I decided to start reading The Brothers Karamazov this past week. Accordingly, on Tuesday I went up to the Slavic Languages floor in the library and found the back corner where they squirrel away all their translations of Russian authors. Of course they had lots of editions of The Brothers, so I settled on a lovely old volume published by The Modern Library, trans. Constance Garrett, that's so old that it doesn't have a publishing date in it. It was originally a paperback, so it has the comfortable size of a pocket edition, but it's been given a library hardback binding, which gives it a good heft. The pages inside are of that lovely silk-smooth paper, paper that feels more like fabric than paper, that you never find in mass-market books anymore.

My philosophy with this book has to be totally different than with most books I read for fun. Usually I blaze through books because I want to know what happens (this is why I read books more than once). However, when I took a class on Middlemarch my first year here, the professor assigned us to journal as we read the novel. I had read Middlemarch before and enjoyed it, but writing my way through it helped me appreciate the narrative style, the slow unfolding of plot and philosophy alongside one another, much more thoroughly. 

Ever since I read War and Peace in highschool, I've felt some animosity toward anything written by a Russian. I loved Crime and Punishment, but War and Peace came after and was huger, more boring (dare I say it), and more daunting. So I haven't been back to the Russians since. But I thought I'd try The Brothers since it's by Dostoyevsky, and I thought I'd try the journalling method since my problem with War and Peace was arguably that I read it far too fast. 

So far, writing through The Brothers has been good. Dostoyevsky's narrator is an enigmatically engaging character in the story, and though I know I probably won't ever meet the narrator in the story (since this is a 19th-century novel, not some crazy 21st-century avante-garde thing), I'm fascinated by what he withholds. 

I'm also fascinated by Dostoyevsky's attitude toward faith. He's definitely not a Calvinist, but I found this beautiful quote last night:

“Fear nothing and never be afraid; and don’t fret. If only your penitence fail not, God will forgive all. There is no sin, and there can be no sin on all the earth, which the Lord will not forgive to the truly repentant! Man cannot commit a sin so great as to exhaust the infinite love of God. Can there be a sin which could exceed the love of God? Think only of repentance, continual repentance, but dismiss fear altogether. Believe that God loves you as you cannot conceive; that He loves you with your sin, in your sin. It has been said of old that over one repentant sinner there is more joy in heaven than over ten righteous men. Go, and fear not. Be not bitter against men. Be not angry if you are wronged…. If you are penitent, you love. And if you love you are of God. All things are atoned for, all things are saved by love. If I, a sinner, even as you are, am tender with you and have pity on you, how much more will God. Love is such a priceless treasure that you can redeem the whole world by it, and expiate not only your own sins but the sins of others.” 

(Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 57-58)