Smerdiakov

Frank Friedeberg Seeley, Georgetown, Texas

I wonder whether there is now anyone who believes the hoary myth that Dostoevsky reserves a drop of Christian charity for even the basest of his creatures - a myth due perhaps to a confusion between an author's understanding and his sympathies. It may be true that no personage of Dostoevsky stands outside the compass of his amazing psychological intuition; but there are more than a few beyond the range of his indulgence or even compassion. This is the case with most if not all of his poshliaki - a group which includes a variety of subtypes and such individuals as Luzhin and Rakitin and (at a somewhat higher level of interest) Petr Verkhovenskii.

To none of the poshliaki is Dostoevsky harsher than to Smerdiakov. He regards the fourth of the Karamazov brothers as the other personages of the novel regard him: not only without pity, but with disgust. And as he is seen by his author, so is Smerdiakov presented to the readers of The Brothers Karamazov, we are to find him revolting without qualification or extenuation.

There is here a paradox which appears to have escaped the notice of the critical fraternity. No doubt Smerdiakov is a poshliak of the purest water; but surely he is unique among poshliaki in being, equally undeniably, one of the 'humiliated and abused' (униженные и оскорбленные), who are generally prime objects of Dostoevsky's compassion and indulgence.

Smerdiakov is humiliated in the very circumstances of his engendering: a rape or quasi-rape. He is humiliated in his parentage: as the issue of an idiot and a moral monster (who nevertheless enjoys a measure of the writer's human sympathy denied to the unfortunate offspring!). He is dragged up by his father's servants as a servant and receives no education to speak of (though he is taught to read). Like any other servant of the time, he is sent away to the capital to learn a means of livelihood and returns home as his father's cook.

He is abused physically by Grigorii, struck by Ivan, brutally threatened by Mitia; verbally he is abused by all these and by his father too; even the saintly Alesha treats him not as a brother but with the cold politeness of master to servant. For Grigorii he is less than human.(1) His family bombards him with the epithet 'stinking' in memory of his mother and with the label 'lackey' to rub in his status.(2)

Smerdiakov's reaction to the outrage of his birth and the crushing contempt of his family might naturally be hate and rage. But whereas in Mitia and Ivan rage is hot and open, Smerdiakov is compelled by his subservient position to keep

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his rage under iron control. Even in his last meeting with Ivan, when their roles of teacher and pupil have been virtually reversed and Smerdiakov feels his superiority sufficiently to let his rage and hate appear in his baleful glare, his grin, his tone - even then, he never allows himself to depart from the polite forms of address and reference (слово-ерс, вы, name and patronymic).

Yet we get glimpses of this rage and hate in his sullen skulking in corners as a child after being punished by Grigorii and, more directly, in his epilepsy, which originated as a protest against such punishment. They transpire in occasional acts of petty malice, as when he deliberately misleads Mitia as to the hour appointed for the meeting in Zosima's cell. They find verbal expression in his three final meetings with Ivan - above all, in the last of them - and perhaps even more explicitly in his colloquy with Mar'ia Kondrat'evna when he proclaims his hatred for Russia.(3) They find adequate expression in action only twice in his career: when he batters his father to death and when he commits suicide. But before considering that climax, let us analyse his family inheritance.

His grandfather Il'ia - his mother's father - had been sickly and cruel. Smerdiakov inherited both those traits. We see the pointless cruelty in his taste for hanging cats and in his teaching Iliusha to trick dogs into swallowing pins. His sickliness is attested, apart from his epilepsy, by his premature aging: his unhealthy, wrinkled, eunuch-like appearance when he returned home from Moscow.

Unlike Alesha and Mitia, who owed more to their respective mothers than to their father (4), and unlike Ivan, whose tragedy stemmed from his being equally split between his paternal and his maternal inheritance and his unwillingness to accept either (5) -Smerdiakov owed almost nothing to his mother. She had been physically tough, morally straight, and intellectually undeveloped; he was physically brittle, morally defective, intellectually well above average.

Smerdiakov differs from his father in his total lack of sladostrastie, of fantasy and of humour; he resembles Fedor Pavlovich in his physical cowardice, his ruthless egotism, his intelligence, and the shame which is the root of his main emotional and behavioural patterns.

