A Micro-Essay in Dostoevsky

S. ELLIAS (New York, U.S.A.)

THE BURDEN OF SHOULDERING IDENTITY: A MICRO-ESSAY IN DOSTOEVSKY

Introductory words We shall begin in media res, as it were, namely, from a small detail, indeed one that has consistently proved to be too small to see, although found right in the epicenter of The Brothers Karamazov, in "The Grand Inquisitor," the heart of hearts of Dostoevsky's legacy. At one level, the entire essay may be perceived as an annotation to this detail, in an attempt to understand its meaning and the service it does to the novel, although it may seem like attach- ing an overcoat to a button, rather than the other way around. But at another, and in fact many other levels, this would basically open up a full-fledged inquiry into Dostoevsky's artistic and ideological world, leading to Dosto- evsky's uniform and holistic appropriation. For, as we make our way in deciphering the significance of that detail, we are to deal with numerous matters tangential to an extensive set of problems in Dostoevsky studies. In the to- and-fro of deliberation, we cannot but face many other themes. To achieve our objective and destination, we shall have to not only alternate telescope and microscope but also advance backward and move ahead rewinding, so at ' the end of the road, when all should come to completion, we will have become only ready to start.

Part One: ATTENTION TO DETAIL

1. A semiotic challenge In order to begin, let us imagine ourselves in the epicenter of The Brothers Karamazov, in the chapter "The Grand Inquisitor," right after Ivan Karama- zov's reading of The Legend to Alesha has been completed, when the text of the novel' features an evanescent appearance of a detail, never to appear again in the novel's text. This detail has been systematically overlooked by researchers, despite perpetual and relentless ransacking and interpreting of the novel, and in the rare cases when it was noticed, it was never made sense of. This is all the more significant given that The Brothers Karamazov, unlike many novels of genius, is still a "functioning novel," so to speak, being read in different quarters: not only by a professional audience but also by the pub- lic at large. It is this detail that will take center stage and engage our attention

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access here and now, as we make an attempt to tease out its significance by way of a hypothesis that the present investigation is poised to advance. Let us now then, with no further delay, get down to business, turning to the narrator, whom Dostoevsky "hired" as fit to be entrusted with his greatest creation, and hear him draw the following verbal snapshot:

Ivan turned suddenly and went his way without looking back. It was just as brother Dmitri had left Alyosha the day before, though the part- ing had been very different. The strange resemblance flashed like an arrow through Alyosha's mind in the distress and dejection of that moment. He waited a little, looking after his brother. He suddenly noticed that Ivan swayed as he walked and that his right shoulder looked lower than his left. He had never noticed it before. But all at once he turned too, and almost ran to the monastery.' (Italics are mine - S. E.)

That it is a piece of imaginative literature, and moreover, that it is Dosto- evsky's imaginative literature, gives sufficient warning and warrant alike to take the detail not as a slip of the pen, or a meaningless trifle, but something that is deliberately posted to be made part of the artistic game by considering and understanding. So, a trifle - yes, but meaningless? By no means! But what is the meaning of it, then - this now becomes the question. In order to communicate better, it will be henceforth referred to as the "shoulder detail or feature," though with no particular stake in the term. While the physical characterization of Ivan Karamazov is on principle left aside as secondary, if not irrelevant, to his strictly ideological function in the novel, now, as if out of the blue, such a corporeal detail to deal with! This detail is obviously minor and even minute, but Dostoevsky clearly introduces it at a major junction and in an emphatic way, which undoubtedly suggests that it somehow is important. Moreover, the detail seems connected with Ivan Karamazov's major ideological claim, as vented in The Legend, putting some gray in his portrait - gray, incidentally, being the color philosophy uses to draw its pictures, as Hegel has it. Significance may also be seen in the fact of not only when but also to whom this shoulder feature appears, for the relation between Alesha and Ivan constitutes a major ideological dynamic and source of tension in the novel. Moreover, the mentioned detail is arguably the only information as to the physical status of the character of Ivan Karamazov, and therefore even on this score it cannot be accidental, especially if we bear in . mind that Ivan Karamazov may be considered among those of Dostoevsky'ss

1. F. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, ed. by R. Matlaw, including the Gamett translation, revised by R. Matlaw, backgrounds and sources, essays in criticism (New York-London: W. W. Norton, 1976) (henceforth BK), p. 245.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access characters who are presented physically with conspicuous reticence, virtually lacking physical predication. The detail, furthermore, engenders a peculiar discrepancy between physique and age in Ivan Karamazov. Once noticed and considered, the shoulder feature of Ivan Karamazov begins to disturb the imaginary physical portrait readers are most likely to draw for themselves as they read the novel, for now they have to incorporate this detail into the portrait of a thinker as a young man and somehow reconcile the disparity between his tender age and his single physical characteristic, between his - perhaps somewhat mischievous - attractive looks of "subterranean beauty" (M. Blanchot) and the physical evidence to the contrary. It is as if this discrepancy is challenging us yet again not to give up, to persist in trying to make out the detail one way or another. Dostoevsky even seems interested in having the reader pay attention to, that very discrepancy and by no means overlook it, for there is a point in the novel that particularly underlines it, when Alesha says something to Ivan that seems to exacerbate the contrast between age and physique: "You are a riddle to me even now. But I understand something in you.. .. That you are just as young as other young men of twenty-three, that you are . just a young and fresh and nice boy, green in fact!"2 The fact of the said discrepancy is turning into a problem, which insists that this sole physical feature given by Dostoevsky is not to be overlooked, but rather made out all the way through. Thus, once detected and appreciated, the shoulder detail is to be considered a semiotic token that needs to be treated as such, that is, semantically deciphered as part of the understanding of the text. Yet, one is given virtually nothing in the text to begin and work with in the process of deciphering, as if Dostoevsky now is interested in keeping the secret. This ostensible contradiction is fully compatible with Dostoevsky's narrational playfulness and his un- articulated, yet transparent, intolerance of the lazy and drowsy reader. Small wonder, then, that the meaning of the shoulder detail has for so long remained, despite a few sightings, a virtual secret known basically only to Alesha, to the narrator, and presumably to Dostoevsky himself - a rather con- fined circle by any standard, which is perhaps what has lent the conspiracy such success. The meaning of this detail has not been revealed even by a stroke of, serendipity, offering researchers or readers the gift of spontaneous insight into it. There is no doubt, however, that in virtue of its being there� the detail was meant to be discovered by the reader, indeed by every reader,. not only professionals. ; So, given Dostoevsky's highly sophisticated and intricate style of creating a literary portrayal and his unshakable commitment to ideas, this detail has to be somehow involved in the nature of the performance the character of Ivan

2. BK, p. 211. !.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access Karamazov gives in the novel; and, as it seems, it cannot be otherwise. With this in mind, let us try to account for the meaning of the shoulder detail in the best way possible, to retrieve the semantic content of this semiotic challenge, for it now comes across as a loaded, eloquent detail, placed there to say something, and as long as it may be deciphered, we must learn to understand the "accent" of this body language. The meaning of the shoulder detail will be framed here in the form of a hypothesis - the shoulder hypothesis.

2. Available responses The shoulder detail is, to be sure, a riddle, but one that has to it some logically stable structure available from the start. It may be captured and ordered as a set of points. First, it is certain that the riddle cannot be considered accidental, being the only element of the physical characterization of the main character in the main work of Dostoevsky. Therefore, the problem should be taken as a deliberate artistic item and thus an artistic cipher, which in turn amounts to recognizing that there is a meaning to recover here. Second, there seem to be two main possibilities at to what the meaning of this physical detail may be. On the one hand, it may be an act of "wavering" (shatanie), expressed as a physical feature; however, it focuses on Ivan's gait rather than his shoulder, and by no means fully explains either one. Acceptance of this point does not eliminate another possibility or second meaning: that, on the other hand, the shoulder detail is an allusion to something or someone on the grounds of some similarity between Ivan Karamazov and that reference, whatever it may be. At this point, this is all we have to go on regarding the matter, and it is, if anything, more encouragement than assistance, for it does not change the shoulder detail's status as a secret, one of many in the maze of secrets that comprises the novel. So instead of solving riddles, we are multi- plying them, at least for now. Deciphering the shoulder detail is an ungrateful task, however gratifying the process of so doing may be, because in the final analysis the solution is unlikely to be wrinkle-free and indisputable. So it has to be clear from the start that it is hardly possible to furnish a solution that could be more than a hypothesis, and the universal validity of it, as is always the case when it comes to matters of judgment as opposed to matters of fact, cannot be abso- lutely secured and guaranteed. Hence, one would ultimately remain at liberty to opt for not taking this hypothesis to be true. The solution, then, must be- forehand be clarified as a task in its own right, which entails accommodating a set of preliminary problems on the way to the solution sought. To that effect, one should bear in mind that the history of Dostoevsky research - its intensity, achievements and maturity, as well as its being a multi-national enterprise - comes across as an authoritative guarantee that the factual resources for the solution have virtually been exhausted. By the same token, the silent

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access treatment given to the shoulder detail carries the opposite suggestion, namely, that it is not that facticity has been exhausted, but that the problem of the meaning of the shoulder detail has yet to be posed. Thus, so early in the inquiry as we are now, it should be stipulated that no specific fact should be expected to procure the solution, although the search is set in motion by, and grounded in, specific facts, as we shall see. So no heretofore undisclosed piece of paper, with Dostoevsky's written testimony sharing the whole story behind the shoulder detail, is envisioned here as a solution, nor is such a solution possible. But, amidst so much unclarity, one point, it seems, may enjoy consensus. There can be little doubt as to the need to revise what is relevant to the matter at hand in the field of the available, and to do so in a variety of ways. While there has been no interpretation of the shoulder detail, still a few remarks have been sprinkled here and there, and they must be summoned here in an exhaustive inventory, before the hypothesis is presented.

In search of available accounts of the shoulder detail The search for any accounts, even a sheer mentioning, of the shoulder detail in conventional papers and monographs has turned up virtually no results, showing that the detail has attracted and enjoyed no attention at this level and in this form of research. We turn, as last resort, to such accounts as guides and companions, which aspire above all to present the text and aid its reading, or semiotics-centered investigations, by means of special attention to details and, what is perhaps most promising, commentaries. It stands to reason that most expectations that the detail may have been noticed, other than in translations, must apply to these kinds of writing, which may be loosely blanketed by the term "reference" used in a broader sense, considering their professional nature and obligation to scrutinize and present the text as exhaustively as possible, without being selective, thus allowing fewer loopholes through which the detail might escape consideration. This approach yields more results, though perhaps still surprisingly scanty, which we shall now consider as atten- tively as possible.

a. R. Matlaw and his semiotic analysis First, we must turn to R. Matlaw's work, The Brothers Karamazov: Novel- istic Technique, specifically its second section, the essay "Symbol and Myth," which has made quite a career as an independent text in its own right. This seems to be the first mention, or better yet, the first evidence of recognition of the shoulder detail. Predictably, what could have enabled Matlaw to notice the detail is twofold. His editorial and translational work on The Brothers Karamazov must have given him a leg up, and second, his focus on novelistic technique, and specifically on symbols, could have led to his observation. We shall not concern ourselves with Matlaw's way of coping with the problem of

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access symbols and myths, for it is beyond our scope; instead, we shall consider his brief statement relating to our task. Let us hear it in full:

A larger unit of Dostoevsky's technique is the myth and the mythical construct. Myth is an immediate intuition of reality, and it is primarily ritualistic or religious in character, but it may, like Ivan's Legend, be purely literary.... Such symbolism pervades The Brothers Karamazov, as it does Dostoevsky's other works. In his notes to the novel there is an indication that this is a conscious method.... Although physical details are comparatively few in Dostoevsky's works, a description may contain a symbolic detail. Thus Fyodor Pavlovich's fleshy, oblong Adam's apple, the fleshy bags under his eyes, accentuate his propensity for physical debauchery. Ivan's sagging right shoulder, Alyosha's down- cast eyes, and Mitya's gesture toward his heart also emphasize characteristic traits. Perhaps the most striking descriptive detail concerns Fetyukovich: as he rises to speak "he constantly bent his back in a peculiar way, particularly at the beginning of the speech, not quite bowing, but as if he were rushing or flying toward his listeners, bending, as it were, just with half of his long back, as though a spring had been placed in the middle of that long, thin back which would enable him to bend almost at a right angle." The mechanical device and bending at unnatu- ral angles perfectly symbolizes Fetyukovich's mind.... Even colors, though by no means all of them, form a symbolic scheme.3 (Italics are , mine - S. E.)

It is difficult to systematize Matlaw's disordered account of different items of different order, a catalog with hardly any principle to it. But, in the final analysis, we find here at least two essential points to consider. First, led by his specialized reading of the novel, as suggested, Matlaw does spot and make mention of the shoulder detail. Second, he obviously offers no explanation of it whatsoever and even when he himself locates it among symbolic details and stresses that all those details emphasize "characteristic traits," he still leaves it unattended, without even an attempted explanation. Though Matlaw connects the symbolic details of Fedor Karamazov with a specific underlying characteristic of his, that of debauchery, he never clarifies how the sagging shoulder relates to an underlying characteristic of Ivan, or to which one of his characteristics, and how so, as if all that is too well known to bother mentioning again. This is certainly not the case, but Matlaw quits precisely where one ex- pects him to deliver his explanation. It is especially disappointing to see how instead, Matlaw maps out the shoulder detail along with many other details,

3. BK, p. 867.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access and thus loses it. Moreover, as a result of all this, Matlaw ends up considering Fetiukovich's peculiarity "the most striking descriptive detail" in the novel. This sounds like a challenge to the vantage from which we here and now con- duct our investigation; we accept that challenge and will respond in due time in the section dedicated to treating the function and economy of details in Dostoevsky. For now, we shall test Matlaw's standpoint by asking: Who, after all, is Fetiukovich to be the bearer of "the most striking descriptive detail"? Is it really compatible with Dostoevsky's artistic management of his works to allot the most effective detail to a tertiary character? Does the novel require its readers to comprehend Fetiukovich's state of mind, as Matlaw puts it, as part of its appropriation? Hardly so. It all signals, as it seems, that Matlaw fails to appreciate his own programmatic thoughts about symbolic and descriptive details, for in the end almost every detail seems to fall into this ru- bric. In other words, if some details as symbolic details are more important than others, why not tarry for a moment and unpack their symbolism? The answers to these questions appear to implode Matlaw's standpoint. A more viable way of reading the semiology of the novel seems to be the opposite of Matlaw's approach. Instead of holding that there are many symbolic details, as he does, only few details are in fact symbolic, and only they represent puzzles with much at stake behind them, calling for retrieval. Along with the shoulder detail, they would include the devil's choice not to wear a watch, which Matlaw does not even consider to be a detail or a symbol. Basi- cally, Matlaw shows what may be called a petitio principi attitude, for he con- siders as already explained what in fact has yet to be explained, by taking Ivan's sagging shoulder to be a self-explanatory detail. This is why he as- sesses it to be relevant to the very essence of Ivan Karamazov's character, without providing any explanation of it. But what this shows above all is that, according to Matlaw, there is nothing to explain. However, we should not fail to credit Matlaw's watchfulness, characteristic of the careful reading that each semiotic-centered reading presupposes. And while Matlaw does not offer any explanation of the shoulder detail, he presumably did do some work on its be- half - namely, he inadvertently popularized its existence, however unpopular this detail still remains, for his essay, as suggested, has been published repeatedly and in a variety of anthologies and editions, and must have been ; consulted by a considerable professional audience. One may certainly expect that Matlaw enhanced the awareness of this detail for V. Terras and It. F. Miller, the other two authors we now move to consider, but only to see that ; this is hardly the case and little has been built upon Matlaw's lead.

b. � : Terras and his Kczramazov commentary . Following the text step by step, as commentators do, is a kind of dealing with the novel that may be expected to provide the most favorable format for

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access not omitting the shoulder detail, giving it in addition some sort of annotation, if not without the risk of trivializing it, that is, reducing it to a non-semantic item, one among many, a tendency that we have already seen at work in Mat- law. When it comes to commentaries, V. Terras' Companion to the novel comes to mind as one of few detailed commentaries on The .Brothers Kara- mazov available and largely in use. Terras is admittedly concerned most of all with the literary form of the novel. This stance may turn out to be ambiguous in that, on the one hand, it compels the author to be liable for the clarification of the formal aspect of the novel - and details do fall in this economy, as the science of aesthetics has claimed since the times of Diderot, Lessing, and Winckelmann. On the other hand, however, this very stance tends to bracket the ideological dimension of the novel, and thus seems to preempt what it itself is committed to, especially in a case when a detail can transport heavy ideological implications. In a word, this stance precludes, or at any rate downplays, the ideological ramifications of certain elements of literary form. As for the shoulder detail, we have yet to see if this is the case. One wonders if such a segregation of literary form and ideological content is really viable, unless resorted to only heuristi- cally in order to reach even deeper and suggest more emphatically, in the final analysis, the inseparability of the ideological and the formal aspects. In Ter- ras, however, this is left unattended and unsettled. As far as the shoulder detail is concerned, it must be pointed out that unlike Matlaw, Terras even does not make mention of it at all. A charitable assessment may grant, however, that he is aware of it, for he does make mention of Ivan Karamazov's gait, which in Dostoevsky's text is tightly linked with the shoulder detail within one sentence, although this already raises the specific problem of Terras' conscious and emphatic choice to skip the shoulder detail. But first, let us consider what he has to say about the gait. For Ter- ras - and following his artistic, rather than ideological, line of reasoning - it is only "an example of emphatic repetition, often used by Dostoevsky."4 In this regard, Terras is quite consistent with Matlaw. But Terras also seems to make a step further and try to account for it in terms of content, if not ideology. From this standpoint, the commentator holds the gait to be "a very strong metonymic symbol" - again consistent with Matlaw - and its meaning is captured as follows:

Ivan is "out of joint"; there is something wrong with him.5

4. V. Terras, A Karamazov Companion (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1981), p. 239, . No. 332. 5. Ibid., p. 239, No. 333; see also p. 241, No. 357.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access As far as the shoulder detail is concerned, Terras' choice to skip this detail and give it no annotation whatsoever seems a surprising decision for a commentator to make, and one is invited to speculate as to the reason for this choice. What comes to mind as a possible explanation is that simply the gait and the shoulder are somehow lumped together in Terras' mind as if signifying one and the same thing - the shoulder sags because of the gait - so that as long as he annotates the one, he automatically annotates the other. Let us then try to experiment and extend Terras' annotation of the gait over the shoulder detail and make it valid for it as we11.6 From this perspective, the following may be stated. To be sure, what Terras has to say about the gait is not incorrect, but it strikes - if taken as an interpretation of both the gait and the shoulder detail - as insensitive to Dostoevsky's literary sophistication. While all nuances that Terras discerns are certainly at play, he nurtures no skepticism that Dostoevsky could have invested something more in it. Hence, the literary semiotics here is not honored properly and done justice to. Now, how is one to relate to Terras' intervention, if it is taken in terms of our thought experiment of blanketing the gait and the shoulder detail? To begin with, it seems clear that explaining is not Terras' goal, for strictly speaking, there is no evidence that he has found here something to explain, which is especially corroborated by the mentioned fact of dropping the shoulder detail out of the picture. But even if taken as an explanation or interpretation, Terras makes nothing more than a casual observation that is more commonsensical than literary, unconsciously grounded, it seems, in the dubious presumption that external portrayal corresponds in a direct fashion to the spiritual interior and hence expresses the attitude of the author directly. To be sure, Dosto- evsky is more complex than that, as Terras certainly knows himself. We may, for example, recall that as an avid student of Victor Hugo - who, incidentally, influenced Dostoevsky even as he worked on The Brothers Karamazov - Dostoevsky was impressed by the Hunchback, who represents a classic case of the breakdown of that straightforward wisdom and technique. In Dosto- evsky, beauty is subject not only to adoration but also to relentless immanent critique, and it finds itself often associated with, or caught in the net of, evil, as part of Dostoevsky's critique of the aesthetic from the vantage of the religious - an exciting theme that we cannot address here. Moreover, if recast from English into another language, Terras' statement would fully lose even its witty Shakespearean and Hamletian evocativeness. Hence, Terras in his commentary provides no annotation whatsoever of the shoulder detail. More

6. It may be pointed out that this reductive move of collapsing the difference between the shoulder feature and the gait of Ivan Karamazov was already advocated and "practiced" by R. Peace (see his Dostoevsky: An Exnmination of the Major Novels [Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1971 p. 227). � i

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access importantly, he may, on balance, have even increased its indiscernibility in that he, in his quality of a commentator, opted to skip it without commenting on it and failed to uncouple it from the gait. This seems to result in undermining the independent status of the shoulder detail and warranting the automatic validity of an explanation for the gait as an explanation for the shoulder detail. c. R. F. Miller and her Karamazov companion Like Matlaw and Terras, R. F. Miller also deals with a specialized kind of writing in her book The Brothers Karamazov: Worlds of the Novel, which is styled as a companion to the novel. In her case too, a certain requirement of comprehensive dealing with the novel sharpens the watchfulness of the writer. Written considerably later than Matlaw's and Terras' works, Miller's companion makes brief mention of the shoulder detail as well and, it seems, even ventures shyly to offer an explanation, although in the fmal analysis she comes out shy of a clarification, as we argue below. The pattern at work in Miller is quite identical with that in Terras, for she chooses to pay attention to Ivan Karamazov's gait, but not to the shoulder feature, presumably because she lumps them together as if they signify one and the same thing. It must also be underscored that the mention of the shoulder detail has made its way into Miller's book exclusively due to quoting Dostoevsky's text. In Miller's work, we read the following, which is all that is available on the matter:

, The chapter [chapter 5, "The Grand Inquisitor," Book 5, "Pro et contra," Part II - S. E.] closes with a crescendo of religious symbolism as Ivan departs to the left and Alyosha to the right. Alyosha also notices that "Ivan swayed as he walked and that his right shoulder looked lower than his lett. 117 .

Being all Miller has to say, this attempted interpretation is qualified here as shy, because for some reason, it chooses not to emphasize its subject matter, as if not interested in drawing the reader's attention to it; not to telegraph what is hidden behind the shoulder feature, as if making a casual point; not to assert itself, as if it has no stake in the matter. Done rather quickly and in passing, it disappears before appearing. The conclusion that this is only an attempt that stops shy of an interpretation, as suggested, is due to the following. First, instead of explaining and interpreting required for any interpretation, Miller seems to engage in something like editing or, better yet, "co-authoring" the text in that she puts into it, and for that matter into Dostoevsky's mouth,

7. R. F. Miller, The Brothers Karamazov: Worlds of the Novel (New York: Twayne Publish- ers, 1992), pp. 70-71.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access facts that are not to be found in the novel. Interpretation is not intended to advance and create facts, but to explain facts, while Miller does the opposite, namely, changing the facts instead of interpreting them, for at no point does one fmd in the text the clear-cut distinction, or even the slightest intimation thereof, of Ivan turning to the left while Alesha goes to the right, which is actually the core of what Miller has to say. Secondly, there is no connection whatsoever between Ivan's swaying or his sagging shoulder, on the one hand, and his turning to the left, on the other. As has been pointed out, there is no turning to the left, but even if we assume for the sake of the argument that it did exist, still there is no connection between making the turn and Ivan's physical features as described. In Miller's attempted interpretation, this connection seems to have been not only drawn but given essential significance: otherwise, Alesha's turning to the right would amount to his right shoulder having to sag, according to the same logic. Also, one has to fight the importu- nate allusion of the shoulder with a sort of "turn signal." Ivan could just as easily have taken the opposite turn. And since clearly Alesha's shoulder is not sagging, should we, then, write it off as Dostoevsky's failure to insert a word or two to that effect, given that Alesha still makes a turn? To put it simply, there is no turning to the left and to the right, and there is no connection between the shoulder and the gait, on the one hand, and the making of whatever turn by whomever, on the other. Third, Miller also seems simultaneously to "brake" and "accelerate" while driving her interpretation. While left and right may be well-established and recognizable political distinctions, they still do not work if applied to religion. But Miller emphasizes that the symbolism in question is precisely religious, and one is left to wonder what "left" ant "right" mean in religion, unless they indicate political intervention in religion, which is not to be found in Dostoevsky's novel. To be sure, the ways of Ivan and Alesha Karamazov are different, and grow increasingly divergent the further they are extended, but again, this is not what is encapsulated in the shoulder detail. So in conclusion, Miller too comes short of clarification of this peculiar physical feature of Ivan Karamazov; like Terras, she blends it with the gait and thus fails to address it. Thus, it may be said that Matlaw's, Terras', and Miller's attitudes to the shoulder detail, if one may speak of such, are symptomatic, at least in that they show that even the subtlest of professional readers, which they certainly are - even when they are aware of the evanescent presence of the shoulder detail, as they are - still may not pay attention to it and consequently be in a position to decipher it, as they were not. In the final analysis, in Matlaw, Terras, and Miller, the shoulder detail remains completely unaddressed and unac- counted for. '

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access 3. The shoulder hypothesis: The meaning and source of the shoulder detail, or I. K. versus I. K.

