Get ebook downloads in full at ebookname.

com

Post Kleinian Psychoanalysis 1st Edition Kenneth

Sanders

https://ebookname.com/product/post-kleinian-
psychoanalysis-1st-edition-kenneth-sanders/

OR CLICK BUTTON

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Explore and download more ebook at https://ebookname.com

Instant digital products (PDF, ePub, MOBI) available
Download now and explore formats that suit you...

Iraq Post Saddam Governance and Security Post Saddam

Governance and Security 1st Edition Kenneth Katzman

https://ebookname.com/product/iraq-post-saddam-governance-and-
security-post-saddam-governance-and-security-1st-edition-kenneth-
katzman/

Eros in Ancient Greece Ed Sanders

https://ebookname.com/product/eros-in-ancient-greece-ed-sanders/

Mosby s paramedic textbook 4th Edition Mick J. Sanders

https://ebookname.com/product/mosby-s-paramedic-textbook-4th-
edition-mick-j-sanders/

Citizen Engineer A Handbook for Socially Responsible

Engineering 1st Edition David Douglas

https://ebookname.com/product/citizen-engineer-a-handbook-for-
socially-responsible-engineering-1st-edition-david-douglas/
Seeking Refuge Central American Migration to Mexico the
United States and Canada 1st Edition Mara-A Cristina
Garca-A

https://ebookname.com/product/seeking-refuge-central-american-
migration-to-mexico-the-united-states-and-canada-1st-edition-
maraa-cristina-garcaa/

Credit Risk Scorecards Naeem Siddiqi

https://ebookname.com/product/credit-risk-scorecards-naeem-
siddiqi/

The Doll s House Webster s Spanish Thesaurus Edition

Henrik Ibsen

https://ebookname.com/product/the-doll-s-house-webster-s-spanish-
thesaurus-edition-henrik-ibsen/

The Concordance Database Manual 1st Edition Alan Haley

https://ebookname.com/product/the-concordance-database-
manual-1st-edition-alan-haley/

Making American Boys Boyology and the Feral Tale 1st

Edition Kenneth B. Kidd

https://ebookname.com/product/making-american-boys-boyology-and-
the-feral-tale-1st-edition-kenneth-b-kidd/
Augmenting Cognition 1st ed Edition Idan Segev

https://ebookname.com/product/augmenting-cognition-1st-ed-
edition-idan-segev/
KENNETH SANDERS
POST-KLEINIAN
PSYCHOANALYSIS
TheBiellaSeminars

Foreword by
DONALD MELTZER

KARNAC
 POST-KLEINIAN
PSYCHOANALYSIS
 POST-KLEIN IAN
PSYCHOANALYSIS
The Biella Seminars

Kenneth Sanders

Foreword by

Donald Meltzer

London & New York

KARNAC BOOKS
First published in 2001 by
H. Karnac (Books) Ltd,
118 Finchley Road, London NW3 5HT
A subsidiary of Other Press LLC, New York

Copyright © 2001 Kenneth Sanders

The rights of Kenneth Sanders to be identified as the author of this work
have been asserted in accordance with §§ 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design
and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A C L P . for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 85575 249 8

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Edited, designed, and produced by Communication Crafts

www.karnacbooks.com

Printed in Great Britain by Biddies Short Run Books, King's Lynn

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS VII

FOREWORD by D o n a l d Meltze r ix

PREFACE XI

1 Prologue a n d a consultation 1

2 A n a d o l e s c e n t emerges f r o m c o n f u s i o n 11

3 D r e a m s : w h o w r i t e s t h e script? 23

4 Identification a n d the toileting of the m i n d 39

5 T h e m e r m a i d a n d t h e sirens 53

6 T h e c o m b i n e d part-object:
from "the w o m a n w i t h a penis"
to " t h e breast-and-nipple" 65

v
Vi CONTENTS

7 T h e c o m b i n e d p a r t - o b j e c t in infan t o b s e r v a t i o n

and practice 79

8 The Oedipus comple x and introjective identification 89

9 Psychosomatic and somapsychotic 101

10 Epilogue:
c l a u s t r o p h i l i a a n d th e " p e r e n n i a l p h i l o s o p h y " 111

REFERENCES 121

INDEX 125
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I
am especially indebted to Selina Marsoni Sella for her invita­
tion to contribute to the teaching at the school in Italy that she
founded in 1990—the Scuola Biellese di Psicoterapia Psicoana­
litica. Her enthusiasm for the work was a constant encouragement
to the seminar.
The membership of the seminars varied over the years, so that
the names of the most regular contributors to the discussions,
listed below in grateful acknowledgement, must stand for all.

Lydia Bozzolo
Antonella Graziano
Selina Marsoni Sella
Carla Perinotti
Marco Rolando
Mario Sabucco
Pieralda Stagliano
Marilena Vottero

" T o my friends pictured within" was the dedication (after Elgar

and his Enigma Variations) that I chose to express my thanks to

vii
Viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

patients and analysands in my previous books—and I can think of

no better for those who appear in these chapters.
I am indebted to Philip Sanders for drawing my attention to the
"Perennial Philosophy" discussed in chapter ten, to Simon Sanders
for help in organizing and to Klara King for editing the manu­
script.
As always, my wife's loving support and encouragement have
been indispensable.
FOREWORD

Donald Meltzer

T
lhis book by Dr Kenneth Sanders, his third, published now
by Karnac Books, is taking its place in what is becoming a
strong corpus of post-Kleinian literature, in a genre begun
by Wilfred Bion and carried on by Donald Meltzer, notably in
Barcelona, Buenos Aires, and Stockholm, and others devoted to
clinical work and discovery and devoid as much as possible from
theoretical invention.
The chapters in this book not only contain fascinating clinical
accounts but in Dr Sanders exposition cover the wide range of
ideas of extended metapsychology as they pertain to children,
adolescents, and adults. Here what is rather scattered throughout
the existing literature is a well-knit exposition of the substance of
this evolving school of psychoanalysis. Clear, precise, and rising to
poetic heights at times, it makes rich reading.

Oxford

ix
PREFACE

T
he essays in this book began as informal talks at a school of
psychoanalytic psychotherapy in Biella, Italy. The students
were at different stages of their psychoanalytic education,
and I was invited to "give a talk" of general interest, rather than a
formal lecture, once a term.
I found a method of doing this by selecting a subject from
current issues in the day-to-day work in my practice, using the
dreams to organize the material. The talks sometimes began with a
brief historical survey, reviewing the relevant line of development
from Freud and Abraham, through Klein, to Bion and Meltzer,
followed by the clinical material and concluding with questions
and a discussion. As the students were at different stages of their
learning experience, there was always a problem of presenting
material that was familiar and elementary to some and compli­
cated and obscure to others. The only solution I found to this
dilemma was to ensure that the material I offered reached the
minimum requirement of being at least of interest to myself, at
whatever level of sophistication.

***
xi
Xii PREFACE

The "Scuola BieUese di Psicoterapia Psicoanalitica" was founded

in 1990 by Selina Marsoni, who trained in both child and adult
psychotherapy in London: the former at the Tavistock Clinic, the
latter with the British Association of Psychotherapy. After many
years of practice and study in London, she returned to Italy and
her home city of Biella in Piedmont. There, in addition to her
practice, she taught small groups of interested students for five
years before deciding, with the encouragement of Donald Meltzer,
to formalize and extend her activities by establishing the "scuola"
in Biella.
The courses are modelled on the child psychotherapy course of
the Tavistock Clinic in London: an observation course of seminars
on baby observation and work experience, and a clinical course
that includes supervision of psychoanalytic psychotherapy of
adults and children. Lectures on theory are given to both groups,
and they meet for other seminars. The orientation of the teaching
in Biella is "Post-Kleinian".

* **

"Post-Kleinian" signifies a model of the mind that adds to Freud's

metapsychology of genetic, dynamic, economic, and structural as­
pects the geographical, epistemological, and aesthetic concepts of
Klein, Bion, and Meltzer.
This revised metapsychology springs from Klein's concept of
projective identification, which contributed an increment of mean­
ing to the terms "identity confusion" and "thought disorder".
For the students in the "scuola", recommended reading is
founded on the work of these authors; others are determined by
the individual student's interest and "thirst for knowledge". The
intention has not been academic, but to indicate a direction of
theoretical growth. The informal discussions at the conclusion of
each talk are reproduced in question-and-answer form. Only a few
were recorded on tape, and I have both added to these where it
seemed helpful and "imaginatively reconstructed" the remainder.
Chapter one combines a prologue, giving a brief survey of the
ground to be covered, with—as the psychoanalytical process is one
of clarifying confusion—an account and discussion of a consulta­
tion in which this was unmistakable although not accessible to
 PREFACE Xiii

further work. Chapter two is a report and discussion of a more

optimistic encounter. Chapter three emphasizes that the unifying
theme of the talks was the significance of the dream. Chapter four
is an introductory survey of the links between the concepts of
catharsis and projective identification. Chapter five returns to the
question of identity and its relation to geographical confusion. A
recurrent theme is the "combined part-object". Oedipal conflict
was originally described by Freud at the genital level of develop­
ment, but as interest moved on to the pregenital organization of
the libido, the concepts of part-objects and combined objects came
to the fore. Chapter six is a historical survey of the emergence of
the "combined part-object", and chapter seven further explores
this issue in an analysand who often began her sessions with ob­
servations of her own baby's behaviour and responses. Chapter
eight is a clinical presentation of aspects of introjective and projec­
tive identification. Chapter nine explores Bion's contribution to
understanding psychosomatic disturbance. Finally, chapter ten ex­
plores those aspects of post-Kleinian metapsychology that have a
"family resemblance" to "wisdom literature" through the ages.
CHAPTER ONE

Prologue and a consultation

"This in my view is the heart of the matter of Post-Kleinian

psychology: that to Freud's four categories of exposition—
dynamic, genetic, structural and economic—there has been
added in increasing detail the investigation of geographic and
epistemological aspects of mental functioning. Whether the
Aesthetic aspect will eventually take on sufficient distinctness to
a d d a seventh category remains to be seen."

