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Christianity

and

Literature

Vol

60, No Winter 2011)

R V W

ESSAY

Dostoevsky's Struggle for Faith

Deborah A.Martinsen

Dostoevsky and the Russian People. By Linda Ivanits. New York,

NY:

Cambridge UP,2008. ISBN0521889936.Pp. 272. 103.00

Dostoevsky s Unfinished Journey. ByRobin Feuer Miller.New Haven, CT:

Yale UP,2007. ISBN978-0300120158. Pp. 272. 38.00.

The Brothers Karamazov: Worlds

of

the Novel. By Robin Feuer iller

New Haven, CT: reprint

Yale

UP, 2008 (1992). ISBN0300125623. Pp. 192.

22.00.

Dostoevsky: Language, Faith Fiction.

ByRowan Williams. Waco, TX:

BaylorUP,2008. ISBN 1602581452. Pp. 285. 24.95.

These four excellent studies all cast light on the complexity of

Dostoevsky's work and belief. Linda Ivanits opens her seminal study of

the interconnections between the narod (people) and Christianity in

Dostoevsky's major novels with the premise that any talk of God in the

mature Dostoevsky must include talk of the

narod ...

Dostoevsky struggled

to believe in Christ and in the Christian essence of the Russian people,

but at times his striving and the dark face of Russian reality were uneasy

bedfellows

(5-6). Ivanits' new readings demonstrate how the presence of

the Russian people and folklore in Dostoevsky's works contributes to his

probing of the eternal questions. In The Brothers Karamazov: Worlds of

the Novel,

a reprint of her 1992monograph, Robin Feuer Miller poetically

explores the web of connections which shape Dostoevsky's last novel.

Itself a work of art, Worlds of the Novel identifies The Brothers Karamazov s

essential themes, characters, genre, and plot by exploring its narration, by

follOWing its images and their transformations, and by exposing its ethical

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310

HRISTI NITY ND LITER TURE

and metaphysical questions. In Dostoevsky s Unfinished Journey Miller

investigates Dostoevsky s representations of the dynamic of conversion and

healing, or the failure of that process, while exploring questions of literary

influence

and

intertextuality (xiii). She tackles the question of Dostoevsky s

own conversion or inner transformation, explores questions of genre, and

speculates on ways Dostoevsky s fiction grapples with issues that are alive

today. Like Ivanits, she offers new readings ofDostoevsky s work, examines

Dostoevsky s representation of the peasant in his fiction and nonfiction, and

probes Dostoevsky s semi-autobiographical novel and prison memoir, Notes

ro

the House

o

the Dead

for invaluable insights into his religious struggles.

Rowan Williams Dostoevsky: Language Faith Fiction contends that

Dostoevsky s fictional practices have deep roots in Orthodox Christianity

(7), that the novels major issue is not theodicy but a fictional picture of

what faith or the lack of it would look like in the political and social world

of his day (4), and that the central question behind Dostoevsky s fiction is

What is it that human

beings owe to each other? (14). While exploring the

novel s theological underpinnings, Williams demonstrates how Dostoevsky

incorporates a notion of freedom into his narration, how the Dostoevskian

novel resists the demonic by keeping multiple possibilities open, and how

Orthodoxdoctrines regardingcreationand incarnation informDostoevsky s

imagery. All three authors believe that Dostoevsky s investigation into the

human spirit derives from the notion, as Ivanits puts it, that to live is to be

open to change and moral transformation (36).

Ivanits begins with a useful chapter on early Dostoevsky and his

exposure to the Russian people and Russian folklore. Although Dostoevsky

made his writing career in Petersburg, he was

born

in Moscow, where he

was surrounded by peasant servants, including his beloved nanny. Ivanits

discusses visits from former servants that become occasions for storytelling,

the rape and death of a nine-year-old playmate, romps with his brothers

and peasant children at the Dostoevsky s summer home Darovoe, the local

holy fool Agrafena (who was raped and lost her child), and the burning

of Darovoe. While the official record says that Dostoevsky s father died

of

a stroke, Dostoevsky probably believed the story (for which there is

much evidence) that he was murdered by his peasants. Thus, early in life,

Dostoevsky had conflicting experiences of the Russian people s kindness

and cruelty. His time in Siberia taught him about the deep gulf between

the people and the upper classes. As Ivanits demonstrates, these rifts and

Dostoevsky s attempts to grapple with them became central to his fiction.








