SUSAN MCREYNOLDS
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bornly walks hand in hand with it." But the initial impression of chaos
is false, Dostoevsky concludes, because "that seeming disorder" in
essence "is bourgeois order in the highest degree."
Baal's tyranny in France has produced a reign of refined, theatrical
depravity. The nation is a stage on which intricate charades are per–
formed between the bourgeois citizen and the state, the public and the
arts, husbands and wives, and even between the individual and himself.
The Parisian bourgeoisie has made a pact with Baal for financial advan–
tage, sacrificing all other values to money. The bourgeois only "looks
upon himself as a human being" when he has "fulfilled the duty of
nature and humanity" to "accumulate money and acquire as many
things as possible." The desire for money has obliterated all other aspi–
rations and distinctions between people: "everyone there is a property
owner or wa nts to be a property owner," beca use" all glory, honor, wor–
ship, and so on" go exclusively to money. French political life is a farce
in which the bourgeois gladly plays a ridiculous role. Having renounced
"all those pranks" that occurred "at the end of the last century," he has
sold his political aspirations for the right to
"faire fortune
and accumu–
late as many things as possible."
De facto
disenfranchisement has been
accomplished with the enfranchisement of citizens who have renounced
all other goals but wealth accumulation.
The bourgeois "is ready to forget everything from earlier times,
everything, ready...to be a most obedient and diligent child," but there
is one thing he cannot forget: "he sighs and pines for eloquence," he
longs for the dead form of what was living spirit, for "the high-flown
word" that "debases everything." The liberal representative "is always
prepared to give a speech for the amusement of the public," to reduce
"the most important questions of state" to the verbose "chatting" that
is allowed to circulate through France like worthless coin. The end
effect of democratic institutions, "all those orators' speeches in the
National Assembly, the conventions, and the clubs, in which the people
take part almost directly" is nothing more than a population that dis–
plays "a love of eloquence for the sake of eloquence," satisfied with the
illusion of historical progress.
What the state does not accomplish by providing "this liberal plea–
sure," the bourgeois carries out himself. The Parisian's debasement is
self-enforced, for he has much to gain from internalizing his status as a
commodity. "What indifference to everything, what transient, empty
interests," Dostoevsky notes in Paris, where "they were all afraid to
speak of anything out of the ordinary, anything that was not trivial." As
French life becomes less serious and more theatrical, Dostoevsky writes,
