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The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1880) (Read in 2014)

Published by marco on

Updated by marco on

Disclaimer: these are notes I took while reading this book. They include citations I found interesting or enlightening or particularly well-written. In some cases, I’ve pointed out which of these applies to which citation; in others, I have not. Any benefit you gain from reading these notes is purely incidental to the purpose they serve of reminding me what I once read. Please see Wikipedia for a summary if I’ve failed to provide one sufficient for your purposes. If my notes serve to trigger an interest in this book, then I’m happy for you.

Like Tolstoy’s novels, this was published as a serial in a magazine of the time called The Messenger. There isn’t an encompassing story arc, so it’s hard to call it a novel as such. It felt more like a collection of short stories and novellas that included the same cast of characters.

The first part is a long introduction to the debauched family of the Karamazovs and the other locals who they’ve drawn into their tawdry orbit. At the center of the first act is the patriarch Fyodor, who argumentatively fences with his three sons, Ivan, Dmitri (Mitya) and Alexander (Alyosha). There is a fourth (possible) son in the person of Smerdyakov.

A subsequent longer section is a long sermon by Ivan, as told to Alyosha. This was the most interesting part of the book thus far.

The life story of Father Zossima follows. This is the spiritual father of Alyosha, who is pledging to be a monk and values this elder above all others.

Kolya is a young narrator in book 5 (?) who is remarkably full of himself, as clever young man of that age typically are.

his narrative voice is also a prime example of what I consider to be the main problem with reading 19th-century Russian literature that is heralded the world over as top-one-hundred if not top-ten of all time.

With modern literature—that is, written during my time or near to it, say mid-20th century and onward—I can usually determine the intended tone of the writing. Is the author espousing his own views through a character? Or is the author espousing views he does not support through that character? If a character is ludicrous and pompous and just out-and-out wrong-headed, I can laugh along, knowing that the author intended to parody opposing worldviews.

However, with Dostoyevsky (and, to a lesser degree, with Tolstoy), while I know what I think of the characters and their views, I am often unsure of what the author intended. I feel like the guy who laughs out loud at a sad movie because he doesn’t realize that the director was being dead-serious.

This doesn’t interfere with my enjoyment of the writing—such as it is—but it certainly makes it more difficult to slog through long conversations between what I consider to be fools discussing utter foolishness when I don’t know whether the author is in on the joke. In net effect, I feel that I can read more of the exact same writing when I know it’s a parody than when I feel that the author intended to convey what he or she considers to be deep truths.

It may reflect poorly on me, I suppose.

Perhaps something is lost in translation or there is too great a distance between the culture that created the literature. I feel that my enjoyment of this type of great literature is too superficial. I see sparks where I feel that I am in on the joke, where I appreciate a bit of cleverness that or phrase, but I am saddled with doubt that I am enjoying the right thing.

On the other hand, I don’t want to be told by experts how I’m supposed to enjoy the book. I would like to be able to enjoy the ins and outs without help but, short of becoming an fluent reader of Russian and possibly more of an expert on a culture and mindset that lies over a century in the past, this will not be possible. That is, I can enjoy other good works on a much deeper level that I can these great works of art. That’s OK, though. I just wish that people would hedge their recommendation that “everyone should read these” to acknowledge that the level of enjoyment, satisfaction and understanding will vary greatly. While this is always the case, it is all the more likely when the original language and culture of the author of the work stands in such stark contrast to that of the reader.

The trial. The trial. It was a farce, with either Dostoyevsky or his translator Constance Gardner constantly using the word “evidence” when “hearsay” would have been much much more accurate.

Citations

I like this bit of drunken logic,

“The monks in the monastery probably believe that there’s a ceiling in hell, for instance. Now I’m ready to believe in hell, but without a ceiling. It make it more refined, more Lutheran that is. And, after all, what does it matter whether it has a ceiling or hasn’t? But, do you know, there’s a damnable question involved in it? If there’s no ceiling there can be no hooks, and if there are no hooks it all breaks down, which is unlikely again, for then there would be none to drag me down to hell, and if they don’t drag me down what justice is there in the world? If faudrait les inventer, those hooks, on purpose for me alone, for, if you only knew, Alyosha, what a blackguard I am.”
Page 23-24
“I have a longing for life, and I go on living in spite of logic. Though I may not believe in the order of the universe, yet I love the sticky little leaves as they open in spring. I love the blue sky, I love some people whom one loves you know sometimes without knowing why. I love some great deeds done by men, though I’ve long ceased perhaps to have faith in them, yet from old habit one’s heart prizes them. Here they have brought the soup for you, eat it, it will do you good. It’s first-rate soup, they know how to make it here. I want to travel in Europe, Alyosha, I shall set off from here. And yet I know that I am only going to a graveyard, but it’s a most precious graveyard, that’s what it is! Precious are the dead that life there, every stone over them speaks of such burning life in the past, of such passionate faith in their work, their truth, their struggle and their science, that I know I shall fall on the ground and kiss those stones and weep over them: though I’m convinced in my heart that it’s long been nothing but a graveyard. And I shall not weep from despair, but simply because I shall be happy in my tears, I shall steep my soul in my emotion. I love the sticky leaves in spring, the blue sky—that’s all it is. It’s not a matter of intellect or logic, it’s loving with one’s inside, with one’s stomach. One loves the first strength of one’s youth. Do you understand anything of my tirade, Alyosha?” Ivan laughed suddenly.”
Page 225–226

Quoting Patton Oswalt: “I’m glad you like a book.”

