Go Out at the Top: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Artistic output is a funny thing.  It is rare that the artist/musician/writer proceeds in a linear way hence it is unusual for the last work they produce to be the pinnacle of their achievements.  It's a lot more complicated that.  In the modern world with the emphasis on producing output the opposite can quite often be true - the best thing someone does is up first.

The aging process normally has an effect too - so Mozart's posthumous Requiem Mass, the late and multiple flowering of Philip Roth's latter output of novels from 1997 (Aged 63 onwards),the Matisse cutouts (late 70s onward) and David Bowie's last two albums ( released 3 years and 1 day before his death) are exceptions.  But to this group I would add Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov.  A massive fulfilling novel which I think is his best - written when FD was in his late 50s and published one year before his death - he died at 60.  I think it is the culmination of all his work and is really one of the best novels ever written.

It took me a  long time to get here as outlined on this blog I have spent the last 8 years reading all of FD's novels in order which again underlines the impact of the novel's strength.  Like distance running reading these books does take a big commitment.  You have to live with the big chunky ones for months.  My copy of the Brothers was with me for at least 7 months - now with a broken spine and indelible coffee stains - the paperback that is.   But whereas in particular with the last two major works of his that I read - Demons and the Adolescent  you can wobble a bit as the pace and the focus is lost the commitment is easy to maintain with the Brothers Karamazov.

Why then is it so good?  Well ironically one of the biggest reasons is one that I won't be fully able to cover in a blog post and that is the novel is massive.  Not just in the number of pages but in its content, ideas and characterisation.  It really is about eight  novels in one -   amongst these are a family saga (obviously), a love story, an exploration of religion, a murder mystery (honestly) and a courtroom drama.  That Dost holds this together in a coherent and fluid way could only really be done by an experienced writer at the top of his game.  It is a book you could really get obsessed with as I note Albert Camus did - trying to put on a stage production of it over several years

The framework of the novel is provided by the titular brothers and their relationship with each other  and several additional characters most significantly their father - a buffoon, terrible parent and abusive man - bravely called Fyodor (!) Karamazov.  It is not only his forename that Dostoevsky gives to this family group though - Ivan, Dmitry (a half brother of the other two) and Alexei  - probably not coincidentally 3 of the most Russian male names you could get but each of the men seem to espouse or personify some element of thought that FD had either promoted at some point of his life or had polemicised against.

One of the many enthralling things about the book is to see how Dost's own experience intertwines with it - there is a minor plot line in it about the death of a young child - FD's own son also called Alexei died 2 years prior to the book's publication.  One of the characters critically suffers from epilepsy as FD did himself.

Yet even the title of the book is not what they seem because one other man the servant Smerdyakov - who as the book progresses we can either see as a master villain or an annoying fool- is an illegitimate offspring of Karamazov.  So another brother enters the field,  And as I pointed out in the last review of the Adolescent - being illegitimate literally made you nameless in Russia at that time. 
In a way each brother represents elements of nineteenth century Russia -  Alexei (named by the invisible narrator as the hero of the piece) is a novice monk at the beginning of the work giving it up by the end, Ivan seems to be a radical atheist influenced by Western ideas - though he gets a rude awakening and collapses by the end and Dmitry is a romantic hero - an ex-soldier and at the heart of the intrigue of the book. 

But that is a bit superficial as the characters are more than just ciphers that FD is using to make a point - a criticism that you could have made in some of his earlier novels.  Another striking part of this 1880 work is the relevance of the human characterisation - the quirks and machinations of humans have not changed that much. FD proves himself to be an adept analyst of our condition.
In this way it is almost relentlessly contemporary.  For example there are a number of teenage and even child characters in the book - some suggest that Dost wanted to write a book focused on youth completely - one is a young teenage disabled girl who self harms (slamming her fingers in doors)  clearly not just a 21st century problem, one is a cock-sure 13 year old who thinks he knows it all.  Dostoevsky's ability to explain and analyse the roots of these feelings and characters is something many modern novelists could learn from.

The inter-generational dispute between Fyodor and his sons - in particular Dmitry who had a brutal upbringing as the oldest - forms the centre of the work but is reflected in smaller sub-plots about father and child relationships.  Fyodor as well as being an eejit is a dissolute character - or "voluptuary" as the work has it - commonly discarding women and not facing his responsibilities particularly as regards his children.  The dispute in the Karamazov household is about love and money.  A disputed inheritance and a sort of love triangle  between Fyodor and Dmitry with generally disinterested Grushenka - a woman who has been continually exploited by men throughout her life - and is viewed as a "Jezebel" by the local community.  Another triangle intersects that as Dmitry is nominally engaged to Katerina  jjealous of Grushenska but who may or may not be in love with Ivan.  So far so complicated but these settings really form the background to human interactions and discussion of broader philosophical context.

