdorovi passe par l'amour de l'enfance malheureuse pour "se retourner" du jour au lendemain, ainsi feront l'Homme ridicule et Dmitrij Karamazov lors de son rve du "petiot". L'enfant qui pleure symbolise le peuple

41 russe souffrant et absous de tout pch. Fdor Fdorovi , l'Homme ridicule et Dmitrij sont des convertis d'abord l'amour des hommes, mdiation vers le Royaume de Dieu. Ce n'est gu prcisment en fvrier 1876, dans l'pisode du paysan Marej du Journal d'un crivain que Dostoevskij, voquant un des moments les plus dsesprs de son sjour au bagne, racontera le processus fulgurant de sa conversion, son adhsion immdiate et ultraparadoxale au peuple russe, qui l'acheminera lentement Dieu. L encore, on retrouve l'enfant - lui-mme - et le peuple - Marej - et, tous les termes le soulignent, le miracle foudroyant: Et quand je descendis de ma couchette de planches et portai les yeux autour de moi, je me souviens que je sentis soudain que je pouvais considrer ces infortuns d'un tout autre regard et que tout coup, par une espce de miracle, s'tait entirement vanouie toute haine et colre dans mon coeur. (21) Dans ses deux nouvelles de 1876 et 1877, Dostoevskij, comme libr par sa confidence, runit dans sa main puissante tous les lments de la conversion: le face face avec la mort conue comme mise en question de l'tre (suicide), l'illumination jaillissant de l'extrieur (hallucination, rve, dlire, vision), le retournement immdiat et total de l'tre en dehors de toute opration de l'esprit, le saut aux antipodes, l'criture fantastique qui seule peut parler miracle. Plus tard, dans les Frres Karamazov, l'oeuvre de l'quilibre spirituel, Dostoevskij saura se passer du fantastique pour dcrire le processus de la conversion, sauf dans un cas trs proche des nouvelles de 1876 et 1877. On y voit comme dans un jeu de miroirs, face une immense souffrance et la proximit de la mort, les conversions se succder en cascade, toujours surprenantes, toujours totales: celles de Markel', une manire d'anti-Ippolit, de Zosima, du mystrieux visiteur. A chaque fois, le prcepte de l'amour, tel qu'il est expos la fin de la Douce et du Rve d'un homme ridicule, est affirm. Demeure le cas de Dmitrij qui, lui aussi, la sortie de son rve sur le "petiot", se rveille converti l'amour et la souffrance. Dostoevskij, dans ce passage, retrouve la veine des nouvelles de 1876 et 1877: le rve - dont Dostoevskij affirmait qu'il est gouvern par le coeur, le dsir, et non la tte et la raison - est le canal oblig de la conversion de Dmitrij: J'ai fait un beau rve, messieurs, dit-il d'un air trange, avec un visage tout nouveau qui semblait illumin par la joie.(22) x x x En conclusion, on peut s'interroger sur la longue rticence de Dostoevskij-artiste peindre la conversion. Il n'a vraiment rompu le silence et franchi le seuil qu'en 1876, alors que le thme est largement abord dans ses carnets, surtout dans "la Vie d'un grand pcheur", donc depuis 1869. Sans doute y-a-t'il ce blocage des raisons d'ordre personnel. 42 mais l'explication la plus probable est chercher dans la difficult cratrice. Le doute, ancr dans le rationnel, qu'on pense Ivan Karamazov et ses nombreux ascendants, ne fait pas problme pour le discours romanesque, la foi dj conquise non plus, tandis que le jaillissement premier de la foi, que ce soit dans l'amour du peuple, qu'il s'agisse corollairement de la vraie foi en Dieu, relve plus de la posie, de l'effusion, du coup de foudre. N'tant pas pote au sens banal du terme, Dostoevskij a cherch les voies pour dire la conversion sans que le miracle ft

