KARAMAZOV: PART 4 Epilogue: Discussion Thread

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KARAMAZOV: PART 4 Epilogue: Discussion Thread

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1tomcatMurr
gen. 6, 2011, 9:35 pm


Ivan Levitan ‘The Vladimirka Road’ 1892

This was the road the convicts walked on their way to Siberia. It’s on this deserted road that Dimitry will make his escape. Dostoevsky himself walked the 190 kilometers of this road in 1849. In chains.

The action of these three chapters takes place five days after the action of the previous book, but it looks forward into the far future: Dimitry’s escape and emigration with Grusha to America; the ‘marriage’ between Ivan and Katerina – or Ivan’s death; and the next generation of Russian youth. The only main character whose destiny is not hinted at or projected, is Alyosha’s, whose destiny remains totally open.

2tomcatMurr
gen. 6, 2011, 9:38 pm

Ch 1: Plans to save Mitya
1.
In contrast to the public narrator of the previous book, the narrator in this is the private narrator, the one who has access to everything, and who never foregrounds himself. This narrator knows exactly how Katerina Ivanovna is feeling, and also reports Alyosha’s thoughts to us in direct speech.

Ch 2: For a moment the lie became truth
1.
“Listen: you are not ready, and such a cross is not for you. What's more, you don't need such a martyr's cross when you are not ready for it. If you had murdered our father, it would grieve me that you should reject your punishment. But you are innocent, and such a cross is too much for you. You wanted to make yourself another man by suffering. I say, only remember that other man always, all your life and wherever you go; and that will be enough for you. Your refusal of that great cross will only serve to make you feel all your life even greater duty, and that constant feeling will do more to make you a new man, perhaps, than if you went there. For there you would not endure it and would repine, and perhaps at last would say: 'I am quits.' The lawyer was right about that. Such heavy burdens are not for all men. For some they are impossible.”

We saw this theme in some of the quotes Tommy shared with us from Notes from the House of Death. ‘The stings of conscience’ Dimitry will bear all his life, and which were mocked by the devil in 11.9, are punishment enough without the legal punishment decreed by the state.

Ch 3: Ilyshechka’s Funeral. The Speech at the Stone
1.
Dostoevsky ends the novel with Kolya and the children, on a life- and hope-affirming note. The next generation will not make the same mistakes as the generation of the Karamazov brothers.

2.
"Of course... I should like to die for all humanity, and as for disgrace, I don't care about that -- our names may perish. I respect your brother!"

Kolya expresses genuine love for humanity, the love that Ivan was not capable of. Youthful idealism is expressed in the final pages of the novel.

3.
‘And whatever happens to us later in life, if we don't meet for twenty years afterwards, let us always remember how we buried the poor boy at whom we once threw stones, do you remember, by the bridge?...Let us remember how good it was once here, when we were all together, united by a good and kind feeling which made us, for the time we were loving that poor boy, better perhaps than we are.’

The importance of childhood memories is the main theme of Alyosha’s final speech to the boys. It is not social rules or conventions or laws that provide the moral basis for goodness, that provide an antidote to the poison of dissociation, but childhood memories of unity of feeling which act on the individual soul and on a social level:

‘You must know that there is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and good for life in the future than some good memory, especially a memory of childhood, of home. People talk to you a great deal about your education, but some good, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man carries many such memories with him into life, he is safe to the end of his days, and if one has only one good memory left in one's heart, even that may sometime be the means of saving us.’

4.
‘From this day forth, I have a place in my heart for you all, and I beg you to keep a place in your hearts for me!’

Dostoevsky’s ideal of brotherhood.

oooOOOooo

And on that note, my commentary ends. Thank you all for your kind attention.

Humbly,
Murr

3absurdeist
gen. 6, 2011, 9:46 pm

Now can I get out my Joseph Frank and compare his notes to yours?

4Porius
gen. 6, 2011, 10:06 pm

Is there any point in discussing Dostoevsky's connection to the Free and Acepted Masons? I don't think he was one but was influenced by a mystical Mason or two. Mozart was a practicing Mason the last seven years of his life. Not the Cagliostro type, more out of the enlightened tradition of Adam Weishaupt, et al. Academics avoid mention of this sort of thing like the plague. I think everything we can know about an author, or musician, is helpful.

