DUALITY AND THE PROBLEM OF MORAL SELF-AWARENESS IN DOSTOEVSKY'S DVOINIK (THE DOUBLE) by Lonny Roy Harrison A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures University of Toronto © Copyright by Lonny Roy Harrison 2008 Library and Bibliotheque et 1*1 Archives Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-39931-6 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-39931-6 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives and Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par Plntemet, prefer, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans loan, distribute and sell theses le monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, worldwide, for commercial or non­ sur support microforme, papier, electronique commercial purposes, in microform, et/ou autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. 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Canada Duality and the Problem of Moral Self-Awareness in Dostoevsky's Dvoinik (The Double) Lonny Roy Harrison Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures University of Toronto 2008 ABSTRACT This dissertation investigates the problem of duality as it relates to the moral situation of the protagonist of F. M. Dostoevsky's novella Dvoinik (The Double, 1846). Bearing the cultural and literary heritage as well as contemporary social realities of mid-nineteenth century Russia steadily in mind, I analyse the duality motif in Dvoinik in terms of the protagonist's self-consciousness [samosoznanie] and moral perceptions. In particular, the moral ideas that underpin his self-definitions are products of what I refer to as moral self- awareness. In the course of my analysis, I interrogate the modulations of moral reasoning in the mind of the protagonist to show how his perceptions and discourse create moral categories, which in turn motivate his contradictory self-definitions and behaviours. In view of this conflict, I argue that the protagonist's will to succeed in the civil bureaucratic order of nineteenth-century Petersburg is incompatible with his implicit need to find moral rectitude. Ego-driven motivations provide contrapuntal tensions to exacerbate his experience of inner division. At the same time, his view of himself as a moral being is obscured by mystified understandings of 'honour' and 'chivalry,' which he has adapted from popular lore and mimicry of the discursive conventions of privileged society. Where social humanism and philosophical Idealism inform the moral issues under examination, their projections through the paired lenses of ego psychology and ii myth ultimately show dual consciousness to hinge on the problem of moral self- awareness. Finally, with reference to Dostoevsky's notebook drafts, personal correspondence and literary journalism, I examine the author's plans for revision of Dvoinik in the early 1860s. I view these developments as evidence of the crystallization of Dostoevsky's idea of the 'underground type,' a term he applied to the hero of Dvoinik as prototype after recasting the role in Zapiski iz podpol'ia (Notes from Underground, 1864). In my conclusion, the protagonist of the latter work exhibits greater conscious understanding of the tensions between ego motivations and innate strivings for moral truth; yet he fails, in the end, to overcome the dualistic divide between the rational mind and the transrational pursuit of higher spiritual meaning and purpose. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND STYLE I wish to express enormous thanks and gratitude to Dr. Donna Tussing Orwin, Dr. Ralph Lindheim and Dr. Sarah J. Young for their invaluable guidance to me throughout the process of writing this dissertation. Thank you also to Dr. Christopher Barnes and Dr. Robin Feuer Miller for their close reading of my final manuscript and helpful questions and comments during my defense. Special thanks also to Dr. Christina Kramer, Dr. Ken Lantz, Dr. Leonid Livak and Dr. Tamara Trojanowska for much help and encouragement. Thanks are also due to many other professors and colleagues at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures for enriching the experience of my graduate studies at the University of Toronto. In addition, I am indebted to many friends and family for their ongoing patience, love and generous support. I cannot thank you enough. This work is dedicated especially to my mom, Karen, my sister, Carrie, and to the memory of my father, Francis Roy Harrison (1941 - 2000). The text of Dvoinik can be found in the Academy Edition of Dostoevsky's Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v 30-i tomakh [Complete Collected Works in 30 Vols.] (Leningrad: Nauka, 1972-85, Vol. 1, 109-229). Except where noted otherwise, translations of the quoted passages are from The Double, A Poem of St. Petersburg, translated by George Bird (Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 1958), which I modify where necessary. Translations of other Russian texts are mine except where indicated. For transliteration, I use the system recommended by the Library of Congress, except in the case of common spellings of some Russian names. iv DUALITY AND THE PROBLEM OF MORAL SELF-AWARENESS IN DOSTOEVSKI'S DVOINIK {THE DOUBLE) CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION TO DVOINIK: CONTEXT AND ORIGINS Overview 1 Cultural Orientations 11 Romantic Poetics and the Doppelganger Motif 18 Synopsis 32 CHAPTER 2: LITERARY ANTECEDENTS AND CRITICAL RESPONSES Heart and Mind: Pogorelsky, Veltman, Odoevsky 35 Otechestvennye zapiski and the Consolidation of Russian Realism 54 Chinovnik Tales 63 The Natural School Critique of Dvoinik 11 Valerian Maikov and Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin: 'Analysis' and 'Contradiction' 87 Other Critical Approaches 96 CHAPTER 3: MORALITY, MASKS AND DUPLICITY Golyadkin's Dual Self-Perception 102 Viewing the Self as ' Other' 119 Goly adkin' s Confession 130 Moral Authority of the 'Fathers' 142 The Ends and Beginnings 152 Duality in a'Higher Sense' 166 CHAPTER 4: ETHICAL EGOISM AND DOSTOEVSKY'S EFFORTS TO REVISE DVOINIK "Zuboskal" and "Peterburgskaia letopis'" 177 Dvoinik in the 1860s 188 Projected Revisions to Dvoinik and Correlations with Zapiski iz podpol 'ia 195 CONCLUSION: BEYOND DUALITY 213 APPENDIX: RUSSIAN TITLES, TRANSLITERATIONS, AND ENGLISH EQUIVALENTS 225 WORKS CITED 227 v CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION TO DVOINIK: CONTEXT AND ORIGINS Overview Two abiding concerns in the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky are the correlated problems of subjective consciousness and moral agency. The Underground Man has 'heightened awareness' [usilennoe soznanie] and has cultivated 'the exalted and beautiful' [prekrasnoe i vysokoe] all his life, yet he rails against conventional morality and defends his right to contrary acts of self-assertion. Raskolnikov considers himself an extraordinary man, unbound by the moral constraints of society, yet his conscious life is shattered by the consequences of his moral transgressions. Ivan Karamazov is a rationalist who rejects the notion of God, but he is beleaguered by guilt and fixated on the problems of suffering and moral conscience. These are but a sampling of the moral dilemmas faced by some of Dostoevsky's better known characters. In a wider frame, these problems absorbed nineteenth-century Russian and European thinkers and dominated socio-philosophical notions of the epoch. Notably, G. W. F. Hegel in Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) interpreted moral and religious experience as a phenomenon of human consciousness, where God is analogous to self-consciousness or self-knowing; Ludwig Feuerbach argued in The Essence of Christianity (1841) that consciousness of God is the moral consciousness of the species; In The Individual and His Own or The Ego and His Own (1844), Max Stirner posited that Egoism is the ideal 1 2 social system, that God in fact is an Egoist, and that Egoism transcends even love.1 The generation of Russian thinkers of the 1830s and 40s were profoundly influenced by these and other thinkers, especially inasmuch as the aesthetic problem of Russia was related to epistemology. From Kant to Hegel, the relation of 'mind' to 'nature,' of individual consciousness to external reality, was the basis for the dualistic thinking that dominated Russian intellectual life through these decades.2 Friedrich Schelling