Part Two, Chap 1-4

[Shelley]

Chris wrote: "I thought R already was planning something as we open the story, I want to attempt a thing like that...Am I capable of THAT? Is THAT seriously possible? but he ( or we surmise) that he focused in on the pawnbroker after he heard this conversation in the bar. "

The bar conversation took place 1.5 months before the events at the very beginning of the story. Part One Chap 6 Paragraph 2: "But R. had lately become superstitious... About a month and a half ago he had remembered the address." That was when he first met the pawnbroker, and right after that first encounter he overheard the bar conversation.

[Chris]

Shelley wrote: The bar conversation took place 1.5 months before the events at the very beginning of the story. Part One Chap 6 Paragraph 2: "But R. had lately become superstitious... About a month and a half ago he had remembered the address." That was when he first met the pawnbroker, and right after that first encounter he overheard the bar conversation.


Ahh...thanks for pointing that out!

[Bigollo]

Kerstin wrote: " There is a is a recurring theme here with Dostoevsky. He did the same in The Brothers Karamazov, not just the term "German" but also mentioning the Jesuits. I get the sense that Dostoevsky is aligning these terms with moral decay. Whenever these get mentioned the context suggests relativism, which he, as a stout Russian cultural traditionalist categorically rejects. "

Yes, I've got a similar impression from all I've read by D. so far.

[Marlon]

Funny you mention his, I've come across this jesuit bashing in almost every book of D I read.

What is the reason?

[David]

Marlon wrote: "Funny you mention his, I've come across this jesuit bashing in almost every book of D I read.

What is the reason?"

The jesuits seem to have a long history of suppression:

Jesuits were supported by Empress Catherine the Great, a patron of learning, who welcomed exiled Jesuits to Russia in 1773 after their expulsion from other parts of Europe. The order of dissolution was delayed in the Russian Empire until long after her death, when the Society had been reinstated in other places. Under pressure from the Russian Orthodox Church, Tsar Alexander I exiled the Jesuits in 1820.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppres...

[Kerstin]

Here are my thoughts on the Jesuit question:
All of this has to be seen in light of the Great East-West Schism of 1054 between the Orthodox Churches and the Roman Catholic Church.
The Jesuits were founded in the 16th century to primarily be an order engaged in evangelization, to counter-act Protestantism. And they were successful in many places. Not all, Protestantism is still around :)
Now Russia is already Christian, Christian Orthodox is just as apostolic as Roman Catholicism, so from their perspective, why would they need Catholic proselytizers with whom they have a rocky relationship to begin with?

I think now we are much closer now to re-uniting than we were in centuries past. During Dostoevsky's time this was a sore spot.