The Force of Inertia In Dostoevsky's Krotkaja

Zachem mrachnaja kosnost' razbila to, chto vsego dorozhe? [...] Kosnost'! O,
priroda! Ljudi na zemle odnivot beda! [...] Vse mertvo i vsjudu mertvecy.
Odni tol'ko ljudi, a krugom nich molkhanie-vot zemlja! (1)
(Why did gloomy inertia smash that which was dearest of all? [...] Inertia! O,
nature! People on earth are alone, that's what's wrong. [...] Everything is dead
and there are corpses everywhere. People, alone, and around them, silencesuch is the earth!)
These desparate apostrophes to inertia (kosnost') culminate Dostoevsky's short story "Krotkaja", which appeared in
the November, 1876 issue-of Dnevnik pisatelja. Dostoevsky presents the story as the extemporaneous confession of
a Petersburg pawnbroker whose wife has just killed herself by jumping out of their window, clutching in her arms an
icon of the Mother of God. As the pawnbroker narrates his version of the events leading up to his wife's suicide, her
corpse lies on the table before him.
In the finale of this disturbing confession, not only does the pawnbroker blame this mysterious force, inertia
(kosnost') for this personal tragedy, the suicide of his wife, but he also has come to regard this inertia as a blight on
human existence in general, one which results in human isolation (Ljudi na zemle odnivot beda!") and causes the
earth to appear as a corpse-ridden place (Vse mertvo i vsjudu mertvecy."). Initially, the confessional ramblings of
this griefstricken, guiltridden husband appear rather inscrutable. What does he mean by inertia? And how is it to
blame for all this?
The pawnbroker's perplexing apostrophes to inertia can, however, be deciphered if examined within the context of
other references to inertia, to be found in Dostoevsky's own works as well as elsewhere, in the literary, philosophical
and scientific works of others. Chief among these is Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica
(Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; 1687), where the First Law of Motion posits inertia as an innate
property of all physical matter. By inertia (vis inertiae), Newton means the inability of a physical body to change
from a state of rest or of uniform motion, unless it is acted upon by an external force.
Dostoevsky studied physics at the Academy of Military Engineers and it can therefore safely be assumed that he was
acquainted with the concept of inertia and the role it played in Newton's conception of the universe. (2) Although
Dostoevsky's career as an engineer was short-lived, his interest in physics endured. Apparently, the Academy of
Military Engineers had failed to teach him all he wanted to learn about the subject, for, in 1854, while in exile, he
wrote a letter asking His brother to sendalong with the works of historians, philosophers and the Church
Fathers a recently published physics book. (3) Whether or not Dostoevsky ever received or read this book, the
request attests a continued or renewed interest in the subject.
A concern with physics, and its possible metaphysical ramifications, is further borne out in his writings, through
references to particular physicists, (4) through persistent use of mechanical metaphor, (5) as well as through
deliberation on inertia and other laws of nature. Inertia figures in Dostoevsky's works askosnost', as inercija, and as
an unnamed mechanical force which threatens human life and makes the natural world appear as a colossal machine.
In general Russian usage, the Latinesque word inercija is more strictly associated with Newtonian mechanics than is
the Slavic word kosnost' which has other connotations of sluggishness and stagnation. In the 19th century, however,
kosnost' was also commonly used to denote the mechanical principle of inertia, as defined in Newton's First Law of
Motion. (6) In this context, inertia denotes not immobility or incapacity for movement per se, but rather an

incapacity for self-generated, self-determined movement. In Russian terms, inertia has also been defined as
"samonedejatel'nost'". Curiously, Russian definitions of inertia are often couched in negative terms and portray
inertia as an inability to change, thus making it appear as a defect or vice, whereas Newton's original formulation of
the principle of inertia employed terms such as "continuation" and "persistence" and thereby depicted inertia as a
neutral if not positive quality. (7)
Upon discovering inertia at work within themselves, Dostoevsky's pawnbroker and other heroes despair because
such a mechanization of their behavior poses a threat, if not to the existence of, at least to the exercise of, their free
will. It reduces them to being nothing more than physical matter, subject to the laws of nature and thereby to decay
and death. Such determinism denies certain basic Christian beliefs. The literary confession, the genre to which
"Krotkaja" belongs, has traditionally narrated the hero's struggle-whether successful or not-to change the course of
his life and become anew man. (Indeed, Dostoevsky's pawnbroker often refers to his own attempts to begin a "new
life".) But as a confessional hero attempts to alter his behavior, he often discovers within himself a perplexing
resistance to change. It undermines his will, seeming to render it inoperative. In other words, the confessional hero
finds himself in the state described by St. Paul in his "Epistle to the Romans", when he complains that: The good
that I would I do not, but the evil which I would not that I do. (8) According to Paul, man can be delivered from this
frustrating state only by God's grace and by faith in Christ's resurrection. Paul regards this resurrection as a miracle
for it defies the laws of nature and promises that all creation will have the chance of doing likewise: "the creation
itself will be set free from its bondage to decay." (9) Thus Christian faith miraculously liberates man from
subjugation to the laws of nature.