C'est du nouveau, n'est-ce pas?8 . Dostoevsky

The achievements with respect to noticing, and much less explaining, the shoulder detail have been not too charitable to it. Noticing the shoulder detail, which in and of itself has proven a rarity, goes only so far as to pose the question of its significance, which in turn calls for an interpretive explanation as a way of making sense of this detail. Predictably, interpreting has been even more rare than noticing, but perhaps surprisingly, noticing does not automatically lead to, and arrive at, interpreting, although by the same token, noticing naturally arouses the need for interpreting, as we have observed in Terras' and Miller's cases, and is the way to interpreting. Now, as we turn to unveil- ing the shoulder hypothesis, we shall address the question of its meaning. It has been widely recognized that Ivan Karamazov, as a literary character, is in fact such a collage of bits and pieces derived from different geographical and historical contexts that, to be flippant, one fears he may disintegrate at any moment without his shoulder having been so much as touched, never mind patted, and wonders if this may be the reason that Ivan Karamazov'ss shoulder has not been touched or dealt with for such a long time. Even if this be true, pondering it surely does not seem to be a problem. The starting point for seriously pondering the shoulder feature must be what seems to be the only thing beyond doubt and enjoying consensus: Ivan Karamazov is seen from virtually all quarters as Dostoevsky's ultimate ideological character, indeed as a walking idea. As Alesha testifies, all Ivan needs is not a fortune but to figure out God.9 Therefore, help in making sense of the shoulder detail may come, indeed should come, from precisely this direction, the essential element of Ivan Karamazov, and the hypothesis must be anchored in it. Moreover, the novel was designed to be the ultimate battle of belief and doubt, of heart and mind, of faith and knowledge, of trust in God and atheism - in a word, of all possible binaries. But who could be the ultimate rival of Dostoevsky in such a radical confrontation? One may argue, none other than ... Kant, in a direct or oblique way, for it is Kant who stands at the foundation of the modern dynamics of ideas in a broader sense. It has been said (by Otto Liebmann) that one may philosophize with Kant or against Kant, but not without Kant. Also, paradoxical as it may be, Dosto-

8. BK, p. 606. 9. F. M. Dostoevskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh (Leningrad: Nauka, 1975-90) (henceforth PSS), 14: 76.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access evsky, like Tolstoy, is a latent and quasi-Kantian in many ways, if only in virtue of being a sheer participant in the spiritual discussion of his time, informed and dominated by the Kantian legacy in whatever way it may be taken. So permeating were Kant's ideas that, in a way, they became intellectual folklore, ubiquitous to the point that, through different reiterations, they acquired a life of their own. One need not any longer be a professional philosopher in order to be exposed to them and be to some degree acquainted with them. Hence, Kant was present even where he was neither expected nor suspected to be. This is why, in addition to direct Kantianism, there was, in the context of the epoch, an oblique, subthreshold, and ubiquitous Kantianism as well, which is often left out of scholarly consideration. This epoch could be generally identified as modernity, that is, the epoch after the French Revolu- tion, or more or less after the Critique of Pure Rerxson, when virtually simultaneously three revolutions took place to swiftly change the destiny of the entire world as if in one triple bout: the one-warrior Copernican revolution, the French Revolution, and the American Revolution. From this vantage, it becomes clear that, as far as oblique Kantianism is concerned, it was omnipres- ent in virtue of that revolutionary shift toward critical thinking, tantamount to and identified as humanity's coming of age. Perhaps it was the very overarch- ing feature of the time, its differentia specifics, for if nothing else, the Coper- nican revolution was a "velvet" and "permanent" revolution that knew no geographic boundaries and enjoyed ultimate universality and reception in every longitude and latitude, while the French Revolution and the American Revolution still had geographic constraints. It was the Copernican revolution that taught man maturity, that is, to always make use of his reason, and in as way the American and French revolutions are exercises in Copernicanism, manifestations of maturity, if only incomplete. It may be argued that of the three, the revolution that touched Russia most was the Copernican revolution, in its oblique and under-radar dissemination. But this is only the contextual aspect, which, however contributive, is too general to sponsor and power the shoulder hypothesis. To secure it, there must be something much more concrete and tangible in the explanandum, indeed equivalent to the explenient. And indeed there is something that leads precisely from the generic characteristics to the d�erentia specifica of the hypothesis. It has to do with Kant himself, with his corporeal characteristics. As is well documented, Kant's right shoulder was visibly higher than his left shoulder. Now, following all those general and specific reasons in their cumu- , lative significance, there is sufficient ground to associate the shoulder feature of Ivan Karamazov with the similar feature of Immanuel Kant, making the claim that since, on the one hand, this feature in Ivan Karamazov cannot be accidental, and on the other, it is so uncommon and idiosyncratic, then in all probability Dostoevsky "borrowed" it precisely from Kant. In so doing,

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access Dostoevsky must have intended to go beyond superficial niimicking and similarity into emphasizing the essential kinship of his character and Immanuel Kant as, if not Kantian, then at least Kantianesque, on the basis of, if not identity, at least similarity between "pure" and "Euclidean" reason. Incidentally, Ivan Karamazov and Immanuel Kant also have the same initials, though this fact does not on its own have the value of evidence of their similarity, for it cannot be shown as non-accidental, although it seems to add up, when taken cumulatively with the rest. This is our shoulder hypothesis. While trying to lobby for, if not prove, the proposition that Ivan's shoulder feature was most likely modeled on a physical characteristic of Kant himself, the shoulder hypothesis does not try to assert that Ivan is a character whose sole prototype is Kant, and who therefore is not the synthetic character he is deemed to be. On the contrary, the character of Ivan Karamazov cannot help being synthetic, in virtue of his being a literary character, and a Dostoevskian literary character to boot. So the scope of the hypothesis does not in any way go farther than claiming that the sole physical detail in the physical portrayal of Ivan Karamazov was most likely borrowed from the physical characteristics of Kant himself, on the nonphysical, more exactly metaphysical, grounds of their ideological kinship, and with the object of artistically presenting this kinship. Any misunderstanding of the claims of the hypothesis would be an obstacle to its appropriation and, for that matter, its appreciation. In fact, it adds just another segment to the collage named "Ivan Karamazov," or, in other words, offers an explanation of the meaning of one enigma among many. To recapitulate, the hypothesis as a whole is grounded basically in the following manifold evidence. First, there is the fact of the physical characteristic of Kant, as given in the earliest memoir accounts of his life (dated 1804) by his contemporaries, friends, and pupils (namely, L. E. Borowski and R. B. Jachmann), and thereafter introduced into various biographies, beginning with the first one (of 1842), written by F. W. Schubert. Second, the hypothesis is fueled also by the high involvement of Kant's ideology not only in the intellectual life of humanity, and not only in Dostoevsky's work and his last novel, but also in Ivan Karamazov's character, as has been claimed by different researchers. Therefore, while creating Ivan Karamazov, Dostoevsky was likely to have had Kant and some tenets of his philosophy on his mind, regardless of how oblique and incomplete, as the ultimate source of the intellectual dynamics then at work - and, for that matter, of the dynamics played out in the novel. Now, it is not known how and from where Dostoevsky may in actuality have procured the knowledge of Kant's physical characteristic - his shoulder feature, which we have not yet given a comprehensive treatment. However, this is by no means an obstacle to the acceptance of the hypothesis, inasmuch

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access as opportunities to acquire it were more than plentiful and highly likely from a variety of standpoints. Let us put it this way: the possibilities were plentiful and the probability high for this acquisition to have taken place. For example, Dostoevsky was fond of philosophy and read some philosophy; throughout his literary career, he was involved in intensive intellectual activity famously organized in "circles" (kruzhki); and he had very close relationships with professional philosophers. Moreover, the biographical information about Kant had been available in a variety of sources ever since Kant's death. The Ger- man language was not a decisive obstacle for Dostoevsky; even less was it so for his philosopher friends. So the possibility of obtaining this information becomes highly probable due to the fact that this knowledge is factological in nature, and to learn it Dostoevsky would have needed only to hear it, which is already enough for him to have been able to apply it in accordance with his literary needs. Clearly, one should distinguish Dostoevsky's discovery of this biographical fact from mastery of Kant's philosophy and his reading through of Kant's critical corpus. If the latter cannot be shown - for in fact it never happened - the former is a different matter altogether. In addition, many portraits of Kant show this feature. It is enough, even for a man with a lesser degree of watchfulness than Dostoevsky, to glance at Kant's portrait, which often accompanies his books - especially the full-face view, not the profile, like the one that is looking at me from my desk - to see the physical detail in question. Thus, one may surmise, Dostoevsky may have gotten the detail as directly as off a portrait of Kant. It must be pointed out that virtually no account of Kant's life is to be found that does not mention his perpetual health problems - indeed, they are one of the constant and major themes of his bog-• raphy - even when the fact of the shoulder feature is "waived" out of respect for the great philosopher. This seems to be the ingenious solution to the pre- dicament faced by his life-account writers: having to dwell on Kant's peculiar corporeal status, while avoiding mention of some delicate details. However, what is crucial here and now is to understand that, while it would be devilishly interesting to pinpoint the very facticity of how Dostoevsky obtained the shoulder detail, this is by no means decisive for acceptance of the hypothesis, because even if that brief moment has irretrievably escaped notice and note, its probability and possibility, as well as its nature and character, are such that hypothetically there is no obstacle, until one be found, that may warrant deny- ing, rather than accepting, the hypothesis. What the hypothesis needs to assert itself is not actuality but possibility and probability; indeed, quite Kantiaruy, it requires only conditions of possibility and it certainly has them. ' ' Further, the possibility increases still more due to the fact that the shoulder hypothesis is fully in harmony with Dostoevsky's style of "studying philoso- r. phy" by collecting from here and there facts, ideas, statements, and interpretations on a variety of philosophical subjects, which he usually used in his

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access works by patching them together in a new order, thus turning them into marvelous images and metaphors while skirting the systematic ponderosity of philosophy. In addition to being a great writer, Dostoevsky had such philosophical sensitivity that he was a genuine "sponge" for philosophical ideas, a thinker whose philosophical resources cannot be gauged by and accounted for simply by calculating what he read and studied. To sum up, there is no obstacle to considering this hypothesis an actual explanation of the shoulder riddle, furnishing the most probable source of the enigmatic sole detail in the external portrayal of Ivan Karamazov, while not disturbing at any level the complex mechanics of Dostoevsky's art and its entire network. In view of that, the answer to the riddle of the source and meaning of Ivan Karamazov's shoulder feature is as follows. In all probability - it bears reiterating - it was Kant who was the source of Ivan Karamazov's sole physical feature, and its significance lies in the profound compatibility, not necessarily identity, of I. Karamazov's and I. Kant's philosophical visions. Indeed, there is no reason for not accepting this hypothesis until either a more convincing one is brought forth our a refutation of the present one is advanced. Now, we shall return analytically to all these claims in what remains of the present inquiry, as we thematize the elements of the shoulder hypothesis in slow motion.

Part Two: THEMATIZING THE SHOLTLDER HYPOTHESIS

What becomes important now is testing how this hypothesis would relate to different elements and levels of the nature and characteristics of Dosto- evsky's art as we know them. In so doing, a number of problems will be addressed from that standpoint. For one, the hypothesis must be related to the spirit of The Brothers Karamazov and its ideological dynamics as a whole. Second, it ought to be checked against Dostoevsky's theory and practice of dealing with details. Next, the Kantian lead must be comprehensively recov- ered and displayed. Also, once again, all principal opportunities for Dosto- evsky to have gained knowledge of Kant's work, life, and persona must be scrutinized in terms of personalities, and modes and types of communication. Further, a look at Ivan Karamazov's character is necessary in order to gauge, as the ultimate ground for borrowing the shoulder detail, his immanent compatibility with Kant's philosophy, without which this borrowing would make no sense. And finally, the main implication of the hypothesis - a new approach to the Dostoevsky-Kant parallel as a whole - will be considered briefly in conclusion, with a special emphasis on its inherent difficulty and the principal insufficiency of the existing approaches to this parallel.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access Theme 1 Going macroscopic: Retrieving the Candide lead of The Brothers Karamazov Here we make a shift toward drawing a panoramic picture of the novel, for we must see if and how the novel as a whole lends itself to such an interpretation and hypothesis. This, in turn, leads us to a characteristic of The Brothers Karamazov that is often underappreciated, sometimes fully overlooked; we shall call it "the Candide lead." In the Notebooks to The Brothers Karamazov of 1876-77, Dostoevsky logs in his intention to create "the Russian Candide." On December 24, 1877, Dostoevsky wrote in part: "Memento. For the whole of my life. Write the Russian Candide. Write a poem."10 This seemingly inconspicuous and brief entry may very well hold the key to crucial events and concepts of Dostoevsky's climactic years, and especially The Brothers Karamazov, which in addition essentially relates to our pursuit here. There are two key points in that entry, and both are understudied. First, there is the objective of writing a poem. This was especially significant in the context of Dostoevsky's polemic with Tolstoy and his response to War and Peace, only now Dostoevsky had to demonstrate and instantiate how his conception of literature differed from Tolstoy's, and the poem in question was to be no poem of exteriority, like Tolstoy's, but one of interiority. Such a kind of poem, however, had no precedent - Dostoevsky was to create it from scratch. Thus, a vast work was projected to showcase it, which is The Brothers Karamazov. Here, though, we are neither in need of this mesmerizing lead nor in a position to take it up, let alone to do justice to it. Second, Dostoevsky specifically envisioned this poem along the lines of a Russian Candide, with all the implications of such a vision, which seems to be still waiting to be teased out and drawn to the surface. This is what is relevant to our search, and we shall pursue it to that extent. Among the few who have paid some attention to the Candide matter is K. Mochulsky, who in chapter 16 of his famous Dostoevsky book offered the following scanty annotation: "In Ivan Karamazov's philosophy, Russian Vol- tairianism finds its culmination. "11I While this is not incorrect, it is rather insufficient and tentative, for although Mochulsky does appreciate the Voltairian affiliation of Ivan Karama- zov in general, he rather neglects the Candide feature in particular, with all its implications, which he would have rendered explicit had he thought there was something to explicate. Also, he does not show awareness that the Voltairian- . ism and Candide aspects are not identical and do not collapse into each other. i- I 10. PSS, 15: 409. 11. K. Mochulsky, Dostoevsky: His Life and Work (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1967), p. 383. •■-

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access Moreover, out of the two, Mochulsky focuses on the inferior aspect. However overlapping, Voltairianism and Candide are still different notions, and when it comes to the concrete case of Dostoevsky, this difference becomes even more significant, for Dostoevsky rejects the former but adopts the latter. After all, The Brothers Karamazov could be the Russian Candide without too much Voltairianism, for the concept of Voltairianism signifies something different and leads in a different direction. Thus, Mochulsky subrogates the literary for the ideological aspects of the Candide matrix, emphasizing just the former, while Dostoevsky appropriates only the former, namely the aspect of critique, or better yet, of literary critique of a philosophy, executed by way of a reductio ad absurdum. This raises a question that so far has not been posed seriously regarding the implications of Dostoevsky's Candide project as implemented in The Brothers Karamazov. This question has essentially to do with our quest, and we shall pursue it further. What has now become the crucial question may be expressed as follows. If The Brothers Karamazov is to be the Russian Candide Dostoevsky projected,. then what is the original whose Candide it may be, since the notion of Can- dide, as it were, stands for parody, or indirectly communicated critique via parody and irony? Mochulsky is silent about this, and so are other researchers. As a consciously Candide-like work, The Brothers Karamazov also presupposes an external reference point, as Voltaire's Candide does in Leibniz, if only to immediately distance itself from it, being its immanent critique. Given that, the understanding of The Brothers Karamazov should inevitably entail and presuppose the identification of the external reference point as its departure. Now, one wonders if this Candide reference point of The Brothers Kuramazov and Ivan Karamazov's shoulder feature, as seen in the hypothesis, can be shown to have something to do with each other. Yes, they can indeed. To that effect, it may be pointed out once again that the Candide lead of the novel has hardly been pursued vigorously, although, as a bit of text left by Dostoevsky, it has been no secret in and of itself. Dostoevsky's brief and somewhat enigmatic statement, left to hang in mid-air, hides a chain of thoughts that must be retrieved. Famously, the French original Candide is Voltaire's hybrid of critique and caricature of Leibniz' philosophy, and one of the earliest critiques of Enlightenment philosophy in general. The Candide pattern, or matrix, would always, then, presuppose an original to mock and - criticize - for that matter, the two are inseparably connected, which is perhaps the irony of this critique. So if The Brothers Karamazov is to be viewed as a Russian Candide, as Dostoevsky intended, then the target it deconstructs must also be identified and made part of the appropriation of the novel,. Unlike Voltaire's Candide, Dostoevsky's novel does not seem to have a single specific reference, but since the recognition of the Candide pattern in Dosto-

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access evsky's novel presupposes that there be such, then this point of reference seems to be Kant, however indirectly. As a literary pattern, Candide, from the standpoint of its content, signals the syndrome of revolt, which is readily available and immediately connects with Ivan Karamazov's function in the novel. Still, the employment of the Candide pattern in The Brothers Karamazov requires preliminary clarification. What is suggested here to that effect is that it is essential to distinguish between pre-modern and modern revolt, in spite of their similarities. While both are similar as a revolt against God, and both are grounded in reasoning, in reason itself, they still are different in terms of the critique of God they generate. So while Candide is obviously the modem pattern of revolt, the premodern pattern may be traced back to the Biblical Job and his revolt. Job revolts within the framework of faith when his faith is logically violated. Candide, on the other hand, is more or less a mockery of this revolt - a meta- revolt, so to speak - and suggests basically an atheistic stance, even if the entire uncertainty characteristic of it is factored in. So when it comes to Ivan Karamazov, an association with Job is less relevant and appropriate than one with Candide, as Dostoevsky seems to have intended. It must be pointed out, however, that the distinction offered here is brought to bear upon Dosto- evsky's work from outside, and is not Dostoevsky's, which in turn suggests that what it delineates in Dostoevsky is only partially discernible. Let us rewind the Candide pattern a bit. As is known, Voltaire had multiple showdowns with Leibniz, recorded in three works, one of which is Can- dide (1759).12 All three wrestle with Leibniz' ontological constructions, and specifically the order of things. Voltaire targets Leibniz' major tenet - that off pre-established harmony, which guarantees the insuperable perfection of our world, whose countless glitches and wrinkles, on the other hand, must be at- tended to under a separate cover, as it were, by way of theodicy, as Leibniz did. At times, such theodicy is pressed to advocate mind-boggling occurrences. If, however, one is so weak in faith as to hang onto reason, theodicy finds itself under fire. Now, it is arguably here that the crucial shift must have occurred, or at least so as far as Dostoevsky is concerned: it is as if for the first time God is left alone, and what is under fire is His creation. Instead of going as far as accusing God of earthly evil, it suffices to make it plain that evil is there, and thereby remove the predicate of perfection from the creation. This is precisely the transition identified here as the difference between premodern and modern revolt. And Dostoevsky was rather sensitive to it, for he . has Ivan Karamazov emphatically identify it as the major tenet of his own philosophy. Clearly, here is a mediated refutation of God, as opposed to an ,

12. The other two are Poeme sur le désastre de Lisbonne (1756) and Histoire de Jenni (1775).

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access immediate one, for it hits God through the conspicuously imperfect and thus non-divine status of His creation, rather than dealing with the ambiguous matter of the very concept of God, since at the end of the day the sum total of the refutation effect would be equal. From a philosophical standpoint, this shift cannot be overestimated. It seems to be a result of Dostoevsky's appropriation of the shifts in the cultural tradition - clearly that of Voltaire, but also of the post-Kantian situation, if only in a circuitous way. It is also important to point out that the modern revolt was fully employed in the contemporary epoch, when the post-Kantian situation in philosophy made it philosophically unviable to go directly about God, for God was shown as a cognitively inac- cessible target. Hence, though available and construed in early modernity, the modern revolt came to operate at its fullest after the French Revolution in the post-Kantian situation - indeed, in the post-Hegelian situation, to be precise - but Kant is the turning point. The Candide pattern, however, should not be limited either only to the pattern of revolt or only to that of theodicy or only even to the shift from the Creator to the creation. It should be considered essential that there is a literary aspect involved in this pattern, and this aspect is broader than, and independent from, its concrete ideological content and stance as found in Voltaire, for it has to do with the mockery and parody of another text, as well as the de- vices of caricature and hyperbole that usually accompany the deployment of the basic ironic and parodic attitudes. This is a "how" that could be attached to various "whats." In Candide, then, we fmd a double meaning that needs to be disentangled: the "what" of it is Voltairianism but the "how" is the Can- dide matrix. The two structures enjoy independence, so much so that they may even go against each other, namely, when the Candide matrix is applied against Voltairianism. Now, it is this artistic aspect of "how" in the Candide pattern that is crucial to Dostoevsky, for the rest of the objectives can also be achieved outside of this pattern. In many ways, Dostoevsky's counterattack on modern revolt represents the focal point of his ideological negativity in the novel. We should not fail to notice, however - referring back to the critical remarks on Mochulsky - that at this point Dostoevsky fights Voltairianism by way of Canclide. In Dostoevsky, the Candide pattern is also tethered to the question of theodicy in its modern form of dealing with the creation rather than the Creator, but this time it is also geared toward its failure, in accordance with Dostoevsky's ideological visions. So, as a Candide-like work, The . Brothers Karamazov goes back to the tradition of Christian apologetics and attacks its attackers by showing that their modern revolt, as .a critique of theodicy, is flawed, and therefore theodicy stands unrefuted. To recapitulate, in setting up the goal of writing "the Russian Candide," Dostoevsky clearly must have intended to write a critique, a mockery of something, for otherwise the Candide matrix would be inapplicable. Thus, it Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access seems safe to infer that if The Brothers Karamazov is Dostoevsky's projected "Russian Candide," then the Leibniz of the Russian Candide, so to speak, is Kant, and Leibniz' theory of pre-established harmony is replaced here with Kant's critique of pure reason, redefined as a critique of Euclidean reason. As the Russian Candide, The Brothers Karamazov may be viewed also as a case of meta-critique, in the technical sense of the word, as introduced by Hamann and Herder.

