Dostoevsky’s A Raw Youth: Mythopoesis as the Dialectics of Absence and
Presence (From Capital to Writing)
by Roman Katsman (translated by Yan Mazor)
Mythopoesis and the Problem of Absence/Presence
The conception of absence in the work of French neo-Hegelian philosophers
such as Alexander Kojève and Georges Bataille has influenced greatly the criticism of
mythical discourse. Eric Gould, for instance, in his discussion of the relationship
between literature and myth, stressed that his research subject is mythicity, not myth,
and that the discourse of mythicity is connected to the universality which transpires
on the background of an absence of meaning.1 In spite of this declaration, Gould
immediately draws conclusions concerning myth itself:
Myth, then, reveals the drama of protecting the ‘soft inside’....And it does this, we
can say, in the face of an absent, metonymical knowledge: again, in order to
reduce the non-meaning of the signifier...The arbitrary but interpretative function
of language, that is, sanctions mythicity. We can also say that it is the mythicity
of language that sanctions myth...Myth, as we shall see, carries this essential yet
disruptive and nihilating use of language.”2
An identity underlies this approach,3 this axiom based on the principle of “A instead
of B”. Georges Bataille states in his essay Hegel, la mort et le sacrifice that a person’s
humanity is truly revealed to its full extent in death, that is, in absolute negativity.
Bataille describes the sacrificial ritual as a model of negative verification.4 Bataille
adds, however, that the revelation of humanity in death cannot be experienced by the
subject for any conscious reason. The human must therefore be replaced by his
imitation – the sacrifice – in order to substitute the experience of death by viewing the
sacrificial offering, i.e. the spectacle, the play.5 Humanity and the human experience
are thus replaced by imitations and plays intended to fill the original emptiness. The
1
Eric Gould, Mythical Intentions in Modern Literature (Princeton: Princeton U P, 1981), pp.30 & 63
Ibid., pp. 67-71.
3
See, for example, ibid., p.45 and following.
2
1
complex of these ideas, René Girard’s “desire triangle” theory among them, is based
on the same replacement principle connected to the principle of absence.
Even if we accept the validity of this metaphor of poetic language, the
application of its principle to myth cannot be carried out automatically. Moreover, it
is necessary to ascertain: if the myth is defined without dependence on metaphorical
thinking, will it still be based on replacement and absence? According to the approach
claiming it is myth which serves literature, various elements of myth (such as
archetypes, rituals, motifs, dreams etc.) function as substitutes or means. These
allegedly create elements of meaning perceived as more “valid” with respect to the
original elements. I would call this approach utilitarian. However, according to the
approach claiming it is the literature that creates myths, a literary text is perceived as
an actual and live dialogue originated in the process of reading. During this process
new myths are created. The second approach I would call creative. It is necessary to
re-analyze the validity of the conception of absence in relation to myth in terms of this
approach. This analysis should open with two questions: what is otherness (i.e. is it
necessarily the absence?), and what is the function of otherness in the creation of
meaning?
The absence was described by Aleksey Losev in the 1930s as “other-being”.6
For Losev, the “other-being” is an integral part of the dialectics of being-becoming:
meaning is defined only by its absence, which is the absence of being – non-being or
other-being. However, this structure in Losev’s work takes place only at the prepersonal, pre-mythical stage. The prefix “pre-“ points here not to the chronological
order but to the order of the stages of the production of meaning. Each case of
Georges Bataille, “Hegel, la mort et le sacrifice,” trans. S.Fokin, Tanatografiia erosa (St.-Peterburg:
“Mifril”, 1994), pp. 256-267.
5
Ibid.
6
Aleksey Losev, “Filosofiia imeni,” Bytie. Imia. Kosmos (Moskva: “Mysl,” 1993), pp. 645-652.
4
2
presence of meaning points, of course, to the fact that “there is” a realm of absent
meaning, but this is of no importance at the stage of myth (at the stage of name). In
myth, the essence is identical to the phenomenon, so the former is defined not in a
genetic way (by its origination from absence) but in a phenomenological way
(functioning actually as the revelation of meaning). From the phenomenological
standpoint, the origin of the name does not consist in its own absence, but on the
opposite, in the full extent of its presence in the existence.7 According to Losev, the
meaning definition concerning its absence constitutes only one stage (not the basic
one) and only one aspect (not the central one) of meaning’s path to actual
embodiment.
