"'I've always been of the opinion that the best way to handle the ordinary Russian is to flog him: he's a scoundrel and there's no need to be sorry for him. Thank God he still gets his birching occasionally. Russia is rich in birch. If the Russian forests were destroyed, it would be the end of Russia. I'm all for clever people. Now we've stopped flogging them, our peasants who have sense enough have started flogging themselves. And they're doing the right thing. For whatever you sow, you shall reap, or however the saying goes... In any case - you shall reap. Russia is just a nasty mess.'"
Fyodor Dostoevsky is, in case you slept your way through English 101, Russian Literature, or any number of other classes, one of the two most famous Russian novelists of all time. Besides the dauntingly long The Brothers Karamazov, he also wrote Notes from the Underground, The Idiot and Crime and Punishment. Oh, and in case you've forgotten who the other "most famous" Russian novelist is, it's Leo Tolstoy.
It's been a while since I read Notes from the Underground and The Idiot, but I did read Crime and Punishment fairly recently, so at least I have that to compare The Brothers Karamazov to. Of the two books I liked The Brothers Karamazov a lot more. Where Crime and Punishment is more a psychological study of one man's experience after committing a crime, The Brothers Karamazov is a larger exploration of how a single crime affects a much larger society.
In the novel three brothers find themselves at odds with a greedy and manipulative father who has designs on the local beauty. One of these three brothers lusts after the same woman, another takes a more philosophical view things, and a third brother, recently released from a monastery, attempts to repair the relationships between the various members of his family.
All in all it's a sprawling look at the underpinnings on not only its characters but also Russia itself. The subjects covered in this novel include traditional religion, mysticism, monasticism, atonement for past sins, modern notions of truth, nihilism, the criminal justice system, the court of public opinion and even Russian sexual politics in the mid 1800s. Throughout all of this the author continually inquires into the nature of his culture, his country and its history.
Did I like it? To be honest it took me a while, and my interest wavered at certain points, but on the whole reading The Brothers Karamazov wasn't as much of an ordeal as I thought it would be. It's an occasionally insightful book, even if it's very long.
And, moreover, now I can REALLY say I've read Dostoevsky. Not just the easier stuff!
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