The Corporeity Discourse and the Body “Arguments” in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Works

Martseva Anna Vladimirovna ORCID: 0000-0002-6461-8139 PhD in Philosophy Associate Professor, Department of History of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, RUDN University 6 Miklukho-Maklaya str., Moscow, 117198, Russia martseva@mail.ru

Introduction

The work of F.M. Dostoevsky is doomed to constant "rediscovery" and reconceptualization, since his reader-researcher, who has changed significantly over a century and a half and sometimes almost unrecognizable, cannot always take full advantage of the hermeneutic discoveries and developments of his predecessors. In some moments, the modern reader still remains alone with the writer's work, searching in vain for answers to his questions from the most astute Dostoevsky scholars of past eras. Not because the researchers' insight was blinded by their subjective interests or capabilities, but because the list of these questions did not fully match. One of these "mismatched", elusive points is the body and physicality in Dostoevsky's work.

It would be an exaggeration to attribute to Dostoevsky a complete concept of the body and physicality. Nevertheless, reflection on physicality is not only a significant, but also a permanent line in his work. In his fundamental, large-scale study of man, Dostoevsky simply could not ignore physicality, at least because of personal, religious, cultural and historical circumstances, which will be discussed below. However, with amazing persistence, classical Dostoevsky's works not only ignore, but often directly deny the existence or serious significance of this reflection on physicality in the writer's legacy. The psychological approach to Dostoevsky's work is complemented by philosophical, literary, linguistic and even theological ones, but the idea remains unchanged that Dostoevsky focuses on the spiritual and spiritual in man^[1], with little interest in his physicality. For example, R. Laut quite categorically formulates his version of the problematization of Dostoevsky's works: "All his (Dostoevsky's. – A.M.) attention is directed at the soul and the processes taking place in it. He was almost not interested in the problem of mind and body, the ratio of psychological and physiological moments" [1. C. 27].

It is significant that this step – focusing on the analysis of the mental and intellectual moments of the existence of Dostoevsky's heroes – was finally legitimized precisely in the process of Dostoevsky's "philosophical discovery". To some extent, it was thanks to the transfer of the center of gravity to the non-corporeal that it was possible to get away from the perception of his works as a chronicle of diseases, deviations peculiar exclusively to marginal personalities, and move on to philosophical content through the search for new subjects and new structural units of his works ^[2]. The transition to philosophical content required a break with the specified tradition of reducing Dostoevsky's work to the genre of "adventures in the Kunstkammer", in which the characters were thought of as atypical people endowed with special (rare, outlandish, deviant) qualities, and also implied the use of new strategies and methods of working with the text, not only changing the optics of the researcher, but also suggesting deconstruction, up to the reduction of Dostoevsky's texts to conceptual schemes that turn his novels into an intellectual cipher that the researcher needs to unravel by finding clues and discarding everything superfluous ^[3]. No matter how far the researchers went in their daring attempts to "crack" Dostoevsky, it was the question of the physical, everyday, bodily, spatial existence of a person that was classified as third-rate, i.e. actually insignificant. Already in 1894, V.V. Rozanov, in The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor, deduces the formula of Dostoevsky's work, in which the writer is thought of as "primarily a psychologist" who "does not depict life for us ... but only the human soul with its elusive bends and transitions" [4. pp. 17-18], literally initiating a number of subsequent ones Spiritualistic interpretations of the Pentateuch. And in 1901, S.N. Bulgakov, in his public lecture "Ivan Karamazov as a philosophical type", still cautiously, through parallels with Faust, but quite clearly reveals the insignificance of external circumstances (physical parameters, place, profession, etc.) when analyzing one of the main characters of the novel: "Ivan is a spirit; he is all an abstract problem, he has no appearance" [5. p. 20]. Two decades later, N.A. Berdyaev, in Dostoevsky's Worldview, asserts the formula of the writer's special realism, in which there is no place for nature, things, and everyday life: "There is only the human spirit, and only it is interesting, it is explored" [6. P. 337]. According to Berdyaev, all Dostoevsky's characters exist within a special world; it is an experimental laboratory in which a person is consistently deprived of all external determinations (and "objectifications"), ideally striving to highlight his true essence. Dostoevsky's Christian anthropology, as interpreted by Berdyaev, is a study of the subject-spirit in his relations with God, the devil and other similar subjects: Dostoevsky has no other concern, "business", interest ^[4], so Berdyaev, with full awareness of the correctness, puts the problem of physicality outside the brackets.

