Brothers Karamazov. Random Family" in the novel by F.M.
CHRISTIAN MOTIVES IN THE NOVEL
F.M. DOSTOEVSKY'S "THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV"
Coursework on the history of literature
I. Introduction. Review of critical literature.
II. Christian motives in the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment".
III. Christian motives in the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky "The Brothers Karamazov".
1) Analysis of the influence of Christian sources on the structure of the novel.
2) Analysis of the epigraph to the novel.
3) Analysis of the narrator's style.
4) The problem of responsibility for crime.
5) The image of Ivan Karamazov. Conversation between Ivan and Alyosha.
6) “The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor.”
7) The Devil and Smerdyakov are the “doubles” of Ivan Karamazov.
8) Alexey Karamazov as the ideal author.
IV. Conclusion.
Introduction
Modern Russian literary criticism has been methodologically radically restructured after many years of stagnation and the undivided dominance of vulgar sociological schematism and all kinds of ideological dictate. Now it is attentive to the experience of foreign literary criticism and widely uses the developments of Russian scientists who ended up in exile and lived in isolation from their homeland, separated from them by the Iron Curtain. Comparativist problems are now being solved more boldly and historically objectively, without labeling.
One of the forbidden areas of study until recently was the area of religion, with which literature supposedly has no connection. IN literary works, including in the novels of F.M. Dostoevsky, social, psychological, and philosophical plans stood out. Any mention of religion and related concepts was called “reactionary” and “erroneous.” Dostoevsky was presented as a propagandist of socialist ideas. An example is the following statement. A.A. Belkin: “It must be emphasized that this [philosophical and political] problematic simultaneously determines both his progressive humanistic sides and his reactionary, religious-idealistic ideas.” G. Friedlander: “But even today the works of Dostoevsky the humanist, his angry criticism of serfdom and the proprietary bourgeois world, his confidence in the need for brotherhood and moral unity of people continue to serve the great cause of social and moral renewal of humanity...” Of course, in the writer’s works there is criticism of the capitalist system, a call for the unity of people, but from a completely different position than that of the socialists. One cannot equate the “world system of socialism” with “universal brotherhood”
Dostoevsky. This is how the writer formulates his understanding of socialism:
« the main idea socialism is a mechanism. There a person becomes a mechanics person. All the rules. The person himself is eliminated. They took away my living soul.”
In addition, evidence of Dostoevsky’s non-acceptance of socialism is his polemic with N.G. Chernyshevsky and his “theory of reasonable egoism.”
Recently, a number of interesting, in our opinion, articles have been published devoted to the study Christian motives in the works of F.M. Dostoevsky.
Let's list just a few of them: D.D. Grigoriev - “Dostoevsky and religion”;
L.G. Krishtaleva – “The moral significance of an act in the novel by F.M.
Dostoevsky “The Brothers Karamazov””; BUT. Lossky – “Dostoevsky and his Christian worldview”; R. Lauth – “On the question of the genesis of the “Legend of
The Grand Inquisitor": notes on the problem of the relationship between Dostoevsky and
Solovyov" [Art. and Germany]; I. Mindlin – “Faith or disbelief? Notes about
Dostoevsky"; G.B. Kurlyandskaya – “F.M. Dostoevsky and L.N. Tolstoy: to the problem of religious and moral quests.” We found the following articles the most interesting, the contents of which we would like to touch upon in more detail.
Article by A.M. Bulanov “Patristic tradition of understanding the “heart” in the works of F.M. Dostoevsky” covers both religious and psychological issues of the writer’s works. The “mystery of man,” which the writer spent his entire life solving, contained the secret of the relationship
"mind" and "heart". This is what the novel “Crime and Punishment” is about. Rational logic comes into conflict with immediate feeling: to step over the blood out of conscience means to exclude the “heart” from one’s own “I”.
In the novel “The Idiot” an attempt was made to create an ideal person in whom harmony would be achieved between the “mind” and the “heart” - this is the “prince
Christ", Prince Myshkin. This image is analyzed by A.M. Bulanov precisely from such positions.
In his last novel, “The Brothers Karamazov,” the dialectic of the relationship between “mind” and “heart” deepens using the example of Ivan’s “rebellion”
Karamazova.
The author, summing up his analysis of the work of F.M. Dostoevsky, concludes about “the movement of the fundamental ideas of Eastern Christian asceticism in the work of the author of The Brothers Karamazov.” One of them was the idea of the unity of “mind” and “heart”, expressed by the Russian genius in all its fundamental contradiction and transformative power for Orthodoxy.
In the work of S.V. The head “Historical and worldview systems: culture, civilization and paganism in the artistic world of Dostoevsky” touches upon the universal problems of Dostoevsky’s creativity.
Christianity in the world of the writer has an exceptional ability to create the soil and cultural atmosphere of society. According to the author, representatives Christian culture(Sonya Marmeladova, Prince Myshkin, Elder Zosima) are the guardians of the purity of the ideal in a society affected by pagan passion and permissiveness and the idea of civilization about the need for the primacy of earthly values over spiritual ones in the process of building a secularized paradise on Earth, that is, in the words of Dostoevsky, Babylon.
Through practical activity, representatives of civilization learn that the Creator is not with them. Ivan’s rational, civilizational mindset was reflected in the poem about the Grand Inquisitor, in the selection of material about the suffering of children, and in his protest against the world of God. Likewise, representatives of culture learn the will of God through action. Alyosha becomes just such a “figure” in the world
Karamazov.
The author of the article concludes “that only Christianity is culture-forming in Dostoevsky’s world. Culture, civilization and paganism are the main components of the Russian conciliar soul. The personality of an individual hero is as polystructural in the writer’s world as the conciliar soul, but the hypostasis of the conciliar spirit always prevails in it.”
CHRISTIAN MOTIVES IN THE NOVEL by F.M. DOSTOEVSKY "Crime and Punishment"
In the works of F.M. Dostoevsky's Christian issues receive their main development in the novels Crime and Punishment and Brothers
The Karamazovs." Crime and Punishment touches on many issues that were later developed in The Brothers Karamazov.
The main idea of the novel “Crime and Punishment” is simple and clear. She is the embodiment of the sixth commandment of God - “Thou shalt not kill.” But Dostoevsky does not simply declare this commandment. He proves the impossibility of committing a crime out of conscience using the example of the story of Rodion Raskolnikov.
As we know from Raskolnikov’s first dream, in childhood main character believed in God and lived according to his laws, that is, he lived as his conscience told him (and conscience, according to Dostoevsky, figuratively speaking, is a vessel in which moral law, and it is in every person, which constitutes the unshakable basis of existence). In his youth, having arrived in St. Petersburg,
Rodion saw a terrible picture of poverty, blatant social injustice, and all this shook his faith in God. In Raskolnikov, a refined, sensitive young man, the existing social system caused a protest, a rebellion, which was expressed in the creation of its own theory, explaining the entire course of world history. Thoughts similar to the thoughts of the main character were in the air in Russia at that time (evidence of this is a conversation in a tavern overheard by the main character). These are ideas about killing one spider for the benefit of thousands of people. A special class of people has the right to destroy -
"supermans" who are the creators of something new in the world, they
"engines" of humanity. Examples of such people are Napoleon and Newton.
The rest are not able to appreciate the activities of Napoleons and their discoveries. Their
Raskolnikov calls them “trembling creatures.” The consequence of these ideas is the intention of the protagonist to kill the old pawnbroker. The conflict is intensified by the fact that she does not evoke sympathy from either the author or the readers. So
Dostoevsky provokes us to agree with Raskolnikov.
At the beginning of the novel, Raskolnikov himself names the purpose of the murder as the benefit of thousands of unfortunate St. Petersburg poor people. However, the true purpose of the crime is formulated by the main character later, during dialogues with Sonya Marmeladova. This goal is to determine belonging
Rodion to the first or second category of people.
So, Raskolnikov, after much doubt (after all, his conscience is alive in him), kills the old woman. But while the murder is being committed, Lizaveta, the pawnbroker’s sister, a downtrodden, defenseless creature, one of those whose benefit Rodion is hiding behind, unexpectedly enters the apartment. He kills her too.
After committing the murder, the main character is shocked, but does not repent.
However, “nature,” completely suppressed by the mind during the preparation and commission of the murder, begins to rebel again. The symbol of this internal struggle in Raskolnikov is physical illness. Raskolnikov suffers from the fear of exposure, from a feeling of being “cut off” from people, and, most importantly, he is tormented by the understanding that “he killed something, but did not step over it and remained on this side.”
Raskolnikov still considers his theory to be correct, which is why his fears and worries about crime committed the main character interprets it as a sign of a complete mistake: he took aim at the wrong role in world history
– he is not a “superman”. Sonya persuades Rodion to surrender to the police, where he confesses to the murder. But this crime is now perceived by Raskolnikov not as a sin against Christ, but precisely as a violation of belonging to
"to the trembling creatures." True repentance comes only in hard labor, after an apocalyptic dream, which shows the consequences of everyone accepting the theory of “Napoleonism” as the only correct one. Chaos begins in the world: every person considers himself the ultimate truth, and therefore people cannot agree among themselves.
Thus, in the novel “Crime and Punishment” Dostoevsky refutes the inhuman, anti-Christian theory and thereby proves that history is driven not by the will of “strong” people, but by spiritual perfection, that people should live not following the “illusions of the mind”, but the dictates of the heart .
Christian motives in the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov"
1) Analysis of the influence of Christian sources on the structure of the novel
It was “The Brothers Karamazov,” this last and final (although, in essence, only half-written) novel by Dostoevsky that caused the main controversy regarding the writer’s worldview. The theme of faith and unbelief, guilt and responsibility, human freedom and slavery is resolved here on many levels and plans.
The influence of the Bible and other Christian sources is felt in the very plot of The Brothers Karamazov. Dostoevsky talks about three sons
Fedor Pavlovich. The fact is that folk numbers (three, seven), like many other elements of folk poetics, were at one time adopted by Christian literature and adapted to its purposes. Three brothers are both a fairy tale and a Christian (hagiographic) element of the plot. In addition, the writer portrays the three brothers as a spiritual unity. This is a conciliar personality in its threefold structure: the beginning of reason is embodied in Ivan: he is a logician and rationalist, a born skeptic and denier; the sensual principle is represented by Dmitry; the beginning of will, as an ideal, is outlined in Alyosha. The brothers are connected with each other on a purely plot, event level: they grow from the same ancestral root: a biological given - the Karamazov element - is shown in their father. The legitimate sons of Fyodor Pavlovich have an illegitimate brother, Smerdyakov: he is their embodied temptation and personified sin.
In one of the diaries of F.M. Dostoevsky says that the most valuable part of the Bible for a writer is the book of Job (this is connected with some aspects of Dostoevsky’s biography).
The origins of the book of Job are mysterious. Neither the date of writing nor its author are known exactly. Job, a righteous, God-fearing man, becomes a victim of God's cruel test of loyalty. The Lord sends great misfortunes to his faithful servant: his flocks perish, Job’s children die.
“Then Job stood up and tore outerwear his, and fell to the ground, and bowed, and said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked will I return.”
The Lord gave, the Lord also took away; Blessed be the name of the Lord!” (Book
Job, 1:20,21). Then Job’s second test came: terrible physical torment was sent to him. The ancient Jews believed that sin inevitably followed punishment, which is why the sinner suffered, that is, without sin there is no punishment and suffering, therefore, everyone who suffers is a sinner. Both Job’s wife and friends convince him to admit his sins. However, Job does not admit any sins; he begins to doubt justice
Yahweh: “All is one; therefore I said that He destroys both the blameless and the guilty.”
(Book of Job, 9:22). The suffering of the innocent - the main motive of the legend about Job - occupies an important place in Dostoevsky's philosophy. Ivan Karamazov sees only suffering, and therefore cannot accept God's peace. God is silent and does not respond to the cries of innocent sufferers. Job says: “In the city the people groan, and the soul of those who are killed cries out, and God does not forbid it” (Book of Job 24:12). Ivan says the same thing: “Do you understand this when a small creature, not yet able to even comprehend what is happening to her, beats itself in a vile place, in the dark and in the cold, with its tiny fist in its torn chest and cries with its bloody , kindly, meek tears to the “God” so that he would protect him - do you understand this nonsense, my friend and my brother, you are my novice of God and humble, do you understand why this nonsense is so necessary and created! Without it, they say, man could not have stayed on earth, for he would not have known good and evil. Why learn this damn good and evil when it costs so much? Yes, the whole world of knowledge is not worth these tears of a child to “God”” (1, 291-292). Ivan rebels against such a structure of the world in which people, and especially innocent ones, must suffer.
