TMoP: Chapter 5 pgs 43 - 48

[Bekah]

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[page 43 - 44  - Maximov says D. is free to go - his issues with his  
gambling creditors are his own problem,  and he cannot have Pavel's  
papers.  D.:  "Nechaev is not a police matter.  Ultimately Nechaev is  
not a matter for the authorities at all, at least for the secular  
authorities."

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[page 44 - D.  says that  Nechaevism  is not an idea but the  
repudiation of ideas.  "It is a spirit and Nechaev himself is not its  
embodiment but its host or rather, he is under possession by it."  ]

D.  tries to visualize Nechaev and says that the name of the spirit  
inhabiting Nechaev is "Baal."  ]

* Title reference  - T "Master" oP -  in Hebrew Baal refers to Lord  
or  "Master."

Maximov is irritated by D's constant reference to ideas,  "Is it even  
practical to talk about ideas going about in the land, as if ideas  
had arms and legs?  Will such talk assist us in our labours? Will it  
assist Russia?"

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[page 45 - Maximov talks about the difference in children of the day  
-  think they're immortal"  "like fighing demons,"   "I am a father  
myself."   "It's in their blood... to wish us ill, our generation." ]

* And Coetzee,  as I noted above somewhere,  writes frequently about  
parent/child relationships and generational divide in his older and  
newer works

[page 45 and then Maximov makes reference to D's own father. ]
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~karamazo/bio01.html
(excellent mini-biography - 10+ pages)

Dostoevsky's father was a drunk and a womanizer,  had emotional  
problems,  and was killed, probably by angry peasants.  Dostoevsky  
was 17 at the time.

Maximov goes on to suggest that the current difficulties are not new  
- "...just the old matter of fathers and sons after all, such as we  
have always had, only deadlier in this particular generation..."     
and goes on to mention the Decemberists and the "men of '49."

** Decemberists were members of a St. Petersburg revolt which took  
place in December of 1825
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decembrist_revolt

**  "...the men of '49"  is Maximov's  viscous little allusion to the  
Petrashevsky Circle to  Dostoevsky belonged and which caused the  
"execution" and exile in Siberia in 1849.  The group was a Western  
oriented bunch of intellectuals who were opposed to Tsarist rule and  
the institution of serfdom.   Petrashevsky was the leader.  Maximov  
is asking if Dostoevsky grew up

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrashevsky_Circle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Petrashevsky  (interesting guy)


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[ Page 46 - Dostoevsky furiously rebuts Maximov's insinuations.    
"They were certainly not men of blood. Petrashevsky - ... from the  
outset denounced the kind of Jesuitism that excuses the means in the  
name of the end."  ]

**  "The ends justify the means" is exactly what Nechaev is about.    
According to the Nechaev -Bakunin Catechism, nothing was unacceptable  
as long as the revolutionary furthered his goal.
http://subversivevision.wordpress.com/2007/08/15/bakunin-and-nechaev- 
by-paul-avrich/
http://allrussias.com/tsarist_russia/revmov_9.asp
(good articles)

  Dostoevsky and Jesuits -  Dostoevsky was horrified,  later to the  
point of obsession,  by the Jesuits who, in his mind,  would stoop to  
whatever it took to convert souls.   (Google Books - pg 8)  http:// 
tinyurl.com/5v5qvv

In  The Brothers Karamazov the idea that "(without God) everything is  
permitted" (in various translations) is a theme.  It comes up  
repeatedly.

The question remains,  "...why do intelligent young men fall under  
the sway of evildoers?"

[page 46:   And D. accuses Maximov of holding himself at a distance,  
erecting a barrier of ridicule..." to the reading material. ]

*  discussed in prior pages - Maximov cannot open himself to the  
text; he has an agenda and has to find the nihilists,  Nechaev.

  ***
[ page 47: - Dostoevsky gets angry,  "... reading is being the arm  
and being the axe and being the skull, reading is giving yourself up,  
not holding yourself at a distance jeering."  ]

*  Not sure about the mention of axe there - that's a "People's"  
revolutionary symbol - see above, page 41.  - Is D. revealing his old  
"revolutionary" impulses through the written word?

[ page 47:   Maximov accuses D of being in a fever.   Dostoevsky:  
"The papers you are holding on to so jealously may as well be written  
in Aramaic for all the good they will do you." ]

*  Aramaic?  A Biblical allusion - but why?  Dostoevsky was pretty  
much  Russian Orthodox in religion - I suppose he could be calling  
Maximov an atheist?

***

[page 48 - Dostoevsky returns to the ante-room of the police station  
and is overwhelmed by the smell of paint. ]

* a seizure? or as some speculate,  the onset of a creative impulse  
which will culminate in a book or something.)

***



Bek