Professor David Peimer
Fyodor Dostoevsky and The Brothers Karamazov

Professor David Peimer | Fyodor Dostoevsky and The Brothers Karamazov | 06.11.22

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- Okay, thank you. So again, hi to everybody and hope everyone is well. Okay, last week, looked at Tolstoy and that insanely long, 900-page novel “War and Peace,” and this week, for light respite, Dostoevsky. And I’m going to focus primarily on “The Brothers Karamazov” but also on “Crime and Punishment” and “The Idiot” briefly as we go through. Just one or two thoughts before to give a context. These guys, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev, and others, Gogol, or even Chekhov is beginning, a little bit later, most of them are writing in the 1860s and so on, second half of the 19th century. And it’s an extraordinary period of remarkable literary explosion in Russian literature. A number of reasons. Obviously, the Gutenberg press, and novels are being published much more, poetry is. There’s Pushkin as well. And also, the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, if I remember, 1860, 1861, anyway, and that is a huge change. It means access to reading, to writing, to at least the basics of education for, let’s say, the remaining 80, 90% of the population, not just the 10% aristocrats or, if you like, the ruling elite who have access to knowledge, education, reading, and writing. The other thing was the proliferation of magazines. You know, Dickens was similar in London and others in England.

So they would write in terms of serialisation. Every week, they had to produce more and more, almost like the soapies of today. So it’s one of the reasons, I would speculate, together with the weather, obviously, but for these absurdly, or, for us today, absurdly, but these long novels, full of psychology and philosophy and thought and ideas and so on, to grip the readers. Very popular amongst the readership of Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and the other educated centres or the increasingly educated numbers of people, the rise of a small mercantile class, et cetera. So the serialisation is really important. And they all begin, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and others, they begin their careers writing in this way. And it changes the approach to their writing, becomes a whodunit. You’ve got to have murder and revenge and hate and love and desire and huge wars and passions and so on. You’ve got to keep the readers gripped, you know, what’s going to happen in the next instalment?

Okay, the other point about Dostoevsky is that he’s so different, for me, to Tolstoy and the others because he does not come from an aristocratic background. He is not the landed nobility, the rich aristocratic 10% who really rule Russia and have for centuries. Very different world that he comes from, which I’m going to go into, and the extraordinarily, if you like, semi-insane or complicated and difficult life that this guy has. And it feeds, for me, it feeds directly into his literature. And it’s one of the reasons why just the name Dostoevsky has such a powerful grip on the contemporary imagination, you know, on our imagination in most countries in the world, translated, that he is so powerful and so invested in his writing and what he’s exploring that it becomes quite extraordinary. And because he does not come from the privileged background that Tolstoy and some of the others do. Even Chekhov, you know, was a qualified doctor, et cetera. So a very, very different world. So what I want to say is, with him, I guess the last point, that I’m going to go into some of these very important experiences of his life, what happened with his father, what happened in his own life with imprisonment, murder, going into what became known as the Gulag, in our times, of course, Siberian forced labour imprisonment camps for years.

You know, what this guy suffered is quite extraordinary. And endless money problems, gambling, drinking, et cetera. So on the one hand, yes, as Nabokov accused, Nabokov the great novelist we all know. Nabokov said that he was highly neurotic and wrote about neurotic and lunatic characters. And he thought he was a third-rate writer. And I’m going to come to Nabokov’s criticisms. But many others did not. But to give a balanced perspective, there’s all of that, and there’s the other side of Dostoevsky. There is a relentless drive to get to the heart of the human heart, which I think goes much further than the others, than Tolstoy, Turgenev, many of the other writers of these decades in Russian history, and in fact, European history, because of his life experiences. The death of his father at a young age, his own imprisonment, his own torture, Siberian labour camp, all these things I’m going to come to. So I want to combine his own personal life with just a sweeping sense of the historical and political life of Russia and the tsar of the times, and then, thirdly, go into primarily “The Brothers Karamazov” and a little bit “Crime and Punishment” and “The Idiot.”

Okay, so Dostoevsky is here, and he’s living 1821, as you can see, to 1881. So he’s really covering that period, what has become known as something of the golden period of Russian literature, you know, because of these names that I mentioned. Whether it’s really a golden period or not is up for debate. It’s five or six or maybe seven or eight writers who explode onto the Russian and European scene, if you like. Okay, so this is here one of the classic pictures that is so well known of Dostoevsky. And, you know, I’m sure many of you have seen it before. The three books I said I’m going to mention, look at “Crime and Punishment.” You see the dates, and that’s what’s important. It’s this period, post the emancipation of let’s call them the serfs, the peasants, whatever. I would call it close to slavery, semi-slavery. But it’s such an important moment, 1860, 1861, in Russian history, the beginning of that emancipation. These are the three books that we’re going to look at, and those are the dates. And, you know, some other pictures of Dostoevsky here. One of his favourite poems was a poem of Pushkin’s. And this line comes from Pushkin, from the poem, “Fear no insult, ask for no crown, receive within indifference both flattery and slander, and do not argue with a fool.”

What I love about this, and I can imagine, if you like, Dostoevsky loving this, ‘cause he wrote about this a lot. This poem and these lines, he would quote them often in letters and so on. It’s almost a bit like Kipling’s “If.” You know, if you can, you know, and keep a balanced perspective on life, not be seduced by fame or glory, have no fear and, you know, not be seduced by the fashionable trappings of what may be fleeting, fame, glory, money, wealth, and so on. “Receive within indifference flattery and slander.” And then he throws in the line, “And do not argue with a fool.” And you have to laugh and smile. You get Pushkin’s wit. And for me, you get Dostoevsky’s wit. And that’s something not often associated with Dostoevsky. One thinks of these, “The Notes from the Underground,” the dark and the horror of humanity, the murderous, cruel, avaricious nature of human beings. But there is a wit. And I’m going to try and explore that a little bit in the books. And we get that wit really coming out in Gogol and some of the others later, and I think Chekhov also. But it’s a particular kind of wit that’s thrown in.

