There is no shortage of books exploring Dostoevsky's religious dimension. Classic studies by critics (Bakhtin, Murry, Girard), poets and novelists (Gide, Ivanov, Milosz), philosophers (Boyce Gibson, Sutherland) and noted theologians (Berdyaev, Thurneysen, Zander, Guardini, de Lubac) abound, with more being published every year. Why, then, do we need yet another?
There are two reasons. The first is its author, Malcolm Jones. An authority on Slavonic literature, Jones has written and edited several highly-regarded studies of Dostoevskian poetics and reception, one of which –Dostoyevsky After Bakhtin(1990)– is among only a handful of Anglophone monographs to have been translated into Russian. Furthermore, his interest in the specifically religious aspects of Dostoevsky's work is longstanding.
The second is the difficult nature of Dostoevsky interpretation. The Russian pioneered what Bakhtin refers to as the polyphonic novel; in Dostoevsky's fiction – in contrast to his journalism – a ‘genuine polyphony of full-valued voices’ is played out. His characters incarnate points-of-view, and are granted full freedom of expression. Thus, e.g., in The Brothers Karamazov– a work intended (in the author's own words)‘to depict […] along with the blasphemy and anarchism, the refutation of them’– the nihilist Ivan is given a tirade against ‘God’ persuasive enough to convince several of its commentators that its creator must have agreed. Elsewhere a drunken buffoon has an ecstatic epiphany of universal salvation (Crime and Punishment), a self-confessed ‘ridiculous man’ visits a prelapsarian paradise orbiting Sirius (Dream of a Ridiculous Man), and two epileptics – one a Christlike idiot (The Idiot), the other a suicidal engineer ‘gone crazy over atheism’(Demons)– have presentiments of the beatific vision. Ambiguities such as these pervade Dostoevsky's oeuvre, prompting myriad interpretations; often as many as there are interpreters.
Terrains like these need expert cartographers, and Jones is well-suited to the task. His book is arranged as a series of six ‘essays’, the first of which serves as a biographical introduction to ‘Dostoevsky's Journey of Religious Discovery’. We are guided through the formative religious experiences of the author's life before surveying the literary works most relevant to Jones’ theme. As a means of easing the reader into perhaps unfamiliar territory this opening chapter is well-aimed and engaging, although one might question his assertion that ‘the notion of sobornost’, which was later to be so important to Dostoevsky’ plays no significant part in Crime and Punishment(p. 13). The concept of sobornost, even on Jones's own definitions of ‘the Church as fellowship under God’(p. 9) and ‘togetherness or conciliarity’(p. 182), can be viewed as the guiding-principle of a novel in which the hero Raskolnikov (whose name is also a technical term for a member of the Old Believers, a schismatic group split off from mainstream Orthodoxy) struggles to reconcile the two halves of his divided self, succeeding only once he has confessed his crime and become acquainted to ‘a new, hitherto completely unknown reality’.
The second essay is also introductory, giving an overview of ‘the current debate’. Taking his cue from the essays collected in Pattison and Thompson's Dostoevsky and the Christian Tradition(2001)–‘a microcosm of recent critical literature on the subject’(p. 28)– Jones gives a concise and illuminating account of the field (most helpfully with regard to significant Russian texts, e.g. those by Zhakarov and Florovsky, which have yet to find an English translator).
One highlight – of many – in the next two essays is the speculation (after Mikhail Epstein) that the Orthodox apophatic and hesychastic traditions prepared the way for the forms of atheism rife in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russia: a ‘God’ with neither attributes nor ‘existence’ is but a small step away from no God at all (an interesting analogue to Buckley's work on modern Western unbelief). This allows for an engaging interpretation of ‘the notable examples of repressed spirituality expressing itself in distorted form’(p. 68). Jones proffers Kirillov's ‘messianic delusions’(Demons) as ‘a striking example’; we may also add Ippolit's hymn to Christ in The Idiot, and Ivan Karamazov's conversation with the Devil. Another major highlight is the discussion of Dostoevsky's frequent lack of authorial authority. As Jones puts it, he ‘compulsively distances himself as author from his narrative voices in ways that almost always raise questions about the trustworthiness of the narrative itself ’(p. 95). This fact, which has not gone unnoticed by theologians, has obvious and important ramifications for those concerned with his treatment of religious experience.
Essay V is given over to a lengthy examination of The Brothers Karamazov. Perhaps the greatest of Dostoevsky's novels, it is certainly the one in which ‘the dynamics of religious experience’ come most obviously to the fore. It therefore serves as a fitting case-study for Jones’ wide-ranging insights. Moreover, while theological attention has tended to focus on Ivan's ‘Rebellion’ and ‘Legend of the Grand Inquisitor’, Dostoevsky himself regarded ‘A Russian Monk’(detailing the life and teachings of the starets Zosima) as the book's theological and moral centrepiece. Jones's discussion, while by no means neglecting Ivan, restores this text to its rightful place.
Dostoevsky and the Dynamics of Religious Experience strikes the right balance between accessibility and analytical rigour. It is a very fine book, bridging the often gaping chasm between what literary critics have to say about Dostoevsky and what theologians do. It will, I am sure, be widely read and digested by both.
