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Dostoevskii, the Jewish Question, and The Brothers Karamazov

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Maxim D. Shrayer
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Abstract

In this article, Maxim D. Shrayer offers a new perspective on Fedor Dostoevskii’s writings about the Jews. Following a trajectory initiated by Vladimir Solov'ev and Leonid Grossman, Shrayer argues that for Dostoevskii the Jewish question is primarily religious, rather than social or ethnic. Through close textual analysis, but also by placing the controversial blood libel episode from The Brothers Karamazov in the larger context of Dostoevskii’s fictional and discursive works, Shrayer links the anti-Semitic charges of ritual murder and host profanation with the story of Captain Snegirev and his son Iliusha. In the story of the Snegirevs, Shrayer identifies Dostoevskii’s keen understanding of (religious) intolerance and scapegoating. Shrayer demonstrates that the conclusion of The Brothers Karamazov (Iliusha Snegirev’s funeral) recalls “The Funeral of ‘The Universal Man’” from the March 1877 issue of The Diary of a Writer and thus points to Dostoevskii’s view of the Christian-Judaic reconciliation.

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Articles
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Slavic Review , Volume 61 , Issue 2 , Summer 2002 , pp. 273 - 291
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Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2002

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References

An early version of this essay was presented at the symposium “Focus on The Brothers Karamazov, ” at Yale University, on 3 October 1999.1 am most grateful to the organizer, Robert Louis Jackson, for encouraging me to undertake this study, giving me an opportunity to participate in the symposium, and commenting on several drafts of this article. A later version was delivered at “Dostojewskij und Deutschland,” the eleventh symposium of the International Dostoevsky Society at Baden-Baden, on 5 October 2001. I diank the organizers, Horst-Jurgen Gerigk and Rolf-Dieter Kluge of the University of Heidelberg, for including me in the program. Boston College has kindly provided funding for my research and for travel to Germany. I would like to thank two of Slavic Review’s three anonymous readers for their most helpful suggestions and criticisms, which I have tried to address. The anonymous reader who recommended against publication is also hereby acknowledged for providing motivation to continue with my work. Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Dr. Karen E. Lasser, for drawing my attention to an interview that helped me formulate my ideas and for reading and patiently commenting on a version of this essay. The epigraphs are taken from A. Z. Shteinberg, “Dostoevskii i evreistvo,” Versty 3 (1928): 99, and Tsypkin, Leonid, Summer in Baden-Baden, trans. Roger, and Keys, Angela (London, 1987), 116 Google Scholar.

1 All citations from Dostoevskii’s Russian texts are from Dostoevskii, F. N., Polnoe sobraniesochinenii v tridtsati tomakh (Leningrad, 1972-1990)Google Scholar, hereafter PSS. Brat'ia Karamazovy is found in vols. 14-15.1 use a modified version of Constance Garnett’s English translation of The Brothers Karamazov (New York, 1957), hereafter BK. All other translations from the Russian are my own; they do not attempt to capture the artistry of the original but rather seek to be literal insofar as possible.

A number of scholars have written about Jewish topics in Dostoevskii’s life and art. Listed below are works that will not be acknowledged elsewhere in this article. Grishin, D. V., “Byl li Dostoevskii antisemitom?“ Vtora’& russkogo khristianskogo dvizheniia 114 (1974): 73–88 Google Scholar; Jackson, Robert Louis, “A Footnote to Selo Stepancikovo,” Ricerche Slavistiche 17-19 (1970-1972): 247–57Google Scholar; Robert Louis Jackson, “The Bathhouse Scene in Notes from theHouse of the Dead,” Literature, Culture, and Society in the Modern Age: In Honor of Joseph Frank, special issue ofStanford Slavic Studies 4, no. 1 (1991): 260-68; Kaufman, Walter, “TolstoyversusDostoevsky,”£ xMtewtio/wm, Religion, andDeath: Thirteen Essays (New York, 1976), 15–27 Google Scholar; Kunitz, Joshua, Russian Literature and the Jew (New York, 1929), 51–54 Google Scholar; E. Levin, “Vladimir Solov'ev protiv antisemitizma,” Evrei v SSSR 19 (January 1979): 418-38; Schwartz, M., “Dostoievsky and Judaism,” Jewish Review 4 (April-June 1933): 57–63 Google Scholar.

