Back in September last year I came across a copy of The Brothers Karamazov, by Dostoevsky, at the Bradford Diocesan Resources Center (which is very good by the way - Kadugli House, Steeton if you are in the Diocese but have never used it) -I wasn't looking for it at the time but it seemed to demand to be read!
Well maybe not demand, but I am quite a fan of 19th century novelists, particularly as an aid to spiritual and theological reflection (they are usually very good novels too) andI had always wanted to read The Brothers Karamazov. As an aside, Tolstoy's' War and Peace ought to be a must for Theology, Sociology and History students (but then again I'm no academic scholar).
The Brothers Karamazov hasn't been a disappointment, quite the opposite, there is a wrestling with all issues of life, faith and belief that has something to say to all of us. Particularly fasciniating is how during this period of history everyone is wrestling with what it means to live in a secular age (as the dust finally settles from the reformation and counter reformation) and this has many echoes for today as people wrestle with what it means to live in the current secular age - but this time as we are moving from a secular age to a more spiritual/religious age. Think about it...
A surprise present for Christmas from Jo was Archbishop Rowan Williams' book on Dostoevsky,which I didn't know existed, but here is a taster from the introduction:
"Terrorism, child abuse, absent fathers and the fragmentation of the family, the secularisation and sexualistion of culture, the future of liberal democracy, the clash of cultures and the nature of national identity - so many of the anxieties we think of as being quintessentially features of the twenty first century are pretty well omnipresent in the work of Dostoevsky... The world we inhabit as readers of his novels is one in which the question of what human beings owe to each other - the question behind all these critical contemporary issues - is lefty painfully and shockingly open... Yet at the same time, the novels insistently and unashamedly press home the question of what else might be possible if we - characters and readers - saw the world in another light, the light provided by faith.
That sums it up far better than I could, but I can't comment any further on the book as I have read no further than the introduction. Just about finished the novel, they are currently summing up in court for those who have read it!
Novels like this can take a fare while to read but half an hour, three or four nights a week for a couple of months has been well worth it. A simliar commitment to watching Coronation Street, but much more powerful and thought provoking!
