The Karamazov Case: Dostoevsky’s Argument for his Vision by Terrence W. Tilley. London, T&T Clark. 2023. Hardback. 184pp. $115.
The elephant in the room for lovers of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov—the uncomfortable truth which the famed Russian writer’s dearest fans wish would just go away—is that the novel does not seem to present as strong a case in favor of Christian belief as it does against it. Ivan Karamazov’s powerful and devastating indictment of Christianity and the institutional church in book five of the novel has, as its philosophical counterpart, almost nothing: the rather soft-headed musings of a dying monk, presented with none of the rhetorical force of Ivan’s monologue. The two sections appear to be deliberately placed in the center of the novel as foils for each other, but the pro-Christianity side of the novel’s “faith versus reason” argument is simply inadequate to refute the ferocity of Ivan’s attacks on the Christian conception of a moral God and the institutional church.
Yet in his recent book The Karamazov Case: Dostoevsky’s Argument for his Vision, Terrence W. Tilley makes the case that the Christianity-versus-atheism/faith-versus-reason antithesis adopted as an interpretive framework by most of the novel’s analysts is simply not the whole story. In Tilley’s reading, Dostoevsky deploys the whole of his novel to advocate for both a comprehensive vision of how the world really works, and a particular way of living in the world: a rational Christianity, grounded on a clear-headed examination of the truths of life, expressed in a proper understanding of community. His analysis of the novel builds in stages with the linear logic of a mathematical proof and draws upon several important statements by Dostoevsky himself about the novel’s meaning, as well as on the breadth of scholarship which the novel has accumulated since its publication. As such, The Karamazov Case is poised to be one of this generation’s most important scholarly discussions of Dostoevsky’s masterpiece.
Tilley begins his book with an extended discussion of the novel’s dialogic narrative structure; his analysis is heavily indebted to Mikhal Bakhtin’s conception of the polyphonic novel, and readers who are familiar with Bakhtin’s argument can safely skim this section.[1] Tilley compares Bakhtin’s concept of the polyphonic novel to the kind of polyphony present in opera, wherein independent harmonic lines converge and interact without any clearly apparent direction or resolution. This addresses a key complaint which Dostoevsky’s readers have been expressing from the beginning: The Brothers Karamazov has an ending which, by the usual standards of the novelistic art form, feels weak and unresolved. Tilley says, however, that “the polyphonic novel seems incomplete because the novel does not bring the dialogue among the independent voices to a resolution. [. . .] The analogy to musical polyphony, especially counterpoint, is revealing. As in listening to polyphonic music, one can lose the whole behind the individual voices if one focuses only on the melody line in the music or only the hero of the novel” (22).
Just as in a work of polyphonic music, Dostoevsky’s chorus of voices in the novel is an essential part of the structure; the key point here, the crux on which Tilley’s argument rests, is that Dostoevsky was writing The Brothers Karamazov as both an accurate reflection of the messy, inconclusive polyphonic nature of real life and as a guide towards a correct conception of living as part of real life. In this interpretation, Ivan’s strident attack on Christianity in book five is only one of several ways of looking at the world. These worldviews are blended together by Dostoevsky just like a composer works themes together in an opera; each one interacts with the others, and they all contribute to the final whole—an accurate representation of the world. In this reading it’s not so much a question of Ivan’s unbelief versus Zosima’s faith so much as these voices talking with each other and with other voices. Dostoevsky’s polyphonic novel never answers the question of whose voice is correct; as Tilley says, “the answer [to the question of how to live in the world] is not given by the author of the polyphonic text but by the readers who interact with and respond to it” (89). And the philosophies of life presented by the characters can be evaluated by observing the consequences of their beliefs.
Tilley draws upon the theories of William James, who argued in The Varieties of Religious Experience that a person’s conversion experience ought to be evaluated on empirical grounds only—i. e. whether or not the fruits are good. This is an echo of Jesus’ statement in the gospel on the value of trees which bear either good or bad fruits. Many of the characters in The Brothers Karamazov undergo conversions of one sort or another and of various degrees of suddenness and consciousness; these conversions can all be evaluated based on what kinds of fruits come forth from them. When Zosima’s brother Markel converts to Christianity, he immediately starts to reconcile himself to his estranged mother; when Zosima comes to his senses after remorse upon beating his servant, he calls off the duel in which he had planned on killing a man whom he had needlessly insulted. Dmitri experiences a renewal of his faith in Mokroye, and vows henceforth to give up his philandering ways and his profligacy. And Ivan? His life philosophy motivates him to renounce his fellow human beings and abandon the world that he admits God made: “It’s not that I don’t accept God, I just most respectfully return him the ticket.” By subtly pointing out the fruits of these respective worldviews, Dostoevsky is asking us: which one is right and true? Dostoevsky’s novel is, therefore, not a debate In the sense of papers presented, discussed, and evaluated; it is, instead, a practical examination of the results of the character’s worldviews. “By your fruits you will know them” (Matthew 7:20).
