Dostoevsky's Incarnational Realism. Paul J. Contino
the “deepest I” of the confessor who, through attention, “dies to himself” emerges as most fully himself and authentically authoritative. And for Christ’s kenosis the Father gives him “the name which is above all other names” (Phil 2:9). Analogously, Dostoevsky’s confessors emerge as truly authoritative by relinquishing the power others may project when they plead, “Decide for me!” The confessor never decides for the person struggling under the burden of conscience. Instead, without manipulation or coercion, he or she guides.
The novel’s counter-image to Christ, the Grand Inquisitor, does decide for others: “we shall allow them even sin” (225). As Roger Cox observes, the Inquisitor’s authority is actually tyranny, his miracle sorcery, his mystery mystification (Terras 235). The Inquisitor claims to love humanity but sees persons only as “impotent rebels” (222, 223), “pitiful children” (225), and “geese” (227). Zosima and Alyosha see persons, and help them to recover “a good taste of self.”
The authoritative words of Zosima and Alyosha reverberate with divine inspiration. In the phrase “penetrated word” Caryl Emerson aptly translates Bakhtin’s proniknovennoe slovo by suggesting its two dimensions: the word penetrates the one who hears it, but is itself “penetrated” and authored by the authority of God. It is thus “capable of actively and confidently interfering in the interior dialogue of the other person, helping the person to find his own voice” (“Tolstoy” 156). Bakhtin’s illustration is Prince Myshkin, who admonishes Nastasya after she taunts Rogozhin in Ganya’s crowded apartment, provoking melodrama and violence. She is wearing a mask, “desperately playing out the role of ‘fallen woman,’” and “Myshkin introduces an almost decisive tone into her interior monologue”:
“Aren’t you ashamed? Surely you are not what you are pretending to be now? It isn’t possible!” cried Myshkin suddenly with deep and heartfelt reproach.
Nastasya Filippovna was surprised, and smiled, seeming to hide something under her smile. She looked at Ganya, rather confused, and walked out of the drawing-room. But before reaching the entry, she turned sharply, went quickly up to Nina Alexandrovna, took her hand and raised it to her lips.
“I really am not like this, he is right,” she said in a rapid eager whisper, flushing hotly; and turning around, she walked out so quickly that no one had time to realise what she had come back for. (The Idiot, Part One, ch. 10, cited in Problems 242)
For a moment Nastasya speaks clearly and resolutely, without a mask; she seems “to find her own voice.”126 But in the events that follow, Myshkin flies from the finitude of decision. He responds to others, especially Nastasya, with a kind of boundless pity and reveals a “deep and fundamental horror at speaking a decisive and ultimate word about another person” (Problems 242). In fact, in the scene cited above, his words are “almost decisive” in displaying both an appreciation of Nastasya’s potential—“surely you are not what you are pretending to be now”—along with a judgment of actions for which she ought to take responsibility: “Aren’t you ashamed?” he cries “with deep and heartfelt reproach” (242). But Myshkin grows increasingly indecisive, and his affect upon others proves violent and tragic. By the novel’s end, he emerges as a Christ-manqué.
By contrast, Zosima and Alyosha do speak decisively and image Christ. Deeply attentive, they reject the univocal pity “which wipes out the need and the agony of all partial and analogical choices of the good” (Lynch, Christ and Apollo 172). Their utterances—sometimes “spoken” in the forms of bow, blessing, or kiss—accrue beyond their initially penetrative effect. They serve as healing presences for those tempted toward destruction and help them to sustain integral personhood.
With this conceptually laden prelude behind us, we turn to a close examination of the persons whom Dostoevsky creates—Zosima and Alyosha—and the persons to whom they lovingly attend.
II
Persons
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