Sunday, April 03, 2005
The Earthbound Karamazov Brothers
Some of you may be familiar with the Flying Karamazov Brothers, whose juggling performances are witty and astonishing. I have long wondered about their connection with the Dostoevsky novel, which I had not read until now.
I guess now that the connection is that there are three of them. (Technically, I suppose you could say there are four in the novel, if you count Smerdyakov, but he is never proven to be a son of Fyodor Pavlovitch.) For me, at any rate, The Brothers Karamazov never takes flight.
I suspect that I am just not the right audience for Russian novels. I liked Anna Karenina just fine, and at least a novel's worth of War and Peace (nearly half of the book), and even most of Crime and Punishment. As an undergraduate, I enjoyed a couple of Solzhenitzyns. But the Russian novel, as I am familiar with it, is not only interested in telling a story and making its point, philosophical or psychological or whatever, through the story. It is interested in expressing a philosophical viewpoint, whether the story will bear it or not. The story stops for a while, or makes a detour into irrelevant territory, while the author has the characters sit around and discuss salvation or military strategy or the necessity of God for human (i.e., Russian) civilization, and then we get on with it.
Granted, this means that I like the nice, economical, modern novel. But I do manage to appreciate the English Victorians (or, at least, some of them) as well as Elmore Leonard. I have managed to get to the end of a (short) book by William Gaddis (of whom more later), who is hardly an action novelist. I don't mind a certain amount of digressiveness, but I just can't quite sympathize with chunks that go beyond digression into dissociation. (This will be tested when I listen to Moby Dick sometime later this year. I loved the book when I read it at 16.)
But how digressive is all that stuff in The Brothers Karamazov? Does it tie in closely with the theme of the story, at least? Well, yes, it does. As far as the story is concerned, the whole first section involving Father Zosima is basically static. It introduces the characters and their relationships, of course, but what it mostly introduces is the idea of suffering. The modern version might start just before Father Zosima bows down to Dmitri in respect for the suffering he is about to endure. Except, of course, the modern version would probably cut Father Zosima altogether. His death and premature decomposition propel Alyosha into the secular world, but that is only necessary because he's been living in the monastery. Make him a university student and you don't need that.
But could Alyosha be a university student? He is not worldly, even at the end of the story, and could hardly survive without either his inheritance from his father or the kindness of strangers. Part of the point of the Grand Inquisitor "poem" is the difficulty of being Christlike in the world. Alyosha manages by not being deeply involved in most of what goes on around him, and this would be much less believable in a university student (especially with the contrast of Rakitin, the corrupt divinity student). So let's keep the whole bit with Father Zosima -- but we can cut it down drastically. Dostoevsky is trying to talk not just about suffering here, but about religious politics and the evolution of the orthodox faith, and to him these are intensely important and intensely related issues.
That's where he loses me, of course. Those issues (other than suffering) are not very important to me. The suffering is intense and intensely portrayed, but Dmitri's grief at having to leave Russia is just too Russian for me. (My ancestors were reasonably pleased to be able to leave Russia.) Now, if I were a real scholar I'd probably be a New Historicist, so I'm perfectly willing to look at Dostoevsky in his historical context and in terms of his own goals. And by those, the book is a masterpiece.
I just didn't enjoy it all that much.
dmh
I guess now that the connection is that there are three of them. (Technically, I suppose you could say there are four in the novel, if you count Smerdyakov, but he is never proven to be a son of Fyodor Pavlovitch.) For me, at any rate, The Brothers Karamazov never takes flight.
I suspect that I am just not the right audience for Russian novels. I liked Anna Karenina just fine, and at least a novel's worth of War and Peace (nearly half of the book), and even most of Crime and Punishment. As an undergraduate, I enjoyed a couple of Solzhenitzyns. But the Russian novel, as I am familiar with it, is not only interested in telling a story and making its point, philosophical or psychological or whatever, through the story. It is interested in expressing a philosophical viewpoint, whether the story will bear it or not. The story stops for a while, or makes a detour into irrelevant territory, while the author has the characters sit around and discuss salvation or military strategy or the necessity of God for human (i.e., Russian) civilization, and then we get on with it.
Granted, this means that I like the nice, economical, modern novel. But I do manage to appreciate the English Victorians (or, at least, some of them) as well as Elmore Leonard. I have managed to get to the end of a (short) book by William Gaddis (of whom more later), who is hardly an action novelist. I don't mind a certain amount of digressiveness, but I just can't quite sympathize with chunks that go beyond digression into dissociation. (This will be tested when I listen to Moby Dick sometime later this year. I loved the book when I read it at 16.)
But how digressive is all that stuff in The Brothers Karamazov? Does it tie in closely with the theme of the story, at least? Well, yes, it does. As far as the story is concerned, the whole first section involving Father Zosima is basically static. It introduces the characters and their relationships, of course, but what it mostly introduces is the idea of suffering. The modern version might start just before Father Zosima bows down to Dmitri in respect for the suffering he is about to endure. Except, of course, the modern version would probably cut Father Zosima altogether. His death and premature decomposition propel Alyosha into the secular world, but that is only necessary because he's been living in the monastery. Make him a university student and you don't need that.
But could Alyosha be a university student? He is not worldly, even at the end of the story, and could hardly survive without either his inheritance from his father or the kindness of strangers. Part of the point of the Grand Inquisitor "poem" is the difficulty of being Christlike in the world. Alyosha manages by not being deeply involved in most of what goes on around him, and this would be much less believable in a university student (especially with the contrast of Rakitin, the corrupt divinity student). So let's keep the whole bit with Father Zosima -- but we can cut it down drastically. Dostoevsky is trying to talk not just about suffering here, but about religious politics and the evolution of the orthodox faith, and to him these are intensely important and intensely related issues.
That's where he loses me, of course. Those issues (other than suffering) are not very important to me. The suffering is intense and intensely portrayed, but Dmitri's grief at having to leave Russia is just too Russian for me. (My ancestors were reasonably pleased to be able to leave Russia.) Now, if I were a real scholar I'd probably be a New Historicist, so I'm perfectly willing to look at Dostoevsky in his historical context and in terms of his own goals. And by those, the book is a masterpiece.
I just didn't enjoy it all that much.
dmh
