Tiwi

Everything about his appearance, from his bored and weary gaze to his measured saunter, made the sharpest possible contrast to his lively little wife. He was evidently not only acquainted with everyone present in the drawing room, but so sick of them all that he found it utterly tedious even to look at or listen to them, since he knew in advance exactly how everything would go.

By Fyodor Dostoevskij

The Literature Series

Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov

Mitya

God and devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.

"Because I'm a Karamazov. Because when I fall into the abyss, I go straight into it, head down and heels up, and I'm even pleased that I'm falling in just such a humiliating position, and for me I find it beautiful."

- Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, Book III, ch. 3

Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov

Vanya

All is lawful.

"People talk sometimes of a bestial cruelty, but that's a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel. [...] I think if the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness."

- Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, Book V, ch. 4

Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov

Alyosha

Let us be, first and above all, kind.

"[...] he was simply an early lover of mankind, and if he threw himself into the monastery path, it was only because it alone struck him at the time and presented him, so to speak, with an ideal way out for his soul struggling from the darkness of worldly wickedness towards the light of love."

- Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, Book I, ch. 4

Pavel Fyodorovich Smerdyakov

All is permitted.

“I visited Smerdyakov [….] His health was weak […] but his character, his heart—oh, no, he was not at all such a weak man as the prosecution has made him out to be. I especially did not find any timidity in him [….] As for guilelessness, there was nothing of the sort […] I found a terrible mistrustfulness in him, behind a mask of naivety, and a mind capable of contemplating quite a lot.”

- Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, Book XII, ch. 12

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Here I am, once again. I crawled out from the dark depths of my mind to finally come back here.

Sorry for the long intervals of inactivity, but sometimes my emotional and psychological state doesn't allow me to do much. I hope you all are okay, I hope to bring you some comfort and post some more, for we are living through dark, dark times.

Take this as a more or less skilful attempt to convince you to read The Brothers Karamazov, if you haven't already. For those of you who did read it, I hope you enjoy this post. The most difficult part was probably choosing the right quotes. There were so many beautiful ones.

Feel free to leave a comment. Who's your favourite character from the book and /or what's your fav quote? Let me know, I'm super curious!! Also, if you want to repost the pictures or this post on Pinterest, please tag me, I love it when people enjoy my work.

'Till next time,

I draw a cover for every single chapter of The Brothers Karamazov (but I can only use MS Paint)

Book XI: Brother Ivan Fyodorovich

Honestly, I feel very happy with it, specially when I look at my first drawings. I also had so many feelings while rereading the book, specially towards Ivan and Smerdyakov. I grew even fonder of them, and even if Ivan made me feel mad sometimes, I also remembered how his despair got to me back then and now my heart aches for him.

While Alyosha denies having heard anything about Rakitin from Ivan, it seems like Ivan has said plenty behind his back, and with a surprising amount of detail:

Ivan paints a vivid portrait of an opportunistic Rakitin for Mitya and Katerina, and laughs about it.

Why do I think they had some sort of relationship in the past? Let's remember what Rakitin represents. Many things point towards Rakitin embodying the people Dostoyevsky disliked, specially seminarians and critics (as said in the oddly detailed Mikhail Rakitin Wikipedia page). Ivan has been hypothetized to resemble a younger Dostoyevsky, however, what's important is that he is also a critic. He became famous writing articles and literary criticism.

So in addition to being two different portraits of a similar type of person in society (one satirized, the other taken more seriously), they are or have been dedicating themselves to journalism and critique.

We know Rakitin knows a lot about the Karamazovs. Too much, in fact, "every detail of Fyodor Pavlovich's biography and the whole Karamazov clan" seems to border on obsession.

Why would Rakitin do this? Did he wake up one day and decide to research this specific family?

It seems the reputation of Fyodor Pavlovich chases Ivan. He is "the son of that Fyodor Pavlovich", and Ivan had been hearing about him since he was a child, even when living away from his birthplace. As indicated by Grushenka's backstory (her being brought from "a provincial town" by Samsonov), Rakitin is most likely not from Skotoprigonyevsk, since his mother was the sister of Grushenka's mother. This is what led me to believe that Rakitin may have discovered the Karamazovs through Ivan, who he met in liberal circles long before the events of the book.

What happened? Rakitin looks for faults within Ivan and speaks in a particularly venomous way about him. If I had to imagine what could have happened between them, I'd say that Rakitin felt envious of Ivan. Perhaps he looked up to him or saw him as likeminded at one point, but got nothing but disdain. Rakitin is superficially likeable to people, but Ivan is more well- respected and didn't need to resort to becoming a seminarian to advance his career because he was already successful as a journalist and writer. Maybe he got a spot in the newspaper that Rakitin wanted. Eventually, Rakitin came to resent the Karamazovs as a whole for class related reasons, something that comes up often in his dialogue.

