What would be “a thousand times more serious” is revolutionary killing such as Dostoevsky was to predict in The Possessed. This book, alone among nineteenth-century works, foresaw what we have come to call totalitarianism, not…
And if his life was important, if it differed from other lives, it was because even its smallest, seemingly mutest events took on meaning, and acquired a resonance of their own, from Ludmila’s presence in…
I am sorry that I cannot say anything more comforting, for active love is a harsh and fearful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams thirsts for immediate action, quickly performed, and with…
“God will punish all atheists. They will burn in everlasting fire.” [A hermit] Obviously upset, the Staretz said: “Tell me, supposing you went to paradise and looked down and saw somebody burning in hell-fire—would you…
Above all, avoid lies, all lies, especially the lie to yourself. Keep watch on your own lie and examine it every hour, every minute. And avoid contempt, both of others and of yourself: what seems…
for Natalie Long Faith comes not from theory but from experience, from the bottom up, by living the right sort of life from moment to moment. For Zossima, that means attending to the prosaic. One…
And therefore I think the solution I have found for myself will be valid for all sincere men who set themselves the same question. First of all, to the question: What must we do? I…
It was never my goal to put together a collection of horror stories, to overwhelm the reader. I was collecting the human. Dostoevsky asked the question: “How much of the human is there in a…
“Just recently I was feeling unwell and read House of the Dead. I had forgotten a good bit, read it over again and I do not know a better book in all our new literature,…
Active love is always directed at somebody or something in particular. Abstract love of humanity is professed by Ivan Karamazov’s Grand Inquisitor, by Rakitin, and eventually by Ivan Karamazov’s devil. When it comes to meeting…