The continuation of our conversation with George Pattison about his blog Conversations with Dostoevsky. Part 1 can be found here.

DN: Tell me more about the embodied Dostoevsky and the setting of the blog. Will the conversations all take place in the narrator’s apartment? And why is it important to emphasise Dostoevsky’s physical presence, whilst simultaneously acknowledging that he has been dead for 120 years? Does this device give a certain authority to his voice?

GP: I’ve dropped a few little comments in – and I think this is as close to Dostoevsky’s view as we can tell – to the effect that immortality isn’t just an eternal soul transferring from a mortal body into a constant state of heavenly bliss, but that there is some kind of post-death development. We can use Bakhtin’s phrase of unfinalizability: even the dead person hasn’t learned all they need to learn. I don’t think authors have the last word, even if they want to. But they do have a significance, which I want to show. However, even as an embodied voice he is not from our time or our place, and whilst there may be parallels and continuities we are in a very different place globally, nationally, and intellectually from his situation. That is, I think, typical of our relationship with writers of the past: they are and are not part of our world. There is also a sense in which, after someone dies, their life ceases to be their own and it passes into the universal spectrum of human experience. This changes how we relate to them. Dostoevsky now belongs to what people call ‘world literature’ in a way he couldn’t have done when he was alive.

Regarding the setting, Scottish cities have always struck me as having something a bit Russian about them, Glasgow in particular. I mention in one of the blogs that modern Glasgow and Dostoevsky’s St Petersburg, as it was in his lifetime, were shaped by a mad period of capitalist and industrial expansion, juxtaposing extreme poverty and desperation with extraordinary wealth. They are the kinds of cities where those two worlds are separate but also meet in all sorts of ways, in strange combinations of social groups. However, the conversations won’t all take place in the apartment. We will encounter Dostoevsky in some other settings.

DN: Let’s talk about the overall arc of the blog. Why did you pick ‘The Gentle Spirit’ to start with?

GP: Partly because the conclusion of that story is, for me, one of the most succinct statements of existential despair you can find. I think it’s saying something similar to Ivan Karamazov’s Rebellion but more concisely. There is also a certain critical opinion that ‘A Gentle Spirit’ is one of Dostoevsky’s most perfect or classic works, as a piece of writing. It is very compact, balanced and focused. It also has a close connection to one of his most autobiographical passages, the notes written after the death of his first wife, beginning ‘Masha is lying on the table. Will I ever see Masha again?’ The ‘Masha’ text is one that, out of all of his writings, states most explicitly some of his speculations about death, the afterlife, Christ,. It’s also important to take something that’s less well known, for the more general reader, to look at Dostoevsky from another side. A case of ‘defamiliarization’, perhaps.

DN: Are there particular subjects you will focus on in subsequent blogs?

GP: The blog started with the question of individual existential despair. The discussion of literature then moves towards the role of the Bible, and then the ‘Christmas Cards’ conversations leads on to the role of Christ. I’ll be taking a break over the summer, but the next conversation will begin with a dinner party where we discuss Dostoevsky and existentialism, and Dostoevsky’s view of women (it turns out our narrator’s wife has strong views on this subject). Dostoevsky will appear in the kitchen to give his side of the argument, while the narrator is washing up! For Dostoevsky, the role of Christ can’t be separated from his ongoing presence in the world, which broaches big questions on the relationship between faith, church and society, so I want to address those in a further conversation. Another topic one should not ignore is the question of Dostoevsky’s anti-Semitism; that will be dealt with via a very critical seminar that our narrator attends, though Dostoevsky will appear to give some feedback on that. Finally I’ll move on to the question of God and immortality, and this brings in the question of literature and our relationship to the literature of the past, to the dead voices of the people we know about like Dostoevsky, but also of the people we don’t know about such as those in the prison camps.

DN: What else do you feel readers should be taking away from Dostoevsky about today’s world?

