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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2017
A future revolutionary, Alesha Karamazov is, at nineteen, an inexperienced boy who lives in a monastery and who has been considered strange since birth. Fedor Dostoevskii endows him with hysteria—then a serious psychopathology with convulsions that were clinically seen as analogous to epilepsy, the morbus sacer from which Dostoevskii himself suffered. Recognized as an epidemic problem, hysteria in this novel is elaborately deployed as a symbol of Russia's social ills and the underlying cause of farreaching personality changes in Alesha (for better or worse), preparing him for a heroic destiny. Although hysteria was soon altered and later eliminated as a clinical syndrome, James L. Rice enables us to read the novel for the first time in the light of documented medical history.
1. PSS, 5:99 Google Scholar. Unlike his “malicious” and “unattractive” antihero, Fedor Mikhailovich could be very appealing to young people, charming and sometimes seductive with women, and captivating to audiences small and large. But he had a dark side, alarming tics, and an eccentric sense of humor.
2. Norman Geschwind, “Dostoievsky's Epilepsy,” in Blumer, Dietrich, ed., Psychiatric Aspects of Epilepsy (Washington, D.C., 1984), 325-34Google ScholarPubMed; Rice, James L., Dostoevsky and the Healing Art (Ann Arbor, 1985)Google Scholar; Moreau, J.-J. (de Tours), Lapsychologie morbide dans ses rapports avec la philosophie de I'histoire, ou de I'influence des nevropathies sur k dynamisme intellectuel (Paris, 1859)Google Scholar. On Moreau, see Rice, , Dostoevsky and the Healing Art, 152-60Google Scholar.
3. PSS, 28-1:386-87, 518-19 (petition to Alexander II)Google Scholar; Ianovskii, S. D., “Bolezn’ F. M. Dostoevskogo” (letter from Cannes, to Maikov, A. N.), Novoe vremia, no. 1793 (24 February 1881)Google Scholar. My thanks to the late Dennis Whelan for bringing Ianovskii's all-important record to my attention early on, twenty-eight years ago. Ianovskii was the physician who treated Dostoevskii's epilepsy before his arrest, a lifelong friend who had helped burn his papers before his apartment was searched. Nevertheless, in his memoirs Ianovskii frankly observed that after Siberia the great writer liked “to play the martyr [porisovat'sia muchenichestvom].“ Ianovskii, S. D., “Vospominaniia o Dostoevskom,” Russkii vestnik, 1885, no. 4: 819 Google Scholar.
4. PSS, 20:198 (variants and commentary: 126rara334, 374)Google Scholar. Also in Literaturnoe nasledstvo, ed. Zil'bershtein, I. S. and Rozenblium, L. M. (Moscow, 1971), 83:254–274 Google Scholar.
5. Rice, James L., “Dostoevsky's Medical History: Diagnosis and Dialectic,” Russian Review 43., no. 2 (April 1983): 131-61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Blitzen, Frederick, review of Rice, Dostoevsky and the Healing Art, in JAMA 255, no. 16 (25 April 1986): 2223-24Google Scholar.
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7. Ibid., 259-79 (“Muhammad's Kinsman, or La folie salutaire“)Google Scholar.
8. Temkin, Owsei, “Health and Disease” (1973), The Double Face of Janus and Other Essays in the History of Medicine (Baltimore, 1977), 438 Google Scholar.
9. PSS, 8:188 Google Scholar. Like his author, Myshkin draws an analogy between an epileptic visionary state and the exaltation of Muhammad, when in a timeless instant he surveyed all of Allah's dominion. Ibid., 8:189 Google Scholar.
10. PSS, 14:297 Google Scholar. Emphasis in the original.
11. Dostoevskii characteristically deploys in his fiction knowledge not only of medical science but also of folk medicine and popular misconceptions. For example, Ivan Karamazov, fully aware that Alesha has acquired his late mother's terrible illness, cynically (and comically) goads his brother about Katerina Ivanovna's debilitating hysteric attack: “So what if it's hysterics? God in his love bestowed hysterics upon Woman!” PSS, 14:212 Google Scholar. In this vein, too, is Dmitrii's uninformed railing against “the [Claude] Bernards,” the author's ingroup joke, less about the famous treatise of 1865 concerning experimental medicine, than about Émile Zola's half-baked use of it in he roman experimental (1880), a detailed preview of which appeared as one of Zola's regular “Letters from Paris“: see “Eksperimental'nyi roman,“ VestnikEvropy, no. 9 (14/26 August 1879): 406-38Google Scholar, wherein Bernard's name occurs forty-three times. Cf. the “Hospital” chapters in House of the Dead, PSS, 4:130-65Google Scholar.