At first, it hits you hard with the horror, and then it trips you with a bit of whip, a bit of wit. The other thing about this phrase is that what struck me is the role of the comic and the grotesque. So we get the comedy in that line, the last phrase, but the grotesque grows out of it. Because it set it up. Pushkin has set it up in the earlier part, the grotesqueness and the majesty of human beings, but flattery and slander, but be indifferent to it rather. So it’s the horrible side of human nature. But then, with the grotesque, there’s something in the comedy that it’s suddenly the grotesque comes out. And I think there’s often that relationship, especially in satire, where the grotesque grows out of the comedy. And some of the almost absurdly ridiculous situations that Dostoevsky sets up in his novels can be seen as quite grotesque, but actually quite comic and parodies almost when you explore it a little bit further. And I’ll go into that. Okay, so I want to go onto, this is a picture of him here when he’s in the Russian military, and he’s working as a military engineer. Let’s go back, a little bit about his life.

The atmosphere I’ve described in the 19th century, this era when he’s writing his books. He’s born in Moscow. When he’s 15, he leaves school, and he enters a military engineering institute. He graduates and works as an engineer. This is the picture of him here when he was working as a military engineer. He developed epilepsy when he’s 15, and it lasts obviously for the rest of his life. And at the time, epilepsy is seen as demonic possession. It’s not necessarily seen as a physical condition or genetically-induced condition at all. It’s seen in a more demonic way, aligned to religious belief, perhaps. It’s not seen in the other way. When I gave a lecture on Freud, that’s one of Freud’s greatest achievements to separate out physical illness and conditions from being seen as psychological manifestations of inner demonic spirits, if you like. Okay, but, in his own time, it’s not. Epilepsy seen in this other way. It develops at the same time that his father is murdered by two serfs. His father’s a low ranking government official, little bit of land. He’s murdered. They put a pillow over the head. And they were acquitted in the trial.

So the epilepsy starts at the murder of his own father, which he witnesses. He completes his first novel “Poor Folk” in 1845. And then, after the murder of his father, he’s 15. Let’s not forget. How many 15? We know so many 15-year-old. The murder of the father and by his own workers. Then he and his fellow conspirators in 1845, after he writes “Poor Folk, he’s mixed up with a literary group, and they’re called conspirators because they’re questioning the role of absolute despotism of the tsar. They’re questioning the extreme totalitarian state, ideas from the post French Revolution, from France, from England, from Europe, are spreading through of ideas of democracy and human rights and justice and all the ideas of the Enlightenment, rationalism, have reached. And of course, they’re taken up as young, idealistic, and authors. Dostoevsky, again, does not come from the aristocratic background. He’s poor. His father’s not rich. His father has to borrow money to pay for his high school. So the tsar, Tsar Nicholas I and his secret police are terrified of a revolution similar to the Decembrist Revolt of 1825, which I had mentioned in relation before to Pushkin, where the officers had copies of Pushkin’s poem "The Ode to Liberty,” and, of course, the revolutions of 1848 and so on. So it’s this case of Dostoevsky and his fellow writers. He’s in his early 20s. He’s 23, 24.

The case is discussed for four months by the tsar himself and his secret police. And they decide, they sentence the group to death by firing squad. And they’re just a literary group. They have got ideas coming from Europe. They’re writing a few pamphlets, a few novels, a few pieces of literature, et cetera. But they’ve hardly got much of an audience. You know, they’ve only got the few, highly-educated literary elite, who are the aristocrats themselves. And the men are led out in three rows. First of all, he’s imprisoned in a terrible fortress in Saint Petersburg for a year and then led out in three rows. And they’re going to have a firing squad be shot one by one. And at the last second, a letter arrived from the tsar to stay the execution and commute it to a sentence, four years hard labour in a Siberian labour camp. They’re standing out in late November in freezing cold about to be shot, and within seconds, minutes, the letter from the tsar arrived. It’s obviously a setup by the tsar to terrify them and make an example of any other writers or those of, artists of literary aspiration, or thinkers, intellectuals. So it’s a terrifying experience for this young guy and the others. And we can only imagine it, if we can. And Dostoevsky later alludes to this experience.

He thought, obviously, it’s his last moments of his life. He’s in his early 20s. And he alludes to it in “The Idiot.” Talks about the guillotine. You know, there’s that scene. Anyway, four years exile, hard labour in a Siberian labour camp. They call him, the tsar and the secret police classify Dostoevsky as one of the most dangerous convicts. He’s shackled with chains, and he’s only allowed a copy of the Bible, and he’s sent off to the labour camp in Siberia. He has to walk with chains for four years. Hard labour, and then, afterwards, he has to serve, once he’s released from the Siberian labour camp, he has to serve six years compulsory in the military, in the tsar’s army. This is what he wrote. It’s the beginning of Gulag literature we all know so well from Solzhenitsyn. “In summer, intolerable closeness; in winter, unendurable cold. All the floors rotten. Filth on the floors an inch thick; one could slip and fall and die in an instant. We were packed like herrings in a barrel. There was no room to turn around. From dusk to dawn it was impossible not to behave like pigs. Fleas, lice, disease, black beetles.” And he goes on and on. He’s writing in such a visceral, evocative way. And it’s the first of, as I said, what became known as Gulag literature, Solzhenitsyn and many others much later.