St. Augustine's confession poses the problem (and offers a solution) in a similar way. He, too, found it hard to do the
good willed. He describes how he had to struggle before his actual conversion to alter behavior that he considered
wrong:
I was quite sure that it was better for me to give myself up to your [God's] love than to surrender to my own lust. But
while I wanted to follow the first course and was convinced that it was right, I was still a slave to pleasures of the
second. (10)
To his dismay and frustration, he found himself unable to change. He persisted on a sinful course even though the
force that originally set him on this course, his will, was no longer being exerted in that direction. Sinning out of
habit, he had become sin's "reluctant victim", whereas he had originally been its "willing tool." (11) At work within
Augustine as he found himself sinning against his will was the spiritual equivalent of the physical principle of
inertia, as defined by Newton more than a millennium later. Eventually, faith in God allowed Augustine to
overcome his inertia.
In his confession, Jean-Jacques Rousseau presents himself as the passive, although often reluctant, victim of external
circumstances over which he felt he had no control. In analyzing his behavior, he resorts to mechanical imagery,
depicting himself as physical matter reluctant to quit its state of rest:
Cette mdiocrit fut en grande partie l'ouvrage de mon naturel ardent, mais faible, moins prompt encore
entreprendre que facile dcourager, sortant du repos par secoursses, mais y rentrant par lassitude et par got...
(12)
Rousseau, unlike Augustine, does not try to overcome his inertial tendencies, for he considers them to be natural,
and for Rousseau, the work of Nature is not to be tampered with. Thus, instead of chronicling a repentant struggle to
change his habits, his confession records his grievances against the external forces which he felt had wrecked his
life.

When Dostoevsky's confessional hero, the pawnbroker, discovers inertia at work in his life, he clearly regards it as a
pernicious threat. And since at the end of his confession, he seems to have failed to disarm this threat, his vision of
inertia naturally becomes more tragic than that of Augustine (who disarmed the threat) and that of Rousseau (who
saw no threat to begin with.) And yet, much like Rousseau, the pawnbroker initially tends to attribute events in his
life to forces external to himself, ones over which he has no control. He sees his whole life as having been
determined by a "tyrannical injustice" against him (tiranicheskaja nespravedlivost' protiv menja), whereby nobody
loved him. He refers to his regiment, which he regards as the most significant event in his life prior to his marriage,
as an "external circumstance" (vneshnee obstojatel'stvo), and stresses its "accidental nature" (sluchajnyj kharakter)
and the fact that it resulted from an "unfortunate concatenation of circumstances" (ot nechastnogo skoplenija
obstojatel'stv). (XXIV:23)
At first, the pawnbroker shows the same fatalism as he responds to his wife's suicide, of which he says:
Glavnoe obidno to, chto vse eto sluchajprostoj, varvarskij, kosnyj sluchaj. (XXIV:34)
(What's most offensive is the fact that all this is an accidenta simple, barbaric, inertial accident.)
In using the epithet "inertial" (kosnyj) to characterize this accident or chance occurrence, the pawnbroker reveals the
close link between fatalism and mechanical determinism, the upshot of both outlooks being the same: a denial of
self-determination. While the pawnbroker regards a lack of self-determination as a universal facet of human
existence, he seems to feel that, in the case of his meek wife, the basic problem was compounded by her lack of selfassertiveness. In other words, her meek, gentle nature made her even more vulnerable to blind forces such as inertia.
In the drafts of the story, the pawnbroker was to comment directly on the extreme susceptibility of the meek to this
force of inertia:
Krotkie tak, otdajutsja dvizheniju, ne rassuzhdajut. Revol'ver. Po pokatoj inercii oslablenija chuvstva. Fu, kakoj ja
vzdor napisal. A ved' eto inercija, i pokataja. (XXIV:318-319)
(The meek are such, they surrender to motion, they don't reason. The revolver. Due to the downhill inertia of
weakening of feeling. Fu, what nonsense I've written. But, truly, it is inertia, and downhill.)
