“And now to business.”
“Though it would be strange to demand clarity from people in a time like ours.” (Introduction)
After about 18 years, I’m re-reading Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, the superbly-translated 2006 version by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, and, to quote from another classic, “Yes, I said yes, I will, yes!”
I know that no less a talent than Vladimir Nabokov hated Dostoevsky, called him “Dusty,*” and couldn’t bear his taste for passion and melodrama….but, alas.
I, personally, am at peace with my continued adoration of Fedya’s works. Nabokov was more of an aristocrat than I’ll ever be, and I adore Dostoevsky’s bodice-ripping, over-the-top passion; his continual, un-ending asides; not to mention his almost preternatural empathy for the suffering of children. That detail, at least, I suspect came from Dostoevsky’s own miserable childhood, if not, the general ordeal of living (….if you can call it living…) and surviving in Tsarist Russia. (Oy vey.)
Nabokov hated Dostoevsky for many reasons, not least his virulent loathing for the Jews, and nope, not defending that, but when you read a paragraph like the following:”Though I do not believe in the order of things, still the sticky little leaves that come out in the spring are dear to me, the blue sky is dear to me, some people are dear to me, whom one loves sometimes, would you believe it, without even knowing why; some human deeds are dear to me, which one has perhaps long ceased believing in, but still honors with one’s heart, out of old habit.” (pg. 230) Oh, come on!*sighs deeply and passionately and presses book to her bosom*
I am not here to judge Dostoevsky, but to savor him, to praise him, to enjoy him, and to allow him to enrich my life. Looking for a great book to read? There’s a reason we call these books “classics.”
*The unreliable “hero” of Nabokov’s Despair is very funny on the subject of Dostoevsky.