The Black Circle

by Jeff Love

  In this respect, as we look back and read Dostoevsky through Kojève, we may argue that this is exactly the point Dostoevsky’s complex presentation of Raskolnikov makes. And the key piece of evidence for this claim is the remarkable emphasis throughout Crime and Punishment on novelty, on the new word that can never really be uttered, can never come to speech and, indeed, comes to be “uttered” as an unspeakable act of murder—not the translation into experience of a higher ideal but rather the elimination of experience as having any relevance in the first place. For murder in this sense, as the refusal to engage any others in one’s own vision except so as to exclude them, to create the cloister of one, is the real essence of the mad visionary, the great criminal, and the prophet of novelty, at least as they emerge in the fictional world of Dostoevsky.

  The creator of the new word is a master of nonsense who does not leave things at discourse. But the appeal of nonsense is evidently formidable enough to motivate the most radical political action, murder, or physical elimination of others. The master of nonsense seeks a freedom that is so complete, so universal, that it can resemble only the freedom of a god shorn of Platonic myth to appear as what cannot appear, as the god and freedom of mystic communion.

  KIRILLOV: SUICIDE AS BECOMING GOD

  If Raskolnikov presents the incoherent coherence of the striving for the universal as a striving for unbridled freedom in the establishment of the New Jerusalem—as the establishment, then, of a divine and perfect city—another important character presents this striving in its full splendor as a striving to overcome God: Alexei Nilych Kirillov. Raskolnikov’s position remains within a primarily political context, the highest end being the establishment of a heavenly city that brings the kingdom of God to earth or represents the final fusion of the two, while Kirillov’s more directly points beyond the political to metaphysical freedom. Put differently, Raskolnikov tests the boundaries of freedom, understood in the context of our relations to other human beings, whereas Kirillov squarely tests the boundaries of our relation to God or to any of his stand-ins, such as Being or nature.

  Unlike Raskolnikov, Kirillov appears as a peripheral character. He is merely one of those characters in Demons who seems to be in the orbit of the novel’s central character, Nikolai Stavrogin. But his primary concern, suicide, is central to the novel, as central as Stavrogin, who ends up committing suicide and is perhaps more consistent than Kirillov in that respect. Though I will return to Stavrogin—one of the most beguiling and complicated characters in all of Russian literature—I want to prepare that discussion by first examining Kirillov, especially given the interest that Kirillov has solicited from so many quarters, and from Kojève as well.10

  Kirillov has got to be the most unusual “structural” engineer in literature. He is the theoretician of suicide, itself a provocative combination. While everyone may read Camus’s revision of Hamlet’s great question, there is still a decision at stake in Camus that Kirillov has definitely made.11 For Kirillov, suicide is not a question but an imperative, and in this lies his curious “dark” appeal. Indeed, for Kirillov, suicide is the most significant imperative of all, quite a bit more significant than the injunction to “Know thyself” or to “Do unto others” and so on. Forget morality, the relation to others; Kirillov concerns himself with the only relation that matters: our relation to God. Of course, this aspect of the relation may leave those who have freed themselves of God blithely unaffected. Kirillov’s concern with God may seem quaint and old-fashioned. God is dead, after all, and we have killed him. But Kirillov’s concern with God is subtler. It is a concern with what God represents.

  “There will be entire freedom when it makes no difference whether one lives or does not live. That is the goal to everything.”

  “The goal? But then perhaps no one will even want to live?”

  “No one,” he said resolutely.

  “Man is afraid of death because he loves life, that’s how I understand it,” I observed, “and that is what nature tells us.”

  “That is base, that is the whole deceit!” His eyes began to flash. “Life is pain, life is fear, and man is unhappy. Now all is pain and fear. Now man loves life because he loves pain and fear. That’s how they’ve made it. Life now is given in exchange for pain and fear, and that is the whole deceit. Man now is not yet the right man. There will be a new man, happy and proud. He for whom it will make no difference whether he lives or does not live, he will be the new man. He who overcomes pain and fear will himself be God. And this God will not be.”