DOSTOEVSKY S STRUGGLE

FOR

FAITH

311

Ivanits shows how the many collections of folklore and spiritual songs

published in the early 1860s became important sources for Dostoevsky s

themes and images. In her invaluable discussion of Crime nd Punishment

(1866), Ivanits demonstrates how spiritual songs about the beggar Lazarus

complement the reading of the resurrection of Lazarus from John s Gospel

to fuse themes of charity and resurrection (62). In The Idiot (1868), Ivanits

asks, where have all the people gone She concludes that the absence of

peasants, earth imagery, and icons signifies a darkworld of spiritual stasis. In

TheDevils (1871), she examines the demonology, demonstrates that folklore

imagery offersmultiple identities for Stavrogin and Maria, and suggests that

the novel reflects Dostoevsky s doubts about the narods Christian nature.

In addition to discussing the novel s peculiar Mariology, Ivanits uncovers a

new source for Maria

Lebiadkina Maria

lebed bel i Maria the White

Swan,a prominent sorceress in folkepic (113). She suggests thatDostoevsky

did not attempt to reincorporate the Tikhon chapter because it provides a

more normative Orthodoxy to counter popular superstition (114). And she

argues that the folk references to Stavrogin suggest the

narod s

propensity

to flock to false, sectarian prophets, to join bloody uprisings, and to mistake

pretenders for the true tsar (119), as well as their belief that in times of crisis

Nicholas the Wonderworker rose to save his people (123). Ivanits concludes

that the novel soffbeat popular spiritualityand its conflicts between demons

and saints reflect Dostoevsky s deepest political anxieties.

Like Feuer Miller, Ivanits notes the disjunction between Dostoevsky S

writings about peasants in his semi-autobiographical fiction Notes from

the House of the Dead (1861) and his 1870s journalism. She concludes that

Dostoevsky s journalistic harangues about the superior Christianity of the

Russian people (193) probably reflected the tremendous tension between

what the writer saw and what he wanted to believe (158). Ivanits masterful

chapter on The rothers Karamazov focuses on how imagery pertaining

to popular belief illuminates Ivan scritique of earthly justice and Zosimas

vision (161). She shows how Dostoevsky used folk beliefs and narratives

to sketch a medieval cosmology that divides the world into heaven, earth,

and a material hell, a cosmology reflected in the zhitiia (saints lives)

tradition valued by Church authorities. By contrast, Zosima s distinctly

modern cosmology espouses a connection between earth and other worlds.

Alyosha sLife of Zosima adopts Zosima s vision, signaling Alyosha s release

from the pre-scientific cosmologyadopted by the novel s literalists (166).On

this view, Ivan s Legend of the Grand Inquisitor must be seen as a struggle








312

CHRISTI NITY

ND LITER TURE

between a medieval cosmos and the freedom that Christ offers (173).

Ivanits demonstrates the many and surprising ways that the legend ofChrist

walking the Russian earth is embedded in the novel, including the charity

at the heart of Zosima s teaching and Grushenka s tale of the onion. She

thus shows that Ivan s compassionate yet lofty Christ reflects Ivan s refusal

or inability to acknowledge God s image in others. Like Raskolnikov before

him, Ivan must learn to receive as well as to give. Ivanits concludes

her

well

researched and insightful work byobserving that Dostoevsky s Christianity

was, like the people s, simple, without a lot of theological baggage (190).Like

Miller, she believes that Dostoevsky s Diary

a Writer pronouncements

about the narod as a God-bearing people reflect the author s ideal rather

than

his struggle to come to terms with the

people their

violence as well

as their charity, capacity for self-giving, and belief in life after death. Like

Williams, Ivanits identifies the question of Christ s divinity, the incarnation,

as essential to Dostoevsky s lifelong struggle to believe.

All praise toYaleUniversity Press for reprinting Robin Feuer Miller s

h

Brothers Karamazov Worlds

the Novel

Already a classic, this profound

book is a must-read for all. Bynoting that one inspiration for this novel was

Dostoevsky s boundless griefat the loss

of

a beloved child, Miller establishes

the emotional sensitivity of her reading. By revealing how Dostoevsky

implicates his readers in the novel s action, she demonstrates

her

mastery

of narrative dynamics: Throughout this long novel, Dostoevsky uses his

narrator-chronicler as a device to force us to make

and

remake judgments

and, eventually, to learn when to suspend them (15). As Miller uncovers

the rhyming or interconnectedness of the novel s images, themes, scenes,

and

characters, she shows how so much in Dostoevsky s artistic world cuts

both ways.