Donald Meltzer, The Claustrum, 1992, p. 50

sychoanalysis lends itself to a historical approach, and to

following with awe the evolution of discoveries such as
infantile sexuality, the transference, and the identification
process that linked mourning and melancholia. There is also the
drama of observing genius struggling with problems that only
become clearer to subsequent generations.
In his autobiography, Freud (1925d [1924], p. 19) describes how
his colleague Breuer told him about "the peculiar manner" that
had allowed him to penetrate deeply into the causation and sig­
nificance of hysterical symptoms, which also included "depressive

1
2 POST-KLEINIAN PSYCHOANALYSIS

confusion". The peculiar method was to ask Anna O — a 20-year­

old woman—to tell him, under hypnosis, the thoughts that she had
suppressed at her father's sickbed.
Freud was troubled by the absence of sexual factors i n Breuer's
report, until he realized that they were precisely the reason why
Breuer was reticent about the final stages. After the work of cathar­
sis had been completed, the girl had suddenly developed a condi­
tion of transference love; he had failed to connect this with her
illness and had therefore retired in dismay.
Freud found that the method of free association was preferable
to hypnosis as an aid to remembering and proposed that there was
in the mind a dynamic conflict between an instinctual force and a
resistance to it from the ego, with the consequence of repression
into the unconscious. The relative strength of the opposing forces
was an economic factor. The task of therapy was to uncover repres­
sions and replace them by acts of judgement.
"I showed my recognition of the new situation by no longer
calling my method of investigation and treatment catharsis but
psychoanalysis" (Freud, 1925d [1924], p. 30). The interpretation of
dreams became the core of the new method of free association and
investigation of transference love.
Two other theoretical or "metapsychologicar' dimensions were
named by Freud; the genetic—that is, the connection with infancy
and the development of infantile sexuality, and the structural—a
model of the mind as a complex of different parts, ego, superego,
and id. The dissolution of the Oedipus complex led to a parental
"precipitate in the ego" named the superego, or the ego-ideal. This
discovery of identification processes was a momentous step, link­
ing mourning and depressive illness; it was to become the seedbed
for growth of the concept of projective identification.
The Oedipus complex was of genital origin, but the gradual
discovery over the next twenty years of the importance of the oral
and anal zones and of pre-genital sexuality pointed to the intimacy
of children of both sexes with the mother and the influence of
toileting and feeding in infancy. In the 1920s and 1930s, when
Melanie Klein was first reporting her experiences with the psycho­
analysis of children (1932), she demonstrated that pregenital oedi­
pal conflict involved the phantasy of intrusion into the interior of
the mother's body, thereby bringing to the fore the question of
 PROLOGUE A N D A CONSULTATION 3

confusion of identity. The motive for this "manic defence" is the

desire to find relief from depressive anxiety, but the consequence
is its replacement by persecutory anxiety.
Her emphasis on the role played by the mechanism she named
"projective identification" (1946) led to a revised structural model
of the mind as an internal family of parents and children in which
inner reality was primary—a Platonic view of the limitations of
knowledge of external reality.
Her pupils investigated further the confusional aspect of men­
tal illness, and Meltzer in The Psychoanalytical Process (1967) de­
scribed it as the sequential lessening of "geographical" confusion
in both inner and outer reality. Twenty-five years later, in The
Claustrum (1992) the geographic dimensions of the mental appara­
tus are listed as the external world, the womb, the interior of exter­
nal objects, the interior of internal objects, the internal world, and
the delusional system—geographically speaking "nowhere".
Meanwhile Bion (1962) found in the concept of projective iden­
tification a path of exploration that led to a theory of the origin and
growth of thought. This psychoanalytical concept of epistemology
added to the oedipal conflict a description of ambivalence towards
the process of thinking itself. Bion described the parental object as
a mind/breast, an apparatus that enabled embryonic thoughts to
grow in complexity, while negative forces in the mind of the infant
self oppose the pursuit of the truth about both inner and outer
reality by opposition to symbolic thought. Mindlessness, psy­
chotic, and psychosomatic states imply this interference and the
genesis of the irrational and the anti-rational.
Meltzer's suggestion of a seventh category, the "aesthetic",
relates to the desire to experience, express, and record those
emotions that the "apprehension of beauty" touches and upsets
(Meltzer & Harris Williams, 1988). The aesthetic category has a
history in the attempts i n psychoanalysis from Freud onward to
include in a model of the mind the unique importance of beauty.
Freud's concept of "sublimation" implies that artistic creativity
springs from a guilty need to divert instincts to a non-sexual aim,
while the Kleinian concepts of the paranoid-schizoid in conflict
with the depressive positions emphasized the reparative aspect of
creativity in a struggle between the life and death instincts. But the
concept of the sublimation of instincts can now be seen to involve
4 POST-KLEINIAN PSYCHOANALYSIS

diminished individual responsibility for the negative, callous, and

philistine in the life of the mind* Meltzer's emphasis has come
from a combination of what has been learned from the observation
of babies and their "aesthetic reciprocity" with their mothers, to­
gether with Bion's addition of the passion for knowledge, to those
of love and hate. This potent combination of " L H K " in conflict
with their negative " - L H K " has led Meltzer, in disagreement with
Melanie Klein, to suggest that the depressive experience precedes
the paranoid-schizoid, and that it arises in the presence of the
mother, at birth, when it experiences "love at first sight".

This is the aesthetic conflict, which can be most precisely stated

in terms of the aesthetic impact of the outside of the "beauti­
ful" mother, available to the senses, and the enigmatic inside
which must be construed by creative imagination. [Meltzer &
Harris Williams, 1988, p. 22]

This anxiety about arriving at the truth about the aesthetic object—
and therefore its value—makes for a "family resembance" (Witt­
genstein) between artistic, scientific, theological, and philosophical
endeavours to comprehend the mind with its passion to under­
stand itself and its world, internal and external. But the truth,
like beauty, has a blinding quality, and the offer of anaesthesia
is constantly available from - L H K — t h a t is, narcissistic organiza­
tions, internally and externally. Inevitably, the artist-scientist as
psychoanalyst finds that the problems with which he grapples
have already been addressed by the world's poets and artists—for
example, this passage from a letter of William Blake's:

And I know that This World is a World of IMAGINATION &

Vision. I see Every thing I paint In This World, but Every body
does not see alike. To the Eyes of a Miser a Guinea is more
beautiful than the Sun, & a bag worn with the use of Money
has more beautiful proportions than a Vine filled with Grapes.
The tree which moves some to tears of joy in the Eyes of others
only a Green thing that stands in the way.

The "tree that stands in the way" I read as an expression of oedipal

conflict about the father! Doubtless the impingement of these
mysteries contributes to the desire to express and to record the
experiences of the psychoanalytic consulting-room, and while
the motives for seeking a psychoanalytic consultation are diverse,
 PROLOGUE AND A CONSULTATION 5

identity confusion is ubiquitous. When the confusion is acute, the

metapsychological categories described above can be discerned in
the manic confusion of scattered thoughts. Insight into the nature
of illness in the mind by the self is a major achievement and re­
quires agreement to work on the problem in an appropriate set­
ting.
There follows a description of a consultation in which confu­
sion presented as an emergency in a young man.

* **
A woman from abroad on a visit to her daughter, Sarah, was
distressed to discover the degree of anxiety and confusion in her
daughter's fiance. She encouraged the couple to seek help for his
panic attacks and his inability to continue with his work, in which
he had shown artistic promise.

***
" M r A " came for the consultation accompanied by his fiancee:
He is tall and thin, dressed in jeans and shirt. He smiles anx­
iously, then talks freely, gathering momentum, impatient with my
infrequent comments. It started, he says, when he was nineteen,
four years ago, when he left home for college—he saw the college
psychologist. A sudden depression, headaches, then unable to
work at his studies. When he gets them, he goes to bed. It isn't
logical—his father is logical, a civil servant. His work is as a
draughtsman—Sarah does the same work, they met at college.
These attacks are terrible, he is a perfectionist, obsessive, but de­
pression is different. It comes from nowhere. He has been to see his
GP, but she wasn't interested. He worries about money, the pay
isn't very good—they pay you by the foot—he smiles at me and
points to his foot—if they go to the USA, the pay is better—his last
job was only twenty pounds a foot, there was an argument, he had
to leave. It's not that, it's the depression, it lasts about a week or so
and then it goes—it isn't logical. M y mother says it's the subcon­
scious—he breaks off and laughs at me—I hope you are not like
that—she sent me to see her friend who is a therapist, a colour
therapist, you think of different colours—what they mean, yellow,
green—I went to talk to her, but I am obsessive—for example,
I think living in a rented flat is expensive, it isn't perfect, my father
6 POST-KLEINIAN PSYCHOANALYSIS

is buying us an apartment, he has raised the mortgage on their

house, but it means if we go to San Francisco there will be a
problem—but we can rent it. I am worried about pollution, as I
walk along the streets I feel worried about pollution, but that
isn't—it's the attacks of depression. I'm not working just now,
neither is Sarah, she gets depressed too, she weeps, her father died
five years ago—I was saying I had this job, you draw cartoons,
there are easy jobs where there isn't much movement—it's sixty
frames per second, the figure is sitting or just slight movement of
the head, like this (he moves his head a little), and there are jobs
that need a lot of drawing where there is a lot of movement—you
begin to feel that it isn't fair, they were paying two hundred
pounds a foot—but I felt that it was too much money, it isn't worth
that, and I got depressed and had to come home and go to bed
M r A has been talking nonstop for nearly an hour. I say we
have to come to a conclusion, but he wants to continue talking. I
interrupt to ask about his family: there is an older sister, she wasn't
very good at college, she goes to parties a lot, I interrupt again to
ask about Sarah—she thought she was pregnant two months ago
and we were both frightened, but she wasn't—but she is four years
older than me, twenty-eight, and she doesn't want to wait too
long....
I intervene: "Well, we must conclude"—"No, can't we go on?
It's this perfectionism, I can't explain it, and the depression "
I interrupt and say we have to stop, that I am in fact, like his
mother, interested in the unconscious, but not in the way his
mother is. Has he heard of psychoanalysis? He smiles and looks
vague. I suggest that he wait a few days to find out the effect on his
mind of our meeting and then return to see me. He smiles with
disbelief and gets up reluctantly.
Sarah is waiting outside. She comes into the consulting-room:
how much do we owe you? M r A is reluctant to leave. I ask her if
she knows about psychoanalysis. She says she remembers some­
thing they learned at school, she may have a book at home. I
suggest they discuss the consultation, return if they are interested.
I offer a referral if they prefer it. They leave, confused and smiling,
but I hear no more.

***
 PROLOGUE AND A CONSULTATION 7

O n reflection, one can sense the presence in his mind of familiar

psychoanalytical themes. The anxiety and obsessional states are
manifest, as is the manic element. Hypochondria, psychotic anxi­
ety, and geographical confusion are present noticeably in the worry
about pollution—an indication that a part of the self has been split
off and projected into an internal space of the internal mother,
presumably her rectum, and he fears retaliation for its intrusion.
The inability to work can be understood as a equivalent to damage
to the internal family of his mind and subsequent inability to think;
the return to his bed as seeking the sanctuary of mother's arms or
as intrusion into her interior. His awareness of inner reality, per­
haps of Freud, is mentioned only to be ridiculed and denied.
Bion divided mental life into symbolic, non-symbolic, and anti­
symbolic. The experiences of emotional life in the infant create
primitive thoughts that have no meaning until they are subject to
the thinking provided by the maternal reverie of the mother. This
begins the process of symbol formation. Primitive thoughts that
escape this treatment remain non-symbolic; they can be described
as mindless or irrational and demand evacuation from the mind.
In addition, forming symbolic thought is actively attacked by anti­
symbolic forces, with the consequence of hallucinatory and other
manifestations of psychosis.
In the work of psychoanalysis the mind/breast of the analyst
functions like maternal reverie to toilet the mind of evacu­
ated meaningless thoughts and to contain and modify primitive
thoughts into symbolic form, so that thoughtfulness can take the
place of confusion. Meanwhile this young man inhabits a threaten­
ing world of his own creation and it is difficult for him to under­
stand that a more benevolent one exists in the mind of others,
perhaps even in that of his fiancee.

