ENG605: Preface to Dostoevski and Absurdity of Gogol

"Moscow Penny Ante," an album by the band Dead to Me, San Francisco, CA, USA 

1/29/2005: Critique One

Obiedzinski on Dostoevskii: Preface to Dostoevsky and Absurdity of Gogol

On a fateful day in 1849 Russia, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, along with a dozen or so other men, was put before a firing squad under the orders of Tsar Nicholas I. A last-minute intervention by the Tsar spared the life of Mr. Dostoevsky, whose sentence was commuted to four years hard labor in a Siberian prison with the likes of morally reprehensible men whose crimes I not dare to repeat, for their depravity transgresses the bounds of all that is rational and decent and good in this world, for Vladimir Nabokov, in his Lectures On Russian Literature, taken during his tenure as professor at Cornell University, writes, “They were told to be shot; they were taken to the place assigned for the execution, stripped to their shirts, and the first batch of prisoners were tied to a post. Only then the actual sentence read to them.  One of the men went mad. A deep scar was left on Dostoevski’s soul by the experience of that day. HE NEVER QUITE GOT OVER IT [capitals for emphasis]” (Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature 100).

Apparently, according to scholars, at this point in Dostoevsky’s life, or at some point during his imprisonment with said crazed individuals, bad actors, Dostoevski discovered and developed a profound faith in God, the same God whom he had denounced in his writings to Gogol, the selfsame writings that landed him in prison in the first place.

            While the zeitgeist of 19^th-century Russia was religious, many were questioning God and the absurdity of life. And only recently had Nietzsche proclaimed to the world that “God is Dead.” Thus, we begin to see a sense of nihilism creeping across Europe. Then in 1848, Marx and Engel publish the Communist Manifesto in Germany. At the same time, as a reaction to those ideas, the Russians attempt to save God and its ties to the Greek-Orthodox Church and its prominent role in Russian life. And here we have Dostoevski, through what literary theorist and Russian Formalist scholar, Mikhail Bakhtin, had first defined as “polyphonic voicing,” or multiple voices, in Dostoevski’s writing, as explicating viewpoints of both the peasant and the nobleman, pitting the two ideologies against each other and having them square off in a dialectical examination, mostly through dialogue, expounding ethos of both nihilism and religion, while showing how going in either extreme, be it atheism or fanatical religion, can lead to disastrous consequences.

God is dead. God is very much alive. I am not sure. And I think that was Dostoevski’s point—to portray faith, nihilism and every thought in-between. Prominent Dostoevski scholar, Joseph Frank, Professor Emeritus at Princeton University, writes in regard to the character Ivan Karamazov appearing in Dostoevski’s magnum opus, The Brothers Karamazov, in one of the most thoughtful chapters in literature, “The Grand Inquisitor,” writes that the “‘Pro and Contra’ refers only to the inner debate taking place in Ivan himself between his recognition of the moral sublimity of the Christian ideal and his outrage against a universe of pain and suffering. And on a world-historical scale, by his questioning of the moral foundations of both Christianity and Socialism in the legend of the Grand Inquisitor” (Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky: The Mantle of the Prophet, 1871-1881, 427).

Oh. And madness. Fools and drunks, saints and sinners. We have the poor and we have the aristocracy. We have rational characters. We have irrational characters. What memorable characters he writes! And I just want to say that Dostoevskii lived and wrote as a compassionate man of empathy, who knew suffering, who believed in his fellow man and how we have a capacity for redemption through repentance and atonement, whilst writing that man is a divine creation of God who is corrupted by the forces of evil. And morality is relative. Just read Dostoevski’s The Possessed.

I ask that you trust me on those last points I have delineated. Throughout this course I will try to prove what I just proclaimed, whether you agree with me, that’s fine. I know in my heart of hearts that Mr. Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski was a good, compassionate man who saw something spiritually noble in the good and innocent while observing something redeeming in the fools and madmen. Dostoevskii has a tendency to portray in good light the good who act and think with a child-like naivete, uncorrupted by the evils of the world and going about with kindness, unaware of the dangers and evils lurking around every street corner in Moscow or St. Petersburg, or among the fields of Russian grain, sickle-harvested. And he was a great writer, to boot.