Tilley says that the main thrust of argument in The Brothers Karamazov is this: that the correct response to the suffering of the world will be enacted in community, and the heart of that response will be to give aid to the sufferers. This is in direct opposition to Ivan’s rejection of a universe where suffering is present and of a God who would allow such suffering. In Tilley’s interpretation (and that of Dostoevsky, if Tilley is right) Ivan’s refusal to accept a world in which innocent children are made to suffer is exactly the wrong approach to the given facts of existence and demonstrates that Ivan’s philosophy is irrational. As Tilley says, “There is no final resolution for the problem of the world in the world. But because the problem is not finally resolved in the world of the novel does not imply that there are no ways to live with it. As with many chronic illnesses, even if evils in the world cannot be cured in the world, those who suffer can be cared for” (25).
Ivan’s returning of the ticket becomes, from this perspective, not the heroic, clear-sighted, and morally responsible act which Ivan thinks it is; instead it is shown to be an act of monstrously self-absorbed and irrational vanity. For how will the suffering present in the world be alleviated if no one is there to aid the sufferers? Alyosha, on the other hand, models the correct response to suffering when he visits the dying Ilyusha at home, tries to intervene in the Snegiryov family’s plight, and works toward a nascent community of love and mutual aid with Kolya Krassotkin and his schoolmates in the novel’s final chapters. That famous “Hurrah for Karamazov” at the novel’s end, shouted into the chilly November air after Ilyusha’s funeral, seems, to the casual observer, to be a futile and absurd gesture into a void of suffering and death; but in Tilley’s reading it becomes a defiant shout of triumph, a declaration that, despite the atrocities of daily existence and the pain and suffering in the world, the spirit of unity that Alyosha, Kolya, and the boys have begun to discover in each other will live on and will render the suffering of no consequence.
An extremely important concept in Tilley’s reading of The Brothers Karamazov is that of Sobornost’, the Russian word denoting a sense of fundamental togetherness and unity; it is a translation of Nicene Creed’s word Katholikos, and connotes something more than “community.” Tilley traces the concept of Sobornost’ throughout the novel, finding it demonstrated negatively in the selfishness of the wicked woman in Grushenka’s tale of the onion and positively in Aloysha’s famous embrace of the earth during the reading of the gospels over Zosima’s dead body. Sobornost’ is a particularly Orthodox concept and has been discussed at length by theologians in the Orthodox tradition. Tilley’s dependence on the concept of Sobornost’ is the only thing in his book which gives me pause: is Dostoevsky’s vision only approachable through an understanding of the Orthodox faith? As an Evangelical Protestant, are there some aspects of his thought which I will simply be unable to accept? It’s unclear whether the argument for faith presented in The Brothers Karamazov is an argument for Christian faith or Orthodox faith. Dostoevsky himself was not of a very ecumenical mind; in The Diary of a Writer (the magazine he self-published in the 1870s) he regularly writes against the influence of Catholicism and German Lutheranism on the impressionable Russian peasantry. But does that come across in his novel? Tilley claims that at least some aspects of the novel depend upon a distinctly Orthodox anthropological concept; will readers from other faith traditions be able to accept Tilley’s understanding of Dostoevsky’s thought? Tilley doesn’t speak directly to that question, but he does state that “Dostoevsky wrote in the context of Orthodox Christianity, [and] his vision is couched in those terms. That does not preclude the possibility that other religious contexts might not develop analogous visions. But arguing for such a view would take us far beyond the limits of this book” (51).
I would hope that some scholar of the near future would complete the task which Tilley realized was outside of his purview and show how Dostoevsky’s particularly Orthodox vision of faith in community is also an ecumenical vision. If this is done, it would go a long way toward a renaissance of Dostoevsky’s thought, enabling his powerfully sublime social vision to find acceptance among a new generation of readers. As it is, Dostoevsky’s writings seem to have been neglected in recent times, due to a combination of factors including the recent invasion of Ukraine by the Dostoevsky-admiring Vladimir Putin and Dostoevsky’s own latent racism and xenophobia as expressed in some of his writings. Can we leave the chaff and preserve what is good in Dostoevsky’s thought? Tilley’s book is a contemporary instance of doing just that.
Tilley’s reading of The Brothers Karamazov is a very valuable addition to the already vast secondary literature on Dostoevsky’s supreme achievement. It’s the kind of guide I wish I’d had at an earlier age. For readers in the present moment, straining to hear through the noise of the internet, is a novel like The Brothers Karamazov seen as simply too difficult to be worth reading? Although there will always be both specialists and serious readers who are willing to put in the effort to read an 800-page novel, any assistance or aid which brings even a few readers into the fold is, in my opinion, welcome; and Tilley’s book is exactly that.
William Collen is an art researcher and writer. He publishes reviews and theoretical essays on aesthetic criticism and art history at his personal blog, ruins.com; his writings have also been featured at Agape Review (where he is the staff film critic) and Artway. He lives with his family in Omaha, Nebraska.
Presented in Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (1929; translated by Caryl Emerson, 1984). ↑