Nobody else until then has written about the reality of political dissidents or just writers who oppose the tsar and the absolute despotism. He’s only allowed to read the Bible for four years. And of course, he’s got epilepsy. So he has seizures, fevers, typhus, et cetera, and shackled with chains for four years. We can imagine what goes through the mind of this young Dostoevsky. So he’s released from prison, and in 1856, he sends a letter to the general, the security police, secret police, apologising for his activity. Obviously forced. Otherwise, he’s got no chance in life. And this enables him to get permission to marry. And he gets permission to publish books because he writes the letter of apology. But he remained under the tsar’s secret police surveillance for the rest of his life, every day. Maria, his first wife, marries him in 1857. She initially refused. Anyway, she said that he was too poor, and they weren’t meant for each other. Anyway, they get married. Terrible marriage. There’s some research that she couldn’t deal with the seizures of epilepsy, but I think it’s obviously much more than that. But interestingly, Dostoevsky wrote in a letter to a friend, “We could not stop loving each other. The more unhappy we were, the more attached to each other we became. We needed unhappiness to feel love and love to feel unhappiness.”

At this early age in the marriage, he’s understanding what I’m going to go to a lot in the novels, the extreme contradiction of human nature. The paradox, how close love and hate are. They walk a razor’s edge. Compassion and violence, forgiveness and contempt. He understands all the extreme opposites of human nature from an early age, and he understands in his own marriage. You know, unhappiness and love can flip from moment to moment or day to day together. So he’s released in 1859 from military service 'cause of his bad health. And he’s allowed to see his brother for the first time in 10 years. 1862, he’s allowed to go on a trip to Western Europe, Cologne, Berlin, Dresden, Belgium, Paris, London, et cetera, Florence. 1863, he goes on another trip. And there he meets his second wife, Polina, in Paris, and he nearly loses all his money through gambling and drinking. In 1864, his first wife, Maria, dies and his brother, Mikhail, dies. He travels more around Europe, develops an addiction to gambling, endless debts, begging for money, and at the same time, starts to become one of the most widely read novelists or writers in Russia through the serialisation, you know, weekly periodical that I mentioned. Influenced by Pushkin, Gogol, Saint Augustine, Dickens, and others.

He’s been translated into 170 languages. That’s extraordinary. So people in almost every country in the world in our times have access in their own language to read Dostoevsky. And of course, served as the basis for many movies and theatre and TV series, et cetera. His father’s religious, and religion pays a huge role obviously in his life, as we all know. His father borrows money to pay for his high school. It shows that they are not rich, and they don’t come from the aristocratic class I mentioned. Dostoevsky hated military academy. A friend wrote of him, “There was no student in the entire military academy with less of a military bearing than Dostoevsky. He walked clumsily. His uniform hung awkwardly about him.” And his epilepsy, of course, is going all the way through at the same time. Then he, with his second marriage and such debts, the second marriage, the lady’s called Anna, they’re forced to sell her valuables, their valuables, endless debts from his gambling and just needing money. Goes back to Russia, sell their possessions. Now, interestingly, Tsar Alexander II finally changes from his previous Tsar Nicholas and Alexander, and orders Dostoevsky to come and visit him in the palace. So he’s risen from pretty humble beginnings. I mean, not poverty beginnings but humble.

He’s risen through all this nightmare of an early, you know, in his early 20s, and his father being murdered in front of him, he’s risen to being called to the Tsar Alexander II to visit in the palace to present some of his writing. And the tsar asks him to educate his two sons, Sergei and Paul. So we get this constant sense of, on the one hand, the absolute pinnacle of power that tsar and the elite recognised the intelligence and the brilliance and the writing ability. On the other hand, they’re terrified of the threat he can pose by putting a few words on a few pages and so on. So we have this dichotomy. But his own life, and then he goes from the horror that I’ve mentioned, psychologically, to reach the pinnacle of Russian power. He’s elected to the committee of the Association of Literature, of the International Association of Literature and Artists, the French Association, and the members include Victor Hugo, Turgenev, Lord Tennyson, Trollope, Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Tolstoy, and others. He’s elected to the elite of the literary circles of his times in Europe. He’s critical of serfdom, of course, but he’s sceptical about a democratic constitution.

He’s changed from the utopian idealist who suffered in prison. He changes. He starts to take on, what is Russian identity? What is Russian nationalism? And something that obviously speaks to us so powerfully today. He advocated, of course, the end of the feudal system, which happened, and a weakening of the division between the peasantry and the affluent or landed classes. He’s utopian. He has a utopian Christianized Russian ideal of nationalism and identity. We get that today, perhaps without the Christianity and the religion, possibly to a degree. But this idea of great Russia, this idea of utopian Russia, this idea of Russia being different to Europe, but how, and in what way? He thought democracy and oligarchy. And he wrote about and used the word oligarchy in terms of French democracy, interestingly. And he thought they were poor systems. And he wrote of France of his times. Of course, this is post the Napoleonic era. “The oligarchs are only concerned with the interest of the wealthy; the democrats are only concerned with the interests of the poor; but the interests of society, the interest of everybody and the future of France, well, no one bothers about those things.”

So he gets the connection between certain class interests as opposed to the society interests. But he’s utopian and an idealist and remains so, I think, because he writes an article on socialism and Christianity, you know, and he has this sort of dream, hope, image or idealism, if you like, I think born from such cruelty and horrific life experience. You know, the only thing maybe is a belief in God, a belief in Christianity. He writes about the Jews. “I am not an enemy of the Jews and never have been. The Jews have existed and thrived for 40 centuries. This proves that the Jewish tribe has exceptional vitality. But because of this, they will always find themselves at variance with the indigenous population of any culture they live in, in our case, the Russian tribe.” He gets it immediately, so much that we’ve all spoken about over the two years, assimilation, non-assimilation, you know, pariah or non-pariah, Hannah Arendt’s phrase, you know. The upstart made good or the pariah. All this debates where the Jew fit or not fit in European, and in this case, Russian, culture and history going way back.

