Another gem from Dostoevsky and The Brothers Karamazov

Until this evening, The Brothers Karamazov has been taking a break on my bookshelf while I turned my attention to other areas of life.  My return was rewarded by another gem from Dostoevsky’s pen, this one happening at what is apparently the turning point of the story, and none too soon at 408 pages into the book!  Alyosha Karamozov’s elder and spiritual leader, Father Zossima, has died, and Alyosha is leaving the room where his body is resting “in state” before burial, and leaving in a hurry for he seems to have begun to realize his life’s purpose.

I’ve read this paragraph several times now, letting the words and the images and feelings they create flow through my soul like water, if you will.  Here it is, for your enjoyment as well:

He did not stop on the steps either, but went quickly down; his soul, overflowing with rapture, yearned for freedom, space, openness.  The vault of heaven, full of soft, shining stars, stretched vast and fathomless above him.  The Milky Way ran in two pale streams from the zenith to the horizon.  The fresh, motionless, still night enfolded the earth.  The white towers and golden domes of the cathedral gleamed out against the sapphire sky.  The gorgeous autumn flowers, in the beds round the house, were slumbering till morning.  The silence of the earth seemed to melt into the silence of the heavens.  The mystery of earth was one with the mystery of the stars. . . .

It’s my guess that Dostoevsky spent a fair amount of time outdoors, enjoying the natural world in all it’s beauty, to be able to know and write lines like these, perhaps like another author I’m familiar with.  I feel a little cheated, too, that I don’t know the Russian language so that I could read these words as they were originally meant to be read.  Knowing there are similarities between Russian and the Koine Greek of the New Testament, and how our English can have a difficult time capturing the fullness of the original Greek language, I believe I’m justified in that opinion.

If you’re interested, another paragraph in this book that I wrote about earlier last year had nearly the same effect.

Thoughts from Dostoevsky on the beauty of God’s world

It was a bright, warm, still, July night, a cool mist rose from the broad river, we could hear the splash of a fish, the birds were still, all was hushed and beautiful, everything praying to God.  Only we two were not sleeping, the lad and I, and we talked of the beauty of this world of God’s and of the great mystery of it.  Every blade of grass, every insect, ant, and golden bee, all so marvellously know their path, though they have not intelligence, they bear witness to the mystery of God and continually accomplish it themselves.

The shape of things to come and The Brothers Karamazov

A couple of months ago I wrote a post that partially dealt with the issue of the Christian Fiction section at Borders creeping into the allotted space of the Church & Theology section.  After today’s visit to the same Borders store I’m convinced that Christian Fiction is no longer creeping, it is now gobbling up real estate and declaring the right of “eminent domain” in the process. 

In other words, Christian Fiction has gained two more shelves, and Church & Theology has lost the same two shelves.  Indeed, even what is left of the Church & Theology section appears to be growing thin, with more books than usual “faced out” rather than set normal (spine out?).  I’m no expert on the strategy of marketing and shelf-space when it comes to bookstores, but I suspect this shift is a reflection of a growth of the market share of Christian Fiction and a reduction in the market share of Church & Theology.  The shape of things to come, perhaps?

So why were we there?