#lise khokhlakova

[stupidnymph]

Alyosha & Lisé

[mikhailrakitin]

various tbk girls (and aglaya hehe)

[rknchan]

I STARTED READING THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV LETS GOOOO

[strangebrew]

lise!!!!!!!

[pitsapitsa]

(Last reblog) And about that. I loved almost every female character in TBK but my love for Katerina turned into irritation quickly after the trial. She's very real, I give her that, and I kinda kin her but noooo. Why would she do that :(

And also I don't think she'd be happy with either Ivan or Dmitri really. It would be extremely interesting to read the next book about her and Ivan but I'm not a fan of them together.

The couple dynamic I do like though is Alyosha and Lise. The fact that they are not together at the end seems good too but moments when they were are dear to me.

I didn't get was it really a love letter that she told Alyosha to give to Ivan but I can see why it happened and it happened so naturally and I love Alyosha's reactions and how he's not jealous or angry with her even when she says wild things.

[confessionofanardentheart]

2.4 A Lady of Little Faith

What does the possibility of nothingness mean for us? Why do we love, and can we love purely for the sake of it? Madame Khokhlakova was fine until she started thinking about it. These sort of questions plague her and make her suffer from her "little faith". She claims nobody else is thinking about it, but in reality, she has spoken for many by daring to make these questions, even if they might make her look foolish or selfish in front of others.

Once someone asked me: "Why try at all if it all ends? What do you think?" and my answer was: "Precisely because it all ends. It's the same for everybody, and we already have it hard as it is. You might as well make things nicer on the way there." Intuitively, Zosima's words of "active love" to Madame K. seemed to mean something of that sort in my eyes. Death for a great idea has been looked upon as commitment to a greater good, but can you live for your "good"? In death, "you" become lasting and static, like your idea. The death you have to accept for yourself may be found in life —in the sense that when you live seriously, you may have to do away with ideas you had of yourself or what is right until the end, you have to kill your fantastic selves. It's tedious, just like most pain around us. Dreams protect us from it like armour, but truly loving entails summoning your courage against shame and disdain in those little moments.

Zosima has a positive outlook on humanity alongside his notion of what it is to be a responsible human being. Man was made to be happy, so one becomes more human by active love. Paradoxically, such advice offered to someone struggling with their faith creates a situation in which the swaying of faith may create a stronger desire to actively love, if one has enough commitment to live seriously... Even if there is nothing at the end. Madame Khokhlakova's answer to her dilemma sits right beside her in a wheelchair, acting. Her great dreams of altruism involve leaving her life in a fantasy of moral martyrdom, but Zosima tells her to do what she can. Loving her daughter Lise unconditionally, no matter how pesky she can be, is the best place to start.

--------

Links:

@keepingupwiththekaramazovs

[gegengestalt]

131 useless or often forgotten facts in The Brothers Karamazov!

This 27 of April is the second anniversary of the day I finished this book for the first time. To do something special, I reread it over the last 20 days and as I did it, I compiled little things that are easy to forget in these 1000 pages filled with food for thought. Let's go!

1. Mitya fought in a duel, though it's most likely that nobody died in it.

2. Ivan's journalist pseudonym is "Eyewitness".

3. Alyosha, in his own words, came back to Skotoprigonyevsk to visit his mother's grave.

4. Fyodor Pavlovich owns several taverns in the district.

5. Grigory was the one who gave Sofia Ivanovna a proper gravestone.

6. Alyosha is one deduction away from becoming a communist.

7. The Brothers Karamazov begins in late August.

8. Kalganov is supposedly Alyosha's friend. This is never mentioned ever again.

9. Kalganov gave one coin to some beggars and told them to divide it among themselves.

10. There is a rumour that the previous elder beat people with sticks. This is false.

11. Alyosha is the only person in the monastery who knows that Rakitin is an atheist, and keeps his secret.

12. Four years ago, Pyotr Miusov divulged a fake story about a saint making out with his own decapitated head. Fyodor never forgot.

13. Madame Khokhlakov is only 33 years old. She has been a widow for 5 years, meaning Lise lost her father at age 9.

14. Zosima's serenity in front of the woman who confesses to a murder may foreshadow his later recollection of having a murder confessed to before.

