Bakhtin on Dostoevsky

[JCamilo]

There is others, Aliocha is somehow pure too, but the point is complex or compelling to be used only towards the doubtful and not towards clarity and idealization is something I avoid. I think those caracters just do another function in the story. Dickens seems to have no doubt, he is clear, he is compelled to show what is true. He does not mind why a character is this way, they must do their role and do good. With Dostoievisky, we have a person how is in doubt, who thinks truth may have some relative meaning, and his characters must help us to see the how. Dickens is somehow mythinc, he show us Ulysses. Dostoievisky shows us Plato's dialogues.

But i think the rest is as you said.

[Germ]

What makes Dostoyevsky's novels polyphonic is that the author addresses his characters as autonomous discourses whose voices are on an equal footing with that of the author.

I would only add that it is the narrator that addresses the characters in such a way, not precisely the author. A fine point, perhaps...

Then again, maybe it is better to say author. In any case, the monophonic novel (I forget what Bakhtin calls it exactly) generally has one privileged discourse around which all the other discourse in the novel is organized. The privileged discourse may not even be directly represented, but its influence can always be sensed by the perceptive reader: Look at Huckleberry Finn, in which the "skaz" narration is entirely in the represented words of the quasi-literate Finn. However, one can sense the thought of Twain himself always in the background: his views about life, society, childhood, slavery. This is the real animating principle, and not the discourse of Finn, Jim, and all the other characters; these other streams-of-thought are subsidiary appendages to one central, authoritative thought (Twain's own, even though it is not directly represented), like the branches of a tree.

One great illustration of this in practice is Dostoyevsky's struggle with Raskolnikov's motivation...

I had always assumed that the ambivalent depiction of Rasknolnikov's motive was part of the conscious design of the novel. It is interesting to hear that Dostoevsky himself honestly struggled with the question of motive; he actually tried to finalize the murderer's motive in a more conventional way, it sounds like. It's a good thing he failed, or we wouldn't have the subtly juxtaposed balance of motives that is one of this novel's most attractive features.

I would never have said, however, that Dostoevsky failed to represent a finalized motive (or a monological hierarchy of motives, in which each factor--the pecuniary motive, the ideological musings, the spiritual protest--is given a definite and singular value), but instead I would have said that he succeeded in representing a polyphonic balance of motives (a dialogical array of motives, in which no one, definite factor can ever gain the upper hand). The motives in a monophonic novel would be structured vertically, with various motives assigned unequivocal priority (given a higher or lower value). In a polyphonic novel they are structured horizontally, and the motives are hyper-equivocal and deeply ambivalent.

This attitude toward the unknowability of motivation was acknowledged in every one of the major novels... One might also note the undisguised contempt for forensic psychology expressed in later portions of The Brothers Karamazov.

This contempt can also be found in his first great novel, in the psychological speculations of Raskolnikov's buddy, for example. Here is another place where the analogy to Dickens becomes valid, since he was a master at the representation of complex motivations (I think of the patricidal son in Martin Chuzzlewit, who foreshadows Ivan Karamazov). Of course, Richardson is a master of motivation. But complexly intertwined motivations do not necessarily make for a true polyphonic of balance of motivations. The attitudes and life-feeling of Dickens, as embodied in his virtuous heroes and heroines, are evaluated at a higher level. It is subtly assumed at every point in the narrative that Dickens' bourgeoisie values are the only truly valid ones, and he would have never dared to place the values of a Fagin, or even of a Sam Weller, on the same plane as his own. Dostevesky does dare to do this (which must have been extremely difficult for him; it's not like he personally agreed with the values of a Raskolnokiv or an Ivan K., but for the purposes of his art, he could not allow his authorial evaluations to take monological priority).

[Germ]

Please consider this thought: 1984 as a polyphonic novel.

The first thing that strikes me in this novel is the complex orchestration of discourse. This is very vividly illustrated in the opening chapters, by Winston Smith's first experiments with the journal. At first, he struggles to find his own voice, but as the story progresses, the journal entries becomes increasingly more confident and articulate.

