“Dostoevsky’s hero is not an objectified image but an autonomous discourse, pure voice; we do not see him, we hear him.”

― Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics

Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, Part II & James L. Rice, “Dostoevsky’s Endgame”.

i.

Reading Rice's "Dostoevsky's Endgame" I was most surprised that the outline of the sequel to The Brothers would be mainly about Alyosha transforming into a revolutionary – on a quest to assassinate the Tsar. I couldn't fully understand from which exact sources he arrived at this assumption regarding the sequel (except from the diary of Suvorin, Dostoevsky's friend), but of it is in some way true it linked up and went against most interestingly with the moment in Book 10, Chapter 6 of The Brothers, where Kolya tells Alyosha:

"And, if you like, I'm not against Christ. He was a very humane person, and if he was living in our time, he would go straight to join the revolutionaries, and perhaps play a prominent part . . . It's even certain he would." (Pg. 587)

After which Alyosha condemns the "fools" Kolya receives such ideas from... Would it turn out then in the sequel that Kolya was right and Alyosha could not yet see it? That the "enlightened path" would be to become a revolutionary? Or Alyosha's path went awry?

ii.

First, let me say I love a good literary fight, and I love letters to the editor, so Dostoevsky's End Game was a fun read.

Upon first reading the Rice article, I felt as though I had read an entirely different novel than his Brothers Karamazov. I was like, "who is this guy?", and found his obituary on a Harvard "Class of 60" blog, with the line "Rice suffered all his adult life from a variety of ills of both mind and body", which made the whole thing make a bit more sense. His insistence on taking the malaise of each of the novel's characters so literally (and clinically) and with such Freudian emphasis felt both laboured and inaccurate. Writing it not from the perspective of his opinion but with the claim that it was Dostoevsky's intention seems equally misguided--why would a writer undertake an 800 page book about crazy people, and how would it manage to still reverberate 144 years later? Are there "longstanding difficulties" stemming from the fact that it is unfinished? Is Alyosha severely mentally afflicted? Zosima, "comical and trivial"? So many questions. Beyond feeling like the whole piece was written by a conspiracy theorist, those just feel like inaccurate readings of the characters. The letter responses were great--I could stop sputtering indignantly and let them do it. Maybe I am supposed to be more respectful of this writer?

Rice may have been able to dispense blithely of Bahktin's "reductive schemata" in a single parenthesis, but I've found his engagement thrilling. He also seems to be forcing a narrative onto Dostoevsky's writing to a degree, but one I find it much more absorbing to think about. His distinctions between the dialogic and monologic to seem to function well with Dostoevsky's oeuvre; the fact that the characters are perpetually both revealing and betraying themselves in conversation with each other in a dialogic work, versus possessing some kind of centralizing, knowable truth that a monologic work might bestow on a character. (Even Alyosha, who speaks the most "truth" seems to be searching for it as he speaks, rather than declaiming it). The instability of Dostoevsky's characters is not a mental condition, as Rice would have it, but an inability to be "finalized" in form and intention; in conversation each character egging the other one on in a constant rush to discovery. In "The Dialogic Imagination", Bahktin writes that the actual word in living conversation is "directed toward an answer...it provokes an answer, anticipates it and structures itself around the answer's direction. Forming itself in the atmosphere of the already spoken, the word is at the same time determined by that which has not yet been said", which to me perfectly captures the frenzy of many of the conversations in the BK, with characters so distracted by worrying about what it sounds to others like they are saying (and what others think of them) that they are barely listening to themselves (and thus prone to betraying something they didn't intend), much less to others. There is no single way to hear something, or control the way someone hears your words, and the imbalance becomes the engine of the plot. (Which is why some of the conversations where there does seem to be genuine good will and curiosity between the speakers--where they seem palpably to be listening to one another--seem to have additional meaning and beauty. I'm thinking back to Demons and the conversation between Stavrogin and the Bishop.)

Any exploration of the inherent insufficiency and ambivalence of language, its evasions and unintended disclosures--what a great and breakable tool we came up with.

iii.

