The Multi-voiced Worlds of Dostoevsky and Pessoa

Abbreviations

NFU – Notes from Underground

TBOD – The Book of Disquiet

Introduction

Fyodor Dostoevsky and Fernando Pessoa are writers of international stature. They excel at their portraitures of protagonists with tragically flawed interiors, who struggle with their ontological bearings while pursuing a meaningful position in the world. This essay reads their respective books, Notes from Underground (1864) and The Book of Disquiet (1982), through the theoretical framework of Russian literary theorist and semiotician Mikhail Bakhtin. Bakhtin’s theory of discourse [1] offers the best lens by which to explore the polyvocality that prevails in these texts, where characters are free from authorial control. Both novels tread the paths that Bakhtin’s interrelated concepts of polyphony and dialogism have carved out.

Firstly, I use polyphony as a textual strategy in order to sketch out the ways Dostoevsky’s protagonist decenters the unified, in Bakhtinian terms, monologic “I” of the author. Secondly, I apply the dialogic principle as a narrative device to treat Pessoa as an

‘empty stage where various actors act out various plays.’ [2]

Pessoa’s self-coined heteronyms resist closure to a single authorial voice, which makes a compelling case for the plurality of the self. Bakhtin’s lifelong interest in the sociology of language justifies the significant role of the social in all utterance and how

‘language must be analy[s]ed as a fluid medium that is sociologically charged.’ [3]

By adopting this standpoint, I wish to prove that the texts are multi-voiced to the extent that they uproot the interiority of the subject (the “I”) via Bakhtin's polyphonic or dialogic notion.

Theodor Dostoevsky

Notes from Underground

Bakhtin is perhaps the only critic that does justice to Dostoevsky’s brilliance, as he gives the full scope of his literary novelty. In Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (1929), Bakhtin compares Dostoevsky with a “canonised” genre, such as epic poetry, noting that the former has introduced a new literary form, that of the novel, as well as a new spin to the character. It comes as no surprise then that Bakhtin proclaimed Dostoevsky the

‘creator of the polyphonic novel’ who subverted ‘the established forms of the […] monologic European novel.’ [4]

The innovative modus operandi of Dostoevsky’s literary practice defied the authoritative "I" —namely the author’s ideological standing—by creating

‘free people, capable of standing alongside their creator,’ [5]

one of which happens to be the nameless narrator in his 1864 novella Notes from Underground.

NFU features ‘a sick […] spiteful […] unattractive man’[6] (as the Underground Man calls himself) whose ‘compilation of […] notes’ [7] explores human consciousness, and his inability to relate with others.

The book is divided in two parts. While the first contains a series of his rambling memoirs, the second details incidents from his youth: how he tries to gain respect from his old classmates, whom he in fact hates, while also psychologically tortures a young prostitute named Liza.

For critic Deborah Martinsen, the Underground Man represents ‘shame’s paradox,’ which justfies his ‘capacity to isolate yet relate’ with the external milieu; the outside world. She maintains that

‘[t]hough [he] has isolated himself, he reaches out to his readers.’ [8]

The structure of Part One could be likened to a philosophical monologue, where the narrative is reduced to one perspective—that of the narrator — and a ‘monologic context’ — that of the Underground space. However, on several occasions, the narrator invites his imagined audience, whom he refers to as “gentlemen”, to come up ‘with a new ideal’ [9] and alter his alienating stance toward modern society.

For Bakhtin, this mode of writing does not simply eradicate

‘this philosophical monologi[s]ation.’ [10]

Most importantly, it encompasses the polyphonic principle or the way in which texts can be multi-voiced, i.e., built on many dialogues and co-existing perspectives. Clearly, the narrator is not the objectified image of a hero in the traditional novel that serves

‘as a vehicle for the author’s own ideological position.’ [11]

As philosopher Julia Kristeva observes,

‘there is no third person to bring unity to the confrontation [between the protagonist and society]; they do not culminate in a stable "I" which would be the "I" of the monologic author.’ [12]

In other words, Dostoevsky does now permeate the novel with his ideologies, for there is no unity of mind in the first place to inform any kind of ideology.