Losev defines myth as a miraculous personal history given in a word.8 Myth is
the full embodiment of being as meaning which cannot be defined as a result of its
replacement by absence. In these terms, the hypothetical assumption regarding
absence, which allegedly underlies the myth, is not necessary. In the myth (in the
name), there already is no absence, and since the meaning appears as identity of being
with itself, there is no replacement, either. The myth is nothing but its own meaning.
In the myth, the word itself comprises the meaning. Being and meaning are identified
by name and leave no room for absence.
Nevertheless, the other-being is in a certain form present in the myth. It
becomes visible in the mythopoesis (new myth creating), though in a new quality –
the personal one. In the mythopoesis, this other-being does not appear as the absence
of being but as its stressed presence in the other person. The Other, while being a
personality, cannot be absent, neither in his origin, nor in his essence. The dialogical
relationship “I – the Other”, on which mythopoesis is built, is not a dialogue with the
7
Ibid.
3
absence of the Other, but a dialogue with his personality as the full embodiment of
meaning. 9 Neither “I”, nor the “Other” can be defined as the replaceable absence,
because they are personalities. Each is a singular and exclusive personality, and being
so, a select and responsible one. Therefore, one cannot speak about replacement as the
basis of the creation of meaning in mythopoesis.10 Meaning is created in the dialogue
between two singular personalities.11
Mythopoesis as the mechanism of meaning is thus primary to the text. Metaphor
is secondary because it replaces what already exists, what already has the meaning. It
bears relationship to the being as a sign but not as a personality. In metaphor, the
being is deprived of personalistic-singular quality and is replaceable. Therefore, myth
and metaphor are not necessarily identical, especially in mythopoesis.
The Presence of Personality in the Absence of the Name?
The novel A Raw Youth reveals problems of personality and raises the question
of grounding personality in absence. In the novel, one can discern clearly the myth of
the youth, Arkady Dolgoruky: the problem of absence/presence of the name which is
raised in the first pages of the novel is developed in the “idea of the capital” of
Arkady and is subsequently resolved in his “idea of writing”. Eventually, the
personality receives the basis of its existence in the presence of the Other and in
dialogue with him.
Aleksey Losev, “Dialektika mifa”, Filosofiia. Mifologiia. Kultura (Moskva: Izdatelstvo politicheskoy
literatury, 1991), p. 169.
9
See, for example: Hans Blumenberg, Arbeit am Mythos, trans. Robert M. Wallace (Cambridge,
Massachusetts and London: The MIT Press, 1990), pp. 22-23.
10
See, for example Hans Georg Gadamer’s remarks on the non-validity of the replacement principle
concerning language in his article “Semantika i germenevtika”, trans. V.S.Malakhov, Aktualnost
prekrasnogo (Moskva: “Iskusstvo”, 1991). Gadamer stresses out that substitutability contradicts the
aspect of individualization of a lingual event at all (ibid. p. 64).
11
This statement characterizes the entire social-dialogical philosophy beginning with Buber and
Rosenzweig and ending with Levinas. See, for example: Emmanuel Levinas, Totalité et infini: essai
sur l’exteriorité, trans. A.Lingis (The Haque, Boston, London: Martinus Ninjoff Pub., 1979), pp. 206207.
8
4
Let us commence with how, in the first lines of the novel, the model is born that
defines the subsequent development of mythopoesis in text. One may claim that the
opening of the novel is focused on the state of absence. This is the absence from
which, on the face of it, Arkady Dolgoruky begins his story of himself. This state of
absence appears as a result of the gap between his definition in terms of the law and
his self-definition. While in terms of the law he is the illegitimate son of Versilov, in
his own eyes he is his legitimate son.12 Arkady demands recognition of the legitimacy
of his personality and of his being a son. Our questions are as follows: What is the
character of this legitimacy that Arkady is, on the face of it, lacking? What process is
caused by the gap mentioned and what result does it lead to?
