Beautiful analysis of a beautiful novel. I loved reading this. In honor of NaPoWriMo, I am writing quick poetic reflections when something moves me. The great thing about it is it's not a creative or original act: it's a reflective act. It still kind of feels like plagiarism, so if it sounds like I'm just copying you, I probably am. Thank you for inspiring my NaPoWriMo entry for April 4 and giving me a lot to think about (and making me want to reread Brothers K).
Face of the Sun (reflection on Olivia Marstall's essay "Mitya: On The Brother's Karamazov")
Let me see you from the front.
Turn around, sun, so I can see your face.
Perhaps you are sparing us the brunt,
the full-force of your affection.
Perhaps you are waiting until we are stronger.
When we step out of skins and bones,
when we get our nondecaying bodies,
when we inherit thoughts allergic to sin,
when we cash in the lottery of grace,
then you’ll show us your face.
In the land where your gaze is the light,
we’ll see one another from the front.
Loving the backward, upside-down version
of everything feels like the Beatitudes,
feels like working with half the puzzle,
feels like half our work might be done if we love life.
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Olivia, you astound me. Reading this manifesto was almost as good as reading The Brother's K itself--perhaps better, in some ways. I find myself relating to this idea of analyzing works of literature to death but then losing their real and truest meanings because I did so. Sometimes picking up a work to simply read it like any contemporary piece of fiction yields a deeper affection and love for a classical book than annotating and taking copious notes.
I too felt contempt toward Dmitry and ridiculed him many times. But I also remember feeling an intense connection with how emotive his responses to literally everything were. I remember gasping as he recited poerty to Alyosha and inhaling sharply as he dismissed Katya as nothing more than one he owed money to (except even he himself admitted that there was more). In all he did, he was passionate, he never once lost that.
And your Chesterton quotes--paired excellently with what Dotoevsky attempted to contrive through his book.
“We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.”
That quote made my heart weep. Alas, we really have forgotten who we really are. It reminds me of a passage of Scripture, of the man gazing dimly in a glass, then eventually, seeing as we really are.
I definitely fall into similar traps when I'm reading. What I find myself doing lately is to read chapters or sections twice—first for the author, then for myself. I'll first try to focus on understanding what they wanted to convey, but after that, I'll return to the same passage to try to figure out how I feel about it.
There's also something to be said for taking seriously deep dives into one story, isn't there? Ours is a culture of book count; saying you read two dozen classics is considered a much bigger flex than saying you spent the year reading Paradise Lost. ("Are you a slow reader? What took you so long?" or "oh yeah I read that high school." Eh, sure you have. :) ) It's really a shame because the best insights I've ever been given about our greatest stories has always been from those who took the time to dig far deeper than myself.
That's a great way to do it, reading sections twice through. I think I'm still coming out of the college mindset of "I need to produce a paper on this, so I have to read it with an eye to building a thesis"--which makes it hard to dig into a work and just enjoy it.
Haha, the old "I read that in high school." I'm guilty of that. I think part of the problem with the "I read more/read that faster/read that first" is we treat books like wikipedia articles, where we're just going to them to get the information we need as quickly as possible. It's utilitarian. It would matter if someone got to a book before you did if it contained one single discrete thought to be extracted and added to the knowledge databank, in which case, who ever gets there first "has the knowledge first." But that's not how books work!! They're relational, they unfold different things to different people or to the same reader in different seasons. Which is reading slowly or having other readers who've gone before you isn't a drawback, but one of the joys of reading: you can weave together all the threads at your own pace.
I'm rather the opposite, despite my academic training, I almost always read for myself first, rushing headlong through novels for the characters and the plots, gobbling them down greedily, skimming over passages with too much description, heedless of what it all means and what I'm supposed to be getting from it. I then have to go back and re-read carefully for the details, for the themes and the structural questions and the kinds of academic questions I know I should be asking. I've always felt guilty for reading this way, for reading like a child when I know better. I've always felt the second reading, was a kind of walk of shame-- if I were a better reader, I wouldn't need to re-read. And often when I was in school I did that second after going to class and hearing the lecture or participating in the discussion with all my fellow students who were much better prepared that I was. But I think this essay has helped me to see that there might be value in reading with the heart first and the head second.
