Sara Ruth, Parker’s wife in Flannery O’Connor’s “Parker’s Back,” represents a confluence of religious themes. She is an uncorruptible Eve, who won’t be tempted to premarital sex even after accepting an apply from Parker. With her “icepick” eyes, . . . . Continue Reading »
Dostoevsky fills his novels with innumerable devils, and they are all folk devils. For Russians, the devil was ubiquitous, and dominated their religious imaginations even more than God and the saints. His novel, The Possessed (also known as The Devils or The Demons ) is, as we’d expect, . . . . Continue Reading »
Evdokimov again, explaining how each of the Karamazov brothers presents a particular ideal of the good. For Mitya, the good is known immediately by sentiment that is prior to any reflection. The problem is that this instinctive response is unstable, and Dostoevsky makes this clear by showing Mitya . . . . Continue Reading »
Toward the end of his Gogol et Dostoievsky , Paul Evdokimov asks whether Dostoevsky’s views on nature, grace, creation, humanity were consistent with Orthodoxy. He answers with a ringing affirmative, and has some intriguing things to say along the way. Dostoevsky’s claim that the . . . . Continue Reading »
In his discussion of the Grand Inquisitor poem, Konstantin Mochulsky ( Dostoevsky ) examines how Dostoevsky depicts the slippage from humanitarianism to despotism. He sees it first in Ivan, the “author” of the poem: “The keenness of Ivan’s reasoning lies in that he renounces . . . . Continue Reading »
Thanks to Ken Myers for passing on the following quotes from Wendell Berry’s essay “The Specialization of Poetry”: “I do not believe that people who have experienced chaos are apt to praise or advocate any degree or variety of it . . . . Formlessness is, after all, . . . . Continue Reading »
Over at the First Things site, David Hart launches out at the Oxfordians, ending with this suggestion: “No Oxfordian has yet convincingly responded to the ‘stylometry’ problem, for instance. If they were really on their game, however, they would argue that this merely exposes . . . . Continue Reading »
In a 1995 piece in Critical Inquiry , Susan Fraiman defends Austen from the charges directed at her in Edward Said’s famous study of Austen and imperialism. Fraiman doesn’t think Said is a very careful reader: His “rendering of Austen is . . . enabled, I would argue, by . . . . Continue Reading »
In The Gift , Nabokov recounts this legend about Chernyshevsky’s What To Do? (Or, What Is To Be Done? ). Chernyshevsky wrote the novel in prison and gave proofs of each section to his friend Nekrasov. But “Nekrasov, on his way home (corner of Liteynaya and Basseynaya streets) in a . . . . Continue Reading »
Not classics deconstructed by postmodern theorists, but the classics themselves deconstructing inherited materials. There is a deconstructive element in much of our great fiction and drama. So argues John Gardner in his classic The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers : Shakespeare does . . . . Continue Reading »
Subscribe
Latest Issue
Support First Things