And to think I had made a post about this but never posted it and deleted the draft because I thought nobody would care, sigh.

I don't know if it's just me due to some sort of déformation professionnelle (I study theater among other things and sometimes I recite lines from books out loud to help with both memory and acting skills, and also because it's fun), but by the way Dostoevsky writes his characters speaking I can perfectly picture what they might sound like in my mind and that's insane (he's an insane writer all around) and not only that: you can tell what kind of person the character is not by what they say, but by how they say it. Again, insane stuff.

I'd say the brothers are the perfect example of this: they're the main characters so they talk enough for us to pick up on each individual's speech pattern and they have very distinct personalities that get to shine during the entirety of the book.

Dmitri is a mess and the way he speaks perfectly mirrors his behavior and Dostoevsky makes sure of showing that by writing his lines with lots of exclamation points and ellipses: he often jumps from topic to topic with no resemblance of coherent thought and speech pattern and has a tendency to ramble with passion for quite a long time. Even his insane amount of crying gets written down and integrated in his speech pattern; our Mitya has a lot of feelings and is not afraid to show them (good for him!). Given these little hints through the pages, I picture him as someone who speaks with lots of emotion (he's a dramatic person indeed and that definitely influences the way he speaks) but with no fixated pacing, volume and intensity because I feel like his voice and speech mannerism would shift a lot depending on his mood in a rollercoaster-like up and down motion if it makes sense, even though I do picture him as talking fast for the most part.

Ivan's feels similar but also completely opposite: he's dramatic and passionate and he feels a lot, but in a way more controlled manner and his voice is pretty much always described as being firm (which is shown by there being fewer ellipses and exclamation points in his lines), so I've never imagined it as showing much emotion, not even while talking to the devil; I feel like no matter what Ivan feels, his voice never fully shows it (his language might though, it's rude as hell). While his speech pattern can be all over the place because he is all over the place, it always remains coherent with who he is as a character and as a person (I've kinda talked about it somewhere in my bipolar Ivan Karamazov series) and never really gets rambly: even his spiral into madness is controlled. On that note, I've always found the way Ivan's lines are written in Pavel's confession's bit striking: our guy here is definitely going through a lot, this is the most important part of his arc, and yet he doesn't lose it completely. Lots of short sentences, lots of periods, little emotion: his voice is still as firm as ever. This leads me to think of him as someone who speaks in an effortlessly powerful manner and in a fixated pattern (not too fast but not too slow, not too loud but not too quiet; perfectly even and neutral) and with a voice that's almost monotone, except for when it doesn't have to be; he's used to speaking in public after all.

Alyosha is sweet, we all know that, and I think it reflects on the way he speaks as well: the use of punctuation and the length and pacing of his sentences suggest he speaks calmly, and personally I think sometimes it resembles the way Ivan speaks a little. His lines are written to never have any hint of hostility in them even in contexts where that would be expected (like when interacting with Rakitin) and even his sarcasm is written to sound soft; I'd say his speech pattern, while not as fun as Dmitri's or not as cool as Ivan's, is probably my favorite out of all four brothers': it's clear, straightforward and easy to follow and it feels fresh and balanced (no rollercoaster-like motions for example). He seems like someone I'd like to hear talk y'know, or a character with a way of speaking I'd like to be able to emulate; there seems to be a comforting and soothing element in it. Also, one thing that's lost in English translations is that Alyosha talks to children using the formal second person, which in my opinion is very indicative of his character and is also something I really like about him.

As for Pavel, I find his speech pattern interesting because it has a strange pacing, with lots of commas and longer sentences that suggest he speaks calmly just like Alyosha does or even slowly, but unlike Alyosha's lines, Pavel's are written in a way that conveys an almost ominous undertone due to the placing and frequency of the commas. One thing that stuck with me is how somewhere at the start of the novel Pavel's singing voice is described as "sugary" because honestly that's how I would describe his speech pattern as well: similar to Alyosha's somehow though not sweet but instead sugary, insincere, like a way of speaking that was fabricated with the sole purpose of fucking with someone's mind. And succeeds at it. I mean, most of the times we "hear" Pavel speak he's talking to Ivan, which I think is quite important because you can tell he articulates himself in a similar way Ivan does, but at the same time it seems his speech pattern has developed in a completely different direction, like mirroring Ivan's but not quite right. I feel like he's a person who knows what specific inflection is just right to use for a particular situation and I read his lines like that, without a fixated inflection but with the same constant slow cadence and smoothness. Also he's the only character we canonically know the vocal range of and not only do I appreciate Dostoevsky for giving me the chance to imagine what his voice might sound like, I also think specifying that he sings in falsetto instead of using his modal voice was a clever choice; it's kinda like a wordplay in a sense y'know.