2 Protokoly sionskikh mudretsov was a forgery created in Paris by an anonymous author probably employed by the Russian secret police (Okhrana). The first Russian public edi tion was put out by S. A. Nilus in 1905 and was followed by a second edition in 1911. The Protocols gained their worldwide notoriety in the late 1910s and early 1920s.

3 David I. Goldstein, Dostoyevski and the Jews (Austin, 1981), 131 (originally published as Dostoievski et les juifs [Paris, 1976]); see also Grossman, Leonid, Ispovea” odnogo evreia (Moscow, 1924), 65–66 Google Scholar.

4 See Dostoevskii, F. M., Evreiskii vopros (Moscow, 1995), 3–13 Google Scholar; see PSS 25:75-93. Of the six sections in Diary of a Writer for March 1877 where Dostoevskii discusses the Jewish question, the publishers of this compilation have only included disgracefully edited versions of sections 1 (“Evreiskii vopros“), 2 (“Pro i contra“), and 3 (“Status in statu: Sorok vekov bytiia“).

5 Hingley, Ronald, Dostoevsky: His Life and Works (New York, 1978), 174–75Google Scholar.

6 I am paraphrasing Vladimir Nabokov’s formulation about Chichikov in Dead Souls: “Chichikov himself is merely the ill-paid representative of the Devil, a traveling salesman from Hades, ‘our Mr. Chichikov’ as the Satan & Co. firm may be imagined calling their easy-going, healthy-looking but inwardly shivering and rotting agent.” Nabokov, NikolaiGogol (New York, 1961), 73.

7 Gornfel'd, A[rkadii], “Dostoevskii, Fedor Mikhailovich,” in Garkavi, A. and Katsnel'son, L., gen. eds., Evreiskaia entsiklopediia (St. Petersburg, n.d. [1906]), 7:311Google Scholar.

8 Dostoevskii, PSS 25:80.

9 Ibid., 25:78.

10 Ibid., 25:75. On the word zhid in Russian language and culture, see Birnbaum, Henrik, “Some Problems with the Etymology and the Semantics of Slavic Zid ‘Jew,’” SlavicaHierosolymitana: Slavic Studies of the Hebrew University, vol. 8 (1985): 1–11 Google Scholar; Klier, John D., “Zhid: Biography of a Russian Epithet,” Slavonic and East European Review 60, no. 1 (1982): 1–15 Google Scholar.

11 It is, for instance, difficult to “make sense” of Dostoevskii’s flippant use of the noun zhid in his essay “Po povodu vystavki” (On the occasion of an exhibition), from TheDiary of a Writerfor 1873; see PSS 21:71.

12 Gornfel'd, “Dostoevskii, Fedor Mikhailovich,” 311; after the final version of this essay had been completed, Horst-Jiirgen Gerigk kindly sent me the manuscript of a Russian translation of a long and fascinating paper by the Japanese Slavist Kennosuke Nakamura, “Dostoevskii i evreiskii vopros: Zametki,” translated from the Japanese by Aleksei Potapov. The original version appeared in the Japanese-language collection, Yasuoka, Haruko, ed., Nationalism in Contemporary Russian Culture (Tokyo, 1998)Google Scholar. Nakamura’s paper makes an important contribution to the study of Dostoevskii’s attitudes toward the Jews, and I can only regret that I did not learn about it earlier.

13 Joseph Frank, “Foreword,” in Goldstein, Dostoyevski and the Jews, xiv.

14 Dreizin, Felix, “Dostoevsky’s ‘Kike,’” in Guaspari, David, ed., The Russian Soul andthe jew: Essays in Literary Ethnocentrism (Lantham, Md., 1990), 113 Google Scholar.

