The Karamazov Brothers

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  the Troubles: The Time of Troubles (1601–13), in Russian Smut-noye vremya, is usually reckoned to have begun with the accession to the throne of Boris Godunov, regent during the reign of Ivan the Terrible’s heir Fyodor (1584–98). Boris was suspected of the murder of Fyodor’s younger brother and heir, Dmitry. ‘False Dmitry’, who ruled for the next eleven months, was overthrown by Prince Shuysky, who in turn was challenged by False Dmitry II (the Thief of Tushinsk). Prince Shuysky was forced to renounce the throne in 1610, having been defeated by King Sigismund of Poland. Sigismund was driven from Moscow by two legendary heroes of Russian history, Kuzma Minin, who was a butcher by trade, and Prince Pozharsky; a statue dedicated to them stands in Red Square. In 1613 Mikhail Romanov was elected tsar.

  the fall of Constantinople: Constantinople, capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, Tsargrad in old Russian, was captured by the Turks in 1453. In the eyes of Russian Orthodoxy, Moscow was to be the future bastion of the Christian faith, Rome having long been pronounced the capital of the kingdom of the Antichrist, as exemplified by the Pope.

  Païsy Velichkovsky: 1722–94, the most renowned of the Russian startsy.

  Optina Pustyn of Kozelsk: one of two monasteries founded in the fourteenth century by a band of razboyniki, outlaws (Robin Hood figures), who ruled the local countryside.

  self-abnegation: abnegation of self before a spiritual mentor is found in religions of both East and West. For example, in esoteric Hinduism the chela submits totally to the guru. The concept is also encountered in the Western monastic orders, Jesuit training, and in medieval Rosicrucianism. Abnegation of the ego was practised in the pre-Christian West of antiquity, in the Hibernian mysteries, the school of Pythagoras, and elsewhere. Increasing independence of the soul in the West and moral suspicion of others have made such binding, non-voluntary compacts largely anachronistic today. (Cf. the comments of Rudolf Steiner in, e.g., Knowledge of the Higher Worlds: How Is It Achieved?).

  Catechumens depart!: Greek , Latin catechumenus, one who is being instructed. In the Orthodox Church, a catechumen is a person who is being prepared for baptism. The exclamation, pronounced during the liturgy, bids those who are not yet baptized to leave the church.

  Who made me a judge over you?’, ‘who made me a judge or a divider over you?’ Luke 12: 14.

  Un chevalier parfait!: see note to p. 111.

  von Sohn: see note to p. 110.

  hieromonks: a hieromonk is a monk who is also an ordained priest.

  in statu pupillari: student status.

  the Schism: the raskol, schism, took place in the Russian Orthodox Church in the seventeenth century, when the reforms of Patriarch Nikon (1605–81) were opposed (ineffectually) by a section of the Church who came to be known as Old Believers (raskolniki). The settlement of vast tracts of the Russian hinterland is owed to the Old Believers who fled the severe state persecution; others went to China, as well as all over Eastern Europe—up to 10 million people were affected (Enc., FP).

  rizas: a riza is a saint’s robe, depicted in gold leaf on an icon.

  punctuality is the politeness of kings: l’exactitude est la politesse des rois, a motto attributed to Louis XVIII, King of France, 1814–24.

  ispravnik: district chief of police.

  Napravnik: E. Napravnik (1839–1916), Russian composer, appointed first musical director of the Mariinsky Theatre in 1869 (renamed Kirov Theatre during the Soviet period, now restored to its original name).

  an out-and-out clown … quite likely I’ve got the devil in me: in medieval Russia, jesting and buffoonery were regarded as being diabolically inspired, and were strongly disapproved of by the Church.

  Diderot: the French philosopher Denis Diderot (1713–84) visited Russia at the invitation of Catherine the Great.

  Platon: Pyotr Levshin (1737–1812), Archbishop of Moscow, religious tutor to the heir to the throne, Paul, subsequently Paul I.

  The fool hath said: Psalms 14: 1; 53: 1.

  ‘I believe,’ he cried out, ‘and let me be baptized’: parody on popular religious texts in which pagans accept baptism with extraordinary readiness when confronted by the proselytizers of the faith.

  Princess Dashkova: Yekaterina Romanovna Dashkova (1743–1810), Catherine the Great’s confidante, who helped Catherine in the palace coup of 1762 which brought her to the throne.