In the final version of this passage where the pawnbroker comments on his wife's attempt to kill him, specific
mention of inertia has been dropped, but mechanical principles such as inertia and gravity are implicit in the
metaphorical model for his wife's behavior which he develops:
Govorjat, chto stojashchie na vysote kak by tjanutsja sami knizu, v bezdnu. Ja dumaju, mnogo samoubijstv i ubijstv
sovershilos' potomu tol'ko, chto revol'ver uzhe byl vzjat v ruki. Tut tozhe bezdna, tut pokatost' v sorok pjat' gradusov,
o kotoruju nel'zja ne skol'znut', i vas chto-to vyzyvaet nepobedimo spustit' kurok. No soznanie, chto ja vse videl, vse
znaju i zhdu ot nee smerti molcha,--moglo uderzhat' ee na pokatosti. (XXIV:21)
(They say that people standing on an altitude somehow gravitate of their own accord downwards, into the abyss. I
think that many suicides and murders have been committed simply because the revolver had already been taken in
hand. That is also an abyss, it's a forty-five degree inclined plane which one has no choice but to slide down, and
something invincibly causes you to pull the trigger. However, the realization that I had seen everything, that I know
everything and that I am awaiting death from her silently, was able to hold her back on the inclined plane.)
As he describes the blind, mechanical nature of his wife's behavior, the pawnbroker depicts himself as an external
force, interrupting her inertial slide down the inclined plane-she points the gun at his head but doesn't carry through

by pulling the trigger and he assumes it is because she noticed him wake up and observe her. This shock jolted her
out of her inertia. Such is his mechanistic interpretation of his wife's attempt murder of him; similarly he argues that
her suicide, an "inertial accident" (kosnyj sluchaj), would have been averted had he arrived home five minutes
earlier. Apparently, he assumes that he would have once again acted as an "external force" interfering with the
inertial progress of her plan:
Glavnoe, obidno to, chto vse eto sluchaj-prostoj, varvarskij, kosnyj sluchaj. Vot obida! Pjat' minut, vsego, vsego
pjat' minut opozdal! Pridi ja za pjat' minut-i mgnovenie proneslos' by mimo, kak oblako, i ej by nikogda potom ne
prishlo v golovu. (XXIV:34)
(What's most offensive is the fact that all this is an accidenta simple, barbarous, inertial accident! This is the
offense! Five minutes, only, only five minutes late! Had I come five minutes sooner-then the moment would have
flown by like a cloud, and it would never again have come into her head.)
That the pawnbroker's arrival would have permanently banished thoughts of suicide from his wife's head is unlikely.
In apparent attempt to evade responsibility, the pawnbroker depicts his wife's death as an event determined by
chance and other causes beyond their control. In this vein he asks:
A chto esli malokrovie? Prosto ot malokrovija, ot istoshchenija zhiznennoj energii? (XXIV:35)
(And what if it was anemia? Simply because of anemia, because of exhaustion of vital energy?)
When he suggests that anemia and exhaustion of vital energy caused his wife to act as she did, he seems to offer a
biological explanation for her behavior, however, the term "zhiznennaja energija" also suggests another branch of
science, physics. The specific notion of this exhaustion might even be a veiled reference to inertia, since the term
vital force (zhiznennaja sila) was used in physics books to denote the mysterious force, possessed by animals,
including humans, that differentiates them from other matter by enabling them to change from a state of rest or
motion without the aid of an external forcein other words, possession of this "vital force" means freedom from
inertia. (13)
By the same token, the pawnbroker's declaration that the meek one's "vital energy" has been exhausted is in a sense
tantamount to a declaration that she had become a victim of inertia. In these repeated attempts to see inertia as the
force "animating", or more accurately, "mechanizing" his wife, the pawnbroker seemed to evade his responsibility
for what has happened. However, near the very end of his confession he suddenly admits his own guilt for what has
transpired. He confesses that he is responsible for sapping her of her vital energy: "Izmuchil ja eevot chto!"
(XXIV:35) ("I tortured her to deaththat's what!") At this moment, he seems to understand that his marriage was
doomed and his wife, driven to suicide by his own intransigence, by his inability to change or adapt in any way: in
spite of his good intentions (the good that he would), he continued to threat his wife unkindly (to do the evil that he
would not) and eventually "tortured her to death."
When the pawnbroker discovers this inertia within himself, he discovers that he has become nothing more than
physical matter. As such, he is necessarily subject to the same laws that rule the physical world. Within the context
of Dostoevsky's metaphysics, the end result of these laws of nature is always death. (14) Lev Shestov, in discussing
the end of "Krotkaja", equates inertia (kosnost') with the "boundless power of death over life" (bezgranichnaja vlast'
smerti nad zhizn'ju). (15) As the pawnbroker contemplates his wife's corpse, he faces all-too-convincing evidence of
the power of these laws of nature. (16) Still, he keeps irrationally hoping that his wife will open her eyes and thus
that the laws of nature will be reversed:

O, pust' vse, tol'ko pust' by ona otkryla khot' raz glaza! (XXIV:35)
(Oh, let it all be such, only let her open her eyes just one more time.)
But she does not open her eyes, the laws of nature carry the day, and he succumbs to a vision of the universe in
which these laws have become both inexorable and irreversible.
