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there is a type of writer whose name everyone has heard of and whose greatness everyone knows, but whose books are… sorry, hard to finish. dostoyevsky and his the brothers karamazov clearly belong to this category.

in his book "i finally finished reading the brothers karamazov", writer miao wei shared several major obstacles he encountered when reading tuoye. one of them was that the characters in tuoye's works "could be anyone, and could rap at any time." another obstacle came from the writer's appearance: a face full of bitterness and a little sick, which was exactly the same as his literature. tuoye also had a "high-profile sense of morality". the suffering and redemption he talked about often brought some moral pressure to readers.

the process of reading dostoyevsky is always difficult and painful. if you want to get close to him, the threshold is very high. but it doesn't matter, miao wei said, "great writers are not meant for us to get close to them, they want to shock you."

this article is excerpted from "i finally finished reading the brothers karamazov", and is authorized by the publisher. the subheadings are written by the editor, and the content has been deleted due to space limitations.

01

tuoye has a very special "rap style"

in january 2021, i finally started reading dostoyevsky. i read frank's "dostoyevsky biography", dostoyevsky's early novels, his "the idiot" and "demons", and also read some reference materials. by november, i finished reading "the brothers karamazov". this matter that had been lingering in my heart for many years finally came to an end.

let me first tell you why i couldn’t stand watching it.tuoye has a very special "rap style".dostoevsky's complete works have as many as thirty volumes. such a creative writer seems to have a button on his body. as long as he presses it, he will start talking. this "rap style" often appears in the characters created by dostoevsky. for example, on page 800 of the brothers karamazov translated by zang zhonglun, alyosha visits mrs. hohlakova. mrs. hohlakova sees alyosha and says, "it's been a long time, a long time, a long time since i last saw you! i'm sorry, it's been a whole week, ah, but you were here four days ago, on wednesday. you came to see lisa, i'm sure of it."

film "26 days in the life of dostoyevsky" (1981)

when alyosha entered the room, madame hohlakova spoke five or six hundred words in a row: "i am always in a hurry. why am i in a hurry? i don't know. i can't figure out anything now. everything is a mess to me." after saying this long paragraph, madame hohlakova asked alyosha if he wanted a cup of coffee.

when doye narrates, he is relaxed, accurate, and humorous, but when his characters speak, a tautology button is activated from time to time. this button appears randomly on different characters, and it doesn't matter who it is or where it happens to be, and they will start rapping. it is said that someone has done an experiment, reading out all the dialogues in the brothers karamazov, calculating the time taken, and then comparing it with the timeline in the novel, and found that they don't match.

tuo ye also has a characteristic, he likes to gather the characters in the novel together and hold a "hero conference" for example, when writing about the sunday party at varvara's house in "ghosts", the author emphasized that this was the day that determined stepan's fate, "one of the most noteworthy days in my chronicle", "this is a day of unexpected events, a day when the past ends and new things begin, a day when sharp explanations and greater chaos begin", "no one expected that everything would be resolved. in short, this was a day of amazing convergence of coincidences."

such commentary often appears in dostoevsky's narration, as if to set the mood for the dramatic scenes he was going to write. i remember nabokov's criticism of dostoevsky, saying that he should have written a play, but he chose the wrong career and wrote novels. after i understood the "dramatic gathering" technique that dostoevsky used in "the idiot" and "demons", i understood why the longest part of "the brothers karamazov" i read in the past was only about page 120, which was the end of the second volume. the family gathering in the monastery was over, the characters appeared, and i was already confused by the garrulous dialogue and verbose writing, but i found that the story had not yet begun.

chatter, that is, repetition of synonyms in narration or dialogue, and deliberately arranged dramatic scenes, are two obstacles that prevent me from reading tuoye's novels. after seeing these two obstacles clearly and regarding them as tuoye's characteristics, i can endure them calmly.

another obstacle is the writer's appearance. there was a french diplomat who met tuoye in st. petersburg. he described tuoye as follows:

it was an ordinary russian peasant's face, with a sunken nose, small eyes blinking under arched eyebrows, eyes that were sometimes gloomy and sometimes gentle, his eyebrows were large and uneven, and his forehead was also sunken, as if it had been hit by a hammer. all these features were twisted and collapsed and led to his painful mouth. i have never seen a face that can show so much suffering, his eyelids, lips, and all muscle fibers were twitching nervously.

