David Schimpf

The Feast as Utopia:
Theological Dimensions of Feasts in
The Brothers Karamazov and Babette’s Feast

Eating and feasting has been a central dimension of the Christian tradition whether regarded from the perspective of its origins in the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth as recounted in the four canonical Gospels or from that of the Jewish tradition out of which it emerged. Both Jewish and Christian traditions view eating and feasting as more than simply an opportunity to refuel the body, enjoy certain delicacies, or celebrate. Eating and feasting became for both traditions encounters with and entrance into transcendent reality, even union with the divine. The belief central to the Christian tradition, that the full humanity of Jesus reveals in a definitive manner the nature of God, grounds this sacramental understanding of feasting, in which the actions of eating and sharing a meal communicate and initiate an encounter with God.

This paper will examine, from the Christian sacramental perspective, the nature and implications of feasting in two works: Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov and the film Babette’s Feast. Although both works are suffused with eating and feasting imagery, this paper will focus on two significant and telling examples of how these works integrate it: Alyosha’s mystical experience of the wedding at Cana in The Brothers Karamazov and the spiritual journey of General Loewenhelm that culminated in the feast in Babette’s Feast. Both Alyosha and the general experienced a fulfillment, a utopia that is at once familiar and surprising, mundane and transcendent, sustaining and celebrating, through participating in a feast.
Before turning to the examples in The Brothers Karamazov and Babette’s Feast, however, it may be helpful to quickly survey some key passages in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures to establish the meaning and significance of feasting in those traditions. The point of this analysis is not to articulate fully these traditions’ perspectives on eating and feasting, but rather to make clear the perspective of the subsequent analysis of this paper.

Eating and feasting is a theme significant and prominent in both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. Many significant events in the history of the Israelite people were connected with eating. Just before leading them out of the Egyptian slavery, Israel’s God commanded his children to commemorate his liberation of them through the sharing of a meal, Passover. Through eating and sharing a meal using specific details that reminded those who celebrated the meal of how God delivered the children of Israel (e.g., eating unleavened bread and roasted lamb, wearing “traveling clothes”), those who shared the meal made present again in their own lives the original reality of God’s salvation experienced by their ancestors.
Envisioning the fulfillment of God’s plan as a feast was a prominent dimension of the writings of the Israelite prophets. Isaiah (Is 25: 6–9) portrayed the Day of the Lord as a great feast to which all the world was invited, with the best of food and wine. In this feast, held on Mount Zion, the spiritual center of the Israelite kingdom and ultimately of God’s salvation, with God as the host, God would destroy death, take away suffering and pain, and bring about universal reconciliation and the fulfillment of human life.
In the Christian Scriptures, Jesus demonstrated the significance of feasting and meals in a manner that was simultaneously in continuity with that of the Jewish tradition and something new. Meals and feasting served as a significant dimension of Jesus’s presentation of his message of the Kingdom of God. He ate with those his society considered the lowest of the low (for example, Mk 2:15–17 and parallels) as a sign of the Kingdom’s universal invitation and reconciliation. His opponents described Jesus as a “glutton and a drunkard” (Mt 11:19 and parallels) due to his willingness to eat with anyone. In the stories of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes (Mk 6:30–44, 8:1–9 and parallels), Jesus demonstrated his compassion as well as his ability to go beyond what appearances said was possible.

Two stories of meals and feasts have particular relevance for understanding Jesus’s revelation of the meaning of feasting. First, he began his mission in the Gospel according to John (Jn 2:1–11) at a wedding feast by prolonging the joy of the festivities by changing water into the finest wine. This willingness demonstrated Jesus’s concern for the fullness of human experience, wishing to fulfill all dimensions of human personhood: physical, emotional, and spiritual.

Second, Jesus fulfilled his earthly mission through sharing a meal with his disciples, in which he gave them himself as food and drink, so as to fill them with his life in the most intimate and full manner possible (Jn 6:52–58, Mk 14:22–24 and parallels). This meal displayed both his continuity with the Jewish tradition, in that the meal he had just shared with his disciples was the Passover, the feast of fulfillment and liberation, and his novelty in his giving himself fully to his disciples and to the world.