            As far as Gogol is concerned, I am familiar with some of his writings. I have read his novel Dead Souls. Concerning our assigned readings for the week, in “The Overcoat,” Gogol brings to light the concept of the absurd. This theme of the absurd is iterated by Nabokov, as he writes that “the absurd was Gogol’s favorite muse—but when I say ‘the absurd,’ I do not mean the quaint or the comic,” and that “you cannot place a man in an absurd situation if the whole world he lives in is absurd” (Nabokov 56). There you have it: the absurdity of life.

Think about it: the protagonist’s name is Akaky Akakievich. While I am unfamiliar with Russian language concerning names and moiety, I do know that naming a character as such in a novel of mine would be akin to naming my protagonist Anthony Anthonionio, a character who gets made fun of by his co-workers and superiors at McDonald’s, being so poor that he could not afford a new jacket. And when he does get his 60 Ruble bonus in his paycheck, like Gogol’s Akaky Akakievich does, he buys a new coat.

And then strange things start to happen. My goodness. What is going on? Even Vladmir Nabokov recognized that Gogol was on a different plane altogether, writing so absurdly, transgressing the nuances, and moreover, the sanctity of the Russian text, and above all, THE written word, writing that “Gogol’s ‘The Overcoat’ is a grotesque and grim nightmare making black holes in the dim pattern of life” (Nabokov 54), and that, “ the superficial reader of that story will merely see in it the heavy pattern of life” (54). Nabokov continues to drive home his point: “But neither the person who wants a good laugh, nor the person who craves for books ‘that makes one think’ will understand what ‘The Overcoat’ is really about. Give me the creative reader; this is a tale for him” (54). Nabokov suggests that Gogol’s style serves as a point of departure from traditional narratives, the likes of which Russian literature had not seen before.

            Above, I was correct in asserting my claim that Gogol is intentionally absurd. Recall my parody of Gogol— Anthony Anthonionio. Also, Nabokov states, “Gogol’s prime intention was to denounce the horrors of Russian bureaucracy” (54). We see it as Akaky Akakievich works as a clerk in the governmental office, getting berated and kept down by his superiors. It’s all a metaphor, really. At least, that is the impression that I get.

            In “The Overcoat” we witness the mistreatment of Akaky Akakievich. We could easily, symbolically speaking, substitute Akaky Akakievich for the common person who gets beaten down psychologically by The Man, i.e. the government, the bureaucracy, as Akaki Akakievich suffers the bullying from his fellow co-workers who berate and tease him, apparently for no reason at all. Yet Akaky Akakievich seems like a quiet fellow who is just doing his job copying texts. Copying texts? Sounds like a mind-numbingly boring waste of talent. Perhaps that was Gogol’s point. And because Akakievich copies texts, he lacks the authority to create stories, thus we see his lack of agency and authority and consequent marginalization. Gogol is indirectly writing on that point.

In conclusion, during this semester, I will attempt to explore and correlate Madness, Morality and Crises of Faith in Dostoevski and Postmodern Fiction. I plan to present on the novel, The Fall, by Albert Camus, a novel with which I am familiar but do not entirely understand. I have read the book, but I just did not “get it.” Perhaps with new insights I will be able to extrapolate more meaning from it. As we explore the themes of Madness and Fools, I ask the question, is Akaky Akakievich a “Fool”? I am not sure yet. My knowledge of Fools is cursory at best.

For Gogol and his successor, whom scholars concur to be Dostoevski, there is something to be said about being considered a fool, about “playing the fool.” I have yet to explore that concept in such depth. Now is the time.

And to end this critique, let us pause to reflect on the irony of Nikolai Gogol’s birthdate: April Fool’s Day, 1809.

 

Let’s have a great semester. Let’s Go !!!

Works Cited

Frank, Joseph. Dostoevsky: The Mantle of the Prophet, 1871-1881. Princeton University Press. 1995. Pp. 427. Print

Gogol, Nikolai. “The Overcoat.” The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol. Eds. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. New York: Pantheon Books, 1998. 394-424. Pdf

Nabokov, Vladimir V. Lectures on Russian Literature. Ed. Fredson Bowers. New York: Harcourt Books, 1981. Print