The Karamazov Brothers

By Fyodor Dostoevsky and A.D.P. Briggs

Translated by Constance Garnett, with an Introduction by A. D. P. Briggs.

As Fyodor Karamazov awaits an amorous encounter, he is violently done to death. The three sons of the old debauchee are forced to confront their own guilt or complicity. Who will own to parricide? The reckless and passionate Dmitri? The corrosive intellectual Ivan? Surely not the chaste novice monk Alyosha? The search reveals the divisions which rack the brothers, yet paradoxically unite them. Around the writhings of this one dysfunctional family Dostoevsky weaves a dense network of social, psychological and philosophical relationships.

At the same time he shows - from the opening 'scandal' scene in the monastery to a personal appearance by an eccentric Devil - that his dramatic skills have lost nothing of their edge. The Karamazov Brothers, completed a few months before Dostoevsky's death in 1881, remains for many the high point of his genius as novelist and chronicler of the modern malaise.

It cast a long shadow over D. H. Lawrence, Thomas Mann, Albert Camus, and other giants of twentieth-century European literature.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wordsworth Editions
• Release date: Jun 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781848705715

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881) was a Russian author and journalist. He spent four years in prison, endured forced military service and was nearly executed for the crime of reading works forbidden by the government. He battled a gambling addiction that once left him a beggar, and he suffered ill health, including epileptic seizures. Despite these challenges, Dostoevsky wrote fiction possessed of groundbreaking, even daring, social and psychological insight and power. Novels like Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, and The Brothers Karamazov, have won the author acclaim from figures ranging from Franz Kafka to Ernest Hemingway, Friedrich Nietzsche to Virginia Woolf.

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Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Brothers

Karamazov

Translated by

Constance Garnett

with an introduction

by A. D. P. Briggs

WORDSWORTH CLASSICS

This edition of The Brothers Karamazov first published by Wordsworth Editions Limited in 2007

Introduction © A. D. P. Briggs 2007

Published as an ePublication 2014

ISBN 978 1 84870 571 5

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Contents

Introduction

Further Reading

The Brothers Karamazov

Part 1

Book One: The History of a Family

Book Two: An Unfortunate Gathering

Book Three: The Sensualists

Part 2

Book Four: Lacerations

Book Five: Pro and Contra

Book Six: The Russian Monk

Part 3

Book Seven: Alyosha

Book Eight: Mitya

Book Nine: The Preliminary Investigation

Part 4

Book Ten: The Boys

Book Eleven: Ivan

Book Twelve: A Judicial Error

Epilogue

Introduction

Honour thy father and mother: Fifth Commandment

Thou shalt do no murder: Sixth Commandment

From the Service of Holy Communion

(and see Exodus 20, xii, xiii)

The middle decades of the nineteenth century in Russia, from the late forties to the late eighties, were distinguished by a wealth of good prose-writing unsurpassed in world literature. Confident in the use of their national language, newly minted by Pushkin, and convinced that, like him, they could equal and transcend any foreign models, two generations of new writers poured out their ideas in a succession of stories and novels that would take the world by storm. Lermontov, Gogol and Herzen began the spate, quickly followed by a succession of capable storytellers whose misfortune it was to be merely talented in an age of greatness. The names of Herzen, Pisemsky, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Leskov, Goncharov, Chernyshevsky and Mamin-Sibiryak are not widely known outside Russia, though their works are substantial and they might have been celebrated if they had not been eclipsed by three luminaries whose works are now known to educated people the world over: Ivan Turgenev (1818–83), Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) and Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–81). These are the great writers whose works were translated into English by the excellent Constance Garnett (1862–1946) and so widely read in the western world that they initiated a veritable cult of Russophilism in the early twentieth century. Their deep love of humanity and compassion for fellow-sufferers in the human condition led Oscar Wilde to exclaim, ‘What makes their books so great is the pity they put into them.’ Katherine Mansfield once wrote to Constance Garnett, ‘the younger generation owe you more than we ourselves are able to realise. These books have changed our lives, no less.’ The great triumvirate produced a dozen outstanding novels in a mere twenty-five years (1856–80), and the last of the series is the work that marked the culmination of Dostoevsky’s career, The Karamazov Brothers.

This is a big book in every sense of the phrase. Second in length only to the legendary War and Peace, it runs to 400,000 words spread out over ninety-six chapters arranged in four parts and an epilogue. It takes a long time to read, but the rewards are great. This novel is widely regarded as Dostoevsky’s masterpiece, a dramatic story of family dissension and murder followed by an arrest, trial and sentence, into which have been fused the author’s final thoughts on human nature and the modern world. It is packed with serious ideas which had been developing in Dostoevsky’s mind over decades, a number of them so penetrating and relevant to the modern world that they made a significant mark on the thinking and writing of many twentieth-century authors, psychologists, politicians and theologians. Dostoevsky is still revered, not only as a novelist of the first rank but also as a commentator on human affairs who has achieved the status of a prophet.

We shall look at the full range of these ideas, but the most obvious of them concerns religion. The Karamazov Brothers is a deeply religious novel, probably the greatest of all attempts to determine the meaning of religion in fictional form. But this raises an important question: why should we bother with a religious novel in an age of rapidly growing secularism?

Religion in a secular age

We live now in a largely secular world, often described in the west as post-Christian. Most people, if they ever think about this state of affairs, are happy with it, loosely believing that in the long battle between science and religion the former has come out on top. Leading scientists tell us that religious ‘truth’ has been founded on falsehood and forced upon whole nations, misleading people in huge numbers and causing conflict and violence. Young people in particular seem to have embraced secularism on a grand scale.

The essential picture of reality now seems to be clear: our universe exploded out of nothing about thirteen billion years ago and is still expanding. The one interesting question is whether it will continue to dissipate its energies as it falls into a cold and tenuous nothingness, or whether it will ultimately turn round and implode into a singularity. There is, apparently, not all that much more to know: Richard Dawkins and Steve Jones inform us that ‘the ocean of ignorance is drying up’. Stephen Hawking has spoken of a ‘theory of everything’, which suggests that total comprehension of the physical world is within our grasp. So, with everything more or less defined and measured for us, what price the idea of God?

Two things are wrong with this. First, Christianity (let alone Islam) has not keeled over and died in the way that many thought possible a century ago. Its hold on the human mind remains tenacious – it survived six decades of official atheism in the Soviet Union, for example – and although church attendance has declined, most people lay claim to some kind of spiritual belief. More significantly, a number of agnostic scientists have become dissatisfied with the ill-considered reductionism of their outspoken colleagues. They have raised again the concept of Intelligent Design, showing that some tiny machine-like structures in nature are ‘irreducibly complex’, which means that they could not have emerged from a process of Darwinian natural selection, or by chance alone. For example, we are told that a ‘flagellar motor’ within a bacterial cell, using its thirty distinct moving parts to rotate at 100,000 rpm, has all the appearance of a machine designed by engineers; there must be intelligence behind it.

Beyond that, evolutionary biologists have started to look seriously at the origins and development of religious practice, which seems to have emerged in some form about 200,000 years ago as soon as our brains became capable of what is called ‘fifth-order intentionality’, outstripping those of the great apes which have remained with only a couple of such orders. Since then it has seemed to be ubiquitous and ineradicable. Scientists are asking why this has happened and what advantages religion has conferred on us. It seems that these come down to a sense of order in the cosmos and some control over it, the natural evolution of a moral code, and massive benefits in communal relations. Above all, it has delivered a better feeling about life: religious people tend to be happy, enjoy good health and live longer.

This is to say that religion is still a live topic. It is still relevant to wonder whether religion may possess a truth and value necessary for our wellbeing, the loss of which leads to disorientation and unhappiness. Young people deficient in even the vocabulary of organised spirituality, and turning instinctively to materialism and self-indulgence, often present an unedifying spectacle, and in large numbers they pay a high price in alienation, drug dependency, overindulgence, ill-health, early pregnancy and so on. They seem to be missing out on a set of basic truths – that self-control is a valuable virtue, that altruism can be rewarding, that wealth and celebrity do not pay rich dividends of contentment – which were commonly conveyed to their predecessors through a church community or a school influenced by church thinking. This development was predicted frequently by Dostoevsky, not least in The Karamazov Brothers. It will be useful to look at his life-story to see where his religious ideas came from.

