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I began work on this book over thirty years ago, when working on my dissertation and teaching a course on “The Novel” at the University of Notre Dame. I remain grateful to the professors who guided me at Notre Dame, especially Thomas Werge—whose class in Fall 1983, my first semester at Notre Dame, helped me to understand the novel more fully. The late James Walton was a consistent source of bracing realism. Jim Dougherty is a model of academic and personal integrity. Thanks too to Larry Cunningham, who sat in on my dissertation defense. I remember him asking about the apophatic dimension in Dostoevsky; I’m still thinking about his question, even as this book, with its emphasis upon Dostoevsky’s analogical imagination, tends toward the cataphatic. While at Notre Dame, I encountered the work of two thinkers who continue to inform my understanding of reality: William F. Lynch, S.J. and Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin. I remain grateful for their work.

I continued to write on and teach Dostoevsky during my twelve years teaching at Christ College, the honors college of Valparaiso University. My wonderful colleagues there—especially Dean Mark Schwehn, Mel Piehl, Bill Olmstead, Warren Rubel, David Morgan, John Ruff, Margaret Franson, and John Steven Paul—were always generous in their support, encouragement, and friendship. Valparaiso University granted me sabbaticals and University Professorships, and granted me time to work. My twelve years at Christ College were a blessing: the students were remarkable, and I remember many of their faces, names, and our conversations about Dostoevsky’s novel.

In Fall 2002, I was blessed by an offer to teach in the Great Books Colloquium at Pepperdine University. I accepted, and have since been leading discussions of The Brothers Karamazov with excellent students (and faculty). In my writing I have been consistently supported by my Divisional Deans—Constance Fulmer, Maire Mullins (my ever-encouraging wife), Michael Ditmore, and Stella Erbes—and by the gifts of time and sabbatical renewal granted by Deans David Baird and Michael Feltner, and Associate Provost Lee Kats. Most recently, it’s been an honor to direct two undergraduate research projects on Dostoevsky’s novel with Callagahan McDonough and Raquel Grove. Jessica Hooten Wilson, a former student, has gone on to write very fine books on Dostoevsky’s affinities with Flannery O’Connor and Walker Percy.

Here at Pepperdine, I am grateful to many friends and colleagues, past and present, who have supported my work over the course of eighteen years, among them Darryl Tippens, Richard Hughes, Bob Cochran, Ron Highfield, Chris Soper, Robert Williams, David Holmes, Cindy Colburn, Jason Blakely, Jeff Zalar, and colleagues with whom I discussed the novel in summer faculty seminars sponsored by Pepperdine’s Center for Faith and Learning, as well as our Great Books faculty—Cyndia Clegg, Jacqueline Dillion, Michael Gose, Tuan Hoang, Don Marshall, Frank Novak, Victoria Myers, Jane Kelley Rodeheffer, Jeff Schultz, and Don Thompson—and our librarians.

I am grateful to the gifted cohort of Lilly Graduate Fellows that I mentored with my friend Susan Felch, with whom we discussed Confessions, Commedia, and the Karamazovs over the course of three enlivening years. In July 2017, the Sisters of St. Benedict provided kind hospitality, welcomed me to community worship, and gave me an office in which to work. And I am grateful to so many others who have sown seeds of inspiration and encouragement over the years: Monsignor John Sheridan, Edward Weisband, Louis Dupré, Robert Kiely, Mary Breiner, Karin Hart, Rich Mitchell, Hans Cristoffersen and many others whom I’m sure—and am sorry—to be forgetting.

And I am grateful to the brilliant and hospitable scholars of Slavic literature. In the late 1980s, I discovered the work of Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin, and contacted a scholar whose studies of his thought I’d found especially illuminating: Caryl Emerson responded with generosity beyond what I could have imagined. In the years since then, I have been grateful for Caryl’s friendship, good counsel, and for the careful reading she gave an earlier version of this manuscript. Caryl’s suggestions have been invaluable in improving the quality of my book, the remaining faults of which remain my own. I am also very grateful for Caryl’s willingness to write the luminous Afterword to this book.

