Russian dolls

Everybody is familiar with those famous "Russian dolls", the "matriochkas" (or, more correctly, matriochki)… figures of decreasing size, which fit into each other. Obviously they are subject to multiple symbolic meanings. I personally see in them an image of the various levels of consciousness which exist in the human being. Inner unity is seldom reached in a man; his will is often divided, his consciousness obscured or torn. Dostoevsky has made of this complexity of the human heart one of the essential features of his novels. It is particularly evident in the figure of the "double", whether in a single character – like Goliadkin, in The Double – or in two characters who are like flip sides of the same being – like Mychkin and Rogozin, in The Idiot.

But it seems to me that the brilliant Fyodor has made use of another literary device to express the interlocking nature that can characterize human consciousness. This is particularly the case of souvenirs buried in the memory, souvenirs that an event or a word can trigger and bring to life. When opened, a Russian doll reveals another; so it is with Dostoevsky – the heart of a character, once opened, shows him in a new light. The attentive reader of Dostoevsky's great novels will no doubt have noticed how often the author begins to tell a "story in the story." It may be narratives spoken by one of his characters, or a revealing dream, or still a vast digression, as a close-up shot of an event whose detailed account is not essential to the coherence of the novel, but which opens it up to new meanings.

After a long period during which I "abandoned" my favorite author, I wish to return to those "Russian dolls" concealed in Dostoevsky’s novels. To open the series, here is a remarkable passage^(*) from the first of the "great" novels of his maturity, Crime and Punishment.

In the hours preceding his crime, Raskolnikov is agitated. He walks randomly. The idea of going home disgusts him. He enters a tavern, grabs something to eat and drinks a glass of vodka, something he has not done in a long time. He finally decides to go back home, but on the way, completely exhausted, he leaves the road, enters the bushes, and falls asleep on the grass. Then, he "has a frightful dream."

The narrative of this dream covers seven or eight pages. Rodia Raskolnikov sees himself, at seven years old, in a small town walking with his father. They go to the cemetery where his grandmother and his younger brother, who died at the age of six months, lie. On their way, they pass a tavern where people celebrate and get drunk. In front of the tavern, there is a large cart, to which powerful draft horses are usually harnessed.

 

Raskolnikov, by Ilya Glazounov

But it is a puny, old mare that is harnessed here. Drunken peasants come out of the tavern and the whole gang pile into the cart, with a barrage of shouting and laughter, then of whips on the back of the poor animal, by three raging men. The child sees it all. “Father, father, he cried, father, what are they doing? Father, they are beating the poor horse!” The father exhorts him not to look at these drunkards and tries to draw him away, “but the boy broke free from his hand, and ran over to the little horse”. But the relentless abuse of the frail mare that falls and tries to rise again continues mercilessly, with the ongoing outburst and laughter and with a kind of murderous hatred. The executioners eventually complete their deadly play wielding iron bars. “… the poor boy is beside himself, he cries out and fights his way through the crowd to the sorrel nag, put his arms round her bleeding dead head and kisses it, kisses the eyes and kisses the lips…. Then he jumps up and flies in a frenzy with his little fists out at Mikolka [the driver]”. But his father seizes him and takes him far from the crowd. “Father! Why did they… kill… the poor horse! he sobbed, but his voice broke and the words came in shrieks from his panting chest”.

It is then that Raskolnikov wakes up. It is as if the dream has stirred his consciousness. While for several weeks he had planned the murder of the usurer, whom he considered a worthless being, he is now "broken". “Good God! he cried, can it be, can it be, that I shall really take an axe, that I shall strike her on the head, split her skull open… that I shall (…) steal and tremble; hide, all spattered in the blood… with the axe… Good God, can it be?” And he persuades himself that he “will not do it”.

Basically, by recounting Raskolnikov's dream, Dostoevsky wants us to understand that this man is neither some kind of beast nor a monster. His crime will be the result of an ideological fit. Rodia would be the victim of this monstrous cynicism which had developed within a fringe of the Russian intelligentsia, engendered by nihilistic notions that Dostoevsky would depict in The Demons.

After his dream, Raskolnikov was convinced that he would not be capable of murder: “I knew that I could never bring myself to it, No, I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t do it!” But everything changed after the chance meeting with Lizaveta, the sister of the usurer, a few words of whom with a merchant catch him by surprise. “He had learnt, he had suddenly quite unexpectedly learnt, that the next day at seven o’clock Lizaveta, the old woman’s sister and only companion, would be away from home and that therefore at seven o’clock precisely the old woman would be left alone (…) he felt suddenly in his whole being that he had no more freedom of thought, no will, and that everything was suddenly and irrevocably decided”. Here then is the man, however capable of compassion and to whom violence is repugnant, who in a flash will become an assassin. Mystery of the human heart...

Fiodor

(*) Crime and Punishment, 1^st part, chapter 5. English translation by Constance Garnett, on www.planetpdf.com.

The teachings of the Elder Zossima

Church in Suzdal - Picture Véronique Hallereau
vhallereau.net

I have already dedicated three articles to the Elder Zossima. A "Secondary" character in The Brothers Karamazov, the old man is however a key to understanding Dostoevsky’s masterpiece. He reached a high degree of holiness and spiritual wisdom, but before entering the monastery, as a young officer, he was, according to his own words, "a cruel, absurd, almost savage creature". Savagery, cruelty and absurdity are to be found, in varying degrees, in the Karamazov’s, father and sons. Only the young Alyosha escapes, for the most part, this onerous inheritance. As for his brothers, Ivan and Dmitri, they do lack neither goodness nor ideal, but these are often thwarted by their passions. The Elder Zossima carries within him as well these human contradictions and contemplates them appeased, in the light of faith.