A life beyond melodrama

Fyodor Dostoevsky made the human mind his special province. He is a psychologist fascinated by people described by one critic as having ‘one foot in the lunatic asylum’. His interest focuses not on standard behaviour but on unhealthiness, suffering and abnormality. You might say that he takes over where his con-temporary, Charles Dickens, leaves off. Dickens’s children, for example, suffer a good deal, and the author effectively castigates contemporary institutions and human deficiencies that make this possible. But in the end it all works out for them. Oliver, Nicholas, David, Kit, Martin and others survive the trauma of a cruel childhood, leaving us sighing with relief as they finally assume their places in middle-class society with every prospect of success and happiness. Their personalities have come through unscathed, their minds and psyches undistorted. Dostoevsky has no interest in this kind of outcome. He wants to know the opposite: what lies behind the weird behaviour of the monsters that we keep hearing about – the depressives, suicides, alcoholics, criminals, misers, recluses, molesters and murderers who have such a negative impact on everyone around them? These are the unusual characters who populate his novels, and they are subjected to suitably exceptional experiences: strange situations, melodramatic and arbitrary occurrences, coincidences with massive consequences, unpredictable behaviour, terrible anguish and tragedy. Can such people and such events really be true? Is there not here an element of exaggeration created by a mind not quite in balance?

A glance at the circumstances of the author’s life is enough to dispel the doubt. Nothing in Dostoevsky’s fiction is more weird and wonderful than the amazing events that overtook him in real life. The worst thing that happened to this writer is almost too horrific to relate. In his mid-twenties he joined a group of young dissidents called the Petrashevsky circle, twenty of whom were arrested in 1849, held in a fortress for eight months of solitary confinement, tried and sentenced to death. On a cold December morning they were marched round a parade ground before massed ranks of soldiers and spectators. Three oak stakes twice the height of a man stood in the centre. Their names were read out along with their sentences: ‘Death by Shooting’. Swords were broken over their heads; they were made to kiss the crucifix, and put on hooded white gowns. What looked like coffins stood nearby. After an hour shivering in the cold, the first three men were tied to their posts. Dostoevsky was sixth in line. Only now – with one man already out of his mind – were they told the truth: the Tsar had granted them a reprieve. Even then horrors lay ahead. Dostoevsky spent the next four years in a Siberian penal colony, describing them as ‘unspeakable, interminable suffering . . . buried alive and enclosed in a coffin’. These appalling conditions, and the wide range of human degradation and criminality that presented itself would later be movingly expressed in his Notes from the House of the Dead (1861); they include an encounter with a man falsely accused of murdering his father, which would have a bearing on The Karamazov Brothers. Incidentally, the only book that he was allowed to read was the New Testament, which became his con-stant companion. Then followed another five years of exile, served as a common soldier. Following his arrest at the age of 26, Dostoevsky spent a third of his remaining life away from home, friends and family, in prison or the army.

But even before and after this period his life could hardly be described as tranquil. He was born in Moscow in 1821, the second child of seven in the family of a physician. The children were terrified of their father, a cruel man who had his peasants flogged for nothing. Their mother died when Fyodor was fifteen and his father was killed two years later under mysterious circumstances, possibly by peasants who could stand no more of his brutal behaviour. (Again, there may be some prefigurement here of Fyodor Karamazov’s death.) The boy graduated from a military academy but quickly resigned his commission to make his way as a writer. His first real achievement, a touching story in letters called Poor Folk (1846), brought him instant success, but his second work, The Double, did not fare so well, and Dostoevsky fell into a depressive state that bordered on mental illness. This must have been associated with the epilepsy which had affected him since childhood and was exacerbated at several stages in his life by fatigue and stress – his two wedding-days were ruined by shocking attacks brought on by the tension of events.

Physical illness was one thing, but Dostoevsky was also unstable in psychological terms. His worst affliction was gambling mania, which worsened his already precarious financial position in the 1860s. Much of this comes out in his story The Gambler (1866), which was dictated for quick money to a stenographer, Anna Snitkina, who married the writer in 1867 and, despite her youth, proved capable of stabilising the life of this rollercoaster genius who worked round the clock, always took on more assignments and responsibilities than he could manage, and never had any money. She fended off creditors and took him abroad for four years. By the time of his return he was already famous and the last dozen years of his life, though still impossibly busy, were relatively agreeable and prosperous. Even so, he died at 59 without completing all the work he had planned. Two months before his death he had announced that he intended to live and write for another twenty years. Thirty thousand people turned out for his funeral. This was the life of turmoil, lived almost beyond melodrama, from which four of the world’s greatest novels emerged. No events in these books, however shocking, transcend the multiple horrors experienced by their author in real life.

Prologue to a four-act drama

Dostoevsky wrote at least twenty important stories and novels, but four stand out as remarkable masterpieces: Crime and Punishment (1865–66), The Idiot (1869), Devils (1871) and The Karamazov Brothers (1880). In order to appreciate this last, culminating work properly it is important to cast an eye back over its three predecessors, and indeed beyond that. If we regard the major novels as a kind of interconnected four-act drama, we must also take account of Notes from Underground, an important work of 1864 which, by anticipating all the main ideas developed in the later fiction, amounts to a prologue to the whole project. What is said in this work is repeated and developed in the succeeding novels, not least in The Karamazov Brothers. It is a story consisting of hardly more than 30,000 words. The word ‘Underground’ has a double meaning, referring both to the dismal basement flat into which the narrator has retreated for the last couple of decades and also to a dark, largely submerged region of the human mind having something in common with Freud’s concept of the Id. The Notes themselves, divided into two sections, are set down in quite the wrong order according to the expectations of a reader of fiction. Throughout Part One runs the suggestion that there is no story at all, merely a series of weird observations by the ‘Underground Man’ about himself, life in general and the modern world. But Part Two puts this right by describing three or four incidents in his life, which, as well as confirming what we have only half-understood so far, also make up a coherent narrative. Thus the work turns out to be a remarkably successful braiding of three different strands: an interesting story, an unusual psychological case-book and an absorbing philosophical treatise.

Notes from Underground is a rather complex work which reveals its secrets slowly. Perhaps it has to be re-read in order to be fully understood. Certainly it must be considered retrospectively, working back from the events of the last couple of chapters through to the utterances of Part One. Only then will the personality of the narrator and his attitude towards life and the modern world become clear. Details of the man and his story must be left for another occasion, but the ideas presented in this story are of immediate importance. What makes Notes from Underground appear to be a difficult read is that its purpose is to attack rationalism, which is best done in a non-rational manner. So, the Underground Man pours out a long, unfocused diatribe consisting of personal opinions, challenging observations, paradoxes and assertive statements, some of which are contrary to common sense or self-contradictory. What is he doing, and why would he want to attack rationalism anyway?

Dostoevsky’s one big idea, the concept that occurred to him first in exile, was confirmed during his travels in Europe, and would stay with him, ramifying in many directions, right through to The Karamazov Brothers, can be summed up succinctly. He was sure that the modern world was going in the wrong direction by embracing science and materialism at the expense of all other ways of accounting for the universe that we live in. Our power to calculate – human reason – was being given too free a rein. The rampant materialism of the modern world (seen at its most hideous in the apotheosis of scientific achievement at the Crystal Palace in London during the Great Exhibition of 1851) was a terrible danger to humanity. While promising everything it delivered nothing, by leaving out of account the things that really matter – human personality, spiritual values and especially the overriding need for freedom, including the freedom to make mistakes, go off the rails, ignore one’s own best interests. Atheism, positivism, socialism, these forces would lead away from freedom into a totalitarian society where the rules for human behaviour were worked out according to scientific formulae and imposed upon the population for their own good. The Underground Man was created as a fictional refutation of all such materialist thinking.