5Macumbeira
gen. 6, 2011, 10:35 pm

Shouldn't we throw a party for our Murr, after all the work he did for us ?
Where are the wodka, the kippers, the dancers ?

6tomcatMurr
Editat: gen. 6, 2011, 10:37 pm

>3 absurdeist: Yes! especially about the narrator! What does Frank say about that?

>4 Porius: Freemasonry was a huge influence in Russia, especially during the reign of Catherine. From it developed the philosophical study groups of Moscow University, the pre-revolutionary circles of the aristocrats which resulted in the Decembrist Coup of 1825, and ultimately the Petrashevsky circle.

Masonry in Russia was the prime mover of early Westernism, linked to important early Westernisers such as Novikov and Schwarz, Radishchev and evenKaramzin
Billington devotes a lot of space to it in The Icon and the Axe, and so does Walicki in A History of Russian Thought.

By Dostoevsky's time, Masonry was a marginal influence, however, and D was not a Mason, as far as I can make out. In fact, his Orthodoxy would have made him an ideological enemy of Masonry.

7Macumbeira
gen. 6, 2011, 11:14 pm

You know which book Frank preferred ? The Magic Mountain by Mann.
LOL, it is true !

8PimPhilipse
gen. 7, 2011, 2:51 am

D. owned five books by Alexandr Nikolayevich Aksakov on spiritism:

Spiritism and Science
Essays in Research on Spiritism
The Rationalism of Swedenborg
The Gospel according to Swedenborg
Heaven and Hell by Swedenborg, translated by Aksakov

How did this influence his writing? I know next to nothing about Swedenborg, and I have a feeling I want to keep it that way.

10tommyb27
gen. 7, 2011, 6:05 am

Thanks yet again, Murr, and indeed congratulations on what was really a very impressive achievement - right down to that very moving painting of the Vladimirka Road.

11tommyb27
gen. 7, 2011, 6:07 am

Oh wait, I just noticed that Ivan Levitan painted it and not you. Well, never mind, still a magnificent performance.

12tomcatMurr
gen. 7, 2011, 8:13 am

thankee sir.

13anna_in_pdx
gen. 7, 2011, 12:17 pm

Tomcat, this has been a greater experience than my up-until-now best experience in a graduate literature seminar (it was on Mario Vargas Llosa). Your commentary and the erudition of other readers have enriched my reading of this book to the point that I really have no words. Thanks.

14absurdeist
gen. 7, 2011, 12:48 pm

6> I'll pull out my Frank this weekend and see what we can find re. his analysis of the narrator(s) in BK. Separate thread for that, you think?

15slickdpdx
gen. 7, 2011, 1:51 pm

Doesn't the book make you want to write a sequel?

16tomcatMurr
gen. 8, 2011, 8:47 am

that will be your assignment, slick!

17Macumbeira
gen. 8, 2011, 8:53 am

Can't belief this threads finished. There is a hole in my life.
Now with Chatwin digested, I am back with the brothers

18tomcatMurr
Editat: gen. 8, 2011, 9:22 am

We not finished mac. Anything you have to say will be warmly received and hotly discussed.

just because my commentary is finished doesn't mean the discussion has. We can talk about any post on any thread until we run out of wodka. And then we just get more wodka.

I WANT to hear what you have to say, m'sieur.

19dchaikin
gen. 21, 2011, 9:32 am

Just getting here....I love the painting in the first post!

20dchaikin
Editat: gen. 21, 2011, 9:46 am

Well this thread was as quick. A lot was wrapped up in Book 12, and there's not much left here (not like Crime and Punishment, with the curious epilogue, IMO; and, somewhere in there was that dream...that still wows me whenever I think about it.)

I was thinking we should have a thread devoted to our summary thoughts. But 1.) I'm very late on suggesting this 2.) I Murr's thoughts were very nicely wrapped up in Book 12. Feels complete 3.) It's too damn complex for me, personally, to give final thoughts. I'm about ready to throw in the towel on a review, and I haven't started writing one yet.

Still - would be interesting to see some of our post-read thoughts...

