TMoP: Chapter 5 pgs 43 - 48

[DJ Ides]

Wow!

Great biographical link!:

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~karamazo/bio01.html<http://www.dartmouth.edu/%7Ekaramazo/bio01.html>

I'm new to the list... have been lurking for a little while (but
unfortunately finished AtD immediately before AtDtDR)... Hopefully I can
provide a bit of input in the MoP discussion. I am currently living in
Lithuania (which was part of Tsarist Russia at the time of MoP) and am also
living for half the year in Cape Town, South Africa, so maybe I can provide
a bit of unique insight (from a geographical perspective at least!) Will be
back in Cape Town next week, so let me know if anything that comes up in the
read needs an analysis amongst the nature and sights of South Africa....

Cheers!

Ides

On Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 8:09 PM, Bekah <Bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:

> ***********
> [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."
>
> ***********
> [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?"
>
> ***********
>
> [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<http://www.dartmouth.edu/%7Ekaramazo/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)
>
>
> ***********
>
> [ 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
>
>
>
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