#tbk 3.3

[karamazovposting]

Not Rakitin being Skotoprigonyevsk's Gossip Girl lmao

[confessionofanardentheart]

3.3 Confession of an Ardent Heart: In Verse

Dmitri Karamazov wants to make a confession. He seeks to be forgiven, but most importantly, he seeks to be found guilty. He must be guilty of the sin that has overcome the very essence of himself in his eyes. No uniform can hide the fact that he's a Karamazov and that there's no cure for that. Dmitri's speech is ecstatic and unpredictable, juxtaposing his own pathos with the deplorable condition of Humanity as a whole, magnifying and sublimating the confessed shame. In spite of his self- deprecation, there is pride: he must sublimate the lowest of himself. His humiliation becomes the humiliation of man because his despair is one over himself, unable to look at his own person without shame as a member of Humanity, but rather an abject insect, in a paradox that takes him from the tragic figure of man to the insect. There is sweetness in it too, decadence can make a dear feeling out of despair. He degrades himself another day, the order of things is accomplished. And can have an excuse to drink some cognac as a treat along the way.

"To insects —sensual lust": for Dmitri, sensual lust is a swarm of locusts and a tempest, it is degradation. The insect imagery delivers an image of inhumanity and powerlessness, and yet such a judgement is human, all too human. He loves God like a guilty dog does, he has been given all that ecstasy but no map, though he could never have one, because a man like Dmitri will never finish understanding these things: there is something simple- hearted about that. Is there beauty in Sodom? The answer to the mystery: Sodom was built in the search for it. Not two beauties, but the choice to cherish Proserpine or mold her into the mirror of our desires. Proserpine, deep in the Underworld, is nowhere in sight, absent except for her whispered name in the lips of Demeter, away from the mother earth, the Madonna that nevertheless glows in the heart —the dark, frightening and confusing heart, as is the world that birthed it.

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Links:

@keepingupwiththekaramazovs