Final read-through of the ARC today - & I'm taking notes for future BookTubes, which I'll record tomorrow (🎉!).
The thing is, The Brothers Karamazov is shaped around Catholicism, so to make a humanist version I had to create a whole new cultural canon, The Sunmaster's Journey (as one species calls it), to inform my book's worldview & disagreements. Many Sunmaster tales are embedded in Children of Doro; it's easily the richest world I've ever constructed. (But more soon on all of that!) #Writing
@MLClark If by "shaped around Catholicism" you mean Dostoevski was anti-Catholic, yes. The parable of the Grand Inquisitor was specifically Romophobic.
The larger context of your post suggests that you're not differentiating between Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy. (Which is rather beside the point, to be sure.)
@phool4xc No, that's a highly reductive reading of the book, the Grand Inquisitor chapter, and Dostoesvky's complex relationship with religion ever since his time in prison. Far, far more to get into than a single post can summarize, but you're also forgetting Ivan's overall narrative arc and the role of polyphonic narration. It's not at all as simple as you've made it out to be.
But more importantly: TBK is hung around a Biblical discourse that my book does not have. That was the point here.
@MLClark Yeah, I don't disagree that thematically, TBK hinges on the passage from the Gospel of John. I was just offering the observation that it's specifically Russian Orthodoxy that suffuses the novel, and not Roman Catholicism.
Between my first and second reading of TBK, I had begun learning about Orthodoxy: history, theology, practices. The second time through, I got a LOT more out of the experience.
@MLClark Thinking some more about our conversation, I was reminded of the scene from Hiuckleberry Finn when Huck rips up the letter. "All right then, I'll go to hell."
I'd never made that thematic connection between Twain and Dostoevski before. A friend of mine once commented that Clemens is his favourite theologian. He was mostly kidding, I think.
@phool4xc Hi Peter! Apologies, this comment slipped off my radar - but thank you for the smile. Clemens as a theologian! Oh my.
I often marvel at how many folks in that era were drawing from the same well, sometimes quite explicitly. A Dickens character, Mr. Micawber, was beloved by Dostoevsky, and likely informed Marmeladov from Crime & Punishment: the man whose drinking is ruining his family & driving his daughter to sex work. That kind of cross-cultural influence is wonderful to think about.