Holbein's Body of Christ in the Tomb and the Idiot

[sadfireworks]

confused and delighted  

I'm trying to finish something I wrote about Myshkin's corruption. I hope it won't take too long.

[Pavo]

Welcome back, Lev.  We missed you.  

There is a question regarding exactly which one of Holbein's Madonna's is referred to in the Idiot.  Maybe you can help.

This may be changing the subject, but I wanted to go back to the question of the other Holbein painting mentioned in this novel.

First of all, Dostoevsky refers to Holbein's Madonna in Dresden.  There is a Holbein Madonna in Darmstadt, Germany, and one in Solothurn, Switzerland.  So, unless one of the paintings was exhibited in Dresden and Dostoevsky saw it there.  I have assumed because of the letter D (Darmstadt, Dresden) that the Darmstadt Madonna was intended.  There may be another possibility, that another Holbein Madonna was in Dresden, but is destroyed.  Dresden was burned in WWII.

The Darmstadt painting can be seen here:  http://gallery.euroweb.hu/cgi-bin/gallery/highlight.cgi?file=html/h/holbein/hans_y/1531/1darmst.html&find=madonna  Click on the small picture to get a big one.

You will notice that on the website I just gave you, this painting is actually a portrait of the Meyer family.  If you read the commentary, you will find it is interesting that Holbein included Meyer's dead first wife behind his current wife, and his two dead sons next to him, with his living wife and daughter in the front right side.

Intriguing that there was no boundary between life and death in the creation of this family portrait.  I don't know if this was commonly done in the 16th century, or if it is unique to Holbein and this painting.  Wow.  I can't see any analogy in Dostoevsky, but I wonder if there is one.

If you are interested, here is the other Madonna by Holbein.  

http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/h/holbein/hans_y/1525/04solot1.jpg

Her sad countenance may actually fit the story more closely than the other painting; Myshkin was comparing Alexandra Ivanovna's sad face to Holbein's Madonna.

[Lev]

Thanks Pavo .
I have no idea on the paintings really. The Darmstadt is very beautiful -- the colors are very deep and the mood is solemn. It's painted with a lot of delicacy. The empathy/suffering shown in the face of the child Christ is incredibly well done I think. Holbein has also put the Madonna's cloak over the father's shoulder. There is that sense of corruption in a pratical sense: the presence of death and suffering. I think also that this sense of death was stronger in past centuries, generally speaking.
I don't know if the inclusion of departed family members is normal or not but in this case it definitely adds a lot to the meaning of the painting. Do you remember how at the end of Job, though "the Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning" by doubling his livestock, he has only ten children (well, if you can even say "only" about that many children), the same amount as before his trials. Some have noted that this is because of the reality of the Resurrection -- the first ten were not really lost and so he really did have double the amount of children as well.
"For I know that my Redeemer lives, and he shall stand at last on the earth; and after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see God.... How my heart yearns within me!" (Job 19:25-27)  
Is it possible that there is absolutely no description or copy of the lost Dresden Madonna? That is unfortunate that it was destroyed .

[sadfireworks]

pt. 3

but still trying to improve things...I hope it contains some observations we can discuss


On the corruption of Myshkin's character


Throughout the novel Dostoevsky establishes who Prince Myshkin is and whom he changes into. The innocent, humble, outspoken Myshkin leaves Switzerland to Russia, whereby his conflict with people causes him to transform into a quieter, reflective, darker person. That transition is figurative to represent how the man of values and humility becomes dysfunctional in an intolerant society, and inevitably loses parts of himself as he endures it--how the free spirited can't stand to the world of "balances and contracts", and how people cannot preserve a healthy body and pure heart with self-interest and "permissible" trickery.

In ‘isolation’, Myshkin had managed to remain authentic, guileless and healthy, but in his confrontation with people his body falls ill again and his heart is embittered.

