The New Leader Literary Section
HINDUS, MILTON
The New Leader Literary Section Split Personality: Dostoyevsky's Tragedy of Intelligence By Milton Hindus A NEGLECTED clones*? It would be strange if it wo* otherwise. A elsseic aut ha atgimtod...
...Every decent man of our age must be a coward and a alave...
...Nevertheless it is clear that such persons as the writer of these note* not only may, but positively must exist in our society, when we consider the circumstances in the midst of which our aociety is formed...
...The really neglected one...
...hat now that I bars seen arjuaf that I only wanted to show off in a despicable way, I will not scratch it out on purpose...
...Perhaps the more you succeed in being one, the more will the other fall into your lap...
...He tells us in a footnote to the title, "The author of the diary and the diary itself are, of course, imaginary...
...t He gives back to the new time its very form'it* pressure...
...In any case he would never change places with them...
...That humanity has an interest in remembering...
...A great ataay leas ¦ area aa thaa w* woe Id ha lad to boliera by the eeae with which aaanea are thrown about la literary reat-rbat...
...f-OSTOTEVSE Y'S subject, as 1 see it, ia the perversa ia human beings and in then- relatione to each other...
...It is bound to be so, since the whole function of men seems to be to prove thst he is unpredictable, that he is not "a piano key...
...but strikes bottom, is just right, in the penetrating and satiric sense of those Words...
...He can be so deep, so reasonable, and so honest want he half-trios...
...He ia an image of humanity itself, a distorted image, it is true, but unmistakable...
...I believe my liver is diseased...
...In some ways, they become nastier than when left alone...
...He is, by turns, ridiculous, pitiful, tragic, subtle...
...Perhaps those who are called reactionary love man better since they are willing to accept him as he is, apparent vices and all...
...The very word aticks in one's throat...
...I know you've seen it mentioned in biographies of Dostoyevsky Snd in rriticsl studies of his work, but it is rsrely accorded the importance it deserves...
...Th* writer makes a statement in one breath, takes it back in the next, asserts it tentatively in the third, plays with the reader, teases him...
...Ha makaa fun of him, and thsn is a war* that his own creation ia making fun of th* creator...
...The book reviewer's turn of phrase gets into our blood, you see...
...He will launch a curse upon the world, and a* only man can curse (it is the primary distinction between him snd the animals) maybe by his curse alone he will attain his object...
...On second thought, he isn't sure...
...There's a question...
...Can I have been constructed simply in order to come to the conclusion that my whole construction it a cheat...
...Tktt is his normal condition...
...So was my egotism...
...Why ars they, otherwise, so anxious for changes in the very basic material they are working with, human nature itself...
...Those persons who have traced in Schopenhauer certain modern theoriea of paychology ought not to neglect Dostoyevsky in that respect...
...It is a hundred page soliloquy, the whsle drama contained in one voice...
...I hsve tried to expose to the view of the public more distinctly than is commonly done, one of the character* of the recent past...
...It is not so bulky ss the others, certainly, but neither does it contain as much chaff...
...Is Bad a mampanaa » that, at least...
...I was a cowsrd and alave...
...It did not occur to me to ask why it was so important to understand me and "people like me...
...He irritates us by his effort* to amuee us constantly and is awtr* that ha id irritating us tat does not stop...
...It is to the donkeys and mules, the direct men of action who do not atop to figure the "impossibility of intelligent vengeance," that his admiration goes...
...That must have been at least partly the case here, because thi* dissection of the soul of a mid-nineteenth century Russian intellectual hit me hard when 1 first read it (a New Yorker living in the twentieth century) »o that I remember I wrote an excited letter to a friend in Syracuse, ''If you want to understand me and people like me, read Doatoyevsky's 'Notes From Underground...
...Yet this one hundred page story deserves to stand on the same plane with the others, higher if you'll take my word for it...
...At that time we were all mad to define "the spirit of the age...
...Perhaps the progressives do not love life as much as they say they do...
...tan this be my whole purpose...
...And how do you know, you menders of humanity, Dostoyevsky asks, that thi* perversity, this ingratitude, this irrational assertion of the self, is not the most advantageous thing of all...
...The New Leader Literary Section Split Personality: Dostoyevsky's Tragedy of Intelligence By Milton Hindus A NEGLECTED clones...
...He i* one of the representatives of * generation still living...
...In that case, why can't there be neglected classics or forgotten daisies, works loat not only through time, (Ire and flood but through carelessness, self-conceit, and just plain obtueeneas, such as we know are the ordinary portion of mankind...
...Had Freud ventured on the bare cynicism of that last statement, he would have been out of the medical profession immediately...
...For thi* is a satire, a great satire, a tragic one on the venomous impotence of the pure intellectual...
...Build him a palace of crystal, a regular exhibit for the world's fair of the future, he'll smash it to bit...
...Is it perhaps because of its sise that it is neglected...
...Is there another work that hits the nail it aims to hit more squarely on the head (and a mighty important nail I think it is too) thsn Dostoyevsky's "Notes From Underground...
...More thaa a decade has paseed, much ha* happened, much baa changed in me and around me, and 1 still stand by that statement, naivete ami ail...
...He, the human animal, say* it make* five, and what are you going to do about it...