Currently in Western society particularly the UK and the USA there is a heavy promotion of  TV - binging on box sets of shows etc.  In many instances this is just a marketing issue with a lot of  mediocre telly repackaged but the very best of it - the Sopranos, Six Feet Under, the Wire is praised for its incredible narrative structure.   But reading this novel a lot of this innovation was used here.

For example 2/3 of the way through the novel  to ditch all the main characters and introduce a new one (the obnoxious teenager) and spend a few chapters developing him until it becomes clear what his relation  is to the whole plot and dynamic of the novel.  Critics would swoon at this being done on the telly but here it is brilliant and compelling. 

Equally the narrative around Smerdyakov in  the book is almost turned on it head near the end of the work : a Keyser Soze moment or from literature Uriah Heep.  Is he a fool or has he manipulated all of the characters for his villainous ends?  Similar to the Usual Suspects movie there is a point when you think you could re-read the whole book and get a completely different perspective. 

So alongside real human characterisation are these structural devices which really challenge the form of the novel - a major achievement  for a nineteenth century work.  As I am reading all of Dost's work in translation I cannot comment on the beauty of the prose - as in English it is someone else's words but these other elements more than make up for the absence of the original language. 

The mastery of this writing means that when Dostoevsky indulges in his musings on religion, the Russian character and how they relate to each other it does not unbalance the novel and make you wish you could skip a few pages.  For example one conversation between Ivan and Alexei takes the form of a distinct parable which stands removed from the rest of the work - it is labelled The Grand Inquistor.  In fact it has been published separately and even a short film has been made of it with John Gielgud.  It covers Jesus being resurrected and showing up in the middle of the Spanish Inquistion - where the Inquisitor has a long rant at him and eventually  concludes he must be executed as he is a challenge to the earthbound authority.  Essentially covering the tension between the purity of Christianity (and religion in general) and the reality of the instutionalisation of that belief system .  One cannot co-exist alongside the other.  It is also a dig at the Catholic  Church  - a common theme in FD's work.

This passage is difficult to read in comparison to the rest of the work and the closest that Dostoevesky gets to the tangential ramblings in his other big books but even this is done at a much better level.  It also informs the full work as Ivan is essentially ranting at Alexei the novice monk but by the end of the work the tables are turned and Ivan is having a crisis of conscience of his views.

The politics of nineteenth century Russia never far from FD's mind are actually pretty hidden here.  The only character that explicitly voices radical Western socialist-like ideas is the obnoxious teenager -here it is seen only as immaturity. There is none of the unbalanced polemic against radical change that so unbalanced Demons as a novel and gets Jordan Peterson and others so excited.  The work really goes beyond that which is another reason it works so well. 
-
The fulcrum of the work just over half way is the murder of (NOT REALLY A SPOILER ALERT) Fyodor with Dmitry in the frame for it.  Did he do it?  Again at a superficial level this is a murder mystery but actually by the end of the work you are not really sure  - it is still up for question.  Again to use another artistic form like a good movie you could be debating the end of it for hours with friends.  So once someone else has finished it let me know!

The murder for me comes in the midst of the best part of the book - Part 3 of the work - particularly the chapters called Mitya (after Dmirty) and the Preliminary Investigation.  They are incredibly written and show the unravelling and disintegration of Dmitry as he becomes more and more desperate from his love for Grushenka and his need for money.  He has terrible encounter after terrible encounter until he dissolves into a pool of broken humanity.  A bit like the Alan Partridge Christmas Special... It essentially develops into an alchohol fuelled frenzy with lots of hangers on and tense cringeworthy moments. Er...we've all been there.  It is brilliant, compelling, sad and often ignored in Dostoevsky's work very funny.  There is an earlier section of the book called Crack-ups - which apparently is a translation that could also mean Disintegration but this part is the real disintegration.  Like the most engaging work you both don't want it to end but equally want to finish it. This part culminates with Dmitry's arrest for the crime of parricide..

At some points you just have to admire Dostoevsky's intelligence - the senior monk  Zosima  who is the patron of Alexei and encourages him to leave the order which he does has a whole book within the novel devoted to his history which is really an exploration of the Russian Orthodox religion in microcosm.  But FD turns that all on its head when Zosima dies - another pivot of the work - as his corpse almost immediately emits a stench - not meant to happen to the pious and religious.  Thus all the tensions within the monastry on religious doctrine but mainly on the structure of leadership come pouring out literally before Zosima is buried  all because of the stink!- another brilliant part of the novel.

