Donald Sheehan's DOSTOEVSKY AND MEMORY ETERNAL: An Eastern Orthodox Approach to the Brothers Karamazov [H/T: tmatt] is absolutely brilliant. The first two paragraphs draw you in and won't let you go till you've ingested it all.
Central to Eastern Orthodox Christendom is the singing, at the end of every Orthodox funeral, of the song known as "Memory Eternal" (in Church Slavonic: Vechnaya Pamyat). This song also concludes Dostoevsky's great, final novel, The Brothers Karamazov, when, following the funeral of the boy whom Alyosha Karamazov (and the circle of schoolboys around Alyosha) had deeply loved, Alyosha speaks to the boys about the funeral and about the meaning of the resurrection, with this brief song as their steady focus.My thesis is simply this: to know something of this song's meaning is to comprehend both the Eastern Orthodox faith and Dostoevsky's greatest novel.
Go spend a half hour with this essay/lecture.
Posted by Clifton at August 9, 2006 05:34 AM | TrackBackI agree, it's an excellent article.
Posted by: Mimi at August 9, 2006 01:15 PM