Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881)

The 19th Century
Presentation 10 of 13

Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881)
Crime and Punishment. The Idiot.
The Brothers Karamazov. Views of the Dissolving Inferno.
Presented by Roger Weir
Tuesday, February 7, 1984

Transcript:

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The date is February the seventh, 1984. This is the 10th lecture and a series of lectures by Roger, where on the 19th century tonight's lecture is entitled. Dustin [inaudible] that's D O S T L E V S K Y who lived 1821 and 1881 crime and punishment. The idea, the brothers Karamazov views of dissolving Inferno. We're coming to the last month in this series. And we're able to finally to begin to get some feel for the whole field of the 19th century. And I think for those few of you, who've managed to come each time and survive all the way through. You're beginning to get an appreciation for the 19th century, which is very difficult. Once you get the appreciation to understand why it has been so ignored, we have not looked at any of the overall views of 19th century thought. There are many multiple tomes and volumes main currents of thought in the 19th century, 19th century studies and so forth. All of them are worthless. There was hardly any Epic in human history within historical reach that is less known than the 19th century. We have consistently seen that every major individual that we have taken has been misrepresented and misunderstood that if there is an overall view of the 19th century, it is the pathetic triumphal expectation that somehow by manipulating the material world, man may find fullness for himself.
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That the materialist view is that life can be better if we work at it, that conditions of life, if improved will lead to better people, better experiences. And that this in turn will increasingly help along the quality of life. This was the liberal viewpoint and still survive until our on time. The corollary to that. And by now, I should think it not unlikely that most of you are sophisticated enough psychologically to know that human attributes in pairs, but they always have a polar energy. And that wherever there is a liberal viewpoint of the gradual betterment of man's life, there is the corollary, which is usually called conservative, but which in the 19th century became turned inside out and became communists. That is to say the communist viewpoint is an ironical paradox. It is a conservative viewpoint turned inside out, Which is what has made most arguments against it in our time in effective.
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But we have seen also that in the communist corollary viewpoint that occurs in sync and polarity with the liberal viewpoint, that man must not just better his world, but must change the structure of his world in order to better it, the liberal viewpoint being one that the given conditions are unalterable, but can be bettered. And finally perfected the corollary to that is that the given conditions are inappropriate. And if changed in structure, then can be better. Now, perhaps it's less political to characterize this viewpoint as communal, rather than communistic and communalism was the essential emphasis of it in its first promulgation,
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What turned okay,
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The conservative viewpoint inside out and made of it. Communist made of it. Communal was a religious perception In the conservative view. The radical change must be in man's religious nature. That what is wrong with the material world? What is wrong with man that can be structurally changed is that he is irreligious. And therefore, if he has made religious and expresses this religiosity through his sense of community, then the world can be better. The insight out this of the conservative religious viewpoint is the communist, your religious viewpoint atheistic rather than theistic that in fact, it is the religious in capacity, the religious opacity of men, which is forbade him To change the world and better the world under new conditions.
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So that in effect
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We have in the 19th century Generation of three ideas, one of them a close parallel, which is the communist conservative viewpoint, which are the same. And those two are polarities together of the liberal viewpoint. We now come with dusty EST to the crunch where all three viewpoints are held simultaneously by an individual
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And the temptation for him as an individual to sort these viewpoints out in terms of analysis in terms of intellectual approach is viewed as the ultimate sin, the ultimate culpability, and that it is only when man is passionately consumed by the energy of all three viewpoints at the same time that he actually is real. And on that basis is capable of an affinity with reality and only thus can teach himself how to be. So that in the extraordinary access of passionate feeling, where all three of the viewpoints are held in a simultaneous ambiguity, par excellence, can an individual come into contact with a universal harmony, this peculiar juxtaposition and viewpoint yeah. Is elaborated in the life and in the writings of Dostoevsky.
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And because of this is
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A major author, one of the world's greatest, he has one of the few places where we may find the conundrum of modern man presented in all of its complications. So that in retrospect, as an audience reading his books decades later, almost a hundred years later now, and in most cases that we come to experience the situation in a more distant kind of an apperception and is no longer so close to us that we are caught up with the intensity of it. The life of Dostoevsky is a case in point. And I think probably at this point, the best thing for us to do is to begin to take a look at his life and try and bring this issue out as clearly as can be, as you can see from the introduction, it's a complication. And it's one that is almost never addressed. That is to say, if you are given Dostoevsky in a world literature course, as literature, you were approached the man through the works and the filter of the works because of their complexity, because of the highly integrated ambiguity, which is presented there, you are lost in the experience of the work and your critical acumen never is able to transcend the complications of the work to get an overall view.
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But on the other hand, if you look at Dostoevsky in terms of politics and you take any one of the three standpoints, you get a bias, which reads out Dostoevsky as if you had understood him completely. And you've missed the whole point. Very few writers have ever addressed themselves to the question of DAS to ask you with honesty and with enough excellence, to be able to perceive this dilemma. In actual fact, Dostoevsky is one of the first individuals who we could style. If we were interested in styling people, according to certain types, cultural types, Dostoevsky is the first existentialist because he is the first man to experience himself on the writing edge of reality on the point of the pen, Because he himself lived the ambiguity's to the fullest, experienced them with such intensity that he often records in his writings that if he could have gone mad, he would have that if he could have broken, he would have, And this tension expressed itself in his life, in the physical element of epilepsy. And we will see that Dostoevsky acquires the safety valve of epilepsy when he is thrown in prison in Siberia. And that by the time he is able finally to view his dilemma with enough accuracy, to be able to portray it and all of its intensity, all of its complexity. He also has come to understand his affliction as a divine gift,
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That just before
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The irrational uncontrollable experience of the physical madness, there is a lightning like flash of universal clarity, which he said makes it all worthwhile. So we have a peculiar individual, and we also have him late in the, uh, presentation
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Of people because
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Dostoevsky moves us ever closer to the end of the 19th century to the beginnings of the 20th century Of his five great novels, the least known as one called a raw youth. I'm sorry, I don't have my copy of the novel. I found a copy, but it's $45 nine. I didn't have $45. My copy was lost in a divorce, but I do have the notebooks for all youth published by the university of Chicago press. And in the raw, you, there was a section called Christ and hunger. And I want to give you a little of this before I, I started Dostoevsky's light.
