Crucible of Doubt: Ivan Karamazov Meets the Devil

Whomever the narrator might be, he is certainly not a doctor, as he tells us twice, yet he knows with confidence that Ivan Fyodorovich is “on the very eve of an attack of brain fever” (492). There is an actual doctor in the narrative and he warns Ivan that, “Hallucinations are quite likely…” foreshadowing what’s to come (492). The text tells us that, “Suddenly someone proved to be sitting there, though goodness knows how he had come in for he had not been in the room when Ivan came into it” (492). It’s funny how this devil is described as sort of middle aged and out of style — “gentility on straightened means” (493). I wonder if there isn’t something at least slightly symbolic about the devil looking like he, “used to flourish in the days of serfdom” (492).

The way the devil is characterized begins to sound a little like Fyodor Pavelovich when it describes him as a “hanger-on”(493) — the word used for Fyodor at the beginning, and when it speaks of gradually losing sight of children raised by a distant relative. The devil and Fyodor also both use a lot of French phrases, and stand out from the other characters in the text by this. Whatever this might imply about Dostoevsky’s view of the French is beside the point, but it certainly seems to link these two characters even more strongly. Ivan refers to the devil as a “fool” throughout the scene which is how Fyodor Pavelovich is described on numerous occasions, by himself and others.

The text tells us that Ivan was “angrily silent” (493). Why is he angry? Is it simply because of his previous conversations with Smerdyakov? — or is he perhaps angry at this Russian gentleman, for being in his room without his permission? — i.e. angry at the devil for being in his psyche. The devil begins the conversation by reminding Ivan that he forgot to “find out about Katerina Ivanovna” — the woman on whom so much of this novel hinges, and about whom we seem to know very little (493). Ivan is certain he would have remembered himself, eventually, and that this in no way proves whether it really is the devil, or a figment of his imagination. The devil tells him, “proofs do not help one to believe, especially material proofs,” and says that, “Thomas believed, not because he saw Christ risen, but because he wanted to believe” (493). This reminds me of how disappointed the people were when Zosima began to smell, and thus no miraculous sign was to be had. According to the devil’s logic, the people wouldn’t have believed anyway, or perhaps were prepared to be disappointed no matter what the outcome. He mentions the spiritists who have material proofs: “they fancy they serve the cause of religion, because the devils show them their horns from the other world” (493). It would seem the prospect of religion, then, ought to be some other task or goal than merely ascertaining material proofs. But what could that be? Does “proving there’s a devil prove that there’s a God”(493)? If we take the devil as a creation by God, then proving God by the devil’s existence is no better than proving God by the existence of humans. However, if we take the devil as a part of God, as Jung and others have, then proving the devil would seem, in a way, to prove the existence of God. In the case of Ivan’s devil, it seems less likely to be of external source, than simply a psychological manifestation.

Ivan becomes frustrated and says, “You won’t drive me to fury, as you did last time” (493). From this, and from the ensuing dialog, we get the idea that Ivan and the devil have met before. Was their first meeting when Ivan was writing “The Grand Inquisitor?” The devil returns to the question of existence and belief when he says, “If you kick me, you must believe in my reality, for people don’t kick ghosts” (494). What exactly it means to be “real” seems to be important here. Ivan, and indeed, I as a reader, find it nearly impossible to accept this visitor as having an external source, devil or otherwise. He tells the devil, “You are myself” (494). He says that this Russian gentleman, this devil is merely an incarnation of his “nastiest and stupidest of” thoughts, but this doesn’t really seem to describe who this gentleman actually is. He is certainly more charming and witty than nasty and stupid. He tells us, “it’s an axiom generally accepted in society that I am a fallen angel. My God! I can’t conceive how I can ever have been an angel. If I was, it must have been so long ago that there’s no sin in forgetting it” (494). This is hysterical, not just because the devil is speaking of sinning, but because he must surely be joking about not remembering his origins. Beneath the humour, I wonder about the the overall tragedy of the devil here and he is showing us a bit of vulnerability.

Overall, this devil is very witty and charming. He says his goal is to live as a “well-bred person” and be “agreeable.” It is a stark contrast to notice just how friendly and personable the devil here is and how noticeably absent from the narrative God is. Apart from Ivan’s Christ character in “The Grand Inquisitor,” who’s only spoken line is in Aramaic, there is no character of God present in the novel. Only a little later, the devil says that even he is unsure of God’s existence. He tells the newspaper workers, “It’s reactionary to believe in God in our days… but I am the devil, so I may be believed in,” to which they all replied, “who doesn’t believe in the devil” (497). What does he mean when he says “reactionary” here? God-belief is problematic when it comes down to the question of what exactly it means to “believe.” The dynamic question of what believing means and what belief is is such an important question and is clearly answered in drastically different ways. Whatever it may mean to believe in or not believe in God could obviously fill an entire essay of its own. Belief in the devil seems even more unclear, and yet it feels like the newspaper workers’ reply is oddly important when it comes to an understanding of this novel as a whole: “Who doesn’t believe in the devil?” What does it mean to believe in the devil?

