Dostoevsky's Incarnational Realism. Paul J. Contino

      Dostoevsky’s Incarnational Realism

      Finding Christ among the Karamazovs

      Copyright © 2020 Paul J. Contino. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

      Cascade Books

      An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

      199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401

      www.wipfandstock.com

      paperback isbn: 978-1-7252-5074-1

      hardcover isbn: 978-1-7252-5075-8

      ebook isbn: 978-1-7252-5076-5

      Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

      Names: Contino, Paul J., author. | Emerson, Caryl, afterword writer.

      Title: Dostoevsky’s incarnational realism : finding Christ among the Karamazovs / Paul J. Contino.

      Description: Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2020 | Includes bibliographical references and index.

      Identifiers: isbn 978-1-7252-5074-1 (paperback) | isbn 978-1-7252-5075-8 (hardcover) | isbn 978-1-7252-5076-5 (ebook)

      Subjects: LCSH: Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 1821–1881—Religion | Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 1821–1881. Bratya Karamazovy. | Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 1821–1881—Criticism and interpretation | Christianity and literature—History—19th century | Redemption in literature | Religion and literature—Russia

      Classification: PG3328.Z7 C66 2020 (print) | PG3328.Z7 (ebook)

      Manufactured in the U.S.A. August 17, 2020

      Cover image “Life is Everywhere” Nikolai Yaroshenko (1888)

      (Used with permission of Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow)

      “Be glad as children, as the birds in heaven.” — Elder Zosima

      “Names in The Brothers Karamazov” by Susan McReynolds Oddo, from THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, A NORTON CRITICAL EDITION, SECOND EDITION by Fyodor Dostoevsky, edited by Susan McReynolds Oddo, translated by Constance Garnett, revised by Ralph E. Matlaw and Susan McReynolds Oddo. Copyright © 2011, 1976 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

      For Maire,

      who has been very patient,

      and for our daughters,

      Mai Rose and Teresa Marie:

       Go with God

      “Literary criticism should arise out of a debt of love. In a manner evident and yet mysterious, the poem or the drama or the novel seizes upon our imaginings. We are not the same when we put down the work as we were when we took it up.”

      —George Steiner, Tolstoy or Dostoevsky

      “The only wisdom we can hope to acquire Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless. . . . And what there is to conquer By strength and submission, has already been discovered Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope To emulate —but there is no competition— There is only the fight to recover what has been lost And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss. For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”

      —T. S. Eliot, “East Coker,” The Four Quartets

      “The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation.Here the impossible union Of spheres of existence is actual,Here the past and future Are conquered, and reconciled . . .”

      —T. S. Eliot, “The Dry Salvages,” The Four Quartets

      “No one teaches contemplation except God, Who gives it. The best you can do is write something or say something that will serve as an occasion for someone else to realize what God wants of [her] or him.”

      —Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

      “Nothing is absolutely dead: every meaning will have its homecoming festival.”

      —Mikhail Bakhtin, “Methodology in the Human Sciences”

      “I believe that for all of us [Dostoevsky] is an author that we must read and reread due to his wisdom.”

      —Pope Francis1

      Acknowledgements

      I began work on this book over thirty years ago, when working on my dissertation and teaching a course on “The Novel” at the University of Notre Dame. I remain grateful to the professors who guided me at Notre Dame, especially Thomas Werge—whose class in Fall 1983, my first semester at Notre Dame, helped me to understand the novel more fully. The late James Walton was a consistent source of bracing realism. Jim Dougherty is a model of academic and personal integrity. Thanks too to Larry Cunningham, who sat in on my dissertation defense. I remember him asking about the apophatic dimension in Dostoevsky; I’m still thinking about his question, even as this book, with its emphasis upon Dostoevsky’s analogical imagination, tends toward the cataphatic. While at Notre Dame, I encountered the work of two thinkers who continue to inform my understanding of reality: William F. Lynch, S.J. and Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin. I remain grateful for their work.

      I continued to write on and teach Dostoevsky during my twelve years teaching at Christ College, the honors college of Valparaiso University. My wonderful colleagues there—especially Dean Mark Schwehn, Mel Piehl, Bill Olmstead, Warren Rubel, David Morgan, John Ruff, Margaret Franson, and John Steven Paul—were always generous in their support, encouragement, and friendship. Valparaiso University granted me sabbaticals and University Professorships, and granted me time to work. My twelve years at Christ College were a blessing: the students were remarkable, and I remember many of their faces, names, and our conversations about Dostoevsky’s novel.

      In Fall 2002, I was blessed by an offer to teach in the Great Books Colloquium at Pepperdine University. I accepted, and have since been leading discussions of The Brothers Karamazov with excellent students (and faculty). In my writing I have been consistently supported by my Divisional Deans—Constance Fulmer, Maire Mullins (my ever-encouraging wife), Michael Ditmore, and Stella Erbes—and by the gifts of time and sabbatical renewal granted by Deans David Baird and Michael Feltner, and Associate Provost Lee Kats. Most recently, it’s been an honor to direct two undergraduate research projects on Dostoevsky’s novel with Callagahan McDonough and Raquel Grove. Jessica Hooten Wilson, a former student, has gone on to write very fine books on Dostoevsky’s affinities with Flannery O’Connor and Walker Percy.

      Here at Pepperdine, I am grateful to many friends and colleagues, past and present, who have supported my work over the course of eighteen years, among them Darryl Tippens, Richard Hughes, Bob Cochran, Ron Highfield, Chris Soper, Robert Williams, David Holmes, Cindy Colburn, Jason Blakely, Jeff Zalar, and colleagues with whom I discussed the novel in summer faculty seminars sponsored by Pepperdine’s Center for Faith and Learning, as well as our Great Books faculty—Cyndia Clegg, Jacqueline Dillion, Michael Gose, Tuan Hoang, Don Marshall, Frank Novak, Victoria Myers, Jane Kelley Rodeheffer, Jeff Schultz, and Don Thompson—and our librarians.

      I am grateful to the gifted cohort of Lilly Graduate Fellows that I mentored with my friend Susan Felch, with whom we discussed Confessions, Commedia, and the Karamazovs over the course of three enlivening years. In July 2017, the Sisters of St. Benedict provided kind hospitality, welcomed