Page 22 - GALIET BENEATH THE ICON: The Lamp Dostoevsky´s Kirillov IV

Earlier, Kirillov had said to Peter that to “kill someone would be the lowest point of self-will, and you show your soul in that. I am not you. I want the highest point and I’ll kill myself.”32 Although Wasiolek argues that by this action “Kirillov negates the freedom which he advocates by bringing back the old values of God from which his suicide is supposed to liberate him”33, we know Kirillov did not have set values about God, he has been tormented and filled with self-doubt ever since the beginning of the novel. Thus, in Kirillov’s lunatic and frenetic dance, we hear the blast, the irremediable gunshot, while we hold the page petrified in angst, terror and disbelief. We can’t help wander if Hamlet’s words are inflicting their immortal wounds through Dostoevsky’s mind,
“To be, or not to be—that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, To be, or not to be—that is the question: Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them?
To die, to sleep-- No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heartache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to--'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished: to die, to sleep.
32 p. 692
33 Shneidman, N.N. Dostoevsky and Suicide. London: Mosaic Press. University of Toronto. 59
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