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Fyodor Dostoyevsky - The Brothers Karamazov
Recently I was given an unabridged copy of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. Although I have had the ”authoritative modern abridgment” by Edmund Fuller version for many years, a version dog eared and worn for having been read and reread, I never thought to seek out the complete work.
Once I began reading it, I was struck by just how much was omitted and how those omissions seemed to speak to me. One passage in particularly seemed to jump out and thought worth reproducing at some length since, like myself, most people only read the abridged version.
The passage comes from the section titled Conversations and Exhortations of Father Zossima (e) The Russian monk and his possible significance. In it, Father Zossima contrasts the everyday orientation of the lay person with that of the devout monk. He points to the then newly emerging faith in science and progress to contrast with the faith of the monk. For the lay person:
They have science; but in science there is nothing but what is the object of sense. The spiritual world, the higher part of man’s being is rejected altogether, dismissed with a sort of triumph, even with hatred. The world has proclaimed the reign of freedom, especially of late, but what do we see in this freedom of theirs? Nothing but slavery and self-destruction! For the world says:
“You have desires and so satisfy them, for you have the same rights as the most rich and powerful. Don’t be afraid of satisfying them and even multiply your desires.” That is the modern doctrine of the world. In that they see freedom. And what follows from this right of multiplication of desires? In the rich, isolation and spiritual suicide; in the poor, envy and murder; for they have been given rights, but have not been shown the means for satisfying their wants …
…Interpreting freedom as the multiplication and rapid satisfaction of desires, men distort their own nature, for many senseless and foolish desires and habits and ridiculous fancies are fostered in them. They live only for mutual envy, for luxury and ostentation. They have dinners, visits, carriages, rank and slaves to wait on one is looked upon as a necessity, for which life, honor and human feelings are sacrificed, and men even commit suicide if they are unable to satisfy it. We see the same thing among those who are rich, while the poor drown their unsatisfied need and their envy in drunkenness. But soon they will drink blood instead of wine, they are being led to it. I ask you is such a man free?
…it’s no wonder that instead of gaining freedom they have sunk into slavery, and instead of serving the cause of brotherly love and the union of humanity have fallen, on the contrary, into dissension and isolation and therefore the idea of the service of humanity, of brotherly love and the solidarity of mankind, is more and more dying out in the world, and indeed this idea is sometimes treated with derision. For how can a man shake off his habits, what can become of him if he is in such bondage to the habit of satisfying the innumerable desires he has created for himself? He is isolated, and what concern has he with the rest of humanity? They have succeeded in accumulating a greater mass of objects, but the joy in the world has grown less.
Photo from lungstruck licensed under Creative Commons
11 Comments
I have a copy of the book, but keep putting off reading it. I guess I need to take it slowly – as your post shows how much wisdom there is inside the book
The Edmund Fuller version is 510 pages long and that may be why it never occurred to me that it was an abridged version, the unabridged version by Random House is 822 pages in length. That gives you an idea of just how much was left out of the former.
It’s astonishingly delightful to come across new passages like the one above and feel its relevance. I hope you get the chance to read the book, either abridged or unabridged.
If it’s at all possible, do get the Pevear translation. Many others don’t include the foreword “From the Author”. That introduction, along with Pevear’s footnotes, will really be helpful. Here’s a small extract from the Pevear:
“…the trouble is, that while I have just one biography, I have two novels. The main novel is the second one – about the activities of my hero in our time, that is, in our present, current moment…”
This curious statement has been interpreted to mean an actual second novel,
which never did come to be – but another reading points to a deeper significance, that the authorship of such a work, in its entirety, relies as well on the participation of the reader ‘in our present, current moment’ and that’s what makes an ongoing experience between reader and author possible.
The passages detailing Father Zossima’s life and sayings are midway through the novel, and have been compiled by the hero, Alyosha, so in effect a manuscript within the novel, but one that has been written down ‘from memory some time after the elder’s death,’ which occurs midway through. So, once again, there is a shift in the ‘now’ of this manuscript – the reader comes to it in the timeline of the novel, yet this writing comes from outside of the novel itself.