Elder Zosima holds a diametrically opposite point of view. Turning to Job, Zosima comes to the conclusion about the need to be sincere with oneself, which leads to sincerity of faith. Job did not hide from himself that everything had been taken away from him, as a result of which the Lord, who had taken everything, remained in his honest soul. He did not avoid thinking about it, everything was lost, so his soul rested calmly, until the moment the Lord’s explanation came to him again and found his heart like well-cultivated soil. Zosima offers his answer to the question of suffering, directly opposed to the totalitarian idea of the Grand Inquisitor depicted
Ivan Karamazov, a state where there is no suffering and deprivation, but where people are not free. Zosima's solution is based on the acceptance and even the necessity of suffering for the sake of redemption and on the beauty, morality and aesthetics of God's world - a concept with deep roots in Russian traditional culture. God's world is just as necessary for man on the path to God as the Holy Scriptures.
2) Analysis of the epigraph to the novel
In the epigraph of the novel The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky writes the words of Christ:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; and if it dies, it will bear much fruit.”
(Gospel of John, 12:24.). The introduction in the epigraph could have been omitted, but for some reason Dostoevsky leaves it. And, I think, it’s no coincidence. Truth moral guidelines and the values of the Kingdom of God for the author of the novel is absolute and undoubted. Everything else “precisely at our current moment” leads him to “some bewilderment.” For Dostoevsky, the meaning of the epigraph is important. The end of the quote in the epigraph: “If a grain of wheat...” is the essence of the novel, a conclusion based on the results of the writer’s research.
We believe that the source of the epigraph should be especially noted:
Gospel of John. Why does Dostoevsky refer to the Gospel of John, and not of Matthew or Luke? Context in the Gospel of John - the Greeks came to
To Jesus. Let us emphasize that it is not the Jews, but the pagans, that is, the rest of the world, all of humanity. Jesus says: “The hour has come for the Son to be glorified
Human..." And further (John 12:26): “Whoever serves Me, let him follow Me, and where I am, there will my servant also be; and whoever serves me will honor him
My Father." A little earlier in this chapter the Pharisees say to each other:
“Do you see that you don’t have time to do anything? All the world is coming after Him." Key words in John: “soul, world.” The words of the epigraph are introduced into the Gospel with words about the hour of glory of the Son of Man. The hour of glory is the Kingdom. Matthew gives the parable in full, and the context is different. Jesus teaches the people by speaking in parables.
Parable of the Sower: chapter 13, verses 3 - 8. Christ concludes it with the words: “He who has ears to hear, let him hear!” The disciples ask why He speaks in parables? Because “it has been given to you to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but it has not been given to them... therefore I speak to them in parables, that seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, and they do not understand.” He further reveals the meaning of the parable of the sower, saying that the seed is “the word of the kingdom.” So, the Gospel of Matthew 13:3 - the seed is the Kingdom of Heaven, and there 13:31 - the Kingdom of Heaven is like grain.
The seed is faith (Matthew 17:20 “...if you have faith...”). In Luke, the seed that bears fruit is “those who, having heard the word, keep it in a good and pure heart and bear fruit with patience.” The words of the epigraph in Luke also appear in the same semantic field: “patience” and “will die” (“tribulation” in
Gospel of Mark). The word "die" appears twice more in John's Gospel in chapter 11, preceding the quotation from chapter 12. John 11:25, 26: “I am the resurrection and the life; He who believes in Me, even if he dies, will live; And everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” What's interesting is that in both Luke and John, negative words have positive connotations. The quotation from John contains a specific contrast: unless he dies
– bad, but if he dies – good. The “earth” or “soil” into which the seed falls is the “human heart”, the soul.
We would venture to suggest that the Gospel of John is most in keeping with the spirit Orthodox Church, therefore, the most “Russian” addressed to
“the mysterious Russian soul”, which most corresponds to the Christian views of Dostoevsky himself: “So that whoever believes... does not perish” (John 3:16).
This book most brightly, sublimely and victoriously announces the reality
The Kingdom of God already now, and about it, still to come. "Christianity
Dostoevsky, according to N.A. Berdyaev, is not gloomy Christianity, it is white, Johannine Christianity. It is Dostoevsky who gives a lot for the Christianity of the future, for the triumph of the eternal Gospel, the religion of freedom and love.” There is no doubt that Dostoevsky chose as the epigraph for the novel a quotation that best corresponds to his “I believe.”
Thus, with the epigraph itself, Dostoevsky defines the general theme
"The Brothers Karamazov", his field creative exploration. We can highlight concepts related to this field: The Kingdom of God (Kingdom of Heaven) - “not of this world.” In contrast to it is a world that does not understand, does not hear, and is barren. The soul, according to Dostoevsky, is “uncertain, unclear.”
But at the same time, the ideal of “soil” for the perception of the word of God, for the acceptance of the Kingdom
God is quite obvious to Dostoevsky - a pure, patient heart, a man,
“he who hates his own life in this world.” But the main thing is not these abstract concepts, but the process of renouncing the carnal self in order to bear the highest fruit.
Another aspect of the epigraph can be highlighted. The idea of sacrifice, expressed figuratively therein, is further detailed in the Gospel and interpreted in altruistic terms: “ Loving soul he will destroy his own; But he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (Gospel of John 12:25). This is the dialectic of sacrifice expressed in extreme form. In order to preserve your soul for “eternal life,” you must not only neglect the personal, overcome selfishness, but also, sacrificing yourself, suffer, you must joyfully accept the guilt of everyone, you must be able to sacrifice yourself for the benefit of everyone. These thoughts constitute a symbol of faith, Dostoevsky’s moral credo.
3) Analysis of the narrator's style
Now let's analyze the narrative style in the novel "Brothers"
The Karamazovs." The hagiographic orientation of Dostoevsky’s narrator is definitely reflected in the introduction to The Brothers Karamazov (“From the Author”), where the narrator, in the tone of an intimate conversation with the reader, explains to him the reason that prompted him to take up the novel, and the edifying purpose of his story, as well as doubts and concerns, which the upcoming work causes in him:
“Starting the biography of my hero, Alexei Fedorovich Karamazov, I am somewhat perplexed. Namely: although I call Alexei Fedorovich my hero, I, however, myself know that he is by no means a great man, and therefore I foresee inevitable questions. Well, what if they read the novel and do not see, do not agree with the remarkableness of my Alexei Fedorovich? I say this because I foresee this with regret. For me, he is remarkable. The fact is that he is, perhaps, a figure, but an uncertain figure, unclear.
However, it would be strange to demand clarity from people in a time like ours.
One thing is, perhaps, quite certain: this is a strange man, even an eccentric...”
(1, 31). In contrast to the hagiographic introduction, the introduction of The Brothers Karamazov only changes the nature of the formulas essential to life and modernizes them. Thus, the concern of the hagiographic narrator relates only to the weakness of himself and never extends to the hagiographic hero, while Dostoevsky’s narrator considers it necessary to insist on “remarkability”
Alexei Fedorovich, is worried that the reader will not notice her or will not accept her.
The confidential tone of the introduction addressed to the reader, the indication of the didactic setting of the story, as well as in the hagiographic narrative, are correlated with those digressions where the narrator moves on to a new topic or initiates the reader into his writing intentions: “About this [Mitya’s life before
“catastrophe”] I won’t expand on now, especially since I still have a lot to say about this first-born of Fyodor Pavlovich, and now I’m only limiting myself to the most necessary information about him, without which it’s impossible for me to even begin a novel” (1, 40); “But while I’m moving on to this novel, I also need to talk about the other two sons of Fyodor Pavlovich, Mitya’s brothers, and explain where they came from” (1.41); “...and it’s a pity that I don’t feel quite competent and firm on this road. However, I will try to tell you in small words and in a superficial presentation...” (1, 42). The given examples of transitions from one topic to another or from a digression to the main narrative represent a modernization of the simple transitions of a hagiographic story.
The general excited tone of Dostoevsky’s narrator, extremely agitated in the circumstances of the “catastrophe” that he sets out, not only does not contradict his hagiographic orientation, but, on the contrary, continues it. The fact is that hagiographical (hagiography) narration, unlike chronicle narration (despite all their closeness), cannot be dispassionate. It is imbued with: an expressed attitude towards the subject - either reverent and sympathetic (if we're talking about about the “positive heroes” of life), or clearly negative. It also includes, with greater reason and breadth than the chronicle, religious and philosophical reasoning, moralistic maxims and tirades.
Finally, the narrator of The Brothers Karamazov, like the hagiographic narrator, for all his closeness to the main characters of the novel, is separated from them throughout its entire length. He is not allowed to communicate directly with them, which would inevitably reduce them, as well as everything that happened to them.
“catastrophe”, to the level of an ordinary criminal incident and therefore would interfere with the high author’s task, his desire to present in his main characters a certain moral and philosophical synthesis of contemporary Russia.
At the same time, the character of the hagiographic narrator of “The Brothers”
Karamazov” introduced the features of a contemporary author of an intelligent man in the street and a reasoner, well informed in matters of “current reality”.
The author deliberately combines these archaic and modern elements in his fictional narrator based on the naivety and simplicity of both the characters that make up his image. In a message about a scandalous detail of the biography of this or that hero, he inserts the hagiographic “narrated” or “according to legend”, into a calm, unpretentious hagiographic phrase - a modern word:
“...special and competent people claim that elders and eldership appeared with us, in our Russian monasteries, very recently, not even a hundred years ago, while in the entire Orthodox East, especially in Sinai and
Athos, have existed for well over a thousand years” (1, 58, 59). Thus, not only the problematics, but also the style of the novel “The Brothers Karamazov” are connected with Christianity and Christian sources.
4) The problem of responsibility for crime
In this latest novel, the writer, as before, demonstrates deep penetration into the soul of each of his heroes, revealing the true, and not the imaginary, motives of their actions. Once again, as in Crime and Punishment, the question arises about the possibility of a crime, about the resolution of a crime according to conscience. The conflict is aggravated by the fact that this time the victim is
Fyodor Karamazov - a man in highest degree depraved, cynical, disgusting, but a father. The Karamazov brothers bear a heavy cross - the Karamazov nature. And she, as the prosecutor says in court, is uncontrollable: she needs both a feeling of the baseness of the fall and a feeling of the highest nobility. “Two abysses, two abysses, gentlemen, at the same moment - without that we are unhappy and dissatisfied, our existence is incomplete. We are wide, wide like all of our mother Russia, we can accommodate everything and get along with everything” (2, 414).
But the topic of responsibility for crime is resolved by Dostoevsky in
“The Karamazovs” is on a different, if I may say so, more evangelical level than in “Crime and Punishment.” The brothers, each in their own way, experience the same tragedy, they have a common guilt and a common redemption. Not only Ivan with his idea of “everything is allowed,” not only Dmitry in his uncontrollable passions, but also the “quiet boy” Alyosha are responsible for the murder of his father. All of them consciously or semi-consciously wished for his death, and their desire pushed
Smerdyakov to the crime: he was their obedient tool. Killing thought
Ivana turned into Dmitry's destructive passion and criminal act
Smerdyakov. They are actively to blame, Alyosha is passively to blame. He knew - and he allowed it, he could have saved his father - but he didn’t. The common crime of brothers entails a common punishment. The author judges not only and not so much the act itself, but the thought, the desire. The direct killer, Smerdyakov, who raised his hand against his father, in fact, does not even appear in court. He is already condemned in advance, from the very beginning, and that is why he ends his life like Judas - in a noose.
Dmitry atones for his guilt by referring to hard labor, Ivan - by the disintegration of his personality and the appearance of the devil, Alyosha - by a terrible spiritual crisis. For not only deeds, but also human thoughts are subject to genuine judgment. “You have heard what was said to the ancients: do not kill; whoever kills will be subject to judgment. But I tell you that everyone who is angry with his brother without cause will be subject to judgment; whoever says to his brother: “raqa” is subject to the Sanhedrin; and whoever says, “You fool,” will be liable to hell fire” (Gospel of Matthew 5:21, 22).
