Man Is Not a Piano Key: Dostoevsky’s Underground in The Brothers Karamazov
“He is extraordinarily, diabolically skillful, his thoughts unusually acute, his dialectic terribly powerful… he is an artist of thought. The abyss of the mind, of a[n].. immense and pervasive aspect, is revealed by Dostoevsky,” remarks the Christian-existentialist philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev. What Berdyaev calls the “abyss of the mind” is Dostoevsky’s psychology of the Underground. It is the skeleton key to Dostoevsky; it frames the underpinnings of his youth and is the great substance of his later literary works. Dostoevsky discovered the Underground, or, as essayist Berlin would put it, “the one big thing” that the hedgehog knows, during his imprisonment in a Siberian work camp and in the Russian military. His rational, Enlightenment writings of the past made little sense in the world of the prison; they couldn’t hold up in an absurd world where men fight over the most trivial matters just to demonstrate their individuality.
During his time in prison, Dostoevsky saw the nature of man’s will in the murderers that surrounded him — and he saw their untapped potential. In time, these criminals, driven by willful desires that once seemed irrational, made more sense to Dostoevsky. In losing a decade of his life to imprisonment and military service, Dostoevsky gained a fresh perspective through the lens of the Underground. Narrowly defined as a philosophical anthropology suspicious of European rationalism, Dostoevsky’s Underground pervades each of his works, driving his characters’ actions and guiding the way they perceive themselves and the other individuals that surround them.
From his “corner” in his philosophical treatise Notes from the Underground, Dostoevsky defines this willful psychology and why man resides within it. Designating man as the “ungrateful biped” in Part I, he asserts that the Underground is man’s natural asylum (Notes 20). Dostoevsky demonstrates that even if this man is given everything, “every earthly blessing” and “economic prosperity,” he will still choose his will over every happiness — and do so simply out of spite (Notes 21). Man’s reason is simply “reason,” he says, and cannot be compared to the will, which is a “manifestation of the whole life” (19). The ostinato of the Underground is that mankind will lay down every advantage that he holds to prove that “men are still men and not the keys of a piano” (Notes 21). By boasting of our individuality, we try to express our dignity in a kind of existential freedom. We desire to demonstrate our individual power over the universe.
Dostoevsky first presents this idea by querying: “[f]or what is a man without desires, without free will and without choice?” (Notes 18). Dostoevsky admits that he himself “want[s] to live, in order to satisfy all [his] capacities for life and not simply [his] capacity for reasoning” (Notes 19). The Underground Man in Part II of Notes is an intellectual “thwarted by his rebellious and fugitive will” that lives out this complex psychology; he is a precursor to the characters in Dostoevsky’s final novel. Unlike the Underground Man, characters in The Brothers Karamazov find their way out of the “abyss of the mind.” Speaking through the minds and actions of “experimental selves” in this novel, Dostoevsky develops his solution to the Underground.
The Brothers Karamazov hosts a multitude of exotic Underground natures — and Dostoevsky places his key examples in the broken Karamazov family. Made up of a sensualist father, two dead wives, and three abandoned sons, the Karamazov family and its broken relations display the baseness of Underground behavior. Fyodor, the old “buffoon,” and failure of a father, resides comfortably in the Underground. He cares about sensual pleasure like Marlowe’s Faust, which holds him fast to his Underground practice. Disregarding his three sons, Fyodor embodies all things despicable and characteristic of this wilful psychology. He first appears during the meeting held at elder Zosima’s cell. Speaking of his relations with women without shame, Fyodor drawls “I won’t deny that there’s maybe an unclean spirit living in me,” but makes no commitment to repent of this spirit (Brothers 41).
Remarkably, Fyodor’s emphasis on appearance and show mirrors the outlook of the Underground Man. In one of his troublesome outbursts in Zosima’s cell, Fyodor whines that “everyone takes [him] for a buffoon,” but asserts that he does not seek their pity. He explains that he willingly chooses to “play the buffoon” because he sees other people and their opinions as “lower than [him]!’” (Brothers 43). This self-ascribed “holy fool” never emerges from his prized Underground world. Fyodor’s sense of self-importance parallels the Underground Man’s inability to look at Liza, a prostitute, that he tried to “save,” when instead he was the one that needed saving; if this man would make eye contact with the prostitute, he would have to surrender to her pity — a sensation that he does not wish to accept. Fyodor, the ultimate sensualist, sires another of his kind: his son Dimitri.
