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Dostoevsky essay on Dream of a Ridiculous Man...

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GVQD3 17. To what extent would you agree with Joseph Frank’s contention that the harmony lost in Dostoevskii’s Dream of a Ridiculous Man can ‘be restored, even if only partially, through the inspiration of Christian compassion and love for suffering humanity’?

Dostoevskii’s Dream of a Ridiculous Man (Dream) conveys a multiplicity of different messages. While some argue that the story mirrors a Christian parable, others suggest that the story’s narrative structure is that of a sermon, or perhaps even a Christmas story. Fundamentally, what the framework of Dream provides is a tool for comparison through its mirroring structures. By “fram(ing) its dream within non-dream […] (the) narration infuses, contaminates or mixes […] both the not-dream with the dream and the dream with the not dream”1. This essay aims to leverage Dostoevskii’s framing structure to focus on the effects of the Ridiculous Man’s dream on an individual, sociological, and spiritual level. By investigating these effects, we can attempt to ascertain Dostoevskii’s intended message behind Dream. While Joseph Frank suggests that Christian compassion and love allows for the restoration of lost harmony, various critics differ in their views on Dostoevskii’s ultimate message. Some suggest that the story represents a triumph of Christianity over Enlightenment rationality, while others claim that Dostoevskii attempts to revitalise Orthodox traditions within contemporary Russia. In order to fully investigate the validity of Frank’s, and other critics’, claims, we must analyse the dream’s influence not only on the Ridiculous Man, but also on the people who inhabit the dreamland and their relationships with both the people around them and their spiritual rationalities.

1 Aizlewood: The Dream of a Ridiculous Man: Both Knowing and Not-Knowing, and Questions of Philosophy, p.171 (hereafter: Aizlewood)

GVQD3 Harmony lost on an individual level is read through the characterisation of the Ridiculous Man. In order to assess this, the reader can draw comparisons between the Ridiculous Man as an outcast in his society at the beginning of Dream, and the Ridiculous Man as an aspiring preacher at the end.

I’m a ridiculous man. Now they call me a madman. It would have been a promotion if I hadn’t remained just as ridiculous in their eyes as before. But now it doesn’t bother me; now they’re all dear to me, and even when they laugh at me.2

This opening sequence shows the Ridiculous Man’s development within the narrative, from “ridiculous man”3 to “madman”4 and provides the framework within which the dream emanates. The Ridiculous Man’s self-identification as “ridiculous”5 shows his displacement from ‘conventional’ society and is represented as his individual lost harmony. Despite this, through his self-diagnosis, the Ridiculous Man seems proud of this label as an outcast of society: “everyone always laughed at me. But not one of them knew or suspected that I was a ridiculous man, then that person was I myself”6. While comparing him with the Underground Man, Stuchebrukhov suggests that the Ridiculous Man “suffers from the state of heightened consciousness, which leads to endless self-reflection, isolation, inaction, indifference, and, finally, an attempt at suicide.”7 This heightened sense of consciousness

2 Dostoevsky: The Dream of a Ridiculous Man: A Fantastic Story, A Writer’s Diary, trans. K.Lanz, p.942 (hereafter: Dostoevsky) 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. 7 Stuchebrukhov: ‘Ridiculous’ Dream versus Social Contract: Dostoevskij, Rousseau, and the Problem of Ideal Society, Studies in East European Thought, p.114, (Hereafter: Stuchebrukhov)

GVQD3 allows the Ridiculous Man to view his interactions from a third person perspective and, in doing so, he undermines and mocks those around him while claiming a higher rationality. “They didn’t take offense, and they all laughed at me. That was because I said what I did with no reproach and simply because it didn’t matter to me.”8 The Ridiculous Man continues to state that he was “always so proud that (he) could never have admitted this to anyone.”9 This pride grows into vanity, as if the Ridiculous Man claimed his ridiculousness provided him with higher intellect. Peace argues that the vanity imbued within the Ridiculous Man’s consciousness comes as a result of “moral indifference”10 through his “nihilist”11 mentality. Compared to Bazarov, the archetypal nihilist created by Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, the Ridiculous Man shows similar attributes in his vanity that stems from heightened rationality. Dostoevskii’s character, however, shows much more of a moral compass. He is governed more by his emotions than the nihilistic trope allows. Martinsen highlights the Ridiculous Man’s emotional reaction to his encounter with the little girl, stating that she “instantiates the Ridiculous Man’s fear of isolation, exclusion or abandonment. This identification arouses pity […] her spontaneous pity reveals the Ridiculous Man’s innate moral sensitivity.” 12 The little girl thus penetrates the hard shell that the Ridiculous Man attempts to create: “his unexpected pity for the little girl exposes the falsity of his self-protective self-image and breaks down those defences.”13 The moral empathy that the Ridiculous Man portrays suggests that his position as an outcast within society is not as secure as he imagined. While he is proud of his state, the moral emotions that he feels for the little girl arouses a powerful sense of anger, that “exposes his defences against the pain of vulnerability and the shame of 8 Dostoevsky, p.944 9 Ibid. 10 Peace: Dostoevsky and the Golden Age, Dostoevsky Studies, p.63 (Hereafter: Peace) 11 Ibid. 12 Martinsen: Moral Emotions in Dostoevsky’s ‘The Dream of a Ridiculous Man’, Dostoevsky beyond Dostoevsky: Science, Religion and Philosophy, p.333 (Hereafter: Martinsen) 13 Martinsen, p.331

