Category Archives: Religious Quest in the Modern Age

Love and Hate

Books, Classic Books, Religious Quest in the Modern Age

 

 

The novel The Brothers Karamazov is a novel of ideas and passions.  To Dostoevsky  they are interrelated.  Ideas are believed (or not) with passion. One of those ideas that is explored in the novel is love.

A curious aspect of the novel is how closely connected love and hate are.  Dostoevsky does not see them as opposites. They are really two sides of the same coin.  As Dmitri said about Katerina “I stared at her with a terrifying hatred that is only a hair’s breadth from the maddest most desperate love.” It is just like “ice burning my forehead like a flame.”  Dmitri asks his brother “Can you understand Alyosha that there are moments of ecstasy in which we could kill ourselves.”

Dmitri also tells Alyosha “Falling in love with someone doesn’t mean loving that person. It’s possible to fall in love and hate at the same time.”

Dmitri can passionately love 2 women at the same time. Katerina and Grushenko. Of course that makes things very difficult.

Often the loves resemble hate. Even the lovers sometimes fail to see the love. The love between Dmitri and Katerina are like that. “It was a hysterical twisted love made up of offended pride, a love that resembled revenge more than love.” Dostoevsky says, “They were like two enemies desperately in love.” Dmitri tells Katerina “I swear to you, I loved you while I hated you.”

Grushenka  tells  Dmitri to forgive her because she loved him but deliberately made him suffer. How is that possible?   She tells him, “I made you all suffer just out of sheer viciousness” and I “drove your old man insane.” It reminds me of what Shakespeare’s King Lear said, “We are to the gods as flies to wanton boys. They kill us for their sport.” These twisted loves are so crazy that Grushenka says If I were God I’d forgive everyone.”

And  in he world of Dostoevsky all of these contradictions can be true, in some sense, in the furnace of the Karamazov’s passion. Somehow, in some very strange way, it makes a kind of sense.

Dmitri begs Grushenka to forgive him for “ruining you with his love.” And that is exactly what he did. He even did the same for Katerina. He ruined two women with his love.

These are all strange loves.

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The Many gods of the Brothers Karamazov

Books, Classic Books, Religious Quest in the Modern Age

In a way there are many gods in the novel The Brothers Karamazov. Is Fyodor Karamazov—the father of the 3, or perhaps 4, Karamazov brothers—God? He certainly is God-like. He is fickle, absurd, unreasonable, and demands adherents be faithful no matter what. Sounds a lot like God doesn’t it?  His former serf Gregory is faithful to him when faith has not been earned or deserved. As Dostoevsky explains about Fyodor Karamazov, “For some complex and subtle reasons, that he himself could not explain, he felt an urgent and pressing need to have someone loyal and trustworthy by him.” Again this sounds god-like. If he is a god, then, of course, his 3 or 4 sons, are all sons of God.

 

Because of the absolute loyalty,  the father liked his youngest son, Alyosha who “touched his very heart, by being there, seeing everything, and condemning nothing.” Remember he is the one who judges no one. Alyosha gave him “something he had never had before—a complete absence of contempt for him…he treated him with invariable kindness—and a completely genuine and sincere affection which Karamazov little deserved.” Of course he treated everyone that way. He was a near saint. Or you could say he was God-like.

Elder   Zosima is certainly god-like. As is Alyosha. But so is Karamazov. He is an absurd god. But in many respect the god of the bible is also absurd. The God of the Bible is the god who lets a small child freeze to death in a shed in a Russian winter. Ivan could not accept such a god.

Dmitri (also known as Mitya) is a god to Katerina. She bows down to him, as Elder Zosima bowed down to Fyodor Karamazov and Dmitri to Grushenka. In fact, Grushenka had father and son “conquered and lying at her feet.” Again a bit God-like.

