Karmazinov

Who He Is

Karmazinov is the great writer, in Liputin's phrase, a relation of Yulia Mikhailovna and an old acquaintance of Stepan Trofimovich, who has lived for seven years in Karlsruhe and returns to Russia to sell his property and take his leave. The chronicler, who read him from childhood and was intoxicated by his first novellas, finds the later ones dull. Small, neat, with gray curls and a tortoiseshell lorgnette, he speaks in a honeyed voice and, according to the rumors the chronicler repeats, values his ties with the powerful more than his own soul, and forgets whoever seeks him out in the presence of the first prince or the first countess (ch. III, Part One). He wants to be admired and wants to leave gracefully. He fears being forgotten by the generation that is coming. The trait that defines him is a self-regard dressed up as a farewell: what he brings to the party is a text in which he bids the public goodbye, so that the public will applaud him for it.

Trajectory

In ch. III, Part One, on the eighth day of waiting for Stepan's engagement, the chronicler meets him in the street and nearly runs to find a cab. The writer, after thanking him for the way to Bikova Street, calls him back to ask where there is one. When the writer drops his little purse, the chronicler bends down, and it is Karmazinov who picks it up, delicately, leaving him looking ridiculous. In the same chapter the chronicler recalls an article the writer published in a journal about a shipwreck he witnessed. The chronicler reads between the lines that it was written only to put himself on stage: no one should look at the storm or at the drowned woman with her dead son in her arms, but he, who turned his back, terrified, without the courage to look. And Varvara Petrovna Stavrogina writes Stepan three anxious notes about nothing but his visit: if he comes, not a word about me; receive him with refinement; if he does not come today either, he will never come.

In ch. IV, Part Two, Yulia Mikhailovna von Lembke announces to Varvara Petrovna that he will read, at the matinee, a farewell entitled "Merci." In ch. V, Part Two, Karmazinov is one of those circling around her, and a remark of his about the group's pranks, which he finds characteristic and bold, makes Yulia forgive the youngsters' mischief. When Stepan calls him a finished writer, Varvara Petrovna replies that he has an almost statesman's spirit.

In ch. VI, Part Two, Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky enters his house, on Bikova Street, and finds him at lunch. Karmazinov rises from the sofa to kiss him and offers his cheek. Pyotr, warned by the earlier experience, offers his own cheek too, and the two cheeks meet. Karmazinov is alarmed to learn that Pyotr has forgotten the manuscript of "Merci," until Pyotr takes it out, crumpled, from his back pocket. He has come to sell the property and leave. He says he does not believe in any God, that Russia as it is has no future, and that wealthy Russians flee abroad by instinct, like rats that abandon a ship first. He has become German, and he takes pride in it. The chronicler adds that Karmazinov hated Stavrogin because Stavrogin had the habit of not noticing him. On the proclamations, he says what, for him, makes them effective:

He then asks, in a honeyed voice, when all this could happen. Pyotr replies that he will have time to sell the property and flee, and gives the date: it begins in early May and ends at Pokrov. Karmazinov thanks him warmly, and Pyotr concludes, returning the image to him, that a rat that leaves the ship does not inform on it. At the door of Virginsky's house, Pyotr tells Nikolai Vsevolodovich Stavrogin that he told Karmazinov that Stavrogin thought the writer deserved to be flogged the way one flogs a peasant. He repeats Karmazinov's phrase about the right to dishonor, which Stavrogin welcomes with enthusiasm.

In ch. X, Part Two, Karmazinov comes with Yulia's group to the governor's house, at her request. He embraces Stepan, whom he has not seen in twenty-four years, offering his cheek first, and Stepan is obliged to kiss it. That night he tells the chronicler what he thought in that moment:

Karmazinov says that the sewer pipe of Karlsruhe means more to him than all the questions of the fatherland. When Yulia contradicts him, reminding him that he was the one who painted the types of the Slavophile and the Westerner, he admits that he did so in passing, to kill time and satisfy the demands of his compatriots. On hearing praise he softens. There in Karlsruhe he will close his eyes, and great men, once the work is done, have only to close their eyes without seeking reward.

