Saturday, August 15, 2026
1549 Jesuit Saint Francis Xavier came ashore at Kagoshima, Japan
1876 US law removed Indians from Black Hills after gold find
1917 Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon met at Craiglockhart War Hospital, Edinburgh
2025 Vladimir Putin traveled to Alaska to meet with Donald Trump to discuss pathways to bring an end to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Volodymyr Zelenskyy was not invited to the summit.
In bed at 9, up at 4:15; 0430 111/70/63 125 202.8; 70/78/70, pop up showers
Morning meds at 7:30 a.m. Eliquis at 7:15 a.m. and p.m.
Does AI think and reason? How omniscient is it? How much can it know and understand of its interlocutors? I wonder. Here is my most recent exchange with ChatGPT:
Me: I've decided I don't want to reread the entirety of Crime and Punishment. I'm mainly interested in the interactions between Raskolnikov and Sonya, and RAskolnikov and his sister. Do you have any suggestions for a few chapters I may wish to reread before closing the book?
ChatGPT: Yes. If your principal interest is Raskolnikov's relationships with Sonya and Dunya, I would not try to push yourself through the whole novel again. There is a fairly compact sequence near the end that gives you most of what you are looking for—and, I think, makes a satisfying way to close the book.
For Sonya: three chapters
1. Part IV, Chapter 4 — Raskolnikov visits Sonya. This is the essential Sonya chapter. Raskolnikov goes to her room and, for the first time, they have something approaching an intimate conversation. She tells him about her family, her faith, and her relationship with Lizaveta. Most importantly, he asks her to read the story of Lazarus from the Gospel.
I'd especially recommend rereading this slowly. The Lazarus episode is really the theological and psychological key to their relationship: Raskolnikov is spiritually dead, and Sonya is the person who believes he can be brought back to life.
2. Part V, Chapter 4 — Raskolnikov confesses to Sonya. This is probably the single most important chapter for your purposes. He finally tells Sonya that he killed the pawnbroker—and Lizaveta. He tries to explain the crime intellectually: his theory of the extraordinary man, his desire to prove that he was capable of transgressing ordinary morality. Sonya sees through that explanation much more clearly than he does himself.
Her response is extraordinarily important. She doesn't recoil from him. She tells him that he must confess and accept suffering, and that she will follow him wherever he goes.
If you read only one chapter before putting the book down, I'd choose this one.
3. Part VI, Chapter 8 — the final meeting with Sonya. This is very short and provides the emotional payoff. Raskolnikov goes to Sonya before turning himself in. She gives him the cross, and he goes to the police to confess. The symbolism is quite heavy-handed—but I think it's worth seeing again, particularly after the Lazarus scene.
For Dunya: two chapters
The Dunya material is somewhat different. She isn't primarily the person who understands Raskolnikov's spiritual condition; she represents familial love, moral integrity, and the possibility that he can still belong to other human beings.
4. Part VI, Chapter 5 — Dunya and Svidrigailov. This isn't principally a Raskolnikov-Dunya scene, but I would read it because of what it reveals about Dunya. Svidrigailov has learned Raskolnikov's secret and uses it to put Dunya in an almost unbearable position. She refuses to sacrifice herself even to save her brother.
It makes clear how remarkable Dostoevsky's contrast between the two siblings is: Raskolnikov believes that morality can be transcended by an extraordinary person; Dunya, under extreme pressure, refuses to transcend it.
5. Part VI, Chapter 6 — Raskolnikov and Dunya. This is the one I'd definitely read. Dunya comes to see him. He tells her that he intends to confess, and she urges him to do it. He still tries to defend the underlying idea of his crime—he killed only a "louse," and if his plan had succeeded, he could have used the money for good. But looking at Dunya, he begins to confront the suffering he has caused his family.
That scene is particularly valuable because Dunya doesn't persuade him intellectually. She can't refute his theory in philosophical terms. Instead, her very presence confronts him with the human consequences of what he has done.
And then I'd stop.