René Girard interprets this gap as the distance between subject and object and
the relationship of the former to the latter as a desire mediated by the intermediary
Versilov whose character imposes its power on Arkady’s personality. Arkady’s
becoming is interpreted by Girard as Versilov’s imitation intended to lead to the
object of desire (the legitimacy), to a bridging of the gap and the filling of lack. The
subject imitates the Other, but is deceived by the illusion that he is on the way to
selfhood.13 Girard’s “desire triangle” theory is based on the personality conception as
inauthentic. The Other receives a satanic hue and turns into a character which the
subject’s personality, while being connected with it, deviates from the track of its
authentic becoming, i.e. from the way to itself. However, the axiom or belief in the
state of absence and lack of authenticity as the given state of the personality underlie
Arkady’s definition concerning Versilov is sufficiently defined and clear. However, he himself
obscurs limits of legitimacy and creates a feeling of doubtfulness and uncertainty. In the wide cultural
context, Arkady’s quests reflect, according to Andreas D. Kriefall’s research, the religeous crisis of the
nineteenth century and the attempts to resove it. See: Crises in Cristianity and the Novel: The
Epistemology and Politics of Religious Doubt in Nineteenth-Century Narrative (Ann Arbor:
Dissertation Abstracts International, 1993). The uncertainty that is created by Arkady’s consciousness
in the text is thus a kind of religeous-ethical uncertainty that raises the question of relationship to the
Other (see the continuation of the article).
12
5
this theory. Opposed to that, according to our conception, the personality is always the
embodiment of its own essence and as such, is expressing its meaning at any moment.
Girard defines the subject’s desire as a “metaphysical” one.14 However, the
metaphysical desire cannot bear relationship to the object. Arkady’s desire to be
Versilov is not metaphysical. The fact that the objective of his desire is out of reach
does not imply its metaphysical nature: the desire for the impossible still falls short of
being metaphysical. In general, is it Arkady’s desire? Is Arkady really deceived by the
illusion that if he imitates Versilov, he will become himself? Of course, not: Arkady is
clever and by no means naive and so evalutes correctly Versilov’s role in his life.
Girard has claimed that classical characters are simpler than the critics deem them to
be. It is possible that this is true but the simplicity does not come at the expense of the
character’s depth and complexity. Girard is right when he points to the aspect of
absence in Arkady’s personality, but he is not right when he claims the fundamental
and exclusive character of this aspect. As we have clarified above, the state of absence
cannot be initial. This is but one of the states experienced by the personality. The
“desire triangle” discerns only one aspect of the character’s basic structure and is not
capable of fully describing it.The “Versilov problem” – the problem of the absence of
the name – is only one of Arkady’s personality components. Arkady is not willing to
be Versilov. He wants to be himself and knows that Versilov is not an intermediary
between Arkady and his self. Arkady is not deceived by the illusion, and that is the
cause of his pain. Versilov is not an intermediary. That is the fact of which Arkady is
aware and which he bemoans, but it does not determine his becoming.
13
Rene Girard, Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque, trans. Yvonne Freccero (Baltimore and
London: The Johns Hopkins U P, 1976), pp. 2-5, 44-45.
14
Ibid., pp. 94-96.
6
Language and History
The “Versilov problem”, in conjunction with Arkady’s problem of legitimacy
do not arise at the beginning of the novel. The first lines of the text are dedicated to
another problem. It is only in the third section that the narrator sets about telling the
actual story. Maybe the best possible interpretation of the novel lies in its first two
sections or even its first sentences. There begins the mythopoesis which raises the
problem of becoming to the full extent of its dialectic complexity: the absence of the
name here is nothing but an external border determining the fullness of presence.
While reading the first paragraph of the novel, we see that it is dedicated to the matter
of Arkady’s writing. In each of the first six sentences of the novel, there appears the
word “write”, “record”. Below are parts of the sentences where this word appears:
The first sentence: “Sitting down to write the history.”
The second sentence: “I shall never again sit down to write my autobiography.”
The third sentence: “To be able without shame to write about oneself.”
The fourth sentence: ”I am not writing with the same object with which other
people write, that is, to win the praise of my readers.”
