Page 9 - GALIET BENEATH THE ICON: The Lamp Dostoevsky´s Kirillov IV

In The Possessed, 3 Fyodor Dostoevsky, no less of a genius than an astute observer of his time and the human psyche, creates a compelling satire of nihilists, particularly in Aleksei Kirillov. In a 19th century Europe and Russia pierced by moral black holes, Kirillov’s suicide embodies a profound philosophical turmoil and existential crisis: to be or not to be. As in all revolutionary periods of fundamental change and uncertainty where standards of decency are challenged and defied, groups emerge to take the law into their own hands; it is time for murder, mob violence, destruction, incendiarism and suicide. Invariably in such times, new philosophies of life are entertained including the reaffirmation and resurgence of the Dionysian principle.
Kirillov, therefore, embodies the ideals of the nihilist revolutionary who is obsessed with deconstructing the grand narratives of tradition. He wants to be the agent of destruction of the God-Ideal by creating another supreme form: the Man- God ideal. Man will become God when he “conquers pain and fear,”4 says Kirillov, and when he “dares to kill himself”5 in the name of absolute freedom. By contextualizing his three dialogues, we will explore Kirillov’s shattering ambiguity and oscillation between theism and atheism together with his ideologies of being (life as suffering) and not being (death as
3 Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Devils. Trans. Michael Katz. London: Oxford University Press, 1992.
4 p. 121
5 p. 122
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