Discussion

Q: What do you think will happen to this young man? Isn't it

alarming that he has attempted to get help from his family
doctor without success and hasn't taken up the offer of psycho­
logical help?
8 POST-KLEINIAN PSYCHOANALYSIS

Q: I find it more sad than alarming—two young people who have

been together for four years and feel themselves to be a couple,
yet their future seems to be hopeless unless he can accept
psychological help.
Q: Do you think the ultimate diagnosis might be psychosis—that
he may lapse into schizophrenia?
A: I don't think it's possible to know, but the method of investi­
gation remains the same—to provide a psychoanalytic setting
and discover whether the patient can use it. If the patient does
not "take to it", then he will try to find relief in other ways—for
example, through the psychiatric and social services. The diag­
nostic labelling of mental illness familiar from psychiatry refers
to the description of the outward behaviour. Once one aban­
dons that, one finds that manic-depressive mechanisms of de­
nial of inner reality, mechanisms of splitting and intrusive
projective identification, neurotic states of anxiety and obses­
sionalism, and so on are all deployed against the experience of
the depressive pain that originates in ambivalence.
If he does commence psychoanalysis, there will begin a very
slow process in which the realization that he is ill will become
meaningful to the healthy part of his personality. Donald
Meltzer describes as the "preformed transference" the conse­
quence of the confusion caused by splitting and intrusive iden­
tification—in other words, that analysands for a prolonged
period assume that the analyst inhabits, and has the same view
of, the world as themselves. The phrase "the same as" recurs
frequently in many contexts. A true infantile dependent trans­
ference must await the realization that the analyst lives in a
world of depressive rather than persecutory anxieties (Meltzer,
1967, 1986).
Q: O n the surface there does not seem to be any obvious oedipal
conflict.
A: True oedipal conflict only appears if the self is on the outside of
the internal mother's body and experiences ambivalence to the
couple. This does not happen if the phantasy is of living in the
interior. In that case, the internal father as guardian of the
mother's orifices has already been bypassed. The retaliation
that is feared when living on the outside was described by
 PROLOGUE AND A CONSULTATION 9

Freud in genital terms as "castration anxiety". In a world of

aggressive pre-genitality, oral and anal, the retaliation feared is
appropriately oral and anal: biting criticism perhaps, or perse­
cution by a polluted (rectal) atmosphere, and of being voided as
worthless.
In Klein's terminology, the ambivalence is to the mother and
father as a couple; in Bion's terms it is ambivalence to the mind
itself and its capacity to be thoughtful, and he memorably
remarked that the first hopeful sign in the psychotic individual
is the realization that he is mentally ill.
It is helpful to be aware that these psychoanalytic ideas do
have a striking affinity to the famous simile of the cave in Plato's
Republic, which describes the mind's development from confu­
sion and illusion to thoughtfulness and wisdom. His graphic
description of people confined to a cave watching shadows
projected onto a wall in front of them, like a cinema-screen
mistaken for reality and ignorant of the sunlight and the world
outside, also envisages the scepticism that would greet any
more enlightened person returning to the cave to bring news of
this other world. Clearly this also lends itself to a theological
reading, and one begins to be aware that psychoanalysis is in
fact one of a family of related attempts to comprehend the
mystery of the mind and the thoughts it generates about the
world.
CHAPTER TWO

An adolescent emerges
from confusion

I
n contrast to the plight of the confused young man who was
unable to imagine what psychoanalytic help might be, as de­
scribed in chapter one, this situation with a confused 16-year­
old allowed psychoanalysis to proceed.

***
I had first met " J i m " in a general practice setting when he was 5
years old. His parents' worry then was about his enuresis, but they
also told me that he was generally bad-tempered, he masturbated
in front of the television, and sometimes he slept with his finger in
his anus. When a star chart had been suggested—a star as a re­
ward for a dry night—he had replied, "What's the use? I'll never
be dry."
I was told that Jim was very good with his two younger siblings
and showed no jealousy, although his mother was still breast­
feeding the baby. He was a bold and excitable little boy whose
cheeks were rouged red, like a clown's, and who prowled round
the room as I talked to his mother. At one point he growled in a
comical way, which his mother explained was an imitation of a

11
 12 POST-KLEINIAN PSYCHOANALYSIS

detective d o g i n a television cartoon. A t the e n d of o u r short talk I

described the p r o b l e m as a struggle i n his m i n d between a n a u g h t y
J i m a n d a g o o d J i m : the naughty J i m takes control w h e n he's asleep
a n d enjoys w e t t i n g the bed, i n the same w a y that he enjoys the
masturbation, w h i l e the g o o d J i m is w o r r i e d about the trouble a n d
extra w o r k for his m o t h e r — a n d m i g h t be w i l l i n g to w o r k w i t h m e
as "detective's assistant" i n the investigation of the p r o b l e m . J i m
h a d been listening carefully a n d n o w j o k e d that he w o u l d keep one
eye o p e n w h i l e he s l e p t — h e squinted a n d closed one eye i n a
c o m i c a l fashion. H e p o i n t e d to his genital a n d his b o t t o m a n d s a i d
s o m e t h i n g about b a d food c o m i n g out of them.
W e arranged to meet at w e e k l y intervals, a n d J i m w a s to b r i n g
some d r a w i n g s . The next time his mother, w h o a l w a y s sat w i t h
h i m , reported that he h a d been l o o k i n g f o r w a r d to b r i n g i n g his
d r a w i n g , a n d w h e n she h a d s p o k e n to h i m about the masturba­
tion, he h a d at first m o c k e d her but then d i d n ' t d o it so openly.
T h e d r a w i n g is r e p r o d u c e d i n Figure 2.1. It looks l i k e t w o w i g ­
w a m s j o i n e d together b y a b r i d g e w i t h Jim's n a m e o n it. U n d e r ­
neath is a n egg-shaped object that, h e said, was a sea-lion that gave
p o w e r to the b r i d g e to go u p a n d d o w n . The bridge h a d a separate
part for m e n a n d for w o m e n . The squiggles at the base of the
w i g w a m were w h a l e a n d shark teeth. I suggested that the faces o n
the b r i d g e were babies' faces, a n d I spoke of the use of the penis for
m a k i n g babies as w e l l as for w e t t i n g .
Whatever it represents—a close-up of intercourse, or w i g - w a m
l i k e breasts or n i p p l e s — w h e n J i m s a w that I w a s s t u d y i n g it, a n d
w h e n I asked h i m one or t w o questions about it, he d r i b b l e d some
spit o n it, then r u b b e d it w i t h his finger u n t i l he m a d e a h o l e — a
g r a p h i c demonstration of the conflict between a part of h i m that
w a s t h o u g h t f u l a n d another that attacked t h i n k i n g . T h u s w a s es­
tablished the basis of m y conversations w i t h h i m : that there w a s a
" g o o d J i m " w h o brought the d r a w i n g s because he w a n t e d to h e l p
a n d a " n a u g h t y J i m " w h o w a s frightened a n d angry a n d w a n t e d to
s p o i l the d r a w i n g .
I s a w J i m about twenty times at w e e k l y intervals, w i t h his
m o t h e r present as anxious observer. H e c o n t i n u e d to b r i n g d r a w ­
ings, b u t there w a s n o tangible i m p r o v e m e n t , a n d the parents de­
c i d e d to t r y a n enuresis a l a r m system: a rubber draw-sheet, w i t h a
w i r e that is connected to a bell. W h e n the u r i n e touches the w i r e , it
 AN ADOLESCENT EMERGES FROM CONFUSION 13

hole

Fig. 2.1

closes the circuit, a n d the b e l l rings. I n theory, this eventually

conditions the c h i l d to w a k e u p a n d go to the toilet before the
"accident" (although I have k n o w n the b e l l to w a k e u p the exas­
perated parents w h i l e the c h i l d sleeps on). The parents reported a
g r a d u a l i m p r o v e m e n t . These w e e k l y sessions lasted for six months
a n d apparently changed n o t h i n g , b u t later events s h o w e d that
they were not w i t h o u t significance.
I n the f o l l o w i n g ten years, I heard occasional reports about J i m
f r o m his father. T h e bed-wetting h a d stopped, a n d he w a s s h o w i n g
p r o m i s e at school, b u t there were r o w s at h o m e because of his
refusal to a l l o w cleaning of his b e d r o o m b y anyone other t h a n
himself.
T h e n there w a s a crisis. H i s father telephoned to say that J i m
h a d g r a z e d his u p p e r a b d o m e n w i t h a razor, d e e p l y e n o u g h to
14 POST-KLEINIAN PSYCHOANALYSIS

draw a little blood, and then asked for help. There had been minor
episodes before: this time it was just before school examinations,
and Jim said that it was because he was worried about a girl at
school. A few days later he ran away from home, and his father
found him nearby, lying on a bench by the side of the road, very
confused.
Jim agreed to see me once again. He spoke slowly about his
feeling of depression, suicidal impulses, and reluctance to ask for
help. He had fallen in love with a girl so intensely that she was
scared off and avoided him. He then felt compelled to follow her to
explain that he didn't want to frighten her, but, predictably, this
frightened her even more.
Jim felt his sanity was in danger. Initial reluctance to investi­
gate the problem touched on the defence of the privacy of his
bedroom and the concealed soiled underwear that betrayed his
guilt. He was now eager to continue where we had left off ten
years earlier: he remembered the good Jim and bad Jim formula
and settled down to a three-session-a-week routine in which
dream analysis came to be the centre of interest. His schoolwork
resumed.
Jim said that cutting himself had started when he noticed the
growth of pubic hair. He disliked hair on his body and secretly
shaved it off. He was self-conscious about his skin generally and
did his best to cover up spots over his back and neck. Anxieties
about his maturing body and his sexuality lay behind his determi­
nation to protect his privacy, and this was a powerful factor in the
transference.
The anxiety that he had harmed his girlfriend—in truth it was
only his disturbed mind that had frightened her, as indeed it
frightened everyone else, including himself—had its origin in a
worry about his young sister and her welfare. I reminded him that
she was being fed at his mother's breast when we first met. He was
relieved that this matter could be discussed and explored. His
admiration was heartfelt for the achievements and wide interests
of both parents, for his father's knowledge and practical skills and
for his mother's beauty and grace. This helped to establish a work­
ing relationship in the transference.
A n incident from his childhood remained in Jim's mind: as a
boy he had liked to dress up and perform. Usually his parents'
 AN ADOLESCENT EMERGES FROM CONFUSION 15

friends laughed at his antics, but on one occasion, as he minced

around wearing his mother's high heels and handbag, a woman
teacher had warned his parents not to encourage him.
Two and a half years later the results of his university entrance
examinations were awaited, and Jim was worried about the conti­
nuity of our work and his absence from home. Was it true that this
university was notorious for homosexuality? He reported a dream:

" I was in a small white hotel-room (well, like this consulting­

room). I went outside my room to find I was on the roof of a tower,
frightened that I would fall, although there was a rait I went back
inside to my parents and said 'so this is the University!' as I realized
where I was. I was to cook myself an omelette and my parents said
they would get the ingredients. I thought, 'good, it means I won't
have to pay'."

