Johann Wolfgang von Goethe claimed to have experienced only a few days of pure happiness in his life. If he, seemingly a favorite of S.L. Frank, was only truly happy in short bursts as the “favorite of fortune”, how can anyone hope to be happy?
Frank describes humans as “slaves of blind fate” (41). We can take action attempting to alter the course of our lives and create happiness but we are in essence, limited by our mortality as humans. We are not divine creatures and cannot hope to be. Frank brings a view that seems decidedly bleak to the discussion on happiness, one of unintended but ever-present misery. In essence, there is no room in the universe for jovial thoughts as it has no impact on the world. Our fate has been predetermined before we are born and while we may act to prolong our fate, it will eventually reach its conclusion. Frank ascribes this theory to ancient Greek philosophy but the dismal worldview is eerily Dostoevskian.
Dostoevsky made his career out of analyzing the darkest recesses of the human mind and spirit in a literary form. Crime and Punishment and Notes from the Underground both feature a main character that can be best described as a raving lunatic and The Brothers Karamazov follows that same path even if Fyodor Dostoevsky isn’t “the” main character. The reader can see glimpses of the darkness of human existence through The Brothers Karamazov including during Ivan’s poem, “The Grand Inquisitor”. By the end, the poem has left Alyosha rambling, seeking as best as he can to fire off his many positive and negative thoughts on the gripping yet insane poem and what it may reveal about Ivan. Ivan summarizes the fleeting desire for happiness and contentment thusly, “For the secret of man’s being is not only to live but to have something to live for.” (236) As Frank would say, we are looking for life’s meaning to not fall prey to our existence as a squirrel in the wheel, a cog in the machine. Frank was viewing the source of life’s happiness through a religious lens while Ivan, an atheist, is having to confront the idea of religion through his interactions with Alyosha. Ivan’s religious beliefs, or a lack thereof depending on your placement of atheism, may also explain his characterization of The Grand Inquistor as a miserable soul. Rather than painting The Grand Inquisitor as happy, or even seeking happiness, Ivan paints him as an enemy of Jesus. Certainly, Dostoevsky was a tortured individual but it is odd for such an anti-religious passage to be in the book of someone who was a devout Christian at the time of writing Brothers.