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He says, be firm, man,
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Let don't let anything disturb you.
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That things are changing for the worse though. This may be true and has been so prophesized for those last days. Do not believe it in the least and act as if things were going to be just fine, preach Christ by your words, even more by deeds, be from man and calm. Do not let anything trouble you and your life shall be to the glory of God. But most of all served by your own works. There is nothing, nothing stronger than the example of your own works, and don't let it trouble you that you have not completed everything or that you have done, but little four, it will all contribute to the general good order of thing. And the reply is, will it relay? And the retort to that was why won't it? How does the man live? But by good examples, and then my car whose name is Makara Dogo Rooskie remarks, sanctify yourself, and you will serve everybody by being a light to the world, sanctify yourself. And you will be a light to everybody in the world. Y I have been speaking of the godless all the time, what godless people are, they really that's asking too much of them.
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And the conversation goes on. It goes on for just fear of Satan and so forth. The basic push of meaning here is summed up in a Russian curse word. A Russian curse word is Borden, which means godless is Bush means without God. Godless is the worst profane curse that you could hurt a human being that they are godless is an ultimate condemnation of those persons.
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And the polarity of that is that someone who is totally God intoxicated is in fact, a light to the entire world, somewhere in that vast spectrum between those who are godless and those who are God intoxicated, lies the realm of human nature being pulled, not one direction or another, but being pulled in sort of a circular, kind of an ambiance by human concerns. And only when the human person individually awakens to the call of service for others. Does he begin then to, uh, experience this pushing away from the ABAs of the godless, the board and the expected triumph of the God intoxicated at the top of this spectrum of humanity is the experience of Christ who experienced God intoxication to the point of being God himself. And at the other end is the Satan, the devil who is truly godless. And so between this heaven and hell man's life on earth, how's its turmoil and its pattern, which is essentially meaningless until it acquires a direction in terms of this inner pole of experience.
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And the clue, the key to this inner pole of experience is the ability to lose oneself in particular, to lose oneself in service for others. When Dostoevsky was born in October of 1821, the overwhelming influence in Russia was German romantic thought. We haven't yet got to that, uh, particular series. We'll get to it at the philosophic research society. You had an April, may and June, not so much Garrett yet this time, but the dominant romantic German voice was sheller. And the dominant romantic English voice was Byron Lord Byron. So that you found individuals in Russia who were affecting the Byronic walk with the Cape and the soft broad brimmed hat and the cane whose mind was filled with ideas of the shall arrest, KIRO, opposing his intelligence and his capacity to the whole scheme of history, to try and dominate it and bring it round to, uh, his own conception. We today hardly ever remember much about Schiller because we have forgotten all this we've forgotten our own roots.
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We somehow remember
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That Shiller wrote William tell that it was about a father who placed an Apple on the head and shot an arrow through it. It hardly ever remember anymore the tremendous energy and the fact that Schiller died young. And the fact that it set a prototype Byron died, young Shelly died young of the youthful genius. And in Russia, the romantic hero was Pushkin. And I'll do a lecture on Pushkin over at the philosophic research society, probably in may of this year, Pushkin who was of Afro Russian heritage was the great hero of Russian society. He was the, the flamboyant genius who proved by his literature, his greatness with language, his ability to write in ways in which the Russian language was changed in its structure, led everyone to expect that Russia had come of age.
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And that in fact, the German idealism of the romantic movement, constant Hagle and Schiller had finally passed as a heritage to Russia. And the feeling was beginning that Europe was had had its heyday. Western Europe had had its heyday and now Russia was a young, giant awakening. And Pushkin was the first beacon light, the first great Russian man of letters who is showing the Russian people that they were coming of age. They were going to lead civilization to new Heights. So Dostoevsky was born into this condition in 1821. And he would have been, uh, an adolescent of about 16 when Pushkin was killed in a duel. And all Moscow, all of Russia was talking about the tragic demise of this great voice in a duel. Now, Dostoevsky was unfortunately, uh, from a family that had, uh, many children. The poverty was enormous. He was extremely close to his brother, Michael. He was also somewhat close to a brother named Andre, but for all intents and purposes, the youth of Dostoevsky was spent hold up in the family apartment with his brothers and sisters until he was about 10 years of age. Let me put it into a contemporary MEC. You can, you can get the impact of this. He lived in a confinement that was like a monastery cell, or like the state room of submarine for the first 10 years of his life. And about the only social intercourse that he had was with his own family, his brothers and sisters, his mother and father. So that alone of all the great major writers in the world, Dostoevsky almost never mentioned landscape or animal
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Life.
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He never mentioned plants. There's one vision in crime and punishment near the end, where a Rast called the cough looks out across the Siberian waist. And he sees the distant tenths of the town looking like black specks on the white snowy vastness. It's the most poetic landscape in all of Dostoevsky. It runs about two sentences. Dostoevsky could care, less, knew less about the external aspects of life. He knew nothing about plants, flowers, trays, landscapes for him. Reality was human nature and the relationships between human beings and the incredible complicated vicissitudes that went into trying to have your
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Way.
