JULES OLiTSKI
first two questions. I'll deal with the third later. Why not a
priest? Why not a rapist? Everything and anything is permis–
sible in masturbation fantasy. That's one of the reasons I
suppose why masturbation is so thrilling, so exciting. After
all, where else in life can you so easily get away with murder,
so
to
speak?
Very well, a priest-rapist, but not just any ordinary priest–
rapist. Father Zossima, in fact, was the model for my priest–
rapist fantasy. Yes, Father Zossima, the saintly priest of
The
Brothers Karamazov.
But forget about Dostoyevsky's book. In
our version Father Zossima has just been turned on (to use a
current phrase) by Stavrogin 's visit where he confesses to
raping a young girl.
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Stavrogin? But isn't he in another novel?
The Idiot? The
Possessed?
If this book, this fiction is going to require a lot of
research, I'll drop it, because I happen to be a lazy man,
pathologically lazy, I've been told. Of course I'm not really
serious about dropping it. Just more self-exposing in the interest
of telling on myself-in this case about my laziness. O.K., to
go
on. Let's drop Stavrogin, as in fact, my narrator did. In mastur–
bation fantasy, as you may have noticed, it's not unusual, so to
speak, to switch horses in midstream. Stavrogin was dropped
and replaced with Dostoyevsky himself. The narrator also
dropped Father Zossima and replaced him with Tikhon Za–
donsky, one of Dostoyevsky's models for the character of Father
Zossima.
So
then it's Dostoyevsky who is confessing to Zadonsky
that he has raped a young girl, (which indeed he once boasted to
Turgenev he had done. Turgenev was shocked and worse. In the
end Dostoyevsky said it was all a joke he'd made up to amuse
Turgenev, because he loved him. In any case, let me pick up the
narrative once again.)
After his confession to Zadonsky and being let off with two
dozen hail Marys and one week of eating only turnips, which
Zadonsky loathed and as it happens Dostoyevsky adored.
Russian Orthodox priests don't
go
in for Hail Marys. I could, I
suppose, make Zadonsky a heretic, a secret practiser of Catholic
rites. That bit about turnips is a descent into farce. This easy
