Tag: Fyodor Dostoevsky

Seven Years of Mostly About Stories

I have invested, perhaps foolishly, in a few friends’ startups, and my reward so far has been a few years’ worth of monthly updates that tell me that things are happening and people are working. Even if I don’t receive any money back, I still enjoy this sense of a joint journey, of being carried by the same wave. You, reader, are also an investor, albeit with your time rather than money, in me and what I make here, and to you I owe an update too. It doesn’t quite sit right with me to have a blog, which is inevitably personal in outlook and even features the first person singular pronoun at regular points, and yet to exist so shadily. One never knows, of course, whether you want me to exist as an independent entity, but I have my hopes on that score.

Indeed, I take as a vague principle that if you readers want properly academic writing, you head to Jstor, and that if you want the polished impersonality of a modern essay or review, you go to the New Yorker or LARB. In short, that if you are here, reading this, rather than merely stumbling on something on the internet while desperately trying to put together an essay for your studies, you must, in a certain sense, want this personal element, in other words, me. 

Life

Last year, I was entering the final stretch of a trainee programme at a large company and had moved to Germany. Over the course of last year, I finished this scheme and received a full-time position, also in Germany. This was a far from guaranteed outcome, and the high levels of stress associated with searching for a role in an unfriendly job market had a negative impact both on my reading and on my writing. All that is now behind us. The new work contract is permanent, and I have the full force of German unions and worker protections at my back to ensure any future moves will be entirely voluntary.

I have spoken before about my enjoyment of stability, indeed my great need for it. After my unplanned exit from Russia in early 2022, I have more or less lived without even a year’s certainty ahead of me. I am not a person who savours spontaneity or the absence of structure. “Be settled in your life and as ordinary as the bourgeois, in order to be fierce and original in your works.” This quote of Flaubert’s is one I have always admired whenever I have seen it, and I can say that it has proven true for my own case too.

And what stability! My work contract is permanent. My rental contract, in a spacious and well-located flat, is equally permanent. Never before has the future been so secure, even if the new risks of stasis and stagnation have appeared for the first time on the horizon. This is a great blessing.

Writing

I finished a first draft of a reasonably lengthy novella and was pleased enough with it, an unusual thing, to show it to a few friends in exchange for some helpful feedback. During the dark days of the job hunt and the brighter-but-still-stressful days of the apartment and furniture hunt, I did not succeed in writing creatively. I was, however, last year blessed with ideas for two novels of, I think, great potential. Unfortunately, one is historical in nature and requires a condition of personal leisure that is currently unavailable to me. The other novel is already in progress.

Now that I have this external stability mentioned above alongside an excellent work-life-balance, there is neither any practical obstacle nor reasonable excuse available to me not to focus with redoubled efforts upon my ambitions of becoming a great, or at least reasonably good, fiction writer. I see this as consisting of three elements.

First, I must improve my experience. This I can do simply by living and paying attention. In a favourite phrase, it means keeping both eyes open and noting things down. Observations, images, snatches of phrases. One of my tasks for this year is to do this in a dedicated volume, as my diary is primarily an emotion-regulation tool now and hence no longer the best place for such things. I am not fundamentally concerned about my chances in this development area: I have had a reasonable number of interesting experiences to call upon already – in Russia, growing up in Scotland, and elsewhere. What I must do now is become the kind of noticer that can identify and place the perfect detail to turn mere remembered experience into a rich vividness.

Second, I must improve my background knowledge. Mostly About Stories is, I hope, a storehouse of at least some value in this regard, but the fact remains that there are significant areas where my knowledge is, in my view, insufficient. Reading – history, philosophy, criticism, art history, politics, economics, religion, current affairs – and so on, in conjunction with discussions, where possible, with those who know better, should answer this need. While I have a reasonable amount of free time outside of work, I cannot afford the truly scattergun approach of a writer of leisure. Therefore, this reading does need to be somewhat targeted. Learning is a project, and projects can be managed.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, I must improve my technique. Many, many, writerly sins can be forgiven of people who know how to put together an incisive sentence in a style that is their own. Can’t do dialogue? Then give us the descriptive jewels of a Marquez paragraph, the chaotic mess of a Krasznahorkai, the hilarious brutality of Bernhard or the wondrous rhythms of Fosse.