dprci, sans qu'il ft rationalis. Le souvenir l'a libr, le fantastique lui a fourni la forme adquate sur le plan crateur, c'est--dire la nouvelle dsencombre des contraintes romanesques et d'un dnment cistercien, la transcription de la fulgurance de la crise, avant que, dans son dernier roman, il ait enfin la hardiesse de dpeindre la conversion en toute srnit, telle qu'elle est: une grce surgie au coeur du doute ngateur le plus profond. Nouvelles de la catharsis, frle ou russie, la Douce et le Rve d'un homme ridicule constituent dans le mme temps une catharsis du crateur, de l'artiste. On peut la dater: 1876-1877. NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. M. Baxtin, Problemy poetiki Dostoevskogo, M., 1963, 184. F.M. Dostoevskij, Polnoe sobranie soinenij v tridcati tomax (PPS), L, 1982, t.24, 61. Russkij sovremennik, 1924, kn. I, 200. F.M. Dostoevskij, Pis'ma, t. II., M-L. , 1930, 358. PPS, t.16, 175. Ibid., 164: "Au cours du roman (et de plus en plus sou vent vers la fin) dlaisser l'adolescent, et en chapitres spars se tourner vers les autres personnages dans un rcit au nom de l'auteur. C'est ainsi gu sera dvoil l'pisode du suicide du petit garon l'oiseau." PPS, t.13, 309: "On est libre de sauter le rcit d'autant plus que je le raconte dans le style." Comparer les rflexions de Stavrogin et de l'Homme ridicule sur l'inanit du remords chez un candidat au suicide ou un habitant de la lune descendu sur terre ( PPS, t.10, 187 et t.25, 107-108). PPS, t.24, 353: "Ce que je veux, je veux lire le psautier. Mais je ne connais pas le slavon et je n'ai pas de psautier! Faut-il envoyer en chercher un; il fait nuit." Ibid., 35. Dostoevsky Studies, vol. 6, 1985, 143-156. Vladimir Volkoff, Le Retournement, Paris, 1979.

7. 8.

9. 10. 11. 12.

43

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21.

PPS, t.24, 35. PPS, t.25, 118. Ibid. , 119. Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky, The Years of Ordeal (1850-2859) , Princeton, 1983, 116-127. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, New York, 1929. Paul Claudel, Mmoires improviss, Paris, 1969, 63: "Toute conversion est une mort plus ou moins." Pour une tude dtaille du personnage cf. Jacques Catteau, La Cration littraire chez Dostoevski. Paris, 1978, 351-353. PPS, t.16,15. A. Bem souligne pertinemment la disproportion entre le volume des pchs et la minceur de la conversion, cause, selon lui, de l'chec de la "Vie d'un grand pcheur": "La face criminelle du hros est dpeinte avec nettet et psychologiquement convainc, la face lumineuse demeure vague et il faut prendre pour argent comptant sa victoire finale." (A. Bem, "Evoljucija obraza Stavrogina". O Dostojevskm, Sbornk Stati a materil, Praha, 1972, 95). PPS, t.22, 49.

22. PPS, t.14, 457.

Dostoevsky and Socrates: The Underground Man and The Allegory of the Cave Thomas S. Berry, University of Maryland
In the Notes from the Underground, the Underground Man can be interpreted as an allegory of Socrates' famous "Allegory of the Cave;" and the Russian work can be seen as a refutation of basic Socratic premises. Dostoevsky's polemic with Chernyshevsky and Schiller in the Notes has been studied; (1) the Russian author's dispute with Socrates in the same work also deserves consideration. Two elements support the thesis that Dostoevsky was attacking Socratic thought in the Notes: 1. A direct reference to a Socratic principle by the Underground Man, a matter that will be discussed later in this study; and 2. the basic theme of the Notes, as declared by the author, which contradicts Socratic philosophy. Dostoevsky explained the major idea of the Underground Man in a letter to his brother on March 26, 1864. (2) Complaining about the censors' prepublication distortion of the Notes, Dostoevsky mentioned that the main theme of the work was in the next to the last chapter of Part I. In that section, he maintains that life cannot be based on the rational alone. This contest of the rational versus the irrational is evident in Dostoevsky's philosophical development from his youth onward; for instance, on October 31, 1839, (3) as a young engineering student, he wrote his brother that a knowledge of "nature, the soul, God and love...is known by the heart, not the mind." This theme is presented in Pechorin's diary in Lermontov's Hero of Our Time and by the repentent Karl Moor in Schiller's "Die Ruber;" both of these works were highly praised by Dostoevsky in his youth. (4) He also wrote in glowing terms to his brother about the famous French religious writer Pascal, who upheld the spiritual over the rational. (5) In his early manhood, Dostoevsky was associated with Belinsky, who defended philosophic idealism against empirical truth. (6) Consequently, considering the influences on Dostoevsky and his numerous references to the irrational versus the rational, it is evident that he had contemplated the idea for some time. 158 A later development of Dostoevsky's attack on rationalism as the best philosophy for mankind is evident