GP: For me, Dostoevsky gives a voice to those who don’t have one. He enlarges compassion. One of the things I recycle is the story from Diary of a Writer where Dostoevsky sees a young man in the street walking home with his child, and he invents a whole story around them. Whether it’s true or not, it makes us look at people differently. It makes us realise that everyone we see in a crowd has an amazing story. He reveals something about the humanity of people in the most unexpected places and reminds us that people are much more complex than we like to think. That leads on to the nature of the self. Dostoevsky’s Underground Man attacked the rational, autonomous egoist who believes that economic self-interest is the only real guide to what motivates people; this view is still very much present in our society today and I think it is a limiting, mistaken one. Dostoevsky can help us see beyond that.

DN: What, finally, do you hope readers will gain from your blog?

GP: I hope they will read more Dostoevsky! They will see that he makes all the points I wish to make better than I do, but they will also be alerted to the need to read him critically and not be over-reverential. He too was a human being with all the limitations that involves. And, of course, I also hope that these conversations will also help readers who are confused or sceptical about religion see better why and how Christian faith makes human sense.

For the latest of our series ‘Reimagining Dostoevsky for the 21st Century’, we chatted with George Pattison, Professor of Divinity (retired) at University of Glasgow, about his blog Conversations with Dostoevsky, and how he himself has reimagined Dostoevsky for a 21st Century audience. The interview is published in two parts; Part 2 is here.

 

DN: When did you first become interested in the works of Dostoevsky?

GP: I started reading him in the early 1970s when I was in my early twenties, having already read some Tolstoy as a teenager. I started getting interested in him in a more academic sense when I was teaching a course in Cambridge on the background to modern theology, which included a class on The Brothers Karamazov­. Around that time I also met Diane Thompson, who became my guide into the world of Dostoevsky scholarship and together we worked on a conference which turned into the book Dostoevsky and the Christian Tradition (CUP, 1999). Then when I went to Oxford I taught a whole course on Dostoevsky under the rubric “Special Theologians”.

DN: So has your connection with Dostoevsky always been through the interface of theology and philosophy?

GP: Yes, that’s largely where I’m coming from. The religious question has always been there for me, although in the beginning, back in the 70s, this was more related to existential despair and the anxieties of that era, and that’s changed somewhat over the years. What attracted me at that time, by contrast with Tolstoy, was the way that Dostoevsky contextualised the questions about Christianity, faith, and the struggle for meaning in existence in a social world that is so extraordinarily varied. Several of his novels are set in a world undergoing rapid social change, depicting the fragmentation of existing social relationships, the emergence of the accidental family (as opposed to the aristocratic family of the ‘classic’ novel), and political unrest. Dostoevsky therefore speaks to a very destabilised social reality and looks to stage questions of faith in that, which makes him a writer who can also speak to our time. I should add, though, that he is just such a great read, he writes so wonderfully even when there are no metaphysical issues at stake. An example is the tension he builds in The Idiot when Prince Myshkin breaks an extremely valuable Chinese vase at a party. It’s so enjoyable from a readerly point of view.

DN: Can I explore with you the contrast with Tolstoy? Do you feel that Tolstoy does not contextualise in quite the same way?

GP: I think the social world of Tolstoy is somehow more static than Dostoevsky’s, it lacks that chaotic element. To compare them in another way, I came late to Russian and still only read Dostoevsky in Russian with difficulty. I find reading War and Peace or Anna Karenina far more straightforward than reading Dostoevsky. In Dostoevsky there is far more variety in voices between characters. But this is in praise of Dostoevsky, not in criticism of Tolstoy.

DN: What made you decide to start your blog?

GP: I’m recently retired. I’ve published various papers on Dostoevsky and taught various courses, so in my retirement I had planned to put together some of that into a book; but then I was at the International Dostoevsky Symposium in Boston and saw so many wonderful Dostoevsky scholars there who have the philological background and the knowledge of Russian literature that I lack. This made me think that actually it would be more useful to try a different tack. I had the idea that I could do it as a series of conversations, and then decided to do it as a blog. It was a way of working it through, rather experimental, and with no commitment. The long term view is to turn it into a book, however, and I’ve had discussions with a press about that. The target is to reach out to the sort of reader who might have read one or two of the big Dostoevsky novels but who doesn’t have a critical apparatus and would like to know more about some of his ideas.

DN: Let’s talk about the pros and cons of blogging. What are the advantages and disadvantages to the online serial format  and how will that compare with producing Conversations with Dostoevsky as a single piece?

