Conversations with Fyodor
What can you say about a work as epic as The Brothers Karamazov? I finished it a month ago and I'm still not sure. It is undoubtedly a masterpiece in many ways (brilliant characters, haunting allegory, and elements of psychology and philosophy worthy of his contemporaries in those fields) but for me it begins and ends with the ideas and the way they are explored. Dostoevsky uses Karamazov as a means to flesh out all of the internal conversations he's had over the years on most of life's most important subjects. Every character has a distinct and valid voice in the matter and the result is a rich dialogue that raises more questions than it answers. I found this lack of resolution a bit frustrating because I gained such respect for Dostoevsky as an intellectual over the course of the novel that I wanted to know where he finally stood. But I suppose that's not the point. Grappling with these fundamental issues without imposing his conclusions is probably what makes the novel so timeless.
Not surprisingly, my favorite part of the book is in Part II, Book V--the chapters Rebellion and The Grand Inquistor. They are beautiful, eloquent and unsettling. I have wrestled with them and I will continue to revisit them periodically until they give me peace. I heard a rumor that Dostoevsky was working on a sequel to Brothers in which our hero Alyosha goes through a night of doubt and questions his faith, which sounds to me like everything I loved about the first book expanded into an entire novel. The mind reels at the possibility.
In the spirit of adding another voice to the conversations that Fyodor started, my next reading consists of a couple of books by C.S. Lewis that are on topic: The Screwtape Letters (on conversing with the devil) and The Problem of Pain (on the problem of innocent suffering in a world created by a loving God). The more voices, the merrier, right?