His intelligence is of quite a high order both practically and analytically. His planning and execution of the murder are brilliant, as is his manipulation of Ivan throughout and of the public prosecutor; and his analysis of Ivan's character at their last meeting shows more penetration than is ever achieved by Fedor Pavlovich in relation to Ivan or by Ivan in relation to himself. Of course, it is, even so, only half the truth: Smerdiakov's intelligence is lamed, and finally foiled, by his utter lack of imagination and of moral sense: it operates only on what is cognate with his own experience or can serve his own interests, and Ivan's intellectual creativitiy and moral anguish are as far beyond his appreciation as is Gogol's Vechera or any form of poetry or heroism.(6)

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The shame, which is at the root of Fedor Pavlovich ' s шутовство, of Alesha's дикая, исступленная стыдливость и целомудренность, of Mitia's подлость and безобразие and of Ivan's intellectual and moral agonizing, is at the root too not only of Smerdiakov's hate and rage, but of the paradoxical and almost breathtaking arrogance which causes him to despise not only his family, but literature, history, morality, Russia and everything Russian. We don't know the origin of Fedor Pavlovich's shame. His three legitimate sons were ashamed - Alesha unconsciously, Mitia and Ivan very consciously - of what they had inherited from their father. Smerdiakov was ashamed of his mother and of the manner of his birth.

Mitia and Ivan revolt against their paternal inheritance; Smerdiakov - against his mother's. Lizaveta had been morally pure and physically filthy; Smerdiakov descends to the depth of moral vileness while cultivating high standards of physical decency: his squeamishness about food coupled with his personal cleanliness and sartorial dandyism serve not only to set him apart from his fellow-servants but to repudiate his mother and to vie with his brothers. Or rather - he is not content to vie: he sets himself to turn the tables, to reverse the roles. In this, as in so much else, it is Smerdiakov, not Ivan, who is really likest of the four brothers to their father. Of Fedor Pavlovich it is said: Явилась, например, наглая потребность в прежнем шуте - других в шуты рядить.(7) Smerdiakov, though in a quite different sense, makes fools of his father, of Mitia, of Ivan, of the doctors, and of the public prosecutor. Old Karamazov's buffoonery hinges on the conviction that the people who look down on him are все... до единого подлее меня.(8) Similarly Smerdiakov is convinced that his family is cracked (шальные, сумашедшие); and although initially he feels some awe of Ivan's intelligence, he gradually worms his way into a position of dominance there too. And Smerdiakov might well say in earnest what Fedor Pavlovich says perhaps mainly in jest: мщу за мою прошедшую молодость, за все унижение мое!(9)

So Smerdiakov sets himself to turn the tables. He will master his 'crazy' masters and establish himself in independence and affluence. He tries to manoeuvre Mitia into killing their father; when Mitia disappoints him, he does the deed himself and frames Mitia. Ivan he regards as an ally, but one on whom he will always have a hold, whom he can blackmail and milk at leisure. Alesha doesn't count.

At first his triumph seems complete. Fedor Pavlovich is dead; Smerdiakov has the money which is to be the basis of his independence and prosperity; he has succeeded in hoodwinking the public prosecutor; and Ivan, at their first meeting, appears friendly and ready to 'play along.'

But then things begin to go awry. Ivan seems to be turning nasty. No longer ally and accomplice, he appears to be posing as innocent, as investigator, even as accuser. Smerdiakov is bewildered. His nerve begins to fail: he starts to read religious books and talks of the presence of God between him

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and Ivan (while denying that he has found faith in God). His health, too, begins to fail. The temporal sequence is not clear. Both failures - of nerve and of health - evidently originate in the interval between Ivan's second and third visits. But: is he unnerved by illness, independently of Ivan's second visit? Or is it that visit which unnerves him and sets his anxieties to prey upon his health? Either hypothesis is arguable; the latter is neater!...

Either way, Ivan's third visit deals a shattering blow to Smerdiakov's plans. His father is dead; but Ivan will not support him: Ivan is escaping his power and Ivan's superman philosophy has proved a broken reed. And, with Ivan against him, Mitia too may well elude his vengeance.