It should be noted that even the psychoanalytic line of Dostoevsky studies, since the time of the "autotherapeutic" interpretation of Z. Freud's work of Dostoevsky as an attempt to overcome his own neurosis, emphasizing the connection between the works and the writer's illness, although he intentionally dwells on the somatology of "seizures" and other bodily manifestations of neurosis, however, he did not investigate the problem of physicality as such in the texts of his correspondence "patient" ^[5].

One can go on and on with a rather long list of authoritative statements in favor of the insignificance of the question of the body and corporeality in Dostoevsky. Their sum adds up to a certain tradition, within the framework of which physicality in Dostoevsky's artistic cosmos is deprived of the "right to vote" by the research will, being considered either as a vestige of the author's personal presence in the text, or as an auxiliary or even decorative element. From my point of view, this issue of physicality needs full-scale rehabilitation.

To achieve this goal, it is proposed to trace two main directions of the discourse of the body and corporeality in four novels ^[6] from Dostoevsky's Pentateuch: 1) the writer's discussion with materialistic philosophical anthropology and 2) reflection on the Christian patristic anthropological tradition. These directions themselves are not exhaustive, but this example can demonstrate that Dostoevsky could not, due to life circumstances^[7], cultural and historical context and, most importantly, worldview, make the question of the body insignificant.

Polysemanticism of corporeality in Russian culture of the second half of the XIX century.

       The scientific breakthroughs of the 19th century and the development of philosophical and anthropological teachings, including materialistic ones, naturally bring to the fore the question of the human body. If in the 90s of the XVIII century. Radishchev's lines about the essential similarity of the "material corporeality" of man with "other creatures", along with the call to search for his fundamental differences from all other living beings, have the character of abstract reasoning ^[10], supported by a certain share of scientific intuitions, then by the middle of the XIX century. this "materiality" It is concretized thanks to discoveries in the field of human physiology, microbiology, etc. and in almost all cases it becomes the subject of special philosophical discussions in the spirit of scientism^[8]. The anthropology of N.G. Chernyshevsky is the most representative from this point of view, with extreme simplicity (bordering, according to T. Massarik and V.V. Zenkovsky, with vulgar materialism [12. P. 316]), who tried to substantiate the anthropological principle in philosophy as precisely rooted in natural scientific knowledge about man: "The basis for that part of philosophy, which deals with questions about man, the natural sciences serve in the same way as for the other part, which deals with questions about external nature. The principle of the philosophical view of human life with all its phenomena is the idea of the unity of the human body, developed by natural sciences; observations of physiologists, zoologists and physicians have removed any thought of human dualism. Philosophy sees in him what medicine, physiology, chemistry see" [13. p. 185].

In addition, the very nature of these natural scientific discoveries (from the physiological foundations of higher nervous activity, phagocytosis to X–rays) is thought of as addressed to a person, designed in the long term to change one of the foundations of his life - bodily vulnerability, taking it under control. For example, the development of instrumental research methods ^[9] is not only an opportunity to study the disease "from the inside" of a living person, it is also the prospect of victory over disease, pain and even (in a radical version) death. In a certain sense, this attitude can be called a "somatic utopia", in which a person's physicality is thought of as potentially subjugated and controlled.

However, most of these scientific discoveries in the period under study did not affect the culture of everyday life and practically did not change the perception of physicality. The body, despite scientific breakthroughs, still revealed its otherness in relation to human plans, desires and goals. A person, armed or not armed with an understanding of his physiological structure and the "mechanics" of nerve impulses, suffered pain, aged and died equally. In addition, the development of non-invasive instrumental diagnostics, which was already discussed above, meant only that the disease could be diagnosed, but in the vast majority of cases this did little to cure. The body was revealed to a person as "disobedient", self-willed, like some Other person with whom it is really impossible to come to an agreement, and sometimes as an enemy who is waiting for the right moment to strike his blow. Dostoevsky is undoubtedly confronted with this mode of corporeality almost more than many of his contemporaries. The death of his parents, his first wife, the death of his beloved brother, Sonya's three—month-old daughter and Alyosha's two-year-old son from a sudden illness ^[10], the anxious expectation of his own new seizures and difficult recovery after them, the complete helplessness of medicine in relation to pulmonary bleeding, which the writer could only accept with humility - all this can be revealed as a certain dictatorship of the body the laws of which cannot be abolished by reason: neither individual, nor scientific, nor philosophical.

