Haunted by Christ

Modern Writers and the Struggle for Faith

Richard Harries

• Publisher: SPCK Publishing
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780281079353
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

W. H. Auden, T. S. Eliot, William Golding, Elizabeth Jennings, C. S. Lewis, Flannery O'Connor, Stevie Smith... These are some of the great poets and novelists whose struggles with faith find expression in their works, and who demonstrate the fascinatingly different forms that faith can take in different times and places.Richard Harries considers the work of twenty of these writers, painting vivid pictures of their lives and times. He also provides numerous critically sympathetic insights into the spiritual dimension of their writings.The result is a book for readers of all religious persuasions, especially those who are fascinated by the ways in which faith is refracted through the lens of great poetry and fiction.Also by Richard Harries:
The Beauty and the Horror (SPCK, 2016)
'A major new defence of Christianity that does not flinch from asking difficult questions about the kind of God who could have created our world.'
The Bookseller'A heartening book, confronting the hardest questions with wide knowledge and deep wisdom.'
John Carey, Chief Literary Reviewer, Sunday Times'An eloquent, honest and engaging case for Christian faith.'
The Tablet'A deeply interesting book.'
Mary Warnock

1

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Through a furnace of doubt

Introduction

Dostoevsky (1821–81) left school at the age of 16 to train and practise as a military engineer. Beginning to write, he found success with his first novel Poor Folk (1846) and became part of a literary circle that was critical of tsarist Russia. The members were arrested and sentenced to death, a sentence which was commuted at the very last moment. Dostoevsky then spent four years in prison in Siberia and four more in military service in exile. On his release, he worked as a journalist and writer and travelled in Europe. Although he had success with his first novel, critical opinion turned against him and, afflicted with a severe addiction to gambling, he often had to beg for money. He was a passionately religious man, an Orthodox Christian, but beset with radical doubts. He wrote that his faith had come ‘through a furnace of doubt’1 and was focused on a deep attraction to the person of Jesus Christ. His best-known novels are Notes from Underground (1864), Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), The Devils (1872) and The Brothers Karamazov (1880).

Regarded as one of the greatest novelists of all time and a precursor of so much in the modern world, he has been translated into more than 170 languages.

A traumatic life

Dostoevsky was brought up in a devout home. His father came from a line of priests and had also trained in a seminary. Dostoevsky’s mother was no less serious in her religion and he remembers happy times of prayer in their home on a Saturday night before the Liturgy on the Sunday. The memory of this happy, devout time was important to him later in life. His mother died when Dostoevsky was 16 and about that time he and his brother were sent to train as military engineers. He had been brought up with a rich literature of story and fable and had started reading widely when young, but he had no particular interest in, or talent for, military engineering. He had even less for a military way of life, being totally unsoldierly both in his gait and attitudes. He disliked the coarse lifestyle and quickly revealed the seriousness of his Christian faith in his compassion for the poor. When his regiment were stationed among people in a wretched state of poverty, he was shocked and organized a collection for them. Not surprisingly he was regarded as eccentric.

Poor Folk reflected his social concern and was the first novel in Russia to bring the poor to people’s attention in fictional form. It was a critical triumph and Dostoevsky left the army to work as a freelance writer. Unfortunately some influential critics, like Ivan Turgenev, then turned against him and he felt totally humiliated. At the same time his early success led to his being invited into a literary circle with reforming ideas critical of tsarist Russia. He was arrested and imprisoned in a fortress for six months before being brought to trial.

We think our own times are ones of unprecedented change, social unrest and violence but the period in which Dostoevsky lived was arguably one of even greater disturbance. The French Revolution and its bloody aftermath were well within living memory. Even in relatively stable and partly democratic Britain there were bloody riots, when the Bishop of Bristol’s palace for example was stormed and his effigy burnt. Terrorist acts by anarchic groups were a regular feature in a number of countries, while new ideas from Germany were threatening many established positions, including belief in God. In Russia itself, the underlying tension was greater than anywhere else because of autocratic tsarist rule, serfdom and the consequent agitation against the cruelty of such a system. All this is reflected in Dostoevsky’s novels, and it was against this background that he was arrested, tried and sentenced to death.