At the time of writing Notes from Underground Dostoevsky was swimming against a strong tide of optimism. Most thinking people wanted to believe that science was on the brink of solving all our problems, and that violence and warfare would soon atrophy and pass from our experience. And here was someone asserting that the very basis of science was unreliable: there are no irreducible laws of nature, and even an obvious truism such as 2 x 2 = 4 has no absolute meaning – it is variable, not constant, a mistaken, inhuman, misleading and pernicious idea. Assertions like these may still today shock readers by their apparent perversity; in their day they must have seemed nothing less than absurd. But with the advantage of six generations of hindsight we can see the truth of Dostoevsky’s peculiar statements in three distinct ways. First, his prediction of a totalitarian takeover in his own country now looks remarkably sagacious; we have seen it through from its beginning to its end. Second, the vision of a socialist utopia imposed upon a population in their own best interests by a beneficent dictator has inspired an entire genre of dystopian fiction running down to this day through Zamyatin, Huxley, Orwell, Bradbury, Atwood and others. Third, and most importantly, his observations about the laws of nature, mathematics and science have proved astoundingly accurate. It took only a single generation for Einstein to come along and overturn Euclid and Newton, opening the way in the early twentieth century for quantum physics with all its surprises and mysteries. We now know for certain that 2 x 2 = 4 may be a useful device for us in our daily lives, but it has no absolute meaning. We know that all scientific laws, including even time itself, bend with relativity and break down completely as you descend into a black hole. Assertions that had seemed paradoxical, even nonsensical, in 1864 have proved to be correct. In the realms of antimatter, quarks, dark energy, gluons, Schrödinger’s cat, string theory, black holes and baby universes, the formula 2 + 2 = 5 is not only alive and well, it mocks us for ever having doubted its existence. The Underground Man is clearly deranged, but he is not the first madman in literature to have revealed profound truths.

The first three major novels

Dostoevsky returned from exile in December 1859 with a religious mission. He had mingled with the lowest of the low, and knew enough about criminality to write about it for the rest of his life, which he now began to do. All four of his major novels deal with murder; perhaps it is significant that there is no murder in A Raw Youth (1875), the one substantial mature work that is regarded as inferior. His reading of the New Testament while in prison had taught him that religion was the only force that could change human nature and save mankind from catastrophe. But where to begin? The first step must be to use fiction as a means of exposing the dangerous flaws in contemporary thinking about the future of society. The radical intelligentsia in Russia were preaching a doctrine of atheism, socialism, freethinking and free love that could only spell danger by rejecting the moral law and undermining personal responsibility. Under their rules you could theorise yourself into justifying anything – even murder.

Crime and Punishment (1866), one of the world’s most famous murder stories, is an attempt to dramatise this idea. A poor student, Rodion Raskolnikov, murders an old woman pawnbroker and her sister. Why? Because he needed money, because he was reacting against family expectations that he couldn’t meet, because new wealth might make him a great benefactor of mankind, but mainly because he had become obsessed with the concept of a superman unconstrained by normal inhibitions, and he wanted to make himself into an exceptional being like Napoleon by deliberately transgressing the law. In any case the old hag was an evil exploiter of weakness, a ‘louse’ that deserved to be exterminated. But alas, all of these motives fall apart in his mind as conscience reasserts itself. First he feels disgust, then he finds he cannot spend his ill-gotten money. He turns for sympathy to Sonya Marmeladova, a girl who has turned to prostitution in order to save her family, and she urges him to confess. An astute police inspector waits for the inevitable confession, which duly arrives. Raskolnikov is sentenced to Siberia, where he is followed by Sonya. The story of a new man now begins, but the author says this must be the subject of another tale. The main qualities of this novel are sheer narrative interest and psychological observation centring on Raskolnikov’s troubled mind before and after the murder, and the detective’s sharp insights. Much is made of dreams as emanations from the subconscious mind. But Dostoevsky’s main strategic purpose has also been achieved: to expose the falsity and danger of modern thinking as a whole, the utilitarianism and cold rationality which take no account of man’s spiritual nature.

In his next novel, The Idiot (1868), Dostoevsky attempts to portray a more positive figure, his ideal man, and to some extent it works. Prince Myshkin is called ‘the idiot’ because of his childlike, saintly nature and refusal to take offence. He returns from abroad, inherits a large fortune and is plunged into the corrupt world of St Petersburg society, where his simple wisdom has a certain mollifying effect on the hard men who surround him, but not for long or on a broad scale. His involvement with two women who are inspired to love him is disastrous. After raising their hopes, he lets them down, unable to offer anything more than pity. One of them is murdered by Rogozhin, the personification of elemental passion and violence, who is sentenced to fifteen years in Siberia. This novel is not an unalloyed success. It revolves around Myshkin, who is characterised almost by an absence of character. He is the personification of spiritual wisdom as opposed to rational egoism, but he is so foreign to the environment in which he finds himself, alone in his purity on a wide sea of conceit, ambition and cunning, that his sad predicament – he relapses into madness at the end of the story – may invoke pity, but it delivers no sense of stark tragedy.

For some reason The Idiot seems to have remained its author’s favourite work, but despite that he never again restricted himself to the affirmative explanatory route. His forte was not the depiction of positive heroes, but the exposure of emptiness, falsehood, immorality and villainy in a series of negative types. In Devils (1871–72) he gives us a truly nihilistic work. A bunch of mediocrities in a provincial town, full of the hot air of revolutionary chatter, are taken over and manipulated by a more talented and dedicated controller, Pyotr Verkhovensky, who turns his young hotheads into a deadly activist cell. When one of their number weakens and wishes to leave them he is brutally killed, and the novel winds up with a number of other murders. This material came to Dostoevsky from reports of the real-life activities of a wild anarchist, Sergey Nechayev. The one major invention by Dostoevsky was the addition of Nikolay Stavrogin, a brilliant, attractive but emotionally sterile young man imbued with nihilism of a spiritual kind which leads him into a career of crime and debauchery.

The nihilists’ activities can properly be described as diabolical; there can scarcely be another novel with so many devils in it. But the worst devil of all, the author assures us, is the dreadful bacillus of modern progressive thinking, that blend of atheism, socialism and narrow-minded empiricism which was steadily infecting the whole of Russian society, eating away at its moral and spiritual strength, and promising so much evil in the near future. In this, his most politically-minded novel, Dostoevsky’s prophetic visions are a clear evocation of brutal spectres to come – Lenin, Stalin and their terrible henchmen.

The Karamazov family

In drawing attention to the important ideas in Dostoevsky’s novels, we run the risk of implying that they are forbiddingly intellectual and perhaps lacking in action or narrative interest. Not so. If you want money, sex and violence you will find them in The Karamazov Brothers. If you want human interest, there is plenty of it. The story-line is strong and the characters, more than a hundred of them from babies and lots of children through to old people, are brought before us with memorable clarity. There is plenty of incident.

The plot is straightforward, almost schematic. Fyodor Karamazov is a lustful, buffoonish character committed to a life of sensual pleasure. From two marriages and a disgusting affair with an idiot girl he has produced four sons, Dmitry (Mitya), Ivan, Alyosha and Smerdyakov, though he has had no hand in bringing up any of them. He and his eldest son are rivals for the affections of Grushenka, a local beauty. The two men quarrel violently about her and also about a supposed inheritance that Mitya has come to claim. The idea that Fyodor might end up being murdered is mentioned more than once before the inevitable happens and he is killed. Circumstantial evidence points to Mitya, who is arrested, unfairly tried and sentenced to twenty years in Siberia. There are hints that an escape is planned, after which he and Grushenka will end up in America.

The question of guilt is given some prominence. We come to know that Mitya, despite the verdict, is not guilty, but complicit blame embraces all four brothers. Theoretical justification for the murder came from Ivan, who urged Smerdyakov to reject God and repudiate the moral law. Equally guilty is Mitya, who accepts that he as good as murdered his father by wishing him dead so often and so passionately. Even the innocent Alyosha is implicated by failing to do enough to prevent the crime which he knew was coming. The brothers are drawn together in shared culpability more than they had ever been by mutual affection or moral obligation.