GP: The key word is ‘serial’. This has opened my eyes to Dostoevsky’s own practice of writing things in serial form, which was common for many 19^th century novelists, and to just how different that is from the practice of most of our contemporary novelists. It has heightened my respect for novelists like Dostoevsky who wrote in serial form, because you can’t go back and change things, you have to have a good sense of where you are going with the material from the outset—or, at least, have the courage to stick with your choices! In a sense I’m giving myself the best of both worlds by doing it as a blog and then revising it for a book. A disadvantage is that the episodes have ended up significantly longer than I originally imagined. I personally prefer not to read long extracts of imaginative prose online, and I find there’s a limit to online readability—but others may not have that problem. With regard to the serial aspect, there is a need every now and again – something that Dostoevsky and Dickens do so well – to introduce a climactic moment. I don’t quite have cliff-hangers but there is a little pressure to have a dramatic moment.

DN: Another feature of a blog is that it has the facility for readers to leave comments. What do you do with readers’ comments?

GP: Most of the comments don’t go very far but I have developed a slightly more extensive email interaction with some of those who have commented and gathered some very helpful feedback, such as about the narrator’s wife – are we going to see more of her, what role is she playing? With the serial form I hadn’t thought too much about that at the beginning but then I realised I would have to think about it seriously for the sake of the coherence of the whole.

DN: Do you feel that the readers’ comments shape your ongoing production of the blog?

GP: Yes, they are shaping my thinking. There is both the internal dialogue going on between the narrator and Dostoevsky, and then other dialogues, like our conversation, that wouldn’t be happening if I hadn’t set the blog up. Part of the idea of doing it as a dialogue has come from the philosophy of religion; the dialogue is one of the oldest forms of philosophy we have. It’s a genre that is proper and appropriate to philosophy and emphasises the theme of dialogue in Dostoevsky himself.

DN: It’s similar in many respects to Dostoevsky’s Diary of a Writer, where Dostoevsky responded to readers’ interactions with him and used those to shape his ongoing entries.

GP: That’s right, and that’s become an important text for me in the last few years. Especially in the anglophone world, people tend to write that off as the place where Dostoevsky expressed all his dreadful nationalistic views, but I think that misses something very important in Dostoevsky; the correspondence with his readers was clearly very important to him.

DN: This leads on to another question: the fictionalised nature of your blog. You’ve given a fictionalised persona to Dostoevsky, and then there is the narrator. You haven’t given him a name; should we assume he is called George Pattison?

GP: No, we definitely shouldn’t! Later on in the summer I’ll be publishing an entry about a dinner party where the narrator and some of his friends talk about Dostoevsky, and I made a very deliberate decision not to name the narrator. Others in that scene will address each other by name, but not the narrator. So no, he isn’t me. I’ve also left the time somewhat indeterminate; it’s early 21^st Century but I don’t want to be too explicit. The narrator belongs to a milieu I’ve known pretty well. He’s a mid-career academic, he may have slightly lost his way, he doesn’t have a top professorship and doesn’t know if he wants one, he’s having a slight mid-life crisis, a kind of re-evaluation, and that’s when he rediscovers this story by Dostoevsky that brings him back into conversation, not just with Dostoevsky, but also with his own life.

DN: How did you decide on the persona for Dostoevsky? Did you draw on diaries, letters, biographies, or was it more intuitive?

GP: It was more intuitive, but I have read all five volumes of  Joseph Frank’s biography, and I think Diary of a Writer is very important, and yes, I drew on letters, diaries, but also his novels. Dostoevsky says his ugly mug doesn’t appear in his novels but in a way it does because the selection of themes he writes about already tells you something about what makes him tick. Photographs and portraits are also significant.

DN: What else would you say about the advantages of engaging with Dostoevsky through a fictional dialogue?

GP: In a lot of the critical literature, especially in the theological and philosophical readings, we see the argument that Dostoevsky’s characters are embodied voices, that he doesn’t just give us philosophical views or tractates but shows us what it is like for a person to hold these views. So I’ve tried to do that with Dostoevsky himself: to show that he is not just a container for these views but someone who holds them and gives them expression. Also, this is a format in which some of the critical discussion can reach a wider readership. I hope in the finished book to have extensive footnoting. Most of the views I ascribe to Dostoevsky can be found in his stories, or in his letters and other documents. I can use the footnotes to point the reader to the evidence I’ve used in my portrayal of Dostoevsky and his views and to where else they might find more material on the relevant theme in Dostoevsky. I would also credit the sources I’ve used, such as a recent Russian study that provides an unusual interpretation of the story ‘The Boy at Christ’s Christmas Party’.

