Текст книги "The Brothers Karamazov"
Автор книги: Федор Достоевский
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Dostoevsky often brings divergent and conflicting personalities together in scenes of excruciating embarrassment, variously known as his ‘conclaves’ or ‘scandal scenes’. Possibly the most memorable of these in The Brothers Karamazovoccurs in the monastery in Part I, Book Two. Typically Dostoevsky sets the scene in a place and on an occasion where a high degree of social decorum is expected. Any breach of it will inevitably cause offence and embarrassment. He places there at least one character who sets great store by the preservation of this decorum but who is on edge in fear of a disaster. He also introduces a number of other characters who in a variety of ways are likely to cause some sort of scandal – perhaps because this kind of decorum goes against their normal inclinations. But they are also predisposed to do things to upset each other; their personalities and interests are bound to clash and since they are all play-acting to some degree, they may try to ‘unmask’ each other and show up the other’s lie. Interestingly, it is not the monks who are embarrassed. Equally interestingly, Zosima accurately diagnoses the source of Fyodor Karamazov’s provocative behaviour, advising him not to lie, above all to himself. The victims of the scandal are Miusov and the Karamazovs.
Another memorable scandal scene, though played out on a less public stage, is described in the chapter ‘The Two Together’, in which Grushenka has lured Katerina into pouring out her heart, only to turn on the girl and humiliate her, finally revealing in a parting taunt that she knows her awful secret. Katerina is devastated in Alyosha’s presence, just as Grushenka had planned. At a time when Katerina is emotionally vulnerable she proffers love and then cruelly withdraws it. She calls attention to areas of Katerina’s personality of which Katerina is but dimly aware and which she is unwilling to recognize. She stimulates her emotionally in a situation where it is disastrous for her to respond. She exposes her almost simultaneously to stimulation and frustration and switches from one emotional wavelength to another while on the same topic. Finally, she blames Katerina for provoking the scene which she has herself engineered. These are akin to the strategies which the psychologist R. D. Laing has identified as causing the most intense emotional confusion. They can be found at work frequently between Dostoevsky’s characters.
But the ‘multivoicedness’ of Dostoevsky’s novel is not restricted to dialogue between and within the characters and the narrator. It has other important functions. One of them involves the constant echoes of other texts. Of course if one actually knows these texts intimately the echoes are richer and more thought-provoking. Otherwise they appear as little more than unfamiliar quotations. Footnotes can do little to repair this deficiency. Still, if one is aware of the precursor voices summoned up through the shared memory of author and reader one still senses that multidimensionality which is one of the glories of The Brothers Karamazov.Such awareness may stimulate all sorts of reflections which the author was unaware of, especially if the ‘allusions’ one detects are to texts which post-date the novel. Some would call such connections misreading. Others would point to them as evidence of Dostoevsky’s extraordinary powers of anticipation.
The novel contains over eighty quotations from the Bible alone. Over forty different sources are mentioned or quoted by Ivan in ‘The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor’. In addition quotations from hagiography and religious folklore, Pushkin, Schiller, Shakespeare, Nekrasov, Herzen, Pecherin, Polezhaev and others, not to mention contemporary journalism, abound throughout the novel. The end-notes to this edition will indicate the sources of some of them. But, as Nina Perlina has pointed out, their significance does not end with their place in the text or the associations they may have in our memories of their sources. Sometimes, for example, sources are reaccen-tuated and misquoted, and this may play an important role in characterization. Perlina notes that in his drafts to Part I of the novel, Dostoevsky wrote,
Most important... the landowner quotes from the Gospel and makes a crude mistake. Miusov corrects him and he makes even worse errors. Even the scholar makes mistakes. No-one knows the Gospel. ‘Blessed is the womb that bore thee,’ ... said Christ... It is not Christ who said that ...
Sometimes, of course, there is no quotation or overt allusion, but the well-read reader will catch the tones of other texts, and the likeness is so compelling one suspects that such texts have served Dostoevsky as models, even unconsciously. Hackel’s view that Dostoevsky must have modelled his presentation of Zosima in part on the Bishop Bienvenu in Victor Hugo’s novel Les Misérablesis based partly on such intuitions and partly on Dostoevsky’s known admiration for the book.