The sixth book of The Brothers Karamazov, entirely dedicated to the old monk, contains beautiful pages where his teachings and thoughts are exposed. I will quote here some significant passages. They are very representative of the Russian spirituality, and, in my opinion, we may also find there the human and religious ideal of Dostoevsky himself. We must remember that he was deeply impressed by figures such as the elder Tikhon of Zadonsk and Ambrose of Optina.

It took Zossima a long and patient spiritual fight before he acquired the peace of heart and the radiant sweetness that emanates from him. Once he did, everything in him was blessing and thanksgiving. “I bless the rising sun each day, and, as before, my heart sings to meet it, but now I love even more its setting, its long slanting rays and the soft, tender, gentle memories that come with them, the dear images from the whole of my long, happy life—and over all the Divine Truth, softening, reconciling, forgiving! My life is ending, I know that well, but every day that is left me I feel how my earthly life is in touch with a new infinite, unknown, that approaching life, the nearness of which sets my soul quivering with rapture, my mind glowing and my heart weeping with joy”⁽¹⁾.

Vassiliy Polenov (1844-1927) - Landscape

Filled with this gentle wisdom, the Elder is capable of giving a word of life to those who visit him. Doing so, he is part of the ancient tradition of the Desert Fathers, who were asked by visitors: "Abba, give me a word." He knows the power that a word of life welcomed in a humble heart can deploy: “Only a little tiny seed is needed – drop it into the heart of the peasant and it won’t die, it will live in his soul all his life, it will be hidden in the midst of his darkness and sin, like a bright spot, like a great reminder. And there’s no need of much teaching or explanation, he will understand it all simply.”

We know to what extent Dostoevsky was concerned by the historical development of Russia, plagued by unpredictable upheavals. For him, materialism, the matrix of capitalism as well as revolutionary socialism, paves the way for atheism and hastens the collapse of the Russian culture, that only God will be able to put right. Undoubtedly, the Elder Zossima expresses the vision of the writer when he says: “God will save Russia, for though the peasants are corrupted and cannot renounce their filthy sin, yet they know it is cursed by God and that they do wrong in sinning. So that our people still believe in righteousness, have faith in God and weep tears of devotion. It is different with the upper classes. They, following science, want to base justice on reason alone, but not with Christ, as before, and they have already proclaimed that there is no crime, that there is no sin. And that’s consistent, for if you have no God what is the meaning of crime?”

Only a new fraternity, based in God’s love, will save Russia and all mankind. To illustrate this conviction, the Elder recounts how he once met his former orderly Afanasy⁽²⁾: “He chanced to see me in the market-place, recognized me, ran up to me, and how delighted he was! (…) He took me home with him. (…) He and his wife earned their living as costermongers in the market-place. His room was poor, but bright and clean (…) The man kept gazing at me and could not believe that I, his former master, an officer, was now before him in such a guise and position; it made him shed tears (…) He did not say much, but kept sighing and shaking his head over me tenderly. After tea I began saying good-by, and suddenly he brought out half a rouble as an offering to the monastery, and another half-rouble I saw him thrusting hurriedly into my hand: “That’s for you in your wanderings, it may be of use to you, Father.” I took his half-rouble, bowed to him and his wife, and went out rejoicing. And on my way I thought: “Here we are both now, he at home and I on the road, sighing and shaking our heads, no doubt, and yet smiling joyfully in the gladness of our hearts, remembering how God brought about our meeting.” I have never seen him again since then. I had been his master and he my servant, but now when we exchanged a loving kiss with softened hearts, there was a great human bond between us. I have thought a great deal about that, and now what I think is this: Is it so inconceivable that that grand and simple-hearted unity might in due time become universal among the Russian people? I believe that it will come to pass and that the time is at hand.”

By putting these words on the lips of the Elder, Dostoevsky is not naïve. He senses, with an acuteness that few of his contemporaries have had, the unrest that will occur in the beginning of the 20th century. In Demons, thirty-five years beforehand, he "describes with incredible accuracy all the historical mechanics that will inevitably lead to the revolution"⁽³⁾. But, just as Jesus invites his hearers to discern the already present Kingdom of God in a world still plagued by violence, injustice and chaos, Dostoevsky understands the march of history in a metaphysical, spiritual and eschatological perspective.

 

Nikolaï Bogdanov-Belsky (1868-1945) - Children at the window

Ultimately, every gesture, every word, every relationship, affects the future of all of mankind. Here's how the Elder Zossima expresses this conviction: “Loving humility is marvelously strong, the strongest of all things, and there is nothing else like it. Every day and every hour, every minute, walk round yourself and watch yourself, and see that your image is a seemly one. You pass by a little child, you pass by, spiteful, with ugly words, with wrathful heart; you may not have noticed the child, but he has seen you, and your image, unseemly and ignoble, may remain in his defenseless heart. You don’t know it, but you may have sown an evil seed in him and it may grow, and all because you were not careful before the child, because you did not foster in yourself a careful, actively benevolent love.”