2021 marks the bicentenary of Fyodor Dostoevky’s birthday. The great novelist takes a pointed position on numerous political issues which still resonate today. Ulrich M. Schmid, Professor of Russian Culture and Society at the University of St Gallen, Switzerland, imagines interviewing Dostoevsky on contemporary matters.

UMS: Fyodor Mikhailovich, the pandemic is a situation which has led to a tremendous increase in government spending in Russia. What would be your advice here?

FMD: My idea, my formula, is as follows: “In order to establish sound finances in a state that has experienced certain upheavals, don’t think too much about immediate needs, no matter how urgent they may seem; think only about restoring the roots, and you’ll get sound finances.”[1]

UMS: After Brexit, the European Union is in crisis. What is your evaluation of the project of European unification?

FMD: Lacking the instincts of the bee and ant, which flawlessly and accurately construct their hives and anthills, people sought to construct something in the nature of a flawless human anthill.[2]

It would be good if we could also realize that at the moment England is in the most critical situation it has ever been in. This critical situation of hers can be formulated most accurately in a single word: isolation, for never before, perhaps, has England found herself in such terrible isolation as now.[3]

UMS: In your work you mention Karl Marx only once in passing, although you were almost exact contemporaries. What is your assessment of Marxist philosophy and its revolutionary implementation?

FMD: The socialists do not go beyond the gut. They even boast that boots are more important than Shakespeare, that one should be ashamed of talking about the immortality of the soul, and so on.[4]

Some of our worthy generation cast in our lot with socialism and accepted it, without the least hesitation, as the final answer for the unity of all human beings. In such fashion, to achieve our goal we accepted something that was the acme of egoism, the acme of inhumanity, the acme of economic bungling and disorder, the acme of slander on human nature, the acme of destruction of every human freedom; but this did not trouble us in the least. At the same time we became so alienated from our own Russian land that we lost all conception of the degree to which such a doctrine is at odds with the soul of the Russian people. In fact, not only did we have no regard at all for the character of the Russian People, we did not even acknowledge that they had any character. We forgot even to think of it, and with complete and despotic equanimity were convinced (without even raising the question) that our People would at once accept everything we told them.[5]

UMS: Given that you criticize socialism so strongly, do you believe that liberalism offers better prospects?

FMD: What is liberalism, speaking generally, if not an attack on the existing order of things? It is so, isn’t it? The liberal has gone so far as to deny Russia herself – that is to say, he hates and beats his own mother. Every Russian failure and fiasco excites his laughter and almost delights him. He hates national customs, he hates Russian history, he hates everything. If there is any justification for him, it is perhaps that he doesn’t know what he is doing and thinks that his hatred of Russia is the most beneficient kind of liberalism. [6]

UMS: Let’s talk about religion. You are a staunch supporter of the Russian Orthodox faith.

FMD: The Russian knows nothing higher than Christianity and cannot even conceive of anything higher. His whole land, all the commonality, the whole of Russia he has called Christianity, or Krestianstvo. Take a closer look at Orthodoxy: it is by no means only clericalism and ritual; it is a living feeling that our People have transformed into one of those basic living forces without which nations cannot survive.[7]

UMS: What is your opinion of other denominations and of atheists?

FMD: Roman Catholicism is even worse than atheism. Yes, that’s my opinion! Atheism merely preaches a negation, but Catholicism goes further: it preaches a distorted Christ, a Christ calumniated and defamed by it, the opposite of Christ! It preaches Antichrist – I swear it does! Roman Catholicism believes that the Church cannot exist on earth without universal temporal power, and cries: Non possumus! In my opinion, Roman Catholicism isn’t even a religion, but most decidedly a continuation of the Holy Roman Empire, and everything in it is subordinated to that idea, beginning with faith.[8]

UMS: In what way are things better in Russia?