This raises one of the great issues in The Karamazov Brothers – family values and responsibilities. Fathers and sons loom large in the novel. There is a clear implication that in earlier days the family could have been relied upon to look after its own, and to provide not only affection but also a moral education sufficient to inculcate self-discipline and strong defences against temptation. The Karamazov family is dysfunctional to the maximum degree, involving total neglect by the father of his children and their revenge through the inevitability of patricide. But at least some of the blame for this extends beyond the family to Russia itself, to society and the modern world, all of which are watching helplessly as all the old standards and practices go by the board. It is not only fathers of families that are losing respect, but even those fathers in church, state and heaven – the Patriarch, the Tsar and God himself – whose authority is under threat as never before.

Spiritual talk

If The Karamazov Brothers appears to be about justice (or the lack of it) in the everyday world, the question of divine justice looms even larger. The novel was written as a serious statement about the religious life, and it contains a number of excursions into straightforward discussion of God, Jesus Christ and the role of the Church in the modern world. At first these discussions arise naturally in the course of the story. The early confrontation between Fyodor and his family takes place in the monastery where Alyosha has been a novice for the past year. In this holy setting we are plunged by the old man into mockery of the church and its beliefs. From then on everybody seems to want to discuss religion. The revered Elder, Zosima, talks with unshakable dignity about the infinite love of God and the all-redeeming power of love among humanity. Before long Ivan makes a challenging assertion that if immortality does not exist there can be no moral order because no one will have to pay for his sins. His assertion that there is no God is countered by Alyosha’s quiet statement of faith. Even Smerdyakov displays a penchant for spiritual thinking, having disturbed his teacher at an early age by asking an irreverent question: if God created light on the first day but the sun, moon and stars on the fourth day, where did the light come from on day one? Ivan then changes tack. Setting aside the abstract question of God’s existence, he now claims that love is not enough. He confesses that although it is possible to love mankind in general he finds it difficult to love his next-door neighbour. Then there is the question of cruelty and injustice: innocent people, especially children, are often subjected to terrible suffering, which they cannot possibly deserve. God’s harmony ‘is not worth the tears of one tortured child’.

All of these comments form a dynamic part of the narrative, worked into conversations between committed unbelievers and their opposites. But two religious items are simply awarded a chapter each and inserted starkly into the text; these have become famous and have often been excerpted for individual publication. Ivan the atheist has written a prose poem entitled ‘The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor’ which appears in Part II, Book 5, chapter 5. This tells the story of how Jesus Christ returns to the earth in Seville during the Spanish Inquisition only to be imprisoned as a menace to the church. The Grand Inquisitor complains that Christ has burdened humanity with too much freedom; men do not want to have to choose, they wish to be led. Only a few strong men are capable of leading; the rest must be kept in submission for their own good and happiness, and this is the role of the modern church. This imaginative document is so nicely balanced as to be capable of opposite interpretations. Some have taken it to be an ultimate statement of spiritual pessimism, the fullest expression of Dostoevsky’s own religious doubts. Others take a more ironical stance: this is devil’s advocacy of the most artful kind, which gives an indication of our spiritual freedom – the things that matter most are our capacity to reject or to choose the religious way, and our instinctive search for the miraculous, which transcends ordinary human experience. And this message is bolstered by the second overt excursion into spiritual matters, the reminiscences of the Father Zosima, which follow on quickly after Ivan’s essay (ii, 6, 1). The Elder tells the story of his life. He has in his day been a robust character who has undergone many diverse experiences before coming to the church. His religious views are unambiguously positive, and he presents a clear picture of the need for us to respect all life and all God’s creatures, to accept suffering as a purifying process, to forgive everyone their sins against us – even brutal criminals – and above all to live always with a spirit of love and forbearance. Some of his thoughtful pronouncements go to the very centre of philosophical insight and spiritual awareness. Here, for example, is a single example of his wisdom, a succinct definition of our philosophical and spiritual condition, worthy of Plato, to whom it may owe a good deal:

On earth we are as it were astray . . . Much on earth is hidden from us, but to make up for that we have been given a mysterious hidden longing for our living bond with the other world, and the roots of our thoughts and feelings are not here but in other worlds. That is why the philosophers say that we cannot apprehend the reality of things on earth. (ii, 6, 3)

Taken on its own, the portrait of Father Zosima may seem simplistic, as indeed would Ivan’s opposite attitude to the same subject. Together they amount to a challenging summary of the basic spiritual problems that seemed to beset humanity at the time, and which still speak to us today.

Enduring relevance

In summarising the events and main ideas of this novel we run the risk of debasing the work by separating its components into easily digested ingredients. The fact is that the novel works well as a fascinating ongoing story, which is how it should be approached. The same applies to the characters. From what we have said, a first-time reader might expect schematic personalities, each of the Karamazovs standing for a part of the human person-ality. Fyodor equals unbridled hedonism. The three sons are body, mind and spirit: Mitya stands for sensual passion, Ivan religious nihilism, and Alyosha spiritual certitude. This is true, however, only in the broadest sense. Far from being ideas in-carnate, the Karamazovs are among Dostoevsky’s most persuasive, living characters. Mitya longs to improve himself, Ivan has doubts about his doubts, the pure-minded Alyosha admits to the attractions of the sensual life. The quality which enables Dostoevsky, at the very height of his powers as a novelist, to reconcile the competing claims of story, character and thought, is well summarised by Victor Terras, as follows:

The sombre tragedy and lofty metaphysical argument of The Brothers Karamazov are embedded in a world of carnal physicality. The menu of a Sunday dinner at the monastery, Fyodor Pavlovich’s after-dinner coffee and cognac, or Dmitry’s shopping spree for a last fling with Grushenka are handled with as much care as the metaphysical anguish of Ivan Karamazov or the serene spirituality of Father Zosima.

Finally, there is another sense in which the novel succeeds in blending together complex concepts so that a piece of text may be said to possess multiple meanings. Much of our discussion of the novel has been about metaphysics, but it is clear that the spiritual arguments often carry an earthly, pragmatic, sometimes political message that runs in parallel. For instance the ecclesiastical totalitarianism preached by the Grand Inquisitor can be taken also as a dire warning in historical, governmental terms. Ronald Hingley emphasises the political message of The Karamazov Brothers as follows:

Here is an eloquent defence of humanity at large against those dull, self-admiring, uncreative, mischief-making, self-seeking philanthropists called politicians or statesmen, who so disastrously devote their lives to imposing on others what they know to be best for them – that host of inquisitors, petty rather than grand, who have so lamentably proliferated since Dostoevsky’s death in the government of his own and other countries.

* * *

One small measure of the enduring relevance of The Karamazov Brothers can be seen five generations later in the situation endured at the beginning of the twenty-first century by the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk, who found himself placed on trial in his own country for having written too openly about its recent history (the charges were eventually dropped at the insistence of the European Union of which Turkey was hoping to become a member). With the prospect of a three-year prison sentence hanging over him for ‘insulting Turkishness’, he must have been sadly amused to look back on his famous novel, Snow (2004), which had taken the following epigraph from notebooks for The Karamazov Brothers: ‘Well then, eliminate the people, curtail them, force them to be silent. Because the European Enlightenment is more important than the people.’

The lasting importance of this complex but rewarding novel is best summed up in the words of W. J. Leatherbarrow:

The key to Dostoevsky’s enduring contemporary appeal is . . . fully revealed in The Brothers Karamazov. First, his work discloses the provisional and unstable nature of contemporary existence which has lost both the spiritual certainty and the faith in the power of reason which sustained man in earlier ages. Secondly, he depicts the tragic and ‘abnormal’ nature of modern man, who is condemned by his lack of faith to amoralism and the desert of existential uncertainty, anxiety and doubt. Thirdly, he has recognised that man’s sense of spiritual isolation is accompanied, and indeed sharpened, by a longing for new certainties to replace those that have been lost. The Brothers Karamazov continues to offer us insights into the moral, social, political, psychological and spiritual crises that afflict our modern culture. It was Dostoevsky’s deepest hope that it also indicated the way to overcome them.

A. D. P. Briggs

Senior Research Fellow, University of Bristol

Professor Emeritus, University of Birmingham

Suggestions for Further Reading

Richard Curle, Characters of Dostoevsky, London, Heinemann, 1950.

Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky: The Mantle of the Prophet, 1871–1881, Princeton University Press, and Robson, London, 2002.

John Jones, Dostoevsky, Oxford, 1983.

