Analyse spectrale de l'Occident : Fiodor Dostoievski

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As every Saturday, France Culture

invites you to listen to Spectral Analysis of

the West, today Dostoyevsky by

Stanislas

Fumet with the participation of Constantin

Andronikov, Dominique Arban, Olivier

Clément

Paimov, Nina

Gfinkeloris de, and the original version by Ren

Mar

Nile.

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The name of Dostoyevsky was introduced to

France at the end of the last century by

Viscount Eugène Melkur de Voget, author of the

Russian novel.

Dostoyevsky then presented himself to the

French as a brilliant barbarian gifted

with undeniable writing power

but rather undisciplined—a bit like what

Turgev, the most French of

Russian writers, might have thought of a

morose colleague he had ended up with.

But Turgev, a gentleman of letters, was

the most bourgeois of the great

Russian writers. If I speak of the introduction of

Dostoyevsky to France, it is for a very

good reason. Simply put, there was no

inherent affinity between Fedor

Michhailovic and a certain

French spirit that still reigned in the

1880s. Dostoyevsky readily criticized the

French, whom he judged as a

whole to be unsympathetic and ridiculous. He was

rather severe towards our

compatriots, whom he only knew

superficially, since Dostoyevsky had only passed

through France in

1862 on his way to London, and his

heart was archislavophile at that

time. On a second trip the

following year, in 1863, he spent a few

days in Paris, where he met up with

a woman he loved,

Pauline from The

Gambler, at Polinaria souslofa. But the French don't hold a

grudge against him for his contempt, which we are only too happy to

share. For Bribri and

mabiche, the protocols of the

French petit-bourgeois couple have nothing in common

with Molière's Don Juan except that

two and two make four, period.

And closer to this ganarelle than to

Don Juan is the dogma of A penny is a pound.

Dostoevsky wasn't initially better

understood in France than in his own country; he was

a morbid criminologist.

Russians, fond of

banal rhetoric, would tell us that Dostoevsky

wrote badly because the style of his

novels is inimitable—something the

French translation doesn't

always reveal. And a great

translator like Boris de Schlezer would certainly point this out: the

novelist gave each of his

characters a suitable language,

dictated by an individual soul and a

particular culture. Now, if any author

found within himself all the numerous

figures he portrayed, it is surely

the author of *Criminal*, *Chapter

of Demons*, or *The Brothers Karamazov*. But

what curiously linked

Dostoevsky to France, in a reverse sense, was

the influence exerted on him by French

writers who were far from

being of his class. He had read Eugène

Sue, like everyone else in his time, and

he dreamed of describing the mysteries of

Saint Petersburg as the Frenchman

had done. For The Mysteries of Paris,

he would later think of Voltaire's Candide;

he wrote it before composing The

Idiot. He loved Jean-Jacques Rousseau,

as Bilinsky reproached him, with

whom he quarreled after having

adored him in his youth and to whom his

reputation owed much. Dostoevsky

admired Balzac; he had translated Eugénie

Grandet; he held Victor Hugo in very high esteem

and had begun his intellectual development by

devouring the French socialist writers:

Fourier, Saint-Simon, Victor Hugo,

Considering Cabet, Proudon, and his

beloved George Sand.

Finally, if he had imitated Dickens, as so many

other writers did,

it was to transplant him into a

mystical soil, for there is always this

mystical soil, this sea, this damp earth that

Alyosha Karamasov will kiss in the manner of

Russian peasants, this land of Holy

Russia, which is a spiritual and

sensory element at once, a

sacramental symbol if you will, or rather an

analogy of the sacramental, as if for the

Russian people Jesus had trod this soil. The

Gospel, on which sacred

icons were said to have miraculously grown, was

actually the premise that the Russians were awaiting

the return of Christ promised by the

Gospels, convincing themselves that the

Second Coming would take place in their own land, on

Russian soil. It must be said that Christ

has returned to us somewhat in a

Russian form, thanks in part to

Dostoevsky's novel. The compassion and the impact that

this Russian literature had on the

Western world and the conscience of

many writers was a shock, especially

when, in

Crime and Punishment, the book that made

the novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky known in France,

Sonia, the

almost saintly little prostitute, begins reading the

Gospel of the Resurrection of Lazarus.

For us, as much as for

Raskolnikov, the French writer who was

perhaps most moved by the spirit

of compassion emanating from Dostoevsky's work,

and poor Charles

Louis-Philippe, who at the beginning of

our century had an

undeniable influence on some writers of

his generation, the author of Bubu de

Montparnasse and Marie

Charles Blanchard's Donadieux had become a

Dostoyevskian Christian. Claudel himself had been

deeply struck by Dostoyevsky's genius

and had discerned in the

novelist that dramatic sense which, for

Claudel, was inseparable from the feeling

of God's presence—the drama of

man,

he said. André Gide wrote a

Dostoyevsky novel, but then one could say that

he, so perceptive as a literary critic, missed the

authentic Dostoyevsky without seeing him,

so preoccupied was he with seeking

his own image within himself. One could name

two beings with a tendency more contrary to

Gide, despite appearances, who never

steps outside himself and whom

everything repels from himself in order to

project outward this generous flow of creation that is

his work. Nietzsche,

when he made the

fortuitous discovery of a book by Dostoyevsky, which

we are now translating, written in a

basement, immediately grasped the

value of what this Russian brought him. "

He is the only one," he declared, "who taught me

anything in psychology—the

voice of blood." as he was called by

another name, was immediately heard, and my

joy was extreme.

Between their two geniuses, there is a natural affinity.

We know that Freud

recognized in the Russian novelist a

precursor of psychoanalytic science.

He saw in duplicity the double that

Dostoevsky identifies everywhere in himself

and in others, the unity of the

person and its possible dislocations,

as Paev Dokimov would say. But—and this is what

the last

French exegete of Dostoevsky's work,

René Girard, so aptly noted in his little book, *

The Search for the Absolute: Dostoevsky, from the

Double to

Unity*—sociologists and psychologists, the

former wanting, because they

recognize in the

subterranean idolatry a form of that fetishism

which permeates social structures,

superseded by historical evolution,

to account for all the

Romanized data of the Karamazov brothers by the

fact that they belong to a

feudal society in full decay; the

latter, the psychoanalysts, wanting to trace

this same idolatry back to the

conflict The only fault of the Edypians is that they

abruptly close the circle of

their description; they know, as

René Girard always says, only a narrow,

arbitrary sector carved out of reality,

and they always want to determine

causes at the level of

observed phenomena. Well, it wasn't the

French who brought us to this new

understanding of Dostoevsky's works;

Russians, Russian philosophers,

preceded us in this investigation.

Today,

Dostoevsky clearly appears to us

as the privileged detector of the

secret tendencies of the human soul, and

he is no longer just a

psychologist here; he is more than that. He is what

Mkovsky, Berdev, and Shestov saw in turn:

a pneumatologist, a kind of

seer or prophet. That is to say, he has

moved from the depths of consciousness

accessible to the moralist to this subterranean realm

that is no longer strictly conscious.

But instead of bowing down, as

materialistic psychoanalysis will, before the

phenomena of the unconscious, he

examines them in the light of Christ's eyes, and it is thus that he

discovers nuggets of wisdom.

of gold in what might repel us,

what is below the norm and does

not reach a climate of perceptible grace, but

benefits from the depths of humility.

Dostoevsky and the psalmist who writes, "

If I ascend

to heaven, you are there; if I descend to

hell, you are there." God. Romano

Guardini, a German writer and theologian,

considered Dostoevsky in this light.

Jacques Maritin, in a small book

published two years ago on God and the

permission of evil, remarks on the more

tragic importance that

evil has taken on for human conscience in

our time. It is evil, he says, that

is at the origin of many forms

of atheism, at the origin also of the

anxieties of what one might call, in

many cases, the Christian conscience.

Offended by the tragic importance

I am speaking of, some great writers and

great poets have been touched much more

deeply than philosophers and

theologians; in this, they have been a

kind of prophet. The greatest of these

prophets... The greatest of his

offended and tortured armies, in my

opinion, was

Dostoevsky.

This Dostoevsky of Maritin is not the

one of André Gide, but rather the one of the

polyphonic monologue, a title so aptly

applied to Dostoevsky's work

by his most recent

biographer, Dominique Arban. If Dostoevsky were not a

prophet, the legend of the

Grand Inquisitor, or the couch conversation

with the devil—these two towers of

the strange religious edifice that is the

novel The Brothers Karamazov—would never have

penetrated so deeply into the realm

of iniquity and into the appeal to the God of

mercy that emanates from it.

Nicolas Berdev sees that in the

legend, there was infinitely less

talk of Roman Catholicism, despite

the letter, than of Atacama Communism with

its crystal palace, which

Dostoevsky presented and whose demons possessed him,

elaborating a doctrine at once so

just and so infernal, for the Grand

Inquisitor, who understood that the

sinner "Doesn't like freedom" is

horribly right. We read

this poem today because that's how we approach it, with a

different eye. And likewise, when we

hear the buffoonery of this devil,

who is our critical double, who

dominates us and whom we hold back while

trying to

exorcise him, we find Freude opaque. This is

probably what we should

call the gift of

prophecy.

