A Weak Heart (1848)

The narrative style of “A Weak Heart” is full of gaps and misdirection.  Vasya and Arkady are both infatuated with Lizanka, yet at no point do either speak of jealousy.  Who ever heard of a love triangle without jealousy?  After Vasya and Arkady have a long and passionate discussion about Vasya’s workload, the narrator tells us “Neither the one nor the other had made even the briefest allusion to [Lizanka].”  Why would the narrator go out of his way to underline what they hadn’t talked about?  The story has two plots which seem to be at variance at one another.  Is the story really about Vasya getting together with Lizanka or about Vasya getting all his work done?  On almost every page, Dostoevsky has me thinking something like “Why did Vasya do that?” or “Why is this in the story?”  In short, the narrator is a compounder of confusion.

Confusion creates a yearning for order.  As I read “A Weak Heart,” I found myself hunting for a thread that would tie everything together.  I wanted to find form in the chaos.  Few things are as satisfying as when I am presented with a jumble of facts and then have the magic thought: Fact A resembles Fact G, and Fact B resembles Fact E—I’m onto something!

Such a search, when rewarded, is one of the joys of reading.  Spotting links across a vast factual terrain is a thrill that brings me back to fiction again and again.  If a story is a small, closed circuit of connections, it lacks mystery, and thus truth.  If a story is all chaos with no coherence, it lacks beauty, and thus purpose.  Dostoevsky provides shape to the chaos of “A Weak Heart” in two ways.  

First, through the word “gratitude.”  The very frequency of its appearance creates a pattern, which is the first step toward order.  The word is often used as explanation for the gaps surrounding Vasya, whose motivations are the story’s primary enigma.  This happens most memorably when Vasya’s boss asks Arkady why Vasya lost his mind, Arkady can only stammer, “From gra-gra-titude!”  The statement almost functions as the story’s thesis.  

Vasya, to put it mildly, is not facing life successfully.  He’s unable to marry the woman he loves, unable to maintain the job he loves, unable to retain his sanity.  He seems to be suffering from a illness which Arkady names “gratitude.”  This, of course, differs from all conventional uses of the word—gratitude is normally considered healthy.  “A Weak Heart” becomes a bizarre new definition, a new concept on Dostoevsky’s map of the soul.  “I was never good to anyone,” Vasya says, “because I couldn’t be [. . .] Yet everyone was always being good to me!”  This obsessive need to repay one’s debts of kindness drives Vasya to psychosis.

Second, the confusion is ordered by the ending.  From a bridge on the Neva River, Arkady gazes at Petersburg.  His vision of the city is full of echoes from the rest of the story, which gives me the impression that its various threads are tying together.  When I try articulate this interconnection in a statement of meaning, I fail.  But the fact that the pattern of experience can’t be reduced to a conceptual statement makes its truth larger.  

If Dostoevsky had provided no conclusion, the story would’ve been mere delirium.  If the conclusion had been conceptual, the story would’ve been mere platitude.  Instead, Dostoevsky concludes with a unifying visual, which illuminates meaningful mystery.