The result of such techniques is that the reader’s mind is encouraged to stray from the path of the narrative and to reflect on connections, parallels, echoes, both within the text and without. The narrator’s own inadequacies and uncertainties also encourage this. But the more one ponders the novel the more one realizes that one is dealing with layer upon layer of text, of voice echoing other voices and not with a single reliable ‘true’ version of events or of life. The sections of the book which purport to lay bare the truth in one form or other (‘The Legend’, Zosima’s testament, the trial) seem to exhibit this most clearly. ‘The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor’, for example, that mighty myth of modern times, is presented as a poem, not to be taken literally, never written down, and recalled by one of the characters in conversation with another. How the narrator got hold of it in all its detail is never explained. Zosima’s discourse is introduced by the narrator, but it appears to be his account of Alyosha’s recollections of fragments of conversations with Zosima over a period of time. This itself contains recollections of fragments of conversations with Markel and the mysterious visitor. The mysterious visitor, in turn, talks about his own past experiences. And so on. As for the trial, the inadequacy of every account – the prosecutor’s, the defence counsel’s, the witnesses’ – to the evidence with which the reader is acquainted simply underlines their provisional nature.
This is why Nathalie Sarraute, an exponent of the French nouveau roman,could write,
The time had long passed when a Proust could believe that ‘in pushing his powers of penetration to their limits’ he could ‘attempt to reach those far depths where truth, the ultimate reality, our authentic experience reside.’ Everyone now knew, enlightened by successive deceptions, that there is no such thing as ultimate reality. ‘Our authentic experience has been revealed as a multiplicity of depths and these depths go on to infinity.’
It is to this vision that she assimilates Dostoevsky which is not to say, of course, that he was unconcerned with truth to life in the social sphere. That he consulted experts in matters of theology, psychology (Ivan’s nightmare) and legal procedure (the trial) is well attested. It does, however, point to the diversity of possible interpretations.
Many of these interpretations can be found in the critical literature on the novel. There are many general books on Dostoevsky’s life and work. Konstantin Mochulsky’s scholarly but highly readable work is still rightly regarded by many as the classic work of its kind. More recent is Richard Peace’s fine book which provides an excellent reading of The Brothers Karamazov.It is notable, among other things, for its treatment of the tradition of the Russian Old Believers in Dostoevsky’s novel. And, although it certainly cannot be regarded as an introductory study, no list of works on Dostoevsky nowadays should fail to draw attention to Bakhtin’s seminal book, which has probably been more influential than any other, not only on Dostoevsky studies but on literary studies in general.
Among books specifically on this novel, Victor Terras’ Karamazov Companionis an invaluable guide to every student of Russian literature. It has a long introduction which examines virtually every aspect of the novel, thematic and stylistic. Robert Belknap’s latest book on the novel displays many remarkable critical insights and is the work of a distinguished and influential scholar who has devoted many years to his subject.
New Essays on Dostoevsky,edited by myself and Garth Terry, contains an excellent psychological study of Ivan Karamazov by K. F. Seeley and an exceptionally knowledgeable and well-presented analysis of Zosima’s discourse by Sergei Hackel.
This brings me to the philosophical and religious dimensions of the novel. Sandoz’s magnificent book on the ‘Legend of the Grand Inquisitor’ is required reading. Stewart Sutherland’s book brings the insights of an Anglo-Saxon philosopher tf bear on the religious philosophy of the novel with some surprisingly positive and fruitful results. Gibson’s book, also written by a philosopher, adopts a more conventional, but no less informative approach. In Cambridge, Diane Thompson has recently published a fine and convincing study of the fundamental structuring role of memory in the novel which is sure to stimulate much interesting discussion.
Some readers will be fascinated by Wasiolek’s English translation of the Notebooks for The Brothers Karamazov.Notebooks can be very difficult to translate because by their very nature notes are often elliptical and obscure: the associations which they had in the mind of the writer, using another language, are often impossible to capture, especially in translation. Very often too notebooks are distinguished by what the author rejected rather than what leads directly into his text. So they should always be used with caution in interpreting obscure parts of the published work. But with these warnings the enthusiastic reader may find much of interest in them and explore the writer’s workshop at leisure. As a matter of fact the drafts that remain are relatively late and close to the text we know.
There are many biographies of Dostoevsky. The most recent, which can be thoroughly recommended, is Geir Kjet-saa’s Fyodor Dostoyevsky: A Writer’s Life.
Last of all (or possibly first of all) some readers may like to explore W.J. Leatherbarrow’s magisterial and invaluable Reference Guide,which lists, with commentary, over twelve thousand books and articles in many languages by and about Dostoevsky. Many of them are, of course, in English and many of them are relevant to The Brothers Karamazov.This is a book above all for the specialist, but for him or her it is indispensable.
So I return to my starting point. That, for better or for worse, is the fate of classics.
