DOSTOEVSKY BEYOND DOSTOEVSKY SCIENCE, RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY Ars Rossica
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DOSTOEVSKY BEYOND DOSTOEVSKY SCIENCE, RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY Ars Rossica Series Editor – David Bethea (University of Wisconsin–Madison) DOSTOEVSKY BEYOND DOSTOEVSKY SCIENCE, RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY Edited by SVETLANA EVDOKIMOVA VLADIMIR GOLSTEIN BOSTON 2016 Effective January 10th, 2019, this book will be subject to a CC-BY-NC license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. Other than as provided by these licenses, no part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or displayed by any electronic or mechanical means without permission from the publisher or as permitted by law. The open access publication of this volume is made possible by: Published by Academic Studies Press 28 Montfern Avenue Brighton, MA 02135, USA [email protected] www.academicstudiespress.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. © 2016 Academic Studies Press All rights reserved ISBN 978-1-61811-526-3 (hardback) ISBN 978-1-61811-527-0 (electronic) Cover design by Ivan Grave Book design by Kryon Publishing www.kryonpublishing.com Published by Academic Studies Press in 2016 28 Montfern Avenue Brighton, MA 02135, USA [email protected] www. academicstudiespress.com Table of Contents Acknowledgments ................................................................... viii Introduction: Fiction beyond Fiction: Dostoevsky’s Quest for Realism Svetlana Evdokimova and Vladimir Golstein ................................................1 Part 1 Encounters with Science I. Darwin, Dostoevsky, and Russia’s Radical Youth David Bethea and Victoria Thorstensson.......................................................35 II. Darwin’s Plots, Malthus’s Mighty Feast, Lamennais’s Motherless Fledglings, and Dostoevsky’s Lost Sheep Liza Knapp ............................................................................................................63 III. “Viper will eat viper”: Dostoevsky, Darwin, and the Possibility of Brotherhood Anna A. Berman ..................................................................................................83 IV. Encounters with the Prophet: Ivan Pavlov, Serafima Karchevskaia, and “Our Dostoevsky” Daniel P. Todes ......................................................................................................97 vi Part 2 Engagements with Philosophy V. Dostoevsky and the Meaning of “the Meaning of Life” Steven Cassedy .................................................................................................111 VI. Dostoevsky and Nietzsche: The Hazards of Writing Oneself into (or out of) Belief David S. Cunningham ...................................................................................129 VII. Dostoevsky as Moral Philosopher Charles Larmore..............................................................................................151 VIII. “If there’s no immortality of the soul, . everything is lawful”: On the Philosophical Basis of Ivan Karamazov’s Idea Sergei A. Kibalnik ...........................................................................................165 Part 3 Questions of Aesthetics IX. Once Again about Dostoevsky’s Response to Hans Holbein the Younger’s Dead Body of Christ in the Tomb Robert L. Jackson ............................................................................................179 X. Prelude to a Collaboration: Dostoevsky’s Aesthetic Polemic with Mikhail Katkov Susanne Fusso ..................................................................................................193 XI. Dostoevsky’s Postmodernists and the Poetics of Incarnation Svetlana Evdokimova .....................................................................................213 Part 4 The Self and the Other XII. What Is It Like to Be Bats? Paradoxes of The Double Gary Saul Morson ...........................................................................................235 XIII. Interiority and Intersubjectivity in Dostoevsky: The Vasya Shumkov Paradigm Yuri Corrigan ...................................................................................................249 XIV. Dostoevsky’s Angel—Still an Idiot, Still beyond the Story: The Case of Kalganov Michal Oklot ....................................................................................................267 Table of Contents vii XV. The Detective as Midwife in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment Vladimir Golstein ...........................................................................................291 XVI. Metaphors for Solitary Confinement in Notes from Underground and Notes from the House of the Dead Carol Apollonio ...............................................................................................313 XVII. Moral Emotions in Dostoevsky’s “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man” Deborah A. Martinsen ..................................................................................329 XVIII. Like a Shepherd to His Flock: The Messianic Pedagogy of Fyodor Dostoevsky—Its Sources and Conceptual Echoes Inessa Medzhibovskaya ................................................................................343 Part 5 Intercultural Connections XIX. Achilles in Crime and Punishment Donna Orwin ..................................................................................................367 XX. Raskolnikov and the Aqedah (Isaac’s Binding) Olga Meerson ...................................................................................................379 XXI. Prince Myshkin’s Night Journey: Chronotope as a Symptom Marina Kostalevsky .......................................................................................395 Index ........................................................................................403 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We would like to extend the most heartfelt gratitude to our stellar contributors, both for their thought-provoking essays and for the patience, which they brought to the editorial process. We would like to acknowledge the generous support of Brown University, which provided funds both for the Dostoevsky conference that we organized at Brown in 2014, and for the production of this volume. Special thanks to Chris Carr, the Slavic Department graduate student— now the holder of freshly minted Ph.D.—for his readiness to interrupt his research and help us with proofreading and streamlining the collection. This is a high time to highlight the superb editorial work of the Academic Studies Press team. Blending patience with outstanding expertise, erudition, and exactitude, Scott Barker III proved to be an ideal copy editor; Kira Nemirovsky provided invaluable help and support at the moments of exaspera- tion and frustration that necessarily accompany any editorial endeavor. Let us also use this opportunity to express our sincere gratitude to all our colleagues, family members, and friends for giving practical advice, helpful information, and their untiring interest and encouragement throughout the process. Very special thanks go to Robert Louis Jackson for inspiring us with his ground- breaking Dostoevsky scholarship and for his passion for Russian literature that continues to serve as a model of scholarly vocation for his numerous students and colleagues. Introduction: Fiction beyond Fiction: Dostoevsky’s Quest for Realism Svetlana Evdokimova and Vladimir Golstein Discussing historical processes leading to the development of nations, Ivan Pavlovich Shatov, a character in Dostoevsky’s novel The Devils, expresses his profound skepticism about modern science and rationalism: There is no nation that set itself up on the foundations of science and reason; there has never been an example of it, unless for a second only, out of stupidity . Science and reason have, from the beginning of time, played a secondary and subordinate part in the life of nations; so it will be till the end of time. Nations are formed and moved by another force which orders and rules them, the origin of which is unknown and inexplicable . It’s the spirit of life, as the Scriptures call it . It’s the aesthetic principle, as the philoso- phers call it; they also identify it as the ethical principle. “The seeking of God,” as I call it more simply . God is the synthetic personality of the whole people, taken from its beginning to its end . Reason has never been able to define good and evil or even to distinguish good from evil even approximately. On the contrary, it has always confused them, shamefully and pathetically; science, in its turn, provided only fist-enforced solutions. Half-science, unknown to humanity till our century has excelled at that in particular, being the most dreadful scourge of humanity, worse than plagues, famine, and war. Half-science is the despot, of a kind that has never been imposed upon humanity before. This despot has its priests and slaves, before 2 Introduction this despot everyone bows with love or superstition hereto unimaginable; the science itself trembles before it, while shamefully condoning it.1 Although the question of national formation and nationalism is not the focus of the present volume, the connection between science, religion, philosophy, and aesthetics is. Shatov’s voice is not Dostoevsky’s own. However, the way Shatov identifies “the spirit of life” dukh( zhizni) with aesthetics (nachalo esteticheskoe), moral philosophy (nachalo nravstvennoe), and with theology (iskanie Boga) as the history-shaping forces, is indicative of Dostoevsky’s awareness of the intense interaction between