12. Fedotov, D. D., “Isteriia i ee granitsy,” Ocherkipo istorii otechestvennoi psikhiatrii (vloraiapolovinaXVIIIipervaiapolovinaXIXveka) (Moscow, 1957), 1:221-35, 306-20Google Scholar; Libbrecht, Katrien and Quackelbeen, Julien, “On die Early History of Male Hysteria and Psychic Trauma: Charcot's Influence on Freudian Thought,” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 31, no. 4 (October 1995): 370-843.0.CO;2-6>CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Glaser, Gilbert H., “Epilepsy, Hysteria and ‘Possession': A Historical Essay,” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 166, no. 4 (April 1978): 268-74CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; MarkS. Micale, “Charcot and the Idea of Hysteria in the Male: Gender, Mental Science, and Medical Diagnosis in Late Nineteenfh-Century France,” Medical History 34, no. 4 (1990): 363-411; Micale, Mark S., Approaching Hysteria: Disease and Its Interpretations (Princeton, 1995)Google Scholar; Goldstein, Jan, “The Uses of Male Hysteria: Medical and Literary Discourse in Nineteenth-Century France,” Representations 34 (Spring 1991): 134-65Google Scholar; Detre, Thomas P., MD, and Jarecki, Henry J., MD, Modern Psychiatric Treatment (Philadelphia, 1971), 337-95Google Scholar. These authorities provide an essential overview; Micale's works are the most comprehensive.
13. Moreau (de Tours), La psychologie morbide. Google Scholar
14. Chizh, V[ladimir]. F., Dostoevskii kak psikhopatolog (Moscow, 1885), 114 Google Scholar. Moreau's chart is reproduced in Rice, Dostoevsky and the Healing Art, 156 Google Scholar.
15. Suvorin, A. S., Dnevnik (1923), ed. Rayfield, D., Makarova, E. O., and Roskina, N. A. (London, 1999), 454 Google Scholar; Blagoi, D. D., “Put’ Aleshi Karamazova,” hvestiia Akademii Nauk SSSR (January-February, 1974): 8–26 Google Scholar; Rice, James L., “Dostoevsky's Endgame: The Projected Sequel to The Brothers Karamazov,” Russian History/Histoire RusseSS, no. 1 (2006): 45–62 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In his journalism of 1876, Dostoevskii used obosoblenie as Darwinian theory later used “mutation,“ to refer (comically) to new trivial ideas (ideiki) springing up in politics. He also mocked the Mendeleev commission investigating spirits, since newer, more malicious supernatural obosobleniia would always escape scientific scrutiny. Mendeleev publicly thanked Dostoevskii for his advice, but asked him to “spare us die obosobleniia.” PSS, 22:80-83, 100; Mendeleev, D., Materialy dlia suzhdeniia o spiritizme (St. Petersburg, 1876), 354 (public lecture, 25 April 1876)Google Scholar; Rice, James L., “Raskol'nikov and Tsar Gorox,” Slavic and East European Journal 25, no. 3 (Autumn 1981): 38–53, esp. 44-45Google Scholar.
16. PSS, 14:222 Google Scholar.
17. Dostoevskii's “demon” motif, also exemplified in The Devils (1871-72), has inspired valuable commentary: Linda J. Ivanits, “Folk Beliefs about the Unclean Force in The Brothers Karamazov,” in Gutsche, George J. and Leighton, Lauren G., eds., New Perspectives on Nineteenth-Century Russian Prose (Columbus, 1982), 135-46Google Scholar; Worobec, Christine D., Possessed Women, Witches, and Demons in Imperial Russia (DeKalb, 2001)Google Scholar; Vinokur, Val, “Facing the Devil in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov,” in Emerson, Caryl, Fleishman, Lazar, Safran, Gabriella, and Wachtel, Michael, eds., Word, Music, History: A Festschrift for Caryl Emerson (Stanford, 2005), 2:464-76Google Scholar; Leatherbarrow, W.J., A Devil's Vaudeville: The Demonic in Dostoevsky's Major Fiction (Evanston, 2005)Google Scholar.