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In fact, he was so close to his brother, Michael and Michael would be alive until the 1860s. So really for the first 40, some years of his life, except for the, uh, sentence to Siberia, we have to speak of the brothers, Dostoevsky, Michael and fire door. I won't get a chance to mention it, but Michael was also a writer, but gave up any kind of expectation that he might've had to become a great writer because he managed to find himself in the cigarette and cigar business. He was one of the first men to conceive of ad campaigns for cigarettes and cigars and did very well, uh, except at this period in European history, anyone who did well financially, who was not of the nobility, usually overspent and built up more debts business in the 19th century was just a, uh, a classic case of opening you up to more and more deaths and bills. Yeah, it occurs in the middle-class in our time in the 20th century because the psychological roots of this particular conundrum are not understood. Uh, if you wish to explore it, Arthur Miller's death of a salesman is the poignant archetype of portrait of the psychological disease. You would have to say it's a syndrome
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At any rate. They
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Only time that the Dostoevsky children ever got a break from the apartment in Moscow was when fire door was 10 years old. And the parents rented a farm outside of town for a couple of months and took the children out there. And it was for Dostoevsky for fedora and all of his brothers and sisters, and then incredible event and experience of unbelievable. Uh uncanniness. It was like, uh, uh, someone at the age of seven being taken to Disneyland for the first time. It infected Theodore with a concern for what would be called the common people, the laboring farm people, the bread and butter of Russia, the peasants, the poor, none of these derisive terms in Russia, all of these, uh, came to have, uh, almost a mystical significance. The term later on that would be used with, uh, uh, poach that, which meant soil put you v-neck was, uh, men of the soil. And this was a, an epithet which one strive to have. It was a dignity. That one was up the soil. So at the age of 10, this element entered into Dostoevsky's life into his character, but very quickly circumstances devolved, the mother died.
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It had been settled that before she died, that at least Michael and fedora would be sent to St. Petersburg and we'd be entered into an engineering Academy. So they were sent there. They were 16 years old at the time. Michael was unable to pass the interest exams and had to go to another city nearby it. Theodore passed and entered into a situation where he began studying engineering. Yeah, it was a mechanical Trevell for Dostoevsky. He simply saw his way through it for five, almost six years, because this was his whole reason for being there. But dusty sq began to be infected with the idea that in Petersburg, which was the Russian imitation of Paris, the Russian imitation of London,
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The place where they, yeah,
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Miss the Pushkin had flowered most poignantly and pushed and died about the time that Dostoevsky entered into the engineering Academy. He began to have aspirations towards literature.
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He began to associate himself with avant garde individuals in Petersburg who wrote, or who associated themselves into cliques circles. Now in most of these circles would contain one or more individuals who had written something, perhaps gotten something published and Dostoevsky, uh, began to feel that this was his world. He liked the idea of entering into the world of, uh, of young manhood of great literary conversations to two or three in the morning. He liked the idea of entertaining for himself, a Bohemian style of life. And so he wrote a novel, short novel called poor folk in 1846. He was just a 24 years old, 1844, 1845 published, uh, about that time, poor folk was extraordinary. It was, it was an incredible presage of Dostoyevsky's literary power. He would not write again for almost 10 or 15 years. Anything near its quality is not a great word, but it is a stunning work. And in the Petersburg, following the death or romantic death of when the Russians were looking for a new voice, dusty ASCII burst upon the scene with poor folk, it was a matter of days before he was dragged to the great critic. Balinsky his house. And Belenski holding up the published novel dreamed wild-eyed at Dostoevsky. Do you know what you have written? And Dostoevsky realized that he was becoming the lion of Russian literary society. He was visited by Turgenev who paid due homage to dusty F gives incredible genes.
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Yes. And at the same time,
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All of this went rushing to Dostoevsky's had, because his basic temperament was one of total access, complete commitment, 100% to excess. And within weeks, this tremendous lionizing of Dostoevsky began to take on the edge of caricature. The older, more mature writers who had been to Paris, we'd been to Berlin who had been to London, realized that this had been somewhat of a fluke. And they began to characterized us to escalate to their friends as a literary pimple. This was the Russian phrase use so that they would make fun of Dostoevsky by parading him at parties and getting him to make these incredible statements. And he became finally disillusion with the entire mess. He began to try and write more, nothing that he was able to put out was of much value. They were not received very well, but he had managed to associate himself with a literary click that centered itself around a man named Patricia Shefsky, Petra Shefsky and Petra Shefsky was on the verge of being literary
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Or political.
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In fact, the, uh, Petra Shefsky had published a fantastic, um, dictionary of foreign words incorporated in the Russian language. And it was like voluntarily philosophic dictionary. It was witty, it was profound. It had a political dynamite and almost every definition the sensors. And you have to realize that Russian society has always had it sensors. Always. There has never been a Russia without it sensors, but the sensors had looked at the title dictionary of foreign words incorporated in the Russian language and had passed it by. So it was published and copies were circulating until the comments came into the government, increasingly that this was the work of a radical group that were seeking to overthrow the government. In fact, all of this came to a head because this was happening in 1849 and the year before the French in 1848 had overthrown their government and several Eastern European governments. And several German did, she's had been overthrown by radical young men, just like this growth. And so the Petro Shefsky circle were singled out by czar Nicholas to be an object lesson, to all the literary cliques in Russia, 23 men were arrested, including [inaudible] and by mistake, uh, his younger brother, Andre was arrested and let her released in the older brother, Michael was brought in,
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It was
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A, an incredible trial. The Russian government made it a cause celeb, they sentenced 21 of the 23 on men to death.
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They took them out on
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Two or three days before Christmas and lined them up in front of firing squads, Dostoevsky among them. But the czar had already decided that he was not going to kill them, but was going to send them to exile. I wanted to sell them with terror before he sent them off on exile. And so a minute before the guns were to fire a messenger, arrived, commuting the death sentence and reading the exile sentence. But of course, none of the young men knew this. It was a harrowing experience and dusty ASCII. And later on in many of his writings would recount that the worst form of murder is the murder by society of an individual. He would say that when a man commits murder, often almost in every case, it is a sudden outbursts. But with governments with social murder is a concerted, inevitable avalanche of revenge.