And finally, the most important from the point of view of the goals of this study is the idea of the body, rooted in the anthropological tradition of Eastern patristics, with which Dostoevsky was familiar (not as a researcher, but rather as an "accomplice") indirectly, through the writings of Neil Sorsky, Tikhon Zadonsky, Paisii Velichkovsky, and directly, because thanks to the active In the 19th century, the ascetic patristic literature was published in the translation and publishing activities of the Optina Desert ^[11].

The body as a divine gift and a body afflicted with sin, spiritualized and passionate — the ambivalence of corporeality is reflected in patristic creations. The body as materiality, materiality is that which opposes the spirit and lives according to its own laws. John the Ladder, speaking of carnal warfare as a necessary condition for spiritual ascent, describes the flesh as a cunning and crafty enemy: "... be at enmity against your flesh incessantly. For this flesh is an ungrateful and flattering friend: the more we please her, the more she harms us."^[17] At the same time, the body itself is a divine creation, and therefore cannot be bad. As O.V. Chistyakova notes, already in early Christian literature one can identify "the fundamental idea of Eastern patristics about the spiritualization of not only the inner world of a person, but also his body, which further led to the emergence of the anthropological phenomenon of a spiritualized personality with its subsequent argumentation in medieval Byzantine philosophy" [18. P. 651]. And the said John of the Ladder does not think of the monastic feat as the destruction of the body, but precisely as the subjugation and subordination of its spiritual principle, the result of which should be the transformation of the perishable into the imperishable.

The same fine line between positive and negative connotations of corporeality is found in Russian monasticism. In Orthodox ascetic thought, "carnal wisdom", which in fact is a violation of the hierarchical order, when the flesh, like an unbridled young horse, does not allow a rider to approach it and controls itself. An unbridled horse is dangerous and unpredictable, while a tamed one is obedient, meek and useful, so even fallen physicality is not thought of as bad in itself. For example, Tikhon Zadonsky, highly revered by Dostoevsky, in his creation "Flesh and Spirit" ^[12] considers the "law of the flesh" as an attraction to sin and ultimately death ^[20] in contrast to the "spiritual law", however, for all the rigor of this opposition, his body is not identical to this carnal law: to overcome this law does not mean to overcome, but on the contrary, to liberate the body. This "tension" of the duality of corporeality was intentionally not resolved in a rational discursive way, referring to the metaphysical depth and apophaticity of the Divine plan for man.

The Mystery of the Body in Dostoevsky's work

The presented modes of understanding of the body and physicality are certainly not exhaustive; this combination is dictated only by their significance in Dostoevsky's work and nothing else. In addition, it can be argued that their significance is inversely proportional to the order of their enumeration, that is, the religious modus is fundamental, the modus of otherness is worldviewically significant, the scientific modus is contextually important. In Dostoevsky's works, they are never in balance, therefore, the physicality of a person is not just problematized by Dostoevsky (which would eventually make it possible to look for a solution), but revealed as a mystery. Not only in the spirit, through the thoughts and actions of the heroes, the very struggle of God and the devil is revealed, but also in the diverse images of physicality.

Bodily beauty. Perhaps the hermeneutics of beauty, including bodily beauty, in Dostoevsky's work is the most researched and popular issue, and the set of quotations and their interpretations can be called canonical. Mitya Karamazov's monologue about the indeterminacy and inconsistency of beauty is not without reason cited as the key one: "Beauty is a terrible and terrible thing! It's scary because it's indeterminate, and it can't be determined because God asked only riddles… Another person, even the highest in heart and with a high mind, begins with the ideal of the Madonna, and ends with the ideal of Sodom. It is even scarier who, already with the ideal of Sodom in his soul, does not deny the ideal of the Madonna… The terrible thing is that beauty is not only a terrible thing, but also a mysterious thing. Here the devil is fighting with God, and the battlefield is the hearts of people" [21. C. 100].