Theme 2 Going microscopic: The aesthetic significance of details in Dostoevsky This aspect is essential to our pursuit in an obvious way. It stands to mind that in order to proceed and investigate the shoulder detail, one must know, as a preliminary matter, what the stakes are with details in principle, and whether it is consistent with Dostoevsky's art to expect that he may have left in a detail like a "message in a bottle," so that we might wonder, delve, and dis- cover, as the shoulder hypothesis claims. This will help us in evaluating the weight the shoulder detail may carry, so that expectations as to its import may be proportionately allotted. It behooves us, therefore, to address the question of Dostoevsky's manner of detail management as a matter of his aesthetics, for what is here to be comprehended is a particular case of this aesthetics.

In response to R. Matlaw Let us first recall other memorable details in the physical portrayal of Dostoevsky's characters. In so doing, it is imperative to bear in mind that details in Dostoevsky's works are of different orders, and while all are deliberate and masterful, only few have symbolic significance and hermeneutical depth, certainly fewer than what R. Matlaw's count shows. In drawing this distinction, we in some way respond to Matlaw's stance as discussed above. First of all, it is widely recognized that Dostoevsky usually is not prone to providing plenty of details, especially when it comes to external portrayal of his characters, and basically he is not verbose about corporeality, though he is its subtle observer. Nevertheless, somehow the reader always ends up "know- ing" Dostoevsky's characters as if up close and personal, corporeality included. There is a peculiar dialectic at work here. Counterintuitively, the fewer details there are, the more significant their artistic function would be. It is this reticence regarding details and corporeality, characteristic of Dosto- evsky's way of portrayal, that possibilizes the significant function of detail in his works and makes his details so emphatic. This seeming contradiction in- forms Dostoevsky's poetics and aesthetics of details so that some details briefly flash from time to time, but linger long and always "stick." This terse- ness, therefore, is what packs surplus power into a few details, which acquire the exceptional metonymic force needed to display the whole. But one should

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access remember that in Dostoevsky's oeuvre there are still only few eloquent or symbolic details of this kind. Let us illustrate this point by way of comparison. For example, there are Shigalev's "prominent ears," which by their size and shape suggest a strong connection with evil in that they resemble the ears of the devil himself; but this association is immediately given, and the reader can harvest its suggestiveness right on the spot, requiring no further delving. There are a few details of this kind. All of them are rather loaded, enhancing Dostoevsky's narrative, but they diffuse artistically in an immediate fashion, and their representational power, as suggested, is readily available. Still fewer details among Dostoevsky's few details have the long legs to get us far from the moment and place of their occurrence, which brings us to the next kind of detail in our comparison. For example, in The Brothers Karamazov, the devil is said to wear no watch. Now, it should be clear that this is already a different case of artistic detailization, for it obviously hides mediation and needs further unpacking. The reader cannot get to the bottom of it immediately, even if notice and attention are paid to it. It is a case of symbolic detail, and this is the category in which the shoulder detail belongs. As for the watch detail, the devil is a peculiar phantasmagoric hologram of Ivan Karamazov's mind, caught up in a strange time warp of its own, and the watch detail is an invitation on Dostoevsky's part, perhaps even an urge, to tarry and further look into how this warp relates to the watch. We cannot pursue it here, having our hands full with the shoulder detail. Granted, in Dostoevsky's narrative, sparing with details, every detail counts, but some are loaded with exceptional semantic cargo. This simple distinction is what seems undelineated in Matlaw's probing into Dostoevsky's symbolism, with all the consequences of this omission. So the conclusion we must draw is that, even though all details seem to be carefully crafted and geared toward a certain artistic and ideological teleology, some details have considerably more preponderance than others, making them eloquent in terms of their contribution to literary art by binding more tightly the poetic and the ideological facets of the character. Used by many writers, in Dostoevsky this artistic practice is acutely posed and reformulated. Dostoevsky is highly innovative in the usage of eloquent details, for he, as has been suggested, at once employs emphasis on detail and forbearance in external portrayal - the underlying dialectic of Dostoevsky's detail management. This enabled him to es- ' cape altogether the classical type of well-detailed literary portrayal so typical of his contemporaries - for example, of Tolstoy - but not at the expense of the expressiveness of his art. It was Oscar Wilde who first paid notice to Dostoevsky's management of portrayal - or, to use Baudrillard's expression, his "political economy of the sign" - and specifically to the phenomenon of the "unfinished portrayal" as Dostoevsky's way of portraying his characters. The term "unfmished portrayal," however, is a bit misleading. A more apt

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access term for Dostoevsky's portrayal stylistics is perhaps "metonymic portrayal," for though his portrayals come across as perfectly finished and complete, they are done in a metonymic and elliptic way, which necessitates the use of a non- conventional way of detailization. Obviously, such a portrayal policy is bound to render additional importance to every detail, especially to some, and gradually cultivate in the reader the sensitivity needed to detect those symbolic details that carry the meaning of the whole they represent, rather than simply contribute to the force of the character in general terms. Dostoevsky's detail management has by and large been acknowledged and appreciated. Considering some testimony in this regard may be instructive to the task at hand. To that effect, we are poised now to hear from different quarters regarding the place and significance details are perceived to have in Dostoevsky's work. The testimony may come across as more mottled than systematic, and deliberately so, for what is important here is the ubiquity, rather than systematicity, of its sway. But before we pursue that, we must briefly consult Dostoevsky on the detail matter.

Dostoevsky To hear what Dostoevsky himself has to say concerning details means to ascertain that we do not ascribe to Dostoevsky a stance or attitude that he would not take on and consider essential, which would clearly pay lip service to the present inquiry. As it turns out, Dostoevsky in fact has much to say, although it can be compressed and delivered in a single sentence, which seems to tell the whole story in his own words: "The details, above everything else the details, I beg you ... 1,13 Incidentally, this is a phrase from The Brothels Karamazov, and it is uttered by Ivan Karamazov, but more importantly, Anna Grigorievna remembers emphatically how precious and significant this phrase was to Dostoevsky himself, and that in fact he frequently repeated it whenever something captured his interest (as she points out in her commentaries to Dostoevsky's works, quoted just as emphatically by L. Grossman).14 Now, with Dostoevsky's endorsement in hand, we may go on with the probing. Dostoevsky not only appreciated details professionally, but also mastered the art of detail and created indelible impressions by way of details, among other things, so much so that many great minds have gone on record sharing the impressions and experiences Dostoevsky's details left on them. At times, snapshots, hinged upon a detail, can prove more memorable and powerful in the eye of the beholder than Dostoevsky's complex ideology. We shall now

-:■ 13. PSS, 15: 61. 1 14. L. Grossman, Seminarii po Dostoevskomu: materialy, bibliografiia i kommentarii (Mos- cow-Petrograd: Gos. izd-vo, 1922), p. 69. ' ■■•

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access hear from some of those great minds, among whom there are a few especially prominent examples in terms of authority and credibility alike.

Levinas With respect to Proust's perception of Dostoevsky and literary work in general, as it relates to The Prisoner, Levinas enters, in Reality and Its Shadow, the following statement, important to our pursuit:

In speaking of Dostoevsky, what holds his [Proust's] attention is neither Dostoevsky's religious ideas, his metaphysics, nor his psychology, but some profiles of girls, a few images: the house of the crime with its stairway and its dvornik in Crime and Punishment, Grushenka's silhou- ette in The Brothers Karamazov. It is as though we are to think that the plastic element of reality is, in the end, the goal of the psychological novel. Much is said about atmosphere in novels. Criticism itself likes to adopt this meteorological language. Introspection is taken to be a novelist's fundamental procedure, and one supposes that things and nature can enter into a book only when they are enveloped in an atmosphere composed of human emanations. We think, on the contrary, that an exterior vision - of a total exteriority, like the exteriority in rhythm we have discussed above, where the subject itself is exterior to itself is the true vision of the novelist.... Even the psychological novelist sees his inner life on the outside, not necessarily through the eyes of another, but was one participates in a rhythm or a dream. All the power of the contemporary novel, its art-magic, is perhaps due to this way of seeing in- wardness from the outside.155

Quite often, one gets the impression that Levinas' self-acknowledged and well-publicized schooling in Russian literature has left an indelible imprint on his concept of literature, and certainly on his philosophy. The lesson Levinas' statement should drive home is that great literature operates so that what it displays on the surface is in principle essential, for it is the exteriorization of the interior, and in virtue of that, the phenomenology of literature is of a different order, as compared to the phenomenology of life. Hence, details in art are radically different from details in everydayness, for they are deliberate and set up, not accidental and often uncontrolled, yet they must come across • in the natural way in which details operate in everydayness. It is hardly accidental that Dostoevsky occasions this remark in Levinas. Although hard to prove, there must be something quite powerful in Dostoevsky as regards details that afforded Levinas the chance to make his statement.

15. The Levinas Reader, ed. by Sean Hand (London: Basil Blackwell, 1989), pp. 139-40.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access Gadamer (and the hermeneutic perspective) Gadamer commands surplus expertise and enjoys the merited authority of being an exceptionally accomplished aestheticist and cognoscente of the intimate relationship between literature and philosophy, a gift bestowed on few. His brand of philosophy, known as philosophical hermeneutics, whose century-long formation comes to fruition in his work, seems ultimately favorable when it comes to capacity and sensitivity in understanding literature. In his sizable output on matters of literature and art, one witnesses nothing but stun- ning subtlety in relating to literature. Focusing on some of Gadamer's statements on Dostoevsky, relevant to our specific pursuit, we fmd ourselves leaf- ing through the pages of his major essay on literature, The Relevance of the Beautiful. In it he states the following:

Let us consider the case of literature.... What, for example, is the evocative function of a story? I shall take a famous example: The Brothers Karamazov. I can see the stairs down which Smerdyakov tumbles. Dostoevsky gives a certain description. As a result, I know exactly what this staircase looks like. I know where it starts, how it gets darker, and then turns to the ladder. All this is clear to me in the most concrete way and yet I also know that no one else "sees" the staircase the way I do. But anyone who is receptive to this masterly narrative will "see" the staircase in a more specific way and be convinced that he sees it as it really is. This is the open space creative language gives us and which we fill out by following what the writer evokes. And similarly in the visual arts. A synthetic act is required in which we must unite and bring . together many different aspects. We "read" a picture, as we say, like a text. We start to "decipher" a picture like a text. 16

Gadamer's concept of universal textuality - understood as everything that awaits "reading," that is, understanding and deciphering of meaning, perhaps also the Husserlian meaning bestowal - is illustrated here on the specific occasion of reading a text as a picture, as well as seeing a picture as a text, which is rather essentially relevant to the task of the shoulder hypothesis. Though Gadamer does not draw together all implications, it is clear that picture in text and text in picture are compatible, and pictoriality of literature or text belongs to literature in a forceful way, being a sketch or snapshot drawn by way of language and certainly operating much as a text does. When already incorporated in the text, it remains a picture nevertheless, a case of a ■ non-textual presence in the text. In other words, narrationality may be viewed

16. H. G. Gadamer, The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays, ed. by R. Bernasconi (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989), p. 27.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access as a case of not only textuality but also of linguistic pictoriality, that is, speaking by way of drawing pictures, just as one might draw pictures by way of speaking. If this is in some way valid, then pictures in literature are among its ultimate instantiations, and thus by no means optional for the reader to understand and ponder. Now, that staircase of Dostoevsky's must have impressed Gadamer considerably, since he returns and refers to it in another essay, namely, On the Contribution of Poetry to the Search for Truth. Let us view this verbal picture once again, as Gadamer skillfully draws it by way of speaking, for it is by no means a mere copy of the previous one:

To speak of truth in poetry is to ask how the poetic word finds fulfillment precisely by refusing external verification of any kind. Let us take a literary example at random - The Brothers Karamazov by Dosto- evsky. The staircase that Smerdyakov falls down plays a major role in the story. Everyone who has read the book will remember this scene and will "know" exactly what the staircase looks like. Not one of us has exactly the same image of it and yet we all believe that we see it quite vividly. It would be absurd to ask what the staircase "intended" by Dostoevsky really looked like. Through the way in which he tells his story and by his treatment of language, the writer succeeds in rousing the imagination of every reader to construct an image so that he thinks he sees exactly how the stairs turn to the right, descend for a couple of steps, and then disappear into the darkness below. If someone else says that it turns left, descends for six steps, and then is lost in the darkness, he is obviously just as much in the right. By not describing the scene in any more detail than he has, Dostoevsky stimulates us to construct an image of the staircase in our imagination. From this example we can see how the poet manages to conjure up the self-fulfillment of language. But how does the poet do this and what means does he employ? I would just like to insert a small observation.... I am thinking here of lyric poetry, where we confront an unconditional case of untranslatability.... There are of course levels of untranslatability. A novel is certainly translatable and we must ask ourselves why this is, why we are able to see Dostoevsky"s staircase in front of us so vividly that I could almost argue with someone about the direction in which it turns, al- . though I know no Russian? 17

Here, among other things, Gadamer emphasizes, if only inadvertently, how details work on the reader, or, to be precise, how the writer works upon the reader by way of details. This is an act of artistic conjuring up of images, and its suggestiveness lingers beyond the image through the image, where instead

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access of spelling it out directly, the writer employs the mastery of oblique or indirect communication. This is why artistic text is always and inevitably loaded. Interestingly, at the same time Gadamer is subtle enough to disclose the opposite tendency of undermining some kind of ultimate authority of details. As he puts it, whether two or six steps separate the change of direction in the staircase is of no consequence whatsoever, and is no difference that makes difference, as long as one goes further into the interpretation of the work and pays notice to the staircase turning and disappearing in the darkness, as well as its direction downward. Here also Gadamer lends his tremendous authority - perhaps in some sense at his own expense - to the notion that becoming a good reader of artistic prose does not necessarily require command of the original language of the work, although with the proviso that this is not the case with the reader of poetry. The encouragement Gadamer issues to the reader is unequivocal: there can be no alibi in reading and no lazy reader; everything in the hodge-podge of the text matters, which is to say there is no detail too small to consider and ponder. We may also add that details can still differ - as we have discussed - which is the reason it matters not if the steps are two or six. However, when it comes to symbolic details, this is not the case. Without suggesting that Gadamer fails to appreciate all elements of the detail game in Dostoevsky, still there can be no doubt that the staircase Smer- diakov tumbles down is less significant than the shoulder detail. Every detail is a statement, and Gadamer's original word for this type of statement is Aussage, namely, "speaking out," saying, communicating. Per- haps there is some ,peculiar way of employing language when it comes to the pictoriality of the text, when language as the ultimate tool of direct communi- ' cation chooses what seems to be alien to itself and its own nature, namely, indirect communication. What underlies this choice is the interference of the rule of artistic engagement, whereby the artistic overrides the linguistic: the latter, at this point, is the tool of the former, and the former is defined by indi- rectness. By the same token, details amount to statements, or words, and therefore must be "read." If properly understood, this is to say that no specific language or linguistic, semiotic, or semiological affiliation is needed to le- gitimize and sponsor the attention to details in imaginative literature, and that, vice versa, the lack of such cannot in any way amount to an alibi or excuse. So this kind of school affiliation should not be confused with the reader following the reader's chores in dealing with the text, for these chores are non- partisan.

Lotinan (and the semiotic perspective) When it comes to literary semiotics, even in a broader sense, as the study of signs, symbols, images, and the like, it seems clear that Lotman must be consulted in view of his scholarly merits and universal recognition as perhaps

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access the last classic in the field, which is especially true in terms of Russian studies. Having acknowledged that, not consulting Lotman would work only to the detriment of the party making this decision. It is appropriate, then, to wrap up our consideration of the detail problematic in Dostoevsky with a brief re- course to Lotman's work, but again, from the specific angle of how it relates to what is at issue here. For that we turn to Lotman's famous work The Struc- ture of the Artistic Text.l8 In the process of his investigation, Lotman ad- dresses, among other things, the question of the extratextual structures of the text, which makes up the frame wherein he explores thoughts relevant to our investigation. The artistic work is basically viewed by Lotman as a specific model of the world, as communication in a specific language, namely, the language of art, so it does not exist and function outside of that language and that communication. Every attempt at appropriating an artistic work outside of this framework is bound, therefore, to arrive at the wrong destination and incorrect results. Thus, the work of art throws the reader into the tangled net of complex artistic codes that express the artistic way of meaning bestowal, which the reader must somehow master in his capacity as a reader. This said, one has to be aware that within the aforementioned framework of language and artistic commerce, there is extratextual presence, which too must be mastered as part of the general intentionality of appropriating the text of the work of art, for it belongs to art. These extratextual elements are planted in the textual canvas, and thus lose their conspicuousness as nontextual, but nevertheless remain such even in that topology. The extratextual structure is in fact a hierarchy in its own right, just as the textual one is, which is to suggest that it runs on a variety of levels. Lotman distinguishes two major levels of extratextual relations - that of artistic language and that of communication.�9 The latter is more interesting to us, for Lotman connects it with the peculiar phenomenon of what may be called semiotic negativity, his term for it being "minus-device" (minus-priem).20 In this avenue, Lotman advances the interesting thought that the aforementioned negativity is organically and graphically affixed to the text, as though in a way present,, but present only by way of its absence. Lotman connects it with the constructive role of the significant zero, which he himself admittedly recruits from Barthes and Barthes' famous notion of zero degree. Obviously, Lotman offers an appropriation of this concept to his own purposes, for he views it as the semantic meaning of pause and the measurement of the information donated by artistic silence.21 One wonders, in response to

18. Iu. Lotman, Struktura khudozhestverenogo teksta (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1970). 19. Ibid., p. 66. 20. Ibid., p. 66. 21. Ibid., p. 67.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access Lotman's thoughts: Is there anything easier than overlooking the pockets of semantic negativity in a text? Perhaps not. The mercurial, yet permeating, presence of semantic silence is rather overwhelming, constituting a whole invisible world, as vast and complex as the visible world of semantic positivity. Obviously, the question of the extratextual presence in the text is a tremendous question of reading, for it may paralyze and implode it. The effort to prevent that leads directly to the response mounted by hermeneutics - a whole science of coping with it. Within this framework, Lotman turns to the question of speech expression-sign, or image (slovesnyi izobrazitelnyi znak - obraz).22 In this regard, he speaks of iconic principle (ikonicheskii printsip)?3 Signs have referential nature by definition, for they refer to something and thus generate meaning. By the same token, the reference point must be absent, whereby the sign becomes the artistic original. But when it comes to meaning recuperation, one is pressed to go beyond the semiotic surface in order to retrieve that missing original, or referential point. And herein lies the dilemma - which Lotman does not address directly - that sign may to an equal degree either open up semantic vistas or commit one to the flatland of not understanding it. When it comes to which of those two options is activated, what is crucial is the capacity to appropriated signs, which begins with the realization that a sign is a sign, that is, a departure toward something, rather than an endgame in itself. So what is at stake here is understanding, which makes hermeneutics the twin of semiotics. Lotman speaks of understanding without words,24 which is precisely the rlifferentia specifica of how image, or expression-sign, operates, namely, that it speaks by waiving speech. Images, or expression-signs, as a relation between the signified and the signifier, require understanding of complex codes.25 In images, Lotman distinguishes two aspects - conditional and iconic,26 where the image operates only through the cooperation of those two aspects. In this distinction, we naturally discern the classic distinction between sign and symbol, or allegory and symbol. Throughout its millennial history, this distinction, however, has shown volatility and instability stronger than, and evasive of, the faculty of discrimination in scholars. For example, Gadamer, in a comprehensive historical discourse of this distinction, arrives at the conclusion of the aspects' similarity. Lotman, in his own way, makes this point himself, that in the final analysis sign and symbol show only different degrees of conditionality.27 Still, he points out that literature is specifically

, . 22. Ibid., p. 72.. 23. Ibid., p. 72. 24. Ibid., p. 73. i ' 25. Ibid., p. 73. 26. Ibid., p. 73. ! 27. Ibid., p. 73. !

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access interested in the conditional aspect, rather than iconic,28 for it is the conditional aspect that triggers the symbolization process. The expression or the iconic aspect is not deployed until the conditional one is brought to bear. These conditional signs are harvested and recruited from natural language. But here a crucial dialectic is at play. They should be of collective availability and transparency, but never trivial, for either of those extremes, be it nontransparency or triviality, taken by itself, would kill the semiotic coil of it. So, to create special or metalanguages, such as the language of literature or artistic language, one has to know, feel, and observe this dialectic. All metalanguages are systems of codes, but codes produced from another system of codes, that is, from natural language, so they contain secondary signs, or signs redefined by a new intentionality and reapplied to specific objectives. For Lotman, iconic signs, in virtue of their immediate and visual similarity to their reference, are less codified than the conditional ones. This creates further the impression that they are more reliable and true than the conditional signs, Lotman points out.z9 Thus there are two aspects that must be present in the image: similarity to, and difference from, the reference.30 For Lotman, using signs is a process of codification, which presupposes similarity and difference with regard to a sign's point of reference, without which there can be no "signing," so to speak, no semiotic process. This dialectic is a fine line to walk, and is vulnerable to deviations, whereby the semiotic function of the sign is easily lost. This function is nothing else but communication without words, and it draws upon, and is grounded in, preceding social experience. If'we apply Lotman's stance on image to the task of our inquiry here, then Ivan Karamazov's shoulder detail may be viewed as nothing short of a classic example. Understanding presupposes preceding experience to derive from - otherwise the reference point is lost. There is a point of negativity - that is, absence, pause, silence - which is the transformation of speech into image and the extratextual presence in the text waiting to be unpacked, and thus turned "audio." This is an invitation to a playful exchange, to a further pursuit, with the door left somewhat ajar, neither closed nor opened. Clearly, at the moment when the dialectic of similarity and difference is violated, the shoulder detail becomes a fact rather than a sign, for there is nothing that may suggest to the reader that there is semiotic silence posted behind, and that he should go further and retrieve it. Hence, to know the shoulder detail only as a fact, not as a sign, in the final analysis means not to know it in a way consistent with imaginative literature. This is why it is claimed here that even when one knows about the shoulder detail, still this is only the beginning, rather

28. Ibid., p. 73. . 29. Ibid., p. 74. 30. Ibid., p. 74.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access than the end of the process of its appropriation, as we saw and argued, for example, in Matlaw's case. When a sign is reduced to a fact, then, to put it into Lotman's vocabulary, only the iconic aspect of the sign is appropriated, and its conditional trigger remains "unpulled," that is, outside of the semiotic awareness field. But the remedy, or what is to follow the fact on its way to becoming a sign, should not come out of the blue - as we saw it do, for example, in the cases of Terras and Miller - however ingenious it may be, for it does not amount to an interpretation of the sign. Hence, a sign qua sign is fully honored - that is, semiotics is semantically honored - not when the sign is spotted, but when the interpretation of the sign is furnished. Clearly, it may be concluded that the shoulder hypothesis is fully in line with the aesthetic question of the role of details in imaginative literature. Moreover, the insight we have gained in the process of pondering this sophisticated problem, and must drive home, may even be somewhat surprising to us, for we have learnt that in fact we must take this detail much more seriously than we may so far have thought. When it comes to imaginative literature, the stakes are great even in what may come across as a small investment, . such as details.

