In 2000, the sociologist Andrew Greenley published a book called The Catholic Imagination. In it he makes the argument that both the great cultural achievements of Roman Catholicism and the everyday lives of Roman Catholics are shaped the way they are because of the Catholic imagination, a way of seeing the world that is enchanted, sacramental, and concerned with the immanence of God in all creation. Greenley's book is well worth reading, and helped to popularize the phrase "Catholic Imagination." I began to think about Greenley's phrase recently while I was reading the novels of the Russian Orthodox novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky's novels form an important part of our curriculum at the upper school and college level here at Saint Constantine. 

Now, I should hasten to say that Dostoevsky wasn't Roman Catholic, and even had some strong disagreements with the Roman Catholics of his day. But I wonder if we could, perhaps, discern within Dostoevsky something we might call the "Orthodox Imagination" in the same way Greeley discerns the Catholic Imagination in the works of great Catholic writers like Dante. 

Like Dante, Dostoevsky is a writer who has very high highs and very low lows. Dostoevsky is known for having written, in the mid-to-late 1800s, a handful of striking and masterful novels, including Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), The Possessed (1872), and The Brothers Karamazov (1880). All of these books are concerned to some degree with the act of murder. Famously, Crime and Punishment begins with its hero, Raskolnikov, planning out and philosophically justifying his desire to murder an old woman, and then carrying the murder out in all its gory detail. Murder abounds especially in The Possessed, where a group of nihilists commit more and more heinous acts in the name of defying all laws both political and moral. And The Brothers Karamazov introduces us to the charismatic atheist Ivan who preaches that if God does not exist, "everything is permitted," a statement that leads other characters to justify the murder of Ivan's father. Dostoevsky is not just willing to explore the psychology of crime and evil, he is positively fascinated by it. Many stop here with Dostoevsky, seeing him as a novelist of darkness and madness. 

But there is much more to Dostoevsky's imagination than the dramatization of human evil. Dostoevsky himself wrote of the importance to him, from a young age, of the Scriptures: "I came from a pious Russian Family... In our Family, we knew the gospel almost from the cradle," (Frank, 43). Biographer Joseph Frank explains that it was from the Gospels that Dostoevsky and his siblings first learned to read. Dostoevsky has one of his most beloved characters, Elder Zosima, exclaim: "What a book---the Holy Scriptures! And with it what miracles and what power have been given to man! It is just like the sculpture of the world, of man and of human nature, and in it everything is named an set out for all eternity" (Brothers, 365).  

Alongside the Gospels were the lives of the saints: "[In Russia] there are a great many tellers—men and women—of the lives of the saints...In childhood I heard these narratives myself, before I learned how to read," (Frank, 48). Dostoevsky's knowledge of these stories came most from the Acta Martyrum, which focused on the sufferings of Christ-like martyrs throughout history. Both the gospels and the stories of the martyrs would deeply affect Dostoevsky's novels. Two of Dostoevsky's novels, for instance, begin with a quotation from the gospels: The Possessed (Luke 8:32 - 37) and The Brothers Karamazov" (John 12:24). In the first epigraph, Christ exorcises a demoniac, casting the demons into a herd of swine who run into the water and drown. In the second, Christ himself speaks of a grain of wheat falling into the ground, dying, and bringing "forth much fruit." Both verses parallel the plots of the novels, respectively, for in The Possessed, it is the demonic nihilism of the younger generation that destroys them, while the older generation, having been tempted by nihilism, end up delivered from it by witnessing the bitter ends of the nihilists. And in Brothers Karamazov, it is the death of two old men, one very wicked, and one very holy, that allows for the hero, Alyosha, to experience a new birth of faithful living and active love. 

Further, the figure of the saintly martyr is continually present in Dostoevsky's novels: In Crime and Punishment, the self-sacrificing Sonya helps the twisted and confused Raskolnikov, reading to him from the gospels of the resurrection of Lazarus to show how resurrection is possible even for a murderer like him.  In The Idiot, the pure and ever-forgiving Prince Myshkin will not give up on loving the self-destructive and murderous Rogozhin, even when it costs the Prince his sanity. In The Possessed, the saintly bishop Tikhon offers forgiveness to the nihilist Stavrogin, and the selfless nurse Sofya tends and reads the gospel to the dying agnostic Stephen. Finally, in Brothers Karamazov, Alyosha lays down his whole life's dream of being a monk to save the souls of his brothers. One might say that in each of Dostoevsky's novels, there is a whole world, a whole sphere, half of which is shrouded in the darkness of night and half of which shines with the bright light of day, and the brightness of the day and the darkness of the night accentuate one another. 

What, then, are we to say of Dostoevsky's Orthodox imagination? First, it is, we might say, an ethical imagination, always aware of and ready to highlight the moral implications of each action, each choice, and how each action and choice draw one closer to God or further from him. Dostoevsky is always interested in the philosophy behind actions and choices, and sees philosophies themselves as admitting of moral good or evil.

Second, we might say that Dostoevsky's imagination is kenotic (I borrow this description from Joseph Frank). Kenosis, or self-emptying, is the action that Christ and the martyrs share. They empty themselves out of love for others, and this kenosis is always the source of heroism for Dostoevsky. He never depicts heroism as consisting of violent conquest or intellectual brilliance. Heroism is always a laying down one's life, either literally or metaphorically, in a discreet act of love for another, especially when that person cannot yet accept or even understand the act of love. 

This is the beginning of an account of Dostoevsky's Orthodox imagination. There is much more to say about it. As I close, I want to point to Greenley's statement that "religion begins in the imagination and in stories, but it cannot remain there" (Greenley, 4). I believe that Dostoevsky would say the same. The things the child learns from the gospels and the lives of the saints must be made manifest in action, in active love for one's brother, one's sister, one's neighbour, and, perhaps especially, one's enemy. 

 

Works Cited:

Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky: The Seeds of Revolt, 1821 - 1849. Princeton University Press, 1976.

Andrew Greenley, The Catholic Imagination. University of California Press, 2000.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Karamazov Brothers. Oxford University Press, 2008.