FMD: I think that children should be born on the land and not on the street. One may live on the street later, but a nation – in its vast majority – should be born and arise on the land, on the native soil in which its grain and its trees grow.[9]

UMS: These days we often hear the demand that people face up to the challenges posed by climate change, populism, and the pandemic. What is your advice?

FMD: The truth is not outside you, but within; find yourself in yourself; submit yourself to yourself; master yourself, and you shall see the truth. Conquer yourself, humble yourself, and you shall be freer than ever you imagined; you will embark on a great task and make others free, and you will find happiness, for your life will be made complete, and you will at last understand your People and their sacred truth.[10]

 

All of Dostoevsky’s answers are original quotations.

———————————————————————-

Ulrich Schmid writes: Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) was a contentious writer who often fell out with his editors, publishers and fellow poets. As a young man he belonged to a more romantic than revolutionary circle in which the abolition of serfdom and the lifting of censorship were discussed. However, the Tsarist authorities were very nervous in the European revolutionary years of 1848 and 1849. Dostoevsky was arrested, sentenced to death and subjected to a mock execution. He then spent almost ten years in Siberian exile. This decisive experience made him not only a devout Christian, but also an ardent admirer of Tsarism. In the last years of his life he published his Diary of a Writer on a monthly basis, in which he commented on world political events from a very subjective perspective. Dostoevsky’s chauvinist and anti-Semitic remarks are notorious. At the same time, with his great novels, Dostoevsky also presented a radical criticism of Russian society, which, in its imitation of Western lifestyles, he believed remained blind to the expected return of Christ.

Ulrich Schmid’s original article was first published in Neuer Zürcher Zeitung on 7 January 2021. This translation by Sarah Hudspith is an adapted and abridged version of the original text. Thanks to Prof Schmid for his permission.

[1] Diary of a Writer Jan 1881 (A Writer’s Diary, vol. 2, trans. by Kenneth Lantz, London: Quartet, 1995)

[2] Diary of a Writer Nov 1877 (A Writer’s Diary, vol. 2, trans. by Kenneth Lantz, London: Quartet, 1995)

[3] Diary of a Writer May-June 1877 (A Writer’s Diary, vol. 2, trans. by Kenneth Lantz, London: Quartet, 1995)

[4] ‘Socialism and Christianity’, Notebooks 1864, trans. by S. Hudspith

[5] Diary of a Writer Jan 1877 (A Writer’s Diary, vol. 2, trans. by Kenneth Lantz, London: Quartet, 1995)

[6] The Idiot Part 3 Chapter 1 (trans. by David Magarshack, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1955)

[7] Diary of a Writer Sept 1876 (A Writer’s Diary, vol. 1, trans. by Kenneth Lantz, London: Quartet, 1994)

[8] The Idiot Part 4 Chapter 7 (trans. by David Magarshack, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1955)

[9] Diary of a Writer July-August 1876 (A Writer’s Diary, vol. 1, trans. by Kenneth Lantz, London: Quartet, 1994)

[10] Pushkin Speech 1880 (A Writer’s Diary, vol. 2, trans. by Kenneth Lantz, London: Quartet, 1995)

In 2021 we mark 200 years since the birth of Fyodor Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky’s works continue to be read, translated, and adapted into a variety of media, demonstrating his enduring popularity and relevance. I recently turned my own hand to adapting Dostoevsky, after a seeing on Twitter a Venn diagram by @fyodor76, putting herself in the overlap between circles representing lovers of Dostoevsky and fans of Lego. Amongst the replies @johnayliff commented “The Minifigs Karamazov”, and an idea was born. Lego’s track record of capturing key story moments from various movie franchises such as Harry Potter and Star Wars in their construction sets seemed suddenly to chime with Dostoevsky’s talent for depicting scenes that spark the imagination. Anyone who has read one of Dostoevsky’s novels will have, fixed in their mind, their vision of the most striking episodes: Raskolnikov bringing the axe down on the unsuspecting Alyona; Rogozhin and Myshkin keeping vigil beside the covered corpse of Nastasya Filippovna; Father Zosima bowing down to the astounded Dmitry Karamazov. Whilst being driven to a large extent by dialogue, Dostoevsky’s novels also have a distinctly scopic quality, generating powerful images of significant moments in the story, expressing ideas that exceed the words in which they are written. This makes his work eminently amenable to visual adaptation.

