TMOP: Chapter 6 pgs 50 - 65

[Bekah]

I suppose it's possible it's all in D's head,  but if so,  he's  
managed to get an awful lot right (a bit later)  about I. Ivanov and  
Nechaev etc.  - the verifiable events could have been read in a  
newspaper or letter from Maykov while the details perhaps imagined,  
though (with a bit of help from Shakespeare or Pushkin.)

http://www.utoronto.ca/tsq/DS/05/063.shtml

http://tinyurl.com/3fglgu
(GoogleBooks)
Dostoyevsky and the Process of Literary Creation By Jacques Catteau,  
Audrey Littlewood

Anyway,  I think it's Coetzee's invention about how the novel Demons  
(especially "At Tikhon's"  "could have" come about - through  
experience (although in this case that was fictionalized because  
Coetzee couldn't really "know" )  coupled with inspired imagination.   
The way Coetzee's version came about seems to have been that way -  
through experience (the death of his son) coupled with some kind of  
imagination.

Bekah



On Oct 7, 2008, at 1:01 PM, Richard Ryan wrote:

> Very thorough and meticulous summary and analysis,  Bekah - thanks!
>
> In musing on these pages I notice the elaborate dance that's  
> already underway between the living characters and the dead, the  
> present characters and the absent.  Because so many characters -  
> most obviously Pavel - are absent, much of the action necessarily  
> takes place inside D.s head.  One question worth keeping in mind is  
> to what extent ALL the action takes place inside of D.'s head...
>
>
>
> --- On Tue, 10/7/08, Bekah <Bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> From: Bekah <Bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net>
> Subject: TMOP: Chapter 6 pgs 50 - 65
> To: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Cc: "Richard Ryan" <richardryannyc at yahoo.com>
> Date: Tuesday, October 7, 2008, 3:40 PM
>
> I've tried to send this twice before - I'm not getting through!
>
> Anna Sergeyevna
>
> [pages 50 - 51 Dostoevsky returns to the shop where Anna waits on
> him - he buys sugar. She says soothing words to him although there
> is a man who looks vaguely familiar there. He wonders why he bought
> sugar. ]
>
> * Because Matroyona offered him sugar with tea (pg 23). Because
> sugar is innocuous and he's suddenly feels a bit amorous - and
> although he has a devoted wife back in Dresden, he's truly grieving
> his son and needs the emotional connection - a common phenomenon.
>
> **********
> [pages 51 - 52 - Dostoevsky writes a note to Apollon Maykov.]
>
> * Maykov was a Russian poet and long-term friend of Dostoevsky.
> Dostoevsky once wrote him a 12-page letter to asking borrow 150  
> rubles.
>
> **********
>
> [page 52: - D. is not grieving - he is paralyzed like a stone. ]
>
> ** I think he's wrong, but because D. says it's from his own
> experience I can't really disagree. - Nevertheless, each
> experience of grief is different. D. has no idea if he's grieving
> or not. Imo, he is - and Coetzee is as well (at this point - this
> book may have been cathartic for Coetzee - but that's not really
> opening myself up to the pages, is it?) This shock and denial D.
> seems to be experiencing is part of the grief process in many
> cases. Just because it wasn't like this with D.'s first wife
> ( died about 4 years prior) or Sophia, his infant daughter who died
> only months before, doesn't mean it's not grief just the same.
>
> There might be some complications with this grief because he never
> was Pavel's natural father - that bond was never there - he could be
> seeking a substitute at this point, I suppose. (But now I feel I'm
> definitely getting too far away from what Coetzee intended - see? I
> do have my limits.) (heh).
>
> [ Page 52 continues: "This is death, death coming before its time,
> come not to overwhelm him and devour him but simply to be with him.
> It is like a dog that has taken up residence with him, a big grey
> dog, blind and deaf and stupid and immovable. When he sleeps the dog
> sleeps; when he wakes, the dog wakes; when he leave the house , the
> dog shambles behind him. "]
>
> * Coetzee often uses dogs and other animals as metaphor - most
> apparent in Disgrace - and beyond metaphor in Elizabeth Costello,
