TMOP: Chapter 8 - Ivanov

[Bekah]

Last host-post from me:


Chapter 8 - Ivanov

This is a really difficult chapter with the pronouns messing with an  
already complex message.  Ambiguous or unclear or something (not to  
disparage ambiguous - there are times when it adds a certain element  
of the unknown or the idea that both (or more)  meanings could be true.


[ Page 79  D. goes to sleep seeking Pavel but is disturbed by a voice  
calling to him.  He goes out and finds it is a dog. ]

As I mentioned earlier,  dogs are important in Coetzee and I think  
this one is very symbolic.


[ Page 80  * The dog is not Pavel and it continues to howl.   D.  
knows he  must not go back to bed because  his son will be like a  
"thief in the night" so D.  must expect what he does not expect.   
(But expecting it could nullify it.)

*   "like a thief in the night"  is a Biblical phrase,  2 Peter  
3:10,  1 Thesselonians 5:2  generally simply means someone (Christ)  
will arrive without any announcement - unexpectedly -   D. was very  
religious so his thinking in Biblical terms is very realistic.


[  D. finds the dog tied and tangled with chain to a drainpipe.  It  
whines.]

The dog is trapped like  Coetzee and Dostoevsky are in their writing  
(tied to cultural barriers and getting twisted around their own  
thinking - Coetzee writes about the barriers of South African  
apartheid  a fair bit.)  Or the dog may be trapped like Pavel is in  
death.  - Both?

***************
[ Page 81    The dog is terrified. D. tickles it.  "Is this what I  
will be doing for the rest of my days, he wonders: peering into the  
eyes of dogs and beggars?"   D. untangles the dog, pets him and  
leaves him chained there.   He wonders about the owners - and thinks  
that Pavel should have his own death,  that D. has no right to use it  
as the occasion of his reformation. ]

* Love that line and thought

[  But he's kidding himself - "Pavel's death will always be his   
death."  ]

Pavel's death is D.'s death.

[  " 'Who will save the baby?' he seems to hear within him, plaintive  
words that come from he does not know where, in a peasant's singsong  
voice." ]

And "peasant voices,"  for Dostoevsky, are often authentic voices,   
especially when they are used in religion or religious themes - life  
and death. ]


[  D. carries Pavel like a dying baby, blue with cold. ]

* So is it,  "Who will save Pavel?"  Or who will save Sophia, his  
infant daughter who probably died only a few months prior to this -  
if Dostoevsky's chronology is followed.

[ " ' Raise up that last thing and cherish it.'  D. thinks this but  
doesn't know if the words come from Pavel or not.   ]

  *   "The least thing" could be Biblical again:   Matthew 25: 40 -  
"And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it  
to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’     
Sounds about right for Dostoevsky in his religious mind.

So who went out to answer the dog's call?   Pavel in D's body?  Have  
we strayed into the occult here?

****************
[ Page 82   If Pavel did utter those words,  should he go back and  
release the dog?   Or is it the beggar who is least and needs to be  
released?  He feels totally hopeless but he knows he will never again  
go out in the night to answer a dog's call.   "I am I," he thinks  
despairingly.

[ D.  tries to argue that the dog is not his son but he loses -  
"Pavel will not be saved till he has freed the dog and brought it  
into his bed, brought the least thing, the beggarmen and the  
beggarwomen too, and much else he does not yet know of..."

* This seems like some kind of religious contract which D. is trying  
to bargain with God.    Bargaining is part of the grief process.  So  
is guilt - I think  D. feels very, very guilty for the way  he  
neglected Pavel and was harsh on him.

[  D. says he seeks the truth but realizes that the truth has been  
pouring down on him and he is drowning in it yet he wants more -  
reverse and reverse the reversal - a Jesuitical trick?]
*  This one is more like the Epilogue of The Brothers Karamazov when  
Alyosha has to admit that his thinking about escape and forgiveness  
is like the lie becoming the truth - Jesuitical conundrums and  
equivocation - tricks.

* D. has twisted himself around his tether just like the dog.