Malcolm V. Jones, Dostoevsky: The Novel of Discord, London, 1976.

W. J. Leatherbarrow, Fedor Dostoevsky, Boston, Twayne, 1981.

W. J. Leatherbarrow, Dostoevsky: A Reference Guide, Boston, Hall, 1990.

W. J. Leatherbarrow, Dostoevsky: The Brothers Karamazov, Landmarks of World Literature, Cambridge University Press, 1992

Richard Peace, Dostoevsky: An Examination of the Major Novels, Cambridge, 1971.

George Steiner, Tolstoy or Dostoevsky: An Essay in the Old Criticism, London, 1960.

Edward Wasiolek, Dostoevsky: The Major Fiction, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1964.

The Brothers Karamazov

Part 1

Book One: The History of a Family

Chapter 1: Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov

Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, a landowner well known in our district in his own day, and still remembered among us owing to his gloomy and tragic death, which happened thirteen years ago, and which I shall describe in its proper place. For the present I will only say that this ‘landowner’ – for so we used to call him, although he hardly spent a day of his life on his own estate – was a strange type, yet one pretty frequently to be met with, a type abject and vicious and at the same time senseless. But he was one of those senseless persons who are very well capable of looking after their worldly affairs, and, apparently, after nothing else. Fyodor Pavlovitch, for instance, began with next to nothing; his estate was of the smallest; he ran to dine at other men’s tables, and fastened on them as a toady, yet at his death it appeared that he had a hundred thousand roubles in hard cash. At the same time, he was all his life one of the most senseless, fantastical fellows in the whole district. I repeat, it was not stupidity – the majority of these fantastical fellows are shrewd and intelligent enough – but just senselessness, and a peculiar national form of it.

He was married twice, and had three sons, the eldest, Dmitri, by his first wife, and two, Ivan and Alexey, by his second. Fyodor Pavlovitch’s first wife, Adelaida Ivanovna, belonged to a fairly rich and distinguished noble family, also landowners in our district, the Miusovs. How it came to pass that an heiress, who was also a beauty, and moreover one of those vigorous intelligent girls, so common in this generation, but sometimes also to be found in the last, could have married such a worthless, puny weakling, as we all called him, I won’t attempt to explain. I knew a young lady of the last ‘romantic’ generation who after some years of an enigmatic passion for a gentleman, whom she might quite easily have married at any moment, invented insuperable obstacles to their union, and ended by throwing herself one stormy night into a rather deep and rapid river from a high bank, almost a precipice, and so perished, entirely to satisfy her own caprice, and to be like Shakespeare’s Ophelia. Indeed, if this precipice, a chosen and favourite spot of hers, had been less picturesque, if there had been a prosaic flat bank in its place, most likely the suicide would never have taken place. This is a fact, and probably there have been not a few similar instances in the last two or three generations. Adelaida Ivanovna Miusov’s action was similarly, no doubt, an echo of other people’s ideas, and was due to the irritation caused by lack of mental freedom. She wanted, perhaps, to show her feminine independence, to override class distinctions and the despotism of her family. And a pliable imagination persuaded her, we must suppose, for a brief moment, that Fyodor Pavlovitch, in spite of his parasitic position, was one of the bold and ironical spirits of that progressive epoch, though he was, in fact, an ill-natured buffoon and nothing more. What gave the marriage piquancy was that it was preceded by an elopement, and this greatly captivated Adelaida Ivanovna’s fancy. Fyodor Pavlovitch’s position at the time made him specially eager for any such enterprise, for he was passionately anxious to make a career in one way or another. To attach himself to a good family and obtain a dowry was an alluring prospect. As for mutual love it did not exist, apparently, either in the bride or in him, in spite of Adelaida Ivanovna’s beauty. This was, perhaps, a unique case of the kind in the life of Fyodor Pavlovitch, who was always of a voluptuous temper, and ready to run after any petticoat on the slightest encouragement. She seems to have been the only woman who made no particular appeal to his senses.

Immediately after the elopement Adelaida Ivanovna discerned in a flash that she had no feeling for her husband but contempt. The marriage accordingly showed itself in its true colours with extraordinary rapidity. Although the family accepted the event pretty quickly and apportioned the runaway bride her dowry, the husband and wife began to lead a most disorderly life, and there were everlasting scenes between them. It was said that the young wife showed incomparably more generosity and dignity than Fyodor Pavlovitch, who, as is now known, got hold of all her money up to twenty-five thousand roubles as soon as she received it, so that those thousands were lost to her forever. The little village and the rather fine town house which formed part of her dowry he did his utmost for a long time to transfer to his name, by means of some deed of conveyance. He would probably have succeeded, merely from her moral fatigue and desire to get rid of him, and from the contempt and loathing he aroused by his persistent and shameless importunity. But, fortunately, Adelaida Ivanovna’s family intervened and circumvented his greediness. It is known for a fact that frequent fights took place between the husband and wife, but rumour had it that Fyodor Pavlovitch did not beat his wife but was beaten by her, for she was a hot-tempered, bold, dark-browed, impatient woman, possessed of remarkable physical strength. Finally, she left the house and ran away from Fyodor Pavlovitch with a destitute divinity student, leaving Mitya, a child of three years old, in her husband’s hands. Immediately Fyodor Pavlovitch introduced a regular harem into the house, and abandoned himself to orgies of drunkenness. In the intervals he used to drive all over the province, complaining tearfully to each and all of Adelaida Ivanovna’s having left him, going into details too disgraceful for a husband to mention in regard to his own married life. What seemed to gratify him and flatter his self-love most was to play the ridiculous part of the injured husband, and to parade his woes with embellishments.

‘One would think that you’d got a promotion, Fyodor Pavlovitch, you seem so pleased in spite of your sorrow,’ scoffers said to him. Many even added that he was glad of a new comic part in which to play the buffoon, and that it was simply to make it funnier that he pretended to be unaware of his ludicrous position. But, who knows, it may have been simplicity. At last he succeeded in getting on the track of his runaway wife. The poor woman turned out to be in Petersburg, where she had gone with her divinity student, and where she had thrown herself into a life of complete emancipation. Fyodor Pavlovitch at once began bustling about, making preparations to go to Petersburg, with what object he could not himself have said. He would perhaps have really gone; but having determined to do so he felt at once entitled to fortify himself for the journey by another bout of reckless drinking. And just at that time his wife’s family received the news of her death in Petersburg. She had died quite suddenly in a garret, according to one story, of typhus, or as another version had it, of starvation. Fyodor Pavlovitch was drunk when he heard of his wife’s death, and the story is that he ran out into the street and began shouting with joy, raising his hands to Heaven: ‘Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace,’ but others say he wept without restraint like a little child, so much so that people were sorry for him, in spite of the repulsion he inspired. It is quite possible that both versions were true, that he rejoiced at his release, and at the same time wept for her who released him. As a general rule, people, even the wicked, are much more naive and simple-hearted than we suppose. And we ourselves are, too.

Chapter 2: He gets rid of his eldest son

You can easily imagine what a father such a man could be and how he would bring up his children. His behaviour as a father was exactly what might be expected. He completely abandoned the child of his marriage with Adelaida Ivanovna, not from malice, nor because of his matrimonial grievances, but simply because he forgot him. While he was wearying everyone with his tears and complaints, and turning his house into a sink of debauchery, a faithful servant of the family, Grigory, took the three-year-old Mitya into his care. If he hadn’t looked after him there would have been no one even to change the baby’s little shirt.

