Newsgroups: bit.listserv.literary
Date:         Tue, 28 Jul 1992 13:52:00 EDT
From:         Tim Johnson <PH408014@BROWNVM.BITNET>
Subject:      Of Levin and Ivan

>i disagree with your analysis of levin.  i'm on somewhat shakey ground
>here, having never finished _Anna_, but what you've quoted and what you've
>commented do not seem to follow.
>
>to me, it appears levin is yet another in a long line of people who have
>had their faith affirmed by mystical knowledge....

  Well, the temptation is strong to take this discussion to the
theological, and lose sight of _Anna Karenina_ altogether.  Certainly
my own prejudices have come across rather clearly from my commentary.
Nevertheless, I'd like to make a few comments.

  The first is that I am willing to accept this notion of faith
affirmed by mystical knowledge.  Even, however, accepting that
Levin did have a moment of grace, I think the remaining excerpts
from the text stand to support my contention that Levin is not
the brightest character in _Anna Karenina_.  His difficulty in
expressing this moment of grace, if you would, stands in obvious
contrast to your own more lucid explanation.

  Nevertheless, (and if you never finished the novel, you likely
won't be able to clear this up) it does not appear to me that Levin
truly does invoke this non-rational (a-rational?) (c-rational? - no
that's bad food for thought ;-)  mystical revelation.  Instead,
Levin proposes a sort of rational argument for the existence of
"the Deity."  That is; "I have a concept of goodness, that concept
of goodness must have come from God, thus there must be a God."
Perhaps, as *he* says, this is only his awkward attempt at expression
of the mystical experience - but that, to me, is not obvious.
This indeed seems the foundation of his "faith."

  I have an additional objection to your comment on his statement:

>>     The question of other
>>   creeds and their relation to the Deity I have not the right
>>   or possibility of deciding.'

>    rather nice of him, actually, to refrain from judging that which he
>has no knowledge or understanding of.

  To my reading, Levin comments on the *fundamental* impossibility of
an understanding of the relationship between his Deity and other creeds.
Yet, he does assert that he understands the relationship of *his* Deity
to *his* creed.  To assert that a similar assessment of other creeds
is impossible is not the same as asserting that a similar assessment of
other creeds is something he is not currently prepared for.

>  ivan karamazov's difficulties, as far as i was able to see, was a surfeit
>of reason.  if one little innocent child has to suffer, he would refuse
>an offer of paradise on earth.  pretty extreme terms, don't you think?
>not just in the stakes, paradise & the desecration of innocence personified,
>but is its polarization of good and evil.  as if one could really exist
>clear of the other.  as if you could pick and chose, like one's livingroom
>decor.  all white and stainless steel, darling, not a touch of pastel.
>to my thinking, the very terms in which he sets up this argument, the way
>he frames the conflict, denies it any resolution.  he reasoned himself
>into a corner, and insanity was the only way out.

  Again, I must disagree.  The difficulty for Ivan is that he was
trying to reconcile the supposed God to the nature of reality.  The
problem of evil in a world created by a beneficent and omnipotent god
is a serious one.  Ivan recognized the mass of tangled contradictions
involved in the different approaches to God - the ultimate
irreconcilability of "The Prime Mover" (or Levin like invocations
of God) with "omni-etc, benevolant" descriptions of God's nature,
with the dogmatic instruction of the Church.  To take Levin's step -
to accept revelation, and then to try to rationalize the nature
of the world as we see it with the nature of God as it is proclaimed
with the nature of the Church as it acts - this is the step that leads
to insanity.  Such a settlement is not possible - yet how can you
discard any of the qualifiers of the nature of God and still have
a God of the principle of goodness, a God of the mystical revelation?
It cannot be done - like Fyodor's Hell, if there are no omnis, and
there is no beneficence, why, the whole thing just goes to pieces,
and then what justice is there in this world?

                         -Tim

p.s.: digression on the theological:  I see no reason why good
      cannot exist without evil.  Take the simple example of
      leaving a department store.  I walk out the door, let it
      shut behind me; the neutral act.  I walk out, hold the
      door for the woman with her arms full of packages - the
      good act - it stands as good in relation to the non-evil
      neutral act.  The evil act: I hold the door, but as she
      leaves, I trip her, and send her and her armload of
      packages sprawling.  That stands as evil in relation to
      the neutral act of having done nothing.  The good did
      not require the evil, the evil did not require the good.

p.p.s:  omni-etc: omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent

--------------------------------


"Even if, depraved by her environment, she succumbed to sin in her youth, she
has since loved much, and Christ Himself forgave her who loved much..."
"It wasn't for that kind of love that Christ forgave..." Father Joseph, the
gentle librarian, responded quickly and impatiently.

                         Dostoevsky, _The Brothers Karamazov_
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