{"id":15757,"date":"2014-03-31T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-03-31T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=747"},"modified":"2014-03-31T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-03-31T00:00:00","slug":"polyphonic-hedgehog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2014\/03\/polyphonic-hedgehog\/","title":{"rendered":"Polyphonic Hedgehog"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I state a thesis: Dostoevsky is a polyphonic hedgehog. The subthesis is that Tolstoy is a monologic fox.<\/p>\n

The second part of that comparison comes from Isaiah Berlin\u2019s\u00a0The Hedgehog and the Fox<\/a>. Berlin cites the Greek poet Archilochus\u2019s dictum,\u00a0\u201cA fox knows
\nmany things; a hedgehog knows one big thing,\u201d and says, quite rightly, that Dostoevsky is of the prickly not the smooth-furred species.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But Dostoevsky\u2019s hedgehogginess is of a particular breed, identified by Bakhtin as \u201cpolyphonic\u201d (Problems of Dostoevsky\u2019s Poetics<\/em><\/a>). Polyphonic novelists allow many voices to have full play in the text; monologic writers dominate and bully their characters so that they say what the author wants them to say. Tolstoy is Bakhtin\u2019s paradigmatic monologist.<\/p>\n

Dostoevsky\u2019s polyphony works at many levels.\u00a0According to Bakhtin, Dostoevsky invents a new kind of novel,
\nwhich is guided by a new poetics, a new set of principles for writing fiction.\u00a0The poetics ranges across all the features of
\nDostoevsky\u2019s novels \u2013 the characters, the plots, the ideas, the genre. He characterizes this poetics and this new
\nsort of novel with the word \u201cpolyphony.\u201d
\nWhat unifies a novel of Dostoevsky is not plot, not the consciousness of
\ncharacters, not the consciousness of the author that incorporates all the
\nconsciousnesses of the characters. The
\nnovels are not even united in a unity of style, since the style of the novels
\nis internally differentiated. The
\nunifying key to the novel is the very play of voices, the carnival of different
\nviewpoints and ideas.<\/p>\n

Bakhtin says, \u201cA plurality of independent and unmerged voices and
\nconsciousnesses, a genuine polyphony of fully valid voices is in fact the chief
\ncharacteristic of Dostoevsky\u2019s novels.
\nWhat unfolds in his works is not a multitude of characters and fates in
\na single objective world illuminated by a single authorial consciousness;
\nrather a plurality of consciousnesses, with equal rights and each with its own
\nworld, combine but are not merged in the unity of the event\u201d (6). \u00a0The world of Dostoevsky\u2019s fiction is a world
\nof subjects, not a world of objects. (Nabokov is right that Dostoevsky has a playwright\u2019s sensibilities, but Nabokov means this as a criticism.) The
\nauthor\u2019s consciousness is not the overarching consciousness, but only one among
\nmany.<\/p>\n

In another effort to define the innovation of Dostoevsky\u2019s
\nfiction, Bakhtin writes, \u201cThe uniqueness of Dostoevsky lies not in the fact
\nthat he monologically proclaimed the value of personality (others had done that
\nbefore him); it lies in the fact that he was able, in an objective and artistic
\nway, to visualize and portray personality as another, as someone else\u2019s
\npersonality, without making it lyrical or merging it with his own voice. . . .
\nthe artistic image of someone else\u2019s personality . . . the image of many unmerged
\npersonalities joined together in the unity of some spiritual event, was fully
\nrealized for the first time in his novels\u201d (12-13).<\/p>\n

One of the more dramatic ways this appears is in Dostoevsky\u2019s use
\nof characters. Bakhtin comments
\nrepeatedly on the \u201cindependence\u201d of the characters in Dostoevsky\u2019s novels. But that is not all that Dostoevsky achieves.\u00a0For Dostoevsky, the hero is not \u201csome manifestation of reality
\nthat possesses fixity and specific socially typical or individually
\ncharacteristic traits, nor as a specific profile assembled out of unambiguous
\nand objective features which, taken together, answer the question Who is he?\u201d Rather,
\nthe hero is \u201ca particular point of view on the world and on oneself\u201d (47). \u00a0For Dostoevsky, the hero is mainly a
\nviewpoint on the world; he is interested in how the hero views himself.<\/p>\n

Bakhtin contrasts this to Gogol.
\nIn Gogol, we have a specific
\ntype of character, a \u201cpoor government clerk\u201d lonely, with a dead-end job and a pathetic excuse for a life. Even when he
\nwas writing in imitation of Gogol, Dostoevsky isn\u2019t interested so much in the
\ngovernment clerk as such, or as an individual instance of a particular
\nclass. Rather, he is interested in the
\nself-consciousness of the character. <\/p>\n

One way to state this is that Dostoevsky brings \u201cthe author and
\nthe narrator, with all their accumulated points of view and with the
\ndescriptions, characterizations, and definitions of the hero provided by them,
\ninto the field of vision of the hero himself, thus transforming the finalized
\nand integral reality of the hero into the material of the hero\u2019s own
\nself-consciousness\u201d (49). \u00a0Bakhtin describes
\nthis as a \u201csmall-scale Copernican revolution\u201d in which the authorial definition
\nof the hero is relativized, made just one more viewpoint on the hero (49).<\/p>\n

One effect of this is to create characters that are less than
\nfully themselves. As Bakhtin says, \u201cA
\nman never coincides with himself. One
\ncannot apply<\/a> to him the formula of identity, A = A. In Dostoevsky\u2019s artistic thinking, the
\ngenuine life of the personality takes place at the point of non-coincidence
\nbetween a man and himself, at his point of departure beyond the limits of all
\nthat he is as a material being, a being that can be spied on, defined,
\npredicted apart from his own will, \u2018at second hand.\u2019 The genuine life of the personality is made
\navailable only through a dialogic penetration of that personality, during which
\nit freely and reciprocally reveals itself\u201d (59).<\/p>\n

For Dostoevsky, this is not a destruction of the self, but rather
\na penetration into the deepest reality of the consciousness of his heroes. They are most themselves not by the
\ndefinitions that others can give to them, not by the objective realities of
\nclass, occupation, marital status, physical appearance. They are most themselves in their freedom to
\nbe something beyond all these definitions and external qualities. The man is man is that which \u201cdoes not submit
\nto an externalizing secondhand definition,\u201d it is an \u201cinternally unfinalizable
\nsomething\u201d (58).<\/p>\n

Bakhtin overstates his case. Dostoevsky does have a viewpoint and wants to get it
\nacross. He keeps turning people to Jesus. But Bakhtin is profoundly right about how Dostoevsky goes about getting what he has to say across to his readers.<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I state a thesis: Dostoevsky is a polyphonic hedgehog. The subthesis is that Tolstoy is a monologic fox. The second part of that comparison comes from Isaiah Berlin\u2019s\u00a0The Hedgehog and the Fox. Berlin cites the Greek poet Archilochus\u2019s dictum,\u00a0\u201cA fox knows many things; a hedgehog knows one big thing,\u201d and says, quite rightly, that Dostoevsky […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[456,454,491],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bakhtin","category-dostoevsky","category-isaiah-berlin"],"yoast_head":"\nPolyphonic Hedgehog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I state a thesis: Dostoevsky is a polyphonic hedgehog. 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