#topic: suffering

[confessionofanardentheart]

3.8 Over the Brandy

The Brothers Karamazov is often called a novel of ideas; however, this reading may understate the underlying dynamic between the realm of ideas and discourse and the realm of emotion and unspoken pathos*. The ideal elements of the conversation over the brandy— the Russian people, the Church, the existence of God— are overflown by an unstoppable vital force, brought about by Fyodor Pavlovich's drunk and uninhibited state, rather than an order of ideas. In return, discourse itself heightens sensations and excites Fyodor's sadistic joy, particularly against the holy and the feminine; and Ivan’s growing anger, which manifests as dismissal of symbolic ideas. See, for instance, his refusal to engage with Smerdyakov’s words at the start of the chapter.

Alyosha, on the other hand, engages with ideas and his own emotions with sincerity. When asked a question, he will answer earnestly, when hearing of depravity, he will blush. The back- and- forth comes to an end when the unspoken rises to the surface, in the form of Alyosha's convulsive tears. He has run out of words and through him, the pathos of the shrieker, the defiled, manifests.  This interruption breaks Ivan out of his shell of distance and irony, no longer standing in the margins,  letting his anger rot: “his mother, I think, was also my mother, wasn’t she?”. With those furious words, he claims his place as an orphaned son of the humiliated Mother— a stray son of this degraded Earth— as well as eligible for parricide of the Father and God. The taboo is out in the open.

*In the Greek sense, if it wasn't evident.

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[confessionofanardentheart]

3.9 The Sensualists

Violence invades the space of the house, forcing its way through doors and remaining between the walls, contained inside by the shut windows. Dmitri is gone, but his words linger in the air and violence remains. The physical wounds on the body of Fyodor Pavlovich are a tangible reminder of the state of alert that the characters must remain in, although not everyone is conditioned by the invasion of violence in the same manner. The servants, Grigory and Smerdyakov, must guard from within the lion’s den. What for them is an invasion of their lives and by extension the integrity of their physical bodies is a question in the case of Ivan and Alyosha. Fyodor fears Ivan’s answer to the question. While he was threatened and beaten for Grushenka, he came to foolishly believe Grushenka was in the house, because of course, Dmitri always wants something from him; a bug and a sensualist like himself, a parasite, so an object of desire through which they live out their tumultuous relationship must exist.

On the other hand, Ivan was a distant being, and now he’s stepped too close. The moment when Fyodor was being held back by Ivan must have been like the terrible moments before death. Ivan could have let him go. He did not this time. Why is Fyodor so scared of Ivan? Is it because he’s afraid of “truth shining” on the black stain that he has turned his home into? As long as the vipers consume one another, they will die alone in their nest, and nobody else will be hurt ever again. In any case, Ivan steps away and rejects the right to kill. He claims his right to wish, and asks to be spared from condemnation. Because Ivan knows— he knows Alyosha knows— that Jesus said sin starts in the heart, all he asks is not to be seen as a villain. What could be a gesture of ideological opposition is instead a plea for compassion and a step towards mutual understanding.

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[confessionofanardentheart]

2.3 Peasant Women who Have Faith

Truly I hadn't noticed before how much of a microcosm of the entire book this chapter is until I started writing this. Pain and hunger weaken the body, the wails of the klikushi pierce ears, the faces of the dead stay in the back of the eye: pain is a very present question, a far cry from a philosophical hypothetical or idle thoughts. The immanence (meaning, present and within the world) of the pain carried by the peasant women seeking healing and the immanence of the experience of God in the earth are the bare bones of recurring dilemmas that will keep coming up in the future.

Out of the different exchanges that Zosima has with the peasant women, two stand out to me: the grieving mother and the young widow who is implied to have poisoned her abusive old husband and feels sick with guilt. Both emotions are throughly explored; grief, guilt, and the despair that often accompanies them. Grief and guilt have unique ways of alienating us.

Every passing of a loved one takes away a piece of ourselves, the past becomes a tomb, and in cases such as the death of a child, the future no longer exists— it is then when we realize we truly don't have futures. How cruel it is that an emotion every human will experience in their lives feels so profoundly lonely? The grieving mother feels despair, she doesn't want to be herself, she rejects a world without her little Alexey in it. The promise of Heaven alone, that is, transcendence, is not enough (more on that later). She has no use of it when her heart has been ripped out of her own world. On the other hand, the widow suffers from guilt, a pain that alienates in a similar manner. Alone with the weight of what she's done, the widow is alone with her emotion and afraid to die and of what has become of herself —if only it hadn't come to that, if only it had been different from the beginning. Guilt is self- conscious, yet it tends to drive you away from the present reality.

With compassion, Zosima offers love in the world itself as an antidote, to heal alongside others to return to themselves as human beings of the world who are responsible towards others; the mother is told to start by grieving alongside her husband and to never abandon him, and the widow's guilt must transform into responsibility. It circles back: the threat of despair has taken them away from the world and up to the monastery, and only afterwards they can return and heal. The last of the peasant women ends the chapter in a positive note, bringing joy and going back home with more. What do we mean when we talk of behaving like a human being, and is there something as being so human it becomes self- negating?

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