The Obscure Reading Group discussion

It’s the third week of our discussion of The Brothers Karamazov, and in Books 7, 8 and 9, we get back to the action. Zosima has died and his body is decomposing in a most unsaintly-like manner, giving Alyosha a crisis of faith.

What do you think of the flow of this novel? Do you like or find jarring the back and forth between different types of narratives--deeply philosophical to action to humor?

Any thoughts about the character of Grushenka and her role in the drama?

I’ve just started Book 8, so have some catching up to do …

I was really put off by the ridiculous to-do over Zosima's decaying body. Saints decay to a sweet smell? And the way the competing parties in the monasteries gloried in this revelation. Clearly Dostoevsky was having some fun at established religion's expense -- how political it is, how naive it is, how impossibly human and hypocritical it is.

Or, if Dosty wasn't using this opening scene to belittle the Church, I took it that way, as organized religion typically makes an easy mark. Of all people, they should know best the green-eyed monster and his wiles.

It was by this point I started enjoying the novel more but I found all its moving parts a little off-putting and some bits wondered how/why it was part of the narrative altogether. That being said, the 'action' against the 'philosophical' was always needed respite. Then again we always have to give the old 19thC writers credit, they all (I really mean mostly) liked to write giant books.

Ken wrote: "I was really put off by the ridiculous to-do over Zosima's decaying body. Saints decay to a sweet smell? And the way the competing parties in the monasteries gloried in this revelation. Clearly Dos..."
I found it hard to believe that Father Ferapont would be taken seriously. I also thought it was especially ridiculous given the previous chapters' focus on the life of Father Zosima and the author's portrayal of him as a such a good man. I got whiplash!

Matthew Ted wrote: "It was by this point I started enjoying the novel more but I found all its moving parts a little off-putting and some bits wondered how/why it was part of the narrative altogether. That being said,..."
Yes, I am hoping the walls of unbroken text are over for the most part. Maybe it is just the Pevear translation but I really felt it was so hard to get through simply because there was no separation of the text into paragraphs for pages on end.

I'm in the middle of Book 8 about Dimitri, and am finding him an over-the-top drama king!

I first read this 15-20 years ago, and then saw the classic film. Don't know if anyone else has seen it, but Yul Brynner plays Dimitri. I'm reading these chapters thinking what an odd casting that was. Dimitri is nervous, wild and out-of-control. Nothing like the cool, buttoned-down Brynner.

There is more than one drama king (and queen) in this book. And I hope Yul wasn't bald for the classic film.

Ken wrote: "There is more than one drama king (and queen) in this book. And I hope Yul wasn't bald for the classic film."

Oh no, he was bald. Except when he wore a furry hat. :-)

The passage on the first miracle at Cana is one of my favorites in all Russian lit, the way Dostoevsky reminds us that Jesus intervened at his mother’s behest for gladness, not illness or death (for instance). This opposes so much else that has happened - the arguments about the three temptations of Satan in the desert, the lack of a miracle at Zossima’s passing. It’s also an antidote to the Grand Inquisitor. The Church could have chosen to support people’s happiness. Instead, it created fear that forces them to find false security in the Church. What might have been is so bittersweet here.

Which reminds us that Zosima kept stressing the importance of joy -- giving it, spreading it, etc. How refreshing.

Ken wrote: "Which reminds us that Zosima kept stressing the importance of joy -- giving it, spreading it, etc. How refreshing."

That's a good reminder, Ken. And Zossima I think does represent the Church that should have been, actual goodness even if his corpse corrupted so quickly and inconveniently. It cracks me up how Madame Hohlakov questions "such conduct" of a man with regards to "letting" his dead body stink so quickly (in her note to Rakitin who tells Alyosha). But in a sense I think that Dostoevsky is using the "smell of corruption" of Zossima's body as a metaphor - being a leader of the Church, no matter how saintlike one is, is going to put its stink on you.

The more I read into Book 7, the more I wonder what modern psychology would do with poor Dmitri. There's something afoot, that's for sure, with his wild mood swings, sudden tears, outbursts, and maniacal passion (I wouldn't call it "love" like he does) for Grushenka.

For a hefty Russian classic, the narrative has a real soap opera-like feel to it, too, but maybe that can be said of most any book.

Ken wrote: "...the narrative has a real soap opera-like feel to it..."

I know, the drama is way over the top, like a bad reality show where you can't decide whether real people are that stupid or just mugging for the cameras. It makes it hard to get through these chapters, but what is the purpose of the structure? For instance, why "three ordeals" of the investigation? Is that like the three denials of Peter, or the three days Jesus was in the tomb, something else, maybe just meaningless? Was Dostoevsky being paid by the page and threw in a bunch of hullabaloo just to earn more? Any one got any ideas? Otherwise a lot of this is a big shrug for me just to hurry and get past.

What's well-established in these pages though is that Dmitri is more like his father than any of the other brothers, the same manic passions and selfishness, (and Ken, you're right, it's not love though he calls it that), but without the drive or ambition to do something, to earn a living or make his own way with purpose.

