556
PARTISAN REVIEW
II
The typical Dostoevskian character is a
whole man,
torn from top
to bottom by these moral and psychological dilemmas. And the
enormous scope and power of Dostoevsky's fiction is at least partly
due to this fusion of man's physical and intellectual predicament.
It is clear, too, that such was Dostoevsky's intention, for in
A Raw
Youth
he speaks of people being propelled by what he calls an "idea–
feeling," which is at once a craving and a belief, blended into the
unity of one's personality. Now Dostoevsky, himself, was just such a
unified person. Not that he was especially consistent or logical; but
his thinking did have an organic quality, being part of the over-all
pattern of
his
being.
Dostoevsky had, indeed, a kind of rough-hewn and passionately
held system, but it was mainly a construction on the basic conflict
between man's animalism and his spiritual possibilities. Hence, it
took the form of a search for values and moral direction, and an
attack on any naturalist approach. He hated science, rationalism, posi–
tivism, socialism and the Enlightenment, shrewdly linking them all
together on the grounds that they offered no more than a tabuiation
-hence a justification-of the present state of the world. It was only
the irrational, in the form of art and, ultimately; faith in God, that
could both free man from his slovenly addiction to himself and give
him an imaginative insight into the unregimented side of his nature.
There were, to be sure, such intermediate ambiguities as the fact
that the irrational not only led to God but was also a pseudonym
for the pathological, while science could provide an understanding
of man's demonic urges. But, on the whole, the Dostoevskian scheme
was dedicated to final truths and values, which would permit him
to judge his impulses, as well as his ideas, and to understand his
suffering as part of his spiritual destiny.
The connection in Dostoevsky's mind between the various aspects
of man's plight is nowhere better illustrated than in the famous sym–
bolism of two plus two. It
will
be recalled that in
Notes from Under–
ground,
the pillar of science, the proposition that two plus two equals
four, is scorned as a petty, unimaginative idea, unequal to the myster–
ies of human existence-why not five? And in
The Brothers K arama–
zov
the proof of Dmitri's guilt rests on the contention that he spent
three thousand rubles on one orgy and three thousand on the second
-three plus three equals six. Yet the truth is that Dmitri is not
guilty, not legally, at least. At the same time he is guilty in a more