A man susceptible to base desires, Dimitri is a “Karamazov,” an identity that naturally leads him Underground (Brothers 107). As the first son of Fyodor Pavlovich, Dimitri inherits his father’s sensualist pangs for sexual and emotional gratification. These desires define his every action, echoing Dostoevsky’s assertion in Notes that the nature of the Underground determines that man’s will always trumps his reason. Dimitri’s ode to insect lust delivered to Alyosha in verse, is Dimitri’s declaration of self. Speaking of his constant subsistence on pleasure alone, he admits, “[W]hen I fall into the abyss, I go straight into it… and I’m even pleased that I’m falling… I find it beautiful” (Brothers 107).
Dimitri’s sensual desire is unique; he desires to feel the fullness of God as much as he wants to embrace the dark chasm of sin. Telling Alyosha “Let me be cursed… but let me also kiss the hem of that garment in which God is clothed,” Dimitri voices the duality of his Underground will (Brothers 107). Trapped in a spiritual dilemma, he is driven by both his love for God and his earthly lust for Grushenka. Huxley’s John the Savage in Brave New World has a divergent will like Dimitri’s. John tells World State leader Mustapha Mond, “I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin” (Huxley 168). When the leader responds that he “claim[s] the right to be unhappy” by wanting such sensations, the Savage assents without hesitation (Huxley 168). Dimitri deeply desires both what is holy and what is sinful with equal intensity.
Because he is a man of such intense passion, townfolk immediately put Dimitri on trial when his father is found murdered. Although the show-trial finds him guilty for a crime he did not commit, this moment gives Dimitri his first moment of self-reflectance — and a glimpse of the world outside of his Underground. He has a dream in his prison cell of something other than himself: a vision of a cold, abandoned infant. This image finally thrusts Dimitri out of most of his Underground desires, as it forces him to think of others. This vision of a suffering child makes him “want to weep… want to do something for them all so that [they] will no longer cry” (Brothers 508). Dimitri begins to see the world as his brother Alyosha does, and accepts his wrongful conviction as a spiritual act of penance. However, Dimitri is still subject to his Underground extremism, shown by his personal desires to be the “greatest” missionary to sinners in the depths of hell.
Ivan Karamazov — the clear opposite of his half-brother Dimitri — is a rational intellectual whose bright mind resides in the Underground. He is in a constant struggle with questions of human existence, and believes deeply that God loves torturing humanity. Ivan views mankind’s “love of torturing children” as a reflection of the nature of God; as God’s people are his sons and daughters in creation, Ivan argues that God too delights in torturing mankind (241). A slave to his Underground mind, he cannot comprehend these “absurdities” that “[the] world stands on” (243). In dialogue with his younger brother Alyosha, Ivan rejects not God, but the world that he created. He explains his plan to “most respectfully return him[God] the ticket,” — meaning he will kill himself — when he reaches the he reaches the ripe age of thirty because his conscience, rooted in the Underground, opposes God’s “nature” as Ivan perceives it (Brothers 245).
Ivan, like the Underground Man, laments the burden of man’s intelligence in his short story “The Grand Inquisitor,” which he shares with Alyosha at dinner. He denounces a returned Christ with his philosophical argument, proclaiming that since he has “awoke[n]” to God’s nature, he does “not want to serve [His] madness” (260). Ivan sees the twisted results of the Underground world, and accepts them — not because he enjoys them, but because this is his way of rationally answering the question of the fallen world.
Ivan’s identity and his sanity is imperiled when his seemingly air-tight Underground philosophy is put into practice. In the novels second part, Ivan’s troubled and injurious half-brother Smerdokov uses Ivan’s intellectual formula that “Since there is no God, everything is permitted” —that Ivan himself had told Smerdokov — to justify murdering Fyodor, their father. Ivan’s understanding of the world is instantly shattered — and he’s forced to face the artifice of his life philosophy and is left without a mind (263).
The night before Dimitri’s trial, Ivan —who is supposed to testify the next day to liberate Dimitri — is teetering on the edge of madness. It’s not clear if he will ever escape the void created by the eruption his Underground mind. Mournfully, Alyosha prophesies that in the courtroom Ivan “will either rise into the light of truth, or… perish in hatred, taking revenge on himself and everyone for having served something he does not believe in” (655). Alyosha encourages Ivan to escape his Underground mind by denying the philosophy he once lived for. And for a brief moment, Ivan does dig himself out of the Underground, and when called on, he successfully testifies to Dimitri’s innocence. However, Ivan’s Underground will seems to win at last: the end of Ivan’s polished speech in court turns into a garbled, unintelligible, and disturbing stream-of-consciousness conversation with the devil in front of everyone present. Earlier, at his last supper with Alyosha at the tavern, Ivan told Alyosha that he sought “retribution” for the suffering he saw on earth (Brothers 245). Regrettably, in this Russian “show trial,” Ivan finds no such justice — Dimitri is wrongfully tried, found guilty of murder, and sent away to a labor camp. As a result, Ivan seems to enternally fall back into his Dostoevskian “corner,” in his “unrequited suffering and [his] unquenched indignation,” and in his hellish Underground mind (245).