[ D. is standing in the street - his hands smell like dog, his tears  
like salt. "Salt, for those who need salt."    And D. tries to  
determine whether a thing is a thing or the thing is a sign and knows  
that kind of thinking will defeat him.   "And beware, beware, he  
reminds himself: the dog on the chain, the second dog, is nothing in  
itself, is not an illumination, merely an animal likeness!"

*   This "salt of the earth" stuff is from the Bible again - Matthew  
(again) 5:13 - Sermon on the Mount - and  probably an allusion to  
peasants.  Dostoevsky loved the Russian peasant religiosity.

Very strange find:   http://marinablack.visualserver.com/ 
Portfolio_main.cfm?nk=5421&nS=0&i=


> They asked, "Why have you taken them? Was there a reason since  
> you've never liked to collect them; you've always liked to look at  
> them and sometimes leaf'd them through your fingers?" then I, "I  
> should not have done it; I did not want to, no!" and I again, "Is  
> someone knocking at the door? Listen? - A dog is howling; I smell  
> the dog on my hands and the salt for those who need salt!" and then  
> they, "The dog is not a sign, it is just a dog among many dogs  
> howling in the night. So, what about them? Why have you taken them  
> now?"


[ Meanwhile,  is someone watching him from the doorway?  ]

***************

Page 84

[ His imagination is full of bearded men with glittering eyes who  
hide din the dark passages.  but he senses another presence.  Sees a  
man crouched.  ]

Suspicion again - it's always there in this book - something  
lurking,  spying - from Maximov to D. himself, the ultimate  
cannibalistic voyeur,  to Nechaev.

[   " Expect the one you do not expect.  Very well; but must every  
beggar then be treated as a prodigal son, embraced, welcomed into the  
home, feasted?  Yes, that is what Pascal would say: bet on everyone,  
every beggar, every mangy dog; only thus will you be sure that the  
One, the true son, the thief in the night, will not sip through the  
net."   ]

*  Prodigal son parable from the Bible - Luke 15: 11-32. -

The Gospel of Luke is also used for the whole idea of demons in Demons -

"The facts have shown us that the illness that seized civilized  
Russians was much stronger than we ourselves imagined, and that the  
matter did not end with Belinsky, Kraevsky, etc. But what occurred  
here is what is witnessed to by the evangelist Luke. Exactly the same  
thing happened with us: the demons came out of the Russian man and  
entered into a herd of swine, i.e. into the Nechaevs [Russian  
terrorists] . . ."

That's from a letter from Dostoevsky to Maykov about his ideas for  
"Demons."

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/jim_forest/pevear.htm

*  Pascal -  Pascal's Wager -  "If you believe in God and turn out to  
be incorrect, you have lost nothing -- but if you don't believe in  
God and turn out to be incorrect, you will go to hell. Therefore it  
is foolish to be an atheist."

**********

  [ Page 85 -  Is betting on all the numbers still gambling?  And a  
paragraph about the wife who  pawns her wedding ring for money for  
the gambler who loses it so the wife goes out to pawn the wedding  
dress.  ]

[ This is straight from Dostoevsky's life during the years in Europe  
when Dostoevsky was down to pawning his wife's jewelry, including the  
wedding ring,  to get himself out of gambling troubles and he went  
straight to the card table with hit.)

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~karamazo/bio08.html

http://www.nplusonemag.com/gambling-supplement

[ D. compares "giving it all" to Anna, the landlady, and her love  
making.  Is that an indicator of how she will give herself to the god  
of chance? ]

But perhaps there's also a Biblical connection  to the parable of the  
widow's mite?  Mark 12:38-44  ]

* And D. remembers and thinks,  "She, he thinks: she is the one, it  
is she whom I want.  Therefore..."

**********

Page 86

[ And thinking this about Anna -  D. goes back downstairs and offers  
his bed to the beggar.]

