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Mythical Implications of Father Zosima's Religious Teachings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Roger B. Anderson
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Extract

One of the most perplexing questions in The Brothers Karamazov is the manner in which Father Zosima serves as Dostoevsky's spokesman on matters of spiritual faith. Zosima's teachings emphasize humility, a mystical union of man and the world, and undifferentiated love; the key to faith for him is the individual's own emotion, the wisdom of the heart. In keeping with the deeply personal quality of Zosima's message, he teaches in the form of short homilies and stories from his own past. These often lack logical connectives, relying instead on repetition of certain images of nature and mystical community. Malcolm Jones has aptly remarked that Dostoevsky withholds specific guidelines from his seekers of faith, giving only the personal experience of individual characters, which is bound up with the symbolism of their own interpretations.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , June 1979 , pp. 272 - 289
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1979

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References

1. For a critical review of Zosima's sentimentally based faith, see Nathan Rosen, “Style and Structure in The Brothers Karamazov,” Russian Literature Triquartcrly, 1, no. 1 (1971): 252-54. Rosen contends that it is inherently weaker than the Grand Inquisitor's critique against belief. For a discussion of the Grand Inquisitor as victor in his logical attack on Christ and faith for its own sake, see Edward, Wasiolek, Dostoevsky, The Major Fiction (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1964), pp. 164–70.Google Scholar

2. See Jones, M. V., Dostoevsky: The Novel of Discord (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1976), pp. 190-91.Google Scholar

3. In his well-known letter of August 7, 1879 to K. P. Pobedonostsev, head of the Russian church, Dostoevsky emphasizes his anticipation of Zosima as an answer “in artistic form” to the Grand Inquisitor's logical challenge to God (see Dostoevskii, F. M., Pis'ma, 4 vols., ed. Dolinin, A. S. [Moscow, 19S9], vol. 4, letter 694).Google Scholar

4. Dostoevsky used as his model Starets Amvrosii of Optina Pustyn', a contemporary of Dostoevsky with whom he had a short acquaintance in 1878, and Bishop Tikhon of Zadonsk, who lived in the eighteenth century.

5. Mochulsky states that “not only liberal criticism, but also those who venerated the 'old monks and prelates, ’ such as Konstantin Leont'ev, did not acknowledge the Elder Zosima as the ideal of the ‘Russian monk.’ The image that Dostoevsky created was likewise rejected by the Elders of Optina” (see Konstantin, Mochulsky, Dostoevsky, trans. Minihan, M. A. [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967], p. 589).Google Scholar In 1886, government censors withheld permission to publish a separate edition of Zosima's biography and teachings on the basis of their subversive potential. For a discussion of the question, see V. K., Lebedev, “Otryvok iz romana Brat'ia Karamazovy pered sudom tsenzury,” Russkaia literatura, 1970, no. 2, p. 124.Google Scholar

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20. Ibid., p. 104.

21. Maloney attributes to Sorskii “the necessity of weeping for our sins in order to receive forgiveness in this life before the general judgment when tears will be useless to remit our sins” (Maloney, Russian Hesychasm, p. 133).

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43. Bazanov, B. G. et al., eds., Neizdannyi Dostoevskii: Zapisnye knizhki i tetradi 1860-1881 gg., Literaturnoe nasledstvo, vol. 83 (Moscow, 1971), p. 24.Google Scholar

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45. For Dostoevsky's specific comments on this topic, see his entry for December 1876 in Dostoevskii, F. M., Dnevnik pisatclia, 3 vols. (Paris: YMCA Press, 1946), 2: 474–75.Google Scholar

46. See Linner, Starets Zosima, p. 203.

47. Such theories about the living having a direct responsibility for resurrecting the dead are apparently close to the philosophy of Dostoevsky's contemporary, N. E. Fedorov. N. O. Losskii summarizes Fedorov's main idea: “One must live not for oneself (egoism) and not for the others (altruism), but with everyone and for everyone; this is the union of the living (sons) for the resurrection of the dead (fathers)” (N. O. Losskii, History of Russian Philosophy [New York: International Universities Press, 1951], p. 78). Sven Linnér puts the apparent similarity to Fedorov in clear perspective, when he says that Fedorov had in mind a science fiction scheme by which future man would gain such technological control over life and the physical world that he would be able to call the dead back to actual physical life (Linnér, Stareis Zosima, pp. 199-203). Such notions were basically alien to Dostoevsky's imagination. His references to Fedorov's “scientific” visions undoubtedly have more to do with the author's curiosity about their coincidental resemblance to his own theme than actual influence by Fedorov.

48. See Fedotov, Russian Religious Mind, 1: 16.

49. See Sokolov, Russian Folklore, p. 165.

50. Ibid., pp. 168-69.

51. The folkloric and mythological implications of the novel are by no means restricted to Zosima. V. E. Vetlovskaia has assessed the structural similarities between Alesha and the third son of Russian folk tales (the wise fool). Moreover, she suggests that the folkloric elements of the third son also correspond to several saints’ lives (see Vetlovskaia, V. E., Poetika romana Brat'ia Karamazovy [Leningrad, 1977], pp. 194–97).Google Scholar In a related article, she discusses Alesha as a modern literary version of the revered Saint Aleksei Man-of-God. She concentrates on the Russian folk versions of that zhitie, in which she finds a combination of the worldly and divine in indiscriminate love (see Vetlovskaia, V. E., “Literaturnye i fol'klornye istochniki Brat'ev Karamazovykh [Zhitie Alekseia cheloveka bozhiia i dukhovnyi stikh o nem],” in Kirpotin, V. la., ed., Dostoevski! i russkie pisateli: Traciitsii, novatorstvo, masterstvo [Moscow, 1971], pp. 345–50).Google Scholar Whereas the typical saint's life emphasizes the separation of daily matters from ascetic devotion, Vetlovskaia says that Alesha, like Aleksei Man-of-God in folk versions of his life, joins the duality into one all-inclusive love. The source of such interpenetration of secular and divine love in the novel itself is, of course, Zosima. Indirectly, then, we have added evidence of a broad folkloric design behind the elder's meaning for the reader.

52. Wasiolek, Notebooks For “The Brothers Karamazov,” p. 93.

53. Fedotov, Russian Religious Mind, 1: 16.

54. Ibid., p. 18.