TMoP, Chapter 20, The End

[Mark Kohut]

Lawrence,

I do not think D's thoughts morphing into Stavrogin too glib, but right on. (If that seems 'too easy' in the context of the book, then that is a lit crit judegment about the book, imho)

I have sorta expressed myself about this in earlier postings. I think that Coetzee's achievement/originality in TMoP is to offer a vision of how a vision of evil can enter a writers' work. D. herein is almost a naive,--an innocent, once-born writer BEFORE this period in his life, Coetzee might be implying THEN he no longer is. THEN, his knowledge of evil is visceral AND IS (PART OF ) HIM. 

Stavrogin's destruction via statutory rape and then emotional/literal abandonment/distance when the girl was despairing enough to (finally) commit suicide was Dostoevsky's touchstone vision of pure evil....(see Grand Inquisitor in "Boris K"., see diaries for "Life of a Great Sinner"). This horrible chapter was judged too offensive to appear in the original edition of The Demons by the printer/publisher. They expressed the societal
feelings, the feelings embodied in ways by Maximov in TMoP. 

Coetzee presents us with a D. different from Dostoevsky. This difference is mainly in having to deal with the cosmic evil of his stepson's death and why, leading him to an adulterous 'occasion of sin" to which he succumbs. A moral evil. 

Throughout D.'s emotional perturbances in TMoP, we have seen him "allowing' as it were, evil into his soul/mind. THIS is how he is able
to grasp Nechaev's and especially Stavrogin's evil--he contains it---and objectify it in the creation of "The Demons". (I still cannot find that quote about having to know evil to write it..Shakespeare, I think, but here is a longer semi-relevant quote found in a paper/essay online:“And I just realized [that] something that I always wanted to deny is how evil evil can be.”---firefighter at WTC after 9/11

"The firefighter’s realization underscores the enormous phenomenological distance between encountering evil at a safe cognitive and emotional remove, and confronting evil when it invades the individualized space of personal experience and indelibly marks the human psyche. This phenomenological distance tends to bifurcate discursive approaches to the problem of evil. On the one hand, narrative approaches often occupy the personalized space of characters grappling with evil (in, say, a Dostoevsky novel or, more recently, a play like Margaret Edson’s Wit). Such narratives eliminate that phenomenological distance and give representation to concrete, particularized experiences of suffering; evil rushes in upon the reader as the narrative unfolds. Philosophical approaches, on the other hand, often operate from a de-individualized vantage point that, if successful, will render universally binding conclusions. In order to do so, such approaches necessarily
 maintain that phenomenological distance, combating the problem of evil from an abstract, de-particularized perspective; concrete instances of evil are held at bay while the theodicy-maker squares off against the universal problem of evil"
)

I think TMoP is Coetzee's (largely) brilliant presentation of the "elimination of that phonomenological distance" while giving embodiment
to "concrete, particularized experiences of suffering". Evil does rush in upon the reader as the narative of TMoP ends....

C's anger at the death of his own son. C's steady refusal to allow any belief in terrorism (as ever justified) into his beliefs. C. showing us how such can enter--become part of-- a great writer

 Yet, yet, resonantly, he presents Dostoevsky's similar refusal as partly keeping such unjustified beliefs alive..??...presenting the 'excitement' the romanticism of such beliefs....and the seemingly hopeless situations in which the beliefs operate.....

One of C's resonances might be: when D.--or I--write about evil, we are partaking of it and keeping it, at least partly, alive. ..?? Would Nechaev's group have been so influential in history--Lenin, others---if Dostoevsky had NOT written The Demons???

Is more Coetzeean resonance. 

I'm easy. I loved it (finding only a few squeaking strainings). Thanks to all who wanted to read it in the group.


--- On Wed, 11/26/08, Lawrence Bryan <lebryan at speakeasy.net> wrote:

> From: Lawrence Bryan <lebryan at speakeasy.net>
> Subject: TMoP, Chapter 20, The End
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Wednesday, November 26, 2008, 5:55 PM
> Stavrogin, the last chapter, is a difficult one for me. The
> title is the name of the main character in a novel,
> "Devils", the fictional D has not yet written, but
> which Dostoyevsky did write shortly after the time period in
> TMoP. At first glance one sees D's thoughts on Nechaev
> morphing into the fictional Stavrogin, but this seems all
> too glib.
> 
> The author Coetzee is the creator of the fictional D
> writing as though he is the real Dostoyevsky writing about
> the real Nechaev in the fictional character Stavrogin who
> doesn't appear at all in Coetzee except as a chapter
> title.
> 
> "Nothing he says is true, nothing is false, nothing is
> to be trusted, nothing to be dismissed." . . .
> "Perversion: everything and everyone to be turned to
> another use, to be gripped to him and fall with him."
> (p. 235)
> 
> As Petersburg burns, D sits at his writing desk trying to
> start to write. He wrestles with ideas, what to write, a
> stream of consciousness, follows: God, blasphemy, Pavel,
> fathers and sons at war with each other, God as the father
> to D who is father to Pavel and also father to what D
> writes, until finally, he starts to write.
> 
> I can continue to summarize Coetzee's last chapter, but
> for me it is a mystery which a summary will not unravel.
> 
> Perhaps someone else here can shed more light on this
> ending.
> 
> In doing a bit of research I came across the following and
> copied the last paragraph.
> 
> Title: Incriminating documents: Nechaev and Dostoevsky in
> J.M. Coetzee's 'The Master of Petersburg.'
> (Sergei Nechaev, Fyodor Dostoevsky)
> Author: Margaret Scanlan
> Publication: Philological Quarterly (Refereed)
> Date: September 22, 1997
> Publisher: University of Iowa
> Volume: v76    Issue: n4    Page: p463(15)
> 
> 
> 
> The violence Coetzee's Dostoevsky recognizes in
> himself, and in terms of which he understands the process of
> artistic creation as plagiarism, appropriation, and
> perversion, is always visible in this novel, not least in
> the contrast between this fictional character and what we
> know about his historical counterpart. In real life, Pavel
> Isaev did not die young, and his stepfather's generosity
> to him through his own years of poverty is one of his most
> redeeming qualities. There is, apparently, little reason to
> believe the old gossip about Dostoevsky and child
> prostitutes, and it is patently unfair to conflate an author
> with his own characters as Coetzee does when, omitting
> references to Dostoevsky's career as the editor of an
> influential journal or to his numerous family, he makes him
> out to be as febrile and isolated as Raskolnikov. But this
> unfairness, this incompatibility between the text of history
> and the text of fiction, is of course Coetzee's point.
> He is not out to "correct" the historical record,
> replacing it with a more accurate version; in the best
> postmodern way, he shows us the gaps and distortions in the
> received version without trying to conceal the problems of
> his own. But Coetzee shares little of the often alleged
> playfulness of the deconstructive view. His Dostoevsky
> slinks off in the night, meditating on the silence of God,
> which persists in spite of the betrayals by which he had
> tried to end it. He is more than a little stagy and
> melodramatic, this guilt-ridden genius, but he is also
> powerful image of the failure of a romantic view of
> literature, a great writer who can finally neither transcend
> history nor shape it to his liking.
> 
> Lawrence, glad to go on to something else.