Readers meet a questionably sane protagonist whose conflicting opinions denote his simultaneous desire and inability to make sense of the world. Evidently, the Underground Man cuts adrift from the epic genre where heroic figures are active participants in the society they are part of. Early in Part One, the narrator claims to be a

‘man of acute consciousness,’ whose life was conditioned by the ‘laws of nature’ — those of rational thought — as well as a ‘mathematical certainty;’ [13]

none of which leaves room for chance or spontaneity associated with life. He says:

‘once you have mathematical certainty there is nothing left to do or to understand.’ [14]

This idea resulted in ‘inertia,’ which rendered him ‘unable to change’ [15] or act against it. Contrary to the man of acute consciousness, the narrator presents the ‘real normal man’ [16] or the oft-referenced “man of action”. The latter’s consciousness is directed outwards, to the external world, but has a comparatively lower perceptual and intellectual ability to the acutely conscious man.

Soon, the Underground Man notifies the reader that he is ambivalent about his subterranean world of hyper-consciousnes, with this motif of self-contradiction working as key to my argument.

He calls himself spiteful, but then affirms he could never become spiteful because he is ashamed and aware of the ‘contradictory sensations’ [17] of his personality. Therefore, Dostoevsky indicates that humans are not inherently rational but confused and spontaneous. Far from a unified character, he displays his antihero as ambiguous, invariably at odds. Deborah Martinsen goes as far to assert that

‘though he champions free will, he acts unfreely.’ [18]

Unsurprisingly, the author neither intervenes to resolve the contradictions his protagonist puts forth, nor suffuses the text with his own angle of vision. Rather, the narrator expresses the need to engage in a conversation with the reader, which signifies the degree of his autonomy as a subject with its ‘own directly signifying discourse.’ [19] All the reader has is the Underground Man’s perspective deprived of a monologic authorial voice to interpret, explain and/or judge him.

As he later confesses,

‘twice two make four is an excellent thing, but […] twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too.’ [25]

Scholar Robert L. Jackson contends that if

‘it is impossible to argue with the rationalists [all] that remains is irrationally to negate reason.’ [26]

To witness the full contours of Jackson’s point, one must pay close attention to the Underground Man. The last states that ‘calculating it all beforehand’ would result in ‘reason [reasserting] itself’ and then

‘man would purposely go mad in order to be rid of reason.’ [27]

As shown, he is a purely irrational man whose ambiguous self and stance toward the ‘laws of nature’ [28] manifest in the form of tormented outbursts. Dostoevsky succeeds in showcasing the neurotic in human conduct, as his hero’s outbursts have “intuitive-emotional” underpinnings rather than rational credentials. The author’s unconventional take on the modern human condition ushered a profound shift in focus.

Modern literature no longer provides fully-fledged, identifiable characters but fabricates the language of disunities; namely of non-integrated speaking subjects. In her reading of Dostoevsky, Kristeva also argues that the narrator is

‘a split subject, divided between unconscious and conscious motivations […] between physiological processes and social constraints.’ [29]

As a result, unconscious impulses and a slippery language come into play; not by a stable, determinate character, but by a fragmented cluster of contradictory thoughts and desires. Dostoevsky neither objectifies nor judges the Underground Man because, as Bakhtin writes,

‘in a human being there is always something that only he himself can reveal [a truth] that does not submit to externali[s]ing secondhand definition.’ [30]

Albeit isolated, the Underground Man attempts to discover “that truth” collectively; through, what Bakhtin terms, the ‘living discourse’ that takes place

‘in the open spaces of public squares, streets, cities […] of social groups.’ [31]

In the first, introspective segment of the book, the narrator admits that

‘he has come […] not out of the lap of nature but out of a retort.’ [32]

His statement transposes the readers to Part Two, where they find a

‘plurality of independent and unmerged voices […] consciousnesses […] and fully valid voices,’ [33]

which are equal in relation to each other. They unfold freely and develop their own original desires without being guided by the omnipotent authorial voice. Ranging from the narrator’s old school friends and his servant, Apollon, to the prostitute, Liza, Dostoevsky’s literary figures are subjects rather than ‘objects.’ They are not

‘fixed elements in [his] design’ that constructs ‘finali[s]ed images of people in the unity of a monologically perceived.’ [34]

Dostoevsky invites new voices to tell a story and dethrone the thunderous, manipulative one who tells the story.

