Hierarchy and Polyphony as the Divine and the Human in Dostoevsky’s World

Abstract

In modern Dostoevsky studies, the prevailing tendency is that the hierarchy and the concept of the polyphonic novel (by Mikhail Bakhtin) contradict each other. However, the article substantiates the existence of a context of understanding in which this linear logic is annulled. The “dialogue of agreement” between hierarchy and polyphony does not comprise either the recognition of the relative “truth” of the latter concept for an adequate scientific description of Dostoevsky’s world (the absolutization of this principle leads to a relativism unacceptable to Dostoevsky), or a rejection of polyphony in favor of hierarchy (this leads to a religious “legalism” that levels the personality, if another consciousness, the consciousness of the hero, is only the bearer of one or another “idea” for its affirmation). It seems that the recognition of the conciliar basis of polyphony is capable of truly “reconciling” the various interpretation principles, which, with other approaches, lead to the loss of the personhood of Dostoevsky’s heroes, and therefore to the reduction of the meanings of his works. The presence of Orthodox conciliarity in Dostoevsky’s polyphony is expressed not in the “equal” significance of the positions of the heroes’ ideological attitudes for the novel’s whole, but in the fact that the human person depicted by the author himself, due to the Christocentrism of Dostoevsky’s world, is hierarchically more significant than the ideological position that the person expresses.

Keywords: hero; idea; hierarchy; polyphony; conciliarity/sobornost’; personality; Christocentrism