Introduction: Reading Dostoevsky religiously

Summary

Dostoevsky has emerged as the most provocative writer in Russian literature, the one who speaks most to the modern human condition. His influence on world literature has been immense. Artists working in other media have found inspiration in Dostoevsky for their own translations of his works into opera, drama, film and the graphic arts. He has stimulated writers and thinkers of the most diverse persuasions and callings (philosophers, theologians, marxists, conservatives, psychologists, literary critics). Books, articles, critical debates, comments, allusions abound. His themes of crime, urban alienation, family breakdown, psychic derangement, the decline of religious faith, as well as his penetrating psychological insight and prophetic grasp of the murderous potential of modern totalitarian ideologies and of the social and spiritual chaos spawned by unrestrained capitalism, profoundly resonate with the twentieth century. Other nineteenth-century writers took up these themes; few matched Dostoevsky's psychological acumen, none his ideological prescience.

But what is above all peculiar to Dostoevsky is his genius for eliciting strong pro or contra responses, for tempting us to make global, essentially religious statements. Dostoevsky had a gift, virtually unique among modern writers, for making Christianity dynamic, for subtly forcing the ideological challenges of the modern age to interact dialogically with his Christian vision and for embodying this vision in psychologically compelling characters. To ‘read Dostoevsky religiously’, then, would mean to engage with this dialogue which runs through his entire post-Siberian oeuvre. This makes those who would rather bypass the religious issues uneasy; they are more comfortable discussing the psychology of his characters and the ideas debated in his fiction.