Of course that's a bit of an oversimplification. Over time I have become a bit more of a careful reader, I can never completely fail to notice important details and more and more I find myself making notes or highlighting passages even on that first read. But I think I still am heart-first rather than a head-first reader.
I have become more of a fan of slow reading and re-reading, though. In the past few years I've been enjoying re-reading books I read in high school or even junior high with my own children. We tend to read slowly, a chapter a day or sometimes only part of a chapter, and savor slowly. We just finished a read-aloud of the Odyssey and Iliad and it's been delightful experiencing them again with all the life experience under my belt.
In a sense it could almost be said that Mitya loves life even more than Alyosha does: Alyosha loves the fact that he, himself, is alive in the world; but Mitya loves the world, as it is; and his own being in it doesn't seem to make a difference about whether or not he loves it. What a powerful, complex novel — and it gets right down to the heart of our own humanity, as all of the best novels do.
I like your insight about how everyone in the novel is "on trial" in some sense. Dmitri's "sorry for God" reminds me a little of another Dostoevsky character, this time from "The Adolescent": Arkady's father, Makar, an old peasant, who, when told basically the same thing as Rakitin tells Dmitri (a material explanation for our consciousness) simply reacts in awestruck wonder, and says something along the lines of "wow, what an amazing world God made and put us in!" Makar and Dmitri both seem to have a rock-solid faith in the truth of God, and the reasonings of the materialists might perturb them a little but I think they will be alright in the end.
Well said! I love the thought that Mitya's love of the world is wholly directed towards it. He's such an interesting character: by no means perfect, but he has a self-forgetfulness that makes him endearing. I also enjoyed Grushenka a lot more this time through, and Katya less--probably she's too much like me in some ways to make me entirely enjoy her. The other question about Mitya that I keep turning around in my mind (and haven't answered to my satisfaction yet) is: why does Zosima bow to him? What's that about?
There are a lot of through-lines in Dostoevsky's writing! C+P is the one I kept referencing as I was reading Brothers K (I've only read that and Notes from the Underground, of his other works), but every time I mention a part of Brothers K, someone brings up another passage from a different novel of his. Maybe this'll be my Dostoevsky year, and I'll see how many of them I can tackle.
Thanks for writing this. Loved reading your thoughts on dissecting the book, versus letting it simply present itself to you. I haven't read Brothers K -- I'm entering Russian lit with Pushkin's short stories right now -- but I'll definitely keep your essay and sonnet in mind when I get there!
I'm currently reading The Brothers Karamazov! I'm returning to Dostoevsky because I think I unfairly wrote him off as being too wordy and verbose years ago--but that was back when I was taking AP Literature where I had to read multiple books in a short time span so Dostoevsky's behemoth Crime and Punishment annoyed 17-year-old me. I'm 23 now and I've returned to his writing with more life experience, maybe a hint more wisdom, and as an Orthodox Christian so this book has resonated with me a lot. I tend to read through books (thrillers, namely) speedily because I often can't put them down, but I've been taking my time with The Brothers Karamazov. So far, I've been deeply enjoying this process.
I heard somewhere a comparison with C&P, viz. that Karamazov is the story of an innocent man definitively convicted, and C&P is the story of an guilty man who cannot be convicted. On some level, both seem to suggest that the right way to face suffering (whether you deserve it or not) is voluntarily, as the occasion of one's own transformation/salvation, for bitterness will only make the anguish permanent. Great reflections here.
The reversal between C+P and Brothers K fascinates me. C+P was one of the first novels I read as a Christian, after coming out of my own period of atheistic nihilism, and it's stuck with me--though I'm long due for a reread. Mitya is so far from being a Raskolnikov, though. I found it interesting that Alyosha tells Mitya not to willingly undertake the 20 years of penal servitude, but that he should try and escape instead, because he's innocent and the burden would be more than he could bear. My own approach to suffering tends to be "the more undergone, the more spiritual fruit", so Alyosha's counsel struck me.