Malcolm V. Jones
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bakhtin, Mikhail, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics,University of Manchester Press, Manchester, 1984.
Belknap, Robert, The Structure of The Brothers Karamazov’,Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Illinois, 1989.
– The Genesis of ’The Brothers Karamazov’,Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Illinois, 1990.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, The Notebooks for ‘The Brothers Karamazov’,edited and translated by Edward Wasiolek, Chicago University Press, Chicago and London, 1971.
Gibson, A. Boyce, The Religion of Dostoevsky,S. F. V. Press, London, 1973
Jones, Malcolm V., and Terry, Garth M., eds., New Essays on Dostoyevsky,Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983.
Kjetsaa, Geir, Fyodor Dostoyevsky: A Writer’s Life,Macmillan, London, 1987.
Leatherbarrow, W. J., Fedor Dostoevsky, a reference guide,G. K. Hall & Co., Boston, Mass., 1990.
Mochulsky, Konstantin, Dostoevsky,Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., 1967.
Peace, Richard A., Dostoyevsky, an Examination of the Major Novels,Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1971.
Sandoz, Ellis, Political Apocalypse: Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor,Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, 1971.
Sutherland Stewart R., Atheism and the Rejection of God: Contemporary Philosophy and‘ The Brothers Karamazov’,Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1977.
Terras, Victor, A Karamazov Companion,University of Wisconsin Press, Wisconsin, 1981.
Thompson, Diane Denning, The Brothers Karamazov and the Poetics of Memory,Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991.
List of Characters
The following list comprises the names of the novel’s main characters, with variants and pronunciation. Russian names are composed of first name, patronymic (from the father’s first name), and family name. Formal address requires the use of first name and patronymic; diminutives are commonly used among family and friends and are for the most part endearing, but in a certain blunt form (Katka, Mitka, Alyoshka, Rakitka) can be insulting and dismissive. Stressed syllables are indicated by italics. N.B. The zin Karamazov is pronounced like the zin zoo,not like the zin Mozart.
Karamazov, Fyodor Pavlovich
Dmitri F yodorovich (M itya, M itka, M itenka, M itri F yodorovich) I vanF yodorovich (V anya, V anka, V anechka)
Alex eiF yodorovich (Al yosha, Al yoshka, Al yoshenka, Al yoshechka, Alex eichik, L yosha, L yoshenka)
Smerdy akov, Pavel Fyodorovich
Svet lov, Agra fenO Alex androvna ( Grushenka, Grusha, Grushka)
Ver khovtsev, Kate rina I vanovna (K atya, Katka, Katenka)
Zo sima (Zinovy before he became a monk)
Snegir yov, Nikolai Ilyich A rina Pe trovna Var varaNiko laevna (V arya) Nina Niko laevna ( Ninochka) Il yusha (Il yushechka, Il yushka)
Kra sotkin, Niko laiI vanov (K olya)
Khokhla kov, Kate rina Osipovna Liza ( Lise) List of Characters
Ku tuzov, Gri gory Va silievich (also Va siliev) Marfa Ig natievna (also Ignatieva)
Ra kitin, Mikh ail Osipovich ( Misha, Ra kitka, Raki tushka)
Paissy
Fera pont
Ippo litKir illovich (no family name)
Nelyudov, Nikolai Par fenovich
Fetyufcovich
Herzenstube
Maximov (Maximushka)
Kal ganov, Pyotr Fomich (Petrusha)
Per khotin, Pyotr Ilyi ch
Mi usov, Pyotr Alexandrovich
Tri fonBorisovich (also Borisich)
Fe dosya M arkovna (Fenya, also Fedosya Markov)
Samsonov, Kuzma Kuzmich
Lizaveta Smerdyashchaya (Stinking Lizaveta; no family name)
Ma karov, Mikh ailMa karovich (also Ma karich)
Mussyalovich
Vrublevsky
Maria Kondratievna (no family name)
Varvmsky
THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV
Dedicated to Anna Grigorievna Dostoevsky
Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of
wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth
alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.
John 12:24
From the Author
Starting out on the biography of my hero, Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov, I find myself in some perplexity. Namely, that while I do call Alexei Fyodorovich my hero, still, I myself know that he is by no means a great man, so that I can foresee the inevitable questions, such as: What is notable about your Alexei Fyodorovich that you should choose him for your hero? What has he really done? To whom is he known, and for what? Why should I, the reader, spend my time studying the facts of his life?