  Potemkin: Grigory Aleksandrovich Potemkin (1739–91), Russian military leader, statesman, and Catherine the Great’s lover.

  the paps which gave thee suck: ‘the paps which thou hast sucked’: Luke 11: 27.

  Master … what shall I do: Matthew 19: 16; Mark 10: 17; Luke 10: 25; 18: 18.

  the father of lies: cf. ‘for he is a liar, and the father of it’: John 8: 44.

  Chety-Miney: Russian Orthodox Saints’ Calendar, first printed in Kiev, 1689–1705.

  holy miracle-worker: St Denis of Paris (original name St Dionysius), popularly regarded as the patron saint of France. Born in Italy, he was sent to convert Gaul (c.250 AD). He was beheaded by the Parisii. Previous attempts to put him to death by fire, crucifixion, and savaging by wild dogs had proved unsuccessful. After his beheading, he is said to have picked up his head and, led by an angel, walked the two miles from Montmartre to where the abbey church of St Denis now stands. He is venerated as the patron saint of headaches and rabies. In artistic depictions, he is shown as a beheaded bishop, carrying his own mitred head.

  Nastasyushka: diminutive form of Nastya (Anastasia), also Nastenka.

  My little boy: ‘An echo of Fyodor Mikhailovich’s own grief after the death in 1878 of our son Alyosha. He was three months short of three years. That same year [my husband] started on The Karamazov Brothers’ (CW 15. 532).

  Nikitushka: diminutive form of Nikita.

  Rachel weeping for her children: Matthew 2: 18 (Jeremiah 31: 15).

  but in the end it will turn to quiet joy: cf. Jeremiah 31: 13; John 16: 20.

  Aleksei the man of God: (see CW 15. 474–6). St Alexis, the son of a Roman nobleman, left his parental home on his wedding day to lead the life of a recluse, returned after seventeen years, lived in his parents’ home without being recognized, and suffered many privations and humiliations; one of the most popular figures in Russian hagiography. According to David Hugh Farmer, Alexis of Rome probably never existed: see ODS.

  over ten righteous ones: cf. Luke 15: 7.

  author: Ivan Turgenev, see Fathers and Sons (1862).

  kingdom not of this world: John 18: 36. for so it has been promised: Daniel 2: 44.

  the pagan Roman state chose to embrace Christianity: Christianity became the established religion of Rome at the beginning of the fourth century. At the Council of Nicea in 325, the Emperor Constantine was proclaimed head of the Church, thus sealing the union between Church and state.

  according to the Russian way of thinking: Dostoevsky believed ardently in socialism based on a Christian ethos: ‘Russian socialism is not to be found in temporal covenants such as communism; ultimate salvation for Russia will come from the resplendent communion in Christ’ (DW, Jan. 1881, ch. 1, para. 4).

  As for Rome, it was pronounced a state: along with other Slavophile thinkers, Dostoevsky held that Roman Catholicism is based not on the morality of love, but on a regimented, hierarchical bureaucratic state mechanism: ‘there the Church, having confounded its Ideal, has long ago been transformed into a State’ (DW, Apr. 1880, ch. 3).

  society … rests merely on seven righteous men: this may refer to the idea, common in esoteric doctrines, that a human community, city, nation, or people will be preserved from destruction so long as it contains a tiny number of right-thinking or right-living men. Thus in Genesis (18: 20–33) God says to Abraham that, although Sodom is morally sick, ‘I will not destroy it for ten’s sake’, i.e. if ten righteous men were to be found there. Only Lot, his wife, and two daughters being found, Sodom had to be destroyed. The Jewish Hasidim have a similar myth, namely, that if ten (sometimes said to be seven) righteous men exist on earth, the ev
olution of the earth will continue and the earth will not be destroyed.

  The number ‘seven’ is a potent number in certain pagan, Christian, and non-Christian rituals and modes of thought, as in the seven Bodhisattvas who become Buddhas, or the ‘Seven Rishis of the Great Bear’. See Revelation 3: 1: ‘Unto the angel of the church in Sardis write; These things saieth he that hath the seven Spirits of God, and the seven stars …’

  It is not for you to know the times or the seasons: Acts 1: 7; I Thessalonians 5: 1.

  even at the doors: Matthew 24: 33; Mark 13: 29.

