ABSTRACT
The Brothers Karamazov represents not only the apex of Dostoevsky's art and thought, but also his final vision of existence. His earliest jottings for this vast encyclopaedia of Russian mentality go as far back as 1876, but he actually began writing it in 1878. As in A Raw Youth, Dostoevsky took up in this work, once more, a whole family. The scene of action is, however, not Petersburg, but the provinces. The Karamazov family, whose destinies the author unfolds, is more varied and much more striking than the one in his previous novel. To begin with, the old Karamazov, although a dissolute representative of the former serf-owning class, is still full of vitality, of animal appetites and passions. Of his four sons Mitya is as chaotic and impulsive as his parent, but he is made of better material. Also the passion he indulges in is on a higher plane and actually becomes ennobledboth in him and in the woman he loves-by a sudden catastrophe. In I van all that energy has become an intellectual, and in Alyosha a spiritual force. Their illegitimate half-brother, the flunkey Smerdyakov, is, however, a mental and moral abortion.