It happened moreover that the child’s relations on his mother’s side forgot him too at first. His grandfather was no longer living, his widow, Mitya’s grandmother, had moved to Moscow, and was seriously ill, while his daughters were married, so that Mitya remained for almost a whole year in old Grigory’s charge and lived with him in the servant’s cottage. But if his father had remembered him (he could not, indeed, have been altogether unaware of his existence) he would have sent him back to the cottage, as the child would only have been in the way of his debaucheries. But a cousin of Mitya’s mother, Pyotr Alexandrovitch Miusov, happened to return from Paris. He lived for many years afterwards abroad, but was at that time quite a young man, and distinguished among the Miusovs as a man of enlightened ideas and of European culture, who had been in the capitals and abroad. Towards the end of his life he became a Liberal of the type common in the forties and fifties. In the course of his career he had come into contact with many of the most Liberal men of his epoch, both in Russia and abroad. He had known Proudhon and Bakunin personally, andin his declining years was very fond of describing the three days of the Paris Revolution of February 1848, hinting that he himself had almost taken part in the fighting on the barricades. This was one of the most grateful recollections of his youth. He had an independent property of about a thousand souls, to reckon in the old style. His splendid estate lay on the outskirts of our little town and bordered on the lands of our famous monastery, with which Pyotr Alexandrovitch began an endless lawsuit, almost as soon as he came into the estate, concerning the rights of fishing in the river or wood-cutting in the forest, I don’t know exactly which. He regarded it as his duty as a citizen and a man of culture to open an attack upon the ‘clericals’. Hearing all about Adelaida Ivanovna, whom he, of course, remembered, and in whom he had at one time been interested, and learning of the existence of Mitya, he intervened, in spite of all his youthful indignation and contempt for Fyodor Pavlovitch. He made the latter’s acquaintance for the first time, and told him directly that he wished to undertake the child’s education. He used long afterwards to tell as a characteristic touch, that when he began to speak of Mitya, Fyodor Pavlovitch looked for some time as though he did not understand what child he was talking about, and even as though he was surprised to hear that he had a little son in the house. The story may have been exaggerated, yet it must have been something like the truth.

Fyodor Pavlovitch was all his life fond of acting, of suddenly playing an unexpected part, sometimes without any motive for doing so, and even to his own direct disadvantage, as, for instance, in the present case. This habit, however, is characteristic of a very great number of people, some of them very clever ones, not like Fyodor Pavlovitch. Pyotr Alexandrovitch carried the business through vigorously, and was appointed, with Fyodor Pavlovitch, joint guardian of the child, who had a small property, a house and land, left him by his mother. Mitya did, in fact, pass into this cousin’s keeping, but as the latter had no family of his own, and after securing the revenues of his estates was in haste to return at once to Paris, he left the boy in charge of one of his cousins, a lady living in Moscow. It came to pass that, settling permanently in Paris he, too, forgot the child, especially when the Revolution of February broke out, making an impression on his mind that he remembered all the rest of his life. The Moscow lady died, and Mitya passed into the care of one of her married daughters. I believe he changed his home a fourth time later on. I won’t enlarge upon that now, as I shall have much to tell later of Fyodor Pavlovitch’s first-born, and must confine myself now to the most essential facts about him, without which I could not begin my story.

In the first place, this Mitya, or rather Dmitri Fyodorovitch, was the only one of Fyodor Pavlovitch’s three sons who grew up in the belief that he had property, and that he would be independent on coming of age. He spent an irregular boyhood and youth. He did not finish his studies at the gymnasium, he got into a military school, then went to the Caucasus, was promoted, fought a duel, and was degraded to the ranks, earned promotion again, led a wild life, and spent a good deal of money. He did not begin to receive any income from Fyodor Pavlovitch until he came of age, and until then got into debt. He saw and knew his father, Fyodor Pavlovitch, for the first time on coming of age, when he visited our neighbourhood on purpose to settle with him about his property. He seems not to have liked his father. He did not stay long with him, and made haste to get away, having only succeeded in obtaining a sum of money, and entering into an agreement for future payments from the estate, of the revenues and value of which he was unable (a fact worthy of note), upon this occasion, to get a statement from his father. Fyodor Pavlovitch remarked for the first time then (this, too, should be noted) that Mitya had a vague and exaggerated idea of his property. Fyodor Pavlovitch was very well satisfied with this, as it fell in with his own designs. He gathered only that the young man was frivolous, unruly, of violent passions, impatient, and dissipated, and that if he could only obtain ready money he would be satisfied, although only, of course, for a short time. So Fyodor Pavlovitch began to take advantage of this fact, sending him from time to time small doles, instalments. In the end, when four years later, Mitya, losing patience, came a second time to our little town to settle up once for all with his father, it turned out to his amazement that he had nothing, that it was difficult to get an account even, that he had received the whole value of his property in sums of money from Fyodor Pavlovitch, and was perhaps even in debt to him, that by various agreements into which he had, of his own desire, entered at various previous dates, he had no right to expect anything more, and so on, and so on. The young man was overwhelmed, suspected deceit and cheating, and was almost beside himself. And, indeed, this circumstance led to the catastrophe, the account of which forms the subject of my first introductory story, or rather the external side of it. But before I pass to that story I must say a little of Fyodor Pavlovitch’s other two sons, and of their origin.

Chapter 3: The second marriage and the second family

Very shortly after getting his four-year-old Mitya off his hands Fyodor Pavlovitch married a second time. His second marriage lasted eight years. He took this second wife, Sofya Ivanovna, also a very young girl, from another province, where he had gone upon some small piece of business in company with a Jew. Though Fyodor Pavlovitch was a drunkard and a vicious debauchee he never neglected investing his capital, and managed his business affairs very successfully, though, no doubt, not over-scrupulously. Sofya Ivanovna was the daughter of an obscure deacon, and was left from childhood an orphan without relations. She grew up in the house of a general’s widow, a wealthy old lady of good position, who was at once her benefactress and tormentor. I do not know the details, but I have only heard that the orphan girl, a meek and gentle creature, was once cut down from a halter in which she was hanging from a nail in the loft, so terrible were her sufferings from the caprice and everlasting nagging of this old woman, who was apparently not bad-hearted but had become an insufferable tyrant through idleness.

Fyodor Pavlovitch made her an offer; enquiries were made about him and he was refused. But again, as in his first marriage, he proposed an elopement to the orphan girl. There is very little doubt that she would not on any account have married him if she had known a little more about him in time. But she lived in another province; besides, what could a little girl of sixteen know about it, except that she would be better at the bottom of the river than remaining with her benefactress? So the poor child exchanged a benefactress for a benefactor. Fyodor Pavlovitch did not get a penny this time, for the general’s widow was furious. She gave them nothing and cursed them both. But he had not reckoned on a dowry; what allured him was the remarkable beauty of the innocent girl, above all her innocent appearance, which had a peculiar attraction for a vicious profligate, who had hitherto admired only the coarser types of feminine beauty.

‘Those innocent eyes slit my soul up like a razor,’ he used to say afterwards, with his loathsome snigger. In a man so depraved this might, of course, mean no more than sensual attraction. As he had received no dowry with his wife, and had, so to speak, taken her ‘from the halter’, he did not stand on ceremony with her. Making her feel that she had ‘wronged’ him, he took advantage of her phenomenal meekness and submissiveness to trample on the elementary decencies of marriage. He gathered loose women into his house, and carried on orgies of debauchery in his wife’s presence. To show what a pass things had come to, I may mention that Grigory, the gloomy, stupid, obstinate, argumentative servant, who had always hated his first mistress, Adelaida Ivanovna, took the side of his new mistress. He championed her cause, abusing Fyodor Pavlovitch in a manner little befitting a servant, and on one occasion broke up the revels and drove all the disorderly women out of the house. In the end this unhappy young woman, kept in terror from her childhood, fell into that kind of nervous disease which is most frequently found in peasant women who are said to be ‘possessed by devils’. At times after terrible fits of hysterics she even lost her reason. Yet she bore Fyodor Pavlovitch two sons, Ivan and Alexey, the eldest in the first year of marriage and the second three years later. When she died, little Alexey was in his fourth year, and, strange as it seems, I know that he remembered his mother all his life, like

Reviews for The Karamazov Brothers

[joshrothman · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Obviously an astonishingly good, if extremely hard, book. Along with Anna Karenina, I want to re-read it immediately.

[dominiquemarie-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Back to the Classics Reading Challenge 2017
Category: Russian Classic

This book took me a little while to get into, but once I got through the first few chapters, I was hooked! This is a long, philosophically dense book, but do not let that deter you. It is anything, but boring, and it will make you think. The main conflict in the novel is Faith vs Doubt. The characters are so dynamic that I believed they were real people. Definitely take your time reading this one. I read it in two months, and there is so much to it that I want to read it again. I think I will read a different translation every time. I actually regret that I can't read it in Russian. I would love to experience this novel in it's original glory.