> "The Lives of Animals" and I think, "Diary of a Bad Year."
> - I
> think D. is on auto-pilot, he's like an animal, he's lost his power
> of reason, his dignity, his creativity, his soul?
>
> [ page 52: And he thinks of Anna's fingers counting coins and
> stitches - he asks, "what do they stand for?" ]
>
> ** they stand for movement - for creativity, for life. And
> Matryona's mother in "At Tikhon's was a seamstress. Stitches of
> time
> - a common metaphor.
>
> ***********
>
> [page 53: - He is sitting at his desk in his room remembering
> children, dead and alive, visions - "He is not in control of
> himself..." ]
>
>
> "Why this plodding chase across empty country after the rumour of a
> ghost, the ghost of a rumour?"
> "Because I am he. Because he is I."
> From Demons: “I also know that it was not you who ate the idea,
> but the idea that ate you...”
>
>
> Coetzee has his own demon and he's cannibalizing the dead and the
> historical.
>
> ************
>
> [ Page 54 - The axe of death is mentioned as well as an ox as
> metaphor for the heart. Pondering the moment before the moment of
> realization of imminent death. And thinking of someone he loves - ]
>
> his wife? Anna?
>
> [ He sleeps and goes downstairs. Anna asks him for tea. "He is not
> in control of himself." ]
>
> * Thus excusing his imminent adultery?
>
> [She puts down her sewing.]
> and she's available.
>
> ***********
> [Page 55 - Dostoevsky and Anna approach each other aware of their
> aging bodies.] -
> Very aware of their mortality. They're both in their mid-40s.
>
>
> *******
> [Page 56 - They spend the night in Dostoevsky's son's room - probably
> because Matryona is sleeping in Anna's room. Anna's body is very
> hot to the touch - "it excites him that they should be doing such
> fiery, dangerous work with the child asleep in the next room." They
> sleep but when he tries to arouse Anna later, she is "like a dead
> thing in his arms" but he goes ahead, forcing himself on her.
>
> * This scene echoes "Stavrogin's Confession" where Stavrogin
> rapes
> the daughter, Matryona. The rape is not so clear in the second
> version of SC, which is the one published today as an appendix.
> http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/12/11/18813/944
>
> [As he climaxes in the sleeping woman's body, the vision of Pavel
> rises up. "It bursts upon him, possesses him, speeds on."]
>
> * Sex as death by falling? An opportunity for a demon to overtake
> him however momentarily? (more later)
>
> - I'm quite sure that several here can do far more justice to this
> section than I can. I know what's going on; I just don't have the
> words or the allusions.
>
> *******
> [ Page 57 - When Dostoevsky wakes he's alone in the apartment and
> is impatient and (metaphors deleted) to see Anna but at supper she is
> cool and then goes to bed, not waking up when he calls her. She's
> now sleeping with Matryona.]
>
>
> *************
>
> [Page 58 - He tries again and the "women" do not stir... ]
>
> * Now here's a distinct sign as to his attitude toward the daughter.
> - She's not a 14 year-old child at this point, she's a woman.)
>
> [... but he notices that the girl sleeps with her eyes open as if
> watching, with a slight smile and with an arm over her mother like a
> bat.]
>
> * A bat? Or a possessive child saying "Mine!"? Or maybe bat, as
> in a flying creature of the night? Certainly no cherub or angel. -
> yup - shades of The Master and Margarita here. And it must be
> remembered that this is D.'s understanding (reading, if you will) of
> her, not her mother's, for instance.
>
> [ Anna comes to him on a future night and again the experience is
> like going to where his son is - with others - to death. He tries to
> tell Anna but she is not interested.]
>
> Anna probably thinks D. is flipping out. Besides, I'm sure she's
> not flattered by what he's using her for.
>
> Cannibalization again -
>
> *****
>
> [Page 59 - Anna doesn't return to his room so he writes her a letter
> which she doesn't open. He goes to the shop but she turns her back.
> He asks her why the avoidance - she replies it's obvious - he was in
> need, he used her and now it's done. He objects.
