Dostoevsky’s Concept of the Sublime

"Leave those vain moralists, my friend, and return to the depth of your soul: that is where you will always rediscover the source of the sacred fire which so often inflamed us with love of the sublime virtues; that is where you will see the eternal image of true beauty, the contemplation of which inspires us with a holy enthusiasm." ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"Word-work is sublime... because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference-the way in which we are like no other life. We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives." ~ Toni Morrison

 I've been re-reading some of Fyodor Dostoevsky, a master of human nature, a novelist who understood power in its most fundamental and terrifying forms. His idea of the sublime is not so much about beauty, it is about pain, exceeding, and the harsh realities we try to flee. Dostoevsky reminds us of the sublime as something that deconstructs and reconstructs what is shattered.

In The Idiot, Prince Myshkin comes into the world a figure of innocence, a man who sees beauty even in pain and madness. His innocence, his almost Christ-like quality, is his frailty in a world that values cunning over virtue. The sublime in this is not reassuring, it is dangerous. It renders Myshkin helpless, exposed to the likes of those who view gentleness as stupidity. The world is unforgiving to its bystanders. Power does not spare innocence; it devours it.

In Notes from Underground, the Underground Man is the polar opposite of Myshkin. He mocks those who believe one can live according to the "sublime and beautiful" but himself craves its truth. This is not by chance. The Underground Man represents the truth of power, cynical, self-loathing, but still desiring meaning.

True beauty, the kind that takes hold of the soul, is profound, it is infused with pain, redemption, and ethical weight. That is why, in Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov does not find his redemption in power or intellect but in suffering. His suffering breaks him down, but through suffering, he finds a higher truth. Power based on ego collapses. We only become who we are after hardship.

Suffering as such cannot possibly empower a person with anything extraordinary or privileged. In The Brothers Karamazov, suffering is believing in faith and love, but suffers to produce chaos and ruin as well.

Dostoevsky knew the battle between man's suffering and man's desire to be saved. He knew that power is not controlling people, but understanding what destroys people and what cures them. The sublime is a force which demands something from us, and most of us are simply too afraid to pay the price.