Dostoevsky composes the answer to the evils of the Underground through the life of Father Zosima, an elder in the monastery near the Karamazov house. A man with his own Underground past, Zosima lived and learned the path upward from rebellion. His sickly older brother Markel was the first to set Zosima on this trajectory. On his deathbed at the age of 14, Markel describes “life” to his brother Zosima as “paradise,” and encourages him to “know that each one of us is guilty before everyone, for everyone and everything” (Brothers 289). This profound statement coming from his dying brother only makes sense to the Underground Zosima when he finds himself in a duel that he is solely responsible for. For the first time, Zosima takes others’ lives into perspective and values them as he values his own; he “repent[s] of his foolishness and confesses his guilt publicly” (299). Surviving the duel and forfeiting his pistol shot, Zosima sees himself “responsible for all the sins of men” and sets out into the world to heal its brokenness.
In the monastery, Zosima addresses the Underground needs of women with varying degrees of faith. In one episode, a “Woman of Faith” comes to Zosima in great despair having lost her third young child. She “is through with everybody” and doesn’t “want to see anything at all” (Brothers 49). Zosima recognizes this Underground grief, and advises her to grieve for as long as she needs, saying “Weep, then, but also rejoice” (49). He also warns her to avoid the Underground thought that she is superior to others because of her suffering. In a secondary episode, Zosima meets with Madam Holgakov, a “Lady of Little Faith.” She asks “how can [faith] be proved?,” and Zosima answers, “One cannot prove anything, but it is possible to be convinced… by the experience of active love” (56). Blinded by the Underground, Madam Holgakov had expected a clean and simple answer to her question. Zosima suggests that she should try to begin a selfless life, where she loves other people through acts of service. Over time, he prophesies, Madam Holgakov may understand the glory of eternal life.
Alyosha, the youngest Karamazov brother is also centrally shaped by Father Zosima’s anti-Underground teachings, and is called to be a force for change in his brothers lives. “[S]imply an early lover of humanity,” youthful Alyosha learns the importance of humility and servitude from Father Zosima, who had his own Underground past (Brothers 18). Teaching Alyosha how to live and love, Zosima sends him to be with Ivan and Dmitri, his troubled brothers. At Zosima’s bidding, Alyosha attempts to resolve their Underground nature, despite his naivety. However, it isn’t until after Zosima’s death that Alyosha truly unleashes himself against the Underground world with his active love. When Zosima dies and his corpse stinks with “the odor of corruption” — whereas historically in the Russian Orthodox church, holy men were supposed to miraculously not smell of death before embalming — Alyosha is crushed. He tells Ratitka that he “do[es] not accept [God’s] world” like his brother Ivan and is bitter at God for treating Zosima in this way after death (341). He visits Grushenka, only to find that he cannot find it in himself to act repulsively towards her; he pities her and treats her kindly as no one else had. Returning to the monastery, Alyosha sees how he can lead others like Grushenka out of the Underground. Rising a “resolute champion,” he sets out to lead those in the Underground world into the light — starting with the scholarly youth in his town(363).
Putting his philosophical anthropology to the test “by means of experimental selves,” The Brothers Karamazov is Dostoevsky’s answer to how one should heal the Underground. Writing the curriculum for the “re-education” of man’s will, Alyosha’s application of Zosima’s teachings brings hope to the despondent youth of his time — and to ours. Alyosha provides the potential for the “invisible horizons,” (as John Fante would put it) of the future youth. It is Alyosha’s prayer that his schoolboys do not give in fully to their passion or intellect—like Alyosha’s brothers did— in their later years. Alyosha’s teachings that safeguard the wavering Russian youth against their natural Underground thinking and behavior are the same teachings that Dostoevsky imparts to readers of The Brothers Karamazov. The demise of Dimitri’s passion and Ivan’s intellect encourage us to live as Alyosha does: liberated from the Underground, and as messengers of active love.
Works Cited
Berdyaev, Nikolai. “‘Revelation About Man in the Creativity of Dostoevsky.’” Russkaya Mysl, Translated by S. Janos, Apr. 1918, pp. 39–61. Berdyaev Online Library, http://www.berdyaev.com/berdiaev/berd_lib/1918_294.html.
Berlin, Isaiah. The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy’s View of History. Phoenix, 1999.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Brothers Karamazov. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002.
— -. Notes From the Underground. Dover, 1992.
Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. Harper & Row, 1946.
