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Dostoevsky and Swedenborg

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Czeslaw Milosz
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Extract

Very few books and studies on Dostoevsky appeared in the first two decades after his death. The year 1900 may be chosen as the turning point, for after that date the number of publications, first in Russian, then in other languages, increased steadily. By the middle of our century the canon of Dostoevsky scholarship was well established, so that hardly any new departures seemed to be possible. Today, whether our attention is focused on Dostoevsky's opinions or on the stylistic devices and structures of his novels, we note that practically every method of approach has already been tried by at least one of our predecessors. Thus Dostoevsky, not unlike Nietzsche, was discovered and appropriated by the first half of the twentieth century. It was then that he grew to the stature he now possesses, and it was then that he was recognized as a forerunner of new trends in European literature and philosophy.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , June 1975 , pp. 302 - 318
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1974

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References

1. Grossman, L. P., Scminarii po Dostoevskomu (Moscow and Petrograd, 1922; reprint Prideaux Press, London, 1972), p. 42 Google Scholar.

2. In this respect an English metaphysical poet, Thomas Traherne, is Swedenborg's predecessor. See, for example, the following stanza from his poem “My Spirit” (The Poetical Works of Thomas Traherne, London, 1932): This made me present evermore With whatsoere I saw. An Object, if it were before Mine Ey, was by Dame Nature's Law Within my Soul: Her Store Was all at once within me; all her Treasures Were my immediat and internal Pleasures; Substantial Joys, which did inform my Mind. With all she wrought My Soul was fraught, And evry Object in my Heart, a Thought Begot or was: I could not tell Whether the Things did there Themselvs appear, Which in my Spirit truly seem'd to dwell: Or whether my conforming Mind Were not ev'n all that therin shin'd.

3. Mandel'shtam, Nadezhda, Vtoraia kniga (Paris: YMCA Press, 1972, pp. 303–4 Google Scholar.

4. Here Dostoevsky comes close to Kierkegaard, but the dichotomy is resolved by Kierkegaard, who tips the scales in favor of “inwardness” and “subjectivity,” and thus identifies faith with truth: “The truth is precisely the venture which chooses an objective uncertainty with the passion of the infinite… . But the above definition of. truth is an equivalent expression for faith… . Faith is precisely the contradiction between the infinite passion of the individual's inwardness and the objective uncertainty” (Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Princeton, 1941, p. 182). A saying of Meister Eckart's may be recalled here: “If God were able to backslide from truth, I would fain cling to truth and let God go. “

5. “The following may be noted as the main points in the Gnostic conception of the several parts of the regula fidei: (a) The difference between the supreme God and the creator of the world, and therewith the opposing of redemption and creation, and there rejection of the Old Testament, or the assertion that the Old Testament contains no revelations of the supreme God, or at least only in certain parts, (c) The doctrine of the independence and eternity of matter, (rf) The assertion that the present world sprang from a fall of man, or from an undertaking hostile to God, and is therefore the product of an evil or intermediate being, (c) The doctrine that evil is inherent in matter and therefore is a physical potence. (/) The assumption of Aeons, that is, real powers and heavenly persons in whom is unfolded the absoluteness of the Godhead. (</) The assertion that Christ revealed a God hitherto unknown.” See Adolph, Harnack, History of Dogma, Dover ed., 7 vols, in 4 (New York, 1961), 1: 257–59 Google Scholar. Harnack also lists additional points.

6. Altizer, Thomas J. J., The New Apocalypse: The Radical Christian Vision of William Blake (East Lansing, 1967)Google Scholar.

7. Grossman, , Seminarii po Dostoevskomu, p. 17.Google Scholar