He then mentioned that he had been offered a university place.

The dream room reminded him of a certain type of hotel favoured
by Japanese businessmen: the cell-like rooms are equipped with a
television and shower and provision for a clean shirt and are a
convenient alternative to returning home when working late. He
recalled a hotel-room on holiday with his parents when he had
stuffed himself with all the crisps and nuts in the room refrigerator
and was pained to hear from his mother that they were not i n ­
cluded in the bill. When one of his mother's friends congratulated
him on gaining a place at the university, she added that his room
would be cleaned for him each day. The problem of the privacy of
his room—the issue of his semen-stained underwear and pyjamas,
hidden in a cupboard and washed by himself—had not gone
away. I recalled his worries about attending school and said that
we were both being given notice that further progress in the analy­
sis—"higher education"—would generate anxiety again.
I discussed with him the possibility of thinking about himself
as an infant with anxieties about his mother's body as a "hotel for
babies" and the geography of the hotel, inside and outside, its
toileting and feeding functions, the anxiety about being un­
contained and falling, about the emotional cost and the fear of
alienation from his good objects, his dislike of "bad Jim's" greedi­
ness and the worry that his baby sister might suffer.
1 6 POST-KLEINIAN PSYCHOANALYSIS

He agreed that it would be ridiculous if he refused to go to

university because of the obsession of keeping soiled underwear
from grown-up eyes. He mentioned a friend who was unable to
say "I don't want to go" if he was invited to a barbecue but cov­
ered up his embarrassment by talking a lot. He added that in the
dream he thought of calling his young brother out onto the tower
roof, and, as he knew he was frightened of heights, he would mock
him and pretend that he himself wasn't scared. Here was con­
cealed his fear that the grownups of the world—including his ana­
lyst—were not as truthful as they pretended to be and that perhaps
their superiority was based on "pulling rank" rather than any
qualitative difference.
Many of the themes covered were now familiar and alluded to
in the dream: separation anxiety, the oedipal opposition to a father
who seeks to deliver him from the interior of the mother's body,
his fear of being asked to be more responsible, his fear of being
crowded out by the other younger babies, problems of greediness
and of being mocked for his timidity, " M y mother told me I
weaned myself", he remembered once just before leaving. A week
later, he came with his ample curly hair cut short, looking more
mature and revealing the pimples and spots around his neck of
which he was so intensely self-conscious.
He reported a dream:

"A famous ballet dancer was to appear in the school play, Nureyev or
perhaps Nijinski. I volunteered to assist backstage and found myself
clinging onto a trapeze, high up. Then I felt myself slipping, as if Yd
tried a manoeuvre with two trapezes and been left hanging upside
down. Nureyev-Nijinski walked through the school hall with every­
one crowding round—he was like a pop star. I wanted to attract his
attention and tap him on the shoulder and say 'Mr Nureyev.. /, but
I was feeling very nervous. Then he stopped near me and I asked him
for help with a weighty problem that I had. He offered me a very big
book, like a box, with a thousand pages, to look at until he returned.
Then I saw there was a little boil—or perhaps a cancer—near my
navel"

Jim enthusiastically joined in the "game" of analysing the dream.

When he thought of the ballet, he thought of his graceful mother
 AN ADOLESCENT EMERGES FROM CONFUSION 17
who had been a dancer in her youth. She had been upset when
Margot Fonteyn died. Was it not strange that at the end of her life
she was so poor? Nureyev, on the other hand, according to his
mother, had "sold out to Hollywood". We discussed his conflict
about the need to continue our work and the impulse to cover it up
by the acrobatics "backstage".
The trapeze reminded him of the last dream on top of the
tower. He had read about Nijinski in a history of the Russian
ballet, and about his connections with Stravinsky and the first
productions of the Rite of Spring, but he seemed unaware of the
story of Nijinski's masochistic relationship with Diaghilev and his
subsequent suicide.
The book was clearly connected with the analysis and with
Jim's father's well-stocked library, of which he now made good
use. We had discussed many times the meaning of the masturba­
tion, linked to the phantasy of intrusion into his internal mother's
body, which damaged her internal babies, and the depression as
identification with them. The conflict was between the two states
of mind in the dream—backstage (intrusion into the primal scene,
pseudo-femininity, masturbation,) or asking for help; acceptance
of the frustration of being one of the children who needed the
breast-box to contain their anxieties and help them to think. When
I connected the pimple in the dream with he problem of the um­
bilical cord and the visible spots on his neck, he told me that his
mother had been cross with him for not preparing newspaper on
the floor in time for a visiting hairdresser who was to attend to
them both. We discussed the problem of procrastination: his con­
flict about proceeding with the work countered by the fear of being
exposed and humiliated.
A month later he reported this dream:

"I woke up early to go on holiday, and mother asked me to wake up a

girl, perhaps my sister or Julia [the one he had been in love with
when he was fifteen] or the woman who presents a TV programme
called Tomorrow's World. I went upstairs and knocked on her door.
Then I was in a supermarket full of chocolate cookies and confection­
ery as big as footballs. I was walking up and down looking at them,
but in the end I didn't buy them. Then in another part of the dream I
was in a changing-room. I began to think that I might be able to peek
18 POST-KLEINIAN PSYCHOANALYSIS

at women undressing, but I couldn't see anything, and at that point I

realized that I didn't have an erection. In the last part of the dream
two bad boys from infant-school were swinging on a rope round and
round and up and down. They invited me to pin in, but I decided that
I was more interested in entering for one of the sports day races/'

Jim said that the boy was the fastest runner at his school, but one
day he discovered that he could overtake him. He agreed that
Tomorrow's World symbolized for him the world of adult interests
and responsibilities—for example, he often speculated that he
would train as a psychoanalyst himself one day.
The analysis was—like his mother—waking him up to inner
reality. Knocking on the door before entering is a reference to
resisting intrusions into his sister's room, as later the "faeces­
chocolate" is resisted.
Here is one more dream from a year later, during his time at
the university:

'T am at the University and studying in the music library an analysis

of a work by Boulez—a setting of some Surrealist poems called 'The
Hammer Without a Master'. Nearby a blonde woman writes quickly,
as if she has 'cracked' the problem. I was trying to peek at her work
without being seen."

He commented that the book being studied was like the book in
the dream about Nureyev. The Boulez composition is in reality
very complex, and he has to struggle to understand the pitch and
harmony. The blond woman reminded him of a woman musician.
Last night he had watched a film on television called Zardoz—a
version of The Wizard of Oz. He was frightened as a child by the
booming voice of the wizard, like the incident in a film of Alice in
Wonderland where Alice grew very big and got stuck. He won­
dered whether it was connected with getting an erection.
He went on: "One of the things I remember from my childhood
was being cross when my mother dragged me away from the T V
while I was watching The Wizard ofOz, because we had an appoint­
ment to come and see you!"
I reminded him again of the temptation for the little boy to
dress up as an adult—man or woman—which creates a world in
 A N A D O L E S C E N T EMERGES F R O M C O N F U S I O N 19

which the apparent grownups are suspected of having done the

same. This is the world preoccupied with surreal and magical
solutions to the problem of being little. The splitting also affects the
father and mother. He feels persecuted by the "Wizard Daddy"
who enjoys punishing children and whom he cannot connect with
the creative "Boulez" father he admires and loves, while the blond
woman musician's superiority is only in her cleverness in "crack­
ing" the riddle. But the "good" parents invite him to identify with
their own capacity for thought and to find his way to his own
interests and ideals.
We were able to arrange for our work to continue during his
absences from home during and after the university years. In this
time Jim came to understand more clearly the distinction between
a punitive superego and those "ego-ideals" within himself that
would lead him to fulfil his personal potential.

Discussion

Q: I think there is a connection with the drawing that he made at

the age of five with the two red conical objects—red, which
represent the penis or the nipples. To me they suggest some­
thing perverse, and the two ballet dancers who were notori­
ously homosexual. I think I can see a mouth in the drawing, but
the fact that he put his finger in the anus has something to do
with entering the body of the mother through the anus?
Q: The Nijinski and Nureyev couple is a sterile one, of course.
Q: Being backstage is as if the patient is saying: "See how you must
watch my back, from behind, because of the spots." The spots
are the link with masturbation, his way of attacking the analytic
process and remaining little. In addition, like this, the patient
goes his own way: "If they see my back and see the spots, they
will know I masturbate, and that is my way of attacking my
development in the analysis".
Q: In the Rite of Spring—there is the sacrifice of a girl, I think.
A: That would be a kind of sadomasochistic intercourse, would it
not?
20 POST-KLEINIAN PSYCHOANALYSIS