Three key statements summarize the Jewish and Christian understanding of meals and feasts. First, they are both familiar and surprising. Given the regular need to eat, there is an everyday quality to them, yet sharing a meal or celebrating a feast often communicates a meaning that confounds expectations. Second, meals and feasts are both mundane and transcendent. Meals and feasts involve basic ingredients consumed by ordinary human beings, yet the eating, sharing, and celebrating can bring the participants into an encounter and union with the divine. Third, meals and feasts are both sustaining and celebrating. Eating is a physical necessity, and can become routine, but in certain contexts and with openness to the transcendent, they can become a celebration of the fullness of human life and union with God.

These dimensions of the Jewish and Christian understandings of eating and feasting help to explain and reveal key dimensions of The Brothers Karamazov and Babette’s Feast. In The Brothers Karamazov, many of the most significant characterizations, events, and discussions occurred either during a meal or feast or involve a direct connection to eating or feasting.

Although many dimensions of the novel could be examined to further explore the significance of feasting in it, we will focus on Alyosha’s transformation into the hero of the novel through his experience of the death of his beloved spiritual father, Elder Zossima (book seven). To understand the context and significance of Alyosha’s transformation, let’s look at how the character of Alyosha was described in the first half of the novel. According to the narrator’s observations at the beginning, Alyosha was the hero of the novel, but a strange, odd one, in fact, a humble and indeterminate one (“From the Author,” pp. 3–4). One of the reasons that he was so strange was that he “does make a figure, but a figure of an indefinite, indeterminate sort” (ibid.). In fact, the narrator continued to describe Alyosha as the “main, though future, hero of my story” (7.1, p. 329) even as he began to describe the events surrounding the death of Elder Zossima at the approximate mid-point of the novel.
Although in appearance a pious youth, Alyosha was in fact in the first half of The Brothers Karamazov self-centered, full of doubt, and of little faith. Many readers miss the transformation that Alyosha experienced in response to the death of Elder Zossima, considering Alyosha to be a type of the pious believer throughout the novel. They assume that the likable, gentle, pious boy of the first half of the novel is identical to that of the second half.

But Alyosha did not live out or experience peace or freedom in his actions in the first six books. He was consistently confused, frustrated, and ineffective. His dealings with his eldest brother Dmitri, his father, his brother Ivan, and Dmitri’s fiancé Katerina Ivanovna brought no peace to them or to himself. Everyone seemed to like him and respect him, but his actions were ineffective and caused him nothing but anguish and confusion.

Elder Zossima alone was aware of Alyosha’s actual situation, twice presenting his perspectives on it. He told Alyosha of his will for him after the elder’s impending death, namely to leave the monastery and to seek happiness only in suffering (2.7; p. 77). Alyosha responded to this message with sorrow and surprise. Elder Zossima was aware that Alyosha needed to encounter the fullness of life, including sorrow and frustration, if he was going to become a full human being.

The other comment Elder Zossima provided on Alyosha’s discipleship was less direct. In his advice to Mrs. Khokhlakov, who was experiencing a crisis of faith in the afterlife, Elder Zossima advised her that the only way one can become convinced of the truth of faith was through the experience of active love as contrasted with love in dreams. According to Elder Zossima, love in dreams “will go so far as the giving even of one’s life” provided it did not take long and was viewed by many, but love in action was something “harsh and fearful....[requiring] labor and perseverance” (2.4, p. 58). But to whom was Elder Zossima speaking? The immediate object of his words was Mrs. Khokhlakov, but the intended object of his discourse was Alyosha. Elder Zossima commanded him to live in the world, serving others, knowing that Alyosha saw the monastic life as an escape from the world. The “Lady of Little Faith” (the title of this chapter [2.4]), ostensibly Mrs. Khokhlakov, was really Alyosha.

The crisis that precipitated Alyosha’s transformation to the hero of the novel was the death of Elder Zossima and the public’s reaction to the seemingly-premature decomposition of his body. At the beginning of book seven, in the chapter “The Odor of Corruption,” most of the disciples of Elder Zossima were surprised that no miracle occurred after his death, even those who knew that they should know better than to be disappointed. Alyosha (described here as “the chief, though future, hero” [emphasis in original]; 7.1, p. 329) was especially upset by the public degradation of Elder Zossima’s reputation. He was weeping inconsolably when Father Paissy, a monk to whom Elder Zossima had entrusted Alyosha after the elder’s death, approached him: “‘Have you, too, been led astray? Are you, too, with the men of little faith?’” (7.1, p. 337).

