Returning to Dostoevsky, and The Brothers Karamazov

 I need a break from science fiction.  There.  I said it.  I am starting to look back at Fyodor Dostoevsky, whom I have not read in many years.  Dostoevsky returns to the top of my reading stack for a few reasons.  He is a reminder, amid a moment in history, that some good things have come out of Russia and that turning against anything Russian, including 19th Century Russian art reaches a point of absurdity.  Yet that is not the primary reason for turning back to Dostoevsky.  Dostoevsky had a clear-eyed moralism, but where many thinkers who might strive for such a description, particularly of Dostoevsky's religious mindset, wind up in the fire-and-brimstone category, Dostoevsky wrote about humility, forgiveness and the truly hard stuff.  His works are floating around again, then, as a perfect antidote to the hard lines being drawn.  I shall return to this, periodically, as I think through Dostoevsky for the first time in many years.  Where am I going with this?  I'm not sure.  However, a few introductory observations.

If you haven't read the novel, it is a dysfunctional family portrait, and set of character studies of everyone surrounding them.  Yet, few people are willing to see themselves in harsh light.  The old aphorism is that everyone is the hero of his own story, but Dostoevsky is more clever than to fall back on any such truism.  Instead, his characters frequently have some minimal level of self-awareness, limited by the construction of their own arbitrary lines which they do not cross.  See that line, there?  That line, I will not cross, and because I will not cross that line, I cannot be so bad!  And if everyone defines the line for himself, no one is truly villainous.  So consider the range.

You are immediately introduced to one of the more contemptible characters in literature, Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, the patriarch.  He lies, cheats, burns through wives, neglects his children, cavorts, blusters and berates everyone in grand spectacles of shut-the-fuck-up-you-insufferable-asshole, and basically, he's Trump.  But if he says to himself, 'I won't kill you,' then he has that line.  See?  Not so bad, right?  He just has to find a line.  Somewhere.  On the more subtle end, consider the monk, Rakitin.  Rakitin is pretty much a shit.  He isn't full-Fyodor, but he is a sneaky, backstabbing, manipulative, game-playing fucker.

I'd almost rather deal with Fyodor than Rakitin, personally, because Fyodor is too unsophisticated to hide how much he hates you.  He'll fuck with you, but he's pretty open about it.

Does that make Rakitin worse?  Well, here's the thing about Rakitin.  He tells himself that he's not just bounded, but actually kind of OK.  You can leave a pile of money unguarded around him, and it's safe!  He's a man of god.  He wouldn't steal!  You see?  This is what Rakitin tells himself in a vitally important line.  Fyodor would steal the money, go out on the town, then bribe someone to find out some secrets about you and expose you for his own fun and games.  Rakitin?  He'll leave the money alone, while playing a deeper game.  So he's fine, right?

The lies you tell yourself to convince yourself that you are OK.  All of this depends on a breadth of character studies, and those lines.  Basic virtues like honesty and humility?  Rare, and antidotes to so much.

In the novel, Alexey Karamazov begins in a monastery following an "elder,"-- Father Zossima-- with the premise being that those who follow elders give up all individuality, control and self to the elder as something far beyond confession.  Humility and then some.  Sounds kinda creepy, but humility and honesty?  That's a different question.

There will be more of these, probably interspersed.  I dunno.  I'm not sure where I'm going here, if anywhere.  In any case, it is useful to go back to the classics.  Some are classics for a reason, even if we weren't necessarily able to appreciate them when they were assigned to us, lo' those many years ago.

Cahalen Morrison, "Humble Hen," from Subcontinent.