TMoP: Chapter 5 pgs 43 - 49

[Mark Kohut]

Bekah wrote: [ 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?  -  Reading as an  
interactive process,  a joint venture between author and reader?  - I  
don't think that's what he's saying in the whole sentence.   And  
that's not a Dostoevskian idea - it may be Coetzee's.

The axe is in the story; there is an axe in "Crime & Punishment" The Kafka quote I posted is sometimes translated as "the ice-axe to crack the frozen ice within"....

Lots of resonance to axe. It is here, I suggest, to 'say' that any real reader must feel even the murderer, the murder weapon and and the smashed
skull when they read about such events..........Reading is imaginatve feeling-into, not just abstract intellection; not just jeering judgment. 



--- On Sun, 10/5/08, Bekah <Bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:

> From: Bekah <Bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net>
> Subject: TMoP:  Chapter 5  pgs 43 - 49
> To: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Sunday, October 5, 2008, 11:28 AM
> I sent this but didn't see it come through and it's
> not on the site.
> 
> 
> 
> ***********
> [page 43 - 44    D.  "Nechaev is not a police matter. 
> Ultimately  
> Nechaev is not a matter for the authorities at all, at
> least for the  
> secular authorities."
> Maximov says that Nechaevism is an idea - you can't
> stamp out ideas  
> by imprisoning their leader.   But Nechaev says Nechaevism
> is beyond  
> ideas, Nechaevism hates ideas,  It's a spirit,  a
> demon,  Nechaev is  
> its host,  is possessed by it.]
> 
> * I suppose this would make Nechaevism a spiritual problem
> and this  
> is where Dostoevsky comes in to explore it with Crime and
> Punishment  
> and Demons?
> 
> 
> ***********
> [page 44 - 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?"
> 
> ***********
> 
> [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. And Coetzee's own son hovers in the
> picture,  on the  
> side,  the reader wonders...
> 
> 
> ***********
> [page 45 and then Maximov makes reference to D's own
> father,  an  
> abusive drunkard. ]
> 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 - Dostoevsky was a young child.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decembrist_revolt
> 
> **  "...the men of '49"  is Maximov's 
> viscous little allusion to the  
> Petrashevsky Circle to  Dostoevsky belonged until his 
> "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 and friends were possessed by demons.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrashevsky_Circle
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Petrashevsky 
> (interesting guy)
> 
> 
> ***********
> 
> [ 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 there.
> 
> [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?  -  Reading as an  
> interactive process,  a joint venture between author and
> reader?  - I  
> don't think that's what he's saying in the
> whole sentence.   And  
> that's not a Dostoevskian idea - it may be
> Coetzee's.
> 
> ***************
> [ 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?  Is he 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.)
> 
> ****************
> [Page 49 - D. goes for a walk,  trying to summon
> Pavel's face,  all  
> that comes to him is Nechaev.   The image will not leave. 
> ]
> 
> Bek