Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881)
Though not a Catholic, Fyodor Dostoevsky remains one of Catholic intellectuals’ favorite literary figures. Pope Saint John Paul II quoted him in his Letter to Artists when he wrote, “Beauty will save the world.” This quote has a very grandiose feel to it, and fits right in with Pope John Paul’s ethos. Through his use of this quote and through the Theology of the Body, Pope John Paul wants to help us understand the importance of beauty in our relationship with God.
When Dostoevsky tells us that beauty will save the world, he means it will call us higher. Beauty points us toward God in a unique and almost indescribable way. Something about it sets our hearts ablaze with passion in a way that pure rationality often can’t. Dostoevsky lived in a time and place not so philosophically different from our own, where intellectual elites favored things like Socialism or Materialist Atheism. Dostoevsky believed that beauty made the best counter-argument to these destructive ideologies.
39 Years after the death of Dostoevsky, God allowed Karol Wojtyła, the future Pope John Paul II, to enter into a world which had only begun to see the consequences that Dostoevsky had warned about. By the time he became a bishop at the age of 38, he had experienced the horrors of Nazism and Soviet Communism. These ideologies viewed people as objects and sought to erase the art and culture of the peoples they subjugated. In the course of their murderous regime, Nazis destroyed many of the cities in Poland, and the Communists replaced them with drab gray buildings that prioritized efficiency over aesthetics.
Even amid this oppression, Pope John Paul saw the importance of beauty. From leading hikes into nature to studying the works of great artists, he continued to patronize and promote beauty wherever he went. In his same Letter to Artists, he writes, “[Beauty] stirs that hidden nostalgia for God.” By emphasizing beauty to people under oppression, he helped them to dream of a hopeful future. He helped them to see that the Soviets could suppress art, but they could not suppress beauty; they could not suppress God. He taught people to seek the transcendent.
In the end, beauty did save the world. Pope John Paul’s efforts to promote a beautiful image of Jesus and His Church helped to bring about the fall of Communism. Leaders on both sides of the Cold War credit Pope John Paul with providing the spiritual inspiration that undermined Communism in Eastern Europe. Through beauty, he gave them a vision of hope that the Soviets could not suppress. Dostoevsky had claimed that beauty would save the world. Surely, he had particular hope that this would include freeing Russia, his home country, from the disastrous ideas that haunted it. Pope John Paul, through the grace of God, helped make this vision a reality.
Dostoevsky’s drawing of Prince Myshkin, the protagonist of The Idiot.
Chris Tarantino is the Communications Director for TOBET. He studied History at The University at Texas A&M and has written for the Tennessee Register and Nashville Catholic.
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