  “So this God exists, in your opinion?”

  “He doesn’t, yet he does. There is no pain in the stone, but there is pain in the fear of the stone. God is the pain and fear of death. He who overcomes pain and fear will himself become God. Then there will be a new, a new man, everything new.… Then history will be divided into two parts: from the Gorilla to the destruction of God, and from the destruction of God to …”

  “To the Gorilla?”

  “… to the physical changing of the earth and man. Man will be God and will change physically. And the world will change, and deeds will change, and thoughts, and all feelings. What do you think, will man then change physically?”

  “If it makes no difference whether one lives or does not live, then everyone will kill himself, and perhaps that will be the change.”

  “It makes no difference. They will kill the deceit. Whoever wants the main freedom must dare to kill himself. He who dares to kill himself knows the secret of the deceit. There is no further freedom; here is everything; and there is nothing further. He who dares to kill himself is God. Now anyone can make it so that there will be no God, and there will be no anything. But no one has done it yet, not once.”12

  The magnificent phrase “God is the pain and fear of death” rings throughout this passage and recalls a remarkable passage from Herman Melville that makes quite a similar point: “Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.”13 The pain and fear of death create God as a repository of hope, the hope that pain and death will not prevail, a hope that one might find patently ridiculous were it not enshrined in doctrines such as the Platonic immortality of the soul or Christian resurrection. Kirillov is not a creature of ridicule or irony, however comic or mad he may appear to those inclined to see him in that way. On the contrary, Kirillov shows a distinctive lack of affect when he discusses his all-consuming idea, and appropriately so, we may surmise, since the primary attitude he insists on is one of resolute indifference, a peculiar combination in its own right. Kirillov needs to prove his indifference, his freedom from all merely worldly interests, particularly those generated by fear, and the only way he can do so definitively is to commit suicide.

  We do not typically associate suicide with indifference, however, because we do not typically associate action with indifference. If we return for a moment to dwell again on the difference between the theoretical and the practical attitude, we may note that the theoretical attitude observes and does not act, or sees no reason to act, because there is in fact a tension between contemplation and action. One contemplates the whole, and in order to contemplate the whole, one must suppress the kind of interestedness that obscures that contemplation of the whole or transforms it into observation from a perspective whose limits are dictated by the interests that prescribe what it may see. The notion implicit here is that my wants and needs determine how I look at things. Thus, the only way to see things “as they are” is to be free of the wants and needs that otherwise obscure my vision (belonging, as they do, to the animal imperative to survive). This way of thinking is obviously indebted to Plato and of course to the myth of the charioteer in the Phaedrus, where the pure vision of the hyperouranian realm—vision that is defined by its lack of perspective, the proverbial and contradictory notion of the all-seeing eye—is limited, if not completely blocked, by the passions that tear one away from this pure vision and force one to work with a limited recollec
tion of it.

  Suicide seems to be an action formidably entrenched in passion and, if we take the word literally at its root, in suffering. How, then, may suicide act as a proof of indifference? Must suicide not undermine the purpose to which Kirillov puts it? One may discern, in this respect, a failure of logic, a contradiction, and dismiss Kirillov as a madman, as one of those possessed by an idea that is quite literally incoherent. He, too, speaks nonsense in an effort to liberate himself from the humiliating recognition of nature’s authority. Or perhaps his praise of suicide is a perverse form of that sweet music that the underground man described in connection with toothache. Perhaps the matter should not be left there. For Kirillov, indifference is freedom, and the highest freedom, the most complete indifference, can only emerge if one is unafraid to take one’s life or to die, pure and simple.

  Still, the nagging question remains: Why? Which interest impels one to seek liberation from all interests? Why would one have an interest in disinterest? And, indeed, what interest could be more powerful, more direct, and less easy to dissemble or sublimate than the fear of death? Melville seems to be correct in connecting vitality with the fear of death—we act in order to overcome the fear of death, to take it away, to hide it—and all these actions come from an overwhelming interest in turning or looking away from death.

