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The Annihilation of Inertia Northwestern University Press Studies in Russian Literature and Theory Founding Editor Gary Saul Morson General Editor Caiyl Emerson Consulting Editors Carol Avins Robert Belknap Robert Louis Jackson Elliott Mossman Alfred Rieber William Mills Todd III Alexander Zholkovsky The Annihilation of Inertia DOSTOEVSKY AND METAPHYSICS Liza Knapp NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY PRESS / EVANSTON, ILLINOIS Northwestern University Press 625 Colfax Street Evanston, Illinois 60208-4210 Copyright © 1996 by Northwestern University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America ISBN 0-8101-1372-4 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Knapp, Liza. The annihilation of inertia : Dostoevsky and metaphysics / Liza Knapp. p. cm. — (Studies in Russian literature and theory) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8101-1372-4 (alk. paper) 1. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 1821-1881—Philosophy. 2. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 1821-1881—Religion. I.Title. II. Series. PG3328.Z7P545 1996 891.73'3—dc20 96-8500 CIP The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the Ameri can National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. For Alan, Lucas, and Thomas Contents Acknowledgments ix Note on Translation and Transliteration xi Chapter One Introduction: Dostoevsky and the Metaphysics of Inertia 1 Chapter Two The Force of Inertia: Dostoevsky’s Confessional Heroes and the “Tragedy of the Underground” 15 Chapter Three The Resurrection from Inertia in Crime And Punishment 44 Chapter Four The Verdict of Death in The Idiot 66 Chapter Five The Dead Machine of European Civilization: Inertia in The Devils 102 Chapter Six Death by Ice: The Poetics of Entropy in The Adolescent 131 Chapter Seven The Dimensions of Providence in The Brothers Karamazov 172 Chapter Eight Afterword: “Except a Com of Wheat” 217 Notes 222 Select Bibliography 294 Index 307 Acknowledgments I am grateful to all those who have helped and encouraged me in the various stages of writing this book: Robert Belknap, who shared his knowledge of Dostoevsky and his intellectual horse sense; Richard Gustafson, who introduced me to Russian Orthodox thought; Robert Maguire, whose literary sensibility I tried to emulate; and to Robert Louis Jackson, whose work on Dostoevsky has inspired me. More recently, colleagues at Berkeley have provided me with advice, valuable information, and encouragement, for which I am thankful: Olga Raevsky Hughes, Hugh McLean, Johanna Nichols, and Irina Paperno. I am also grateful for the research assistance I have had from Jennifer Foss, Anne Hruska, Mary Rees, and Jennifer Wilder. I feel very fortunate to have had Susan Harris as my editor at Northwestern University Press. Work on the present study was supported in 1993-94 by a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, for which I am very grateful. I am also grateful for the support of the Heller Fund of the College of Letters and Science at the University of California at Berkeley to defray cost of publication. This book elaborates a line of thinking outlined earlier in “The Force of Inertia in Dostoevsky’s ‘Krotkaia,’ ” Dostoevsky Studies 6 (1985): 143-56 and the introduction to my Dostoevsky as Reformer: The Petrashevsky Case (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1987), 7-26, and “The Fourth Dimension of the Non- Euclidean Mind: Time in Brothers Karamazov, or Why Ivan Karamazov’s Devil Does not Cany a Watch,” Dostoevsky Studies 8 (1987): 105-20. ix