Q: A n d of re birth!
Q: I would like to know the meaning of the enuresis. Is it an attack
on the mother and father?
A: O n them as a couple, an oedipal attack on the combined object,
which also has the meaning of an attack on his internal objects
as an apparatus for thought (Bion). It has the identical meaning
as the dribbled spittle and the hole rubbed through the paper of
his drawing.
Q: A n d the masturbation?
A : Yes. Thoughtfulness about growing up includes struggling
with the sad feelings of separating from the parents if they are
loved—to overcome the childlike desire to stay a baby and to
deny the passage of time. It is not clear to one part of the
personality that the pleasures of adult life, which include carry­
ing responsibilities, are in fact desirable. If that part of the
personality that has thinking function—internal good objects or
the mind/breast according to Bion—is damaged by intrusion
or by oedipal hostility, then the possibility of identification with
the adult world is also affected.
Q: The enuresis sheet with the bell was an invitation not to think.
A: Yes, behaviour therapy!
Q: Yes, and he rebelled against it.
A: The parents were exhausted at the time. In the third dream
there is a picture of being woken up not by the bell but by
thinking: " M y mother asked me to wake up the g i r l . . . " I take
that to mean being the analytic process pulling him out of
intrusive identification.
Q: I find it intriguing that in the dream the image of the spots is not
on his back but near the umbilicus.
Q: For a son it may be difficult if the mother is not able to think in
terms of a psychological birth mediated by analysis?
Q: There are elements of homosexuality—I am concerned about
the transference of the patient towards a male analyst?
Q: Do you think the friend who observed him as a five-year-old
walking in his mother's high-heeled shoes and carrying her
 A N A D O L E S C E N T EMERGES F R O M C O N F U S I O N 21

handbag might have suggested to the parents that psycho­

therapy was needed?
A : I doubt whether that would effect much change in a situation
that was otherwise stabilized. The decision to seek psychoanal­
ysis is usually made reluctantly and only when the level of
anxiety is high. M y feeling was that it was not homosexuality as
such but his femininity. This was indeed a factor and of course
a potential source of strength. He did have an identification
with his mother, her beauty and creativeness. There was a slight
difference between the father and the mother with regard to
confidence about the analysis, but in fact they were both sup­
portive. The main difference was that the father had had per­
sonal experience of analysis.
Q: Not only had an analysis—but had survived it!
A : Jim's interest in music is identification with the mother. The T V
programme Tomorrow's World is a science programme, and the
beautiful presenter is an engineering graduate. He is I think
wanting to integrate the scientific half identified with his father
and the music and dance half, for which he is indebted to his
mother.
Q: He has an aesthetic response to the beauty of music, as well as
to femininity?
A: Indeed he has—and, I think, also to the psychoanalytical
method, which Meltzer has described as an aesthetic object.
Aesthetic conflict, on the other hand, he suggests, arises because
of the theory by which the method is practised, which is noto­
riously open to suspicion (Meltzer & Harris Williams, 1988, p.
23).
Q: Can you say more about the aesthetic conflict?
A: This goes to the heart of the post-Kleinian development. Mela­
nie Klein assumed that the paranoid-schizoid position in object
relations came before the depressive position, Bion saw it as a
repeated oscillation between the two (Ps^D) whenever inte­
gration or a new development was immanent: "Breakdown or
breakthrough", or "catastrophic change" were his characteristic
expressions (Bion, 1970). Meltzer describes the aesthetic impact
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Sämtliche
Werke 9-10: Die Brüder Karamasoff
 This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the
laws of the country where you are located before using this
eBook.

Title: Sämtliche Werke 9-10: Die Brüder Karamasoff

Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Contributor: Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky

Editor: Arthur Moeller van den Bruck

Translator: E. K. Rahsin

Release date: March 2, 2022 [eBook #67541]

Language: German

Original publication: Germany: Piper

Credits: the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at

https://www.pgdp.net. This book was produced from
images made available by the HathiTrust Digital
Library.

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SÄMTLICHE

WERKE 9-10: DIE BRÜDER KARAMASOFF ***
F. M. Do s tojew s ki: Sä mtl iche Wer ke
Unter Mitarbeiterschaft von Dmitri Mereschkowski
herausgegeben von Moeller van den Bruck

Übertragen von E. K. Rahsin

Erste Abteilung: Neunter und zehnter Band

 F. M. Dostojewski

Die Brüder Karamasoff

Roman

R. P iper & C o. Ver la g, München

 R. Piper & Co. Verlag, München, 1914
Vierte Auflage

Copyright 1914 by R. Piper & Co., G. m. b. H.,

Verlag in München.
F. M. Dostojewski
Wahrlich, wahrlich, ich sage euch: Wenn das
Weizenkorn in die Erde fällt und nicht stirbt, so bleibt es
allein; stirbt es aber, so bringt es viele Früchte.
Ev. Johannis, Kap. XII, 24.
 Inhalt

Erstes Buch: Die Geschichte einer Familie

Seite
I. Kap. Fedor Pawlowitsch Karamasoff 1
II. „ Der erste Sohn 7
III. „ Die zweite Frau und deren Kinder 12
IV. „ Der dritte Sohn Aljoscha 23
V. „ Die Startzen 38

Zweites Buch: Die unschickliche Versammlung

I. Kap. Die Ankunft im Kloster 55
II. „ Der alte Narr 64
III. „ Die gläubigen Weiber 80
IV. „ Die kleingläubige Dame 94
V. „ Und es geschehe also 108
VI. „ Wozu lebt solch ein Mensch? 125
VII. „ Der Seminarist und Streber 144
VIII. „ Der Skandal 160

Drittes Buch: Die Wollüstlinge

I. Kap. In der Bedientenstube 176
II. „ Lisaweta Ssmerdjäschtschaja 186
III. „ Die Beichte eines heißen Herzens. In Versen 193
IV. „ Die Beichte eines heißen Herzens. In Prosa 208
V. „ Die Beichte des heißen Herzens. „Kopfüber hinab“ 222
VI. „ Ssmerdjäkoff 237
VII. „ Die Kontroverse 247
VIII. „ Beim Gläschen 257
IX. „ Die Wollüstlinge 271
X. „ Beide zusammen 281
XI. „ Noch ein verlorener Ruf 301
 Viertes Buch: Ausbrüche
I. Kap. Pater Ferapont 316
II. „ Beim Vater 335
III. „ Die kleinen Schuljungen 344
IV. „ Bei Chochlakoffs 352
V. „ Im Empfangssalon 364
VI. „ In der Stube 385
VII. „ Und in frischer Luft 400

Fünftes Buch: Pro und Contra

I. Kap. Das Verlöbnis 420
II. „ Ssmerdjäkoff mit der Gitarre 440
III. „ Die beiden Brüder 452
IV. „ „Empörung“ 470
V. „ „Der Großinquisitor“ 492
VI. „ Ein vorläufig noch sehr unklares Gespräch 532
VII. „ „Mit einem klugen Menschen ist auch das Reden ein 553
Vergnügen“

Sechstes Buch: Ein russischer Mönch

I. Kap. Der Staretz Sossima und seine Gäste 569
II. „ Aufzeichnungen aus dem Leben des in Gott verschiedenen
Priestereinsiedlermönches, des Staretz Sossima,
zusammengestellt nach dessen eigenen Worten von
Alexei Fedorowitsch Karamasoff. Biographische
Aufzeichnungen
a) Vom jungen Bruder des Staretz Sossima 577
b) Von der Heiligen Schrift im Leben des Staretz Sossima 584
c) Erinnerungen des Staretz Sossima aus den Knaben- und 594
Jugendjahren seines weltlichen Lebens. Das Duell
d) Der geheimnisvolle Gast 607
III. „ Aus den Gesprächen und Predigten des Staretz Sossima
e) Einiges über den russischen Mönch und seine 630
Bedeutung
f) Einiges über Herren und Diener: Kann es zwischen Herr 635
und Diener eine geistige Bruderschaft geben?
g) Vom Gebet, von der Liebe und von der Berührung mit 642
anderen Welten
 h) Kann man Richter über seinesgleichen sein? Vom 647
Glauben bis ans Ende
i) Von der Hölle und vom höllischen Feuer. Eine mystische 651
Betrachtung

Siebentes Buch: Aljoscha

I. Kap. Der Verwesungsgeruch 656
II. „ Solch ein Augenblick 678
III. „ Das Zwiebelchen 688
IV. „ Die Hochzeit zu Kana in Galiläa 722

Achtes Buch: Mitjä

I. Kap. Kusjma Ssamssonoff 731
II. „ Ljägawyj 750
III. „ Die Goldgruben 763
IV. „ In der Dunkelheit 784
V. „ Der plötzliche Entschluß 795
VI. „ „Ich fahre!“ 825
VII. „ Der Erste und Unbestrittene 840
VIII. „ Rausch 871

Neuntes Buch: Die Voruntersuchung

I. Kap. Der Anfang der Laufbahn des Beamten Perchotin 897
II. „ Der Alarm 910
III. „ Der Gang der Seele durch die Hölle. Das erste Purgatorium 922
IV. „ Zweites Purgatorium 939
V. „ Das dritte Purgatorium 954
VI. „ Der Staatsanwalt 976
VII. „ Mitjäs großes Geheimnis 991
VIII. „ Die Aussagen der Zeugen. „Das Kindichen“ 1014
IX. „ Wie Mitjä fortgeführt wurde 1032

Zehntes Buch: Die Knaben

I. Kap. Koljä Krassotkin 1041
II. „ Die Gören 1051
III. Kap. Die Schüler 1062
IV. „ Shutschka 1077
V. „ An Iljuschas Bettchen 1092
VI. „ Frühe Entwicklung 1122
VII. „ Iljuscha 1135

Elftes Buch: Iwan Fedorowitsch

I. Kap. Bei Gruschenka 1143
II. „ Das kranke Füßchen 1162
III. „ Das Teufelchen 1182
IV. „ Die Hymne und das Geheimnis 1194
V. „ „Nicht du, nicht du!“ 1221
VI. „ Erstes Wiedersehen mit Ssmerdjäkoff 1233
VII. „ Der zweite Besuch bei Ssmerdjäkoff 1252
VIII. „ Der dritte und letzte Besuch bei Ssmerdjäkoff 1271
IX. „ Der Teufel. Iwan Fedorowitschs Alb 1303
X. „ „Das hat Er gesagt!“ 1341

Zwölftes Buch: Der Justizirrtum

I. Kap. Der verhängnisvolle Tag 1352
II. „ Die gefährlichen Zeugen 1366
III. „ Die ärztliche Expertise und die Geschichte von dem einen 1383
Pfund Nüsse
IV. „ Das Glück lächelt Mitjä 1393
V. „ Die Katastrophe 1410
VI. „ Die Rede des Staatsanwalts: Die Charakteristik 1428
VII. „ Der Überblick 1448
VIII. „ Über Ssmerdjäkoff 1459
IX. „ Der Schluß der Rede des Staatsanwalts: Der Gipfel der 1479
Psychologie. Die jagende Troika
X. „ Die Rede des Verteidigers. Ein Stock hat zwei Enden 1503
XI. „ Kein Geld. Keine Beraubung 1512
XII. „ Und kein Mord 1524
XIII. Kap. Der Übertreter des Gebots 1539
XIV. „ Das Urteil der Bauern 1555

Epilog
I. Kap. Pläne zu Mitjäs Rettung 1569
II. „ Auf einen Augenblick ward die Lüge Wahrheit 1579
III. „ Iljuschas Beerdigung. Die Rede am großen Stein 1595
 Zur Einführung.
Bemerkungen über Dostojewski