Dmitri also treats Alyosha like a god. He confesses to Alyosha:

“I’ll make a clean breast of everything, for there must be someone who knows the whole truth. I’ve already told it to the angel in heaven and now I’ll tell it to the angel on earth. Because you are the angel on earth Alyosha.”

 

What are we to make of so many gods on this religious quest?

 

 

God’s Fools

Books, Classic Books, Religious Quest in the Modern Age

 

In the book The Brothers Karamazov, the monastery was where Alyosha, one of the three sons of the patriarch Fyodor Karamazov, was learning how to find light and love with the assistance of his mentor, the elder, Zosima, a near Saint. The elder lives in a small room in the monastery that was far from grandiose. It is not the Vatican. Nor the lavish home of American televangelists. As Dostoevsky described it, “The whole cell was rather small and drab-looking. It has only the most indispensable furniture, and even that was poor and crude.”

It is interesting that we learn a lot in a chapter of the novel titled, “The Old Buffoon.”  The elder Karamazov as invariably he does, acts like a buffoon.  And he is exactly that.  In fact, he introduced himself to Elder Zosima that way, and then acted the part with gusto. He refers to himself as “one of God’s fools,” and even says there may be an unholy spirit in me too, but it must be one of minor rank—if it were more important it would surely have chosen better quarters.”

Miusov also acted the part of the fool. As Dostoevsky said of Miusov, “He rated his own powers of judgment rather highly, a weakness which was excusable in him, since he was already past fifty, an age at which an intelligent, cultured man of the world of independent means acquires an exaggerated opinion of his own judgment, sometimes despite himself.” I guess I am lucky, not being a man of means nor cultured.

The three sons are each fools but each in their own way.

Is elder Zosima an old fool for living so simply? In the novel when elder Karamazov plays the buffoon to such an extent that his son Alyosha can’t stand to see his father acting so in front of his mentor Zosima. But the elder Zosima, echoing Christ with Mary Magdalene, throws himself at the feet of the Fyodor Karamazov the father. According to Rakitin, “That’s the way it always is with God’s fools: they’re liable to cross themselves at the sight of a tavern and then hurl stones at a church.”

But Zosima impressively treats the fool like a nobleman. There are many of God’s fools in the novel, sometimes in disguise.  Some of the fools are very intelligent. Wise men are harder to find. Isn’t it always like that?

The way to light and Love

Books, Classic Books, Fellow Feeing, Religious Quest in the Modern Age

In the novel The Brothers Karamazov, Alyosha, also called Alexei is the youngest son and least like the father. He is the most likeable of all the Karmazovs, and I might even say, the most God-like of the brothers Karamazov. He did that by being free of resentment. He was filled instead with compassion and fellow feeling that left no room for resentment. Unlike his father and his brothers, He “never held a grudge when someone offended him.” Instead he had fierce, frantic modesty, and chastity.” He was “in no sense a fanatic…he was not even a mystic.” As Dostoevsky said, “he refused to sit in judgement of others.” Or like Bob Dylan said, “he knows too much to argue or to judge.” Some of us, (I am looking in a mirror now) could learn a lot from Alyosha.

 

What was his secret?  It wasn’t dogma. Or following rules. He had no need of either.  As Dostoevsky said, “he was just a boy who very early in life had come to love his fellow men.”  Simple but effective! As the author shows us in his novels, many men  claim to love their fellows but few are able to do that. Alyosha did go to a monastery but that was “simply because at one point that course had caught his imagination and he had become convinced that it was the ideal way to escape the darkness of the wicked world, a way that would lead him toward light and love.” This was his religious quest. He was as unencumbered by vows or rules as his Father was unencumbered by scruples. Near the end of the book Alyosha shows us that there is better way. But really the whole novel leads us there. I will get to that later in my posts on this book. I must meander there. There are no shortcuts to truth.

 

This is the genuine way of religion. This is the true faith of the religious quest. Religion without dogma. What a blessing that could be. Alyosha shows us the way by example.

