Dostoyevskii’s “Dream” is a much later short story, coming at the end of the great man’s career. It has few commentators, largely because few know what he’s talking about. It is not uncommon to hear people wonder who actually wrote this story, and how unlike the great master the plot line actually is. The unfortunate part of Russian literature is that professional literary critics are the last people that should be reading it. Russian literature is intensely historical and ethnic, deeply religious and metaphysical, all things that professional literary geeks know nothing of.
The “Dream” is a work of agrarianism and anti-civilizationalism, a theme that comes up in Gogol far more often than his commentators understand. Civilization is the creation of Cain, and is an urban phenomenon where the labor force of the elites are kept close by, watched and generally kept under control. The western ideology of “liberalism” was developed to legitimize such an economic development.
Civilization is about power: it is about the harnessing of nature for the ends of the elite; manipulating her and eventually, destroying her. All occult understanding derive from this radical severing of man from nature, and forcing him to live in a world of images rather than the reality of creation. The “Dream” is a polemical attack on the occult, as it was manifest in Russian freemasonry at the end of the 19th century.
The story is a story about alienation, and the development of epistemology that derives from alienation. Unfortunately, Rousseau (who Dostoyevskii read regularly) fully admitted that there was no going back once the scythe of Saturn had fallen. The scythe, represented in the Soviet flag, refers to the development of civilization as manifesting power through alienation. In other words, that man are alienated from the earth, the basis of all earthly goods, and, as a result, look to technology to meet their needs. Therefore, whoever controls access to technology, i.e. the means of production, controls the world. The Soviets now control these means, and, in Lenin’s own words, will create one large factory over the earth. The scythe is a sick joke on the working classes of the world.
Michael Hoffman has spent much time describing the connection between the occult and modern science, or more specifically the development of a technologically oriented society, that might be better described as a society controlled by those who control access to the inventions of science. Technology is what develops to fill the gap when men are severed from nature; they are severed from nature in that elites realize that technology and the ethos of the city (or “Cain”) can create greater profits, control and organization over their realm than the simple dependence on nature. Hoffman writes:
The sickle symbolizes Saturn, also known as Chronos-Saturn or as the Greeks called it, the Demiurgos, the operating engineer of the universe as opposed to the creator of that universe. The reign of Saturn we see exorbitant building and modeling activities and this is reflected in the masonic reference to their god as the “Big Builder” or “Architect.” This sounds reasonably attractive, many of us can appreciate magnificent buildings and splendid projects along these lines but as usual there is more to it than this.The Saturnian-masonic “edifice complex” ultimately is building against the grain, against nature, though at the beginning, in the early eras, nature’s forces are manipulated with a knowledge which requires the greatest intimacy with her ways, as reflected in the megalithic structures in the British isles, Europe and ancient America. . . .
Man began his peregrination away from Eden through the conceit that he would ‘become as god.” Yet, as soon as he let the Divine Plan for the occult process his stated objective became the Cabalistic tikkun olam or “the repair of the world”, via the intervention and imposition of human brain power–the very ego maniacal device that caused the separation from God’s natural Eden in the first place. . . .
In the Hermetic-masonic tradition the secret identity of Satan is the cosmic force represented in occult lore as emanating from the star Sirius, the so called dog star, alpha Canis majoris. In the secret tradition of the Freemasons, Sirius is overwhelmingly identified with a single primary attribute, the bringing of civilization to earth. (Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare, Second Edition, 21-23. (Independent History and Research, 2001))
This understanding, completely unknown even to those who think they know something about the occult or “magyck”is central to the careers of Dostoyevskii and Gogol. In particular, they are central to understanding the “Dream,” not for the least of reasons that the dog star makes an appearance.
Petersburg, as I have written before, was itself a masonic ritual. Peter used the forced labor of Old Russia, represented by the Cossack host, to build his city in the most difficult and cold swamp in the world, near the Finnish border. The city itself was literally built on the bones of these symbols of the Old Belief, that is, everything that Peter and his masonic friends in Holland thought was backwards and deranged. The new European city, dedicated to finance, military might and industrialism (not to mention the new megastate, built on western Renaissance models) was literally meant to conquer nature itself, not merely in the symbolic building of the city in a terrible place from a strategic point of view, but powerful from a magical point of view, but also in a more powerful sense of being the city that will bring industrialization to Russia.
This story is very short, but there is no end to its interpretation. Of course, the action takes place in Petersburg, though this is deliberately left vague, left vague because it is an attack on civilization itself, rather than Petersburg in particular. However, it is clear that both Gogol and Dostoyevskii knew the city was built on ritualistic lines.
