Page 12 - GALIET BENEATH THE ICON: The Lamp Dostoevsky´s Kirillov IV

Kirillov confirms that men don’t kill themselves because they fear pain and the wrath of God. For Kirillov and Russian revolutionaries, God has become a symbol of oppression, suffering and guilt that has inculcated a life of pain, suffering and terror. Yet, however much we witness Kirillov vacillate between truth and untruth, his ideology does embrace a new Russia; a Russia whose sweeping materialism is shaking her old foundations and promising to release her from her chains into liberty, from an oppressive and subjugated God-man world into a free and liberated Man-God consciousness: immanence. Kirillov feels optimistic that this new Man-God ideology will deliver and renew humankind from all its sufferings into a new age of happiness. It bears mentioning that Kirillov’s views tend to contrast with Dostoevsky’s own taxing experiences. While Dostoevsky’s own sufferings and imprisonment are a source of inspiration rather than of destruction, Kirillov’s beliefs are permeated with notions that a suffering life does not lead to enlightenment:
“life is pain, life is terror....now man loves life, because he loves pain and terror... that’s the deception. There will be a new man, happy and proud. For whom it will be the same to live or not to live, he is the new man. He who conquers pain and terror will become himself a God. He who dares kill himself is God. Everyone who wants the supreme freedom must dare to kill himself.” 11
11 p. 121
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