[jakebornheimer · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It took me a year or so to finish this- but I'm so glad I did. Though I took a long time to understand and warm up to the characters, they are brilliantly vivid and alive. All through the book I tried to place myself among the Karamazov brothers but found a piece of each in me. Ivan the intellectual, Alyosha the monk, and Mitya the hedonist; the brothers are magnificently crafted archetypes. The book made me think a lot and I believe I'll be pondering over it for a long time after.

[danielstj · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is an amazing, transcending book. Although I preferred the first third of it to the last, I completely recognize the scope and intensity of the prose. The characters are vivid and vital. I was very pleased reading it.

[meditationesmartini · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Shit. Fuck. Oh, wow. Maybe it was just finishing it on the 9/11, but this book disturbed me so much it gave me the night sweats, not to mention the no sleep fits and starts and later the "dreaming you're having tea with Smerdyakov and he's still got the noose on and he's telling you how he did it for the lulz"es.Sorry, Princess Alexandra Kropotkin. You were great for Tolstoy with his slow-moving muddy-river certainty about all that doesn't really matter. Not that that's Tolstoy's tragedy or anything - it's his strength: the more you believe in the mundane human cultural secular awesome world, the less you have to come down to the Fear - but when it comes, it's worse, and it drove Leo kinda batty from what I hear. Dostoyevsky is ALL FEAR. I mean, okay, that's untrue, but it was such a shock after the smooth certainties of the princess, who no doubt grew up parling the francais, to switch versions to Constance Garnett's. Yikes! Questionable editing choices in the Kropotkin aside, even, this is chalk and cheese. People think what's scary is the a dog with eight legs or Yog-Sothoth in your closet, but that's crap - dark fantasy just means anything can happen, whereas no fantasy means no magic egress on the back of a hippogriff but still the Holocaust.And (if I may briefly wax philosophical, thereby showing I've learned nothing from the esteemed Prosecutor) maybe that's Fyodor's hangup? Maybe when you're staring death down and the magic egress that will never come but still might comes and is revealed as so whimsical, arbitrary, the "little father" playing with your life to teach you a lesson, WELL . . . does something break inside you? No wonder he was determined to beat through the horror of the real.No wonder Ivan, "the most like his father,"" is also the most like his author.No wonder Alyosha is so real, like no holy man ever has been in literature. I bet he becomes a socialist, breaking his creator's sad tired heart as well as perhaps his own. Viva Karamazov!No wonder we get no egress, no closure. I think that's why I had the sleep troubles. I don't even know what I want for Dmitri. It's easy to cling to "justice," transcendent rather than earthly, because it gives you a pretext for making up your mind, saying "oh yeah, Smerdy totally did it, Mitya must go free!"But will he just split some other drunk's head in the bar? Will he strangle Grushenka in a fit of jealousy? Will he just drink himself to death at fifty like yer bog-standard Russian male? Will any of those things detract from his human worth?That's three I dunnos and a Never!, for those of you keeping score. But just as this book, for all its open-endedness, inexorably forces you to renounce all the options but love and grace, so it cruelly forces you to accept the uncertainty and fear and pain that go along with accepting love and grace - no ill-defined divine panacea here. And maybe it would have turned out that way if the planned trilogy had been written - Dostoyevsky has a lot in common with Sartre, it occurs, and this book with The Age of Reason - but it would still have been a prayer, (it may be too much to say) for his dead son. It would have wrapped us up in arbitrarily "ultimate" safety, whereas this book on its own is more akin to a night of recrimination and stock-taking, tears for all the hurt we deal our dear and hated ones, and then stumbling out of bed, getting ready for the struggle, smoking a cigarette and tightening up our gut.

[ibreak4books · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

If you read for escape,this isn't your book. But if you don't mind tickling the noodle, pick it up and think about the nature of man.

[awhayouseh · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Dostoevsky at his best. Each character is a case study of what it means to be human.

[rybeewoods · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I loved this book! Don't ask me to sumarize it, because I couldn't. It's the story of three brothers who all took different paths to deal with their dead beat dad.

[sabreader · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I hadn't read this novel in years, but I loved it once again. The chapter on the "Grand Inquisitor" has particular resonance in these days where so-called "Christians" are claiming to act in the name of their god...

[mattearls · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I confess this would probably get a higher rating if I'd ever finished it.

[sullywriter_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The greatest novel ever written.

[jculkin-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

At times difficult and quite tedious... but after 200 pages there are some great events and better discussions. A confused but decidedly confused opinion about belief and faith. The 3 brothers are great characters.

[stef7sa-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I just don't get it. The characters are weird, I cannot understand their motives, I am not interested in their theories or philosophies. Different universe. Reminds me of the Lars von Triermovie Breaking the Waves, full of people and emotions alien to me.

[longhorndaniel · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Well it took me long enough but I finally finished; I did like the writing and the story was well thought out but was sometimes just tooooooooo drawn out for me. My favorite part was actually the characterizations.

[natek_23 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Welcome to crazy town.

[bookomaniac-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is one of the few books of Dostojevski that still are readable. And what a feast! This book is as "grand" as much of the other great work of D. but, at least here you can find a story that you can follow till the end. And what a beautifull story, thrilling till the end, and touching the very escence of being human.Is eigenlijk een van de weinige boeken van Dostojevski die nog echt overeind blijft, maar dan wel ineens een topper (en een klepper). Het is even breedvoerig (zoniet nog meer) dan de anderen, maar er steekt een verhaallijn in die tot op het eind wordt gevolgd. Stilistisch bovendien prachtig breeduit vertellend. De figuren worden bijna allemaal goed uitgewerkt. Aljosja is duidelijk de hoofdfiguur. En natuurlijk is het verhaal van de Groot-Inquisiteur een klassieker, zij het dat de slavofiele inslag ons westerlingen erg bevreemd.Eerste keer gelezen toen ik 17 jaar was; ik was onmiddellijk gegrepen.

[ehines_20 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A well-done Russian soap opera with philosophy and religion.

[selfcallednowhere · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

2 stars for the first half, 3.5 stars for the second half, compromising with three. The first half was MIND-NUMBINGLY BORING and I could not make myself care about it, but once the crime happened it started getting interesting to me. There was a LOT that could have been edited out even in the more interesting second half, though.

[garypatella · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is one of Dostoevsky's finest works. The story remains interesting throughout, despite the large number of pages. All characters, and their personalities, really come to life. Highly recommended.

[leonard_seet_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The crime: someone murdered Fyodor Karamozov, the wanton, irritable, and sadistic patriarch. The punishments: Smerdyakov, the illegitimate son, committed suicide after killing his father. Dmitri, the eldest son, passionate and immoderate like his father, whom the court found guilty of the murder, was condemned to Siberia. Ivan, the second son, who was “enlightened” and rational, struggled with the guilt of convincing his half-brother Smerdyakov that since God didn’t exist, everything, including patricide, was permitted. But as the dying monk Zosima had revealed and Dmitri soon realized, everyone was complicit in and thus implicated for the crime, since, for Dostoevsky, the web of sin entangled young and old to the extend that even children suffered from their peers’ sadism. Through his dream of the hungry and suffering children, Dmitri realized his guilt in the desire, that mustard seed in his mind, to kill his father and therefore willingly took upon the punishment for the crime he didn’t commit. In doing so, he assumed a Christ-figure, accepting punishment for another’s crime.The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor revealed Ivan’s enlightened rationalism for a humanistic dystopia, the socialist utopia that Dostoevsky condemned. Only when, in a hallucination, the “devil”--Ivan’s dark side-- revealed the parable of the learned atheist and thus rationalism’s arid futility did Ivan realized his guilt in rationalizing patricide and prodding Smerdyakov to commit it.And Smerdyakov, who mirrored Ivan’s unconsciousness and who carried the latter’s reasoning to the logical conclusion, like Judas, would not have the chance to repent or atone for his crime. In the end, Dmitri assumed his punishment. Through the tormented consciousness of Dmitri, Ivan, Smerdyakov and other characters, Dostoevsky grabbled with morality in an enlightened but Godless world, a world that he could not accept.