Theme 3 . The Kantian lead: A historical review of Kant's biographical sources

I take it for granted that all people of education will acknowledge some interests in the personal history of Immanuel Kant, however little their taste or their opportunities may have brought them acquainted' with the history of Kant's philosophical opinion.... To suppose a reader thoroughly indifferent to Kant is to suppose him thoroughly un- intellectual; and, therefore, though in reality he should happen not to regard Kant with interest, it would still be amongst the fictions of courtesy to presume that hs did. On this principle I make no apology tv any reader, philosophic or not, Goth or Yandal, Hun or Saracen, for de- taining him upon a short sketch of Kant's life and domestic habits, drawn from the authentic records of his friends and pupils.3! Thomas De Quincey

The logic of our investigation into the hypothesis of Ivan Karamazov's physical semblance to Kant inevitably leads us back to what we know about Kant's life, or in other words, the history of the accounts of Kant's life. As we approach that, our task is to display the Kantian sources of the shoulder hy-

31. The Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey, vol. 4: Biographies and Biographic Sketches, pp. 323-79, enlarged ed. (New York: AMS Press, 1889-90 [1968]), p. 323. 1

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access pothesis, with the package of their history, variety, typology, and message. Due to the significance of Kant in any sense and for any field of knowledge, this matter seems to have been well explored. Again, the purpose that guides us toward the matter of Kant's personal Bildungen is determined and re- stricted by its concrete profile and goal. So we are going to� investigate this matter not for the sake of simply acquiring extensive knowledge, but rather to disclose the necessary historical data and ground for illuminating the riddle in question. Here and now we turn to the protocols of the hypothesis. It is known that when Dr. S. Johnson found out that J. Boswell was going to write his biography, Johnson's reaction was characteristic: if Boswell were to describe his life, then he in return would take his. Conversely, when Kant understood that Borowski had drafted a biographical sketch about him, Kant took interest in looking into it, read it carefully, entered changes, and in so doing virtually created what may be termed the protocol of his life. In the year of Kant's death, 1804, this account was published together with two other accounts, all of them authored by people who knew Kant personally and con- tinuously kept his company. This three-part account became the most authoritative source by any standard of the facticity of Kant's life. Let us emphasize: it is this account that lies at the bottom of the shoulder hypothesis, as will be shown. Among Kant's first chroniclers, the crucial figure is that of the said Borowski, not only because of his unique access to Kant's life, but also because Kant himself is the actual editor and censor of his account, as has been pointed out. This original source has been handed down to us through a rather rich and various biographical tradition. Further, we must distinguish between memoirs and biography as different kinds of life accounts; in so doing we will gain clarity in perceiving the un- equal reliability of different life accounts with respect to different purposes. The memoir is usually one-sided, but in an obvious way strong because of its one-sidedness, for it is heavily informed by the immediate knowledge of its subject. Thus, it may be said that the memoir is the "zero degree" of writing life accounts, and in this regard, Borowski's account, as reviewed by Kant, is clearly the zero-degree writing of Kant's life - again, its ultimate protocol. The biography is holistic and presumably more complete, but this is achieved at the expense of being usually a secondary account, and, for that matter, derivative and mediated. What it is derivative of is memoirs. The mutual com- plementarity of, and differences between, memoir and biography are readily available. In Kant's Bildungen, these two aspects are represented and well segregated. With this distinction clarified, we may now turn to its implications concerning the shoulder hypothesis. For our purposes, memoir is the unconditional and decisive object of interest on account of its immediacy and reliability, as well as hands-on access and facticity, but also due to the specific interest in specific information we wish to obtain as relevant to the pre-

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access sent hypothesis. Moreover, our specific target is such that it could hardly benefit from the principal advantages that a biography may offer, namely, its balance and complete analysis. It is crucial to remember that since biography Piggybacks memoirs, it gains its completeness and universality at the price of using a selective approach to the data supplied by memoirs. So the physical portrait of Kant, depicted and completed early on in memoirs, became subject to the peculiar selective approach of biography, when different biographers used their discretion as to what portrait was most fitting to their plan - their agenda even - which in turn determined how they should redraw Kant's portrait by selectively using the data of the early memoirists. This selectiveness is what may be called the biographer's discretion, or choice, or license. The bottom line here, as far as our investigation is concerned, is that even if some biographies do not reveal Kant's shoulder feature, they cannot make it nonexistent, and conversely, the memoirs of Kant's life already document with ut- most certainty his shoulder characteristic, so it is a fact not less certain than that of Kant's authorship of The Critique of Pure Reason, though, of course, incomparably less significant. In sum, biographies come across to the shoulder hypothesis almost exclusively as vehicles of dissemination, and their duty is only to disseminate the shoulder feature or not.

Memoirs The history of Kant's personal Bildungen reveals, as has been indicated, the internal typology of memoirs and biographies, and the former have been identified as the genuine scope of our interest and now become the focal point of our attention at close quarters. Kant's Bildungen first came to pass exclusively in the form of memoirs and, even before Kant passed away, were a law- governed result of the great interest in Kant among the Germans, and in particular among the residents of Kant's city, Konigsberg. It may be pointed out in passing that unlike numerous other men of genius, Kant was appreciated while still alive by receiving the full recognition of at least the German philosophical community, and quickly transcending its numerous borders. This is why it would be no exaggeration to speak of Kant's celebrity status - of course, in adequate historical and professional quantification - which inevitably encouraged his life-accounting. The beginning of the process of recording Kant's life was predictably initiated by the people who knew him, as a result of observing his daily life or/and recalling facts of it. Now we shall turn to the most fundamental memoirs of Kant's life, both to reconstruct the general picture of memoirs and to track down and specify the source of the concrete information about Kant's shoulder characteristic, crucial to the present investigation. What this calls for, in turn, is to focus on the three most original and most authentic memoir accounts, two of which mention, indeed introduce, the shoulder detail. ! .

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access 1) L. E. Borowski As has been repeatedly stated, the oldest, and here held most important, account of Kant's life is that of Ludwig Ernst Borowski's Darstellung des Lebens und Charakters Kants.32 The author was sixteen years younger than Kant and the oldest of Kant's pupils. The beginning of the work had been struck up, eight years before its publication, as a lecture on Kant's life that Borowski delivered before the Royal German Society of Konigsberg. As has been indicated, the most significant point here consists in the fact that Kant had perused Borowski's manuscript and virtually given his benediction in terms of both its oral presentation on the occasion and an eventual written account to be published after his death. And this is what happened indeed, which makes Borowski the "patriarch" of Kant's life accounts, and more specifically, of Kant's memoir corpus. Here is what Borowski wrote concerning Kant's shoulder characteristic and dared to present to Kant - and Kant dar- ingly approved:

His (own) body, barely medium size, was of fragile build, yet on the whole sound, except that his right shoulder, ever since his early years, was noticeably higher.33 (Italics are mine - S. E.)

It bears repeating for our purposes that this is precisely the statement seen and approved by Kant, all the more significant since it is documented that he also struck out some passages from that very account.

2) R. B. Jachmann The next account chronologically is that of Reinhold Bernhard Jachmann, Immanuel Kant in Briefen an einen Freund.34 This account is peculiar in that it covers Kant's life only until 1794. Its author, too, maintained an intensive connection with Kant, mainly from 1784 until 1794. Jachmann, as the title already shows, styles his account of Kant's life in the epistolary genre, but it is a mock correspondence. In letter No. 14, dedicated to Kant's physical status, Jachmann writes the following:

His body was hardly five feet tall; his head in relation to the rest of , his body was rather big; his chest rather flat and almost twisted; the

32. L. E. Borowski, Darstellung des Lebens und Charakters Kants (K6nigsberg: bey Frie- drich Ricolovius, 1804), 276 S. in toto). 33. Ibid., pp. 109-10. 34. R. B. Jachmann, Immanuel Kant in Briefen an einen Freund (Konigsberg: bey Friedrich Ricolovius, 1804), 220 S. in toto).

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access right shoulder, turned backward, was somewhat lower.35 (Italics are mine - S. E.)

It may be pointed out that in the same letter, Jachmann testifies to Kant's attitude to his own body, a topic that Kant by no means avoided, which remains outside the scope of the present investigation.

3) E. A. C. Wasianski The third account is that of Ehregott Andreus Cristoph Wasianski, .Bericht von Kant in seinen letzten Lebensjahren.36 It was born out of a close relationship with Kant throughout his last years, starting from 1790. Thus, it is obvious how the accounts of Jachmann and Wasianski virtually make up one whole chronologically, supplementing each other. While Wasianski does not include the shoulder feature in his account, this fact should not be overestimated but rather correctly understood. Since Borowski, with Kant's approval, testifies to the fact of the shoulder feature, he makes it clear that the feature was undoubtedly in place and conspicuous during the time when Wasianski was a friend of Kant, a fact that Jachmann corroborates. Now, there is something to emphasize here, but of a different order. By not mentioning the shoulder characteristic, Wasianski makes a choice, reminiscent of the biographer's license, not to include it while virtually constantly dwelling upon Kant's physical status as a central problematic of Kant's later years. This comes across as something of an act of the excapsulation of the genre of memoirs and its fermentation into biography, as distinguished above. Through Wasianski's work, we understand better the relative nature of the memoir- biography distinction, the demarcation line between them that is often blurred under the pressure of their similarity, although their difference, in one way or another, survives this pressure. The whole scholarly world uses these three accounts as the definitive source of knowledge about Kant's life. As has been pointed out, in addition to the three major accounts, there are other contemporaneous accounts, which are considered second-rank even by scholars who themselves have written about Kant's life, and therefore carefully studied the entire bank of Kant's Bildungen - such, for one, is the famous Neo-Kantian scholar Karl Vor- lander,3� as well as, for another, the first biographer of Kant in English, J, H.

,35. Ibid., p. 153; see also p. 158. 36. E. A. C. Wasianski, Bericht von Kant in seinen letzten Lebensjahren (Konigsberg: bey I %I Friedrich Ricolovius, 1804), 224 S. in toto). 37. See Karl Vorlander, Immanuel Kants Leben (Leipzig: Verlag von Felix Meiner, 1911), p. 212. ■

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access W. Stuckenberg,.38 There are other accounts and sources of import, such as the high-profile reminiscences and letters of Herder and Hamann, as well as the autobiographies of T. G. von Hippel, J. G. Schittner, both friends and pupils of Kant, and so on. Again, none of these may be considered equal to the three accounts above in terms of originarity and reliability. But the point, essential to the hypothesis, has been made by showing how the introduction of the shoulder detail took place in two out of three original memoir accounts of Kant's life. The absence of it in Wasianski's account is in fact a silence that speaks to the choice he made not to record the feature, which makes for a natural transition from memoir to biography. This transition was later pro- pelled further by the inherent limitations and insufficiency of memoir accounts, limited in time, subjective in mood, and one-sided in presentation, which called for a new approach in Kant's Bildungen - that of biography.

Biographies Turning to biography accounts, it has been already stated that memoirs, with their originary authenticity, have superior significance to biographies from the standpoint of the shoulder hypothesis. The relation between the two types of accounts perhaps may be delineated as the former being the source of information, and the latter the vehicle of its dissemination. Hence, we have to show now how the first biographies picked up the shoulder detail from the memoir accounts and set in motion its cultural circulation. We fmd the shoulder feature mentioned in Kant's first German biography, as well as in the first English biography. More importantly, we already know for certain that when the shoulder feature is not mentioned, it is exclusively due to the biographer's discretion, not because of its nonexistence. Biography, as a life account, has an internal division of its own worth briefly considering - biography of the man and biography of the scholar, although we may never find a crystalline delineation and separation of the two, as this distinction may suggest. The internal specialization of biography underlying this distinction is relevant to our pursuit here, for clearly the genre is more prone to overlook the shoulder detail, precisely because of, its focal point. Arguably the first to create a biography proper of Kant was Friedrich Wilhelm Schubert, who, together with Karl Rosenkranz, published an eleven- volume edition of Kant's works, wherein the eleventh volume is supplemen- tary, consisting of two parts: Rosenkranz' Geschichte der Kantschen Philoso- phie and Schubert's Immanuel Kants Biographie, both now classics. This edition, as well as the biography occasioned by it, was brought out thirty-eight years after Kant's death. Inevitably, the sources of Schubert's biography were

38. See J. H. W. Stuckenberg, The Life of Immanuel Kant, Appendix, reprint (New York: Univ. Press of America, 1986), p. 451.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access the three aforementioned memoir accounts. In it, if we reach far enough, we may stumble upon the mention of Kant's shoulder feature, which withstood Schubert's biographer's license. He writes, even using at moments the language of Borowski and Jachmann:

Due to weak shoulder frame, and still weaker muscular strength, he was hardly 5 feet tall; his chest was rather flat and quite twisted; the right shoulder was somewhat bowed. The other body parts were in good proportion to each Other.39

Schubert's biography, the first in Germany, marks symbolically the beginning of scholarly biography of Kant in general, and as we have seen, makes mention, in its own way, of the shoulder feature. Schubert precedes Kuno Fischer's biography of Kant4O by about two decades. It is certainly important and relevant to mention that Dostoevsky's close friend N. Strakhov translated Kuno Fischer into Russian; the first fragments of his translation came out in the early 1860s in the journals Time and Epoc.h, virtually concomitantly with the appearance of the original work in Germany.41 K. Fischer introduced what turned out to be, for about a century, the classic "genre" of the two-volume investigation of Kant, wherein basically the first volume accounts for Kant's life and the second for Kant's philosophy. It must be pointed out that like Wasianski and others, K. Fischer opted not to mention the shoulder detail, though at the same time he was comprehensive in his attention to Kant's health problems and all that came with them in terms of lifestyle, diet, habits, regular strolls, daily routines, and so forth. Still, he went as far as the very brink of disclosing the shoulder feature, mentioning that because of his nar- row and flat chest, Kant had to make special accommodations in his life Though the merit for introducing the life of Kant to the English-speaking audience seems reserved for and copyrighted by De Quincey, with his Biog- raphies and Biographic Sketches (his source was Wasianski, for his topic is the last days of Kant, as the title shows), the first biography proper of Kant in English, J. H. W. Stuckenberg's The Life of Immanuel Kant (published in 1882), not surprisingly was written by a German. Its derivative nature is ob-

39. Immanuel Kant's Sammtliche Werke, Theil 11, Abteilung 2: "Immanuel Kant's Bi- ographie: Zum grossen theil nach Handschriftlichen Nachrichten," dargestellt von F. W. Schu- bert, herausgegeben von K. Rosenkranz � F. W. Schubert (Leipzig: Leopold Voss, 1842), p. 177. 40. Kuno Fischer, Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, Bd. 4, Theil 1, Jubilaumsausgabe (Heidelberg: Karl Winter's Universitatsbuchhandlung, 1898). 41. For example, as early as in Vremia No. 5 (1861), pp. 117-40; Vrernia No. 7 (1861), pp. 173-200. 42. Fischer, Geschichte der neuern Philosaphie, Bd. 4, Their I, p. 107. ! . ■

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access vious and recognized by the author himself. This holds true of every other national branching in the enterprise of describing Kant's life, which is only normal and understandable. Not as a possible source of Dostoevsky, but in order to account for the pattern of dissemination, we may consider how Stucken- berg tackles the problem under scrutiny. Let us read some in chapter 4 of his book to add to our collage of Kant's portrait:

Kant's physique was not proportionate to his massive intellect. He was below the minimum size; and when somewhat bowed by the old age, he was described as scarcely 5 feet high.... The compressed chest was an inheritance from his mother. His right shoulder was turned backward and was considerably higher than the other: in old age his deformity became more apparent, and gave him the appearance of being very much bent.... In old age the appearance of Kant was not calcu- lated to impress a stranger favorably at first sight; his elevated shoulder and bent form made his diminutive stature still less imposing than in the vigor of youth. Professor Kraus describes him in later years as "almost always keeping his head bowed down and hanging on one side, the bag of his wig mostly disordered and lying on one shoulder." With a sudden motion of his head he would throw the bag back, and the servant, pass- ; ing behind his chair, frequently restored it to its proper place; but it would soon fall to the left again .43

It has to be pointed out, however, as Stuckenberg himself stipulates,44 that the physical characteristics, especially when it came to details, were borrowed from the early generation of memoirists, who may be trusted in virtue of their being Kant's friends and acquaintances. This is the case of necessity with all biographers. So, now the question is whether something was included or edited out. In Stuckenberg's case, we find a great deal of these details preserved. As far as Russia is concerned, the situation is somewhat more complex. Strange as it may be, it seems that the first full-fledged biography proper of Kant was written as late as Soviet time, sometime in the 1920s. This late date makes it in a certain sense superfluous and irrelevant to pose reasonably the question of Kant's first biography in Russia. But this situation only reflects, one may argue, the peculiarity of Russian philosophical scholarship, with its recurring contradiction: while Russian, philosophy has advanced admirable samples of philosophizing, the predominant part of it has been the result of direct imports from the West, which often has obviated the generation of in-

43. Stuckenberg, Life of Immanuel Kant, pp. 93, 94, 96. 44. Ibid., Preface, p. vi.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access digenous traditions and schools. Long before what may have been the first Russian biography of Kant appeared, Russian philosophers had already been using the excellent specimens of this genre created in Germany. This short circuit shows how in Russia translations often replaced the process of indigenous creation of some of the philosophical phenomena. The complete translation of Kuno Fischer's History of Modern Philosophy, for example, made in Russia at the turn of the century - indeed, even in two versions - already obviated the need to produce an indigenous biography of Kant, not to mention that chronologically this was a task bypassed by the development of philoso- why. But in all fairness to Russian philosophy, this occurs in all other national compounds in philosophy, including such recognized centers of philosophical creativity as England and France. When it comes to biographies, it is crucial to underscore once again that the lack of mention of the shoulder detail is by no means a token either of its nonexistence or of the biographers' unawareness of it. To that effect, it must be said that the avalanche of works on Kant that was on the move in the second half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries, pow- ered by the Neo-Kantian movement, rarely mentions this feature as a matter of principle, for this movement understandably focused on Kant's philosophy rather than personality, and while dealing with his personality, emphasized the scholar rather than the man. Behind all that is again the biographer's license. But even this notwithstanding, we find the shoulder detail in both biographies emphasizing more the scholar and those emphasizing more the man - in a word, in all sorts of accounts, and its presence should be considered legitimate in all accounts. Moreover, at times this discretion seems to have been at work in the case of memoirs too, as we saw already in Wasianski's early case, though this strikes one as more or less "illegitimate" with respect to the nature of memoirs, as already discussed above. All in all, the presence of the shoulder detail is all-pervasive, and for that matter, rather unfettered. Once the shoulder fact was in print, it disseminated rather quickly through the mechanism of "recycling" in new and newer accounts, where the decisive coil of dissemination was the growing interest in Kant and his philosophy. After the publication of Borowski's original account of Kant's life - that protocol, Ur-texte, genuine Qwelle of every other such account - it was, before long, available ion different accounts, and gaining access to it presented no difficulty whatsoever for the philosophical community; the inquirer needed not have been a member of Kant's famous lunch circle or, still less so, a resident of Konigsberg. One could learn about it as far from Germany as, for example, Russia. This dissemination is still under way, as we find mention of it, for instance, in Jaspers' 1950s account of Kant. The fact of Kant's physical characteristic entered the world of readers, the scholarly world included; and from then onwards - which means from Kant's death to our time and thereby for-

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access ever - this information was available, and whether or not to utilize it was already a matter left exclusively to one's choice. As far as concerns our investigation into the Kant sources, as part of testing the shoulder hypothesis, we may thus conclude that the shoulder information was readily available for Dostoevsky to procure, be it diiectly or circui- tously, from either memoir or biography accounts, by reading those accounts or speaking to those who read them - in any of many ways. And in any case, the authenticity of this bit of information is beyond doubt.

A necessary explanation: On Kant's corporeality versus Kant on corporeality Pursuing its evasive target, the investigation has so far moved in a way that may be unjust to Kant by overemphasizing a delicate and insignificant physical feature, which seems to go against the grain not only of good etiquette but especially of Kant's immense and immortal contribution. Perhaps the sole exception with respect to the insignificance of Kant's shoulder feature is the shoulder hypothesis, as here and now it becomes essential to focus upon it for the sake of deciphering a scholarly riddle. So, one imagines, Kant would have approved of such focusing, just as he did not edit out his shoulder feature from Borowski's account. The inclination to spare Kant mention of this feature is well known, and we have already encountered it at the very junction of transition from memoir to biography. As we have seen, Kant's physical portrait was first depicted, and indeed even completed, early on by his memoirists, and then became subject to the peculiar biographer's license, in virtue of which different biographers decided on their own what portrait would be most fittingly redrawn by using the pool of data provided by the early memoirs. It is solely for this reason that some biographers chose to omit the shoulder detail, and there is a great deal of logic to this, for they found it at once insignificant and irrelevant to Kant's philosophical activity. So there appeared a tendency to muffle this fact of Kant's biography, which seems to the present inquiry to be more than just, inasmuch as advertising the shoulder detail is by no means crucial to the understanding of Kant, the man and the philosopher alike. Thus was the tool of the biographer's license applied to remedy the situation by not mentioning the shoulder feature. But while fully legitimate, this is hardly the appropriate remedial mode. On the temptation of simple editing out the shoulder feature, the following may be said. In fact, let Stucken- , berg take the floor again, for he puts it rather neatly:

The philosopher of Konigsberg was too great to need merited praise. ... Instead of desiring such hyperbole, the true admirer of the author of the critical system will agree with the philosopher Herbart, who said of

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access Kant, "We can show no honor to the sincere inquirer after truth, at the expense of truth."45

So, using the biographer's license in order to amend nature's injustice to Kant is the conventional, yet ultimately incorrect, way of so doing. The right way to remedy the problem was discovered by Kant himself, he applied it and even achieved rectification, although this fact remains unhighlighted. The sentiment and task of defending Kant is not lost on the present work, but we shall take the Kantian approach in responding to this sentiment. Though hardly a well-known fact, Kant was as innovative in his attitude to corporeality as to philosophy, one may argue, however much it may go against the grain of Kant's corporeal status. This is the aspect that now must be considered so as to reestablish the balance between fairness and truth by way of this hybrid of a caveat and an addendum to Kant. Everyone who is acquainted with the history of philosophy, in whatever way and through whichever account, must, it seems, have observed that the physical characteristics of the philosophers are not essential to what the scope of a history of philosophy consists in and deals with. Philosophy, at least as it has hitherto existed, is not connected with the physical status of the philosopher. Strictly speaking, only as late as Nietzsche do we find corporeality recruited to the philosophical problematic. The fact that before that - for example, as early as the Greek doxographers - we find mention of trifles about the physical features of one or another philosopher does not refute this claim, for this mention was rather due to the fact that the ancient doxographers were in the business of gathering any philosophical information whatsoever. There are, however, two unique cases breaking this rule, when the physical status of philosophers acquired an essential connection, if not to their philosophies, at least to their biographies. The two cases in point are those of Plato and Kant, and how strange it is that these two cases are opposites! Let us look briefly into this parallel. The philosopher known by the name of Plato was in fact a man with the given name Aristocles. Plato was only his nickname, given him presumably by Socrates due to Plato's beautiful large-chested body - platios in ancient Greek means abundant, broad, and "large-chested." So it was not Plato's philosophy but his body that in fact occasioned his name. At the other pole is Kant, a man to a great extent deprived by nature of the ordinary gift of even a normal body, as has been considered above. An antipode of Plato, Kant has been said in every biography to have had "engen und flachen Brust."46 Now, isti't this a physical "non-Platonism"? Kant had to struggle in order to com-

45. Ibid., pp. vi-vii. 46. Fischer, Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, Bd. 4, Theil I, p. 107. ■'

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access pensate for this parsimony of nature, and he made the story of his life almost an implied full-blown "critique of the deficient body." Thus, he applied the principles of "pure reason" to his existential case, and the result is rather amazing, for as is known, Kant lived exactly as long as Plato did - eighty years! - which is tantamount to Kant's producing a Copernican revolution in terms of his corporeality. Just as in Hegel's dialectic, the opposites become identical. It is the contention of the present inquiry that Kant's physical case amounts to a stance on corporeality, indeed a Copernican attitude to it, which mankind has not yet come to make out, in spite of the constant and increasing chatter about corporeality since Nietzsche. This, however, is not a concern of the present pages. If properly understood, the fact of Kant's physical status cannot in any way overshadow the great thinker that he is. On the contrary, it rather shows an additional radiation coming from the unmatchable personality of Kant, who had to overcome not only the cognitive resistance of the universe and philosophy, but also the unforgivable injustice of nature. He took the blow himself alone and did not let it influence his thinking, which secured his theoretical gift to mankind, for and this should be clear he could have made philosophy a tool of constant accommodation of his deficient corporeality and achievement of perpetual private peace.