Miller avoids the cliched characterization

of

the Karamazov brothers as

allegories ofbody (Dmitry),mind (Ivan), and heart (Alyosha) byhighlighting

their shared family traits, particularly their Karamazovian sensualism and

narrative skill. She notes that the novel s key moments involve a story or

a speech: Drnitry s confession, Ivan s Legend of the Grand Inquisitor,

Grushenka s story of the onion, Zosimas autobiography, Alyosha s vision

of the wedding at Cana, Alyoshas closing speech to the boys at the stone.

Moreover, Alyosha, who acts as a Jamesian ficelle, or connecting character,

is always present at such key moments. By the

end

of

part

1,Miller holds:

the novel has begun to ask its difficult questions about the nature of

confession, the meaning of faith, the function of miracle, the right of








DOSTOEVSKY S STRUGGLE FOR

FAITH

peopleto judgeand orgiv eachother,the placeofreason inexplaining

the mysteriesof the human heart, and the obligations of parents and

children to each other. All of these questions, moreover, have already

begun to intersect and collidewith each other ...The reader has begun

the arduous, deeply associative task of moving through a dense, yet

fluidmedium in which allthingsare connected:

(47)

313

Miller identifies the poetic clusters revolving around bread an d stones

(50), demonstrates how Dostoevsky works as a borrower an d adapter of

biblical an d literary sources (63), how th e riddles of miracle, mystery, an d

authority lie not only at the heart of the Grand Inquisitor s diatribe bu t also

at the heart of Zosima s exhortations (68), ho w Alyosha s greatest gift lies in

his ability to give back to others what they have given

hi m

(74),

an d

how

Zosimas true authority lies in his radical dispersal of responsibility (each

for all) (76). The actual moment of Zosima s death, she holds, constitutes

a triple response of love

an d

responsibility ... three gestures that we have

already seen repeatedly: a bo w to the ground, a prayer,

an d

a kissing of the

earth (79). Miller shows that the possibility of religious faith for all three

brothers

an d

Zosima is inextricably

and

mysteriously intertwined with

the reality of children s suffering (96),

that

with Ilyusha s death at the

en d

of

book

10 the themes of the death of a child, seeds, tears, memory,

an d

the

overarching paradox of the Book of Job all coalesce (107),

that

Ivan s visits

to Smerdyakov represent a descent into the most complex aspects

of

guilt

explored in the novel (115), that the trial is the most extended

an d

satiric

scandal scene that Dostoevsky ever wrote (125),

an d

that Dostoevsky s

understanding of character as fate is profoundly Shakespearean (130).

Miller argues t ha t t he Epilogue to Brothers

aramazov

draws us even more

deeply into th e novel s action. Alyosha again ties everyone together with

his visits,

a nd t he n

Dostoevsky pulls

ou t

the narrative stops. In the novel s

last pages, his narrator uses words denoting

memory

thirty times. Miller

concludes by reminding us of the novel s epigraph: Memories an d the very

words used to express

them

become, literally, the seeds that, having died,

bear fruit (133).

The title of Miller s latest book,

Dostoevsky s nfinished

Journey reveals

her central metaphor: conversion

an d

transformation as ongoing processes.

HerbeautifullywrittenstudyemphasizesDostoevsky sartistictransformation

of source material autobiographical, oral, literary, or

journalistic

an d

the conversions or failed conversions that

mark

his work. Each chapter has

a different focus,

bu t

all are tightly woven together by the central themes








314

CHRISTI NITY

ND

LITER TURE

of transformation and conversion, analysis of narrative strategy and genre,

and recapitulation with variation. Miller thus introduces Dostoevsky s The

Peasant Marey (1876), the author s artistic reinventing of a personal

experience in Siberia, as a rewriting of his semi-autobiographical fiction,

House the Dead

(1861) in chapter 1; reads it as a parable in chapter 4;

and returns to it as a paradigmatic conversion story in chapter 8. With each

examination, Miller deepens her argument that Throughout Dostoevsky s

fiction the experience of conversion is a frighteningly perilous one in which

the movement toward God threatens, at virtually every moment, to collapse

into its opposite, to change direction (149). Marey,moreover, emblemizes

the figure of the peasant who is intimately bound up

with

Dostoevsky s

most cherished ideas about visionary experience, memory, salvation, and

grace that is, his ideas about transformation and conversion (3-4).