The anti-hero of the story is tired of life in the city. He sees no point to it. The drive for power leads to the accumulation of more power, and this leads to more power. The state functions to gain power, for the sake of defending itself and gaining more power as a result; the purpose of it all is, well, to gain more power. This circle seems bizarre, and our anti-hero decides to kill himself.
As he’s walking home, he meets a poor girl, one of the cast offs, or sacrifices, necessary to make a modern city function. She is calling for help. Our anti-hero rebuffs her. No one in the story has names, largely because in the city, names do not matter. One’s place in the hierarchy matters. Image matters, not reality. Why does the main character rebuff this poor girl, who is seemingly looking for help to assist with her sick mother. First of all, it is made clear that all the advances of civilization have nothing to do with helping this poor girl. Civilization is for the elites, for their problems and for their desire for power, and then security to maintain that power, with the end of gaining more power. To this day, civilization has proven itself incapable of assisting girls like that, no matter who is in charge. Marxism, that fraud of the rich, has merely led to a “bureaucratic aristocracy” (to use Russell’s phrase) that left girls like this as destitute as before. Marxism was a means for a specific elite to gain power at the expense of another elite. Power is identical, but excuses for it change. No matter who is in charge, or, more accurately, who is in control of the image manufacturing devices of modernity, have nothing to do with helping girls who are in trouble, or any poor people, for that matter.
However, the second reason why the anti-hero rebuffs the girl is that he has found the “secret” to freedom: imminent death. This is a topic that the great writer deals with (cf. The Possessed, or the Idiot) often, but never as explicit as in the “Dream.” Imminent death is the great liberator, because all your earthly obligations are cancelled. Suicide makes man a God. How does this argument work? One must understand the major intellectual currents in Russia near the end of Dostoyevskii’s life. One major current was the philosophy of Schelling, or that of the German idealists in general. According to this school, which includes the great Fichte, reality is at least partially created by the mind. Usually, reality is the mind, and mutual experience creates a sort of “inter-subjective” unity around these “objects,” or more accurately, “projections.” If reality is a creation of the mind (again, Fichte would say the will, which is identical to mind), then the self is the creator of the world. If this is true, then, of course, moral obligations are illusory and, second, suicide will destroy the world. Therefore, suicide makes one a god. The suicidal man is made a god in that he is now above moral obligation, and that, since the world depends on his will, he is destroying the world and its ground (the self). Dostoyevskii is fascinated by this idea, and his commentators have missed it completely.
Just prior to returning to his room, the clouds part, showing what clearly is the dog star, Sirius. It is this star that gives him the idea of godlikeness, and that suicide is connected to this state. Dostoyevskii was anti-Masonic, but he knew his occult lore, and he knew that Orthodox people would also understand this reference, specifically in the context of Tsarist Russia. He is clearly linking the secret abode of Satan with that of civilization, as well as suicide and the bizarre belief in godlikeness. It might also bear noting that Hoffman has a footnote to the quote mentioned above, one that states that this star, so important to adepts, is also the realm of Isis in Egyptian mythology. It is clear in the ancient writings dealing with this goddess that she had great skill in manipulating nature using special, magical words. But there is more about this star, a star important to many cultures around the globe in ancient times. Hoffman writes: “The name Shaitan is a form of Set, one of the myriad names, in this case Egyptian, for the entity Sirius (Sothis), the state of the goddess Isis as well as of the jackal-headed deity, Anubis.” (31) However, the anti-hero, returning to his room, is disturbed. There is an intuitive understanding that he did wrong. Though there is no logical reason to feel this way. He falls asleep and dreams that he has killed himself. He then is taken by an unknown force through the heavens, past the dog star (though the force denies that this is the star) and brought to a double of the solar system, to a double of the earth. He is being brought to Eden.
For someone who understands the arcane nature of the dog star and that of urbanism and civilization, coming to Eden (not heaven) makes perfect sense. The anti-hero is brought to earth prior to the fall. That is to say, prior to civilization, or that which was meant to fill the vacuum after the fall and man’s alienation from dependence on creation. What does he find?
Oh, I understood at once even at the time that in many things I could not understand them at all; as an up-to-date Russian progressive and contemptible Petersburger, it struck me as inexplicable that, knowing so much, they had, for instance, no science like our. But I soon realized that their knowledge was gained and fostered by intuitions different from those of us on earth, and that their aspirations, too, were quite different. They desired nothing and were at peace; they did not aspire to knowledge of life as we aspire to understand it, because their lives were full. But their knowledge was higher and deeper than ours; for our science seeks to explain what life is, aspires to understand it in order to teach others how to love, while they without science knew how to live; and that I understood, but I could not understand their knowledge. They showed me their trees, and I could not understand the intense love with which they looked at them; it was as though they were talking with creatures like themselves. And perhaps I shall not be mistaken if I say that they conversed with them.