Physical intrusion is happening constantly throughout the story. Now that one comes to think of his “progress” within the novel in relation to the deterioration of the body of Christ in Holbein's painting, one can come to visualize Myshkin's body decaying in the novel as he undergoes suffering. Sweating nervously in his encounter with the Epachin family, the first stages of his reticence. Nastya Filippovna abandoning him in Moscow, a pallor setting in. The discussion with Rogozhin when he goes to visit him, the blackening of his fingers, the mockery that Aglaya makes of him, the nostrils caving in, the constant remarks to his idiocy—a sense of death.

At first, there seems to be two things that provoke Myshkin's reticence; conversations about love and faith. When asked whether he loved someone in Switzerland, he avoids a direct answer, in the same way that when asked whether he believes in God, he replies with another question, eventually talking about religious feeling.

Perhaps what Dostoevsky is suggesting is that the corruption of character is as much inevitable as the corruption of the body. That people can't preserve a pure heart in the same way as they can't preserve a perfect body, and that is why it's so unlikely and difficult to find a positively beautiful man in our society. And in case one of these men comes to exist, he is ridiculed by others, is an “idiot” and his nature gives in. The only way such man can exist is in isolation, because once he comes to confront people he is bound to react and to face conflict within himself.

That's the dilemma, which perpetrates the universe of "The Idiot". The idea behind Myshkin's character cannot survive, the only way it can survive within reality is for him to be considered idiotic. And instead of concentrating on the portrayal of a positively beautiful man who can function, which is infinitely more difficult without compromising the man to be unreal, Dostoevsky decided to write about the corruption of a quasi-positively beautiful man.

"He was beginning anyhow to believe in the Russian soul. Oh, he had endured so much, so much that was quite new to him in those six months, and unlooked-for, and unheard-of, and unexpected. But another man's soul is murky, and the Russian soul is murky; it is so for many. Here he had long been getting together with Rogozhin, close together, together in a "brotherly" way--but did he know Rogozhin?
And anyhow what chaos, what turmoil, what ugliness there sometimes is in all that!”

"Will Rogozhin kill? Has it been decided that Rogozhin will kill?"

"Is Rogozhin not capable of brightness?

During such time Myshkin reflects thoroughly about Nastya Filippovna, Rogozhin and himself, and convinces himself that he judged Rogozhin wrongly, that the murkiness was not in "another man" but in himself. "Compassion and understanding will give understand to Rogozhin himself. Compassion is the chief and perhaps the only law of being for all mankind. Oh, how unpardonably and dishonorably guilty he was before Rogozhin!"

"It will all be resolved!...How gloomily Rogozhin said today that he was "losing his faith"! The man must be suffering greatly. He says he "likes looking at that painting: ; he doesn't like it, it means he feels a need. Rogozhin is not only a passionate soul; he's a fighter after all: he wants to recover his lost faith by force. He needs it now to the point of torment...Yes! to believe in something! to believe in somebody! But still how strange that Holbein painting is..."

"Or was there in fact something in Rogozhin, that is, in today's whole image of the man, in the totality of his words, movements, actions, glances, something that might justify the prince's terrible foreboding and the disturbing whisperings of his demon? Something visible in itself, but difficult to analyze and speak about, impossible to justify by sufficient reasons, but which nevertheless produced, despite all this difficulty and impossibility, a perfectly whole and irrefutable impression, which involuntarily turned into the fullest conviction?...Conviction--of what? (Oh, how tormented the prince was by the monstrosity, the "humiliation" of this conviction, of "this base foreboding," and how he blamed himself! "Say then, if you dare, of what?" he said ceaselessly to himself, in reproach and defiance.

"Formulate, dare to express your whole thought, clearly, precisely, without hesitation! Oh, I am dishonorable!" he repeated with indignation and with a red face. "With what eyes am I to look at this man now all my life! Oh, what a day! Oh, God, what a nightmare!"

"How is it that, like an ailing woman, I believe in every forebonding today!". A new, unbearable surge of shame, almost despair, riveted him to the spot"

"Yes, I’m a man without heart and a coward!"

