How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
"[A] week ago, I called in a medical student, Kislorodoff, who is a Nationalist, an Atheist, and a Nihilist, by conviction, and that is why I had him. I needed a man who would tell me the bare truth without any humbug or ceremony—and so he did—indeed, almost with pleasure (which I thought was going a little too far).
"Well, he plumped out that I had about a month left me; it might be a little more, he said, under favourable circumstances, but it might also be considerably less. According to his opinion I might die quite suddenly—tomorrow, for instance—there had been such cases. […]
"Kislorodoff told me all this with a sort of exaggerated devil-may-care negligence, and as though he did me great honour by talking to me so, because it showed that he considered me the same sort of exalted Nihilistic being as himself, to whom death was a matter of no consequence whatever, either way." (3.5.6-8)
Now we get to see the condemned-man theme rear its ugly head in person. Of course, Dostoevsky describes it exactly to show that nihilism is an unworkable philosophy. It goes against what we take to be appropriate human feelings. Ironically, even though truth and honesty are nihilistic ideals, we get the sense that acting as a truth-teller actually has the stench of an elaborate performance. (Check out how the doctor has to "exaggerate" to display a careless attitude.) It seems this attitude is just as false as whatever artificial social conventions the nihilists themselves are against.
Quote #8
"[The picture] represented Christ just taken down from the cross. It seems to me that painters as a rule represent the Saviour, both on the cross and taken down from it, with great beauty still upon His face. […] But there was no such beauty in Rogozhin's picture. This was the presentment of a poor mangled body which had evidently suffered unbearable anguish even before its crucifixion, full of wounds and bruises, marks of the violence of soldiers and people, and of the bitterness of the moment when He had fallen with the cross—all this combined with the anguish of the actual crucifixion.
"The face was depicted as though still suffering; as though the body, only just dead, was still almost quivering with agony. […] It is strange to look on this dreadful picture of the mangled corpse of the Saviour, and to put this question to oneself: 'Supposing that the disciples, the future apostles, the women who had followed Him and stood by the cross, all of whom believed in and worshipped Him—supposing that they saw this tortured body, this face so mangled and bleeding and bruised (and they must have so seen it)—how could they have gazed upon the dreadful sight and yet have believed that He would rise again?' […] Nature appears to one, looking at this picture, as some huge, implacable, dumb monster […].
"[…] All those faithful people who were gazing at the cross and its mutilated occupant must have suffered agony of mind that evening; for they must have felt that all their hopes and almost all their faith had been shattered at a blow." (3.6.80-86)
This is a pretty awesome summary of this Holbein painting and the questions it raises about the ability to keep faith in the face of evidence. (Check out the "Symbols" section if you want a whole discussion about it.) That middle section where Ippolit tries to imagine what it must have been like to be a disciple seeing the dead body of Jesus is fascinating, and kind of makes us think of the second where Myshkin imagines seeing Nastasya as a caged insane asylum inmate. Is this disappointment in the object of love? (By the way, when Jesus does come back and shows up at Emmaeus, the dudes there totally don't recognize him until after he leaves.)
Quote #9
"There is nothing which you might not hear. Why I should wish to tell you, and only you, this experience of mine, I really cannot say; perhaps it really is because I love you very much. This unhappy woman is persuaded that she is the most hopeless, fallen creature in the world. Oh, do not condemn [Nastasya]! Do not cast stones at her! She has suffered too much already in the consciousness of her own undeserved shame. And she is not guilty—oh God!—Every moment she bemoans and bewails herself, and cries out that she does not admit any guilt, that she is the victim of circumstances—the victim of a wicked libertine. But whatever she may say, remember that she does not believe it herself,—remember that she will believe nothing but that she is a guilty creature. When I tried to rid her soul of this gloomy fallacy, she suffered so terribly that my heart will never be quite at peace so long as I can remember that dreadful time!—Do you know why she left me? Simply to prove to me what is not true—that she is base. […] Aglaya—perhaps you cannot understand all this. Try to realize that in the perpetual admission of guilt she probably finds some dreadful unnatural satisfaction—as though she were revenging herself upon someone. Now and then I was able to persuade her almost to see light around her again; but she would soon fall, once more, into her old tormenting delusions." (3.8.111-116)
You know, Dostoevsky wasn't a psychologist or anything—um, what with the whole idea of psychology only just starting to be invented elsewhere—but, wow, that's a pretty spot-on psychological profile of a self-destructive person, no? Get this lady some mood stabilizers, stat.