Improving one’s technique is, of course, a matter of practice. It is also a matter of study. On this blog I have, I hope, provided the occasional example of the analysis of a wider work. Sometimes I even quote things, as if to inform readers that I have actually read the thing I’m talking about. But really, I am not attacking sentences enough. Increasingly, I contemplate doing blog posts on single paragraphs to really get to the heart of why they work. All this is necessary because while I am often pleased with what I write in my blog posts – there’s often a good sentence here or there, if I may say so myself – with my fiction this is almost never the case. Such focused study, getting closer to language itself, ought to remedy this. The late William Gass did this at times in his essays (e.g. “The Sentence Seeks its Form”), and I have great respect for such an approach.

These three areas are by and large how I think I can improve independently. Naturally, the criticism of trusted and untrusted persons on things I have written is also important, perhaps essential. But by and large, owing to my external situation, my focus is on personal development as it lies within my own hands. I am now 28 years old – a reality that at times strikes me as disappointing, but which is not objectively a catastrophe. I still view myself as being very much a journeyman or apprentice when it comes to writing. This is likely why I am so interested in style and technique. I view writing as a craft that I must work at before I can go around throwing pieces of paper in other people’s faces. Or rather, I want to say things, but I have enough respect for writing and readers to want to make sure I can say them well first.

Blog

Mostly About Stories, of course, has continued. I hope you have enjoyed some of the pieces. I know, and it pains me, that the quality can be variable. There’s always a tension here between my desire to give you something short, snappy, and polished, and my desire to note down in moderately organised paragraphs everything I possibly can about a book while still keeping the time I spend working on the posts reasonably under control. Since I read and write my posts primarily to learn, (and hope readers learn while reading as well), my natural tendency is always for a big baggy monster of a post. Occasionally, I do make unspoken resolutions for you to myself never to write anything longer than 1500, or 2000, or 2500 words. So far, this has not worked.

I have not posted as often as I had intended, annoyingly. I actually have a few posts stacked up which I just haven’t gotten around yet to posting, so it’s not even a dearth of reading or writing at my end which is to blame. I want, ideally, to put something out each fortnight. I do also, though I’ve said it’s unlikely, want to post things that are slightly more tightly written – though first it will be necessary to get through the backlog.

Numbers

When I started MAS, I looked around to see whether there was any information on how many viewers blogs like this actually get. There is a site that does a survey, linked here. Since I write about literature, an even less popular topic than books and reading in general, I still feel there’s value and interest in sharing my own specifically.

Anyway, last year’s total views was 103’546. As our first six-figure result this feels like a small milestone, even if it may just be the power of an accumulation of mildly interesting posts. While the majority of readers may well be people looking to write school and university essays about books they haven’t read, I am grateful for those among you who write comments that often make me feel you have read the book far better than I have, or who write me encouraging messages via the Contact form. And if you are just here to read and enjoy in silence, know that I’m grateful for your presence here too. It’s what I’d do myself.

Books

I would say that my greatest discovery this year has been the Japanese writer Yukio Mishima. I had the impression that my post on The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea generated a lot of thoughts in readers – even the few friends who read the blog in real life mentioned it specifically when we caught up. I also enjoyed reflecting on Latronico’s Perfection, albeit slightly more than I enjoyed reading it.

Among the various things I read but did not write about, I received the greatest joy from Gary Saul Morson’s Wonder Confronts Certainty, about the relationship between ideas, life, and writing in the 19th century Russian novel, with a few forays into the Soviet period too. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves Russian literature and wants to know the historical interlinkages a little better, or perhaps just wants some new arguments to help articulate what possibly makes the literature special, if special it is.