15 Felix Philipp Ingold's work (Dostojewskij und das Judentum [Frankfurt am Main, 1981]) strikes me as the most balanced in its reasoning and the least befuddled by overarching theories. See also Rosenshield, Gary, “Isai Fomich Bumshtein: The Representation of the Jew in Dostoevsky’s Major Fiction,” Russian Review 43, no. 3 (July 1984): 261–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rosenshield, “Dostoevskii’s ‘The Funeral of the Universal Man’ and ‘An Isolated Case’ and Chekhov’s ‘Rothschild's Fiddle’: The Jewish Question,” Russian Review 56, no. 4 (October 1997): 487-504; and Katz, Michael, “Once More on the Subject of Dostoevsky and the Jews,” in Rubin-Dorsky, Jeffrey and Fishkin, Shelley Fisher, eds., People of the Book: ThirtyScholars Reflect on Their Jewish Identity (Madison, 1996): 231–44Google Scholar.

16 Torop, P., “Dostoevskii: Logikaevreiskogo voprosa,” Sbornikstateik 70-letiiuprof. lu.M. Lotmana (Tartu, 1992), 310 Google Scholar.

17 Katz, “Once More on the Subject of Dostoevsky and the Jews,” 242. On the idea of “two Dostoevskiis,” see Merezhkovskii, D. S., “Prorok russkoi revoliutsii: K iubileiu Dostoevskogo,” Polnoe sobranie sochinenii D. S. Merezhkovskogo, vol. 11 (St. Petersburg-Moscow, 1911)Google Scholar, and D. S. Merezhkovskii, L. Tolstoi i Dostoevskii: Zhizn', tvorchestvo i religiia, Polnoe sobraniesochinenii D. S. Merezhkovskogo, vol. 7 (St. Petersburg-Moscow, 1912); Zaslavskii, D[avid], “Dostoevskii o evreiakh (Kstoletiiu so dnia rozhdeniia)”Evreiskii vestnik 1 (1 April 1922): 6–10 Google Scholar.

18 Leonid Grossman’s book is available in English translation; see Confession of a Jew, trans. Ranne Moab (New York, 1975); the Russian text was recently reprinted: Ispoved'odnogo evreiia (Moscow, 1999). Aleksandr Melikhov’s novel Ispoved' exrreia (Confession of a Jew) takes its title from Grossman’s book; Melikhov’s novel was published in Novyi mir in 1993, and then in book form in 1994, see Melikhov, Aleksandr, Ispoved' evreia (St. Peterburg, 1994)Google Scholar. Leonid Tsypkin’s novel Leto v Badene (1982) also takes its inspiration from Grossman’s Confession of a Jew; it was recently brought into public view by Susan Sontag’s “Loving Dostoevsky,“Mai Yorker, 1 October 2001, 98-105. Tsypkin’s novel is available in English translation, Summer in Baden-Baden, trans. Roger and Angela Keys (London, 1987). Peter Scotto’s essay explores Jewish questions in Grossman’s influential study “Lermontov and the Cultures of the East“; see “Censorship, Reading, and Interpretation: A Case Study from the Soviet Union,” Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 109, no. 1 (1994): 61-70.

19 See, in particular, Grossman, Leonid, “Dostoevskii i iudaizm,” Ispoved' odnogo evreia (Moscow, 1924), 165–81Google Scholar.

20 Morson, Gary Saul, “Dostoevsky’s Anti-Semitism and the Critics: A Review Article,” Slavic and East European Journal 27, no. 3 (1983): 312 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Morson reworked his review article of 1983 for publication in a collection of essays by Jewish scholars; see Gary Saul Morson, “Apologetics and Negative Apologetics; Or, Dialogues of a Jewish Slavist,” in Rubin-Dorsky and Fishkin, eds., People of the Book: Thirty Scholars Reflect on Their Jewish Identity, 78-97.

21 Morson, “Dostoevsky’s Anti-Semitism and the Critics,” 310.

22 Solov'ev, V. S., “Russkii natsional'nyi ideal,” Solov'ev, V. S., Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 5, 1883-1897 (St. Petersburg, n.d.), 383 Google Scholar.

23 Maude McLeod and David Isay, “‘I Did Not Join the Hebrew Faith—I Returned,“‘New York Times Magazine, 29 September 1999, 116; emphasis in the original. I thank my wife, Karen, for drawing my attention to this interview.

24 Dostoevskii, PSS 25:80.

25 For a useful account of the history of Judeoizers in Russia, see “Zhidovstvuiushchie“ in Katsnel'son, L. and Gintsburg, D. G., eds., Evreiskaia entsiklopediia (St. Petersburg, n.d.), 7:582–88Google Scholar.

