Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov - The Diigo Meta page

• 29 Sep 09
  

  isabella R

  literature dostoevsky

• 11 Mar 08
  

  bloggingprof 2b

  bakhtin bk cp dostoevsky

  • Mikhail Bakhtin originally introduced the idea of the polyphonic novel in his book The Problems of Dostoevsky's Art. Later, this book was republished and expanded as Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. Bakhtin described the polyphonic novel as one in which many different voices can be heard, and each voice represents a different view of the truth. In his book, Pro and Contra: Notes on Dostoevsky, Viktor Shklovsky summed up Bakhtin's conception of the polyphonic novel by saying:

    In Dostoevsky, the voices have equal right; they are not refuted. There is, in his dialogues, no Socrates who leads the argument to his own conclusion. The dialogue does not end. The argument is explicated in his novels by virtue of the fact that there is no (single) conclusion which he would be able to validate artistically. (13)

    Bakhtin's notion of the polyphonic novel is born both out of The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment, as well as Dostoevsky's other works. Both novels contain so many instances of what Bakhtin would have referred to as polyphonic that it is impossible to say that one is more 'polyphonic' than the other. One of the many examples is the scene in chapter five of book three in Crime and Punishment when Raskolnikov, Porfiry, Razumikhin, and Zamyotov are discussing the ideas in Raskolnikov's article about the "superman." In this scene multiple voices can be heard, some conflicting, in reference to Raskolnikov's article. Bakhtin also comments on the variety of voices that express Ivan Karamazov's idea that " everything is permissible" as long as the soul is not immortal. Throughout his book, Bakhtin stresses that Dostoevsky's ability to incorporate these multiple voices in his writings is what makes his writing truly unique and ingenious. Bakhtin comments specifically on both The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment by saying:

    Both of these ideas (Raskolnikov's and Ivan Karamazov's) reflect other ideas, just as in painting a certain color, because of the reflections of the surrounding colors, loses its abstract purity, but in return begins to live a truly colorful life. If one were to withdraw these ideas from the dialogical sphere of their lives and give them a monologically completed theoretical form, what cachetic and easily-refuted ideological constructions would result! (80)

    Since Bakhtin's study on the polyphonic novel focuses mainly on The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment, to conclude that the notion was born equally from both novels would be logical.

    Bakhtin also comments on the sources of the several voices that appear in Dostoevsky's writing by saying,

    As an artist Dostoevsky did not create his ideas in the same way that philosophers and scholars create theirs- he created living images of the ideas which he found, detected, or sometimes divined in reality itself, i.e. images of already living ideas, ideas already existing as idea-forces." (81)

    For instance, the prototypes of Raskolnikov's ideas came from Max Sterner's "Der Einzige und sein Eigentum," as well as ideas from Napolean III's Histoire de Jules Cesar (Bakhtin, 81) whereas many of the prototypes for the voices in The Brothers Karamazov were influenced by Dostoevsky's personal life. The voice of Father Zosima is likely to have been influenced by the monk that Dostoevsky visited upon the death of his child, Alyosha (" Life With Anna," 28). Also, while in prison, Dostoevsky met a man who had been wrongly imprisoned for parricide. Most likely the prototype for Dmitry came from this man ("Convict and Exile," 22). It is evident that Dostoevsky drew from many different aspects of life for the many voices that appear in his novels.

    The themes that are present in Crime and Punishment reappear in The Brothers Karamazov, despite the fourteen-year gap between when the two novels were published. Often these themes, which include murder, the power of money, and the suffering of children, as well as the use of polyphony, may be connected with Dostoevsky's own life. Both novels are permeated by events similar to those that took place during Dostoevsky's life, as well by his own feelings and social critique of those events. Despite the fact that the two novels contain different stories, there are many similarities and a resonance between them, because they both grow out of a core of powerful questions and themes that Dostoevsky was preoccupied with throughout his career.

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