Next

This year, I aim to write a first draft of the second of the novel ideas that came to me last year, the one that does not require months in a library. It is, however, at least in one sense, a novel of ideas. Hence, it does require plenty of reading – Camus, Sartre & de Beauvoir, Wittgenstein, the Stoics, and the Christian Mystics, are all on my reading list and may appear here (in some cases again) later on. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. I’m also going to read Dostoevsky again, for the first time since the 2022 Invasion. He’s necessary for the novel too.

I also aim to write slightly better blog posts and be mildly more consistent in posting them.

In general, I am excited for what discoveries lie ahead and for sharing them here, with you.

Uneasy Modernity in D. H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow

D. H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow is a frustrating book. I have a suspicion that it was probably supposed to be. Following the lives of three generations of the Brangwen family in Nottinghamshire in the 19th century, it is primarily the story of their struggles to assert themselves and their identities. While the older generations have only limited success, Ursula, the granddaughter of our original Brangwen hero Tom, is able to achieve something closer to what she wants for her (emotional) life.

That she does so is a little ironic. The Brangwens may be progressing financially and socially in the story, but it is clear that for Lawrence the world around them in late 19th and early 20th century England is not. Rather, it’s becoming increasingly more awful as continues to industrialize and modernise. What complicates this situation is that it is precisely the progress Lawrence dislikes – economic, educational, and social – which allows Ursula the chance to be herself in the way she thinks she ought. Otherwise, I think this might have been quite a one-dimensional book.

The Rainbow was my first full-length Lawrence, after a few of his poems and his well-known short story, “The Odour of Chrysanthemums”. The best compliment I can give him, not that I think he’d necessarily care for my feedback even if he weren’t dead almost a hundred years, is that he certainly has his own distinctive approach. The characters of The Rainbow only ever experience strong feelings. The best way to describe them for one who hasn’t read him is that they are like jugs of emotions just sloshing about more than real people. Regularly, the feelings pour over the brim and make a mess on the carpet.

Central to these emotions are love and hate, and the frustration that leads to their regular alternations. Anna Brangwen, the adopted daughter of Tom Brangwen, imagines her premarital life as like a torture cell where she could “neither stand nor lie stretched out, never.” She escapes her home by marrying Will Brangwen, son of one of Tom’s brothers. At first, things are good: “Gradually a low, deep-sounding will in him vibrated to her, tried to set her in accord, tried to bring her gradually to him, to a meeting, till they should be together, till they should meet as the sheaves that swished together.”

Then, just as quickly, things are bad. First, she’s crying, and then he is. They are unable to talk to each other, and Will takes up drinking – the men in The Rainbow are always going up to the village to get drunk alone, and Will quickly joins their number. When they visit a cathedral – Will likes them as a kind of hobby – Anna decides to ruin his faith through mockery and doubt and largely succeeds, leaving him miserable. They then make up just as suddenly, and it almost seems as if Lawrence approves of this destruction because he suggests it leads to better sex. At another point, Will tries to seduce a stranger and when he returns home the result is the same – better sex. Both he and Anna no longer feel obliged to be good or obey or social norms, and their passion for one another reaches a new height. (I lost track of how many babies she has throughout the novel, or how many fallings-out.)

The only child who matters within this book, however, is Ursula, the eldest daughter. On the first page of The Rainbow we learn that the Brangwens are all born with a look of “expectancy” on their faces, and it is with Ursula that we get closest to fulfilment. In the background of the book’s several hundred pages, modernity has crept into the story. By the time of Ursula’s section, we have the occasional motor car and the Boer War to help us date things, while the suffragettes are trying to get women the right to vote. The Brangwen family has also grown. At first, they were reasonably well-off farmers, but the growth of towns nearby thanks to coal mining makes them more money and allows them to climb a little socially.

