Tag: philosophy
-
Brothers’ Inheritance
The Father’s Ghost and the Wound That Has No Will: Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov and the Inheritance of Fracture in The Brothers’ Inheritance Introduction Dostoevsky did not write The Brothers Karamazov about a murder. He wrote it about a family — which is a more serious subject. The murder is the event around which the novel…
-
Never Ask the Liar
The Genealogy of Falsehoods: Dostoevsky’s Ontology of the Lie in Never Ask the Liar Introduction There is a moment in The Brothers Karamazov where Ivan Karamazov, confronted by his own devil, finally screams: “You are I, myself — only with a different mug!” The devil smiles. He has been waiting for this admission. Because the…
-
King Without A Crown
Weighed in the Balance: Dostoevsky, the Narcissist, and the Kingdom Built on Stone in King Without a Crown Introduction Dostoevsky’s most frightening characters are not murderers. They are not criminals in any conventional sense. They are the people who have made themselves the center of the universe — not through arrogance exactly, not through stupidity,…
-
Triage of the Bone
The Prosecutor Who Cannot Heal Himself: Dostoevsky, the Courtroom Culture, and the Hospital of Grace in Triage of the Bone Introduction There is a moment in Crime and Punishment that defines the entire architecture of Dostoevsky’s moral universe. Raskolnikov, having confessed his crime to Sonya, is given a choice by the woman who loves him:…
-
Icons in the Smoke
The Painted Eyes That Do Not Argue: Dostoevsky’s Aesthetic Theology and the Encounter with the Icon in Icons in the Smoke Introduction In 1867, Dostoevsky stood before Holbein the Younger’s painting The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb in a Basel museum and stared at it for so long that his wife feared…
-
The Unshielded Mouth
The Surrender of the Pen: Dostoevsky, Confession, and the End of the Authored Self in The Unshielded Mouth Introduction There is a moment in Crime and Punishment so quiet that readers sometimes pass through it without fully registering what has happened. Raskolnikov, after months of fever and evasion and partial confessions and retreats and theories…
-
Shattered Reverb
The Note That Eats Itself: Dostoevsky, the Echo Chamber, and the Feedback Loop of the Modern Underground in Shattered Reverb Introduction In 1864, Dostoevsky published a story about a man who lived underground — not literally, but epistemologically. The Underground Man had sealed himself off from the world of genuine human encounter, from the corrective…
-
Empty Chair at Dawn
That Is Enough: Dostoevsky, Resurrection Without Resolution, and the Grace of the Returning Dawn in Empty Chair at Dawn Introduction The epilogue of Crime and Punishment is one of the strangest endings in world literature, precisely because of how little it resolves. Raskolnikov is in Siberia. He has confessed. He is serving his sentence. And…
-
The Thistle & the Samovar
BONUS TRACK: THE THISTLE & THE SAMOVAR My prog rock concept albums usually contain several instrumentals, but Ghosts, Masks & Fractures defied that pattern from the start. I wrote the opening track without knowing where the album would go—so much for a “concept album,” right? The album’s characters are composites drawn from people I’ve known,…