"Parfyon, I don't believe it!"

At Rogozhin's, the prince develops a suspicion in his "friend". When leaving his house and after Rogozhin's request to exchange crosses, Myshkin on the verge of an epileptic seizure strolls aimlessly, thinking to himself, and finally coming to a different conclusion about Rogozhin. Now he curses himself for his previous suspicion. This conviction is such that when he's finally confronted by the truth that Rogozhin wants to kill him, the deception sets him to convulsions. So what is it specifically that saves him from Rogozhin's blow? Of course, he's being already on the verge of a fit means that it could come at any time, but why precisely when Rogozhin appears?

There's an analogy between his epilepsy and deception, once more the physiological and the psychological, in the same manner as there's an analogy between the abnormal state and the state of a Christian heart. The deception sets his epilepsy, a transcendence of the body and mind. His transformation and contortions go to represent his attack as much as it represents the transformation of character.
 
Here corruption saves as much as it destroys him.


sf.

[Pavo]

Hey, Lev and Sadfireworks, you wrote too much too fast.  I just had the time to catch up.  It is excellent, I expect you both to be writing your own critical volumes of the works of Dostoevsky someday.  The painting really is a paradigm for the corruption of the character of Myshkin.

Bringing us to corruption, one of the great unrecognized themes of Dostoevsky.   Along those lines, Lev wrote:

In the Idiot -- to be more on the subject -- I seem to see something of an earlier discussion we had on the Notes from the Underground (I think that was the one). Pavo's use of the term corruption is excellent because it is a very broad one. In my opinion, it is even more important than he has yet suggested . Certainly, it is a very broad theme appearing in many of Dostoyevsky's other works.

Lev, I would be interested in how corruption is a broad theme appearing in many of Dostoevsky's other works.  Maybe a subject for another thread.  

Sadfireworks wrote:

I think that corruption is another major concepts in Dostoevsky. "The Idiot"differs from the other works in that it concentrates on the "corruption of the body" as well as the mind. I'll have more to say about that shortly.

Sadfireworks, actually, I believe that corruption of the body is one of the ideas in Dostoevsky.  We encounter it in the Idiot, we encounter it in the Brothers Karamazov (Zosima).  I believe that when 19th century beliefs about tuberculosis are studied, that we encounter the idea of physical corruption in Dostoevsky's consumptives.  See the Dostoevsky and His Consumptives discussion.

One of the ideas connected with corruption in Dostoevsky is human limitation, or human failing.  Corruption is how Dostoevsky has chosen to depict death, raw and unadorned, with no transcending higher purpose in and of itself.  He depicts it as it is, unapologetically, he brings us to the edge of the cliff and makes us look over and see it for what it really is.  Death.  Corruption.  Death by degrees, consumption, Myshkin's character.

Back to the painting, this discussion certainly demonstrates how vitally important the works of the great masters are to an understanding Dostoevsky, beyond what I ever thought possible.  It adds a whole new dimension to his work.  Maybe we ought to be reading Dostoevsky with an art history book in the other hand!  

I found out about the Madonna.   Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky have a footnote in their translation:

Dostoevsky saw a copy of the the Madonna with the Family of the Burgomeister Jacob Meyer (1525-1526), by Hans Holbein the Younger (1497-1543), in the Dresden Gallery.  The original is in the museum of Darmstadt.

So, it really is the Darmstadt Madonna.  Lev, I also found out about the three deceased family members in the painting--that was done at the request of Meyer, who wanted his first wife in the painting.  Holbein handled this delicate situation skillfully by painting the first wife in the background with indistinct features, and adding the two departed sons.

A passing comparison to Anna Ivanovna's sorrowful countenance, or something more?  A comparison could be drawn between the family grouping of the painting perhaps, and Myshkin is seated with the Epanchin family in their home. Would it be far flung to speculate that as the Meyer family is grouped about the Madonna, the Epanchins are grouped about Myshkin?