Most directly for Ursula, this helps her to become a teacher and try to live an independent life. She also then goes to college to actually train to be a teacher, which perhaps she should have done before doing the teaching. In between all this she has her experience of first love with the son of a friend of her mother’s, an extremely homoerotic experience with a female friend, and through her other acquaintances she also comes across such ideas as the cause of the suffragettes.

In general, however, and as I mentioned at the beginning, Lawrence seems very hostile towards the modern world. The corporal punishment Ursula has to mete out to her children at the freshly-built new school seems as demeaning to her as it is to them, while the teaching itself is unstructured and primarily rote-learning. The suffragettes are criticised for thinking about ideas rather than actual human fulfilment, and as for the growth of towns and urban spaces Lawrence memorably describes them as “a red-brick confusion rapidly spreading, like a skin-disease”. People everywhere seem to be turning into machines, and Lawrence is no fan.

His own ideas are much more timeless, or at least timeless-seeming. There’s an emphasis on personal freedom and self-assertion, but mainly through passionate sex rather than upending society. In fact, there’s no real sense of society at all – Lawrence’s characters are all monstrous egotists only brushing against each other when their blood is pumping. The greatest moments are moments of nakedness – Anna dancing in her bedroom nude, or Ursula running on the beach naked. That’s the fulfilment everyone wants here and not the vote. But we might also notice, unsurprisingly, that even if a partner is present, these are moments of self-fulfilment rather than of joint, let alone of collective fulfilment. The men observing feel left out, alienated. (I am not sure Lawrence liked men who were not himself.)

Lawrence uses religious language and symbols to give his work a kind of mythic edge and his ideas the stamp of Truth. Early moments of love are described as “the light of the transfiguration”; at one point Ursula is compared to the serpent in the Garden of Eden; and cathedrals play a reasonably prominent role. The clear delineation between and essentialising of men and women, a sense of cyclicity (Brangwens on their first illicit strolls with lovers always seem to find the same paths to tread), and biblical images like a flood and the rainbow of the novel’s title, all make Lawrence’s narrator seem like someone presenting some timeless discovery, as if he has gone back to the root of things to find their real essence.

It is not so, of course. Lawrence may attempt to cloak himself in the Bible, but his main influences seem to be the classic German thinkers of the 19th and early 20th centuries. When we read that “she felt his will fastening on her and pulling her down, even whilst he was silent and obscure,” we think of Schopenhauer’s idea of a fallen humanity controlled by clashing wills. When we consider Lawrence’s rejection of modernity (“I hate democracy”, Ursula cries embarrassingly) and his love of the body, there’s more than a touch of Nietzsche and his successors in the Lebensphilosophie movement, while Freud is also here in much of the more detailed psychological assessments of the effects of modern society on the individual soul.

One is allowed to be influenced by others, of course, and Lawrence not being a real prophet does not devalue his ideas necessarily and certainly not his book as a whole. In fact, The Rainbow was banned in the UK for some years after its initial publication, which is generally a sign that it did reflect a certain truth. A truth about sex in particular – this is, undoubtedly, the sexiest book I’ve read which does not mention the male member once. Like de Sade, there’s a sense that even if Lawrence has a limited view of female empowerment, it’s one that still undermines the view that women exist only to be caregivers and dolls.

Overall, the ideas are actually reasonable enough; the problem is that, wishing to convince us of their Truth, Lawrence takes the easy option of disallowing debate or counterargument to exist. Characters are either sellouts to modernity who become like machines and are dropped by Ursula, or they are having great sex. I suspect there may be more to the matter than that. Anna has fifty babies, while Ursula gets engaged, goes on a mad one, and then breaks the whole thing off. The life of the body is good and fun, but I dislike the way Lawrence completely devalues the mind. I suppose once we accept he is right about everything we are supposed to stop thinking, if we were supposed to think at all.

