Discussion
As Merab Mamardashvili, a contemporary Kantian, distinguishes between the good in itself and the intention of good, he involves the example of Dostoevsky and his works at large, as well as the particular instance of
The Insulted and Injured. Interestingly, he states that after Belinsky’s social and humanistic interpretation of this novel, Dostoevsky became misunderstood in Russian culture. Mamardashvili argues that Dostoevsky’s position was completely the opposite to that of Belinsky: he did not mean to produce a literary text to convert readers to take the side of the poor as the insulted and injured. He meant to illustrate how good intentions may turn into pure evil if they remain intentions of good and do not correlate with the good in itself. (Mamardashvili,
Estetika myshleniia, Moscow: Moskovskaia shkola politicheskikh issledovanii, 2000: 23) If the intentions of the good are only natural psychic expressions, they remain just that; there is no connection between the state of being poor and any privilege, as the word ‘poor’ does not point towards a person who has a sense of social justice. Rather the opposite: poverty often covers evil, arrogance, and hatred towards others. This means that the poor characters in this novel can only punish others with their poverty and misery. Mamardashvili concludes by saying that the intention of good by itself, even if it is expressed by the kindest people in the psychological sense, seeds such evil as the most sordid villains cannot fathom. (Ibid.) As I previously analysed Dostoevsky’s “The Meek One” (1876) in a Faustian light, I wrote about the good intentions of the pawnbroker causing The Meek One’s suicide. I am now offering a study of Dostoevsky’s first novel
Poor Folk (1846), famously praised by Belinsky as a masterpiece of social and humanistic justice conveyed via literature, and argue that Devushkin’s good intentions in
Poor Folk lead to Varen’ka’s decision to marry Bykov, a pre-meditated suicide on her part. This new Mamardashvilian reading connects the early and late works of Dostoevsky in a Faustian circle, and demonstrates the significance of Goethe’s
Faust for Dostoevsky throughout his life.
