Table Of Content
OXFORD WORLD'S CLASSICS
THE KARAMAZOV BROTHERS
FYODOR MIKHAILOVICH DOSTOEVSKY was born in Moscow in 1821,
the second in a family of seven children. His mother died of con-
sumption in 1837 and his father, a generally disliked army physician,
was murdered on his estate two years later. In 1844 he left the College of
Military Engineering in St Petersburg and devoted himself to writing.
Poor Folk (1846) met with great success from the literary critics of
the day. In 1849 he was imprisoned and sentenced to death on account
of his involvement with a group of Utopian socialists, the Petrashevsky
circle. The sentence was commuted at the last moment to penal
servitude and exile, but the experience radically altered his political and
personal ideology and led directly to Memoirs from the House of the Dead
(1861-2). In 1857, whilst still in exile, he married his first wife, Maria
Dmitrievna Isaeva, returning to St Petersburg in 1859. In the early
i86os he founded two new literary journals, Vremia and Epokha, and
proved himself to be a brilliant journalist. He travelled in Europe, which
served to strengthen his anti-European sentiment. During this period
abroad he had an affair with Polina Suslova, the model for many of
his literary heroines, including Polina in The Gambler. Central to their
relationship was their mutual passion for gambling—an obsession
which brought financial chaos to his affairs. Both his wife and his much-
loved brother, Mikhail, died in 1864, the same year in which Notes from
the Underground was published; Crime and Punishment and The Gambler
followed in 1866 and in 1867 he married his stenographer, Anna
Snitkina, who managed to bring an element of stability into his frenetic
life. His other major novels, The Idiot (1868), Demons (1871), and The
Karamazov Brothers (1880), met with varying degrees of success. In
1880 he was hailed as a saint, prophet, and genius by the audience to
whom he delivered an address at the unveiling of the Pushkin memorial.
He died six months later in 1881; at the funeral thirty thousand people
accompanied his coffin and his death was mourned throughout Russia.
IGNAT AVSEY is a freelance translator, critic, and lecturer. He has lectured
in a number of British universities and in the States, and has written on
Gogol, Dostoevsky, and Dmitry Merezhkovsky. His other translations
include Dostoevsky's The Village of Stepanchikovo (1983) and Insulted and
Injured (2007).
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OXFORD WORLD'S CLASSICS
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
The Karamazov Brothers
Translated with an Introduction and Notes by
IGNAT AVSEY
OXJORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
OXPORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
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© Ignat Avsey 1994
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First published as a World's Classics paperback 1994
Reissued as an Oxford World's Classics paperback 1998
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Data available
ISBN-13: 978-0-19-283509-3
11
Printed in Great Britain by
Clays Ltd, St Ives pic
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I WISH to express my gratitude first of all to Antony Wood, in
particular for his editorial input into my translation of the early
Books, and also for his generous help and expert advice at all
stages of this enterprise. I also wish to thank the Revd. Dr
Gerald Bray for advice on ecclesiastical matters, and Daphne
Percival, John Moloney, Ian Millard, Roger Heathcott, Guy
Churchill, John T. Smith, John L. Smith, Simon Wilde, and
Callum Wright for fruitful and always useful discussions
covering a wide variety of pertinent topics. I am most grateful
to Alex Poole for technical help in the production of the Time
Chart.
Second impression, 1995: My grateful thanks to Neville
Collins, Adolf Czech, and above all my sister Ina for a number
of helpful comments and suggestions.
Eleventh impression, 2007: My gratitude to Peter Khoroche
for his painstaking and perceptive reading of the text, leading
to a number of important amendments and improvements.
For Irene
CONTENTS
Introduction xi
Translator's Note xxix
Texts Used xxxi
Select Bibliography xxxii
A Chronology ofDostoevsky xxxiii
Principal Characters XXXV
Time Chart xxxvi
THE KARAMAZOV BROTHERS
From the Author 5
PART ONE
BOOK ONE THE STORY OF A FAMILY
1. Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov 9
2. The eldest son is packed off 12
3. Second marriage, second brood 16
4. The third son, Alyosha 23
5. Startsy 32
BOOK TWO AN UNSEEMLY ENCOUNTER
1. They arrive at the monastery 43
2. The old buffoon 48
3. Devout peasant women 58
4. Lady of little faith 66
5. Amen, amen! 75
6. A man like him doesn't deserve to live! 85
7. The careerist seminarian 96
8. A scandalous scene 1 06
BOOK THREE SENSUALISTS
1. In the servants' quarters 117
2. Lizaveta Smerdyashchaya 123
viii Contents
127
3. Confessions of a passionate heart. In verse
4. Confessions of a passionate heart. In anecdotes 137
145
5. Confessions of a passionate heart. 'In free fall'
6. Smerdyakov 154
7. Controversy 1 60
8. Over a glass of brandy 166
9. Sensualists 174
10. Both together 181
11. One more ruined reputation 193
PART TWO
BOOK FOUR CRISES
1. Father Therapon 205
2. At his father's 216
3. An encounter with some schoolboys 222
4. At the Khokhlakovas' 227
5. Crisis in the drawing-room 234
6. Crisis in the tenement 246
7. And in the fresh air 255
BOOK FIVE PROS AND CONS
1. Betrothal 267
2. Smerdyakov with a guitar 279
3. The brothers get to know each other 286
4. Rebellion 296
5. The Grand Inquisitor 309
6. Still very unclear 332
7. Tt's always interesting to talk to an intelligent person' 343
BOOK SIX A RUSSIAN MONK
1. Starets Zosima and his visitors 353
2. From the life of the Schemahieromonk Father
Zosima, resting in the Lord, in his own words,
as recorded by Aleksei Fyodorovich Karamazov 358
3. Concerning the discourses and teachings of Starets
Zosima 392
Contents ix
PART THREE
BOOK SEVEN ALYOSHA
1. Odour of putrefaction 411
2. Here's an opportunity 425
3. A spring onion 432
4. Cana of Galilee 452
BOOK EIGHT MITYA
1. Kuzma Samsonov 459
2. Lurcher 471
3. Prospecting for gold 479
4. In the darkness 492
5. A sudden decision 498
6. Here I come! 517
7. The former and indisputable one 526
8. Delirium 545
BOOK NINE JUDICIAL INVESTIGATION
1. The beginning of civil servant Perkhotin's career 561
2. Alarm 568
3. A souPs journey through torments. First torment 576
4. Second torment 586
5. Third torment 594
6. The prosecutor catches Mitya out 607
7. Mitya's great secret. He is made a laughing-stock 616
8. Witnesses' evidence. The bairn 629
9. Mitya is taken away 640
PART FOUR
BOOK TEN SCHOOLBOYS
1. Kolya Krasotkin 647
2. Children 652
3. The schoolboy 659
4. Zhuchka 668
5. At Ilyusha's bedside 675
6. Precociousness 693
7. Ilyusha 700