At the end of the confession, the inertia the pawnbroker discovered within himself seems to have permeated the
earth, making it appear as a corpse-infested place. Even the sun, traditionally seen as a life-giving force (one
opposing inertia) , becomes a corpse:
Kosnost'! O, priroda! Ljudi na zemle odnivot beda! [ ... ] Govorjat, solnce zhivit vselennuju. Vzojdet solnce i
posmotrite na nego, razve ono ne mertvec? Vse mertvo, i vsjudu mertvecy. Odni tol'ko ljudi, a krugom nikh
molchanievot zemlja! "Ljudi, ljubite drug druga"kto eto skazal? chej eto zavet? (XXIV:35)
(Inertia! O, nature! People on earth are alone that's what's wrong. [...] They say that the sun animates the
universe. The sun will come out, just look at itisn't it a corpse? Everything is dead and there are corpses
everywhere. People, alone, and around them silence such is the earth. "Love one another"--who said this? whose
commandment is this?)
When the pawnbroker alludes to human isolation and asks about the commandment to "love one another", he
implies that inertia causes not only mortality but also a failure to love-or perhaps it's the reverse: a failure to love
causes inertia. (The point is that it is a vicious circle and in vicious circles it is virtually impossible to distinguish
cause from effect, although one thing is clear: vicious circles operate by virtue, or by vice, of inertia.)
Inertia, isolation and death have replaced the deliverance, love and paradise that the pawnbroker wanted to create.
He reminds his wife's corpse that: "Raj byl u menja v dusha, ja by nasadil ego krugom tebja!" (" Paradise was in ray
soul. I would have planted it around you." XXIV:35) But the "good that he would", the paradise existing in his soul,
failed to materialize.
Dostoevsky had previously concerned himself with this same network of ideasinertia and mortality, on the one
hand, and love and immortality, on the otherin a notebook entry made at the time of his first wife's death in 1864.
(The story "Krotkaja" interprets and expands on the ideas outlined in the notebook entry and thus it can be seen as a
gloss on it.) In fact, Dostoevsky, like his later fictional pawnbroker, pondered his wife's death while her corpse lay
on the table before him. He begins: "Masha lezhit na stole. Uvizhus' li s nej?" Then he addresses the failure of
human beings to fulfill Christ's commandment about love:
Vozljubit' cheloveka, kak samogo sebja, po zapovedi Khristovoj,nevozmozhno. Zakon, lichnosti na zemle
svjazyvaet. Ja prepjatstvuet. (XX:172)
(To love someone, as oneself, in accordance with Christ's commandment, is impossible. The law of the ego is
binding on earth. The "I" stands in the way.")
This "law of the ego" (or selfishness) is, in a sense, also what causes the pawnbroker's intransigence and frustrates
his attempts to love his wife.
The thematic parallelism between this notebook entry and "Krotkaja" continues, for in the notebook entry
Dostoevsky switches, in an apparent non-sequitur, from his discussion of Christian love to the subject of materialism
and inertia, writing :

Uchenie materialistov--vseobshchaja kosnost' i mekhanizm veshchestva, znachit smert'. Uchenie istinnoj filosofiiunichtozhenie kosnosti, to est' mysl', to est' centr i Sintez vselennoj i naruzhnoj formy ee veshchestva, to est' Bog,
to est' zhizn' beskonechnaja. (XX:175)
(The teaching of the materialistsuniversal inertia and the mechanization of matter, amounts to death. The
teaching of the true philosophy is the annihilation of inertia, it is thought, it is the center and Synthesis of the
universe and its external form, matter, it is God, it is eternal life.)
In the notebook entry, Dostoevsky makes it clear that embracing materialism means succumbing to inertia and
results in death, whereas embracing God (or the so-called "true philosophy") means annihilating inertia and results
in eternal life; however he does not directly explain how the Christian love which had been discussed throughout the
rest of the notebook entry fits into this scheme. But he implies what he later, in "Krotkaja", will demonstrate more
explicitly-namely, that love provides a potential means of annihilating inertia.
As he concerns himself with materialism, in general, and inertia, in particular, Dostoevsky follows in the footsteps
of various philosophers who explored the metaphysical ramifications of the physical theories of Newton, Descartes
and others. (18) A concern with physics permeates European philosophical works of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. For instance, the German philosopher, Johann Gottlieb Fichte describes the human spirit as a machine
governed by "inertia of the spirit" (Trgheit des Geistes), (19) He also explains how this inertia constitutes the root
of evil in man:
Trgheit sonach, die durch lange Gewohnheit sich selbst ins unendliche reproducirt, und bald gnzliches
Unvermgen zum Guten wird, ist das wahre, angebohrne, in der menschlichen Natur selbst liegende radicale Uebel
... (20)
[Accordingly, inertia, which out of longstanding habit reproduces itself ad infinitum and which soon becomes a
complete incapacity for doing good, is the true, inborn, fundamental evil, lodged in human nature itself.]
