A Perilous Threshold

In his contribution to Pattison and Thompson's recent book, Henry Russell cautions the reader:

In drawing attention to this vital distinction Russell, perhaps unintentionally, highlights the ease with which one may be confused with and slip into the other, not only conceptually but also, depending on the mood of the experiencing subject, experientially. In other words, the silence at the core of apophatic religion may be interpreted or experienced either as a fullness or as an absence, as glorious plenitude or as desolate abyss, as a Godcentred locus of meaning or as total chaos and meaninglessness. As we have seen, Dostoevsky experienced this himself and understood the slippage very well. Similar experiences may be observed in the experience of his individual characters, and also among them. As Thompson points out,164 characters as unlike each other as Myshkin and Ippolit quote the same phrase from the Book of Revelation, ‘there will be time no more’ (Rev 10: 6), the one in his epileptic ecstasy, the other in suicidal despair. This dual experience is not a modern discovery.