Theme 4 Dostoevsky's sources: A comprehensive review

A preliminary clarification Ostensibly, the most difficult and important burden of proof for the shoulder hypothesis to carry is the question of Dostoevsky's source of information on Kant. However, if its task and claim are understood correctly, this should not be quite so onerous due to the following reasons. The strength of the hypothesis is concentrated not in a single fact but in the cumulative effect of its being able to accommodate and make sense of the whole array of problems of Dostoevsky's novel, and even work in toto, from the corresponding angle and vantage opened up by Ivan Karamazov's shoulder feature. So it is imperative here that the question of Dostoevsky's source, while recognized as important and pursued vigorously, should be posed correctly and critically from the very outset. To that effect, the modality form of the question must first be properly ' determined: it does not inquire about the actuality of the source - that is, we are not looking for a detail or a fact, since it should be known by now that Dostoevsky left no factical evidence explaining this detail, which explains its deep obscurity - but rather about the possibility and probability of it, which is to say it asks about the motive and opportunity to conceive of this detail, to recruit it in whatsoever way from some kind of account of Kant's life, regardless of whether directly or indirectly. As we are aware now, there were plenty Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access of sources for everyone to use, but still it is necessary to go further and look into the possible passage Dostoevsky took to this source - that is, again, into the possible and probable, rather than actual, way of his getting hold of that information. This is what we shall here and now pursue. To begin with, nobody knows or can say what factually is invested and reflected in the shoulder feature but Dostoevsky. Even if anyone from his most immediate surroundings had known anything about it, the only way of fmding out could have been for Dostoevsky himself to reveal it. This shows that Dostoevsky single-handedly holds the sole set of keys to this knowledge, and suggests how close one had to be to Dostoevsky in order to be privy to such details nonhypothetically. Since the Dostoevsky corpus may be considered to have been thoroughly ransacked countless times, with no yield in this regard, the only way remaining is the oblique way of extrapolating possible solutions, which in turn is the reason that no single fact should be imagined as the only definitive settlement of the matter. This is by no means inconsistent with the nature of the riddle at hand. In fact, one may go so far as to observe that literary study has earned the "stature of non-limitation" even relative to the author, for literature is not a private af- fair even for the writer: if a piece of writing is to be perceived as a piece of imaginative literature, then a critic may happen to know better than even the author himself. There are classic examples in this regard, such as the Theo- dore Adorno-Thomas Mann relation. It is true even of philosophy, where it is not simply possible but rather necessary to understand Plato better than he understood himself, as Kant counsels us. An interpretation departing from the author's immediate and private intentions, or the commission of the occasion, for that matter, is something perfectly legitimate, and should by no means be considered wrong on that score. The condition of possibility of this claim, from the standpoint of aesthetics, is captured in the phenomenon of the author qua author being "possessed" in the act of creating - discerned first by Plato - and thus being able to achieve something that he does not ultimately understand better than his recipients. Telling a story and explaining a story are two different kinds of office and they do not entail each other. When it comes to a single detail, things are perhaps somewhat different than in the case of a holistic interpretation of a work of art, but certainly not so different as to cancel all of its implications. Thus, the appropriation of literature compels us to make sense of it, rather than skip over it simply because there is no absolute factical certainty.

I. Kant's "Russian connection ": The main facets We must begin the reconstruction of the horizon of possibility in which the acquisition of the shoulder information by Dostoevsky may have taken place. This is what moves us to turn to Kant's "Russian connection." This metaphor

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access stands here for the network and constellation of channels and bearers of Rus- sia's awareness of Kant and his work, as well as the modes and ways in which he infiltrated and influenced Russia's spiritual life. Let us be clear: though Kant's Russian connection does not speak to the immediate means by which Dostoevsky procured the shoulder information, it is certainly important for illuminating the background of it, and therewith its field of possibilities and degree of probability, which makes it an important part of the entire reconstruction and its natural starting point. Kant's Russian connection was institutionalized, as it were, during the 1790s, which seems rather good timing, for by then his critical system had been completed. Even though Kant never engendered a grassroots movement, so to speak, he was still appreciated by the intellectual circles and establish- ment of Russia. This was made possible, one may infer, by the groundbreak- ing activity of Peter the Great, whereby Russia generated circles of high learning and artistic activity, following carefully the dynamics of the West. Kant's Russian connection is best reflected by a set of patterns and facts that we shall briefly consider. 1) As is known, the Petersburg Academy of Science was second to the Berlin Prussian Academy in making Kant, on July 28, 1794, one of its international members, along with thirteen other scholars honored that day. But there are two twists to this story. First, Kant was nominated for membership by a geographer, I. I. Georgi, as if Russia had no philosophers to spread the Kantian word and vouch for him. Even by default, though, this happened to be the right move. The second twist is more complex. After Kant had received a letter from Secretary of the Academy Euler Jr., the son of the great mathematician, and a diploma of bestowal, in 1797 he was surprised to acci- dentally find out that he in fact was not among the international members of the Petersburg Academy. This spurred Kant to write a letter of inquiry. As a result, it became transparent what had transpired: his name had never been entered due to the lack of response on Kant's part in the first place. But the problem was that Kant had responded, and the letter had somehow been lost. So the entire procedure had to be repeated: Kant wrote a letter of acceptance to Euler Jr. and, albeit with a three-year delay, Kant did become a member of the Petersburg Academy. Now, it is clear that this could not have been very instrumental in the dissemination of the shoulder information, although it was still contributive in the generic way of connecting Kant with Russia's spiritual life and making his achievements and significance known. But there is more to Kant's Russian connection. , 2) There is a recurring pattern of Russia's leading intellectuals making pilgrimages to the West - sometimes to study, sometimes to travel and relive history, and, more importantly, sometimes to visit the leading intellectuals of the West. This pattern has played a crucial role in Russia's spiritual life. What

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access has always remained unsettled regarding this pattern is an aspect of it that seems to go against the grain of Russia's perpetual claim of independence from the West. While Russia and Russia's intellectuals vigorously waged a campaign against the West, they nevertheless maintained the pilgrimage and benefited from it. In spite of the tension inherent in the very makeup of the pilgrimage pattern, it was a vehicle of cultural commerce driven by high sen- timents and yielding significant, though not obvious impact. The playout of the pattern is also documented by memorable occasions. Since its beginning during the time and activity of Peter the Great - himself a pilgrim who traveled incognito and reportedly conversed with Leibniz and Newton - when cultural exports from the West became the operative principle of interior affairs, this traffic ran in two major channels: French and German. Under Peter the Great it was predominantly German, whereas Catherine the Great, his daughter in greatness, emphasized the French side. It is in the German avenue that one may locate Kant's Russian connection. Visits paid to Kant by Russians were neither numerous nor frequent. Still, there was one visit that seems to be the paradigmatic Russian visit to Kant. It took place in 1789, when one of the greatest figures of Russian spiritual history-to-be, N. Kararnzin, as part of his extensive West European journey, traveled to Konigsberg with the chief aim of paying a visit to Kant. In all fairness, he was prompted to do so by his friend J. M. Lenz, who happened to be a major literary figure in Germany during the Sturm und Drang movement. Already a prolific writer, Karamzin kept a journey log, which eventually was published under the title Letters of a Russian Traveler, first as journal installments in Moskovskii zhurnal (Moscow Journal) and eventually (in 1791) as a book. That this book is said by many to be one of the beginnings of Rus- sian literature is less significant here and now. Basically, the book is a kind of journey account in which journeying is not a means but a goal, for Karamzin took his time to amass observations and experiences, as if they were a mandatory element of his education and maturation - a chapter in his Bildungsro- man. The only point of interest in it here is that in the chain of those observations and experiences, Karamzin documented his encounter with Kant. The entry in question, found in Part One, Section Eight, consists of about two pages exclusively dedicated to Kant and the encounter. Though short, it is an intense text, hastily displaying a great deal of facts and impressions. First, Karamzin explains how, having hit Konigsberg and gained his first glimpse of the town, he spent some time on the town, dining and hobnobbing with some local officers. Then he headed for the Prinzessenstrasse, where Kant's house was known to be located. Bearing no letter of recommendation or appoint- i ment, he entered and was met by Kant himself, whereupon they conversed for about three hours. Kant spoke more. Predictably, the conversation covered various topics, but for Karamzin it was also a rather brief "crash course" in

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access Kantian philosophy. They briefly discussed their common acquaintance J. C. Lavater, and Kant suggested to Karamzin a list of further readings of his philosophy, writing down on a sheet of paper two titles (namely, the Second Cri- tique and The Metaphysics of Morals). Kant also entered Karamzin's name in his pocket notebook and wished Karamzin success in settling all his doubts. Karamzin left and went to his hotel, where he jotted down for us the conversation. As far as the physical aspect of Kant's representation is concerned, Karamzin gives very little - he mentions Kant's exceptionally fragile, thin, and small body - but even this much is somewhat surprising, for it is alien to the nature of his account. Despite its shortness, Karamzin's account of this encounter is a significant document, especially if put in a Russian context, because of its acute timeli- ness. Given that the meeting took place in 1789 - which means a year after the publication of the Second Critique and a year before the publication of the Third Critique, which means Kant was then writing his Third Critique - but more importantly, that it was published in 1791 - when Fichte and K. L. Reinhold, G. E. Schulze and S. Maimon were taking the first steps toward post-Kantian philosophizing - Karamzin inadvertently gave the Russians a sneak peek of significant coming philosophical attractions. To be sure; it must have been hard to appreciate this out of context, especially lacking the benefit of the philosophical perspective one enjoys now in hindsight, but it is from this perspective that Karamzin's account is all the more significant. Karamzin was the kind of Russian figure that touched the mind of virtually every Rus- sian, and in many ways is still a significant point of reference with his His- tory.'In the time of Dostoevsky, he was an enormous presence, especially because the Slavophiles-vs.-Westernizers controversy, which in many ways Karamzin himself stirred, was still very much at play and in the air. Karam- zin's passionate, yet tempered, Slavophilism is compatible with Dostoevsky's synthetic stance of pochvennichestvo. That Dostoevsky read Karamzin's Let- ters is perhaps one of the very few facts of absolute certainty. Perhaps it is at this point that we should tarry to touch on the following fact. Given that in Dostoevsky's entire artistic oeuvre Kant is mentioned directly only once (in Uncle's Dream), still there are numerous and significant traces of Kantian presence in Dostoevsky, which, however, Dostoevsky chooses not to identify as Kantian. After all, even if one skirts Ia. Golos- , ovker's rampant interpretation, still the presence of Kant is felt characteristically beneath the surface of the text, and its "seismic" activity has been regis- tered in different quarters. This strange fact may be termed the "undermention of Kant" in Dostoevsky's work, something that differs from state of affairs in Tolstoy and others. It is not necessary to launch another hypothesis as to why Dostoevsky undermentions Kant, but it does appear to be a fact, and moreover, a fact that should not be overlooked.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access Though paradigmatic and insuperable in significance, Karamzin's Kant visit was not the only one. Another known and documented visit took place in 1794, when a Russian known as Woldemar Ungern-Sternberg, an officer by occupation, met Kant. This encounter is noteworthy in that upon his return, the Russian visitor did some work of dissemination by publishing an account of that meeting, which gained some prominence at that time. But yet another visit paid to Kant, this one by a Russian medical doctor, was so colorful that Wasianski described it. Though the name of Kant's visitor remains unknown, the encounter is made part of Kant's Russian connection by Wasianski's record. The visit took place in 1803, a year before Kant's death, and might very well have been the last Russian visit to Kant. It also drew the attention of De Quincey, via Wasianski's account, who understandably gave it a better rendi- tion than Wasianski himself:

A young Russian also rises to my recollection of this moment, from the excessive (and I think unaffected) enthusiasm that he displayed. On being introduced to Kant, he advanced hastily, took both his hands and kissed them. Kant ... appeared to shrink a little from this way of saluta- tion, and was rather embarrassed. However, the young man's manner, I believe, was not at all beyond his genuine feelings; for next day he called again, made some inquiries about Kant's health, was very anx- . ious to know whether his old age was burdensome to him, and, above all things, entreated for some little memorial of the great man to carry away with him. By accident the servant had found a small canceled fragment of the original manuscript of Kant's "Anthropologie": this, with my sanction, he gave to the Russian; who received it with rapture, kissed it, and then gave to the servant in return the only taler he had about him, and, thinking that not enough, actually pulled off his coat and waistcoat, and forced them upon the man. Kant, whose native sim- plicity of character very much indisposed him to sympathy with any ex- travagances of feeling, could not, however, forbear smiling good- humoredly, on being made exposed to this instance of naivete and enthusiasm in his young admirer.47

Even this could, in some peculiar, oblique way of reverberating and rico- cheting, have been a possible source of a physical description of Kant for Dostoevsky, although the probability of this possibility is rather infinitesimal and considered here negligible. Certainly, Dostoevsky had much more probable possibilities, as we have seen and shall shortly consider in detail.

47. De Quincey, Collected Writings, p. 365; also see Wasianski, Bericht von Kant, pp. 170- 72.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access 3) Another facet of Kant's Russian connection, the counterpart to the pattern of Russians pilgrimaging to Germany, may be seen in the opposite pattern of migration - Germans living and working in Russia. The broader basis here is again the cultural exchange established by Peter the Great as part of a tradition of German scholars teaching in Russia. In terms of additional academic opportunities, Russia was in a way an extension of Germany. As is known, even some of the best scholars of Germany taught in Russia: J. G. Buhle, J. J. Brucker, F. A. Wolff, and others. But as far as Kant is concerned, in the last decade of the eighteenth century, there were a few Germans teaching in Russia, and even teaching Kantian philosophy. Among the major names is that of Ludwig Mellmann, who seems to have been the first to teach Kant- ian philosophy at Moscow University, as well as at the gymnasium affiliated with it. In this case, it is not important who taught Kant but simply that Kant's philosophy was taught. In addition to academic figures, there were other intellectuals of renown, such as Friedrich Maximilian Klinger, russianized as Fe- dor Ivanovich Klinger, an active participant in the Sturm und Drang movement, who moved to St. Petersburg. There he published a novel, Faust, Hits Life, Activity, and Descent into Hell, in the epilogue to which he displays his misunderstanding of Kant's philosophy. Misunderstandings, it should be noted, often make for good dissemination. Another interesting case is yet one more German, a pupil of Kant, F. A. Hahnrieder, who came to Russia with letters of recommendation from Kant himself, though his goal was to embark on not philosophical but practical involvement. He reached the point of being an aide to Suvorov and participated in the Second Turkish Campaign (1787-1792). For some time, perhaps since listening to Kant's lectures on practical philosophy, Hahnrieder had had trouble coping with reality: he took the categorical imperative seriously, though the categorical imperative as transcendental is said to originate in pure practical reason. This got him into trouble in Russia, not the best place to serve the categorical imperative. He reported corruption, and was subsequently court- martialed and sentenced to many years in prison. After four years, in 1796, he escaped and returned to Germany. He met Kant again and, with another letter of recommendation from him, left for Berlin to become a carpenter. This enterprise failed too, but after one more year, Hahnrieder reconciled with reality, and found happiness and even social success (which he reflects in a letter to Kant of 1800). It seems this success was due to his abandoning the categorical imperative. All this is clearly a process of dissemination, in one way or another, of Kant's work and personality in Russia. 4) A peculiar facet of Kant's Russian connection is to be seen courtesy of A. Gulyga's archival work for his biography of Kant. It consists of an exchange between Kant and A. M. Beloselsky-Belozersky (1752-1802), a re- nowned Russian intellectual, also a Russian ambassador to Germany and a

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access member of several academies of science. His account of this interchange is given by Gulyga in the "In Lieu of an Epilogue" of his biography of Kant. In a nutshell, the exchange between Kant and Beloselsky-Belozersky was occasioned by the latter sending his treatise, "Dianyology or Philosophical Scheme of Thinking" (published in French in 1790 as Dianyologie ou tableau philosophique de l'entendement and a year later translated into German, as Dianyologie oder philosophisches Gemdlde des verstandes), to Kant. Kant wrote a letter to him in response (the letter is now preserved in Russia and was published for the first time in Gulyga's Kant book) complementing Be- loselsky-Belozersky on his serious achievements. It is time now to draw a conclusion as to the significance of Kant's Russian connection to the shoulder hypothesis. As has been suggested, while turning to the consideration of the Russian connection, its import lies in its serving, not as a source, but rather as the background that unifies the factors, resources, and elements that create the conditions of possibility and increase the degree of probability for Dostoevsky to have actually acquired the shoulder information. This is the invisible backdrop that generated interest in Kant, promoted his significance, and made Kant known and central to the dynamics of the Russian spirit. Within such a framework, it becomes possible and meaningful for Dostoevsky not only to have acquired the information but, more importantly, to have felt it important to connect his work and his Ivan Karamazov with it.

2. Dostoevsky's ways with philosophy Kant's Russian connection only provides the broad horizon, which must be further narrowed down and explored. Since the reference point of the shoulder hypothesis has been identified as philosophical, it inevitably leads us to philosophy, under the specific angle of how Dostoevsky dealt with it. The received opinion has it that Dostoevsky had his way with philosophy, which is certainly true. Indeed, in philosophy in a broader sense, Dostoevsky was a natural. But here and now, it would be insufficient to leave it at that, for it is this relation, its nontransparency coupled with tenacious ambiguities, that is essential to the understanding of what is ultimately nothing short of Dosto- evsky's art. With this stipulated, the decisive form of the question of Dosto- evsky's relation to philosophy is how he dealt with philosophy in the process , of creating literature, rather than in general. This is to be distinguished from considering Dostoevsky a philosopher per se, a mistake that is often repeated. . Even delineated in this way, the question still is twofold: namely, how Dosto- evsky appropriated philosophy, and how he incorporated it into his literary art. Let us look into it, for there is a story to tell, but let us do so solely with respect to the needs of the present inquiry.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access Taking up the first part of the question, we see that the fact that we are talking about a biographical detail, rather than philosophical ideas and problems proper, further reiterates and considerably redefines the problem of Dostoevsky's relation to philosophy. In its more conventional format of protractive appropriation and wrestling with philosophical ideas, it becomes now a rather specific matter-of-fact problem, for after all Dostoevsky may have heard the shoulder fact in a most unexpected and unlikely way. Still, in spite of this transformation of the problem, it must be assumed that a philosophical fact would most likely have surfaced in a conventional philosophical framework, such as philosophical studies or conversations. The fact that Dosto- evsky was a typical genuine Russian intellectual already deduces and yields legitimately a great deal of information about him in this respect, since he participated in the operation and dynamics of certain cultural patterns. Par- ticularly important in this regard is the prevalent philosophical format in the Russian culture of Dostoevsky's time, which could be referred to as the culture of "circles" - regular gatherings of intellectuals, wherein a perpetual commerce of knowledge, ideas, and interpretations went on "at bargain prices," so to speak. Dostoevsky was an integral part of this culture - even as early as 1847 - in many ways its child, and eventually its father. Clearly, no records exist of those perpetual proceedings and transactions, for they were hardly kept, apart from some snapshots preserved in memoirs. Then again, it seems that the likely proceedings are somehow to a certain degree available to one's imaginative reconstruction. For instance, in spite of the eclectic and het- erogeneous nature of those circles, philosophy was a major presence there; . indeed, in many ways they were a venue for peddling philosophy. During those gatherings, the only thing that may have kept up with philosophy was the consumption of tea. In other words, all of those circles were basically philosophical, even if none was philosophical in a strict sense. As for Dosto- evsky, being the sort of man who was prone to extremes in everything, he was deeply involved, if not fully engrossed, in the circles dynamics, with all the ideological benefits thereof. Thus, this system of circles was virtually Russia's only functional "educa- tional system" in philosophy, rather nocturnal than diurnal, relying upon several untenured "professors" who shared, in an ongoing fashion, their previous night's readings of certain philosophical texts, and thus provided nontextual acquaintance with philosophical ideas and systems. As a result, the "alumni" of such "free universities" presented, in terms of qualification, a contradictory '- melange of great philosophical talents and weak specialists in philosophy. This contradiction begot a great deal of both confusion and brilliant thoughts, not only in ordinary provincial circles but also in perhaps the most eminent circle, that of Stankevich, where many of the classic names in Russian philosophy were educated by the generous scholarship and fellowship of the

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access same "pedagogical system." Here is the famous Belinsky, who was educated basically by way of listening to Bakunin, as Belinsky himself acknowledged; and it was here that Herzen - that sweet-tongue illegitimate half-German and legitimate half-Russian, perhaps the best "alchemist" of the Russian language - gave his unique "lectures" on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, perhaps the first in Russia. As far as Dostoevsky is concerned, he wandered around, participating in many circles, two of which however are crucial to his fate. First, he was ar- rested as a member of the Petrashevsky circle, and as soon as he returned from a decade of exile, he himself established another circle known as the circle of pochvennichestvo, organized around the editorial board of his journals Epoch and Time at the very beginning of the 1860s. The latter circle devoted a great deal of its time to philosophy arranged in a Russian "tonality," which means less theoretically and more practically involved, less conceptual than metaphorical, and "domesticated" in that it was put to work for the Russian cause. Through his friendship with N. Strakhov, Dostoevsky replicated the Belinsky-Bakunin story. These two circles, especially the latter, must have been very fruitful sources of philosophical awareness and erudition, although probably not the only ones, especially since they were perfectly timed, coming together after Dostoevsky had gone through existential events that per- fected his spongy mind and Russia had entered its crucial decade, the 1860s. Overall, Dostoevsky seems to have had two principal sources of immediate highbrow philosophical influence and consultation: N. Strakhov and V. So- lov'ev, who, incidentally, are among the best philosophical minds of Russian philosophy of all seasons, especially Solov'ev. Also, R. Lauth is not incorrect to add Belinsky as an important early source of ideological influence during Dostoevsky's formative years, still it must be bore in mind that Belinsky himself was not a philosophical erudite. From the standpoint of the shoulder hypothesis, it must be pointed out, Belinsky's probable contribution is infinitesimal, unlike those of Strakhov and Solov'ev. Dostoevsky may conceivably have learnt a great deal of philosophical information through Strakhov. As is known, their friendship was extremely intensive during the early 1860s, that is, prior to Dostoevsky's-friendship with Solov'ev. It was during this time that Strakhov made moves to "import" Kuno Fischer to Russia, which could have engendered a real possibility for Dostoevsky to gain insight into Kant's philosophy and life. We have already mentioned this lead while considering , Kuno Fischer's place in the dynamics of dissemination of Kant's life account. Indeed, it would seem rather inconceivable to anyone acquainted with the dynamics of Dostoevsky's life in the early 1860s, before he left for Germany, that Strakhov's reading Kuno Fischer, translating portions of his work, and publishing installments of it in the journal Dostoevsky edited did not occasion conversations on Kant and his work. As far as Solov'ev is concerned, he en-

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access tered the scene after Dostoevsky's relationship with Strakhov had lost its original intensity and closeness. As is known, Dostoevsky commenced his work on The Brothers Karamazov in 1877. According to E. Radlov - one of the first and principal biographers of Solov'ev, as well a Russian philosopher in his own right - the beginning of the friendship between Solov'ev and Dostoevsky falls in the same year, when Solov'ev moved from Moscow to St. Petersburg for a four-year sojourn,48 as if "commissioned" by destiny. During the work on The Brothers Karamazov, it was mainly Solov'ev - as well as N. Fedorov - who exercised influence on Dostoevsky, according to Anna Grigo- rievna's account.49 Given this almost complete overlapping of the work on the novel and the friendship with Solov'ev, it is tempting to think that Dostoevsky heard about the physical feature of Kant directly from Solov'ev, which is certainly a great possibility. Kant must have been a subject of their conversations, inasmuch as at that time Dostoevsky made use of some of Kant's ideas in his work. Moreover, Solov'ev must be recognized as a well-versed reader of, indeed specialist on, Kant, which is authoritatively corroborated by the significant fact of his being the first translator of Kant's Critique of Pure Rea- son into Russian. In many ways, Solov'ev even understood philosophy in terms of Kant and German idealism, and specifically considered Kant's Third Antinomy - the collision between freedom and necessity, to which he often refers in his work - to be the coil, as it were, of post-Kantian philosophy. Another important point to consider is that Dostoevsky's window of opportunity to gain the shoulder information was virtually equal to a lifetime, for it was available throughout his entire life, so that representatives of many . generations may have inadvertently contributed to the possibility of this encounter by various means, such as bringing books from Germany, disseminat- ing information, engaging in philosophical discussions, and so on- facets of a commerce that in Russia was very intensive. Furthermore, Dostoevsky was partially a contemporary of crucial philosophical eventfulness. During his early years, the intrigue of German idealism was still ongoing, if only through the response to it, which galvanized the atmosphere and made for an intellectual ambiance charged with philosophical ideas and "evaporations." And if this was true of Germany, the ripple and lingering effect make it true of Rus- sia as well, of course with a time differential of considerable length. Young Russian philosophers were then making intensive philosophical pilgrimages to Germany, described intriguingly in a variety of accounts. After all, this was still the glorious time of the later Schelling's retaliation to Hegel, when he delivered his famous Berlin lectures and summoned under one roof Bakunin, I.