Inertia functions in the spirits of Dostoevsky's heroes in the very same way, keeping them from doing the good that
they would and causing them to do the evil that they would not. Specific knowledge of Fichte's writings on the
subject probably did not contribute to the development of Dostoevsky's ideas on inertia. Ignorant of Fichte though
he may have been, Dostoevsky was obviously aware of, and to a degree affected by, modern Western philosophy's
obsession with physics.
The Russian philosopher, Vladimir Solov'ev, with whom Dostoevsky was in contact during the late seventies, (21)
also shared this concern with inertia. In fact, in his "Lectures on God-Manhood" (1873), Solov'ev identifies inertia
(kosnost') and impenetrability (nepronicaemost'), as the two qualities that beset the natural world once it had fallen
away from the "divine unity" (bozhestvennoe nachalo). (22) Inertia and impenetrability, when present in (fallen)
human beings, not only mechanize human existence but also cause excessive egoism and a denial of others, both
contributing to make love for another impossible.
The human predicament - man in his fallen state - as described by Solov'ev in these lectures had already been
illustrated by Dostoevsky's pawnbroker and others of his earlier confessional heroes who, like the pawnbroker, had
fallen victim to inertia. (23) Chief among these others is the underground man who confesses to his own inertia
(inercija), defined as "conscious-sitting-with-arms-folded", and who also criticizes his supposed antitheses, the men
of action and les hommes de la nature et de la vrit for their active, machine-like existence. But, actually, as he
himself secretly realizes, both types of existence discussed - his own conscious stasis and the men of action's
mindless motion - can be seen to be determined by the same principle, inertia, for as defined by Newton, it embraces
the blind continuance of both motion and rest. Similarly, Ippolit in "The Idiot" may be regarded as a victim (and/or

perpetrator) of inertia: when he loses faith in triumphing over the laws of nature, the world appears to him as "some
colossal machine, technologically up-to-date" (kakaja-nibud' gromadnaja mashina novejshego ustrojstva), which is
ruled by, and run on, "a dark, insolent, senselessly-eternal force to which all is subjected" ("temnaja, naglaja,
bessmyslenno-vechnaja sila, kotoroj vse podchineno" VIII:339). Ippolit chooses to describe the force in these terms,
but had he named the force that keeps the machine in motion, the name given would surely have been inertia. When
Ippolit and the pawnbroker conclude that inertia has taken over them as well as the universe, they begin to see death
everywhere, this wareness of human mortality making life unbearable to them. In "Notes from underground," actual
death remains more remote to the hero, as he boasts of his senseless longevity; still, a concern with death permeates
his confession and when he claims to be "still-born" (mertvorozhdennyj), his point seems to be that being born into a
life of inertia is tantamount to being born dead.
The vicious circle established in Dostoevsky's works between inertia, sin and mortality also harks back to Patristic
thought. Specifically, the Church Fathers held that by sinning man became mortal - that is, he re-became the matter
out of which he had originally been created. In the process, man forfeited the spiritual, immortal nature God had
endowed him with at creation. Gregory of Nyssa, the 4th century Church Father whose mystical writings were very
popular in the Russia of Dostoevsky's day, defines divine nature, as a "state of not being bound by any law of
nature" (in Russian translation: nesvjazannost' nikakoj prirodnoj siloj). (24) Thus, man's being subject to necessity of
any sort (including the physical laws) is proof of his having forfeited his divine nature. Thus when Dostoevsky
applies the concept of inertia to describe man's wretchedness, his fallen sinful state, he does not create a metaphor,
but rather carries certain Patristic concepts to their literal conclusion: sinning man becomes nothing more than
physical matter and therefore is subjected to all physical laws, and since Newton's time, primary among these has
been the force of inertia. Dostoevsky's special understanding of inertia and its role in human existence results then
from a superimposition of Newtonian physics onto Patristic metaphysics.
But if, according to Christian thought, the "old Adam" brought man mortality and subjection to the laws of nature,
the "new Adam", Christ, promised him immortality and deliverance from these laws. Specifically, through his
incarnation and resurrection, Christ triumphed over the laws governing physical matter and thereby promised man
the possibility of doing likewise. As St. Paul writes, "the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay."
When Dostoevsky argues in his notebook that in order to achieve eternal life, the "true philosophy", the "synthesis
of the universe", etc., one must annihilate inertia, he is in perfect harmony with Christian theology although he
employs the lingo of modern philosophy.