The fifth sentence: “To write out word for word all that has happened to me.”
The sixth sentence: “I shall simply record the incidents.”15
The “obsessive” repetition of the word “to write” stresses the importance of the
writing in Arkady’s eyes from the moment he begins telling his story. Arkady’s
decision to open his story with the problem of writing attests to the guiding role of
writing in his history, i.e. in his becoming. But that is not the main point. The major
effect of the above sentences is the mythopoetic constitution. From the standpoint of
15
Fyodor Dostoevsky, A Raw Youth, trans. by Constance Garnett (London: Heinemann, 1979), p. 1.
7
Arkady’s personality, the basic identity between word and event is set. Arkady does
not record what befell him as “event for event” (that is, all the events according to
their order), but as “word for word” (that is all the words according to their order), as
if what occurred is not a succession of events but that of words. He is going to record
the incidents as if they were words. If it is said that Arkady’s words are but idiomatic
expressions, this will once again confirm that the language itself attests to the identity
between word and event in terms of the speaking personality, and Dostoevsky’s text
only stresses this identity and raises it as the pith and marrow of this personality.
Another aspect is accentuated in the first sentences of the novel: the narrator is
writing the history about himself and for himself. Behind his rhetorics, there is a real
intention that will be revealed only on the last pages of the novel: Arkady’s intention
to improve and educate himself anew by means of writing.16 At the end of the text, he
say it is the writing, not the events described in it, which reshaped his personality.
Here, we encounter the case of automythopoesis: the personality creates its own myth.
In this case, becoming is an event identical to its embodiment in the word in the most
overt way. Therefore, in the automythopoesis, the word will necessarily be revealed
as event and vice versa; the automythopesis is this identity by itself.
To summarize, let us note that in terms of mythopoesis, the main result of the
first section is setting the identity between word and event, between language and
history. This identity is additionally developed and shaped in the second section.
Even if behind Arkady’s intention, there lies the “romantic irony” of the author, it does not deny,
according to John W. Axcelson, the seriousness of the religeous thought lying behind the irony; nor
does it deny the validity of Arkady’s attempts to form an alternative theology. See: The Divine Breath
of Irony: The Relogious Consciousness of Romantic Literature (Ann Arbor: Dissertation Abstracts
International, 1995).
16
8
The Russian Mythopoesis
Two major points are stressed in the second section. “I fancy writing is more
difficult in Russian than in any other European language.”17 In the light of the identity
between language and history, the meaning of the quoted sentence will be interpreted
as follows: it is difficult to write in Russian, i.e. the Russian history (that of Russian
personality) is more difficult than any other history. In other words, the Russian
mythopoesis (in the present case – the automythopoesis) is more difficult in terms of
the personality itself. Why is that so? What difficulty might there be in mythopoesis?
The answer to these questions will be given below, but already at the present stage,
we can anticipate the direction in which the answer lies. If mythopoesis is becoming
and if its basic mechanism is the ethical-dialogical relationship “I – the Other”, then it
is most likely that the difficulty may arise as a disruption of this relationship, total or
partial severance between the personality and the Other. This disorder may hamper
becoming (while the Other is not an intermediary but a human face demanding
ethics). The desire for the absolute Other is a metaphysical one and initiates
becoming.18 The disruption of this desire hampers the course of mythopoesis. The
conclusion is that the Russian mythopoesis is more difficult because it finds the
problematic relationship with the Other more profound and acute.
“I am much cleverer than what I have written. How is it that what is expressed
by a clever man is much more stupid than what is left in him?”19 In these words, an
additional difficulty of the mythopoesis is revealed. The mythopoesis is the perpetual
becoming of personality, but its final product – the myth – is given only within word
always belonging to the given existence but not to the becoming. It results in an
17
A Raw Youth, p. 2
See: Emmanuel Levinas, L’Au-delà du verset: lectureset discours talmudiques, trans. Gary D. Mole
(London: The Athlone P , 1994), pp. 129-133.
19
A Raw Youth, ibid.