But the novel, as always with Dostoevsky, also speaks of the cleansing power of suffering. And Mitya, sentenced to hard labor legally innocently, realizes that his spiritual guilt before his murdered father is undeniable and that it is for this guilt, invisible to the world, that the Lord punishes him in a visible way. And although the novel ends as if mid-sentence with the plans of brother Ivan and Katerina Ivanovna to release Mitya from the prison and send him to America together with Grusha, the reader clearly feels that these plans will not come true. And Mitya Karamazov is too much of a Russian to find his happiness in America.
“I hate this America even now!.. I love Russia, Alexey, I love the Russian God, even though I myself am a scoundrel!” (2, 487, 488) - he says to his brother on a date after the trial.
And indeed, Mitya Karamazov was not destined to escape from hard labor. In the second, unwritten part of the novel, according to the memoirs of Anna Grigorievna
Dostoevskaya, “the action was transferred to the eighties. Alyosha was no longer a youth, but a mature man who had experienced a complex emotional drama with Lisa
Khokhlakova, Mitya was returning from hard labor” (2, notes, p. 501). In fact, it is Mitya Karamazov who is the hero who consciously sacrifices himself. Or, in any case, those who consciously agree to such a sacrifice, consciously following the path of atonement for their own sin and the sin of their brothers.
5) The image of Ivan Karamazov. Conversation between Ivan and Alyosha
Each of the brothers is associated with one or another motive related to the issues of religiosity and atheism. Dmitry (who was mentioned earlier) personifies a sacrificial personality, Ivan is a “rebel”, a fighter against God,
Alyosha embodies the image of a monk in the world; in addition, the hagiographic line of the novel is connected with him.
Ivan, the second son of Fyodor Pavlovich, grew up in a strange family as a gloomy youth and early discovered brilliant mental abilities. Alyosha confesses to Ivan in the tavern: “Brother Dmitry says about you: Ivan is a grave. I'm talking about you:
Ivan is a mystery. You are still a mystery to me” (1, 277). Alyosha feels that
Ivan is busy with something internal and important, striving for some goal, perhaps a very difficult one. “He absolutely knew that his brother was an atheist.” This is how the author mysteriously introduces the figure of the “learned brother.” His behavior is incomprehensible and ambiguous: why, being an atheist, does he write about the theocratic structure of society? Why does he “firmly and seriously” accept the elder’s blessing and kiss his hand?
Experienced and able to understand people, Zosima immediately guesses the secret of the young philosopher. Ivan “God is torturing”; in his mind there is a struggle between faith and unbelief. The elder tells him: “This idea has not yet been resolved in your heart and is tormenting it... This is your great grief, for it urgently requires resolution...
But thank the Creator for giving you a higher heart, capable of suffering such torment, “to reason on high and seek on high, for our residence is in heaven” (1, 105). Ivan is not a smug atheist, but a high mind,
“the highest heart”, a martyr of the idea, experiencing unbelief as a personal tragedy.
Zosima ends with the wish: “God grant that the decision of your heart may be realized while still on earth, and may God bless your paths” (1, 105). The righteous man blesses the sinner’s “tireless striving” and predicts his fall and rebellion. The author of “The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor” does not die. In the epilogue
Mitya prophesies: “Listen, brother Ivan will surpass everyone. It's his life, not ours.
He will recover” (2, 486), he has “such strength that he will withstand everything” (1,
315). This is “Karamazov’s... power of Karamazov’s baseness” (1, 315).
Ivan is Dostoevsky’s traditional tragically divided personality.
He, a logician and rationalist, makes an amazing confession. “I know in advance,” he says, “that I will fall to the ground and kiss the stones and cry over them...
I’ll get drunk with my own tenderness” (1, 279). The atheist Ivan can experience tears of delight and tenderness! And he, like Alyosha, is capable of falling to the ground and pouring tears on it. But Karamazov’s love for life collides in his soul with a godless mind, which corrupts and kills it. He denies with his mind what he loves with his heart, considers his love meaningless and indecent. Is it worthy for a person to love “with his gut and belly” that which appears to his rational consciousness as “chaotic, cursed and, perhaps, demonic chaos”?
In Ivan, the centuries-long development of philosophy from Plato to Kant ends...
“Man is a rational being” - this position is more important for Ivan than anything else. Ivan is proud of his reason, and it is easier for him to renounce God’s peace than his reason. The rationalist does not want to reconcile with some kind of “nonsense.” This is where the tragedy begins. There is an irrational element in the world, evil and suffering that is impenetrable to reason. Ivan builds his argument on the most advantageous form of injustice - the suffering of children who did not have time to commit any sins in their lives for which punishment could punish them
God's. “It [world harmony] is not worth a tear, even just one tortured child who beat his chest with his fists and prayed in his stinking kennel with his unredeemed tears to “God” (1.294),
- Ivan declares and mockingly concludes: “They valued harmony too dearly, and we can’t afford to pay that much for admission. That’s why I’m in a hurry to return my entry ticket... I don’t accept God, Alyosha, I’m just a ticket
I most respectfully return it to him” (1, 295). Ivan admits the existence of God:
“I don’t accept God, understand this, I am the world He created, the world
I do not accept God’s and cannot agree to accept” (1, 284). He accepts
God, but only in order to hold him responsible for the “damned chaos” He created and to return the ticket to Him with incredible “respect.” Ivan’s “rebellion” differs from the naive atheism of the 18th century: Ivan is not an atheist, but a fighter against God. He turns to the Christian Alyosha and forces him to accept his atheistic conclusion. “Tell me directly,” he says, “I call you - answer: imagine that you yourself are erecting the building of human destiny with the goal of ultimately making people happy, finally giving them peace and quiet; but for this it would be necessary and inevitable to torture just a tiny creature, that very child who was beating his fist in the chest, and to found this building on his unavenged tears. Would you agree to be an architect on these conditions, tell me and don’t lie! » (1, 295). And Alyosha, a true believer, has to answer:
“No, I wouldn’t agree.” This means that it is impossible to accept an architect who built the world on the tears of children; You cannot believe in such a Creator.
Ivan triumphs: with his logical chain he “draws” the “monk” into the network of his reasoning and forces him to agree with the idea of “rebellion.” After all, Alyosha could not answer differently, otherwise he would not have the right to be called a Man.
Ivan denies God out of love for humanity, acts as a lawyer for all those who suffer against the Creator. However, in this imposture lies deception, since in the mouth of an atheist appeals to noble human feelings– this is pure rhetoric. Ivan says: “On the whole earth there is absolutely nothing that would force people to love their own kind... if there is and has been love on earth until now, it is not from the natural law, but solely because people believed in their immortality...” (1 , 290). Ivan does not believe in immortality, and therefore cannot love people. He, putting on a mask of philanthropy, tries to put himself in the place of the philanthropic Creator. Supposedly he would have created a more equitable world structure. What does "rebellion" really mean?
The existence of evil in the world proves that there is no God. Christianity recognizes the Fall and believes in the coming of the Last Judgment; Ivan denies the first and rejects the second: he does not want retribution for innocent suffering. In Christianity, all humanity is sinful: everyone is “conceived in iniquity and born in sins.” Ivan denies the presence of original sin, believing that a person is born innocent. Therefore, the suffering of children is unfair and Last Judgment meaningless. Responsibility for evil is placed on God. But God is not evil
God - which was what needed to be proven. All the power of Christianity and the person of Christ, the conqueror of sin and death. But if there is no sin, then there is no redemption.
Dialectics inevitably leads the atheist to a collision with the God-man. Alyosha, suppressed by Ivan’s arguments, forced to share his “rebellion,” remembers that “there is a Being who can forgive everything, everyone and everything and for everything, because he himself gave his innocent blood for everyone and for everything”...
(1.296). Ivan was waiting for this “reminder”; he knew that all his evidence would be powerless if he failed to overthrow the cause of Christ.
6) “The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor”
Having destroyed the idea of the Fall and retribution, the atheist must also destroy the idea of redemption. What can we accuse the “One Sinless One” of? The God-fighter, understanding the complexity of the struggle, presents instead of logical arguments a religious myth, the action of which takes place in Spain in the 15th century. "The Legend of the Great
Inquisitor" - greatest creation, the pinnacle of Dostoevsky's creativity.
The Savior comes to earth again.
In Seville, during the rampant Inquisition, He appears among the crowd, and people recognize Him. Rays of light and power flow from his eyes, He stretches out his hands, blesses, works miracles. The Grand Inquisitor, “an old man of ninety, tall and straight, with a withered face and sunken cheeks” (1,300), orders him to be imprisoned. At night he comes to his captive and begins to talk to him. “Legend” – monologue of the Grand Inquisitor. Christ remains silent. The old man's excited speech is directed against the teaching
God-man. By accusing Him, he justifies himself and his spiritual betrayal. “A terrible and intelligent spirit, a spirit of self-abasement and non-existence” (1,
302) tempted Christ in the desert, and He rejected him. The Inquisitor claims that the tempter was right. “You want to go into the world,” he said to Christ, “and you go with your bare hands, with some kind of vow of freedom, which they, in their simplicity and in their innate disorderliness, cannot even comprehend, which they fear and are afraid of, for nothing has ever happened for man and for human society more unbearable than freedom! Do you see these stones in this naked and hot desert? Turn them into bread, and humanity will run after You like a flock, grateful and obedient...” (1, 303). The Savior rejected the advice evil spirit, because he did not want to buy obedience with bread, did not want to take away freedom from people. The Inquisitor prophesies: in the name of the bread of the earth, the spirit of the earth will rise up against Christ, and humanity will follow him; on the site of the temple will be erected Tower of Babel; but, after suffering for a thousand years, people will return to the Roman church, which “corrected” the work of Christ, bring it their freedom and say: “Better enslave us, but feed us” (1, 304). The first temptation in the desert is a prophetic image of human history; “bread” is a symbol of godless socialism; Not only modern socialism, but also the Roman Church falls under the temptation of the “terrible and clever spirit.” Dostoevsky was confident that Catholicism, sooner or later, would unite with socialism and form with it a single Tower of Babel, the kingdom of the Antichrist. The Inquisitor justifies betrayal of Christ with the same motive with which Ivan justified his fight against God—philanthropy. According to the Inquisitor, Christ was mistaken in people: “People are weak, vicious, insignificant and rebels... Weak, eternally vicious and eternally ungrateful human race... You judged people too highly, for, of course, they are slaves, although they were created rebels...
I swear, man is created weaker and lower than You thought about him... He is weak and base” (1, 307). Thus, the teaching of Antichrist is opposed to Christ’s teaching about man. Christ believed in the image of God in man and bowed before his freedom; The Inquisitor considers freedom to be the curse of these pitiful and powerless rebels and, in order to make them happy, he proclaims slavery.
Only a chosen few are able to bear the covenant of Christ. Didn’t He really think about the millions and tens of thousands of millions of weak people who are unable to prefer heavenly bread to earthly bread?
In the name of this same human freedom, Christ rejected two other temptations
- miracle and earthly kingdom; He “did not want to enslave a person by miracle and thirsted for a free faith, not a miraculous one” (1, 307). The Inquisitor accepted all three proposals of the “clever spirit.” “We corrected Your deed and based it on a miracle, mystery and authority... We took the sword of Caesar, and having taken it, of course, we rejected You and followed him” (1, 309). Freedom will lead people to mutual destruction and anthropophagy... But the time will come, and weak rebels will crawl to those who will give them bread and bind their disorderly freedom. The inquisitor paints a picture of the “childish happiness” of enslaved humanity: “They will tremble in relaxation at our anger, their minds will become timid, their eyes will become teary, like those of children and women... Yes, we will force them to work, but in the hours free from work, we Let's arrange their life like a children's game with children's songs, choirs, and innocent dances. Oh, we will allow them to sin too... And everyone will be happy, all the millions of creatures, except for the hundreds of thousands who control them...
They will die quietly, they will quietly fade away in Your name, and beyond the grave they will find only death...” (1, 310, 311). The Inquisitor falls silent; the prisoner is silent. “The old man would like him to tell him something, even if it’s bitter and terrible.