26 See Solov'ev, V. S., “Tri rechi v pamiat' Dostoevskogo,” in Gal'tseva, R. and Rodnianskaia, I., eds.,Filosofiia iskusstva i literaturnaia kritika (Moscow, 1991), 250–51Google Scholar. See Marina Kostalevsky, Dostoevsky and Soloviev: The Art of Integral Vision (New Haven, 1997), 28-34.

27 Solov'ev, “Russkii natsional'nyi ideal,” 382-83.

28 Solov'ev, V. S., Evreistvo i khristianskii vopros (Moscow, 1884), 9 Google Scholar; see also 6. Kornblatt, Judith Deutsch discusses Solov'ev’s writings on Jews and Judaism in “;Vladimir Solov'ev on Spiritual Nationhood, Russia and the Jews,” Russian Review 56, no. 2 (April 1997): 157–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Shteinberg, “Dostoevskii i evreistvo,” 103.

30 Dostoevskii, PSS 10:199.

31 See Rosen’s, Nathan passionate review of David I. Goldstein’s Dostoyevshi and the Jews, Dostoevsky Studies 3 (1982): 200–203Google Scholar.

32 Merezhkovskii, “Prorok russkoi revoliutsii,” 195-96.

33 Dostoevskii, PSS 26:147.

34 Grossman, Ispoved' odnogo evreia, 167.

35 Dostoevskii, PSS 14:21, 311, 453.

36 Berlin, P. A., “Dostoevskii i evrei,” Novyi zhurnal 83 (1966): 266 Google Scholar.

37 Dostoevskii, BK, 552-53; also PSS 15:24; emphasis in the original.

38 Dostoevskii, BK, 554.

39 See Trachtenberg, Joshua, The Devil and the Jews: The Medieval Conception of the Jewand Its Relation to Modern Antisemitism (Philadelphia, 1943), 109–55Google Scholar; see also “Krov',” in Garkavi and Katsnel'son, gen. eds., Evreiskaia entsiklopediia, 9:866-69; Klier, John Doyle, “The Occult Element in Russian Judeophobia,” Imperial Russia’s Jewish Question, 1855-1881 (Cambridge, Eng., 1995), 417–49Google Scholar.

40 See “Velizhskoe delo,” in Garkavi and Katsnel'son, gen. eds., Evreiskaia entsiklopediia, 5:398-406.

41 On the subject of ritual murder in Dostoevskii, see Goldstein, Dostoyevski and theJews, 95-98; 122-26; 155-59.

42 Khvol'son, D. A., O nekotorykh obvineniiakh protiv evreev: Istoricheskoe issledovanie poistochnikam (St. Petersburg, 1861)Google Scholar; Khvol'son, D. A., Upotrebliaiut li evrei khristianskuiu krov’f (St. Petersburg, 1879)Google Scholar.

43 Brafman, Iakov, Kniga Kagala: Materialy dlia izucheniia evreiskogo byta (Vil'na, 1869)Google Scholar; Iu. Gessen et al., eds., Zapiska o ritual'nykh ubiistvakh (pripisyvaemaia V. I. Daliu) i ee istochniki (St. Petersburg, 1914). The report, attributed to V I. Dal', was originally published as Rozyskanie o ubienii evreiami khristianskikh mladentsev i upotreblenii krovi ikh (St. Petersburg, 1844); see Klier, John Doyle, Imperial Russia ’s Jewish Question, 1855-1881 (Cambridge, Eng., 1995), 419 Google Scholar; on the other two figures associated with the authorship of the 1844 Dal', see 495n6.

44 “Kutaisskoe delo,” in Garkavi and Katsnel'son, gen. eds., Evreiskaia entsiklopediia, 9:863-65. For Dostoevskii’s remarks, see PSS 30.1:59.

45 Grossman’s research is discussed in Goldstein, Dostoyevski and the Jews, 157-58, 217«33.

46 Robert Louis Jackson elucidated die centrality of the obraz- bezobrazie opposition in Dostoevskii’s poetics and aesthetics; see, in particular, his The Art of Dostoevsky: Deliriums andNocturnes (Princeton, 1981), 304-18. I investigated the problem of linguistic dehumanrzation in “Metamorphoses of bezobrazie in Dostoevski]’s The Brothers Karamazov: Maksimov- Von Sohn-Karamazov,” Russian Literature 37 (1995): 93-108.

