(novel, 1879)
Great novelists often draw extensively from their own lives. Perhaps that was never more the case than in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, widely considered one of the very best novels ever written. The patricide at the center of the novel draws upon the events surrounding the real-life murder of Dostoyevsky’s cruel and tyrannical father by the family’s servants, a crime that went unpunished. But this is not the only parallel. The very different philosophies of life of the three Karamazov sons directly echo the stages of Dostoyevsky’s own personal journey through sensuality and skepticism toward an embrace of faith.
The Brothers Karamazov is a polyphonic novel, written so that the contrasting voices of the three Karamazov siblings are allowed to speak for themselves. These voices play off each other as their perspectives are tested against each other in a search for truths that often feel just out of reach. The effectiveness of such dialogues in the novel comes from their authenticity. It never feels as though the novel is a “set up” for pushing through Dostoyevsky’s own philosophy, and the arguments do not feel doctored so as to arrive at any tidy resolutions. Each major character is invested with the integrity of an individual voice, and their arguments are put forward with conviction. Dostoyevsky isn’t so much making a point as honestly portraying the reality of a world where questions about God and humanity are many and concrete answers seem few.
Each of the three brothers is a psychologically complex creation, and they represent three radically different approaches to life. Dimitri is a sensualist who lives mostly for pleasure—wine, women, and adventure. Like his father, whom he is accused of killing, he is seemingly unable to say no to his physical urges, even when he wants to. Ivan is an intellectual and a skeptic, a tense and unhappy man who lives in a state of mutiny against God. The horrible suffering he sees in the world—and specifically the torture of children—leads him to a conviction that the God he is rebelling against is a God who simply isn’t there. The famous “Grand Inquisitor” chapter in the novel is a story Ivan tells in an attempt to expose faith as a delusion. The youngest brother, Alyosha, is a gentle, spiritual man of great kindness and simple faith, whose closest companions are the monks of the local monastery. From his perspective, forgiveness and longsuffering love are the only hope for humanity.
In the course of this long and complex novel we hear each of these characters espouse their beliefs about life, and we see these beliefs tried and tested in circumstances of great pain and suffering. Like his character Alyosha, Dostoyevsky had come to believe that there is a redemptive power in suffering that cleanses and purifies the soul. The only rebuttal he provides against Ivan’s philosophical arguments can be found not in words but in the simple power of love in action, as exhibited in the life of Alyosha. And near the conclusion of The Brothers Karamazov he even affirms the reality of an eternal life beyond this vale of tears. Leaving the funeral of his deceased young friend, Alyosha is asked, “Can it be true what’s taught us in religion that we shall all rise again from the dead and shall live and see each other again, Ilyusha [the deceased boy] too?” Alyosha’s simple answer, “Certainly,” echoes one of Dostoyevsky’s own utterances: “If you believe in Christ, then you believe you will live eternally.”1
Fyodor Dostoyevsky was born in Russia in 1821 to a harsh, tyrannical father and a gentle, saintly mother. In various guises they appear throughout Dostoyevsky’s novels. His father’s severity was such that he was eventually murdered by his own servants, though the crime was never thoroughly investigated and no one was arrested for it.
Dostoyevsky’s first book, written in 1846, was Poor Folk, a novel challenging the social injustices of the day. It was an immediate critical success. In time some of the same discontent about the unfair social conditions in Russia that fueled his novel led him to join a radical group of revolutionaries. That might sound like a major step, but in truth they were not a very dangerous bunch, mostly made up of writers and journalists. They had a secret printing press with which they planned to produce anti-government propaganda. But the police sniffed them out and they were arrested, tried and convicted of treason, and sentenced to die.
On the morning of December 22, 1849, Dostoyevsky and twenty of his compatriots were carted to the town square, had their hands bound behind them, and were made to stand in front of a firing squad as their death sentence was read aloud. The order was given, the rifles were raised, and at the very last moment a rider from the czar came galloping in, announcing that their sentence had been commuted. The czar had not intended that they die but rather wanted to frighten them enough to make a point about the gravity of their crimes. Instead of death, they were sentenced to serve four years of hard labor in a Siberian prison camp.
