Overview

Conversations with Dostoevsky presents a series of fictional conversations taking place between November 2018 and Spring 2019 in the narrator's Glasgow apartment and elsewhere in the city. At the beginning of the conversations, the narrator has been reading Dostoevsky's story A Gentle Spirit, which concludes with a dramatic statement of protest atheism. This statement suggests that love is not possible in a purely mechanical universe in which all living beings are condemned to death and ultimate extinction. The conversations spell out Dostoevsky's response to this view and his advocacy of faith in God, Christ, and immortality. The themes discussed include suicide, truth and lies, guilt, determinism, literature, the Bible, Mary, Christ, Dostoevsky and film, 'the woman question', nationalism, war, the Church, the Jewish question, immortality, and God. In addition to conversations between the narrator and Dostoevsky, we drop in on a dinner party at which Dostoevsky is discussed from various points of view and in another conversation Dostoevsky is joined by the philosopher Vladimir Solovyov to discuss nationalism, the Church, and life. We also attend a seminar on 'Dostoevsky, Anti-Semitism, and Nazism', and visit Glasgow's Necropolis on Easter Eve. The conversations in the first part of the volume are accompanied by a series of commentaries in a second part, which contextualize the issues discussed in the conversations with references to his novels, journalism, letters, and notebooks as well as engaging the relevant critical literature.

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9780198881544

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Reviews

George Pattison's multi-voiced scholarly fiction on Dostoevsky's Christian faith is an echo-chamber of genres: Dialogue of the Dead, Ivan Karamazov's hallucination, Kierkegaard's uplifting discourse, Soloviev's Three Conversations, and a defense of literary creativity as a patient and learned therapy for the soul. The result is a game-changer. Rise and walk, read and see. * Caryl Emerson, Princeton University * In this wonderfully searching and imaginative dialogue, George Pattison explores many of the hardest questions any of us can face--among them, about love, humility, truth, flourishing, and finding or sustaining meaning in our lives. At its heart is an intensely personal investigation of what it is to live a Christian life, which will fascinate and inspire readers, whatever their own religious commitments. * Simon May, King's College London * A completely original and deeply imaginative engagement with a novelist whose spiritual and intellectual legacy is perhaps more complex and disturbing than ever at this time of heightened conflict in Eastern Europe. George Pattison helps us read Dostoevsky with sympathy, but does not blunt the hard questions he puts to us--and that we have to put to him. * Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury * Pattison, drawing on a wealth of literature, gives us a Dostoevsky for the issues of our time and every time, and can be strongly recommended. * Richard Harries, Church Times * Pattison, drawing on a wealth of literature, gives us a Dostoevsky for the issues of our time and every time, and can be strongly recommended. * Rt Revd Lord Harries, Church Times *

George Pattison's multi-voiced scholarly fiction on Dostoevsky's Christian faith is an echo-chamber of genres: Dialogue of the Dead, Ivan Karamazov's hallucination, Kierkegaard's uplifting discourse, Soloviev's Three Conversations, and a defense of literary creativity as a patient and learned therapy for the soul. The result is a game-changer. Rise and walk, read and see. * Caryl Emerson, Princeton University * In this wonderfully searching and imaginative dialogue, George Pattison explores many of the hardest questions any of us can face--among them, about love, humility, truth, flourishing, and finding or sustaining meaning in our lives. At its heart is an intensely personal investigation of what it is to live a Christian life, which will fascinate and inspire readers, whatever their own religious commitments. * Simon May, King's College London * A completely original and deeply imaginative engagement with a novelist whose spiritual and intellectual legacy is perhaps more complex and disturbing than ever at this time of heightened conflict in Eastern Europe. George Pattison helps us read Dostoevsky with sympathy, but does not blunt the hard questions he puts to us--and that we have to put to him. * Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury *

George Pattison's multi-voiced scholarly fiction on Dostoevsky's Christian faith is an echo-chamber of genres: Dialogue of the Dead, Ivan Karamazov's hallucination, Kierkegaard's uplifting discourse, Soloviev's Three Conversations, and a defense of literary creativity as a patient and learned therapy for the soul. The result is a game-changer. Rise and walk, read and see. * Caryl Emerson, Princeton University * In this wonderfully searching and imaginative dialogue, George Pattison explores many of the hardest questions any of us can face--among them, about love, humility, truth, flourishing, and finding or sustaining meaning in our lives. At its heart is an intensely personal investigation of what it is to live a Christian life, which will fascinate and inspire readers, whatever their own religious commitments. * Simon May, King's College London * A completely original and deeply imaginative engagement with a novelist whose spiritual and intellectual legacy is perhaps more complex and disturbing than ever at this time of heightened conflict in Eastern Europe. George Pattison helps us read Dostoevsky with sympathy, but does not blunt the hard questions he puts to us--and that we have to put to him. * Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury * Pattison, drawing on a wealth of literature, gives us a Dostoevsky for the issues of our time and every time, and can be strongly recommended. * Richard Harries, Church Times *

Author Information

George Pattison was formerly a parish priest in the Church of England, Dean of Chapel (King's College, Cambridge, 1991-2001), Lector in Practical Theology (University of Aarhus, 2022-3), Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity (University of Oxford, 2004-2013), and 1640 Professor of Divinity (University of Glasgow, 2013-2019). He currently holds honorary positions at the Universities of Glasgow, St Andrews, and Copenhagen. He has published extensively in post-Kantian philosophy of religion, with particular reference to Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Heidegger, existentialism, and Russian religious philosophy.

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