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And it's being to wait for the ax to fall knowing that surely it will fall not from anyone in particular, but just the vengeance of a society gone Ned in the case of the individual. And from that perspective, so Dostoevsky and one of the other leaders of the group do cough. And the third young man were bundled up publicly and sleighs as they were stood up and roped in and on Christmas Eve, they were paraded through the streets of Petersburg, one of the largest cities in Russia and taken off to Siberia. They were packed into slays outside of town, where they were inside stuffed inside. And it took them many, many weeks to traverse by sleigh the vast reaches of Russia. They were eventually taken over the urinals and into central Siberia and Dostoevsky was put into prison and the town of aunts that you can imagine in your mind, the imagine Afghanistan and above it, huge, vast stretches of Kazakhstan. And up above that would be swampy marshes of Siberia and somewhere in between the deserts of Kazakhstan and the marshes of Northern Siberia is a narrow habitable, uh, area of land. And one of the major cities there was arms on the IR Christian river, which flows North and empties into the Arctic ocean.
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He was clapped into the prison and conditions that were almost inhumane. Dostoevsky records several times in his writings, images, which are so catastrophic that, uh, on reading them one time to gain you have compared the images. He did not like dusty ask you, but he said, these are images worthy of Dante. Here's one. This is a quotation. Imagine to yourself, an old tumbled down wooden building, which it has long ago been decided to scrap, and which is no longer fit for use in summer intolerably, stuffy and winter unbearably cold. All the floors are rotten. An inch of filth on the floor on which you slip and fall, the little windows frosted up so that the whole day long, it is impossible to read on the panes ice and inch thick drips from the ceiling drafts everywhere. We packed like herrings in a barrel. The stove is fed with six logs, no heat, the ice scarcely melts in the room and awful Funes.
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And so it goes on all the winter here in the Barrack, the convicts wash their clothes. And the whole of the little Barrack is splashed with water, no room to turn around from dusk to Dawn. It is impossible to go out to satisfy one's needs. The barracks being locked. A large tub is placed in the car door. And the stench is insufferable. All the convicts stink like swine and stayed that it is impossible not to behave like flying. Since we are living beings, he spent five years in these conditions later dos, they ask you what dredged them up.
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[inaudible]
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Like someone who had been filled to the brim with images that he could only vomit up. There was nothing else that he could do with him. And he placed a great deal of it in a short novel called memories or memoirs from the house of the dead often translated justice house of the dead. It is an incredible picture of human deprivation that anyone could survive. Such conditions is, is unbelievable. When we read in our times, Soja needs sins, uh, portrayal of the conditions in the Gulag, uh, prisons across Russia. We have a picture of the conditions as they have been refined in somewhat better, but in Dostoevsky, it is just simply a pig pen, a style where men are thrown in and forgotten about.
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They were allowed to take steam baths once a month. And they crowded 200 men into a room about 30 by 10 feet so that there was no place to be. And off task you learned to take, uh, money in so that you could buy a space to stand and someone would squat down and you could sort of, uh, kneel on their back and have some place to be incredible conditions. Dostoevsky in his letters to Michael reveals changes happening in him. The pressure of this intolerable, psychological abuse torture on a massive scale began to change. Dostoevsky's carbon to diamond. He began to perceive human character in this great, uh, polarity of vision that man is based beyond compare and that he has precious also beyond compare that in one, in the same being as a phenomenon, man has the capacity to belong outside of nature on both ends of the moral scale that he can just as well fall through the net of society. As he can transcend the net of society, man can become an angel or a devil. He has this capacity that the pressure cooker of events in the modern world simply speeds up this process. And that often what happens here is a self-selecting process. The man chooses heaven or hell in terms of his personality, in terms of his character and follows those ways.
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He began to experience some strength in himself, physically, the hard manual labor brought him round later, 20 years later, he could write about it as if it were actually had some saving grace and that it had slapped him awake from the foolish student days in Petersburg. But another occurrence that came out of the prison was the onset of epilepsy, the intolerable psychological conditions, which manifested themselves in epileptic fits, which started about this time, dusty gay, because he made friends with a few of the prison individuals, because he was somewhat known as an author was reprieved after almost five years. And given the chance to become a common soldier in the Russian army, rather than a prisoner, he took the chance. Anything was better than that. So he moved further to East, further into Siberia. He moved to a place which was only about 250 miles from China. And it was, uh, there that he experienced for the first time in his life. Some sense of his Manliness, semi Paula tints is the name of the little, uh, fortress. It is also on the irritation river. Um, following from Omsk, uh, one would, uh, drop, uh, South by East, uh, probably on the order of about seven or 800 miles
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And
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Semi, uh, pelotons, uh, small fortress community. When Dostoevsky reached there, he experienced the blessings of freedom. After years and years of privation, he found two friends there. One was a man named Barron Wengel who had been appointed as, uh, a diplomatic Emissary there. This an wrangle would actually live until 1906 and, uh, helped off the FQ many times during his life. And in fact, his letters, uh, to and from Dostoevsky at this, uh, uh, middle ground of his life are about the only reliable record that we have. We will see that Dostoevsky's second wife destroyed almost every indication and every evidence, uh, that her husband had ever experienced a period of vacillation in his life. She was very protective of his literary greatness and his good character. The other friend was a woman, the first woman in [inaudible] life, other than prostitutes, we have to understand the dust FK was about 33 years. Oh. Before he had a decent relationship with a woman. Anyway,
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The
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Poignant lack of appreciation for the feminine.