Beautiful analysis of a beautiful novel. I loved reading this. In honor of NaPoWriMo, I am writing quick poetic reflections when something moves me. The great thing about it is it's not a creative or original act: it's a reflective act. It still kind of feels like plagiarism, so if it sounds like I'm just copying you, I probably am. Thank you for inspiring my NaPoWriMo entry for April 4 and giving me a lot to think about (and making me want to reread Brothers K).
Face of the Sun (reflection on Olivia Marstall's essay "Mitya: On The Brother's Karamazov")
Let me see you from the front.
Turn around, sun, so I can see your face.
Perhaps you are sparing us the brunt,
the full-force of your affection.
Perhaps you are waiting until we are stronger.
When we step out of skins and bones,
when we get our nondecaying bodies,
when we inherit thoughts allergic to sin,
when we cash in the lottery of grace,
then you’ll show us your face.
In the land where your gaze is the light,
we’ll see one another from the front.
Loving the backward, upside-down version
of everything feels like the Beatitudes,
feels like working with half the puzzle,
feels like half our work might be done if we love life.
This is lovely! I’m so honored to have inspired some poetry with this piece. Thank you for sharing; may I restack it?
I would be so happy to have you restack it. 🥰
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Olivia, you astound me. Reading this manifesto was almost as good as reading The Brother's K itself--perhaps better, in some ways. I find myself relating to this idea of analyzing works of literature to death but then losing their real and truest meanings because I did so. Sometimes picking up a work to simply read it like any contemporary piece of fiction yields a deeper affection and love for a classical book than annotating and taking copious notes.
I too felt contempt toward Dmitry and ridiculed him many times. But I also remember feeling an intense connection with how emotive his responses to literally everything were. I remember gasping as he recited poerty to Alyosha and inhaling sharply as he dismissed Katya as nothing more than one he owed money to (except even he himself admitted that there was more). In all he did, he was passionate, he never once lost that.
And your Chesterton quotes--paired excellently with what Dotoevsky attempted to contrive through his book.
“We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.”
That quote made my heart weep. Alas, we really have forgotten who we really are. It reminds me of a passage of Scripture, of the man gazing dimly in a glass, then eventually, seeing as we really are.
I definitely fall into similar traps when I'm reading. What I find myself doing lately is to read chapters or sections twice—first for the author, then for myself. I'll first try to focus on understanding what they wanted to convey, but after that, I'll return to the same passage to try to figure out how I feel about it.
There's also something to be said for taking seriously deep dives into one story, isn't there? Ours is a culture of book count; saying you read two dozen classics is considered a much bigger flex than saying you spent the year reading Paradise Lost. ("Are you a slow reader? What took you so long?" or "oh yeah I read that high school." Eh, sure you have. :) ) It's really a shame because the best insights I've ever been given about our greatest stories has always been from those who took the time to dig far deeper than myself.
That's a great way to do it, reading sections twice through. I think I'm still coming out of the college mindset of "I need to produce a paper on this, so I have to read it with an eye to building a thesis"--which makes it hard to dig into a work and just enjoy it.
Haha, the old "I read that in high school." I'm guilty of that. I think part of the problem with the "I read more/read that faster/read that first" is we treat books like wikipedia articles, where we're just going to them to get the information we need as quickly as possible. It's utilitarian. It would matter if someone got to a book before you did if it contained one single discrete thought to be extracted and added to the knowledge databank, in which case, who ever gets there first "has the knowledge first." But that's not how books work!! They're relational, they unfold different things to different people or to the same reader in different seasons. Which is reading slowly or having other readers who've gone before you isn't a drawback, but one of the joys of reading: you can weave together all the threads at your own pace.
I'm rather the opposite, despite my academic training, I almost always read for myself first, rushing headlong through novels for the characters and the plots, gobbling them down greedily, skimming over passages with too much description, heedless of what it all means and what I'm supposed to be getting from it. I then have to go back and re-read carefully for the details, for the themes and the structural questions and the kinds of academic questions I know I should be asking. I've always felt guilty for reading this way, for reading like a child when I know better. I've always felt the second reading, was a kind of walk of shame-- if I were a better reader, I wouldn't need to re-read. And often when I was in school I did that second after going to class and hearing the lecture or participating in the discussion with all my fellow students who were much better prepared that I was. But I think this essay has helped me to see that there might be value in reading with the heart first and the head second.
