I have tried reading this novel so many times - bought perhaps 20 years ago. Now the cover page is crumpled and a little torn. In recent years itself I have tried to read it 3 or 4 times, but still I persist. Every time I begin it afresh trying to give myself new momentum. I am so familiar now with the opening pages and the introduction of the family until I reach the Grand Inquisitor and there somehow the steam gives up. And then it sits again for a while until I pick it up with renewed vigor. And so it goes.
This time around I am yet to reach Grand Inquisitor. Part of the reason I have slowed down Makioka Sisters is to keep company to the Brothers' story. Silly, but who knows what works.
I really like reading it once I begin to read it. The writing has a beautiful quality to it which draws you in. It is oddly inspiring as well, like when the Elder Zossima asks Alyosha to keep working, work without rest. The surrender and the bond thus between two people, where one owns the responsibility for the other soul.
Oddly this, soul, the sacredness of life, and yet at times the mental illnesses that bring chaos to thoughts and sometimes it is difficult to pick apart the one sacred thread, where none other would ever suffice. It all passes, one says. Reading from different times, with the perspective of distance, is akin to practical philosophy. One sees things pass, and learns patience, acceptance and a belief in that one sacred order which has any meaning, if there were any meaning to existence. But irrespective of that, one has one's life to order, to live well, and one begins where one is, and tries again in radiating outwards circles to take care of self and surrounds. With humility, and if possible with humour on the absurdity and ridiculousness of modern life.
There is the Elder on one side, to learn from, to be inspired by. And then there is Karamazov, ridiculous, silly, what one could say attention-seeking individual, irreverent and just upsetting the peace of life around him, at times, provoking people to extremes. Perhaps this is the part of the question of novel, how much responsibility of the provocateur? How much of the provoked? Such tightly knit societies we live in, interacting with people - generally the politeness and the respect for individual and custom makes for smooth going, but sometimes, when these are trespassed, and one finds oneself alone in waters never traveresed before, and one knows not what experience to rely on, what except one's own upbringing to fall back to, and that too if the passion of the moment allows enough clear thinking. This upsetting of the normal, or pushing to the extreme of situations was something in the Idiot too. I liked that book a lot as well, the writing, the times it evoked, Myshkin. But at times it felt in the book that many situations could have been avoided if people could have just walked away. But they kept persisting, insisting on responses from people who know not their own depths or shallows especially in those random conversational currents. One doesn't meet people then, only a provoked artifact or remnant of a person, and what one gets out of it is like a chemical reaction not done before, one really doesn't know. But some of the situations could have been resolved by just walking away. It feels like that. Somehow people keep persisting and insiting and trespassing each other's customary boundaries in his books. Or perhaps it is about those situations and the ridiculousness of being human. The stakes never justify the actions. They are moments of impassioned unreason. And the solution at times is a night's sleep.
Anyhow, I am yet to read it. So more later.
**
Later - I have reached farther in the book than ever before.
There is a sunniness to the writing around the Elder, Zosima, while he is alive. There is warmth, hope, forgiveness and cheerfulness in those sections. Sometimes they starkly contrast: Zosima's lived reality, his sunniness stands very much in contrast with the cereberal discussions of Ivan about Grand Inquisitor and related previous chapter. As if the lived reality of Zosima is itself an answer to Ivan's questions and unresolved thoughts about humanity. There is no answer to many questions that Ivan raises, and perhaps anyone can raise, but there is an acted reality in the life lived by Zosima, a forgiving acceptance of whatever the world is. And yet that it is wonderful. It is the difference of perspective. My humble hope is for the sunniness, cheerfulness, optimism and forgiving acceptance of what is. Logic and reasoning can find no answer to some of the deeper questions of humanity, but faith and acceptance, a mind which can hold the world as it is yet forgive it, and be forgiven in it...
**
My other wonder as I read it, is Nabokov's note about reading... about reading the mind that wrote it, rather than just reading the narrative and characters. In Dostoevsky is Ivan's restless dark wonder as well as Zosima's sunniness.
**
Finished it finally 2nd half of November.
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