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Yes, a major flaw
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In the universe of Dostoevsky.
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And it is a concomitant
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To his lack of appreciation for landscape, for animal life and for, uh, plant life. This whole perspective is underdeveloped and Dostoevsky almost to the point of a, uh, neurotic, uh, syndrome, excuse me, for lapsing into a psychoanalytic jargon ease, but I'm trying to condense it for you in rapid succession. So you can hear it briefly. It's complicated. The woman's name was Maria and Maria was actually, uh, Maria, uh, Dimitris. Nia was the wife of a man who was an alcoholic and semi pelotons. She had a young son about eight years old. Um, this, uh, ice Divya would become dusty ski stepson Dostoevsky fell in love with this woman. It is always said by.one of Dostoevsky's daughters, that she was just a, an immoral woman. Totally. She has recounted in one of Baron Rangle's, uh, uh, letters as being, uh, uh, pretty, uh, blonde and, uh, of about medium height, but for Duff Desky, it was the first time that he was ever able to experience a relationship with a woman that was somewhat satisfying to him. As a man, he fell madly in love with her, with Dostoevsky's personality, nothing happened by gentle increments. He began to see the relationship as one of soul salvation, everything depended upon this relationship happening. And so he pursued her.
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Her husband got a position and a town about 600 kilometers away. She moved there with him. [inaudible] was just maddeningly, uh, trying to get free. He heard that her husband died and he found from a correspondence from her that some young schoolteacher from Tom was hanging around her place. And he was beside himself with grief. He managed to go all the way to this, uh, small community and to win her, to marry her. And she became Dostoyevsky's first wife and her son became his stepson. They came back to Semipalatinsk and for two years, they remained there. And Dostoevsky at this time began to write his memoirs from the house of the dead. He began to, um, write the notes from the underground. He began to compose some of his, um, observations and experiences onto paper.
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He applied to the czar and a personal letter of great Dobies for permission to move back to Moscow. He was given permission to move to a community about 150 kilometers from Moscow named, uh, TEVAR. It is now, um, called, uh, Colleen rather than Tovar it's on the rail line between Moscow and St. Petersburg. But, uh, uh, or Leningrad is it's known today, but about 150 miles outside of Moscow, much closer to Moscow than St. Petersburg or Leningrad. So he moved his wife, Maria, and their step son who is now getting to be 12 or 13 to this town. He was extremely unhappy there. He finally would make it back to Petersburg, but his wife began to contract, uh, tuberculosis consumption and her days were numbered. I didn't want to go into that relationship so terribly much, but by the time they had moved back to European civilization, his wife had ceased to count very much for him. Dostoevsky had
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Literally
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Exploded the image of her and pursuing her. And once he had her, the Lin was gone and the situation became one up, just a regular family drudgery
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Doc. The ASCII began to try to bring back his literary context. It was now 1860. He was, uh, almost 40 years of age. He had probably just one item, poor folk that had been of any note or any regard. It was at this time that Michael, uh, passed away and Dostoevsky fedora had to take over, um, the duties of his family. Michael also had a mistress and, uh, an illegitimate son and fedora began to support all of these people. And in order to support them, he began writing four different journals and he began to turn out, um, novels, which are very curious, the insulted and the injured is probably the best known these novels. It has been pointed out several times, resemble Charles Dickens rather than Dostoevsky. And it's interesting now because Dickens is exactly the opposite of Dostoevsky.
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They're polar opposites, Dickens, and Dostoevsky together. Give you a very good barometer of the 19th century. Someone who is capable of bridging both Dickens and Dustin whiskey is Herman Melville, who incidentally is a much greater author than either of them. This is not to say that Texans and Dostoevsky are not major. It's just to say that Melville is ethical. He's on a par with Homer and Shakespeare and savant, but this use of the Dickinson worldview to write, so that Dostoevsky was simmering inside and simply trying to work externally. And as he worked, he found that he could churn out material at least enough to be able to get by. Um, he had, his brother had started a periodical called Ramya, which names and time, and, uh, Ramya, uh, had, uh, been set up to publish stuff Jeff's case works. And in fact, it was the first indication in dusty FDA's mind that the way to go was to, for him to write and, uh, for his family to publish his work.
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And later on, his wife would do just that his second wife Ana would manage the whole affair. And in fact, she would do this for about 40 years. Long after Dostoevsky was dead on him was still keeping, uh, control of Dostoevsky's novels and the receipts and income. She was an extraordinary capable woman, uh, economically very, very sound. And, uh, we are to probably forgive her for destroying a lot of correspondence. She was trying to protect the man that she loved and also her, um, life investment, the, the development of dusty F Skase artistry came under the gun of financial distress. Whenever he had money in his pocket, he could not write. And whenever he got money, here's late lent it right away to anybody that would ask him, spent it right away so that he found himself on the death of his brother, uh, completely, uh, indebted.
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I think his brother left debt, something like about 35,000 rubles and dust Saskia, soon, these debts, as well as his own, and, uh, began to try and, uh, work his way out of this jam in order to get a hedge on the world of creditors. The world of relatives, doc theft gate went through several affairs and in 1862 took a long trip. He took a three or four month trip through Western Europe is the first time he ever saw Western Europe. He went to Berlin, went to Paris. He went to London. Uh, interestingly enough, when he was in London, he visited the Russian anarchist Alexander Hertz, who his writings are, uh, tremendously, uh, famous in the Soviet union. Uh, Hertz in is looked upon as one of the precursors of Lennon, a writer of, uh, of great significance and social thought Dostoevsky did not realize, but there were spies of the czar, uh, present at all these meetings and noting down the conditions. In fact, Dostoevsky's name appeared on many lists for a few months as an ex, uh, prisoner from Siberia, seen talking to Alexander Hertz and in London. And where did he go from there? This net of espionage was developing in Europe.