15. Zosima likes to make jokes.

16. Lise and Alyosha last saw each other two years before.

17. Reminder that Grushenka met Mitya because Fyodor wanted her help to throw Mitya into a debtors' prison.

18. Kuzma Samsonov is the mayor of Skotoprigonyevsk.

19. Ivan rambled to Dmitri and Katerina about how he thinks Rakitin will be a failed journalist turned landlord.

20. Fyodor Pavlovich's house is filled with rats.

21. The Miusov family had their own private theatre.

22. Lizaveta Smerdyashchaya was a bit over 142cm/4'7 tall.

23. In 1842 there was a runaway convict called Karp commiting crimes in Skotoprigonyevsk.

24. Marya Kondratievna's mother is missing a leg.

25. Mitya ghosted a girl in real life.

26. Katerina's mother died when she was young.

27. Mitya had a fever for two weeks once because of a spider bite.

28.Mitya thought Grushenka was "nothing striking" the first time he saw her.

29. Mitya was squatting in his neighbour's rented room.

30. Fyodor Pavlovich has a portrait of the former provincial governor in his house.

31. Fyodor Pavlovich goes to sleep at 3- 4AM, like Dostoyevsky himself.

32. Sofia Ivanovna was being courted by a rich man called Beliavsky while she was married.

33. Who was the woman coming from the alley that Mitya mistook for Grushenka? I still wonder.

34. A cheap glass jar was destroyed during Mitya's frenzied break- in.

35. Katerina sends two detailed reports a week to her surrogate mother figure who lives in Moscow.

36. Katerina has an aquarium.

37. Alyosha sleeps using his monk habit as a blanket.

38. Father Ferapont survives eating nothing more than 1,6kg of bread a week.

39. Ivan had told his father about his feelings for Katerina, for some reason.

40. When Alyosha kissed his father, he had the impression that Alyosha was thinking that it was their last conversation.

41. Madame Khokhlakova owns three houses as property.

42. Madame Khokhlakova and Katerina Ivanovna are supposedly great friends.

43. Ivan reads Schiller when nobody is looking.

44. One of Snegiryov's daughters, Varvara, is invested in feminism.

45. Captain Snegiryov's childhood friend is a lawyer.

46. Mitya spilled cognac over the table of the summerhouse.

47. Smerdyakov sings in falsetto.

48. Marya Kondratievna is the only one who ever calls Smerdyakov 'Pavel Fyodorovich'.

49. Ivan uses Smerdyakov as a messenger.

50. Dmitri and Katerina had been engaged for around six months.

51. Ivan's right shoulder looks lower than the left one when he walks.

52. Smerdyakov often moves the tip of his right foot from side to side when he stands (adorable).

53. Dmitri's favourite death threats are "pounding in a mortar" and "breaking legs".

54. Grigory suffers from paralysis three times a year.

55. The real name of 'Lyagavy' is Gorstkin.

56. Zosima's real name is "Zinovy".

57. There was actually another old German doctor before Herzenstube and he was named Eisenschmidt.

58. Zosima has known Brother Anfim for forty years.

59. The Bible is thrown once.

60. Madame Khokhlakova asked Rakitin to go to the funeral as her eye.

61. Alyosha was hiding behind the grave of starets Iov, who lived 105 years.

62. Zosima was harshly criticized for telling a monk hallucinating to take his meds if praying doesn't work.

63. Both Grushenka and Rakitin are children of deacons.

64. Samsonov is the only person that Grushenka seems to be completely and clearly sincere with.

65. Likewise, Samsonov only trusts her when it comes to counting money.

66. Samsonov has the entire first floor of his house for himself.

67. Mitya tells many of his secrets to his landlords, who are fond of him.

68. Alongside eggs and bread, Mitya grabbed and ate a piece of sausage that he "found".

69. Mitya and Perkhotin first met at the Metropolis tavern.

70. Mitya's dueling pistols are his "most prized possessions".

71. Madame Khokhlakova apparently borrows money from Miusov.

72. The brass pestle was 17 centimetres long.

73. Mitya spent exactly 300 rubles in food and alcohol in Mokroye, and it would have been 400 if Perkhotin didn't help.

74. Mitya gave a glass of champagne to a kid.

75. The owner of Plotnikov's shop is called Varvara Alexeievna.

76. Two thousand villagers live in Mokroye.

77. Trifon Borissovich makes his younger daughters clean up the messes of every guest of the inn.