“Fathers and teachers, forgive me and don’t be angry, that like a little child I’ve been babbling of what you knew long ago, and can teach me a hundred times more skillfully. I only speak from rapture and forgive my tears, for I love the Bible.”
Page 289–290
“The jealous man can forgive extraordinarily quickly (though, of course, after a violent scene), and he is able to forgive infidelity almost conclusively proved, the very kisses and embraces he has seen, if only he can somehow be convinced that is has all been “for the last time,” and that his rival will vanish from that day forward, will depart to the ends of the earth, or that he himself will carry her away somewhere, where that dreaded rival will not get neaer her. Of course the reconciliation is only for an hour. For, even if the rival did disappear next day, he would invent another one and would be jealous of him. And one might wonder what there was in a love that had to be so watched over, what a love could be worth that needed such strenuous guarding. But that the jealous will never understand. And yet among them are men of noble hearts. It is remarkable, too, that those very men of noble hearts, standing hidden in some cupboard, listening and spying, never feel the strings of conscience at that moment, anyway, though they understand clearly enough with their “noble hearts” the shameful depths to which they have voluntarily sunk.”
Page 382

In this next piece, I can’t tell if she’s serious or crazy or taking the piss and, if so, whether she does that deliberately and maliciously. The old woman is proposing to loan Dmitri money in the form of the idea of telling him to go find gold mines and mine them. Subsequent passages indicate that Dmitri took this suggestion seriously but discarded it because of its being too much work.

“The money is as good as in your pocket, not three thousand, but three million, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, in less than no time. I’ll make you a present of the idea: you shall find gold-mines, make millions, return and become a leading man, and wake us up and lead us to better things.”
Page 386-387

Kolya and his mother, in a classic relationship:

“He was extremely vain. He knew how to make even his mother give way to him; he was almost despotic in his control of her. She gave way to him, oh, she had given way to him for years. The one thought unendurable to her was that her boy had no great love for her. She was always fancying that Kolya was “unfeeling” to her, and at times, dissolving into hysterical tears, she used to reproach him with his coldness. The boy disliked this, and the more demonstrations of feeling were demanded of him the more he seemed intentionally to avoid them. Yet it was not intentional on his part but instinctive—it was his character. His mother was mistaken; he was very fond of her. He only disliked “sheepish sentimentality”, as he expressed it in his schoolboy language.”
Page 511
“Habit is the greatest motive-power.”

The captain is extremely poor and the doctor appears at his home to advise him on his ailing son. The doctor recommends experts in Paris, to which the captain responds,

“Doctor, doctor! But you see!” the captain flung wide his hands again despairingly, indicating the bare wooden walls of the passage.”
Page 555

The captain is ashamed to directly address his poverty but appeals instead for the doctor to adjust his diagnosis and recommendation to something appropriate to the circumstances. The doctor responds quite coldly,

“Well, that’s not my business,“ grinned the doctor. “I have only told you the answer of medical science to your question as to possible treatment. As for the rest, to my regret—”
Page 555

While his answer is most likely correct, it is cold and ignores the duty of the a doctor to provide at least a modicum of comfort. If there’s nothing to be done, there is no point in mentioning all of the things that could be done were more money available. In honestly, the experts in Paris probably couldn’t do anything either but suck money from the patient’s father’s pockets. But the world and its solutions are for the rich. The cruelty lies in the doctor reminding the captain of that in the depths of his pathos.

