Dostoevsky, God and Beauty

 I came late to Dostoevsky. I had to read Crime and Punishment in high school; only I found it impenetrable. I did not try to read him again until I ran across his Brothers Karamazov during my pretrial detention. However, I did not finish reading it until I was in prison proper. Only there did my resistance to the Russians fail me. Now, I am quite fond of them.

Ryan Kemp's Dostoevsky’s Dangerous Gambit: The divine hiddenness at the core of a masterpiece helps illumine The Brothers Karamazov. I pass this along here hoping to encourage you to avoid my mistake, and read Dostoevsky.

There is arguably no other book in the history of literature that has so adeptly portrayed the beauty of Christianity while also converting more readers to atheism than The Brothers Karamazov. With the publication of Michael Katz’s translation, a new generation of English-language readers is invited to wrestle with the challenge of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s masterpiece.

Dostoevsky is too Christian for a secular age and too secular for Christendom—bound to insult the run-of-the-mill believer just as readily as the village atheist. On his view, we moderns need considerable saving and the only version of Christianity that can do the job is one we can’t possibly accept. This means, perversely, that the true success of Dostoevsky’s presentation of Christianity depends, in its own way, on its failure. If Dostoevsky plays by the rules of his own game many of us will leave the novel disappointed. Many have left the novel disappointed. It’s a literary gambit that fails just as often as it succeeds. 

I will quibble that his Christianity is Orthodox Christianity, and it can be accepted - if one has the faith. 

Dostoevsky believes that part of what makes human experience so unbearably painful is our constant urge to reign supreme over life; we continuously look to exercise forms of control and domination over others and our own circumstances. And even when we seem to succeed, we’re left empty: There can be no satisfaction in the company of those who, by subtle or less subtle means, have been made to submit to our will. A world that is made to our measure can never inspire awe or reverence, and despair grows. But part of worshiping something bigger than yourself is submitting not just your desires and will. It’s submitting your mind as well. Echoing the novel’s epigraph (John 12:24), everything in natural man must die. But if it dies, “it bringeth forth much fruit.” Here we get a glimpse into the perverse wisdom of the cross that so infuriates the Inquisitor. Only a Christ who surpasses the understanding can do the proper saving. Reason too must bow. Only then is the human ego made to surrender its control and consent to something beyond itself. To utter in true humility: Thy will be done. 

This too feels like Orthodox Christianity, recognizing that reason has its limits and human reason cannot encompass God.

 But this intense light of conviction soon fades. The indubitable becomes dubious, and we are left again in the shadows. Dare we trust that the world as seen in the light is the world as it is? Can we trust the sun? Is it a genuine sign we can live by? If by “genuine” we mean one that’s grounded in the kind of evidence that passes the test of the philosophy seminar room, then the answer must be no. Beauty is, as another Karamazov laments, “a mysterious thing.” We must assent to it, and it gives us the space to do so. Though, to be sure, this space is often the source of much pain and anxiety, Dostoevsky believes it’s not something we should properly lament. Beauty’s saving power is inseparable from the risk it demands we take for its sake, its strength ever allied to its weakness.

As I read the Orthodox writers, God is beautiful. Beauty is a sign of God. 

But aside from the insights I think Orthodox Christianity provides, There is a point here that I think I should have known and that seems ignored by most of the people I know. To live it is to engage in risky behavior.

How to live well is the goal and the problem.

sch 12/22