21Ridik
abr. 16, 2014, 8:41 am

I've been reading all the threads here about The Brothers Karamazov, but no one mentions this, which seems very important (PART 4 Epilogue Chapter 3):

Alyosha went into the room. In a blue coffin decorated with white lace, his hands folded and his eyes closed, lay Ilyusha. The features of his emaciated face were hardly changed at all, and, strangely, there was almost no smell from the corpse.

I know this is an old thread, but if someone would say a word or two about this or point me on some book where I can read it about it, I would really appreciate it.

Greetings.

22Macumbeira
abr. 16, 2014, 5:10 pm

Hi am the janitor...
Nobody hardly comes over here anymore.

But i'll post your questions on some other threads.
Maybe i'll get you an answer. Check again in 24 hours

Mac

23LolaWalser
abr. 16, 2014, 5:26 pm

#21

That IS interesting, in contrast to what happened, embarrassingly, with Zosima's corpse (stank to high heaven).

I don't know what Dostoevsky was driving at with this (Murr probably does). Is the child always closer to heaven than an adult, even when that adult is reputedly a saint?

Does the rotting of the saint's body just prove how little the body matters (Dostoevsky going against the usual pieties of conventional religion)?

24A_musing
abr. 16, 2014, 5:35 pm

I'm with Lola, it's an obvious contrast to Zosima's stinking corpse, where the expectation of a saintlike sweetness of bodily odour was so high. Certainly seems to sanctify the child a bit, but I don't remember my reading well enough to see any chance sto make some deeper comparisons between Ilyusha and Zosima and their two deaths.

25anna_in_pdx
abr. 16, 2014, 5:42 pm

Wow, I forget the plots so fast. I had forgotten about Zosima being the one that stank and had conflated the two in my head.

26LolaWalser
abr. 16, 2014, 5:50 pm

Since Zosima was based on a real person, I wonder whether that detail was real as well, or fictional. I'd google but I doubt there's a quick answer.

I wouldn't put it past Dostoevsky to introduce deliberately an enigma, to make one stumble and keep asking, perhaps out of sheer perversity. Why does he mention Zosima's stench at all? It would seem disrespectful, and yet we know how highly he thought of the model and this character.

27anna_in_pdx
abr. 16, 2014, 6:04 pm

Maybe he was just trying to show that superstition is based on selective interpretation and not reality? Showing the cognitive biases inherent in folk wisdoms that are too pat (saints miraculously not decomposing, etc)?

28LolaWalser
abr. 16, 2014, 6:10 pm

Yes, I like that--sort of what I meant by going against conventional religion.

Now I'm sure somebody somewhere discussed this...

29Macumbeira
abr. 17, 2014, 1:08 am

This Book is dominated by the story of Zosima's corpse, which shocks the monks and townspeople by corrupting very quickly. In medieval times (and the Orthodox Church in the Russia of Dostoevsky's time had survived mostly unchanged since medieval times), people believed that the inner goodness or evil of a being or substance could be judged partly by its smell. It was believed that many saints' bodies miraculously did not corrupt or give off a bad smell after death, and that sometimes they even gave off a heavenly fragrance. The lack of corruption and the heavenly smell were signs of the person's holiness and of their favor with God.

Hence it was a serious matter that Zosima's body smelled bad, and could be taken by some as a sign that he was not holy and in favor with God. The physical reality of corruption was at odds with religious faith. However, this story illustrates an important theme of the novel: that faith is not and cannot be validated by miracles, but is a choice made from one's free will.

30LolaWalser
abr. 17, 2014, 10:03 am

Excellent conclusion, I'll take that.

31LolaWalser
abr. 17, 2014, 10:18 am

P.S. Oh, what about Ilyusha tho'? Saintly without sainthood, simply as an innocent sufferer? (Dostoevsky loved his child martyrs.)

32Ridik
abr. 17, 2014, 10:41 am

I'll take your conclusion as well janitor. Thank you for your answers.

33Macumbeira
abr. 17, 2014, 11:58 am

Don't mention it

Yo Lola, long time no see !

34LolaWalser
Editat: abr. 17, 2014, 12:32 pm

Yo, janitor! Come fix my cable.

Um... ;)

35Macumbeira
Editat: abr. 17, 2014, 4:16 pm

If we weren't separated by 5912,19 km, I would pop in for a quick fix :)