GVQD3 not living up to his ideals.”14 His self-identification is therefore a tool to “protect himself […] and (he) guards this defensive knowledge with pride […] his pride leads to increased selfenclosure, which he equates with survival.”15 Thus, prior to the dream, the Ridiculous Man proclaims himself to be an outcast in society through his higher rationality, but begrudgingly suppresses his moral compassion towards others.

The Ridiculous Man’s transformation from social outcast to self-proclaimed preacher at the end of the narrative indicates a change in moral attitude as a result of his dream.

I could not, I did not have the strength to kill myself, but I wanted to suffer at their hands; I longed for suffering, I longed for my blood to be spilled to the last drop in these sufferings. But they only laughed at me and at last began to consider me a holy fool.16 While there is an argument to be made that the Ridiculous Man moves from an egocentric rationality towards someone driven by Christian love and compassion, his sense of pride and vanity in his new role remains the same. “What’s a dream? Is our very life not a dream? I’ll say even more: suppose this never comes to pass, suppose paradise never is realized (that much I do understand, after all) – well, I shall still go on preaching.”17 This statement shows that, despite his role as preacher, the Ridiculous Man is still unsure about the message that he himself preaches. He does not seem to have the answers to restoring the lost harmony of the society around him, rather his messages read less as sermons, more as ramblings of a 14 Martinsen, p.333 15 Martinsen, p.338 16 Dostoevsky, p.959 17 Dostoevsky, p.960

GVQD3 “madman”18. The short, hurried phrases convey an incoherent flurry of thoughts created by a vision that only he has encountered. His proclamation as a “holy fool”19 by the dreamworld’s society sparks Grillaert’s argument that the “ketonic ideal of humility and selfrenunciation is revived.”20 Grillaert characterises the holy fool as an “eccentric recluse, who lives and behaves beyond all social and religious conventions […] his foolishness is feigned: through suppression of his reason, he opens up his spiritual eyes and enters a divine reality.”21 He also argues that the Ridiculous Man’s pre-dream behaviour is that of the holy fool’s daytime activity, wherein he “dwells in the margins of Petersburg society, deliberately refusing to live by its social and moral customs, setting as his ultimate goal to uncover the futility, shallowness and nothingness of conventional life.”22 If the reader were to accept Grillaert’s charge, then an argument could be made that there was no harmony lost in the story at all, that Dream contained no sense of restoration, be it through Christian love and compassion or otherwise. Dostoevskii’s framework either side of the dream is considered by Grillaert to be the daytime and nighttime activities of the holy fool, where he plays the role of social recluse in the daytime, but “opens up (his) spiritual eye to view the divine and receive its truths.”23 Such a line of argument holds some weight. While the holy fool may not show the same level of moral sensitivity that the Ridiculous Man shows for the little girl, or for the inhabitants of the dreamworld, his re-enactment of Christ’s fall emphasises the vanity and self-importance that holy men place upon themselves. By claiming higher rationality and how he’s “seen the truth”24, Dreams no longer reads like a Christian sermon,

18 Dostoevsky, p.942 19 Dostoevsky: Dream, p.959 20 Grillaert: Orthodoxy Regained: The Theological Subtext in Dostoevskij’s ‘Dream of a Ridiculous Man’, Russian Literature, p.166 (Hereafter: Grillaert) 21 Grillaert, pp.167-168 22 Grillaert, p.169 23 Ibid. 24 Dostoevsky, p.960

GVQD3 rather the ramblings of a madman. By placing himself as Christ, the Ridiculous Man creates a source of familiarity for his readers – his “new-found truth is in fact an almost literal account of Christ’s second Commandment.”25 The question therefore remains, whether the Ridiculous Man had in fact lost harmony, or whether he had been restored in society from his role as an outcast to that of preacher. If we were to consider Grillaert’s argument, then Dream becomes less of a tale of redemption and restoration, but a holy man’s advertisement for followers to his cause.