I genuinely have been finding the Bakhtin piece so fascinating, particularly the part about characters' speech versus author's speech. I am really interested in this idea of the author and the character being linked and sort of both existing as characters; Bakhtin writes:

"Whenever we have within the author's context the direst speech of, say, a certain character, we have within the limits of a single context two speech centers and two speech unities: the unity of the author's utterance and the unity of the character's utterance. But the second unity [...] is subordinate to the first" (187).

I was also so interested in his comments on narration by a narrator, and how it almost closes the reader out from the narrator and the author--because the narrator and the author are one, and their discourse is not visible from the outside. Bakhtin talks a lot about discourse--the author's discourse, the character's discourse, the discourse created by their interaction. Specifically in regards to Dostoevsky, Bakhtin writes that there are "no objectified words in Dostoevsky," and that the threads of multiple voices are what characterizes his novels.

"We shall see that authorial understanding is very subtly and carefully refracted through the words of the hero-narrators, even though the entire work is filled with overt and hidden parodies (205).

iv.

As I continue to read Bahktin, there are some specific parts I really responded to.

Bahktin’s writing is so detailed, full of clarity and insight regarding Dostoevsky’s work. This idea that we don’t find truth in just one person, we find truth in the community of people that are searching for it. And we find it though their interactions with each other. I found his focus on utterances, and the individual word having weight fascinating. It’s something, as you read, you don’t observe, but going back into Demons and Brothers it’s so evident now.

“Thus dialogic relationships can permeate inside the utterance, even inside the individual word, as long as two voices collide within it dialogically (microdialogue, of which we spoke earlier). “….. “On the other hand, dialogic relationships are also possible between language styles, social dialects, and so forth, insofar as they are perceived as semantic positions, as language world views of a sort, that is, as something no longer strictly within the realm of linguistic investigation.”

You cannot argue with Bahktin about the specificities that Dostoevsky brings to each human being in all his books. They are absolutely complex individuals, filled with humor, madness, joy and history. They can be so complicated that I have to go back and look at a family tree to keep up with them. There was one moment where, as the reader, I was perplexed, trying to decode certain sentence, and it for just a second, felt a little more monologic. The last line of chapter one in Brothers, "In most cases, people, even wicked people, are far more naive and simple-hearted than one generally assumes. And so are we." That "And so are we," will always get me. WHAT? It's like the narrator steps out of the book and points at you, then slips right back inside. Curious how others feel about it.

I also realize Dostoevsky can't always stick to the Dialogic principle. But, I agree that his narrators, for the most part, are themselves not a monological voice. They are part of the community, and we learn that we cannot lean our trust on them, which makes for an exciting, vulnerable space to be in as a reader.

v.

In “The Hero in Dostoevsky’s Art,” Bakhtin analyzes the character-character, character-world, and character-author relationships that occur in Tolstoy’s monologic “Three Deaths” in order to more thoroughly explain those relationships in Dostoevsky’s polyphonic works. He claims that there is no dialogic relationship in Tolstoy’s work, and, due to his (the author’s) “surplus” field of vision, his “words and consciousness…are not addressed to the hero, do not question him, and expect no response from him… He speaks not with him, but about him” (Bakhtin 69-71). As I was reading this, I came to the realization that not a single character in Dostoevsky is depicted in the actual process of prayer (to my knowledge, the closest they come is Alyosha’s memory of his mother before the icon). In the same way that Tolstoy adopts a God-like relationships with his characters, God, for Dostoevsky’s characters, is not addressed. In the “Appendix II,” speaking about “what monologism is, in the highest sense,” Bakhtin says,

“God can get along without man, but man cannot get along without Him” (285). It is, therefore, impossible for a dialogue to be had with God. Nothing could come out of such an attempt in, according to Bakhtin, a form of novel in which no ideas, thoughts, or positions —even truth—exist “in themselves” (31).

The characters are much better off, in the world of the polyphonic novel, to have discourse with themselves and with each other about the roles of religion and God’s world. We see this particularly in Kirillov, Shatov, and Ivan, for their views on God are born of discourse, not of prayer. I find it significant, given the extent to which Dostoevsky’s works deal with God, religion, and its ramifications (and, as Bakhtin so emphasizes, the “word”), that the very words of prayer are never uttered.

vi.

