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Background to The Brothers Karamazov
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Dostoevsky: The Brothers Karamazov
In this course, Professor Carol Apollonio (Duke University) explores Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. In the first lecture, we introduce Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov and its significance within Russian literature. In the second lecture, we examine the context of The Brothers Karamazov, and provide a brief overview of its characters and plot. In the third module, we explore the profound themes of The Brothers Karamazov against a backdrop of cosmic indifference and divine grace. In the fourth module, we track the devil's influence throughout Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov as it relates to fatherhood, the Devil, evil twins and temptation. In the final lecture, we investigate Dostoevsky's vision of faith and grace as a response to the demonic temptations and atheistic perspectives presented in the novel.
Background to The Brothers Karamazov
In this lecture, we explore Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov and its significance within Russian literature, focusing on: (i) Dostoevsky's status as a profound psychologist and philosopher who tackles fundamental questions of existence, morality, and the nature of evil; (ii) the historical context of Dostoevsky's life (1821-1881) amid significant social and political changes in Russia, including the clash of Western ideas and traditional values; (iii) Dostoevsky's early literary career, beginning with his first novel Poor Folk and his subsequent arrest for revolutionary activities, which shaped his worldview; (iv) the aftermath of the Crimean War and the reforms of Tsar Alexander II, which influenced the younger generation's radicalization and engagement with Western thought; (v) the evolution of Dostoevsky's writing style following his return from Siberia, marked by major works like Notes from Underground and Crime and Punishment; (vi) the thematic exploration in The Brothers Karamazov of family dynamics, existential crises, and the struggle between faith and doubt, reflecting the broader societal tensions of the time; (vii) the importance of engaging with Dostoevsky's literature through a nuanced understanding of its artistic depth, avoiding reductive biographical interpretations.
Greetings, readers.
00:00:06This is Carol Apollonio at at Duke University where I've
00:00:07spent the last forty years reading the great Russian classic writers.
00:00:11In this series, I have the great pleasure of introducing you to one of the
00:00:15world's greatest novels,
00:00:19Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov.
00:00:20In this first lecture,
00:00:23we'll talk about the the writer and his context, and gradually,
00:00:24we'll move into the novel in the subsequent lectures.
00:00:27Brothers Karamazov is on is on most top five lists for
00:00:31literary classics in the world and for good reason.
00:00:35It's the culmination of Dostoevsky's brilliant body of
00:00:38work and a novel so profound it's hard to imagine it was
00:00:41made by human hands.
00:00:44Dostoevsky is a great psychologist, ethicist,
00:00:46and religious and political philosopher.
00:00:49He goes deeper into the inner psychology than any other
00:00:52writer before him, unearthing the scary stuff that we try to repress.
00:00:55Russian literature asks those big questions,
00:01:00unanswerable questions.
00:01:03Who is to blame?
00:01:04What is to be done? Why was I born? Why do I suffer?
00:01:06Why do I do evil? Is there a god?
00:01:10Importantly, the evil depicted in Dostoevsky's works is committed
00:01:12by human beings.
00:01:16These are not earthquakes or tornadoes or hurricanes,
00:01:18not what we call acts of god.
00:01:21Yet god does not seem to interfere, leaving us,
00:01:23like Ivan Karamazov, bewildered,
00:01:26suspended between the need for faith and our outrage at the
00:01:28world's injustice.
00:01:32This incredible tension of Dostoevsky's works reflects a
00:01:34potent mix of his own distinctive psychology and his
00:01:38own dramatic life experience,
00:01:41the troubled revolutionary times he lived in,
00:01:43and the great clash of cultures between Russia and the west in
00:01:46a modernizing world.
00:01:50Dostoevsky's sixty years fit centrally in the nineteenth
00:01:51century, eighteen twenty one to eighteen eighty one.
00:01:54This was a time of great change in Russia.
00:01:58The son of a military doctor, he grew up in Moscow,
00:02:01the old capital, but was educated in Saint Petersburg,
00:02:04the window to the west opened by Peter the Great in the early
00:02:07eighteenth century.
00:02:10Through this window from the west flowed architecture and
00:02:12art from Italy, from enlightenment philosophy
00:02:16from France, romanticism and idealism from Germany,
00:02:19and literature from all of Western Europe.
00:02:23Along with these new ways of thinking came modern science
00:02:25and importantly, atheism.
00:02:28Dostoevsky's lifetime coincided with the growth of literacy in
00:02:31Russia and with a great curiosity about Western ways of
00:02:35thinking, which clashed with the old ways.
00:02:38Dostoevsky's writing reflects all of this and is highly relevant today.
00:02:42Russian literature draws much of its power from the
00:02:46restrictions on other forms of writing during that period.
00:02:49Censorship made direct treatments of politically
00:02:53sensitive topics impossible,
00:02:56especially under the reign of emperor Nicholas the first
00:02:58eighteen twenty five to fifty five.
00:03:01So literature took on the task of social commentary.
00:03:03Under the guise, say, of a love story,
00:03:07a writer can communicate coded revolutionary messages.
00:03:09Upper class Russians went to the west to study and travel,
00:03:13and they brought back with them communist theories and news
00:03:16about revolutionary activities, including,
00:03:19importantly for Dostoevsky,
00:03:22the European revolutions of eighteen forty eight.
00:03:24Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century,
00:03:28Russians were grappling with serfdom and the rigid social
00:03:30class divisions that lingered in Russia long after they broke
00:03:33down in the west.
00:03:36Dostoevsky, though a member of the lower nobility,
00:03:38never had money and had to work for a living.
