[May?]
Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1880)

Someone once told me, long long ago, that the world is divided into Tolstoy people and Dostoyevsky people. That's probably silly nonsense. A different someone once told me, also long ago but not quite as long, that the world is divided into Ravel people and Debussy people. My reply — to her horror — was that I like them both, and furthermore I tend to think of them as in the same category. She was a trained pianist, so perhaps that explains why she perceived the difference between the two more keenly than I did.

She was very much a Ravel person, and I once had the pleasure of hearing her give a stunning performance of Ravel's Alborada del gracioso, which to this day is still my favorite piano work, in large part due to this memory of Rosemary O. She was a tiny little woman, meek and mousy, with little hands that could barely reach a ninth, but when she played Ravel it was like she was possessed by a demon. An angry and passionate demon. I was enthralled.

Nonsense or not, I always fancy myself a Dostoyevsky person. My grounds for that are shaky. True, I have no affinity whatsoever for Tolstoy, but my Dostoyevsky love is quite narrow. I've never attempted Crime and Punishment at all, nor The Possessed. I read a large chunk of The Idiot, once upon a time, but I never finished it. I've sampled short bits of "The Gambler" and some other short stories. But really, my Dostoyevsky love is based entirely on a single work, Brothers Karamazov.

I love this book. It's probably my favorite among the European classics — certainly of the 19th century classics. I think this is my fifth time reading it, but the first time in a long long time. When I was 20 I was briefly the roommate of a young guy named Gordon, who at the time happened to be interested in the Russian heritage he drew from one of his grandparents. He was interested in my copy of Karamazov and offered to trade me his Early Christian Doctrines for it. To me, this seemed like a bargain, given that his book was a nice hardback and mine was a cheap paperback that could be easily replaced.

I occasionally use Early Christian Doctrines as a reference when I need to look up some arcane detail about Nicene monophysite homoousion or some such rot, but I've never actually read the book because, frankly, it's boring. So maybe got the better of the deal after all.

I first discovered Karamazov as a teenager. I must have been 15 or 16. We had read the Grand Inquisitor chapter in school, and I was sufficiently intrigued to go out and get the whole book. My first reading of the book followed the pattern of a roller coaster: the long and slow climb drawing energy from the motors in order to lift you to the apex, and then a fast and wild ride after that. It was about midnight when I read that Dmitri was arrested, and from that point on I didn't stop reading until I was finished. In my edition, Dmitri isn't arrested until page 407, but also in my edition the book has 699 pages, so that's 300 pages at a single sitting. It was my first experience in staying up all night to finish a book (though not my last).

After that I got in the habit of reading the book roughly once a year. Typically I'd read the Grand Inquisitor chapter first, and then proceed with the rest of the book a little later, in unintentional imitation of my first time. After I traded my first copy to Gordon, I didn't get another for a long long time. When I went to the bookstore to get a copy, I found that the edition with the familiar picture on the cover was not to be found. Furthermore, to my horror, I found that every edition I did see calls Dmitri "Mitya" throughout the book. Even then, I think I was aware that "Mitya" was a more accurate representation of what the author wrote — and since then I've heard high praise for the new translation by Pevear and Volokhonsky — but I was used to thinking of him as Dmitri and it irked me to have to change my habit. So I held out, looking for my favored translation (by Constance Garnett) which never appeared.

Until much later. I remember pretty well a few years ago at a library sale here in Shoreline (but before we moved here) thumbing through the rows of paperbacks and suddenly exclaiming, "Hey! Here it is! This is the Karamazov I like!" I remember only very dimly going through the same experience a few years earlier. So now I have two copies of it. It wasn't till early this year that I finally got around to reading it.

One thing I noticed rereading it this time is that I found the front part of the book more interesting and the back part less. Maybe it's because I'm older. All those philosophical conversations in the monastery, which seemed edifying but tedious when I was a teenager, I find fascinating now. To me, that is the essence of Dostoyevsky. Tolstoy is full of settings and descriptions, and I suppose that's what Tolstoy people love about him. He's the novelistic equivalent of those epic movies filled with panoramic shots of lush British lawns dotted with puffy white dresses worn by actresses named Emma or Kate. Dostoyevsky is all about the conversations. God, faith, passion, free will, morality, redemption. It doesn't matter where they are or what they're wearing. It's just about who they are and the ideas they exchange. That's why I'm a Dostoyevsky person.

It seems this post is destined to be a remembrance of things past. (She also played a Schubert sonata in G. Why do I remember that?) I won't attempt to review the novel any more than that.

I will, however, use this opportunity to reprint a short argument I wrote as an email to Andrew Sullivan. He had mentioned the Grand Inquisitor on his blog, and I took the opportunity to relate Karamazov to his pet topic of religious fundamentalism in politics. I had earlier attempted to make this argument here on Benzene, in a sprawling and unfocused post that tried to cover too much ground.

This second attempt makes the point much better:

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