The devil says, “I am a slandered man” (497). It is interesting how the devil here refers to himself as “a man” and has already been characterized as sort of shabby and middle-class. He tells us that “nothing but hosanna is not enough for life”(497). Hosanna translates as “joy.” This raises the age-old question of whether good can be fully realized without the existence of evil. Can happiness truly be understood without pain? “[T]he hosannas must be tried in the crucible of doubt” he tells us (497). So maybe this idea of a holy joy or spiritual ecstasy which can’t be fully felt unless one also experiences doubt. The devil refers to himself as a “scapegoat”(498). Could it be that his rôle is as necessary as Christ’s and that’s why he feels he has been slandered? “If everything on earth were sensible, nothing would happen. There would be no events without [the devil]”(498)! That’s a huge statement: no events without the devil. The devil’s very existence seems rooted in the passage of historical time. If there was not an “against the grain” force, nothing would ever happen. Eden, it would seem, was a very boring place. Leaving the garden, then would be a crucial step to coming to the present reality and for that, Adam and Eve needed a serpent. But can we necessarily say that “events” or history are good, or is this just another illusion of the devil? If this is good, then the timelessness of a pristine Eden is bad, because without events, life is dull. Yet, if one takes a step back, one might observe that humans are the only creatures who mark time in such a way. Measuring centuries, years, hours, minutes and seconds — painfully aware of every passing moment and of her impending death.

The devil says that people taking too seriously this farce of existence is “their tragedy” Perhaps it’s better, the devil believes, simply to be in the moment, rather than struggle against the tide. Of humanity, he tells us: “They suffer of course… but then they live. They live a real life not a fantastic one, for it is suffering that is life” (498). A life without suffering would be a kind of suffering of it own perhaps: “an endless church service… holy, but tedious” (498). How sad then, it must be, to be the devil and be condemned to “suffer, but still [not] live”(498). Is this why his greatest wish is to be a merchant’s wife weighing two hundred and fifty pounds? He doesn’t just wish to be a human, but evokes a very specific human experience, involving a simple sort of piety, “placing candles before God’s shrine”(498). It seems that the devil is unable to experience that sort of thing, even though he wishes to.

Ivan sees something in the devil’s longing for simplistic God-belief and asks him directly whether or not God exists, to which the devil quite comically replies, “My dear fellow, upon my word I don’t know” (498). This brings up one of the biggest questions in this section: what can it mean if the devil is agnostic? If the devil doesn’t even believe with certainty in God’s existence, how then can we? He seems to draw a dialectic connection between belief and nonbelief when he says, “From the vehemence with which you deny my existence, I am convinced that you believe in me” (500).

The devil is clever. He tells Ivan that he retold him his own story on purpose, saying, “I lead you to belief and disbelief in turn, and in doing it, I have a purpose of my own” (500).This tension between belief and disbelief seems crucial here, if we are to understand it along the lines of what was stated earlier in the text about “events.” Is doubt necessary in forming a system of belief? He tells Ivan, “As soon as you disbelieve in me completely , you’ll begin assuring me to my face that I am not a dream, but a reality” (500). When he tells the story of the Norman girl at confession, I wondered if this anecdote was meant merely to be amusing, or if it also fits into the larger question of belief and doubt. In her naïveté, she saw the situation as if she were providing a service of the the goodness of her heart — for the good of mankind, one might say. “It was the cry of nature,” the devil tells us, “better than innocence itself” (501). The priest, he tells us, asked the woman out on a date after confession.

When the devil accuses Ivan of his pride being wounded, “How could such a vulgar devil visit such a great man as you” (502)? Presented here is a sort of economy of the metaphysical, which somehow reminds me of when Fyodor said, “I do not deny there may be an unclean spirit in me, but only a little one. A more important one would have chosen another lodging” (29). Is Fyodor’s self effacing buffoonery conversely reflected in Ivan’s self-aggrandized seriousness?This devil which may or may not be an emanation of Ivan’s own psyche, is accusing him of pride. Actually, Ivan strikes me as being a lover of humanity and an advocate on behalf of the people. I feel he believes he is motivated by love. The devil calls him romantic and if we see this devil as a part of him, he tells us, “I am perhaps the one man in creation who loves the truth and genuinely discerns good” (502). Here, the devil is referring to himself as a man again and the question practically asks itself: What does the devil mean by “good?”

He claims that he wanted to sing “hosanna” with all the angels when Christ and the two thieves ascended into heaven. He wanted to, but if he had, he tells us, “Everything on earth would be extinguished at once and no events could have occurred”(502). This idea of events occurring, it would seem, is linked to the devil’s idea of what “good” is. What is good seems to be an unfolding of historical time. The devil faithfully fulfills his rôle which is to “…ruin thousands for the sake of saving one” (502). I’m curious about what he means when he says he was made a fool because of Job. I’m not really sure how the devil was made a fool in that case, other than just losing the bet with God. The devil tells Ivan, “nothing need be destroyed… we need destroy only the idea of God in mankind (503). In the same way that if he joined in the hosanna the world would be extinguished, if humans destroy the idea of God, “the old conception of the universe will fall of itself… the old morality and everything will begin anew. Men will unite to take from life all it can give…” (503). This for me echoed a sort of socialist utopian vision and even the language seemed reminiscent of that. This man-god, he tells us, feels so much joy in making this world better that he has no more use for ideas such as heaven. When Miüsov paraphrases Ivan earlier in the text, he says, “…if you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up” (50). This is not the case in the picture presented by the devil: “Every one will know that he is wholly mortal, that there is no resurrection” (503). Contrary to Miusov’s explanation, “he will love his brother without need of reward” (503).