 

The Quest of the Abandoned for an Absent God

Classic Books, Religious Quest in the Modern Age

 

Dostoevsky shows us in his magnificent novel, The Brothers Karamazov that the religious quest in the modern age is the quest to deal with abandonment by God. At least according to Ivan, the atheist son, when God leaves a child to suffer that is something he cannot accept. Even if suffering leads to discovery of God, a some suggest,  that is not good enough, for it is not worth the price.

 

The father Karamazov is successful in business ventures because he is “unencumbered by scruples.” Later Ivan accuses God of the same crime. He creates a world which many of us feel is a great success, but it contains suffering children so God considers that their suffering is worth the price. To Ivan it is not worth the price. The less unencumbered one is by scruples the more successful one will be. No one is more successful than God. But children suffer! He thinks there is something terribly wrong with such a world. It is not good enough and if that is the best God can do,  God is not Great as Christopher Hitchens said.

 

 

The Brothers Karamazov: Abandoned by God

Books, Classic Books, existentialism, Religious Quest in the Modern Age

 

In the book The Brothers Karamazov the brothers have a most unusual father. The father feels no responsibility to the sons and virtually abandons them all to their own devices. In the first sentence of the novel, we learn that the father has died under “tragic and mysterious” circumstances so I am not giving much away when I suggest that the most likely suspects are his sons. And it could be anyone of them, even though only Dmitri is charged with his murder.

 

The father had 3 “legitimate” sons and one other son who works for the father as a servant.  We never learn for sure whether he is actually a son or not. In that first paragraph we also learn that the father is “wretched and depraved but also muddle-headed in a way that allows him to pull off all sorts of shady little financial deals and not much else.”

 

The problem between the father and at least one of the sons, Dmitri, is that both love the same woman. And they compete for her violently. Here is how the prosecutor put it in his summation to the jury: “it was an amazing and fatal coincidence that these two hearts should have been set afire simultaneously.” And this set off “a month of hopeless passion.”  And no one could be more passionate than the Karamazovs for it was that passion that set off “the idea of parricide.”  This is such a powerful idea that, as defense counsel said, “the idea of it shocks and impresses us so much that the inadequate proof seems adequate and the questionable facts cease to appear questionable.” The idea is like a magic elixir that can transform a substance into something foreign. The very idea of it can make the false true and the true false.

 

However, as dangerous as that may be, there is more. Dmitri’s brother Ivan so different from him, is the atheist brother who argues that if God does not exist “all is permitted.” In fact, it could be said that the very idea of a dead God is a magic elixir that could mean all is permitted. That is where his religion ended.  Yet as the  defense lawyer explains to the jury, Dmitri’s father was not a real father for he effectively abandoned his children, therefore it would not be a monstrous thing for a son to murder such a father. It would be understandable. The consequence to Dmitri as his legal counsel explains, is that “my client grew up under no one’s protection but God’s, which means that he grew up as wild animals.” That seems like a horrible indictment of God, but it also gives license to Dmitri. For as we all know, if our parents disappear, we are given permission, in practice to do anything. The same with an absent God. All is really permitted. This is a lesson we also learned at the funeral of the very young Ilyusha who has an absent mother, not in fact, but in reality, for she has lost her reason. His mother was as bad a mother as Dmitri’s father was a bad father..

 

Being abandoned by a parent is as devastating as being abandoned by God. And that is the crux of the enigma of the religious quest in this novel. Abandonment by God is central to the whole idea of the death of God which gripped philosophers starting in the 19th century.

That shocking idea was born in the writings of Dostoevsky and Nietzsche and then carried on by the existentialists.

Re-Reading the Brothers Karamazov

2024 Trip to South East United States, Books, Classic Books, Religious Quest in the Modern Age

 

 

 

A couple of years ago I started two projects. One was to re-read at least one great classic book  each year. As a result I have re-read Albert Camus’s book The Rebel, Joseph  Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. I also started a project I call Religious Quest in the Modern Age based on a course taught by University of Winnipeg Professor Carl Ridd in the 1970s. I heard a short version of it in 1972 on television. In it he covered some of the same books. Teh idea of such a quest, has  an inspiration to me for 50 years! Some of the books I am reading overlap both of these projects. This is one of them.

