November 05, 2018 Monday
Bedtime Story
Dostoevsky's Hedonistic and Sensualist Characters
The ‘Demons’ features four actual suicides
besides several others being referred to obliquely in the dialogues of the
characters.
This novel besides being a political satire
is a psychological drama and eventually in the end a tragedy of massive
proportions.
Finally, it can be summed up as an attack
or perhaps outright onslaught on atheism and nihilism arguing that without the
support of belief in God and afterlife both the individuals and society will not
be able to sustain themselves and implode on itself.
That implies that he saw the root of all of
Russia’s problems to be atheism, the paradox of absurd and nihilism the same
way that many see the root of all problems in South Asia and Middle East to be
religious.
The truth may lie somewhere in the middle
and religion can’t always be blamed for everything wrong we apes do no matter
how irrational religious ideas are.
The third book of Dostoevsky that Camus
explores in the third chapter is the one that I have happened to read and is by
far his most reputed work:
(3.) “The Brother Karamazov” – This book
has been a favorite of many renowned people such as Franz Kafka, Ludwig
Wittgenstein, Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein.
Although centered around patricide (an
alcoholic and a womanizer Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov) being murdered by one of
his four sons that he sired through three women.
Of the four one of them was an illegitimate
child who he employs as his servant.
The mother of the illegitimate child was
rumored to be a mute “reeking” lady who lived down the street and died during
the child birth.
Dostoevsky introduces us to this father who
not only takes no interest in his sons but is also sexually infatuated with the
lover of his eldest son Dmitri Fyodrovich Karamazov.
The elder son Dmitri himself carries many
of the traits of his father who like is father is a libertine and a sensualist
spending large amounts of money on alcohol and woman and all sorts of
entertainment that money can buy.
He has a fiancé but falls in love with a
mature woman named Grushenka who also becomes is in love with her.
So we have a debauched father (and the
elder son with nearly same characteristics) here completely devoid of any sort
of morality and who is eventually murdered by one of his sons though till the
end it is not revealed to the reader whether it was the elder son or perhaps
the illegitimate son/servant.
All these depraved events have been set up
on the background of Optina Monastery or Optina Pustyn which is an Eastern
Orthodox Monastery that is located near the town of Kozelsk in the Kaluga
Oblast near the westernmost border of Russia not very far from Moscow.
During the times of Dostoevsky in the early
19th century this monastery was considered the most spiritual center
of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Many a Russian saints or starets came from
here.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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