18. PSS, 8:188 Google Scholar.
19. Konstantin Pobedonostsev, procurator of die Holy Synod, urged Dostoevskii to counter Ivan's atheism with faidi. The author, who was drafting Book 7 (“Alesha“), replied with cunning obfuscation that the figure of Zosima, trivial and comical, might be inadequate to triumph over evil, for the novel must follow the dictates of “artistic realism.“ Zosima's goodness was only inward and spiritual. PSS, 8:30–31, 121-22Google Scholar.
20. Belknap, Robert L., The Genesis of ‘The Brothers Karamazov: The Aesthetics, Ideology, and Psychology of Text Making (Evanston, 1990), 124 Google Scholar.
21. Iakubovich, I. D., Budanova, N. F., and Fridlendera, G. M., eds., Letopis’ zhizni i tvorchestva F. M. Dostoevskogo v trekh tomakh, 1821-1881 (St. Petersburg, 1994), 2:76 Google Scholar— under the date 3 September 1866, the only references to Karakozov are in the notebooks for Besy.
22. See the translator's “Time Chart” (through Dmitrii's arrest) in Dostoevsky, Fyodor, The Karamazov Brothers, trans. Avsey, Ignat (Oxford, 1994), xxxvi-viiGoogle Scholar.
23. Rosenthal, Richard J., MD, “Dostoevsky's Experiment with Projective Mechanisms and the Theft of Identity in The Double,” in Rancour-Laferriere, Daniel, ed., Russian Literature and Psychoanalysis (Amsterdam, 1989), 59–88 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rice, James L., “Dostoevsky's Medical History: Diagnosis and Dialectic” Russian Review 42, no. 2 (April 1983): esp. 149-50 and 149nGoogle Scholar; Rice, Dostoevsky and the Healing Art, 245-52Google Scholar.
24. Carus, C. G., Psyche, 2d ed. (Stuttgart, 1851)Google Scholar; Smith, S. Stephenson and Isotoff, Andrei, “The Abnormal from Witfiin: Dostoevsky,” Psychoanalytic Review 22, no. 4 (October 1935): 361-91Google Scholar; Gibian, George, “Carus, C. G.’ Psyche and Dostoevsky,” American Slavonic and East European Review 14, no. 3 (1955): 371-82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rice, Dostoevsky and the Healing Art, 133-46Google Scholar.
25. Carus, Carl Gustav, Ueber Geistes-Epidemien derMenschheit (Leipzig, 1852)Google Scholar. The Swiss Carus (1789-1869) was then court physician to the King of Saxony and a person of solid intellectual repute.
26. Ibid., 55–56 Google Scholar.
27. Micale, “Charcot and the Idea of Hysteria in the Male.” Only the work of J.-M. Charcot, the acclaimed French neurologist, made the diagnosis of “male hysteria” widely acceptable. His publications on the subject appeared after Dostoevskii's death. See also, Micale, MarkS, Hysterical Men: The Hidden History of Male Nervous Illness (Cambridge, Mass., 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
28. Micale, , Approaching Hysteria, 227-39Google Scholar.
29. Krafft-Ebing, Richard von, Lehrbuch derPsychiatrie aufklinischer GrundlagefuerpractischeAerzte und Studierende, 3 vols. (Stuttgart, 1879-1880)Google Scholar.
30. Iakubovich, , Budanova, , and Fridlendera, , eds., Letopis’ zhizni i tvorchestva, 2:123 Google Scholar.
31. Baudelaire, Charles, “Madame Bovary par Gustave Flaubert” (1857), Oeuvres complètes, vol. 3, L'art romantique. Critique littéraire (Paris, 1980), 360 Google Scholar: “se traduit chez les hommes nerveux par toutes les impuissances et aussi par l'aptitude à tous les excès.” The translation is mine.
32. Grossman, Joan Delaney, Edgar Allan Poe in Russia: A Study in Legend and Literary Influence (Würzburg, 1973), 11, 31, 193, 201, 238Google Scholar.