[hopingforchange · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Okay, so, I am biased. I generally dislike Russian lit; I particularly dislike Dostoevsky. I dislike Dostoevsky more now than I did before reading this. I will concede that the novel, particularly the last 150 pages has serious literary heft and some crazily beautiful philosophy. This does not, however, make The Brothers Karamazov an enjoyable read. I know that I sound decidedly lazy when I say this, but it's just so darned long! This book could easily have been 300 pages shorter with very little sacrificed. Overall, I can't say it's something I would read again.

[helenliz_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

 Blimy - that was L O N G!
Not bad, just so very very long. I'm not sure I really understood the necessity for the very long diversions into the meaning of the church and philosophy and so on. I suspect a good editor would have it down to ~ 250 pages, not the 770 I've just ploughed through.
The characters seemed to be in the pantomime mould - not very real - they were all extremes, and not very believable. I wonder if the three brothers were intended as examples of the intellectual (Ivan), the moral man (Alexei) and the pleasure seeker (Dmitri), aspects of character rather than being real characters themselves. In which case this is a morality play of sorts. The pleasure seeker is tried for a crime of passion that he, in fact, did not commit, while the intellectual suffers a nervous breakdown of some regard and end conversing with the devil - having denied the existence of God. (Note, denying God also tends to lead to denying the devil too, just a thought Ivan). Alexei is the only one that comes out with any credit, indicating that is the only true path in life. Can't quite see where the illegitimate son (assuming here) Smerdyakov fits into the morality play, unless it's that the guilty will not prosper.
Just far too long winded for me to really enjoy. I doubt this will be a book I'll come back to.

[chriskrycho · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of my favorite books. Dostoevsky shatters modernism and anticipates postmodernism – and manages this in the context of a novel that is archetypically Russian in breadth and scope.

[srboone · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Astonishing work by Dostoevsky, though it does become repetitive. Existential to a fault.

[clara53_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I doubt I can shed any new light on the masterpiece such as this book, so - just a few points that impressed me.... First: the fact is, I don't know of any author who can depict human agony to such an excruciatingly vivid extent as Dostoyevsky. He did it in "Crime and Punishment" and he did it here, in "The Brothers Karamazov". Secondly, we often talk of the so-called "developed" or "not developed enough" characters in literature. Here too, Dostoyevsky is on top: his characters are so shockingly realistic and "known" to him as if inside out, that one cannot help but come away in awe. And how about the little tale-turned-philosophy of "giving an onion"!!!... Having re-read this book in English translation just now, I must say that Princess Alexandra Kropotkin did a very good job as a translator, and except for the book's drawings (which were rather awful) I love this 1949 red-and-gold edition of "The Brothers Karamazov" that I unearthed at a used bookstore.

[schmerguls · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

SPOILERS. On Mar 6, 1956, my comment: "Reading in Brothers Karamazov. Elder Zossima has just died. Now I reckon we'll return to the brothers, after a diversion concening Zossima. Dmitri is set to do something terrible." On Mar 11: "The Brothers Karamazov is enthralling. The picture drawn of Kolya Krassatin, a 13-year-old prodigy. is wondrous. Whether Mitya will be convicted I don't know. Did Ivan maybe kill his father? I don't know--I'm sure Mitya didn't. The story has been consistently excellent for chapters now." On Mar 13: "Smerdyakov has said he did it! This, in conversation with Ivan. Dmitri's trial is tomorrow, and Smerdyakov is sure Ivan won't tell on him, and even if he does, Smerdykov is sure no one will believe him. Dmitri, after knocking on the window, and after Fyodor screamed, ran away. Grigory ran after him and got hit in the head by Dmitri. Smerdyakov, who was shamming a epilectic fit, heard Fyodor was still alive so he went to him, knocked, and was admitted, and Smerdyakov killed him with a paper weight, and took the 3000 rubles. Grigory says the door was open, but he just imagines this, though it is a key thing in the case against Dmitri. Now the thing remains--will Ivan turn Smerdyakov in, and will they believe Ivan even if he does?" On Mar 16: "Read some in Brothers Karamazov. Mitya (Dmitri) will apparently be convicted. Katarina has produced the implicatory letter Dmitri wrote her a couple days before the murder. Katerina did this because Ivan testified of his talk with Smerydayev before the latter's suicide," On Mar 18: "Finished the book. Dmitri was convicted by the jury despite the eloquence of his defense counsel. Katerina was making plans for his escape as the book ended. 'Twas a great book, and I enjoyed most of it. It was long-winded and boring at the beginnng and the long speeches at the end held not my interest. Neither did the convoluted meanderings of the peculiar Russian minds. The part I liked best was the story of Katyn and Ilyusha, and the dog, etc. That was genuinely pathetic, touching and inspiring.

[figre · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Let me explain the lesson I learned with this book. Do not even think about approaching Dostoyevsky with the idea that you can skim through, have a quick read, knock it off in an afternoon, get the point without too much work. In other words, devote the time and energy to reading Dostoyevsky that he put into the writing.I say this because, contrary to the way I approached The Idiot (and who does that make idiot?), I approached this book with the idea that I would take some time with it. I made sure I knew the characters. I made sure I knew the locations. I made sure I knew the circumstances. And, because of that, I had one of the best reading experiences I have ever, well...experienced.You can read synopses anywhere. I will simply say that this is story of four brothers and their father – the way they interact, the way their lives move forward. There are people you will like, there are people you will dislike, and there are people you will change your mind about whether you like or dislike. In other words, lives that match the way people really are.It seems ludicrous, a recommendation from someone like me for you to read a classic. But there are a lot of "bad" classics out there, and we should all be steered away from them.Do not steer away from this one. Set aside the time; set aside the brainpower. And delve into a fascinating world. (And now, maybe, I better go back and take another look at that book of Dostoyevsky's I gave short shrift.)

[lisamaria_c · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

On the surface this novel could be read as a psychological thriller, family drama, and murder mystery--with enough of a twist to satisfy an Agatha Christie fan. It's rather beside the point though, and the reveal is hardly the climax of the book. This is after all one of the most celebrated works of not just Russian, but world literature, one of the candidates for greatest novel ever written. My introduction to Dostoyevsky was an excerpt from this novel, the chapter "The Grand Inquisitor." And not in a literature course, but a philosophy course, where it was used to raise issues about the nature of God and the problem of evil. It's the speech of (and a story by) the atheist Ivan Karamazov he tells to his devout brother Aloysha. And to give Dostoyevsky his due, he props up no straw man--it's a powerful indictment of God.Not that I always appreciated the religious-themed passages. My Dostoyesky could go on and on... Those of you who complained about the speechifying in the novels by Russian-born Ayn Rand? The similarities in style are no accident--she was a fan of Dostoyevsky--certainly not of his philosophy, to which she was diametrically opposed, but of the way he wove such themes into plot and character. Sometimes I felt preached at in this novel--I particularly found the chapter on the sainted Zossima's teachings an unbearable slog, and by midpoint I decided to skip the rest of that chapter. Maybe some day I'll go back, but I rather doubt it. But believe me, that was the only part I skipped or wanted to skip. The eldest brother Mitya sometimes came across as too-stupid-to-live and the youngest Aloysha too goodie-goodie. And every female character was a drama queen--not that the men fare much better. But as long as the focus was on the brothers and their relationships with each other and their odious father, I was riveted. And certainly each of them were more engaging to follow through hundreds of pages than Raskolnikov, the monomaniacal and repulsive center of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. Certainly I'd be much more likely to read more of Doestoyevsky than Tolstoy, whose War and Peace bored me to tears (although I did rather relish Anna Karinina.) I do absolutely think The Brothers Karamazov lives up to its reputation as one of those great works everyone would learn a lot from being acquainted with--and an engrossing story as well.

[kakadoo202 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

i made it only half way through. i could not relate to any of the characters. the action was slow if there was even any action and then all the difference side stories and life stories of each character. just not my cup of tea.

[meriwetherr-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Some really great content thematically... BUT it's probably the most tedious book I've ever read. Someone explained to me that these used to come out in something like a magazine or newspaper form periodically, which makes some sense. But still... find an abridged version if you can.