One thinks of the mathematical theory of chaos, called "the butterfly effect"⁽⁴⁾. And the Elder tells how his older brother asked the birds to forgive him… “That sounds senseless, but it is right; for all is like an ocean, all is flowing and blending; a touch in one place sets up movement at the other end of the earth. It may be senseless to beg forgiveness of the birds, but birds would be happier at your side – a little happier, anyway – and children and all animals, if you were nobler than you are now.” Another sentence that helps us to understand the famous “Beauty will save the world”⁽⁵⁾.

And the old man completes his teaching on a note of profound wisdom, illuminated by the vision of a reconciled world: “Fear not the great nor the mighty, but be wise and ever serene. Know the measure, know the times, study that. When you are left alone, pray. Love to throw yourself on the earth and kiss it. Kiss the earth and love it with an unceasing, consuming love. Love all men, love everything. Seek that rapture and ecstasy. Water the earth with the tears of your joy and love those tears. Don’t be ashamed of that ecstasy, prize it, for it is a gift of God and a great one.”

Are we still capable of hearing such words? Yet they are the epitome of the Judeo-Christian heritage, freed from any dogmatic rigidity. It is the wisdom of the Book of Proverbs as well as the Sermon on the Mount. Solzhenitsyn would evoke this spiritual attitude in terms of "self-restraint". Listening to and meditating on the teachings of Elder Zossima is a powerful antidote to the frenzied individualism and the immoderation in which we are immersed.

Fiodor (the other one)

(1) All quotations are from The Brothers Karamazov, translated by Constance Garnett, on Gutenberg project http://www.gutenberg.org/files/28054/28054-0.txt

(2) See a previous article: « You cannot be a judge of anyone »

(3) Pierre LAMBLÉ, La métaphysique de l’Histoire de Dostoïevski, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2001, p. 76.

(4) The flapping of a butterfly's wings can cause a storm on the other side of the world... In other words, the infinitesimal variation of a parameter in a complex system can ultimately lead to significant effects.

(5) See the article on that topic.

“You cannot be a judge of anyone." The Elder Zossima, continued

 

Mikhail Nesterov (1862-1942) - The Hermit

“Even five minutes before his death, they said afterwards wonderingly, it was impossible to foresee it. He seemed suddenly to feel an acute pain in his chest, he turned pale and pressed his hands to his heart. All rose from their seats and hastened to him. But though suffering, he still looked at them with a smile, sank slowly from his chair on to his knees, then bowed his face to the ground, stretched out his arms and as though in joyful ecstasy, praying and kissing the ground, quietly and joyfully gave up his soul to God.”(1).

Such was the death of Elder Zossima. But what kind of man was he? What kind of role does he play in the complex composition of The Brothers Karamazov? After all, an entire book – about one-twelfth of the work – is almost entirely dedicated to him. Nevertheless, even if the old monk has a determining influence on the young Alyosha, he does not really participate in the plot of the novel. As Paul Evdokimov points out, Dostoevsky’s spiritual characters (the Elder Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov, or Father Tykhon, in Demons) are present "as icons." They are not actors in the story, but they enlighten it.

The spiritual light he receives from his master is the power that will lead Alyosha throughout the novel. And the sections on this monk form a kind of spiritual biography, written by the disciple, that Dostoevsky integrates into the story, under a significant title: “Notes of the Life of the deceased Priest and Monk, the Elder Zossima, taken from his own words by Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov”.

The old man whom Alexey (Alyosha) has known is a peaceful man, rooted in God, with a bright and comforting look. But it was not always so, as the elder portends in these words: “It’s the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet, tender joy. The mild serenity of age takes the place of the riotous blood of youth. I bless the rising sun each day, and, as before, my hearts sings to meet it, but now I love even more its setting, its long slanting rays and the soft, tender, gentle memories that come with them, the dear images from the whole of my long, happy life — and over all the Divine Truth, softening, reconciling, forgiving!”

The reader then discovers the darker side of the life of Zynovy, the name he bore before entering the monastery. As a young man, he entered the Cadet Corps in St. Petersburg. He remembers how, in military life: “many of my childish impressions grew dimmer (…) I was transformed into a cruel, absurd, almost savage creature. A surface polish of courtesy and society manners I did acquire together with the French language. But we all, myself included, looked upon the soldiers in our service as cattle.”

Ilya Repine (1844-1930) - Ivan the Terrible and his son

This last statement comes to life in an event he describes in detail. He has just incited another soldier to a duel. “In the evening, returning home in a savage and brutal humor, I flew into a rage with my orderly Afanasy, and gave him two blows in the face with all my might, so that it was covered with blood. He had not long been in my service and I had struck him before, but never with such ferocious cruelty.” The next morning, at dawn, he sees the sun rising and hears the birds singing, and he feels in his “heart as it were something vile and shameful.” He suddenly remembers  the event of the previous evening. “It all rose before my mind (…), he stood before me and I was beating him straight on the face and he was holding his arms stiffly down, his head erect, his eyes fixed upon me as though on parade. He staggered at every blow and did not even dare to raise his hands to protect himself. That is what a man has been brought to, and that was a man beating a fellow creature! What a crime! It was as though a sharp dagger had pierced me right through.” Now, a lieutenant, his friend, comes and finds him for the duel... He tells him to wait a moment, rushes to the closet of his orderly: “’Afanasy’, I said, ‘I gave you two blows on the face yesterday, forgive me’, I said. He started as though he were frightened, and looked at me; and I saw that it was not enough, and on the spot, in my full officer’s uniform, I dropped at his feet and bowed my head to the ground. ‘Forgive me’, I said. Then he was completely aghast. ‘Your honor... sir, what are you doing? Am I worth it?’ And he burst out crying as I had done before, hid this face in his hands, turned to the window and shook all over with his sobs.”