78. Pan Wroblewski is 190cm / 6'2 tall.

79. Madame Khokhlakova gets a migraine whenever she has to talk to Mitya.

80. The ispravnik's elder granddaughter is called Olga, and the night of the murder was her birthday.

81. The prosecutor's wife seems very interested in sending for Mitya often, for reasons he doesn't know.

82. Mitya does not know that the epidermis is the outer layer of the skin.

83. Nikolay Parfenovich is the only person in the world who trusts Ippolit Kirillovich.

84. Mitya often dreams that a person that he fears is chasing him and searching for him.

85. Nikolay Parfenovich wears a smoky topaz ring on his middle finger.

86. Pan Wroblewski is a dentist without a license.

87. Kalganov had visited Grushenka once before, but she seemed to dislike him for some reason.

88. Kolya's father died when he was a little baby.

89. There was a plot going on in the background about the doctor's maid having a child out of wedlock.

90. Rakitin often talks with Kolya. Seems like the only person who takes his ideas seriously is a literal child.

91. Smerdyakov and Ilyusha met and talked to each other.

92. Alyosha rarely gets colds.

93. Katerina befriended Snegiryov's sick wife.

94. Kolya was taken to a judge for teaching a guy how to efficiently crack the neck of a goose.

95. Kolya is against women's rights.

96. Mitya and Grushenka spent five weeks secluded and away from each other after the arrest.

97. Grushenka went to see Grigory to try to convince him that the door wasn't open.

98. Rakitin made up in an article that Madame Khokhlakova offered Mitya 3k rubles to run away with her.

99. Madame Khokhlakova doesn't remember Rakitin's patronymic, and calls him "Ivanovich" instead of "Osipovich".

100. Madame Khokhlakova didn't know of the judicial system reform until two days before the trial.

101. Lise sent chocolates to Mitya in jail, even though there's no reference to them ever interacting before.

102. Alyosha has had the same dream about the devils that Lise has.

103. Alyosha is friends with the jail inspector, who often discusses the gospels with him.

104. Mitya spent two entire nights awake since he discovered ethics.

105. Ivan cleans his own room.

106. Smerdyakov shared a hospital room with an agonizing dropsy patient.

107. Mitya's letter had the bill on the other side.

108. Smerdyakov uses garters with his stockings.

109. There is an apple tree in Fyodor's garden.

110. One of Ivan's "most stupid" thoughts is being the fat wife of a merchant.

111. Ivan had a friend named Korovkin when he was 17, the one he told the story of the quadrillion kilometres to.

112. Ivan has another poem named Geological Cataclysm.

113. Alyosha was the first person the distraught Marya Kondratievna ran to.

114. Ivan is mistaken for "the eldest son" twice in the trial.

115. Grigory did not remember he was in 1866.

116. Rakitin knows "every detail" of the biography of Fyodor Pavlovich and all the Karamazovs.

117. Grushenka's surname, Svetlova, means "light".

118. Mitya once dropped 100 rubles while he was drunk.

119. Ivan saw not just the Devil, but people who had died while he walked in the street.

120. Ippolit Kirillovich died nine months after the trial, the first and last day he received applauses.

121. Marfa is dismissed as a suspect simply because they can't imagine her killing.

122. There is a partition wall in Mitya's lodgings.

123. Mitya mostly stopped staring at the floor during the prosecutor's speech whenever Grushenka was mentioned.

124. Fetyukovich bends forward in an unnerving manner when he speaks.

125. An 18 year old street vendor committed axe murder earlier that year.

126. The verdict was given past 1AM, making the trial last almost 16 hours.

127. Katerina kept the sick Ivan in her house knowing it could possibly be harmful to her reputation.

128. Rakitin tried to sneak in to see Mitya in the hospital twice.

129. Lise sent the flowers that adorn Ilyusha's coffin, and Katerina paid for the grave.

130. Snegiryov cries seeing his late son's little boots the same way one of the women at the monastery in the beginning of the book did.

131. At the end, Alyosha mentions "leaving the city for a long time" soon. Where to? We don't know.

If you read this far down, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing all of these down.