18
9
inevitable gap between the perpetually becoming personality at the historical time and
the word by which this history is embodied. The difficulty stressed by Arkady results
necessarily from his action – the writing – and reflects the principal difference
between mythopoesis and myth. The lack of ease in Arkady’s case results from the
“unjust” and inevitable discrepancy between the revelation fundamental to
mythopoesis, in which the personality has at any moment the possibility of a new
reality, and the embodiment fundamental to myth, in which the personality has at any
moment a possibility of a given reality. The conclusion of these first two sections is
thus as follows: Arkady is not only engaged in automythopoesis, but he is aware of its
elements and difficulties.
In the third section, the state of absence in Arkady’s personality is revealed in a
dialectic way. The name determines the personality. Arkady does not want to be
Versilov; he wants to be the prince Dolgoruky. It was not some being that determined
his becoming but the absence of some being: the absence of the title of prince caused
his personality to become in this particular way. Not the name but its absence.
“Simply Dolgoruky” – that is in this name where the gap originated: this is the
mythical continuum, space-time of the new revelation, a place for new possibilities of
meaning. This is one aspect of personal dialectics, and it does not exist without the
other one – the positive presence of the being. As Dmitri Chizhevsky wrote, the loss
of self (in Arkady’s case and in others among Dostoevsky’s works) is integral to the
quest for ethical existence and stability.20
In the third chapter, when Arkady starts relating his history, it should be obvious
that it includes only words, i.e. there is no other Arkady Dolgoruky and no other
history except what is becoming in these words of his. Arkady’s personality is present
10
at any moment and in any word of the text. It is Arkady who experiences the word as
event, who is aware of the mythopoetic difficulties, who reshapes himself in writing,
who does not want to be the Other (Versilov) but raises the problem of being himself
as related to the Other. Therefore, when Arkady speaks of his legitimacy in the third
section, his purpose and object of his desire are not Versilov but the law itself. The
focus of his tension does not lie in Versilov’s plane but in that of the law. Being
Versilov’s son cannot be legitimate and will not create any new reality. In conjunction
with that, this being can be legitimate in relationship to Versilov (as to any other
person) as to the Other, and that is where the new reality may be born. Arkady is
searching for the law of the relationship between I and the Other. Arkady’s
personality is not becoming under tension between himself and Versilov but under the
tension between severance of the relationship with the Other and its realization; in
other words, between totality and ethics (using Lévinas’ terms) or between capital and
writing (using Dostoevsky’s terms).
The Mythopoesis and Ethics
In A Raw Youth, the history of Arkady’s becoming is that of Versilov’s dynasty.
Arkady is the “product” of this dynastic becoming. Therefore, when he is sitting and
writing his personal history, he is actually writing three histories. Each word about
himself is simultaneously (a) a testimony of Versilov’s dynasty, (b) the story of a
certain event in Arkady’s personal Petersburg history (in the past) and (c) the event in
Arkady’s present, in the act of writing. The first two aspects are obvious. Let us focus
on the latter – on Arkady’s creative writing. This writing (of the present novel)
appears as the acme and result of his personal history. How does the writing result
from his history? At the end of the novel, Arkady points out that he wanted to re-
20
Dmitri Chizhevsky, “The Theme of the Double in Dostoevsky,” Dostoevsky, a Collection of Critical
11
educate himself. What does he mean by saying this? The guideline leading him to
Petersburg and to the series of his deeds was the idea of the capital. Did he give it up
and by doing so, sever the connection between the beginning and end? At the end of
the novel, Arkady poses the following question:
Perhaps some reader may care to know: what has become of my ‘idea,’
and what is the new life that is beginning for me now, to which I refer so
mysteriously? But that new life, that new way which is opening before me
is my ‘idea,’ the same as before, though in such a different form, that it
could hardly be recognised.21
If we assume the unity of the text (the unity of myth created in the novel), we shall be
obliged to find the link between the idea of the capital and Arkady’s creative writing.
Let us recall what this idea consists of. Arkady clarifies why he needs the
capital: “Retreat within oneself! Break with everything and withdraw within oneself!
[…] Within oneself, simply within oneself! That’s my whole idea […]”22 The purpose
and essence of the capital idea are linked to the set of concepts lying beyond the
capital itself. Under discussion are the relationship with others and the status of the
Self. The idea of the capital is but a code of ethics and the theory of the self.23 Arkady
starts in Petersburg, aiming at realization of his personality by means of the capital
idea, but this idea is delayed over and over.
