[drdaeman]

The quote is truly the quintessence of Dostoevsky's works. A classic orthodox christian hodgepodge base, served with heaviest spicing of obligatory suffering of all kinds - both physical and mental, all perversely portrayed as a virtue.

It's kinda like alcohol, and if we go with this comparison - Dostoevsky promotes drowning in it as a salvation. Put bluntly, that shit ruins lives, not mends them. But Dostoevsky does not just write about it, he carefully designs the whole narrative to make it look like the only logical choice and wholeheartedly promotes it. And that's why I just can't stand his works, despite all their psychological, artistic and linguistic/literary merits. This insane cultural gap is simply too big to cross for me.

It all makes sense in historical and cultural context, of course, but that's exactly what puts an expiration date on Dostoevsky's works. They're a product or a very specific culture, and thus will no longer be relevant when their parent culture will finally wither away (and, personally, I sincerely hope it naturally does, for I see it as way more harmful than positive).

There are literature works that would remain relevant for a long while, but Dostoevsky is not one of those.

Just my own personal opinion.

[gsf_emergency]

I read the quote in Alyosha's voice, I don't remember if it's really him. I'm by no means a Dostoyevsky expert and I read the book, halfheartedly, a long time ago. So please do your own thinking when I say that Ivan, not Alyosha, is closest to the author's heart.. he wrote about the three brothers because he was trying to resolve the conflicts between (at least) 3 archetypes of the Russian soul! Too humble he was, to try to generalize that to the world, but the downside is, later readers can't help but put in their own interpretations, or selectively quote stuff that aligns with their lonely hearts..

[SubGenius]

I believe those words are said by the elder Zosima in one of the early chapters when he has several visitors. Not Alyosha - although it's been several years since I've reread the book.

[gsf_emergency]

Ah thanks! I do, now, remember the foul stench of Zosima's body :)

Again, liberal amounts of salt/lime may work, to stop it from turning allegorical.. https://www.quora.com/What-do-you-think-Dostoyevsky-was-expr...

[NateEag]

In my experience, people often conflate forgiveness, reconciliation, and redemption. They are distinct things. People also often do not understand the role repentance plays (evangelical Christians are _especially_ prone to miss it entirely).

We can forgive someone for horrific things they've done, even when they are utterly unrepentant. Forgiving them is changing our attitude about the harms the offender did from anger and hatred to acceptance and peace. This does not mean saying "what they did was okay," but rather accepting that they chose to do something horrible, learning to make peace with their hurtful choices, and focusing on healing the damage to ourselves and others rather than seeking to injure the injurer.

Reconciliation is mending a damaged relationship between two (or more) people, as much as it can be. Unlike forgiveness, true reconciliation requires that all parties make an effort - the injured party must put in the work of forgiving the offender, and the offender must do the work of repenting.

"Repent" now means "make a show of acting sorry" in evangelical Christian circles, but genuine repentance is very different. It is recognizing the harmful choices you have made and truly regretting them, and as a natural outgrowth of that regret, choosing to do what you can to heal the damage you have done. It means accepting the consequences of your choices; a repentant offender expects to be distrusted and treated differently for their crimes, and does not resent it, realizing the shattered relationships (emotional, familial, civil, and otherwise) are part of what they chose. Without repentance, others may forgive an offender, but reconciliation is not possible - if the injured continue a relationship with the aggressor, it is necessarily a stilted, broken, fragmented one.

Redemption is rarer and harder to achieve than either forgiveness or reconciliation. It is when reconciliation succeeds and goes beyond success, giving birth to something fuller and more beautiful than what was first broken. Adapting the words of my lost-yet-beloved faith, "He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. Behold, He is making all things new."

This is not, in my experience, how conservative Protestant evangelicals use these words. However, in the decades I practiced Christianity, I slowly found these ideas in the Bible, despite the ludicrously-wrong exegesis practiced in US churches, by reading the texts many, many times. I find a great deal of truth and wisdom in them, considered this way. I hope perhaps my explanation can help you understand why so many people resonate with the message recorded in the Gospels, and the one that Dostoevsky so loved.

[matrix87]

suffering can reflect virtue if it's a reaction to guilt, it just shows that people have capacity for moral self reflection