Monthly Archives: January 2016

There was a particular scene in Francis Coppola’s Apocalypse Now that reminded me of the trauma faced by a protagonist in Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. In  Apocalypse Now, Willard begins his monologue of his experience returning to civilization. He goes on to recall the desire to leave the warzone when he was in duty, but quickly changes this opinion when he feels like a stranger to the “peace” of being at home. This realization is similar to All Quiet on the Western Front’s Paul Baumer when he is temporarily relieved from his service at war. Paul returns to his sister and sickly mother , however, he  is unable to escape the belief that he does not belong by his family’s side, but rather belongs to the brutal conditions of war. (As Paul joined the war when he was eighteen, he encounters the cruelty of manslaughter in war that the majority of adult men have not confronted.)

Both Willard and Paul have experienced the cruelty and chaos of war on the frontline where they have witnessed gruesome injuries, the deaths of close acquaintances, and slaughtering of men upon men. To suddenly return to society is an adaptation that neither of the protagonists are able to make, especially when civilians and society glorify the  act of going to war and the “pride” that is associated with their participation in it. Those in society euphonize the war (despite having little or no knowledge of the struggles found within) and idealize a brave soldier without fear of the war. It is due to the realization that the fantasy of a noble and unbroken soldier returning home is impossible that causes Willard and Paul to embrace the harsh conditions and reality of war. Neither of the protagonists can cope with the denial of their trauma in the frontline (by society’s unshattering delusion of war bettering the soldier and the nation), thus they seek comfort in the atrocities of war that are real, unavoidable, and ever-lasting in memories.

Nihilism is based on the Latin word meaning ‘nothing’. The position of nihilism plays a significant part in Philosophy when it comes to exploring the realm of nothingness. The idea that there is nothing at all, that we know nothing at all, and the extinction of moral principles. However, in this sense, it is possible to incorporate the state of nothing into any possible scenario. The more modern discussion into the idea of nihilism is based on the realisation that nothing we do, create, love, or say has no valuable meaning at all.

Undeniably, this is seen as certainly quite melancholy. The question that arises from nihilism could sound a bit like this: is that really all there is? Are human beings on this planet that insignificant that all that we believe in is in fact just a ball of nothing?

The popularisation of nihilism originated from philosophy as a form of an accusation. The excuse that they are a nihilist, then uses against you stating you are in fact a nihilist are hardwired into the vocabulary of philosophers. Interesting enough, I wonder how modern society would act if someone used ‘you are a nihilist’ as an insult. How many people would actually burst into outrage?

Early on in The Idiot, Prince Myshkin tells the story of a man about to be executed who has an epiphany. When faced with the imminence of death, the convicted man felt time slow down to a point where “five minutes seemed … an infinite term” (64). The man became frustrated at this thought, thinking that if “life were returned to [him, he] would turn every minute into an entire age” and never waste a moment of his life (64). Despite this epiphanic moment, he still found that he “wasted many, many moments” after his life was spared.

While this is an extreme example of an epiphanic moment before an absolute sentence, I find that a similar realization often occurs in our everyday lives. Albeit on a much smaller scale and a more trivial matter, often I find myself feeling the same sense of mystical clarity the night before an assignment is due.

With an imminent deadline and an incomplete essay just hours before it is due, “the whole awful torture lies in the fact that there is certainly no escape” from it; there is no chance for an extension or aid of any sort (24). In such scenarios, I also find myself similarly dividing the remaining time: two more hours for writing, then thirty more minutes to review, a quick break for perhaps a cup of tea — then the final read before submitting.  These minutes seem “a vast wealth” of time, and I promise that with the next assignment “I would count every minute, and wouldn’t waste a thing for nothing” (65). However, much like the convict described in Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, I find with each passing week that I have not learned at all, and with many other assignments, “wasted many, many moments” (65).