According to Bakhtin, monologic texts limit every expression

‘in the dungeon of a single context [where] it is not able to exchange messages with other utterances.’ [35]

The Underground Man undermines this when he admits that he cannot stand

‘three months of dreaming at a time without feeling an irresistible desire to plunge into society.’ [36]

Halfway through the second part, the narrator visits a brothel. There, he meets a young prostitute called Liza: an ill-bred girl by an uncaring family, who works to support herself financially. Although she is initially depicted as naïve as the story develops her role becomes more complex, which suggests character progression by one’s own volition. As Karl Jaspers aptly puts it,

‘the individual is seen as this unique existent, the being who freely […] creates [itself] through the exercise of his freedom.’ [37]

During their first interaction at the brothel, Dostoevsky reiterates a common image of his era, that of the redeemed prostitute, and correlates it with the figure of a “fallen woman” – that of Mary Magdalene. Like a Christ incarnate, the Underground Man “lectures” Liza and agrees to reform her. However, at their ensuing conversation in his house, the events of the story face a drastic twist with the Underground Man’s unpredictable abusive tirade. He pays her for what she freely gave out of love at the brother and, as Edward Wasiolek remarks,

‘leaves Liza with an insult burning in her soul,’ for he is certain that “this ‘highest form of consciousness' [he has] is better than the love he might offer her if he overtook her." [38]

This unexpected incident resonates with writer J.G Ballard’s belief that the author no longer has

‘the moral authority to invent a […] self-enclosed world, to preside over his characters […] knowing all the questions in advance.’ [39]

Indeed, Dostoevsky does not try to fit his characters in a moral framework. On the contrary, the ‘moral obliquity’ [40] of the Underground Man allows him to show no regret and dive deep in the intensity of that situation; the outcome of which was unforeseen for Liza.

Suggestively, the author does not illustrate "characters" but "personalities", for he neither “characterises” the hero nor uses words to define him. Dostoevsky propounded this ‘new integral view on the person’ [41] through which

‘personality is not subordinate to [the author’s objectified cognition but] reveals itself only freely and dialogically.’ [42]

The author does not control the discourse. Rather, he descends to the polyphony of clashing worldviews with no more authority than the voices and differing views of the Underground Man and Liza. Dostoevsky is a system-builder but not in the sense of methodological closure. Individuals are not rational or one-sided but malleable, many-sided and, as the Underground Man confirms, ‘this many-sideness is amazing.’ [43]

A career that spans more than half a century as a linguist testifies Bakhtin’s concern with the ways in which humans organise themselves socially through symbolic structures. For him, language is neither informative nor communicative. It appeals to extrinsic factors and formulates a heterogeneous system comprised of multiple voices.

Proponents of this multi-voiced narrative synthesis is Fernando Pessoa. The Book of Disquiet is precisely what he concedes:

‘a dreamed confession of the painful, sterile rage and utter uselessness of dreaming.’ [44]

The fragmentary and non-sequential layout of his journal entries urge the reader to rotate in and out of the book, as if to destabilise even a semblance of stylistic hierarchy. This implies that the text breaks with a prescriptive way of reading; allowing responses to be unexpected and coloured by the reader’s own arbitrary reading routines. Simultaneously, it grants the reader the status of the participant for a dialogical interaction with the text.

Dialogue, as portrayed by Dostoevsky and theorised by Bakhtin, partly articulates that the individual is indispensable to the social fabric. In Part Two of NFU, the younger version of the Underground Man did not interact with others out of respect for them or out of desire to listen to them. Rather, Dostoevsky sets the surrounding world as the means by which the hero is shaped because, as the recurring trope of bitterness in Part One suggests, the mature narrator is a victim of his past.

If Dostoyevsky was a tireless pathologist of the soul, Pessoa’s commitment was tied to the persona: the self and whether it should be predetermined or created; whether it is individual or arrives in multitudes.

Fernando Pessoa

The Book of Disquiet

Bakhtin might have renounced attempts to ascribe literary ancestors to Dostoevsky’s novelistic polyphony, this essay, however, finds him a successor in the face of Pessoa. For Bakhtin, polyphony is ‘a new theory of authorial point of view’ [45] and, likewise, David Lodge perceives it as ‘virtually synonymous with ‘dialogic.”’ [46] Lynne Pearce, however, strikes a subtle distinction between the two, which is pivotal to the idiosyncratic aspects of and my take on Pessoa’s writing style. She clarifies:

‘[P]olyphony’ is associated with the macrocosmic structure of text (literally, its ‘many voices’) and ‘dialogue’ to reciprocating mechanisms within the smaller units of exchange, down to the individual [world]’ (Pearce 1994, p. 46).