00:03:40He attended military engineering academy in Saint
00:03:43Petersburg and worked as an army engineer.
00:03:47But early on, he resigned his commission and devoted himself to writing.
00:03:49It was all he could do.
00:03:53In eighteen forty six,
00:03:56he published his sensational first novel, Poor Folk,
00:03:57which launched his literary career.
00:04:00Soon afterwards, against the background of those eighteen forty eight
00:04:02revolutions in Europe,
00:04:06he joined a philosophical discussion circle,
00:04:07which was secretly a subversive political group.
00:04:10In eighteen forty nine,
00:04:13he and the others in that group were arrested, interrogated,
00:04:14and sentenced to death
00:04:18by a firing squad.
00:04:20And dramatically, at the last minute, as though in a novel,
00:04:22the sentence was commuted to hard labor prison in exile in
00:04:25Siberia where Dostoevsky spent the next ten years.
00:04:29So he was not shot,
00:04:31and he wrote the great novels that we read today
00:04:33after this experience.
00:04:37Meanwhile, a lot is going on in Russia.
00:04:39After the disastrous defeat of Russia during the Crimean War,
00:04:41the Tsar Nicholas the first dies,
00:04:46and he's succeeded by Alexander the second,
00:04:49called the Tsar Liberator.
00:04:51He ascends the throne and introduces the great reforms.
00:04:53Most importantly, emancipation of the serfs, westernization,
00:04:56including importantly for our novel,
00:05:00the jury trial, freedoms for women,
00:05:03and the breakdown of the patriarchy, family,
00:05:06and social class divisions.
00:05:08Formerly limited in their opportunities,
00:05:11the youth becomes free, starts to read,
00:05:13and in the process becomes radicalized, atheist,
00:05:15and socially active.
00:05:18This is the Saint Petersburg to which Peters to which
00:05:20Dostoevsky returns from Siberia at the end of eighteen fifty nine.
00:05:22He can now write more freely,
00:05:26though he's no longer a political liberal or radical.
00:05:28He starts out with what he calls a novel,
00:05:32but which readers would recognize as his memoir of
00:05:34Siberian prison life, Notes from the Dead House,
00:05:36then Notes from Underground,
00:05:39which addresses the isolation of a thinking
00:05:41person in a secular world and has become a staple of
00:05:44philosophical courses worldwide.
00:05:48Then in eighteen sixty six,
00:05:51both Crime and Punishment and The Gambler followed by,
00:05:53shortly afterwards, The Idiot, Demons, The Adolescent,
00:05:57and then in the eighteen seventies,
00:06:00The Diary of a Writer.
00:06:02Finally, our book, The Brothers Karamazov,
00:06:04eighteen seventy nine to eighteen eighty.
00:06:06All of these works are fast paced, dramatic, philosophical,
00:06:09religious, sensationalistic,
00:06:13and center either on an obsession like the novel The
00:06:15Gambler or a violent crime.
00:06:17During the mid eighteen seventies,
00:06:20Dostoevsky publishes a journalistic work called Diary
00:06:22of a Writer with nonfiction, commentary, criticism,
00:06:25and some short stories.
00:06:28This periodical serves as a workshop for the brothers
00:06:30Karamazov.
00:06:33Completed just before the writer's death in eighteen
00:06:35eighty one, this novel occupies a central place,
00:06:37both in Dostoevsky's works and in world literature.
00:06:40He addresses in it the stresses of the times, nihilism,
00:06:43the family breakdown, general generational conflict,
00:06:47the justice system, but also the eternal questions,
00:06:51religious faith and atheism, crime and punishment,
00:06:55guilt and innocence,
00:06:58and all of this is presented through the metaphor of one troubled family.
00:06:59The novel is set thirteen years before the time of writing,
00:07:04which puts it back in the mid to the late eighteen sixties
00:07:07when the excitement of the great reforms was giving way to
00:07:10political violence, cynicism, and terrorism.
00:07:12The novel reflects these tensions,
00:07:15but also the breakdown of the family and of the patriarchal
00:07:18system in Russia,
00:07:21which had been founded on the free labor of peasants,
00:07:22of course, no longer available.
00:07:25Before we get into the book and the next series of lectures,
00:07:27let me recommend a great source,
00:07:30the website dostoevsky dot org.
00:07:31This is a site of the International Dostoevsky
00:07:34Society and the North American Dostoevsky Society,
00:07:36where you can keep up with news in the field,
00:07:39browse the journal called Dostoevsky Studies,
00:07:42consult online resources and publications,
00:07:45and peruse the blog, the bloggers Karamazov.
00:07:47Do be aware of random online sources,
00:07:51particularly those purporting to explain Dostoevsky's writing
00:07:54through the lens of his epilepsy,
00:07:57his gambling obsession, the murder of his father,
00:07:59love affairs, and other biographical distractions.
00:08:02Great literature is not reducible to oedipal drama or biology.
00:08:05It's art like music or painting and comes from deep within the
00:08:10artist's creative mind.
00:08:13As the artist attempts to reach that deep place within our mind
00:08:15to plunge in and read.
00:08:19
Cite this Lecture
APA style
Apollonio, C. (2024, November 05). Dostoevsky: The Brothers Karamazov - Background to The Brothers Karamazov [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/courses/dostoevsky-the-brothers-karamazov
MLA style
Apollonio, C. "Dostoevsky: The Brothers Karamazov – Background to The Brothers Karamazov." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 05 Nov 2024, https://massolit.io/courses/dostoevsky-the-brothers-karamazov