33. PSS, 4:14, 67, and 175Google Scholar.
34. PSS, 14:117 Google Scholar. The painting depicts a peasant in a snowy autumnal forest, frozen in a trance. It is reproduced in Rice, Dostoevsky and the Healing Art, 255.Google Scholar
35. Fedotov, , “Isteriia i ee granitsy,” 228, 231, 233Google Scholar. In a posthumous publication, Charcot acknowledged that he had never ceased sending difficult cases of hysteria to Lourdes for faith-healing: Charcot, J.-M., “Le foi qui guérit,” Archives de Neurologie 20 (73) (January 1893): 72–87 Google Scholar.
36. Fedotov, , “Isteriia i ee granitsy,” 232, 234.Google Scholar
37. Klementovskii, A. I., “Klikushi,” Moskovskaia meditsinskaia gazeta (1860), no. 25: 197–203, no. 26: 205-10, no. 27: 213-18, no. 28: 221-24, no. 29: 229-31, no. 30: 237- 42, no. 31: 245-60, no. 32: 253-59Google Scholar. Fedotov strongly praises the scientific soundness of Klementovskii's report in general, and particularly as a corrective to popular accounts of klikushi. Fedotov, “Isteriia i ee granitsy,” 234.
38. PSS, 14:18 Google Scholar.
39. Dal, Vladimir', Tolkovyi slovar’ zhivogo velikorusskogo iazyka, 2d ed. (St. Petersburg, 1881), 2:118 Google Scholar. Emphasis added.
40. Temkin, Owsei, The Falling Sickness: A History of Epilepsy from the Greeks to the Beginnings of Modern Neurology, 2d ed. (Baltimore, 1971)Google Scholar; Rice, Dostoevsky and the Healing Art Google Scholar; Ianovskii, “Bolezn’ F. M. Dostoevskogo.“
41. Bourneville, D.-M., Recherches cliniques et thérapeutiques sur I'épilepsie et I'hystérie [a Salpêtrière de 1872 à 1875] (Paris, 1876)Google Scholar. Bourneville, [D.-M.] and Renlar, , “Sluchai gistero-epilepsii,” Meditsinskii vestnik (St. Petersburg), 1876, no. 1: 6–8 Google Scholar.
42. PSS, 14:12-14, 18, 19, 21-22, 43.
43. PSS, 14:43-45, 49.
44. PSS, 14:45; cf. 14:456 (kakie-tokorichnevyeunikhlitsa). This feature is at once clinical and iconic.
45. PSS, 15:21. Arson was a frequent act of anarchy in Russia, especially after the Petersburg fires of 1862. Rozenblium, N. G., “Peterburgskie pozhary 1862 g. i Dostoevskii,“ Literaturnoenasledstvo 86 (1973): 16–54 Google Scholar.
46. PSS, 14:44.
47. Klementovskii, “Klikushi.“
48. PSS, 13:21-22.
49. PSS, 14:24, 18.
50. PSS, 14:126.
51. Ibid.
52. PSS, 14:216.
53. PSS, 14:221. Here we may anticipate the embellishment of Ivan's image, besenok, arching over more than 300 pages of text, to a chapter titled “Besenok” (usually translated as “The Little Demon“), which is a nickname bestowed by Ivan on the hysteric Lise, whose tales of atrocity that bludgeon Alesha not only resemble the devil's advocacy of Ivan, but are in some instances inspired by him. Alesha and Lise were destined, according to one plausibly informed source, to marry in the sequel. Typical of Dostoevskii's literary technique is the projection of a hero's quality into an allegory, and its dramatic interplay in a realistic plot. Ivan manipulates both Lise and Alesha with his demonic force.
54. PSS, 14:241.
55. Micale, , Approaching Hysteria, 226-39Google Scholar; Detre, and jarecki, , Modern Psychiatric Treatment, 337-95Google Scholar.
