The Archbishop's Dostoevsky (Why Rowan Williams is the best man for the job to Appreciate Him)

The Times (London) ^ | October 8, 2008 | A. N. Wilson

[nickcarraway]

Why Rowan Williams is the best man for the job – of appreciating the greatness of Dostoevsky

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s views on religion are notoriously hard to pin down with confidence. If you collected up the criticism devoted to Tolstoy, there could be no doubt about what he believed at any stage of his journey. Yet in the history of Dostoevsky criticism we find, for example, Henry Miller reading Dostoevsky as a great social revolutionary, whereas others have seen him as a diehard conservative. Rowan Williams, in his latest book, quotes (and rebuts) William Hamilton, who sought to enlist Dostoevsky as a forerunner of “Death of God” theology; Georges Florovsky, who saw Dostoevsky as an exemplar of Russian Orthodoxy; Malcolm Jones, who has linked him to “post-atheism” in contemporary Russia, and judged him to exemplify the workings of “minimal religion”. Clearly, all these contradictory readings cannot be right. Or can they? Is that precisely the nature of the difficulty?

We need a guide who combines the gifts of a literary critic and a trained theologian to work out how far the novels of Dostoevsky can be used as vehicles for such explorations. We also need a guide who is deeply versed in the ethos and spiritual traditions of the Russian Orthodox Church to place Dostoevsky, and the tormented exchanges of his characters, within some intelligible historical framework. Luckily, the Archbishop of Canterbury combines all these qualities, and more. T

There are many insights in Dostoevsky: Language, faith and fiction which will illumine its subject’s novels, and which could only have come from this interpreter.

[nickcarraway]

Interesting, but I think the article is a little off on some points. Has there ever been a great writer who was more conservative than Dostoevsky? The only one I could think of in that class is Austen.

I agree with this:

But equally, only the insensitive could fail to see that it is essential to read the novels as narratives in which ideas repellent to Dostoevsky are given freedom to breathe. Indeed, in one of his finest chapters, Williams argues that this is central to Dostoevsky’s entire purpose as a writer, and as a religious thinker.

[ConservativeDude]

Agreed.

The rub comes b/c sometimes those who have repellant views speak very persuasively. If you read these portions in isolation, you might think the revolutionaries and the atheists “win”.

Personally I have no doubt that Dostoevsky knew Christ.

[nickcarraway]

Dostoevsky knew the other side- he had been there. And he wasn’t afraid to show it.

[ConservativeDude]

Yes, well put. Not a simplistic faith for this man.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

It is too bad that Williams does not retire as Archbishop and stick to literary criticism.