Lebedev’s information

Posted in information, Jane Austen, The Idiot by Tony Sifert on April 22, 2011

Who is Nastasya Filippovna? Rogozhin is the first character in the novel to mention her name, but it is Lebedev — offering proof of his knowledge to Rogozhin — who provides information about her:

It’s the same Nastasya Filippovna on account of whom your parent wanted to admonish you with a blackthorn stick, and Nastasya Filippovna is Barashkov, she’s even a noble lady, so to speak, and also a sort of princess, and she keeps company with a certain Totsky, Afanasy Ivanovich, exclusively with him alone . . . (12)

What sort of information is this? The narrator calls Lebedev a “Mr. Know-it-all.” This type (that, of course, does not define Lebedev) takes great pains to practice the “seductive science” of who’s who (14). Rogozhin disdains the type, but takes the “pencil pusher” with him all the same. Lebedev has good information. He is an exemplar of the type. He “knows everything.” (How many times in The Idiot does someone say that they “know everything” or that someone else doesn’t know everything?) He goes beyond the mere recitation of Nastasya’s entry in the book containing this sort of knowledge. In fact, not a step is taken in her (and not only hers) ambit “without Lebedev.” Of course, Rogozhin is not truly interested in this sort of information even as he turns pale and trembles at hearing it. He trembles as Lebedev’s information mingles with his own knowledge regarding Nastasya Filippovna, namely, that which was imparted when she “burned [him] right through” (12). He is alternately infuriated and amused by the presence of potential suitors who are incapable of being so burned — incapable precisely because their entry in Lebedev’s book is not only superficial, but also entirely sufficient. But any sort of information about those who are in the light of the sun reminds the listener of its warmth.

Talk of “information” is usually talk of Jane Austen’s novels rather than Dostoevsky’s. Austen’s novels reveal that information, even superficial information, is almost necessary for the preservation of tradition and community and can be an introduction to true education. The reign of the superficial is merciful to her locally great-souled characters as well as to a real reverence for England. Though there is always something sinister or tragic in the way information is given, acquired, misplaced, or withheld in his novels, Dostoevsky is similarly concerned with the work of knowing. In conversation with General Epanchin, Prince Myshkin appears to lament the practice of knowing that is so essential for Jane Austen:

. . . it seems to me that we’re such different people, by the look of it . . . in many ways, that we perhaps cannot have many points in common, only, you know, I personally don’t believe in that last notion, because it often only seems that there are no points in common, when there really are a lot . . . it comes from people’s laziness, that they sort themselves out by looks and can’t find anything . . . (27)

When we think of 18th-19th Century British society (if that’s the appropriate stretch of time, but you know what I mean) it is easy to reply: “This very laziness is the ground of our civilization, my dear Prince! It is social man’s humble recognition of his limits and his wish for real, lasting love. What you call laziness we call the celebration of nuptial love. To recognize the worth or beauty of another is to set them apart from the common and, at the same time, to set the common apart from oneself. This setting apart need not be tragic. In fact, we can love our neighbors all the more when we appreciate the sacrifice of knowing that we have all made together. ‘That whereof we cannot speak, we must lovingly consign to silence.’”

It should go without saying that it is impossible to know everyone to the fullest extent. It may even be wrong to attempt to do so. (Is that even what Myshkin is attempting?) The risk is not only that one cannot be responsible to so many people, but also that one simply might not have the ability and may be burdening the world with just another kind of sorting.

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Tony Sifert said, on April 22, 2011 at 10:02 am

See also Alte’s interesting argument at Traditional Catholicism that “chivalry is for the boys.”

Only training creates a situation in which a man or woman will purposefully hamper their own ability to acquire a superior mate, in order to reduce their competitive advantage over their same-sex competition out of a sense of solidarity. Just as modesty actually makes it harder for a woman to seduce a man, chivalry makes it harder for a man to seduce a woman . . . The gentlemen, you see, had an agreement. You watch my women, and I’ll watch yours. You keep mine safe, and I’ll protect yours. You keep your hands off mine, and I’ll keep my hands off yours. The way each man could implicitly signal his agreement to this standard was with chivalry. Men who didn’t agree were scoundrels, and considered the enemies of the rest. By refusing to follow the code, or following it inappropriately (such as lingering over a woman’s hand when kissing it), they signaled that they were a threat to the other men. They were interlopers, attackers, and seducers.
Tony Sifert said, on April 22, 2011 at 12:05 pm

Bakhtin:

Just as paradoxical from the point of view of life’s normal logic is Myshkin’s attempt to combine in life his simultaneous love for Nastasya Filippovna and Aglaya. Also outside the logic of ordinary life are Myshkin’s relationships to the other characters: to Ganya Ivolgin, Ippolit, Burdovsky, Lebedev, and others as well. One might say that Myshkin is not able to enter into life completely, cannot become completely embodied, cannot accept any definitiveness in life that would limit a personality. He remains, as it were, on a tangent to life’s circle. It is as if he lacks the necessary flesh of life that would permit him to occupy a specific place in life (thereby crowding others out of that place), and therefore he remains on a tangent to life. But precisely for that reason is he able to “penetrate” through the life-flesh of other people and reach their deepest “I.” (Problems 173)
Tony Sifert said, on December 13, 2011 at 6:48 pm

Victor Terras: “The nuptial frustrations of General Epanchin’s nubile daughters could be part of a novel by, say, Jane Austen. . . . The romance of Aglaya and Prince Myshkin, at least initially, develops in a way that fits the model of a conventional nineteenth-century love story. . . . a happy ending does not appear impossible.” (An Interpretation, 44).

Adam has written elsewhere about Shatov’s “hyperbolic gestures” towards “something else.” Terras’ section on the composition of The Idiot shows that Dostoevsky himself was given to similar threshold (of genre) gestures toward “something else” in his own novels. Terras includes in a prior chapter a quotation from D’s letter to Strakhov [I only quote part of it] about the “fantastic realism” that reviewers were objecting to:

Is not my fantastic Idiot reality, and most ordinary day-to-day reality at that? It is precisely now that such characters [must appear] in those strata of our society that are torn away from the soil, strata that become fantastic in reality. But no use talking! Much in the novel is written hurriedly, much is longwinded and didn’t come off right, but some things did. I am not defending my novel, but I will stand behind my idea. (31)

See also the reference to Gogol’s Pirogov. But even this ordinary Austen-like sort of composition and the hope it presents to the reader (“a happy ending does not appear impossible”) who knows that nevertheless he is in the midst of a tragedy, just like the dialogic mixture of Shatov and Stavrogin, asks, “what if someone just recognized?“

Confinium