Adam's Curse: Reflections on Religion and Literature by Denis Donoghue Review by: Anita Houck The Journal of Religion,

Vol. 83, No. 1 (Jan., 2003), pp. 170-171 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1205485 . Accessed: 21/11/2012 03:59
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The Journal of Religion

overpowered by the utterly pervasive reverberation of the Bible-all of it, from Genesis to Revelation" (p. 3). Mining the riches of this many-layered novel-and of its resources, as remembered in the novel-these authors have provided a provocative discussion of various interpretations of prophecy (literary, philosophical, and religious) and have disclosed new ways to consider Dostoevsky as prophetic not only for modern but for postmodern times. In the course of examining the prophetic dimension of Dostoevsky's work, Kroeker and Ward address the whole range of his religious thought, particularly his ideas on human happiness, truth, history, apocalypticism, justice, immortality, and the relationship between prophecy and poetics. They also compare and contrast Dostoevsky's thought with that of Friedrich Nietzsche in very intriguing ways, especially when discussing the devolution of progressivism into nihilism (in chap. 3: "Breaking the Seals: Dostoevsky and Meaning in History"), the interrelatedness of belief in God and love for humanity (chap. 5: " 'Do You Despise or Love Humanity, You, Its Coming Saviours?' "), and the meaning of Christ (chap. 7: "Christ in 'The Grand Inquisitor' "). In chapter 5, the authors offer an extended Nietzschean interpretation of the central question of Ivan Karamazov's atheism-The Brothers Karamazovbeing the one work by Dostoevsky that Nietzsche did not have the opportunity to read-and then suggest that "Dostoevsky's exploration of atheism was not only an act of confrontation [of the death of God] but also an attempt to learn the meaning of atheism for faith" (p. 152). My only criticism of this book is that it lacks sufficient historical contextualization. The authors provide considerable ideological context, situating the images and concepts of The BrothersKaramazovwithin the relevant ideas of nineteenthcentury culture in eastern and western Europe. But the main focus of the hermeneutical effort here remains inside the world of the text. That is, historical, sociopolitical, and religious realities are treated as allusions within the text rather than as the actual environment of the text. This dimension is especially pertinent to interpreting Dostoevsky, as he habitually incorporated reflections and commenKaramazov.Bringing tary on current events into his works, including TheBrothers these historical figures, events and circumstances to bear on the text not only would enhance our understanding of those allusions but also would help embody Dostoevsky's work for contemporary readers. G. TrumanState University. JENNIFER JESSE, DENIS. Adam'sCurse:Reflections Religion and Literature. on DONOGHUE, Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001. ix+ 178 pp. $24.95 (cloth). Denis Donoghue knows well that anyone working in the field of religion and literature is likely to get into some trouble. Both religion and literature, he says, resist the sway of modern culture; each is "a deviation, and increasingly a vagabond, a nomad, a critic" (p. 10). Yet Donoghue is steadfastly committed to both, and his book is in many ways as authentic a work of religion and literature as the field can offer. An eminent literary critic, a wide reader, and an incisive commentator, Donoghue is also possessed of a Christian worldview that thoroughly infuses his analysis of literature and culture. He first presented the essays collected here to inaugurate the Erasmus Lectures at the University of Notre Dame, a series dedicated to exploring the connections among the Abrahamic traditions of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam and vital issues in various disciplines. It is a project to which Donoghue clearly has much to contribute.

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Book Reviews
The "religion" in Donoghue's subtitle is an unabashed, sometimes parochial, and almost always Roman Catholic Christianity in which the church must stand firm against the world (pp. 46-47), in which "our priests would do well to elucidate the sacred texts for us and not to transcend the hard sayings" (p. 28), and in which one does, of course, avoid any regions haunted by Richard Rorty and his secular "religion of literature" (p. 122). This view of religion will not suit every reader. But to Donoghue's credit, he criticizes the church as forthrightly as he criticizes the world that opposes it, he maintains a respect for the darkness and deep tensions of Christianity, and he makes his religious and political preferences clearly known. If Donoghue's notion of religion is circumscribed, his vision of literature is expansive. His study incorporates not only novelists and poets (among them J. M. Coetzee, Philip Larkin, Wallace Stevens, and W. B. Yeats, who gives Donoghue's book its title), but also cultural critics such as Robert Bellah, theologians such as Hans Urs von Balthasar, and ethicists such as Emmanuel Levinas and Alasdair MacIntyre. His agility in negotiating this territory often makes for truly engaging reading. To be sure, his interlocutors are not always, at least by reputation, of special interest, and those looking for big names may find some sections-including chapters focusing on figures such as William Lynch, Allen Tate, and John Crowe Ransom-less inviting than they'd like. But Donoghue is, above all, always on the trail of ideas, and substantial ones at that: the relationship of church and state, the frustrations of artistic creation, the challenges of contemporary theism, the nature of symbol and imagination. Accordingly, the texts that inspire each essay serve as starting points for, rather than limits on, his discussion. Sometimes he offers close, critical readings, sometimes broader introductions. In either case, the "I" that is at work here is active, honest, and never timid. So, for example, his assessment of Lynch's theory of imagination includes a reflective passage: "But I should look into the question of metaphor more closely. Lynch evidently thinks that analogy is adequate, as if by definition, to whatever reality it addresses and that metaphor is merely an enabling rhetorical figure like any other. I find myself thinking that what he regards as a defect in metaphor, I regard as one of its glories" (pp. 80-81). Of Levinas's ethical injunctions he writes, "I suppose it is good to be admonished in this way, but it is also absurd" (p. 67). Here it might be worth noting that Donoghue is a reader as patient as he is opinionated, and, whatever differences one might have with his literary values, he clearly has a rich, principled sense of fiction. Perhaps most provocatively (and helpfully), he doesn't hesitate to take on ethical readings of literature that endow every work of fiction with a claim to moral authority. Fiction, Donoghue says, deserves respect, but it also has limits; as he says of Coetzee's Age of Iron, it "does not tell readers how to live, what to do" (p. 67). The trails of Donoghue's thought are laid along canonical lines but rarely along straight ones, so that readers trying to follow him in a discussion of Ransom will find themselves facing a detour toward William Empson that in turn relies on an excavation of an argument of John Henry Newman's. He also embellishes his arguments with fascinating asides-something of Frost'saccount of God's apology to Job, a bit of Henry Adams's meditations on Chartres, a scene between Yeats and Maud Gonne-from which one could probably piece together a fine education in the Western literary and critical tradition. The path is winding, but there is good conversation along the way and unexpected flashes of light and pleasure. Saint Mary'sCollege,Notre Dame, Indiana. HOUCK, ANITA

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