The Brothers Karamazov Readalong: Part I Book One
Welcome to The Brothers Karamazov Summer Readalong! Should I call it The Summer of K? BK? will always be associated with the Newark, Ohio Burger King, and KB are my initials, so perhaps we are best left to the name. We’ll be reading one of the novel’s 13 book sections a week.
What’s in a name, though? One of the many people I talked to about the book asked, “is it about a circus,” perhaps because of the title. I find it intriguing that only the Oxford World’s Classics version is called The Karamazov Brothers, which scans more regularly, though is certainly less familiar and distinct.
Then, what’s in a name? According to Pevear/Volokhonsky, the translators of my edition, the zee/zed of Karamazov is like zoo, not Mozart.
And, why did I pick this translation? I’m reading it with a book group, so I find it best to go with the most readily available in stores, which is this one. The P/V version is even available in more than one edition/publisher. After some poking around, though, I think I might have preferred that Oxford edition. There are a couple times already in just 33 pages that the translation has “hiccuped” for me:
“he is a strange man, even an odd one.” (3) What’s the difference between strange and odd?
Then, among the translations, there’s disagreement on an adjective to describe the brothers’ father, Fyodor Pavlovich. Some choose muddleheaded (P/V, MacAndrew), McDuff, Avsey), others senseless (Garnett, and another, perhaps Oddo’s Norton?) I find scatterbrained perhaps more apt.
Hey, did you know there’s a 1958 film adaptation, and guess who’s the main character, Alexi?
SHATNER.
On to the book. Part I, Book One contains five chapters. We’re introduced to the depraved and scatterbrained father Fyodor Petrovich, his first and second wives, and most importantly, his three sons, of the title.
Dmitri, from the first marriage. A wild uneducated soldier who resents his lack of inheritance. Fights with FP.
Ivan, the elder son of the second marriage. Gloomy and a scholar, also resentful about living on handouts but gets along with FP.
Alexei, the youngest son, who is proclaimed the hero of the novel by Dostoevsky on page 3. Introverted, intelligent, religious, a peacemaker. Loved by his father, liked by Dmitri, but distant from Ivan.
The narrator tells us that FP dies a dark and tragic death, which he’ll discuss later. Several other times we’re told that we’ll be told things later. This book ends as the brothers, their father, and a relative of Dmitri’s mother plan a metting with a respected monastery elder, Alexei’s mentor Zosima. Alexei does not have a good feeling about the upcoming meeting.
Meet us back here in a week to discuss book two. What did everyone else think?
June 4th, 2013 at 8:52 am
I’m reading the same edition and had to rip out and reinsert pages 103-134 because they were in the wrong order. I agree that the translation does seem awkward at times and there are a lot of arguments to follow. I’m not sure what book it’s in but I loved the part about Zosima and his advice to the women who visit the monastery. I’m on page 143 and the book is building like a volcano.
June 4th, 2013 at 12:00 pm
Having already read BK three times (once in a now-out-of-print translation and twice in the Avsey translation—which I love), I think I can shed some light on the odd language.
Firstly, the whole BK vs. KB thing is somewhat interesting because it relates to the differences between Russian and English. There’s actually no good reason to have it as BK except that Russian, like French and Spanish, put the adjective after the noun. It sounds weird and a little exotic—maybe a little circus-like—to our ears but it shouldn’t. If anything, the emphasis should be on Karamazov, which is a strange Russian name and means “black smear,” which is significant and related to a strangeness about all the Karamazovs that finds expression differently in each one.
This all relates to the question of translation because what Pevear and Volokhonsky are none for is fidelity to the chunkiness of the Russian tongue. The tendency for translators like Constance Garnett and even my buddy Ignat is to soften it a little, make it a little more Continental. It basically comes down to whether you look at the original Russian and believe that Dostoevsky’s often somewhat blocky writing is attached to only the language or to the character of the language.
I have to admit, I often find it a little taxing as has been mentioned here when word choices seem odd. In particular, you’ll likely have a problem with repeated references to “a strain” which come up later and sounds really clunky to me. But I’m trying to embrace it and take it the idea that the chunkiness is not invisible to the Russian reader, but rather part and parcel of what makes this book so Russian.
It’s very concerned—as you’ve seen—with questions of things that are “uniquely Russian” or have a particular “national character.” Like almost all of D’s books, this is a central question: Is there something uniquely Russian about the Russian people that shouldn’t be bent to sophisticated, European tastes, even if it’s something self-destructive?
June 4th, 2013 at 4:59 pm
Ritalee, you’re ahead of the curve! Steve, thanks for the background, and glad my instinct about the Avsey is good. As I read, I’m very much reminded of Dicken’s Bleak House, and a quick google search turned up that Dostoevsky had read Dickens, http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/gredina.html
and that there’s a huge recent-ish controversy about whether they met or not in a long article that sounds batsh1t crazy! http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1243205.ece
FYI, the P/V translation is available from more than one publisher. I have a Vintage copy, the red one pictures is FSG, and I think it’s also available both from Modern Library and Everyman’s. So pick your preferred package. I’m actually reading the Vintage, which I found on clearance at Half Price Books some time ago.
June 5th, 2013 at 11:56 am
In P/V’s translation of War and Peace, they put a foreword talking about the issues of translating Russian writers, and repetitiveness of language was one of the things they pointed to, noting other translators would take liberties in editing that. So it may be that Dostoyevsky using “strange” and “odd” was by choice?
June 5th, 2013 at 1:58 pm
Amy, I would guess that other translators would perhaps leave out his multiple uses of the same term, like muddleheaded. But strange and odd as different or matters of degree seemed, well, strange to me.
June 11th, 2013 at 11:47 am
Just finished Book 1. Read it Screwtape-like segments, but hope to catch up over vacation. Found a Modern Library hardcover at Half Price Books. Translator is Garnett. Nice preface by her (I assume).