But He suddenly silently approaches the old man and quietly kisses him on his bloodless, ninety-year-old lips. That's the whole answer. The old man shudders. Something moved at the ends of his lips; he goes to the door, opens it and says
To him: “Go and don’t come again. Don’t come at all... Never, never!” And he releases Him into the “dark hailstones” (1, 314).
What is the secret of the Grand Inquisitor? Alyosha guesses: “Your inquisitor doesn’t believe in God, that’s his whole secret.” Ivan readily agrees.
“Even so! – he answers. “Finally, you guessed it.” And, indeed, so, indeed, this is the whole secret...” (1, 313).
The symbolism of the “legend” is multifaceted: on the surface there is an accusation
“Antichrist” beginning of the Roman Church and modern socialism. Dostoevsky was seduced by the fantastic idea that the Tower of Babel, erected by godless socialism, would be crowned by Rome. But this unjust and unchristian condemnation of Catholicism is only the outer cover of a religious myth. Beneath it lies a profound exploration of the metaphysical meaning of freedom and power.
The hero of the legend, the Grand Inquisitor, is depicted with great skill.
The old cardinal is a majestic and tragic face. He gave his life to the selfless service of Christ, to his feat in the desert - and suddenly, at the end of his days, he lost his faith. “Isn’t it really enough for just one of these to cause a tragedy?” (1.313) – asks Ivan. Indeed, the loss of faith is the deepest tragedy of the Inquisitor: not believing in God, he takes upon himself lies and deception and accepts this suffering “out of love for people.” The author neglects the publicly available weapons of struggle against atheism: he does not portray his hero as a villain and a monster. The Inquisitor is an ascetic, sage and philanthropist. This concept contains Dostoevsky's brilliant insight. Antichrist opposes
Christ in the name of Christ's covenant of love for neighbors. He poses as His disciple, as the successor of His work. Antichrist is a false Christ, not anti-
Christ.
The author of "The Karamazovs" presents the fight against God in all its demonic grandeur: the Inquisitor rejects the commandment of love for God, but becomes a fanatic of the commandment of love for one's neighbor. His mighty spiritual powers, which were previously spent on the veneration of Christ, are now turned to serving humanity. But godless love inevitably turns into hatred. Having lost faith in God, the Inquisitor must also lose faith in man, because these two faiths are inseparable. By denying the immortality of the soul, he denies the spiritual nature of man. And immediately a person turns for him into a pitiful, weak and vile creature, the history of mankind into a meaningless heap of disasters, atrocities and suffering. If man is only an earthly creature, then his fate is truly “the devil’s vaudeville”; if people “beyond the grave will find only death,” then truly they are “unfinished, tentative creatures, created as a mockery” (1, 311). Then there is only one goal left for the philanthropist: to make these unfortunate creatures’ short lives easier, to “establish” this rebellious herd on earth. Man is given only a moment of earthly life, let him live it in contentment and peace. And the Inquisitor arranges “universal happiness”: he will feed the people (“bread”), bind their disorderly will with “home, secret and authority,” take the sword of Caesar and gather the weak rebels into a single herd. Then the great Tower of Babel will rise and the harlot will sit on the beast - and forever. Ivan argued that without faith in God and immortality it is impossible to love humanity. The Grand Inquisitor proves this too.
He began with love of humanity and ended with turning people into domestic animals.
To make humanity happy, he took away their humanity. Hero
“Legends” ended with the idea of “limitless despotism.”
The Inquisitor's monologue is a masterpiece of oratory; conclusions logically follow from the premises, conclusions are striking in their irresistibility; but negative argumentation suddenly turns positive: accusatory speech becomes the greatest theodicy in world literature. “Legend” completes Dostoevsky’s life’s work – his struggle for man. He reveals in her the religious basis of personality and the inseparability of faith in man from faith in God. With unheard of force, he affirms freedom as the image of God in man and shows the Antichrist beginning of power and despotism. Without freedom, man is a beast, humanity is a herd; but freedom is supernatural and superintelligent, alright natural world freedom, there is only necessity.
Freedom - divine gift, the most precious asset of man. It cannot be substantiated by reason, science, or natural law - it is rooted in
God, is revealed in Christ. Freedom is an act of faith.
Godless people who love mankind reject God because there is evil in the world.
But evil exists only because there is freedom. Beneath the false pity for the suffering of humanity lies a devilish hatred of human freedom and the “image of God” in man. That is why, starting with philanthropy, he ends with despotism.
“The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor” contains “proof by contradiction”. By accusing Christ, the Inquisitor pronounces the final verdict on his Antichrist cause. He ends up with the “herd” and the Whore of Babylon.
The silence of Christ conceals within itself the justification of man and the affirmation of his divine-human dignity. Blasphemy against Christ turns into His glorification. The Inquisitor reproaches the Savior for placing an unbearable burden of freedom on humanity, demanding impossible perfection from it and, therefore, acting as if he did not love it at all. But he, the Inquisitor, really “loved” people: he fed them, enslaved them and turned them into a herd. Dostoevsky makes the greatest spiritual discovery: the free personality of man is revealed only in Christ; love for humanity can only be in Christ. Love for one's neighbor is characteristic of the unfallen human nature, but divine nature. The lover of humanity is not a man, but God, who gave his Son to save the world.
Dostoevsky thought that in the Legend he exposed the deception of Catholicism and the lies of socialism; His reproof went further and deeper. Antichrist kingdom
The Inquisitor is built on wonder, mystery and authority. In spiritual life, the beginning of all power is from the evil one. Never in all of world literature has Christianity been presented with such amazing force as a religion of spiritual freedom.
Dostoevsky's Christ is not only the Savior and Redeemer, but also the One
Liberator of man.
The Inquisitor, with dark inspiration and red-hot passion, denounces his Prisoner; he remains silent and responds to the accusation with a kiss. He does not need to justify himself: the enemy’s arguments are refuted by the mere presence of Him who is “the Way, the Truth and the Life.”
Ivan finished. Alyosha asks about the future fate of the Inquisitor.
“The kiss burns on his heart,” Ivan answers, “but the old man remains in the same idea.” “And you are with him, and you?” - Alyosha exclaimed sadly.
Ivan laughed” (1, 314).
Yes, Ivan with the Inquisitor, with a “terrible and intelligent spirit” against Christ.
He must follow the path of apostasy and atheism to the end. His idea
“everything is permitted” is realized in Smerdyakov’s parricide, “the spirit of self-destruction and non-existence” is embodied in the “devil”. The famous scene of Ivan's nightmare is a brilliant creation of an artist and philosopher. And at the beginning of the novel, Elder Zosima tells the “learned brother” that the question of God “has not yet been resolved in his heart and torments him.”
7) The Devil and Smerdyakov are Ivan Karamazov’s “doubles”
Traditionally, Dostoevsky's novels contain a complex system of doubles. So it is in “The Brothers Karamazov”: Ivan has two doubles, revealing the essence of the hero’s beliefs. The duality of consciousness between faith and unbelief is shown in the dialogue between the hero and the devil. The mocking visitor makes every effort to force the atheist to accept his reality: once he believes in the supernatural, the positive worldview is destroyed,
The “Euclidean mind” is blown up. Ivan desperately fights the “nightmare”; in a rage, he shouts to the devil: “I don’t accept you for a single minute as the real truth. You are a lie, you are my disease, you are a ghost. You are the embodiment of myself, only one side of me, however... my thoughts and feelings, only the most disgusting and stupid ones” (2, 346). However, he jumps up to beat his
“hanger-on”, give him kicks; throws a glass at him with a flourish, and after he disappears he says to Alyosha: “No, no, no, it was not a dream! He was, he was sitting here, on that sofa..." (2.363). So the question of the mysterious visit will remain unresolved in Ivan’s heart. He believes when he doesn’t believe, when he denies, he affirms. Reality eludes a person who has lost the highest reality - God; reality merges with delirium, there is nothing, everything just seems.
The author reproduces with extraordinary skill this indistinguishability of the fantastic and the real. The devil is a hallucination; Ivan is on the eve of delirium tremens, but the devil is reality: he says what Ivan could not say, reports facts that he did not know.
Ivan Karamazov’s visitor, a Russian gentleman-crawler, is “just a devil, a crappy little devil” (2, 363). The hero speaks about him with hatred:
“Undress him and you’ll probably find a tail, long, smooth, like a Danish dog’s, about an arshin long...” (2, 363). What concreteness in the description of the fantastic, what base triviality the supernatural is clothed in! The devil teases him: “You are angry with me because I did not appear to you somehow in a red radiance, “thundering and shining,” with singed wings, but appeared in such a modest form. You are offended, firstly, in your aesthetic feelings, and secondly, in your pride: how, they say, could such a vulgar devil enter such a great man?” (2, 347). Here the deceitfulness of satanic beauty is revealed. In his “Legend”, Ivan presented the devil in a majestic form in the form of a terrible and intelligent spirit, and now he turned out to be a vulgar hanger-on with a brown tail, like a Danish dog... The spirit of nothingness is an impostor: this is not Lucifer with singed wings, but an imp “from failed”, the embodiment of world boredom and world vulgarity.
But Ivan Karamazov has not one double, but two: he stands next to the devil
Smerdyakov. The face of the “learned brother” is distorted in the reflection of two mirrors. The devil repeats his thoughts, but only “the most disgusting and stupid ones.” Smerdyakov reduces his “idea” to a vile criminal offense. In the base soul of the footman, Ivan’s theory “everything is allowed” turns into a murder plot for the purpose of robbery. Ivan thinks abstractly, Smerdyakov draws a practical conclusion.
“You killed,” he declares to his “teacher,” “you are the main murderer, and I was only your henchman, a faithful servant of Licharda, and at your word I did this deed” (2, 330). Smerdyakov follows Ivan as
"executor". The son of the libertine Fyodor Pavlovich and the fool Lizaveta
Stinking, the lackey-killer Smerdyakov is a sickly and strange person. He suffers from epilepsy, speaks in a smug, doctrinaire tone and deeply despises everyone. “As a child, he was very fond of hanging cats and then burying them with ceremony” (1, 163). Smerdyakov is a proud, arrogant and suspicious mediocrity. He is a born skeptic and an atheist. The servant Gregory teaches sacred history to a twelve-year-old boy. He mockingly and arrogantly asks him: “The Lord God created the light on the first day, and the sun, moon and stars on the fourth day. Where did the light shine from on the first day? (1, 163).
Smerdyakov is not a fool at all; His mind is low, but resourceful and resourceful. Fyodor Pavlovich calls him a “Jesuit” and a “casuist.” And the seed of Ivan’s teaching falls into this ugly soul. The footman receives him with delight;
Ivan is “tormented by God” - the question of immortality is not resolved for him. In heart
Smerdyakov there never was a God, he is atheist by nature, a natural atheist: and the principle “everything is permitted” fully corresponds to his internal law.
Ivan only wishes for his father's death. Smerdyakov kills.
In three meetings between the accomplices, a tragic struggle unfolds between the moral murderer and the actual murderer. Smerdyakov cannot understand Ivan’s horror and torment; it seems to him that he is pretending, “playing a comedy.”
To prove to him that it was not Dmitry who killed, but he, the footman shows a wad of money that he stole after the murder. Dostoevsky finds details that give this scene the character of inexplicable horror. “Wait, sir,” said
Smerdyakov, in a weak voice, suddenly pulled his left leg out from under the table and began to wrap his trousers up on it. The leg was in a long white stocking and a shoe. Slowly, he removed the garter and plunged his fingers deep into the stocking. Ivan Fedorovich looked at him and suddenly shook in convulsive fear...” “Smerdyakov pulled out a pack and put it on the table” (2,
331). One more detail. The killer wants to call the hostess to bring her lemonade, and is looking for something to cover the money with; Finally he covers them with a thick yellow book: “The words of our Holy Father Isaac the Syrian.” "The Long White Stocking", which contains stacks of rainbow banknotes, and "The Words of Isaac"
Sirina”, covering the prey of the parricide - the expressiveness of these artistic symbols can only be indicated, but not explained.
Smerdyakov gives the money to Ivan. “I don’t need them at all,” he says.
