"I more than the others": Dostoevsky and Levinas

Yale French Studies

Volumn 104, Issue , 2003, Pages 55-61

  Toumayan, Alain ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 60949512218     PISSN: 00440078     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book Series    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (21)

1. Marie-Anne Lescourret, Emmanuel Levinas (Paris: Flammarion, 1994), 46-47
2. See Lescourret 43, 125, 356, as well as The Levinas Reader, ed. Seán Hand (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), 1
3. Jill Robbins, Altered Reading(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 147
4. and Robert Bernasconi, "What is the question to which 'substitution' is the answer?" in The Cambridge Companion to Levinas, ed. Simon Critchley and Robert Bernasconi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 239
5. "Interview with François Poirié (1986)," in Is It Righteous to Be!: Interviews with Emmanuel Levinas, ed. Jill Robbins (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 72-73
6. Emmanuel Levinas and Richard Kearney, "Dialogue with Emmanuel Levinas," in Face to Face with Levinas, ed. Richard A. Cohen (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986), 31
7. Note that the variation between "responsable" and "coupable" in Levinas's allusions to Dostoevsky is not expressed in Robbins's translation, which carries "guilty" in both instances (François Poirié, Emmanuel Levinas: Qui êtes-vous! [Lyon: La Manufacture, 1987], 103, 123-24
8. and Robbins, Is It Righteous to Be!. 56, 72)
9. On the translation of Dostoevsky's statement as "I have sinned," see Victor Terras, A Karamazov Companion: Commentary on the Genesis, Language, and Style of Dostoevsky's Novel (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981), 248 n. 21, 252 n. 70, 259 n. 156
10. Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Human Emotions, trans. Bernard Frechtman (Secaucus: Citadel Press, 1998), 22
11. Albert Camus, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt, trans. Anthony Bower (New York: Vintage, 1991), 57
12. See also W. J. Leatherbarrow, Fyodor Dostoevsky: "The Brothers Karamazov" (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 88-97
13. and Michael Holquist, Dostoevsky and the Novel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), 174
14. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Andrew R. MacAndrew (New York: Bantam, 1970), 348
15. See also Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky: The Mantle of the Prophet, 1871-1881 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 570-71, 622
16. See Richard J. Bernstein, "Evil and the Temptation of Theodicy," in Critchley and Bernasconi, The Cambridge Companion to Levinas, 257-58
17. This principle actually precedes Ivan's discussions in the chapters "Rebellion" and "The Grand Inquisitor." In an earlier soliloquy, also recorded by Alexei, Zosima develops this idea of unlimited answerability, though without the striking formula "I more than all the others" (196)
18. The proximity of the two statements by Smerdyakov and Ivan consolidates the association of both characters in Frank's view (602). On the other hand, the fact that Ivan, as opposed to Smerdyakov, indicates an awareness that he is repeating Cain's phrase (" 'Does that sound to you like Cain's answer to God about his murdered brother?' " [278]) can also serve to distinguish him from Smerdyakov in a very significant way
19. Levinas acknowledges this reliance quite explicitly: "I always quote Dostoevsky" (Robbins, Is It Righteous to Be!, 100)
20. "I always recall Dostoevsky in this connection" (EN, 105)
21. "I return to my quote of Dostoevsky" (Pierre-Jean Labarrière, Autrement que savoir: Emmanuel Levinas [Paris: Editions Osiris, 1988], 72)