Z wanzig Jahre haben wir nach dem Tode Dostojewskis gebraucht,

um zu begreifen, daß wir heute keine zufällige „Degeneration“,
keinen zeitweiligen „Niedergang“, keine, wie man meint, aus
dem Westen herübergebrachte Dekadenz, sondern das lange
vorbereitete, natürliche und notwendige Ende der russischen
Literatur erleben. Furchtbar ist es uns, das einzugestehen. Vielleicht
aber liegt in diesem Furchtbaren zugleich auch Freudiges für uns,
vielleicht ist die russische Literatur, so groß sie auch sein mag, doch
noch kleiner als das russische Leben? Vielleicht ist das Ende der
russischen Literatur d. h. unserer großen russischen
Anschauungsweise, der Anfang zu der großen russischen Tat?
Erst jetzt, da die russische Literatur ihr Ende erreicht hat, oder
wenigstens ein vollkommen bestimmter, unwiederholbarer Kreis ihrer
Entwicklung sich abschließt, erst jetzt fangen wir an zu verstehen,
was eigentlich von den dreißiger bis zu den achtziger Jahren des
XIX. Jahrhunderts in Rußland vor sich gegangen ist, von Puschkins
„Onégin“ bis zu „Anna Karenina“ und den „Brüdern Karamasoff“. Um
in der Weltkultur etwas dieser plötzlichen Offenbarung, oder
richtiger, etwas diesem Ausbruch geistiger Kräfte Ähnliches zu
finden, müßte man zur Entwicklung der griechischen Tragödie von
Äschylos’ „Prometheus“ bis zu Euripides’ „Alkestis“ oder zur
Geschichte der Malerei der italienischen Renaissance zurückgreifen.
Acht Jahrhunderte lang, seit dem Anfang Rußlands bis zu Peter,
schliefen wir; in dem Jahrhundert von Peter bis Puschkin begannen
wir zu erwachen; und dann, in dem halben Jahrhundert von
Puschkin bis Tolstoj und Dostojewski, durchlebten wir nach dem
plötzlichen Erwachen, das erfolgt war, drei ganze Jahrtausende der
westeuropäischen Menschheit. Der Atem vergeht einem von dieser
Schnelligkeit des Erwachens, die der Schnelligkeit eines Steinfluges
in den Abgrund gleichkommt. L. Tolstoj und Dostojewski – diese
beiden Gipfel der russischen Kultur – wurden vom ersten Strahl der
furchtbaren Sonne erleuchtet, wie bis jetzt noch kein einziger aller
Gipfel der westeuropäischen Kultur erleuchtet worden ist. Diese
furchtbare Sonne aber, das ist der Gedanke an das Ende der
Weltgeschichte.
Ich fühle die mir drohende Gefahr, das Heiligste lächerlich zu
machen, denn für die Kinder dieses Jahrhunderts, für die Menschen
der ewigen Mittelmäßigkeit, des endlosen „Fortschritts“, der
Weiterentwicklung der Welt, gibt es nichts Lächerlicheres,
Dümmeres, Unwahrscheinlicheres, Beleidigenderes als diesen
Hauptgedanken des ganzen Christentums – der Gedanke an das
Ende der Welt. Doch ich beruhige mich damit, daß mich jetzt ja doch
niemand oder so gut wie niemand hören wird: meine Worte, die uns
wie Donnergetöse betäuben, werden den „Menschen dieses
Jahrhunderts“ kaum vernehmbares Geflüster scheinen.
„Allem ist das Ende nahe,“ „Kinder, es ist die letzte Stunde,“
wiederholte vor dem Tode der hundertjährige Greis, der geliebte
Jünger des Herrn, der an Seinem Herzen geruht und das Geheimnis
dieses Herzens gehört hatte – Johannes, „der Sohn der Gewitter“.
Ja, je näher wir dem Herzen des Herrn sind, um so verständiger wird
dieser sein geheimer Gedanke – der Gedanke an das Ende.
Fast zwei Jahrtausende sind seit der Zeit vergangen, als dieses
Wort gesagt ward: „Das Ende der Welt ist nahe“ – das Ende aber
kommt nicht. „Wo ist die Verheißung seiner Zukunft? Denn nachdem
die Väter entschlafen sind, bleibt alles, wie es von Anfang der
Kreatur gewesen ist“ (Zw. Sendschr. Petri III, 4). Und gerade jetzt
glauben die Menschen mehr denn je, daß es ein Ende überhaupt
nicht geben werde, daß eher seine Worte vergehen werden, als
Himmel und Erde. Doch selbst wenn die Zentripetalkraft unseres
Planeten noch für ganze zwei Jahrtausende ausreichte – für zwei
Augenblicke vor dem Angesicht des Ewigen – was hat das zu sagen?
Ist es doch unmöglich, daß wir das nicht sehen, was wir erblickt
haben.
 Gleich denen, die, auf einer Höhe stehend, über die Köpfe der
Menschen hinweg das ihnen Nahende erblicken, während dieses der
unter ihnen stehenden Masse vorläufig noch unsichtbar ist, haben
wir, über alle kommenden Jahrhunderte und möglichen
geschichtlichen Ereignisse hinweg, das Ende der Weltgeschichte
erblickt.
Das Anzeichen unserer neuen Annäherung an Christus ist dieser
plötzlich zu gleicher Zeit auf allen äußersten, höchsten Punkten des
Menschengeistes aufdämmernde Gedanke an das Ende. „Der
Mensch ist etwas, das überwunden werden muß,“ also spricht
Zarathustra-Nietzsche. „Das Menschengeschlecht muß erlöschen“ –
stimmt L. Tolstoj Nietzsche bei. „Das Ende der Welt kommt,“ gibt
auch Dostojewski zu.
Alle drei haben sie sich auf diese für die zeitgenössischen
Menschen des unendlichen „Fortschritts“ lächerlichste und
unwahrscheinlichste, für uns furchtbarste und glaubwürdigste
Prophezeiung gleichsam verschworen: „Das Ende ist nahe“.
Nicht umsonst stimmt das, was auf den höchsten Gipfeln der
russischen und universalen Kultur aufgedämmert ist, mit dem
überein, was in dem tiefsten Elemente des russischen Volkes vor sich
geht: nicht umsonst hat in den letzten drei Jahrhunderten gerade
das russische Volk so hartnäckig und unablässig wie kein einziges
der anderen westeuropäischen Völker über das Ende der Welt
nachgedacht.
Wir sind „Dekadente“, obgleich auch unsere „Dekadenz“ vielleicht
etwas Verwandtes, Volkliches, Russisches ist – das nicht von außen,
sondern von innen kommt, nicht aus Westeuropa, sondern aus der
Tiefe, aus dem blutverwandtesten Mutterschoß der russischen Erde
(ist denn Dostojewski vom Gesichtspunkte des klassischen,
akademischen Puschkin nicht „dekadenter“ als wir alle?); vielleicht
ist auch unsere „Dekadenz“ gleichfalls etwas Historisch-Natürliches,
etwas Notwendiges, denn was sind wir anderes, als das natürliche
und notwendige Ende der russischen Literatur, die selbst das Ende
von etwas noch Größerem ist? Mögen wir die Schwächsten der
Schwachen sein. „In der Schwäche vollendet sich unsere Kraft.“
Unsere Kraft aber besteht darin, daß uns selbst der Mächtigste aller
Teufel mit keiner einzigen Verlockung der ewigen Mittelmäßigkeit,
des unendlichen „Fortschritts“ gewinnen kann. Wir nehmen keine
Durchschnittsphilosophie an, denn wir glauben an das Ende, sehen
das Ende, wollen das Ende, denn wir selbst – sind das Ende oder
wenigstens der Anfang vom Ende. In unseren Augen liegt ein
Ausdruck, der noch nie in Menschenaugen gelegen hat; in unseren
Herzen ist ein Gefühl, das kein einziger Mensch nun schon seit
neunzehn Jahrhunderten mehr empfunden hat, seit der Zeit, als dem
Einsiedler von Pathmos die Vision erschien: „Und der Geist und die
Braut sagen: komm! und der es hört, sage: komm! Es spricht, der
solches zeuget: wahrlich, ich komme bald! Amen. Wahrlich, komme,
Herr Jesus Christus!“
Wir sind wie Gräser auf dem äußersten Rande eines steilen
Abhanges, auf einer Höhe, wo nichts mehr wächst. Dort unten in
den Tälern reichen hohe Eichenbäume mit ihren Wurzeln bis tief
hinein in die Erde. Wir aber sind die Schwachen, Kleinen, von der
Erde aus kaum Sichtbaren, wir stehen unbeschützt vor allen Winden
und Stürmen, fast wurzellos, fast verwelkt. Dafür stehen wir früh
morgens, wenn die Wipfel der Eichen noch dunkel sind, schon im
Licht; wir sehen das, was noch niemand sieht; wir sind die ersten,
die die Sonne des großen Tages sehen; wir sind die ersten, die zu
Ihm sagen:

„Wahrlich, Herr, komme!“

Dmitri Mereschkowski.
 Vorwort

D ie „Brüder Karamasoff“ sind das Epos aller der dunklen

Innenmächte, die durch das Russentum drängen. In seinen
anderen Romanen, vor allem in „Rodion Raskolnikoff“ und in
den „Dämonen“, hat sich Dostojewski mit erklärt zeitlichen Werten,
moralkritischen oder kritischpolitischen, auf eine neue und
großartige Weise auseinandergesetzt. In den „Karamasoffs“ dagegen
ist Allgemein-Volkliches und im volklichen Sinne Ewiges ausgedrückt.
Deshalb wirken jene in ihrer Knappheit und Schärfe fast wie Dramen,
die „Brüder Karamasoff“ dagegen sind in der heiligen Schwere, mit
der ihr erregender und leidenschaftlicher Inhalt vorgetragen wird,
ein echtes Epos.
Zwar sollte noch ein großer Schlußteil das für alles Russentum
geradezu typische Geschlecht der Karamasoff unmittelbar einführen
in religiös-politische Gegenwartskonflikte. Ausdrücklich kündete
Dostojewski an: „Dieser Schlußteil wird die Tätigkeit meines Helden
(Aljoscha Karamasoff) in unserer Zeit bringen, gerade im
gegenwärtigen Augenblick.“ Aber dieser Schlußteil ist ungeschrieben
geblieben. Warum? Der äußere Grund lautet: Dostojewski starb über
der Vollendung seines Hauptwerkes. Etwa vom Jahre 1870 an hatte
ihn die Idee der „Brüder Karamasoff“ beschäftigt. Doch immer
wieder schob sich zwischen die Niederschrift anderes: die
„Dämonen“ und die Hauptmasse seiner kritischen Schriften, in denen
er gleichfalls seine tiefsten und notwendigsten russischen Gedanken
ausdrücken konnte – bis er dann endlich in den Jahren 1879 und
1880 sein Werk wenigstens zu der vollendeten und doch
unabgeschlossenen Form brachte, in der wir es heute kennen. Das
Jahr 1881 aber war dann, schon im Januar, das Todesjahr
Dostojewskis.
 Doch die Beziehungen zwischen der Entwicklungsgeschichte der
Werke eines Genies und dem Leben des Genies pflegen niemals bloß
äußerliche zu sein. Diese inneren Gründe, die Dostojewski
verwehrten, das Epos der Karamasoff in einem Umkreise
abzurunden, der alle russischen Möglichkeiten in der Summe erfaßte
und aussprach, hat zuerst Mereschkowski klar erkannt: „Die ‚Brüder
Karamasoff‘ zu Ende zu führen, das war, wie sich zeigte, unmöglich
für Dostojewski, denn dieses Ende war im Leben noch nicht
vorhanden; und als hätte er selbst gefühlt, daß er alles getan, was
möglich war, verließ er das Leben – er starb.“ Gleichwohl liegt in den
„Brüdern Karamasoff“ das Russentum, so weit es und so wie es sich
bis heute entwickelt hat, in mächtiger Basis aufgerollt. Und vielleicht
ist gerade ihr Prototypisches, daß Dostojewski wenigstens im
Gedanken und in der Absicht den Versuch machte, den zentralen
Ausdruck allen Russentums der Gegenwart wie der Zukunft aus dem
Riesenplane zu heben. Das war nur möglich auf dem Wege einer
vorbildhaften russischen Einheldigkeit, die an die Stelle des
problematischen und nihilistischen Heldentums trat, das Dostojewski
in seinen früheren Romanen auf dem Hintergrunde des leidenden
und doch so wirklichen Heldentums in der russischen Volksbreite
geschildert hatte. Von den drei Brüdern Karamasoff war Mitjä, der
Enthusiast, der unendliche Lebensbejaher, die verkörperte Grundlage
eines volklich-russischen Heldentums, in dem sich Güte mit
Gewaltsamkeit, Empfindung mit Überschwang zu einer Einheit
verband. Darüber hinaus sollte Aljoscha Karamasoff in der Kraft
seiner naiven Reinheit zum russischen Einhelden auswachsen. Oder
wäre nicht vielleicht doch Iwan Karamasoff, der Ideologe, dieser
Einheld geworden? Aber hier bricht das Werk ab, wie hier das
russische Leben abbricht, das nach außen als ein so festes und
schweres Massiv erscheint und doch in seinem Innern von
zersplitternden und zersetzenden Dualismen erfüllt ist, die sich nicht
selbst befruchten, sondern eher gegenseitig aufheben.
Moeller van den Bruck.
 Erstes Buch.
Die Geschichte einer Familie
 I.
Fedor Pawlowitsch Karamasoff

A lexei Fedorowitsch Karamasoff war der dritte Sohn des

Gutsbesitzers unseres Gouvernements Fedor Pawlowitsch
Karamasoff, der seinerzeit – vor jetzt gerade dreizehn Jahren –
durch sein tragisches und dunkles Ende, auf das ich noch später zu
sprechen kommen werde, so viel von sich reden machte. Vorläufig
will ich über diesen „Gutsbesitzer“, wie man ihn gewöhnlich bei uns
nannte, obgleich er in seinem ganzen Leben fast nie auf seinem
Gute wohnte, nur bemerken, daß er ein sehr eigenartiger Mensch
war, ein Typ, den man aber, genau genommen, nicht einmal so
selten antrifft: der Typ eines nichtsnutzigen und ausschweifenden
Menschen, der zu gleicher Zeit ganz auffallend närrisch ist, – jedoch
zu jener besonderen Art von Narren gehört, die ihre Geschäftchen
immer vorzüglich zu machen verstehen, und zwar scheint das das
einzige zu sein, was sie verstehen. Fedor Pawlowitsch, zum Beispiel,
begann mit fast nichts in der Tasche. Von den Gutsbesitzern war er
einer der ärmsten: er fuhr uneingeladen zu allen Bekannten zum
Besuch und lebte so als ewiger Gast auf Kosten fremder Menschen,
aber nach seinem Tode erwies es sich, daß er allein an barem Kapital
runde hunderttausend Rubel besaß. Und doch war er sein ganzes
Leben lang einer der einfältigsten Narren unseres Gouvernements.
Ich will damit nicht sagen, daß er etwa dumm gewesen wäre –
größtenteils sind diese Narren sogar sehr klug und schlau –, sondern
gerade einfältig, und dazu war es bei ihm noch eine ganz besondere
Einfältigkeit, eine nationale.
Er war zweimal verheiratet gewesen und hatte drei Söhne, – den
ältesten, Dmitrij Fedorowitsch, von der ersten Frau; die beiden
anderen, Iwan und Alexei, von der zweiten. Die erste Gemahlin
Fedor Pawlowitschs stammte aus dem wohlhabenden und
angesehenen Adelsgeschlecht der Miussoffs, – gleichfalls
Gutsbesitzer unseres Bezirks. Wie es kam, daß dieses reiche
Mädchen – das dazu noch hübsch war und zu den
temperamentvollen, intelligenten Frauen gehörte, die man in unserer
Generation so häufig antrifft, die aber auch schon in der
vergangenen auftauchten –, solch einen jämmerlichen Menschen
heiraten konnte, will ich weiter nicht zu erklären versuchen. Kannte
ich doch ein junges Mädchen, allerdings war es eines aus der
vorigen „romantischen“ Generation, das sich nach etlichen Jahren
rätselhafter Liebe zu einem Mann, den es zu jeder Zeit ruhig hätte
heiraten können, schließlich die unüberwindlichsten Hindernisse
ausdachte, die eine Vereinigung unbedingt ausschlossen, und die
sich darauf in einer stürmischen Nacht von einem hohen Ufer, das
fast einem Felsen glich, in einen ziemlich tiefen und reißenden Strom
hinabstürzte und in ihm ertrank, – eigentlich doch nur deshalb, um
der Shakespeareschen Ophelia zu gleichen. Ja, es ist sogar
anzunehmen, daß sie, wenn an der Stelle des malerischen Felsens
nur ein prosaisches, flaches Flußufer gewesen wäre, an die
phantastische Idee, aus Liebe in den Tod zu gehen, überhaupt nicht
gedacht hätte. Dieser Selbstmord ist aber Tatsache, und ich glaube
annehmen zu dürfen, daß sich in unseren beiden letzten
Generationen nicht selten Ähnliches zugetragen hat. Auch die Heirat
Adelaida Iwanowna Miussoffs war ein Schritt von derselben Art und
zweifellos auf fremde Einflüsse zurückzuführen. Vielleicht wollte sie
durch ihn ihre weibliche Selbständigkeit beweisen, gegen die
gesellschaftlichen Fesseln, gegen den Despotismus ihrer Eltern und
Verwandten auftreten, und vielleicht hatte ihr noch die bereitwillige
Phantasie die Überzeugung eingeflößt, wenn auch nur auf einen
Augenblick, daß Fedor Pawlowitsch trotz seiner Rolle als ewiger
Freischlucker einer der geistreichsten und eigenartigsten Spötter
dieser Übergangsepoche sei, die zweifellos zu Besserem führte,
obgleich er in Wirklichkeit doch nichts als ein boshafter Narr war. Das
eigentlich Reizvolle der Sache bestand jedoch darin, daß sie von ihm
entführt wurde – das aber war für sie ausschlaggebend. Hinzu kam,
daß Fedor Pawlowitsch damals unbedingt, gleichviel mit welchen
Mitteln, Karriere machen wollte, und so war er denn infolge seiner
sozialen Lage geradezu gezwungen, sie zu entführen: war doch die
Aussicht auf eine Mitgift und die Gelegenheit, zu einer reichen und
angesehenen Familie in so nahe Beziehung zu treten, gar zu
verführerisch. Was nun die beiderseitige Liebe anbelangt, so war die
überhaupt nicht vorhanden, weder von seiten der Braut, noch, trotz
deren Schönheit, von seiten Fedor Pawlowitschs, – eine Tatsache,
die in ihrer Art denn auch den einzigen Ausnahmefall im Leben Fedor
Pawlowitschs bildete, dieses größten Lüstlings, der sein Leben lang
immer sofort bereit war, nach einerlei was für einem Weiberrock zu
langen, wenn er ihn nur anlockte. So war also diese Frau die einzige,
die, was seine Leidenschaft anbetraf, nicht den geringsten Eindruck
auf ihn gemacht hatte.
Adelaida Iwanowna kam denn auch schon bald nach der
Entführung zur Überzeugung, daß sie für ihren Mann nur Verachtung
empfinden konnte, und so stellten sich die Folgen dieser Heirat
unverzüglich ein. Ungeachtet dessen, daß ihre Familie sich sehr bald
darauf mit der Tatsache aussöhnte und der Entlaufenen die Mitgift
auszahlte, kam es zwischen den Eheleuten doch zu unaufhörlichen
Szenen. Später erzählte man, daß die junge Frau unvergleichlich
mehr Anstand und Vornehmheit bewiesen habe als Fedor
Pawlowitsch, der sich, wie man es jetzt genau weiß, fast ihr ganzes
Geld, an fünfundzwanzigtausend Rubel, sofort einsteckte, so daß sie
von diesen Tausenden nichts mehr zu sehen bekam. Das Gütchen
jedoch und das Haus in der Stadt, die gleichfalls zu ihrer Mitgift
gehörten, wollte er lange Zeit unbedingt auf seinen Namen
überführen, und er würde auch bestimmt erreicht haben, was er
wollte, da sein unaufhörliches Betteln und seine unverschämten
Erpressungsversuche in ihr nur Verachtung und Ekel hervorriefen,
und sie vielleicht aus seelischer Ermüdung, und um ihn los zu
werden, schließlich eingewilligt hätte. Zum Glück aber trat ihre
Familie für sie ein und machte diesen Erpressungsversuchen ein
Ende. Wahr ist gleichfalls, daß zwischen ihnen nicht selten
Prügeleien stattfanden, doch war es nach der Überlieferung nicht
Fedor Pawlowitsch, der schlug, sondern Adelaida Iwanowna, die eine
heißblütige, kühne, ungeduldige Dame von bräunlicher Gesichtsfarbe
und nicht geringer körperlicher Kraft war. Schließlich aber hielt sie es
doch nicht mehr aus und lief Fedor Pawlowitsch mit einem in Armut
verkommenen Seminaristen, der übrigens Lehrer war, einfach davon,
und überließ ihm außer ihrem Kapital noch ihren dreijährigen Sohn
Mitjä.[1] Fedor Pawlowitsch machte aus seinem Hause sofort einen
Harem und ein Lokal für die wüstesten Gelage, von Zeit zu Zeit aber
fuhr er zu allen Bekannten, also fast durch das ganze
Gouvernement, und beklagte sich mit Tränen in den Augen über
Adelaida Iwanowna, wobei er so ausführlich von seinem Eheleben
erzählte, wie es ein anderer Ehemann schon allein aus Schamgefühl
nie getan haben würde. Es schien ihm beinahe angenehm und
womöglich noch schmeichelhaft zu sein, diese lächerliche Rolle des
gekränkten Gatten zu spielen und anderen sein Leid in allen Farben
auszumalen. „Man könnte ja wirklich glauben, Fedor Pawlowitsch,
daß Sie einen höheren Rang erhalten haben, so zufrieden scheinen
Sie trotz Ihres vermeintlichen Kummers zu sein,“ sagten ihm denn
auch manche, denen er sein Leid klagte, nicht ohne spöttische
Verachtung. Viele fügten sogar noch hinzu, er solle sich doch nicht
verstellen, da er ja im Grunde nur froh sei, eine neue Narrenrolle
spielen zu können, und sich bloß, um die Komik zu erhöhen, den
Anschein gäbe, als bemerke er die eigene Lächerlichkeit nicht. Wer
aber kann es wissen, vielleicht war das alles wirklich ganz naiv von
ihm? Endlich gelang es ihm, seiner Flüchtigen auf die Spur zu
kommen. Die Arme befand sich in Petersburg, wohin sie mit ihrem
Seminaristen gefahren war, und wo sie in der größten
Ungebundenheit lebte. Fedor Pawlowitsch traf sofort große Anstalten
zur Reise nach Petersburg – warum aber und wozu dorthin? – das
wußte er natürlich selbst nicht. Vielleicht wäre er damals auch
wirklich abgefahren, doch nachdem er einen so großen Entschluß
gefaßt hatte, fühlte er sich sofort vollkommen berechtigt, sich zur
Stärkung auf einen so weiten und schweren Weg vorher noch dem
uferlosesten Trunk zu ergeben. Inzwischen aber erhielt die Familie
seiner Frau die Nachricht von deren Tode. Sie war ganz plötzlich
gestorben, irgendwo in einer Dachkammer, am Typhus, wie die einen
behaupteten, oder wie die anderen meinten – vor Hunger. Als der
gerade betrunkene Fedor Pawlowitsch die Nachricht vom Tode seiner
Frau erhielt, soll er auf die Straße hinausgelaufen sein, die Hände
wie zum Dank zum Himmel emporgehoben und laut ausgerufen
haben: „Herr, nun lässest du mich in Frieden fahren!“ – Andere aber
sagen, er habe wie ein kleines Kind geweint, und zwar so sehr, daß
man für ihn trotz der Verachtung Mitleid habe empfinden können. Es
ist sehr leicht möglich, daß sowohl das eine wie das andere wahr ist,
daß er sich über seine Befreiung von ihr gefreut, und zu gleicher Zeit
über ihren Tod geweint hat – beides zusammen. In den meisten
Fällen sind die Menschen, und sogar Bösewichte, viel naiver und
aufrichtiger, als wir es von ihnen voraussetzen. Ja, und wir selbst
sind es doch gleichfalls. –
 II.
Der erste Sohn