Immediately afterward, the one who is going to become the Elder Zossima goes to the scene of the duel. His opponent shoots first and misses. But our man, instead of fighting back, throws away his gun and asks for forgiveness... The reactions are mitigated: the honor of the regiment, etc. But his comrades are completely confused by the fiery words he addresses to them. He announces to them that he is resigning from the regiment in order to enter a monastery. The rumor of the event spreads quickly: he becomes a kind of hero, and many people try to meet or to invite him. It is in this context that he meets a mysterious visitor. But that is another story... to be continued. 

In the meantime, we can underline how much, for Dostoevsky, the experience of humiliation and repentance are crucial in shaping the consciousness of a man. Indeed, Fr Zossima will never forget that his heart was capable of sheltering such a violence: “Though it’s forty years ago, I recall it now with shame and pain”. Shaped by such an experience, he would be able to welcome without judging and to comfort by testifying of God’s mercy. He would not stop teaching his disciples: “Remember particularly that you cannot be a judge of any one.”

Today, we seek to exonerate ourselves from any fault and, if necessary, we make of our deviations standards. Meanwhile, there are a few who find favor in our eyes, and we easily regard a criminal as a "monster". Through deified characters, Dostoevsky reminds us that "the heart of man is complicated and sick"(2) and that we all share a responsibility in evil: “For no one can judge a criminal, until he recognizes that he is just such a criminal as the man standing before him, and that he perhaps is more than all men to blame for that crime (…) Though that sounds absurd, it is true. If I had been righteous myself, perhaps there would have been no criminal standing before me.”

Fiodor (the other one)

(1) All quotations are from The Brothers Karamazov, translated by Constance Garnett, on Gutenberg project http://www.gutenberg.org/files/28054/28054-0.txt

(2) Jeremiah 17, 9.

Job, Jeremiah, Yosl…

Is it a coincidence? Four days before Yom Kippur, a colleague passes me a book and asks me to give him my opinion. The story, which takes only about twenty pages of the book, is entitled Yosl Rakover talks to God^(*). It begins with these words: “In one of the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto, preserved in a little bottle and concealed amongst heaps of charred stone and human bones, the following testament was found, written in the last hours of the ghetto by a Jew named Yosl Rakover.”

I read these twenty pages breathless, crying, my heart in knots. A dazzling text, a powerful cry, rebellious and peaceful at the same time. An incredible profession of faith in the midst of the worst horrors. Job and Jeremiah together... It is only by reading the essay of Paul Badde, which occupies most of the pages of the book, that I realized that it was fiction. But, as Emmanuel Levinas writes (in the last pages of the book), this text is “true as only fiction can be.”

The author of the story is Zvi Kolitz, a Lithuanian Jew, born in 1919. Emigrated to Palestine at the beginning of World War II, he was active in the Zionist movement and was even an agent of the Irgun. In 1946, he published his story in a Yiddish magazine of Buenos Aires, on the occasion of Yom Kippur. Then settled in New York, Zvi Kolitz died there in 2002.

The ups and downs of this text are amazing. For a long time presented as an authentic testimony, deprived of its real author, Yosl Rakover’s testament circulated around the world, raising many questions, but arousing everywhere a real fascination. Even if the fate of this story and that of the author are exciting, it is perfectly possible to ignore them and receive the text in all its strength and brilliance.

I confine myself here to quote a few fragments. But first, it is necessary to set the scene. It is April 28th, 1943. The Warsaw Ghetto is living its last hours, in a deluge of fire and under a barrage of artillery. Yosl witnessed the death of his wife and his six children, and now his time has come. In the house where he writes, lying on the ground, he is surrounded by the bodies of his comrades, fallen before him: “I look into their faces and it is as if irony had washed over them, peaceful and gently mocking. As if they wanted to say: ‘Have a little patience, you foolish man, another minute or two and everything will become clear to you, too’.” 

The fall of the Warsaw Ghetto

Indeed, he is unable to understand, otherwise than in revolt and anger, the killing madness that surrounds him. “The animals of the forest seem so dear and precious to me that it pains my heart to hear the criminals who are now masters of Europe likened to them. It is not true that there is something of the animal in Hitler. He is — I am utterly convinced of it — a typical child of modern man. Mankind has borne him and raised him and he is the direct, unfeigned expression of mankind's innermost, deepest-hidden urges. In a forest where I was hiding, I met a dog one night, a sick, starving, crazed dog, his tail between his legs. Immediately we felt our common situation (…) He rubbed up against me, buried his head in my lap, and licked my hands. I don't know if I have ever wept the way I wept that night; I wrapped myself around his neck and cried like a child (...) I was ashamed before the dog, for being not a dog but a man.”

But it is God, that he always wanted to serve with dedication – “with all my heart and with all my soul and with all my strength” – to whom Yosl now turns. He wants Him to give reasons. Because, he says, “God has hidden His face. God has hidden His face from the world and delivered mankind over to its own savage urges and instincts (…) In such a circumstance I have, naturally, no expectation of a miracle and do not beg of Him, my Lord, that He should take pity on me. Let Him veil His face in indifference to me as He has veiled it to millions of others of His people…” Yosl knows that God is just, and even that He is “the God of vengeance and our Torah threatens death for the smallest of transgressions”. But the Talmud tells us that “a single death sentence from the High Council in seventy years was enough to make people call ‘You murderers’ after the judges. The God of the other peoples, however, whom they call ‘the God of Love,’ has offered to love every creature created in His image, and yet they have been murdering us without pity in His name day in, day out, for almost two thousand years.”