He thought that he killed for money, but now he realized that it was a “dream”. He proved to himself that “everything is allowed”, that’s enough for him. Ivan asks:
“And now, therefore, you have believed in God if you give the money back?” “No, I didn’t believe, sir,” whispered Smerdyakov” (2, 340). He, like Raskolnikov, only needed to make sure that he could “transgress.” He, like the student's killer, is not interested in the loot. “Everything is permitted” means “everything, no matter.” Having transgressed God's law, the parricide gives himself over to the “spirit of non-existence.”
Smerdyakov commits suicide and leaves a note: “I destroy my life with my own will and desire, so as not to blame anyone” (2, 362). Thus he commits the last act of demonic self-will.
Before we start talking about Alexei Karamazov, we emphasize that we will also consider his image from the point of view of the hagiographical nature of the narrative.
The youngest of the Karamazov brothers, Alyosha, is depicted paler than the others. His personal theme is drowned out by Dmitry’s passionate pathos and ideological dialectics
Ivana. Like his spiritual predecessor Prince Myshkin, Alyosha sympathizes and empathizes with others, but the action of the novel is not determined by him and its “idea” is only outlined. Meanwhile, “The Karamazovs” was conceived by the author as a biography (life) of Alyosha, and in the preface he is directly called the hero of the novel. Dostoevsky tries to explain this discrepancy between plan and execution: Alyosha does not look like a hero because he
“an uncertain, unclear figure” (1, 31). His image will be revealed in the future. “The main novel is the second,” the author writes, “this is the activity of my hero already in our time, precisely in our current current moment. The first novel took place 13 years ago and is almost not even a novel, but only one moment from my hero’s first youth” (1, 31, 32). But the second novel was not written, and Alyosha remained as “unfinished” as Prince Myshkin.
While working on “The Idiot,” the author admitted: “Depicting the positively beautiful is an immeasurable task.” In “The Karamazovs” the ideal image of a person is only a premonition and foresight.
Alyosha is Ivan’s half-brother, his mother, the humble, “meek” Sophia
Ivanovna was a clique. He inherited from her the religious structure of his soul. One memory from early childhood determined his fate. “Alyosha remembered one evening, summer, quiet, an open window, slanting rays of the setting sun, in the room, in the corner, an image, in front of him a lit lamp and in front of the image on her knees, sobbing, as if in hysterics, with squeals and cries, her mother, who had grabbed him in both hands, hugging him tightly, to the point of pain, and the Mother of God praying for him, stretching him out of her embrace with both hands to the image, as if under the protection of the Mother of God” (1, 48). Sofya Ivanovna, the suffering mother, is mystically connected with the Most Pure Mother of God. Alyosha was given under her protection Mother of God; he is dedicated, and grace rests on him from childhood. Alyosha, like an ordinary hero of a hagiographical narrative, already in his early youth reveals a desire to leave the vain world, because earthly passions are alien to him. Old Karamazov was struck by the reason for his return:
Alyosha came to find his mother's grave. Soon he entered the monastery as a novice to the famous elder and healer Zosima. The author is afraid that his young hero will seem to the reader an exalted eccentric and fanatic. He insists on the physical and moral health of his hero... “Alyosha was at that time a stately, red-cheeked, bright-eyed, 19-year-old teenager bursting with health. At that time he was even very handsome, well-built, of average tall, dark Russian, with a regular, although somewhat elongated, oval face, with shiny dark gray, widely spaced eyes, very thoughtful and, apparently, very calm” (1, 56). He has a special gift for arousing universal love, he loves everyone, does not remember insults, never cares whose means he lives on; even and clear; he has “wild, frenzied modesty and chastity,” which also serves as a sign of a hagiographic hero.
The complex relationship between the ideal hagiographic hero and the world around him makes this hero strange for ordinary perception. Alyosha, like an ordinary hero from life, already in childhood discovers the extraordinary qualities of the future ascetic.
Alyosha is “bursting with health,” red-cheeked, stands firmly on the ground and is full of Karamazov’s spontaneous vitality. But why did this cheerful young man become a novice? The writer explains: his hero “is not even a mystic at all”
– he is a realist. “In a realist, faith does not come from a miracle, but a miracle comes from faith.”
In the image of Alyosha, a new type of Christian spirituality is destined - monastic service in the world; he goes through monastic asceticism, but does not remain in the monastery; Elder Zosima, before his death, says to his favorite:
“I think about you this way - you will leave these walls, and you will remain in the world as a monk... Life will bring you many misfortunes, but with them you will be happy and you will bless your life and force others to bless you - which is most important...” (1 ,
338). This is Dostoevsky’s plan for Alyosha: the elder’s predictions were to come true in the second novel. Alyosha combines two types of hagiographic hero: he feels a high destiny from childhood and turns to God and indulges in asceticism after many trials (like Ephraim the Syrian).
After introducing the main character, a motive arises that connects his name with the name of Alexei, the man of God. This motive sounds indirect at first.
The reason for this mention is the elder’s conversation with one of the believing women, who was heartbroken over the death of her son. The elder asks what his name was.
Mother answers:
“- Alexei, father.
- It's a cute name. On Alexey, a man of God?
“God’s, father, God’s, Alexei the man of God!” (1, 82).
Later, Rakitin calls Alexei “Alyoshenka, God’s little man” (2, 39).
Then the “temptations” and “temptations” of the hagiographic hero begin. The “young lover of humanity” encounters an atheist brother; Alyosha believes in God and lovingly accepts God's world; he says to Ivan: “I think that everyone in the world should first of all love life... Love before logic - and only then will I understand the meaning” (1, 279). Alyosha accepts the world of God according to his faith, Ivan does not believe in God (or accepts it with murderous mockery, which is the same thing) and, before falling in love with the world, he wants to understand its meaning. Christian love is opposed to godless reason. “About Contra” goes to the very soul
Alyosha, becomes his internal struggle, temptation and victory over temptation. The old man dies; the student expected the glorification of the teacher, but instead is present at his dishonor: a “corruptive spirit” prematurely emanates from the tomb of the deceased righteous man; “temptation” covers both monks and pilgrims; “firm in faith” “realist” Alyosha is also tempted. Where is the spiritual transformation of nature that the elder taught about? And if he is not, then Ivan is right.
Alyosha’s “rebellion” is an echo of Ivan’s rebellion. He also rebels against Providence and demands “justice” from it. “He didn’t need miracles,” the author explains, “but only “the highest justice,” which, according to his belief, was violated and why his heart was so cruelly and suddenly wounded... Well, even if there were no miracles at all, even if nothing miraculous would have appeared and what was immediately expected would not have come true - but why did dishonor appear, why was shame allowed to happen, why this hasty decay that “warned nature?..
Where is Providence and its finger? Why did it hide its finger at the most necessary moment (thought Alyosha) and, as it were, want to subordinate itself to the blind, dumb, merciless laws of nature” (2, 21). Questions about "justice"
Providence, about world evil, so tragically experienced by Alyosha - questions
Ivana. At a fateful moment, the novice suddenly feels his spiritual closeness to his atheist brother. He tirelessly recalls his conversation with Ivan. “Some vague, painful and evil impression from remembering yesterday’s conversation with his brother Ivan suddenly stirred in his soul, and more and more asked to come to the top of it.” But Ivan’s “rebellion” ends in fight against God and denial of God’s world; Alyosha's "rebellion" ends with a mystical vision of resurrection: he is saved by a feat of personal love. Alyosha leaves the monastery, falls into the power of his Mephistopheles, Rakitin, and he takes him to Grushenka. Karamazov's voluptuousness awakens in the chaste young man. The “Infernal” sits on his lap and treats him to champagne. But, having learned about the death of Elder Zosima, he devoutly crosses himself and “as if in fright” jumps off his rut. Alyosha says “loudly and firmly” to Rakitin:
“Did you see how she spared me? I came here to find an evil soul - I was so drawn to it, because I was mean and angry, but I found a sincere sister, I found a treasure - a loving soul. Agrafena Alexandrovna, I’m talking about you, you have now restored my soul” (2, 34, 35). Grushenka tells a fable about an onion. The feisty, contemptuous woman has done nothing good in her entire life; Once she gave a beggar woman an onion, and after death this onion helped her get out of the lake of fire. Grushenka’s pity was an “onion” for Alyosha,
Alyosha’s compassion turned out to be an “onion” for her offended heart.
“He turned my heart,” she exclaims. “He took pity on me, the first, the only one, that’s what!” Why did you, cherub, come before?” she suddenly fell to her knees in front of him, as if in a frenzy. “All my life I’ve been waiting for someone like you, I knew that someone like that would come and forgive me.” I believed that someone would love me too, the disgusting one, not just for my shame” (2, 41). Alyosha's meeting with
Grushenka - the mystical betrothal of the groom to the bride-earth. Law of Death
(voluptuousness) conquered by resurrecting love. Souls understand their kinship and mystical unity. Alyosha bears Grushenka's guilt, Grushenka
- Alyosha’s fault. “Everyone is to blame for everyone.” In common guilt - they loving brother and sister. Spiritual rebirth has taken place: Grushenka is ready to sacrificially share Mitya’s redemptive feat. Alyosha is open to mystical visions
"Cana of Galilee."
The novice returns to the monastery and prays at the elder’s tomb. Through his drowsiness he hears Father Paisius reading the Gospel story about the marriage in Cana
Galilean. And then the walls move apart - the coffin is no longer there; he sees the guests, the bridal chamber. Elder Zosima, “joyful and quietly laughing,” tells him
“We have fun, we drink new wine, the wine of new, great joy; Do you see how many guests there are? Here are the bride and groom, here is the wise Architriclinus, tasting new wine... Do you see our Sun, do you see Him? Don't be afraid of Him. Terrible in his greatness before us, terrible in his height, but infinitely merciful..." (2,
45,46). Alyosha's vision is a symbol of resurrection, the joy of the Kingdom of God. He leaves the cell; falls as if knocked down to the ground, hugs and kisses her.
“He cried in his delight even about these stars that shone to him from the abyss, and “he was not ashamed of this frenzy.” It was as if the threads from all these countless worlds of God came together at once in his soul, and it was all trembling,
“touching other worlds.” He wanted to forgive everyone and for everything and ask for forgiveness, oh! not for myself, but for everyone, for everything and for everything...” (2, 47). After the light of resurrection - cosmic delight and a vision of a transformed world. This is that second of “world harmony” that Dostoevsky’s heroes anticipate and yearn for. The heart of man is the mystical center of the universe, the threads of all worlds converge in it, and the new Adam, restored to his pristine glory, “crying, sobbing and shedding tears,” kisses the Holy Earth
The mother whom he once desecrated with his fall into sin. Karamazovskaya
“earthly” power turns into transformative power. Alyosha's ecstasy corresponds to Ivan's confession. Ivan does not understand how he can forgive the mother of a tortured child. Alyosha understood: in the new world they forgive “for everyone, for everything and for everything.”
The hero of the life overcomes “temptations”.
The mystical experience of the novice becomes the source of his spiritual energy. It pours out onto the world, enlightening it from within. The novel shows only the beginning of this ministry. Alyosha enters the lives of the schoolchildren, befriends them, reconciles them with Ilyusha, who is dying of consumption, and at his grave lays the foundation for “all-human brotherhood.” The new community, in contrast to the socialist anthill, is built on personality and love. This is a free association of friends of the late Ilyusha - personal love for one becomes the common love of all. “All of you, gentlemen, are dear to me from now on,” says
Alyosha to the boys, I will enclose all of you in my heart, and I ask you to enclose me in your heart too! Well, who united us in this good thing, good feeling...who else but Ilyushechka, good boy, dear boy, dear boy to us forever and ever” (2, 500). Ilyusha did not die: in the love of the friends he united, he will live “forever and ever.”
Kolya Krasotkin forces the “young lover of humanity” to express his thoughts to the end. “Karamazov! - Kolya shouted. – Does religion really say that we will all rise from the dead and come to life and see each other and everyone and Ilyushechka again?
“We will certainly rise, we will certainly see and cheerfully, joyfully we will tell each other everything that happened,” Alyosha answered, half laughing, half delighted” (2, 500).
The novel ends with a solemn confession of faith in the resurrection.