M an kann sich natürlich denken, welch ein Erzieher oder Vater

solch ein Mensch sein konnte. Fedor Pawlowitsch vergaß das
Kind vollständig, doch nicht etwa aus Bosheit oder aus
irgendwelchen beleidigten Gattengefühlen, sondern ganz einfach,
weil er es eben vollkommen vergaß. Solange er noch trauerte, klagte
und weinte und sein Haus dabei in eine unzüchtige Höhle
verwandelte, nahm sich des kleinen, dreijährigen Knaben Grigorij,
der treue Diener seines Hauses, an – wenn dieser es nicht getan
hätte, so würde der Kleine kaum ein Hemdchen zum Wechseln
gehabt haben, da auch die Familie seiner Mutter ihn in der ersten
Zeit gleichfalls ganz vergaß. Sein Großvater Miussoff, der Vater
Adelaida Iwanownas, war schon gestorben, und dessen Witwe,
Mitjäs Großmutter, war nach Moskau übergesiedelt und dort
erkrankt; ihre jüngeren Töchter heirateten gerade, und so blieb denn
Mitjä ein ganzes Jahr beim Diener Grigorij und lebte in dessen
Wohnung auf dem Hofe. Übrigens, wenn sich der Vater seiner auch
erinnert hätte (denn er konnte doch unmöglich von seiner Existenz
überhaupt nichts wissen), so würde er ihn doch selbst wieder in die
Leutewohnung auf den Hof geschickt haben, da das Kind ihm bei
diesem Völlerleben nur im Wege gewesen wäre. Doch da kehrte
eines schönen Tages der Vetter der Verstorbenen, Pjotr
Alexandrowitsch Miussoff, aus Paris zurück, wo er viele Jahre
hindurch gelebt hatte. Er war damals noch ein ganz junger Mann,
der sich aber unter den Miussoffs doch schon als aufgeklärter
Großstädter und Ausländer auszeichnete; er fühlte sich von jeher als
Europäer, und am Ende seines Lebens konnte er zu den Liberalen
der vierziger und fünfziger Jahre gezählt werden. Natürlich stand er
mit allen liberalen Größen seiner Epoche in Rußland wie im Auslande
in Verbindung, kannte persönlich Proudhon und Bakunin, und liebte
zum Schluß seiner Wanderschaft ganz besonders, sich der drei Tage
der Pariser Februarrevolution zu erinnern und anzudeuten, daß er
selbst beinahe auf den Barrikaden gestanden hätte. Das waren für
ihn die schönsten Erinnerungen seiner Jugendjahre. Er besaß ein
ansehnliches Vermögen – nach den früheren Verhältnissen
gerechnet, ungefähr tausend Seelen. Sein wundervolles Gut lag ganz
in der Nähe unsres Städtchens und grenzte an die Ländereien des
berühmten Klosters, mit dem Miussoff sofort, nachdem er sein Erbe
angetreten hatte, einen Prozeß begann (wegen irgendwelcher
Rechte auf den Fischfang im Fluß oder auf das Holzfällen in einem
Walde, ich weiß es nicht mehr ganz genau), da er als aufgeklärter
Mensch selbstverständlich für seine bürgerliche Pflicht hielt, mit den
„Klerikalen“ Prozeß zu führen. Als er nun das Schicksal Adelaida
Iwanownas, deren er sich natürlich noch sehr gut erinnerte und für
die er sich früher sogar interessiert hatte, erfuhr, und von ihrem
Sohn Mitjä hörte, beschloß er sofort, sich trotz seines heftigen
Unwillens über Fedor Pawlowitsch, in die Sache einzumischen. Bei
der Gelegenheit war es denn, daß er Fedor Pawlowitsch zum
erstenmal sah und kennen lernte. Er erklärte sich bereit, die
Erziehung Mitjäs auf sich zu nehmen. Noch lange nachher erzählte
er, gewissermaßen zur Charakterisierung Fedor Pawlowitschs, daß
dieser, als er ihm von Mitjä gesprochen, ein Gesicht gemacht habe,
als ob er überhaupt nicht verstehen könne, von welch einem Kinde
die Rede sei und ersichtlich sogar sehr erstaunt gewesen wäre, zu
hören, daß bei ihm im Hause irgendwo ein kleiner Sohn lebte. Wenn
Pjotr Alexandrowitsch in seiner Erzählung auch etwas übertrieben
haben mag, so muß doch immerhin etwas Wahres daran gewesen
sein. Außerdem aber liebte es Fedor Pawlowitsch tatsächlich, sich
plötzlich zu verstellen, oder eine ganz unerwartete Rolle zu spielen,
und zwar, was die Hauptsache dabei schien, ohne daß die geringste
Notwendigkeit dazu vorhanden gewesen wäre, mitunter sogar zu
seinem eigenen Nachteil, wie z. B. in diesem Falle. Dieser Zug ist
übrigens vielen Leuten eigen, und sogar sehr klugen Leuten, nicht
nur solchen wie Fedor Pawlowitsch. Miussoff führte also die Sache
durch und wurde sogar als Vormund des Knaben eingesetzt
(zusammen mit Fedor Pawlowitsch natürlich), da doch dem Kleinen
nach dem Tode der Mutter immerhin das Gütchen und das Haus
verblieben. Mitjä wurde denn auch wirklich in das Haus Pjotr
Alexandrowitschs gebracht; der aber hatte keine Familie, und da er
selbst, nachdem er seine Wirtschafts- und Geldangelegenheiten auf
dem Gute geordnet hatte, so schnell als möglich und auf lange Zeit
wieder nach Paris eilte, so wurde das Kind einer Tante, einer älteren
Dame, die in Moskau wohnte, anvertraut. Und so kam es denn, daß
auch Miussoff in Paris den Knaben vollständig vergaß, besonders als
diese Februarrevolution ausbrach, die ihm so imponierte, daß er sie
sein Lebtag nicht vergessen konnte. Die Moskauer Dame aber starb
bald darauf, und Mitjä kam zu einer ihrer verheirateten Töchter. Ich
glaube, er hat dann noch einmal, zum viertenmal, das Nest
gewechselt. Doch darüber werde ich mich weiter nicht verbreiten, da
ich noch viel über diesen Erstling Fedor Pawlowitschs zu erzählen
habe; ich will mich jetzt nur auf die notwendigsten Mitteilungen
beschränken, ohne die ich den Roman nicht beginnen kann.
Dieser Dmitrij Fedorowitsch war der einzige von den drei Söhnen
Fedor Pawlowitschs, der mit dem Bewußtsein aufwuchs, daß er
immerhin über einige Mittel verfügte und, wenn er mündig
geworden, unabhängig sein werde. Seine Kinder- und Jugendjahre
verlebte er ziemlich unordentlich: das Gymnasium beendete er nicht,
darauf kam er auf eine Kriegsschule, diente dann im Kaukasus, hatte
dort ein Duell, wurde deswegen degradiert, diente sich aber wieder
in die Höhe, führte ein wildes Leben und gab verhältnismäßig viel
Geld aus. Vor seiner Mündigkeit bekam er von Fedor Pawlowitsch
kein Geld, lebte daher bis dahin von Schulden. Fedor Pawlowitsch,
seinen Vater, lernte er erst nach seiner Mündigkeit kennen; er kam
damals zum erstenmal in unsere Stadt, um sich mit ihm über seine
Vermögensverhältnisse auszusprechen. Wie es schien, gefiel ihm
sein Vater nicht, denn er verließ ihn sofort wieder, als er eine
gewisse Summe erhalten und mit ihm über die weiteren Einnahmen
seines Gutes verhandelt hatte; doch konnte er weder die Einkünfte,
noch den Wert des Gutes jemals von seinem Vater erfahren. (Bitte
das wohl zu beachten.) Fedor Pawlowitsch aber bemerkte damals
sofort (und auch dies bitte nicht zu vergessen), daß Mitjä sich von