47 Gor'kii, M., “Eshche o ‘karamazovshchine,’” in Dmitriieva, A., ed.,Dostoevskiiv, F. M. russkoi kritike (Moscow, 1956), 396 Google Scholar.

48 See Ingold, Dostojexvskij und dasJudentum, 88-95.

49 Morson, “Dostoevsky’s Anti-Semitism and the Critics,” 310; Rosenshield, “Isai Fomich Burnshtein,” 275.

50 Dostoevskii, BK, 177-79.

51 Ibid., 179.

52 Ibid., 181.

53 Ibid., 190-91.

54 Ibid., 196-97.

55 Ibid., 203-4.

56 Another refraction of the finger motif is the account of the birth of the servant Grigorii’s son who is born with six fingers; I am grateful to Horst-Jiirgen Gerigk for pointing this out.

57 One could also argue that toward the end of the novel the motif of blood has gained further prominence: the bloody murder of old Karamazov, the servant Grigorii’s bloody wound, the blood on Dmitrii’s hands and clothes, and so on.

58 See Girard, Rene, The Scapegoat, trans. Freccero, Yvonne (Baltimore, 1986)Google Scholar, esp. chap. 2, “Stereotypes of Persecution.” Originally published as Le bouc émissaire (Paris, 1982).

59 Berlin spoke about this process in “Dostoevskii i evrei.“

60 Dostoevskii, BK, 532.

61 Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures (Philadelphia, 1988/5748), 1272.

62 Dostoevskii, BK, 727-28.

63 Ibid., 729.

64 Solov'ev, Evreistvo i khristianskii vopros, 28.

65 Gary Rosenshield points to a connection between “The Funeral of ‘The Universal Man’” and The Brothers Karamazov in his article, “Dostoevskii’s ‘The Funeral of the Universal Man,’” esp. 488, 492-94, 501.

66 In “Leskov and Dostoevsky, Parable and Icon,” a section of her recent book, Rewriting the Jew, Gabriella Safran offered provocative comments on Dostoevskii’s “Funeral of’The Universal Man’” and “The Jewish Question“; see Safran, , Rewriting the Jew: AssimilationNarratives in the Russian Empire (Stanford, 2000), 135–46Google Scholar.

67 See Ipatova, S. A., ed., “Neizdannye pis'ma k Dostoevskomu [letter of S. E. Lur'e],” Dostoevskii: Materialy i issledovaniia (St. Petersburg, 1996), 12:205–26Google Scholar. Of S. E. Lur'e’s letters to Dostoevskii, nine letters and an envelope of the tenth have survived (they are at Institut russkoi literatury, Rossiiskaia gosudarstvennaia biblioteka, St. Petersburg); Dostoevskii is known to have written ten letters to Lur'e, of which three have survived and been published (see PSS 29:81, 146, 150). The subject of Sof'ia Lur'e’s relationship with Dostoevskii awaits its investigators.

68 See Dostoevskii, PSS 25:89-90.

69 My main source of information about Hindenburg is Sofia Lur'e’s letter to Dostoevskii of 13 February 1877. A recent publication of Lur'e’s letters to Dostoevskii mentions an obituary, published in the German-language Sankt-Petersbourger Herold, February 1877; see S. A. Ipatova, ed., “Neizdannye pis'ma k Dostoevskomu.“

70 Dostoevskii, PSS 25:91, 92; emphasis in the original.

71 Ibid., 26:148.

72 A catalog of principal Jewish characters in Dostoevskii’s fiction includes: Isai Fomich Bumshtein in Notes from the House of the Dead, Achilles in Crime and Punishment, and Liamshin in The Possessed.

73 I discuss the careers of three major representatives of Russian village prose, Astaf’ev, Viktor, Rasputin, Valentin, and Belov, Vasilii, in “Anti-Semitism and the Decline of Russian Village Prose,” Partisan Review 3 (2000): 474–85Google Scholar.

74 Solov'ev, Evreistvo i khristianskii vopros, 3.