One figure I thought of regularly while reading The Rainbow was Dostoevsky. Both he and Lawrence can only write characters whose emotional states are strained so taut you can hear the thrumming as soon as they leap onto the page; both he and Dostoevsky could have done with a better editor; both he and Lawrence have their own visions of how things are. But of the two, only Dostoevsky actually places his ideas against those of his enemies in such a way that even today, many readers can be quite convinced that he wasn’t really a toady old reactionary Christian nationalist. With Lawrence, you’d need to be an idiot to miss what he’s on about. Which altogether just makes him seem naïve and a bit silly, even before we start thinking about the ideas themselves.

Yet this is not a bad book by any stretch. One reason why this is so is the tension I noted at the start on the subject of modernity. Ursula goes to a better school than her parents, she is able to get a job where her mother gets none, and I might even suggest that her willingness to have sex while ultimately backing out of marriage indicates that she was not entirely deaf to some of the more radical ideas her suffragette friends may have been mentioning. In other words, her choices do not come out of nowhere – the world may be getting worse, but it is also opening up new opportunities for achieving the kind of self-realisation that Lawrence definitely loves.

There’s an irony in all that which he may have noticed himself. Such an irony, and the question of how much self-fulfilment Ursula will actually get within that world, makes her part of the novel by far the most interesting. Indeed, it even sustains itself into a sequel, Women in Love, which I will probably read at some point. This, and the occasional richness of the sloshing-about of these characters’ sensual emotions, makes The Rainbow quite the sensual experience. Just one that I will not rush to return to until I have gone outside and first touched the grass. 

How Not to Write Philosophical Fiction – Soren Kierkegaard’s Repetition

Kierkegaard’s title is actually a typically witty joke – it refers to the number of times you need to read this stupid book to understand it. Repetition is one of the Danish philosopher’s earliest works, and as it is quite a bit shorter than Either/Or, I decided to start with it. I am very good at buying Kierkegaard’s books – I own Either/Or, Repetition and Philosophical Crumbs, Fear and Trembling, The Sickness Unto Death, Papers and Journals, and A Literary Review – but I am less good at reading them, even though I’ve always felt we would get on. After all, he’s often referred to as a foundational thinker of existentialism; at the same time, he was also a devout Christian, and I am interested in both of those things.

I suppose I was finally motivated to read Repetition because of Clare Carlisle’s fun and imaginative biography of Kierkegaard, Philosopher of the Heart, which I read last month. The biography actually turned me off Kierkegaard somewhat – I really had the impression that he was quite sickly, and it’s hard to put from one’s mind Nietzsche’s argument that good, healthy philosophy is always produced by good, healthy minds. But Carlisle’s book got me thinking about the Dane anyway, and so I decided to give him a go – Repetition’s short size didn’t hurt either.

But in all honesty, I am no philosopher. In this post I hope to explain more what is interesting about Repetition than to put forward any kind of interpretation. I cannot say I enjoyed Kierkegaard’s work, but there is a lot to take away from it.

An Overview of Repetition

Repetition is, like many of Kierkegaard’s works, written under a pseudonym – this time, Constantine Constantius. It’s wrong to think that the pseudonym simply masks Kierkegaard or provides a funny pun – the pseudonyms are themselves narrators, exploring views that Kierkegaard himself does not necessarily call his own. My copy of the book even refers to Constantine in the notes, rather than Kierkegaard. I found this a little jarring, for it is as if the fictional Constantine has burst through into reality, but it makes sense.

The work’s subtitle is “An Essay in Experimental Psychology” which means absolutely nothing because in the 19th century people called whatever they wanted to “psychology”. In some sense it is not unlike a German novella. Repetition is a story, rather than a tract, with characters and a sense of being anchored in a world very familiar to our own. There are two central sections, framed by some philosophising by Constantine on the nature of repetition. One story concerns a trip by Constantine to Berlin, while the second, more weighty section, is about a young man who falls in love with a girl and then has to deal with some tortured consequences because he decides he needs to break the engagement off.

