The Infuriating Beauty of Dostoyevsky

And why he’s my favourite author.

The convicted man by Vladimir Makovsky

Few authors inspire at much dread in Western audiences as the Russians. I gave up on Tolstoy’s War and Peace as a teenager, when, as I was reading bed, dropped it on myself one too many times from the sheer weight of the thing. Over the last year or so though, the Russian authors have grown on me — specifically Dostoevsky.

I want to be open right out the gate — this is not an apology piece for Russia and its actions in Ukraine dressed up as a literary exploration. What Putin and his co-conspirators are doing is illegal, inhuman and will rightly be remembered as a national shame in a post-Putin Russia. But I do not believe we should not let the sins of modern-day Russia outweigh the actions and contributions of its better men.

With that important preface out of the way, let’s get to Dostoevsky.

Redemptive suffering

I recently finished The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevsky’s magnum opus, and was asked to describe what the book was about. On the surface, it’s about the murder of a landowner named Fyodor Karamazov supposedly by his son, Dmitry, one of three brothers. In truth though, this is just a sideshow for the novel’s real themes — the redemptive power of suffering, our guilt in the eyes of others…