Dostoevsky deliberately emphasizes the amazing power of physical beauty. It is this dimension of it, in isolation from spiritual and spiritual life, that Dostoevsky specifically explores. An interesting experiment undertaken in the novel "The Idiot": Prince Myshkin sees at first only the image of Nastasia Filippovna — a large-format photograph. Her rare beauty, according to the writer's plan, is visible in the portrait and amazes Prince Myshkin. Dostoevsky carefully describes, even records her appearance: "The portrait depicted a woman of truly extraordinary beauty. She was photographed in a black silk dress, of an extremely simple and elegant style; her hair, apparently dark brown, was simply put away, homely; her eyes were dark, deep, brow thoughtful; her expression was passionate and, as it were, arrogant. She had a somewhat thin face, maybe pale..." [22. P. 27]. The prince guesses the suffering on her face, but cannot determine whether she is kind or not. Meanwhile, this is exactly what is most important for him: "Oh, if only for good! Everything would have been saved!" [Ibid., p. 32]. In other words, Nastasia Filippovna is beautiful regardless of whether she is kind or not, beautiful in almost every action. But what is the meaning of this beauty, what this beauty testifies to, there is no definite answer in the novel, since the inner conflict of the heroine is so complex and deep that she can be both kind and not kind. It is a beauty that cannot be used as a ladder to the upper world, it is rather a maze. But her strength is no less from this. Dostoevsky uses this technique in other novels as well: beauty, not restrained by good, uncontrollable beauty (not necessarily directed by evil will) becomes a catalyst for terrible destructive shifts in a person who encounters it, and after that – in the world^[13], since bodily beauty is almost inevitable ^[14]. 

An example of another striking but paradoxical beauty is Stavrogin. And here Dostoevsky carefully records his appearance: "... his hair was too very black, his light eyes were too calm and clear, his complexion was too delicate and white, his blush was too bright and clean, teeth like pearls, lips like coral, it would seem, is a written beauty, but at the same time it seems to be disgusting. It was said that his face resembled a mask; however, much was said, among other things, about his extraordinary bodily strength." Here Dostoevsky develops the theme of the tragic gap between body and spirit, which seems to double a person. Stavrogin's perfect bodily beauty is presented here as a mask or a sign that means nothing. At least, it does not mean that destructive and terrible process that engulfs Stavrogin and leads to death.

However, Dostoevsky breaks this line of hermetic in-itself physicality, which does not communicate about the spiritual and spiritual in a person and does not even know about this side. The outrageous and repulsive bodily ugliness of Fyodor Karamazov is a "personification" of his sins; at the same time, Dostoevsky, with emphasized schematism, combines bodily manifestations with the base qualities of the hero's nature: "By that time his physiognomy represented something that sharply testified to the characteristics and essence of his entire life" ^[21]. Bags under the eyes indicate drunkenness and gluttony, a large fleshy adam's apple-purse – about greed and greed, a plump carnivorous mouth – about voluptuousness, etc. I.e. in this case we are dealing with a "talking" body: bodily corruption fully corresponds to spiritual corruption.

Bodily diseases. Bodily health and ill health in the space of Dostoevsky's artistic world also fit into rational schemes with great difficulty. Suffering heroes, including those who suffer severely from body diseases, can take steps out of their suffering towards both good and evil. It should be noted that Dostoevsky's palette of morbid characters is very diverse; consumptive patients occupy a leading position among them^[15]. And the point here is not only the incurable tuberculosis for medicine of the XIX century and the terrifying prevalence of this disease, but also its vivid, manifest symptoms. The romanic consumptive patient is forced to face classic symptoms ^[16], which (especially "hemoptysis") they are so specific that both the patient himself and others look at him as a doomed physicality, which is destined to die soon. The challenge posed by this disease excludes the standard "disease–treatment –recovery" algorithm and at the same time cannot be ignored. As a result, in Dostoevsky's novels, the typical disease of the "ordinary" body turns into a mystery with an unpredictable outcome.

However, the most significant in the plot and conceptual plans is another incurable disease – Prince Myshkin. Myshkin's "seizures" cannot be overcome by medical means (in fact, all that remains for him is a regime and discipline), his life is full of limitations ("imprisonment in illness"): he cannot marry, cannot work regularly, cannot rely on himself. The disease makes him sober up every second and remember his non-peacefulness; this non-contact with the world does not help Myshkin in any way to control the disease, but it is in this humility that Myshkin is more than his physical weakness. Bodily infirmity takes the hero out of the world only at the level of everyday practices, but he returns back on new grounds. Myshkin's unreliable body makes him a hero who gains extraordinary strength ^[17].