Both sections are influenced by Kierkegaard’s own life. The main biographical point everyone knows about him is that he fell in love with, and got engaged to, a girl called Regine Olsen. He then broke off the engagement because he decided he preferred to be unhappy and write philosophy – as you do. The reasons are, of course, slightly more complicated than that – Carlisle is good on them – but it is perhaps helpful to know that Kierkegaard had experienced similar things to his characters, even if the thoughts here are specially produced.

The “philosophy” section

You will be expecting me to tell you what “repetition” actually means. I certainly expected Kierkegaard to. The book’s theme is after all put by Constantine thus: “whether repetition was possible and what it meant, whether a thing wins or loses by being repeated.” Repetition appears to be a way of viewing the world. The Greeks saw all knowledge as recollection – what we learn we really remember. Recollection therefore orientates the one remembering towards the past. Repetition does the opposite. It is “recollected forwards”. But what does that mean?

Constantine tells us that “repetition’s love is in truth the only happy love”. It is happy because unlike hope it does not distract us from the present, and unlike recollection it is not filled with the sorrow of comparing the present to the past. Repetition is a living in the moment, but one with a kind of structure and a sense of limitations. Repetition knows not to demand too much. “Only a person who does not delude himself that repetition ought to be something new, for then he tires of it, is genuinely happy”.

Repetition accepts life’s limitations – it is not greedy. But it does require a kind of courage to desire repetition. “Repetition is actuality and the earnestness of existence”. God himself, we are told, wills repetition. To rephrase Far Cry 3’s Vaas, repetition is not the definition of insanity– it is the only way of living, aside from thinking about the past the whole time, which allows us to live without life dissolving “into an empty, meaningless noise”. Without repetition or recollection, we will struggle to live meaningful lives. And only the former lets us live happy ones.

Berlin

Constantine decides to test if repetition is possible, so he goes to Berlin. He has been there before, and he hopes to find it the same. Unfortunately, but somewhat predictably, the city has changed. His old landlord has gotten married, the theatre isn’t quite what it was the first time. He had left his home in Copenhagen because he was living “the wrong kind of repetition. My thoughts were barren, my anxious imagination constantly conjured up tantalizing memories of how the thoughts had presented themselves the last time, and the weeds of these recollections strangled every other thought.” In Berlin too, Constantine cannot enjoy things because he is recollecting them, rather than actually “repeating” them. He fails to live his own definition.

A Romance

Before and after the Berlin trip Constantine tells the story of “a young person” who considers Constantine his confidant. This person likes a girl, but unfortunately not in the right way. Constantine uses his idea of repetition vs recollection to determine what a good relationship should be like. Almost immediately, this young man is already “in a position to recollect his love.” Rather than concentrate on the girl as a human being in the present, she is already a memory-image in his mind. In a brilliant phrase, Constantine writes that the young man “had leapt right over life”. Perhaps the young man does not love her at all, only the image she created in him. Anyway, Constantine suggests ways of breaking off the engagement that will not hurt the girl too much, mostly involving been seen with other women.

After his trip to Berlin, the young man reappears in Constantine’s life, sending him letters. He has departed Copenhagen, but not followed Constantine’s advice about how to end the relationship. Constantine philosophises about him – “The girl has enormous significance for him. He will never be able to forget her. But that through which she has significance is not herself, but her relation to him. She is like the limit of his being. But such a relationship is not erotic. Religiously speaking, one could say that it is as if God had used this girl to capture him”. In any case, the young man leaves no address, simply writing his thoughts to Constantine for the latter to muse over.

And what are these thoughts? A mishmash of things, mostly centring on God and Job. “Does one no longer dare to complain to God?” the young man asks. In our age we no longer have sufficient faith to argue with Him, or perhaps we are simply afraid. The young man reads Job. “At night I can allow all the candles to be lit in my room, illuminating the entire house. Then I stand and read aloud, almost yelling, one or another passage from Job.” Me too. The young man also offers an interpretation of the bible story in the context of repetition. Namely, that Job, undergoing God’s testing, did not hope for anything, but simply lived, and then eventually things got better – they repeated. Only God can make possible repetition through his “thunderstorm”, which overcomes the tension of life.