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You are the author, Nina Gorfinkel, of "A

Dostoyevsky Our Contemporary," a study

that appeared in

1962 in which you very

usefully emphasize the political and

social aspects of the novelist

Dostoyevsky's work. You will tell us that Dostoyevsky was a committed writer,

and it is in this light

that you bring him back to life. If the notion

of commitment was born in

French literature of the Resistance, it is as

old in Russia as the

literary opposition to terrorism. This opposition

appears under Catherine I with the

first spokespeople for the

political and social thought of the young society

in

formation. However, it is not This

expression of public opinion would

later take shape at the beginning

of the 19th century, particularly after

1812, when the Napoleonic invasion led

Russians to become

aware of their national identity in the face of

the West. It was then that the

first Russian public movement was born: the

Decembrists, whose uprising on December 14,

1825, marked the entry of Russia onto

the

revolutionary path under the reign of

Catherine I. Cultured men, steeped

in the thought of the

Encyclopedists, were still rare; only

isolated voices rose up against

the enlightened absolutism of the sovereign. First among these was

the voice of Nikolai Novikov,

founder of the Russian press and publisher of

journals and popular works, who

dared to engage in polemics with

the Empress. Beyond

Lazarine's fine liberal declarations, he criticized her

actions, which negated them: the

extension of the privileges of the nobility,

leading to serfdom,

class justice, and inexorable repression. Of all

critical thought, it was

then the voice of Alexander Radichev;

it was so powerful that all those who

fought for the freedom of the people of

Pukinalin would constantly refer to it.

In

1790, Radichev published his famous

essay, "Journey from Petersburg to Moscow," in which, along the way,

he highlighted

the misery and effects of

oppression. The third most

effective voice, because it spoke the language of

genius, was that of Denis van Wiisen, the

first great Russian playwright,

who, in

1778, in a famous comedy, "The

Miner," stigmatized serfdom and the

exorbitant rights of the nobility over enslaved

souls.

Terrified by the explosion of the

French Revolution, he suppressed

his troublesome voices. Wiisen escaped

imperial wrath thanks, so to

speak, to a fatal illness

that soon carried him off.

Thus, at the end of the 18th century,

Russian writers fighting for the

People's Cause knew what to expect. At the

beginning of his reign, Alexander I...

Liberal promises were not

kept. Pushkin, the very young author

of an ode to liberty that echoed the

title and themes of a similar work

by Radichev, was far from the capital;

at least his absence spared the poet

the fate reserved for his

Decembrist friends, the Gibe, or the

Siberian Ban. Nicholas I resumed, even

harsher, the anti-literary policies

of Alexander

I. However, the figure of the

Decembrists—ineffective revolutionaries

but courageous idealists—redeemed

martyrs, quickly entered into legend,

which nourished the adolescence and

youth of Feder.

Dostoevsky, son of a doctor at

the Moscow Poorhouse where he was born in

1821, from a working-class, minor nobility,

always felt closer to the commoner

than to the nobleman.

He was in solidarity with the new

generation of professional writers

who were struggling to make their way

among the well-established noble authors. In

the epilogue of "The Adolescent," he

attacked Tolstoy and this

literature. a

landowner who worked peacefully, far from the

tumult of cities, far from current events,

and who consequently

wrote, he said,

historical novels, because in Dostoevsky's eyes,

not only War and Peace but also

Anakarinin was a historical novel, just as

Turgev only pretended to be interested

in the present; they

actually belonged to a bygone era.

Dostoevsky was not only

a great novelist but also a great

journalist in the tradition of Caux and

Bernanos; he too constantly moved from

novel to journalism. His reflections,

like his subjects, were nourished by current events,

alongside the

constant questioning of the soul. He scrutinized the

problems of their

time. The themes of his articles and

books echo and

intertwine, whether it be the

opposition between Asia, Russia, and the West,

Catholicism and Orthodoxy,

youth, or divine and

human justice. One cannot understand Dostoevsky

except by embracing the entirety of his work

and his life. From

1821 to

1881, 60 years that coincide with the

period of intense ferment in

Russian thought, the eruption of a thought

still searching for its form, immense readings

enriched the young

Dostoevsky. Alongside the Greek

and French classics and Shakespeare, a place

of honor belonged to authors who

immersed him in the social and moral universe,

Victor Hugo and George

Sand in the foreground. But the god of his Parnassus was

Schiller, poet of tyranticides, author of The

Robbers, Don Carlos, Cabal, and

Love. "He is not only a great

universal poet, he is our poet," he

said. The Schillerian theme of idealism,

humanism, high social morality, runs through

all of Dostoevsky's work,

blossoming in The Brothers Karamazov

with the frenzied confession of Ma, who, on

the eve of being condemned for parricide,

leans her ardent heart in the hymn of

joy. It is in the light of this

literary ideal that we must approach the

political vicissitudes of his life.

At 25, Dostoevsky was immersed in

the poetic and philosophical atmosphere

of 1840s Russia, an atmosphere dominated

by Schling and Hegel. A

disciple of the great Russian critic

Bilinsky, Dostoevsky was as Chilean as he was

socialist. He himself said that nowhere

in Europe, not even in France, was

French utopian socialism professed with such enthusiasm, and

nowhere else was there such fervor.

He devoured the works of

Fourier, as well as those of Abbé Saint-Simon,

undoubtedly considering them useful, and also

Proudon and Auguste Conte, though the latter

suited his

sensibilities less. It is always the

novelist, journalist,

fierce and emotional polemicist, and not the theorist,

that we must think of when evoking

Dostoevsky. We understand, then, that his

first work, published in

1845, was a social novel, "Poor Jean,"

written in the form of letters. It is

the story of a miserable,

pure-hearted civil servant who loves a young

girl, but she is sold to a

rich and brutal man. Humble

and humiliated is no match for the

cynicism, violence, and

omnipotence of money. Fifteen days

after "Poor People," another short

story appeared, which Dostoevsky had been working on

concurrently: "The Double," where a

similar theme was explored. The

humiliated petty official became a

floating human wreck,

thus introducing into

modern literature the notion of deception. He

would exploit this theme to the very end, to the abyss,

in "Notes Taken in the Basement," the

basement of the soul. At the same time, he

developed the theme of the poor

in "The Insulted and the Humiliated." In these

great novels, the two aspects of

the analysis will not be

intertwined. What is the background against which

Dostoevsky's personal commitment appears to us? Man and citizen. Around

1847, he joined the clandestine

Petrchevsky Circle. This curious man gathered

young intellectuals at his home every Friday.

He made available to them

the vast library that had

brought together, in a bizarre way, a civil

servant at the Foreign Ministry

in charge of the welfare of foreigners. He

bought his devotion on a number

of works banned in Russia,

particularly the works of

French socialists. He himself was a Fourierist. On

these Fridays, they discuss and exchange

endless remarks on socialism,

political economy, and of course, the most

urgent reforms, beginning with

the abolition of serfdom and the allocation

of land to peasants.

The religious question occupies a large

place in these discussions. Doesn't the doctrine of

Saint-Simon lead to

a new Christianity? Doesn't Kabé

advocate true Christianity

according to

Jesus Christ? The pedagogue Milukov, a friend

of Dostoevsky, reads to the

Perashivian his translation into

liturgical Slavonic of a chapter from Words

of a Believer by the Amnet, a translation that

Dostoevsky considers superior to

the original. He himself reads aloud to those present

the indignant letter that Binsky

wrote from abroad in 1847 to Google, who has

sunk into a strange mysticism. He

preaches resignation and exalts

Monarchy, Orthodoxy, and serfdom—a

reminder to the author of *The

Inspector General* and *

Dead Souls*—this reading will be held against

Dostoyovsky as the principal

charge. It will also be established that he

borrowed from the Circle of subversive books.

As for the revolutionary ideal of the

Perashevians, it remained vague.

Did they truly plot something? If

some of them had even considered it, no

precise plan had been drawn

up. The authorities were

perfectly aware of these

innocuous and unaccustomed meetings. But 1848

enraged Nicholas I, this policeman of Europe who

disliked intellectuals, and even more so

those who read

forbidden works. On

April 23, 1849, 48 members of the

Perashevsky Circle, including himself and Dostoyevsky,

were arrested.

Two terrifying works were discovered in Dostoyevsky's possession:

Cravant's *The Shepherd*, Eugène Su's *Socialist Conversation*,

and Proudon's *The Celebration of Sunday*. These were

the Perashevskys, imprisoned

in the Peter and Paul Fortress.

From these months of detention, we have a few

letters from Dostoyevsky to his brother

Mikhail. He was in good spirits and

insistently asked for books: Shakespeare, the

Bible, a literary magazine. The investigation

was slow; it was only on December 22,

1849, that Dostoyevsky's

fate was decided. For failing to denounce the letter

from the writer Binsky, which constituted an

offense against religion and the

government, he could have been

deprived of his rank and rights and

condemned to be shot, but a vile

charade was carried out. The execution was scheduled for the

last minute. Instantly, the condemned men,

already tied to the post, are announced to be

pardoned, and the true verdict is read to them:

Dostoyovsky is sentenced to four years

of hard labor in the Omsk penal colony in

Siberia, after which he will be drafted into

the army as a private, which, in the

time of Nicholas I, is another penal colony. "

I am neither depressed nor

discouraged,"

he wrote to his brother on that fateful

day of December 22nd. "Life is

everywhere, life is within us and not outside of us.

Around me there will be

human beings, and the real problem is to

be a man among men and to

remain so without letting oneself be discouraged

or degraded. I have understood this. This mind that

created, that lived a

superior artistic life, that had become accustomed

to being aware of the highest

demands of the spirit—this mind, it is

true, is no longer on my shoulders, but I still have

the memory, I still have the

figures I conceived and have not yet

embodied. They will

tear me apart, I know, but I still have

My heart, my flesh, my blood, and they will

continue to love, to suffer, to

grieve, and to remember. That is what

living is. We see you, the

sun, we see the sun. These last

words Dostoevsky wrote in

French; it is perhaps a

reminiscence of The Last Day of a

Condemned Man. Dostoevsky left the barracks on

February 22,

1854, to be drafted into the army. He would not

return to St. Petersburg until

1860. The following year, he began writing

Memoirs from the House of the

Dead, where he recorded the

profoundly human lessons that he received from them.