Of course, linked to Christianity, but also linked, in a way, to a perception of 40 centuries, exceptional vitality. But because of that, they will always be at variance with the indigenous population of whatever tribe they’re part of. The endless debate that we’ve all known and we’ve discussed so many times. He gets it in a couple of phrases, I think. And yes, he’s anti-Semitic, and there are parts of his writing which are anti-Semitic. There’s no question about it. In the letters and other things, where it’s more vitriolic. But this is the most interesting phrase that I’ve found. It’s the most philosophically thought through phrase. And he only has one character in all his writing who is Jewish, and the character is lazy and deceitful and a few other things, but not a huge major character in any of the major novels or books. I’m not excusing, and I am certainly not forgiving him in the slightest, the opposite. But I don’t think he really cared that much. He’s anti-Semitic, so are many of the others. You know, T. S. Eliot all the way back to many of the others. He’s obsessed with Russian nationalism, Russian identity. And he later writes about the Jews that he admires, Jews who stick to their traditional and religious beliefs and nationhood. And he has an idealistic naive hearkening back to a kind of landed Russian nationalism and identity, which he sees as different to a European one.

Now, this is very popular at the time. Tolstoy and many of the others are all thinking in this way. They’re trying to find a position of Russian identity in relation to European, superior, inferior. Of course, they feel inferior in relation to France, England, you know, and maybe even Germany and other countries. So they’re trying to find what is their identity. And this speaks, I think, to a very profound and deep sensibility in Russia today, certainly of Putin and other leaders anyway, or they’re simply using it cynically for power. But I think somewhere deeper, they’re all part of something of, somewhere this mythology does touch them profoundly. And of course, the Christianity is very powerful, very religious upbringing. Christianity becomes more and more essential to his life, the figure of Christ, I should say, rather than Christianity and established institutionalised religion. The other key theme for me in all his work, aside from Russian nationality and identity and so on, is the theme of human suffering.

Samuel Beckett had the great phrase just after the war, before he wrote “Waiting for Godot” in the mid 1940s. He’s walking around Paris, and he had this beautiful phrase. He wrote to a fellow writer in Ireland. He said, “I see humanity everywhere on its knees and sinking.” So humanity on its knees, suffering. What he went through in his own life, Dostoevsky, the suffering of so many people on a psychological, on a political level, everything imaginable. And I think it’s the obsession with suffering that makes him the great writer that he is. No other writer of his era and very few post Dostoevsky really try to go to the heart of why do we suffer so much. Why do humans make others suffer so much? Why do we give power to a few to make so many suffer? Whether it be a material point of view or institutional or communities, nations, superior, inferior, binaries. What is the nature of suffering? And then his question, which is in “The Brothers Karamazov,” well, what is this God? If this God allows so much suffering. An old ancient question, we know, but he makes it contemporary.

And he almost, totally unconsciously, predicts this 20th century to come. Where the hell is God if there is all this suffering? What the hell is a God? Is this a God of mercy, of love, of justice? What what kind of God? And if God has given free will, well, why? Because it’s led to so much suffering. What’s the point? And that’s one of the primary themes in “The Brothers Karamazov,” and we see it in that brilliant chapter of the Grand Inquisitor. We see it also in “The Idiot.” You know, the idiot is the character who’s the goody two-shoes. He tries to forgive and compassion and is involved in financial and emotional affairs. And he’s disastrous with them all. But he’s endlessly Christian or forgiving or religious, whatever you call it, you know, has the faith, believes in the goodness of humanity and tries to forgive and be kind and everything, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That’s why he’s an idiot because he’s not going to fit into society. That’s the paradoxical humour I alluded to right at the beginning with the Pushkin quote. From the comic comes the grotesque. So it’s a comic idea “The Idiot.” It’s ridiculous. It’s an idea.

The character’s so naively idealistic, he can only, you know, be smashed to bits by everybody else in a way. He’s an idiot, but he believes in all the values the society purports to aspire to. How do we live if a few have so much power? Dostoevsky asks. And they claimed always to benefit mankind to make the society greater again. And I’m not talking about the Trump slogan. You know, that slogan’s been used by many in varied forms over many cultures. You know, how do we make people feel greater, feel stronger, feel bigger, better? In a word, superior, not inferior. Why do we give power to so few? And they always end up making so much suffering. The role of murder, prison, law. What is crime? What is punishment? He is not scared, through the lens of suffering, is, what I believe, his way in to try and understand all these great themes of human life and our societies. And then, of course, the self-righteousness that is in his novels, of the left, equally of the right. The self-righteousness. There’s only one way of understanding history. There’s only one truth. And we don’t only have to look at communism or extremes of capitalism or communism, whatever. There’s only one truth. This is the way.

The self-righteous, extreme zealot, whether of the left or the right. He goes into it, the role of the tyrant and so on. Again, coming back to the core of suffering in human nature, and what on earth is this idea of a God? Interestingly, in 1861, 90% of Russians, this is the emancipation of the serfs, were serfs, peasants, semi-slave, 90%. 10% are the ruling elite. So in America, around the same time, I think it was about 16% are slaves or just coming out of slavery, and the remainder are, let’s call it, free. In Russia, 90% are serfs. Not only are they semi-slaves, but it means they’ve had no access to education, no access to literacy, to read or write anything. That is what Russia is emerging out of in this period. They are intentionally groomed to be ignorant. They’re intentionally kept without any knowledge. And it’s the secret police of the tsar and many others, et cetera, of course, all in league with this. So this is the culture and the massive change that is happening when he and these other guys are writing. You know, for me, in his one short novel, “The Double,” every idea has its opposite. The sympathetic has the cruelty. The contempt has the forgiveness.