In The Idiot, Dostoevsky communicates the moments before his execution, through Myshkin’s description of a scene for Adelaida to paint. He describes his surroundings in detail and becomes increasingly aware of the time that passes. He begins to regret the wasted moments in his life. Questions surrounding the possibility of being spared arises but the responsibility of living an intense life causes him to wish for death.  As Dostoevsky waited for his death, he gradually wanted to be executed as his fear for being unable to live a satisfying life became too much to tolerate. Eventually the challenge drives him mad as he was saved.

I, like many, assume that I will die of old age or sickness, opposed to a violent death early on in my life. However, if my life does suddenly ends, I don’t think that I’ll experience Dostoevsky’s crisis during the time span between realizing that I am dying and the end. I’ve always thought that dying would result in personal relief. Perhaps the violent means that I would be subjected to, for the purpose of this blog, would not be desirable but I believe that the seconds before the end of my life, I would be at peace with both dying and the life that I’ve lived.

The exquisitely beautiful, proud, yet also stubbornly self-destructive Nastasia Filipovna Brashkova in The Idiot was based on the equally fascinating figure of Polina Prokofyevna Suslova, who in addition to being mistress of Fyodor Dostoevsky was also a short story writer in her own rights. Not only was she the basis for Nastasia, Polina was the prototype for the vast majority of Dostoevsky’s great female protagonists, including Katerina in Crime and Punishment, Lizaveta Nikolaevna in The Possessed, both Katerina and Grushenka in the Brothers Karamazov, and the eponymous Polina in The Gambler. Much like Myshkin and Nastasia, Dostoevsky’s relationship with Polina was a painful and tumultuous one which ultimately resulted in lasting heartbreak for the novelist.

The two first met in  1861 when Polina was a 21 year old student attending a public reading by the 40 year Dostoevsky, who was at that time already a renowned writer and married to his first wife Maria who was at the time dying from consumption. Dostoevsky was enraptured by the attractive young woman and the two soon began a short but passionate affair. Polina repeatedly demanded the writer to leave his wife for her although when Dostoevsky proposed to her after his wife’s death, she turned him down. The relationship eventually ended  in the spring of 1863 due to Polina seeing other lovers and because of Dostoevsky’s increasingly worsening gambling addiction, which has landed him in considerable debt.

In a letter to Polina’s sister, Nadezhda (who interestingly was the first Russian female physician and gynecologist), Dostoevsky wrote that she was a “great egoist. Her egoism and her vanity are colossal. She demands everything of other people, all the perfections, and does not pardon the slightest imperfection in the light of other qualities that one may possess”, and that “I still love her, but I do not want to love her any more. She doesn’t deserve this love …”.

When she was 40 years old, she married the 24 year old Vasily Rozanov, who wrote in diary that he fell in love with her at first sight and that “she is the most wonderful woman I’ve ever met”. Rozanov has the reputation of being one of the most controversial writers of his time who was known for his paradoxical and self-contradicting political comments and held Dostoevsky as his boyhood idol.  Their marriage was an uneasy one as Polina often flirted  with Rozanov’s friends all the while making public scenes of jealousy herself, she was dismissive of Rozanov’s work and left him on two occasions only to be forgiven and begged to return, saying “there was something brilliant (in her temperament) that made me love her blindly and timidly despite all the suffering”. She finally left him in 1886, after six years of marriage although she did not divorce him for another 20 years out of spite, thereby making all the children Rozanov had with his later partner illegitimate.

Even after their relationship has terminated, Polina’s memory never left Dostoevsky’s mind as evidenced by the numerous appearances of proud and selfish heroines and doomed love affairs which were all variations her and their brief time together until the very end of Dostoevsky’s writing career. In the book The Three Loves of Dostoevsky, the critic Mark Slonim described  of Dostoevsky’s longing for Polina by saying “until his death he remembered her caress and slaps in the face. He was devoted to this seductive, cruel, unfaithful and tragic love.”