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Dostoevsky took

psychology a giant leap forward; that much is clear. He was

an unparalleled explorer of what

we understand by

depth psychology, but he was careful not to

study the human soul by

subjecting it solely to

physiological conditions and

social factors—I mean, by cutting it off from

its spiritual roots, without which

the human soul would lose all

transcendence in this The

realization of the duality that guided

Dostoevsky's approach makes me

think of that

famous statement by another explorer of the

depths of the human heart,

Baudelaire: "In every man, at every

hour, there are two simultaneous impulses,

one towards God, the other towards

Satan." And then, for Dostoevsky, there is the

subterranean, the unconscious, the not-yet-

conscious, which, by dissolving in a

certain light, the Christic Light,

enriches, after experience, the

production of meritorious acts, which are

ultimately

free acts. Dominique Arban, you have

worked for many years on

Dostoevsky; you have sought out precious

documents in Russia.

Your book, "Dostoevsky the Guilty,"

was followed by "Dostoevsky by Himself"

and by the translation of

unpublished correspondence. Konstantin

Andronikov, a specialist in

everything concerning Russian thought and

spirituality, will respond.

I have only one

preliminary question to ask you: what

made

Dostoevsky the exceptional psychologist

we admire? I don't know; I

think it's one of the... Many secrets

that we are not equipped to

unravel. I think he possesses

sufficient knowledge and, above all, an

enormous passion to discover what

man is. It is from this

drive that we can perhaps

imagine Dostoevsky as a great creator

of a psychological world. I am thinking, in

saying this, of a letter he wrote to his

brother, a year his senior, who was his

best and perhaps his only friend. A

letter he wrote when he was, I

believe, 22 or 23 years old, in any case before his

first work, *Poor People*, which he

finished when he was 24. This

sentence seems significant to me. Here is what he

says: "Man is a mystery. I want to

spend my life unraveling this mystery because I want to

be a man." Therein lies all of

Dostoevsky. What do you think,

Conikov? Well, if you had asked me

earlier

how to explain that Dostoevsky is a

great psychologist, I would have answered you

with a question: how to

explain that a man is a genius?

Genius. Destoyevsky is a genius who

expresses himself by embodying ideas in his novels.

These are ideas that delve

very deeply into the depths

of psychology, or rather, into

depth psychology. But here

we are trying to

dissect this genius and, consequently, to

understand how these

profound movements of the soul, which constantly

stirred him throughout his life

until his death, began to emerge

from the depths of his being.

I believe we can go back very, very

far. May I interrupt you for a

moment, Constantin Dronic? You said something

important earlier:

he embodies his ideas in his

characters, and that's obvious. But we

must never forget—and this brings us back

to psychology immediately—that he never

spoke of "ideas." He always

spoke of "ideas" and "feelings," with a hyphen

between "idea" and "feelings." These are

feelings, ideas, feelings.

And yet, may I

interrupt you, he also spoke of ideas, and of

ideas as such. I will give just one

example. One of the most famous

is the attitude of the adolescent who takes

refuge in an idea—ah, but that's

in an idea—and very often,

in his novels, his

correspondence, and his journal, this

writer, which is an inexhaustible mine of

ideas and

feelings, speaks of certain images

or aspects of the soul that, in themselves,

represent an idea. But it seems

very important to me that he so often, and

especially in the novels, uses

the term "idea" and "

feeling" because for him, an idea was

never an intellectual abstraction;

it was always deeply founded

on an intuition or a passion. His

ideas were of a passionate nature, and

he proved it to us, and his entire life

proves it. And he wasn't at all

someone who elaborated systems—ah,

no, not at all. He was the opposite of a

philosopher in that sense. Yes, yes, but

for him, ideas are what we can

call "views." It's synonymous, but

in "view" there is something more

intuitive than in "idea," and which corresponds

Furthermore, regarding the idea of ​​feeling, he writes "

idea feeling," and this is all the

more striking because, to

my knowledge, no one before him used "

se tirait" (a phrase that appears to be a fragment of thought). The connection between these two words is that

for him, it was like that, and we come back to

who he was. If you

want to return to the beginning of my

interruption, Andrei Nikov, and

you were just touching on something important:

his childhood. Yes, I

simply meant, in parentheses, that

someone perhaps had spoken, if not of

ideas or feelings, but of living ideas,

and that one had to live to the fullest in an

existential way. And that's where

it comes from. It was Kirkegard, or something like that.

But for his childhood, from the very beginning, in

fact, from the moment he becomes a little

aware of his inner life

as a child, and when we have

information about it, we know that he encounters

ideas or

feelings—in any case, realities of

deep life—that will never cease to

work on him and to which he will never cease

to work all his life. And that is

First, there is the theme of injustice and the

paradox between the idea of ​​a

good and all-powerful God and the idea of

suffering,

particularly the suffering of the

innocent, that is, children. There are

two

extremely visible and

striking themes in his childhood. The first is the theme of the

suffering of the innocent, since, as the son of the

doctor at the Maria Hospital, living in one of its

wings, he was,

despite his father's objections,

constantly in conversation with the

convalescents who dragged their

ailments and their misery onto the benches in the

garden. And what

conversations could this little boy have had

with these people living in the worst

poverty in Moscow? It was a hospital for the

poor; there were only 700 beds

for all the destitute of Moscow.

So there must have been... it wasn't the only

hospital, no, no, it was the only

hospital for the poor in Moscow, and this

hospital, which had been founded by

Elizabeth, was the place where the

greatest distress and hopelessness converged. And

these unfortunate people... who was dying there, a

serious illness, knew that upon leaving

would begin their lives anew, without hope or escape.

Thus,

for young

Dostoevsky, there was the confrontation: the confrontation with

the overwhelmed man, with whom God

seemed to intervene in no way, if not with

justice, then at least with

love. But I wanted to

allude to something even earlier, something that

presented itself to him precisely

in the form of an

embodied idea. It was, of course, the

Book of Job, which was read to him

when he couldn't yet read, and

then, I believe, when he was

eight years old, when he heard the

Book of Job read aloud in church by the

cantor. He wept, he

wept over Job's suffering or over

God's injustice—we will never know.

But at the end of his life, he wrote

to his wife. This Book of Job, which I am

rereading now, is a book that moved me deeply

when I was almost a baby,

and even now, when I

read it, I cannot stop... I can't walk around

my room. It's

likely, of course, that the child

couldn't fully grasp the

depth of this drama that so profoundly affects

a mature man, but that he sensed its

depth, he sensed its

tragic nature. Because if he weeps for this

unfortunate Job, whose

dying death recounts in The Brothers

Karamazov, as if it were

his own personal story,

it's likely that young

Dostoevsky glimpsed something there. He was

a very precocious child intellectually,

and he glimpsed

something that wasn't just

Job's suffering, perhaps

this moral universe in which he lived

among his parents, a universe where it was

perfectly clear where good and

evil lay. Suddenly, things

exploded because God had given

justice to the devil, but only for a time—we mustn't

forget that—and I believe

Dostoevsky remembered

this story of Job well, since the way

to overcome this apparent injustice

within the historical and

temporal conditions... It's about accepting it,

accepting suffering, and besides,

God only gives Job to Satan for a

time, but he forbids Satan from

touching Job's life. Job, accepting this,

becomes a happy man again, that is

to say, in the fullness of his being. And Dostoevsky's characters, much later, also

embody this idea of

accepting suffering as the

satisfaction of a

supreme sacrifice, that is to say, in a

spiritual realm, through the characters

we know well, and you more than

anyone else. On this

subject, I'd like to add another point, another aside:

one of those who

has perhaps written best about

Dostoevsky from this perspective is

someone who wrote a very

remarkable book on the scales of Job, and that

was

Christof. Yes, but it's certain that the

Book of Job represents the whole question

Dostoevsky posed until the end, and we

can say that he never accepted the

arguments of Job's friends and, deep down,

that he only truly finds God in spite of

himself, when God speaks to

his soul in silence and in secret. It is

certain that Dostoevsky's ending, which is

a

religious ending, is something

comparable to the ending of the Book of Job,

where everything changes when God begins

to answer. But I believe that if

Dostoevsky did not accept the answers

of Job's friends, it was for a very

good reason, a very

Dostoevskian reason: Job's friends did not

suffer as Job did; they were

not experiencing, not being tested, not grappling with the

apparent justice or injustice of God,

whereas Job, like Dostoevsky,

lived it. If we have made this

considerable leap from

Dostoevsky's childhood to the end of his work and to

his conclusion in The Brothers

Karamazov, then perhaps

we should dwell on this for a little while longer

to show what is very

important: the problem of God, too, was not a

simple adventure for Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky constantly says, "

God who has tortured me all my life."

