This blog is about reading. The linch-pin is Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov," but it is also about reading Gary Saul Morson "Freedom and Narrative: The Shadows of Time" and
Mikhail Bakhtin on Dostoevsky's poetics. Bakhtin (1895-1975) wrote during the Soviet period in Russia. It is said he wrote "for the drawer," not for publication, as a humanist, and some would say a religious person, in times when these were two poor choices for a Soviet writer. He did spend time in exile after conflicts with Soviet powers, and during his lifetime he published little. His work began to be translated into English in 1968, finally reaching prominence in the international academic world in the 1980s. Looking at Bakhtin, one must consider the limited resources he had about us, and vice versa: a man writing in a vast continent that was and still is incomparably closed to the West. Dostoevsky used to complain, how is it that Russians can understand Europeans so completely, whereas Europeans never can "get" Russians? Perhaps this is why, as an introduction to Bakhtin, we are wise to go to Morson, a Slavicist, for a guide. Morson writes also about literature, and Bakhtin in particular, with great depth and feeling. In reading "The Brothers Karamazov," the great themes of damnation, redemption, and the meaning of God's goodness, even ideas of Paradise, must be included even in this humble blog. Morson's enrichments to this experience are myriad. However, there were surprizes right from the very beginning. At first writing, I found myself writing about Primo Levi, without knowing why. I had been reading Kjetsaa's biography of Dostoevsky, and abruptly threw down my book, and went right to the shelf and picked up Primo Levi's "
The Drowned and the Saved," and read it right through.
Later, I learned that Morson's book, "Narrative and Freedom," had started out to be another type of book entirely, about sideshadowing, a Bakhtinian term, to be co-authored by his friend Michael Andre Bernstein. As the two friends began to assemble their materials, it became clear the Bernstein wanted to look at "backshadowing," with regard to the Shoah, while Morson wanted to write about "foreshadowing," determinism and non-determinism (or freedom), and the "diseases of the present," using literature as the best evidence for his and Bakhtin's observations about time and narrative. From Bakhtin's foundational ideas about time and story, then, two rich books came: Morson's book on "narrative and freedom," and Bernstein's "Foregone Conclusions: Against Apocalpytic History," where "The Brothers Karamazov" and "The Drowned and the Saved" both figure, using the very passages I'd drawn out initially to compare. I was drawn away from this theme for a while, lost in the beauty of Dostoevsky's "vortex time," and temporarily dazzled by Father Zosima's ideas about Heaven and Hell, which took me, not surprizingly, to William Blake and Swedenborg, but perhaps surprizingly, to Mormonism, about which I know just a little. I found upon investigation that both Dostoevsky and Morson are popular studies among studious Mormon book clubs and bloggers, and there is even a course centred on Morson's "prosaics" at Brigham Young University. Upon learning this, I did two things: I wrote to Morson, who is on record as a self-identified "Jewish Slavicist," and asked him if this is coincidence, and I read Morson on prosaics, yet another Bakhtinian term. This took me aback, because there I found Morson sounding more like Steiner in "Tolstoy or Dostoevsky." Another detour took me on a saunter around "holy fools." This had to be done when I discovered by using the concordance link, to your right, dear superaddressees, of Constance Garnett's translation, that she scrupulously avoids the use of this most Russian of terms, a term that leapt from the page of Pevear's translation each of the many times I read it. So I had to bristle my copy of Pevear's translation with post-it notes to compose a short, little post on the "holy fool." And then, there is always the beauty of Dostoevsky's writing, its "eventness" and constant surprises, which can't be and won't be canned. And so there is always much more, so then, on to the blog.
This blog is about reading. The linch-pin is Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov," but it is also about reading Gary Saul Morson "Freedom and Narrative: The Shadows of Time" and Mikhail Bakhtin on Dostoevsky's poetics. Bakhtin (1895-1975) wrote during the Soviet period in Russia. It is said he wrote "for the drawer," not for publication, as a humanist, and some would say a religious person, in times when these were two poor choices for a Soviet writer. He did spend time in exile after conflicts with Soviet powers, and during his lifetime he published little. His work began to be translated into English in 1968, finally reaching prominence in the international academic world in the 1980s. Looking at Bakhtin, one must consider the limited resources he had about us, and vice versa: a man writing in a vast continent that was and still is incomparably closed to the West. Dostoevsky used to complain, how is it that Russians can understand Europeans so completely, whereas Europeans never can "get" Russians? Perhaps this is why, as an introduction to Bakhtin, we are wise to go to Morson, a Slavicist, for a guide. Morson writes also about literature, and Bakhtin in particular, with great depth and feeling. In reading "The Brothers Karamazov," the great themes of damnation, redemption, and the meaning of God's goodness, even ideas of Paradise, must be included even in this humble blog. Morson's enrichments to this experience are myriad. However, there were surprizes right from the very beginning. At first writing, I found myself writing about Primo Levi, without knowing why. I had been reading Kjetsaa's biography of Dostoevsky, and abruptly threw down my book, and went right to the shelf and picked up Primo Levi's "The Drowned and the Saved," and read it right through.