Then, Yosl stops his thoughts to profess his faith. “I am proud to be a Jew. Because being a Jew is an art. Being a Jew is hard (…) I believe that to be a Jew is to be a fighter, an eternal swimmer against the roiling, evil current of humanity. The Jew is a hero, a martyr, a saint (…) One is born a Jew as one is born an artist. One cannot free oneself of being a Jew. That is God's mark upon us (…) I believe in the God of Israel, even when He has done everything to make me cease to believe in Him. I believe in His laws even when I cannot justify His deeds. My relationship to Him is no longer that of a servant to his master, but of a student to his rabbi. I bow my head before His greatness, but I will not kiss the rod with which He chastises me. I love Him. But I love His Torah more.”

Finally – and these are the most ardent pages – Yosl addresses his God. “And so, my God, before I die, freed from all fear, beyond terror, in a state of absolute inner peace and trust, I will allow myself to call You to account one last time in my life.” He demands to know. “O tell us, what more must happen before You reveal Your face to the world again? (…) Now, more than at any previous stage on our endless road of suffering — we, the tormented, the reviled, the suffocated, the buried alive and burned alive, we, the humiliated, the mocked, the ridiculed, the slaughtered in our millions — now more than ever do we have the right to know: Where are the limits of Your patience?”

Surprisingly, this call changes into intercession and a demand for mercy. “And I wish to say something more to You: You should not pull the rope too tight, because it might, heaven forbid, yet snap. The temptation into which You have led us is so grievous, so unbearably grievous, that You should, You must, forgive those of Your people who in their misery and anger have turned away from You. Forgive those who have turned away from You in their misery, but also those of Your people who have turned away from You for their own comfort (…) Forgive also those who have taken Your name in vain, who have followed other gods, who have become indifferent to You (…) I am saying all this to You in plain words because I believe in You, because I believe in You more than ever before, because I know now that You are my God. For You are not, You cannot be the God of those whose deeds are the most horrific proof of their militant godlessness.”

And the prayer becomes like a blind leap into faith, but incredibly daring and with plenty of extraordinary nobility. “I cannot praise You for the deeds You tolerate. But I bless and praise Your very existence, Your terrible majesty. How mighty it must be if even what is taking place now makes no impression on You! But because You are so great and I so small, I beg You — I warn You — for Your name's sake: Stop crowning Your greatness by veiling Your face from the scourging of the wretched!”

 

Zvi Kolitz

Finally, speechless, stunned, we must listen to the last words of Yosl to his God. He first recalls the story of a Jew who had fled the Spanish Inquisition. On an island where he landed, his wife was struck down by lightning and his child carried of by a wave. Left alone on his rock, he exclaimed: “God of Israel, I have fled to this place so that I may serve You in peace, to follow Your commandments and glorify Your name. You, however, are doing everything to make me cease believing in You. But if You think that You will succeed with these trials in deflecting me from the true path, then I cry to You, my God and the God of my parents, that none of it will help You. You may insult me, You may chastise me, You may take from me the dearest and the best that I have in the world, You may torture me to death — I will always believe in You. I will love You always and forever — even despite You.” And Yosl appropriates these words of fire: “You have done everything to make me lose my faith in You, to make me cease to believe in You. But I die exactly as I have lived, an unshakeable believer in You. Praised be forever the God of the dead, the God of vengeance, of truth and judgment, who will soon unveil His face to the world again and shake its foundations with His almighty voice. Sh'ma Yisroel! Hear, Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one. Into Your hands, O Lord, I commend my soul.”

Once the book was closed, and after recovering  my senses somewhat,  I thought that I had just read the answer to the Grand Inquisitor found in The Brothers Karamazov...

Fiodor

(*) Zvi KOLITZ, Yosl Rakover talks to God, First Vintage International Edition, 2000. Besides the story itself, the book includes an essay by Paul Badde on Zvi Kolitz, a short text – a speech given in April 1955 – by Emmanuel Levinas, entitled Loving the Torah more than God, and another one of Leon Wieseltier. The text of the story is available online http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/k/kolitz-god.html

When a book hides another one

I once read Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim, but I would probably never have thought of reading his Typhoon, if Christian Bobin, in one of his last books, “L’homme-joie”, had not given an arresting echo of it.

Bobin is a compulsive reader. Fortunately for us, he is also a prolific writer. Because, for him, the world as we experience it – overwhelmed, hyper-connected, stressed – is unbearable. He desires – he even needs – the invisible world, that books, music, love, prayer… allow us to approach. “To write, says Bobin, is like drawing a door on an impassable wall, and then opening it”.

“L’homme-joie” is enchanting. At one point, it makes reference to Typhoon in a chapter entitled “La gueule du lion” (The Lion’s Mouth). Bobin first lays his cards on the table: “My idea of life is a book, and my idea of a book is a draught of ice-cold water like the one coming out of the mouth of a lion fountain on a mountain road in the Juras, one summer. I was in one of these joyful penal colonies that one calls ‘summer camp’. I was left there for centuries, integrated into a small troop of singing killers, my peers, when in the middle of a forced march under a broiling sun there appeared the fountain belching out its foam of light. I rushed under the lion's mouth, opened my own and swallowed an ocean of cold water. The water rushed into my body right up to the heart where it extinguished the fire of abandonment that ravaged it. Decades later, I still remember the mystical comfort given by that icy water. Whenever I open a book, I look for the lion's mouth.”