This last question is the most fateful one, for I can only reply: perhaps you will see from the novel. But suppose they read the novel and do not see, do not agree with the noteworthiness of my Alexei Fyodorovich? I say this because, to my sorrow, I foresee it. To me he is noteworthy, but I decidedly doubt that I shall succeed in proving it to the reader. The thing is that he does, perhaps, make a figure, but a figure of an indefinite, indeterminate sort. Though it would be strange to demand clarity from people in a time like ours. One thing, perhaps, is rather doubtless: he is a strange man, even an odd one. But strangeness and oddity will sooner harm than justify any claim to attention, especially when everyone is striving to unite particulars and find at least some general sense in the general senselessness. Whereas an odd man is most often a particular and isolated case. Is that not so?
Now if you do not agree with this last point and reply: “Not so” or “Not always,” then perhaps I shall take heart concerning the significance of my hero, Alexei Fyodorovich. For not only is an odd man “not always” a particular and isolated case, but, on the contrary, it sometimes happens that it is precisely he, perhaps, who bears within himself the heart of the whole, while the other people of his epoch have all for some reason been torn away from it for a time by some kind of flooding wind.
I would not, in fact, venture into these rather vague and uninteresting explanations but would simply begin without any introduction—if they like it, they’ll read it as it is—but 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. As for the first novel, it already took place thirteen years ago and is even almost not a novel at all but just one moment from my hero’s early youth. It is impossible for me to do without this first novel, or much in the second novel will be incomprehensible. Thus my original difficulty becomes even more complicated: for if I, that is, the biographer himself, think that even one novel may, perhaps, be unwarranted for such a humble and indefinite hero, then how will it look if I appear with two; and what can explain such presumption on my part?
Being at a loss to resolve these questions, I am resolved to leave them without any resolution. To be sure, the keen-sighted reader will already have guessed long ago that that is what I’ve been getting at from the very beginning and will only be annoyed with me for wasting fruitless words and precious time. To this I have a ready answer: I have been wasting fruitless words and precious time, first, out of politeness, and, second, out of cunning. At least I have given some warning beforehand. In fact, I am even glad that my novel broke itself into two stories “while preserving the essential unity of the whole”: having acquainted himself with the first story, the reader can decide for himself whether it is worth his while to begin the second. Of course, no one is bound by anything; he can also drop the book after two pages of the first story and never pick it up again. But still there are readers of such delicacy that they will certainly want to read to the very end so as to make no mistake in their impartial judgment. Such, for instance, are all Russian critics. Faced with these people, I feel easier in my heart: for, in spite of their care and conscientiousness, I am nonetheless providing them with the most valid pretext for dropping the story at the first episode of the novel. Well, that is the end of my introduction. I quite agree that it is superfluous, but since it is already written, let it stand.
And now to business.
PART I
BOOK I: A NICE LITTLE FAMILY
Chapter 1: Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov
Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov was the third son of a landowner from our district, Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, well known in his own day (and still remembered among us) because of his dark and tragic death, which happened exactly thirteen years ago and which I shall speak of in its proper place. For the moment I will only say of this “landowner” (as we used to call him, though for all his life he hardly ever lived on his estate) that he was a strange type, yet one rather frequently met with, precisely the type of man who is not only worthless and depraved but muddleheaded as well—one of those muddleheaded people who still handle their own little business deals quite skillfully, if nothing else. Fyodor Pavlovich, for instance, started with next to nothing, he was a very small landowner, he ran around having dinner at other men’s tables, he tried to foist himself off as a sponger, and yet at his death he was discovered to have as much as a hundred thousand roubles in hard cash. At the same time he remained all his life one of the most muddleheaded madcaps in our district. Again I say it was not stupidity—most of these madcaps are rather clever and shrewd—but precisely muddleheadedness, even a special, national form of it.
