What Does it Mean to be a Karamazov? Dostoevsky and the Human Soul

This past week, I have been reading The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. That is to say, it saw me finish the novel; its 1000-odd pages have taken me the better part of months to slowly pick my way through. Partly the reason for this lengthy reading process is that it is more than twice the length of Dickens’ Great Expectations, or over five times the page number of Shelley’s Frankenstein. But it is also because this is, in as pedestrian of a manner that I can phrase it, a heavy book.

Dropping it on one’s foot obviously wouldn’t be recommended, but what I mean by heavy is that every page of The Brothers Karamazov is absolutely packed with the densest psychological, philosophical and sociological insight that Dostoevsky could fit into his characters. Each individual inhabiting the author’s shadowy, sordid microcosm of Russia is so specifically articulated that by the end you feel as if you have known them for your entire life. And yet the work is underpinned by a broader significance that gives the sense that, by reading about their bizarre and agonising existences, you are also peering deep into the wider expanse of the human soul.

Each character can be perceived in a multifarious wealth of ways, and each conversation can be pored over for hours to dig into the deeper meaning behind the words. Indeed, I feel that one could emerge from each re-reading with an entirely different opinion of the titular brothers, or those tragic figures they are surrounded by, than the previous one. It is one of the few books, even amongst Dostoevsky’s other works, that has left me with the strong hunch I would need to tackle it twice more before even beginning to comprehend the true messages hidden within its complex weave of narratives.

One of those threads that I found most intriguing is the question of what it means to be a Karamazov. Much of the three brothers’ lives are overshadowed by the malign presence of their father Fyodor Pavlovich, a debauch, devilish lout who draws on the goodness of those around him and exploits it for his own ends. To be a Karamazov, we learn early on, is to partake in a bloodline of volatile people driven by violent whims and burning lusts, and capable of great acts of vicious passion. To be a Karamazov, it seems, is to be doomed to a life of baseness and misery.

Nobody exemplifies this damning diagnosis as much as the eldest child, Mitya. Of the three Karamazov children, he is the one most immediately tied to his father’s conceited caprice, for he is in line to, upon maturity, inherit a large sum of money from Fyodor. Yet upon maturing, Mitya finds himself being constantly cheated out of the amount that is rightfully his. In this way, unlike Ivan and Alyosha, who somewhat remove themselves both intellectually and spiritually from the festering presence of their patriarch, Mitya’s fortunes are tied directly to the whims of his father.

Beyond this, though, it feels that Mitya is the exemplar of this Karamazovian condition more than anyone else. After all, the plot is driven forward by his frantic flailing in the grip of his own lusts and desires. He is erratic, prone to outbursts that are sometimes physical, and randomly capable also of the highest loquacity in speech. The dynamic spectrum of his constitution is epitomised in how he can callously strike down Grigory with the pestle after fleeing from his father’s home, before stopping that flight for almost five minutes to bend grief-stricken over the unconscious body of the man who effectively raised him.

That, then, is a brief summary of how the Karamazovian state relates to the specific characters within the novel. But what of the broader human condition as a whole?

For that, we must turn to the end of the novel, when Mitya is falsely(?) put on trial for the murder of his tyrannical father, and the words of his defence lawyer Fetyukovich. The character of Fetyukovich operates in a similar way to Porfiry Petrovich in Crime and Punishment— the figure of magisterial authority who possesses such an acute, almost inhuman level of perception that their awareness is elevated above the general confused state of those around them. While defending Mitya, Fetyukovich counters the procurator’s damning interpretation of the material evidence (which, in itself, does point rather conclusively to Mitya’s guilt in the crime) by weaving his own ‘fiction’ (the word Dostoevsky uses is romans, an antiquated French word for narrative ‘romance’) that instead serves the purpose of exonerating Mitya.

The back-and-forth between Fetyukovich and the procurator Ippolit is fascinating not only in how they both paint contrasting narratives of the fateful night from the same material evidence, but also in how they relate Mitya’s strife to the broader society as a whole. In an attempt to rile up the onlooking public against the unfortunate Karamazov, Ippolit portrays him as an exemplar of morality-gone-mad in Russia— an excess of progressivism and a forgetting of the core traditions that stabilised the country in the past— and ultimately an opportunity to reclaim that old sense of right and wrong by finding him guilty.

