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Name required. Follow Following. Richard Howard London: Quartet Encounters, , In both, he appears as a financially independent, melancholic, beautiful man. The narrator describes him in short, precise sentences, as if painting a portrait. For example, at the very beginning of the novel, we meet Kalganov in the first of the scandalous conclaves, which puts into motion the tragedy of transfiguration.
Yet, before he disappears from the story, Kalganov makes one more gesture. So we may say that this originary scandal ends with a departure of those two enigmatic Gogolian characters, Kalganov and Maximov, whose actions proper may take place only in the surplus.
Being absent for more than three hundred pages of the novel, Kalganov reappears in book 8: we find him in Mokroe, on the sofa next to Grushenka, who is clutching his hand. The narrator—perhaps assuming that the reader, too, has also forgotten about this taciturn and giggly melan- cholic—inserts the same portrait of Kalganov, as if by mistake.
Yet, if we agree that the proper space for Kalganov is in the narrative surplus, this repetition, which creates some sort of a rhyme, is perfectly justified. When we meet Kalganov for the second time in Mokroe, he is perhaps more capricious, even inexplicably irritated, filled with disgust for the world, as if it had deeply disap- pointed him; he is bored and tired with it.
Let us note that the angelic character from The Adolescent, Trish- atov, explicitly prevented a suicide. It is as if Dostoevsky, in parody, wanted to present the drama of a modern guardian angel, but one who is unable to actively protect us.
He then tries to prevent Mr. Musialowicz and Mr. Wroblewski from cheating at cards. Kalganov is a much subtler and more discreet angel than the unleashed Prince of Lightness, Myshkin, whose marginality takes over the center. Kalganov then gives him his clothes. And the angel wept and went away. One can dream up the gayest things, but to live is boring. Therefore, perhaps, the decision of the directors of the various cinematic adaptations of Brothers Karamazov—from Fyodor Otsep, to Richard Brooks, to a recent Russian television soap-opera-style adaptation—to remove Kalganov to focus on the commercial success of their films tells us something important about Kalganov.
Certainly, he reemerges from the narrative fog in Mokroe, but only by chance, as he readily admits. Moreover, this scene belongs to a different order than that of the ostensive narrative—it belongs to the visionary. It is hard to resist the impression that by introducing Kalganov, Dostoevsky was carrying the Gogolian surplus into his last novel, as he did with his first major works. Anagogia, one of the exten- sions of the spiritual meaning of history the story —in scholastic exegetic practices, as Georges Didi-Huberman reminds us—designates the ultimate of tropological conversions, the meaning of Scripture viewed from the eschato- logical perspective, constituting the theological, and the theological atmosphere, of meaning par excellence.
It was discussed most notably by Johann Winckelmann, and from then on by almost every major European writer and philosopher. Miguel E. Mary with the child. Further, we may have the impression that in his novels that refer to the Sistine Madonna—The Idiot, Demons, and The Adolescent—Dostoevsky seems to be focused just on the central Madonna, not noticing the drama of representation a significant portion of the composition or the cherubs, who rest on the represented frame of the painting, long fasci- nating so many art historians and writers.
Obviously, Dostoevsky saw the original painting in Dresden, so we are fully justified to look for allusions to this painting in Brothers Karamazov. Moreover, the absence of direct references to Raphael in this novel may imply a subtler and more discreet presence, one not reduced to a discussion of the eternal beauty embodied in the Madonna, as in the previous novels.
The Romantic viewers of the painting shifted their critical attention from the central Madonna to the background and margins of the work, provoking questions concerning the tension between reality and artifici- ality, and the limits of representation.
It became the paradigmatic work for the Romantic point of view, in which artistic contemplation replaced religious practice. Heidegger, as Belting reminds us, compared the Dresden picture to the sacrament, in which the bread is transubstantiated into the body of art. If The Idiot is an apocalyptic experiment with the image of the world after the crucifixion of Christ and the impending Second Coming, Brothers Karamazov might pose questions on the Incarnation and on the possibility of its representa- tion related to the question of realism in art.
In this sense it is truly a simulacrum. Here the shores converge, here all contradictions live together. At the same time, the angel also unveils the terrifying truth that hope within the visible is unattainable. The knowledge of the internal, Rilke would say, is beyond the visible. What is their role in the entire composition?
They are not simply ornamental surplus, and even if this were the case this angelic ornament would not escape from the regime of the anagogic content of the painting. We barely notice him and his role in the narrative, and yet we cannot forget his two elaborate physical descriptions. He feels uncomfortable in his body, almost embarrassed by his own physical presence; his melancholic gaze 54 Rainer Maria Rilke, Selected Poems, trans.
Yet, his phys- ical image, and at the same time, narrative discreetness, situates the frenzied rioters on the threshold between the visible and the invisible. But she is still on the threshold, of the visible and the invisible; the babe in Mokroe is still a vision.
Fyodor prompts him to stay so that he can finish The innkeeper reports that Grushenka is bored with her officer. Dmitri sends Borisich to Grushenka is sitting at the end of the table, in an armchair, beside Pyotr Fomich , who is saying something to Maximov. On a chair, by the wall, Dmitri sees Pyotr Fomich ignores him and invites Dmitri to sit.
Pyotr Fomich laughs and asks if Maximov thought that she was skipping from the joy of being Pyotr Fomich says that Maximov is talking about his first wife; the second one is still alive He wins the first hand. Quickly, he starts doubling his stakes and loses. The innkeeper shows his own deck, which remained unopened. Part 3: Book 8, Chapter 8: Delirium. Grushenka then goes over to the sleeping Pyotr Fomich and kisses him tenderly.
She praises his beauty. He opens his eyes and looks at The Wee One. Next, Pyotr Fomich Kalganov arrives.
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