Conclusion
According to the writer's undoubted conviction, modern humanity is in a situation of inevitable choice, similar to the one in which Dmitry Karamazov found himself at the end of the novel - whether to remain “Despised Bernard, take advantage of the unjust power of the money offered by his brother Ivan and flee to America to the “mechanics” and “machinists” in order to keep up with everything a world that has deviated from the “straight path”, or, following the example of Christ, through suffering and resurrection, gain a new personality in oneself, remain in Russia and become a true brother to one’s neighbor. Leaning towards the second option, Mitya seems to be inviting all people on earth to renounce arrogant pretensions, selfish interests, selfish isolation and to realize with all sincerity that for them there are only two polar possibilities: either to embrace, or to destroy each other, or immortal life, or eternal death. “If there were brothers,” Elder Zosima insists in his conversations, “there would be brotherhood, but before that, brotherhoods would never be divided. The image of Christ is vulnerable, and will shine like a precious diamond throughout the world... Awaken, awaken” (1, 373). Therefore, it is so important, the writer concludes, to protect this precious diamond, at least in units or in the rank of holy fool, that the “banner of Christ” does not allow a person to forget about the “higher half” of his being, preserves the criteria for distinguishing between good and evil and the ability to understand what , dark or light, sides human soul rely on various phenomena life. And while the light of the unquenchable lamp shines in the darkness, as long as the saving hope for resurrection and renewal, which captured children’s hearts at Ilyusha’s funeral, is alive, for gaining the highest freedom, which burns even in the heart of the Grand Inquisitor with a kiss
Christ.
LIST OF REFERENCES USED
1. F.M. Dostoevsky "The Brothers Karamazov". In 2 volumes. Tula, Priokskoe book publishing house, 1994.
2. F.M. Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment". M, "Fiction", 1978.
3. Unpublished Dostoevsky. Notebooks and notebooks 1860-1881. M., 1971.
4. Bible. Synodal edition.
5. Christianity and Russian literature (collection of articles)./Rep. ed. V.A.
Kotelnikov. St. Petersburg, “Science”, 1994.
6. About Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky's creativity in Russian thought 1881 - 1931. /Compiled by: Borisova V.M. , Roginsky A.B. M., 1990.
7. Russian literature of the 19th century and Christianity. M., Publishing house Mosk. university
1997.
8. Dostoevsky: materials and research. T. 11. St. Petersburg, 1994.
9. Dostoevsky in foreign literatures./Rep. ed. IN AND. Reizov. L.,
"Science", 1978.
10. Russian literature in the assessment of modern foreign criticism. M., Publishing House
Moscow University, 1981.
11. M.M. Bakhtin "Problems of Dostoevsky's poetics." M., " Soviet Russia»,
1979.
12. Ya.V. Kirpotin "The World of Dostoevsky". M., “Soviet Writer”, 1983.
13. Yu.G. Kudryavtsev “Three circles of Dostoevsky (Eventual. Social.
Philosophical.)". M., Publishing house Mosk. University, 1979.
14. Creativity F.M. Dostoevsky./Ans. ed. N.L. Stepanov. M., Publishing House Acad. Sciences USSR, 1959.
15. V.K. Cantor “The Brothers Karamazov” by F. Dostoevsky. M., “Art. lit-ra",
1983.
16. V.V. Rozanov. Collected works. The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor F.M.
Dostoevsky. Lit. essays. Descriptions and writers./Ed. A.N. Nikolyukin.
M., "Republic", 1996.
17. N.A. Berdyaev “Philosophy of creativity, culture, art.” In 2 volumes. T.2.
-M., 1994.
18. K.V. Mochulsky. "Gogol, Solovyov, Dostoevsky." M., "Republic"
1995.
19. V.E. Vetlovskaya. “The Poetics of the Novel “The Brothers Karamazov”.” L., "Science",
1977.
-----------------------
“Creativity of F.M. Dostoevsky”, p.266 – M., Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences
USSR, 1959.
Introductory article to “Notes from House of the Dead" - M., "Sov. Russia",
1983.
Publ. in the collection “Christianity and Russian Literature”.
Publ. in the collection “Russian Literature of the 19th Century and Christianity.”
ON THE. Berdyaev “Philosophy of creativity, culture, art. T. 1, p.
149.
Tutoring
Need help studying a topic?
Our specialists will advise or provide tutoring services on topics that interest you.
Submit your application indicating the topic right now to find out about the possibility of obtaining a consultation.
Analysis of the novel by F. M. Dostoevsky "The Brothers Karamazov"
The action of F. M. Dostoevsky’s novel “The Brothers Karamazov” (1878-1879) takes place in the provincial town of Skotoprigonyevsk, in the noble family of the Karamazovs. In terms of the breadth of its coverage of life, the significance of the images drawn and the depth of the questions posed, this novel belongs to the most outstanding works of the writer. The Brothers Karamazov was conceived as a series of novels; only the first was written, which “is almost not even a novel, but only one moment from the first youth of my hero” (Dostoevsky) - the “early lover of mankind” Alyosha Karamazov, called upon to carry out in life the behests of his monastery mentor Father Zosima.
For Dostoevsky, the Karamazov family is Russia in miniature. Each of the heroes embodies a certain “idea”. The collision of these life attitudes determines the action of the novel.
The old man Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, disgusting in his cynicism and debauchery, is like a symbol of death and decay of Russian society of the 60s, which should still give birth to something new. The eldest son, Dmitry, is a spontaneous, “broad” nature; good is mixed with evil in him. He gets confused in his passions, reaches a moral impasse, but a beautiful one." new person", dwelling in his soul, is a guarantee of future resurrection to another, righteous life. Dmitry is attracted to Alyosha, who embodies the genuine " living life" And with Ivan, who embodies the power of denial, the charm of evil, he has nothing in common, their relationship is purely external. It is Ivan who is the real, “in theory,” father’s killer. Smerdyakov is a pathetic figure - only an executor of his evil will.
In the preface to the novel, Dostoevsky immediately singles out Alyosha from all the characters. He calls him his hero. In the introductory story about Alyosha, Dostoevsky gives a “biography” of the third son of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov. The author notes those features of his hero that distinguish him from others and attract the attention and sympathy of everyone who had to deal with Alyosha.
After the death of his mother, “Alyosha suddenly announced... that he wanted to enter a monastery and that the monks were ready to admit him as a novice.” Alyosha went to the monastery, but did not stay there long. After the death of Elder Zosima and by his will, Alyosha returned to worldly life, to its joys and anxieties. The elder realized that in the family younger son more necessary, there it can bring a lot of benefit. Alexey himself feels that his brothers need him. And not only the brothers - the father, Grushenka, Katerina Ivanovna, the children - everyone needs him. Because only Alyosha has such a kind, loving and forgiving heart. In difficult times, everyone turns to him for help, and he willingly helps people find themselves in this complex and confusing world.
The most passionate, the most intemperate and the most hot-tempered of the Karamazovs - Mitya - is sincerely happy when he meets Alyosha and tells him his secret, “because the time has come.” Alexey thinks a lot about his brothers, and thinks about them with love. And he suffers because he cannot understand anything in “all this confusion.” He cannot understand who he needs to feel sorry for, what to wish for each of the brothers. He already knew a little about Mitya and tried to help him as much as possible. And Ivan was a mystery to Alyosha. But thanks to the brothers’ “acquaintance” over lunch at the tavern, Alyosha realized that Ivan also needed him, needed him to help him. The mystery began to gradually unravel. Ivan spoke frankly with Alyosha, he “wanted to get along” with him because he had no friends. Ivan entrusted his innermost thoughts and theories, which he had long and painfully nurtured in his heart.
Ivan does not accept the world created by God, because this world is unfair and cruel. He does not talk about the suffering of adults, because adults are not without sin. But why should children, pure and innocent of anything, suffer? After all, the tears of a child speak of the imperfection of this world. And Ivan does not accept the statement that children suffer for their future sins. He also does not understand the idea that evil on earth is necessary in order to better demonstrate good. Ivan doubts the omnipotence of God. In response to Alyosha that Christ can forgive everyone and for everyone, Ivan tells the legend of the Grand Inquisitor. And he himself goes further than the inquisitor. He does not believe in man, he denies not only the world. Ivan denies morality and proclaims the principle “everything is permitted.” And here he comes to a contradiction. He denied God, who creates harmony, for the “tear” of a child. And I came to the principle “everything is allowed,” which entails only tears and blood.
Ivan says that he will not refuse “everything is permitted.” Alyosha kisses him, to which Ivan remarks to him that this is literary theft. Alexey really repeats the act of Christ. And the conversation between the two brothers is similar to the scene of the conversation between Christ and the inquisitor. And here and there the “inquisitors” spoke, the “Christs” were silent. “And only at the end did they give an answer in their own spirit: I feel sorry for you, I forgive you and thereby set an example for you... I showed you that your initial attempt is false, that’s not how a person is, he is more complex and better. The inquisitors did not understand that God must be inside, not outside. By denying God, they thereby showed not that there is no God at all, but only that God is not in them.”
Ivan did not kill his father. But he was the first to formulate the idea of the admissibility and permissibility of parricide. Dmitry also did not kill Fyodor Pavlovich, but in a fit of hatred for his father he stood on the verge of crime. He killed Father Smerdyakov, but only by bringing to its logical conclusion the thoughts thrown by Ivan.
In Karamazov’s world, it is impossible to restore clear moral boundaries of crime: everyone is to blame for what happened, crime reigns in an atmosphere of mutual hatred and bitterness. Each person is to blame individually and collectively.
“Karamazovism,” according to Dostoevsky, is the Russian version of the disease of European humanity, the disease of civilization. The reasons for this are that civilized humanity has lost moral values. There is a crisis of humanism, which in Russia takes on frank and defiant forms. Renunciation of higher spiritual values leads a person to indifference, loneliness and hatred of life. Therefore, it was not for nothing that Dostoevsky made Alyosha Karamazov a person necessary for everyone. Helping people in their troubles and alleviating their torment and suffering, Alyosha goes through great school, he is more and more convinced of the idea that the most important thing in life is a feeling of love and forgiveness. Dostoevsky always faced the problem of overcoming pride, as the main source of disunity between people. He tries to resolve this theme in every novel. The Brothers Karamazov is no exception. Alexey renounced pride, which means he forgave the pride of others, forgave “his grief and his misfortune” and accepted forgiveness himself.
F.M. Dostoevsky believed that a person’s personality is immortal because it lives in others. But in order to become a person, you need to independently approach reality, have a meaning in life and focus not on “to have”, but on “to be”, and have high moral responsibility. It is difficult, but without it there is no personality.
"The Brothers Karamazov" - last novel Dostoevsky. Already from the beginning of the 1860s, after reading and comprehending the novels of Victor Hugo, primarily “Les Miserables” (1862), the Russian writer was occupied with the idea of creating an epic novel, built on the material of current reality, encyclopedic in its coverage of material.
Many topics raised and explored by Dostoevsky in the Diary of a Writer (the decomposition of the noble family, the economic crisis in Russia, the destruction of forests, the impoverishment of the Russian countryside, the crisis of the Orthodox faith and the scope of sectarianism, the state of the court and the legal profession, in a broader sense - the past, present and future of Russia ...), were subsequently reflected in his last work. The writer himself emphasized in one of his letters: “...preparing to write one very large novel, I decided to immerse myself specifically in the study - not of reality, in fact, I am already familiar with it, but of the details of the current one. One of the most important tasks in this current one, for me, for example, is the younger generation, and at the same time the modern Russian family, which, I have a presentiment of this, is far from being the same as it was just twenty years ago. But there is much more besides that...” (Kh. D. Alchevskoy, April 9, 1876). – the problem of the decomposition of the Russian family and the continuation of the problem of random families.
Dostoevsky filled the novel with burning issues of the current time - it contains many responses to the events of Russian social life in the late 1870s, polemics with works and articles that appeared on the pages of magazines at that time. But for all the topicality and “feuilletonny” of the content in “The Brothers Karamazov,” Dostoevsky the novelist’s unsurpassed skill in combining the momentary and the eternal, everyday life and philosophy, matter and spirit was most powerfully demonstrated. The main and global theme of the novel, as already mentioned, is the past, present and future of Russia. The destinies of the passing generation (Father Karamazov, Staff Captain Snegirev Miusov, Mrs. Khokhlakova, Polenov, Elder Zosima...) are, as it were, compared and somehow contrasted with the destinies of representatives from the “present” of Russia (the Karamazov brothers, Smerdyakov, Rakitin, Grushenka , Varvara Snegireva...), and representatives of a very young generation are already coming to the fore, the “future” of the country, who were probably destined to become the main characters of the second novel (Liza Khokhlakova Kolya Krasotkin, Kartashov, Smurov...)