...They do not push consciousness beyond the limit where it becomes absurd and loses "the name of action...
...Of that I am firmly persuaded...
...Milton Hindu* ia one ef the yennger leading literary critics ef the country...
...Hardly a word after the opening sentences, "I am a sick man...
...A poor jest, hall will aet scratch it eat I wrote it thinking it venal sened vary witty...
...H* has written several etudieo ef Prouat...
...He had to dress it up in fancy technical terminology, but in the end it amount* to the same thing...
...I say tail without the slightest embsrrsssment...
...H* ia a re-creation, more up-to-date in every respect,'of Hamlet...
...A thing to be remarked about this book is bow largely it deals with what we have come to call the subcon-acious...
...You think of Dostoyevsky and "The Possessed" come* to mind, "The Brothers Karamaiov," "Crime and Punishment," "The Idiot," but not "Notes From Underground...
...I «**,,» spiteful onVial I was rude and took pleasure ia beta so I did aet take bribes, you nee, no I was boons...
...And not only mine but that of a judicious critic like Andre Gide, who in his study of Dostoyevsky, if I remember correctly, calls it his centrsl work...
...There is an element of the perverse in all human nature, inseparable from it in fact, but it i* aggravated in those persons who live too much in the mind, who have, as Dostoyevsky puts it in another place in the story, two or three times the amount of consciousness that any human being was meant to have...
...Nevertheless, I don't think I was wrong in attributing th* importance 1 did to it...
...It is all quality...
...I ask you, gentlemen, listen sometime* to the moaaa of an educated man of tha nineteenth century suffering from toothache, on tho second or third day of the attack, when he ia beginning to moan, not as he moaned on tha hist day, that is, not simply because he has toothache, not just as any coarse peasant, but as a man affected by progress and European rivilixation, a man who 'is divorced from the soil and the national elements,' as they express it nowadays...
...Has anyone, for example, distinguiahed better than he between the different type* of memory...
...And yet, is their lack of intelligence so admirable...
...His basic propensities are not changed very much by civilization...
...I do not believe it...
...Celine, Emily Dirkiaaen and other Hterary Ignrea...
...And what ia a clasaic anyway...
...The only thing one can't say is that it'* rational...
...Gratuitously...
...And Dostoyevsky's attitude to the/ character likewise changes...
...You may build up the most airtight systems, hell refuse to be caught by them...
...A elsseic aut ha atgimtod by infinitum, j natal* franca had it jest abeat right when a* said that tha work* oioijbsdy onmrroa ar* ala* tha emee nobody loom, at nhakoapoara, tar example Or, atill bettor, tha Groak Draaan Nobody ia aa exaggera tioa, of court...
...i MOT only is the theme of the story prevcreeness, but the method of development is contradictory...
...History, as Dostoyevsky sees it, is much more the product of the forces of impulse, caprice, and perversity than it is of the reasoning process, "in short, one may say anything about the history of the world, anything that might enter the most disordered imagination...
...Every man ha* reminiscences which he would not tell to every one but only Jo his friends...
...A lecturer at The New School for Social Research and Hunter College, he has contributed te Foetr$, Kengon Kevieu, Atlantic Monthly, The New Leader and other publication...
...Tb* more decent he ii, the greater the number of *uch thing* in hi* mind...
...Only donkeys and mules are valiant, and they only till they are pushed to the wall...
...its a work, isn't it, that in lit form and manner is constructed aa nearly perfectly as our limited minds ran imagine...
...Nor is thi* an accident depending upon the darkness snd ignorance of the past...
...As a kind of reward...
...Hanging on by the last breath ao to apeak...
...Yet the boundary between the timely and the timeless cannot be fixed...
...It is clear that Dostoyevsky had the timeliness of this piece in mind when he wrote it...
...Kach one to his own nsture and his own fate...
...I was still in my teens then, and my enthusiasms were naively expressed...
...Aad what of thaa* daaaira that ao on* even talk* about...
...Thoao on tho point of vanishing altogether...
...And if he does not find means he will contrive destruction and chaos, will contrive sufferings of all sorts, simply to gain his point...
...When we thought we had found it, there was nothing to do but proclaim it to the world Without questioning if the world wanted to hear it, ar had aeed of hearing it, or had, perhaps, eneasthtng more important to do...
...That is, he recognises thst man is not the angel that optimists have made him out to be...
...To retain his individuality, his power of choice, hi* csprics (which he takes to be synonymous with his humanity) he will, if pushed to extremes, even deny that two and two make four...
...He is made and constructed to that very end...
...But there are other things which a man U afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such thing* stored away in his mind...
...In fact, Dostoyevsky in this piece, like so many other satirist*, takes what we should call a thoroughly reactionary view of the world...
...Can a neglected work in thi* ultimate aense even be considered a clasaic...
...He has other matters in his mind whiah he would not revesl even to his friends, but only tb himself, and that in secret...
...I am a spiteful man...
...That explain*, for example, the wonderful section on the voluptuous enjoyment of toothache...
...Tbe title ia, of course, significant in that respect...
...Even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if thi* were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain hii point...
...He Is dead serious one moment and dead-pan the moment after...
...I am an unattractive man...
Vol. 27 • December 1944 • No. 49