56. PSS, 14:6.
57. Book 7 of The Brothers Karamazovwas sent to the printer on 1 October 1879.
58. Krafft-Ebing, , Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie. Google Scholar
59. Ibid., 2:114-19, with select medical literature (9 titles from 1865-1872 are cited), noted on 114. The publisher announced the release of volume 2 in the 6 August 1879 listing of Boersenblatt fuer deutschen Buchhandels, one day after Dostoevskii arrived at the Bad Ems spa for his last therapeutic visit. This would have allowed Dostoevskii plenty of time to locate Krafft-Ebing's publication (eagerly awaited in Petersburg) in a bookstore or clinic in Koblenz or Ems and to read the concise passage on hysteria before writing and submitting Book 7 of The Brothers Karamazov to the printer on 1 October (though my case does not rest on such conjecturally indirect influence). We may yet discover more about the advent of Krafft-Ebing's book in Petersburg, from Protokoly zasedanii Obshchestva psikhiatrov St.- Peterburga (1879 g.). The enthusiasm of Dr. Merzheevskii, noted below, must have had an impact on the Russian medical community, including his junior colleague, Dostoevskii's favorite nephew Aleksandr Andreevich Dostoevskii, a student and later docent at the Medical Academy. Volotskoi, M. V, Khronika roda Dostoevskikh 1506-1933 (Moscow, 1933), 176-77Google Scholar and plate 6; Budanova, N. F., Biblioteka F. M. Dostoevskogo (St. Petersburg, 2005), 315 Google Scholar. (German medical publications by Aleksandr Dostoevskii are listed here.)
60. Krafft-Ebing, , Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie, 3: cases 51, 52, 53, 57, 58, 71, 90-99Google Scholar. All of these cases are women, however Krafft-Ebing's select sources include the great cumulative paradigm by Pierre Briquet, which begins polemically with seven documented cases of “male hysteria“: Briquet, Pierre, Traité clinique et thérapeutique de I'hystérie (Paris, 1859)Google Scholar. See Micale, , “Charcot and the Idea of Hysteria in die Male,” 50 Google Scholar; Micale, , Approaching Hysteria, 368-69Google Scholar. Krafft-Ebing's description of “hysteric character” (vol. 2) in no way limits or distributes die symptoms by sex.
61. Krafft-Ebing, , Lehrbuch der Psychialrie, 2:114-19Google Scholar. Emphasis in the original. Krafft- Ebing's dicta on hysteria are presented as a state-of-the-art model elucidating the case of Alesha Karamazov, which conforms to that current clinical picture in almost every detail. Particularly useful for readers of Dostoevskii's novel is the revelation that hysteric visions (like epileptic aura) were considered to be both negative and positive, shifty, and easily confused with reality.
62. Lord, Robert, Dostoevsky: Essays and Perspectives (Berkeley, 1970), 81–101 (“An Epileptic Mode of Being“)Google Scholar; Catteau, Jacques, La creation litteraire chez Dostoïevski (Paris, 1978), 125-80 (“La maladie“)Google Scholar; Rice, Dostoevsky and the Healing Art Google Scholar. Many of Dostoevskii's major characters have pathologies with epileptoid features: Goliadkin, Nelli, Raskolnikov, Velchaninov, Kirillov.
63. Kraft-Ebing, [= Richard v. Krafft-Ebing], Uchebnikpsikhiatrii, sostavlennyi na osnovanii klinicheskikh nabliudenii dlia prakticheskikh vrachei i studentov, 3 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1881-1882).Google Scholar
64. “Merzheevskii, , Pavlovich, Ivan,” Entsiklopedicheskii slovar’ (St. Petersburg, 1896), 19:115-16Google Scholar; Bekhterev, V. M., “I. V Merzheevskii i ego rol’ v razvitii russkoi psikhiatrii,“ Obozreniepsikhiatrii, nevrologiii i eksperimental'noi psikhologii, 1908, no. 3: 129-35Google Scholar.
65. Krafft-Ebing, Richard von, Lehrbuch derPsychopathologie mit Beruecksichtigung der Geselzgebung von Oesterreich, Deutschland undFrankreich (Stuttgart, 1875)Google Scholar; Krafft-Ebing, , “Ueber gewisse Anomalien des Geschlechtstriebs und die klinischforensische Verwerthung derselben als einen wahrscheinlich functionellen Degenerationszeichens des centralen Nervensystems,“ Archiv fuer Psychiatrie und Nervenkrankheiten, 1877, no. 7: 291–311 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Both are documented in the bibliography of Harry Oosterhuis, Stepchildren of Nature: Krafft-Ebing, Psychiatry, and the Making of Sexual Identity (Chicago, 2000), 289. My thanks to Professor Oosterhuis for calling my attention to these sources.