Dostoevsky gives a detailed description of how he and his fellow accused were led out to the parade ground, blindfolded and received last words from the chaplain. Then at the last moment a message arrived from the tsar commuting the sentence to four years’ imprisonment in Siberia followed by six years’ military service there in internal exile, of which he served four years. The conditions in prison were indescribable owing to the cold, dirt, hunger and brutality. Dostoevsky also suffered from health problems, haemorrhoids and emphysema among them. There was a particular humiliation for Dostoevsky because though he felt deep compassion for his fellow inmates and saw himself as a voice for them, they turned on him on the grounds that he came from a noble family, even though he was sharing their lives to the full. Yet, despite all, his spirit did not fail, and he could write that his faith had been strengthened and his compassion deepened. He was allowed a New Testament and he studied it carefully. A few prisoners, including one particularly brutal one who attached himself to Dostoevsky, did begin to see something remarkable about him. A turning point was when, filled with utter loathing for his fellow prisoners, he remembered an incident in his childhood when he was frightened and a peasant had made the sign of the cross on him, comforting him greatly. This gave him a deep feeling of empathy for the Russian people and the Christ who kept them going through so much suffering.2 It transformed his attitude to his fellow prisoners. At the same time it brought about a renewal of his Christian faith.

When Dostoevsky was eventually released, he tried to earn his living as a writer again, but often suffered from dire poverty, having to beg for money to survive. This was accentuated by his serious gambling addiction. However, when his first wife, after a very unhappy marriage, died, he married a stenographer, Anna, and with her travelled for four years in Europe, where eventually she managed to cure him of his addiction. We have a vivid account of this time from Anna herself, who says that the hardship they endured, especially the terrible grief when their first child died, brought them closer together and strengthened their faith. As someone who knew him at the time wrote, ‘His manner changed, acquired greater mildness, sometimes verging on utter gentleness. Even his features bore traces of that frame of mind, and a tender smile would appear on his lips.’3

It was during this time abroad that he wrote Crime and Punishment. Not only were the times in which Dostoevsky lived extreme; his own personality was one which sought to test everything to the limit. In his last great novel, The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan seems to suggest that if God does not exist then everything is permitted.4 It was this line which was taken up by Jean-Paul Sartre at the end of the Second World War as the founding principle of existentialism. It is an idea which is embodied in Raskolnikov, the central character of Crime and Punishment.

Crime and Punishment

Raskolnikov, a much troubled former student, murders Alyona, an elderly, corrupt pawnbroker. He offers a number of reasons for this but above all because he wants to see himself as a Napoleon figure, above good and evil, an idea which recurs at the end of the novel. This is a notion which Raskolnikov at once wants to embrace and also sees as a temptation of the devil. Lizaveta, Alyona’s half-sister stumbles upon the scene of the murder and Raskolnikov murders her as well. Raskolnikov is tormented by what he has done and acts in odd ways as though wanting to reveal the truth; in particular he is drawn to the policeman Porfiry, who suspects the truth. Raskolnikov is befriended by Sonia, a pure woman who has been forced into prostitution in order to save her family from starvation. The turning point in the book is when she reads to Raskolnikov the story of the raising of Lazarus from the dead. She is at once reluctant and fearful of reading it to him and yet desperate to do so, as though something great is at stake. At the same time Raskolnikov senses the intensity of her passion that he should hear the Gospel and hear it now. This emotional scene of the reading carries on for three pages.

Here she stopped again, anticipating with a feeling of shame that her voice would once more tremble and snap.

‘Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again. Martha saith unto him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection of the last day. Jesus saith unto her ‘I am the resurrection and the life, he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die. Believe thou this? She saith unto him’ (and as though drawing her breath painfully, Sonia read slowly and distinctly to the end, as though she were herself making a public confession of her faith). ‘Yea, Lord, I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world.’5

Sonia continues with the same intensity to the end, longing for Raskolnikov’s eyes to be opened like the eyes of those who saw Lazarus rise. At the end they sit in silence for five minutes; then Raskolnikov makes an abrupt dismissive remark.