This man-god isn’t limited to the morality of the “slave-man” because, “There is no law for God” (504). He criticizes the modern Russian for being so hindered morally that he must create moral sanctions for everything he wants to do. Yet he says that he is, “so in love with truth” (504). The devil seems critical in this moment of the Russian as a character type. I feel that the question of what it means to be a Russian has been a persistent question throughout the course of the novel. If Ivan is a sort of reaction to Fyodor in some way, it seems helpful to note how Fyodor was typified as some sort of archetype of Russian identity when the narrator tells us that Fyodor’s senselessness belongs to a “peculiar national form” (3).

If we are meant to accept this entity as the actual Christian devil, it doesn’t seem that Dostoevsky has made that very clear. If anything, most of the details — the rag and glass — the establishment of Ivan’s brain fever and the likelihood of hallucinations, and of course the repeating of stories Ivan himself had written, all seem to lead to the conclusion that the devil is a projection of Ivan’s psyche. Interestingly, he is never actually referred to as “the devil.” He vehemently denies being a fallen angel. After quoting Descartes, he makes sure and clarifies that he is agnostic about both God and Satan, which would seem to suggest that if he is somehow an actual devil, he is not Satan himself. I continue returning to this idea of the Russian gentleman being very closely linked to Fyodor Pavelovich via the details of characterization. It occurs to me that Ivan once told Alyosha that “In every man … a beast lies hidden” (183).

I wonder if the key to understanding this devil is in the name Karamazov itself. When Ilyusha’s mother meets Alyosha, she mistakes the name “Karamazov” for “Chernomazov.” According to the notes in the Farrar, Straus and Giroux edition of the text, “ cherny is Russian for ‘black’; however, in Turkish and Tartar languages kara also means ‘black’ (the root, maz, in Russian conveys the idea of ‘paint’ or ‘smear’)” By mistaking the more obscure “kara” for the standard Russian word “cherny” in the name Chernomazov, Dostoevsky was no doubt illuminating the meaning slightly for his readers. If karamoz is some sort of black mold — some unhealthy stain that is transmitted down the family line, we might wonder if this devil, Ivan’s devil, is a manifestation of that part of himself — of his father — presumably of his ancestors before that: the Karamazov.

In the beginning of the narrative, Mitya is the one who expresses his hatred for his father with an act of violence. Ivan seems the dutiful son. When he punches Maximov, knocking him off the carriage after the scene at the monastery, we are left wondering why. Now, having seen the novel to completion, one can’t help but see Ivan’s violence against Maximov as some sort of expression of his repressed hatred for his father. He is silent with his father for the remainder of the scene, just as his Christ is silent in the poem he writes.

The Christ of “The Grand Inquisitor” is lacking a father-God as an essential element of the narrative. Ivan had an absent father who barely even knew of his existence. It is a commonly held idea that we form concepts of God around concepts of our father. Perhaps Ivan’s frustration at having no essential type for a father has resulted in an absent concept of God as well as a repressed violence which he carefully maintains. When I begin to consider this as a primary motivation for Ivan as a character, it seems that the moment of punching Maximov and this present moment of meeting the devil stand as bookends to his character arc. What if, in writing “The Grand Inquisitor,” he summoned this devil in the sense that he isolated this aggression by manifesting a character that takes on both a general personification of his inherited guilt, as well as the more specific hatred of his father. His physical father has been murdered, but this devil steps in as a sort of archetype — an inversion of the father-God archetype — and stands to torment him. He cannot escape it. It seems to relate to how he feels guilt at the death of his father even though he was not actually the murderer.

All four of Fyodor Pavelovich’s sons suffered the same or similar neglect, but they all responded to it differently, and with different outcomes. The details which connect Fyodor Pavelovich and the devil are too numerous to be mere coïncidence, and so much of Ivan’s character, to me seems to be a dramatic inversion of Fyodor’s character. One wonders what kind of father Fyodor Pavelovich had. It seems that Dostoevsky is presenting this sort of hereditary evil — this black stain in the Karamazov family as somehow diminishing through time and through generations. Much like the man in the devil’s story who lay down in the road rather than walking a quadrillion kilometers, but after a thousand years decided to get up and walk, it would seem that God’s grace is being presented as some sort of inevitability, even if it takes “a billion years,” as the text tells us, or in the case of the Karamazov family, multiple generations.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Братья Карамазовы (Brothers Karamazov). trans. Constance Garnett. New York: Heritage Press. 1933.