Truth versus truth in context in Dostoevsky. Polyphony vs relativism. The case of a conversation between father and son over the brandy

Abstract

The article juxtaposes the semantic difference of usage for the word “truth” (“istina”) in Christian vs. secular contexts in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov”. The author reveals an infinite multiplicity of conflicting receptive “mirrors” as they diverge from the Christian conceptualization of the notion of Truth, a notion most important for Dostoevsky, viewed by him as inalienable from the image of Christ. The author dwells on various meanings of the word “truth” in the polyphonic context of Dostoevsky’s novels, thus comparing and contrasting the characters’ perception of this word versus the meanings found in the relevant Biblical and liturgical texts, in Russian, Hebrew, Greek, and Church Slavonic. The textual example for this essay focuses on the chapter “Over the Brandy”, referencing the hypocritical policy of Catherine II in her attempt to please the representatives of the church hierarchy at the level of cultural gestures, while actually confiscating church lands and reducing the number of monasteries by two thirds. In this respect, she would find allies not only among the secularists like Miusov or Ivan Karamazov, different as their stances may be, but also among the radicals like Pyotr Verkhovensky, in Dostoevsky’s fiction. The article also shows that both the left-wing radicalism and the right-wing triumphalism equally distort and lead away from Christ, as Dostoevsky sees Him.