66. Odesskaia, M., ed. and intro., “Ustnyi rasskaz F. M. Dostoevskogo: Iz arkhiva E. N. Opochinina,” Novyi mir, 1992, no. 8: 211-17 (on Merzheevskii, see 213-214n)Google Scholar. Dostoevskii tells his memoirist of a Petersburg necrophile (whether fantasy or real) who sneaks into funerals to plant long deep kisses on the mouths of deceased adolescent beauties. The memoirist is forced to exclaim: “Such monsters … should be annihilated!” For all the world like Alesha Karamazov's verdict, “Shoot him!” (revealing the demonic principle in his heart). Ibid., 217.
67. Verkhovskii, Iu., ed. and intro., “Besedy s Dostoevskim: Zapisi i pripominaniia E. N. Opochinina,” Zven'ia (Moscow-Leningrad, 1936), 6:454-94Google Scholar, esp. 474. Cf. an early example from the fiction: Unizhennyei oskorblennye (1861-62), pt. 3, chap. 10, PSS, 3:361- 62)—echoed by Zapiski izpodpol'ia (1866), PSS, 5:104, 128.
68. Odesskaia, ed. and intro., “Ustnyi rasskaz,” 217.
69. PSS, 14:315. Grushenka assumes he means old Karamazov.
70. PSS, 14:307-8. Emphasis in the original.
71. PSS, 14:131.
72. PSS, 14:318.
73. PSS, 14:323-24. For another view of the, after all, beguiling Grushenka, see Friedrich, Paul, “Grushenka,” Dostoevsky Studies, n.s. 6 (2007): 38–55 Google Scholar.
74. PSS, 14:323-27.
75. PSS, 14:328. Emphasis added.
76. “The term hysterical neurosis is currently restricted to individuals who show varying degrees of selective inattention to particular elements of their internal or external environment, as manifested by conversion symptoms and such symptoms of dissociation as fugue states, amnesia, and multiple personality.” Detre, and Jarecki, , Modern Psychiatric Treatment, 222 Google Scholar. Symptomatic forgetting by hysterics is also noted, more than once, by Krafft-Ebing, , Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie, 2:117 Google Scholar.
77. PSS, 14:328. Interpretation of this passage as a purely religious epiphany has recently been argued by Kate Holland, “Novelizing Religious Experience: The Generic Landscape of The Brothers Karamazov,” Slavic Review 66, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 63 - 81.
78. John 12:24. PSS, 14:328. These words may also conjure the idea of the hero's sacrificial destiny in the cause of revolution.
79. PSS, 14:328.
80. Krafft-Ebing, , Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie, 2:117 Google Scholar. Leonid Grossman, the leading Dostoevskii scholar of the Soviet era, commented on the description of Alesha's euphoria in quasi-medical terms that deserve to be recalled here: “Dostoevskii's language with its excitability is distinguished by its exceptional emotionality and a purely epileptic capability of illuminating the most knotty contours to lend the whole design a sharp clarity.” His example is Alesha's ecstatic vision of earth and heaven merging. Grossman, , Seminarii po Dostoevskomu (Moscow, 1923), 81 Google Scholar. Emphasis added.
81. At the time of the first installment, it would be 1879. The first complete edition, a huge and immediate success, appeared on 9 December 1880.
82. Kolia, as Leonid Grossman observed, is “obviously an embryonic revolutionary“ yet positively portrayed, not satirically as hitherto by Dostoevskii (e.g., in “The Eternal Husband” or The Devils). Grossman, “Dostoevskii i pravitel'stvennye krugi 1870kh godov,“ Literaturnoe nasledstvo, 1934, no. 16:107. If the hysteric Lise becomes Alesha's wife, she will presumably complicate die illness of the hysteric son of a hysteric modier. See Hoffmann, Th. M. Dostojewski, and Diane Oenning Thompson, “Lise Khokhlakova: shalunia i besenok,“ in Karlinsky, Simon et al., eds., O RUS! Studia litteraria slavica in honorem Hugh McLean (Oakland, Calif., 1995), 281-97Google Scholar.
83. Z, “Zhurnal'nye zametki,” Novorossiiskii telegraf, 26 May/7 June 1880, 1. This featured review was probably scheduled to coincide with the opening of die Pushkin festival in Moscow, postponed because of die death of the Empress Mariia, Alexander II's wife.
