Polyphonic Hedgehog

I state a thesis: Dostoevsky is a polyphonic hedgehog. The subthesis is that Tolstoy is a monologic fox.The second part of that comparison comes from Isaiah Berlin’s The Hedgehog and the Fox. Berlin cites the Greek poet Archilochus’s dictum, “A fox knows many things; a . . . . Continue Reading »

Whores with Hearts of Gold

Nabokov didn’t much like Dostoevsky. What interests him in literature is “enduring art and individual genius,” and from this viewpoint Dostoevsky is mediocre: “with flashes of excellent humor, but, alas, with wastelands of literary platitudes in between” (Lectures on . . . . Continue Reading »

Word among words

Diane Thompson concludes her essay in Dostoevsky and the Christian Tradition with this superb description of the place of God’s Word in the words of Dostoevsky’s novels, and his characters:“Dostoevsky’s feeling for the dynamic aspect of the Logos was exceptionally . . . . Continue Reading »

Lord of the Lake

Stepan Trofimovich, the vain Francophone liberal in Dostoevsky’s Demons, claims to know the gospels well from reading Renan, but in fact hasn’t read the Bible itself in a long time. During an illness, he comes to see himself as the liar he is and asks Sophia to read the . . . . Continue Reading »

Dostoevsky the Liberal?

So, this is a moment of dialog with myself. I have been musing on Bakhtin and Dostoevsky, so the self-division seems appropriate.I have charged that Dostoevsky’s Christ is an ineffectual liberal Christ, using The Idiot as exhibit #1. But Diane Thompson’s essay on the . . . . Continue Reading »

Sermon in a Tavern

In her contribution to Dostoevsky and the Christian Tradition, Diane Thompson offers a brilliant analysis of Marmeladov’s speech to Raskolnikov at the beginning of Crime and Punishment.Everything he says is seasoned with grandiloquent references to the gospels, and especially to the . . . . Continue Reading »