Agreed, it's what I found most disappointing. Though I liked the philosophical side, the novel just felt like it was filled with gratuitous ramblings and side-plots, the characters all seemed like caricatures, over-the-top and soap-like. In a way I found it hard to take it seriously when the characters were all raving and shouting and crying. It completely distracted me, and people always say Dostoyevsky is the one with the psychological depth but honestly Tolstoy's characters have been far more impressive to me.

If I can take an armchair psychologist's seat for a moment, I read The Gambler, recently, and found similar, as Ken puts it so well, "wild mood swings, sudden tears, outbursts, and maniacal passion."

I wonder if Dostoevsky was afraid of his own passions--for gambling and for love, and if he had experienced them as wild and maniacal. I wonder if he in contrast admired the intellectual discipline of Ivan, and the spiritual discipline of Alyosha, and thought of those pursuits as a higher passion, and was trying to show that here?

Ken wrote: "The more I read into Book 7, the more I wonder what modern psychology would do with poor Dmitri. There's something afoot, that's for sure, with his wild mood swings, sudden tears, outbursts, and maniacal passion (I wouldn't call it "love" like he does) for Grushenka."

I suspect that Dmitri might have what modern psychology calls Histrionic Personality Disorder, a type characterized by behaviors that are erratic, emotional or dramatic. Dmitri considered his relationship with Grushenka to be more intimate than it really was (I wouldn't call it love either). We observed how he went after her to Mokroe and threw a wild party there (right after what he did to poor Grigory). He also threatened to kill himself. His theatrical traits resemble those of people with this type of PD.

The three brothers cannot be more different from each other. The narrative started to engage me a lot more in Part 3. Guess I was worn out by the long philosophical and theological speeches in the earlier part. A lot of action here and now I need to know what would become of Dmitri.

Yes, the pace definitely picks up with the interrogation. It helps that the reader is a bit confused, having recalled the Grigory blood but not the Father K. blood.

The note in this Ignat Avsey translation mentions the torments by saying "According to Russian Orthodox eschatology, souls of the departed are subjected to torments (twenty in all) by evil spirits, in preparation for the Day of Judgment. Souls of the saints are left unmolested."

Why Dosty struck on three for his chapter headings I cannot say, other than the fact that the number 3 is a holy one (along with 7, 9, 21) in Christian lore.

I was also struck by the psychological accuracy of the scene where the investigators force Dmitri to strip off his clothes as evidence behind the curtain. "[Dmitri] felt embarrassed--while everyone else was fully clothed, he was undressed; and, strangely enough, in his state of undress he began to feel vaguely guilty in front of them and, most important of all, was himself almost ready to accept that he really had become inferior to them all of a sudden and that they now had every right to despise him. 'If everybody were undressed,' the thought flashed through his mind again and again, 'I wouldn't mind so much, but I'm the only one who's undressed, while everybody else has his clothes on and is looking at me -- it's shameful. It's like a bad dream.'"

Who says clothes don't make the man? Anyone who's suffered annual physicals at the doctor's office can relate to Dmitri completely. The psychological balance in the room is completely off-putting!

Ken, what a perceptive comment about the psychological accuracy of the scene where Dmitri was forced to strip off his clothes! That clothes do make the man takes on a new and potent meaning in this scene.

I jotted down a few statements Dmitri made about himself and did marvel at Dostoevsky's portrayal of human nature:

“There’s no order in me, no higher order. But that’s all over. There’s no need to grieve about it. It’s too late, damn it! My whole life has been disorder, and one must set it in order.”

“I love life. I’ve loved life too much, shamefully much.“

“I’m a scoundrel, but I am satisfied with myself. And yet I’m tortured by the thought that I’m a scoundrel, but satisfied with myself.”

At the thought that he might have killed Grigory, he said:

“I have learnt that it’s not only impossible to live a scoundrel, but impossible to die a scoundrel… No, gentlemen, one must die honest…”

Even though Dmitri is a foolish and impulsive man, there is a part of him that knows what is right and how far he has fallen short. He had no peace not for fear of punishment but the disgrace of it. I thought Dostoevsky captured this conflicting duality in human nature well.

I wondered if Grushenka really loved Dmitri. I doubt it. She professed to love him only for one day (the message to be conveyed to Dmitri via Alyosha). At Mokroe after her second abandonment by her Polish officer, she latched onto Dmitri but later seemed quite sincere in defending him and wanting a future with him. What do you all think of Grushenka? I find her shallow and hard to like. In fact, none of the female characters are likeable, in my view.

Spot on about Dmitri, Laysee. Fundamentally a good man who is prisoner to his own passionate nature.

And that quote "I love life. I've loved life too much, shamefully much." This from a man who came this close to putting a bullet in his brain. I've often thought that some suicides love life TOO much, that their expectations of themselves and others and of how happy life can be ultimately do them in. This bears that out.

Grushenka is another head case. At the arrest scene she seems torn between wanting to be the femme fatale and wanting to follow Ophelia into a nunnery. After a night with the milk toast Poles, Dmitri's passionate nature starts to look good. Or at least to Grushenka under the influence of champagne.

I'm not sure she knows what she wants, but she does seem to draw sustenance from driving men mad.