He was married twice and had three sons—the eldest, Dmitri Fyodorovich, by his first wife, and the other two, Ivan and Alexei, by his second. Fyodor Pavlovich’s first wife belonged to a rather wealthy aristocratic family, the Miusovs, also landowners in our district. Precisely how it happened that a girl with a dowry, a beautiful girl, too, and moreover one of those pert, intelligent girls not uncommon in this generation but sometimes also to be found in the last, could have married such a worthless “runt,” as everyone used to call him, I cannot begin to explain. But then, I once knew a young lady still of the last “romantic” generation who, after several years of enigmatic love for a certain gentleman, whom, by the way, she could have married quite easily at any moment, ended up, after inventing all sorts of insurmountable obstacles, by throwing herself on a stormy night into a rather deep and swift river from a high bank somewhat resembling a cliff, and perished there decidedly by her own caprice, only because she wanted to be like Shakespeare’s Ophelia. Even then, if the cliff, chosen and cherished from long ago, had not been so picturesque, if it had been merely a flat, prosaic bank, the suicide might not have taken place at all. This is a true fact, and one can assume that in our Russian life of the past two or three generations there have been not a few similar facts. In the same way, the action of Adelaida Ivanovna Miusov was doubtless an echo of foreign influences, the chafings of a mind imprisoned. [1]Perhaps she wanted to assert her feminine independence, to go against social conventions, against the despotism of her relatives and family, and her obliging imagination convinced her, if only briefly, that Fyodor Pavlovich, despite his dignity as a sponger, was still one of the boldest and most sarcastic spirits of that transitional epoch—transitional to everything better—whereas he was simply an evil buffoon and nothing more. The affair gained piquancy from elopement, which strongly appealed to Adelaida Ivanovna. As for Fyodor Pavlovich, his social position at the time made him quite ready for any such venture, for he passionately desired to set himself up by whatever means. To squeeze into a good family and get a dowry was tempting indeed. As for mutual love, it seems there never was any either on the bride’s part or on his own, despite the beauty of Adelaida Ivanovna. This was, perhaps, the only case of its kind in Fyodor Pavlovich’s life, for he was a great sensualist all his days, always ready to hang onto any skirt that merely beckoned to him. This one woman alone, sensually speaking, made no particular impression on him.
They had no sooner eloped than it became clear to Adelaida Ivanovna that she felt only contempt for her husband and nothing more. Thus the consequences of their marriage revealed themselves extraordinarily quickly. And though her family even accepted the situation fairly soon and allotted the runaway bride her dowry, the married couple began leading a very disorderly life, full of eternal scenes. It was said that in the circumstances the young wife showed far more dignity and high-mindedness than did Fyodor Pavlovich, who, as is now known, filched all her cash from her, as much as twenty-five thousand roubles, the moment she got it, so that from then on as far as she was concerned all those thousands positively vanished, as it were, into thin air. As for the little village and the rather fine town house that came with her dowry, for a long time he tried very hard to have them transferred to his name by means of some appropriate deed, and he would probably have succeeded, merely because of the contempt and loathing, so to speak, that his shameless extortions and entreaties aroused in his wife, merely because of her emotional exhaustion—anything to be rid of him. Fortunately, Adelaida Ivanov-na’s family intervened and put a stop to his hogging. It is well known that there were frequent fights between husband and wife, but according to tradition it was not Fyodor Pavlovich who did the beating but Adelaida Ivanovna, a hot-tempered lady, bold, dark-skinned, impatient, and endowed with remarkable physical strength. Finally she fled the house and ran away from Fyodor Pavlovich with a destitute seminarian, leaving the three-year-old Mitya in his father’s hands. Fyodor Pavlovich immediately set up a regular harem in his house and gave himself to the most unbridled drinking. In the intermissions, he drove over most of the province, tearfully complaining to all and sundry that Adelaide had abandoned him, going into details that any husband ought to have been too ashamed to reveal about his married life. The thing was that he seemed to enjoy and even feel flattered by playing the ludicrous role of the offended husband, embroidering on and embellishing the details of the offense. “One would think you had been promoted, Fyodor Pavlovich,” the scoffers used to say, “you’re so pleased despite all your woes!” Many even added that he was glad to brush up his old role of buffoon, and that, to make things funnier still, he pretended not to notice his ridiculous position. But who knows, perhaps he was simply naive. At last he managed to find the trail of his runaway wife. The poor woman turned out to be in Petersburg, where she had gone to live with her seminarian and where she had thrown herself wholeheartedly into the most complete emancipation. Fyodor Pavlovich at once began bustling about, making ready to go to Petersburg. Why? He, of course, had no idea. True, he might even have gone; but having undertaken such a decision, he at once felt fully entitled to get up his courage for the journey by throwing himself into more boundless drinking. Just then his wife’s family received news of her death in Petersburg. She died somehow suddenly, in some garret, of typhus according to one version, of starvation according to another. Fyodor Pavlovich was drunk when he learned of his wife’s death, and the story goes that he ran down the street, lifting his hands to the sky and joyfully shouting: “Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.” [2]Others say that he wept and sobbed like a little child, so much so that they say he was pitiful to see, however repulsive they found him. Both versions may very well be true—that is, that he rejoiced at his release and wept for her who released him, all at the same time. In most cases, people, even wicked people, are far more naive and simple-hearted than one generally assumes. And so are we.