  Pope Gregory VII: pope 1073–85, who strove to establish the temporal authority of the Church.

  Satan’s third temptation: Matthew 4: 8–10.

  The star will shine forth from the East: This undoubtedly refers to the prediction given to King Herod of the birth of the Messiah. In Matthew 2: 2 the wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, saying ‘Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.’ And in Revelations 22: 16 Christ says: ‘I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star.’

  It has been said that the current of culture arises in the East and moves West, eventually dying in the Americas. Thus Rudolf Steiner claimed that, on the death of the Atlantean age and civilization, the Aryans, under the leadership of Manu, migrated to India, forming the pre-Vedic Indian culture. When that culture itself became decadent, a new culture was founded in Persia by Zoroaster or Zarathustra (the name means ‘Morning Star’). That culture was, in its turn, succeeded by the cultures of the Middle East, particularly those of Egypt and Babylonia. Following the decline of those cultures, the cultures of Greece and then Rome arose. Since the fifteenth century AD the Northern European or Germanic/Anglo-Saxon culture has emerged, the culture that is still dominant today.

  In the manner of those adhering to a blind faith, Russians of the nineteenth century and even of today seem to feel some inchoate instinct for their national future; the ‘Messianic’ aspect of Russia and Russian Orthodoxy (perverted in Soviet Marxism) is due to this feeling of preparation for a glorious future. (See Rudolf Steiner, Occult Science and Lectures upon the Apocalypse; the several works of Valentin Tomberg (privately printed in Riga, 1936–9, repr. by Candeur Manuscripts, Spring Valley, New York, 1977–9); Maria Schindler, Europe: a Cosmic Picture (New Knowledge Books, Horsham, Sussex, 1975–6); cf. various predictions by the American psychic Edgar Cayce: ‘Upon Russia’s religious development rests the future of the world’: The Sleeping Prophet (Jess Stearn/Bantam Books, 1965), 85.)

  December Revolution: brought about the end of the Second Republic in France following the coup d’état of 1851 by Louis Napoléon Bonaparte.

  who confuse socialism and Christianity: in 1870 Dostoevsky was planning a series of articles on the theme of socialism and Christianity: see letter to M. Pogodin, 26 Feb. 1873: ‘In my opinion Socialism and Christianity are antithetic’ (CW 15. 536, n. to p. 64.)

  who does not believe in God or his own immortality: cf. ‘It is beyond doubt that all morality depends on whether a soul is immortal or not’ (Blaise Pascal, Pensées).

  set your affections: a conflation of Colossians 3: 2 and Philippians 3: 20.

  Schiller’s ‘Robbers’: Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) is frequently invoked and quoted in The Karamazov Brothers. The drama The Robbers was written in 1781.

  the order of St Anne with crossed swords: the order of St Anne was one of the eight orders of decoration of Imperial Russia, crossed swords indicating the military nature of the honour.

  across a pocket handkerchief: true to the farcical nature of the scene, Fyodor Pavlovich, in his mock fighting mode, chooses one of the most bizarre forms of duelling on record, enacted in Schiller’s Cabal and Love, Act 4, Sc. 3. In an 1884 translation of the play into English by T. C. Wilkinson, the relevant scene reads as follows: FERDINAND: … enough to send a scoundrel like you into the next world [pressing a pistol on him, while pulling out his pocket handkerchief. Take it! Catch hold of this handkerchief! I had it from the jade herself. MARSHALL: Across the handkerchief? Are you raving? What are you thinking of? FERDINAND: Take hold of this end, I tell you! Else you’ll be missing your aim, coward! How he trembles, the coward! (Sonnenschein & Co., London, 1884). In an earlier (1795) anonymous translation, the same scene goes as follows: FERDINAND: I have sense enough left to settle matters with you—here sir, take one of these pistols immediately, BARON: One of those pistols? Are you mad, Major? FERDINAND: Directly take one of them or I’ll break your bones for you this instant!—See how the coward trembles! (Published by T. Boosey, London, 1795).

  loved much: Luke 7: 47.