“Brother, these last two months I’ve found in myself a new man. A new man has risen up in me. He was hidden in me, but would never have come to the surface, if it hadn’t been for this blow from heaven. I am afraid! And what do I care if I spend twenty years in the mines, breaking ore with a hammer? I am not a bit afraid of that—it’s something else I am afraid of now: that that new man may leave me. Even there, in the mines, under-ground, I may find a human heart in another convict and murderer by my side, and I may make friends with him, for even there one may live and love and suffer. One may thaw and revive a frozen heart in that convict, one may wait upon him for years, and at last bring up from the dark depths a lofty soul, a feeling, suffering creature: one may bring forth an angel, a create a hero! There are so many of them, hundreds of them, and we are all to blame for them.”
How could you help reckoning on him? if he killed him, then he would lose all the rights of a nobleman, his rank and property, and would go off to exile; so his share of the inheritance would come to you and your brother Alexey Fyodorovitch in equal parts; so you'd each have not forty, but sixty thousand each. There's not a doubt you did reckon on Dmitri Fyodorovitch
“That was quite right what you taught me, for you talked a lot to me about that. For if there’s no everlasting God, there’s no such thing as virtue, and there’s no need of it. You were right there. So that’s how I looked at it.”
Page 628–629
“He had unmistakably been, at some time, in good and fashionable society, had once had good connections, had possibly preserved them indeed, but, after a gay youth, becoming gradually impoverished on the abolition of serfdom, he had sunk into the position of a poor relation of the best class, wandering from one good old friend to another and received by them for his companionable and accommodating disposition and as being, after all, a gentleman who could be asked to sit down with any one, though, of course, not in a place of honor. Such gentlemen of accommodating temper and dependent position, who can tell a story, take a hand at cards, and who have a distinct aversion for any duties that may be forced upon them, are usually solitary creatures, either bachelors or widowers.”
Page 632
“What would become of an ax in space? Quelle idée! If it were to fall to any distance, it would being, I think, flying round the earth without knowing why, like a satellite. The astronomers would calculate the rising and the setting of the ax, Gatzuk would put it in his calendar, that’s all.”
Page 637

And this is possibly the inspiration for the most-famous utterance of Marvin the paranoid android.

“Philosophy, indeed, when all my right side is numb and I am moaning and groaning. I’ve tried all the medical faculty: they can diagnose beautifully, they have the whole of your disease at their finger-tips, but they’ve no idea how to cure you.”
Page 637-638
“<Why, you keep thinking of our present earth! But our present earth may have been repeated a billion times. Why, it’s become extinct, been frozen; cracked, broken into bits, disintegrated into its elements, again ‘the water above the firmament,’ then again a comet, again a sun, again from the sun it becomes earth—and the same sequence may have been repeated endlessly and exactly the same to every detail, most unseemly and insufferably tedious—”
Page 641-642
“in his opinion the prisoner was now, and had been all along, in a perfectly normal condition, and, although he certainly must have been in a nervous and exceedingly excited state before his arrest, this might have been due to several perfectly obvious causes, jealousy, anger, continual drunkenness, and so on. (Emphasis added.)”
Page 672
“At the first temptation—for instance, to entertain the woman with whom he had already squandered half the money—he would have unpicked his little bag and have taken out some hundred roubles, for why should he have taken back precisely half the money, that is, fifteen hundred roubles? Why not fourteen hundred? He could just as well have said then that he was not a thief, because he brought back fourteen hundred roubles. Then another time he would have unpicked it again and taken out another hundred, and then a third, and then a fourth, and before the end of the month he would have taken the last note but one, feeling that if he took back only a hundred it would answer the purpose, for a thief would have stolen it all. And then he would have looked at this last note, and have said to himself, ‘It’s really not worth while to give back one hundred; let’s spend that, too!’ That’s how the real Dmitri Karamazov, as we know him, would have behaved. One cannot imagine anything more incongruous with the actual fact than this legend of the little bag.”
Page 700–701
“By some pre-temporal assignment, which I have never been able to figure out, I am appointed ‘to negate,’ whereas I am sincerely kind and totally unable to negate. No, they say, go and negate, without negation there can be no criticism, and what sort of journal has no ‘criticism section.’ Without criticism, there would be nothing but ‘Hosannahs.’ But Hosannahs alone are not enough for life, it is necessary that this “Hosannah’ pass through the crucible of doubt, and so on, in the same vein. I don’t meddle with any of that, by the way, I didn’t create it, and I can’t answer for it. So they chose themselves a scapegoat, they made me write for the criticism section, and life came about. We understand this comedy: I, for instance, demand simply and directly that I be destroyed. No, they say, live! Because without you there would be nothing. If everything on Earth were sensible, nothing would happen. Without you, there would be no events, and there must be events. And so, I serve, grudgingly, for the sake of events, and I do the unreasonable on orders. People take this whole comedy for something serious, despite all their undeniable intelligence. That is their tragedy.
from The Devil [or Ivan K’s fever-dream of him

Errata

When I read books that I downloaded from Gutenberg Project, I like to be helpful and provide corrections where I can. They have a very friendly and responsive errata-submission system.

Page 24:
  J’ai bu l’ombre d’un cocher qui avec l’ombre d’une brosse frottait
    replace “bu” with “vu”; J’ai [vu] l’ombre d’un cocher qui avec

Page 564–565:
  What a girl I am! Blurring things out!
    Replace “Blurring” with “Blurting”; What a girl I am! Blurting things out!

Page 700-701
  fifteen hundred roubles? why not fourteen hundred?
    Capitalize “why”; [W]hy not fourteen hundred?