Carnivalistic influences

The Carnival in Dostoevsky’s Novels

The carnival permits the eccentric, the inappropriate, the sensuous.

Carnivalization is a literary concept used by the Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin to analyze the composition of Dostoevsky’s novels. Introduced in his novel, Rabelais and His World, he defines the carnival as an opportunity to “consecrate inventive freedom, to permit the combination of a variety of different elements and their rapprochement, to liberate from the prevailing point of view of the world, from conventions and established truths, from clichés, from all that is humdrum and universally accepted” by creating a fantastic atmosphere that subverts social and hierarchical conventions. Each person in the carnival space is an active participant, so Dostoevsky’s use of carnivalization presents opportunities to catalyze the polyphony. In realizing the relativity of all things, the carnival also affirms the unfinalizability of the characters’ sense of self.

The Four Categories

• The first category is defined by the idea of “free and familiar contact” between all participating individuals, regardless of each person’s socially definitive characteristics. The carnival disregards social status, rank, wealth, reputation, and age, thereby allowing unburdened interaction between everyone present. In Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, the characters’ interactions in the scandal scenes and Myshkin’s eccentric compassion highlight the relativity of socio-hierarchical order. This relativity also underscored by the carnival’s mock crowning and de-crowning of the carnival “king” or “queen”. Nastasya Filippovna’s abrupt claim to power and ability to manipulate the attention in the scene of her birthday party, as well as the shift of power to Fyodor Pavlovich in the scene of the meeting in Zosima’s cell, are examples of this phenomenon. These characters are carnival figures who represent the “inappropriate” and “eccentric”.

• Free contact between all carnival participants must then permit the socially or morally unacceptable: the sensuous, the eccentric, and the inappropriate. This second category refers to all scandal scenes, Raskolnikov’s dreams of the whipped horse and laughing woman, and the earthly “Karamazov baseness”.

• The third category is the dualistic idea of “carnivalistic mésalliances”, which reunites the obscene and grotesque values, thoughts, themes, and tropes with their good counterparts. Bakhtin states there is understanding between the two opposites, and we see this in “carnival pairs” like Nastasya Filippovna and Myshkin, Ivan and Alyosha Karamazov, and Sonya and Raskolnikov. The reunion of the opposites also gives opportunity for dialogue, a nod to the polyphony in Dostoevsky’s novels. Another example of carnivalistic mésalliance would be the meeting of the divine and profane in Myshkin’s epileptic fits, because his fits enable him to feel a lofty sense of the divine while simultaneously being perceived as taken by demonic possession. Carnival symbols are always dualistic because they contain both sides of the whole.

• The last carnivalistic category is profanation, or what Bakhtin calls, “carnivalistic blasphemies”. Bad behavior can go unpunished in the carnival—evident in Fyodor Pavlovich’s Epicurean lifestyle. This aspect of the carnival is about “bringing things down to earth”; it revels in the primitive, reproductive, and earthly side of human nature. Dmitri Karamazov best embodies this sensual aspect of the carnival, as Dostoevsky depicts him as capricious, passionate, and violent: someone entirely governed by his bodily instincts.