This is either about Brothers K or Bakhtin, or neither. You tell me.

The Brothers Karamazov is the most organically unfolding, brilliantly conceived, delivered and well plotted novel I could have never dreamed of. The introduction of each character; their totally separate lives, existences, values, ways of being and even journeys—I begin to really marvel at how I do not hear or suspect that I hear the voice of the author, while all these very different, very developed characters all come from out of one single mind!? That alone is stunning—we have static characters, we have dynamic characters, but we don’t have a clear protagonist and we don’t have a clear mission. It all unfolds from a point in space and time, everyone has their origins, but come to be in the same world interacting or not, changing or not, in the same world. Each one of the characters exist, but not to serve as a tool to the protagonist or the journey. We have multiple protagonists, we have multiple journeys—we have multiple melodies, and some harmonies, and if I want to use achromatism as an analogy for unorthodoxy, then we have achromatism as well.

After marveling over the form of the novel, to hear it described as “polyphonic,” I was so excited, because that sounds just right. Polyphonic, literally, means something like ‘many sounds.’ To translate it for use in this context, I’d rather say something like, “many voices,” or “many stories.”

Upon hearing this “polyphonic novel” concept, I began to think about some classical compositions and based on what I read in Bakhtin and considering the form of Brothers K, I went ahead and put on Palestrina’s Sicut Cervus, a polyphonic composition. I could have put on, or offered to you, Chumbawumba’s Tubthumping, but it’s not beautiful and aside from the polyphonic aspect, the song does not have a distinct form, or maybe I should say the song doesn’t really tell a story or follow any kind of plot, if you will—let’s just say that if Tubthumping were a novel, the plot sucks—beginning, middle, end, fluidity, etc. Sicut Cervus has four distinct voices, multiple melodies, there are harmonies, there is dissonance and resolution. You can hear the form, and you can then recognize it in Brothers K. You know, to take sort of Socratic approach and find the form in something smaller to discover it in something bigger. An even more thrilling analogy would be to look at Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. For whatever this is worth, the music analogy really works for me and helps me to analyze and look for the form in other novels. Are they homophonic, are the monophonic? This is fun. I’m going to bring some sheet music to class for fun.

vii.

Reading Bakhtin's deep analysis of Dostoyevsky's has been like cracking the code on his novels and literature.  He's able to put into words the effects that Dostoyevsky applies to his writing that have always been present, but for me, have eluded me.  Most notably, the idea of polyphony of the ideas and the characters personalities and view points.  He likened it to the a musical fugue, which upon making that connection in his work, opened up the content of his novels tremendously.  The fugue is the layering of different musical motifs that goes through the orchestra and interplays with itself.  I feel that is exactly what Dostoyevsky is able to manage through the complex layerings of his characters personal identities, and actions.  He creates this broad, rich, multi-tonal narrative, that seems exists in its own plane of reality, separate from the brilliant imagination of its author.

viii.

Reading Mikhail Bakhtin's review and critiques of Dostoevsky's work was very profound to me as it was a truly in depth analysis and viewpoint about his work. It was interesting to see this analysis and how it came out. I liked this theme of Subtly and how Dostoevsky was able to incorporate it in his “menippea” / Religious satire. It's interesting to see how Mikhail analyzed this satirical perspective that Dostoevsky has when contrasted with his scenes of scandal and revelation about characters. There is a high level of drama in his work that is contrasted with a satirical and oftentimes almost cynical perspective. This in depth and comprehensive analysis of Dostoevsky's work i found it most interesting when Mikhail said

“all of Dostoevsky's novels are permeated with menippean elements, and with elements of other kindred genres as well the Socratic dialogue, the diatribe, the soliloquy, the confession.” (Mikhail Bakhtin, 156)

Here Mikhail synopsizes these key ‘elements’ that are the quintessential literary foundation of Dostoevsky's work. These elements that are highlighted are consistent throughout his work and build the foundation of Dostoevsky's style of writing.