Dostoevsking

literary sports and misery porn

Dostoevsking is an international sport of endurance—of mind, will, body, and particularly of the bladder. The fundamental principle of Dostoevsking is simple: one must hold out as long as possible before the door where Fyodor Mikhailovich himself is presumably located, and endure until he emerges, which is an undoubtedly ambitious goal, considering that for a century and a half he still hasn't come out.

The wall where the action took place stretched in both directions to both horizons, towered like a skyscraper and cast such a shadow over the surroundings that neither end nor edge could be seen even with the aided eye. All of its expanse was inscribed with Cyrillic letters that barely assembled into words and looked more like an incoherent jumble of symbols, which many had attempted to decipher and reproduce but none succeeded. On the door itself hung a sign reading "F. M. Dostoevsky. Do Not Enter. Do Not Knock. Maintain Silence (please)," with a sheet of paper stuck beneath it saying "He will come out to you himself." There was no handle whatsoever—it had been torn off by some twat years before—and the wood around the keyhole and above the bottom gap, through which draughts crept in and out, was inhumanly scratched by human claws.

Some athletes, you see, couldn't bear the torment of waiting and began scratching like animals starved to death, hoping that Fyodor Mikhailovich, hearing their piteous moans, would deign to come out, but he—what a surprise—still wouldn't come out and wouldn't come out. What a bloody nuisance! What a complete farce! Pardon me, what the fuck is this! Why won't the bugger come out—is he dead in there? Forgotten how to do so? Is he deliberately tormenting everyone? Or is he afraid to come out, refusing to do so, so that at the moment when the door opens, no one would dart in there and occupy the prime spot, for “there”, according to legend, is the Holy Grail, I'll stake my life on it, and in that roomkin, the dimensions of which were impossible to guess or calculate, there's enough space for only one. Therefore, he, Fyodor Mikhailovich, as some allegedly heard, sat right there by the door, peering through the keyhole at the athletes coming and going and sniggered, mentally placing bets, which he loved doing, on how long each newcomer would last—let them suffer, the little twats, then perhaps, with any luck, they'll produce something worthwhile.

The completely desperate athletes, lost souls, souls given up, maintained that there was no one there and couldn't be, to which others replied that no, well, someone was definitely walking about in there, we saw it, saw it with our own eyes, Fyodor Mikhailovich pacing to and fro, blocking the light seeping from beneath the door, and if you came closer and listened carefully, you could hear his breathing—slow, slightly raspy, occasionally whistling, quite elderly really. One theory—very robust, mind you—was that it took 48 years for Dostoevsky’s soul to regroup in Chile and reincarnate in Alejandro Jodorowsky, and they are, in fact, the same consciousness, inhabiting different bodies across time. The Dostoevsking Sport Association (DSA) didn’t want anyone to know that, of course, because that would ruin their whole endeavour but the patterns, as some ex-athletes said, were too consistent to ignore, such as, if one reads and watches close enough, one would see that “The Holy Mountain” is the film adaptation of “The Brothers Karamazov”! A few claimed they heard Fyodor Mikhailovich’s voice, or rather claimed outright that they managed to hallucinate it, in Russian, naturally, so that sweet fuck all was comprehensible anyway—try making sense of that mysterious Russian soul. As it turned out, one could hallucinate footsteps and stomping and the rustle of paper and even deathly silence, which was the most difficult of all. One could leave, but one couldn’t. For what if you turned around, gave up, walked away, and he cracked the door open and scarpered? Or worse still, someone else occupied the prime spot in the roomkin? And what if one were up and smash the door down, with a foot, a battering ram—however one fancied, just up and smash it down, but no—the rules were rules, otherwise what was the point? Where then would be the competitive aspect, where would be the thrill, all of that stuff. No, no, no, spun round in the athletes' heads, one must endure, the human body, with which, incidentally, Fyodor Mikhailovich would agree, exists precisely for such perseverance, endurance, suffering, as Lacan later said, "the recoil imposed on everyone, in so far as it involves terrible promises, by the approach of misery porn as such."

Throughout the entire history of the competition, all sorts of things happened, naturally—stabbing pain, cutting pain, fountains bursting outward, trembling with impatience, trembling with tension, trembling in the legs, muscle contractions, and then kidney infections and death, of course. Never mind, the athletes thought and believed with all their hearts and other organs, Fyodor Mikhailovich simply cannot sit in there that long, no human being, be it a trembling creature or someone who has the right, could endure sitting there so long. Nevertheless, days, weeks, months, years, decades went by, and Dostoevsky still wouldn't come out, and the athletes still wouldn't leave, but just sat, lay about, paced along the wall to and fro sometimes, as if it helped distract them and quell their natural urges. For if you were desperate for a wee, but he still wouldn't and wouldn’t come out, honestly, well, you couldn't just piss on that wall, could you?

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This story is my submission to the Soaring Twenties Social Club (STSC) Symposium. The STSC is a small, exclusive online speakeasy where a dauntless band of raconteurs, writers, artists, philosophers, flâneurs, musicians, idlers, and bohemians share ideas and companionship. Each month STSC members create something around a set theme. This month, the theme was “Sports.”

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P.S. Dostoevsking (other definition) noun. The reflexive invocation of Dostoevsky's name in literary discourse as universal validation, regardless of context or relevance. Upon invocation, it acts as a floating signifier deployed to lend automatic gravitas to any argument. Most literary essays contain at least one instance. See also: "What would Jesus do?", "As Nietzsche said..." Note: The competitive sport of Dostoevsking represents the logical endpoint of this phenomenon.