D. is figuring he has to give his all to redeem Pavel?  Like he's  
pawned him?  Or he's what???  I don't see the logical connection but  
perhaps its just about action?  Just give it - cover the bases - play  
a Pascal.   Will Anna appreciate D's giving his bed to a bum?  -

[ the beggar says:  " ' This is my post, I must stay at my post.' "  
But they get upstairs and the beggar introduces himself as Ivan Pyotr  
Alexandrovich.

This is apparently the fictionalization of I.I. Ivanov the historical  
victim of Necheav and People's Vengeance.   Dostoevsky used Ivanov in  
Demons under the name Ivan Shatov.   This scene of Ivanov changing  
his mind about accepting D.'s offer of his room may symbolize  
Ivanov's change of heart about the "People's Revenge" group.    (not  
to go further due to spoilers)

See - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Nechayev

***********
[ Page 87  Ivan advises D. to cry for his lost son.  "We must learn  
to cry from the fair sex, Fyodor Mikhailovich."  Ivan cries.  " 'I  
believe I will grieve for my lost babies for the rest of my days,'   
he says." ]

  D. earlier thought of Pavel as a cold dying baby in his arms.

************
[  Page 88  D wonders if people tell him their stories because he is  
a writer.  Ivanov talks to him about charity and grief and God.  D.  
thinks Ivan a charlatan and they sleep.

* Ivan's name changes on this page - Ivan Pyotr Alexandrovich becomes  
Ivanov as in I.I.  I don't know enough about Russian naming to know why.

[  D. wakes him up and says,  "Time to leave, your shift is over."    
Ivanov doesn't notice the irony. }

* Another ambiguity, imo, does D. suspect anything - what?

************

[  Page 89   Ivanov cadges breakfast and comments,    "We get what we  
deserve, in a higher sense.  Nevertheless I sometimes wonder, do we  
not also deserve, each of us, a refuge, a haven, where justice will  
for a while relent and pity be taken on us? -  spirit of Scripture:   
That we deserve what we do not deserve?

* Ivanov wants to stay,  rambles - tries to get D. into a  
philosophical discussion.  D. has to almost kick him out.

*********

[  Page 90    A fat young girl dressed like a nun novice comes to  
D.'s door.   She says she's a friend of Pavel's and wants to see what  
he left behind.   She has called before but the landlady wouldn't  
admit her. She says her name is Katri - a Finnish name.   "She looks  
like a Finn, too."  ]

* Finland was an technically an autonomous Grand Duchy of Russia from  
1819.  They experienced a severe famine between 1866- 1868 - I'm told  
that my ancestors had to cook and eat the bark from the trees.  -  
There was probably quite a lot of immigration during that time.   
Petersburg is quite close.  There were no political ramifications to  
the famine - not political blame or uprisings.  Historically,  this  
girl would have come to Petersburg and been introduced to the cause  
there.

**********
[Page 91   " 'You realize that the police killed your stepson,' "    
D. is stunned.  She says the police killed him and called it  
suicide.   Katri is belligerent and restless.   She's apparently   
looking for the list of names which Maximov has.  " ' Are you one of  
Nechaev's people? ' "   She glares, "triumphant."  Would I tell you?   
Do you know the police are watching this house?]

The question at that point is who is Ivan working for?  How did Pavel  
really die?  We have more dark, brooding suspense.

*********

[  Page 92 - Katri, in D.'s mind,  is in the grip of a devil.  "The  
devil inside her twitching, skipping, unable to keep still."  ]

*This is certainly the theme and spirit of Demons.

[ D.  tells himself he will give Ivan shelter if he shows up again.   
"...that is enough for the bargain to hold. "
* He apparently thinks he has made a bargain with God - but it's the  
same one-sided bargain he told Matryona  Pavel made - "if you (God)  
love me you'll save me."

*********

[ Page 93 - But D. knows he can do more than be willing  - he can  
actually go forth and save Ivanov from his cold watchpost.   So he  
searches for him in order to offer him shelter again and finally  
thinking, "I have done what I can."    "But he knows in his heart he  
has not.  There is more he could do, much more."  ]

*  What more could he do?   He's wrestling with the angel here for  
sure - with an internal spiritual force - a fight which has its  
origins in some really basic human condition.

Bekah