While Martinsen argues that the dream “heals the Ridiculous Man’s divided self and gives meaning and purpose to his life”26, the lack of restoration on an individual level is apparent from the opening sequence. There is little change in the conversion from ridiculous man to madman. The main difference between the two is that the term ridiculous was selfproclaimed while he is characterised as a madman by others. Despite claiming that “they’re all dear to me, and even when they laugh at me,”27 the Ridiculous Man is praying on the sense of otherness that his behaviour entails him in order to gain sympathy and support from the reader. Through his proclamation that he is the “only one who knows the truth”28, he draws attention away from the fact that the dream has had limited effect on his social standing, that he had “remained just as ridiculous in their eyes as before.”29 While the holy fool may not place emphasis on the impressions that others have on him, the charge towards ridiculousness clearly affects the Ridiculous Man, and the dream is an attempt to alleviate it. Furthermore, despite his pride in claiming the ‘ridiculous man’ trope, he uses it

25 Grillaert: p.160 26 Martinsen: p.340 27 Dostoevsky, p.942 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid.

GVQD3 as a shield to “increased self-enclosure, which he equates with survival.” 30 Therefore, when considering the Ridiculous Man’s purpose, Frank’s claim that the story represents harmony lost is invalid due to the Ridiculous Man’s failure to reposition himself within the society around him, but remain in the periphery of it, indicating that there is no restoration.

Stuchebrukhov highlights Dostoevskii’s affiliation with Rousseau, drawing attention towards the sociological freedom that the natural man enjoys:

“Man’s ‘natural goodness’ is possible only while he lives in solitude. In associations, competition is introduced, and man’s state of equilibrium with his environment is lost; his psychological discomfort induced by physical, intellectual, and, subsequently, social inequality and lack of freedom […] with the rise of civilisation, man’s impersonal dependence on nature turned into personal dependence on other men.”31

When assessing the impacts of the dream on a sociological level, we must investigate the change in communication and relationship that the people of the dreamworld have with the world around them. The “associations”32 that Stuchebrukhov highlights is the arrival of the Ridiculous Man to the parallel Edenic universe. Martinsen combines the Ridiculous Man with an enlightened being, stating that Dostoevskii “engages the Romantic debate with Enlightenment thinking and devises a synthesis.”33, thereby linking Dream with Hegelian ideology. By comparing the prelapsarian society with the enlightened being, Dostoevskii 30 Martinsen, p.338 31 Stuchebrukhov, pp.104-105 32 Ibid. 33 Martinsen, p.331

GVQD3 introduces the notion of knowledge and understanding within society. Naiman argues that “utopian anxieties revolve around a fear of epistemological contamination. The knowledge brought to paradise by the Ridiculous Man corrupts the children of the sun in mind and body.”34 The idea of corruption links with the Ridiculous Man’s self-diagnosis as a “trichina” 35 – a “worm affecting pigs (as well as men).”36 Through his framing device, Dostoevskii is able to create a direct comparison between the Ridiculous Man’s initial observations of a society untouched by Enlightenment knowledge and a society which developed into a politicised system.

The pre-dream society that the “modern Russian progressive and wretched inhabitant of Petersburg”37 arrives to is a society that has a knowledge that “does not build on reason, but on love for all that lives and exists on their planet.”38 The people are described as having “no desires and were content; they did not strive for knowledge of life as we strive to comprehend it, because their lives were more complete […] their knowledge was more profound and more elevated than our science.”39 Critics disagree on the relationship that the Ridiculous Man has with the prelapsarian people. Miller argues that “although he is attracted by their innocent ways, the inhabitants are equally, if not even more, ready to imitate and be converted by him […] he quickly casts off the typical role of observer of a safely remote utopian society to become instead a tortured figure.” 40 This indicates that the people, despite their contentment with their society, were drawn towards 34 Naiman: Of Crime, Utopia and Repressive Compliments: The Further Adventures of the Ridiculous Man, Slavic Review, p.513 (Hereafter: Naiman) 35 Dostoevsky, p.956 36 Peace, p.63 37 Dostoevsky, p.953 38 Grillaert, p.161 39 Dostoevsky, p.953 40 Miller: Dostoevsky’s ‘The Dream of a Ridiculous Man’: Unsealing the Generic Envelope, Dostoevsky’s Unfinished Journey, p.114 (Hereafter, Miller)

GVQD3 the promise of increased rationality. Dostoevskii does not intend for the prelapsarian society to seem desirable to the reader, emphasising the element of utopia wherein the reality is fundamentally unachievable.

