Shadows

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Hello, friends!

I find myself back in St. Petersburg, the hub of the literary world.  With so many wonderful authors publishing so much, I am reminded of my days as a story teller in my homeland of Byzantium.  At this point, Byzantium has been gone so long, I am perhaps more Russian than Byzantine.  Though my birthplace has faded into dust, I have certainly made a wonderful home for myself here.  It is amazing to me the wealth of stories being told by these people who were only a short while ago devoid of any classic tale to call their own.  I could not be more proud of these Russians.  The tales of Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, and all the rest are so enthralling and insightful.  For such a censored people, they certainly have a lot to say.
However, the subject of these latest novels and short stories have become increasingly dark.

Yesterday, I got into a discussion with a critic for a popular large journal.  He wanted to discuss the musings of Fyodor Dostoyevsky over drinks.  This brilliant man, Dostoevsky, has written many fantastic stories.  His novels, Poor Folk, Crime an Punishment, and The Brothers Karamazov have been wildly successful. One thing that Dostoevsky seems to focus on is the dark side of human reasoning.

This Illustration accompanied Demons,
to show the real demon within.

My new friend, Yuri, had heard of an interesting connection between Dostoevsky's Demons and another book being distributed at the same time called At Daggers Drawn, by Percy.  He described both tales as following Nihilist protagonists who roll into town and bring destruction in their wake.  He seemed to think that this meant that Dostoevsky was taking a less approving stance towards the Nihilist heroes so common to this period, choosing instead to display them as criminals with a lack of morals (Thorstensson, 2016).  These sentiments, while nothing new, are certainly out of the ordinary.  Indeed, it seems as thought Russia herself is headed for Nihilism, though there is much caution she could learn from her authors on the subject.

Indeed, my friend said, evidence for this darker side of Nihilism could be found throughout Dostoevsky's works.  He said, " Dostoevsky anticipated these consequences in his focus on murder and suicide (Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, Demons), sexual perversion and child/adolescent abuse (Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, Demons)" (Desmond 2012).  It would certainly seem, I agreed, that he doesn't seem to trust these Nihilists very much.  He seems under the impression that their lack of established moral standard will not set strong foundations for peace, wealth, or safety.

A scene from the Brothers Karamazov, in which a trial is taking place to solve the murder of Fyodor Karamazov,
Father of the family.  It is later decided that each of his sons played a roll in his death.

My newfound friend seemed to find some irony in that thought.  He stated that in Dostoevsky's The Brother's Karamazov, the character Ivan becomes a type of Nihilist, basing his beliefs on the observable and rejecting the orthodox beliefs of his brother because of the trials faced by the young in this life already (Desmond, 2012).  With such suffering permitted to happen in the world, Ivan has decided that there could be no God who would allow it.  Thus, the perceived absence of God creates the space for such a decline in the first place.

I pondered this quite a great deal as I made my way home.  My roots are still in Byzantium, and in Christianity, but I have seen much, and the arguments behind this Nihilist movement are hard to ignore.  Their science certainly provided much good, and they advocate for the rights of the common man.  However, when all things are permitted, what is there to stop those, or even to condemn those, who commit such atrocities?  Surely, my old mind is too old for this new world.






Desmond, John F. "Fyodor Dostoevsky, Walker Percy and the Demonic Self." The Southern Literary Journal, no. 2, 2012, p. 88. EBSCOhost, ezproxy.uvu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsglr&AN=edsgcl.293240138&site=eds-live.

Thorstensson, Victoria. "The Inkwell of the Russian Messenger: Editorial Politics and the Serialization of Dostoevsky's Demons and Leskov's at Daggers Drawn." Russian Review, vol. 75, no. 1, Jan. 2016, pp. 26-50. EBSCOhost, ezproxy.uvu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=mzh&AN=2016830390&site=eds-live