What I mentioned before, he sees paradox and contradiction in every human emotion, in every human idea. And whilst hoping for a utopian solution, he knows that’s the truth. He’s gone through murder, he’s gone through prison, you know, suffering himself, and so on. He’s seen incredibly kind convicts, you know, in the harsh labour camps of Siberia. He’s seen cruel extremes of all kinds. And the phrase from Solzhenitsyn perhaps rings true. Solzhenitsyn in “The Gulag Archipelago,” he writes, “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” In Dostoevsky, his phrase is, “Hell is the place where it is impossible to love.” Fascinating phrase. “Hell is the place where it is impossible to love.” I think that these kinds of phrases for me, you know, speak to a lot of his work. Okay, what I want to do is I want to show now, we’re going to go straight onto… I want to just talk a little bit about “Crime and Punishment” first. Because “Crime and Punishment,” briefly, I’m sure everybody knows it, just to mention. Raskolnikov murders a pawnbroker who’s been horrible to people, made a lot of money, so he’s doing, he’s killing the pawn, he’s murdering the pawnbroker for the benefit of mankind or the society.

But then Raskolnikov suffers from guilt. I murdered, but I murdered for a good cause. I murdered the baddy who was taking so much of our money, but I did it for a good cause. On the one hand, he murders with a kind of cold indifference. On the other hand, he starts to be plagued by this guilt. That for me is what I mean almost by the comic and the grotesque linked so close. It’s a comic idea, in the profound meaning of the word comic, as a premise for a novel or a play. And yet it has profound implications. We can only go so deep in terms of wealth and rich or power, elite, if you like, and the role of murder and guilt and the suffering, you know, that the character goes through. So he’s killed. Everybody, you know, other people are happy. But then, of course, Raskolnikov gets rich himself, and he’s torn, you know, between, did he act righteously or didn’t he? Et cetera, et cetera.

“The Idiot,” I’ve mentioned the main story, the main idea, is almost a Christ-like forgiving, iconic mythical figure, if you like, and compassionate and everything, et cetera. But what is also interesting in “The Idiot” is that it dawns on us the reader, and this is Dostoevsky’s brilliance, that, in fact, to be so forgiving is increasingly destructive because it almost becomes a parody of himself. That it’s delusional to be a goody two-shoes so much, to think that to be good is to be safe and secure. It’s delusional. Society is going to smash you from this side and that. And the degree of self-deception that we as humans are capable of is an extraordinary depth of delusional activity. That’s a fascinating extra idea that Dostoevsky adds in. Okay, this is a scene here from the Yul Brynner production, Hollywood production of “The Brothers Karamazov” trailer.

[Clip plays]

• [Narrator] All that makes men and women saints or sinners, the furies that rage in their hearts, the fires that burn in their flesh, now storms the screen in the seething story of a master storyteller. “The Brothers Karamazov.”

• Alexey, I see in myself the same depravity and sin as there is in our father. I’m a Karamazov.

• My father is very romantic.

• And very rich. He wants to marry me.

• Hmm.

• And if I marry him, that makes me be your mother.

• [Narrator] This is the explosive story of the Karamazov family. The seed of depravity and sin that was in their father was the only thing the brothers had in common. Lee J. Cobb gives an astounding performance as the father. Albert Salmi makes an auspicious screen debut as the sinister illegitimate son.

• You wouldn’t kill your own son, would you?

• Do you want to kill me, darling?

• Stop talking such foolishness, pop.

• [Narrator] The saintly Alexey is portrayed by William Shatner. Co-star Richard Basehart vividly portrays the smouldering intellectual Ivan.

• Slut!

• That’s not becoming of a lady.

• You’re on sale to any man.

• I didn’t go to Dmitri’s room for 5,000 rubles, did I?

[Clip ends]

• Okay, I’m going to hold it there. I just wanted to show this because Hollywood has taken out all, most links anyway, to the Russian historical context and cultural and political context of its time. And they’re focused entirely, mostly anyway, on the emotional quality of love and hate. And the father hates his three sons, and the brothers, and the role of the inheritance and the money, and the Yul Brynner character, Dmitri, the main son, the eldest son, having an affair with the same woman that the father is having an affair with. You know, the passions, and the passion leads to murder and hate and desire and lust, et cetera. You can see in the presentation of the trailer how much the emotional world of these characters is glorified and sensationalised. It’s a sensationalist portrayal. It’s not trying to go into any of the questions that I really tried to look at earlier. And it incorporates what we would I think see as a bit, the film was made in the '50s, of a kind of '50s soapie in a way. And we can imagine it along those lines.

But it’s interesting to see, you know, given the cultural context of when it’s made. I want to show this is a better scene from the same, from the movie, between the two brothers. Just to remind everybody, for those who may have forgotten this ridiculous 800-page novel, you know, that Fyodor is the father of three sons, Dmitri, who Dmitri is the strong physical one and impetuous, and he drinks, and he corrals, and the intellectual, Alexey, the younger shy one. The father, Fyodor, has also fathered an illegitimate son, Pavel, who the father employs as his own servant. That’s his own son. Fyodor has no interest in his three legitimate sons and no interest in the illegitimate son. And the relationship between Fyodor and the three sons, who are the brothers, of course, is really at the core of what drives the plot of the novel.