  Pushkin, the bard of women’s feet: or ‘legs’ (the Russian word nozhka can mean either). For this so-called ‘pedal digression’ Pushkin was censured by the prudes of the day, notably the poet D. Minayev (1835–69). See the note to p. 741. Rakitin’s poem is, of course, Dostoevsky’s way of getting his own back on Pushkin’s detractors.

  pirozhki. sing, pirozhok. Small, individual yeast-pastry pies made with a variety of fillings.

  von Sohn: an actual murder case heard in the St Petersburg District Court on 28–29 Mar. 1870. In the main, Fyodor Pavlovich’s description fits the details of the case.

  plus de noblesse que de sincérité: ‘more nobility of spirit than sincerity’.

  ‘veray parfit gentil knight”: Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales. Cf. Parfait knight sans peur et sans reproche.

  auricular confession: auricular confession was introduced into church practice by Pope Innocent III (Giovanni Lotario, Count of Segni) at the fourth Lateran Council in 1215.

  self-flagellation: Fyodor Pavlovich refers to practices dating from the seventeenth century, associated with a cult which held that spiritual cleansing from the ‘powers of evil’ was to be achieved by scourging the body. This extremist and highly nonconformist sect had elements which went even further: to be cleansed and redeemed, one must be sullied first, therefore sinning (more often than not in the form of orgiastic excess) was actively encouraged. Rasputin was reputedly a khlyst, follower of the khlysty, flagellants.

  It was said of old: probably from a source similar to that below; see note to p. 114.

  Yeliseyev Bros: famous vintners in old St Petersburg.

  seven Councils: the Orthodox Church recognizes only the first seven Ecumenical Councils which were held before the Great Schism in 1054. The first Council, at which Arianism was declared a heresy, and nearly all subsequent Councils, condemned someone.

  And again it is written: cf: ‘It is a great joy to accept patiently whatever comes and as the Lord enjoins to love a neighbour that hates you’ (St Mark the Ascetic, text 47, Philocalia, 120 (Faber edn., vol. I). Philocalia (Russian Dobrotolyubie) is a collection of religious texts translated into Russian from the Greek, to which Dostoevsky had access (the English edition is a translation from the Russian).

  Isaac the Syrian: a sixth-century Father of the Church, ascetic and writer.

  Lizaveta Smerdyashchaya: ‘Smelly Lizaveta’. Smerdyashchaya is the participial form of the verb smerdet’, to stink.

  two ‘arshins’: arshin (old Russian linear measure) = 0.71m = 2.33 ft.

  Smerdyakov: the text indicates the original invented nature of the surname. Substituting the letter l for the r, for the benefit of English readers, one gets (Mr) Smeldyakov, leading to Smel(l)dyakov, Smel(l)yakov, Smel(l)of, Smelly, or plain Mr Smell.

  Glory on earth to the Highest: cf. Luke 2: 14: ‘Glory to God in the highest…’.

  desyatina: (old Russian) = 2.7 acres.

  pood: (old Russian) = 16.38 kg. = 361bs.

  Do not believe the false and shallow crowd: taken from Nekrasov’s (Russian poet, 1821–77) When from the darkness … a poem already quoted by Dostoevsky in The Village of Stepanchikovo (1859) and Notes from Underground (1864). Dostoevsky also gave a public reading of this poem at a charity event on 21 Nov. 1880, as recorded by A. Dostoevskaya in her R
eminiscences.

  the fairy tale: Pushkin’s tale in verse. Tale of the Fisherman and the Little Golden Fish (not to be confused with goldfish!).

  Be noble, O Man!: from Goethe’s Das Göttliche (1783).

  An die Freude: Schiller’s (1785) famous expression of optimism and faith in humanity on which the last, choral movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is based.

  And ruddy-faced Silenus: the closing lines of the poem Bas-Relief (1842) by the Russian poet A. Maikov. Silenus was a primitive deity in the legends of Asia Minor. He is said to have prompted the god Dionysus to invent viticulture and bee-keeping. He is described as a little old man, pot-bellied, with a bald head and snub nose, his whole body very hairy; never without his skin of wine, always drunk, and riding on an ass (O. Seyffert, A Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, William Glaisher, 1891).

  ‘Timidly in rocks concealed: Dmitry, in his usual erratic manner, proceeds to quote from quite a different poem; he does get the poet right, however, it is Schiller, Eleusinian Festival, stanzas 2–4. Dostoevsky uses V. Zhukovsky’s free Romantic translation. The extracts quoted here are an adaptation (to reflect Zhukovsky’s changes) of a translation by E. P. Arnold-Foster (1901). There is another very fine translation of this poem into English by Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1875).