Of course that's a bit of an oversimplification. Over time I have become a bit more of a careful reader, I can never completely fail to notice important details and more and more I find myself making notes or highlighting passages even on that first read. But I think I still am heart-first rather than a head-first reader.
I have become more of a fan of slow reading and re-reading, though. In the past few years I've been enjoying re-reading books I read in high school or even junior high with my own children. We tend to read slowly, a chapter a day or sometimes only part of a chapter, and savor slowly. We just finished a read-aloud of the Odyssey and Iliad and it's been delightful experiencing them again with all the life experience under my belt.
In a sense it could almost be said that Mitya loves life even more than Alyosha does: Alyosha loves the fact that he, himself, is alive in the world; but Mitya loves the world, as it is; and his own being in it doesn't seem to make a difference about whether or not he loves it. What a powerful, complex novel — and it gets right down to the heart of our own humanity, as all of the best novels do.
I like your insight about how everyone in the novel is "on trial" in some sense. Dmitri's "sorry for God" reminds me a little of another Dostoevsky character, this time from "The Adolescent": Arkady's father, Makar, an old peasant, who, when told basically the same thing as Rakitin tells Dmitri (a material explanation for our consciousness) simply reacts in awestruck wonder, and says something along the lines of "wow, what an amazing world God made and put us in!" Makar and Dmitri both seem to have a rock-solid faith in the truth of God, and the reasonings of the materialists might perturb them a little but I think they will be alright in the end.
Well said! I love the thought that Mitya's love of the world is wholly directed towards it. He's such an interesting character: by no means perfect, but he has a self-forgetfulness that makes him endearing. I also enjoyed Grushenka a lot more this time through, and Katya less--probably she's too much like me in some ways to make me entirely enjoy her. The other question about Mitya that I keep turning around in my mind (and haven't answered to my satisfaction yet) is: why does Zosima bow to him? What's that about?
There are a lot of through-lines in Dostoevsky's writing! C+P is the one I kept referencing as I was reading Brothers K (I've only read that and Notes from the Underground, of his other works), but every time I mention a part of Brothers K, someone brings up another passage from a different novel of his. Maybe this'll be my Dostoevsky year, and I'll see how many of them I can tackle.
Thanks for writing this. Loved reading your thoughts on dissecting the book, versus letting it simply present itself to you. I haven't read Brothers K -- I'm entering Russian lit with Pushkin's short stories right now -- but I'll definitely keep your essay and sonnet in mind when I get there!
You're in for a delightful time, when you do get there! Pushkin is great too: he's the archetypal Russian author. :)
I'm currently reading The Brothers Karamazov! I'm returning to Dostoevsky because I think I unfairly wrote him off as being too wordy and verbose years ago--but that was back when I was taking AP Literature where I had to read multiple books in a short time span so Dostoevsky's behemoth Crime and Punishment annoyed 17-year-old me. I'm 23 now and I've returned to his writing with more life experience, maybe a hint more wisdom, and as an Orthodox Christian so this book has resonated with me a lot. I tend to read through books (thrillers, namely) speedily because I often can't put them down, but I've been taking my time with The Brothers Karamazov. So far, I've been deeply enjoying this process.
I heard somewhere a comparison with C&P, viz. that Karamazov is the story of an innocent man definitively convicted, and C&P is the story of an guilty man who cannot be convicted. On some level, both seem to suggest that the right way to face suffering (whether you deserve it or not) is voluntarily, as the occasion of one's own transformation/salvation, for bitterness will only make the anguish permanent. Great reflections here.
The reversal between C+P and Brothers K fascinates me. C+P was one of the first novels I read as a Christian, after coming out of my own period of atheistic nihilism, and it's stuck with me--though I'm long due for a reread. Mitya is so far from being a Raskolnikov, though. I found it interesting that Alyosha tells Mitya not to willingly undertake the 20 years of penal servitude, but that he should try and escape instead, because he's innocent and the burden would be more than he could bear. My own approach to suffering tends to be "the more undergone, the more spiritual fruit", so Alyosha's counsel struck me.
Yes. Interesting too that in C&P an escape to America is more or less a metaphor for self-destruction (cf. Svidrigailov’s demise).