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Seymour
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2002
Total Posts : 105
| Posted 4/6/2002 7:27 PM (GMT -6) |   |
Alyosha Karamazov was a Pharisee in training. He was burning with lust yet always supressed it and played the role of an all-together Christian saving his soul by becoming a monk. Yet at one point in the story Alyosha is thrown into despair. His mentor the saint Zosima banished him from the monistary wihtout explination, only that he was to work in the world not in the monistary. And then Zosima died. Now the theological beliefs of the day was that saints bodies don't smell bad, and Zosima's body not only smelled bad, but it smelled bad the quickest of any of the dead bodies that anyone had encountered. This refelcted poorly on him morally, and seeing as Zosima was in the middle of some hot theological debates his opponants were quick to jump on this rotting smell to discredit him as a teacher and as a moral person all together.
Alyosha remained loyal to Zosima, but he was deeply hurt by people bad mouthing Zosima in this way. His world was crubling so--in his dispare--he finally decided to give into his lust and went to visit Grushenka a local woman with the reputlation of being rather loose (yet in actuality it was just a reputation she fed off of, she never actually had sex with any of the characters, but she enchanted and played of of the desires of the flesh.)
Alyosha went there with the intention of losing his soul, yet upon arrival we witness that Grushenka is inspired by the reputation of Alyosha's saintliness that she is on the verge of repenting. Alyosha is snapped out of his brief lapes in character and slips back into the role of a zealous Pharisee in training who is genuinly overjoyed at the honest repentance of this woman. Yet he, however, is still lost.
What we witness here is two charaters crossing eachother. Grushenka is the very Biblical model of the woman at the well, or Mary Magdelin, who from spiritual ruins finds redemption. Yet her redemption seems to have blocked the only avanue that Alyosha had to his own redemption, namly destroying his role as a Pharisee and adopting the role of the sinfull by having sex with her.
The Brothers Karamazov was to be the first volume of a two volume work that Dostoevsky was writing. He died before he could begin writing the second volume (oh evil of all evils!) but he did sketch out the general layout of the book. In it he appears to have intended to document Alyosha's slow decent into the darkness of damnation.
What we wittnessed in that scene above was similar to what we see in Decalogue Six where one person who is innocent becomes bitter, and another who is bitter becomes innocent again, but only at the price of the other. The boy is in love with the girl who no longer believes in love. The girl tries to demytholigize the boy's view of love by equating it with sex, she subduces him and then tells him that 'making love is all there is to love.' The boy despairs, attempts suicide, and in the extremity of his despair awakens something in the girl. She now sees that this boy has looked at her differently then she had ever been looked at before. None of the other men she had ever slept with had really loved her. She is saved, she know sees that love is real. But the boy is bitter. He no longer believes in love. He's been hurt too deeply to ever recover. All of this is like what we see in The Brothers Karamazov.
Grushanka should have waited one night before her repentance, for in doing so she may have been able to prevent Alyosha's eventual demise. However it was Alyosha's purity which inspired her redeption in the first place, had she destroyed that appearance of purity then she too would desair and be lost, although Alyosha would be saved.
All this makes me wonder, who is being saved that I am being damned? Maybe what I need is to go have sex with someone? But in doing so, although I would be redeamed by sin, I would be participating in anothers damnation by my very salvation. Perhaps the ethical thing to do is to be damned for another?
At the begining of Fear and Trembling and indeed throughout the work S.K. talkes about "going beyond faith" and the dangers of this "going beyond." Jesus died in order for us to be saved, but he did not damn himself, he will still in the end reign in heaven. Perhaps I can 'go beyond' Christ in terms of altruism to actually let myself be damned in order to let someone else be saved. Perhaps this is nobel. Or on the flip side perhaps what I really should do in order to heed the ethical imparitives placed on me is to save myself, go find someone to sleep with and enjoy the release of this burden?
What do you say? Should I seek a fling with a Freanchwoman? I really want to have an adventure, and a fling counts as an adventure for me. I don't know of any Freanchwomen, but I have falling in love at a distance with many of them. Does anyone know of some loose Freanchwomen they could hook me up with?
I don't want to be a Pharisee. I just want to please God. I just want to go to Heaven. Only sin can save me now, I'm too far gone.
EMILY: “Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?--every, every minute?”
STAGE MANAGER: “No. The saints and poets, maybe--they do some.”
Edited by - Seymour on 04/07/2002 12:45:56 AM | | Back to Top | | |
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