Over the past little while we've done a series on Dante, and one on Virgil's Aeneid. To complement the cheery springtime weather which is close upon us, I thought I would start a new series on one of my favourite authors: Fyodor Dostoyevsky. We'll start with the Brothers Karamazov:
I shall be told, perhaps, that red cheeks are not incompatible with fanaticismand mysticism; but I fancy that Alyosha was more of a realist than anyone. Oh! no doubt, in the monastery he fully believed in miracles, but, to my thinking, miracles are never a stumbling-block to the realist. It is not miracles that dispose realists to belief. The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will always find strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather disbelieve his own senses than admit the fact. Even if he admits it, he admits it as a fact of nature till then unrecognised by him. Faith does not, in the realist, spring from the miracle but the miracle from faith. If the realist once believes, then he is bound by his very realism to admit the miraculous also.
There are some online versions available; and at this point I'm not certain which text I'll use, but nothing says the tulips are up like a Russian novel... To begin, however, let me tell you about 3 young men who were seen walking away from a carpet store with large rugs heaved up on their backs: the brothers carry mats off.
the brothers carry mats off
Groan. You just ruined one of my favourite novels :-)
Posted by: David | May 17, 2009 at 03:06 PM
And there are plenty more where that came from :^)
Posted by: joseph | May 18, 2009 at 11:28 PM
Groan. That was awful.
Posted by: Kate | May 21, 2009 at 08:05 PM