[karaviav]

liza/lise khokhlakova you will always be famous (click for better quality)

[sad-eyed-lady-of-the-paperbacks]

Thoughts on 2.3

I can never read this chapter without tears. Zosima’s attentiveness to the concerns and the pains of common people, and of women in particular, is beautiful. It is a sad irony that although regard for women and for others who were marginalised is so striking and features so prominently in the accounts of Jesus, through the centuries, such tender concern for women has been abysmally rare amongst men—particularly those in positions of power like Zosima—who claim to be followers of Christ. Not only have such men failed to reflect this love, but they have even been some of the most zealous and hateful oppressors of the marginalised. Zosima, in contrast, is practising what he preaches. These suffering women are drawn to him for his refreshing, sincere care, and they are willing to travel great distances for the balm he offers to their suffering.

Right away in this chapter, sex and class are highlighted. It’s specifically stated that “there was on this occasion a crowd made up solely of women”, and the landowning Khokhlakovas are waiting “in the accommodation reserved for upper-class female visitors.”

There are a lot of dead mothers in this novel, but the Khokhlakovas are the reverse of this. Lise is instead fatherless, and her mother is very present.

Mme. Khokhlakova was only 28 when she was widowed, and the fact that she is widowed is the most info we ever get about her husband, as far as I recall. We don’t even know his name; later on, we’ll get Mme. Kh’s first name and patronymic, but Lise’s patronymic is never given. Of Mr Khokhlakov, all we have is a void.

Zosima walks past the visiting monk and the prominent landowner Mme. Khokhlakova and goes straight to the common people first.

I’ve linked it before, but I will once again link this source on the klikushi (warning for spoilers). A comparison is drawn between the narrator’s recollection of seeing these wailing women as a child and the horse dream from Crime and Punishment. In both cases, the child is concerned by the spectacle of suffering that is the defenceless female victim (the horse is very specifically a mare) while the adults around him are callous to it and downplay it.

Another thing from that source that is interesting is the fact that while the Freudian and Platonian models of the hysterical woman are characterised by a lack of sex or an obsession with sex, for which marriage, sex, and motherhood were supposedly the cure, this is not so with the klikushi as Dostoevsky portrays them. In their case, it is the fact that marriage, sex, and motherhood are bound up with violence and hardship which causes their shrieking. And I just have to quote this directly, it’s so profound:

In this respect, their hysteria is still related to the womb. But their hysteria is the bodily expression of the anguish these mothers feel in response to giving birth to children-to bringing them from the safety of their wombs out into a world where mothers and children suffer, into a world where God allows this suffering to happen.

Liza Knapp, “Mothers and Sons in The Brothers Karamazov: Our Ladies of Skotoprigonyevsk.” A New Word on The Brothers Karamazov, Robert Louis Jackson, 2004

A lot has already been said regarding the autobiographical inspiration of the grieving mother of little three year old Alexei. I just want to note that her name, Nastasya, means “resurrection.” And just how poignantly her grief is depicted—this is what makes me cry every time. And how Zosima validates her grief, he doesn’t criticise it as a lack of faith. Regardless of whether or not she believes her little boy is in heaven, regardless of whether or not it’s fair or makes any sense that a God who already has billions of angels would take a mother’s little boy to be one more angel in heaven with him, the fact is that he’s not there with her, the fact is that she cannot hear his little pat-pat-pat feet any more. And that is soul-crushing and devastating, and of course she cannot be comforted—she should feel no need to be comforted. She has a right to her tears. And his words to her are just so beautiful.

The young widow is very strongly implied to have killed her abusive old husband, but Zosima stops her before she confesses it publicly, which is very interesting. His response to her too, is very compassionate. I love @confessionofanardentheart’s reflections on grief and guilt in this chapter

[ladyofmelk]

"dosto isnt spicy why would you even ask" have you ever been in a room with ivan karamazov and katya sitting diamterically opposed to each other while she's talking about how she wants to save his brother and he's clutching his fists then they have a staring contest bc neither of them remember what katya just said and ivan really wants lo leave but katya is sitting there still thinking some of the nastiest thoughts ever known to man with a perfectly happy face and then mrs khokhlakova storms in with tea cockblocking them and lise follows along reading her fanfictions about alyosha out loud. have you ev

[dykenastasyafilippovna]

did you know i love katerina osipovna khokhlakova? and lise. very much.