84. Ibid. Emphasis added. The closing ellipses are Z's, ending his paragraph.
85. One here recalls, too, Carus's remarkable suggestion that “amidst the fantasies and delirium of humanity's developmental ills, from time to time truly great ideas flash through like lightning [im Einzelnen blitzartig audi von wahrhaft grossen Idem, durchzuckte].“ Carus, Ueber Geistes-Epidemien der Menschheit, 55.
86. Rice, “Dostoevsky's Endgame,” 50 Google Scholar.
87. “He perishes for the sake of others, whom he bears in his soul and to whom Russia's future belongs.” Hoffmann, Th. M. Dostojewski, 427 Google Scholar.
88. Z, “Zhurnal'nye zametki,” In this context, iurodivyi does not mean a “holy fool,“ the prophetic peasant type in tsarist Russia, usually itinerant, superstitiously regarded by many of all social classes, but rather the first definition in the Academy dictionary: “a psychically ill or unbalanced person; a madman” (mildly pejorative). Slovar’ sovremennogo russkogo literaturnogo iazyka (Leningrad, 1965), 17:2003-4Google Scholar.
89. PSS, 15:195-96.
90. PSS, 14:297. Emphasis in the original.
91. Dostoevskii was intimately involved with many sensational cases of revolutionary sedition, including his own, which led to months of solitary confinement, the firing squad, and ten years in Siberia—and he told the tale of his mock execution (brilliantly) to innumerable audiences large and small. He had bonded with the radical Nikolai Speshnev (“my Mephistopheles“), was shaken by Karakozov's act, moved by the trial of Vera Zasulich, witnessed the execution of I. O. Mlodetskii (on “his own” Semenov Square), profoundly studied Sergei Nechaev, and created Raskolnikov and Stavrogin, Kirillov, and Verkhovenskii. Permutations of Russian revolutionary types were, so to speak, legion, in life and art.
92. PSS, 8:188. On Myshkin's religious qualities, see Kiiko, E. I., “Dostoevskii i Renan,“ Dostoevskii: Materialy i issledovaniia (Leningrad, 1980), 4:106-22Google Scholar.
93. PSS, 15:485-87 (V E. Vetlovskaia's commentary on the projected sequel).
94. Luke 15:32.
95. Rice, Dostoevsky and the Healing Art, 60–81 Google Scholar.
96. Dostoevskii lacked a James Boswell, an intimate friend and chronicler who would simply revel in the multifarious quirks of his personality.
97. In the character of Smerdiakov, epilepsy is elaborately complicated by a sociopathic criminal streak, devious malingering, and cunning malice. There is, incidentally, a river Smera“near Dostoevskii's ancestral Pinsk.
98. Blumer, , ed., Psychiatric Aspects of Epilepsy, 134-35, 180, 202-3, 254, 305Google Scholar.
99. It has occurred to me that in these bizarre mood swings one may find an answer to the vexed question of Dostoevskii's sporadic antisemitic outbursts, often trivial and without any apparent agenda. The literature on this subject is large and inconclusive. Grossman, Leonid P., Ispovea” odnogo evreia (Moscow, 1924), especially the conciliatory afterword (which is lacking in the German edition in Freud's library)Google Scholar; Ingold, Felix P., Dostojewskij und dasjudentum (Frankfurt am Main, 1981)Google Scholar; Rice, James L., “Dostoevsky and the Jews,“ TLS (letter to the editor), 27 November 1981, 1394 Google Scholar; Rice, James L., Freud's Russia: National Identity in the Evolution of Psychoanalysis (New Brunswick, 1993)Google Scholar; Shrayer, Maxim D., “Dostoevskii, the Jewish Question, and The Brothers Karamazov,” Slavic Review 61, no. 2 (Summer 2002): 273-91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Frank, Joseph, “Dostoevsky and Anti-Semitism,” in Emerson, Fleishman, , Safran, , and Wachtel, , eds., Word, Music, History, 2:433-49Google Scholar.
100. James, William, The Varieties of Religious Experience, a Study in Human Nature (1902; New York, 1973), 11 (Lecture I. Religion and Neurology)Google Scholar.
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