The Pain of Sharing Pain

• In Event: The Sense of Suffering in Literature, Poetry, and Performance

Abstract

This paper examines how the community can exacerbate the pain of individuals, focusing on the 19th-century Russian novel “War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy and the Bulgarian short story "Blind Vaysha" by Georgi Gospodinov. I argue that the two main characters, Natasha Rostova and Vaysha, experience pain on a communal level that goes beyond personal boundaries. Due to their ailments, they are influenced by the actions and judgments of their respective communities. Their communities, primarily through healers and doctors, cause pain to these characters due to two main factors: they are women who do not fit into the traditional roles that their societies imposed on them, and the inability of the communities to recognize the individual bodies as unique. I contrast Natasha and Vaysha's experiences with Pavel Smerdyakov's from Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel "Brothers Karamazov." Smerdyakov suffers from epilepsy and is generally left alone during his epileptic seizures. As a result, being left alone by his community allows him to commit the heinous act of murder against Fyodor Karamazov, his biological father.

Author

• Murad Jalilov, U of Kansas