Classics of Russian Literature | The Novelistic Presence of Christ and Satan (Lecture 15)

Lecture 15: Dostoevsky replies to the problems posed by the Grand Inquisitor with the teachings of the elder, Father Zosima. Alyosha tries to follow these precepts and ends up close to a loss of faith, saved by Grushen’ka, the one who is supposed to be an infernal woman. Ivan has his famous interview with an ironic devil who deals all too succinctly with the intellectual’s problems. The whole affair is interrupted and then completed with Dmitrii’s trial, where the wrong person is convicted for a murder whose real culprit we readers have met through Ivan’s interviews with Smerdiakov. The final statement of the novel comes through Alyosha’s sermon at the gravestone of a young boy who has died. He leaves us at the edge of a hint about the reality of Christian resurrection, while the author leaves us a virtually unmatched literary masterpiece.

Suggested Reading:
Robert Belknap, The Genesis of the Brothers Karamazov.
Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky The Mantle of the Prophet, 1871–81, vol. 5.