  Kirillov appears to be caught up in an ugly irony, a perversely “sweet music” indeed. This sweetness turns to the monstrous, however, in one of the most eerie and powerful scenes in the novel, when Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky pushes Kirillov to make good on his promise to transform theory into practice by committing suicide. Kirillov resists Pyotr Stepanovich. Why he does so may be indicated by his own admission:

  “There are seconds, they come only five or six at a time, and you suddenly feel the presence of eternal harmony, fully achieved. It is nothing earthly; not that it’s heavenly, but man cannot endure it in his earthly state. One must change physically or die. The feeling is clear and indisputable. As if you suddenly sense the whole of nature and suddenly say: yes, this is true. God, when he was creating the world, said at the end of the day of creation: ‘Yes, this is true, this is good.’ This … this is not tenderheartedness, but simply joy. You don’t forgive anything, because there’s no longer anything to forgive. You don’t really love—oh, what is here is higher than love! What’s most frightening is that it’s so terribly clear, and there’s such joy. If it were longer than five seconds—the soul couldn’t endure it and would vanish. In those five seconds I live my life through, and for them I would give my whole life, because it’s worth it. To endure ten seconds one would have to change physically. I think man should stop giving birth.”14

  Kirillov hesitates. He makes a crucial distinction. The harmony he describes is intolerable for us in our earthly state. We cannot live harmony of this kind unless we physically change; that is, metaphysical transformation precedes political transformation. Without the radical freedom afforded by the transformation of the human being into a being capable of harmony, the political dream of harmony is nothing more than that—a dream. In that case, suicide, too, is merely a comfort offering an illusion of radical freedom. Even here, the freedom is so radical that one cannot even begin to describe it, presumably, for more than five seconds. Here we have nonsense again, a dreadful nonsense, evinced, moreover, by Kirillov’s unusual language, a Russian that begins to lose syntactic integrity because it represents, as best as one can do in language, the disintegration of language as the foremost social bond that ties Kirillov to others, a tie that both discloses and restricts. In his headlong progress to emancipation from all limitation, Kirillov also emancipates himself from discourse—Kirillov moves from sense to nonsense. Rather than achieving a status equivalent to that of a god, Kirillov merely bestializes himself; he becomes a monster.

  And so we return to the culminating scene of Kirillov’s life. This scene develops the central difficulty of Kirillov’s “theory,” that he cannot make sense of his pursuit of indifference other than by revealing its rootedness in an overweening desire to live without the pain of limitation. We might assume that it is a simple matter for Kirillov to end his life, as Pyotr Stepanovich expects, in order to provide a necessary alibi. But Kirillov’s theory itself emerges as a mask for a tyrannical desire to live. After all, the simple objection is devastating: Why make a theory about an act whose essential nature is to repose in silence? The genuine suicide need not speak, need not proselytize—the cultivation of indifference makes little sense if one may simply “get things over with.”

  Kirillov’s mask falls off. He becomes animal. Pyotr Stepanovich waits for him to complete his promised suicide. But he hears nothing.

  Though he was reading and admiring the wording, he still kept listening every moment with tormenting alarm and—suddenly got furious. He glanced worriedly at his watch; it was a bit late; and it was a good ten minutes since the man had gone out.… Grabbing the candle, he made for the door of the room where Kirillov had shut himself up. Just at the door it occurred to him that the candle was also burning down and in another twenty minutes would go out entirely, and there was no other. He put his hand on the latch and listened cautiously; not the slightest sound could be heard; he suddenly opened the door and raised the candle: something bellowed and rushed at him.15

  This “something” is of course Kirillov, having become animal—no longer, it seems, capable of speech other than bellowing or shouting. Kirillov, indeed, barely utters another word in the novel (other than to shout “Now, now, now, now”) and he dissolves into a something that Pyotr Stepanovich cannot even recollect or describe properly.