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It was not just the Russian mentality. All of the European countries were spreading out this net of intrigue and espionage. The inquisition was no longer religious, but with political, and it was no longer conducted by one body, but by dozens and dozens of different bodies and political bodies,
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European
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Thought in the 1860s was becoming increasingly complex in terms of innuendos.
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Yeah,
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It's extraordinary that Dostoevsky was unimpressed
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By the great cities of Europe. He would travel
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A couple of more times to Europe trying to make contacts with, uh, various, uh, uh, women and various, uh, um, publishers. His life at this point was a complete turmoil. In fact, us, the esky was suffering more and more from epileptic fits and he found himself almost incapable
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Of, of writing.
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It was at this point that he took on someone that we would call today as not prefer. She was young. Her name was Anna [inaudible] and Ana Grigory is now would become Dostoevsky's second and final wife. Ana was about 20 years old. [inaudible] about 45. He was somewhat of a famous writer, extraordinarily clumsy inside his conversation, longing to pour himself out, open up. His solo is only a Russian could really understand. And she is very stable, even tempered
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Young woman,
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He proposed to her and she accepted during the court. The influence of her, even this of temperament
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Her, um, femininity,
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Let's put this deeper, her universal, feminine,
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Feminine
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Tone began to penetrate into Dosta after case, uh, psychology.
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He began to, uh, note in his writer's diary, which we have, um, qualities of a longing for domestic Felicity that he hadn't ever had really in his life that had come to the fore once or twice when he was imagining his wild love for Maria. But now that began to occur to him in a more even tone, more consistently with this quality in mind, Dostoevsky's writing changed. He began to instead of grind out material, just to get it out, he began to write from a more stable standpoint, correcting what had done and dusty ASCII began to apply many images and characters, which he had had in the past to a character. They came to dominate his thoughts named Dr. Coleman and the novel, which was published the same year that he got married was crime and punishment. And is one of the world's great novels has established in one fell swoop in 1866. Dusty ASCII is one of the major European novels. He was beyond dispute one of the greatest Russian writers of all time, by the time that crime and punishment came out in its final installments
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Is this, uh,
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And I, I brought crime and punishment, and I don't know if I'll have time to go through it, probably not. I was going to give you some sort of a structural precis of the whole work, um, In the beginning, right? It's called the coffin students. There's a landlady prod broker
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Who
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Is rather vicious in her dealing. No one likes her In chapter seven of the first part of crime and punishment. This is how Dostoevsky described an encounter between the two. He writes the door was as before opened a tiny crack, tiny crack, and again, to sharpen suspicious eyes stared at him out of the darkness to get the uncanny serpentine, the devil from the abyss, then rice Cola cough lost his head and nearly made a great mistake. That is to say this image evoked in him. This tremendous upheaval
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Triggered off in him, an almost uncontrollable response fearing the old woman would be frightened by their being alone and not hoping that the sight of him would disarm her suspicions. He took hold of the door and drew it towards himself to prevent the old woman from attempting to shut it again, seeing this, she did not pull the door back, but she did not let go of the handle so that he almost dragged her out with it onto the stairs. Seeing that she was standing in the doorway, not allowing him to pass. He had bounced straight upon her. She stepped back in the alarm and tried to say something, but seemed unable to speak and stared with open eyes at him, the eyes, the serpentine eyes, fixing him, hypnotizing him, bringing out this, uh, uh, devilish, uh, energy, this satanic energy, which overcomes rash, Toma, cough. He can do nothing.
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He picks up an act and strikes the woman she has killed. He writes he laid the acts and the ground near the dead body and felt at once in her pocket, trying to avoid the streaming blood, the same right-hand pocket from what she had taken the key on his last visit. He was in full possession of his faculties, free from confusion or getting us, but his hands were still trembling. The vacillation between this incredible, uh, volcanic vertigo and sudden moments of clarity. And then the penetration of the trembling guilt or a career, which RAF called the cough experiences and the sales in throughout crime and punishment again and again, until he is roasted in his anxiety and realizes that the only expiation that he has, the only possibility that he has as a being is to confess his crime so that the beatitude is moved from the world of evil to the world of good.
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It does not matter that he will be punished for his crime. He does not fear the punishment for his crime. He fears the incident vertigo's of evil to what she has subjected as long as his crime is unconfessed. And that confessing his crime will transpose that energy from the world of evil to the world of good rash called the cough is intelligent. He's a student he's very clever. He's very, very intelligent. He cannot bring himself to do this. He cannot bring himself to confess because his whole mind games and canines uses his intelligence on basis of the hate fear relationship to that satanic energy too. We have such a net of complications that he will never be caught, not even implicated. And he finds that he is very good at this, that he is extraordinary successful at this. And it is the increasing realization on [inaudible] part that he's intelligent enough to get away with the crime that scares him.
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Most of all, that leads him to the intolerable psychological impasse, and he becomes the foulest of the 19th century and doing this, that man has achieved such a command of intelligence and mind that he can cover up his own guilt, his own murderous capacity. And no one will know, except he himself know, and like a possessed man. He realizes that the only expiation that exists for him is on his own recognizance to confess. I have to, uh, uh, give you just a little bit here. There are two women to whom he confesses before he confesses to the individual. That is to say he has love named Sonia and his sister named Dunia before he can confess to society before I can confess to his fellow man, he brings himself as the man to his woman to Sonia. And she tells him that he has suffered from a condition of godlessness does boarding.