This phrase recurs both in his

characters and in his private work,

his letters, his diary. A writer, and

the problems this raises are

extremely persistent because,

for example, when he gets out of prison, he writes to

Madame von Visine, who, being an

extremely

important woman, is in 1854. It is in 1854 that

one of the first letters written from prison is from

Madame von Visine, one of those famous

Decembrist wives who went into exile

in Siberia

following their husbands. And this letter,

by its tone, by the solemnity of

the writing, by the importance of the

person to whom he addresses himself—and we

will see why later—is

crucial. I simply want to

extract a fragment of it. I will tell you of myself

that I am a child of the century, the

child of unbelief and doubt. I am so to

this day, and I chisel down to the very tip of

the stone. This atrocious torture

cost me, and still costs me,

this thirst for belief, which is all the

stronger in my soul the

more

opposing arguments there are within me. And yet, God

sometimes sends me moments when I am completely

peaceful. In those moments, I love and

feel loved by others, and it is in

those moments that I formed within myself a

creed where everything is clear and sacred to

me. This creed is very simple:

if someone were to prove to me that Christ

is outside the truth, and that it were

true that the truth lay outside

of Christ, I would rather remain

with Christ than with the truth. This phrase is

repeated verbatim 20 years later in

Demons. That is to say, during those

20 years between his release from the ban and the

publication of Demons, Dostoevsky

remained with this thought,

with this crucial difference. Yes,

but with this difference—I believe

Motchulski, who wrote an admirable book

on Dostoevsky, notes it with great

precision. The thing is, at that time, Christ

for Dostoevsky was not at all the

Christ of Christian theologians; he was still only

the luminous personality of the

most perfect, the best, the

most

compassionate man. And it was only later that he would

understand that this was also God. In

other words, Christ at that time

for Dostoevsky was not yet

man; he was only the perfect man. And I

remember a sentence from a

writer's diary where Dostoevsky, quite surprisingly,

especially after what you have just read, says

of himself, "Domini carban, and yet he completes himself: 'I am a happy man,'

but he doesn't seem content.' So I

wonder at what moment he was

most sincere, because he was never a

happy man, nor a content man,

except for rare moments of RAR (revolutionary art),

moments that were of

Illegitimate or authorial vanity, which

he later flagellated himself for, didn't he?

But which were very real

at the time of his first

dazzling successes." Dizzying at the time of the

poor people, yes, it wasn't repeated afterward,

and it never has been

repeated since.

If we, if we have lingered a little

on this

major theme of Dostoevsky's thought, we have only touched upon it,

because it would take hours

to elaborate on its various aspects.

But since we are talking about

Dostoevsky's psychology and

consequently his heroes, because in one way

or another it is all one, and to the

extent that he was, or carried within

him, contradictions and conflicts

that fueled his work, as a

conflicted character, to that extent his work

is, uh, the fulfillment and

the assumption of his life, of his

personal psychology. And on this subject, I wanted to

return a little to the essential theme, to the

primary data of this

double life that he carries within him and which is

refracted through all the paths of his

consciousness or his unconscious. He is

double in every matter; he is double,

moreover, we must not forget that

epilepsy is, after all, a tension

of opposing forces. which resolves itself in

crisis, and these crises certainly

freed Dostoevsky from

tragic conflict, and in him this conflict is reflected

throughout his work. For example, if we

take the theme of the idiot, it is an

aspect of the theme of crime in

Dostoevsky's work and of the theme of God in

Dostoevsky's work. Well, if we

look at the early adventures of

Dostoevsky's drafts, the one who will be

the idiot is at the same time the criminal; this is the one who will become

Rogozhin, the man with the

knife, who will be the assassin. Now, the idiot,

Muskin, and

Rogozhin, his brother, it seems that this

pair, initially conceived by the writer as

heroes who murder and who are nevertheless

men of

faith, he was never able to free himself from. He

created another character to play

the assassin, and these two characters, the

perfect man, Muskin, and the assassin,

Rogozhin, are always identified, for

example, by the love they bear for the

same woman, and who It is not always a

rivalry,

since at various points in the work

each relinquishes to the other the task of ensuring

the happiness of the other, and

she herself does not know which of the two

she truly loves. Moreover, this

brotherhood is, in a way, sealed—

I would even say sacralized—by the famous moment

when Muskin and Rogojun exchange their

crucifixes as one exchanges more than just

blood. These two individuals, moreover, were born from

an idea that came to

Dostoyevsky when he was reading the

transcripts of a famous trial in

Russia where a man murdered

another whom he barely knew and who

was very sympathetic to him. She

slit his throat with a knife while

uttering the words, "Lord, my God,

forgive me in the name of Christ." Dostoyevsky had been

deeply struck by this man

committing his crime while

calling upon God. It was, if you will,

a reflection of Dostoyevsky's own psychology,

who was always tempted

by the creative, and we cannot

doubt this, since all these heroes, in one

way or another... on the other hand, they commit

crimes, which are not always

murders, but can include

child rape, which are always

extreme crimes. Including the crime against

himself that Stavrogin commits, the

supreme sin, the hopeless sin that is

suicide. Dostoevsky was constantly a

man of this contrast, which he ceaselessly

sought to unite and re-establish as a

living unity within himself. This is one

aspect of these dual paths;

moreover, there are others.

Each time, he embodies these dual paths

in characters, and

sometimes he even

explicitly identifies them with real people.

I'm thinking of the one he called his

Mephistopheles, whom he met

in 1948, Spnov, the first

communist, who came to Russia from

Switzerland with the mission of creating a

real social struggle, no longer the empty talk

that Dostoevsky's friends were content with.

So, curiously, Dostoevsky was

no longer satisfied at that point.

There is a transposition that seems quite

significant to me; I find it

in an episode of

Stavrogin's confession. Stavrogin himself has

Tikhon read it when he... (See in this

chapter which...) The episode of "The Coronation of

Demons," which was never published

because the authorities were opposed, features

a

twelve-year-old girl who suffered

abuse at

Stavrogin's hands. She comes to the threshold of the

room where he is, shows him the

spot—you remember—and says, "I killed

God. You killed God in me, that's it."

Stavrogin says, "She believed

she had killed God. If I say that, it's because this

idea of

someone killing God in someone

else is a little bit of the experience

I think Dostoevsky had with

Bellinsky. Because at the time,

Dostoevsky was infatuated with Charles,

George Sand, Balzac, Victor

Hugo—Christian writers—he

was completely taken up by the

utopian ideas of

Fourier, the new Christianity of

Saint-Simon, the true Christianity

following Jesus Christ, of Cabé—people

like that—and who

consequently wanted to act in accordance with this

utopianism to save his Contemporaries,

it's his neighbor, that is to say, acting

socially. He met Belinsky, who

was a

deliberate and who, through a process whose

rigor Dostoevsky recognized,

essentially killed God. Dostoevsky at the time,

and Dostoevsky acknowledged this; he wrote about it

to his brother, and then he

explained it at length, I believe, in a

writer's diary. He said that it took

the terrible ordeal of the penal

colony and Siberia for him to complete

his turning point, to reconsider all his

ideas and believe in Christ, despite

Belinsky's arguments, which for him

remained, to a certain extent, entirely valid.

Because he recognized that

Belinsky, in his perspective, was

perhaps more right than

rationalism, and that's why, moreover, in

all his subsequent works,

Dostoevsky essentially set out in a

frenzied and almost desperate way

to combat rationalism, because he

had experienced within himself that

rationalism could kill what was there.

Ultimately, what is most precious and

most fruitful for man is the

feeling of God. Yes, there are

wonderful things in The Brothers Karamazov

when Dmitri says, "Get out of the way,

Lord my God, let His holiness pass."

Chemistry, a whole

world, because Dostoevsky's ironic vein,

I believe, deserves another

roundtable discussion. In any case, I think we

could say that if we pose the

problem of Dostoevsky and

psychology, and if we want to talk about

Dostoevsky in terms of psychology, we immediately

realize that it's

impossible to speak within the limits

of a certain discipline, a certain

academic discipline, which is

psychology, and that we must speak

immediately to the very core of man.

That is to say, we never finish, we must

live it. But regarding this

accepted irrationalism of Dostoevsky,

I would almost say voluntary, we must

recall his work, which seems to me the

keystone of his thought, which is written in

the basement, and, uh, take up a few

phrases that These points could even serve as a

conclusion to this brief sketch.

Recall what Dostoevsky thinks of

reason, and why then do you assert

with such assurance, he says, with such

solemnity, that only the normal and the

positive—in a word, well-being—are

profitable to man? Might reason not be

mistaken in matters of profit? Perhaps

man does not

only love his well-being; perhaps

he loves suffering just as much;

perhaps he benefits as much from

suffering as from well-being. Man loves

suffering, and sometimes passionately;

that is a fact. In truth, it is not so much

suffering that I value, nor

well-being; I value my whim and having it

guaranteed to me when I need it.

Consciousness, for example, is infinitely

vaster than your two x 2. After 2 x 2, of course, there is nothing left

not

only to do but even to maintain.

All that one could do then is to

shut off the five senses and sink

into contemplation. But with

conscience, even though we arrive at the same

result, that is to say, there's nothing to be

done either, at least we can

sometimes flagellate ourselves, and that, even so,

is certainly retrograde,

but still, it's better than

nothing. Therein lies the great Dostoevsky, the

Dostoevsky who mocks his opponents

because this is a mockery

of Ternichevsky, who had

written a work saying that when

man manages to give well-being to

all humans, he will be completely

happy. And Dostoevsky rebels against this

and claims that he prefers suffering

and that there's no point in saying badly what he has just

said so well. But I think it might be

a little difficult

to

conclude by taking Dostoevsky

literally and taking his whim for mere

fantasy. Ah, but it's that he wants

the freedom of the ES (Economic Society), he wants

freedom and

suffering, yes, because it is

suffering that allows us to know

man better. That was his

[Music]

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[Music]

płaczeodok

CHU

pokłon

chrystus

[Music]

m I turn to you, Boris de

Schleszer, whose beautiful translations of Dostoevsky's novels and short stories have been read by all those

interested in Russian literature.