Miller convincingly argues that Dostoevsky s own conversion involved

a turning to the Russian people and suggests that it may wellhave occurred

before he reached Siberia. She identifies Dostoevsky s

House

the Dead

as

the source of images, plot fragments, and narrative strategies from which

the writer will draw in later work. Miller sees this hybrid of autobiography

and fiction as both idealized vision and reality in extremis, the product of

artistic shaping (28). Drawing a parallel between the convict peasants who

are artists of their own lives and the dreamers of his fiction, Miller notes

that Dostoevsky locates lack of freedom in compulsion, symbolized by the

fetters that convicts wear, even as they lay dying (36).

In outlining her strategies for teaching

rime and Punishment

Miller

draws attention to the essence of our shared pedagogical enterprise:

modeling the process of finding and asking questions as our students

bring their private readings into the public sphere of the classroom, where

we contemplate with them freighted issues such as the friction between

individual and social justice and encourage them to make weighty

judgments about both individuals and the society in which they

liv

(52). She observes that Dostoevsky s decision to shift from first-person to

third-person narration marked a shift from story to novel and solved his

problem of identifying a primary motivation for Raskolnikov s crime: The

plentitude ofmotivations becomes, in its entirety, the substance of the novel

and of Raskolnikov s character (59). Miller s strategies for unraveling the

character of Dostoevsky s university dropout provide compelling material

for thought aswellas classroom discussion.

Throughout her work, Miller raises questions about genre: she explores

the paradox of revealing and concealing embedded in parables (chapter








D O ST O EV SKY S ST RU G GL E FO R

F ITH

315

4) and confessions (chapter 5), the generic envelopes of The Dream of a

RidiculousMan - utopia, dystopia, dream journeyto a lostEden, Christmas

story (chapter 6),

and

the contributions of the uncanny, the fantastic, the

melodramatic, the gothic, and the metaphysical to The rothers aramazov

(chapter 7). These explorations yield rich insights both about the works and

about Dostoevsky s artistic process. Her four examples ofparable, including

The Peasant Marey; all start with the narration of a memory, combine

Russian content with Western literary strategies, contain a maternal smile

that cannot undo human suffering but recalls God s love for man, and prove

transformative for the teller or listener or both (78):

These parables constitute moments when Dostoevsky, through the

rhetoric of his characters words and through his own canny ordering

of events and manipulations of larger contexts, could revitalize,

reinvent, reshape, and reconstruct the Orthodox heritage and, through

the medium of contemporary fiction, render it immediate, modern,

and startling. (85)

Miller holds that Dostoevsky wrote his ongoing polemic with Rousseau

into The ossesse by identifying Rousseau as the figure behind both Stepan

Verkhovensky sand Stavrogin sconfessions and bylinkingliteraryconfession

to indecent exposure and masturbation. In this way, Dostoevsky connects

the generations of fathers and sons and places them into a larger cultural

picture influenced by French romanticism.

On

this reading, Stavrogin

remains a tragic figure who cannot separate himselffrom destructive vanity,

whereas Stepan Verkhovensky, despite his comic depiction, experiences

an authentic conversion and transcends his European predecessor both

morally and spiritually.

In her final chapter on journeys of conversion (chapter 8), Miller

observes: For Dostoevskythe experience ofconversion isalwaysunfinished,

alwaysperilous; it embodies a metaphysical apprehension of the fantastic, a

fleetingbut unforgettable sensation of contactwith otherworlds (149). She

examines four conversions from works discussed earlier: the Dostoevsky

of The Peasant Marey the ridiculous man, Alyosha Karamazov, and

Ivan Karamazov. From these examples, Miller identifies elements of the

Dostoevskian conversion experience: a frame, a needy child, a trance-like

state, a precise time, and subliminal memories that resurface (157). Miller s

sensitivity to embedded narratives and their resonances allows her to see a

pattern for Ivan in the earlier stories. Suggesting that the fundamental shift

to conversion may take place before the conversion journeybegins, she asks








316

CHRISTIANITY

AND

LITERATURE

whether Ivan, like the philosopher of his own tale, recalled by his devil, may

have got there long ago? I 72).