The conditions in the prison camp were unimaginably harsh, and the inmates dealt daily with intense cold, lice, stench, and filth. Perhaps it is an indication of the terrible conditions of the prison that when he later wrote a book about his experiences there, he titled it The House of the Dead. Amid such squalor, Dostoyevsky lived among people who were flesh-and-blood illustrations of the human capacity for evil; these would later serve as models for some of his alienated characters. But despite the terrible situation into which he had been thrust, Dostoyevsky refused to descend to such a state himself. Instead, since he had the opportunity to stare death directly in the eye and lived to tell of it, he believed he had been given a second chance at life.
As he wrote to his brother, “Never has there seethed in me such an abundant and healthy kind of spiritual life as now. . . . Now my life will change, I shall be born again in a new form.”2 There in the prison camp he was permitted only one book—a copy of the Gospels he had been given by a compassionate woman during the long transport to Siberia. He read and reread the little book, embracing its message as the only hope for himself and for his country, and he kept the volume within reach for the rest of his life. To the woman who had given it to him he wrote of the intensity of his newfound convictions, “Nothing is more beautiful, profound, sympathetic, reasonable, manly, and more perfect than Christ. . . . If someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth, then I would prefer to remain with Christ rather than with the truth.”3
After four years in prison, plus another six in exile, Dostoyevsky was finally able to return to his former life and he did so with great relish, beginning to write in earnest. Many of his stories would revolve around the question of whether it was possible for humans to live a good and meaningful life in a world where there was no God. Nietzsche’s philosophy of nihilism had taken root with many Russian intellectuals, who asserted that God did not exist and that the only real morality was that which would arise from superior thinkers who were not tied to traditional moral standards but rather could pursue a completely rational ethical system. Dostoyevsky could not embrace such an optimistic view of human nature and its neglect of the human propensity for selfishness, self-delusion, and violence. Subsequent events in Russia were to show the horrific results of a social experiment that tried to create an earthly paradise without reference to God. Dostoyevsky was always plagued by his own questions and doubts, as well as his personal failings (which included compulsive gambling and alcoholism), but he could not imagine living in a world where God did not exist.
But since this world can sometimes feel like a world where God is absent or hidden, Dostoyevsky’s novels honestly explore the predicaments and struggles of life in such a world. The stubborn reality of sin winds its way throughout his novels, and he demonstrates that grace must be embraced if his characters are to find inner peace. For example, his novel Crime and Punishment (1866) tells the story of one of the aforementioned “superior men” who commits what he considers a justified crime, the brutal murder of his landlady. But he discovers that he cannot live with what he has done. His conscience torments him until he finally confesses the crime and seeks God’s forgiveness. Throughout Dostoyevsky’s work we witness this kind of struggle, one that takes place in every human soul. “God and the devil,” he wrote, “are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of men.”4
Dostoyevsky’s writing style was not polished and refined but passionate, intensely dramatic, somewhat disheveled, and profoundly emotional. His specialty was in unfolding the dark and complex territory of the human heart—all its petty fears and grand dreams, its agonizing obsessions and fondest delusions, its brutal hatreds—and conversely, its most startling acts of unexpected compassion. In surveying the underside of the human conscience he never left the reader without the hope that there is a God whose love will one day redeem all the sin and suffering of the human race.
Ultimately Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s message is one of grace and forgiveness—not just as abstract theological or philosophical concepts but as lived realities. We can hear his ultimate message of hope for humankind in the words he placed in the mouth of Father Zossima, in The Brothers Karamazov:
Brothers, be not afraid of men’s sins. Love man even in his sin, for that already bears the semblance of divine love and is the highest love on earth. Love all God’s creation, the whole of it and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light! Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything you will perceive the divine mystery in things.5