Notions of order and chaos - Aesthetics of Humanity and the Materialism of Life

 

Aesthetics of Humanity & the Materialism of Life

 

Barazov, the nihilist of our tale, represents not only the jaded group of young radicals from eighteen-sixties Russia, he also represents a new—in Russia, at least—theory on the aspects of life, including emotion, religion, and the existence of the individual. Nihilism, which remains the eternal wedge dividing the younger from the older, expresses an ideal world on both the level of the single entity, as well as the group of entities surviving in a proposed harmony, called a society; this section will analyze the former aspect, whereas the next will explore the latter.

For many, human emotion is omnipresent in every quality we display, and in every action we perform. The height of emotional discovery found itself during the period of romanticism, a branch off from humanism, or the centring of life around the individual. Emotions guide us through life, yet it is constantly at war with the mind, and with reason; somehow, these two centres of being are able to coexist in the same entity.[1] Yet there is a constant struggle for power, as these two foci of our existence are unable to consider each other equals; each is always trying to reign over the other. There are some, like the romantics of their forgotten age, who allow the more natural, elegant and quixotic emotion to run free, and impulsively but passionately decide how their life will proceed; but then there are others, like our very own Barazov, who insist on quelling those very intrinsic urges and relying on their terribly adored logic and reason, who take abode in the mind. It is this backdrop—the heart on one end, and the mind on the other—that Barazov tries to sway us in the direction of the sagacious mind. What is the point of human emotion, he forces us to question; all it does is lead us astray on the path of life. “Taking place!” Barazov exclaims when Anna Odintsov, his forlorn love, demands of him what is occurring in his heart. “As though I were some government body or social group! In any case, it’s utterly uninteresting—and besides, can someone always speak out loud about everything that’s ‘taking place’ inside him?” [2] Immediately we can see that Barazov believes there is no worth in discussing what is “taking place inside him”, because it is impossible in the first place. Emotions are abstract and petty, with little meaning to the outside world—what does it matter how you feel to the rest of society? For no, it is logic, and rationality, which we as a collective group must rely on; we could survive easily without our emotions, as they are superfluous, but without logic, we would be a doomed species. This ardent materialism—the incredulity of any spiritual force or immaterial being—is what grounds Barazov to the earth; it ensures a world without difficulty or strife.

The crisis Barazov reaches, in terms of his abhorrence towards human emotion, is when he realizes his love for Anna. This is a true conflict of conscience, for now the very battle Barazov forces us to take sides for is taking place inside of him. Odintsov represents a romantic form of humanism, because she is the object of Barazov’s desire; however, she also shows how this romanticism is the breaking force of reason—it destroys the mind. As we already know, Barazov is effectively shut down when he attempts to break away from the logical ropes that hold him together, and—although these ropes are not terribly menacing—Barazov insists even more zealously that nihilism is the only true method of survival, and that Anna’s fervent emotionality is pointless. An interesting addition to this poignant conflict is Anna’s temperament towards the rest of her life: although she indeed represents the vicissitudes of human emotion, she lives her life in a painfully ordered and structured fashion—she plans every second to her very liking. Since we already know that these two multifaceted characters stand for two different ideals in a much larger scope, it could be determined that Turgenev is showing us another duality Russia was suffering from. The aristocracy, on one hand, with their qualities tended towards the human being the center of humanity, and a life “organized… with such impeccable regularity that there can’t be any room in it for either boredom or sadness… for any unpleasant emotions.”[3]; and nihilism, on the other—the product of this very aristocratic Russia, and a creed which heeds the oncoming of chaos. Russia, then, has reached a most uncertain crossroad: the people are not at peace with the way life is progressing, yet they are, at the same time, yearning for this chaos. Turgenev well understood such a problem, and as such, he took no sides, and simply acted as the insightful observer. Is there any certainty in the outcome of this battle, pitting the mind against the heart? According to our dear Barazov, not everyone is “cut out for our bitter, rough, lonely existence.”[4] It will take more of those willing to live a life of despair in order for the world to function as it should—where life is as we see it and no strife will be able to enter our toughened, materialist minds.