As we know, his hold on life had always been feeble. When he was being terrorized by Mitia, he thought to take his own life: И до того... всё дальше серчают... что думаю иной час от страху сам жизни себя лишить-с.(10) One might perhaps doubt the sincerity of this appeal for Ivan's protection, but not his earlier confession to Mar'ia Kondrat'evna: И до того... всё дальше серчают... что думаю иной час от страху сам жизни себя лишить-с. (11) All the other Karamazovs love life. Smerdiakov unconsciously hates life (and himself). So - what can he do now? He cannot use the money; for, if Ivan denounces him, that would prove his guilt. Is he, then, to live out whatever of life remains to him, sick, poor, perhaps in prison, letting his hated brothers triumph over him? Or shall he, at the cost of a brief remnant of miserable existence, make a bid to retrieve the seemingly lost game - at least, maximize his chances of dragging Mitia and Ivan down with him? His sickness, his self-hatred and hatred of life, his rage and hate of his family, and his fear of possible punishment - all point him in the same direction.

x    x    x

APPENDIX

Another of the papers on Smerdiakov at our Symposium - a defence of Freud's 'Dostoevsky and Parricide' - gave rise to a discussion which was unfortunately curtailed for lack of time. I would like to subjoin here a few of the points I had no opportunity to make then.

That debate seemed to get bogged down in controversy over Freud's diagnosis of Dostoevsky's epilepsy as 'hysterical'. If 'hysterical' is interpreted to mean: i) absence of discoverable physical defect(s) corresponding to the symptoms and (ii) reversibility: then - although proof is of course impossible - the preponderance of evidence suggests that at some point (variously dated 1847, during the Omsk prison years, in Semipalatinsk) Dostoevsky developed 'genuine' epilepsy.(12) However, if we accept this, for the sake of argument, it leaves open the question whether the physical component of Dostoevsky's epilepsy was genetic or acquired (but v.i.) and, if acquired, when or how. It is, so far as I understand, arguable, that what Dostoevsky grew up with was no more than a genetic predisposition to epilepsy.

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But to grant that Dostoevsky's post-1847 epilepsy was not hysterical is by no means to say (as several of the contributors to our discussion appeared to assume) that it was not psychosomatic. By 'psychosomatic', as distinct from 'hysterical', I understand a physical disorder that can be triggered and/or developed by emotional factors. Thus, anxiety creates stress and stress can lead to ulcers - 'genuine' ulcers (or, of course, to alcoholism, or to more purely psychic disorders). So anxiety/stress does not cause ulcers, but in combination with a certain diathesis (predisposition) it can express itself through ulcers.

Or take tuberculosis. We all know nowadays about the tubercle bacillus and about the environmental factors (malnutrition, etc.) which promote tuberculosis. But tuberculosis does not strike all the children in a given poverty-ridden family: it appears only in the one(s) with a predisposition to consumption. On the other hand, in the nineteenth century, it appeared quite commonly in middle- and upper-class families in the absence of all the usual environmental factors, as a result of emotional triggering: love-lorn young ladies 'went into a decline' which may have been hysterical (reversible) in the early stages, but which in due course became 'genuine' tuberculosis leading to an early death.

Dostoevsky's epilepsy was first professionally diagnosed in 1847 by his friend, Dr. S. D. Ianovskii(13). This makes it probable that the epilepsy was genetic rather than acquired: more than half of all epilepsies make their first appearance in the first ten years of life, and the ratio of genetic to acquired epilepsy from then on steadily increases with age (14).

So it took 25 years for Dostoevsky's genetic predisposition to develop into unmistakable 'grand mal': a long, slow process. As early as his tenth year Dostoevsky suffered from (auditory) hallucinations.(15) On the testimony of Drs Ianovskii and Riesenkampf we know that the epileptic attacks of 1847-49 were a culmination of nervous disorders going back at least to 1843, when Riesenkampf shared living quarters with Dostoevsky. And we know that in later life the frequency and severity of Dostoevsky's epileptic attacks were correlated with the stresses of his creativity (not to mention anxiety over money and deadlines). It is therefore reasonable to assume that stress was a main factor in the gradual development of Dostoevsky's genetic predisposition into full-fledged epilepsy - and there were few periods in Dostoevsky's life in which he was not subject to more or less severe stress.