When the novel concludes with the trial of Dmitry - which could really be a book in and of itself to return to the multiple themes issue - it focuses in turn on each legal advocate for prosecution and defence.  Very cleverly each accuse each others of creating fictions about the death of Fyodor - or the perjorative "romans (French novel)" but of course we are reading a novel and our perspective on the death as a reader is dictated by what we have taken from the novel itself.  Very clever and even post-modern.  This is done quite knowingly by the narrator who is never revealed but seems to be FD dipping into the work himself. 

There is so much more to the work - the sub-plot of the dying child Alexei, the characterisation of the female characters, how dogs (!) become involved in it - I can only really scrape the surface.  It could become (let's see) a life's obsession but for Fyodor Dostoevsky (I think) it was his life's achievement.  An incredible novel. Repays the time you put into it.

Each Night I Ask The Stars Up Above : The Adolescent by Fyodor Dostoevsky

At first glance it seems a strange decision for a writer in his mid 50s to decide to write a first person narrative in the voice of a teenager.   Even now in the big publishing business (relatively) of "young adult" fiction it is unusual  for an established writer to give themselves over to such a form. If we leave aside the hilarity of Adrian Mole's Diary the viewpoint of a semi-articulate and not fully grown human is a problem.

It is also a modern conceit of popular social history aided by TV and radio documentaries that the "teenager" is a 20th century phenomenon.  Not until the post war boom of the 50s with full employment and disposable income did the young population manage to establish their own identity - rock and roll,fashion blah blah blah.

Of course the truth is more complex as modern biological and psychological research as illustrated in the recent excellent Infinite Monkey Cage discussion shows that teenagers walk among us but they are not the same as us oldies ! Generational differences which are so central to our post Yes movement, Brexit, Corbyn societal discussions are also hardly new either.

Russian literature of the 19th century Tsarist police state period  had  recognised this prior to this book particularly with Turgnev's Father and Sons from 1862 - seen almost as a document of the growth of nihilistic political theorising amongst the young.

But over a decade later Dostoevesky's decision in 1875 to write this work still seems a strange turn.  As usual he never does things by half measures and he throws himself fully into making the work sound like an adolescent or a "raw youth" as some translations have it.

This creates one of the first problems of the work - teenage years although a necessary part of our lives are incoherent, messy, overblown and contradictory.  That's what happens when your adult brain and personality form.  It even partially explains Morrissey's arrested development in some areas.  In prose form it is difficult to follow though - particularly when the whole fictional world is viewed through this prism.   Add to the mix a fairly convoluted plot about hidden letters, disputed wills  and revealing family secrets and so many characters that a guide/list to them is provided at the start of the book (never a good sign in my view) you can see whilst despite being FD's penultimate 'big' novel it is largely hidden and forgotten.

But there are some pleasures to be had from struggling through the mood swings of a young adult's thoughts. In a sense FD was catching up with a new mood in Tsarist Russia - living there again after a few years in Europe.  Radical politics had shifted a little from the small conspiracist groups he had attempted to lambast in his last major novel Demons to a peasant based movement Narodnism.  This idealised (to an extent) the rural lifestyle and encouraged young radicals to "go back to the country" and live amongst the peasantry. 

This was something which on the face of it FD would have been sympathetic to - it was Russian in origin - did not idealise European political thought (like the anarchism of Bakunin or the economic socialism of Marx) and recognised the central role of the peasantry.  It was also not as explicitly irreligious as the other political trends were.

So to write about young people now would perhaps not necessitate as much polemic as Dostoevsky had engaged with in previous work, including arguably Crime and Punishment.  Indeed the novel's publication was even in the radical journal Notes of the Fatherland (Closed by Tsarist authorities in 1884)  this would have been unthinkable a few years earlier with Demons.  One of the theoretical fathers of Narodnism Mikhailovsky gave his endorsement of the work and its publication even though it contains a critique of a group of radicals albeit in a very slight way which is distant from the rest of the work - unlike the full scale attack of Demons

This illustrates another problem with the work is it feels a little like a sticking together of ideas from previous works - the inward problems of small radical groups although mentioned almost in passing, the nature of suicide, doomed unrequited love, the fixation on roulette gambling  the pure religiosity of the Russian peasant - with little original direction.  The toning down of the political critique also makes the central relationship in the work a bit more oblique. 