Then, almost without transition, off he goes. “Three days and three nights aboard this old tub tortured by the storm (...) Three days and three nights on this boat, to feel my heart sinking into my chest, to slide into the abyss of a fear with black eyes…” And we, readers, we are embarked as he is, feeling “Tons of black water exploding in the hold of the brain, the end of plans and dreams…” The chapter then ends then abruptly: “ – What’s wrong with you? – Nothing, I just finished reading Conrad’s Typhoon. It took me three days and three nights to read it. – Is it good? – I cannot answer your question. A book is light or it is nothing at all. It’s task is to switch on some light in the palaces of our desert brains. Writing knows more than death, I'm sure. I paid the price to learn this, three days, three nights”.

So, what about Typhoon? There is, of course, the masterful writing of an author who, for nearly twenty years was at first a sailor. The descriptions of the raging nature of the China Sea, are breathtaking, realistic and poetic at the same time. “The wind had thrown its weight on the ship, trying to pin her down amongst the seas. They made a clean breach over her, as over a deep-swimming log; and the gathered weight of crashes menaced monstrously from afar. The breakers flung out of the night with a ghostly light on their crests – the light of sea-foam that in a ferocious, boiling-up pale flash showed upon the slender body of the ship the toppling rush, the downfall, and the seething mad scurry of each wave...”

But the most impressive aspect is elsewhere, in the heart, the body and the soul of some of the characters in the story. It is there that the storm brings out the very depths of their personality, their humanity. There is Jukes, the chief mate, a quibbler, reluctantly obeying what seems to him unreasonable. And Mr. Rout, the chief engineer, experienced, unwavering in his duty. “He moved, climbing high up, disappearing low down, with a restless, purposeful industry, and when he stood still, holding the guard-rail in front of the starting-gear, he would keep glancing to the right at the steam-gauge, at the water-gauge, fixed upon the white wall in the light of a swaying lamp.” And, finally, Captain MacWhirr, in whom some critics have seen Conrad’s self-portrait. A taciturn, placid, apparently insignificant man: “Captain MacWhirr, of the steamer Nan-Shan, had a physiognomy that, in the order of material appearances, was the exact counterpart of his mind: it presented no marked characteristics of firmness or stupidity; it had no pronounced characteristics whatever; it was simply ordinary, irresponsive, and unruffled…”

But this man, strong-minded and unresponsive to the arguments of his chief mate – who suggested avoiding the typhoon by modifying the ship's course – shows a quiet courage and remarkable determination. When he gives Jukes the order to face up to the wind, whatever happens, because “They may say what they like, but the heaviest seas run with the wind”, the mate, for a long time puzzled and irritated by what he took to be unconsciousness on the part of the Captain, rediscovers, at the height of the storm, the self-assurance that he had lost: “Yes, sir, said Jukes, with a flutter of the heart (…) For some reason Jukes experienced an access of confidence, a sensation that came from outside like a warm breath, and made him feel equal to every demand. The distant muttering of the darkness stole into his ears. He noted it unmoved, out of that sudden belief in himself, as a man safe in a shirt of mail would watch a point”.

Besides his composure and his tenacity, which eventually save the ship, MacWhirr shows his humanity and his sense of justice. Coolies housed in the steerage during the crossing, fought, at the height of the storm, to recover a few dollars that had escaped from their trunks, shaken loose and broken open by the waves' battering. The Captain had sent the crew to seize all the money and to lock up the coolies. When calm was restored, it was time to gather them and to return their money to them. In a letter sent to a friend after the events, Jukes writes: “– I wish, said I, you would let us throw the whole lot of these dollars down to them and leave them to fight it out amongst themselves, while we get a rest. – Now you talk wild, Jukes, says he, looking up in his slow way that makes you ache all over, somehow. We must plan out something that would be fair to all parties”. And MacWhirr unimpressed by the danger, moves forward bare hands to the coolies and, with quiet authority, distributes to them what they deserve. Jukes explains: “It seems that after he had done his thinking he made that Bun Hin's fellow go down and explain to them the only way they could get their money back. He told me afterwards that, all the coolies having worked in the same place and for the same length of time, he reckoned he would be doing the fair thing by them as near as possible if he shared all the cash we had picked up equally among the lot…”

By his courage, his determination and his sense of justice, this apparently “ordinary and irresponsive” Captain held on to the light of hope throughout the storm. Christian Bobin writes: “Nothing more than a ring of black water around the ship on which I had embarked without knowing why (...) And inside the black mass, in its gaping maw, the yellow dot of trust (…) So we had to embrace the fear with furious eyes, to love it like good bread, to continue crossing, to lose ground, to lose heart and to continue anyway, to see the iron filings sky, to see the stars fall like dirty gold dust, and hear then, at this very moment, at the height of the disaster, we needed to hear the sweet, peaceful and confident voice, the light yellow voice that promised to bring the ship to port”. That “light yellow of trust” certainly evokes captain MacWhirr, according to the description made by Conrad: “His hair was fair and extremely fine (…) The hair of his face, on the contrary, carroty and flaming, resembled a growth of copper wire clipped short to the line of the lip; while, no matter how close he shaved, fiery metallic gleams passed, when he moved his head, over the surface of his cheeks”.

