The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature

146 The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature

out” (kenosis). Tolstoy could never empty himself out enough, however; his critics did not forgive him his high birth, title, and wealth, and he never forgave himself for failing to divest wholly of this birthright. The more he tried to shed those privileges, the more he was accused of hypocrisy. His acquisitive and media-driven era could only be unkind to a man of his inclinations. An earlier Greek precedent for Tolstoy might be the ancient Cynics (fourth century BCE), who did not perceive self-limitation to be perverse self-denial or sacrifice, but simply the means to happiness.25 Cynics ignored public opinion, disdained politics, rejected private property and commercial networks, denied the validity of the polis or state – positions that Tolstoy adapted, and blended with primitive Christianity. Cynics also considered “schools” bogus and quoting earlier books as an authority useless, even harmful. Individual reason or intuition should be able to arrive at all necessary truths on its own. In any event, the sole necessary knowledge for Tolstoy (and for the Cynics) was “how to live.”

Dostoevsky and books

Dostoevsky was devoted to the printed word, and so are his fictional characters. Several strategies exist for “replaying the words of a book.” Dostoevsky was adept at them all. The author can take an earlier literary character and re-run his plot, but only after endowing the character with more consciousness and thus with more intricate conflicts. Such is Dostoevsky’s technique in The Double (1846), which portrays a madman not according to the usual author–reader contract – that is, with the madness present as a written trace – but in a far less stable form. The model for Dostoevsky’s tale, Gogol’s Diary [or Notes] of a Madman (1835), had chosen for its strategy the externalized written trace, accessible as a document from the outside, which establishes a reassuring distance between reader and madman. Dostoevsky replays the slide into insanity from the inside, before any transcript of it could be made. With schizophrenia, this is not an easy task. We watch, or hear, the consciousness of Golyadkin break in two, as one side of his humiliated persona tries to assure the other side that everything he does is “normal, quite all right” (visiting his doctor, forcing his way into a party uninvited, or simply waiting on the trash-filled landing for the right moment to enter, knowing it will cause a scandal and in denial about that knowledge). Finally, one side of this persona actually materializes, breaks off into a body, and evolves from Golyadkin’s companion into his rival and betrayer.

Hoveringoverthesesplit,frightened,defensivevoicesis anarratorwithaccess to all three perspectives – but only erratically. That access might be an illusion