That’s why I am positive that Dostoievski meant in his foreword the second interpretation of his words about two novels. The joy of it is that he wants his readers to figure things out for themselves all the way along.
Have fun!
Are you kidding me? Over eight hundred pages? What substance do you suggest to help get me through it. Are you thinking coffee would help or wine and beer. Or something even stronger.
I adore Gogol and Tolstoy, but D. is just painful so often. It could be that I am not imbibing whatever it is he did when he wrote the book. (As far as modern day novels, sometimes I don’t like an author, and then I find out they are a coffee nut, so I need to do coffee to get through them and enjoy it. I have had other friends tell me that is definitely the trick to wrapping your mind around a book that is tough going.)
Just jump into it. If it engages and draws you in you will become absorbed within the world the author created without any conscious effort. The length, difficulty, and temporal space dissolves and becomes meaningless;it’s a similar experience to approaching other authentic objects of art, be it music,painting, poetry …it is a voluntary act not to be forced…
You are entirely wrong but it’s okay. This was D’s last work – he wrote it after his three year old son, Alexey (Alyosha) died of the epilepsy D had passed on to him. D was of course devastated by this, but a visit to the Optino monastery helped him through it, and he incorporated what he learned there into this work. To abridge it, in my mind, was a travesty. Some truths aren’t easily passed on, but if you wouldn’t be interested in making the effort, as many are not, you will perhaps find them elsewhere.
Elise, don’t take what I just wrote the wrong way – it’s definitely a difficult work. And to my mind, no English translation yet entirely does it justice. I’m not a Russian scholar, but I was fortunate to be in a group discussing the work with a Russian professor who loved Dostoievski and put his ideas in context, no easy thing to do. I am myself presently attempting my own translation (even the Pevear falls down a bit) and as I have done in the past I will bring you some extracts from time to time, so I did mean that you could find some of the truths in our comments here, and just the gradual recognition of the work, which pagostino has admirably begun, can perhaps give entry to the novel itself.
Here’s one point to consider: the word ‘novel’ translates in Russian to ‘roman’ – which I’ve always found helpful. ‘Roman’ goes to ‘romance’ in a warmer way than just the word ‘novel’. So, in his introduction Dostoievski is talking about his ‘roman’. Another point is that the father in the story has the same name ‘Fyodor’ as Dostoievski himself. The little bit of his biography I gave above was helpful to me in
giving something to relate to as I went along, and there is a lot more that makes it a worthwhile attempt.
Here is a link to a debate between the late Christopher Hitchens and Chris Hedges on religion and God that cover in contemporary political dialogue a topic which Dostoyevski covers in matchless prose between Ivan and Alexey and point to the timeless relevance of The Brothers Karamozov.
http://www.againstthegrain.org/program/509/id/511232/tues-12-20-11-christopher-hitchens-v-chris-hedges-religion
What a good background detail to know. To think this great author had been so devastated. I can’t imagine losing a child. Yet he went on and continued to write. Thanks for this insight.
Thank you for linking to that debate. It goes very well with Father Zossima’s description of the modern doctrine of the world as you quoted it above. Mr. Hitchins’ point about the similarity between the Communist institution and tsardom is a valid one, but as Dostoievski points out, there is a difference between a state religion and the faith of individual religious persons. (He himself was brought before a firing squad, then exiled to Siberia for freethinking, so his consideration of this problem had to take an oblique form.) It is very interesting that the novel opens with the consideration of an ‘institution’ that is dying out – that of the elders, to whom the Russian people would go to work out their problems. Father Zossima is presented as the last of these at the fictional monastery in which the novel is set. (For this reason I do not think Mr. Hedges is entirely correct in his analysis, since there is something to be said for traditions that are not hungry for power but supportive of individual freedoms.)
Thank you for this interesting thread.
Speaks the conservative. The Russian people indeed had desires: enough food, decent housing, freedom from arbitrary abuse by the nobility. These don’t seem to me unreasonable or a distortion of nature.
I wonder if Dostoyevsky agreed with Zossima wholly, or if he gave Zossima those words as an exposition of that view.