Your prefaces to editions

of Leo Tolstoy, Nikolai Gogol, and Leon

Chestof, because they proceed from the same

aesthetic views, join the studies of the

musicologist, which were crowned by

your learned and so judicious

introduction to Johann Sebastian

Bach. You attach great importance

to the role of dialogue and monologue in

the works of... you were telling me...

Tolstoy

and Dostoevsky have often been contrasted as dramatic poet and

epic poet. This opposition is accurate,

but I believe we should look

more closely at what is meant when we speak

of Dostoevsky as a

dramatic poet. Generally,

his novels are considered dramas because we

emphasize the role that plays... The action

itself in these novels focuses on

sudden plot twists,

numerous dramatic events, and dramatic turns.

However, I believe

that Dostoevsky's novels can be

described as dramatic in a different sense. I

mean that the purely

narrative aspect of Dostoevsky's work is much

less important than the speeches,

dialogues, and monologues. If we

compare Dostoevsky to Dostoevsky, in

Dostoevsky's work, narration plays

only a secondary role. It serves to

introduce the characters, to establish their relationships,

and to allow them to speak, because it is

their words, their discourse, that

often characterize them. A very

important character, for example, Ivan Karamazov,

whose brothers are not

described from the outside at all, is one we

are given. What is given to us is his speech, his way of

expressing himself. And what is striking about

Dostoevsky is that he is able to

make the most diverse characters speak,

from the valet Smerdyakov

to the elder Zosima. Each has their own

way of speaking, each expresses themselves

in their own particular language. I believe

this is very important because it

gives a particular meaning to

artistic creation. In Destayevski's work,

people either speak to others

or express themselves alone, like

the character in the

underground box or the husband of the

gentle woman who, standing before the body

of his wife who has just committed suicide,

wonders what happened and why

she took her own life. These are

soliloquies, but generally it's

dialogue. What I want to

emphasize is that the way

the characters express themselves is

directly linked to what they say.

For example, in *The Demons*,

Kirilov's atheism, his way of conceiving of man

and God, which he wants to deny,

is directly related. He

couldn't express it any other way than

in Kirilov's halting,

uncertain, stammering language. Similarly, the character

of Chatf, when he becomes impassioned to express

his belief, cannot express himself any

other way because what he says is

directly related. With the way he

speaks, I'll give you another

striking example:

that of the character in the

underground box. Here, Dostoevsky reached a

power of expression that he never

surpassed, and the paradoxes, the

blasphemies that

the character almost certainly utters, are

exactly what a

man who speaks in that very

way might say. I mean, then, that

Dostoevsky's language in the narrative sections

and in the dialogue sections are

two different languages. In the

narrative sections, he writes like a good

secondary writer; he's not very

strong in description. Besides, his

descriptions, compared to those of

Talstoy, are rare and poor. But as soon as he

makes characters speak, his

language changes completely. Then he

acquires a force, a power, a

variety that I believe no

Russian writer has ever achieved, and I don't know

if such a

range of linguistic variation exists in world literature. There's another

interesting trait I think worth noting:

Dostoevsky never expressed in his

own name what he did. To tell these

characters, one might think he was

afraid of censorship, that he didn't

dare say to himself what

Ivan Karamazov or Kiril say in Demons,

but I don't believe it was a fear

of censorship or a

fear of his own conscience. I

believe it was in creating these

characters that he discovered the

strange,

audacious ideas found, for example,

in The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor.

The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor is

the work of Ivan Karamazov,

indirectly through Dastayevsky.

Kirilov's atheism is not

the atheism of Dostoevsky; it is

the atheism of

Dostoevsky's creation. That is to say,

Dostoevsky's characters

wrested from Dostoevsky things he was

completely unaware of and

revealed to him, so to speak, the very depths of

his being. It is probably through the character of the

underground box that

Dastayevsky He managed to know himself, which

is striking indeed. All of

Dostoevsky's great novels,

those which, as Nina Grfinkel said, make

Dostoevsky our contemporary,

were written after The

Underground Box, as if The

Underground Box opened a door for

Dostoevsky, as if in The Underground Box

he had managed to manifest in

real language something he was

unaware of within himself. There is another

trait that is particular to

Dostoevsky: in the

narrative, for example, in the

presentation of The Brothers Karamazov or

Demons, even in this case, he

disguises himself. It is not Dostoevsky who

tells the story of The Brothers Karamazov;

it is a fictional character, supposedly

an inhabitant of the town where

the tragedy of The Brothers

Karamazov took place. The same is true of Demons;

it is a fictional character, a supposed

witness, who tells the story.

That is to say, Dostoevsky remains

outside his novels, whereas Tstoy, who

is considered an epic poet, is

much closer to his novels, since what he

recounts is Tstoy ​​himself recounting the

stories of Natasa, Pierre Bezour,

Ann Karine, and so on. Whereas what

Dostoevsky recounts is

false; he appears under the guise

of a city dweller who supposedly

witnessed all the

successive catastrophes. But this is obviously a

completely

fictional character, since he shouldn't

know the dialogues taking place

between the different characters—dialogues

he doesn't witness, but which he

reports as if he had.

This supposed presence of a

witness, of a character in whom

Dostoevsky is embodied, seems extremely

significant to me. Everything he writes from

the Underground onward are

works where the characters

confront each other, discuss, talk, and

even when they act, we

know their actions not through

the author but through this

fictional witness. This is why, it seems to me, it has

always been very difficult to bring Dostoevsky's

works to the stage. Their

structure is dramatic because

everything is in the

dialogue and monologues;

nothing should be cut from the monologues

and dialogues. But in that case, it would be necessary to ensure

that the

characters' situations were

understandable. The only time a

Dastayevski novel was adapted for the stage

was at the Moscow Art Theatre. Over

two evenings, the entire novel was performed,

but the narrative sections that

more or less explained the

characters' situations were spoken by an actor

hidden in a corner, and everything else

was conveyed solely through the

characters' dialogues. I believe this was

the only way to present a

Dastayevski novel in the theater; there is no

other way. All other

attempts have been more or less unsuccessful, even

the best one: Camus's attempt with *

The Demons* (which novel is it? *

Brother

Keramaz*?). Then the Moscow Art Theatre

wanted to do the same thing with *The

Demons*, but it didn't work because

they had to cut some of

the dialogues, which cannot be

cut. Devsky's dialogues are so powerful

because if you cut a couple of lines, the

whole novel collapses. The entire novel

lies in the succession and opposition

of the characters, conveyed through their own words

and not explained by

the author.

[Music]

Pauldokimov, you are the author of a

major work on Dostoyevsky in which we found

a path connecting this

unclassifiable novelist to a whole tradition of

patristic spirituality, the memory of which the

Eastern Churches have jealously guarded.

Recently, you complemented this

work with a new book, *Gogol and

Dostoyevsky*, in which you develop certain

theological views, perhaps even more

illuminating, particularly on

Eros. Would you like to tell us

what, in your opinion,

Dostoyevsky's relationship with love was, his

personal attitude towards women? Everything

Devsky wrote about women and

love is not solely the product of

his imagination but very

faithfully reflects the novelist's personal experience.

His first wife, Marie

Constant, was the granddaughter of a French émigré.

Dostoevsky's life for 7 years,

Dostoevsky's diary lifts the veil on the

dissonant note of their pathetic love:

this love is deprived of their

balanced and reciprocal OS, and as Dostoevsky notes

and emphasizes,

pity alone V on the abyss

of

suffering, profoundly discordant on

the level of the senses, they could only unite

on the angelic plane where one does not

covet.

Catherine Marmeladov in the novel

Crime and Punishment, Marie in all her

cruel, heartbreaking, and so human

truth,

supposedly his second, strongly

carnal passion, almost burned Dostoevsky.

Pauline Sslov, infernal woman, and Caine,

Russian, appear in the novel The New Player

simply under the name

Pauline. Finally comes synthesis and

balance: his second wife, Anna,

brings him fulfillment; she is both

his mother and his wife. The year of his

own death, Dostoevsky writes to his wife: "

My conjugal enthusiasm grows more and more;

I am more in love than

ever." Accepting too readily the idea

that Dostoevsky doesn't present a

positive image of love, and especially that

woman is only a part of

man's destiny, is that the essence of love

is irrational, profoundly

mythological, mysterious. The tension

between the two poles of Eros is

crucial; it's the tension between the pity

for an innocent being and the

erotic obsession with the flesh. As

Dostoevsky says, it's the angel standing

before God, and below, the insect,

tainted by lust.

Dostoevsky descends

to the metaphysical root of

voluptuousness. There before us is Kamazov, the

father. He lives frenetically in the ecstasy

of his own

sensuality. His monstrous passion far

surpasses mere physiology; it is fulfilled

in the perversion of

the mind. When he concludes the tale of his

debauchery with the sacrilege committed on a

miraculous icon of the Virgin, a symbol

of virginal integrity, he gives the word...

The enigmatic nature of this spiritual adulteration

makes the man a phantom living in a

spectral world, like Sidr Gilov in *Crime

and Punishment*. The rustling of the robe, the

infernal writhing of the body, make him obsessed,

mad, enormous,

and peaceful.

Sidr Gilov, however, has no real

substance; he is all veiled in

deadly and

evanescent vapor. He comes from Roskolnikov's dream

and departs from this world

like the final act of the same

feverish dream. This is also, but more

profoundly, the enigmatic case of

Stav Rogin.

His metaphysical incapacity for

affirmation and choice,

the absolute inability to say yes, this

impotence of his mind, reverberates

in his destiny. "Only negation came from me,"

he confesses. His strength is limitless, but

tragically also without object, without point

of application. His life is nothing but a

perpetual nightmare. It is the enraged attitude of

hell before God, or the

demonic impotence before the human being. The

pure young girl wants to save him with her love,

but the nights spent with Stavrogin

would bring out all the gaping

emptiness in his heart. Limitless eroticism

deprives and empties passion of its

object, and this is the shared boredom.