If you want the minimum possible rereading, I'd make it:
Part IV, Ch. 4 → Part V, Ch. 4 → Part VI, Ch. 6 → Part VI, Ch. 8
That's only four chapters, but together they give you what I think you are really interested in: Raskolnikov's movement from intellectual isolation toward human attachment.
And there is an interesting symmetry:
Sonya says, in effect: You are not beyond redemption.
Dunya says: You are still my brother.
Raskolnikov initially responds to both with arguments.
But gradually, the arguments become less important than the relationships.
I suspect that may be a more rewarding way for you to finish Crime and Punishment than forcing yourself through another 300 pages. The novel's philosophical machinery is important, but these four chapters contain much of what makes the novel emotionally memorable.
That ChatGPT response to my inquiry arrived in 2 or 3 seconds after I submitted it. I've had other interactions with ChatGPT very much like this, even spookier, involving reasoning and value and literary judgments, the sorts of things we expect from a human being, not from a mass of interconnected computers operating on the basis of coded 1s and 0s and algorithms. I'm sure my interactions are nothing compared to the kinds of stuff more sophisticated, more technical, and some probably nasty-minded. It's not just that AI is smart and capable of reasoning; it's that it is amazingly smart and quick-witted
about virtually everything! That said, it also makes mistakes about simple things, or seems to get confused. In one exchange I had with it, it confused the authorship of some books by Elizabeth Strout and Ann Patchett, matters of simple historical fact.
I've stopped reading the novel because it's too heavy an emotional load. Throughout the novel, Raskolnikov is a tortured, suffering soul. Everyone in the novel is suffering or pathetic. It is, in a sense, both tragic and comic since, at the end, Raskolnikov suffers Siberian imprisonment but is redeemed by Sonya's love and hope for a religious and emotional redemption; but the novel is just relentless suffering, page after page, chapter after chapter, from beginning to end. It is a terrific explication of Solzhenitsyn's and Steinbeck's belief that each of us is a source of both good and evil, that even the worst of us has some good in him, and the best of us some evil, but reading it is a long, hard slog. I did it willingly when I was much younger, but I'm not up to it at my very old age. I read both The Idiot and Notes From Underground earlier this year, but there's only so much Dostoevsky that this old guy can take. Perhaps this is due to age. I turn 85 in 9 days. How many days do I have left? How many books can I read before my eyes, or my brain, fail me? How many hours and minutes of reading do I have in front of me? I don't want to spend any of my precious remaining reading time in the 'Slough of Despond' with Dostoevsky.
An exchange with Derry Keenan about my FB post yesterday:
Derry Keenan
Like Janine, I thank you for your descriptions and insight into the current conditions for crew members serving on those destroyers, where morale is low and basic needs aren’t available (today’s NPR reported shortages of soap, toothpaste, and access to washers to clean their t-shirts), as well as inadequate food.
My dad was in the navy in WWII but attached to the Marines as a medic. Like so many from that war he almost never talked about his experiences and the conditions of the war in then pacific, but I found a large bunch of sealed letters returned to mom because they could not be delivered—and this while she was pregnant and birthed their first child alone.
I’m so sorry, Chuck, that you had to endure that war, and my father his, and the soldiers now who must endure this administration’s senseless and immoral foreign policy. And, personally, I think Hegseth is evil and despicably dishonest.
Charles D. Clausen
Wow, I didn't know your Dad was a hospital corpsman serving with the Marines in WWII. I wonder if he was attached to the 4th Marine Division, in which my Dad served, including in the Battle of Iwo Jima. To my regret, I never met your Dad but I've been fortunate to meet some of your siblings and have only the warmest memories of your Mom, Mary. I even had a fantasy my Dad and your Mom getting together in their old age. As I write this, I'm looking at the wall opposite me and the fireplace poker you gave us, the one made by your brother (Kevin???). I'd love to visit with you again, but don't know how to contact you. 😥❤❤❤
Anniversaries thoughts. First, Francis Xavier. I'm not a big fan of missionaries, especially missionaries directly tied to colonial, mercantile imperialism, as Xavier was to the Portuguese Empire in Asia.