>
> Anna - "You are using me to get to someone else... You have a wife
> of your own." and "You were pleading."
>
> [Page 50-60 D. remembers the words, "A wife of your own." and he
>
> thinks - "My wife is too young...Too young for me as I am now!"
> [ Italics from book.]
>
> * D. is sooo aware of his tired, old mortality - his wife is about
> the age Pavel was.
>
> * and the words, "You were pleading" will come back to haunt him.
>
> **********
>
> [Page 60 D. realizes that when he returns to his wife he will want
> Anna. He goes to his room and calls to Pavel. But the vision that
> comes is of Nechaev. "Nechaev is no student hothead, no youthful
> nihilist. He is the Mongol left behind in the Russian soul after the
> greatest nihilist of all has withdrawn into the wastes of Asia." ]
>
> * The Mongols invaded Russia in 1237 and generally occupied it until
> 1552. They moved the capital to Moscow, appointed or validated the
> tsars and and didn't leave until Ivan the Terrible conquered them
> in 1552 and became the Russian Tsar of all Russia. This era left a
> huge cultural gulf between Russia and Western Europe. Russia was not
> part of the Renaissance (14th-15th centuries throughout Western
> Europe) or the Reformation (M. Luther- theses - 1521). They were
> totally out of the loop when Peter the Great took the throne in 1682
> and tried to catch up with Europe. And the Russians took to the
> French influence and let that influence shape their aesthetics from
> the time of Catherine the Great, 1762.
>
> Dostoevsky considered the Mongol influence to be the origins of the
> dark side of the Russian soul but after his stint in the Tsar's
> prisons and military he was not enamoured of the West either. Like
> other Russian intellectuals of the times, he was searching for the
> Russian soul. (See Natasha's Dance by Orlando Figes.)
>
> From http://www.utoronto.ca/tsq/DS/01/003.shtml:
>
> "... Gorkij's insistence in a letter ... in 1911 that Dostoevsky was
>
> a writer who "with the greatest power and lucidity depicted the
> spiritual illnesses grafted upon us from the Mongol, the mutilations
> inflicted on our soul by painful Muscovite history."
>
> And here Coetzee directly addresses Nechaev's Catechism by quoting:
>
> [ " 'The revolutionary is a doomed man,' it began. 'He has
> no
> interests, no feelings, no attachments, not even a name. Everything
> in him is absorbed in a single and total passion: revolution. In the
> depths of his being he has cut all links with the civil order, with
> law and morality. He continues to exist in society only in order to
> destroy it.' and later, 'He does not expect the least mercy.
> Every day he is ready to die.' "
>
> Dostoevsky used the Catechism in Demons and Peter Verkhovensky was
> pretty much true to form.
>
> ************
>
> [Page 61 - * How can a child understand that? The vision of
> Nechaev is present - Pavel, the image of him, cannot return.]
>
> * The "child" is Pavel. D. doesn't consider him old enough or
> mature enough to understand revolutionary thought. Pavel was 21
> years old, almost 22. Pavel may be D's child but at 21, he's no
> "child." Still, he probably couldn't have the same
> understanding of
> revolutionary thought that a man in his mid-40s would have. Excuse
> me, Nechaev is only 22 at the time and Nechaev wrote it - at least
> in part. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Nechayev
>
> [ D. will meet Anna and Matryona after they go to church and the
> three will go to Petrovsky Island.]
>
> Petrovsky Ostrov is one of five islands that make up the part of St.
> Petersburg called the Petrograd Side. The other four are Zayachy,
> Kronverksky, Petrogradsky, and Aptekarsky islands. Together, they are
> the oldest part of the city. Petrovsky Ostrov is where Petrovsky
> Stadium, where the 1994 Goodwill Games were held, is located.
> Insignificantly, Raskolnikov collapses there in "Crime and
> Punishment."
>
> A nice place: "View from Petrovskii Island in St. Petersburg" by
> Silvestr Shchedrin, (1815)
> http://www.rollins.edu/Foreign_Lang/Russian/shche.jpg
>
> [ In the morning Dostoevsky trips over a tramp in the doorway and