The reason is Arkady’s apparent awareness of his incapability to bring about
this idea in its original form. He has realized that his relationship with others is
indelible. He will not be himself – Arkady Dolgoruky-Versilov – if he eliminates this
relationship. He has realized that if he retreats into himself after he severs his
relationship with others, that he will not find anyone in himself, will not find there his
Essays, ed. René Wellek (Englewood Cliffts: Prentice-Hall, 1962), p. 122.
21
A Raw Youth, p. 555.
22
Ibid., p. 67.
23
In his time, Georg Lukács wrote that Arkady’s “idea” raises the ethical problem of the relationship
with the Other similarly to Raskolnikov’s power experience. See: “Dostoevsky,” Dostoevsky, a
Collection of Critical Essays, ed. René Wellek (Englewood Cliffts: Prentice-Hall, 1962), p. 150.
12
own self. He wanted only to settle his accounts with others and then sever that
relationship. However, he became confused and discovered it was impossible to settle
this account because this relationship is based on the incompleteness of payment on
both sides. Arkady also discovered suddenly that this life of complex relationships
with others satisfies his wish to realize himself. (The complexity of these relationship
with others renders Arkady’s mythopoesis more complex, as we pointed out above,
and therefore, it is difficult for him to write in Russian. In spite of that, he continues to
write in Russian, i.e. in relationship with the Other.) In other words, Arkady reaches a
new understanding: he has to find the way to reach his Self without severing his
relationship with others. That is how the idea of the capital receives a new direction.
As Arkady states, he changes his form. The new form of this idea is that of writing.
As the capital was a code for finding the Self after the severance of relationships with
the Other, so is writing a possibility to reach his Self continuing the relationship with
the Other. Such is the meaning of Arkady’s “re-education”. Writing educates him for
ethical existence, because it makes him aware of his new ideas of self-realization, and
because writing itself constitutes an ethical existence or, at least, its model. On the
one hand, writing is the becoming of the Self in itself in an intimate and closed way.
On the other hand, this becoming is realized as language, as communication, as the
relationship with the Other which bursts his being closed within his totality.24 This is
Arkady’s work, this is his novel – the live testimony of his new idea regarding selfrealization.
The problem of the Self and of ethics also introduces that of personal freedom.
The novel describes the transition towards creation and literary text in the direction of
ethical existence. This transition conditions the genuine freedom received by the
24
On the link between writing and the personality becoming, as it is expressed in Dostoevsky’s works
13
personality at special moments of its becoming – at the moments of miracle. Stewart
R. Sutherland stressed that in Dostoevsky’s Weltanschauung, the central role of the
freedom is doubtful: it is not necessary that the freedom is the true way to one’s
personality realization.25 Paul Kindlon disagrees with this statement by asserting the
central character of freedom in Dostoevsky’s philosophy where, in the researcher’s
opinion, “self-will” and “self-creation” of the personality do not contradict the divine
will.26 I assume that Dostoevsky’s text forms here a conception, in accordance with
which the personality’s freedom of will does not contradict the divine will and leads
to its self-realization, but provided that the freedom is understood as responsibility for
the Other (using Lévinas’ terms), according to Jacques Catteau: “The hero of
Dostoevsky is guilty because he is free and responsible for his destiny, for his own
and that of others.”27
In light of what has been said about writing, let us examine the heart of the
novel’s mythopoesis – Ekaterina Nikolayevna’s letter about her father – and the link
to Arkady’s personality history. This letter contains the meaning of the myth of
Arkady’s character and encodes the negative aspect of the complex problems of
Arkady’s spiritual world. In terms of the form, this letter, as any other, is an act of
communication with the Other, a lingual expression which, in its essence, brings
about dialogue and creates ethics as the acceptance of the Other and in response to
him. From the formal standpoint, the letter is intended to represent and enforce the
law which is fully incorporated within the father – son relationship. However, in
in general, see: Monica Codina Blasco, Tradition and Nihilism in Dostoevsky’s Poetics (Ann Arbor:
Dissertation Abstracts International, 1997).
