My first time reading Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov

I’m unable to articulate all the feelings I went through while reading this book. I’m not afraid to say it may be the best book that I ever read. Every two or three pages Dostoyevsky comes up with a dialogue, a thought, a note, a way of describing a feeling that resembles human nature in ways that I think we all have felt in some way or another. Not only does he manage to accomplish that, but he manages to do it in such a way that I could relate things happening in the book to aspects of life, my own and others.

The Brothers Karamazov is the last book written by Dostoevsky before his death in 1870. Released between 1879 and 1870, it follows the life of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov and the complicated relationship with his three sons, Dimitri, Ivan, and Alexei Fyodor Karamazov. The book, comprised of four parts, is set in Russia’s country during the second half of the 1800 under the climate of important political reforms and Europe’s ideological shifts; this is worth mentioning because it adds context for the complete plot of the story and conundrums the characters in the book face. The first part of the book goes into explaining the origins of our characters, their conflicts and serves as the prologue for the next part of the book, where the real twist (a catastrophe) of the story happens.

But, what is this book really about? It’s difficult to put it in simple words. As someone whose first read book by Dostoevsky was The Brothers Karamazov , I would be doing a disservice to the people reading this text by saying that I could fully understand all themes, topics, and messages delivered through this book’s pages. However, I can try.

The book revolves about three brothers and their father. The three children, Dmitry, Ivan and Alyosha, born from two different mothers that passed away when they were little, each one of them has a very specific set of personality traits and internal problems and had different upbringings but they all three have something in common: their father. They three kids were almost abandoned by their father, Fyodor, the other protagonist. Fyodor, described somewhere in the book as a clown (you’ll have to read to book to understand this, but I bet you’ve known a clown like Fyodor in your life), became of wealth by basically ripping off their children’s mother inheritance. As the children grow up, they go about their lives but they all eventually come back to the place they were born in; however, that last fact sets the history off. The story boils up to the point when a catastrophe happens in the family. And that’s everything I’ll be mentioning for now.

It took me a few months to read through, I made a bunch of notes. This was necessary and something I’ve wanting to do for a long time. I did not want to be just a passive reader, I wanted to understand and digest the words; the notes helped a lot.

Dostoyevsky in his own words.

I recommend this book a lot. As a matter of fact, I’ll be reading it again sometime soon. Again, it is very difficult to me to put it in simple words, these are some of the quotes that resonated in me.

…there are some people who feel deeply but are somehow weighed down. Their buffoonery is a sort of a wicked irony for those to whom they dare not speak the truth. Believe me, …, that kind of buffoonery is sometimes deeply tragic…

There are souls, that in their inadequacy, will blame the whole world

’I love all humanity’ he declared, ‘but I’m surprised at myself… the more I love humanity in general, the less I love humanity in particular, that is, separately as single individuals’.

God posses only but riddles.

Gos and devil are struggling here. And the playground is the man’s heart.

I’m a very uneducated man, brother, but I’ve thought a great a deal about this. There are a many great secrets! Too many riddles burden man on this earth. Guess as best you can and crawl out of the water dry. Beauty! I can’t endure it that man, endowed with a lofty heart and mind, beings with an ideal of the Madonna and ends up with the ideal of Sodom.

A note of the translation.

I read the Michael Katz’s translation. I think it is the latest one that you can find and it is said that Katz was able to do a great job in bringing Dostoyevsky to the english language. This is not a literal translation as the P&V’s one, but one that managed to capture the author’s voice.