Dmitri, the Yul Brynner character, is the eldest. He drinks. He has wine, women, and song. But he wants his inheritance, and he’s the most strongest, mentally and physically, which, of course, the father’s holding onto. Relationship with the father becomes volatile, violent. They fight over the money. They fight over the love triangle for Grushenka, who’s the woman who has an affair with the father and Dmitri, the son. And killing the father. And then Dmitri’s closest to the younger brother, the youngest one, whose nickname is Alyosha, and he calls him his cherub. Ivan is the 24-year-old, reserved and aloof, but intellectually brilliant. And his dictum is, if there’s no God, everything is lawful. Now, it’s a phrase which we all know from philosophy and coming down through the ages. If there is no God, then everything is lawful. Why not?

You know, Hitler was not that far from a similar kind of a phrase. And that’s a recurring motif in the play, in the novel. So the role of God or what God represents, a series of moral precepts, of moral ideas, if you like, to, if you like, at least balance or contain the darker, most cruel aspects of human nature. But, on the other hand, in the remarkable chapter with The Grand Inquisitor, which is about the debate between Ivan and the understanding of a kind of moral ideal, and in this case, in the novel, against a universe of suffering. That’s the link for me of suffering is at the core of the novel. And in this remarkable chapter on The Grand Inquisitor, Ivan rejects God. Because you have to refute the Christian idea of compassion. It’s absurd. Human history is proven by the senselessness of endless utter suffering on many levels.

So the world of God must be a world to be rejected. Ivan is the youngest, the intelligent, the intellectual thinker, and the debate with The Grand Inquisitor in that remarkable scene. He’s the first. I know it’s in the Book of Job and there’s many others. But he goes into such intricate, nuanced detail in this philosophising through the character, through. We’ve gone through murder, prisons, everything, cruelty, et cetera, to come to this in the novel. That’s the key. And this is a scene here between the two of the Yul Brynner Dmitri character.

[Clip plays]

• I don’t understand. Why do you have private lodgings away from the barracks?

• For private reasons, brother.

• And why didn’t you pay them with the 5,000?

• I have another use for it.

• Father wants you to sign this first.

• The hell with him first. Ah. He’d only hold you responsible for it.

• How can you hate your own father?

• There are fathers and there are animals who only sire you. He was never a real father to me, nor to you, nor to Ivan. What do you expect me to do? Love him?

• Dmitri, we all need love.

• You blame him for nothing.

• Nothing.

• Alexey, I see in myself the same depravity and sin as there is in our father. I’m a Karamazov. But then you are too. Only you’re a saint. As long as there is Fyodor Karamazov, there is evil. And as long as there is you, there is good. Alexey. Pray for me, brother.

• You’re very prompt, Katya.

• I’m desperate, lieutenant.

• Can I give you something? Maybe some wine, tea?

• 5,000 rubles, please. You said that if I came for it myself. I’m here.

• Even when you ask for a favour, you do it as an insult. You have too much pride, Katya.

• The regiment’s books will be inspected in the morning. 5,000 will be found missing. The commanding officer, my father, will be responsible.

• Only because he took the money.

• Promised me the 5,000 if I… I’m not begging, lieutenant. Tonight, I’m prepared-

• And tomorrow?

• Our bargain concerns me-

• And what if tomorrow I came to you with a proposal of marriage?

• That would be even more degrading.

• Good night, Katya. Good night.

• Lieutenant? The innkeeper claims that you’re-

[Clip ends]

• Okay, that was the two parts to that little clip. The first is between the two brothers, the Karamazov, you know, the Yul Brynner character, sees himself, Dmitri, as the evil one, and, you know, it comes down through the father’s line, and Alyosha, the youngest one, and actually close, is the idealistic, monk-like figure, if you like. So he has set up stereotypes, but, at the same time, he has set up, because they are brothers, we can assume intimacy. We can assume such a closeness. And therefore, they can say almost anything and do almost anything to each other. That’s the key. And it’s one of the classic techniques that soapies use and pot boilers as well. In book five, that I mentioned in the “The Brothers Karamazov,” is all about the Grand Inquisitor.

You know, one of the great chapters that we’ve seen. And then Ivan is arguing, the brother, the middle brother, that the world of God must be rejected because it’s a world built on suffering. It’s not a world built on compassion and forgiveness, love thy neighbour, et cetera. And in it, Ivan, the middle brother, tells Alyosha, the younger one we saw with Yul Brynner, his imagined poem. And the imagined poem is an encounter between a Grand Inquisitor from the Spanish Inquisition and Jesus who has returned to earth. And we see the dramatisation of a Grand Inquisitor who then orders the arrest of Christ and throws him into prison. But then he goes to visit him in prison. The Grand Inquisitor accuses Jesus of having inflicted on humankind the burden of free will. You have the freedom to love, the freedom to choose, love, love of God or compassion or forgiveness, or not. And the Grand Inquisitor accuses Jesus. You know, you’ve come, but you haven’t just brought, you know, love thy neighbour, et cetera. You’ve brought the burden of free will, and that’s led to all the suffering.

So the Grand Inquisitor, 90-year-old Grand Inquisitor, throws Christ into prison, furious. And at the end of listening to a long speech, Christ in the prison silently steps forward and kisses the 90-year-old Grand Inquisitor on his lips. The Inquisitor is stunned, tells Christ that he must never come here again. Do not come back to earth, go. And he lets him out of prison. That’s what I meant, again. It’s almost parody. It’s almost a comic moment in the profound meaning of the word comedy. Because Christ has come back to the Spanish Inquisition, but he’s accused of bringing the burden of free will. Religion has brought the burden of free will and the belief in it to humankind, and that’s led to all the cruelty and suffering. And Christ turns the other cheek and gives the kiss, et cetera, et cetera. So one can see the kind of complexity that Dostoevsky is playing with. He’s not giving a simplistic argument, pro or anti Christianity or the beliefs of religion, other religions as well, at all.

