Dostoeswsky is a Prophet

AGAIN, High Time for Dostoewsky !

(specially good for our bewilderd contemporary Ethiopian generation)/0*/

Dostoeswsky is a prophet in his way and Rene Girard (“one of the ‘forty immortals’ of the French Academy”)  is the one who may have interpreted him at best!

Dosteowsky, who  forsaw, how ” Almost in the wink of an eye , after the Russian revolution, the total freedom proclaimed by the Bolsheviks was metamorphosed into total sevitude.” (*

“Genuine prophecy always sounds a little indecent to those whose minds are closed to its truth”(* as we are still witnessing in Ethiopia today after all what took place in our generation  and to our generation!

(* (Resurrection from the Underground):-

René Girard

Resurrection from the Underground: Feodor Dostoevsky

Translated by James G. Williams (Michigan State University Press, 2012)
…. A wonderful long essay! Don’t miss it, if you want to look behind the curtains of alleged “big” historical events and cultural processes

  – a must read for those who have authentically and honestly made a real trouble of reflecting on our past 50 years of Ethiopian Experience, social, political as well as deeply personal!!

His (Girard’s) mimetic theory as applied on Dosteovsky’s literature. True! “Mimetic theory as a theory of evolution as applied to the origins of culture. ….mimetic crisis, sacrifice , and coversion” (G. Williams, the translator)

Specially recomendable for our “literature” corners who are daring to write this or that piece on their perceptions and experiences! History pieces as well! May be too late (if that is all they have to say!) for:-

1. The Quest for Socialist Utopia: The Ethiopian Student Movement, C. 1960-1974 (Eastern Africa)

by Bahru Zewde

2. Der letzte Kaiser von Afrika: Triumph und Tragödie des Haile Selassie 

by Prinz Asfa-Wossen Asserate

with their “Heros” and “Gods”!

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Including

3. FikreSelassie Wogderess

እኛና አብዮቱ

Fikre-Selassie Wogderes

who seems stuck in the events and one-dimensional (ወታደራዊ) perception of his time, 4 decades back, for good and for ever!

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Read more

On Dostoevsky & René Girard

…. A Review 

….. …… “Circumstances cause Dostoevsky to overturn his earlier ideas and examine them in a new light, and so in some ways the works of Dostoevsky’s middle period are all about seeing through the society-induced lies of his own earlier texts from a time when he mimicked the literary desires of others. Dostoevsky’s life was not without an excess of pride and humiliation, and we see that his genius was born from past mistakes that many perhaps would not learn from, but that this great and truly self-searching intellect did indeed take to heart. Girard’s book ends in Christian revelation, as Dostoevsky himself in The Brothers Karamazov reconciles a lifetime’s worth of ideas with scripture, seeing beyond the popular literary and social theories of his day and revealing a universal human truth. It is this human truth which still marks Dostoevsky out as one of the most psychologically perceptive authors who ever lived.”0*/

0*/
René Girard-

Resurrection from the Underground: Feodor Dostoevsky

translated by James G. Williams (Michigan State University Press, 2012)

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The Human Delusion:-

On mimesis Theory of Rene Girard