Ostensibly similarly to Turgenev this is a paternal conflict - between father and son but Dostoevsky does put a modernist and intelligent twist on it.   For the title character adolescent Arkady is a living victim of the strict hierarchies of Tsarism.  He is the illegitimate son of an aristocrat who seduced the young wife of one of "his" peasants in the pre serf emancipation days of Russia.  In a society where even now your name is determined by your father (the patronymic) this was critical for identity - Arkady literally does not know what his name is.

The central tension of the work - though this is tested by the plot convulsions - is Arkady's obsession/hatred/love for his father the seemingly dissolute Andrei Versilov.  At least that is what is ultimately revealed because the work is  also disjointed.  Sometimes this is an inevitable consequence of the periodical nature of publishing lengthy novels (this one was published in three parts) but I think the bitty nature of the work exacerbates the problem.

It starts in a slightly different vein with Arkady seeking to make his way in the world and make himself independently wealthy.  Or in the vaguely anti-semitic and conspiracy theorist words of the work - make himself a "Rothschild".  For an illegitimate child of a member of the aristocracy whose named father is a peasant this was a pretty radical ambition - despite Versilov paying for his private (unhappy) education. 

This ambition sort of gets lost in the plot which involves Versilov entangling himself and indirectly Arkady with obscure legal battles for contested inheritance.   Their growing relationship really become the central element of the work.  Yet another title of the work is  "The Accidental Family" - arguably the most appropriate. This allows various quasi - parental conversations to occur although the anger that Arkady feels about his second class status does not take long to surface.  In a way this allows FD to personify Versilov as the older "nihilistic" generation - who despite his social status is anti-religious and pro-European enlightenment figure.  Even his relationship with Arkady's peasant mother - who right until the end of the novel he seems to romantically love hints at his challenge to the structural hierarchy.  But for the most part these conversations are fairly obscure and don't really put their cards on the table on what they are really about.  In part this feeds into the problem of having a naive "raw youth" reporting on this discourse - the reader finds it difficult to see behind this.  It is one of the inherent problems (or in other contexts opportunities) of first person narrative.

His father's fractious love life causes the growing relationship between Arkady and Versilov to break down a few times in the work.  At one point both are in love with the same figure - Katerina - who is tied up in a pretty confusing way with the battles over inheritance and that missing letter could (or could not) be vital to her. Arkady's attitude to the female characters - including Katerina, his (also illegitimate sister) Liza verges between tragic and hyperbolic - again pretty much like a teenager in love.  Although there are a few worrying scenes early in the book on how Arkady used to harass women whilst at school with fellow male pupils - showing the misogyny revealed by the #Metoo movement are far from a 21st century phenomenon.

There are potentially interesting narrative forms that FD also uses in the first person teenage form.  In modern cinematic terms he use jump cuts a lot - running ahead of himself  "I need to tell you what happens in a few chapters for this to make sense" and looking backwards.  In the overall confusion of the novel though this merely adds to it and again in the style of the adolescent the "really important" events are actually pretty minor.

There is no real revelation or learning exhibited by the end of the novel which again is in line with adolescence.  The legal disputes (after encountering a clumsy blackmail action) are sort of resolved but they become so difficult to follow the reader finds this difficult to notice. 

You could say this work was a bit of an experiment for Dostoevsky and for a writer nearing the end of his professional (and actual) life this is quite encouraging.  It does mean the work is sprawling and unlike say the Idiot has no arc of resolution within it - the conclusion can only be seen through the eyes of Arkady.  The plot is also an issue - I note the Wikipedia page of the book does not even attempt a synopsis - and that sort of collapses in on itself in the work.   A bumpy journey of a read but a few sights worth remembering along the way.

For me a step towards completing all of FD's novels - only one (major) work to go.

The Good, the Bad and the pretty Ugly, Demons (A novel in 3 parts) by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

A mountain climbed.  It's not so much the 750 pages (with 35 page appendix) or the dense text but finishing this book really feels like an achievement of that magnitude.  But also like that task you wonder why you did it.

"Because it was there" doesn't seem like a good enough reason.  On the face of it this is not a novel that should attract me - it is in (large) part a polemic of Dostoevsky against "radical" groups - their ideology, membership, leaders and purpose.  Further it essentially is novel of ideas - which  is a big ask over hundreds of pages.  Other writer/philosophers like Sartre and Camus hone their narrative philosophical fiction over much smaller length.  And yes these are problems - I will expand on this later- but I stuck with it.  In a lesser writer's hands this whole project would fall apart.  Ultimately the study of character and quality of prose shine through.  But there are problems and an underlying tone of nastiness that sticks to you as reading.