Raskolnikov is locked up in his mental prison. He does not really hear or see others as people at all, thinking of Alyona, for example as ‘a louse’. So this moment when he needs to hear a word, a word that will break into his self-enclosed torment and deliver him from it is key. He does not hear the liberating word at this point, but he does later through Sonia. For it is to Sonia that he eventually confesses his crime. She urges that he confess this in public and give himself up for arrest and punishment. Noticing that he is not wearing a cross, she gives him hers. Orthodox Christians not only wear a cross; they will sometimes exchange crosses as a sign of friendship. She gives him her cross as a sign that she will share his suffering, which she already in fact feels deeply. ‘We’ll suffer together, so let us bear our cross together.’6 Raskolnikov does not accept the cross at this point; but says he will later, which he does.

This wearing of the cross is significant not only as a sign of shared suffering but of shared responsibility for the murder. For the cross which Sonia gives him is likely to be the one which the murdered Lizaveta had given her. Before this, Lizaveta had shared crosses with Alyona; so the cross was really Alyona’s, given to Raskolnikov via Sonia.7 So Sonia acts as a link of shared responsibility.

The idea of accepting responsibility for other people in their totality, which as we shall see is a major theme in Dostoevsky’s novels, emerges here for the first time. But this sharing is not just a matter of helping them to bear the burden of what they have done; it is to help them take responsibility for it. Raskolnikov has refused to accept that he is an ordinary criminal; instead he plays around in his mind with fantasies of himself as a superman. He has to accept that he is like everyone else, a flawed human being, no different from Alyona, the corrupt pawnbroker he murdered. Through Sonia he does eventually gain this self-knowledge. She continues to keep close to Raskolnikov, making it clear she will follow him to Siberia. Eventually he does ask for her cross and prays, which leads him to announce in the street that he is a murderer and then give himself up.8

Sonia is clearly a Christ figure, or at least what Rowan Williams calls a platzhalter for Christ, ‘someone who takes the place that belongs to the saviour within the human transaction of the narrative’.9 It is a mistake however to think of Sonia as a passive person whose role is simply to suffer. She is strong in many ways, not least in the way she stands up to Raskolnikov and will not move away from him until he has accepted full responsibility for his life and actions as an ordinary sinful human being. When he first confesses to her, he asks what he should do:

‘What are you to do?’ she cried, suddenly jumping to her feet and her eyes, which till then had been full of tears, flashed fire. ‘Get up’. She seized him by the shoulder, and he raised himself, looking at her almost in astonishment. ‘Go at once, this very minute, and stand at the crossroads, bow down, first kiss the earth which you have defiled, and then bow down to all the four corners of the world – and say to all men aloud, I am a murderer! Then God will send you life again. Will you go? Will you?’ She asked him trembling all over, seizing his hands and clasping them tightly in hers and looking at him with burning eyes.10

This is what he eventually did, when he had finally accepted her cross and prayed, even though people in the street took him for a crazy drunkard.11

In the theology of the Orthodox Church, the resurrection of Christ plays a much more central role than it does in the Western Churches, both Catholic and ...

Table of contents

• 1 Fyodor Dostoevsky: Through a furnace of doubt
• 2 Emily Dickinson: A smouldering volcano
• 3 Gerard Manley Hopkins: ‘Away grief’s gasping’
• 4 Edward Thomas: The elusive call
• 5 T. S. Eliot: Out of hell
• 6 Stevie Smith: A jaunty desperation
• 7 Samuel Beckett: Secular mystic
• 8 W. H. Auden: ‘Bless what there is for being’
• 9 William Golding: Universal pessimist, cosmic optimist
• 10 R. S. Thomas: Presence in absence
• 11 Edwin Muir and George Mackay Brown: Light from the Orkneys
• 12 Elizabeth Jennings: Poet of pain and praise
• 13 Grace in failure: Four Catholic novelists – Graham Greene, Flannery O’Connor, Shusaku Endo and Evelyn Waugh
• 14 C. S. Lewis and Philip Pullman: Competing myths
• 15 Marilynne Robinson: Christian contrarian
• Notes
• Acknowledgements
• Search terms