25
Stewart R. Sutherland, “The Philosophical Dimension: Self and Freedom,” New Essays on
Dostoevsky, ed. Malcolm V. Jones and Garth M. Terry (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983), p. 171.
26
Paul Kindlon, The Anti-Platonic Affinity between Nietzsche and Dostoevsky (Ann Arbor: Dissertation
Abstracts International, 1992).
27
Jacques Catteau, La Création littéraire chez Dostoïevski, trans. Audrey Littlewood (Cambridge, New
York: Cambridg UP, 1989), p. 444. On the problem of freedom in Dostoevsky’s works see also: Aaron
Z. Shteinberg, Sistema svobody Dostoevskogo (Paris: YMCA-Press, 1980).
14
terms of its contents, the given letter is a contradiction of his formal purpose. Its
subject is the father, son (daughter), law, dynasty and legacy but its direction is
negative: its purpose is to cancel the law, deny the father’s role and in so doing
undermine the “I – the Other” relationship and, in the long run – ethics itself.28
Arkady’s key questions are: to be or not to be within the dynasty? In the course
of his entire life, Arkady is looking for the father, but arrives to Petersburg as the
angel of destruction (in terms of the relationship between Achmakova and her father),
to avenge his insult. In the beginning of the novel, Arkady’s function is identical to
that of the letter in his hands. But in the course of the story, Arkady’s personality is
detached from the letter and receives its particularity. He finds a model for himself in
person of his legitimate father – Makar Dolgoruky. In the terms of Kierkegaard, as
applied by Stefan Iliev in Dostoevsky’s works,29 one can say that Versilov is an
aesthetic pole of Arkady’s quest, Makar Dolgoruky – a religious one, whereas Arkady
himself is advancing towards ethical existence while pausing between the
aforementioned poles. This is the image of seemliness (“blagoobrazie”). Seemliness
means the existence within the order, dynasty and law, observing ethical relationship
with the Other, while the latter is incorporated with the singularity and uniqueness of
a concrete personality.30 As Derek Offord stressed, in Dostoevsky’s works, aspiration
towards a moral law can be seen as opposed to the mathematical and non-human law
28
On this letter, in connection with the problem of order and disorder, see, for example: Francis
Spencer, “Form and Disorder in Dostoevsky’s ‘A Raw Youth’,” F.M. Dostoevsky (1821-1881): A
Centenary Collection, ed. Leon Burnett (U of Essex P, 1981).
29
Stefan Iliev, Who is Stavrogin: An Aesthetic Interpretation as a part of a Kierkegaardian Reading of
‘The Possessed’ by F.Dostoevsky (Ann Arbor: Dissertation Abstracts International, 1993).
30
On ethical-metaphysical quest of the seemliness in Dostoevsky’s works regarding Vladimir
Solovyov’s philosophy see: Marina Kostalevsky, Dostoevsky and Vladimir Soloviev: The Continuous
Dialogue (Ann Arbor: Dissertation Abstracts International, 1993).
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of nature. The moral law is the principle of the Self in the relationship with the Other
in “selfless love”.31
Conclusions
We have thus seen that the idea of writing at which Arkady arrives at the end of
the novel is a result of his quest for the law. The original idea severing the
relationship with the Other, the idea of the capital, incorporated in the contents of the
letter in his hands, disappears with the letter, and instead of it, there comes the idea of
realizing this relationship. Such is the idea of writing incorporated in the body of the
novel. In other words, the novel documents the transition from the conception of
personality based on absence to one based on presence. Severance of relationship with
the Other is parallel to the absence of meaning, while this realization is parallel to the
presence of meaning. At the center of the myth created in the novel, there lies a
personality full present to itself. This personality creates a myth of itself
(automythopoesis), while the latter and its creation are based on identity between
word and event, between language and history in the novel.
Derek Offord, “The Causes of Crime and the Meaning of Law: ‘Crime and Punishment’ and
Contemporary Radical Thought,” New Essays on Dostoevsky, ed. Malcolm Jones and M. Garth
(Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983), p. 61.
31
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