[karamazovanon]

who is your favourite female character in Dostoyevsky's works!! i adore all the women in his stories to be honest. . . they deserve the world

OHHHHH THIS IS SUCH A GOOD QUESTION DONT MAKE ME CHOOSE BETWEEN ALL 78 OF MY WIVES....... i really do adore his female characters because truly madly deeply they are ALL UNHINGED in some capacity and that is the chief quality i look for in a woman. it's VERY close but i think in the end it's gotta be either nastasya filippovna or grushenka <333 honorable mentions list is too long but dunya, lise khokhlakova, and varvara stavrogina are also very dear to me—i just really really love morally complex women with devastating backstories who do bad things especially out of self-hatred/self-sabotage, extra especially if those bad things are to men <3 nastasya & grushenka did nothing wrong

[rknchan]

some sketches made yesterday

[doyouknowthisdisabledcharacter]

Has any Dostoyevsky's character been submitted? (I submitted few but I am not sure if I did it correctly.)

Also: does epilepsy counts?

Epilepsy does count. Lev Myshkin from The Idiot and Liza (Lise) Khokhlakova from The Brothers Karamazov have been submitted. (There might be more, I only checked for six of his books.)

[sad-eyed-lady-of-the-paperbacks]

(Belated) Thoughts on 2.4

Ok, I need to get caught up so I’m going to speedrun this and not be as thorough as I’ve been in previous chapters.

One quick note which I should have mentioned in 2.3: Garnett transliterates the family name of this mother-daughter duo as Hohlakov, which gives you almost zero chance of guessing the correct pronunciation of the name, Хохлакова. The sound is more frequently and helpfully transliterated as “kh”. It’s the consonant known as the voiceless velar fricative, represented in IPA as x. (Side note/weird Sadie fact: if I had to pick a favourite consonant in the languages I’m familiar with, it might be this one. Or perhaps the voiceless uvular fricative. I’m always excited when either of those pop up.) The only words I’m aware of in English with an equivalent sound are “loch” or “Bach”, though to be fair even those are technically Scottish and German, respectively. Anyway, a more helpful transliteration is “Khokhlakova” (P&V just says “Khokhlakov” because they always leave of the -a ending meant to indicate that the character is female, and I’m not sure why.)

Anyway! Without further ado!

Lise’s crush on Alyosha and her very teenagery inability to be too serious for very long is portrayed so realistically. As is poor Alyosha’s embarrassment and not at all knowing what he’s supposed to do. He doesn’t want to encourage her and so he’s been staying away from her, but that only makes her more determined to provoke a reaction from him, it seems.

In this chapter we are hearing for the first time that Dmitri Fyodorovich, the debauched, spendthrift eldest son, has a fiancée. A fiancée who is described as “such an exalted, such an unfathomable being!” who has apparently been enduring quite a lot due to mysterious “recent happenings.” She wants Alyosha to come visit her, and doesn’t explain why.

When Lise experiences an improvement in her condition, Mme. Khokhlakova attributes it to a miracle performed by Zosima. Interestingly, when Zosima experiences an improvement in his own condition, he says this:

‘Today I feel unusually improved, but I know from past experience that it will only last a moment. I now understand my illness without error.’

He is not expecting any miracle of healing for himself. Not from lack of faith, but seemingly from an understanding that this is the natural course of things. He, like Alyosha, appears to be more of a realist than a mystic. And rather than end on what his listeners might perceive as rather a gloomy or hopeless note, he adds this, which I think is just lovely:

‘But if I seem to you so full of gaiety, there is no way that you could ever delight me so much as to make such an observation. For human beings were created for happiness, and whosoever is completely happy is also worthy of saying to himself: “I have fulfilled the behest of God upon this earth.”

Regarding Mme Khokhlakova’s suffering from lack of faith, see this post.

I thought Zosima’s response to her was very helpful and profound. And I made a whole post about that too.

All the discussion of love for humanity in the abstract of fanciful love vs. active love is super profound, and also reminds me of what the narrator said back in 1.5.

Alyosha has been given some quests! He needs to go see Katerina Ivanovna, and Zosima also promises to send him to Lise.

I have more thoughts but I’ll limit myself because like I said, I need to catch up!