Bodily illness, as can be seen from the examples of consumptive heroes, Dostoevsky does not necessarily combine with spiritual strength or moral purity. For example, Lisa Khokhlakova, who also suffers from a terrible disease (paralysis), despite her young age, is a very controversial character. The fact that infernality is present in it is brought to the fore by Dostoevsky. "Imp" Lisa unfolds terrible pictures of "disorder" in front of her counterparts, which in fact looks more like a hellish abyss ^[18] than the deconstruction of values and meanings peculiar to teenagers. However, Dostoevsky recalls: Lisa is still a child (in the novel she is only 14 years old), humiliated and trampled by her paralysis. In her absurd sadistic fantasies, the same rebellion of Ivan Karamazov against the world order, against dependence on his flesh and against the divine plan is expressed.

Thus, both Myshkin and Lisa are prisoners of a sick body, but if the former humbles himself and thus gains his strength (albeit for a while), then the latter, on the contrary, strives to escape from imprisonment through rebellion.

The death of the body. And finally, the main "argument" of the body is its death. The absurdity and inevitability of physical death is a challenge that scientific and optimistic theories of man cannot answer. The dead body in Dostoevsky's novels is as inescapable and irrationalizable as beauty. This idea is expressed with maximum force in two episodes – Prince Myshkin's contemplation of a painting by Hans Holbein Jr. The "Dead Christ" and the death of Elder Zosima.

In the episode with the painting, which depicts Christ with all the typical signs of incipient bodily decay, Myshkin is horrified. "Yes, from this picture, someone else's faith can disappear!" [22. C. 181], the prince exclaims. From which particular painting and who is this "other"? The prince reproduces very accurately the main argument of death: its irreversibility. The physical disintegration of the body in its natural form, without the detachment that is characteristic of modern functional practices, completely and terribly indicates the end of material existence. And there is no physical force that can reverse this process. How could the students who saw the dead Teacher refrain from utter despair? How can a person who has seen death hope for immortality? This episode, as has been repeatedly shown in studies ^[19], is based on the Gospel episode about the resurrection of Lazarus. Lazarus the Four-day-old fell ill, died and spent four days in a coffin. His death was certain, and his sister testified that he was already "stinking" (John 11:39). Patristic interpretations of this verse usually emphasize the terrifying and unbearable picture of corruption. Christ is grieving and crying because he loves Lazarus and his sisters. This moment deserves special attention: Christ knows that he will resurrect Lazarus, but he cannot help but grieve ^[20]. Human nature cannot but respond to death with sorrow. And Christ is crying in front of the dead body of a friend.

However, in the dialogue between Myshkin and Rogozhin, the question arises of how a person can endure death in all its bodily evidence if there is no faith in the future resurrection, when even for Christ, who did not just believe, but knew about the imminent resurrection of Lazarus, it was difficult to bear.

The second episode, with the death of Elder Zosima, is very close to the first and is also connected with the evangelical miracle of the resurrection of Lazarus. Elder Zosima, whose holiness was not doubted even during his lifetime by either monks or laypeople, after his death discovered his human natural physicality. The smell of bodily decomposition (in the novel it literally "stank") shocks the spiritual children of the elder. If the elder has the same body as any other person (and not incorruptible fragrant relics), and if he also died naturally, then on what basis should an ordinary person hope for resurrection?

Conclusion

The examples given may not be the most representative and certainly not exhaustive. In Dostoevsky's novels, a person possessing corporeality is legitimized along with this corporeality. The body is not just the circumstances of the life of the spirit, which can be taken out of the brackets. Dostoevsky does not standardize physicality, on the contrary, there is something unique and mysterious about physicality. In Chernyshevsky's materialistic anthropology, we are usually talking about an "ordinary" body that will behave predictably in the same external and internal conditions. Chernyshevsky's bodily mechanics are not quite simple, but they are universal. That is why his "anthropological principle" in literary refraction does not at all imply interest in the difference of bodies and the peculiarities of their manifestations. In Dostoevsky, on the contrary, we see an extraordinary attention to the description of bodily phenomena. Appearance, epicrisis, the smell and color of the human body – all this occupies an important place in the novels. The body has its own "carnal law". As a law, it is inexorable and tragic, bearing the seal of the fall: "the earth is and the earth is gone" (Gen. 3:19). And it is precisely the incredible power and diversity of this "bodily law" that is manifested in Dostoevsky's novels: the impotence of the flesh destroys the meaning of all abuse. Dostoevsky assigns one of the central places in his novels to the arguments of the human body. And in this he surpasses all materialistic physiologists of his time, because, unfolding the phenomenological description of physicality on the pages of his works, Dostoevsky disputes the existence of an ordinary and obedient human body. He thinks of the body as something universal and unique at the same time. In this regard, further Dostoevsky studies, which involve a serious study of the writer's reflection on the body and physicality, require a more complicated research methodology and resist the prevailing reductionist tendencies. 