Miller s deep understanding of Dostoevsky s narrative strategies and of

his double-edged psychology combined with

her

own poetic wisdom spark

epiphanies in her readers. She concludes by meditating on Dostoevsky s

creative processes. Miller tracks the images

of

doors, leaves, stones, seeds,

and onions in The rothers Karamazov noting that Dostoevsky values

symbolic, epiphanic transformations that can occur at unexpected

moments over factual knowledge:

The stone

suggests

the inherent potential for good and for

evil

for

conversion or itslack, inherent in allhuman beings.Thestone remains

unfixed

a metaphor

always

in

flux

transforming or not transforming

into a weapon, into bread, into words-becoming by the closeof the

novel

the foundation of a spiritual

edifice

built on the unjustified

suffering and tears ofa child.

(182)

concluding, Miller pulls together all the threads of her book, using her

insights about the paradox of conversion- The truth is that we travel

on a journey that was already accomplished before we set out (155)

to explain Alyoshas three acts of plagiarism. Alyosha gives an onion

back to Grushenka, a kiss back to Ivan, and, earlier, Ivan s words back to

Ivan: Alyosha, in these three acts of literary plagiarism, has returned to

Grushenka and to Ivan kernels of grace that each

had

already unknowingly

possessed (183). Ivan s love of sticky green leaves of spring and of Alyosha,

his own fictional conversion story, the conversions of his brothers further

support Miller s view of Ivan s conversion. Unlike Williams,

who holds that

the devil is working for Ivan s damnation, Miller holds out the possibility

that the devil may be working for Ivan s salvation, that in reminding Ivan of

his own conversion story, he may be giving him an onion. AsMiller reminds

us, Dostoevsky s final novel works like the seed and the onion:

The seed and the onion are emblematic of that same potential in

each human being for both negative and positive metamorphosis

and transformation. The seed and the onion are likewise suggestive

of Dostoevsky s longstanding habits of narration, with his primary

strategies as a writer ... These metaphors for the kind of narrative

texture Dostoevsky created are especially powerful in

he rothers

r m zov because in that particular novel form and content, with

regardboth to seedsand to onions-coincide. (182)








DOSTOEVSKY S

STRUGGLE F OR F IT H

317

While she tracks the ways that both evil and good travel in Dostoevsky s

fictional world, Miller identifies narrative patterns that provide hope,

thereby underscoring Dostoevsky s belief in narrative s salvatory potential.

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is a theologian and

moralist who reads Dostoevsky s work as an Orthodox believer s response

to secularization. The five chapters of his book examine the theological

underpinnings of Dostoevsky s authorial stance; discuss the demonic as an

anti-historic, anti-dialogic force that leads to isolation and death; propose

dialogue as the precondition for self-knowledge, freedom and love; claim

responsibility as a sort of authorship that involves giving others space and

time to be other

an d

to accept their own responsibility for all; and read

holy characters as icons who make divine presence and plentitude visible

in narrative. From start to finish, Williams insists that Dostoevsky s life and

work are shaped by the central icon

of

the incarnate Christ, an image

of

transcendence made visible, a kenotic model of vulnerability accepted, of

ego abandoned, and of responsibility for all embraced.

Williams grounds his theological reading of Dostoevsky s work in

Bakhtins theories of

language, dialogue, polyphony, and answerability.

He enriches those theories by adding an iconic dimension. While

acknowledging the presence of actual icons in Dostoevsky s novels, which

he sees as

part

of their Orthodox

serniosphere

(189), Williams develops a

view of icon as story (201): what makes images sacred is ... their capacity

to retain in themselves the real energy

of

another world ... a presence that

offersto nourish and augment what I am (208). He contends that the basic

polarity in Dostoevsky s novels involves those who acknowledge their

iconic dimension and those who struggle to resist or extinguish it (201).

Williams thus pits Dostoevsky s narrative icons or holy characters against

the demonic. He seesDostoevsky s holy characters as those who make visible

the assumption of plentitude, the excess of possible meaning and resource

that maintains the narrative itself as a symbol of possible reconciliation

(207).Williams defines reconciliation as the ability to live intelligently and

without despair in a world that so deeply pulls against our ideals (21) and

faith as a response to grace and to Christ (38) made visible in Dostoevsky s

novels in thosewords, gestures, and actions that make reconciliation possible

(26). On

this view, the underground

man

Notesfrom Underground, 1864

rejects reconciliation (18).