Thus inspired by @johnayliff’s comment, I began with The Brothers Karamazov. This novel makes use of expressive chapter titles, some of which are quotations of lines of dialogue, and which are often oblique and whimsical. These suggested themselves perfectly for identifying buildable and recognisable scenes and providing the captions. Having worked out which scenes I would build, I then took to thinking about how to make each character distinctive, and representative of their role and traits. Here I was slightly hampered by the Lego available to me: although the amount of Lego acquired by my family over the years was, in all seriousness, a factor in our recent decision to buy a bigger house, I knew my children would not wish me to tamper with their favourite sets. So I was restricted to a collection of non-franchise-related minifigures that mainly comprised soldiers and emergency services workers. Not a great casting pool for 19^th century female roles. Fortunately, some characters acquired through a few years of those extravagant Lego advent calendars diversified my selection, and also provided a range of ready-made set props such as fire places, tables and chairs.

Choosing the right hair and facial expression required careful thought; thus Grushenka’s status as a woman shaped by men’s treatment of her is signalled by her loose hair style and more overtly feminised features, compared with Katerina’s tied-back hair and more neutral expression. Like any screenplay writer worth their salt, I conflated some elements of the story: in the novel, Smerdyakov, for example, is not playing his guitar when he is encountered sitting by the garden gate by Ivan and he comments that it is nice to have a chat with a clever man; but the visual signifier of the frivolous guitar for this crucial conversation adds to the image of Smerdyakov as dismissive of the value of human life.

Ultimately the scale of the novel exceeded my skill and patience, and my episodisation stopped at Dmitry on the threshold of murder (those of you who have not read the novel will have to do so to find out whether he did it or not). But the response on Twitter was very positive, and I was requested to do a follow-up of Crime and Punishment. So the following weekend, back I went to the brick boxes. This time, I resolved to summarise the whole novel, and found it easier than with The Brothers Karamazov. Indeed, as @kevinobriencha1 observed, Crime and Punishment “uniquely marries action and philosophy”. The novel provides a number of important visuals, such as Raskolnikov’s hat that is too eye-catching for a would-be murderer, Sonya’s three windows in her apartment, symbolic of the divine light of the Holy Trinity that infuses her outlook, or the liminal spaces such as thresholds or street junctions where pivotal events happen that could take the action in a number of directions.

Again, I wanted the figures to be emblematic of their characters. For Raskolnikov I chose a head with a rather crazy grin and lines round the eyes, to signify his mental turmoil. For Sonya, I used the same body and hair as the sexually exploited Grushenka, but chose a child’s head to indicate her innocence and purity despite her profession. In the case of Alyona, being short of bodies befitting an elderly widow, I had to breach my injunction to borrow from my children’s beloved franchise sets, and used the body of a Harry Potter Death Eater, but I think that Fyodor Mikhailovich would have found that rather fitting for a moneylender.

Some readers may feel that Lego is too flippant a medium to render such a serious author as Dostoevsky, who grappled with the ‘accursed’ questions of the nature of good and evil, the immortality of the soul and the despair that attends upon self-interest and pride. However, there is subtle, but significant humour in Dostoevsky, that exists alongside the dark philosophical probing, indeed throws it into sharper relief. There is black comedy in Raskolnikov slipping and slithering, panic-stricken, in the blood of his victims as he tries to locate Alyona’s hidden riches, or in the heavily accented soldier wearing an incongruous helmet, telling Svidrigailov “Dis is not de place” as he puts the gun to his head. The humour reminds us not only of the breadth of human nature, so memorably lamented by Dmitry Karamazov, but also of the fictionality of the stories, which paradoxically signal their truth. Dostoevsky believed that only fiction, particularly that which presented its poetic idea as a “whole image”, could fully capture the essence of the human condition. Or, as Emmet Brickowski says in The Lego Movie, “The prophecy is made up. And it’s also true. It’s about all of us.”

The Brothers Karamazov: selected scenes

(Original Twitter thread here)

Crime and Punishment: selected scenes

(Original Twitter thread here)