Fetyukovich, meanwhile, in a move that makes Dostoevsky pre-eminent of the Freudian revolution decades later, chooses to appeal not to notions of society or theology, but to psychology. While Ippolit, acting on the presupposition that Mitya is guilty, proceeded to describe Mitya as a deplorable in every way, Fetyukovich instead considers the ‘two-edged sword’ of psychology, and interprets the events preceding the murder as the actions of a complex and troubled man tormented by a ‘distorted’ sense of honour. Importantly, he describes the Karamazovian disposition as one capable of ‘opposites’, of ‘extremes’, subject to the opposing forces of both ‘reckless abandon’ and also ‘love’ that flares inside ‘like a tinder-box’. It is ‘passionate and cruel’, a soul that ‘yearns’ for all that is ‘tender, beautiful and just’, or in other words all that is in opposition to the ‘recklessness’ and ‘cruelty’ also in their natures.

And ultimately, Fetyukovich argues, if we are dealing with a man who is capable of such a spectrum of passions, how can we be so convinced by the most damning interpretation of events, when it is just as likely he was entirely innocent as well? No, the defence lawyer proclaims, he who is truly at fault here is the father, Fyodor Pavlovich, for neglecting his duties as paternal guide and allowing his children to roam without the upbringing that would allow them to draw these paradoxical lusts and yearnings under control.

For the curse of the father is also present within his other two children as well— and in an extremely simplified summary, they could be seen as representing the peaks and chasms that the Karamazovian condition is able to reach. The middle child, Ivan, is highly intelligent and articulate, capable of rational and materialist thought that vastly exceeds the mental capacities of those around him. But he is a figure often described as terrifying, even by his own father, and in rejecting the spiritual realm of religion succumbs to the nihilistic void of the secular and the material. (Remember, Dostoevsky was a religious man himself, and so his works are imbued with a strong sense of the moral necessity of God in a person’s life.) But the Devil himself lurks within the material realm, visiting Ivan as the madness of his soul worsens— and the Devil is even present in the courtroom, beneath the table holding the material evidence that leads Mitya to be wrongly condemned, for as Ivan raves in the height of his delirium, ‘where else would you expect him to hide?’.

Meanwhile, the youngest brother Alyosha has committed himself to a monastic life, directing that same Karamazovian yearning for love and tenderness towards his religious practises. Unlike Ivan, who is visited by the Devil seemingly in the flesh, Alyosha is never treated to an appearance from the heavens— and yet, he seems also susceptible to subtle moments of intuition that could be described to be divine. The most notable of those would be during the trial itself, when for no reason at all, he recalls a specific interaction with his brother Mitya from days before. This happens to back up a claim made by Mitya previously, and is the closest that the eldest brother gets to being truly found as innocent. It is also worth noting that the evidence for Mitya’s innocence— Alyosha’s remembrance, and Fetyukovich’s opposing romans— are backed up not by the material evidence on the Devil’s table, but by matters of pure faith in the goodness of the man. Here, the truth lies not in the physical, but in the psychological and the spiritual.

And yet, despite the defence providing a council that seems to convince all present of Mitya’s innocence, the jury of ‘muzhiks’ (peasants) still find the man guilty on all accounts. By now, to myself at least, it is clear that the diagnosis of the Karamazovian constitution is intended to be a prognosis of the general human soul, and its potential for acts both of great kindness and cruelty. Fetyukovich argued that, in the face of uncertainty, forgiveness is all that must be shown to the convicted, for the light of mercy might undo the darkness inflicted by his father and begin a new life of redemption. But Dostoevsky does not have Mitya walk free, and the damning indictment from the peasants feels like a sentencing against the innocence of the human soul as a whole. What Dostoevsky meant by this heart-shattering ending— perhaps the importance of atonement for past sins, or the difficulty of convincing an atheistic society about the value of forgiveness— is still, I profess, rather lost on me.

I have no doubt that this would require a second, or perhaps a third, reading to figure out.

As I predicted, this has rambled on for a rather long time, and I have covered many various topics. And yet, I have barely scratched the surface of The Brothers Karamazov— still to be acknowledged is the rivalry between Katya and Grushenka, the tragedy of Ilyushechka, the pernicious presence of the half-brother Smerdyakov, and much more. Ultimately, though, I believe this novel to be a quintessential work in the realist movement, and perhaps the pinnacle of the artform itself.

I would be keen to hear any of your thoughts in the comments below.

Thank you for reading,