Already here below, a hellish

phenomenology of love, he

discovers complementary elements:

pity and voluptuousness. And this encompasses all the

immense dialectics of mind and

body. The rupture of their

balance makes union impossible. This is

precisely the subject of the novel. The

idiocy, the angelic nature of Prince Mkin,

disembodies him, alters something of his

person. His compassion undoubtedly consoles,

but above all, it bores Nastasia, who

flees Prince Mkin, tormented between the

two women, unable to choose and

unite with one of them to form a

single

destiny. On the other hand, voluptuousness alone burns

and exterminates. Such is Verilov's love

in the adolescent, and especially

Rogogin's carnal love, the dialectical opposite

of

Michkin's. In these notebooks, Dostayevski notes

that the Fall shattered the

man-woman monad into masculine and feminine. These

opposites can clash in an

insoluble, hopeless opposition or

appear complementary, bringing

together opposites to give birth to the

beauty of spirits and, in the

fullness of human existence,

the secret blossoming of love in

the shadow of its own mystery. Botitelli

depicts this under a rain of tongues of

fire in a striking image of the

Pentecost of love. This is also the

sublime realm of the Song of Songs,

showing that true love is

divine in nature. These are the flames of the

Eternal's consuming fire, and that is why

the central chapter of The Brothers Karamazov

is entitled "The Miracles of

Cana." The Gospel places the love of the betrothed

in Christ, and the miracles of Cana—the

changing of water into new wine—and the

great symbol of the change from

brutal passion to charismatic love

in the nuptial communion of Noah, beautiful

creature—this is already the subject of

reflection for

Dstayevsky on the day of his

first wife's death. It is in the shadow of

offering and oblation that

Imurit the Ros is born, transfigured and

made

charismatic. Love changes the very

substance of things, says

Saint John Chrysostom, and it is in

faith alone that we can walk without

being seized by vertigo in the spaces of

freedom. And this is precisely

the experience of Mitya and Alochia

Karamazov. The mother of Jesus tells him, "They have

no wine, yet the people are

thirsty. Their thirst, however, is not

ordinary; it

comes from the depths of the spirit." It is

a thirst commensurate with that which is

immeasurable, a thirst for love for which the EMP

weeps, so great is that at last the joy of God

finds its

rest there. What a beautiful miracle! The cat hears

the URE of his vision of the Kingdom of God

illuminated by the miracle of Cana. We must

dedicate ourselves to the joy that loves

men, who also love their joy. Here is

our Sun, the charist; he changes the water in

vain, new, so that the joy of the

guests may not fail.

We are his

testament, leaning over him like

his guardian angel or his mother. Woman is

indeed part of

man's destiny, but insofar as she

saves him from himself, deciphers him, fulfills him,

and completes him, because

she represents his salvation, just as the

Virgin Theodocus represents

the Church.

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

Dostoevsky was not without having been

marked by the spirit of the stars, those monks

who are spiritual advisors and

even directors of souls or

consciences, very characteristic. In the

Russian tradition, Staret Zosim was the teacher

of Alyosha Dostoevsky. While he

transfigured him, he did not entirely

invent him. Olivier Clément, you teach at

the Saint-Serge Theological School.

Would you like to tell us about this

spiritual world to which Father

Zosim Dostoevsky belonged? He was certainly

influenced by the spirit of the Staret Zosim, those

monks who are

spiritual advisors and even

spiritual directors, very

characteristic of the Russian tradition.

Father Zosim was the teacher of Alyosha

Dostoevsky. He transfigured him, but he did not

entirely

invent him. Olivier Clément, you are a lecturer

at the

Saint-Serge Orthodox Theological Institute. Would you like to

tell us about this spiritual world to which

Father

Zosim Dostoevsky belonged? He was certainly not a

Doctor of the Church, but it is certain that he was

influenced by what was

most vibrant in the

Orthodox spirituality of his time, a spirituality that was

familiar to him. At that moment, an

undeniable resurgence occurred. Indeed, at the

turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, the

Orthodox Church experienced one of its death-

resurrections, a strange pattern that punctuates its

history. The 18th century is one of the

darkest periods in the history

of Orthodoxy, not to mention the

Ottoman domination in

Southeast Europe. In Russia, the Patriarchate was

abolished, replaced by a synod, over which, at

least administratively, a high-ranking official reigned. The abyss

between the educated elite and

the Church seemed to have become irreconcilable and insurmountable. The resurrection came from a

renewal in prayer, from a

readaptation of the great

spiritual tradition of Orthodoxy: the tradition of the

silent, the eicasts, a tradition

which, through the invocation of the name of

Jesus, aims to unify humanity in

the experience of light, to unite

intellect and heart, to

involve the whole being—

body and soul—and the universe itself in the

light of Christ. A

monk from Mount Athos represented this in 1782. Nicodemus Laagorite

published in Venice a large collection

of mystical theology entitled, according to

tradition, the Philokalia, meaning "love

of beauty" in the sense that beauty

expresses the restored integrity of the whole

being, in the sense that Dostoevsky would say, "

beauty will save the world." This Philokalia

was translated into Slavonic and directed toward

its destiny and its Russian service in

Moldavia under the direction of the man

who was the secret animator, the

spiritual pole of all Orthodox renewal,

himself living in the second half

of the 18th century. The

Philokalia Laavon appeared in St. Petersburg

in

1793, and its publication was followed by

the arrival in Russia of

Paero's disciples, who were the initiators of

perpetual prayer, of the prayer of the heart.

They found, moreover, the ground prepared

by a local monastic renewal, the

most extraordinary witness of which is

Saint Seraphim of

the Great, the transfigured figure of

modern Orthodoxy. Indeed, the most

remarkable characteristic of this religious renewal

is the flowering of the Starcutter. What

could be defined as a

free and creative spiritual fatherhood, more

precisely the renewal, the

multiplication, the open manifestation

of this charismatic fatherhood, the

staret in Russian, in Greek gueros, the word

simply means elder. The staret

is a monk, priest or not, it doesn't matter, who,

after a

lifetime of obedience, humble work, and

prayer, has received the gift of

spontaneous prayer, of perpetual prayer, which is

identified with the very beating of his

heart, even when he sleeps, and thus

becomes, in the Orthodox sense, an

apostolic man, a man who has received the gift

of prophecy, the gift of healing, and

above all, this discernment of spirits that

allows him to speak the word that

disturbs or heals, to reveal the

secret sin, the unconscious sin that

poisons the soul, to discern beneath the

ashes the virgin point where

the light can still spring forth. The staret receives

the inner command to renounce his

solitude, and crowds come to him.

The staret thus represents the

totally free prophetic spiritual event

destined to purify the

ecclesiastical institution; he awakens Hearts, filled with

humility and love, are freed

not only from indifference or

revolt but also from the formalism,

ritualism, and all forms of

ecclesiastical hypocrisy. The Staret

Maer, Staret Ambrose, a contemporary of

Dostoevsky,

could not participate in the long

monastic services for health reasons. And when Dostoevsky

shows us Zosima's body decaying,

contrary to general expectation, I would

almost say that this is

the supreme affirmation of the

Staret's total freedom from all

forms of traditional veneration.

Stars, it is easy to understand, were

often persecuted by the

hierarchy and the large

monastic communities. Some led

a kind of unregulated, popular monasticism,

particularly that of wanderers and

pilgrims, such as the pilgrim

Maer depicted by Dostoevsky in *

The Adolescent*. But the greatest

refused a marginal status that

could separate them from the

sacramental reality of the Church, in favor of a

rootless spiritualism, and they

settled near the great

Monastic communities in a kind

of hermitage where the

freely chosen spiritual master lived, along with a few

disciples. These hermitages,

traditionally called sketes, were established,

and this was particularly true of the

Optina Monastery, whose skete is

faithfully described in The Brothers

Karamazov. Optina was the

preferred place for this

spiritual fatherhood; it became a

local tradition, a kind of school that

trained four generations of sketes. Each

skete trained his successor by

associating with him for many years.

Three of them in particular were

Leonid, who lived from 1768 to 1841, Maer

from 1788 to 1860, and Ambrose from 1812 to

1891. Leonid, who introduced the

skete into the line of Pasier Veliskovski and created the skete,

was a man of the people, a rough man

without much formal education, whose

influence was exerted primarily on the

common folk. everything

changed with the elder maer. With him,

Optina's starchesvo entered a

new destiny. It opened itself to the problems

of culture, to the problems of

social and political life in Russia, and

for the first time since Peter

the Great, it bridged the chasm that had

opened up between the church and the

educated circles of Russia. Macker was a

gentle and thoughtful man with a

highly developed aesthetic sense. He was inclined towards studies, towards

the

intellectual expression of

contemplative experience, and he thus played an

essential role in placing

this intellectuality, this

rationality that the influence of

the West was increasingly bringing into

Russia and which

often took on the character of a

profoundly anti-religious scientism, at the service of spirituality. His prayer, which

became perpetual, allowed him to hardly

sleep each afternoon. He

received crowds of visitors. He

devoted his

evenings and mornings to intellectual work and

reserved the

hours of the night, from 2 a.m.

until 6 a.m., for solitary prayer. He was a man

He was extremely humble and possessed a keen sense

of the world's beauty. He practiced what

the Greek Fathers called the

spiritual contemplation of nature,

the contemplation of the flame of

worldly things, like a burning bush.

