Dostoevsky Poetics In The Religious-cultural Context

Dostoevsky is one of the most important Russian writers whose artistic creation and poetic principles exert great influence upon the world literature today. But, in the past, in the Dostoevsky studies there is a lack of critical practice upon his poetic principles from the perspective of Russian religious culture. By using the critical approach from cultural perspective, this dissertation tries to establish a relationship between Dostoevsky's poetic principles and the Russian cultural context in which these principles will be carefully examined. Since the Baptism of Rus in the 10th century, Russia had not gone through the process of secularization as Western Europe had in the Renaissance and Enlightenment, and therefore preserved such cultural features as those of the early Christianity. It was in this cultural context that Dostoevsky formed his religious outlook which, based upon Eastern Orthodoxy, includes his dialectical perception of God, his contemplation of theodicy, his assertion of immanent divinity in man, and his idealization of a universal religion besides his reception of the main doctrine, all of which of course were absorbed into his personal experience and served as constraints to his poetic principles. The examples can be shown as follows: (1) Theodicy and the realistic principle: The ambivalence that Dostoevsky personally experienced the sufferings in the real world but meanwhile piously believed in Christ is the very reason why he received the ideas of theodicy which are characterized by his squarely facing the sufferings and the evils, his refusal of the cruel reality, and his celebration of the pains in his works. (2) "Man in man" and "man's immanent divinity": Dostoevsky explains this as "discovering man in man under the entirely realistic condition". Understanding of this phrase varies. In fact, Dostoevsky portrays man according to the principle of asserting man's divinity and, as he concentrates on evils, he meanwhile discovers divine quality in man and reveals man's choice and misuse of freedom given by God. (3) Polyphony and convergence(соборность): The quality of polyphony is universally recognized as one of the most important poetic principles. The phenomenon was discovered by many long before Bakhtin, and in the context of religious culture, it can be seen not only as an assertion of man's divinity, but also as a structural realization of the Catholic Church images. The principle of polyphony organizes people from different ranks ( those who belong to hell, purgatory, and heaven respectively ) and makes them equivalent in this structure. (4) Diachrony, synchrony and prototypical structures: After Bakhtin, most critics believe that works of Dostoevsky are synchronic, and makes no diachronic sense in both structure and characters. Criticisms such as this are obviously characterized by formalism. As a matter of fact, there is a typical proto-structure of the Christian triad: the Hell, the Purgatory and the Heaven. This triple structure simultaneously shows its synchrony and diachrony, the force of punishment from the Hell and the Purgatory, and the process from punishment to salvation undergone by the sinned man.