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And that this condition of godlessness is what has created the entire situation. And only by turning to God, can he free himself from this? She tells him that the way to do this is to go to a major cross street and bow down and kiss the earth and ask the earth for forgiveness. And then to tell everyone that he meets that he is guilty all the way to the police station, so that when he arrives at the police station with his confession of guilt, that he will have expiated himself to nature to mother earth and to everybody, all the strangers all the way there. And it will be in a state of complete openness or complete possession by the God-like, uh, uh, intoxication that he will have moved his compulsion from the world of evil to the world of good. Then he tells his sister Joni. And when he tells his sister, huh,
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He's already trying to work his intelligence in trying to protect himself. And he realizes that he's capable enough, stays intelligence enough, that he has become ruthless enough to even while he's trying to free himself to make complications, which will enable him to escape. And this begins to work upon him and make him extraordinarily fearful. And so with us, the FKA, the first existential quandary becomes one of ultimate terror that he is guilty of a murder, a double murder. As a matter of fact, there was another woman who had come in and Russ called the cough and asked her to, but that's his intelligence at eluding, all of the nuts of the police, all of the nuts of the complication, his intelligence had permitted him to escape. And now even when he has admitted this to Sonia his crime, by the time he admits it a second time to assist her Dunia he says, crime, what crime?
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He cried in sudden fury because the compulsive energy is free floating in him. He has no control over it. And this is what Sonya has been telling him. You must kiss the ground and confessed to mother earth and ground that compulsiveness because it isn't yours to expiate. It has you is possessed you and you do not have it. And you tell everyone openly on the way there to keep that openness, that expiation, that grounded-ness of that evil energy clear so that you can make that confession, but it's not understood that then ref called the cough. Even at this point, this crime, what crime, he cried sudden fury that I killed a vile noxious insect, an old pawnbroker woman of no use to anyone killing her was an atonement for 40 cent. And so Rascone begins his incredible net of justification, which has ever since been the disease of contemporary math, his incredible capacity to rationalize and justify every brutality of what she is capable until it weaves itself into the nut of his intelligence.
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And the intelligence itself becomes rotten and infected with the lies promulgated by this wild card energy from the abyss dusty eskies relentless brings Cola cough in the shows, exceeding pride to the police station. And there, he has a conversation with the very, uh, policemen, the very detective, uh, who would, uh, uh, like to have, uh, put him away, which he, uh, the man that he feared the most and he comes into the police station and he has this long conversation with him. And, uh, in this conversation, uh, rest Cola, cough, uh, uh, comes, uh, very quick close to pulling off the greatest triumphal cue of his life because he walks out, does the police station, he has not confessed. And when he comes down to the street, he looks across and he sees Sonya. And he realizes that Sonya has been following him all this time has been watching him. And he realizes that he is at a juncture. He has come to her as his only contact with reality, his only possible, uh, way of transmuting this energy from the infinitely evil to the infinitely, good from becoming satanical intoxicated to becoming God intoxicated. And Sonia is the, the thread for him and seeing her, he suddenly has this rush Dostoevsky, right? Like this.
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He went out, he really, he was overtaken with giddiness and did not know what he was doing. He began going down the stairs, supporting himself with his right hand against the wall. He fancied that a Porter pushed past him on his way upstairs to the police office, the a dog and the lower story. I kept a shrill barking and that a woman flung a rolling pin at it and him, he went down and out into the yard. There not far from the entrance to Sonya pare pale and horror stricken. She looked wildly at him. He stood still before her. There was a look of poignant agony of despair in her face. And you see, at this point, dusty escape is bringing all the power of the icon of the Virgin. Mary embodied into the face of Sonia dress called the cough, realizes that God himself has presented his last channel and expiation and rest calm the cough seeing, and not the loving forgiveness of the face of the eternal feminine, but the horror stricken capacity that man has freed himself to be eternally evil. And Russ called the cops. He stood still before her suspended. In that moment, there was a look of poignant agony of despair in her face. She clapped her hands. Her lips worked in an ugly, meaningless smile. He stood still a minute grinned and went back to the police office.
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Yulia Petrovich had sat down with rummaging among some papers before him stood the same peasants with pushed by him the stairs. Hello, back again. Have you left something behind? What's the matter resveratrol I cough with white lips and staring eyes came slowly nearer a man garroted by his own satanic incidents capacity for deception white lips and staring eyes, the mask of sheer terror and approaching a moment of reality. He walked right to the table, leaned his hand on it, tried to say something, but could not only incoherent sounds were audible. You were feeling ill. A chair here, sit down some water rash Toma across dropped onto a chair, but he kept his eyes fixed in the face of Elliot Petrovich, which expressed unpleasant surprise. Both looked at one another for a minute. Then waiting water was brought. It was, I began resveratrol in the cough, drink some water restaurant. The cough refused the water with his hand and softly brokenly, but distinctly said it was, I killed the old pawnbroker woman and her sister lives Liz visa with an accident, Rob, then you'll be a Petrovich opened his mouth. People ran up in all sides. Russia called the cough, repeated his state.
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So doc Def begins the epilogue in crime and punishment after this with a single word, Siberia
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Like a
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Rush of visionary combination Siberia, not the, that the, um, the, the bound up energy that was in the horrific hypnotic magnetism of the crime associated with the darkness in the evil eyes of the pond. Broker. Looking from that darkness through his confession had been expiated to Siberia. It was not a punishment. It was an intimate vastness of renewal. It was not a prison of suffering for the crime. It was a transmutation of the man from the Rome where crime could exist and punishment be feared to around where expiation would make a new man different from the old different, from the old. And he ends it by saying,
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Because Sonia moves to Siberia and is there to wait for him. He's going to be there for seven years, but they don't mind. They don't mind. She had been greatly agitated that Dan at night, she was taken elegant. She's become drawn. She's been there for awhile. Rest called the cough has been given the day to go and see her. And he throws himself at her seat and grass to her knees and begins just sobbing uncontrollably until she understanding that he is not in an epileptic fit, but has come clean and her hands, which were raised in horror, that he might've gone into madness, realizes that he has gone into this. God intoxication has become a Holy fool for God and her hands come to his head. And a blessing comes to him from her seven years, only seven years at the beginning of their happiness.
