With a Name like Skotoprigonyevsk, it has to be Cracked Up

           It only took 734 pages…but at last the narrator has yielded the closely guarded secret of the namesake of the town in which our tale is set.  As quickly as this new development surfaced, it was just as quickly tossed aside in favor of the narrator’s simple label of “our town”.  According to the end notes provided by the translator, the namesake for our setting amounts to the literal translation of “cattle-drive-home-place”.  I can honestly say that I was anticipating a more grandiose name for “our town”, expecting there to be some magnificent literary analogy.  Instead Dosotoyevsky has left his readers with a single line, only mentioning the garbled namesake of “our town” in passing.     

This being said however, such a title does bring to the forefront some interesting questions.  For me personally, the namesake seems to indicate an association between the town and a cattle pen.  My memories of the ranch I worked at in New Mexico take over from here, and I can honestly say that some similarities between cattle pens and the town of Skotoprigonyevsk may exist. 

In my experiences with cattle it was quite evident that the herd remained seemingly anarchic without the presence of a fence line or the management of the ranch hands.  In much of the same manner our wonderful characters seem completely free to act given the lack of any significant guiding force in any of their lives; that is to say except for Aleksey, who seems to continue to guide his actions through a commitment to faith. 

A stronger relation however, is the potential linkage between the town and the structure of a cattle pen.  Throughout the novel I have always felt a sense of enclosure and constraint.  The story has always been set in rather dismal dwellings, and the few times that the narrator has let the story venture out, the descriptions have remained minimal.  The town of Skotprigonvevsk also seems to be far from even the local railway station, and its isolation furthers its potential linkage to a pen in the midst of a wider pasture.  This overall sense of constraint reminds me of how cattle appear when they are driven together and placed in holding pens.  I always harbored a sense of wonderment as to whether the pens on the ranch were truly able to contain all that force that was positioned within their boundaries.  In much of the same sense I feel that Skotoprigonyevsk has had great difficulty in containing the rather forceful and unmanageable Karamazov clan.  The ability of the Karamazov brothers and their late father to stir up scandal within the town has been portrayed as boundless.  The extent of this unruly behavior however has led to the introduction of the authorities.  The pen of Skotoprigonyevsk has been agitated by the apparent patricide, and in order to re-establish order the “ranchers” have been sent down from St. Petersburg. 

Oh, and speaking of potential links between cattle pens and the town of Skotprigonyevsk, there was that chapter entitled, “A Putrid Smell”…but I digress…

Another intriguing facet of this latest reading was yet another passing reference made in regards to the Caucasus.  I know it does not relate in any way to the previous focus of this post, and it may not amount to anything, but I do find it rather remarkable that there exists a recurring Caucasian link.  In the very early portion of the novel Dostoyevsky made mention of Dmitry’s deployment and subsequent service in the Caucasus.  Not only that, but young Ilyusha was recommended to visit the Caucasus for treatment and Ivan’s devil wished to first appear as a civil servant from the Caucasus.  All of this seems to allude to a sense of foreboding concerning the Caucasus.  It seems that only those on the cusp of tragedy or that thrive on tragedy are associated with this far-flung element of the Russian Empire.  Historically speaking the region of the Northern Caucasus was only incorporated into the Russian Empire in the early portion of the 19^th century and has continued to this day to be a difficult entity to deal with geopolitically in the Russian context.  The region has a high degree of variance both ethnically and religiously, which has often led to its subjugation throughout history from the European and Orthodox Russian state.  This may just be the musings of a political science major attempting to find meaning in a sheer coincidence, but I think that it is worth noting that Dostoyevsky rarely mentions specific regions or places within the Empire, this in of itself evidenced by the long-time lack of a namesake for “our town”.  Why is it that Dostoyevsky would choose the Caucasus in reference to such important events and characters?