Dostoevsky: Language, Faith and Fiction
£9.09
New Testament. - Focusing on the four major novels of Dostoevsky: The Idiot , Crime and Punishment , The Devils and (above all) The Brothers Karamazov , Rowan Williams here in this subtle and sophisticated 100,000-word essay argues for Dostoevsky as a religious writer who s works are best understood through the lens of faith. In so doing he challenges and refutes the views of 20th century interepreters of Dostoevsky such as William Hamilton who viewed the narrative indeterminacy and dialogist strategies of the great Russian writers art as the expression of an anguished agnosticism.Williams however interprets these narrative strategies as Dostoevsky sdisinterest in presenting the dry abstract philosophical questions of faith, of arguments for or against the existence of God, for the exploration of ,and interest in, the reality of a life of faith lived in the presence and knowledge of the Divine by real historically and culturally conditioned individuals and also, conversely, the exploration of what it is like to live, again: by real historically and culturally conditioned individuals ,with the full ramifications of an absolute denial of that Reality and the questioning of the legitimacy of God and the experience of Him by people of faith in the face of the most grotesque and degrading forms of human suffering. As Dostoevsky famously wrote: If someone were to prove to me that Christ was outside the truth, and it was really the case that the truth lay outside Christ, then I should choose to stay with Christ rather than with the truth. This essay is evidence of a close reading of the primary texts and of a familiarity with the novels born of decades of study, both in translation and the original Russian. And it is not hard to see how both the dialogism and narrative indeterminacy of the Russians novels would prove intellectually seductive to a liberal Anglican of Dr Williams stripe. As the cultural critic Terry Eagleton dryly observed: one could construct a far more unpleasent Dostoevsky than this one. And this is very much a liberal Anglican reading of the Russian author but a fascinating and deeply learned one that is both insightful and wonderfully pursuasive. This study is at the end of the day a meditation on the nature of language, the beautiful articulation of a profound love of the written word and ultimately a moving testimony to the enduring transformative power of the novel. This is the work of a brilliant mind at the height of its powers and anyone who reads it will find themselves elevated and enriched by it.