DOSTOYEVSKI, SPIRITUALLY MATURED

I had the pleasure of reading in Serbian the doctoral dissertation of my late friend, Milutin Devrnja, The Conceptions of Human Existence in the Early Works of F. M. Dostoyevski.¹

I loved and respected Milutin Dervnja. I knew him from Belgrade, 1939-1941, and then later in the exile in Germany 1949, and in the States from 1951. By God's permission, he died in an automobile accident in Montreal, Canada, just after visiting Very Rev. Dr. Dimitrije Najdanovich, another gifted Serbian and Christian writer and nationalist activist.

Devrnja's dissertation is well composed and very informative on Dostoyevski's ten novels written up to 1864. Yet I felt that something was missing: There was no noticeable presence of the Christian enlightenment of personages described which is remarkable in the novels of the latest cycle, Brothers Karamazofs, Idiot, and Crime and Punishment, the grand three in his latest works.

I am no expert on literature, and can offer only a hunch for some younger investigator to verify or reject. Devrnja mentions only that Dostoyevski went on a grand tour of Western Europe - Germany, England, Italy, France in-1-863 and he came back disillusioned - he knew that Europe has been under the Judeo-Masonic attack and that there was no spiritual hope in that de-Christianized culture.

That was - I imagine - a spiritual awakening in Dostoyevski. He could no longer entertain the illusion that a spiritual awakening could come to Russia from Western Europe. Europe was largely spiritually exhausted and dead, racked by anti-Christian political, philosophical and religious falsehoods. The only hope left was in a Russian Christ arising and saving his country from spiritual devastation which had happened after open Judeo-Masonic attacks of 200 previous years. That was the Christ he depicted in his latest five great novels.

In the first ten novels which Devrnja studied and described in his dissertation there are, besides rogues, great many noble sufferers and dark tragedies, pain and existential devastations.                 

There are however no majestic spiritual figures like Father Zossym, Aljosha Karamazoff, Prince Mishkin and others, who are like the lights of the light houses which guide the ships away from the rocks.

The same conclusion is regarding the Serbian Orthodox nation. There are many teachers who are spiritually confused, who cannot rise and show the way. They are like the early Dostoyevski - they still imagine that salvation may come from the West, from the human reasoning, which is itself sick with godlessness.