The demonic plays a large role in Williams reading of Dostoevsky.

In his chapter on devils, Williams argues that the Devil is the enemy of








8

CHRISTIANITY

AND LITERATURE

real narration, i.e., narration with an open future (107), that diabolical

authorship ends in silence and death (79); that the diabolical is the

immobilizing of the self in humiliation and self-hatred (71); that the

demonic aims to undermine belief in immortality (82); and that the

demonic always de-realizes or disincarnates, distracts us from the body

and the particular (82). Because the theology of the Eastern Church insists

on the indwelling of divine activity in matter, particularly as seen in the

making of icons, Williams holds that the Devil s defeat involves characters

commitment to the physical world (75) rather than to their own will and

self-image (76). We see this in Ivan Karamazov s rescue

of

the peasant

whom he had left to freeze (75). Nonetheless, Williams holds that Ivan s last

minute decisions to do good by the peasant and

to give testimony at the trial

are tragically undercut by the self-doubt which Ivan s Devil subsequently

exploits (76). Despite his fine analysis

of

the parents and children dynamics

of The Demons, in discussing the demonic, Williams the moralist prevails,

and

his reading empties that novel of its rare conciliatory moments as well

as its tragic comedy.

Williams explores recognition of others as the necessary condition

for dialogue and for freedom. Dialogue always involves the risk of being

misheard or consciously distorted (132): others words open to us areas

in ourselves that have been hidden or alien or simply not worked through

(132). Dialogue thus makes characters visible and free. Williams sees

Golyadkin

The Double, 1846166),

the underground man, and Raskolnikov

as characters who have retreated to inner worlds. They are

not

demonic

like Pyotr Verkhovensky and Stavrogin Demons), however, because they

have no interest in ending history or closing off dialogue by silencing

others (121), as Stavrogin does in his confession (1l0). On this view, The

Brothers Karamazov (1881) narrates the processes of the brothers coming

to visibility (126), which entails becoming vulnerable (130) and open to

others (131).

Williams proposes that we read Dostoevsky s work through the

imperfect analogy between writing and divine creation: authorship entails

creation of a continually unfolding, unscripted, unfinalized world that is

directed toward freedom and not control (235). On this view, a novelist

must negotiate the path of authorial presence and kenosis, an authorial

self-emptying that provides characters the space and time to develop and

choose (226). Yet Williams blurs the boundary between authorship and

agency when he argues that taking responsibility is a sort of

authorship







DOSTOEVSKY S STRUGGLE FOR FAITH

319

(169), a mode of ethical vision (172) that is a roadmap for action: Ethical

action is never retreat into

the

self;... One becomes actively answerable only

byself-renunciation ... the developed understanding of responsibility insists

on

the taking of a position in order to create space for the other (173).

Williams reads Sonya Marmeladov as a Dostoevskian author (157) who

gets Raskolnikov to take responsibility for his crime (153), yet he does

not

distinguish between her actions and other characters narratives.

Williams excels as a reader of Zosima

and

his discourses (book 6),

which he views as the most sustained discussion of taking responsibility

in Dostoevsky s fiction (158). He holds that Dostoevskyplaces Zosima into

a robust theological tradition based in the teaching of St. Tikhon, built

around the theology of Isaac the Syrian, and tempered by the presence of

the Elder Amvrosy (whomDostoevskyvisited after his son s death). On this

view, Zosima shares his life story to dispel

the

idea that humans (or icons)

come ready-made (202). Williams tracks a progression of conversions in

Zosimas discourse which shows that Markel s paradisal vision is attainable

only by a willingness to embrace actions that carry serious risk (163)

and maintains that characters are life-bound or death-bound depending

on their capacity for mutual responsibility (213), which in

turn

relies on

their decision to accept a structure of moral life shaped by the central

icon that is

the

narrative

and

presence of Christ (215). Williams identifies

Mitya s struggle as the next stage of Zosimas progression. On this reading,

Mitya Karamazov s joyful embrace of sacrifice is the most costly embrace

of responsibility in the novel and Mitya the most effective icon in this

story (201). Williams contrasts Mityas responsible choice to Stavrogin s

arbitrary choices and elevation of ego, which spell an

end

to both dialogue

and narration in Demons 220 .