Alyosha’s reaction was to run from the monastery without the permission of his new elder. Father Paissy’s words indicated the true quality of Alyosha’s love. His love remained the love in dreams to which Elder Zossima referred, a love remote from the joyful love in action that he lived out, that he called for in his disciples, and that Christ embodied. Alyosha later realized that in his rebellion, he had forgotten the others in his family, especially Dmitri and Ivan, focusing exclusively on the sense of self-indulgent outrage he felt on the denial of a higher justice he expected due to Elder Zossima. Meeting his sometime-friend Rakitin, Rakitin convinced him to visit Grushenka, whom Alyosha knew had promised to seduce and ruin him.

Despite Alyosha’s expectations, Grushenka (the woman whom both Fyodor and Dmitri wished to marry) provided the decisive catalyst in Alyosha’s transformation, which was fulfilled later when returned to the monastery. Upon realizing that Alyosha was sad and upset for some reason, she jumped on his lap: “I’ll cheer you up, my pious little boy” (7.3, p. 349); Alyosha made no move to get her off, curiously observing her actions and his reaction to her. Rakitin continued to taunt Alyosha, finally telling Grushenka that the reason Alyosha was so upset was because Elder Zossima had just died. Upon hearing the news, Grushenka acted compassionately to Alyosha: “The elder Zossima died!” Grushenka exclaimed. “Oh, Lord, I didn’t know!” She crossed herself piously. “Lord, what am I been doing now, sitting on his lap!” She suddenly gave a start as if in fright, [and] jumped off Alyosha’s knee at once…” (7.3, p. 351).

Alyosha, admitting he had come to Grushenka in rebellion against God, told Grushenka that in her he had found a treasure. Her compassion on his sorrow had restored his soul (7.3, p. 351). Grushenka and Alyosha shared a moment of ecstatic joy, in which everything had combined just then to arouse their deepest emotions.

The transformation in Alyosha’s love that began with Grushenka’s leap off his lap was confirmed in his actions in the last chapter of book seven, “Cana of Galilee.” After leaving Grushenka and Rakitin, Alyosha returned to the monastery. He went to the open coffin of the dead elder, but he was no longer ashamed and confused: “But there was sweetness in his heart, and, strangely, Alyosha was not surprised at that” (7.4, p. 359), the first time his soul was so described. As he prayed, he listened to the reading of the Gospel that accompanied the funeral vigil.

The story was the wedding feast at Cana (Jn 2), in which Jesus prolonged the gladness of the feast by changing water into wine. As Alyosha gently and joyfully contemplated the joy of Christ’s active love, he had a vision of another wedding feast, or the fulfillment or the reality of that first feast, the messianic feast in the kingdom of God at which Christ was the host, a representation of the fulfillment of the sacramental dimension of the first feast. Elder Zossima greeted him and invited him to join in. Alyosha’s response to the vision confirmed his transformation through the experience of the sacramental feast: “Something burned in Alyosha’s heart, something suddenly filled him almost painfully, tears of rapture nearly burst from his soul…” (7.4, p. 362). He then experienced a sense of unity and solidarity in love with all of creation: It was as if threads from all those innumerable worlds of God all came together in his soul, and it was trembling all over…. He wanted to forgive everyone and for everything, and to ask forgiveness, oh, not for himself! but for all and for everything… (7.4, ibid.).

Most significantly, however, was the effect on his faith and his soul:

But with each moment he felt clearly and almost tangibly something as firm and immovable as this heavenly vault descend into his soul…—now for the whole of his life and unto ages of ages. He fell to the earth a weak youth and he rose up a fighter steadfast for the rest of his life, and he knew it and felt it suddenly, at the very moment of his ecstasy.… “Someone visited my soul in that hour!” he would say afterwards, with firm belief in his words… (7.4, p. 363).

Three days later, he left the monastery, obeying his late elder.

Alyosha’s experience of active love in the encounter with Grushenka and confirmed by his mystical experience of the feast enabled him to find strength, resolve, and meaning in the midst of the most difficult moment of his life, to, as Elder Zossima had foretold earlier, “find joy in sorrow.” It was as the result of the transformation of his love, from a self-centered, sorrowful love in dreams to an other-centered, communal, joyful, active love through the experience of Grushenka’s compassion and the mystical wedding feast that Alyosha became the hero of the novel.