Yet the pawnbroker and most of Dostoevsky's confessional heroes, rather than annihilate inertia, seem to be
annihilated by it. They are cursed by their inability to change or reform and their failure to use their will in a
productive way. But, wretched as they are, these heroes nevertheless identify, if only remotely, the means by which
inertia could be annihilated. As he alludes to the commandment to love one another ("ljudi, ljubite drug druga - kto
eto skazal?"), the pawnbroker reveals his awareness of the redemptive potential of selfless love, even of its specific
potential for delivering man from inertia. In other confessions, the heroes realize that faith in the resurrection
(Ippolit) and "zhivaja zhizn'" (the underground man) also offer freedom from inertia.
But the pawnbroker and most other Dostoevskian heroes fail to love another, to have faith, to partake of "zhivaja
zhizn'". They fail to "do the good they would." On this very account, according to Dostoevsky, they become "tragic
heroes", but tragic heroes of a particular sort, ones who partake of the special "tragedy of the underground". In 1875,
Dostoevsky explained this when he wrote:
Ja gorzhus', chto vpervye vyvel nastojashchego cheloveka russkogo bol'shinstva i vpervye razoblachil ego
urodlivuju storonu. [...] Tol'ko ja odin vyvel tragizm podpol'ja, sostojashchij v stradanii, v samokazni, v soznanii
luchshego i v nevozmozhnosti dostich' ego i, glavnoe, v jarkom ubezhdenii etikh neschastnykh, chto i vse takovy, a
stalo byt', ne stoit ispravljat'sja! (XXVI:329)

[I pride myself that I was the first to depict the contemporary man of the Russian majority and that I was the first to
unmask his ugly tragic side. [...] I'm the only one to have depicted the tragedy of the underground, consisting of
suffering, of self-castigation, of consciousness of the best and of the inability to achieve it, and, most of all, of the
clear conviction of those unfortunates, that all are thus, and consequently, there's no need to reform!]
For Dostoevsky, then being "tragic" means falling victim to inertia, allowing one's life to be determined by it rather
than one's will, allowing it to prevent reform; and it means accepting this personal inertia as a universal, natural law
from which there is no deliverance.
NOTES
1.

2.

3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

F.M. Dostoevskij, "Krotkaja", in Polnoe sobranie soinenij v tridcati tomax (Leningrad: Nauka, 1982),
XXIV, 35. The volume and page numbers given hereafter in parentheses after citations refer to this edition
of Dostoevsky's works.
In a letter written in 1840 to his brother, Dostoevsky describes his studies at the Academy of Military
Engineers and mentions taking a physics course: "Znaesh' li Geodeziju? U nas (kurs Bolotova). Fizika,
(kurs Ozemova)." F.M. Dostoevskij , Letter to M.M. Dostoevskij, January 1, 1840, 16 in Pis'ma, ed. A.S.
Dolinin (Moscow: Academia, 1928), I. 55.
Letter 62, 27 March, 1854, I, 145. Dostoevsky asks for "fizika Pisareva", but Dolinin notes that: "zdes' po
vsej verojatnosti, familija nazvana nepravil'no: ne Pisarev, a N. Pisarevskij , "kurs obshcheponjatnoj fiziki"
153

kotorogo vyshel pervym izdaniem v 1852 g., 2-m izdaniem tomakhv 1854-1857 gg." Pis'ma, I, 515.
For example, in Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky names the physicists Newton and Kepler among other
"lawmakers" such as Napoleon and Mahomet, who, according to Raskol'nikov's theory, had the right to
commit crimes (VI, 199). Further reference to Newton appears in the notebooks for the novel where his
creative genius is associated with that of Shakespeare: Chasto rozhdalas' vo mne mysl': muzhik pashet, a
on, mozhet, N'juton al' Shekspir. Padaet jabloko, zarozhdaetsja mysl' i ugasaet. Kaby oshchee-to
obrazovanie-s. Ne nado sporit' (o sistemakh) i nado zhit'. Rabotat' budut mashiny. Khorosho by khot'
kirpichik." (VII, 197)
9. Dostoevsky often turns to mechanical metaphors to describe the apparent paralysis of will occurring in his
heroes when they become involved in violent activity. For example, in The Devils, Liputin's unwilling
continuation of his involvement in terrorist activity after he has already realized its wrongness is described
in mechanical terms of inertia and external forces: Liputin had become "tol'ko gruboe, beschuvstvennoe
telo, inercionnaja massa", "im dvizhet postoronnaja uzhasnaja sila." (X, 430) Similarly, in Crime and
Punishment, mechanical imagery is used to describe Raskol'nikov's behavior prior to the murder of the
pawnbroker: "Posjednij zhe den' [...] podejstvoval na nego pochti sovsem mekhanicheski... Tochno on
popal klochkom odezhdy v koleso mashiny, i ego nachalo v nee vtjagivat'." (VI, 58)
10. Herzen in his "Pis'ma ob izuchenii prirody" uses the term kosnost' rather than inercija when discussing
physical concepts. For example, he writes that for Galileo as for Newton, matter was conceived as
something "dejatel'noe odnoju konsost'ju". A. I Gercen, Sochinenija v devjati tomakh(Moscow: Gos. Izd.
