on Dostoevsky

'I read again last night the fifth chapter of the second part of The Brothers Karamazov, the chapter in which Ivan hands back his ticket of admission to the universe God has created, and found myself sobbing uncontrollaby.

These are pages I have read innumerable times before, yet instead of becoming inured to their force I find myself more and more vulnerable before them. Why? It is not as if I am in sympathy with Ivan's rather vengeful views. Contrary to him, I believe that the greatest of all contributions to political ethics was made by Jesus when he urged the injured and offended among us to turn the other cheek, thereby breaking the cycle of revenge and reprisal. So why does Ivan make me cry in spite of myself?

The answer has nothing to do with ethics or politics, everything to do with rhetoric. In his tirade against forgiveness Ivan shamelessly uses sentiment (martyred children) and caricature (cruel landowners) to advance his ends. Far more powerful than the substance of his argument, which is not strong, are the accents of anguish, the personal anguish of a soul unable to bear the horrors of this world. It is the voice of Ivan, as realised by Dostoevsky, not his reasoning, that sweeps me along.

Are those tones of anguish real? Does Ivan "really" feel as he claims to feel, and does the reader in consequence "really" share Ivan's feelings? The answer to the latter question is troubling. The answer is Yes. What one recognises, even as one hears Ivan's words, even as one asks whether one wants to rise up and follow him and give back one's ticket too, even as one asks whether it is not mere rhetoric ("mere" rhetoric) that one is reading, even as one asks, shocked, how a Christian, Dostoevsky, a follower of Christ, could allow Ivan such powerful words - even in the midst of all this there is space enough to think too, Glory be! At last I see it before me, the battle pitched on the highest ground! If to anyone (Alyosha, for instance) it shall be given to vanquish Ivan, by word or by example, then indeed the word of Christ will be forever vindicated! And therefore one thinks, Slava, Fyodor Michailovich! May your name resound for ever in the halls of fame!

And one is thankful to Russia too, Mother Russia, for setting before us with such indisputable certainty the standards toward which any serious novelist must toil, even if without the faintest chance of getting there: the standard of the master Tolstoy on the one hand and of the master Dostoevsky on the other. By their example one becomes a better artist; and by better I do not mean more skilful but ethically better. They annihilate one's impurer pretensions; they clear one's eyesight; they fortify one's arm.'


(from the closing chapter of J.M. Coetzee's Diary of a Bad Year)

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Edit: 9 Sept 2008

It's so characteristic of Coetzee that even this is not allowed to be the final word in the novel. I've just checked out The Brothers Karamazov from the library, and lo and behold, the chapter reference given by 'Coetzee' in the text is... well, not exactly wrong, but certainly rather unusual and confusing. One would expect a writer and an academic like Coetzee to follow the usual referencing conventions more closely. So it looks like even this apparently rousing call to an ethical aesthetics cannot be taken at face value.

And therefore one thinks, Slava, John Maxwell Coetzee, for once again refusing to allow us to take easy refuge in easy answers! May your name resound forever in the halls of fame!
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