For example, he would reserve an hour of

solitude for himself in the garden after lunch, a

garden he had designed, an

almost paradisiacal garden, admiring

each flower at length. In winter, he felt

great compassion for animals, taking care to

feed them,

protecting the weakest from the strongest. One

thinks here of Marcel, the brother

of Elder Zosima, who asked forgiveness

of the birds. Elder Zosima did

very important work editing

the great

patristic texts relating to the

spiritual life in Russian translation, and he did this work

with the help of one of the greatest

Russian philosophers of the time, the

Slavophile philosopher Jan Kirevsky.

Jan Kirevsky was passionate about the

ideas of German Romanticism and Idealism;

he was passionate about Schling and

Bader, and one day his wife, who

was a spiritual daughter, The

elder told him, "But it seems to me I've heard about

these things a little

differently, but still the

same concerns. And by whom? Well,

by the elder." And Jean Kirevski went to

see the elder, and

indeed, in this thought, in this

tradition, in this sense of

integral knowledge—that of the

intelligent heart, in this sense of the total

presence of divine energies—he

discovered, in essence, what he had been searching for

through the restless religiosity of

German Romanticism. And he never ceased to

collaborate with the elder. It was

also the time when Gogol went to

Optino, and he wrote to the monk, "At every

moment, my thoughts must transcend

the pettiness of this world;

I must always find myself in Optino,

climbing the path of my pilgrimage." The elder

judged; he judged the great

problems of the day, but he

judged them on a spiritual plane, in a

prophetic, apocalyptic perspective. He did

n't give a recipe; he changed

people; he gave them

inspiration, a certain fire that

then allowed them to serve.

Effectively in the city, the elder

Ambrose, who collaborated with the elder

Maer and continued his work of

translation, brought

this tradition of spiritual fatherhood to its zenith

in Optino. His

profound intelligence, refined by

perpetual prayer, had transformed into

clairvoyance; he read souls as if they were

books. A visitor could remain

silent, conceal themselves in the crowd, but

the elder nevertheless knew their life, the

state of their soul, and the motive they had

brought. He did not wish to manifest this

gift of clairvoyance and

usually asked his

visitors questions, but sometimes he betrayed himself.

Thus, one day he answered a

young craftsman, who complained of a sore

arm, sharply: "Yes, your arm will hurt.

Why did you hit your mother?"

Most often, he limited himself to

discreet allusions, generally in a

humorous form. A student from

Moscow, who had never seen him, called him an

old hypocrite. Driven by

curiosity, she came to Optino one day

and positioned herself behind the other

visitors who were waiting for him. Staret

enters, he goes directly to her,

says, "Ah, you've come to see the old

hypocrite." After a long conversation, the

young girl became one of those

witty girls. Two qualities,

above all, it seems to me, mark

Ambroise's clairvoyance: a keen sense of the

practical and an infinite tenderness. A

keen sense of the practical because it seems that no

field was closed to him. He is on equal

footing with the senator of the

capital as with a peasant woman. He

spoke to the scholar, the engineer, the

technician, the philosopher. He was nicknamed

the "staress of active life." He

always has precise advice to give to

one. He will give

detailed instructions for creating an

irrigation system, and to a peasant woman,

very precise advice so that her turkeys

no longer die. Don't you understand, he would

say, that for her, her whole life is

linked to her turkeys, broken from her soul.

After all, the same price as that of people who

have higher standards. This

capacity for attention was also translated

into infinite tenderness. He did not judge;

he was all compassion and all

love, and that is Why did the most

wretched go to him with confidence

towards the end of his life? He often said in a

low voice, nodding his head, "I was

severe at first, but now I have

become weak. People have so much

pain, so much pain, and they are

primarily concerned with revitalizing and healing."

He bestowed his

attention and love upon the most fallen,

the most aggressive, the most

despised beings. One thinks of the Elder Zosima before

the old Karamazov. He never

despaired in the face of the immensity of evil and

human anguish. And the unbelievers, the

seekers of God so numerous in

the Russian intelligentsia at the end of the

last century, came to him. All the

spiritual voices of Russia passed through

Optino, not only

Dostoevsky but Solovyov, but Leontiev,

who had a small

house built for himself within the monastery grounds and

lived there for 15 years, but Tolstoy, but

Rosanov. And the testimony is always

unanimous: not one, not even those who came

with the most critical mind, could

find anything negative in him.

From the elder Sambisius Tolstoy

said after an interview, "This father

Sambisius is a true saint. I only spoke

with him, and suddenly my soul

feels so lightened. It is when one speaks

with men like him that one feels the

closeness of God." Another writer

spoke of this unfathomable garment of love

that lived within him, and Rosanov concluded by

saying, "Gold has passed through the fire of

skepticism without losing any of its

brilliance." We now understand all that

Tolstoy's thought, which owes to

Sambisius this vision of man in

his depth, for example, and even more, it

seems to me, two

fundamental realities that are but one: the

acute sense of spiritual freedom and the no

less acute sense, the mystery of

true fatherhood, of fatherhood in

freedom, in the Ecclesiastical tradition

actualized by the elders, in what

seems to me to have found the living meaning of the

mystery of father and son as a relationship that

liberates and builds, and which is

perhaps the only answer to this

egalitarian relationship. MASTER SLAVE, which

since the 19th century has become one of the

roots of modern revolt and atheism,

and after all, the entire novel of The

Brothers Karamazov, and it is the tragedy of the

father that intersects with

Dostoyevsky's personal experience, and the whole novel

oscillates between the old Fyodor Karamazov,

the fallen father, the father who degrades, the

father who provokes revolt and hatred,

and Staret Zosima, the father chosen for

the initiation of the spirit and the

blessing of life. Yet the

monks of Optina did not recognize themselves

in the character of Zosima, and

Dostoyevsky himself in no way

claimed to be creating a portrait of the Staret Zosima with Zosima,

for two reasons, it

seems to me, which I would like to briefly

indicate in conclusion.

The first is that the austere, stripped-down spirituality

linked to the

incessant asesis of the Optina monks did

not entirely coincide with

Dostoyevsky's Christianity, which is both

more cataclysmic and more

Dostoevsky's Dionysian approach occupies

a different dimension of

Orthodox spirituality, less Johannine, I would say, and

more Polynesian. Its

most remarkable representative in Russia was

Saint Icon of Zadonque in the 18th century. Saint

Icon's work profoundly

influenced Dostoevsky, who drew upon the

writings of this bishop, who became a humble

monk, to compose the teachings of

Staret Zosima, as well as to create the

character of Bishop Titicon in The

Possessed. Indeed, in Saint Icon, there is

an experience of anguish and its

conversion into joy and

total trust, which is very

Dostoevskian. Similarly, there is a

sense of God's presence in the

cosmos, an emphasis on the

resurrection of the body, on the

universal Transfiguration, which

certainly helped Dostoevsky to embrace, within

Christianity, his mysticism of the

earth, his mysticism of the Great Sea, of which The

Lame Woman speaks. Another reason is

that Dostoevsky is a creator, and

his creation sometimes lives again. In the

spiritual realm, a

prophetic character, it seems to me that Dostoevsky glimpsed

forms of atheism,

abysses of anguish and decay

that perhaps

Optina's stari did not yet encounter, but which we see asserting themselves

in our century. It

seems to me that he also glimpsed

new forms of spiritual life linked to

entirely secularized societies where

traditional forms of monasticism can hardly

survive: a monasticism

in the world, an internalized monasticism,

that of Alyosha, a monasticism for the

daily Transfiguration of life. And

as Rosanov wrote in 1906,

Dostoevsky appears to us as a

dreaming stare whose analysis penetrates the

depths of the human being and whose

imagination creates

radically new universes and forms of

relationship between people that have never before been

felt and experienced.

He himself calls this a dream, a dream, but

immediately specifies that this dream is more

real than any reality. Who knows if these

ideas of the Christian Dostoevsky, these

impossible ideas... unrealizable things will

not find their field of action when

a brand new

civilization arises

[Music]

It was alluded to in our

program this kind of illumination

that occurred to the young

novice Alyosha Karamasov in the

monastery where Father

Zosim had just died. It is this chapter entitled Cana

in Galilee that Renault Marie will play for us

in a

new translation by Michel

Baya. A wedding took place at Cana in

Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.

Jesus was also invited to the wedding with his

disciples. But when the wine ran out,

Dostoevsky made the SOS from Cana the

starting point of Alyosha Karamasov's new religious mission.

Elder Zosim died. The

novice Alyosha had taken this holy

monk as his spiritual director, but he

thought, like the common people in

Russia, that the bodies of saints do not

decompose after death. So

he was troubled in his faith when, keeping vigil over

Father

Zosim's body, that He revered an entire people who flocked

to the monastery; like the others, he smelled

a foul odor. By

prematurely extricating himself from the corpse, which had

barely been placed in the coffin, the event caused a

scandal. The supporters of the elder were humiliated and

grieved, while the others, his

enemies, were delighted. For, as

Dostoevsky observes, quoting a profound remark by

Osim the fisherman, he likes to note the

fall of the righteous.

Alyosha, in a moment of revolt and

disgust, left the monastery. He even

followed the impious seminarian Rakitin to

Grosenka's house. This frivolous girl sat

on his lap and spoke of

taking a knife to

meet a man, but Alyosha

turned the poor girl's heart

by calling her his sister. Furious,

Rakitin insulted Alyosha. Then

Karamasov left the city and

returned to the monastery through the

fields. It was already very late for the

monastery when Alyosha arrived at

the Hermitage. The gatekeeper brother

ushered him in through a private entrance.