Russia in the 19th Century was a society of massive contradictions.  A huge land of feudalism amongst the sea of pioneering capitalist states.  Slavery or Serfdom abolished in 1861 (on a par with the American Civil War) - but a massively stratified society meant the vast majority of the populace lived in grinding poverty with no prospect of escape.

However the elite of Russian society had different options.  Most attached themselves to the Tsarist regime and attempted to give it a liberal sheen - fuelled by trips across the European continent.  A small section though were attracted to other European phenomena like revolutions and democratic change.

From this grew a myriad of small groups with "revolutionary" aims.  As they operated in a police state and were (largely) from the upper echelons of society their influences and ideas were all over the place.  Anarchism and individual acts of heroism./terror (based on perspective) were particularly strong in such a context.  Bakunin (born in 1814) and Herzen (born in 1812) were two of the key figures.  Assassinations (successful and attempts) were very common - even the act of creating a work of art or in particular literature could be seen as a revolutionary act against the Russian state,  What is to  be Done was a very successful novel advocating revolutionary change in Russia - Dostoevsky hated it - a few scenes here are spoofs of that work.  Lenin later used the title in partial tribute for one of his key political writings.

The absence of large industry and the nature of agricultural peasant life meant that belief in collective action was more theoretical and not central to change in the way Marxist thought envisaged.  Russian groups existed with that perspective but they were even smaller and more isolated - it took the 20th Century and mass revolutionary action for these to develop.

Dostoevsky obviously knew of this phenomenon  because he was part of it.  As a member of the Petrashevsky Circle he was exiled to a Siberian prison (after facing mock execution)  in 1849.  Demons has often been cited as the work that utterly repudiates this past and partly that is true but there is more to it than that.

An actual topical incident inspired Dostoevsky  the  revolutionay Nechayev a follower of Bakunin murdered an associate in his group  "People's Vengenence"  He fled the country in 1872 but returned and was sentenced to 20 years in jail where he died.   Prior to this he had also gained a large inheritance from Herzen to spread revolutionary ideas and published a short pamphlet "The Catcheism of the Revolutionary".

Dostoevsky saw this incident as an opportunity to dissect and dismantle the entire Russian radical movement and he didn't limit it to the new generation of radicals which Nechayev represented.   Nechayev was actually from a poor ex-serf background - interestingly Dostoevsky choses not to have either of his main protagonists from that stock.   He also wanted to expose the ideas underpinning individual revolutionary action as essentially anti- human.  Nechayev had written in his pamphlet that a revolutionary has no identity or being at all it was consumed by the one purpose - revolution.  Of course these groups were explicitly athiest too - another long-term target of Dost.

So he had his targets - yet one of the problems of reading this work now - is the time it takes to make that clear.  The actual incident of the internecine killing of an ex-revolutionary  (Shatov) now recanting his ideas and the movement occurs well into the 3rd "book" of the novel.  Around this a massive artifice is constructed in the rural anonymous Russian town where the work takes place.

Bravely and in an interesting narrative device for the 19th century time  the first book does not mention or explore the key characters that will emerge later in the work  the charismatic villainous "revolutionaries" - Peter Verkhovensky and Stavrogin.  In fact you would struggle to identify what the novel was about at all and this is over 200 pages long.  This ends fairly abruptly with a confrontation at the end of this part.  

Modern novels or any other form of narrative art would struggle with the absence of the main "protagonists" from the first third.  Although cinema often kills off a main character shockingly early - think Janet Leigh in Psycho - it doesn't often refer to a character off camera for the first third.

So Dost was ahead of his time in this area but it does mean the novel has no hook to click onto and means the first part is the hardest slog of the work.  It asks a lot of the reader to essentially read the length of one book to establish the premise for a much longer work and even then it is hidden given it focuses on the machinations of underground radicals.

I don't think this was purely a narrative  trick for FD though. The focus on the first part of the work is on (confusingly) the father  of Verkhovensky and the mother of Stavrogin.  He (Stepan)was a teacher to Stavrogin and she is a local widowed landowner.  Stepan was/is a contemporary of Dostoevsky himself and held radical ideas then but is appalled by reports of what is now going on.  The mum is a Europhile and devoted to her son.  The two have an unrequited/sad and quite destructive relationship.  It is clear that put bluntly Dostoevesky blames the parents and indirectly the intellectual milieu of the early 19th Century for creating these immoral empty violent revolutionaries.  Stepanlitters his speech with French - to a ludicrous extent by the end.