In ch. I, Part Three, it was said in town that, to raise the takings, he would read "Merci" dressed as a provincial governess. He comes on stage in tails and white tie, and the room receives him with respect. He had in fact agreed to read in order to drive the notion of a banquet out of the public's head. He reads nearly two pages of a prose of impressions and recollections with no theme, in which pass a first kiss under an orange tree, Pompey on the eve of battle, a mermaid in the shrubs, a fog that looks like a million pillows, a genie who falls into a hole in the ice of the Volga, and a hermit's cave under a tower of Moscow. He reads from on high, as if doing a favor. When someone at the back says, with no show at all, that it is nonsense, he asks, with the air of a wounded chamberlain, whether he has bored those present, and the replies begin. The chronicler points out his mistake:

A young district schoolteacher says that, if he had the good fortune to love as the author describes, he would not put love into a text for public reading. Karmazinov cuts it short and reads only the last six lines:

When Yulia brings the laurel on a velvet cushion, he replies that in our century laurels look better in the hand of a skilled cook, and the cries for the buffet begin again. In the scene of tears with Yulia, in ch. II, Part Three, Pyotr will say that Karmazinov came out like a green donkey and dragged the text on for a full hour, and that this puts him, ironically, in the conspiracy against the party. After the matinee, the book no longer brings him onstage.

Themes Embodied

Karmazinov is Truth and Lies in the figure of the writer who cannot tell what he writes from the pose he writes in. The article on the shipwreck, the kiss under the orange tree, and "merci" repeated three times are the same gesture: something great happens, and the author places himself before it. The book does not treat him as a villain. It treats him as a man of middling talent, accepted in life as a genius, whom the new age forgets, and who, instead of staying, chooses to leave applauded.

The thesis on honor, that the Russian has always found it a burden and that an open right to dishonor is what drags him along most quickly, supports two readings. In the first, it is the view of a clear-sighted opportunist who knows what he is saying. He speaks to be heard by the man he takes to be the head of the revolution, and gives Pyotr the formula that Pyotr later uses with Stavrogin. In the second, it is the view of a coward who hides behind a thesis that may also persuade him, and who still defends honor, out of habit and weakness of spirit, as he says of himself. What Pyotr gets from him, the date of the disaster and the certainty that the writer will not inform, does not depend on which of the two readings is right.

The outcome of the public reading confirms the pose in reverse. Karmazinov asked for the audience's applause, and he takes his leave of it as one dismisses servants. He wants admiration and he wants to leave, and "merci" repeated three times is the way to say both things at once. The audience, which in part boos and in part applauds, receives the gesture with the same ambiguity with which he made it.

Divergent Readings

The book's characters give three weights to Karmazinov. Stepan, in ch. V, Part Two, calls him a finished writer, and later an exhausted, angry old woman. Varvara Petrovna sees a spirit almost of a statesman. Pyotr, in ch. VIII, Part Two, tells Stavrogin that he is very intelligent and right in saying that there is nothing to hold on to. The chronicler, in ch. III, Part One, places him among the talents of middling size who wear themselves out without noticing and take themselves for gods.

The portrait has a key outside the novel, which readers of the time recognized at once:

The readings fit together. The portrait is a caricature of a real person, and the type it fixes, that of the established writer who would rather leave than be challenged, holds good beyond that frame. The book does not show his work, only what he does with it before the public, and it is in that space that the judgment fits: a talent that has lost its subject and keeps its gesture.

Relationships

• Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky: the young man to whom he hands the thesis on honor, and from whom he hears the date of the disaster (ch. VI, Part Two).
• Yulia Mikhailovna von Lembke: the relation and patroness who asks him for the farewell and puts him on stage (ch. IV, Part Two, ch. I, Part Three).
• Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky: the old acquaintance he embraces in order to humiliate him (ch. X, Part Two), and who calls him a finished writer (ch. V, Part Two).
• Varvara Petrovna Stavrogina: the lady who writes three anxious notes about his visit, and who glares at him in the salon (ch. III, Part One, ch. X, Part Two).
• Nikolai Vsevolodovich Stavrogin: the man who does not notice him, and whom he hates for it (ch. VI, Part Two).
• Andrei Antonovich von Lembke: the governor in whose salon he appears (ch. X, Part Two).