I just recently re-read  one of the greatest novels I have ever read. It is The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. It is a brilliant novel that is infused with a powerful religious quest by the main characters. All of them in very different ways. That makes it perfect for both projects.

The book is 936 pages long (with an introductory article) and very complicated. Often, I had to re-read lengthy passages to make sure I had caught on to what is going on. That makes for very slow reading. But it is very enjoyable reading. I feared It might take me half of our 3- month holiday to wade my way through it, making many of the books  dragged out to Arizona  unnecessary. I feared I would not get to them. But that was all fine. I could not have enjoyed  my reading more. It actually took me slightly less than a month to read even with the back and forth and making notes.

I originally read The Brothers Karamazov after or just after my first year of Law School in 1972. I decided that since I had such an all-consuming year trying to learn law and had married a lovely and wealthy young lady, Christiane Marie Jeanne Calvez, the year before, and she had a fantastic $600 in her account, that I should take advantage of this to take a summer off. I reached the daring conclusion that I should take the summer off instead of working and read Russian novels instead.  This probably struck her as insane, but she did not object even though we could have used the money. My bad.

That summer I read 3 of Dostoevsky’s long novels and it was an incredible experience. I recall intense dreams filled with startling Russian characters. And I loved it. And Christiane put up with it. She has frankly put up with a lot! I had worked for 5 years of University in which I studied intensely and figured I should take a lengthy break to avoid burn-out. It was one of the greatest experiences of my life. It was magnificent.

I know my wife wished I had learned more practical things like carpentry or plumbing, but I was focused on adventures of the mind. This year in 2024 it was a wonderful thing to re-experience. That is what re-reading classics is all about.

When I re-read the book in the winter of 2024 while in Arizona, I found it was everything I remembered and more. More than 50 years later I came to the book a very different person then I was the first time, a young man filled with piss and vinegar with a lot to learn. Now I am an old man mostly “vebrukt,” (broken) but unfortunately still with a lot to learn

And now I decided to re-read the greatest of those Russian novels. Perhaps even the greatest of all novels.  And once again, it was an astonishing experience. The novel is that good and I recommend everyone read it.  Do it now before it’s too late.

 

Nature is Stupendous

2024 Trip to South East United States, Religious Quest in the Modern Age

 

 

COPYRIGHT JOHN NEUFELD

 

For a number of reasons, I did not take very many photos this year in Arizona. I was bedevilled by problems with my camera, my knee, and most importantly my brain. But I did take a couple. I will try to show you some of them, especially as I contemplate seeking to walk beautifully in the world as Professor Moriarity enjoioned us.

As he sought walk beautifully in nature , Professor John Moriarty wanted humans to be like God.

It was if, God on the 6th day of creation, were to say
out there, nature is stupendous. Stupendous in its waterfalls, stupendous in its glaciers, stupendous in its storms, stupendous in its silences, stupendous in little things, stupendous in daisies, stupendous in little snow drops, stupendous in cow’s calving, go out there in the great places and small places because small places are also stupendous, allow yourself to be whelmed and overwhelmed by nature. Allow yourself to be even terrified by it.

Parts of nature are too great for the human mind. We should never try to rule it or dominate it. If you are over awed by nature your attitude to nature won’t be one of dominance over it. As Moriarty said, “now it behooves us not to be a carrier of those ideas of the universe.”

Original Sin

2018 Trip to Southwest USA, New Attitude to Nature, Religious Quest in the Modern Age

 

 

According to Professor John Moriarty, my guide on this particular meander, things went wrong right at very  beginning with the first chapter of Genesis. In chapter 1 verses 26 and 28 where God is saying “let us make man in our image and likeness where God gives man a divine mandate to rule over the earth, to subdue it, and have dominion over it.”