You know, “Woza Albert,” the great South African anti-apartheid play in the '80s, has a simple premise. What if Christ came back to apartheid South Africa with a slightly darker or whatever colour skin or hair? So in the comic lies the grotesque of a society and the way people treat each other and the cruelty. The link, again. And then, of course, Dmitri later is accused of the murder, found guilty, is going to be sentenced to the Siberian prisons and so on. And Ivan, of course, in a world without God, everything is permitted. So we have these profound philosophical debates and ideas which I think are so contemporary inside this remarkable novel and inside Dostoevsky’s thinking. But it’s nuanced and complex, you know. What is holding us back from anything being permitted? What is holding us back from extreme cruelty and violence and horror? You know, whether it’s slavery or colonialism or whether it’s, you know, the Gulag or Russians being sent to Siberian camps.

All of this to me is seen by Dostoevsky through the original lens of suffering. And that for me is the link in why he read so much of Saint Augustine, Dante, and some of the others. Okay, a couple of quotes just to help us with Dostoevsky. “Man likes to count his troubles much more than his happiness. People speak of the cruelty of man, but that’s a bit unjust, and it’s offensive to beasts. No animal could be so cruel as man. No animal could be so artfully and artistically cruel.” Reminds me of the film “Conspiracy” about the Wannsee Conference and the 90-minute meeting in Wannsee of Heydrich and the other Nazi leaders, where they decide on the Final Solution. The word elegant is used in the German version of the film. You know, it’s an elegant decision. It’s an elegant way of dealing with the Jewish problem, et cetera, et cetera. You know, so artistically cruel is Dostoevsky’s phrase. “Man is sometimes extraordinarily and passionately in love with suffering.” Why? That to me is the key to look at the whole of Dostoevsky’s work.

C. P. Snow, the really interesting cultural thinker and writer of Britain, he spoke about Einstein. 'Cause Einstein regarded “The Brothers Karamazov” as one of the greatest, if not the greatest novel. And Snow wrote about Einstein that, “For him, 1919, "The Brothers Karamazov” was the extreme summit of literature. And it remained so when I spoke to Einstein again 20 years later in 1937.“ Freud called it the most magnificent novel ever written. The oedipal themes. And in fact, 1928, Freud published a paper called "Dostoevsky and Parricide.” His obsession with the son and the father, killing the father. You know, his own father being murdered. Freud argued, of course, that Dostoevsky’s epilepsy was the physical manifestation of the guilt, his father’s death, et cetera, et cetera. Kafka called Dostoevsky his blood relative. Wittgenstein read “The Brothers Karamazov” so… This is from his own letter. “I have read 'The Brothers Karamazov’ so often I know whole passages by heart.”

Stalin is reputed to have read Dostoevsky and “The Brothers Karamazov” many times, and his own copy of this book had many notes in the margins. Hemingway wrote, “There were things so true in Dostoevsky in ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ that when you read them, you change. How many books do you read and change as you’re reading? It is frailty and madness, wickedness and saintliness, violence and cruelty and forgiveness, and the insanity of gambling.” He goes on, Hemingway. James Joyce wrote, “More than any other writer, he created modernity in prose, intensified it to its present day pitch. It was his explosive power which shattered the Victorian novel with its simpering maidens and ordered common places. Books that were without imagination and without violence.” Virginia Wolf, “After Shakespeare, there is no more exciting reading than Dostoevsky.”

Nabokov, his biggest critic, attacks him viciously for excessive, quote, “Excessive psychologizing. Excessive philosophising. It’s endless and stereotype. He’s a third-rate writer. I don’t know why he is so popular.” And Nabokov calls him a mediocre writer with wastelands of literary platitudes. “He writes novels only about people who are lunatics and neurotics. The plot is contrived. The complications are contrived.” Okay, I give you that at the end to give you some sense of other writers and other great thinkers that I, and I’m sure many others, admire and their thoughts on this crazy writer. The most extraordinary life and extraordinary couple of books that he wrote, which still torment and fascinate and inspire extraordinary responses, you know, 170 years, 160, 70 years after he wrote these novels. And to finish, finally, a little slide to share.

The top left, that is the copy of the Bible that he was allowed to, the only thing he was allowed to read in four years in the Siberian forced labour camp. The bottom are his scribblings in notes for “The Brothers Karamazov”. And you get an idea of his psychology from that. And on the right-hand side, 1971, the Soviet Union, as they often did, many countries in the world, they do postage stamps of their great writers. Many other countries, I don’t know why, there’s an obsession with postage stamps and writers.

Thank you very much, everybody, and happy to take questions.

Q&A and Comments

So Bev asks, “I wonder what the literacy rate in Russia was when the book was written.” Well, it was certainly less than 90, it was certainly less than 10%. Because it’s approximately 90% were serfs and 10% were the landed or the rich or the upper class, aristocratic class would’ve been literate. And I agree. Hard to believe the serfs would’ve become literate. They would only become literate over time. Absolutely. So they’re really being read by, you know, the upper class. Bev, “Such insane cruelty.” I know. Marion, thank you. Mavis,

Q: “And today, Russians are kept misinformed by their government. So, how far have they come from the time of 1861?” A: Great question, Mavis. And this obsession with Russian identity and the land and Russian nationalism and trying to define themselves in relation to Europe and Western Europe in particular, I think it’s still such a contemporary obsession.