In TBOD, these microcosmic, individual units of exchange arise in the form of what Bakhtin calls “double-voiced discourse”, which identifies

‘the chief hero [that is, Pessoa] among various novelistic discourses.’ [47]

Bakhtin developed this category to complement his notion of dialogism. The double voicing in Pessoa is expressed through what he conceived as ‘heteronyms.’ Richard Zenith, the editor of the book, explains that Pessoa referred to the multiple names under which he wrote as ‘heteronyms’ instead of pseudonyms, for they were not ‘false names.’ Instead, they were

‘invented […] fictional writers with points of view and literary styles […] different from Pessoa’s.’ [48]

At first glance, one might recognise Pessoa as a polyphonic writer because he–like Dostoevsky–allows maximum independence to his invisible co-authors. They are by no means allegoric or illusory; nor do they constitute a postmodern phenomenon of scattered identity. Each one is a distinct entity, ‘with their own real, individual, imperfect lives,’[49] with their own validity and textual weight within the novel. Among these is Bernando Soares, Pessoa’s semi-heteronym, whose vignettes, in the form of aphorisms, cover three quarters of the book.

What qualifies Dostoevsky’s novel as polyphonic is mainly his hero’s excursions “over ground”, to the social milieu, and his encounters with others. Polyphony, in the Dostoevskian sense, is inadequate to capture the complexities in Pessoa’s discourse with his heteronym; namely their dialogic relations even when Pessoa professes to be a lonely, solitary man.

Although TBOD rife with Pessoa’s riveting descriptions of the patrons in the restaurant where he dines, he is arguably a socially dysfunctional man. For Rene Girard, he is ‘a contemptuous observer of the human scene’ [50] and Pessoa validates that:

‘I have the advantage of an armoured contempt towards whatever’s outside me [and] perfectly see others while perfectly excluding them.’ [51]

Pessoa’s heteronyms reflect an internal difference he wishes to attain but external reality does not suffice:

‘I contemplate the nothingness of the universal life outside […] the only reality is each man’s soul.’ [52]

So, he turns inwards: to his phantasmagoric fantasy. By internal difference I mean the heteronymic multiplicity he cultivates in his mind at the expense of the single, superior “I” of Pessoa’s subjectivity. He envisions

‘a life consisting of entire days full of imaginary companions and created people’ that have what he wants ‘to be exactly […] what [he] wanted to be and [he is] not.’ [53]

He proceeds:

‘My only real concern has been my inner life […] when I opened the window on to the street of my dreams and forgotten myself.’ [54]

To reach this dream-like state and this fractured, intermingled authorship, Pessoa did not mimic his personas. For poststructuralist philosophers, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari,

‘[m]imicry is a very bad concept, since it relies on binary logic to describe phenomena of an entirely different nature.’ [55]

The book is all about undoing any type of binary oppositional scheme. The ‘drama of interactive souls’ [56] enacted in his head disrupts what Girard describes as the distinction between the man’s ‘imaginary grandeur and actual baseness.’ [57] The oxymoronic phrase: ‘[I]n my imagination I line up the characters – so alive’ [58] is testament to how he fuses fantasy (the imaginary grandeur) with reality (the actual baseness) in his own distinct way.

Also, the dialogically-orientated discourse between Pessoa and his heteronyms has a twofold trajectory:

‘it is directed both toward the referential object of speech [that is, Pessoa] as in any ordinary discourse and also toward another's discourse [for example] toward someone else's speech.’ [59]

In ‘Appendix III: Reflections on the Book of Disquiet from Pessoa’s Writings’, the author takes an "objectified" discourse–to some of his alternate personas–and infuses it with his own private consciousness and explanatory intentions.

The similarities he draws between his different centres of consciousness should not go unnoticed. From Bernando Soares and Baron of Teive’s identification to him, to Bernando again and Álvaro de Campos’ resemblance, his eyes always ‘forget the amorphous audience’ in reality ‘and [he waits] for the first performers’ of his heteronymic dramaturgy to come on stage.

