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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2017
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.
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
6. See George, Gibian, “Dostoevski]-'s Use of Russian Folklore,” Journal of American Folklore, 69 (July-September 1956): 242.Google Scholar
7. See Pletnev, R, “Zemlia,” O Dostocvskom: Sbornik statei, 3 vols., ed. Bern, A. L. (Prague, 1929), 1: 157.Google Scholar
8. Dostoevskii, F. M., Sobranie sochinenii v desiati tomakh (Moscow, 1958), 9: 399.Google Scholar All references will be made in the text following the quoted material; for convenience, the quotes will be in English using the Constance Garnett translation as revised and edited by R. E. Matlaw ( Dostoevsky, F. M., The Brothers Karamasov [New York: W. W. Norton, 1976]).Google Scholar
9. Zander, L. A., Dostoevsky (New York: Haskell House, 1975, p. 56.Google Scholar
10. See Fedotov, G. P., The Russian Religious Mind, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1946 and 1966), 1: 56, 63, 20.Google Scholar
11. See Mochulsky, Dostoevsky, p. 589.
12. Gibson, A. B., The Religion of Dostoevsky (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1974, pp. 195–96 Google Scholar
13. See Linnér, Sven, Starets Zosima in the Brothers Karamasov: A Study in the Mimesis of Virtue (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1975), pp. 95–98.Google Scholar
14. Ibid., pp. 102-3.
15. Ibid., p. 110.
16. See John, Dunlop, Starets Amvrosy, Model for Dostoevsky's Starets Zossima (Belmont, Mass.: Nordland, 1972), p. 19.Google Scholar
17. See Maloney, G. A., Russian Hesychasm: The Spirituality of Nil Sorsky (The Hague: Mouton, 1973, p. 144.Google Scholar
18. Ibid., p. 115.
19. Ibid., pp. 120, 124, 126.
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).
22. See Richard, Chase, Quest For Myth (Baton Rouge, La.: Louisiana State University Press, 1949), pp. 69–70.Google Scholar
23. Philip, Wheelwright, “The Semantic Approach to Myth,” in Sebeok, T. A., ed., Myth: A Symposium (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), p. 167 Google Scholar.
24. See Chase, Quest For Myth, p. 78.
25. Watts, Alan W., Myth and Ritual in Christianity (London: Thames and Hudson, 1953, p. 7.Google Scholar
26. See Northrop, Frye, Fables of Identity: Studies in Poetic Mythology (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1963), p. 33.Google Scholar
27. See William, Righter, Myth and Literature (London and Boston: Routledge and KeganPaul, 1975, p. 39 Google Scholar.
28. Eliade, See Mircea, The Myth of the Eternal Return (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1955), p. 31.Google Scholar
29. See Fedotov, Russian Religious Mind, 1: 18-19; and Sokolov, Ju. M., Russian Folklore, trans. C. R. Smith (New York: Macmillan, 1950, pp. 165–69.Google Scholar
30. See Northrop, Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton: Princeton University Press), pp. 139–40.Google Scholar
31. Fedotov, Russian Religious Mind, 1: 12.
32. See Vyacheslav, Ivanov, Freedom and the Tragic Life: A Study in Dostoevsky, trans. Cameron, N. (New York: Noonday Press, 1960), pp. 55Google Scholar and 77.
33. See Roger, Cox, Betiveen Earth and Heaven: Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, and the Meaning of Christian Tragedy (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969), pp. 202–4.Google Scholar
34. See Joseph, Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969, p. 17.Google Scholar
35. See Frank, Kermode, The Sense of an Ending, Studies in the Theory of Fiction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 77.Google Scholar
36. See Eliade, Myth of Eternal Return, p. 141.
37. Nikolai, Berdiaev, The Divine and Human, trans. French, R. M. (London: G. Bles, 1949), p. 152.Google Scholar
38. See Eliade, Myth of Eternal Return, p. 5.
39. Ernst, Cassirer, Language and Myth, trans. Langer, Susanne K. (New York and London: Harper and Bros., 1946), p. 15.Google Scholar
40. Edward, Wasiolek, ed., The Notebooks For “The Brothers Karamazov” (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1971), p. 99.Google Scholar
41. See Zenkovsky, V. V., A History of Russian Philosophy, 2 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1953), 1: 431.Google Scholar
42. Fedotov, Russian Religious Mind, 1: 18.
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
44. See Linnér, Starets Zosima, pp. 233-37.
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.