The Story & The Idea

You asked me, isn't a novel an idea carried through its whole span using fictional characters? Yes; I ask you in return, isn't the expression of a man in itself always the venting forth of their ideas that they have carried all throughout life, that somehow they want to understand through the written word? Doesn't, when one expresses, isn't it without object at first? Don't I sing to myself? And when I write, it is as if something that I was not able to concentrate upon, something I was missing, by those words that will queue up in my brain and get written on the paper; as if something external to me resides in me, and is actually not external, and yet with whom I often remain unacquainted. But should the expression seek an object - in which case I call it propaganda; when a singer's sole objective is to give a concert, I equate it to a propaganda, but when she can give a concert and yet each time lose herself in the beauty she is creating, yes she's singing - or should the expression burst forth because it had to, because there is no reason except survival, except shrieking in the deep woods? Shouldn't the expression be free, carefree? So, everything is an idea carried forth, each expression: but when tempered by the discipline so that that expression is intelligible, that the shriek becomes a voice, the freedom becomes liberty, the idea becomes more than that: a work of art.

I don't agree with a lot of what Rand says, so maybe I could be biased; so I will take an author I love: Dostoyevsky. His novels were always not quite "well-structured," as he had a lot to say, his primary objective was his ideas, carried through diverse characters; in fact, just as with many other authors (including Rand's), most of his characters are kind of repetitions, though in Dostyoevsky's case sometimes the gradations are steep: Stavrogin is a horrific form of (pre-Sonya) Raskolnikov, with Ivan Karamazov somewhere in the middle in that evolutionary period. If ideas were the only criteria, then "The Devils" would be the best Dostoyevskyan novel for me: and not just ideas, but characters like those of Stavrogin and Shatov are strongly etched on my mind for ever. The former is a brilliantly conceived precursor of all that was to come to the world in the twentieth centuty: the fragmented, anarchist man. Stavrogin can rape a girl and yet not feel any guilt about it; the reason is not a mere "he's cruel," maybe he's not that - it's that things have become meaningless to him; ideas, beliefs, the world, the people. Everything's "egal" to him: c'est egal. Things are meaningless, he's tired, and he tries to live with the games he could indulge in. He's intelligent, sharp, brilliant - and he's tired. Ivan is still one step behind: things are becoming meaningless to him, because is there an answer to his question why an eight-year-old girl is shut by her mother in the middle of a winter night in a latrine for bedwetting? The "middle", the "winter", even the "latrine", and even the "shut" are in fact just peripheral, sensational details: the question is the reaction to the bedwetting. And, yet, as he cannot understand Alyosha and his love - and yet Alyosha is also searching for meanings, he also has none, he also is tired, but probably the only difference is that he's not lost hope to find them, or that they even exist - as he cannot understand that, he's still a step behind.

But, "The Devils" is a mass of brilliant ideas, that Dostoyevsky has desperately tried to fashion into a novel, but has miserably failed. For me, it remains one of my favorite novels, but that does not mean I can recommend it as a novel to anyone else. Can everything be a collage? The characters, the plot - they also mean as much, and more; suspension of belief is fine, but the alternative world in which now we're existing - because a complete suspension is never possible; I think, I exist - should also be believable. I wonder if you've seen any of the artwork by Salvador Dali, or his films: they're brilliant, I am in awe of the genius of the man, and yet they horrify me as much as Stavrogin did. Of course, you can put it all down to my old mad belief in meanings, that they exist, and my continual striving for them; but, if even the music is mathematical, and every single leaf in nature, even after all the mutations, has a pattern to it behind, how can I deny those meanings? I wouldn't even go so far: I ask you, if the other can touch you, how can meanings not exist? Meanings are maybe gained and lost, but as regarding existence, they do exist for me.