Hierarchy and Polyphony in the Artistic World of Dostoevsky

According to the later confession of the creator of the polyphonic novel theory Michael Bakhtin, he was able to fulfill only part of the task when he substantiated the polyphonic “horizontal” of voices in the world of Dostoevsky. He was not allowed to create the “vertical” (inseparable from the “existence of God”). An attempt to supplement what Bakhtin was unable to do requires a restoration of the scientific and religious-philosophical context in which the concept of “polyphony” can be ontologically related to the concept of Orthodox conciliarity, as well as other important phenomena of Russian culture. In modern Dostoevsky studies, the prevailing tendency is that the hierarchy and the concept of the polyphonic novel 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. These theses are illustrated by the interpretation of Dostoevsky’s works.