48. E. Radlov, "Solov'ev i Dostoevskii," in 0 Dostoevskom: tvorchestvo Dostoevskogo v russkoi mysli 1881-1931 godov (Moscow: Kniga, 1990), p. 318. 49. Mochulsky, Dostoevsky: His Life and Work, p. 465. Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access Kireevsky, Kierkegaard, F. Engels, J. Burckhardt, among others. Even though Kant was not very popular in Russia, the popularity of Schelling and Hegel was enormous, which must have created a certain law-governed interest in Kant and Fichte as well. On those grounds, one may expect that there was at that time an intensive influx of philosophical information, as part of which information about Kant must have intensively entered Russia. When all this frantic eventfulness was unfolding, Dostoevsky was in his twenties, spiritually thirsty and omnivorous, making his entrance. Addicted to reading and tolerating no reading regimen, yet actually often on diet when it came to reading philosophy proper, Dostoevsky cannot be studied reliably as to what he read. Moreover, even if this could be done, it would not, one may argue, properly reflect what Dostoevsky knew and was aware of. One should also take into account the often dramatic difference between what is read and what is understood. Also, understanding a philosophical text from a general cultural point of view is dramatically different from understanding it from a strictly philosophical vantage. So in this regard, the only reliable inference with respect to what Dostoevsky might have known is reduced to two possible sources: first, documented information on this score, and second, more importantly, what Dostoevsky's own text reveals. With this in view, we know reliably that Dostoevsky knew well the New Testament, which he spent a great deal of time reading. We also seem to know that he did some philosophical study, for we are often told so, but we should be careful here: Do we really know? And what do we know exactly? It is a dubious claim, for unlike Herzen and Bakunin, Solov'ev and Strakhov, in fact we can hardly claim Dostoevsky pursued this kind of study. For one, we are misled into believing that Dostoevsky studied Hegel and Kant, as a result of ambiguous statements to that effect in his correspondence, which are never corroborated by anything; if such study is documented elsewhere, only the opposite seems to be true. For example, Strakhov testifies that during their first meeting, Dostoevsky gave to him the notorious volume of Hegel's History of Phi- losophy without having read it.50 But more importantly, whatever the case, one wonders what is really the relation of this particular Hegel volume to Dostoevsky's work in toto. There are many other Hegel books that are much more relevant, but Dostoevsky never made mention of them. As far as Kant is concerned, the situation is rather similar. Still, this does not mean that Dosto- evsky could not have read some passage or other, or that he could not have heard coherent statements about the philosophemes and propositions of Kant . and Hegel as well as many other thinkers, and understood much of it. After all, as we have considered, Dostoevsky constantly moved in circles that were

50. Quoted in R. Jackson, Dostoevsky's Quest for Form: A Study of His Philosophy of Art (New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 1966), p. 185.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access not at all foreign to philosophy. It should be recognized that, for a writer with Dostoevsky's paramount sensitivity to ideas, hearsay can furnish all the philosophical awareness and knowledge that an author needs, perhaps even better than conventional study of philosophy would. This is why he need not have possessed a certain book in his own library in order to know something about it. Vice versa, he knew little about many of the books he possessed, for we know that he often chose not to read books that he did in fact possess and did not even give away. So the question of how Dostoevsky could have gotten hold of Kant's shoulder detail does not need rigorous proof of a specific factual kind, for example, that he had a book that contained this information, or that there was a Russian translation of a book containing this information. As far as the shoulder hypothesis is concerned, what is crucial is that Dostoevsky had, so to speak, both motive and opportunity, interest and involvement, conditions and intentions alike, to gather philosophy as it came his way, both in Germany and in Russia. Also, the fact of Dostoevsky's long-lasting interest in Kant is crucial, and may be considered confirmed. Is it not, after all, the will that fmds the way? Having in the foregoing viewed the historical dynamics of how the fact of Kant's physical detail has been accounted for, we may conclude that, basically, the shoulder characteristic had been readily available ever since Kant's death in 1804, when the two originary accounts, reminiscences of Kant's life by Borowski and Jachmann, made all those who never encountered Kant privy to this fact. Even though there have been accounts of Kant's life that do not mention that particular physical detail, there has not been a single one that ■ does not provide extensive information about Kant's unique physical status and problems. Given Dostoevsky's interest in Kant's Critique of Pure Rea- son, it is hard to imagine that Dostoevsky was not at all acquainted with at least the general matter of Kant's health. So the principal opportunities for Dostoevsky to gain the shoulder information remain basically either reading about it himself or hearing about it from friends and interlocutors; the latter being the most probable channel. In general, in terms of philosophy, Dostoevsky resembles Belinsky, specifically the latter's peculiar and complicated relationship with philosophy, and his ability to make very memorable use of things that, strictly speaking, he did not know. Dostoevsky admittedly wanted a great deal to read philosophy, for in his own way he loved philosophy. However, he never did it in a systematic way. Also, he never dealt with scholarly systematic philosophy, and perhaps avoided it. His readings, somewhat ironically, point only to second-rate thinkers: At moments, he was directed against philosophy, quite like Pascal, who exercised an enduring influence on Dostoevsky. All this shows that despite his passion for philosophy, Dostoevsky remained a writer.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access Actually, in view of the guiding task of solving the riddle of the shoulder detail of Ivan Karamazov, it is not necessary to systematically and exhaustively view Dostoevsky's attitude toward philosophy. Dostoevsky needed not even have had one. Indeed, one may legitimately ask: Should Dostoevsky have had to read Critique of Pure Reason at all in order to know about Kant's shoulder feature? The answer is obviously in the negative, and least of all because that book is not a source of that information. Given that - even if it is proved that Dostoevsky never read anything by, on, or about Kant, which is certainly not the case - still the likelihood that he may have used Kant's Physical features in Ivan's physical portrayal obviously remains as high as if he had, and is by no means infringed upon. Dostoevsky did not need a So- lov'ev or a Strakhov to find out the simple fact that Kant had the peculiar shoulder feature. Yet this much Dostoevsky did need, namely, to hear about it, so that later on we may find the same feature on Ivan Karamazov, collaged masterfully into his character. It must be recognized that the peculiar nature of this bit of information makes it not only readily available in terms of sources and their relatively generous dissemination - as we have already seen above - but also in terms of there being a number of ways for Dostoevsky to indirectly, yet instantaneously, get hold of it. It is also instantaneously digestible and usable. This ultimate availability seems to be in reverse proportion, however, to the difficulty of pinning down the very instant - the nick of time, if you will - when this momentary and momentous act could have taken place, and one may see. why, but certainly the former could operate without the latter.

3. Transformation of philosophy into literature: Direct and indirect communication . Taking up now the second part of the question concerning Dostoevsky's relationship with philosophy, namely, that of his incorporating into imaginative literature whatever philosophy he had acquired in whatever way, it will be beneficial for us to take a closer look into how Dostoevsky recruited philosophy to work for his writerly office, that is, how he brought about the marvelous romance of literature and philosophy we enjoy in his works. Strakhov's comments on this ability have a particular significance and authority, for he was a man from the circle of Dostoevsky and also the philosopher , who probably influenced Dostoevsky most in terms of providing repeated "philosophical consultation." He states something rather relevant and reveal- , ing to our pursuit, indeed as if speaking directly to it:

The most general and abstract thoughts frequently acted upon Dostoevsky with great force; and he would draw tremendous inspiration from them.... A simple idea, sometimes an old and well-known one,

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access suddenly would ignite him, would appear to him in all its meaning. One may say that in an unusual way he felt thoughts. At such times he would give expression [to a thought] in its various aspects, would express it sometimes in a very sharp image, although he would not elucidate upon it in a logical manner, would not develop its content. Above all he was always an artist, thought in images, and was guided by feelings.51

While this statement captures with immense aptitude the heart of the mast- ter, many may hold Strakhov to be, though philosophically competent, also biased, if not lacking in integrity, in view of his complicated attitude to the later Dostoevsky, and because he became, inadvertently or not, involved in mythmaking detrimental to the entire reception of Dostoevsky. After all, Strakhov was the principal source of information for Freud's analysis. So let us hear from R. Jackson, perhaps an equally competent yet unbiased source, who confirms Strakhov:

The critic Belinsky, even if his knowledge of German were limited, was full of the ideas, for example, of Schelling.... The same may be said of the ideas of Schiller, Hegel, and others. One did not have to read these authors in the original or even in translation to be imbued with their ideas. Dostoevsky clearly was a thinker who drew freely and uns- ystematically from all sources; he was capable, as Strakhov noted, of sympathizing with and understanding different and contradictory views.52 ' .

This statement may provide grounds for consensus on this matter among Dostoevsky's researchers from different quarters and persuasions: Dosto- evsky undoubtedly had, among many other things, an ardent philosophical heart, but his philosophical force lay in the way he recruited philosophy to literature. The energy of this observation is enough to prove that Dostoevsky may very well have heard the fact of Kant's physical feature and eventually implemented it in his novel. We must now go on to consider aspects of Dostoevsky's way of crafting his narrative tapestry, with special regard to how details are recruited and grafted. Dostoevsky's way of dealing with philosophy is fully compatible with, and, more importantly, subordinated to, his way of creating literature. Let us hear classic testimonies to that effect. One of the subtle investigators of the Legend, the Russian philosopher and literary critic I. Lapshin, has the fol-

5 1. Ibid., p. 184. 52. Ibid., pp. 185-86. Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access lowing to say in general terms about it, incidentally referring to the chapter in which the shoulder detail is to be found:

To be sure, "The Grand Inquisitor" was formed, in the creative process of its composition, out of literary and philosophical elements drawn from outside, above all, as it seems to me, from Western literature. Dostoevsky's mastery, just like that of every other truly great artist, consists in the evanescent "bits and pieces" (chut-chut), resisting every account in the combination of these elements and their creative reproc- essing. To determine, however, those basic elements with complete certainty is exceptionally difficult.53

What Lapshin seems to have sensitively captured is the collage of Dosto- evsky's poetics, where the alchemy of fiction-cooking is done basically by throwing in real ingredients that in the end come out as delicious fiction. The seductive feast of the spirit served by this alchemy owes a great deal to the 'spices" Dostoevsky puts in, and they blend so well that we cannot help re- turning for more helpings, although in the end the analytic itemization of those ingredients is hardly possible. Lapshin's opinion is quite relevant in an obvious way to the subject matter of our inquiry, the shoulder detail. Along similar lines, G. Fridlender also emphasizes something important regarding the process of literary creation in Dostoevsky, already taken from a different angle:

' Not quite trusting his knowledge and life experience, Dostoevsky would consult with specialists from various professions - educators, doctors, lawyers, and so on, striving to rigorously obey, in every scene of the novel, terminal exactitude in the reconstruction of mores, circum- stances, spiritual ambiance, characteristics of people from different ages, estates, and professions, [different] layers of cultural conscious- ness and interests, speech habits, and so on.54

This apt observation, too, opens up not only a general perspective on Dostoevsky's literary habits but also enhances our ability to envision how in particular the circle participation may have been essentially contributive to Dostoevsky's literary art, and more specifically, how he could have gained philosophical information, ideas, and insights. Further, Terras gives us the

53. I. Lapshin, "Kak slozhilas legenda o velikom inkvizitore," in A. BeTp, O Dostoevskom, 3 vols. (Prague: Petropolis, 1929-36), 1: 125. 54. G. Fridlender, Pushkin. Dostoevskii. Serebriannyi vek. (St. Petersburg: Nauka, 1995), pp. 367-68.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access following insight, as though deliberately addressing the question here under discussion:

Dostoevsky was a writer with "tricky" style who often delivered hits message through more or less subtle allusions.... Dostoevsky's narrator will sometimes give up on formulating a thought exactly, trusting that the reader will catch the correct meaning anyway. Naturally, Dostoevsky does this intentionally.... Note the detail. Dostoevsky wants to create maximum credibility for what follows this description and so he dwells on some credible, though inconsequential details.... Dostoevsky is very particular about the physical manifestations of mental states.55 .

One might go on to add that it is not only Dostoevsky's specific of being "tricky," which is certainly accurate, but also, and more importantly, the nature of literary craft demands that every element of the text be treated and deciphered, let alone the only detail of the main character's physical portrayal, as the shoulder feature has been shown to be. Thus, it may be said in conclusion that the numerous testimonies from various sources of different stripes and persuasions quite univocally con- verged to confirm that the hypothesis of the shoulder detail is fully compatible not only with the spirit of Dostoevsky's flair for philosophy, and not only with the manner in which he conducted his freelance commerce with philosophy, but also with the style of his literary habits and work.

Theme 5 Focusing on Ivan Karamazov anew

Ivan is a riddle. Alesha's words56 Ivan is a sphinx. Mitia's words . Love Ivan! : Mitia to Alesha

55. Terras, A Karamazov Companion, p. ix; p. 125, No. 8; p. 246, No. 2; p. 246, No. 4; p. , 299, No. 214. 56. BK, p. 211.l. 57. BK, p. 561. 1 58. BK, p. 566.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access As we have already discussed, what is essential for the hypothesis to work is not procuring a factual proof but rather establishing the compatibility of Ivan Karamazov and Kant, and not even their actual compatibility, but only the one perceived by Dostoevsky. This is basically what we will address now, as we turn to Ivan Karamazov and investigate how this compatibility is manifested through his character. The crucial importance of exploring this avenue is immediately available, since, after all, the sagging shoulder is Ivan Karama- zov's, and the only way to ascertain the burden that bows it is to turn to Ivan Karamazov and his ideological identity, which the shoulder must somehow represent. There should be no doubt that the proper scope of the hypothesis is Ivan Karamazov's character - indeed, in a certain sense, the shoulder hypothesis is a case study of this character.

1. Ivan Karamazov as a literary man The character of Ivan Karamazov, as well as the novel in general, issues a recurring invitation to clarify not only the textual but also the supratextual pedigree of Ivan. Indeed, who is the prototype, or better yet, prototypes of Ivan? This may be considered a conventional question in the corresponding compartment of Dostoevsky study, one that has been addressed by many a re- searcher. But this question can prove to be not only seductive but also futile, for there are many ways in which it cannot be answered, and indeed in which it makes no sense. Still, pondering this question, if done correctly, is by no means meaningless to the understanding of the novel and the character; in fact, for that purpose it is mandatory. Ivan is many and none, for he is his own literary man, certainly a tapestry of features derived from many diverse sources, both fictional and actual, out of which Dostoevsky wove not only the fabric of Ivan's literary personality but also his literary activity, including his supple arguing and writing. We might notice that Ivan's pen could be often equated with the pen of Dostoevsky himself, since Dostoevsky was able to trust him with their peculiar co-authorship. The Ivan Karamazov spell has resulted in generations of researchers trying to get a glimpse of his genuine prototype, assuming there is such, resulting perhaps most of all in getting deeper and deeper into Ivan Karamazov. In the process, it has been ascertained that basically Ivan Karamazov is a "patchwork" of various sources ranging far and wide and incorporating features of Voltaire and Hugo, Schiller and Goethe, Gogol' and Pushkin, Tolstoy and Tiutchev, Dante and Herzen, as well as fictional sources, such as the Bible and Hamlet,59 all brought together in literary organicity. Now, all that is true, although the order is rather disordered, mar- shaled as if according to Dostoevsky's famous notion of disorder. But the genuine question here is: What does it all mean?

59. BK, p. 70.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access All implicated sources, in spite of their heterogeneity, seem to point quite unilaterally to Ivan Karamazov's discourse, which, to be sure, is only one aspect of the character, the thinker rather than the man. As far as Ivan's personal features are concerned, strikingly little has his "genome" been studied and mastered. Belinsky is often mentioned as a possible prototype, but again, in terms not of his personality but of his discourse, specifically his fixation on the question of God, proverbially postponing dinner for after the question of God has been settled. The reason why this is so lies in that Ivan Karamazov, though ostensibly with vivid presence in the imagination of the reader, is yet another literary "man-idea," like Belinsky was, and however passionate he may be in arguing, he is not much of physical presence. If we quiz ourselves in analytic fashion to identify his physical characteristics and draw a mental sketch of him, we will find ourselves with literally next to nothing. And while we are told that the devil himself wears no watch - something we are hardly eager to know - for some reason, we are given next to nothing in terms of Ivan Karamazov's portrayal. One thing does seem clear: we should not write this off as a quirk of Dostoevsky's stylistics, claiming that Dostoevsky draws no physical portraits as a matter of rule. However correct that claim may be, it would be an easy wayout at the expense of taking away little and abusing Dostoevsky's manner of portraying. To this claim we may find many refuta- tions right in the novel, where some of the characters are in fact physically well accounted for. If this issue is sufficiently pondered, then Dostoevsky's considerable order and deliberateness in Ivan Karamazov's case begins to emerge, determining what and where something that has to be presented , physically is presented - it is not a random choice. The literary personae of flesh - above all Ivan's father, Mitia, and Grushenka - who are known to be versatile and proficient with respect to corporeality, are described accord- ingly. Also, take Zosima: the nonaesthetic feature of odor lingers as an impor- tunate corporeal presence after his death, so it certainly has a specific literary and aesthetic office to fulfill. As for Ivan Karamazov, he is a "ghostly" character, as if he is punished by noncorporeality for his crime of rationalism. About Ivan Karamazov, Dostoevsky has provided externally virtually as much as about the Underground Man, whose shadowy physical presence translates into no external properties, only thoughts. After all, they are close literary relatives. In this absence of physical description of Ivan Karamazov, however, still something sneaks in, and so subtly that the reader would rather overlook it than not: the shoulder detail. Once spotted, it comes across as yet another enigmatic detail, perhaps comparable to the devil's watch, and certainly set up to excite thoughts and associations just as much, if not more. And, we should grant, Dostoevsky did such a marvelous job in subthreshold symbolism that generations of investigators, experts in hounding details and

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access ransacking texts, managed "skillfully" to overlook it, and once it was noticed, no one could make head or tail of it. Fundamental in the understanding of Ivan Karamazov's identity is the cooperation of actual and fictional elements, which produce a truth of a higher order as their cumulative effect, where the whole is more than the parts. Hav- ing considered the actual element, let us now consider the fictional one. Ivan Karamazov is a literary embodiment, not as much of personalities as of Dostoevsky's idea of the rationalist thinker, or the agent of rationalist cogni- tion, presented vis-a-vis the bearer of faith. If there is anything clear about Ivan Karamazov, it is that he is an idea. But confusingly, the idea Ivan Karamazov represents is an eclectic mixture of incompatible elements, a real semantic ball that should be disentangled and ordered, which does not seem to be in Dostoevsky's power. So this idea stands at once for positivism, ra- tionality, philosophy, science, and so on. But at close quarters, the incompatibility of these elements begins to present itself as irreconcilable, if not even combustive and is thus a problem for Dostoevsky's ideological agenda. For one, as is known, philosophy was overrun and in fact closed down by positivism, which is scientific rationalism under philosophical guise, but this was not quite clear to Dostoevsky, one is led to believe, for he collapses their difference. The consequences of neglecting this incompatibility are rather important. For one, it is in virtue of this confusion that Kant finds his place on both sides of the barricades at one and the same time, for on the one hand, Dosto- evsky equates him with Euclidean reason, and on the other, Kant is to him the unconditional symbol of philosophy. We may recall in this regard that in Un- cle's Dream, where Dostoevsky makes his only mention of Kant's name, Kant is precisely the synonym and symbol of the rational professor .60 Now, Euclidean reason and philosophy, even when overlapping, cannot be identified, unless in a very loose interpretation. While Euclidean geometry can power, as it has, a critique of Kant, it would be utterly erroneous to tether Kant to the empirical domain, disregarding his immense contribution in terms of transcendence. Regrettably, the sufficient clarification of this matter is a topic in its own right, and we cannot take the time to address it further. It is essential, however, to evoke awareness of the inherent elements of eclecticism and discrepancy in the ideological makeup of Ivan Karamazov, given to him by Dostoevsky himself.

2. Ivan Karamazov as a literary thinker As we have seen, everything in Ivan Karamazov is a marker of his ideological essence, and according to the shoulder hypothesis, the ,only detail of his physical portrait is, too. This ideological essence is encapsulated in, and

60. PSS, 2: 313.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access presented as, Ivan Karamazov the thinker. The appropriation of this character has its focal point in the understanding of his presence in the novel as a thinker. Therein lies also the complexity and difficulty Ivan Karamazov presents to the reader. There seem to be many ways to capture Ivan Karamazov the thinker, but there must always be structure and logical order to it. The sequence we shall follow is advanced because it is viewed to be the natural sequence that propels Ivan Karamazov: philosophy, logic, the Euclidean stance, revolt, Doppelgdnger. The internal coherence of this sequence will become increasingly transparent as we follow these signposts.