this is tuo ye's relatively normal state in social situations. if he has an epileptic seizure, he will look even more frightening - sweating, foaming at the mouth, and eyes bulging out of their sockets. tuo ye had his first epileptic seizure when he was nine years old. during his most vigorous writing period, epileptic seizures were very frequent. after each seizure, he had to take several days off before he could continue working. this disease is also hereditary. one of tuo ye's sons died of an epileptic seizure at the age of three, which brought tuo ye great pain.

i am intimidated by the bitter look on dostoevsky's face. will the appearance of a writer affect the readers? in the soviet era, there was a writer named solzhenitsyn, whose appearance also made me feel stressed. look at tolstoy and turgenev, they both had big beards, but i didn't feel any pressure. so why did solzhenitsyn make me feel uncomfortable? this is not a matter of appearance, but a matter of image.

solzhenitsyn has a high-profile sense of morality, and he wishes he was the witness of the tragedy of the people. he deserves it, but the high-profile sense of morality makes people uncomfortable. readers like me who are petty bourgeois and literary will feel uncomfortable. dostoevsky also has a high-profile sense of morality. the characters in his books are always a little morbid, with extreme personalities. he talks about god at length. the suffering and redemption he talks about bring me a certain moral pressure. this is the crux of the problem.i always have an instinctive aversion to writers who are high-profile in their moralizing.

film "26 days in the life of dostoyevsky" (1981)

i read dostoevsky in a roundabout way. i started with natasha's dances by the british writer orlando figgis, which gave me a superficial understanding of russian culture. then i read joseph frank's "dostoevsky biography". frank's biography of dostoevsky is five volumes. the first volume was published in 1976, and the fifth volume was published in 2002. the writing span is 26 years. after the chinese version was introduced, it was also published one volume after another. the fifth volume is a thousand pages long, and two hundred pages are spent on explaining the brothers karamazov. the sense of pressure from the volume is really too strong.

i read it very carefully. in addition to frank's biography of dostoevsky, i also looked for other reference books. the fifth and sixth volumes of the brothers karamazov, in dostoevsky's own words, are "the climax of the book", probably the climax of the moral debate. in the fifth volume, there is the story of the "grand inquisitor" told by ivan to alyosha, and in the sixth volume, there is a story similar to the biography of zosima the elder. these two episodes are dostoevsky expressing his own religious thoughts.

in order to better understand these two volumes, i found two books to read, one is "dostoevsky's world view" and the other is "tolstoy and dostoevsky". to be honest, i basically can't understand it - not completely, but there is always a gap. i can understand that the so-called "seriousness" and "religiousness" are the characteristics of russian literature, and i can also understand that "god and the devil fight, and the battlefield is in the human heart" and "if god does not exist, everything is allowed" are such questions that bother dmitri and ivan.

while reading, i often couldn't stand tuo ye's emotionality. tuoye wrote a short story called "a ridiculous man's dream", which is narrated in the first person. "i" was going to commit suicide. at night, on the way home, i met a little girl who pulled me to save her mother, but i ignored her. i went home and fell asleep on the sofa. in my dream, i went to a paradise-like place. when i woke up in the morning, i pushed away the gun i was going to use to commit suicide. i realized the meaning of life. "i" wanted to spread the word everywhere and love everyone.

in the ninth volume of the brothers karamazov, dmitri also had a dream. he dreamed that on the grassland, a thin mother had no milk and her child was crying. dmitri felt a surge of great compassion that he had never felt before: "why are people poor? why are the children poor? why is the grassland bare? why don't they hug each other and kiss each other? why don't they sing happy songs?" mijia said, i hope that from this moment on, no one will cry anymore. he was still drinking and having fun the night before, and he suddenly felt compassion after having a dream. of course, i believe that dostoevsky always has such compassion in his heart, but it is too emotional to let the characters in his works vow to change after a dream.

02

"the emergence of man is for consciousness and speech"

in the third volume of the brothers karamazov, "the lecher", there is a character named lizaveta, smerdyakov's mother, who is 1.4 meters tall, ruddy and healthy, but a fool, always barefoot, wearing a coarse linen dress, and always with leaves and grass in her hair. sympathetic people gave her a fur coat and shoes, and she took them off and put them on the steps of the church. when others gave her a few dollars, she also put them in the church's donation box. she lived on black bread and water, and slept in the cowshed or the corridor at night.

one night, after a few masters had a good time, they saw lizaveta by a fence. they used foul language and said that lizaveta should not be treated as a woman, but the old landowner fedor raped lizaveta. lizaveta was pregnant and came to fedor's garden on the night of her birth. she gave birth to a child. the old servant grigori and his wife adopted the baby, who turned out to be smerdyakov, the illegitimate son who later killed the old landowner. this short story is very tragic. the character of lizaveta has a prototype.

dostoevsky's younger brother andrei recalled that when they were young, they had seen the silly girl agrafena in their father's territory. "there was a silly girl in our village who did not belong to any family. she spent all her time wandering in the fields. only in the severe winter was she forcibly taken in by force in a farmhouse. she was between 20 and 25 years old at the time. she spoke very little, reluctantly, unclearly, and incoherently. the only thing that could be understood was that she kept recalling a baby hidden in the cemetery. she seemed to be born a silly girl, but despite her condition, she was raped and became the mother of a baby who died soon. later, when i read the story of lizaveta in my brother's novel the brothers karamazov, i couldn't help but recall our silly girl agrafena."

tv series the brothers karamazov (2009)

books about russian literature always mention the image of the "holy fool" among russian peasants and the miserable life in the countryside. in order to understand the background of the story, i found a book called "russian rural areas in the late tsarist reign". the author of this book, semenova tianshanskaya, conducted an anthropological survey in the rural areas of ryazan province in the 1890s, recording the conditions of rural life, especially the conditions of women's lives. although the time when she conducted the survey was several decades different from the time described in tuoye's novel, in order to add a little more real "atmosphere" to the reading of the novel, i roughly read the survey report.

the landlord fyodor in dostoevsky's novel had four sons. he mostly ignored them. if he had a daughter, he might have been even crueler to her. semenova recorded many phenomena of the rural people favoring sons over daughters, and also recorded the industry of "midwives" - according to convention, the midwife's reward for "bringing a child" was a piece of rye bread and a piece of bread made of refined flour, plus a cotton scarf worth twenty kopecks and ten kopecks in cash. if the midwife living nearby thought the money was too little, the mother-in-law would go to another village to find another midwife. at this time, most mothers were left at home to suffer labor pains, with no one to take care of them.

babies were usually baptized on the second day after birth, less often on the third day. for men, the most common names were ivan, vasily, mikhail and alexei, and for women, maria, anna, avdosia, akulina. the priest received fifty kopecks for the baptism, plus some black bread. people liked to attend the baptism of children from wealthy families, and were less willing to attend the baptism of children from poor families because "there were few refreshments." at the baptism dinner, parents served vodka, cucumbers, kvass, and bread. in addition, wealthy families would provide cabbage soup, noodles, pancakes, and even chicken.

semyonova recorded that during the serfdom period, mothers had to return to the fields three days after giving birth, and in the 1890s it was generally five to seven days. when the mother returned to work in the fields, she either took her child with her, or the fields were not far from the house, so she could run home to feed the child. the hard work after childbirth can cause a certain degree of uterine prolapse. but in the eyes of the midwife, this is nothing to worry about. the midwife would rub a little grease on the mother's belly, then turn an earthenware pot over and quickly light a piece of yarn under the pot. the vacuum would cause the mother's abdominal muscles to be sucked into the pot, similar to cupping. the midwife believed that in this way, the uterus would return to its correct position and stop hurting. this treatment was called "compression pot", and it also cost a little flour or bread. this rural record was written very loosely, and it can be said that it did not really form a "book".

semyonova grew up in her own estate in st. petersburg. at the age of 23, she won the silver medal in geography for collecting folk songs from the ryazan province. a young man once proposed to her, but semyonova refused. the young man then shot himself, and semyonova never married. i know that the poet akhmatova was pursued by gumilev. akhmatova refused repeatedly. gumilev committed suicide many times, at least once in paris and once in cairo. he was rescued every time and finally married akhmatova.

gumilyov once wrote a poem: "at that time, i was tortured by a woman. neither the salty and fresh sea breeze nor the hustle and bustle of the foreign bazaar could give me the slightest comfort. i prayed to god to grant me death, and i was ready to approach him."

akhmatova, salome, and this semenova tienzhanskaya, all have the charm of angels, which makes men commit suicide when their love is not accepted. this is how i understand the torment that the eldest brother dmitri in the brothers karamazov has to endure. there are two chapters in the novel where dmitri confides his love distress to his younger brother alyosha, saying that he does not want to be with katerina, but with grushenka.

in his creative notes, tuo said:"man is speech in concrete form. he appears in order to be conscious and to speak."this also helped me understand why the characters he created are so talkative - this is the writer's aesthetic pursuit.

tv series the brothers karamazov (2009)

when dostoevsky wrote about smerdyakov, he said that he could read two pages of gogol and two pages of "a universal history", but he could not get any pleasure from the books. he would stand at home, in the yard or on the street for ten minutes.he is not thinking but perceiving.there is a painting by kramskoy, a russian itinerant school painter, called "the insighter", or "the meditator". it shows a ragged farmer standing on a forest road. he seems to be lost in thought, but he is not thinking, but rather insightful.

dostoevsky said that there are many such insightful people in rural russia, who would sometimes be in a daze in the village. after decades, they would either go on a pilgrimage to jerusalem or burn down the village. when i read this, i couldn't help but look for kramskoi's paintings. the peasants painted by kramskoi can help me imagine what those people in dostoevsky's works look like.

the process of reading the brothers karamazov was full of such episodes: i first wanted to find out lizaveta's living conditions, and ended up finding tienzanskaia's book and reading her investigation report. then i wanted to see what the insight was like, so i looked up what kramskoy had painted, and then i would continue to be distracted, wondering what repin had painted and what the itinerant school was about. the real history of russia seems to be much more interesting than novels. dostoevsky's own life experience is also more interesting to read than novels. small literati always don't quite understand the pain of great writers. when i read dostoevsky's biography, i always felt that his life was too hard and he was always worried about money.

tolstoy lived in a large estate, married a beautiful young wife, lived a quiet life after marriage, and wrote two masterpieces, war and peace and anna karenina. but why did he spend more than ten years writing religious articles? there are some questions whose seriousness i don't understand how much trouble they could cause to tolstoy and dostoevsky.

so i went off on a tangent and read tolstoy’s biography. then i read russia’s decisive battle with napoleon to try to understand the background of war and peace, and then i read turning the red wheel to get a rough idea of ​​the thoughts of some russian intellectuals. this is not “extended reading”, but because the notes of the brothers karamazov often remind readers that this paragraph is criticizing the anarchist ideas among russian youth, and this paragraph is a satire on belinsky.

the character smerdyakov in the book said that it would be better to lose the war in 1812 and let napoleon rule russia. it is said that many young russians at that time had similar ideas, so i wanted to find out where these ideas came from. in theory, not knowing these things does not hinder reading novels. but russian history always breaks into novels. russian novels are too realistic. when russian history breaks into novels, you will find that history is much more interesting than novels.

03

"great writers are not meant to be approached by us,

he wants to shock you."

sometimes we often form impressions of great people based on some small stories. for example, there is a story in "natasha's dance" that says that the great painter repin once visited tolstoy, and tolstoy insisted on going to the field to show repin how he plowed the land. repin saw that the peasants in tolstoy's manor turned a blind eye to this affectation, greeted the host and walked away, and the peasants from other villages came and watched tolstoy plowing the land, but with a look of contempt on their faces.

repin said: "i have never seen such a contemptuous expression on the face of a simple peasant." repin had worked hard in the settlement since he was a child, and knew how poor and difficult the peasants' lives were. he did not believe that the owner of the manor, tolstoy, could really live like a peasant. repin said that tolstoy only spent a day to understand the sufferings of the peasants, and then announced "i am with you", worked in the fields during the day, and went home at night to enjoy the meals served by servants wearing white gloves. this was pure hypocrisy.

however, tolstoy's biographer would say that tolstoy's pain was real. there are many pre-drawn grids in the world. if you stay in the grid with peace of mind, you will be self-consistent. if you are not at ease in your own grid, you will always feel that these rules and regulations in the world need to be changed, which will bring great conflicts to your heart.tolstoy dealt with this conflict throughout his life.

the biographer said that if you don’t understand tolstoy’s “what should we do then?”, you can’t really understand “war and peace.” such words always make readers unconvinced - why do we read books where the author discusses social issues when we read a novel? why does history always have to break into novels?

war and peace (1966)

what should we do then? tolstoy completed his book in 1886. it is somewhat autobiographical, and a large part of the book discusses the problem of poverty. he said:

there are tens of thousands of poor people in moscow, and i and tens of thousands of others are overfed on beefsteak and sturgeon, covering our horses and floors with cloth and carpets, and this is a crime - no matter what all the learned people in the world may say about their necessity - a crime that is not only committed once, but is constantly committed; and i, with my luxury, not only tolerated it, but participated in it. therefore, i felt it in the past, feel it now, and will continue to feel it in the future: as long as i have a day's extra food and others have none, as long as i have two clothes and others have none, i am participating in a crime that is constantly repeated.

tolstoy's complaint is thatthere is a hidden slavery among us; we tolerate the existence of a class that is always enjoying itself, and we enslave a class that is always working even though it is hungry.tolstoy's prescription was that everyone live a minimum standard of living and work to make a living. his ideal life was the life of russian rural peasants without government interference.

when reading the novels of tolstoy and dostoevsky, fictional characters will break into the historical scene, and real history will also break into the novels. in the past, pushkin, herzen, and chaadayev's "philosophical letters" will become the premise for understanding the novels; in the future, lenin, stalin, trotsky, the great purge, "world war ii", the cold war, the iron curtain, the disintegration of the empire, and even larger stories have been roaring in a low voice. tolstoy and dostoevsky are constantly telling stories about the countryside, peasants, beliefs, and youth paths in russia, but the real history that happened later has a tension that makes all their words scattered and slightly shaken. this weird feeling seems to appear only when reading russian novels.

in the tenth volume of the brothers karamazov, "the children", a precocious child named kolya appears. according to dostoevsky's original idea, the brothers karamazov will continue to be written, and alyosha will become the protagonist. i don't know whether the child kolya will continue to appear as a character in the book, but i can't help but wonder: what will alyosha look like later? what will kolya look like later? at this time, a real historical figure appears in the appearance of alyosha or kolya.

one morning in march 1888, mikhail romas left kazan and sailed 30 miles down the volga river to the village of krasnovidovo. he planned to open a cooperative store there to change the lives of local farmers. romas was a populist, a member of a secret civil rights organization, and had been imprisoned and exiled for 12 years. in the 1870s, a large number of young russian students and intellectuals went to the countryside and declared that they wanted to live with the peasants. this was the rise of the russian populist movement. they really believed that changing the peasants and improving their status would change the face of the country.

after years of exile, romas still insisted on his dream. he wanted to organize the villagers into a cooperative to sell fruits and vegetables to kazan. this populist named romas was accompanied by a 20-year-old young man named alexei peshkov, who later became more famous as maxim gorky.

gorky started picking up scraps, eating leftovers and stealing things at the age of nine. this street wanderer worked as a dock loader, night watchman, leather worker's assistant, draftsman's apprentice, icon painter, and finally became a baker in kazan. romas met gorky in kazan and felt pity for him.

the cooperatives of romas and gorky failed, of course. the peasants set fire to their cooperatives and almost beat them to death. three years later, gorky saw a husband whipping his wife in the countryside and stepped forward to dissuade him. he was beaten by the villagers who were watching. the writer firmly believed that the simple peasants turned into a mob, and their cruelty was the source of violence in the revolution.these peasants were not, as dostoevsky said, of higher moral standards than europeans, nor were they, as tolstoy said, born saints.

the idiot (2003)

gorky, the original russian word also means "greatest pain", he wrote under this pen name. in 1921, he left russia to europe for medical treatment. after arriving in berlin, he wrote to romain rolland:

my tuberculosis has relapsed, but at my age it is not a big deal. what is more unbearable is the sadness of the soul. i feel very tired. in the past seven years in russia, i have experienced many tragedies that are not the inevitable result of passion and free will, but the reckless and cold-hearted premeditation of fanatics and cowards. i still believe fervently in the future happiness of mankind, but i am tired and troubled by the fact that people have to endure more and more suffering as the price for their beautiful hopes.

the above excerpt is from orlando figes's a people's tragedy. i started with his natasha's dance and ended with his a people's tragedy to complete my reading of the brothers karamazov. it took me almost a year to finally finish reading this novel.

i have many more puzzles, such as what exactly is a "village commune", what does the russian village commune mean, what changes occurred after the abolition of "serfdom", and what exactly is the contradiction between tolstoy and the church.

frankly speaking, after reading several of tuoye's works and his biography, i still don't like this writer.however, great writers are not meant for us to get close to them; they are meant to shock you.

this article is excerpted from

i finally finished reading the brothers karamazov

author: miao wei

publisher: hunan literature and art publishing house

producer: pu rui culture

subtitle: thirty lectures on literary experience 3

publication year: 2024-9