Cleansing of the soul

Cleansing of the soul is the term Dmitri Ivanovitch Nekhludoff uses for a recurring inner process in which he clears out the accumulated moral rubbish that has choked his spiritual life, much as a watch must be cleaned to run properly. The metaphor appears at a critical turning point in the novel, after Nekhludoff has recognized Maslova in the prisoners' dock and begun to feel the weight of his past. He recalls that he has experienced such cleansings several times before, each followed by a resolution to live a new life, and each eventually undone by the temptations of the world. The first and most vital awakening occurred during the summer he spent with his aunts, when he was still a pure young man, writing his essay on land tenure and falling in love with Katusha. A second awakening came when he gave up civil service to join the army during the Russo-Turkish War, ready to sacrifice his life. A third occurred when he left the army and went abroad to devote himself to art. But each time, the choking-up process soon accomplished itself, and he fell back into a life of selfishness and dissipation. The period from that last awakening until the day of the trial had been the longest without any cleansing, and the discord between his conscience and his life had become greater than ever before. He is horror-struck when he sees how vast the divergence is, and the defilement seems so complete that he despairs of ever getting cleansed. A tempter's voice whispers that he has tried before and failed, that all are alike, that such is life. But the free spiritual being, which alone is true and eternal, has already awakened in him, and he cannot but believe it. Enormous though the distance is between what he wishes to be and what he is, nothing appears insurmountable to the newly awakened spiritual being. He resolves to break the lie that binds him, to confess everything, to tell everybody the truth, and to act the truth. He will tell Missy that he is a profligate and cannot marry her; he will tell Mary Vasilievna's husband that he has been deceiving him; he will dispose of the inheritance in a way that acknowledges the truth; and he will go to Katusha, confess his sin, and ask her forgiveness. He even considers marrying her if necessary. He prays, asking God to help him, to enter into him and cleanse him of all abomination, and what he is praying for has already happened: the God within him has awakened his consciousness. He feels himself one with Him, and therefore feels not only the freedom, fullness, and joy of life, but all the power of righteousness. His eyes fill with tears—good tears of joy at the awakening of the spiritual being that has been asleep all these years, and bad tears of tenderness toward himself at his own goodness. He opens the window to a moonlit, fresh night, and drinks in the invigorating air, exclaiming, "How delightful, how delightful; oh, God, how delightful." This cleansing is not a single event but a pattern that defines Nekhludoff's moral trajectory. The novel's central action—his decision to follow Maslova to Siberia, to give up his land, and to seek a new life—is the direct consequence of this final, decisive cleansing. The process is also reflected in the novel's title, "Resurrection," and in the religious imagery that pervades the later chapters, as Nekhludoff reads the Sermon on the Mount and discovers the five commandments that he believes can establish the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. The cleansing of the soul is thus the psychological mechanism through which the novel's moral and spiritual themes are realized in the protagonist's inner life.