And again,
They were as gay and sportive as children. They wandered about their lovely woods and copses, they sang their lovely songs; their fair was light - the fruits of their trees, the honey from their woods, and the milk of the animals who loved them. The work they did for food and raiment was brief and not laborious. They loved and begot children, but I never noticed in them the impulse of that cruel sensuality which overcomes almost every man on this earth, all and each, and is the source of almost every sin of mankind on earth. They rejoiced at the arrival of children as new beings to share their happiness. There was no quarreling, no jealousy among them, and they did not even know what the words meant. Their children were the children of all, for they all made up one family. There was scarcely any illness among them, though there was death; but their old people died peacefully, as though falling asleep, giving blessings and smiles to those who surrounded them to take their last farewell with bright and lovely smiles. I never saw grief or tears on those occasions, but only love, which reached the point of ecstasy, but a calm ecstasy, made perfect and contemplative. One might think that they were still in contact with the departed after death, and that their earthly union was not cut short by death. They scarcely understood me when I questioned them about immortality, but evidently they were so convinced of it without reasoning that it was not for them a question at all. They had no temples, but they had a real living and uninterrupted sense of oneness with the whole of the universe; they had no creed, but they had a certain knowledge that when their earthly joy had reached the limits of earthly nature, then there would come for them, for the living and for the dead, a still greater fullness of contact with the whole of the universe. They looked forward to that moment with joy, but without haste, not pining for it, but seeming to have a foretaste of it in their hearts, of which they talked to one another.
This is precisely the opposite of modern, mechanized society. In other words, these people did not actually know anything, or at least, they did not know anything discursively. Discursive reasoning is result of the fall, where men understand through bits and pieces strung together, very delicately, why anything can shake the edifice. Here, they understood all they needed to know intuitively, all at once, without recourse to logic. Logic in the modern sense is the language of mechanization, the language of the fall, the language of alienation and death. Nature was not “dead matter” but was alive, and communicative, though not in words, but in concepts, concepts in all their fullness and depth, rather than the meaningless words of the modern man. In fact, it seems they used few words, for words are the tools of manipulation. They used full, rich concepts that they corresponded in a sort of innocent telepathy, both with nature and each other. They had no temples because nature was a temple, the landscape of the living God rather than that of the earthly elite. Temples were erected to create islands of sanity within insanity; a place where worldly cares could be kept out, and only live can be seen within, a love born of faith and sorrow, a sorrow for Eden long gone.
Unfortunately, without understanding how, the anti-hero corrupts them. It begins with one small lie, but soon, in a realm of innocence, a realm without defenses, it germinates into the fall, into civilization. In other words, the corruption of this Eden derives from a fallen man making contact with people who knew nothing of “defending” themselves from corruption, as they had no notion of it. Corruption is a manipulation of discursive reasoning to defend a economic or passionate interest of some type, and of course, no such discursive logic existed before the fall.
He brings civilization to Eden, he brings death. He brings separation, the literal meaning of alienation. Suddenly, these people are cruel to animals, using them for profits, controlling them for sale. Animals now retreat to the forest, avoiding mankind. Orthodox saints have had excellent relationships with animals, including recent saints such as Fr. Seraphim of Platina. They no longer “talk”: to the trees, as they view nature as “dead” matter, just waiting to be “humanized” in the words of Schelling, though scientific logic.
In dealing with alienation, people form clans, families and nations. People are separated from one another, and develop theories of justice to deal with the problems. These theories simply lead to more warfare, as the clans begin killing each other to impose their idea of ethics. They develop discursive theories of economics to justify their gradual rape of nature. Suddenly, they realize that logic will not solve their problems, and so they begin to believe that suffering is a part of life, and simply accept it.
What is particularly interesting about the last parts of the “Dream” is that Dostoyevsky actually goes through the post-Enlightenment developments in intellectual life in tracing the fall of the people the anti-hero of the story corrupts. He goes from the naive logic of the early Enlightenment though the German idealists, and eventually ends with Schopenhauer. In other words, the final thesis of the story is that ideological formulae, whether political, moral or scientific, have no actual meaning. They are the phenomena of the will to power of individuals, and, as such are not actual ideals, strictly speaking. It is a powerful indictment of ideology, and the faddish slogans that were making the salon rounds in Russian cities during Dostoyevskii’s time. They are still making the rounds among the faculty lounge scribblers.
Of course, these same scribblers have no idea what Dostoyevskii is talking about, and so this story remains unread and unappreciated.