The characters in the film Babette’s Feast have a similar transformation through the experience of eating and drinking at the feast Babette prepared, giving all that she had, her talents, her wealth, and her heart. Through the experience of the feast, the visiting general, Martina and Phillipa, and the members of the community, as well as Babette herself, realize that they have both been given their choices they chose as well as those they had rejected.

Although all of the characters in the film experienced a transformation through the sharing of the feast, General Loewenhelm’s change represents well that of the others. The film presents the story through a series of flashbacks that focus on the lost loves and tragedies of the three major characters: Martina and Phillipa, the daughters of the patriarch of a strict Lutheran sect in a small village in northern Jutland, and Babette, a former chef in the best restaurant in Paris who sought refuge with the daughters after her husband and son were killed in the 1870 revolt in Paris and served as the servant and cook for the daughters.

The film first presents the young Loewenhelm as an dissolute army officer ordered by his father to live with his elderly aunt in Jutland in northern Denmark in hope of reforming his character. While with his aunt, he encountered the elder daughter, Martina, and fell in love with her. He insinuated himself into the fellowship of the Lutheran sect founded by Martina’s and Phillippa’s father so as to be close to Martina. Martina seemed to be unresponsive. In this scene from the film, the young Loewenhelm chokes on some food while the patriarch delivers a sermon on Psalm 85, focusing on the verses “mercy and justice will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other,” describing how God can allow apparent opposites to coexist.

In this scene, we see young Loewenhelm choke on the food, bid goodbye to his beloved, saying that he had come to realize that life was cruel and hard, and that some things were impossible. This experience of eating was far from fulfilling, bringing despair rather than joy. His subsequent frustration caused him to focus on his career, in which he achieved success, eventually becoming a general, marrying a lady of the Queen’s court.

Meanwhile, years passed, and the daughters wished to celebrate the one-hundreth anniversary of their father’s birth. The community he founded consisted at this point mainly of the sisters and elderly members who bickered constantly. Suddenly, Babette received notice that she had won ten thousand French francs in a French lottery. She then insisted that she prepare a “real French dinner” in celebration of the father’s birthday. Although at first the sisters resisted, they eventually allowed it, although when they saw the ingredients that went into the feast (live quails, a turtle, a cow’s head) they wondered whether Babette was prepared a witch’s sabbath.

General Loewenhelm just happened to be visiting his elderly aunt on the day of the feast, and was then invited, as his aunt was a member of the sect. As he prepared for the feast, he looked back on his life, and experienced again the sense that his life had been frustration and vanity. He had a vision of himself as a young man, and told him that he had accomplished everything that the young man had dreamed of and more, but that he would that evening test the truth of his despairing reaction to the last time he had attended a feast with his first love, Martina.

Given that the sisters were known for their spartan food, the general was shocked to discover that the food and drink prepared for the feast was the best imaginable, comparable to the best meals one could have in Paris. The members of the sect, who had promised each other not to comment on the food out of respect for the concerns of the sisters, imitated his actions and began to enjoy the meal and celebrate the memory of their patriarch. The general too began to remember the patriarch and his love of Martina, and at the end of the meal presents this sermon, an expansion of the patriarch’s words at the last meal he attended with Martina, viewed earlier.

The feast has had some amazing effects. The community had become reconciled with each other. The general took the role of the patriarch, realizing that his life had not been in vain, and that the feast had enabled him to receive even the consequences of the actions he had once rejected and thought were dead.

As he and his aunt left the feast, the general revealed to Martina his understanding of what his life and his relationship with her had meant to him. In this scene, his words demonstrate a transcendence of the physical and temporal dimensions of reality, placing his love of Martina in a timeless, transcendent, spiritual realm.

As we have seen, both Alyosha and General Loewenhelm experienced a a form of utopia, a transformation and a transcendence of the mundane, physical, and temporal dimensions of reality through the experience of a feast. In doing so, they also experienced the Jewish and Christian sacramental vision of feasting as the fulfillment of human existence, both familiar and surprising, mundane and transcendent, sustaining and celebrating. They encounter the divine and receive fulfillment through the experience of the physical.