'The Brothers Karamazov' by Fyodor Dostoevsky

 

I’ve read ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ a few times and in various translations even the one called ‘The Karamazov Brothers’.  It’s a great book quite resistant to the vagaries of the rendering of idiom.  I was reading the Garnett but when it came to The Grand Inquisitor the ‘thous’ and the ‘shalts’ put me off this time and I switched to the Pevear and Volokhonsky which is excellent.  Perhaps Garnett was attempting to give a rendition of High Church Slavonic and that might be justifiable but it seemed to me to be a distraction from the real theme of faith, freedom, and belief.

This time reading the latter parts of the book struck me more than before particularly the trial and the speeches of the prosecution and the defence.  Though what must happen is fated I still was annoyed at the lack of investigation by the star lawyer for the defence.  What about the money, ask about the money.  Was any note taken of the numbers of the notes, in Russian books, always rainbow coloured.  These are large amounts and were paid out by the banks.  Surely Fyodor Pavlovich would want new notes to give to Grushenka.  There was an envelope with a seal, new clothes for the hoped for tryst, codes, and you mean to say she was to be given dirty money.  No this cannot be.  Ivan Fyodorvich’s 15 G from cashing out bonds sounds like new money with noted numbers for security purposes.  Compare the two sets.  Are they the same?

That’s mad of course but what we were offered by Fetyukovich was ‘Papa Karamazov was a bad daddy and needed killing’.  Not an unknown defence in America but not fine forensic logic either.

The boys funeral moved me very much.  The captain his father clinging to the coffin, weeping at the sight of his little broken boots at the door that will never again be filled.  I’m filling up thinking about it and as always in Dostoevsky the hysteria, the dark atrabilious comedy, the naive yet effective speech to the boys by Aloshya, those elements of genius that we only accept from genius because all that has gone before has prepared us for it.  We say ‘only you could make me believe this’.