The globality of the theme, the depth of the “world” questions posed in the novel contributed to the fact that it reflected the context of Russian and world history, literature, and philosophy even more widely than in Dostoevsky’s previous works. Hundreds of names and titles of works are mentioned on the pages of the novel and in the comments to it. The range of philosophical sources of The Brothers Karamazov is unusually wide - from Plato and Plotinus to N.F. Fedorov and Vl. S. Solovyova. But in this regard, it is especially worth highlighting the works of Russian religious thinkers (Nil Sorsky, Tikhon Zadonsky, etc.) who proclaimed the ideal of a whole person whose various spiritual powers and abilities are in unity and do not contradict each other, who has no struggle between thought and heart, theoretical reason and moral principle, which, according to Dostoevsky, is exactly the opposite of Western rationalism, which leads humanity to a dead end. And, of course, a particularly important role in the ideological and moral content of The Brothers Karamazov: the Gospel plays - the epigraph, which contains hope for the revival of Russia after a period of decline and decay, abundant quoting of Gospel texts, constant conversations and disputes between the heroes about Gospel parables...
The writer's attention is focused on the events that unfolded in a town with the telling name Skotoprigonyevsk, where the contradictions tearing apart the Russian nature and the national spirit itself are more obvious (compared to the capital). The Karamazov family, a variant of the “random family,” becomes an artistic model of all-Russian antinomies. This, on the one hand, is the destruction of patriarchal principles, the loss Orthodox foundations life, spiritual nihilism and immoralism, on the other hand, Christian asceticism, centripetal spiritual forces that determine the strength of blood and religious brotherhood, and finally, conciliarity.
During the trial, Mitya came to the idea of suffering and redemption. Innocently convicted, he accepts the sentence - hard labor! - with humility. - the problem of redemption through suffering is akin to Raskolnikov, although Dmitry is not guilty, unlike the latter.
The problem of people throwing themselves between belief in immortality and atheism, the search for God in everyday world events, will there be harmony after suffering, is this harmony worth such suffering? If there is no immortality, then it means you can create everything without turning around. Ivan’s reasoning is as follows: if God allows the suffering of innocent, absolutely sinless creatures, then either God is unjust, unkind, or not omnipotent. And he refuses the highest harmony established in the world finale: “It is not worth the tear of even one... tortured child.” But, “returning his ticket” to the Kingdom of Heaven, having become disillusioned with the highest justice, Ivan makes a fatal, essentially illogical conclusion: “Everything is permitted.”
And again, as in the writer’s previous novels, freedom of thought, not rooted in morality and faith, turns into self-will of word and deed. Ivan submits a criminal idea - Smerdyakov carries it out. Both are equally parricides.
This is the state of life in The Brothers Karamazov. Carnal instincts, the cynicism and foolishness of Fyodor Pavlovich, Karamazov’s “unrestrained” Mitenka, Ivan’s ideological rebellion, Grushenka’s “infernal” beauty - everything went beyond ordinary boundaries, dramatically strained, revealing in itself the possibility and necessity of retribution for sin, cleansing suffering, faith in rationality being.
But in order for the possibility of something better to be realized, existing reality must be exhausted to the end, giving all of itself to a new stage of development. This dialectic in the novel is formulated and emphasized by the epigraph - one of the deepest gospel metaphors, linking into an existential whole decomposition, death with the conception of a new life and its future fruits. Without the decomposition and dying of “Karamazovism” its own powerful forces will not be released, will not grow, will not bear the fruits of goodness and truth.
Behind the literary devices, behind the psychological grotesqueries of “The Karamazovs,” there are true facts of an era marked by the degeneration of the nobility, the moral degradation of the individual, an epidemic of criminal offenses and suicides, and unprecedented ideological confusion.
Smerdyakov kills his father, Karamazov, who gave birth to him: the circle of decomposition is thus closed. But the image of Smerdyakov in the novel does not end there. In it, Dostoevsky prophetically points to the growing breed of “escheat” people, cut off from national and universal roots, deprived not only of faith, convictions, heartfelt affections, but also the very ability and need to have them. The Smerdyakovs will accept and implement any ideas and slogans that give rise to their low and evil nature, they will become “advanced meat” (as Ivan calls him) in any matter of social unrest and destruction undertaken by some next Verkhovensky (or Lenin).
The problem of perception of beauty, what role does it have in life? In the eldest son, Dmitry, spirit and flesh are uncontrollably directed towards beauty - towards the crown and main secret of the universe. But beauty here, unlike in The Idiot, appears to the heroes as a deeply dual phenomenon. And Dmitry is struck by this duality and experiences it as an internal fracture, as a painful mental “strain.” His life is a tossing between two ideals, finally choosing one, finding a “moral Center”, without which the powerful elements of life turn into Karamazovism. Man embodies both sides of beauty: “He begins with the ideal of the Madonna, and ends with the ideal of Sodom. It’s even more terrible for those who, already with the ideal of Sodom in their souls, do not deny the ideal of the Madonna.” “Even too broad” is a person whose nature accommodates both ideals, and in this “broadness”, without a single and absolute measure of the truly beautiful, he is doomed to tragic duality, to internal chaos - like Svidrigailov, Stavrogin, Versilov, Dmitry Karamazov. But Karamazov’s excess of strength wants to embrace and survive everything. Dmitry, in frenzied outbursts of feelings and desires, crosses all boundaries - only a miracle, the “bright spirit” saved him at the last moment from the murder of his father.
The problem of legal proceedings, soulless and factual. The circumstances of the crime lead the court to believe that Dmitry is the killer. The investigation and trial, depicted by the writer in critical tones, are capable of recreating only the rough mechanics of material facts, and the truth of the human soul, which in its last struggle overcame evil within itself, is inaccessible to them.
The problem of atonement for the sins of entire generations. Mitya is sentenced to hard labor, the path of suffering opens before him; already begun by the “walk of the soul through the ordeal” of inquiry and trial. He is by no means imbued with obedience and humility on the threshold of a new life: in him a man is resurrected, who in all the fullness of his former strength rebelled against the “Sodomite ideal”, against evil not only in himself, but also in the world. Before his arrest, Mitya has a prophetic, meaningful dream: he is driving along the sad steppe and sees among the fire victims a mother with a crying “child” and feels “that he wants to do something for everyone so that the child does not cry anymore, and the black withered woman does not cry.” mother and child, so that no one will have tears at all from this moment and so that now, now, now, without delay and in spite of everything, with all the unrestraint of Karamazov.”
Mitya longs to rid the world of these tears, because he realizes that he, too, is guilty of them - the nobleman Karamazov, who humiliated and insulted, and raised his hand against his father. To accept punishment for an imperfect murder means to atone for this guilt, to stop the fall of a person who has reached the “edge”, and to prevent final decomposition.
Karamazov's nature in Mitya frantically strives to live and accepts suffering in order to be cleansed and reborn to a different life. In Grushenka, Mitya now sees a “new calling light”, sees beauty not “infernal”, but good and saving.
The name of the father of the Karamazov family, Fyodor Pavlovich, is associated with a special phenomenon of Russian life, which received the definition of “Karamazovism”, which characterizes national-psychological vices like “Khlestakovism”, “Oblomovism”, etc. Karamazovism is usually interpreted as the unrestrainedness of sensual desires: voluptuousness, the itch for profit, primitive self-will, which is what distinguishes Fyodor Pavlovich. But this phenomenon is more complex and dangerous: “Karamazovism” is moral sensuality, that is, outright shamelessness, open defense of the “right to dishonor,” cynical ridicule of everything sublime and spiritual. Rampant immorality is presented in the novel as a corruption of the Russian national spirit in an era of mass loss highest ideals. Damage because, according to Dostoevsky, a strong need for faith has always lived in Russian people, noticeable here even in the father of the family, with all his lack of Christians.
The four Karamazov brothers represent, according to Dostoevsky, the four most characteristic types of moral consciousness and, at the same time, four types of spiritual activity, separately depicted in the writer’s previous novels. Ivan is a theorist and atheist - a brave analyst of Genesis. Smerdyakov is a practical businessman who uses Ivan’s theory to justify his future crime. Dmitry is “a complete fanatic”, a man of unbridled passions, he seeks support in the “sources of his heart”, in human nature. Alexey is an “organically moral” type, with an ideal, and therefore a reliable position in life. He is “the future generation, living force, new people.”
The image of Dmitry Karamazov is associated with the problem of the moral and religious revival of man - the main one in the novel. This hero is presented as an irrepressible personality, in no way knowing the measures, socially dangerous. At the same time, and most of all, from Dostoevsky’s point of view, this is the trembling Russian soul, struck by its own disintegration, eager to “collect” itself as a person. Dmitry sees his fall as a manifestation common law life - ethical duality modern man, but this consciousness does not serve as an excuse for him, does not console him, but, on the contrary, torments him, causes pain and despair: “Moreover, I cannot bear that another person, even higher in heart and with a lofty mind, begins with the ideal of the Madonna, and ends the ideal of Sodom. It is even more terrible for someone who, already with the ideal of Sodom in his soul, does not deny the ideal of the Madonna, and his heart truly burns from it, truly burns, as in his young, blameless years. No, the man is wide, too wide, I would narrow him down.” Mitya, unlike his father and Smerdyakov, does not confuse good and evil in the rating system, does not pass off black as white, but in his actions, committed under the influence of spontaneous impulses, he does not always distinguish between them. He recognizes the value of every person, but he can offend anyone, as, for example, Captain Snegirev, whom he publicly pulled for his “loofah” beard. In a hero, moral consciousness rarely precedes actions; more often it appears “after the fact,” like remorse. This is the “Russian broad nature” - a type that is repeatedly varied by the writer. In Mitya, unconscious religious feeling is emphasized. This is a native Russian man of the 19th century (“root man,” as Dostoevsky himself called such people): his concepts of the world order are based precisely on faith in God, and faith lives in the blood.
Mitya is reborn through excruciating suffering - it is no coincidence that the stages of moral upheavals he experiences are defined as ordeals of the soul. Dmitry's way of understanding the world is directly opposite to the wisdom of Ivan, who is trying to comprehend the world rationalistically.
6) The fifth book of the novel “Pro and Contra” is the culmination of the conflict of ideas in the novel. The fifth book is centered on “The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor.” Its plot is based on the fictitious coming of Christ to medieval Italy, where the Catholic Inquisition was rampant. The Sicilian inquisitor is ready to send the Son of God, the Teacher, to the stake, so long as he does not interfere with the preaching of humanism and freedom to implement the Teaching, interpreted in his own way by the inquisitor, in ways incompatible with the principles of the Teacher himself. The arguments in some ways repeat the arguments of Raskolnikov (“Crime and Punishment”) and Shigalev (“Demons”): people, insignificant by their very human nature, cannot cope with freedom. They joyfully gave up freedom in exchange for bread, in exchange for bridles. Freedom is taken away from people for their happiness. The Inquisitor, according to Ivan Karamazov, is sure of this; he cares about humanity in his own way. Christ comes from a completely different, high understanding of man. He kisses the lifeless lips of the warlike old man, probably seeing in him the most lost sheep of his flock.
Alyosha senses the dishonesty of the inquisitor, who uses the name of Christ to achieve his goals. Ivan, comparing two points of view on a person, is inclined to the inquisitorial one. He not only does not believe in people, but also denies the world itself, created by God.
7) Ivan’s reasoning is as follows: if God allows the suffering of innocent, absolutely sinless creatures, then either God is unjust, unkind or not omnipotent. And he refuses the highest harmony established in the world finale: “It’s not worth even one tear... just a tortured child.” But returning his ticket to the Kingdom of Heaven, having become disillusioned with the highest justice, Ivan makes a fatal conclusion: “Everything is permitted.”
And again, as in the writer’s previous novels, freedom of thought, not rooted in morality, turns into self-will of word and deed. Ivan submits a criminal idea - Smerdyakov carries it out.
Ivan Karamazov’s rebellion is preceded by the chapter “Believing Women” from the second book of the novel, in which Elder Zosima managed to calm and spiritually strengthen a young woman who had lost her baby. It is known that the words of Zosima were recorded by Dostoevsky from the words of the Optina elder Ambrose, whom the writer visited after the death of his young son.
