Dostoevsky's Spiritual Art: The Burden of Vision

George Andrew Panichas

Transaction Publishers

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Fyodor Dostoevsky's highest and most permanent achievement as a novelist lies in his exploration of man's religious complex, his world and his fate. His primary vision is to be found in his last five novels: Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Devils, A Raw Youth, and The Brothers Karamazov. This volume culminates twenty years of studying, teaching, and writing on Dostoevsky. Here George A. Panichas critically analyzes the religious themes and meanings of the author's major works. Focusing on the pervasive spiritual consciousness at play, Panichas views Dostoevsky not as a religious doctrinaire, but as a visionary whose five great novels constitute a sequential meditation on man's human and superhuman destiny.

"A brief review cannot do justice to the profundity, erudition, and spiritual as well as moral candor displayed in George Panichas's treatise. Panichas's style combines lucidity, subtlety, and immediacy with a convincing eloquence which derives its force from a vision of undeniable truth. Hopefully, Panichas's work will receive the widest possible circulation among academic specialists, literary critics, and educated readers."--Heinrich A. Stammler, Slavic Review

"One cannot put this book down without experiencing the desire to read some of Dostoevesky's great novels. As Panichas makes clear, Crime and Punishment and the Brothers karamazov are part of the Western literary canon." - FCS Quarterly

"[T]he deep erudition in these pages is alive with a sympathy and a sensitivity--at times even a passion--that bespeak a real sharing in the author's prophetic vision. As few works of criticism do, this is a book that deserves its place on the same shelf with the inspired fiction it examines."--Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture

"Dr. Panichas' book on Dostoevsky is, indeed, a new milestone in the immense body of literature on the Russian genius."--Sergei Levitzky, Novoye Russkoye Slovo (Russian Daily)

George A. Panichas is professor emeritus of English at the University of Maryland and editor of Modern Age: A Quarterly Review. Among his numerous writings are The Reverent Discipline: Essays in Literary Criticism and Culture and The Courage of Judgment: Essays in Criticism, Culture and Society.

Michael Henry studied with Gerhart Niemeyer at Notre Dame, where he received his advanced degree in political theory in 1974. He has been teaching philosophy at St. John's University in New York since 1977 and is the series editor of Transaction's Library of Conservative Thought.