I liked this book - but I fully expected to love it, and perhaps that was the kiss of death. I love Dostoevksy and classic Russian Literature, so with so many people hailing this as perhaps the best book ever written, I was sure I'd love it. Was it the too high expectations? Was it the fact that I read the first 400 pages with nary a break while traveling 28 hours back from Europe? Not sure. The one thing that stood out to me versus books like Crime and Punishment and Notes from Underground was that in those books the characters' reactions were so real, so believable. In this book I found myself often feeling that characters' reactions to events in the book seemed not entirely believable, which took a lot away for me. ( )

For some reason, two bits of this stay with me --one, when old Katramazov tells of a skeptic telling an Orthodox prelate "there is no God" and the prelate replying "the fool says in his heart there is no God" and the other when Fr. Zosima dies and his followers expect the odor of sanctity but instead he rots and stinks. ( )

A classic and written by Dostoevsky at the height of his powers. Ahead of its time but also brilliantly captures the 19th century Russian struggle with God's existence as scientific and political changes in thought were rapidly taking place. The characters represent facets of Dostoevsky and Russia: the wicked father, the cad and martyr Dmitri, the atheist, socialist "devil" Ivan, and the angelic, pure Alexei, who has faith in both God and man.

Probably a "must read", and lots of great quotes.

On Brotherhood:
“I love mankind,” he said, “but I am amazed at myself: the more I love mankind in general, the less I love people in particular, that is, individually, as separate persons. In my dreams,” he said, “I often went so far as to think passionately of serving mankind, and, it may be, would really have gone to the cross for people if it were somehow suddenly necessary, and yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for even two days, this I know from experience. As soon as someone is there, close to me, his personality oppresses my self-esteem and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I can begin to hate even the best of men…on the other hand, it has always happened that the more I hate people individually, the more ardent becomes my love for humanity as a whole.”

"In order to make the world over anew, people must turn onto a different path psychically. Until one has indeed become brother of all, there will be no brotherhood. No science or self-interest will ever enable people to share their property and their rights among themselves without offense. Each will always think his share too small, and they will keep murmuring, they will envy and destroy one another. ..for everyone now strives most of all to separate his person, wishing to experience the fullness of life within himself, and yet what comes of all his efforts is not the fullness of life but full suicide, for instead of the fullness of self-definition, they fall into complete isolation."

Enlightenment:
"Filled with rapture, his soul yearned for freedom, space, vastness. Over him the heavenly dome, full of quiet, shining stars, hung boundlessly. From the zenith to the horizon the still-dim Milky Way stretched its double strand. Night, fresh and quiet, almost unstirring, enveloped the earth. The white towers and golden domes of the church gleamed in the sapphire sky. The luxuriant autumn flowers in the flowerbeds near the house had fallen asleep until morning. The silence of the earth seemed to merge with the silence of the heavens, the mystery of earth touched the mystery of the stars…"

On the good and evil in man:
"It is usually so in life that when there are two opposites one must look for truth in the middle; in the present case it is literally not so. Most likely in the first instance he was sincerely noble, and in the second just as sincerely base. Why? Precisely because we are of a broad, Karamazovian nature – and this is what I’m driving at – capable of containing all possible opposites and of contemplating both abysses at once, the abyss above us, an abyss of lofty ideals, and the abyss beneath us, an abyss of the lowest and foulest degradation."

On Love:
"I am sorry that I cannot say anything more comforting, for active love is a harsh and fearful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams thirsts for immediate action, quickly performed, and with everyone watching. Indeed, it will go as far as the giving even of one’s life, provided it does not take long but is soon over, as on stage, and everyone is looking on and praising. Whereas active love is labor and perseverance, and for some people, perhaps, a whole science."

"“Love is gone, Mitya!” Katya began again, “but what is gone is painfully dear to me. Know that, for all eternity. But now, for one minute, let it be as it might have been,” she prattled with a twisted smile, again looking joyfully in his eyes. “You now love another, I love another, but still I shall love you eternally, and you me, did you know that? Love me, do you hear, love me all your life!” she exclaimed with some sort of almost threatening tremor in her voice."

On Man's Inhumanity:
"People speak sometimes about the ‘animal’ cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to animals, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel…I think that if the devil does not exist, and man has therefore created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness."

I love this little story...
"Once upon a time there was a woman, and she was as wicked as wicked could be, and she died. And not one good deed was left behind her. The devils took her and threw her into a lake of fire. And her guardian angel stood thinking: what good deed of hers can I remember to God? Then he remembered and said to God: once she pulled up an onion and gave it to a beggar woman. And God answered: now take that same onion, hold it out to her in the lake, let her take hold of it, and pull, and if you pull her out of the lake, she can go to paradise, but if the onion breaks, she can stay where she is. The angel ran to the woman and held out the onion to her: here woman, he said, take hold of it and I’ll pull. And he began pulling carefully, and had almost pulled her all the way out, when other sinners in the lake saw her being pulled out and all began holding on to her so as to be pulled out with her. But the woman was wicked as wicked could be, and she began to kick them with her feet: ‘It’s me who’s getting pulled out, not you; it’s my onion, not yours.’ No sooner did she say it than the onion broke. And the woman fell back into the lake and is burning there to this day. And the angel wept and went away."

On Religion:
"“Listen: if everyone must suffer, in order to buy eternal harmony with their suffering, pray tell me what have children got to do with it? It’s quite incomprehensible why they should have to suffer….answer me: imagine you yourself are building the edifice of human destiny with the object of making people happy in the finale, of giving them peace and rest at last, but for that you must inevitably and unavoidably torture just one tiny creature, that same child who was beating her chest with her little fist, and raise your edifice on the foundation of her unrequited tears – would you agree to be the architect on such conditions? Tell me the truth.”
“No, I would not agree,” Alyosha said softly."

"And this need for communality of worship is the chief torment of each man individually, and of mankind as a whole, from the beginning of the ages. In the cause of universal worship, they have destroyed each other with the sword. They have made gods and called upon each other: ‘Abandon your gods and come and worship ours, otherwise, death to you and your gods!’ And so it will be until the end of the world, even when all gods have disappeared from the earth: they will still fall down before idols."

On remembering:
"And so, first of all, let us remember him, gentlemen, all our lives. And even though we may be involved with the most important affairs, achieve distinction or fall into some great misfortune – all the same, let us never forget how good we once felt here, all together, united by such good and kind feelings as made us, too, for the time that we loved the poor boy, perhaps better than we actually are…And even if only one good memory remains with us in our hearts, that alone may serve some day for our salvation."

On "Superman":
"“…Once mankind has renounced God, one and all (and I believe that this period, analogous to the geological periods, will come), then the entire old world view will fall of itself, without anthropophagy, and, above all, the entire former morality, and everything will be new. People will come together in order to take from life all that it can give, but, of course, for happiness and joy in this world only. Man will be exalted with the spirit of the divine, titanic pride, and then man-god will appear. Man, his will and his science no longer limited, conquering nature every hour, will thereby every hour experience such lofty delight as will replace for him all his former hopes of heavenly delight. Each will know himself utterly mortal, without resurrection, and will accept death proudly and calmly, like a god. Out of pride he will understand that he should not murmur against the momentariness of life, and he will love his brother then without any reward…”"

On valuing life:
"If I did not believe in life, if I were to lose faith in the woman I love, if I were to lose faith in the order of things, even if I were to become convinced, on the contrary, that everything is a disorderly, damned, and perhaps devilish chaos, if I were struck even by all the horrors of human disillusionment – still I would want to live, and as long as I have bent to this cup, I will not tear myself from it until I’ve drunk it all! "

As an aside, the 1958 movie version with Yul Brynner as Dmitri and (ack) William Shatner as Alexei was entertaining. The scenes with Brynner and Maria Schell as Grushenka were in particular good. ( )

Have tried more than once, will finish someday

I finished it.

Who am I to go against Joseph Conrad? Here's what he had to say about this,
and I have to concur.

“I do hope you are not too disgusted with me for not thanking you for the
“Karamazov” before. It was very good of you to remember me; and of course
I was extremely interested. But it’s an impossible lump of valuable matter. It’s
terrifically bad and impressive and exasperating. Moreover, I don’t know what Dostoevsky stands for
or reveals, but I do know that he is too Russian for me. It sounds to me like some
fierce mouthings from prehistoric ages. I understand the Russians have just
‘discovered’ him. I wish them joy.”

-from a letter to Edward Garnett (May 27, 1929)

Years of wanting to read this book, hours of reading it, now it's done. Like cleaning up a literary spill. ( )