Conclusion

Although Pessoa shares a kinship with The Underground Man–in the sense of estrangement and hostility–their dialogic or polyphonic principles differ in nature. What distinguishes Dostoevsky’s hero and the characters he interacts with, is Pessoa’s invented heteronyms. Whereas Dostoevsky shows that character, in part, comes from beyond us, from the social milieu, Pessoa demonstrates it comes from within. As the latter reveals: ‘[t]o live is to be other.’ [60]

Words: 3781

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[1] In a literary context as such, discourse understands the ordering of language and particularly, the ordering of events in a story through that language.

[2] Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, (London: Penguin Press, 2001), p. 96.

[3] Charles I. Schuster, Mikhail Bakhtin: Philosopher of Language, p. 117

[4] Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics ed. Caryl Emerson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), pp. 7-8.

[5] Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, p. 6.

[6] Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), p. 3.

[7] Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground, p. 53.

[8] Deborah Martinsen, ‘Of Shame and Human Bondage: Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground’ Dostoevsky on the Threshold of Other Worlds: Essays in Honour of Malcolm V. Jones, ed. by Sarah J. Young and Lesley Milne (Ilkeston: Bramcote Press, 2006), pp. 157-69, p. 157.

[9] Dostoevsky, p. 47.

[10] Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, p. 10.

[11] Bakhtin, p. 7.

[12] Julia Kristeva, "The Ruin of a Poetics", in Russian Formalism, ed. Stephen Bann and John E. Bowlt (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1973), p. 111.

[13] Dostoevsky, p. 44.

[14] Ibid., p. 45.

[15] Ibid., p. 9.

[16] Ibid., p. 12.

[17] Dostoevsky, p. 61.

[18] Martinsen, Dostoevsky on the Threshold of Other Worlds: Essays in Honour of Malcolm, p. 157.

[19] Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, p. 188.

[20] Dostoevsky, p. 32.

[21] Ibid., p. 37.

[22] Ibid., p.38.

[23] Ibid., p. 34.

[24] Ibid., p. 33.

[25] Ibid., p. 44.

[26] Robert Louis Jackson, Dostoevsky’s Underground Man in Russian Literature (The Hague: Mouton, 1958), p. 40.

[27] Dostoevsky, pp. 40-1.

[28] Ibid., p. 32.

[29] Julia Kristeva, Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art, ed. Leon S. Roudiez, trans. Thomas Gora, Alice Jardine, and Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), p. 6.

[30] Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, p. 59.

[31] Mikhail Bakhtin, ‘Discourse in the Novel’ The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist (Texas: University of Texas Press, 1981), p. 274.

[32] Dostoevsky, p. 13.

[33] Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, p. 6.

[34] Ibid., p. 7.

[35] Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, p. 274.

[36] Dostoevsky, p. 75.

[37] Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy Vol. VII (New York: Image Books, 1963), pp. 428-29.

[38] Edward Wasiolek, Dostoevsky: The Major Fiction (Cambridge: The M.I.T. Press, 1964), p. 143.

[39] J.G Ballard, Crash (London: Vintage, 1995), p. 1.

[40] Dostoevsky, p. 38.

[41] Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, p. 58.

[42] Ibid., p. 298.

[43] Dostoevsky, p. 61.

[44] Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, p. 472.

[45] Bakhtin, Problems with Dostoevsky’s Poetics, p. 3.

[46] Robert A. Morace, The Dialogic Novels of Malcolm Bradbury and David Lodge (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989), p. 86.

[47] Bakhtin, p. 185.

[48] Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, p. 505.

[49] Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet (UK: The Penguin Press, 2001), p. 88.

[50] René Girard, Resurrection from the Underground: Feodor Dostoevsky (Michigan: Michigan State University Press, 2012), p. 22.

[51] Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, p. 109.

[52] Ibid., pp. 49 & 38.

[53] Ibid., p. 106.

[54] Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, p. 88

[55] Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (London: The Continuum, 2003), p. 11.

[56] Pessoa, p. 62

[57] René Girard, Resurrection from the Underground: Feodor Dostoevsky, p. 43.

[58] Pessoa, p.88

[59] Bakhtin, Problems with Dostoevsky’s Poetics, p. 85.

[60] Pessoa, p. 91.

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Bibliography

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___________, ‘Discourse in the Novel’ The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays ed. Michael Holquist (Texas: University of Texas Press, 1981)

Ballard, J.G, Crash (London: Vintage, 1995)

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Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (London: The Continuum, 2003)

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Morace, Robert A., The Dialogic Novels of Malcolm Bradbury and David Lodge (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989)

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