Nine o'clock had struck, the hour of rest and

peace after a day that had been

For all, so agitated, so

overwhelming,

Alyosha timidly pushed open the door and

entered the staret's cell where

his coffin now lay. There was no one there except

Father Paisius, who was reading

the Gospel before the coffin, and the

young novice Porphy, exhausted by the

conversations of the previous night and all

the emotions of the

day. He was sleeping the deep sleep of

youth, lying on the floor in the

adjoining room. Father Paisius, although he had heard

Alyosha enter, didn't even turn his head.

Alyosha knelt in a corner to the

right of the door and began to

pray. His soul

overflowed, but his impressions remained

confused, one chasing

the other in a kind of

regular and

peaceful gyration. His heart was filled with

sweetness, and strangely enough, he wasn't surprised by it. Again,

he saw before him this

coffin, this infinitely dear deceased, enclosed

on all

sides, but the torturous and agonizing

pity, full of tears, that had

tormented him all morning had

vanished at once. Upon entering, he fell to his

knees before the coffin as if it were

sacred, and

happiness radiated in his

heart and mind.

One of the cell's windows was

now open, letting in fresh, clean air.

But the thought of the noxious odor that had

seemed so horrible and

humiliating just a few hours earlier no longer stirred the

same anguish or

outrage within him. He began to pray

softly, but soon realized he was

praying almost mechanically.

Fragments of ideas passed through his soul,

flickering like tiny stars only to be extinguished

immediately, replaced by

others. But within his soul reigned

something strong, something unique, like a

total certainty, of which he was

aware at times. He would begin to

pray fervently; he needed to

give thanks, to

love. But having begun a prayer,

his thoughts would drift to another object.

He would become absorbed, lose the thread of his

prayer and the cause of his distraction. He

wanted to listen to what Father

Paesius was reading, but exhausted, he would

fall again and again. A little while into drowsiness,

and on the third day there was a wedding

at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.

Jesus was also invited to the wedding with

his

disciples. The

wedding—what are the weddings?

Thoughts swirl in Alyosha's mind.

She too is happy; she went to

a feast, but she didn't take the knife.

Not the

knife; it was just a poor little

word. We must always forgive

poor little words; they ease our souls.

Without them, human suffering would be

too

heavy. Rakitine took the alley. As long as

Rakitine broods over his grumbles, he will

always take the alley. But the road—the

main road is straight, flooded with

crystalline light, with the sun at the

end.

Ah, what are we reading? And when the wine ran out,

the mother of Jesus said to him, "They have no

wine." Ah yes, I missed

the beginning; I regret it.

I love this passage so much: the wedding at

Cana, the first miracle. Ah, that miracle, ah,

that dear miracle. It's not the Pain,

but also human joy, which Christ

visited, performing his first miracle,

strengthened the joy of humankind. He who

loves humankind loves their joy. The deceased constantly

reminded us of this; it was one

of his main ideas. Mitiia also

said, "One cannot live without

joy." Or, "All that is true and

beautiful is always full of mercy."

He said this too. Jesus said to her, "

Woman, what is there between you and me? My

hour has not yet come." And his

mother said to those who were serving, "Do whatever he tells

you.

Give joy, joy to the very

poor, the very poor, certainly

poor people, since he had missed them at their wedding.

Historians write that near

Lake Genzarth, scattered throughout

the region, was the

poorest population imaginable. But

the great heart of this other

mysterious being who was there now—his

mother knew that he had not only come down to

fulfill his

terrible and sovereign mission, but that

his heart could understand the innocent

vulnerability of simple and ignorant people, of those

endowed with Malice, who had tenderly

invited him to their modest

wedding, said, "My happiness has not yet come." He

had said this with a smile;

certainly, he must have smiled at her

gently.

But in reality, was it to increase

the quantity of wine at a poor wedding

that he had descended to

earth? But there he was, he came and did

what she asked.

Ah, there we read the rest. Jesus told them to

fill his jars with water, and they

filled them to the brim. Then Jesus

told them to draw some out and take it to the

master of the feast. And they

took it to him. As soon as the master of the feast

had tasted the water that had been turned into wine, not

knowing where this wine had come from, although the

servants who had drawn the water knew,

he called out to the bridegroom and said to him, "

Every man serves the good wine first, and

after everyone has drunk freely, he serves the

lesser wine. But you have reserved the good

wine until

now. But

what is happening? What is happening? Why is the

hall getting bigger?" Ah yes, these walls

seem to recede, it's the wedding, the

marriage, yes of course, here are the guests,

the young couple seated, the

joyful crowd, but where is the very wise master

of the feast? Who is he?

The walls of the hall recede even further.

Who is rising over there at the

large table? How is he

here too? But he was in the coffin. He rose,

he saw me, he is coming towards me.

Lord,

yes, he is approaching, he is approaching him.

The small, thin old man with his face

furrowed with wrinkles, he is all joyful and

he laughs

softly. The coffin has disappeared. He is wearing

the same clothes he

wore just yesterday when his friends had

gathered in his

cell. His face is

uncovered, his eyes are

shining.

So he too is at the banquet. He too has been

invited to the one in Cana of Galilee.

Yes, me too, my darling, I have been called, called

and

invited. He hears Zosim's voice

above

him. Why are you hiding in that corner? We can't

see you. You too, come with

us. It was his

voice, the voice of the Staret Zosim, and it is

indeed he, since he

calls me, the old man took Alyosha by

the hand and rose from his kneeling position. Let us rejoice, let

us drink the new wine,

the wine of immense new happiness.

Here is the bridegroom and the bride, here is

the very wise master of the banquet, he tastes

the new wine. Why do you look at me

with astonishment? I gave a very

small alms and here I am. And

many among those who are here

gave only a small alms, just one

small

alms, which are our deeds. And you, my

sweet, my peaceful child, you knew how to

give alms today to her who was

hungry and

thirsty. Begin, my beloved, begin your

work.

And do you see our Sun? Do you see him? I am

afraid, I dare not look. Balbu Yosha, not

afraid of

him. His Majesty

frightens us, his grandeur terrifies us, but

his mercy knows no

bounds. Out of love for us, he became

like us and he rejoices with

us. He changes the water. In vain, so as not to

interrupt the joy of the guests, and he

waited endlessly for more guests;

he would call others, and

this until the end of the world. Here comes the

new wine; you see the

cups. Something burned in

Alyosha's heart; something

oppressed him to the point of suffering.

Tears of joy escaped from his

soul. He stretched out his arms, cried out, and

awoke again. The coffin, the

open window, and the quiet, solemn,

and slow reading of

the Gospel. But Alyosha wasn't listening to what was being

read; strangely enough, he had fallen asleep on his

knees, and now he stood.

Suddenly, pulled from his place, in

three quick and firm steps, he

approached the coffin. Even as he passed,

he bumped into Father Paiius's shoulder without

noticing. The latter looked up

at him but

immediately turned away, understanding that

something singular had happened to the young man.

Alyosha considered the coffin for a

brief moment; the dead man, completely covered,

lay motionless with an icon. On his

chest and his hood surmounted by the

eight-

pointed cross, it had barely been a moment

since he had heard her voice, and that

voice still resonated in his ears.

He leaned forward attentively, hoping for more

words, then suddenly, turning on his heel,

he left the

cell. He didn't stop on the steps

but quickly descended to the garden. His soul,

burning with rapture, thirsted for

freedom, for

space. Above him, the

celestial vault had overturned its immense

dome, full of peaceful,

shining stars. From the zenith to the horizon

stretched the double Milky Way, still

distinct. The night, cool and tranquil, almost still,

enveloped the

earth. The white towers and

golden domes of the abbey sparkled against a

sapphire sky. The opulent autumn flowers

in the parterres along the house

remained asleep until

morning. The silence of the earth seemed to

merge with that of the sky,

and the mystery of the earth touched that

of the stars.

Alyosha,

motionless

He watched, and suddenly, as if struck down, he

prostrated himself. He didn't know why he was

embracing the earth; he didn't understand

why he longed to embrace it, to

cover it with kisses while weeping. But

his kisses were mingled with tears and

sobs, and he promised desperately to

love it always, to love it until

the end of the world: "You will water the earth with

tears of joy, and you will love your tears."

His words resounded in his soul.

What was he weeping over in the midst of his

rapture? Ah, he was even weeping over those

stars that twinkled for him from the

depths of their abyss. And he wasn't

ashamed of this exaltation. It

seemed to him that all the threads of all those

countless worlds converged in his

soul, and it vibrated with the touch

of those other worlds. He

wanted to forgive everyone and everything, and

ask for forgiveness, not for himself, but

for everyone else, for everyone and

everything.

The others will implore him for me.

These words, too, returned to him more and

more. He felt it clearly, as if

tangibly. Something firm and

unshakeable, like the firmament

descending into his

soul, an idea seized his mind

for his entire life, and

forever he had prostrated himself, a weak

adolescent, and he rose again, a

virile wrestler, and this

forever. He was aware of it at the very

moment of his exaltation, and never

in his entire life could Alyosha forget

that instant. "

My soul was visited at that hour,"

he said later, believing with all

his faith in the truth of his

words. Three days later, he left the

monastery in accordance with the will of the

elder who had ordered him to

stay in the

world.

[Music]

As every Saturday, France Culture

presented you with "The Spectral Anal of

the West," today

Dostoyevsky by Stanislas

Fumet, with the participation of Constantin

Andronikov, Dominique Arban, Olivier

Clément, Paul EVD Kimov, Nina Gourfinkel,

Boris de Schlezer, and the voice of Renault

Marie, assistant director Nicole

Gesveller. [Music]

[Music]