> curses. The tramp reappears at the church where Dostoevsky asks if
> he is following him. The tramp ignores him and the tramp "sidles
> off," leans against a post, feigns a yawn. No gloves, only a
> blanket rolled into a muff. ]
>
> * This tramp will show up again - he's Coetzee's version of Ivan
> Ivanov whom Dostoevsky used as Shatov in Demons.
>
> ********************
> Page 62.
>
> [Voznesensky Prospekt ]
> Dostoevsky lived on this street for many years.
> http://www.russian-st-petersburg.com/photo/citytour/st-isaacs.jpg
>
>
> [ D., Anna and Matryona go to the island where D. thinks of them as
> being a family, "...only a fourth required and we will be complete."
> ]
>
>
>
>
> * D. is missing Pavel because he's sure not looking to the future.
>
> [ Matryona plays like a child and D. recognizes that she will be a
> beauty. ]
>
> * a little foreshadowing there?
>
> * D. is concerned with what his wife would think - he's had prior
> affairs and, without detail, "confessed," causing more grief than
> the affair.
> (Dostoevsky was a man of deep conscience which tortured his sensuous
> and risk-taking side.)
>
> * But in this case he feels no guilt -
>
> [perhaps because he is grabbing Anna for his very life - for the life-
> force she carries to counteract the death force impact of Pavel and
> associated thoughts.]
>
> ***************
> Page 63
>
> *Anna's passion. "Falling, but never an irrevocable falling. No:
> to fall and then come back from the fall new, remade, virginal, ready
> to be wooed again and to fall again. A playing with death, a play of
> resurrection."
>
> [ Pavel fell to his death - Coetzee's son fell to his death. But
> falling as Anna does is not irrevocable, the faller comes back,
> resurrected. This is what D. wants for Pavel. ]
>
> [ Because Pavel never died in real life - I believe that
> inescapably there is much of Coetzee here. ]
>
> * D. - "I could love this woman." ... "He and she are of the
> same
> generation. And all of a sudden the generations fall into place."
> And he puts Pavel into the same generation as Matryona - They are
> probably about 7 years apart. (Matryona is about 14, I believe.) He
> takes this difference in generations into the physical sexual
> experience they had with her body in flames fighting age.
>
> * He ranks the generations: "The children against those who are
> not children, those old enough to recognize in their lovemaking the
> first foretaste of death. Hence the urgency that night, hence the
> heat."
>
>
> Page 64 *Anna brings up Siberia. D. offers the info that this is
> where he met Pavel's mother - Pavel was about 7 then. They married
> after Pavel's father died. Then a few years later Pavel's mother
> died also.
>
> * Anna says that Pavel described her as being "young." D. realizes
>
> that his current wife, also named Anna, is in the same age category
> as Pavel and Matroyona.
>
> [ Dostoevsky met Maria Dmitrievna Isaev (wife #1) while part of the
> Tsar's military stationed in Siberia near the border with China.
> It's a fairly tortured story with Maria not in love with Dostoevsky
> and Dostoevsky tortured by obsessive jealousy. They married in 1859,
> she died in 1864. He started Demons under the original title, "The
> Great Sinner," after reading about the death of I.I. Ivanov at the
> hands of People's Vengeance (Nechaev).
> http://www.dartmouth.edu/~karamazo/bio05.html
> http://www.dartmouth.edu/~karamazo/bio09.html ]
>
> [ Anna/wife was hired by Dostoevsky at the age of 20 in 1866.
> http://www.dartmouth.edu/~karamazo/bio07.html ]
>
> * Anna S. tells D. that Pavel was afraid of losing D. D. denies
> this saying, "From the day I became his father I never once failed
> him. Am I failing him now?"
> She tells him children are jealous -
>
> Page 65
> * D. thinks of Matryona and her possible jealousy.
> * Anna tells D. some of what Pavel told her - it's painful for D. but
> he wants to know so he can ask forgiveness. She tells him Pavel was
> lonely and would talk. He needed to talk.
> * D. asks Matryona if she remembers anything. Anna stops him - it's
> not right to ask a child something like that.
>
> (Could be leading into "Confessions"?)
>
>
>
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