Xd. Lit., 1955), V, 280. [Joseph Frank cites evidence of Dostoevsky's familiarity with, and fondness for,
this particular work of Herzen's in Dostoevsky: The Seeds of Revolt (Princeton: Princeton university Press,
1976), p. 233, footnote.)
11. Pisarevsky, in the physics book which Dostoevsky requested from his brother, uses the terminercija
primarily but he also lists kosnost' along with samonedejatel'nost' as other names forinercija. Nikolaj
Pisarevskij, Obshcheponjatnaja mekhanika (St. Petersburg, Vol'f, 1854), p. 12.

12. See, for example, the following negative description of inertia: "Svojstvo inercii-svojstvo chisto
otricatel'noe, eto absoljutnaja nesposobnost' tel izmenjat' svoe dvizhenie..." in "Inercija", entry in:
Brokgaus-Efron, Enciklopedicheskij slovar' (St. Petersburg: Efron, 1894), XXV:184. Similarly, Pisarevskij
defines inertia in terms of the inability of matter to change: "Vsjakoe telo, nachodjashcheesja v pokoe ne
mozhet samo soboju prijti v dvizhenie. Vsjakoe telo, nakhodjashcheesja v dvizhenii ne mozhet samo
soboju izmenit' sostojanija svoego dvizhenija." p. 11. Newton's more neutral definition of inertia reads as
13. 154
14.
15. follows: "Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is
compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it." Isaac Newton, Mathematical Principles of
Natural Philosophy (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952), Great Books of the Western World,
XXXIV, 14.
16. "Epistle to the Romans", 7:19.
17. Ibid., 8:21
18. St. Augustine, Confessions, trans. R.S. Pine-Coffin (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961), p. 165. [Book 8]
19. Ibid. Augustine does not, however, imply lack of responsibility for this "reluctant", unwilling sin. He
explains: "For the rule of sin is the force of habit, by which the mind is swept along and held fast even
against its will, yet deservedly, because it fell into the habit of its own accord." p. 165. Since a human being
falls into sin of his own accord, he maintains responsibility for his sin.
20. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions (Paris: Tallandier, s.d.), II, 51-2. [Book 7.] Rousseau's choice imagery
in the passage quoted might be an indirect result of the debate over Newtonian (and Cartesian) mechanics
which was being carried on in French intellectual circles at the time. Rousseau devotes a section of the
"Profession de foi du Vicaire Savoyard" in Emile to a discussion of the philosophical ramifications of
Newton's discoveries.
21. Pisarevskij uses the term "zhiznennaja sila" in his discussion of inertia. Having posited inertia as an innate
property of all matter, he then notes that if animals are able to change from rest to motion, it is thanks to the
"vital force" they are endowed with. He further notes that "s unichtozheniem etoj sily, dejstvujushchej v
organizme zhivotnykh vo vse prodolzhenie ikh zhizni, telo kazhdogo zhivotnogo delaetsja podobnym
vsjakomu neorganicheskomu telu, napr. kamnju, vode i t. p.; tela zhivotnykh v etom sluchae perestajut byt'
sposobnym perekhodit' sami soboju iz sostojanija pokoja v sostojanie dvizhenie." p. 11. Thus, when an
animals' "vital force" is destroyed, it becomes subject to inertia.
22. Dostoevsky establishes this link between the laws of nature and death in several of his works. For instance,
in The Idiot, when Ippolit loses faith in the possibility of man's ever triumphing over the laws of nature,
death begins to seem insurmountable and life itself loses all sense. At this point, Ippolit opts for suicide.
Similarly, the suicide of the fictional "N. N.", discussed by Dostoevsky in the October and December, 1876
issues of Diary of a Writer, results from the conviction of this "materialist" that life is subject to "kosnye
zakony (XXIII, 147) or permeated by "kosnost'" (XXIV, 47). Through the examples of Ippolit and "N.M.",
Dostoevsky presents the notion that a life governed solely by the laws of nature is tantamount to death.
23.
24. 155
25.
26. Lev Shestov, "O pererozhdenii ubezhdenij u Dostoevskogo" in Umozrenie i otkrovenie (Paris: YMCA
Press, 1964), pp. 186-7.