And speaking of empires, in the westward expansion of the American White Empire, once it was discovered that "there's gold in them thar hills", the Indigenous tribes were screwed. Another treaty broken by our government, another violation of the so-called Rule of Law in obedience to the REAL rules of law: He who has the gold makes the rules, and the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must. USA, USA, USA!!!
Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon are two favorite poets. Sassoon's The Hero reminds me, painfully, of my days as CACO for north Philadelphia in 1966-67.
'Jack fell as he'd have wished,' the mother said,
And folded up the letter that she'd read.
'The Colonel writes so nicely.' Something broke
In the tired voice that quavered to a choke.
She half looked up. 'We mothers are so proud
Of our dead soldiers.' Then her face was bowed.
Quietly the Brother Officer went out.
He'd told the poor old dear some gallant lies
That she would nourish all her days, no doubt
For while he coughed and mumbled, her weak eyes
Had shone with gentle triumph, brimmed with joy,
Because he'd been so brave, her glorious boy.
He thought how 'Jack', cold-footed, useless swine,
Had panicked down the trench that night the mine
Went up at Wicked Corner; how he'd tried
To get sent home, and how, at last, he died,
Blown to small bits. And no one seemed to care
Except that lonely woman with white hair.
Owen's Dulce et Decorum is bitter and true:
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Owen was killed in action in France one week before the Armistice was signed, ending the war. His mother received the telegram informing her of his death on Armistice Day. Sassoon lived until age 80, dying in 1967. He converted to Catholicism at age 70 for some uncertain reason.
American poets produced some moving World War II poetry. A favorite is Randall Jarrell's The Death of a Ball Turret Gunner.
From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
Ball turrets were features on the underbellies of B-17s and B-24s. The gunners crammed in the fetal position in them, manning their 50-caliber machine guns against enemy fighter aircraft.
But the best of all of them (to me) is still Walt Whitman:
Come up from the fields father, here’s a letter from our Pete,
And come to the front door mother, here’s a letter from thy dear son.
Lo, ’tis autumn,
Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder,
Cool and sweeten Ohio’s villages with leaves fluttering in the moderate wind,
Where apples ripe in the orchards hang and grapes on the trellis’d vines,
(Smell you the smell of the grapes on the vines?
Smell you the buckwheat where the bees were lately buzzing?)
Above all, lo, the sky so calm, so transparent after the rain, and with wondrous clouds,
Below too, all calm, all vital and beautiful, and the farm prospers well.
Down in the fields all prospers well,
But now from the fields come father, come at the daughter’s call,
And come to the entry mother, to the front door come right away.
Fast as she can she hurries, something ominous, her steps trembling,
She does not tarry to smooth her hair nor adjust her cap.
Open the envelope quickly,
O this is not our son’s writing, yet his name is sign’d,
O a strange hand writes for our dear son, O stricken mother’s soul!
All swims before her eyes, flashes with black, she catches the main words only,
Sentences broken, gunshot wound in the breast, cavalry skirmish, taken to hospital,
At present low, but will soon be better.
Ah now the single figure to me,
Amid all teeming and wealthy Ohio with all its cities and farms,
Sickly white in the face and dull in the head, very faint,
By the jamb of a door leans.
Grieve not so, dear mother, (the just-grown daughter speaks through her sobs,
The little sisters huddle around speechless and dismay’d,)
See, dearest mother, the letter says Pete will soon be better.
Alas poor boy, he will never be better, (nor may-be needs to be better, that brave and simple soul,)
While they stand at home at the door he is dead already,
The only son is dead.
But the mother needs to be better,
She with thin form presently drest in black,
By day her meals untouch’d, then at night fitfully sleeping, often waking,
In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with one deep longing,
O that she might withdraw unnoticed, silent from life escape and withdraw,
To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead son.
