The Brothers Karamazov: A Novel in Four Parts With Epilogue

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Humiliated and Insulted (aka The Insulted and Humiliated, The Insulted and the Injured, Injury and Insult) Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky are literary translators best known for their collaborative English translations of classic Russian literature. Individually, Pevear has also translated into English works from French, Italian, and Greek. The couple's collaborative translations have been nominated three times and twice won the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize (for Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov). Their translation of Dostoevsky's The Idiot also won the first Efim Etkind Translation Prize. Garnett has, apparently, been criticized for skipping some paragraphs and writing in a style very typical of Victorian England. I was worried about this at first, but then remembered that Dostoyevsky’s style – which, to some degree, was conspicuous in all the various Dostoevsky translations I’ve read previously – is, in my opinion, one of his weaknesses. At his best, the plot, characters and philosophy are all wonderful, but I’ve often found the prose a bit repetitive, not very beautiful and somewhat (forgive me!) adolescent in tone – which is quite jarring when the psychology is as insightful as it is. I see P&V’s calculated evasion of Victorian English as eminently appropriate. Without P&V, I doubt I would have sweated with Levin at the reaping or walked dizzily through the city with Raskolnikov during my college years’ long hot summers of extra-curricular reading, some of the best and most intense reading experiences of my life.”

In the first production of “The Idiots Karamazov,” at the Yale Repertory Theatre, Garnett was played by a student at the drama school named Meryl Streep, who portrayed the aged “translatrix” as a muddled loon. The mangling of the translator’s craft is a main plot point. The Russian for “hysterical homosexual,” Mrs. Garnett insists, is “Tchaikovsky.” When she recalls for the audience the arduous process of translating “Karamazov,” she confuses the four brothers with the “Three Sisters,” a stumble that leads inevitably to the musical number “O We Gotta Get to Moscow!” Mrs. Garnett closes the proceedings by reciting a conjugation of the verb “to Karamazov.” Dostoyevsky’s response to this question comes in the form of a speech by Father Zosima, an elder at Alyosha’s monastery. Zosima preaches a sermon on brotherhood to his fellow-monks: “You should know, my dear ones, that every individual is undoubtedly responsible for everyone and everything on earth, not only with respect to general guilt, but also each individual is responsible for every single person and all mankind on earth.” Zosima urges the monks, as Dostoyevsky urged readers, to see ugliness as a trait shared by the entire human family. We are all our brother’s keepers. No one, not Dmitry or anyone else, should ever stand trial alone. I can’t tell you whose voice you’ll enjoy spending 30 hours with; that’ll depend on your personal preference. You’ll probably want to listen for yourself before deciding.

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There are large swaths of “The Brothers Karamazov” in which Dostoyevsky’s vices are on full display. His chauvinism and antisemitism (Fyodor’s avarice is attributed to his time in the Ukrainian city of Odesa, a Jewish enclave of the Russian Empire), dressed up in the language of Christian love, threaten to weigh the novel down with the flaws of its creator. But the structure of the book gives it a greatness that transcends the author’s smallness. The form of the detective story forces readers to look closely for clues, to pay attention to characters or objects we might be conditioned to ignore. You do not want to make the mistake that the Karamazovs made, of overlooking what was right under their noses—the forgotten son, the disregarded brother, Smerdyakov. Did he feel slighted, rejected by his father, to the point of murder? The prosecutor does not take him seriously as a suspect. “What was his motive? What did he hope to gain?” Kirillovich asks. After all, an illegitimate son cannot inherit. But Dostoyevsky himself attends to Smerdyakov, granting him, arguably, the central role in the family drama. Wyatt, Edward (7 June 2004). "Tolstoy's Translators Experience Oprah's Effect". New York Times . Retrieved 2008-04-23. The text is accompanied by a detailed introduction, a pronunciation and explanation key for the novel’s main characters, and greatly revised and expanded explanatory annotations.

The novel contains a famous chapter-long prose poem called “The Grand Inquisitor”. The chapter has been published separately a number of times. This new translation has the same effect as rinsing a cloudy windowpane. All at once an amusing young girl seems out-and-out funny, a mildly satiric scene with a self-absorbed matron makes us laugh aloud, and those complex, tortured Karamazov brothers become people we might bump into in downtown Baltimore.” Without translators, we are left adrift on our various linguistic ice floes, only faintly hearing rumors of masterpieces elsewhere at sea. So most English-speaking readers glimpse Homer through the filter of Fitzgerald or Fagles, Dante through Sinclair or Singleton or the Hollanders, Proust through Moncrieff or Davis, García Márquez through Gregory Rabassa—and nearly every Russian through Constance Garnett.

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There have been twelve translations of The Brothers Karamazov so far. I found complete audio versions of 3 of them (shown in bold below). We actually met because of Russian literature. I had written an essay on the Soviet dissident and writer Andrei Sinyavsky. It was published in The Hudson Reviewin 1972. I remarked ironically that the poet Yevtushenko was giving readings in Madison Square Garden—among his translators were John Updike and Richard Wilbur—while Sinyavsky was in a Soviet labor camp. I received a letter from Irene Kirk, a professor at the University of Connecticut. She told me he wasn’t in prison, he had been released but also stripped of his citizenship and deported. She had helped him and his family leave for France. This is the Second Norton Critical Edition, first published in 2011. It is an updated version of the Norton Critical Edition edited by Ralph Matlaw. Washington Post: “ The Brothers Karamazov is a classic, but it’s not beyond criticism” by Michael Dirda In the early seventies, two young playwrights, Christopher Durang and Albert Innaurato, collaborated on a satire about nineteenth-century Russian literature called “The Idiots Karamazov.” In their liberal interpretation of Dostoyevsky, Father Zosima is a gay foot fetishist. Which causes the angelic monk Alyosha to wonder, “How can there be a God if there are feet?” The main character is based not on any figure in Dostoyevsky but, rather, on his first and most enduring English-language translator, a woman of Victorian energies and Edwardian prose, Mrs. Constance Garnett.

Criticism” offers a wide range of scholarly commentary on The Brothers Karamazov from American, Russian, and European authors, eleven of them new to the Second Edition and two of them appearing in English for the first time. Contributors include Ralph Matlaw, Valentina Vetlovskaia, Seamas O’Driscoll, William Mills Todd, Vladimir Kantor, Edward Wasiolek, Nathan Rosen, Roger B. Anderson, Robin Feuer Miller, Horst-Jürgen Gerigk, Vladimir Golstein, Robert L. Belknap, Ulrich Schmid, and Gary Saul Morson. Tom wrote: "Well, my vote would be for Brothers Karamazov, Pevear and Volohonsky translation. But then I haven't read all of D's work. A good friend who has read all of D says that in some quarters Demons (a..." In this version, MacAndrew leads the way in portraying the mother and her daughter in front of me. The language is not a hindrance but his version is true to the original. For example, he describes the mother as “very pretty” instead of comely in appearance, or pleasant to the gaze. Hunnewell, Susannah (Summer 2015). "Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, The Art of Translation No. 4". The Paris Review. Summer 2015 (213). Another example is the last sentence of the first paragraph in the book, describing Fyodor’s muddleheadedness.Some critics praise the authenticity and accuracy of their work, while others find it rough and unappealing; much ink has been spilled in the debate. Bloom, Harold (2020). The Bright Book of Life: Novels to Read and Reread. New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0525657262. External links [ edit ]