It followed directly from that the world was created by God for “man’s use and benefit.” Moriarty compared this to saying the earth, which is a jewel hanging in space, is more like a sink or a toilet bowl—i.e. for the use and benefit of humans.

 I would characterize this as the original sin. Right from the start, Moriarty says, “our attitude to the earth was all wrong.”

 In Job, God withdraws the commands to rule the earth. There in Job he says man cannot and will not haver dominion over the behemoth. Jesus was “Grand Canyon deep in the world’s karma,” according to Moriarty. So it is not a bad thing that many are in religious collision with his holy book. This is as it should be.

Moriarty asks if one can be “not rebelliously but religiously, in collision with the Holy Book?” Is that even possible? He says Man must resist that command. Just as if a man was commanded to have dominion over his wife, and the wife must refuse, so many must refuse the command to rule the earth. If God said to man rule over that dog, the dog could not manifest his nature to man. So too with the world.

As a result, Moriarty rejects this early commandment of God. That is a bold move. Instead, Moriarty seeks to walk beautifully over the earth. That is Professor Moriarty’s religious quest.

 

The Holdovers

2024 Trip to South East United States, Fellow Feeing, Movies, Religious Quest in the Modern Age

 

The film takes place over the Christmas and Hanukkah holidays in 1970, mainly at a New England boarding school. Barton, for the sons of wealthy parents. Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) has no love for the students clearly believing they are, privileged and entitled philistines. He  is a strict teacher of ancient history who is unpopular or even hated by the students and fellow staff members. Because he refused to “lift up the marks” of a wealthy donor’s son, who as a result was not accepted in Princeton, Paul was punished by the headmaster and made to stay over at school to chaperone 5 students who had no place to go for the holidays. He was  stubborn that the school should not “sacrifice our integrity on the altar of their entitlement.” In each case the parents had reasons for leaving these students at the school rather than bringing them home for the holidays.

Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph),  the black cook, whose husband died earlier,   understands why Paul had to flunk the boy: “He was a real asshole. Rich and dumb. Popular combination around here.”  Mary was another holdover, but by choice, because she did not want to go home where she would be reminded of the recent death of her son in Vietnam where he had been stationed. These were “the Christmas orphans.” 4 of the boys get lucky and were rescued by the father of one of them, leaving the unlikely three alone at school. It is their Christmas story.

Paul has little sympathy for the students who don’t religiously follow the rules. As a result, he punishes them to

“clean the library. Top to bottom. Scraping the underside of the desks, which are caked with snot and gum and all manner of ancient, unspeakable proteins. On your hands and knees, down in the dust, breathing in the dead skin of generations of students and desiccated cockroach assholes”

 

And then he tells them that are lucky and they should

“consider yourselves lucky. During the third Punic campaign, 149-146 B.C., the Romans laid siege to Carthage for three entire years. By the time it ended, the Carthaginians were reduced to eating sand and drinking their own urine. Hence the term punitive.”

The students, needless to say are unimpressed with this ancient history.

Angus Tully (Dominic Sesa) the one Baron student who did not get released because Paul could not reach his parents for consent, and Paul approach each other as opponents, if not enemies. Yet they come to realize that they have a connection.

Paul gives the other two a Christmas gift of a classical book, “Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius. Paul says, “For my money, it’s like the Bible, the Koran and the Bhagavad Gita all rolled up into one. And the best part is not one mention of God.” Maybe Paul’s quest is not a religious one.  At least he doesn’t think it is.  

The three of them enjoy a lovely Christmas dinner in a huge room in the school. They exchange looks and all seem to realize there is in fact an intimacy of some sort between them. Much to his surprise, Angus, finds out that “I don’t think I’ve ever had a real family Christmas like this. Christmas dinner, I mean — family style, out of the oven, all the trimmings. My mom always just orders in from Delmonico’s.