Williams is less successful in his reading

of

PrinceMyshkin (The Idiot ,

whom

he views as an unwitting portal of evil. Williams contends that

Myshkin lacks pre-history and thus tends to reduce others to the same state

(51), that he fails to help Nastasia Filippovna because she rebels against his

static view of her, and that his pre-epileptic ecstatic vision of harmony

(49) is in some sense bound up with death: (One wonders whether the

Archbishop believes the same of Dostoevsky s pre-epileptic experiences?)

Unlike the incarnate Christ, Myshkin faces no temptations

and

thus

remains undeveloped and impotent in the world (57), an unwitting force

of destruction (54). Williams does not explicitly link Myshkin with Don

Quixote on these grounds, but his argument might have taken another turn








320

CHRISTIANITY

AND

LITERATURE

if

he had. While Williams rightly holds that the Myshkin of the novel differs

greatly from the Prince Christ of Dostoevsky s notebooks, he overlooks

the novel s moments of grace. Williams thus praises Sonya Marmeladov,

who exchanges crosses with Lizaveta and then gives one to Raskolnikov,

yet condemns Myshkin, who first buys a drunken soldier s cross and then

exchanges crosses with Rogozhin. Williams reads Myshkins purchase of the

solidier s tin cross as a sign of responsibility renounced (156), Myshkin s

series of anecdotes about belief as centerless (155), and Myshkin and

Rogozhin as nonidentical spiritual twins (I57). He equates the soldier s

tin cross to Holbein s Christ as a signifier of emptiness (157). Williams

concedes that Myshkin buys the cross as an act of generosity but does not

consider whether the exchange of crosses might be a ritual of adopted

brotherhood by which Rogozhin attempts to curtail enmity and offer

Myshkin protection (cf. Ivanits 96). He also overlooks parallels between the

progression in Zosima meeting s with the peasant women in

The Brothers

Karamazov

and the progression in Myshkin s masterful series of anecdotes

about faith cf Miller,

Journey 79-81).

Like Ivanits, Williams argues that

Myshkins

lack of incarnational reality undercuts his Christ status as he

cannot enter into the suffering and joy of others and thus cannot inspire

them. Yetwhile Ivanits suggests that Myshkin might be viewed as a Gnostic

Christ (99), Williams sees him as a perpetuator of stasis. Miller, on the

other hand, recognizes Myshkin as an author who shares his narrative

gifts with others and identifies his skillful stories about faith as a parable.

While Williams criticizes Myshkin for lack of insight, Miller finds parallels

between

Myshkins

parable and Dostoevsky s The Peasant Marcy : neither

narrator can say what is in the peasant s heart, Yet each nevertheless tells

his

tale

a parable about the reception of faith, of grace and by telling it

enacts yet another act of faith, a spreading of that

gr ce

Journey 78 .

Williams closes with one of Dostoevsky s verbal icons. While the

problem oftheodicy has no theoretical solution, Pictorially and narratively,

the resolution lies in Alyosha s freedom to offer Ivan such reconciliation as

is in his

power the kiss which echoes Christ s for the Inquisitor. This is

simply the reaffirmation of the ultimate presence of creative lovewithin the

narrative (235). In other words, it is a kenotic moment of emptying a

verbal icon illustrating Alyosha s use of freedom as a gift to his brother.

Ivanits, Miller, and Williams have all written insightful and original

studies of Dostoevsky s work, all of which wrestle at some point with the

writer s famous statement that if someone succeeded in proving to me that








D O ST O EV SK Y S ST RU GG LE FO R

F ITH

321

Christ was outside the truth, and if, indeed, the

truth

was outside Christ, I

would sooner remain with Christ than with the truth: In Dostoevsky n the

Russian People Ivanits skillfully mines the folkloric content of Dostoevsky s

work. Her well-written work will become a standard in the field. In

Dostoyevsky: Language Faith

n

Fiction

Williams investigates the theology

behind Dostoevsky s work. While his own agenda as a moralist influences

his readings sometimes there is more Williams than Dostoevsky), scholars

will benefit from his deep readings while wishing for clearer prose). In

Dostoevsky s Unfinished Journey

Miller explores Dostoevsky s artistry not

only with rigor

an d

insight, but with poe tr y and wisdom. This book is

bound to join Miller s first two works, Dostoevsky

n

The Idiot

and

Worlds

of

the Novel as a classic.

Columbia University

christianity & literature 2011 martinsen 309 21

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