As the work develops it becomes clear that Stavrogin and Peter V have returned to the town to kill Shatov - the underground printer desperate to recant his previously held views. Or rather Peter V will mobilise the rag-tag secret "group of 5" who live in the town - underground radicals.  This emerges as they both destabilise the town by enthralling and splintering the local elite - particularly around the Russo-German Governor and his wife.

This part is also pretty complex - and you can see why the edition I read had a list of characters with full Russian names to keep track. It also  exposes another problem in the work - the narration.  There is an identified narrator (Stepan's friend) who I think is meant to be some sort of moral observer of events.  However it is unclear to me how he knows everything that was going on - particularly as the work becomes more and more complex and delving into the underground.

Complex as the artifice is the essence of the work I think is the question of what sort of character do you have to be a revolutionary like Nechayev in the real world or Stavrogin and Verkhovensky?  Dostoevesky is pretty clear - you have to be a villainous psychopath incapable or uncaring of feeling - love or otherwise.  In the creation of a bad guy Dostoevsky with his masterful skills of describing the characters of humans has come up with one of the best literary examples I would say with Peter Verkhovensky.  Duplicitous, charming and ruthless - he sees the opportunity of the underground revolutionary movement for him to dominate and control others and create general chaos in broader society.  It is him that organises the killing of Shatov and takes the lead on coordinating the group of 5 and seducing (not literally I don't think) the governor's wife.

Stavrogin is the more charismatic and secretive one but essentially a complete psychopath and narcissist who most of the aristocratic women seem to fall for with more or less tragic consequences.  He is from the aristocracy but marries a disabled poor girl just because he can and then abandons her - in 19th Century feudal Russia essentially destroying her life.  He is emotionless when others express their love for him and are promptly destroyed.  He has open disdain for everyone but they seem to want to be in his company

Dostoevsky even wrote a chapter which has Stavrogin in quite explicit language for the time confessing to a monk of his child abuse of a young girl in Petrograd.  The editors thought this was a step too far and it was removed.  It is contained as an appendix here in this addition  So a psychopath, narcissist, satyr and a peadophile!  Hardly subtle.

Of course modern critics and opponents of what happened in Russia 50 years later with the October Revolution have stated this shows Dostoevsky's foresight - that only dangerous and isolated characters are attracted to revolution and in particular revolutionary organisations.

There  is a point that subterfuge and small groups (not necessarily left wing or even political ones) attract people who have their own issues.  It may allow them to dominate and exploit but the specific characterisation of these two who could be defined as the leadership goes over the top to express this point.

Indeed you could go further and state that the Left in particular have (or perhaps had) an obsession with gaining a charismatic leader who could advance ideas.  You don't have to go very far to see that as I know in Scotland.  Indeed Peter envisages Stravogin for that role (their own relationship is pretty spikey) - linking him to Ivan Tserevich - a significant figure in Russian folk history/mythology.

But Dostoevsky's point is much more than this.  It is essentially that the act of wanting to change a society and having a vision or ideology is in itself worse than any society you would be fighting against.  Modern political philosopher John Gray essentially endorses and underpins this position.

FD's position is made clear not so much by his portrayal of the two protagonists but of the ordinary Russians who make up the radical  group manipulated by Peter V- local functionaries, students, midwifes, teachers.  The contempt for their attempts to alter the way they live drips from the prose - portraying them all (without exception) as witless or arrogant or boring or buffoons.

There is one scene where a group of disgruntled workers from a nearby factory approach the local governor and he sends the army to whip them.  This is exploited by Peter V for his own ends.  However the way it is written sneers at the reporting of a political protest and the overreaction of describing it as brutal.  I think it is clear Dostoevsky believes the act of collective protest against a regime like post-serfdom Tsarist Russia is worse than acceptance of it.

It is in another artistic universe to the prose of FD but I was reminded a little of the lightweight drama concocted by Liverpudlian TV writer Alan Bleasdale in the early 1990s - GBH.  It was in part a political hatchet job on the struggle on Liverpool Council and the Militant in the 80s - however it became more than that.  It was actually an attack on those who would challenge authority - they are as bad as the ruling elite and attract the dislocated and dangerous.  The plot of GBH sort of collapsed in on itself outlining the similarities between the rebels and the ruling class.

The historic role of those who struggled for democratic, feminist and socialist ideals in the Russian police state of the 19th Century is boiled down to a psychological disorder or as an enablers of psycopaths and dictators.  Which probably was Dostoevsky's position.

However it is a scattergun approach which feeds into the sprawling nature of the work.  Noone who has touched radical ideas in any sense is safe.  He mercilessly lampoons his contemporary Ivan Turgenev through the character Karmazinov as a pompous hypocrite feeding into the underground movement but distancing himself from it by planning to live abroad.  He attacks the Germanic Governor and his wife for facilitating Peter V and his more open and acceptably liberal arguments which for FD are only used as a front for the destruction of society by more revolutionary methods.  This is symbolised by a literary gala day and dance which is meant to use liberal art education to help the masses of the town and stop revolutionary ideas spreading organised by the Governor's wife.  Of course this is manipulated by Peter V and becomes a shambles culminating in utter disaster - a well written few chapters.

FD comes close to putting the case through the prose that any form of liberalism in Russia encourages the more dangerous elements that he dissects - hence his savaging of Stepan and Stravogin's mother.  The true radicalism comes from internal individualism - most notably an individual's relationship with God.  There are no real heroes in this book which in and of itself I don't have a problem with in fiction but it does mean you struggle to get a grip of the  moral centre of this work.

The closest apart from the frustrating narrator and the renegade Shatov (who lambasts Stravogin in one chapter over his abandonment of God) is a character called Kirillov.   He like Shatov is distancing himself from the "group" but has internalised it.  He plans to kill himself - allowing a few very Dostoevskian passages on the nature of suicide and its relationship to religion and existence.  Peter V hopes to exploit this and persuade Kirillov to admit to the killing of Shatov in his suicide note - thus saving all the other murderers.

It is quite a violent work which fits in generally with the themes and the murder of Shatov has predictably bloody consequences.  The corpses pile up pretty quickly by the end of the work.

So is it worth it?  Well the characterisation is impressive and although Dostoevsky is polemical his writings on the nature of humans - even when he is attempting to caricature them is impressive.  Some of the quieter scenes for example on the relationship between Stepan and Stravogin's mother are really good.  The prose and  senses of people will stay with you if you can stay the course for the work.  It is long though with many chapters essentially philosophical discourses through the medium of conversations.  Overall though I think the settling of scores and the polemic against radical change overbalances the work as a whole.

You can see why critics of the left or specifically revolutionary change use this work to show the innate danger of such ideas but this work itself is one-sided - quite deliberately so.  Dostoevsky's shift to supporting the status quo in Russia was as much an inspiration for this book as his attempt to expose the anarcho-individualist actions of the Russia Underground and the radical movement.

This book though long, difficult and ultimately flawed will still cause disputes, discussions and fights among those who read it and 150 years on I would say that is some achievement.

Reality Bites - The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Sprawling nineteenth century novels  it would seem don't really come like this.   Not for the Idiot a 6 part Sunday night drama in the run -up to Christmas nor the scrabbling around of a Hollywood script editor to churn it all down to a two hour screenplay.  Not to say these acts would be impossible - Russian TV attempted the serial thing (although it was 10 parts) and Kurosawa adapted some of the work into a piece of Japanese cinema.  But the difference from say a Dickens and Austen is the sheer amount of intellectul material FD throws at the page.  To continue the cinematic theme one Polish film was made based solely around the last 20 pages of this tome.

However that weight is not always necessarily a good thing nor does it make the Idiot an easy read. As it was written in instalments - common for the time - characters can come and go.  Large polemics can be advanced by characters where it is difficult to identify the context.  Using similar forms writers would rely on plot devices - cliff hangers and so on to give the reader some sort of guide or helping hand through the hundreds of pages.  Plot is not really the thing for FD here (although there is one which is not negligible) rather the force of ideas and strong central characterisation are what pulls you through.

The book begins with a return as a train pulls into St. Petersburg from the outskirts of Western Europe.  For FD this was also a sort of return -  his last novella the Gambler being set solely in the casinos of the West - as he himself gambled his way across the city states of 19th Century Europe. He wrote this work when abroad.  In a sense that dislocation is reflected in the work itself as although set in his regular haunts of St. Petersburg - the urban setting does not have the same central role as in Crime and Punishment or the Double.  In fact more than half the work takes place in a Russian resort town Pavlosk - near the city - fairly anonymous and removing the tensions of the urbanisation of Russia which is a continual theme of Dostoevesky and indeed Russian literature.

The returner is Prince Myshkin - the "Idiot" - who has been released from an asylum in Switzerland being treated for epilepsy (FD's own condition).  Given the nature of the novel it is not really revealing much to say that the narrative arc of the work sees the Prince returning to hospital care.  So in a sense the whole book is coverage of a period of so-called lucidity from Prince Myshkin.   The title is a bit of a deceit but again symbolic of Tsarist Russia as Myshkin has the title but little else in terms of property or money.   What he does have though is purity and child-like innocence as he has developed in a cocoon thousands of miles away from the internecine tensions of St. Petersburg.  He is thrown into the deep end of the messiness and realities of human interaction almost immediately as he meets a character on the train - in some ways his polar opposite - Rogozhin.

Rogozhin is from the merchant class and is cash-rich but a nasty piece of work.  In one scene he literally buys off one of his potential suitors for 100,000 roubles.  This is a not very thinly disguised show of disdain that FD has for the new social forces in Russia.  The Prince gets deeply involved with the subject of Rogozhin's crude financial passion:  Nastasia Fillipovna.  This is because Myshkin tries to get established in St. Petersburg by calling on a distant relation - he subsequently becomes inveigled with her whole family - the Yepanchins whose patriarch is a General.  Nastasia is a beautiful young woman - who by the nineteenth standards of the time - is a fallen woman - kept by an older man and acquaintance of the General.  She is treated like a piece of property (not unusual for a society having only recently ended serfdom) who although with great beauty is seen as damaged goods thus open to being passed around any men.  It is the General's assistant Ganya who seems to have the biggest obsession with her. although he is also hedging his bets with one of the General's three daughters.

Yet it is Ganya that Rogozhin attempts to buy off  in a drawn out scene at Ganya's apartment where the Prince intervenes and offers to marry Nastasia as an alternative to a life with Rogozhin.  This tension between the naive romanticism of Myshkin versus the brutal wealth and violent passion of Rogozhin is a constant throughout the work.    Nastasia herself cannot decide - as her "ruined" past (which is only hinted at) means she could only deserve the nasty side of life in Rogozhin.  This has predictably tragic consequences.   It would be inaccurate to call this a love triangle - Myshkin in particular is pretty ambiguous about his feelings for Nastasia which again has consequences for him.  This unusual relationship may provide one of the frames of the work but it intersects with so many other complicated elements.  One thing that is noticeable is the continual use of ensembles - Rogozhin has a gang (quite humourously drawn),  the Yepanchins and the suitors for each of the daughters, a group of nihilist -light young men  led by Burdovsky pursue Myshkin for some non-existent legacy.  This is pretty difficult to follow particularly when they are all gathered together!

This mighty character list exposes I think the strengths and weaknesses of FD  - he has a real insight into human behaviour and character which the reader can recognise 150 years later but the work is so sprawling there seems to be inconsistencies over which character has which behaviour.  Ganya in ther first book is pretty villainous - this alters in the second book where he comes to Myshkin's aid and then he sort of disappears.  Probably one of the curses of writing such a long piece of work in instalment format.  

To some extent this same problem can be seen in the polemic that comes from the mouths of the characters but essentially they are Dostoevsky's voice or his caricatures of ideological opponents.  Within an hour of his return to Russia the Prince is sharing his experience  of facing death then being reprieved (exactly what happened to Dostoevsky twenty years before - causing his prison exile),  Dostoevsky seems to be making the points fairly randomly as the work does not have the binding coherence of a clear narrative development.  A scene where all characters have to outline the worst thing they have ever done seems more like a philosophy tutorial .  The Prince's mega-rant  near the end of  the book against Catholicism and Athiesm and the Russian character and everything really is an immediate precursor to an epileptic attack - almost like FD was venting and getting everything out of his head.  

This latter speech actually occurs in quite a funny context as Myshkin is now attempting to declare his love for the Yepanchin's youngest daughter Agalaya  - who in a way reciprocates him and definitely shares his naivety - and he makes this speech at a party in their honour hosted in honour of their potential engagement.   He then accidentally breaks an antique Chinese vase something he explicitly declared he would not do.    This relationship is doomed just as inevitably as the smashed antique.

So the work ends with Myshkin's return to hospital, Nastasia's death at the hands of Rogozin and the lack of marriage to Agalaya.  The Idiot's venture into the "real world" seems to have been a disaster but ultimately through his insight and openness many people have been affected by him - as he does inspire loyalty, friendship and in an extremely distorted way  love.    There is a lot more in the work - many other characters who touch the reader with their truth (albeit not always consistently) - the matriarch Lizaveta, Ganya's drunken father, the opportunist hanger on Lebedev.

I don't think anyone has ever quite written a novel like this - it is sprawling, confusing and packed full with contradictory and developed political and personal argument.  Ultimately though like the Prince's brief time  which is documented amongst the maelstrom of humans it is very worthwhile even if he does end up back in hospital.  A book that will stay with me but has taken me a long time to think about - this has taken 6 months to compose.  Worth it though, definitely worth it.