  Then there occurred something so hideous and quick that afterwards Pyotr Stepanovich could never bring his recollections into any kind of order. The moment he touched Kirillov, the man quickly bent his head down, and with his head knocked the candle from his hands; the candlestick fell to the floor with a clang, and the candle went out. At the same instant, he felt a terrible pain in the little finger of his left hand. He cried out, and all he could remember was that, beside himself, he had struck as hard as he could three times with the revolver on the head of Kirillov, who had leaned to him and bitten his finger. He finally tore the finger free and rushed headlong to get out of the house, feeling his way in the darkness. Terrible shouts came flying after him from the room.16

  After this miserable drama, Kirillov manages to shoot himself. Long gone, however, is the rational suicide, the one who dies in order to be freed of the kind of impassioned, bestial action that his final moments seem to exemplify. The frenzied anger of the beast rather than the cool determination of the suicide prevails.

  STAVROGIN, THE HERO OF EMPTINESS

  Kirillov is merely a satellite. Stavrogin is the center, the “sun” around which all the other characters revolve.17 Yet Stavrogin is a peculiar center. He is another master of nonsense, and the central role he plays in the novel has much to do with this enigmatic quality. Nietzsche is once again helpful. He maintains, in an aphorism from Twilight of the Idols, that those who are never understood have authority precisely for that reason—the authority of the enigmatic, mystery.18 This aspect of Stavrogin comes clear very early on in the novel, when the narrator informs us of three striking and peculiar incidents. Immediately before he recounts the three incidents, the narrator provides a description of Stavrogin that makes an important point, one applicable to Kirillov as well: “I was struck by his face: his hair was somehow too black, his light eyes were somehow too calm and clear, his complexion was somehow too delicate and white, his color somehow too bright and clean, his teeth like pearls, his lips like coral—the very image of beauty, it would seem, and at the same time repulsive, as it were. People said his face resembled a mask.”19

  The combination of beauty and repulsiveness, as if at one and the same time Stavrogin is beautiful and repulsive (or twisted: отвратительный), does not make sense. How can one be, at one and the same time, both beautiful and repulsive?
Does this not contravene the hallowed law of contradiction? Of course the claim that Stavrogin is dissembling, wearing a mask, serves to obviate the contradiction. In this case, Stavrogin is merely a creature of irony, dissimulatio, and nothing more. This notion of irony as one kind of sense hiding behind another seems far more comforting than the more radical notion of irony, according to which all varieties of sense hide, to a greater or lesser degree, a primordial absence of sense. In both cases, there is a ready distinction between sense and nonsense that affirms that there is a border between the one and the other that protects the integrity of each in relation to the other. However, this is not the case if one takes Stavrogin’s peculiar ambiguity as encroaching on the tolerably clear divisions created by the law of contradiction. The greater and more disturbing import of this latter possibility is that the distinction between sense and nonsense begins, itself, to dissolve.

  But this problem is only hinted at in the initial description. The three incidents that follow the description all seem to suggest that Stavrogin is a little mad in a conventional way, insofar as he engages in what we nowadays might call “random acts.” These random acts are not kind ones, however, in which case their chance character might be passed off more easily. Rather, they are violent incursions, all the more violent because they do not seem to follow any logic. In this respect, the sheer menace of seemingly unmotivated action as dissolutive is much clearer. The first of these incidents involves a nose, the second a wife, the third an ear. All are darkly comic.

  In the first instance, Stavrogin literally drags someone by the nose. This person, a respected elderly man, has the habit of accompanying his statements by the phrase “No, sir, they won’t lead me by the nose!” Stavrogin at one point counters this statement by quite literally taking hold of and pulling the elderly man by the nose. The incident causes titters but it also disturbs, not for the reasons we might expect—such as Stavrogin’s anger—but primarily because Stavrogin shows no anger whatsoever: “All this was very silly, to say nothing of its ugliness [безобразие]—a calculated and deliberate ugliness, as it seemed at first sight, and therefore constituting a deliberate and in the highest degree impudent affront to our entire society.”20 The claim made here applies to the other ostensibly “disturbed” actions of Stavrogin, both of which are violent, if in different ways, with the essential violence emerging either as a contravention of expected codes of conduct or of expectation itself. Stavrogin’s love of novelty is a locus of crime, a calculated ugliness or nonsense.