 

Barazov also attacks notions of beauty in the novel. First, however, to have a good grasp on how materialist and, well—nihilistic—Barazov truly thinks, consider a section of the novel near the beginning, when he is continuing his medical studies with frogs. A young serf, curious, asks of him how he can study the human body using an amphibian, and Barazov replies that “I’ll cut open a frog and see what’s going on inside, and then, because you and I are a lot like frogs… I’ll know what’s going on inside us, too.” [5] We know, from this point on, that this phrase is more important than it gives upon face value, for it directs us in the way of a great nihilist, who only knows that we—human beings—are no more significant than a lowly frog.

Since humans have no more consequence in the world than any other living object, then how can we admire anything that we have created? Beauty is simply a stimulus that reacts in pleasant harmony with our emotions, which we have already determined are superfluous in today’s society. Why waste time indulging in our emotions, by observing something considered ‘beautiful’, when we could understand more the very physical aspects of our existence? For this, consider when Arkadii—through Barazov’s goading—offers to replace his father’s copy of Aleksandr Pushkin’s The Gypsies for Ludwig Büchner’s Stoff und Kraft, a treatise on physics and philosophical materialism. A most potent symbol of how the world should—nay, how it must!—change from pointless romanticism and the false pretences of ‘beauty’ to logical understanding and an appreciation of the sciences, a subject matter that has a real effect on our very existence.

Then we reach the idiosyncratic tendency for us to find authority in certain creators of this ‘beauty’, such as great artists, poets, musicians, or even God himself in his supposed formation of the landscape in which we inhabit; this, to a nihilist such as Barazov, would be complete lunacy. In an intense argument with Pavel, Barazov insists that, considering Russian artists refuse to set foot in the Vatican because the artwork is ‘worthless’, “Raphael isn’t worth a thing, and they [the Russian artists] are no better than he was.” [6] In fact, we can see, there are no betters—only equals. Beauty is the adoration of an object that would seem to have a higher meaning than the observer himself; if there are no authorities, and no betters, then beauty is an absurdity, and no more important or relevant than the faintest of our futile emotions.

 

All this speculation and supposition must lead to some aspect of our existence that is concrete, or to some ideal that must be shattered into the winds of the future; post tenebras, lux, in the form of a materialist universe.[7] Where else may the heart of Russian society be found than in religion itself—the very stronghold the nihilists, whether knowing it or not, wish to break. The nature of religion is such that no one is merely passive before it; they are either in favour of, or against, the great omniscient deities of the heavens. Therefore, we have another great divide amongst the people of Russia; this schism is such that, if complete eradication on the level of what nihilists’ desire is to arise, one of those sides is to be completely annihilated. Fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately, depending on whom this volatile topic is being discussed with—this complete asphyxiation of religion from the lungs of mother Russia was not to be; however, the Russian Orthodox Church did receive a rather grisly blow to the torso after the abdication of the monarch in 1917, considering that the Tsar of Russia was the supposed ‘child’ sent by God (not to be confused with Christ, however, who wore thorns instead of a general’s cap at his death). Barazov’s nihility towards reality suggests to us instead that science is our God, and not some mystical and gratuitous being in the desolate sky playing mercilessly with our very existence. Once science has trumped God in the game of life, the quest for a materialistic universe will be complete, and a reformation of the society upon which we for so long have stood may commence. Remember, now, the most important line of this novel, spoken by Barazov himself— one that sums up the entire materialist, positivist philosophy: “What matters is two times two makes four—all the rest is trivial.”[8]

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[1] I use the term ‘entity’ here to be true to Barazov and to nihilism, for to them a human being is nothing more than a living, breathing, thinking machine.

[2] p. 107

[3] p. 100

[4] p. 192

[5] p. 19

[6] p. 56; one can sense, at this point, the rare socialist tendency to arise—all people are equal.

[7] “After darkness, light.” The original motto of the protestant reformation, but of no relation to the current topic.

[8] p. 45