Rodia,
Thank you for your post. I must confess that I had to struggle hard to overcome my dislike of Raskolnikov. I first intensely disliked his philosophy, his nihilism and his arrogance. It is only progressively that I reconciled myself with him, that I realized how lost and miserable he was. I think I have been pretty harsh and intolerant with him while reading Crime and Punishment. I had construed his rage against society as being too intellectual, too abstract, too detached from real life to be meaningful and worthy of compassion. And then suddenly, almost to my surprise, I forgave Raskolnikov, and I found myself guessing and hoping that he would eventually surrender, which he did. Dostoyevsky had done it again: he had me love and forgive one of his character.
This spirit of forgiveness that Dostoyevsky grants to his readers is IMO the core and the heart of his art. It is a great gift he makes to us. He presents us with people who are so excessive and outrageous that in real life we would dismiss them as being either out of their mind or good comedians. Also, we would be afraid of them. But in his books, not only do we accept them as real characters, not only do we accept their rage as granted, as you said, but we also accept them as brothers, whose acts we can forgive. I believe that it is because Dostoyevsky values honesty and innocence above all qualities, and gives to his heroes these qualities. His characters cannot help acting the way they do (and when they can, they pay for it at a very high price). They cannot fake it. Rogojine in The Idiot can only yield to the temptation; he can only kill Nastaja; it is the call of his blood; an uncontrollable impulse. The Player cannot help playing. Stavroguine in The Demons cannot distinguish between Good and Evil, and because he wants at least to once understand and touch the natural and tangible limit of evil, which he realizes other and normal people understands and recognizes, he commits one of the worst possible crime a man can commit. But even this crime does not really give him a conscious (what kind of Demon is he anyway? A demon who does not feel the joy of evil cannot be considered a true demon. He is, in fact, not a demon at all. He is just a man without a conscience and seeking helplessly one; he is not evil as he does not know what evil is; he just lacks the principle of good in him: he his an uncomplete man). And yet, we still forgive Rogojine, Stavroguine (and even Ivan, who did not directly kill his father, although he is partly responsible for it, and who turned out not to be the cold intellectual we thought he was but also a child), because of the way Dostoyevsky describes them to us: as innocent children, not realizing what they are doing. Dosto is the only writer who does that to me. I strongly believe that people should be held accountable for their acts. I believe in responsability. So for me forgiving really means forgiving someone who is in fact responsible for what he has done even though he may appear to have acted like an innocent child.
Rodia, you said that Dostoyevsky just opens a window into the soul of his character and that we do not really know what they are thinking. But I think that what is important to bear in mind is that these characters are not double-crossing you. They are shown as who they are (as if they were possessed) without varnish. We may not know exactly what they are thinking, but we know that they earnestly, sincerely, think it, if you see what I mean. Dostoyevsky expects and wants his reader to realize that his characters are sincere, hoping that his reader will empathize with their characters and forgive them because of their sincerety. And this spirit of forgiveness that he grants to his reader is the reason why, I suspect, I love him so much. Why, also, I love, above all of his characters, Muychkine, the so-called Idiot, who has, at the highest degree, this spirit of forgiveness. Myshkin sees. He is not an Idiot: he sees what other people cannot see: he pierces the heart of the people he meets and he knows who they really are. What he cannot do, however, is change these people. He does not have the power to change them, to stop the tragic course of events. And this is where lies the sadness that is conveyed by the book: we want the Prince to dominate the world, whereas it is not his world, and his fundamental goodness, which is a weakness in the real world, ends up frustrating us, while we should cheer for it. The same goes for Aliocha in The Brothers Karamazov. However, neither Myshkin nor Aliocha are meant to change the course of events. They should let other people exercise their free will, and then forgive them because these characters do not really know what they are doing.
By reading some of Dostoyevsky’s articles in his newspaper, I discovered that Dostoyevsky’s love for the innocents and his belief that innocent is a great virtue had its drawback: Dostoyevsky hated compromises. He really hated intellectuals who were consciously and cynically compromising with life (Dosto gives his intellectuals a very hard time in his books; for example, I think that he treats Ivan Karamazov unfairly). He really was vomiting them. It is almost ironic that Dostoyevsky became such an icon in France, where he has been studied and discussed by all intellectuals since Gide discovered him around 1920, while he probably hated the French for their absence of faith in God and their perceived cynical (and he was wrong for the French are not cynical, they are just pessimist). This is a less known, uncomfortable and frightening, aspect of his personality. But I forgive him, thanks to the spirit of forgiveness he gave to me, an unbeliever.
A quick and last comment: I think that Frodo is almost a Dostoyevskian character: he had with Gollum a true double, his possible negative double. Frodo sees what Sam cannot see, just like Myshkin. And although he perfectly knows that Gollum would betray him, just like Myshkin knew that Rogojine would stab him, he let Gollum betray him, he gives Gollum a chance. Then, he forgives Gollum after the destruction of the Ring. Even more, he asks Sam (us) to forgive him too in what is probably the most meaningful passage of LOTR, which PJ, unfortunately (and consciously
) cut, thus very much simplifying one of the uncomfortable theme of the book. However, contrary to Myshkin, Frodo is not weak. He is as strong as Dmitri Karamazov.
Sorry for rambling on.
I hope this makes some sense.
Jn,
You find Russian literature maudlin? Funny. I would not call maudlin any of my favorite Russian novels (which include Dosto’s four great novels, Vassili Grossmann’s Vie et Destin (don’t know the English title for this one), Gontcharov’s Oblomov, Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Solzhenitsyn’s One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich, and Gogol’s Dead Souls). May I ask you what Russian novels you find maudlin?
Nin,
Of course I speak French. I am French.
If you want to speak in French with me, do not hesitate to send me a private message (je ne crois pas qu'il soit approprié de parler en français dans ce fuseau).