Winston Smith's environment is completely saturated with the discourse of IngSoc and newspeak. This is an aggressively monological discourse that seeks to penetrate and control all other discourse. In Air Strip One, every word has been finalized, and those words that can't be finalized are eliminated from the vocabulary (and the ban is enforced through terrorism). It takes great effort to detach your own unique, individual voice from the omnipresent discourse of Big Brother. The way Orwell depicts it (with honesty, sympathy and subtle insight), this is accomplished through an intense process of inner dialogue. Winston uses the journal to talk to himself, and through this process he is able to make his own thought separate and clear (to himself, but also unfortunately to BB).

The motives of O'Brien are very complex and ambivalent. Orwell even coined a term for the process by which two contradictory motives or ideas can be held in the mind at once: doublethink. How easily this concept could be used as a synonym for the "loopholes" that Bakhtin identifies as a fundamental to the construction of Dostoevsky's characters. Every hero of Dostoevsky is a victim of his own peculiar form of doublethink. O'Brien has mastered doublethink in it's most subtle variations. Hence his motives can not be reductively analyzed. Are they rational or deranged? Is he a madman, or a genius? Both, apparently, and neither.

The whole operation against Winston stretches out over several years and costs a considerable amount of money and manpower. It really makes no rational sense (if we're talking about more linear and conventional motives). Are they merely testing poor Winston, to see if he'll go over to the "other side"? But O'Brien already knows about Winston's apostasy; he understands his character perfectly and knows in advance everything he will do, say, or think. And the "other side" that Winston is being tempted to is a construction of BB themselves: they actually wrote the bible of the resistance (that book that Winston is allowed to peruse shortly before his capture).

One of the characteristics of the polyphonic novel is this: the author can present his own personal views, but only in an ambivalent and conditional form. There are many characters who represent the views of Dostoevsky himself (slavophilic, orthodox), such as Prince Myshkin or Alyosha. But, these views are placed on the same plane of dialogue with the world views of all the other characters. There is no assumption that these thoughts and opinions are the final word on the matter (within the context of the novel anyway; in real life, Dostoevsky did think that these views were the correct and final ones, but he was a very disciplined artist who could overcome such personal limitations). Something similar can be seen in 1984. The book by Goldstein reads like excerpts from the essays Orwell wrote in the years proceeding the publication of 1984. These are his own personal views and opinions, but they are given a dialogic twist, in the context of the novel, by being turned into the words of IngSoc (doesn't O'Brien tell Winston that he actually wrote the book himself?). Orwell makes his own thought provisional and limited, for the purposes of the novel (which are polyphonic, I believe).

...What makes Dostoyevsky's novels polyphonic is that the author addresses his characters as autonomous discourses whose voices are on an equal footing with that of the author. The author retains no surplus of information beyond that available to the characters...

I remember this point from Bakhtin. He illustrates it by a number of examples, which seem to be fairly easy to find. Many of Dostoevsky's characters have this peculiar trait, that they already somehow know in the beginning how everything is going to turn out in the end. Prince Myshkin, for example, not only knows, on some level, that Rogozhin will murder Nastassya Filippovna, he even knows the specific weapon that will be used. This can certainly be seen in 1984. O'Brien knows all about Winston's apostasy years before it even enters Winston's head. Winston is also aware, on some deep, inarticulate level, of the grim fate that is waiting for him.

I also see similarities of plot structure (or, to use the Bakhtinian jargon: similarities of chronotope), especially in the last section of the novel. Once Winston is captured, everything goes crazy, linear time begins to lose all meaning, and we enter a strange world of sudden reversals and coincidental meetings. In the dungeons of the ministry, the truth can finally be spoken. O'Brien holds nothing back. These sequences have the same feeling as those peculiar scandal-scenes that are so prevalent in Dostoevsky, in which anyone can suddenly pop up, and their every utterance can be an important revelation.

[WyattGwyon]

I would never have said, however, that Dostoevsky failed to represent a finalized motive (or a monological hierarchy of motives, in which each factor--the pecuniary motive, the ideological musings, the spiritual protest--is given a definite and singular value), but instead I would have said that he succeeded in representing a polyphonic balance of motives (a dialogical array of motives, in which no one, definite factor can ever gain the upper hand).

I too, like Rhav, believe the "failure" to represent a finalized motive inestimably adds to the realism of the portrait and the aesthetic value of the novel—I was just trying to capture Dostoyevsky's evaluation of his own efforts, not mine. I don't think it is clear whether the author finally and consciously came to appreciate the indeterminacy of characterization in the same way and to the extent that you and I do, but considering that it became his modus operandi in the later novels, I would assume he must have.