Digital Underground - uXu - Underground eXperts United #uxu-540

### ### ### ### ### #### ### ### ### #### ### ### ##### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ##### ### ### ########## ### ### ########## ### ### ### ### Underground eXperts United Presents... ####### ## ## ####### # # ####### ## ## ####### ## ## ## ## ##### ## ## ## ## ## #### ## ## #### # # ####### ####### ## ## ## ## ## ## ##### ## ## ## ## ## ## ####### ####### # # ####### ## ####### [ Dostoyevsky And The Brothers Karamazov ] [ By Eric Chaet ] ____________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________ DOSTOYEVSKY AND THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV by Eric Chaet THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV is, among other things, a murder-mystery novel. Tho it is not much of a mystery to us, the readers. There are four brothers: Ivan, in his late 20's, a very clever fellow, 'too sophisticated' for faith in the old ways of Russian thinking, including belief in God and virtue; Dmitri, in his mid 20's, a swaggering ex-lieutenant, a drinker, undisciplined, loud, passionate, ruled by his heart, not his mind, whose ineffective moral compass is a commitment to 'honor'; Alyosha, 20 - in the early part of the book a monk - pure of heart, kind, caring, not bothered that others consider him simple-minded; Smerdyakov (Stinker), whom none of the other three realize is their brother, son of their dissipated father Fyodor and an idiot-girl who used to wander around "our provincial town" in only a smock and bare-footed, thru the winter, even. Ivan is the son of one mother, Dmitri and Alyosha of another, Smerdykov of the idiot girl. Their father, Fyodor, neglected them all, to what would now certainly be judged a criminal extent. If the two servants had not taken care of them, they would have starved, frozen, been devoured by lice. This Fyodor was a nobleman without assets in his youth, who gained wealth by toadying among the more prosperous nobility, until he got enough money to earn money as a money-lender and trader, and to indulge himself in womanizing and drink. He also liked to quote the fashionable ideas of the time, from Schiller's "The Robbers" for instance. Smerdyakov, vain and insolent, is his cook. Ivan and Dmitri have recently returned to "our provincial town". Dmitri is sure that his father owes him money, the inheritance from his mother's wealth. He gets drunk a lot, and makes a lot of noise about how, if his father won't give him his due, he will kill his father. (When the father IS murdered, all the evidence seems to point to Dmitri, and he is convicted.) Dmitri falls for Grushenka, and so does his father, Fyodor. She toys with them both, caring for neither. Fyodor offers her 3,000 roubles if she will come to him. Which, of course, drives Dmitri wild, because he is obsessed with Grushenka, and, also, because he considers the 3,000 roubles his. Ivan indulges in 'intellectual' discussions with his father, Smerdyakov, a variety of ladies and gentlemen of the town, and even the monks, and, toward the end, with Dmitri in his prison cell. He plants ideas in Smerdyakov's mind that lead, eventually, to Smerdyakov considering himself a very clever person, cleverer than those around him, and to his deciding that murder can sometimes be justified, and to his murdering Fyodor, the dissipated and abusive father of the four sons. When Ivan realizes how he has 'programmed' Smerdyakov - at the same time Ivan begins to realize that his own ideas lead to a dead end - he loses control to a greater and greater extent, and lapses into, first, hallucinations (the devil visits him, and is fond of intellectual discussion), then 'brain-fever'. Alyosha, instructed by his mentor - just before this mentor's death - in the monastary to return to 'the world' serves everyone with whom he comes into contact, mostly by listening to them rant, with respectful and caring attention, and helping them when they fall into despair or sickness. He is, when not carrying around too much of the others' suffering, happy - and makes friends with a group of pre-teens. At the very end of the book, Alyosha delivers a brief speech to them, to which they listen attentively, tho they tend to scoff at what adults say in general - because they have learned that he cares for and respects them, and because they also care for and respect him. The speech is about how such caring, and kindness, will serve as antidotes, thruout life, for the evil one encounters. DOSTOYEVSKY WAS A MAN of great intellect, whose fate it was to live, primarily, among non-intellectuals, and to see thru the errors and pretensions of the prominent intellectuals and would-be intellectuals of his time. Dostoyevsky was doing his work mostly in the third-quarter of the nineteenth century, in Russia, when faith in God and in the doctrines of Orthodox Christianity (as opposed to either Catholicism or Protestantism) were beginning to be widely scoffed at, especially in the upper classes, and there was wide-spread admiration for the ideas of the French Revolution, with a good deal of nihilism - that is, belief in having no beliefs. When a person without acute and comprehensive intellect operates with cynicism regarding the beliefs of those he or she lives among, and a faith that people, if liberated from such beliefs, can do better making up their own thoughts and moves - there is frequently great mental suffering, posing, and violence performed to convince oneself that one is free. This is frequently seen in our own time, in western civilization, too. Dostoyevsky was such a nihilist (and a revolutionary) as a youth - but spent time among (non-political) criminals in Siberia, then, on probation, in a provincial town, with people mostly not his intellectual equals. Some, tho, were quite brilliant, some extraordinarily passionate, and some were extraordinarily kind and helpful - and some combined all these qualities. (Some were extraordinarily cruel and insensitive, too. Most, of course, were as conventional as they were able to be.) When he returned to Petersburg, Dostoyevsky's companions were his fellow petty bureaucrats - i.e., clerks below middle-management - in a thoroughly corrupt and failing system - where courage, for instance, was considered a character flaw, and compassion laughable. The struggles of such people - and Dostoyevsky's own struggle, trying to survive and to make a come-back (he had had big success with a juvenile novel, POOR FOLK, early) as a convicted felon and a man with suspect political leanings in times of fierce reaction and fitting in for the purpose of thriving - became the material of his great novels, which he wrote, mostly, in St. Petersburg, rapidly - so that they are by no means elegant - for money he desperately needed. Each novel became more competently written and comprehensive in examining the social situation, passionate relationships, psychological and spiritual conditions and catastrophes, and occasional triumphant transcendence. THE BROTHERS KARAMZOV was the last - and the wisest - completed just before Dostoyevsky's death. Recalling it frequently serves me as a kind of beacon, a lighthouse - when I seem to be navigating primarily in the dark: when others seem to be acting toward or reacting with me and among one another almost entirely in a destructive manner - believing what is not so, and inadvertantly causing destructive results - placing apparently insurmountable obstacles in the path of that which would benefit those who are suffering thru no fault of their own - and which would relieve the very conditions they themselves complain of most vociferously - or suffer from in proud secrecy. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- uXu #540 Underground eXperts United 2000 uXu #540 Call Terraniux Underground -> +46-8-7777388 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

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