Blessed is he who discovers, in the dark moments of his life, this “yellow dot of trust”. Isn’t it true that a good man can change the course of history?

Fiodor

Gentle and compassionate Sonia

Alexei Alexeievitch Harlamoff (1840-1925) – Girl with a red scarf

At the end of last year – with the figure of Makar Dolgoruky – I opened what could be a gallery of characters from Dostoevsky evoking the deified humanity. It's time to continue, because there is work to be done...

Today, I would like to evoke Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladov, or Sonia, the young woman who is going to lead Raskolnikov, the murderer of Crime and Punishment, on the path of redemption.

Sonia is a young girl with a childish aspect. “She had a thin, very thin, pale little face, rather irregular and angular, with a sharp little nose and chin. She could not have been called pretty, but her blue eyes were so clear, and when they lighted up, there was such a kindliness and simplicity in her expression that one could not help being attracted. Her face, and her whole figure indeed, had another peculiar characteristic. In spite of her eighteen years, she looked almost a little girl, almost a child. And in some of her gestures, this childishness seemed almost absurd” (III, iv) ⁽¹⁾.

Her father, Semyon Zakharytch Marmeladov, a former state employee, inveterate alcoholic fallen into the worst of decays, wastes the scarce resources of his family: his second wife, Katerina Ivanovna and the three children born of this marriage, Polya, Kolya and Lyda. It is to bring to them some money that Sonia is engaged in prostitution. But beyond her sordid everyday life, she preserves a pure heart and she is livened up by a simple but profound Christian faith. Raskolnikov does not manage to understand how she can bear that situation: “What held her up? surely not depravity? All that infamy had obviously only touched her mechanically, not one drop of real depravity had penetrated to her heart…” (IV, iv).

But what impresses most is her strength of mind and her self-abnegation. She gives herself entirely for her loved ones. After the murder, in a bout of fever and frenzy, Raskolnikov mumbles: “Sonia! Poor gentle things, with gentle eyes… Dear women! Why don’t they weep? Why don’t they moan? They give up everything… their eyes are soft and gentle… Sonia, Sonia! Gentle Sonia!” (III, vi).

Sonia cannot imagine that the depreciation on which she agrees for herself can impose upon others. When Rodia Raskolnikov comes to speak about the girl Polya, Sonia’s half-sister, suggesting that she too will be forced into prostitution, she reacts strongly: “– It will be the same with Polenka, no doubt, he said suddenly. – No, no! It can’t be, no! Sonia cried aloud in desperation, as though she had been stabbed. God would not allow anything so awful!” As he does it on several occasions, Dostoevsky introduces – here briefly – doubt and temptation against faith. Rodia answers indeed: “– He lets others come to it. – No, no! God will protect her, God! She repeated beside herself. – But, perhaps, there is no God at all, Raskolnikov answered with a sort of malignance, laughed and looked at her. Sonia’s face suddenly changed; a tremor passed over it. She looked at him with unutterable reproach, tried to say something, but could not speak…” (IV, iv).

Actually, it is faith that allows Sonia to stand firm. Rodia is still unable to understand it, and he looks at her in a condescending and mocking way: “– So you pray God a great deal, Sonia? he asked her. Sonia did not speak; he stood beside her waiting for an answer. – What should I be without God? she whispered rapidly, forcibly, glancing at him with suddenly flashing eyes, and squeezing his hand. ‘Ah, so that is it!’ he thought. – And what does God do for you? he asked, probing her further. Sonia was silent a long while, as though she could not answer. Her weak chest kept heaving with emotion. – Be silent! Don’t ask! You don’t deserve! she cried suddenly, looking sternly and wrathfully at him. ‘That’s it, that’s it’ he repeated to himself. – He does everything, she whispered quickly, looking down again” (IV, iv).

Later, Rodia notices a book lying on the table, a New Testament. Despite Sonia’s reluctance: “– What for? You don’t believe?...”, Raskolnikov insists so that she reads the passage of the raising of Lazarus in the Gospel of John.  With excitement, but inwardly convinced that she had to read: “– He, too, will hear, he, too, will believe, yes, yes! At once, now”, Sonia runs and reads the whole passage. Then: “– That is all about the raising of Lazarus, she whispered severely and abruptly, and turning away she stood motionless, not daring to raise her eyes to him. She still trembled feverishly. The candle-end was flickering out in the battered candlestick, dimly lighting up in the poverty-stricken room the murderer and the harlot who had so strangely been reading together the eternal book” (IV, iv). In a footnote, the translator of the French version rightly points out that, by saying “That is all about the raising of Lazarus”, Sonia means that this chapter of the Gospel story is completed, but also that everything (that is the entire novel, the entire life) is only about one thing: resurrection.

It is indeed to a resurrection that Sonia is going to lead Raskolnikov. It is to her that he will first confess his crime. The reaction of the girl is amazing: “– What have you done, what have you done to yourself? she said in despair, and, jumping up, she flung herself on his neck, threw her arms round him, and held him tightly (...) There is no one, no one in the whole world now so unhappy as you!, she cried…” The path of the redemption opens for Rodia: “A feeling long unfamiliar to him flooded his heart and softened it at once. He did not struggle against it. Two tears started into his eyes and hung on his eyelashes.” (V, iv).

