Dostoevsky and the Russian People by Linda Ivanits

Abstract

MLR, 104.4, 2009 1203 compendium and discussion of information on a neglected subject which broadens our understanding of pre-revolutionary Russian culture. University of Bristol Derek Offord Dostoevsky and theRussian People. By Linda Ivanits. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 2008. ix+258 pp. ?50. ISBN 978-0-521-88993-3. The premiss of Linda Ivanits's study is thatDostoevskii's Christianity inhis fiction and other works can be fullyunderstood only when considered within the context of his evocation of the narod. Appearing generally only in the form ofminor char acters inDostoevskii's novels, and at timesmore of an absence than a presence, the narod is also represented in references to folk tales, imagery, and song, revealing a contrasting world-view to that of the Westernized intelligentsia who populate the foreground of themajor works. In Chapter 1 Ivanits gives details of Dostoevskii's early life and contact with the peasantry, asserting that his revulsion towards the institution of serfdom? including itspossible role inhis father's death?was the source of his early radical ism. The author's encounter with the narod in the stockade atOmsk, fictionalized inNotes from theHouse of theDead, gives little indication of his later claims for the 'God-bearing' nature of theRussian people, as here the focus is largely on the brutality of the peasant convicts. At this stage and into the early 1860s, as outlined in his famous letter to Fonvizina and notes on the death of his first wife, Dosto evskii's moral ideal was Christ, not the people. The gradual shift towards the latter is charted in the rest of themonograph. Chapter 2 examines theMarmeladovs as representatives of the common people who crowd the streets of St Petersburg but remain in the shadows in Crime and Punishment-, themotif of almsgiving and the image of the beggar Lazarus, developed particularly through the figureof Marmeladov, are connected to the storyof the resurrection of Lazarus, which plays such a prominent role in the novel. Chapter 2 shows that in The Idiot the narod is absent and folk references provide only partial interpretative frameworks with which to address the central question of the identity of Prince Myshkin and his relation toChrist. In The Devils, the focus of Chapter 3,where the issue of Stavro gin's identity similarly forms the fundamental enigma of thenovel, characters from the narod demonstrate, in spite of their superstitious nature and tendency to be misled, the existence of a world beyond devilry and an innate sense of outrage at the violation ofmorality. A feminine ideal connected to theMother of God is also posited, but the novel, like The Idiot, ends on an extremely bleak note, as the possibility that a void exists after death remains unrefuted. In Chapter 5 Ivanits explores the image of the narod inDiary of a Writer, in particular connecting the paradigm of sin and repentance in Vlas to the figure of thewanderer Makar Dolgorukii in The Adolescent. Chapter 6, on The Brothers Karamazov, shows how folklore imagery isused to expose the falseness of certain types of faith; themedi eval cosmology which lies behind not only the literalist faith of Ferapont and his 1204 Reviews followers, but also the atheism of Ivan and Smerdiakov, is contrasted with Zosima's erasure of the boundaries of thisworld and the next, in his characterization of hell as the absence of love. Ivan's references to tales of Christ's appearance among the people, before his own such story in the parable of theGrand Inquisitor, and Grushenka's tale of the onion, form the basis of an ideal faith of love and service to others. Although the study is full of interesting details and the interpretations it ad vances are often persuasive, particularly in the final three chapters, overall itseems to be founded on rather too little;much of the analysis depends on a handful of fleeting references, and indeed the fact that the chapter on The Idiot isbased largely on the absence of such references suggests a certain weakness in the underlying approach. At times, key elements of themake-up of the narod are sidelined?in particular, theirbrutality is all but forgotten in thefinal chapter?so that the aspects of popular belief foregrounded in...