If Anna's face is compared to the Madonna's, could the woman on the right with the slight scowl (the living wife), behind the girl kneeling in the front, be a model for Elizaveta Prokofievna?  Well, anyway, I could speculate, but this painting is not as important to the oevre as the other one.

[sadfireworks]

I believe that corruption of the body is one of the ideas in Dostoevsky.  

I agree, Pavo. Again, i'm sorry for not communicating my ideas in a clearer way. I think the theme of corruption of the body is present in all of Dostoevsky's works I've read. But what I meant to say is that in "The Idiot" I believe that this idea is more vivid, especially as it relates to the central idea of the novel.

He depicts it as it is

This is a very important statement, one of the things I see in Dostoevsky is the depiction of how life is, but not how it ought to be. He's a political writer, I agree, but people still interpret him as they see it. Someone might say that Dostoevsky tells us that we ought to be spiritual, that is not completely untrue, but still, people who are atheist will say something different, those interested in morality will say something different, existentialists will do the same. There's something deep in Dostoevsky that tells people something, but that comes through the readers themselves. I've seen essayists writing about his works and drawing their own conclusions, of course, but I think it goes understated that Dostoevsky was doing something else.

It adds a whole new dimension to his work

Inspiration transcends any mediums because all mediums bring out things from the same fountain. So it doesn't come as a surprise that Dostoevsky has been inspired by painting, but it does leads us to another level of understanding his works.

Would it be far flung to speculate that as the Meyer family is grouped about the Madonna, the Epanchins are grouped about Myshkin?

Not at all impossible. Good speculation, even if it isn't "accurate" it makes us think, and imagine the scene. I tried to imagine it instantly.


Another speculation: in the same way that Holbein included Meyer's family members into a portraiture of something "symbolical" as the Madonna holding Christ and thus giving it further meaning, Dostoevsky in noticing this had the idea of creating "modern" characters, possibly based in real life too and each representing an idea, to "live" within the Holbein painting ('dead Christ'), that is, the universe of corruption and suffering, living the significance of the painting. And so he gave origin to another painting. The "good thing" about the written art is that we get movement as opposed to the static painting.  



Lev,

was the discussion you referred to earlier the one on 'Crime and Punishment', about the resurrection of Raskolnikov? I think we did talk abou Notes from Underground too, I'd have to look up. I really enjoyed that discussion, if you get some on ideas on it please let me know. We've covered many ideas there but often we find more.  

[Lev]

Well Pavo, it was you who highlighted this theme of corruption . I think it's many faces have been noticed in a fragmented way... but it is so broad. To be seen as a united/related presence is a new twist, as far as I know. If I may say so, the Biblical texts encourage this view -- and this was the perspective with which Dostoyevsky was familiar with (and is legitimately thought to have accepted). Also, moving outside of Dostoyevky's writings specifically, the corruptions in our own lives and our shared world can be looked at in this way.    

The Holbein Madonna -- Do I understand that the "Dresden" and the "Darmstadt" are one and the same? -- I am confused by this time! If that is the case, I am sure that if it caught Dostoyevsky's attention and he mentioned it, it meant something very layered and complex . It is a painting that can really be pondered anyway. It's relation to the Epanchin's is an interesting question -- I don't really know. By the way, have you ever been to Germany?

was the discussion you referred to earlier the one on 'Crime and Punishment', about the resurrection of Raskolnikov? I think we did talk abou Notes from Underground too, I'd have to look up. I really enjoyed that discussion, if you get some on ideas on it please let me know. We've covered many ideas there but often we find more.

We all have far too much to talk about yet! I can see it going on for thread after thread... . I don't know what topic I had in mind or where I might have brought that up now. Really, we should just go back to all of them eventually. I wish I could concentrate on everything at once!

I'm skipping a lot but I'm all tired out . Later...

[Pavo]

The Holbein Madonna -- Do I understand that the "Dresden" and the "Darmstadt" are one and the same?

