andom reflections on the novel (Part-24)
This week my reflections are about one of the most profound novels that I have read –“Brothers Karamazov”
In the world not everything is rational. If everything in the world was rational, nothing would happen. So, it would be unwise or foolish to look for solutions, logical outcomes as to what happened to so and so at the end of the story. Did Mitya escape on his way to Siberia? Did Ivan come out of his delirium? What happened to Alyosha? What about Lise or Madame Khokhlakhov or Rakitin?
I was eager to know all these things. But No. Great Novels are not made to answer the reader’s curiosity. The course of events or the plot as it may be called was my point of interest. But the plot is only a device for the author to test his grand themes: God, religion, morality, free-will, sin and retribution. Dostoevsky’s novel spans the realm of the real, the surreal, and the psychological but it is his unique ability to merge his boundless insight into the human psyche with a gripping plot that gives the Brothers Karamazov the stamp of genius.
All are contradictions. The only steady characters are Fyodor Pavlovich and Alyosha. The other characters swing from one extreme to another touching the pinnacle of nobleness in one swing and the wallowing depths of ignominy in the other. Dostoevsky is an agonizing artist. He makes the reader go through searing pain. The moral question is there for all to see, but the answers are not just black and white. Instead the myriad hues of humanity go through the prism of temptation, suffering, and redemption in this novel. Only redemption is not apparent. But the questions are so damning that they continue to stare at the face of humanity which has flinched and fidgeted under the daunting scrutiny of Dostoevsky.
The discussion at the monastery and the putrefaction of the corpse of Father Zossima start the novel’s enquiry as such into the nature of belief and the essence of religion. The filial relations between Fyodor Pavlovich and his four sons, Dimitri, Ivan, Alexei and Smerdyakov which culminates in the murder (parricide) of the father constitutes the major part of the novel. The murder dominates the latter part of the novel. Since all the sons except Alyosha have strained relations with their father, the identity of the murderer is not established clearly. But this is not the point of interest. The novel will not answer a reader who reads only for the plot although there are small pleasures when Alyosha spreads kindness and love among street children when all around there is only sin and ill-will. Describing the dialogic or polyphonic imagination of Dostoevsky, Mikhail Bakhtin proposes the concept of ‘unfinalizability’ which is very relevant towards understanding the poetics of Dostoyevsky. I quote here “Nothing conclusive has yet taken place in the world, the ultimate word of the world and about the world has not yet been spoken, the world is open and free, everything is still in the future and will always be in the future.””’’ Dostoevsky
To “understand” a novel like Brothers Karamazov is a test each reader has to go through. “The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky,