"The Brothers Karamazov" is Dostoevsky's last novel, which the author wrote for two years. The novel was published in parts in the "Russian Bulletin" magazine. Dostoevsky conceived the novel as the first part of the epic novel "The Story of the Great Sinner". The work was completed in November 1880. The writer died two months after publication.
The novel raises deep questions: about God, freedom, morality.
Francis Scott Fitzgerald admitted that he "loved more than other Europeans" Dostoevsky, the first acquaintance with whom took place precisely after reading "The Brothers Karamazov". Fitzgerald was shocked by the novel; in a letter to his daughter, he advised her to read it so that she could see "what a novel could be." The writer noted that his novel "The Great Gatsby" was largely influenced by the courageous manner of Dostoevsky's novel.
The researcher of Dostoevsky's works notes that the theme of the novel "The Brothers Karamazov", which is a criminal incident, is revealed "according to the laws of the detective genre." The work has an intriguing beginning and a starting point in the introduction; events leading to "catastrophe"; silence regarding the offender; denouement with the identification of the offender. At the same time, the idea of Dostoevsky, the ideological dominant of the novel, "is not in the twists and turns of a detective plot, but in the moral-philosophical and social-journalistic themes that this plot absorbs." The plot serves only to organize the material of the novel, obeys the ideological dominant and departs in a number of methods of its expression, as a result of which "the theme conveyed by the plot cannot be an indisputable indicator of the genre." According to the literary critic Leonid Grossman, “the starting point in Dostoevsky's novel is the idea. An abstract idea of a philosophical nature serves him as the core on which he string the numerous, complex and intricate events of the plot. "
According to Vetlovskaya, due to the subordination of the detective plot to the philosophical and publicistic dominant, the novel is rather close to the philosophical and journalistic genres. Various ideas are transformed into artistic facts in such a way as to preserve the ideological essence. The author's thought "affects both the reader's mind and his feeling at the same time." Vetlovskaya notes that this basic principle of narration in philosophical and publicistic works connects their poetic system with oratorical genres. The author's word has the main meaning, at the same time not ignoring and even introducing other people's opinions into the text.
Philologist Irina Belobrovtseva noted Dostoevsky's extreme stinginess when using facial expressions and gestures of characters, which sometimes can lead to the fact that the same gesture or facial movement can be repeated many times. In "The Brothers Karamazov", Ivan, Grushenka, Ilyusha and other characters sparkle eyes, which, according to the philologist, may be related to the tradition of the adventure novel. In general, in the novel, the decisive importance is given to the word and dialogue, and the number of gestures is reduced to a minimum. Most of the gestures are present in the scene of the conversation between Ivan Karamazov and Smerdyakov.
Literary critic Georgy Friedlander considered the method of "psychological explanation" of human actions used in the novel, explained in the court scene and various other episodes by the writer himself, who, however, considered it insufficiently deep. In the court scene, the prosecutor, defense lawyer and witnesses try to explain the character and motives of Dmitry Karamazov, while recalling his past or describing a possible crime. Throughout the novel, all the characters also receive some psychological characteristics from the narrator or other characters, while none of them gives a complete picture of the character. All the characters turn out to be more complex than any previous characteristic, in which only some part of the truth appears, and not the whole as a whole.
This article was sponsored by Omar Khasawneh.
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