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At some moments, they were both ready to look on those seven years as though they were seven days. What are the seven days and seven days of creation? He did not know that the new life would not be given him for nothing, that he would have to pay dearly for it. That would cost him great striving, great suffering. But that is the beginning of a new story. The story of the gradual renewal of a man, the story of his gradual regeneration of his passing from one world into another of his initiation, into a new unknown life. That might be the subject of a new story, but our presence story is ended.
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So in 1866, with the marriage to Anna and the publication of crime and punishment, Dostoevsky began to emerge conclusively at the stature at which we value him today. And as he did, the POL relatives began to sense that there was more money in the man. The creditors who had long given up on notes began to hound dusty FCE. So I know realizing that her life, her marriage, the whole capacity of this man who could produce cotton crime and punishment was at stake engineering, a Kuda Gras, a palace revolution in small. She sold all of the furniture, the piano, all of her Dory goods. They paid off all the revenue and all the creditors, and they moved away. They went traveling into Europe and Dostoevsky was freed in the matter of four and a half years, the continuity of his experiences with Anna and his Debby life away from the turmoil of the creditors and the family and the complications away from his own condition in decisiveness gas, ski behind to right in a regular fashion.
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And he produced in those four and a half years in rapid succession, the idiot, which is one of the world's greatest novelists, uh, about, uh, Prince Michigan, who has a full for God, a Holy Shiro ranks with, uh, Don Quixote. In fact, uh, the said, uh, uh, many times in his writings, uh, in his writer's diary that Cervantes Don Quixote rank says the Christian hero of all time, and that he had hoped that Prince Michigan would stand in that company. He wrote also the tremendous, uh, novel, which in Russian is called the devil, but often is translated as the possessed here. Uh, he wrote the, um, uh, the tremendous, uh, uh, complications that would come out in, uh, um, a raw youth, which I started the lecture with today. And when he returned in 1871 to Russia, it was as the great man of letters.
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He was called upon to do public readings, to give lectures. His family life had become quite stable. And I had, uh, uh, managed, uh, in fact, economically to bring Dostoevsky's fortunate around. She used the technique of keeping all the copies of his books in their apartment. For instance, when a raw youth was published, she had, uh, hundreds and hundreds of copies put into the apartment. And the news, uh, leaked out that the great writer had just written the best work of his entire life. And within hours, even before doc [inaudible] had woken up, uh, she had sold three or 400 copies of this at cash, no credit, and had managed to put this money away. And so with the guidance of Ana, uh, financially doc Desky, uh, came into, uh, his own, the pressure of curiosity about him as a prodigy, the incredible vicissitudes of such a man, such a human being, uh, urged him to publish the journal of an author, or it's called in English, the diary of a writer in two large volumes, one of the most remarkable, uh, diaries of all time and towards the end of his life, the final years Dostoevsky began to plan one last year.
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Great word has his life has become clearer and clearer to him. The poignancy of this trans mutation of energy through the individual isle saving society through the individual of going back to, uh, the soil of people, of style of the Russian peasant of using that as a basis of reality, we're in the individual confined his qualities of worth where the natural expression of the individual and his family would become the linking of the individual to the people of the soil, so that the family became a, uh, uh, an existential instrument of social transmutation, and also a medium whereby the satanic energies that had infused man and permeated his intelligence making of it, just the simple cleverness could be transformed into a religion ritual approaching the [inaudible]. So that end of the brothers turn lotsa off. At the end of dusty FC, his career, we find, uh, Dostoevsky at, uh, uh, the Heights of his greatness.
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He finished the brother's caramel sauce in the autumn and announced that the journal of an author with once more appear regularly in 1881, meanwhile, his services were more than ever in demand for readings and aid of charitable institution. And after one of them, he was presented to the future czar, Rita Maria, via dirty Rosina and touch readings. The prophet always appeared by request in the program. Has it become more than any of his own works more even than the brothers, Cara, Matsa the symbol of his greatness. And he suffered from an archery hemorrhage T passed very quickly into a terrible condition. Physically, Ida was admitted to the sick room and a few of his friends, and he died at half past eight in the evening at the end of the brothers, Caremark's off the triumph of the dust. Deskin transmutation. Yes. It's presented at a funeral, little elder shifts funeral, and I'll give you that. And then the lecture with it. Oh, how I loved him. Explain cold. Yeah. Your children. My dear friends do not be afraid of life. How good life is when you do something that is good. And just yes. Yes. The boys repeated enthusiastically, Kara, myself. We love you. A voice. Probably Kartra shoves cried, impulsively. We love you. Love you. The other boys echoed there were tears in the eyes of many of them hurrah [inaudible].
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Cody has shouted enthusiastically and many of the dead boys, men Rae lift forever. I lie HSA added again with feeling, may it live forever? The boy is echoed again. The boys are like a chorus instead of a Greek tragedy. The chorus now is a Christian triumph of the family vision, kind of my cries cornea. Is it really true that as our religion tells us, we show all rise from the dead and come to life to see one another again, all and Lucia. Certainly we will rise again. Certainly we will see one another and she'll tell one another gladly and joyfully, all that has been a lawyer show replied half laughing, half rapturously. Oh, how wonderful it will be called you cried. Well, now let's make an end of talking and go to his wake. Don't let it worry you that we shall be eating pancakes. It's been a very old custom and there's something nice about that. Alicia laughed well, come along and now we do go hand in hand and always, so all our life handed hand her off. I count on my soft Cody. I cried again with enthusiasm and once more, all the boys cheered
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[inaudible].

END OF RECORDING