That is obvious for his years in the Engineering School. But before that, there had been no lack of stress in his childhood and adolescence: above all, in his relations with his father (16). Dostoevsky had been a high-spirited, excitable child; his father was a rigorous, unimaginative disciplinarian. If Dostoevsky was not a born rebel, his father's constant pressure made him into one. He was torn 'between resentment and filial piety'(17); and it is noteworthy that that is the predicament of the child Myshkin and the origin

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of his epilepsy. (18) In fact, Dostoevsky traces the illness of both his leading epileptics, Myshkin and Smerdiakov, back to their childhood and their upbringing by harsh and puritanical martinets (and, incidentally, Dr. Dostoevsky had much more in common with Grigorii than with Fedor Pavlovich Karamazov). Surely, the implication is clear: consciously or unconsciously, Dostoevsky knew or felt that the seeds of his sickness had been sown in his childhood, by his father.

As for the date of Dostoevsky's first epileptic fit - it is inconceivable that the death of his father should not have brought about a significant advance on his road to full-fledged epilepsy: both Frank and Freud (though for completely different reasons) hold that Dostoevsky must have reacted to that death not only with grief, but with deep feelings of guilt. A first attack of 'grand mal', unobserved and undiagnosed, may well have been precipitated by that grief and guilt.

It has been objected that if Dostoevsky had developed 'grand mal' while in the Engineering School, that could hardly have escaped attention and record. However, if eight years later his documented attacks were occurring only at the rate of one a year, why not admit that a first attack in the summer of 1839 might not have been followed by another till the second half of 1841, when he moved out of the School into quarters of his own? Or it may be that what was set in motion by Dr. Dostoevsky's death (and what Liubov' Dostoevskaia was referring to) was a series of 'petit mal' attacks, which need certainly not have been noticed in the School and need not have been recognized by Dostoevsky himself till many years later.

Far be it from me to claim for the above suggestions anything more than compatibility with the known facts and perhaps a measure of plausibility; I put them forward here to be shot at (or shot down) by those who know more than I about Dostoevsky's life and/or about epilepsy.

NOTES

References to The Brothers Karamazov in the notes are, first to Book and chapter of the novel, then to volume and page of the current Soviet edition: F. M. Dostoevskij, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh, Leningrad, 1972- (the text of Brat'iа Karamazovy is in vols. XIV & XV, 1976).

1.  III, 6; XIV, 114 : Ты разве человек,... ты не человек, ты из банной мокроты завелся, вот ты кто...
2.  III, 6; XIV, 115: ...лакейская ты душа, cf. V,2; XIV, 205: А они (sc. Ivan Karamazov) про меня отнеслись, что я вонючий лакей XI, 7; XV, 51 : смердящая шельма... Etc...
3.  V, 2; XIV, 205: .  Я всю Россию ненавижу, Марья Кондратьевна.  And further: ...хорошо, кабы нас тогда покорили эти самые французы: умная нация покорила бы весьма глупую-с... Русский народ надо пороть-с...

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4.  See my paper, 'Ivan Karamazov,' in New Essays on Dostoevsky, Malcolm V. Jones & Garth M. Terry (eds.), Cambridge, pp. 121-126.
5.  Ibid.
6.  Regarding Vechera: III, 6; XIV, 115:   Про неправду все написано... As to poetry: V, 2; XIV, 204:  Стихи вздор-с...  On heroism: the chapter Контроверза, passim (III, 7; XIV, 117-121).
7.  I, 4; XIV, 21.
8.  II, 2; XIV, 41.
9.  II, 8; XIV, 83.
10.  V, 6; XIV, 245.
11.  V, 2; XIV, 204.
12.  See: James L. Rice, Dostoevsky and the Healing Art, Ardis, 1985, passim.
13.  Rice, op. cit., p. 10 et seqq.
14.  W. G. Lennox, Epilepsy and Related Disorders, Boston & Toronto, 1960, p. 225.
15.  See "Мужик Марей" in Дневник писателя за 1876 год: XXII, 46-50.
16.  For a balanced and persuasive presentation of those relations see: Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky: the Seeds of Revolt 1821-1849, Princeton, 1979 (1976), chapters 2 and 3.
17.  Frank's phrase: op. cit., p. 41.
18.  See my paper, 'The Mystery of Prince Myshkin,' in Actualité de Dostoevskij, Istituto Universitario di Bergamo, n.d., pp. 43-44.