In his Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, which he wrote In 1863 just before undertaking the Notes from the underground. Returning from Europe, Dostoevsky deplored the West he had discovered In his travels. In the Russian writer's mind, Western civilization was decadent and materialistic. In his attack on the West, he again repeated the theme referred to so often in the past: the pointlessness of a life based only on the rational. (7) This is the idea carried over to the Underground Man. Whether Dostoevsky deliberately or subconsciously wanted the Underground Man to serve as a rebuttal to Socratic philosophy is a matter of conjecture, but a dispute between the philosophical ideas of the two writers is evident. The beginning of the Notes from the Underground can be interpreted as an attack on the famous Socratic dictum "Know thyself." The Underground Man gives the impression that he knows himself very well. His health and psychological state are discussed in considerable detail. A Socratic argument develops between the Underground Man and himself. A question is asked and an answer is given; but the Underground Man's inquiry leads to the blind wall of the laws of nature and the inquirer realizes that he cannot know himself if nature does not even ask one's permission whether you like or dislike it's laws. In knowing oneself, one simply has to accept the world presented by nature. This the Underground Man cannot do. He refuses to resign himself to the blind laws of an impartial nature. Lev Shestov, in his book Athens and Jerusalem, said that Dostoevsky was attacking "eternal truths" with his theory about the laws of nature, or the stone wall, as Dostoevsky refers to them. And he attacks them from the side which seemed "naturally" defended and consequently inaccessible. Before the wall, he says, men who are philosophically cultivated, that is, schooled by the Greeks, 'bow down in all sincerity...A wall for them has something calming, final, perhaps even mystical about it.' (8) But the Underground Man will have nothing to do with such finality and comfort. He will not bow to constraint. Dostoevsky had discovered what Etienne Gilson had realized while writing L'esprit de la Philosophie Medievale, that: 159 the divine law exercises no constraint on the will of man...It is established that freedom is an absolute absence of constraint, even in relation to the divine law. (9) God does not constrain, but two times two make four and the stone walls do constrain. Addressing the man who thinks he knows himself, the Underground Man would ask, "How can you know yourself if you are constrained by the laws of mathematics or of impartial nature?" He would continue, "You can't!" Besides, where is all this "know yourself" when it comes to a toothache? That is the great humbler! All your pride in knowing yourself disappears. You are no longer what you thought you were; you are nothing but a moaning glob of protoplasm. So, see, you didn't know yourself at all I You're "no longer the hero" you tried being before and you've no reason to respect yourself. The Underground Man insists on the impossibility of knowing oneself because to know thyself you must "have your mind at ease without a trace of doubt in it." But, he asks, "How does one set one's mind at rest?" Where are my primary causes on which I am to build? Where are my bases? Where am I to get them from? I exercise myself in the process of thinking, and consequently with me every primary cause at once draws after itself another still more primary cause, and so on to infinity...So you give it up as hopeless because you have not found a fundamental course. (Part I, Sec. V) The Underground Man concludes that you end up deceiving yourself. You talk yourself into believing you know yourself, but you don't because that is impossible. Continuing his argument, the Underground Man states that he wishes he could have at least been capable of being lazy:

there would at least have been in me one positive quality, as it were, in which I could have believed myself. Question: who is he? Answer: a loafer. After all, it would have been pleasant to hear that about oneself. It would mean that I was positively defined. (Part I, Sec. VI) 160 The Underground Man could have "known himself" if he had at least been lazy. Realizing the man's ambivalence, one can understand why he chose gluttony as his preferred vice: he wanted a large stomach. That would be an asset because he could have embraced it and thereby know that one thing on this earth was positive, for he would be holding it. Still he would only be deceiving himself because a stomach is only temporal. The Underground Man concludes that you cannot ever know yourself. A second Socratic premise that the Underground Man disputes is that "no one would deliberately choose what will harm him or knowingly reject what will benefit him most." (10) The Underground Man says: We all know that not a single man can knowingly act to his own disadvantage, but what if it so happens that a man's advantage sometimes not only may, but even must, consist exactly in his desiring under certain conditions what is harmful to himself and not what is advantageous. And if so, if there can be such a condition, then the whole principle becomes worthless. (Part I, Sec. VII) Through the rest of the literary work, Dostoevsky tries to prove that the principle is indeed worthless. Man, according to Dostoevsky, has the right to desire for himself even what is very stupid and not to be bound by an obligation to desire what is rational. It is the irrational that preserves our individuality, not the rational; otherwise the Underground Man could not ask the question, "Why then am I made with such desires?" This is not a question for the so-called "normal man" who accepts the rational world per se; no, it is the Underground Man's question and he cannot answer it. Instead he realizes that life is a series of contradictions that come about my man's free will or choice. Part II of the Notes presents many examples of the Underground Man in situations where he acts to his own disadvantage. In the beginning of Part II of the Notes, when the Underground Man went into the tavern in hopes of being thrown out the window, he certainly was acting to his disadvantage. It was a matter of free choice, but his craving for contradictions certainly caused him to act to his own disadvantage. What could show more antipathy than the hero's ridiculous efforts to bump into his adversary on 161 the street? The futility of the endeavor and the unsuitability of his conduct indicate the contradictions prevalent in his mind. The irrational directs his thinking and his actions appear absurd in the empirical, rational world. Seeking escape from the antagonisms of the world, the Underground Man lost himself in daydreams (Part II, Sec. III). However, while reflecting on Schiller's "sublime and beautiful," he realized that his lifted spirit was only a deception which he described as a "sauce made up of contradictions and sufferings, of agonizing inward analysis." Even in moments of Schillerean "spiritual heights" he was not sure of himself. Such uplifting moments came even when he was practicing that which he called his most loathsome vice. Dostoevsky shows by this the contradictions that prevailed in the hero's mind. Vice and the sublime were in his thoughts at the same time. His thoughts were riddled with contrariety. There was no chance of ever knowing himself. The antagonisms in the Underground Man's thoughts cause him to conduct himself in ways that are not to his advantage. In Part II, Sec. II, when he joined in the party of his friends, he asked himself, "What possessed me to force myself on them?" He himself could not explain his repugnant behavior. He was a victim of contradictory compulsions which led him into situations ever to his disadvantage. The yellow stain on his trousers at the party deprived him of his dignity. How could a person know himself with a yellow stain shouting impropriety and neglect? He should have left the party, but for reasons he could not

explain, he stayed, later concluding that "No one could have gone out of his way to degrade himself more shamelessly and voluntarily, and I fully realized it and yet I went on pacing up and down." (Part II, Sec. IV) The revolting scene ends with the Underground Man begging for money to accompany his friends to the house of ill repute. "Take it, if you have no sense of shame!" Simonov finally exclaimed, underlining the degradation of the Underground Man. His lack of direction and his contradictory nature had caused an impasse which had obliterated social decencies and human values. Shame meant little in his situation. With no understanding and rife with contradictions, the Underground Man was adrift in the human sea with no anchor of hope for moderation of thought or adjustment in society. 162 The prostitute Liza exposes more of the Underground Man's war with himself. Liza has gone into her profession, certainly to her disadvantage, as an escape. Without doubt, the meetings with the Underground Man cause her grief, but her life is one of sorrow. Her predicament is not the most important element in this part of the work. Her relationship with the Underground Man accentuates his intellectual apostasy. He has gone beyond the "stone wall" of rationalism and has been destroyed by the irrationality on the other side of the wall. The confusion in the world of irrational only defeated his determination to do anything or his desires for anything. His vacillation is proof of his contradictory nature: his sentimentality causes him disgust; his love turns to hatred; and his hatred gives him anguish. His neurotic state promotes his strange behavior. In the scene where the Underground Man orders his servant, Apollon, to call the police, the menial's remark, "Who ever heard of anyone calling the police on themselves?" can be seen as a reference to Socrates' "No man would work to his own disadvantage." The irrational Underground Man most certainly would and did. He has refused the rational world of the Greeks; and in his refusal, he has forfeited the right to know himself. For "knowing oneself" is just a matter of accepting the world as the rationalists would have us believe it is. The world is not really that way. It is more than the confines of geometry and Chernyshevsky's socialism. Man is free only in the irrational. Normal man accepts Euclidian laws and is lost without them. Take them away, the Underground Man says, and normal man will crawl back to them, eagerly demanding the old deceits, begging to be enslaved (Part II, Sec. 10). But the Underground Man knows that he has gone beyond the wall of rationalism. And beyond that wall, there is chaos; but chaos allows freedom from restrictions, awareness beyond the normal, and refuge for genius. The Underground Man did not cope with the irrational world he found. He failed he states that he ruined his life in his great quest. Still he maintains that even though he might have failed, he still had more life than normal man. In his own words, I have in my life carried to an extreme what you have not dared to carry halfway; and what's more you have taken your cowardice for good sense and have found comfort in deceiving yourself. (Part II, Sec. X) 163 The Underground Man has exposed mankind for what it is: cowards, cringing to the security of a rational world based on deceit. Dostoevsky has shown that the Socratic principles which are basic to Western civilization are a grand sham. These principles have made a "generalized man" who is "still-born" and in essence is a shell of his potential. True understanding is not limited by laws. Broader horizons exist; man must have the courage to discover them or else he will be blinded by the limitations of rationalism and face stagnation. Dostoevsky can be interpreted as staging an argument against Socrates' famous "Allegory of the Cave;" and perhaps the Underground Man is the Russian writer's rebuttal to the Greek's famous presentation. Plato reported Socrates' "Allegory of the Cave" in The Republic (Part VII). The Greek allegory is in support of knowledge as a means for overcoming the illusionary quality of existence, which Socrates has shown in his arguments. The Russian allegory upholds the irrational as the only means of preserving individuality in a world where the rationalism of the empiricists has explained existence in terms which Dostoevsky found limited and just as illusionary as that underground world described by Socrates. The Greek hero left the underground and found that the world he knew below was an illusion; the Russian Underground Man went beneath the earth to escape the illusion of this world. The knowledge that the Greek hero heralded in this world was the very thing that drove the Underground Man away. Socrates'