Maxine, “On the subject of anti-Semitism, it reminds me of George Orwell, a great writer, but anti-Semitic tropes appear constantly in his writing.” Yes. “Along with other racist ideas.” Yep. “And in 1946, Orwell argued for the Jews "to be brought to the UK rather than be sent to Israel.” Fascinating. Complex, contradictory. Not quite as simple as one-dimensional hate of Jews. Faye, “There was a wonderful rendition of the full story on BBC Radio 4 a couple of years ago.” Ah. “It ran for three months.” Well, it’s 800 pages. You know, I suppose six months of freezing cold. What else? Candlelight and, you know, to write these. I think the serialisation is important, pot boilers, ‘cause they want to keep making money, so they’ve got to keep writing something every week that’s going to increase the readership. Henry, thank you for your kind comment. Bobby,

Q: “For Dostoevsky novels, what book would you suggest starting with?” A: I would dive into “The Brothers Karamazov,” but there’s “Crime and Punishment” or “The Idiot.” Those three for me are sort of top of the pops. In particular, “The Brothers Karamazov” and “Crime and Punishment.”

Gail, thanks so much, Gail. Hope you’re well in Joburg.

Q: “Is there a particular translation?” A: There are quite a few that are really good today, and, you know, can happily email through, you know, through lockdown.

Q: Bobby, “Did Dostoevsky’s family and friends also believe he was possessed because of epilepsy?” “Did he have children?” A: Yes. I forgot to mention he had a child, a baby, and he was three, 'cause the baby died of pneumonia at the age of three. And, you know, the suffering of this guy was just endless. His first wife dies. His brother dies. His baby dies. His father is murdered. The rest you know.

Q: “Did his friends believe he was possessed?” A: I think, I don’t know specifically his friends and family, but certainly the culture. And that’s, as I said, one of Freud’s greatest contributions was to divide, was to draw the distinction between this is a medical, physical condition, and it’s not a psychological condition. You know, and the classic example for Freud, of course, was the notion of hysteria with women. Women were accused of being hysterical and all the rest of it. And there could be a physical component, or there could be a psychological, or they could be separate. And, you know, Freud then diagnosed, hence many… Freud is responsible I think for really setting into medical history the change and not that blurred confusion. So I think in his own time, it would’ve been seen as demonic possession, whether it was Satan, 'cause his father was religious, very religious, or whether it was something else. You know, epilepsy would’ve been seen as something. Julius Caesar also had epilepsy. But interestingly, the Romans called it the falling sickness. I haven’t found much evidence that the Romans regarded it as something demonic, you know, or linked to one of the gods. 'Cause in Caesar’s writing, it’s not described like that. He doesn’t describe himself like that. Anyway, Paul,

Q: “Have you seen 'Inquisition’ with Derek Jacobi? The film of the Grand Inquisitor.” A: Yes, fantastic, with Derek Jacobi. Thanks, Paul. Yvonne, thank you. And thank you for your kind comment, Richard.

Q: “Darwin was a contemporary of Dostoevsky. Any evidence of influence either way?” A: Great question. I don’t know, Richard. Great question, and I’ll have a look.

Avron, thank you.

Q: Laurie, “Do Russians read Dostoevsky today?” A: Yes, absolutely. I mean, they all read Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, you know, all of them. I don’t know about if they read Solzhenitsyn, unlikely, but certainly, you know, Turgenev, Chekhov, et cetera, of this whole second half of the 19th century. School kids have to read it at school in the way that in English language countries, school kids have to read Shakespeare, maybe Mark Twain, maybe Faulkner, maybe Dickens, Jane Austin, whatever. They have to read, you know, the Russians have to read it.

Q: Jean, “When the serfs were emancipated, did the state help them?” A: No, great question. Trudy would know this much more than me and William, but, as far as I know, I don’t think the state, you know, stepped in to offer to help them with a freer life or to get access to land or property or anything of that kind. I think, as you say, Jean, they were left on their own.

Susan, thank you. And then, number 365,

Q: “Are there any stories related to the end of his life or his death?” A: There are, but that could take a whole other, you know, time to go into.

Barbara, thank you. Erica, “If anyone chooses to go to Moscow, Dostoevsky’s house in the suburbs of Saint Petersburg is very interesting to visit. It’s full of his life and possessions, quite modest and very informative.” Thanks, Eric. That’s great. Erica, sorry. Apologies. Susan, “I thought that he had a daughter by his second marriage, became a writer.” I have to check that. Thanks for that. Brenda,

Q: “How do you explain Dmitri accepting his accusation of guilt?” A: Because he has killed, you know, he goes to kill… Grushenka is having an affair with Dmitri, the son, and Fyodor, the father. And he sneaks into the father’s house one night and Grushenka is there with his father, and in a fit of rage, kills the father. And there’s Grushenka. So it’s a love triangle of the father, the son, and Grushenka. And in the end, the guilt, you know, comes out in the trial, et cetera.

Thank you for your kind comment. Give Dostoevsky as a book. You know, I do feel, together with Nabokov, to say this, finally, it’s far too long for contemporary readers. It’s 800 pages. Tolstoy, “War and Peace,” we spoke about it. It’s over 900 pages. You know, it’s endless. I think for contemporary readers, it’s got to be edited, cut, shortened. And it frustrates me immensely to have to wade through many, for me, excessive words. But in the end, the treasure I get out of it is far greater than the temporary annoyance of wading through too many words.

Okay, thank you very much, everybody, and hope you have a wonderful rest of the weekend.