Dostoevsky scholars are some of the most thoughtful and kind people a scholar could ever hope to meet. Some of the scholars with whom I conversed are now of blessed memory: Joseph Frank, Robert Belknap, Victor Terras, and Diane Oenning Thompson. Others remain vital contributors to the study of Dostoevsky: Carol Apollonio, Brian Armstrong, Robert Bird, Julian Connolly, Yuri Corrigan, Octavian Gabor, Robert Louis Jackson, Deborah Martinsen, Greta Matzner-Gore, Susan McReynolds, Gary Saul Morson, Riley Ossorgin, Maxwell Parlin, Robin Feuer Miller, George Pattison, Randall Poole, Amy Ronner, Gary Rosenshield, Rowan Williams, Peter Winsky, Alina Wyman, Denis Zhernokleyev, and many others whom I am sorry to be forgetting. At one time or another, each has given their kind attention to my work. My focus upon Dostoevsky’s Christian dimension follows decades of work by distinguished scholars, among them Boyce Gibson, Sven Linner, Robert Louis Jackson, Steven Cassedy, Malcolm Jones, Susan McReynolds, Rowan Williams, Wil Van Den Bercken, George Paniches, and P. H. Brazier, and many other international and Russian scholars, such as Vladimir Nikolaevich Zakharov.2 Books focused solely upon The Brothers Karamazov and closely attuned to its spiritual dimension—especially those by Robin Feuer Miller, Diane Oenning Thompson, and Julian Connolly—have been consistent sources of insight. I have found the works of countless scholars to be helpful, and hope this small contribution may be heard in dialogue with theirs, and contribute to what continues to be a vital conversation, especially timely in our “secular age.”

In the book’s final stages, Hilary Yancey’s expert typesetting and careful indexing proved to be indispensable. My gratitude, too, to the attentive team at Cascade Books / Wipf and Stock—especially Robin Parry, but also Matt Wimer, Ian Creeger, Zechariah Mickel, George Callihan, Adam McInturf, Savanah Landerholm, Jim Tedrick, and Joe Delahanty.

Finally, I am deeply thankful for the support of my family: to my parents, Salvatore and Kathryne, for their love and guidance during their earthly lives. My Mom passed on to me not only her love of reading, but also her love for our Catholic Christian faith and tradition. Many years ago, when I was vocationally at sea, my sister Kathy encouraged me to become a teacher: I’m very grateful she did. Nick Pellicciari was always interested, always kind. My wife’s parents, Harriet and Peter Mullins, always thoughtfully granted me space to work while we visited. Above all, I am very grateful to my wife Maire Mullins, who for thirty years has been my companion, conversation partner, source of good humor, counselor, sometime-typist, perceptive reader, and daily support in writing, teaching, parenting, and living. I thank our beautiful daughters, Mai Rose and Teresa Marie, who learned to pronounce “Karamazov” earlier than any child should ever be asked to attempt. While I worked on this book, they excused my absence from some of the family fun. All their young lives, they have encouraged me by their kindness, good humor, insight, and grace.

I hope that whoever picks up this book—be it a teacher, student, pastoral counselor, therapist, general reader (and we all inhabit each of these roles at some time)—will be guided toward a recognition of the uniquely transformative and edifying potential of Dostoevsky’s final novel. Readers —especially those exploring the novel for the first time—may wish to use the Norton Critical (Second) Edition of the novel as my analysis is keyed to that translation. First-time readers sometimes find Russian names to be a challenge, and will find assistance in Appendix II here. I’ve sometimes said that my vocation is simply to get people to read The Brothers Karamazov. If this book gets more people to read that book, I’ll consider it a success.

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In part, this book draws upon and revises work on Dostoevsky I have previously published. Below, I list these publications with gratitude to the publishers for any permissions that may be required. In this book I’ve integrated some of this past work, in different form, and employed words and ideas that first appeared there:

“Catholic Christianity.” In The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Religion, edited by Susan M. Felch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.

“‘Descend That You May Ascend’: Augustine, Dostoevsky, and the Confessions of Ivan Karamazov.” In Augustine and Literature, edited by Robert Kennedy, Kim Paffenroth, and John Doody. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2006.

“Dostoevsky.” Entry in The New Catholic Encyclopedia. Gale Research, 2011.

“Dostoevsky: The Brothers Karamazov.” In Finding a Common Thread: Reading Great Texts from Homer to O’Connor, edited by Robert C. Roberts, Scott H. Moore, and Donald D. Schmeltekopf. Notre Dame, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2011.

“Dostoevsky and the Ethical Relation to the Prisoner.” Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature 48.4 (1996).

“Dostoevsky and the Prisoner.” In Literature and the Renewal of the Public Sphere, edited by Susan VanZanten Gallagher and M. D. Walhout. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000.

“Incarnational Realism and the Case for Casuistry: Dmitri Karamazov’s Escape.” In “The Brothers Karamazov”: Art, Creativity, and Spirituality, edited by Pedrag Cicovacki and Maria Granik. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter, 2010.

“Merton and Milosz at the Metropolis: Two Poets Engage Dostoevsky, Suffering, and Human Responsibility.” Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature 63.2 (2011).

“The Prudential Alyosha Karamazov: The Russian Realist from a Catholic Perspective.” In “Dostoevsky and Christianity: Art, Faith, and Dialogue,” a special volume of Dostoevsky Monographs, Volume VI, edited by Jordi Morillas. St. Petersburg: Dmitry Bulanin, 2015.

“Zosima, Mikhail, and Prosaic Confessional Dialogue in The Brothers Karamazov.” Studies in the Novel 27.1 (1995).

Thank you to all.

Orthodox Christmas, January 7, 2020