hero rejoiced that he had come to another world; Dostoevsky's hero knew too well the world found by the Greek and wanted to leave it. The Russian author created, in a sense, a reverse allegory which contradicts Socrates' famous presentation. The conclusion is provocative: the knowledge that chained the Greeks to their illusions below the earth will also chain them to a piano-key existence on earth. Dostoevsky wanted to preserve all that is good in man, his irrationality, by taking him away from the illusions that will eventually bind the Greek hero to his newfound world. There is no doubt that Dostoevsky had planned for the irrational to be the answer for the Underground Man's intellectual predicament. Faith, or the irrational, was Dostoevsky's solution. The irrational, or faith in Christ, would save the Underground Man from chaos on the other side of the Stone Wall; it would also deliver him from the imprisonment of Greek thought in the empirical world. It is well known that the censors deleted Dostoevsky's 164 references to Christ as the savior of the disillusioned Underground Man. Whether the censors helped make the Notes from the Underground one of the most original Russian contributions to world literature is a matter of conjecture; as they are, the Notes pose philosophical testaments that cast doubt on the great Socratic premises so traditionally accepted in Western civilization. (11)

NOTES
1. E.K. Kostka, Schiller In Russian Literature. (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1965). Wasiolek, E., Dostoevsky: The Major Fiction. (M.I.T. Press, 1964). (For Chernyshevsky, see section on Notes from the Underground.) 2. Dostoevsky, F.M., Pis'ma, v. I. (1832-1867). Ed. A.S. Dolinin. (Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo, 1928.) P. 353. 3. Ibid., pp. 50-51. 4. Frank, J., Dostoevsky: The seeds of Revolt (1821-1849). (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979.) P. 93. 5. Magarshak, D., Dostoevsky. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1975.) P. 75. 6. Terras, Victor, Belinsky and Russian Literary Criticism: The Heritage of Organic Aesthet ics. (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974.) P. 37. 7. F.M. Dostoevsky. v. 5: Povesti i rasskazy, 1965-1966. (Leningrad: Izatel'stvo "Nauka," 1973.) P. 374. 8. Shestov, L., Athens and Jerusalem. (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1966.) P. 329. 9. Gilson, E., L'esprit de la Philosophie Medievale. (Paris: Librarie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1948.) P. 284. 10. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, v. 7. Ed. P. Edwards. (New York: The Macmillan Publishing Co., 1967.) P. 484. 11. Dostoevsky's polemic with Socrates in the Russian writer's major novels is under study by the author, as well as the analogy between Dostoevsky and Nietzsche in the Notes. These studies will be submitted in the future. The author wishes to express his gratitude to Dr. Victor Terras, Brown University, Providence, R.I., for his reading, comments, and encouragement.