Ivan Karamazov and philosophy

What man is determines the philosophy he chooses. Fichte

It is never and nowhere set in stone, but the underlying attribute of Ivan Karamazov's spiritual characteristic is philosophy, or better yet, philosophy in a broader sense. The first to investigate Ivan Karamazov as a thinker is Alesha Karamazov, as it were, as he posits the principal task of figuring out what his dear brother Ivan believes in and by what he lives. Alesha is also the first to furnish an answer to this question, which is to understand about God. Right here we seem to have what can be considered the first interpretation of Ivan Karamazov, and it captures him as a metaphysician par excellence. Needless to say, Dostoevsky endorses it. This is why philosophy is the start-, ing point for Ivan Karamazov. It is said that philosophy is invited or called upon in the act of man's confronting the world, and that the world's resistance or fearsome profile only exacerbates the demand for philosophy. This is a perpetual reiteration of the Greek thaumatze. Philosophy is just as relevant when man turns to himself, and thus moves from the world to the self, asking the eternal questions: What am I to do? What can I hope for? Whence did I come? Who am I? Ivan Karamazov may be assumed to have arrived at his philosophizing by way of a similar path. What is powerful about Dostoevsky is, as is often observed, that he has a way with complex philosophical matters, putting them right in the pocket, so to speak. This takes immense philosophical talent, which Dostoevsky certainly had. When he applied philosophy to literature, it resulted in a marvelous literature. It must be granted that even the scanty summary that Dostoevsky often gives to philosophical ideas is capable of packing immense philosophical forces and conveying the power of an entire full-blown philosophy. Confronting philosophy takes another philosophy - this is agreed upon from the early Aristotle to the later Derrida. Dostoevsky has a vision as to what philosophy is, and he disagrees with it; so he confronts it through (confronting) the character of Ivan Karamazov. In so doing, Dosto- Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access evsky crowns what he started in his showdown with a series of characters: the Underground Man, Raskol'nikov, Ippolit, Kirillov - the "underground family" of "literary relatives," like snapshots from a family album, expressing an easily discernible "family resemblance." Thus Ivan Karamazov stands for philosophy and showcases philosophy at its best, but only to make its demise all the more complete and ultimate. '

Ivan Karamazov's philosophical master argument: The stalemate of revolt As is known, all philosophers argue, and argument is their premier weapon; it is the master argument that best represents a philosophy. Let us now look briefly into Ivan Karamazov's philosophical or, more exactly, ethical master argument, its core and limits, as well as its mechanism. Ivan Karamazov's philosophy, generated by his admitted Euclidean reason - though there is some confusion about this concept in the spirit of the aforementioned eclecticism of Ivan's ideological makeup - lends itself famously to a brief summary: if there is no God and the soul is mortal, then everything is permitted. Thus Ivan attacks not God but the meaning of His creation. If deciphered according to the samples and specimens of the history of philosophy, this stance fits the chronotope of contemporary philosophy, but then it is applicable to a number of doctrines and movements within this frame. The attempt to sort it all out must be considered a part of the task of understanding Ivan Karamazov as Dostoevsky's critique of philosophy cast in a literary form. This aperçu is twofold, for while directed against the creation, it has the force of compromising the Creator. What we have here is the classic case calling for theodicy, for every theodicy is a response to this very revolt, namely, attacking God by attacking His creation - or, vice versa, the imper- fection of the world as a creation of God is taken to be ultimately a proof of the nonexistence of God by way of a reductio ad absurdum, for it is self- contradictory that an omnipotent God may engender a less than perfect creation. This is the underlying motif and force of Ivan's entire philosophy. He states:

But you must note this: if God exists and He really did create the world, then, as we all know, He created it according to the geometry of Euclid and the human mind with the conception of only three dimen- sions in space. Yet there have been and still are geometricians and philosophers, and even some of the most distinguished, who doubt whether the whole universe, or to speak more widely the whole of being, was only created in Euclid's geometry; they even dare to dream that two parallel lines, which according to Euclid can never meet on earth, may meet somewhere in infmity. I have come to the conclusion that, since I cannot understand even that, I can't expect to understand about God. I

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access acknowledge humbly that I have no faculty for settling such questions, I have a Euclidean earthly mind, and how could I solve problems that are not of this world? ... And so I accept God and I am glad to, and what's more I accept His wisdom, His purpose -- which are utterly beyond our ken; I believe in the underlying order and the meaning of life; I believe in the eternal harmony in which they say we shall one day be blended. I believe in the world to which the universe is striving, and which itself was "with God," and which itself is God and so on, and so on to infin- , ity.... Yet would you believe it, in the final result I don't accept this world of God's, and, although I know it exists, I don't accept it at all. It is not that I don't accept God, you must understand, it's the world created by Him I don't and cannot accept.... That's what's at the root of me, Alyosha; that's my thesis.61

This is the locus classics of Ivan Karamazov's revolt in the novel, and it is not hard to trace its roots to the incompatibility of human logic and the dynamics of the world, or, reiterated in more recent terms, the collision between human finitude and infinity. In this setting, and in this stance, no logical explanation can be found for plenty of occurrences, of which the most conspicuous is the suffering of children, according to Ivan; this is how he makes his case against God in the tribunal of reason. Hence, he finds logical incon- sistency in the very midst of Christian doctrine. Let us listen once again:

Of the other tears of humanity with which the earth is soaked from . its crust to its center, I will say nothing. I have narrowed my subject on purpose.... Men are themselves to blame, I suppose; they were given paradise, they wanted freedom, and stole fire from heaven, though they knew they would become unhappy, so there is no need to pity them.... But then there are the children, and what am I to do about them? ... For the hundredth time I repeat, there are numbers of questions, but I have only taken the children, because in their case what I mean is so unanswerably clear.... I understand solidarity in sin among men. I understand solidarity in revolt too; but there can be no such solidarity in sin with children. And if it is really true that they must share responsibility for all their fathers' crimes, such a truth is not of this world and is beyond my comprehension. Some jester will say, perhaps, that the child would have grown up and have sinned, but you see he didn't grow up, he was torn to pieces by the dogs, at 8 years old.... But what pulls me up here is that I cannot accept that harmony.... It's not worth the tears of that one tortured child who beat itself on the breast with its little feast

61. BK, pp. 216-17.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access and prayed in its stinking outhouse, with its unexpiated tears to "dear, kind God"! It's not worth it, because those tears are unatoned for. They must be atoned for, or there can be no harmony.... What good can hell do, since those children have already been tortured? And what becomes of harmony, if there is hell? ... I would rather remain with my un- avenged suffering and unsatisfied indignation, even if Were wrong,.... And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket (allusion to Schiller's resignation - S. E.).... It's not God that I don't accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return Him the ticket .62

Alesha is not up to the challenge to respond to this powerful argument, to this oblique refutation of God, which operates by implicating God in self- contradictory detachment from the world or responsibility for its malfunction, which is tantamount to getting God caught up in the tangled web of His own creation. This is even more embarrassing and effective than the direct refutation of the ontological proof of God's existence. All Alesha can do is to identify Ivan's stance as revolt.

Ivan Karamazov as a Doppelganger: Perpetual revolt with no synthetic fe- cundity To move further, it is necessary to emphasize Ivan's response to Alesha's diagnosis of revolt, as Ivan offers in it a self-interpretation that is interesting in that, first, it rejects the revolt as being a chosen stance and, second, shows in Ivan's core, somewhat counterintuitively, an impulse and choice to overcome the revolt, which in turn signals that there is another side to Ivan Karamazov: .

"Revolt? I am sorry you call it that," said Ivan earnestly. "One can hardly live in revolt, and I want to live." ... I want to forgive. I want to embrace. I don't want more suffering.63

This internal split discloses Ivan Karamazov as a Doppelgdnger. We are made privy to both his willingness to go beyond the split and his constantly falling short of achieving this goal. Let us take our bearings so far. Philosophy as the chief element of Ivan Karamazov's character led him to revolt and split, creating the dualism of thought and intention, which is a perpetual revolt and perpetual absence of peace. So the Doppelganger is an effect, the cause of which is philosophy. The Doppelgdnger syndrome is basically identical to the tragedy of the Underground, understood as divorce from life, withdrawal

62. BK, pp. 224-26. 63. BK, p. 226, tr. amended.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access and escape, confrontation and showdown with life. The Underground is groundlessness, while life, as its opposite, is being on the ground, having a ground. But we have yet to clarify why philosophy led Ivan Karamazov to revolt, split, and Doppelganger, why it engendered no comprehension of life and reconciliation with reality. It is known that, while philosophy is called upon to bring together the self and the world, it often fails to remedy the chasm between them. This failure is a complex philosophical phenomenon, impossible to address here and now for it leads away from the trajectory of our investigation. But in a nutshell, it is philosophy that is to blame for its inability to reach ontological completeness, and thereby show that man and the world are un- derlain by a primordial unity, but misrepresented by their confrontation and difference. Specifically, it is a sign of philosophical empiricism of a sort, as is the case with Ivan Karamazov, and also is compatible with major tenets of Kant. Now, it must be pointed out that Dostoevsky seems to have identified in his mind this kind of philosophy with philosophy in general, which was a stance prevalent in the post-Kantian philosophical situation and heavily disseminated. As a Doppelgdnger, Ivan Karamazov is connected with Kant, though not completely and not directly. Specifically, Ivan is incapable of bridging the two major elements of his life - everydayness and theory, the empirical and the theoretical, virtue and happiness - and thus remains constantly in a perpetual antinomy, a paradox with which Kant has been repeatedly charged, beginning with Schiller, who happened to be a mentor and hero of the young Dostoevsky. What is also reminiscent of Kant is that when Ivan . opts for virtue, this automatically meant the undermining of happiness and life. It is because of this antinomy and the inability to reconcile its horns that Kant becomes the principal source of the concept of Doppelgdnger, as well as the target of its critique. Dialing back a bit, we must clarify now the question of why Ivan Karama- zov's philosophy is precisely of the kind that it is, and thus vulnerable to all these charges. The hallmark of Ivan Karamazov in terms of philosophy is, more specifically, his formal logic, which is what underlies, and grows into, Euclidean reason. It goes along with the absence of transcendence, understood in the novel as mystery. The presumed reason for the lack of mystery in Ivan Karamazov's horizon may be seen precisely in the fact that mystery cannot be understood logically, because in approaching it logic breaks down, and mystery evaporates. Faith, not logic, is what is needed, Dostoevsky asserts, for faith is the same as the recognition and confirmation of mystery, even without understanding it. Logic and knowledge re-cognize only what can be cognized, understood, digested, and they inevitably affix the mind to empirical facts, which, if anything, are rather the beginning than the end of truth. Conversely, faith is connected with passion, life, and existence, not with logic

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access and reason. Faith is born when the question of transcending facts and empirical experience is raised, being the way of correcting their limitedness. The basis of faith is God, and mystery is receiving truth by way of faith, where this truth is not generated by man, but sent to him by God's grace. The profound effectiveness of Dostoevsky's novel, working through Ivan Karamazov, is manifested in the internal contradiction between his nobility and natural ethicism, and his conscious scientific commitment, fueled by philosophy, which enter into a clash. So what we are exposed to is Ivan as a naturally ethical and noble individual with a highly sensitive conscience and will to life. But all this is severely opposed by his intellectual views and subject to gradual, time-release ravaging. Ivan's personality is inevitably a split personality, a Doppelganger, and the split is between what is natural and what is acquired, perhaps what is Russian and what is imported, or again, what is important and what is imported. But, to be precise, Ivan will, in the final analysis, be victimized not by the split itself, but rather by his own failure to synthesize this internal dualism by transcending it. What is the principal reason for the impossibility of this synthesis in Ivan? As has been pointed out, the only way to achieve this synthesis is faith, but this is the single way that is preempted by the very nature and constitution of Ivan Karamazov's Euclidean mind - again, because of philosophy. This is the source of the poignancy, or tragedy, of Ivan Karamazov, the tragedy of the Underground, and it is what Dostoevsky relentlessly wants to get across. It is clear that Ivan's doubts and ceaseless interrogation of philosophical Problems identify him in terms of his philosophical characteristics and commitment. After all, no philosophy can afford not to address the matters Ivan Karamazov reflects upon. Ivan's stance is often compared with that of Nietzsche, and for good reason, for both live in the time after the deicide, when man dwells in the conditions of ontological loneliness and presumably the absence of transcendence. It is a time of decadence and modernity for both Dostoevsky and Nietzsche. Nietzsche was the first to accept and face it, while Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky found that impossible and put up a fight against it. It is in this context that Dostoevsky's own words to Pobedonostsev must be made out, namely, that he mounts a case of atheism and decadence that has no precedence and match.64 This case is precisely made through, and encapsulated in, the character and philosophy of Ivan Karamazov. Ivan Karamazov's character is geared by Dostoevsky to display, as fully and profoundly as possible, the standpoint adversarial to Dostoevsky's, which 1 is basically that of philosophy, of positivism and rationalism in a broader sense. So Dostoevsky engages not only in an exuberant presentation of it, but also in the unfettered application of that standpoint to the matters of life, the

64. PSS, 30/1: 66, letter No. 784.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access practical, morality, good and evil - all this as one problematic, more or less holistic and loosely identified as philosophy and metaphysics. In the process of presentation and unfolding, this application, without intervention, turns into its opposite, its own reductio ad absurdum and immanent critique, sheerly in virtue of its internal shortcomings and ultimate incoherence. Dosto- evsky's goal is to bring, without visible interference, that incoherence to the surface and make it conspicuous. More than that, he wants to bring it in with the entire package of ramifications and implications, whereby the practical effect of this stance is exposed, so that it does not remain one philosophy among many, thus camouflaging its dangerous and perfidious consequences. Hence, Dostoevsky is interested in the complete unfolding of it, so that its damaging impact on life is rendered available and visible. Thus, in the investigation into conscience, morality, matters of life, good and evil, Ivan arrives at his own reductio ad absurdum by showing how his views not only fail to furnish answers to the "cursed questions," but also - as, for example, in his precursor Raskol'nikov - cause nothing short of the annihilation of life. In the context of the novel, the ultimate effect of Ivan's character is in the clear as- sertion - and this is one of the upshots of the novel - that none of these questions can be accommodated unless the empirical existence of man is tran- scended, first, and, second, that this transcendence is man's encounter with God by way of faith in the former and the grace of the latter. Ivan seems ultimately left, then, with two choices: either to be victimized by his own views, damaging in the process all lives tangential to him, a real self-ingurgitation - which is what happens in the novel - or to take the leap of faith, which he . proves incapable of. According to Dostoevsky's indirect work upon, and communication to, the reader, it is Ivan's self-identification with Euclidean reason that fails to open the possibility of a leap of faith and thus secures Ivan's self-destruction. Between reductio ad absurdum and salto mortale, Ivan chooses the former, for thus is he "wired" by his views: he is unable to opt for sola fide, for it is non-Euclidean. Ultimately, Ivan Karamazov is a vic- tim of his own Euclidean reason.

3. The discrepancy in the common feature of I. Kant and I. Karamazov, or when a differences makes no difference Whoever may have a stake in not accepting this hypothesis may try to re- ject it in a variety of ways, one of which could be by focusing on the discrepancy between Ivan Karamazov's and Kant's shoulder feature, although this : discrepancy may turn out to be virtually unnoticeable. This discrepancy is too infinitesimal to sponsor a counterargument to the shoulder hypothesis, and is grounded in an inessential difference, especially in the field of literature, which is known to enjoy a broader latitude in applying its license, poetic and nonpoetic. Exactitude is not the goal of art, even when it is far from'being

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access Sloppy, as Dostoevsky's art certainly is, for what is important above all in literature is setting the reader up in the way of experiencing something, rather than conceptualizing it. Still, when it comes to conceptualizing literature in and by literary study, it is imperative to address all discrepancies, as we now move to do. The aforementioned discrepancy consists in the following: whereas it is Karamazov's left shoulder that sags, in Kant it is the right shoulder. The fact of that difference is hardly sufficient to render the specific shoulder similarity between Ivan Karamazov and Kant nonexistent. However, instead of relying on that exclusively, let us see what meaning this difference may yield and how far in this regard it may take us. To begin with, there could be a number of reasons for the said discrepancy, and it behooves us to consider as many as Possible. For one, it may be due to Dostoevsky's finding out about Kant's shoulder characteristic considerably earlier than he implemented it in Ivan Karamazov. This would be consistent with what was, in the early 1860s and in the circle of pochvennichestvo; a time of philosophical discussions with Strakhov, and thus a Kant time. Thereafter, Dostoevsky may have forgotten all details beyond the fact that one of Kant's shoulders was visibly higher than the other, regardless of which shoulder it was, that being a difference inessential to him. What are we to do, however, if we remain consistent with our conviction that every detail in Dostoevsky is highly deliberate? While still this may very well be a result of forgetting minutiae over time, there could be deliberate twists to this alteration, and it is this deliberateness that we must try somehow to take up now and account for. To that effect, we may extend our hypothesis to recognize also that Dostoevsky indeed sought to introduce an additional cipher by changing the side of the physical defect in Ivan, as compared to Kant, which would be putting a Dostoevskian twist to it (no pun intended). But in so doing we inevitably assume that, first, Dostoevsky still made sure it would be sufficiently transparent that Kant is the one who is mimicked in the character of Ivan, and second, that Dostoevsky knew perfectly well which of Kant's shoulders sagged. Strictly speaking, the fact is that in Ivan Karamazov one of the shoulders sags, whereas in Kant the same shoulder is elevated. It should be pointed out that Dostoevsky himself gives a hint of a "reverse perspective," inasmuch as the fact of Ivan's uneven shoulders is stated while Ivan is viewed from behind - although, true, this does not change the fact of the difference - while portrayals of Kant presumably capture him in a frontal perspective. Furthermore, in pursuing the possibility that the discrepancy under scrutiny is an altogether deliberate item, we have to consider the following as a major argument. As is known, the Russian mentality of that time engendered a vision, substantiated by Slavophilism and grounded in viewing Russia as a world of its own, with a peculiar historical destiny, parallel to the West. This

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access resulted in a peculiar duplication, which created a Russian version of virtually everything. There is an extensive catalog testifying to this. Thus, there is "Russian Christianity," there is "Russian philosophy" (in the technical sense, the idea of I. Kireevsky), there is a complex and multiple phenomenon called "the Russian idea" (introduced by V. Solov'ev and Dostoevsky), there is a "Russian Nietzsche" (a label given to Dostoevsky or to Stavrogin, or even to Ivan Karamazov), there is a "Russian Faust" (a "title" bestowed upon Ivan Karamazov by S. Bulgakov or upon Stavrogin by V. Ivanov), there is a "Rus- . sian Jesus" - in fact, Dostoevsky's Myshkin stands for a "Russian Jesus," as Dostoevsky himself intended - and last but not least, there is also a Russian devil. A. Volynsky, though speaking to a different issue, is rather relevant to our pursuit, when he writes: "Dostoevsky does not forget that the Russian devil is a peculiar creature - not a Satan with fiery wings, amidst lightnings and thunderbolts, but rather something much shabbier."6s Likewise, according to G. Chulkov, The Village of Stepanchikovo offers the idea of a Russian Tartuffe in the character of Foma Opiskin.66 Indeed, the , catalog tends to be comprehensive, if not complete, ranging from the Russian guitar, with an extra 'string attached, to the Russian roulette, adding absolute loss to the few options in the game. But we must ask now: How does it relate to the hypothesis at hand? In the same spirit, one is tempted to construe that there was nothing to hinder Dostoevsky in describing a Russian Kant in the case of Ivan Karamazov, utilizing the eloquent detail of Kant's physical portrayal, while signifying this national d�erent�'a specifica by means of a deliberate change in the side of the physical deformity - the left shoulder instead '" of the right shoulder; a sagging, instead of elevated, shoulder. This difference most likely has no further symbolism other than the opposition to, and difference from, the "Western Kant." But whatever the exact motive, or the lack thereof, the most significant point remains the point of similarity, inasmuch as Kant was for Dostoevsky the epitome of reasoning and philosophical rationalism, just as Ivan Karamazov is the climax of this faculty in Dostoevsky's oeuvre. Again, Ivan Karamazov was admittedly conceived as a result of Dosto- evsky's intention to mount the absolute expression of rationalism, atheism, positivism, and so on. The difference in the shoulder feature between Kant and Ivan' Karamazov strikes the discerning reader as a difference that ultimately makes no difference, or an exception whose sole function is to all the more strongly confirm the rule, which is the same. . Having attached to Ivan Karamazov the possible title of a "Russian Kant," . � . or .simply by underscoring the Russianness of Dostoevsky's Kantianesque

, . 65. A. Volynsky, "Chelovekobog i Bogochelovek," in 0 Dostoevskom: tvorchestvo Dosto- evskogo v russkoi mysli 1881-1931 godov (Moscow: Kniga, 1990), p. 83. ! 66. G. Chulkov, Kak rabotal Dostoevskii (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1939), p. 60.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access character, we are reminded of the fact that S. Bulgakov once, in his essay on Ivan Karamazov ("Ivan Karamazov as a Philosophical Type"), made the case for the Russianness of Ivan Karamazov, though in a different relation, namely, vis-a-vis Nietzsche rather than vis-6-vis Kant. Since Bulgakov is certainly one to be trusted in terms of expertise, we may look into his argument regarding the dialectic of universal and national in Ivan Karainazov. Accord- ing to Bulgakov, the world significance of Ivan Karamazov becomes clearer in comparison with Faust.67 The irony and surprise in this parallel lie in Faust's being the ultimate emanation of the German spirit, the secular Bible of the Germans, as dubbed by Heine, while Ivan Karamazov is perceived by Bulgakov as utterly Russian. Nonetheless, Bulgakov fmds continuity between Faust and Karamazov on ideological grounds, as the latter grapples with the skeptic legacy of the former.68 But while Ivan Karamazov shares the universal dimension of Faust and the fundamental doubts and problems of mankind in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Ivan is also, Bulgakov insists, a Rus- sian man through and through: .

But everything that is great comes forth in a national costume, and while emphasizing the universal and supranational features of the said character, we must also point out the national ones.... The immediate impression speaks loud and clear, as well as ... undoubtedly, that Ivan Karamazov is a Russian man through and through, with whom each of us cannot but feel blood kinship. More specifically, Ivan is a Russian intellectual from head to toe, with his passion for eternal questions, with ' his inclination to protractive conversations, with constant self-analysis, with his ailing and tortured conscience. The latter of those is the feature I identify as the most poignant characteristic of the Russian intelligent- sia.... Ivan Karamazov is genuinely Russian namely in that he is fully preoccupied by the ethical problem; striking is the indifference of that strong philosophical mind to all other problems of philosophy, such as epistemology.... Thus, we have come to feel in Ivan Karamazov our indigenous illness, constituting our national differentia specifica.69

Perhaps nothing is wrong in this statement of deep insight and subtle comprehension, but nevertheless, Bulgakov fails to show the genuine differentia specifica of the Russian spirit, simply because what he advances in this regard

. 67. S. Bulgakov, "Ivan Karamazov v romane Dostoevskogo 'Brat'ia Karamazovy' kak filosofskii tip," in 0 Velikom Inkvizitore:Dostoevskii i posleduiushchie, ed. Iu. Seliverstov (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1991), pp. 193-217, pp. 212-16. 68. Ibid., p. 214. 69. Ibid., pp. 215-16.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access to be uniquely Russian is in fact as universal as it can be. It is naive to per- ceive as a Russian trademark of thinking the commitment to the practical as ethical hypersensitivity. Rather, this could be identified as a feature of all peoples, or better yet, of intellectuals from different quarters and persuasions. It must be pointed out that Bulgakov is not alone in his failure to draw a line in the sand between Russia and the West. Dostoevsky belongs here as well, for his attempt to ground this difference in Russian Orthodoxy is ultimately incoherent and successful only to the degree that it recaptures the historical and cultural peculiarity of Russia. These differences, however, do not run deep enough to power Dostoevsky's entire historiosophy, and they finally leave it in midair, unbeknownst to him. Small wonder, then, that the ultimate destination of Dostoevsky's thinking, which is religiosity, goes beyond Rus- sian Orthodoxy and 'resonates much more with some Western religious mavericks, such as Kierkegaard, rather than with Russian Orthodoxy. We learn this not from the badmouthing of Dostoevsky's foe but from his own novels - indeed, from his most entrusted spokesmen, the elders. Whatever Dostoevsky's ambitions, his elders are at best heterodox Orthodox Christians. ' Thus the argument of Ivan Karamazov's Russianness is at once unsuccess- ful and in a certain sense viable, in that it harmonizes perfectly well with the fundamental dynamics of the Russian spirit at the time of Dostoevsky and considerably thereafter, as Bulgakov demonstrates. Bulgakov's articulation is in many ways Dostoevskian and Dostoevsky-inspired. This argument, however, cannot satisfy the burden of proof it sets out and needs to meet, for at best the national peculiarity of a thinker is bound to remain among the secon- �• dary characteristics of his thinking, and perhaps the deeper a thinker goes, the thinner the national peculiarity of his thought gets. What is crucial is that this change - left or right shoulder, sagging or elevated - deliberate or not, seems to fall short of toppling the shoulder hypothesis, confirming this feature as Kant-inspired. In conclusion, the character of Ivan Karamazov displays all the credentials to carry the shoulder feature namely as a Kantian token. Whether this may be viewed as a professional hazard of the rationalist or a peculiar badge of philosophical honor, is a decision that ultimately is not even for Dostoevsky, but rather for the reader independently, to make. For his part, Dostoevsky has made a compelling case for the former. At any rate, Ivan Karamazov shoulders his identity, and the burden of it seems rather vast. The detail of the physical portrayal of Kant, redrawn by Dostoevsky's pen, is a devilishly ingenious physical way - at one and the same time ultimately eloquent, yet utterly economical - to "Kantianize" Ivan Karamazov in terms of his physical -, features on grounds found in his intellectual makeup. Ironically, Dostoevsky is often erroneously thought to hide behind Ivan Karamazov so he could air his true opinions, but in fact he gave Ivan the "cold shoulder." This is a detail

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access that artistically may reify very acutely a great deal of ideology. And while it does not make Ivan Karamazov a Kantian, it does make him Kantianesque, which is consistent, it seems, with Dostoevsky's task in the novel. Ivan's philosophy, as we find it in the novel - his well-emphasized Euclidean reason, the Doppelgctnger stance as sealed to transcendence - are hallmarks of his "Kantian connection," that is, seeing the world more or less "according to Kant," and his counterpart is not non-Euclidean geometry, but transcendence as secured, according to Dostoevsky, only by faith in Christ, who is the sole ideal for living life, an ideal superior even to truth, as soon as truth deviates from it.

