Валаамова магарица: шта представља Смердјаков?
BALAAM’S ASS: WHAT DOES SMERDYAKOV REPRESENT

Summary/Abstract: This paper deals with psychological, social, religious and philosophical aspects of Pavel Smerdyakov’s character from The Brothers Karamazov. It brings about an analysis of his personal characteristics as well as of his relationships with some other characters: Fyodor Pavlovich, Ivan Fyodorovich and servant Gregory. The caricatured comparison with the speaking ass in the Old Testament’s story of the prophet Balaam is taken as a starting point for an investigation of the intertextual relations in two directions: toward servants’ characters in other Dostoevsky’s novels (Vidoplyasov from The Village of Stepanchikovo, Apollon from the Notes from the Underground, Filka from the Crime and Punishment) and toward Shakespeare’s evil manipulators, Iago from Othello and Edmund from King Lear. After rejecting a recent N. Karamenov’s assumption of Smerdyakov’s homosexual inclination to his half-brother Ivan, the author concludes that Smerdyakov is incarnation of an atheist with highly developed but spiritless intelligence, who literally adopts and realises Ivan’s nihilistic ideas in practice, and whose main characteristic is an absolute incapacity for love. As such, he represents a demonic incarnation of Ivan’s double in the novel, as well as the antipode of the Prince Myshkin from Idiot.

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