Dostoevsky's Incarnational Realism: Finding Christ among the Karamazovs by Paul Contino

Abstract

Reviewed by: Dostoevsky's Incarnational Realism: Finding Christ among the Karamazovs by Paul Contino Thomas Gaiton Marullo (bio) Dostoevsky's Incarnational Realism: Finding Christ among the Karamazovs Paul Contino Cascade Books, 2020. ??? + 334 pp. $32 paperback. In this study, Paul Contino asks a provocative question: can literary classics move readers towards reformation and transformation, i.e, can they inspire audiences to be better people? For Contino, the answer is yes, with Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov as exemplar: a work that surprises, challenges, shocks, and eventually changes the lives of those who journey with its writer to find Christ among one of the most engaging, if perverse families in nineteenth-century fiction. Contino asserts that at the core of Dostoevsky's final novel is what he terms as "incarnational realism," and specially, how it takes root in Alyosha, the hero of the novel. In the third Karamazov son, Contino affirms, Dostoevsky shows that divine grace is present amid human violence, trauma, and deformation; and that pure and ideal Christians are not abstractions, but tangible, real possibilities in literature and life. [End Page 222] Contino defines incarnational realism as Dostoevsky's belief that despite epistemological contradictions and social constrictions, people can comprehend the world ontologically. The writer's incarnational realism, Contino goes on to say, suspects images and ideals that are romantic, utopian, sentimental, and apocalyptic. It embraces confessional dialogue, kenotic attentiveness, and scholastic prudentia. It seeks active bodies, minds, and hearts; it applauds physical and spiritual accomplishments and deeds. Contino notes further that Dostoevsky's incarnational realism not only confesses the reality of a triune God in Jesus Christ, but it also sees all creation as participating in the integral reality of the Trinity in heaven and of the Deity on earth. It fosters freedom in unity of reason, will, knowledge, love, and choice. It assumes that humans, with God as guide, have the power to act on their own, to think and act responsibly, and to attain openness and closure, descent and ascent, sanctification and salvation. In his idea of incarnational realism, Contino pursues two lines of argument. For him, Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov is a tale of two confessors. The first considers Zosima, particularly his youthful encounter with Mikhail, his "mysterious visitor," before he engages sinners of all shapes and sizes. The second reflects on Alyosha as an incipient "monk in the world." It is Alyosha's vision of Cana, Contino asserts, that grants him strength and fortitude to attend to Mitya's struggle to become a "new man," to Ivan's rebellion against God, and to his own mentorship of Kolya and the schoolboys. Critical to Contino's analysis of incarnational realism is his thesis of confession as a prosaics of conversion. True acknowledgment of sins, he notes, is a dialogue: a profession of sin and faith. It is a prayer and bow to God; an act of humility; a stepping stone in the passage of inner descent and ascent, openness and closure. False confession is a monologue: an apologia pro sua vita of self-justification, punishment, aggrandizement, and exhibition. False confessors do not appear naked before God and the universe. Rather, they don costumes and masks to hide the rottenness within. Unsurprisingly, they do not experience happiness and peace in telling all. Just the opposite, they know only new frustration and fear at their fallen state. Indeed, it is use and misuse of confession that has Zosima and Alyosha appear as winners in The Brothers Karamazov and everyone else in the novel as losers. Acknowledging their sins in a genuine and straightforward way, the two integrate the openness of mercy and the closure of responsibility as they step out brightly into a dark and troubled world. Equally important, perhaps, Contino affirms that Alyosha is the star of the show. In so doing, he counters conventional studies of The Brothers Karamazov that often dismiss the third Karamazov son as too angelic and [End Page 223] sweet against such demonic and sour figures as Fyodor, Dmitri, and Ivan. In trial and error, Alyosha discerns his vocation. In Cana, he assumes physical and spiritual prowess. In ministry, he moves others towards valid confession, prodding and probing men, women...