Yes.  They are one and the same.  There is no Dresden Madonna, only a Darmstadt one.  Dostoevsky saw a copy of it in Dresden.

By the way, have you ever been to Germany?

 No.  But I would like to.  The closest I have gotten is Belgium and the Netherlands.  They are nice countries, by American standards they are "cute."  I haven't made it to the UK yet either--I wanted to focus more first on places where English isn't spoken. But I hope to make it there soon, so much to see of importance there.

[sadfireworks]

I was in Germany a couple of times, but i've never been to East Germany, so I never went to Dresden. Both times I went to Dortmund and nearby cities where I have friends. I'd say that Germany is definetely worth a visit, in my experience they are very hospitable people, and i'm fond of German literature as well. I still want to visit Bavaria and East Germany one day, perhaps even go to Darmstadt? See Holbein for myself

By the way, wouldn't you like to see the paintings in real life? That would be incredible.

We all have far too much to talk about yet! I can see it going on for thread after thread...

I know, and there were still other things I wanted to discuss, but I'm being barely able to keep up with what we are discussing now.

[Lev]

Right, well I'll keep that in mind just in case I happen to be in Europe . Heh... But you know, there are quite a few towns in Texas founded by German immigrants -- "cute" in a rustic way and on a smaller scale.
It would be amazing to see even a couple of those paintings in person. Not to mention that the whole city is probably art itself.
I wonder why Holbein isn't more popular? Not one of those names people throw around like "Rembrandt."    

[Pavo]

We should do a Dostoevsky Grand Tour, see all the paintings in person, see Worm in Belgium, and don't forget St. Petersburg and Moscow.  

[Worm]

We should do a Dostoevsky Grand Tour, see all the paintings in person, see Worm in Belgium, and don't forget St. Petersburg and Moscow.  

You are all always welcome.
Come see my house .. come see my paintings.  You're gonna go like Dostojewski in the museum.

I am going to make that one painting, i just don't have time for it now.  It is also a very difficult & complex painting for my level, so it takes more time to build such a thing.

I am so very much behind on this topic.  Expect my nose to pop in again in a few days.

- the Worm

[sadfireworks]

We should do a Dostoevsky Grand Tour, see all the paintings in person, see Worm in Belgium, and don't forget St. Petersburg and Moscow.  

Great idea  

And you could come visit the UK  

I was actually considering going to St. Petersburg in August, but the visa takes about 4 to 6 weeks, perhaps I might do it in September instead. I'm finding it difficult to plan my summer. Moscow would be great too.

Count me in.

[Lev]

I didn't see where you had added more the last time I posted, Sadfireworks.

That transition is figurative to represent how the man of values and humility becomes dysfunctional in an intolerant society, and inevitably loses parts of himself as he endures it--how the free spirited can't stand to the world of "balances and contracts", and how people cannot preserve a healthy body and pure heart with self-interest and "permissible" trickery.

In 'isolation', Myshkin had managed to remain authentic, guileless and healthy, but in his confrontation with people his body falls ill again and his heart is embittered.

That is pretty depressing! It is hard to see him fall back into illness at the end. The idea that he couldn't endure and that perhaps there was no real change brought about (despite all of the wild events) by what he did or said. He fades away sort of.

[Lev]

I happened to come upon a painting (or icon?) that was similar to this Holbein one. Some obvious differences though... It was vertical, because the view was from above. The tone was entirely the opposite: silvery, serene, and the body was saintly. Or, in other words, a huge contrast to the dark, cramped box and the form of Christ so abused. I had hardly any time to study it so my memory of it is not very clear -- but it was such an unexpected treat that I could hardly complain. It was also connected with some sort of ritual in which they would carry such a painting or something like that. My knowledge in that area is so scant that I hardly know how to improve it .
The woman there said that in the Russian Orthodox faith the Resurrection is emphasized in the way that the Cruxifiction is in the more Western branches of Christianity. I don't know much about it. In relation to Dostoyevsky, this seems strange.