Elder Zosima repeatedly emphasizes that you can transform the world around you only through the recognition of your personal responsibility and guilt. He calls on everyone to “realize yourself guilty before everyone.” The author emphasizes the validity of this idea using the example of the murder of Fyodor Karamazov. Although Smerdyakov committed this crime, Ivan Karamazov and Dmitry Karamazov consider themselves guilty. And even the meek and peace-loving Alexei Karamazov considers himself guilty of not fulfilling the order of his mentor on the fateful day of the murder and postponing the meeting with Dmitry Karamazov, not saving him from difficult trials.
8) The image of Alyosha Karamazov’s third brother is the writer’s last experience in solving the problem of a “positively beautiful person.” This is the type of new Russian ascetic, religious truth-seeker, who is characterized by Christian love for people, constantly manifested in his life practice, in the active good he does and in his readiness for self-sacrifice. For the first time in Russian literature, a positive hero appears in the cassock of a monastic novice. At the same time, Dostoevsky showed the fundamental difference between a patriot-ascetic and a fighter for social rights. The justification for the character of Alexei Karamazov in the very first chapters of the novel is given according to the principle of “by contradiction”: he is not at all like the Hero. For the traditional heroes of Russian literature, their conscious life began with a sharply critical attitude towards their immediate environment, with an early condemnation of their environment or an internal separation from it, opposing themselves to it - this is even among gentle, loving feminine natures– from Tatiana Larina (“Eugene Onegin”) and Lisa Kalitina (“ Noble Nest"). Alyosha implements in life the instructions of his spiritual leader, Elder Zosima, who believed that every person should realize that he is the worst of people. Indicative in this regard is the contrast of the chapter “Both Together” from the third book of the novel to the chapter “Onion” from the fifth book. In the chapter Onion, Alyosha succeeds in what Katerina Ivanovna failed in the chapter “Both Together”: he evoked compassion, empathy and repentance from Grushenka. Katerina Ivanovna's generosity is full of self-indulgence, her whole speech is full of a sense of superiority over her rival, and this irritates Grushenka, who bitterly rejects Katerina Ivanovna's advances. Alyosha Karamazov does not show pity towards Grushenka, he managed to find in her certain traits of nobility and places himself below Grushenka. He is able to get along with his father, who is mired in voluptuousness, despite his rejection of debauchery. The young man does not assign evil to a person’s social or educational status (he is angry because he is a serf owner or a nihilist), as did the hero of Russian literature, brought up in the Enlightenment traditions.
Dostoevsky considered Alexei Karamazov the first hero of his book - he wrote about this in the introduction to the novel, but main book there was supposed to be a second volume about him, but it remained unwritten. The testimony of A.S. Suvorin about the writer’s intention is known: “He wanted to take him (Alyosha) through the monastery and make him a revolutionary. He would have committed a political crime. He would have been executed. He would search for the truth, and in this search, naturally, he would become a revolutionary.” This message raises serious doubts. Alexey is too far from a revolutionary, moreover, he is decisively opposed to him. The novel outlines another perspective of Alyosha’s activities: here he, like Christ, guides his disciples - twelve teenage boys (by association with the twelve apostles of Christ) to life, true to ideals Christian love and brotherly love
9) Key Feature Dostoevsky's novel "The Brothers Karamazov" - polyphonism discovered by M.M. Bakhtin - multiplicity of subjects of consciousness, independence of voices not reduced to one ideological denominator; “independence” of heroes in relation to the author. Bakhtin convincingly argued that the narrative structure of a polyphonic novel makes it possible to make the hero’s word about himself and about the world as full-fledged as the author’s word, to present it in all its completeness and objectivity. The scientist stated the fundamental ideological incompleteness of Dostoevsky’s novel, which asserted that “nothing final has happened in the world yet, the last word the world has not yet been spoken about, the world is open and free, everything is still ahead and will always be ahead...” However, the polyphonism of Dostoevsky’s artistic thinking does not mean the elimination of the last will of the author-creator, realized both in the plan and in the results of everything he created. But in the poetic structure of a polyphonic novel author's position and the assessment, unlike a monologue novel, is expressed not directly, but indirectly, through a specific plot-compositional structure, through the system of parallel and contrasting rows and oppositions presented by the author.
“The task of art is not the accidents of everyday life, but their general idea, vigilantly guessed and correctly removed from the diversity of homogeneous life phenomena,” wrote Dostoevsky. By organizing the ideological communication of his characters, allowing them to open up to the end, the writer realizes a new artistic vision of life human consciousness and helps expand the consciousness of readers, the formation of their spiritual independence.
|
Other materials on the works of Dostoevsky F.M.
|
The years of “brotherly communication” with all of Russia (as Dostoevsky himself called the publication of his “Diary”) gave a lot to both readers and the author. Enriched by this experience, he began to create his last and greatest novel, The Brothers Karamazov (1879-1880). Its action takes place in the small provincial town of Skotoprigonyevsk, in which all the main human types seem to be united and concentrated, the most important problems then Russia.
At the center of the novel is the fate of the family of landowner Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov. A cynical and depraved old man, cunning and selfish, has three sons. The eldest, a retired officer Dmitry, the middle one - the intellectual and philosopher Ivan and the youngest - Alyosha. There is also a servant - footman Pavel Smerdyakov, who, according to rumor, is also the illegitimate son of the old man Karamazov.
The intrigue initially revolves around the conflict between Mitya, passionately in love with the local beauty Grushenka Svetlova, and Fyodor Pavlovich, who decided in his old age to marry this Grushenka; He intends to buy her favor for three thousand, reserved for her in a special package. But Dmitry is ready to prevent this by any means. Meanwhile, something brought Smerdyakov together with Ivan Karamazov, and he (as we learn later) expounds to the stupid lackey his “advanced” theories brought from the capital.
The essence of these theories boils down to the following: it is not given to a person to know whether God exists or not, because God does not show His participation in the affairs of people in any way: the world lives in evil, suffering, wars, illnesses, and torment of innocent children are multiplying. If He does not exist, then for strong in spirit and the person who realizes this “everything is permitted.” After all, all systems of morality and ethics that emerged from religious ideas about the divinely ordered universe lose their meaning. One can imagine with what delight young Smerdyakov listened to all this, to whom the “capital thing,” the brilliant and intelligent Ivan, condescended. Ivan’s ambition was also flattered by such power over the human soul (though he verbally despised Smerdyakov).
The conflict between Fyodor Pavlovich and Dmitry is complicated by the fact that Dmitry desperately needs money; Meanwhile, the father, according to Mitya Karamazov, owes him just three thousand for his due share of the inheritance, but refuses to give them back. Dmitry learned from Smerdyakov that old man Karamazov had put aside these three thousand for Grushenka! Mad with jealousy, he threatens to kill his father.
The situation is heating up to the limit. Terribly concerned about this, the youngest, Alyosha, consults with Ivan on how to prevent the murder. To which Ivan, with poorly hidden hatred, makes it clear to him that such an outcome would suit him quite well: “one reptile will eat another reptile, and both of them will go there.” In addition, there are two more circumstances that Ivan does not want to admit to himself. If Dmitry kills his father, he will be deprived of all rights, and then the inheritance will have to be divided not into three, but into two, and Mitya’s “official” bride Katerina Ivanovna will become free - Ivan has been secretly in love with her for a long time...
The only one who interests him in the family is brother Alyosha, who went to a monastery as a novice and became a student of the enlightened elder Zosima. His brother's kindness and openness cannot leave Ivan indifferent; in addition, he, not very confident in the correctness of his “theories,” is worried about Alyosha’s persistent and sincere faith. He makes an attempt to convert Alyosha to his faith. Their conversation, in which many world problems are discussed, takes place in a small tavern in Skotoprigonyevo, to the exclamations of drunks and waiters, over a plate of fish soup - Dostoevsky knew how to combine scales.
“Children, why are they suffering,” asks Ivan. And how can all this be understood and justified? Is it possible to accept such “divine” harmony that would be paid for by at least one tear of one child? In conclusion, Ivan tells Alyosha how a certain general, in front of his mother’s eyes, hounded her son with dogs just because he hit his favorite hunting dog’s paw with a stone. “Well... what is it? Shoot? To satisfy moral sense shoot? Speak, Alyoshka!” - “Shoot!” - Alyosha answers. Ivan triumphs: this is the answer he managed to get from the future monk! But Alyosha, only momentarily succumbing to Ivan’s pressure, immediately returns to solid ground. If Christ, Himself being absolutely sinless and therefore having the right to condemn people, nevertheless forgave them and endured terrifying torment for their sake, then how do we, sinners, have the right not to forgive sinners just like ourselves? The world does not stand on a child's tear; the cornerstone on which the world stands is Christ, and by this everything is determined.
But Ivan was waiting for such an answer and prepared for Alyosha the legend he had once composed about the Grand Inquisitor. It tells how in the 15th century, at a time when the Inquisition was rampant in Spain, burning heretics every day, Christ came to earth again. But suddenly the all-powerful Grand Inquisitor appears. He orders the guards to seize Christ and take Him to the cell. In the evening, the inquisitor comes to the Prisoner and accuses Him of overestimating the man. But people, says the inquisitor, do not need freedom, it is painful for them, because freedom means choice, means responsibility. Christ’s “mistake” was corrected by a small group of chosen people led by the Grand Inquisitor. Having taken the right to decide and responsibility upon themselves, they left everyone else only the possibility of slavish submission. Which means a calm and happy existence. And now, when everything has already been achieved, Christ, with his coming, can destroy this system. Therefore, again, in the name of the happiness of people, it is necessary to execute Him again. Christ does not answer anything to this - He only, going up to the old inquisitor, quietly kisses him. The shocked inquisitor opens the cell door and says to Christ: “Go and don’t come again.” Christ leaves, and the inquisitor remains in the cell in deep thought.
Ivan thinks that with his poem he is striking a blow at the Christian idea, proving that people do not need the freedom given by Christ. But Alyosha reacts completely differently: “...your poem is praise to Jesus, and not blasphemy... as you wanted.” Moreover - and Ivan did not take this into account - the freedom given to man by God denies strict dependence: sin is punishment, a good deed is a reward. After all, it would be reminiscent of slave training. But along with freedom, a person also gains responsibility, which he bears for the suffering and destruction caused to himself and loved ones, including children.
This is the main ideological system of the novel, which in terms of plot is constructed very complexly, with virtuoso skill. The reader intensely follows the fate of the heroes, each of whom the author tests to the breaking point. Someone cannot stand it - like, for example, Ivan, who with his theories, wittingly or unwittingly, seduced Smerdyakov (he kills Fyodor Pavlovich and commits suicide). Ivan is going crazy. Someone, on the contrary, takes the blow upon himself. Thus, the innocent Mitya goes to Siberia on a false charge of parricide, in order to save his soul. Moreover, all three brothers are to blame for the death of their father, albeit indirectly.
The wise Alyosha, whom Elder Zosima blessed to go into the “world”, live and act outside the monastery, warns the impetuous Mitya: you need to calculate your spiritual strength, will it be enough to endure all these years of hard labor with the same mood? And if not, maybe it’s better to agree to an escape organized by friends? We don't know how this issue will be resolved.
But in parallel with the tragedy in the Karamazov family, another plot develops, which at the end of the book becomes the main one, crowding out all other lines - about the boy Ilyusha. At one time, Mitya, having learned that the retired captain Snegirev, the head of a large family living in poverty, had agreed to help Fyodor Pavlovich in an intrigue against him, Mitya, for money, publicly beat the captain. This was seen by the captain’s little son Ilyushechka, which was a terrible shock for the boy (who was already sick).
Ilyusha is dying. But his death served as a cleansing shock for the rest of the boys, his classmates, and on the day of Ilyusha’s funeral, they, gathered around Alyosha Karamazov, vow to serve good throughout their future lives. Of course, everyone has their own life ahead and it will not always be possible to be faithful to a childhood oath. But, as Dostoevsky himself wrote, one or two bright and bright impressions taken from childhood can save a person throughout his life.
Dostoevsky intended to show Alyosha's activities in the world in the second volume, but did not have time to write it. However, the first, completed part of the novel still causes fierce debate among readers and scientists.
