Donald Sheehan on Memory Eternal
[Note: This was originally published online as part of the Dartmouth University web page Resources and chat area for “The Brothers Karamazov” text . The original is archived here .] DOSTOEVSKY AND MEMORY ETERNAL An Eastern Orthodox Approach to the Brothers Karamazov by Donald Sheehan References to Brothers Karamazov pertain to the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation. (translated from the Russian by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky N.Y. : Knopf, 1992. Central to Eastern Orthodox Christendom is the singing, at the end of every Orthodox funeral, of the song known as “Memory Eternal” (in Church Slavonic: Vechnaya Pamyat ). This song also concludes Dostoevsky’s great, final novel, The Brothers Karamazov , when, following the funeral of the boy whom Alyosha Karamazov (and the circle of schoolboys around Alyosha) had deeply loved, Alyosha speaks to the boys about the funeral and about the meaning of the resurrection, with this brief song as their steady focus. My thesis is simply...
