Writing
Ivan The Terrible
On Ivan Karamazov, the first of a sequence on Dostoevsky's last novel. A man who has mastered method but remains aimless in the soul.
The firstborn of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov's second wife, Sofia Ivanovna, Ivan Karamazov, is first introduced as a brooding character. He's someone with high raw intellect, and naturally, from a very young age, Ivan's painfully aware of his life situation: his father is a degenerate who's abandoned him, he's living in a benevolent stranger's house, and he must make something of himself, for he has no real safety net.
Gifted with preternatural intellect, Ivan does make something of himself. He starts giving tuition to sustain his university life, and curiously starts to write for newspapers where he apparently is always the "eyewitness." I'm not surprised that he is a good writer. However, I suspect he's already internalized, by the time he is in university, that it is more important to be interesting than truthful. It is more important to appear truthful than be truthful. Social life is drawn to the spectacular, and Ivan has, in his early career, started to exploit this for profit.
It is no wonder, then, Ivan's earned his fame in matters related to the Christian Church while being an atheist. This is as intriguing in the world of The Brothers Karamazov as it is to me. Because, think about it: what does it really mean for an atheist to write in such seriousness about matters related to the Church courts? It means Ivan is above the fold and doesn't literally believe in canon law, but for the Russian people who are not as enlightened as he is, the Church is necessary. Essentially, religion is to govern stupid people, and enlightened people's responsibility is to wield its force for social control.
I am curious about Ivan's ultimate ends. Ivan is smart, for he knows how to get what he wants through any method that may be effective. But to what end? What does Ivan really believe in? I suspect he is a man who's mastered method but remains aimless in the soul. He is trapped, for Ivan's metaphysics does not allow for anything to hold the weight of his soul, and in this quest of using reason without any clear end, Ivan will have a reckoning once he is forced to stare at the darkness of nihilism.