Part Three: CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

Undoubtedly, at a certain point one is bound to tarry and wonder why and how the shoulder detail of Ivan Karamazov has managed for so long to keep its cover from being blown, in spite of researchers, with their sleeves rolled up, "scouting" ceaselessly. Not just international, but interdisciplinary nature of the shoulder feature may at least partially account for how it may have fallen through the cracks and loopholes of imperfect disciplinary continuity, disturbed by the boundaries of the neighboring fields, concerned more with their bounties than with whatever truth may remain across the border. This is how all parties seem to have left it to someone else, which would be fatal, if common efforts are necessary, as is so in this case - unless, of course, serendipity's help works a miracle, which does not seem to have happened. Inter- disciplinary research has been in vogue for quite some time now, but with little impact on the shoulder matter. Simply put, it has remained untransparent for any literary or philosophical party wishing to claim it, for neither party has had the double vision to see it. Since, according to the shoulder hypothesis, the detail points toward a philosophical address, it is only natural and prudent to consult philosophical research, since the literary sources have basically been consulted. Dostoevsky has had many a sensitive reader within the philosophical community, even, perhaps somewhat unexpectedly, as far as his literary versatility and sophistication are concerned. And this has been the case not only in Russia but also abroad. Let us briefly consider both regions.

The Western perspective In the West, especially in Germany and France, Dostoevsky has famously enjoyed enduring appreciation. It was arguably Jaspers who, shortly after World War II, reintroduced Kant's shoulder characteristic at the highest philosophical level, after it had been skirted in the process of otherwise relentless Kant study, as we have already indicated. Thereby, Jaspers potentially provided for several generations of Dostoevsky scholars a new opportunity to

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access discern Kant's and Ivan Karamazov's common physical feature. Let us hear how Jaspers presents this physical feature. In his account of Kant's life, Jas- pers writes:

Kant was unusually small, thin, flat-chested; his right shoulder was higher than the left one. He was fragile, yet healthy.70 (Italics are mine - S. E.)

. By now we know very well the proto-source of the information Jaspers re- plays. There is, however, a complication to consider here. Jaspers was instrumental and helpful in bringing forth again the shoulder feature, making it part of the postwar discussion on Kant, but at the same time one cannot help but ask: What of Jaspers himself? Why did he not notice it? In fact, Jaspers may be emphatically mentioned among those who have not noticed the similarity between Kant and Ivan Karamazov, especially given the following additional consideration: he planned on having a special entry on Dostoevsky in his vast historio-philosophical project, indeed the same project in which Kant is treated and his shoulder feature mentioned. And while Jaspers' death regrettably left this prodigious enterprise incomplete, he still put together thou- sands of pages that include a sketch of Dostoevsky, however incomplete. One may conclude that Jaspers unconditionally must have read The Brothers Karamazov, although he may not have read some of Dostoevsky's other works. Still, the association never occurred. All this holds true for Gadamer as well. Even though he never wrote an ac- �• count of Kant's life, his involvement with Kant has been certainly lifelong and fruitful. We have already had the pleasure and benefit of listening to his subtle reading of details in Dostoevsky, coming right from The Brothers Karamazov, endowed with the rare bonus of exceptional sensitivity and attention to detail. The details he quotes so convincingly, the corridor and the staircase in The Brothers Karamazov, are, as details, certainly less significant than the shoulder detail. Yet, the shoulder association between Ivan Karama- zov and Kant remains undrawn in Gadamer too. The possibility of Gadamer seeing the detail and the parallel is especially fascinating and seductive, and the imagination is aroused by the vision of what this ultimate hermeneutician ; of the twentieth century would say about the shoulder detail, and, though much less importantly, why he did not notice it, since everything seems in place and so well laid out. ` : ' ' The puzzle perpetuates itself, this time as regards R. Lauth, perhaps cur- reritly the most recognized authority on Dostoevsky's philosophical dimen-

70. Karl Jaspers, Die grossen Philosophen (Miinchen: R. Pieper � Co. Verlag, 1957), 1: 397.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access sion .71 But Lauth may be approached not only through the Kant-Dostoevsky but also through the Dostoevsky-Fichte connection. Let us explain this double bind. It remains mysterious why Lauth, the leader of the Fichte Renaissance of the 1980s - known also as the Munich school of transcendental philosophy - not only never clarified the Fichte-Dostoevsky parallel, but, it seems, never even discerned one. Now, the reason is certainly not that there is nothing to mention and investigate, for Fichte in many ways is not only relevant to Dostoevsky's work but perhaps the best facilitator of illuminating certain Dostoevskian themes. Briefly, he reiterated Kant's distinction between morality and happiness, which was essential to Fichte's work as well. The same distinction is significant in Dostoevsky as well. Herein lies the parallel, but the reasons go much further. For one who recognizes Dostoevsky's critique of natural existence, or critique of man, Fichte becomes arguably the best media- tor in appropriating that Dostoevskian critique. Turning to France at approximately that time, three main figures among the French philosophers had intimate connections with Dostoevsky's work - Sartre, Camus, and Levinas. None, however, noticed the Karamazov-Kant parallel, though all conditions were seemingly in place. One wonders, for example, how Levinas, with his sensitivity as a literature reader, including his attention to detail, as well as his command of Kant and The Brothers Kara- mazov - whose Alesha and Ivan he would often subpoena for testimony or in- vite for cameo appearances - plus the bonus of his being able to read Dosto- evsky in the original, would fail to notice the shoulder parallel between Ivan Karamazov and Immanuel Kant, however evasive that parallel may be. But somehow it escaped him.

The Russian perspective When it comes to Russian philosophers, the main preliminary consideration to bear in mind is that the frontier between philosophy and imaginative literature, as well as religion, is blurred and at moments obliterated, so Rus- sian literary critics were often philosophers, and vice versa. This is so much so that even Bakhtin - today viewed by the majority of scholars as a classic of literary theory par excellence - deemed himself a philosopher, and indeed he was one, for he was a Russian philosopher. And while this indetermination is

71. See R. Lauth, Die Philosophie Dastojewskis in systematischer Darstellung (Munchen: Piper, 1950, 1981). It may be pointed out that R. Lauth has, since his first Dostoevsky book, continued to contribute to Dostoevsky studies, the main publication intermittently being Dosto- jewski und sein Jahrhundert (Bonn, 1986), also his essay "Dostojewskis 'Traum eines lacher- lichen Menschen' als Auseinandersetzung mit Rousseau und Fichte" (in his marvelous collec- tion Transzendentale Entwicklungslinien: von Descartes bis zu Marx und Dostojewski [Ham- burg: F. Meiner Verlag, 1989], pp. 422-34). But despite his rich additional work, the parallel between Dostoevsky and Fichte remains to be drawn.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access often viewed as unhelpful to either philosophy or literature, one surmises that in the particular case of the shoulder detail it could have been helpful, but was not. S. Bulgakov was one of the first to write a separate essay on Ivan Karama- zov, which is referred to above, and is still among the few to have done so. That his essay was written from a philosophical point of view makes it especially interesting to the present inquiry. As has been pointed out, Bulgakov executed the essay in the spirit of drawing a parallel between Ivan Karamazov and Faust.72 He in part maintains that Ivan Karamazov is the Russian Faust, as has been mentioned. But also important is that Bulgakov did not see the connection between Ivan and Kant, for it was eclipsed by what may be argued is the considerably weaker parallel between Ivan and Faust. We may ask, as M. Blanchot once did: "Why Faust?" And while Bulgakov is undoubtedly correct about the essential significance of philosophy in the character of Ivan Karamazov, his particular observation may have preemptively dulled his ability to observe the physical aspects of Ivan Karamazov in general, and thus his ability to see the shoulder detail. For it is Kant, rather than Faust, it is claimed here, who would better illuminate the philosophical presence in Ivan, if this is to be done through a parallel. Bulgakov was arguably the first to "frisk," so to speak, Ivan Karamazov, and one of Bulgakov's statements is especially relevant to our pursuit:

Characteristically, in the novel, there is no external description of Ivan, although all other characters are described externally. As it seems• to me, this is by no means accidental; it is not sloppiness, but internal artistic instinct. Ivan is a spirit, he is entirely an abstract problem, he has no exterior. On whom would it dawn to require external description of Faust, who also lacks such in the tragedy? Hence, the entire talent of the author is directed to disclosing and illuminating Ivan's state of mind at a given moment; this is what is the focus of the electric sun of Dosto- evsky's talent.73

The irony here is that this statement presupposes Bulgakov's careful examination of the novel's text, as a result of which the statement was made, for no physical detail was found. Given that, Bulgakov seems to have opened up to being reminded that in fact there is an exception to the rule of Dosto- evsky's fundamental underplaying of Ivan Karamazov's exterior description. ' This exception only reconfirms the rule, for Dostoevsky breaks it, as it were, to the sole effect of making it stronger. As has been argued, Dostoevsky in-

72. Bulgakov, "Ivan Karamazov," pp. 212-16. i . ` 73. Ibid., p. 197.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access troduces an evanescent physical detail as a way to emphasize Ivan's interior all the more; hence this physical detail is an additional pointer to his interior, a sort of a clue to viewing the interior. But then, this detail and clue must be noticed and comprehended, which Bulgakov fails to do. While Bulgakov finds it more fitting to play out the parallel with Faust, the majority of Russian philosophers and critics find the parallel with Kant more compelling. Let us briefly recall some of these thinkers and their opinions. L. Shestov takes the Kant-Dostoevsky connection seriously, and according to his reading, Dostoevsky struck up a polemic with Kant in 1864 in his Notes from Underground, a work Shestov interprets to be basically Dostoevsky's response to Kant.74 If this is true, then Dostoevsky's work in toto stands to be understood as a multiple response to Kant, since Notes from Underground started what underlies Dostoevsky's later work as a whole, and The Brothers Karamazov must then inevitably be viewed as Dostoevsky's ultimate response to Kant, mainly because of Ivan Karamazov. However, strikingly, Shestov is silent about this implication, which flows from his own stance, and he does not even give any signals of awareness of it. Furthermore, another Russian thinker, S. Gessen, in his reconstruction of Dostoevsky's ethical outlook as displayed in The Brothers Karamazov, notes the presence of the principles of Kant's ethics Even though he does not mention the detail, his general observation as to Kant's presence in the novel already significantly corroborates the shoulder hypothesis, for if Kant is a presence in the novel, as claimed, then some of Kant's ideas must be embodied primarily in Ivan Karamazov. This, in turn, speaks to the possibility that Ivan Karamazov's shoulder feature was most likely borrowed from Kant and symbolizes something Kantian- esque. In the same vein as Gessen, the Russian philosophical and literary writer A. Shteinberg, investigating specifically the question of freedom and idealism in Dostoevsky, fmds Kantian presence in Dostoevsky to even a greater extent. On the basis of Platonism in a broader sense, Shteinberg holds, Kant is compatible even with Zosima: "Kant's philosophy does not contradict Zosima's philosophy; both of them, as well as Dostoevsky himself, are Plato- nists. "76 The common denominator of Zosima and Kant is a subtle observation, one that is too complex to unpack here and irrelevant to the shoulder detail be- sides. What is more important here is that Shteinberg identifies the explicit

1 74. L. Shestov, "On the 'Regeneration of Convictions' in Dostoevsky," in Speculatton and Revelation (Athens: Ohio Univ. Press, 1982), pp. 145-70, pp. 14G, 155, 166.. 75. S. Gessen, "Tragediia dobra v 'Brat'iakh Karamazovykh' Dostoevskogo," in 0 Dosto- evskom: tvorchestvo Dostoevskogo v russkoi mysli 1881-1931 godov (Moscow: Kniga, 1990), pp. 356, 357, 359, 361. 76. A. Shteinberg, Sistema svobody Dostoevskogo (Berlin: Skify, 1923), p. 30.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access opposition between Ivan Karamazov and Zosima with the implicit opposition between Kant and Zosima, which seems to amount to the conclusion that Ivan Karamazov represents aspects of Kant's doctrine. Another Russian critic of old, M. Tugan-Baranovsky, also confirms the connection between Kant's and Dostoevsky's ethical reflections, and points out correctly that Dostoevsky did not create an artistic commentary on Kant's moral philosophy but instead advanced an attempt at criticism of it.77 L. Zander also compares Ivan Karama- zov and Kant in the case of ethical thinking.78 He goes on to correctly point out the major moment of dispute, which is that according to Kant, the connection between God and morality is only logical,79 whereas Dostoevsky requires a "living" connection with an "immediate" God of belief. However, Kant and Ivan Karamazov share a correct major premise: there can be no morality without God. Mochulsky also acknowledges the connection between Kant and Ivan,80 as well as the connection of Ivan with the philosophical tradition from Plato to Kant. Also, in more recent years, N. Valmon has explored the Schiller-Dostoev- sky parallel,81 regrettably without seeing in it the Kant-Dostoevsky implication. He still adheres to the view that Kant and Dostoevsky are not incompatible and not opposed to each other. So does A. Gulyga, who, in his biography of Kant,82 represents a later tendency of emphasizing the similarity between Kant and Dostoevsky, but only negatively, that is, by way of de-emphasizing their differences. The underlying thought here seems to be the reconsideration of the entire parallel. However, this cannot be done only strategically and partially, for it calls for nothing short of a complete analysis of the parallel, car- . ried out from a radically new standpoint. G. Fridlender, though known as a master of the Dostoevsky parallel in virtue of his having produced a number of memorable parallels between Dostoevsky and other contemporary writers and thinkers, was still not in a position to contribute to the Dostoevsky-Kant parallel. This fact was rendered most transparent when in 1992 he presided over, and participated in, a roundtable discussion on Dostoevsky and Kant in Konigsberg (Kaliningrad in Soviet times). His brief opening statement, some five pages long, shows that he has little to say on the topic, though generally he views the Kant-Dostoevsky parallel in the spirit of the tendency of com-

77. M. Tugan-Baranovskii, "Nravstvennoe mirovozzrenie Dostoevskogo," in 0 Dosto- evskom: tvorchestvo Dostoevskogo v russkoi mysli 1881-1931 godov, p. 129. 1 78. L. Zander, T'aina dobra: problema dobra u Dostoevskogo (Berlin: Posev, 1960), pp. 26- 27. 79. Ibid., p. 27. 80. Mochulsky, Dostoevsky: His Life and Work, p. 505. 81. N. Valmon, "Dostoevskii i Shiller," Vedikie sputniki (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel', 1966), see espec. pp. 141, 276. , 82. A. Gulyga, Kant (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1981).

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access patibility mentioned above. Last but not least, Ia. Golosovker was the first to write a monograph on Dostoevsky and Kant, and more specifically on The Brothers Karamazov and Critique of Pure Reason.83 Golosovker's work still remains the ultimate achievement of a certain approach to the Dostoevsky- Kant parallel, captured here as dogmatic. The aforementioned tendency seems of late to have been engendered precisely in opposition to Golosovker's interpretation of the Kant-Dostoevsky parallel in terms of acute incompatibility. His dogmatic stance has also been attacked by those who claim that the Dostoevsky-Kant parallel is an unattainable problematic to investigate on account of there being no textual reference and anchorage for it. Basically, this is the standpoint here called textual empiricism, or skepticism, represented, for example, by J. Catteau.84 We shall once again briefly return to the skepticism-dogmatism confrontation. What is significant to the shoulder hypothesis in the views of all these thinkers is the multiple and various confirmation of the connection between Dostoevsky and Kant, or even between Ivan Karama- zov and Kant, regardless of the fact that no one has spotted the shoulder feature in Ivan and conceived of the possibility that it may originate in Kant. Now, the recurring question of how all these philosophers and literary scholars, who represent different traditions, nations, persuasions, and schools, failed to notice the Dostoevsky-Kant parallel as manifested in the shoulder feature, is a rhetorical one. That is, while none of them owes anyone an answer to this question, it is something else that is important: the fact that they did not notice the shoulder detail speaks to its peculiar status as utterly evasive and evanescent. More importantly, as we have witnessed, the Kant- Dostoevsky parallel seems rather well recognized, however indeterminate its description may be, which amounts to an oblique corroboration of the hypothesis.

Final thoughts The efforts invested in the shoulder hypothesis should not be taken to signify that it is saddled with exceptional and exaggerated expectations, for after all this hypothesis is put together with the aim of explaining merely a minute detail. That said, the shoulder hypothesis is not without ramifications, some of which may not be minute. It is not our task to deal with the ramifications of the hypothesis, but at least one implication should not be overlooked. The shoulder hypothesis may amount inadvertently to the reactivation of attention to the Kant-Dostoevsky parallel in a new way, bringing it out of a dormant

83. Ia. Golosovker, "Dostoevskii i Kant," in Zasekrechennyi sekret: filosofskaia proza (Tomsk: Vodolei, 1998). 84. Jacques Catteau, Dostoevsky and the Process of Literary Creation (Cambridge: Cam- bridge Univ. Press, 1989), see espec. pp. 64-65.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access state caused by the aporia of the dogmatic stance and the skeptic stance. It thereby suggests not only that the Dostoevsky-Kant parallel has never been satisfactorily addressed, and thus remains unclarified, and not only that it cannot be addressed in the ways it has been so far, but also that there must be a new, critical and synthetic way of approaching the parallel unaffected by the myopia of textual empiricism that sterilizes the skeptics, and the frenzy of contrivance that "jinxes" the dogmatics. Thus it is clear that the shoulder hypothesis raises of necessity, and almost . automatically, the general question of the Dostoevsky-Kant relation in a broader sense, serving as a sort of a prelude to it, for it highlights anew a set of interdependencies and relations that belong to the parallel. Of those, the following should be briefly mentioned. First, the hypothesis that the shoulder feature of I. Karamaz6v is suggested by the physical characteristic of I. Kant is sufficiently justified by the degree of presence of Kant's philosophy in the novel. As we have seen, this presence, if not proven, has at least been noticed and signaled from various quarters. So there is sufficient connection and thus reason for Dostoevsky to "borrow" the shoulder to the effect of enhancing the subtextual intensity of his work. Moreover, that documented degree of Kant's presence in the novel, even if the shoulder hypothesis is set aside altogether, must also be considered sufficient to warrant a new look at the complex parallel between Dostoevsky and Kant. Further, this stance may be taken as far as stating that in fact no presence of Kant whatsoever in Dostoevsky's novel is necessary to justify,the study of the parallel between the two great men, which is true of any two first-rate creators, however incompatible they may come �• across as at first blush. The argument behind this claim is rather clear, for such a parallel examination could be done on their own recognizance, as it were, sheerly in view of their scale and ubiquity of influence on mankind's life, for clearly little could be advanced against or in lieu of it. This, however, is certainly no alibi, and the fact that such a parallel must, in the final analysis, be justified by its significance stands and cannot be waived. One thing seems clear: to understand the relationship of Dostoevsky to Kant (and for that matter even, for example, to Hegel), one cannot rely sheerly on textual analysis, for there is no such text. Some creative relations of influence, though they do not end up generating text and accounts of their own history and dynamics, are still significant and fruitful. Hence, one should not stop after having exhausted all textual hard-copy evidence, but must go on and consider the broad frameworks of thinking in the two parties involved, so that the spirit of their relation may be captured and put in a comparative perspective. While it may seem to lack the conventional reliability typical of textual testimony, in a certain sense this approach may be even more trustworthy, for it is based not on words said but on thoughts thought, and not accidental thoughts, but thoughts entertained and acted upon throughout the thinker's

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access life, and thus liberated from the fastidiousness of momentary snapshot statements, which may cease to be true no sooner than they are uttered or jotted down. So there is no reason to give too much credence to the former, that is, the textual, or to undermine the latter, that is, the contextual; what remains is to take the synthetic way of making the most of both inasmuch as they are available, recognizing that they make up the whole. This is especially true if the need to gain understanding of the theme outweighs all doubts, for otherwise it is tantamount to choosing "nothing" over "something," simply because "something" is not "everything." But what is "everything"? And what does it mean to determine that "something" is insufficient? It must be stipulated that, ironically, perhaps even Dostoevsky himself, if asked, may not have been clear as to his relation to Kant, and it would be naive to imagine that it would have taken only a brief conversation with Dostoevsky to clarify his attitude to Kant. We know this from what Dostoevsky has written and created as a whole, which is the ultimate criterion. After all, the Kant-Dostoevsky parallel is not a matter of personal taste; further, the question about their juxtaposition is not about Dostoevsky the man but about his work, which already has a life of its own, like an arrow already shot from the bow and flying on its own (to use Heinrich Heine's metaphor). So the question of the parallel now becomes how Dostoevsky's work and Kant's work could be legitimately related, rather than how the two men relate to each other. Looking at the Kant-Dostoevsky relation panoramically, we see two naturally formed parties, designated here as dogmatism and skepticism, to use a fraction of Kantian vocabulary rather suitable to the occasion. Let us briefly clarify the difference inherent in the two positions. As always, dogmatism diligently constructs with enthusiasm and faith in the possibility of rigid results, but all its structures are so pre-dedicated that neither presuppositions nor materials nor methods of construction matter, as if they were trifles compared to the seduction of the final result. Thus, naivete becomes inevitable and gradually overwhelming, even if the result comes out palatable and exciting. Conversely, skepticism gathers all the right arguments to prove that getting involved is not worth it, and while every bit of judgment and reasoning seems right, the whole comes across as wrong. Skeptic wisdom is often easy, but as many times wrong, for it is applicable to everything. Given all that, one need not be a Kantian to see that a blending of the two parties may be the way to go, provided that it recruits the critical capacity of skepticism and the constructive commitment of dogmatism to bring about a third position that is neither the one nor the other. But this is already the exciting task of another ses- sion, to which the present essay in "micro-Dostoevsky," so to speak, is only an introduction and invitation.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access As we close, we may recall Chekhov's ingenious and famous phrase: if a gun appears on the stage, it must be shot before the play is over. Chekhov's point is more than clear: he underscores the teleological presence of every element in a work of art, no matter how insignificant it may appear. Che- khov's integrity as quintessential playwright and his strict economy of expression make this phrase a maxim of literary writing. But there should be no . doubt that Dostoevsky could also have been the author of this maxim, for it is operative in his work, as we have seen. Then, one may paraphrase it as follows: if a Dostoevskian character has a sagging shoulder, that shoulder must carry a burden, and, before the novel is over, it must become somehow clear what sort of burden it is. Ivan not only shoulders his identity, but also wears it on his sleeve literally and literarily.

The New School University

Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 07:38:19PM via free access