^[1] Modifications are possible here depending on the methodology chosen by the researcher. For example, R. Laut gives a very branched personality structure, striving to systematize Dostoevsky's work. However, my article does not set out the task of systematically reconstructing Dostoevsky's anthropology, and the question of the greater relevance of the dichotomous or trichotomous concept of man goes beyond the limits of present interest (in any case, the soul-spiritual here appears as precisely non-corporeal).

^[2] In the most consistent version — by M.M. Bakhtin (See: "Problems of Dostoevsky's Creativity" (1929), "Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics" (1963) ^[2])

^[3] One of the most logically completed versions of the interpretation of Dostoevsky's work of this kind is a small work by J. Golosovker "Dostoevsky and Kant" ^[3].

^[4] It is interesting that Berdyaev's idea of "idle heroes" was reproduced a hundred years later by Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeev) in his popular book "The Gospel of Dostoevsky", released for the anniversary of the writer ^[7]. 

^[5] Actually, Z. himself. Freud did not pretend to be a researcher of Dostoevsky's works, professionally they interested him only as a statement of a gifted neurotic and a vivid example of confirming intuitions about the neurotic nature of culture and creativity. See, for example: Freud Z. Dostoevsky and parricide ^[8].

^[6] "Crime and punishment", "Idiot", "Demons", "Brothers Karamazov"

^[7] The special relevance of biographical data in modern Dostoevsky studies is emphasized by the Italian Slavist M.K. Gidini: "Painstaking work on the reconstruction of materials from archives and other sources in order to shed light on the periods of Dostoevsky's biography that still remain in the shadows is perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of today's Dostoevsky studies, especially when this work is aimed at interpretation specific biographical data, to highlight the internal structure of the writer's existential path, to observe the forms of his artistic images" [9. C. 13].

^[8] The discussion around I.M. Sechenov's "Brain Reflexes" is characteristic in this case ^[11].

^[9] On the influence of instrumental diagnostics on the perception of the human body, see ^[14].

^[10] The special tragedy of these losses is given by the suddenness of the daughter's illness and the son's illness, as well as the impotence of doctors, which A.G. Dostoevskaya emphasizes in her memoirs [15. pp. 230-231, 373].

^[11] Quite a lot has been written about the peculiarities of the reception of gospel texts in Dostoevsky's work. However, fundamental works devoted to the study of patristic sources, on the contrary, are very few.  Among them, it is necessary to mention the works of Simonetta Salvestroni ^[16].

^[12] Is a concise quotation book from the Bible and John Chrysostom with comments by St. Tikhon. See: ^[19].

^[13] Cf. Grushenka's role in the unfolding of the tragic basis of the plot of the Brothers Karamazov.

^[14] Here, of course, it is necessary to keep in mind the greater sensitivity of a person of the XIX century to human bodily beauty, because before the era of industrial and in-line formation of the desired bodily image (beauty industry), genuine beauty, and not just attractiveness, was perceived as a miraculous miracle. This does not at all contradict the fact that decorative cosmetics, clothing, hairdressing in all epochs also acted as a means of overcoming natural imperfections. However, until the 20th century, neither plastic surgery (which was mainly of a therapeutic and restorative nature), nor cosmetics, nor any other techniques were able to create bodily perfection.

^[15] It should be noted that Dostoevsky's list of consumptive patients is huge. Statistically speaking, in reality only a part of them would have tuberculosis, the rest most likely suffered from other diseases with similar symptoms, but this does not matter much for Dostoevsky's works or for us.

^[16] For example, at the first meeting, Marmeladov lists these symptoms to Raskolnikov, speaking about his sick wife Katerina Ivanovna.

^[17] In this image, of course, a reference to the words of the Ap. Paul: "... for the power Mine is accomplished in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9).

^[18] This riot reaches its greatest acuteness in the fantasy about a crucified boy and pineapple compote.

^[19] See, for example: ^[16].

^[20] John Chrysostom explains this verse as follows: "He comes to the tomb and again holds back sorrow. But why does the evangelist carefully and repeatedly notice that He was crying and that He was holding back grief? So that you may know that He was truly clothed with our nature." (Interpretation of the Gospel of John 11:33). https://azbyka.ru/biblia/in/?Jn.11:33