Dostoevsky without frills

American scholar Robert Jackson called Dostoevsky "an icon of self-consciousness." When you read Dostoevsky's novels, you sense that he is a man who has grasped the mysteries of existence with such depth and penetrating intensity, as one does in a temple while standing before an icon during prayer. But if you see in the themes of icons and faces the reality transformed by the light of the world, then in Dostoevsky's novels, you perceive the divine essence of creation imprinted on the body o...