Repetition as Philosophical Novella

I do not pretend either to have understood Repetition or to have successfully conveyed what little I did, perhaps, understand. But I would like to critique it as a philosophical novella, because I at least know how to do that. Kierkegaard’s two characters, and his story, encourage us to think. By having action in the real world, Repetition makes its philosophy something directly related to life as we live it. Meanwhile, the two characters prevent us from simply assuming that one or other is the author, and the other is someone to be disagreed with thoughtlessly. Constantine insults the young man – “it was easy to see that he laboured under a complete misunderstanding” – but that does not mean we should. As I noted, Constantine’s trip to Berlin shows he himself does not quite understand repetition as he defined it. Both characters are flawed, but both have important things to say.

But does that make Repetition a successful philosophical novella? What even is philosophical literature to begin with? Is it just a narrative that makes us think about philosophical themes? Most stories are philosophical by that definition, but we’ll go with it. Repetition has the young man’s story, with its letters and Constantine’s occasional snarky commentary. It has the Berlin trip, and it has the philosophy at the beginning and the end. Very well.

But it is not entirely successful as a work of literature. The Berlin section contains far too long a discourse on the nature of the theatre and of farce. There is a bit of humour, a lot of irony, but not enough humanity. The young man’s story suffers similar problems. Constantine notes that the girl is only an image to the young man, but she remains so for him and us too. The young man’s letters are perhaps the best example of the work’s flaws. He asks questions, “Am I lost?”, “Am I perhaps crazy?”, “Why does no one answer?” – which cannot have answers, because he does not leave a return address or even desire Constantine’s response! But that means that there is no dialogue in this text, there are only two monologues, with Constantine’s critiquing the young man’s.

Dostoevsky is often compared to Kierkegaard, but his philosophical novels are a hundred times better than Repetition precisely because they are filled with dialogue between characters. Characters engage with each other’s ideas, and nothing is settled in their world. The great Soviet critic Bakhtin notes that “Dostoevsky’s hero always seeks to destroy that framework of other people’s words about him that might finalize and deaden him”. Here, the young man cannot be in dialogue with Constantine because the correspondence only goes one way. Constantine “finalises and deadens” the young man, without the battle that would take place if they were actually in the same room. Though both characters are supposedly alive, because they have no real relation to each other it’s hard to feel they actually live.

Conclusion

I am unable to judge Repetition’s philosophy. A wiser person than I may one day note in the comments how terribly I have misrepresented it. As I understood it – this orientation towards the present, coupled with a sense of not demanding too much of life – it seems sensible enough. I appreciate Kierkegaard’s careful structuring of his text, but I think it is fundamentally misaligned with how good philosophical fiction must be.

Philosophical fiction shouldn’t just be people talking past each other – even Heidegger has essays with characters chatting, for crying out loud! Philosophical fiction has to elucidate the ideas in a way that philosophy on its own cannot, and that demands action and dialogue. Dialogue through life, rather than simply words passed between others; otherwise we could stick Repetition and some of its early reviews together and call that “dialogue”.

Latency does not make for dialogue. We need characters in the same room – we need to feel, as we feel with Dostoevsky, that at any moment the discussion could fall apart and they could start fighting each other with hands and fists. If this philosophy stuff is actually vitally important – and I’m sure Kierkegaard thinks it is – then its representation in literature demands this. Philosophical literature must make philosophy real, and it must make us feel. Alas, Repetition only just manages the former, and fails completely at the latter.

I will read some more Kierkegaard soon. For more on Job, check out my review of Joseph Roth’s novel of the same name. For more Dostoevsky, look at my thoughts on rereading the first two parts of Crime and Punishment.