Raskolnikov is still reluctant to surrender to the police, but Sonia has these powerful words: “– Go at once, this very minute, stand at the cross-roads, bow down, first kiss the earth which you have defiled and then bow down to all the world and say to all men aloud, ‘I am a murderer!’ Then God will send you life again.” After much hesitation and questions Rodia is finally ready to give up himself. “– Will you come and see me in prison when I am there? – Oh, I will, I will (...) – Have you a cross on you?, she asked, as though suddenly thinking of it. He did not at first understand the question. No, of course not. Here, take this one (…) Take it... it's mine! It's mine, you know, she begged him. We will go to suffer together, and together we will bear our cross! (…) – Not now, Sonia. Better later, he added to comfort her. – Yes, yes, better, she repeated with conviction, when you go to meet your suffering, then put it on. You will come to me, I'll put it on you, we will pray and go together.” (V, iv).

This dialogue is like a prelude to the genuinely Christlike attitude of Sonia accompanying Rodia in the penal colony, in Siberia. Very concretely, she bears his cross to lead him up to the end of salvation. And remarkably, this attitude produces a saving effect on other convicts: “And when she visited Raskolnikov at work, or met a party of the prisoners on the road, they all took off their hats to her. ‘Little mother Sofya Semyonovna, you are our dear, good little mother’, coarse branded criminals said to that frail little creature. She would smile and bow to them and everyone was delighted when she smiled. (Epilogue, ii).

Rodia himself, who had withdrawn into himself for a long time, is eventually touched by Sonia's love. The last lines of the novel evoke this transformation: “… that is the beginning of a new story, the story of the gradual renewal of a man, the story of his gradual regeneration, of his passing from one world into another, of his initiation into a new unknown life.” (Epilogue, ii). Sonia, the wretched girl, degraded but inhabited by a divine love, has been the instrument of a resurrection. That is all about the raising of Raskolnikov…

Fiodor (the other one…)

(1) All the quotations from Crime and Punishment are from the English translation by Constance Garnett on http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2554/pg2554.txt

The numbers in brackets refer to Part and chapter.

As if he saw Him who is invisible…

Life of Pi was a bestseller. I did not read it. But I recently saw the film adapted from the novel by Ang Lee, the Taiwanese American director. This film won the 2013 Oscar for the best director. It is a wonderful movie. Breath-taking images: a feast for "optical gluttons" of my kind. A beautiful story, more complex than it seems at first sight: an enigma rather than a "message".

What is the plot of the movie? Pi Patel – his full first name, suggested by his uncle, crazy admirer of Parisian swimming pools, is Piscine Molitor… Pi, thus, is the son of the manager of a zoo in Pondicherry, India. The situation in the country forces the family into exile in Canada. They board a cargo ship, with a lot of the animals from the zoo. During a violent storm, the boat sinks. Pi finds himself in the middle of the ocean in a lifeboat, together with the ship's cook, a brute – played, with all the necessary vulgarity, by Depardieu – who had offended his father who asked for a vegetarian meal. Also in the boat are a young Japanese Buddhist injured during the wreck, who had tried to calm things down during the quarrel, and the mother of Pi. The cook terrorizes them and eventually kills the young Japanese and Pi's mom. Pi tries to protect her, without success, but he manages to kill the murderer.

But the film does not show all this. We learn it only at the end, while Pi Patel, years later, tells his story to a reporter who came to interview him. What the film shows us is what lies behind the scenes: what happens in the mind and heart of Pi. And this terrible experience is represented by animals, supposed to have boarded the boat during the wreck. There is a wounded zebra, who represents the young Buddhist, and a sweet female orangutan, who is the mother of Pi, and then a disgusting laughing hyena: the killer cook. And what about Pi? He is present under his usual appearance of a young athletic Indian, but also – and this is probably the key of the riddle – under that of a beautiful Bengal tiger. Pi, as a child, was fascinated by this tiger called Richard Parker.

It is only at the end of the movie that the mystery gets clearer. Pi, of whom the first moments of the film highlight the sweetness and spiritual thirst, had to find within himself the strength and cruelty of a tiger to kill the hyena, the disgusting killer cook. We witness, moreover, a slow process of domestication – or rather taming – of the tiger by the young Pi Patel. Stranded on a Mexican beach, exhausted, Pi sees the tiger Richard Parker, exhausted and emaciated too, disappear into the foliage of the forest bordering the seaside. He has now overcome the violent side of himself, which saved his life...

Beyond the beautiful entertainment of the movie, it is possible to discern a very profound and important teaching: by choosing not to stress the "outside" events, the film gives evidence that the most important realities are invisible. If the filmmaker, as the novelist, had merely decided to show the killings that took place on the boat, we would have witnessed a cruel, but rather trite, news item. By showing us – in the form of a parable – the storm that rages inside Pi, he reveals to us the mysteries of the human heart.

This is a lesson to be learned: if we want to understand the truth of the world, the truth of the events, the truth of our own lives, we have to cross the boundaries of the visible. So many people today – and this is probably often my case – have our noses "stuck in the mud." They see world events as an absurd and cruel drama, and their lives as a painful test. Nevertheless, as Christian Bobin writes: "A few seconds, isn’t it, are enough to live forever. ‘We feel and know that we are eternal’: this thought of Spinoza has the sweetness of a child sleeping in the back of a car. You and me, we have a ‘Roi Soleil’ (Sun King) sitting on his red throne in the large room of our heart. And sometimes, for a few seconds, this king, this joy-man, comes down from his throne and takes a few steps into the street. It's as simple as that." (Christian Bobin, L’homme-joie, Ed. L’Iconoclaste, 2012, p. 16-17).

Fiodor