What, therefore, is Dostoevskii’s intention in Dream? Naiman suggests that the dream is intended to be read backwards, to “eliminate uncertainty and irrationality through ‘Faustian’ means giv(ing) way to a ‘repressive’ utopian’s attack on rationality.”41 By blurring the temporality surrounding the dream, Dostoevskii gives way to the possibility that the narrative is not intended to be understood chronologically. Reading the dream backwards allows for the reader to experience a paradise gained rather than a paradise lost, resulting in the prelapsarian society becoming the ultimate goal and creating an incentive for the alleviation of Enlightenment knowledge. Chronologically, the harmony lost in the dream is that of a society that seizes upon the possibility for higher rationality and thereby loses their freedom and “natural goodness.”42 The Ridiculous Man “witnesses (the) progressive decline of brotherly love from its original idyllic purity.”43 However, the dreamworld society is never able to deal with the knowledge that they gain from the Ridiculous Man: “understanding in knowledge moves, as we have seen, from him to them; they have eaten, one might say, from the tree of understanding.”44 The Ridiculous Man wakes up before the reader is able to ascertain whether the society recovers from the negative effects of civilisation. If read backwards, the society breaks free of the effects of knowledge and receives contentment through brotherly love, therefore their harmony is not lost, but achieved. Dostoevskii presents a world where man is free from the shackles of civilisation and achieves 41 Naiman, p.513 42 Stuchebrukhov, p.104 43 Peace, p.65 44 Aizlewood, p.179

GVQD3 a worldly contentment, where relations between man and nature are in perfect harmony. He does not, however, suggest to the reader how to achieve this. If Dream were intended to be a parable in order for the reader to gain contentment and happiness through brotherly love, Dostoevskii would have provided answers to the questions surrounding the achievement of prelapsarian levels of contentment. Instead, he presents a utopian society where this state of contentment is unachievable without the alleviation of knowledge and human rationality – a knowledge which contemporary society is unable to be rid of. As Peace suggests, what Dostoevskii depicts is “little more than a romantic cliché”45, and that he proclaims a system wherein the “individual surrenders his rights to his brother men and they in return guarantee his individuality and freedom.”46 The society gained an “impersonal dependence on nature”47 but achieved no solution to their problem of “personal dependence on other men”48 without the loss of the ‘deus-ex-machina’ arrival of Enlightenment rationality. Therefore, Frank’s notion that harmony lost can be restored through Christian love and compassion is not evident on a sociological level, whether read chronologically or backwards. The Ridiculous Man’s arrival in the dreamworld results in the prelapsarian society’s “impersonal dependence on nature turned into personal dependence on other men.”49

The religious connotations within Dream of a Ridiculous Man are evident through Dostoevskii’s proclamation of an Edenic paradise, the self-identification of Christ, and the Fall. When we assess the loss of spiritual harmony, however, the ties between the sociological and the spiritual are clear: “the consciousness of the Ridiculous Man is a 45 Peace, p.64 46 Ibid. 47 Stuchebrukhov p.104 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid.

GVQD3 modern one which represents the world in the categories that are informed by what one can broadly term the Enlightenment worldview.”50 The worldview that Aizlewood is suggesting here is that of a more secularised society informed by critical thinking rather than the word of God. Grillaert draws attention towards the contemporary state of the Orthodox Church, showing an institution that has “lost much of its spiritual authority […] (and) had grown alienated from its Byzantine-Orthodox roots, in the process of which it had lost its quintessential spirituality.”51 Grillaert states that Dream can be “read as a mythopoetic endeavour to revitalise Old Russian spirituality and to regain this lost heritage in Russian Orthodoxy.”52 However, we are drawn again to the question of Dostoevskii’s intentions for Dream. If Grillaert’s charge were to ring true, then the society presented as the Edenic paradise would not be portrayed as a paganistic world, where spirituality emanates from the surrounding nature rather than from a higher authority. “Not only does the element of earth worship appear as un-Christian, but the doctrine of other worlds is also doubtful of Orthodox validity.”53 What Grillaert suggests is that the harmo...