The Gift of Active Empathy

“Wyman’s book is a thoughtful addition to what Slavic literary criticism does so well: cultivating the productive relationship between literature and moral philosophy. . . . The book is remarkable in its philosophical prowess and depth of literary analysis. It will surely become a useful guide to those who seek a better understanding of Dostoevskii, as well as a philosophical self-help manual with the highest potential for spiritual regeneration.” —Alex Spektor, Slavic Review

“Wyman’s book is a perfectly constructed circumference, where three major dots—Scheler, Bakhtin, and Dostoevsky—are connected in an intrinsic manner by a scholar who thoroughly examined all major psychological novels by Dostoevsky and did so through the magnifying optic of the two most prominent thinkers of the twentieth century. I am delighted to see such a book published.” —Slav N. Gratchev, The Russian Review

"Bakhtin’s book on Dostoevskii was attacked as ‘idealist’ by its first Marxist reviewers in 1929. Ever since, its dazzling but not watertight case for polyphony and the dialogic word has prompted philosophically equipped critics to offer correctives. Alina Wyman is among the best. Her method is to use the younger Bakhtin to improve upon the older, with the help of the German phenomenologist Max Scheler, whose work on sympathy Bakhtin admired... The Gift of Active Empathy might well be not a process, not a device, not a skill incrementally learned novel by novel, but simply and luminously a gift. —Caryl Emerson, Slavic and East European Review