Each of three them learns a valuable lesson. It is a lesson from a great Classic writer, much admired by Paul, Cicero, who said, “Not for ourselves alone are we born.” It really is a religious insight. Each of them must learn it in their own way. I think it is the theme of the film.

Paul as a teacher of ancient civilizations knows that, but  he does not really understand it. He needs to really learn it, like the other 2. Paul must learn it by living it, as do the other 2 members of the trinity.

Paul has an unexpected gift that helps him.   Underneath his crusty surface, he has a surprising amount of empathy.  He is not a cynic. To Mary, spending her first Christmas without her son, he says “Mary, we remember Curtis as such an outstanding and promising young man, and we know this holiday season will be especially difficult without him. Please know that we accompany you in your grief.” The students have to learn it however.

When the privileged students mock Mary Paul says,

“Will you shut up! You have no idea what that woman has… (reining it in) For most people… life is like a henhouse ladder — shitty and short. You were born lucky. Maybe someday you entitled little degenerates will appreciate that. If you don’t, I feel sorry for you, and we will not have done our jobs.”

Paul must teach empathy to his students.They have a lot to learn.  After Angus annoys young boys in a bar who want to exact retribution from him, Paul buys them each a beer to keep Angus out of harm’s way. Angus wonders why Paul would do that for such “assholes,” but Paul asks him to look at them. One has a metal hand.

“How many boys do you know who have had their hands blown off? Barton boys don’t go to Vietnam. They go to Yale or Dartmouth or Cornell, whether they deserve to or not.?”

Angus catches on quickly.  He learns. He says, “except for Curtis Lamb.” Curtis was Mary’s son who joined the armed forces in Vietnam to earn enough money to go to a university, but he died there. He never got to go to college.

Mary has to teach Paul that he must also have empathy for his students, Angus in particular. Paul gets mad at Angus when Angus begs him to let him go back to a party so he can try to connect with a young lady. As a result, Paul yells at him and says he did not want to be with the Christmas orphans. Mary rebukes Paul “You don’t tell a boy who’s been left behind at Christmas that you’re aching to cut him loose. That nobody wants him. What the fuck is wrong with you?” This helps Paul to come to his senses. Paul catches on and realizes that Angus deserves some empathy too. He has actually had a difficult life even though he was the son of a woman who had married a rich man.

Paul told Miss Crane that he taught because he thought he could make a difference and she asks him what that means. He says,

“I used to think I could prepare them for the world, even a little — provide standards and grounding, like Dr. Green always drilled into us. But the world doesn’t make sense anymore. It’s on fire, the rich don’t give a shit, poor kids are cannon fodder, integrity’s a punch line, trust is just a name on a bank.”

 

But I guess I thought I could make a difference. Miss Crane smiles at him, “dazzling even with the dark sentiments. A bittersweet Christmas moment.” She tells him that if that’s all true then now is when they most need someone like you.”

Paul tells Angus,

“I find the world a bitter and complicated place, and it seems to feel the same way about me. I think you and I have this in common. Don’t get me wrong — you have your challenges. You’re erratic and belligerent and a gigantic pain in the balls, but you’re not me, and you’re not your father. You’re your own man. Man. No. You’re just a kid. You’re just beginning. And you’re smart. You’ve got time to turn things around.”

 

 In the film Angus makes a big sacrifice for Paul and Paul makes a big sacrifice for Angus.  They are life changing moments. They complete, for each of them, what I have called their religious quest. The film does not use this expression, but I do. In a sense each gives his life for his new friend. It is no accident that the words “sacrifice” and “sacred” have the same root.   At the end, Paul dismisses that any suggestion that he was heroic. “All I did was tell the truth, mostly” he says. But that is enough.

But that is not easy. Sacrifices are never easy. And Paul’s face reveals “the terror and hope.” The consequences of telling the truth can be painful. But they are important.