27. After discussing Ippolit and his rebellion against death, Shestov turns to "Krotkaja" where Dostoevsky "s
takoj zhe siloj povtorjaet svoj vopros po povodu bezvremenno pogibshej molodoj zhizni." He then quotes
the pawnbroker's statement about kosnost' and asks: "Otkuda prishla eta kosnost', eta bezgranichnaja vlast'
smerti nad zhizn'ju..."

28. In this sense, the meek one's corpse serves the same function as the Holbein picture of Christ's deposition in
Ippolit's confession - both sights serve as inexorable proof of the sway of the laws of nature and of death
over humanity.
29. In this notebook entry, the capacity of love for annihilating inertia remains potential since, as Dostoevsky
points out, "vozljubit' cheloveka, kak samogo sebja, po zapovedi Khristovoj,nevozmozhno. [...] Ja
prepjatstvuet."
30. In Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, David Hume plays indirect tribute to the popularity of
inertia as a topic of concern among philosophers when he writes: "I need not examine at length the vis
inertiae which is so much talked of in the new philosophy..." (New York: Collier, 1910), Harvard Classics,
XXXVII, 365.
31. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, "Ueber Belebung und Erhhung des reinen Interesse fr Wahrheit" inWerke
(Stuttgart: Friedrich Frommann Verlag), III, 86.
32. I learned of Fichte's use of the concept inertia from the following passage of an essay by S.I. Gessen's on
Brothers Karamazov: "Eto ponimanie Dostoevskim unynija, kak materi vsekh grekhov, vpolne sovpadaet s
drevnim predaniem pravoslavnoj cerkvi. Zamechatel'no, chto k skhozhemu s etim rezul'tatu prishel v svoe
vremja i Fikhte, kogda on pytalsja osvobodit' Kantovu etiku dolga ot prisushchago ej moralizma i
formalizma (v t. naz. "ioannovskij period" svoej filosofii, sr. v pervuju ochered' "Anweisung zum seligen
Leben", no takzhe uzhe i "Grundlage der Wissenschaftslehre" 1794 g., gde "Trgheit des Herzens"
polagaetsja istochnikom vsjakago grekha." S.I. Gessen, "Tragedija dobra v Brat'jakh Karamazovykh
Dostoevskogo" in O Dostoevskom, ed. Donald Fanger, Brown University Slavic Reprint, IV, 219.
33. Fichte, "Das System der Sittenlehre" in Werke, V, 185.
34. Radlov notes that Dostoevsky and Solov'ev became acquainted "no earlier than 1877." E.L. Radlov,
"Solov'ev i Dostoevskij" in F.M. Dostoevskij: Stat'i i materialy, ed. A.S. Dolinin (Leningrad: Mysl', 1924),
II, 158. ("Krotkaja" was written in 1876; Solov'ev's "Lectures on God-Manhood", attended by Dostoevsky,
were read in 1878.)
35. Vladimir Solov'ev, "Chtenija o Bogochelovechestve" in Sobranie sochinenija, 2nd edition, (St. Petersburg:
36. 156
37.
38. Prosveshchenie, s.d.). III, 143.
39. Although the term inertia and mechanical imagery do not figure in Stavrogin's confession, it still shows that
he, too suffers from "inertia of the spirit." Tikhon speaks of Stavrogin as being characterized by "a capacity
for inactivity, in spite of total desire for action." Stavrogin may inspire those who come into contact with
him to act but he himself remains incapable of self-generated action or motion.
40. Quoted in G.V. Florovsky, Vostochnye otcy IV-go veka, (Gregg International Publishers, 1972), p. 158.
Gregory of Nyssa expands on this notion that the divine is not subject to physical necessity in the following
passage: "Esli by takaja neobkhodimost' vozobladala chelovecheskoju zhizn'ju, to s etoj storony stal by
neveren obraz, po semu neskhodstvu sdelavshis' dalekim ot Pervoobraza. Ibo kak estestvo, podchinennoe i
poraboshchennoe kakim-libo neobkhodimostjam, moglo by imenovat'sja obrazom estevstva
carstvennogo?" Florovsky, p. 158. In his analysis of Gregory's theology, Florovsky uses the word inertia
(inercija), perhaps implying that had his physics been Newtonian rather than Aristotelian Gregory might
have used the word himself. Florovsky writes: "Sud'ba chelovechestva opredeljaetsja Bozhestvennym
prednaznacheniem i svobodnym izbraniem voli. Chelovek sozdan svobodnym i emu postavlena
dinamicheskaja zadacha. Eta zadacha ne byla reshena. Naprazhenie voli oslabelo, inercija prirody
prevozmogla nad stremleniem k Bogu." Florovsky, p. 164.
41. Other confessional heroes who fall victim to inertia are the dreamer in "White Nights", the underground
man, Ippolit, and Stavrogin. Dostoevsky does present some confessional heroes who are more successful in
managing to change and to overcome inertia: these are the "ridiculous man" and the "raw youth."