I’m so hyped up on Dostoevsky right now. In the past year, I’ve re-read Crime and Punishment and sped through The Double, The Gambler, and Notes from Underground for the first time. Is there anyone better at taking on a voice, becoming someone else so authentically, so ardently, that readers cannot but assume he speaks his own mind? Camus does this beautifully in The Fall, but I think Dostoevsky is even better in Notes from Underground; it’s remarkable ventriloquism.

Now I've finished The Brothers Karamazov, a dazzling spectacle of clamoring voices, each one written with understanding and special pleading, fully convincing before we move on to the next. Even the narrator has a distinct character – dry and fussy, alternately irritating and endearing. This is a big story of love, hate, mystery, and suspense; but, more than that, it's an ambitious, surprisingly modern conversation that starts within an intimate circle of family and friends, and expands to the village, the university, the church, the law, and the media. They all but take to the internet to make themselves heard! The Russia Dostoevsky gives us here is appalling and exciting, half modern, half medieval, but already tackling the ideas of the 20th century, supremely aware that it's standing on the cusp of something big. I don't know that I've ever read a novel so thoroughly built on dialogue, on the exchange of ideas from diverse perspectives. And, if the truth doesn't prevail in the end—if, in this particular case, the best voices falter or fail—it's not as discouraging as you might think. Primed by the mammoth conversation we've just read, we're ready for more, we're energized. We can keep talking till we get it right!

Since so much of what I've watched lately has belonged in the My Horrierino thread, here's a link to my wrap-up in that thread:

Still under the spell of this great book, I've been doing my usual desultory research on the internet, simply because I don't want to stop thinking about it. I wish there were more discussion to be found, especially of the tantalizing claim in the preface of the novel that this was to be only the first of two books about Alexei Karamazov:

This idea is given strength by the peculiar openness of the end of the book, which introduces a new, very young character and blatantly addresses the future. (For film lovers still reading, it's Tony Leung in Days of Being Wild, only more so.) While this works, as is, to tie the story into the history of the Russian people (or, even, when added to Dmitri's plans to go to America, into a broader human canvas), the reader can't help but think about that promised second book. Because Dostoevsky died only a few months after publishing The Brothers Karamazov, we'll never know that next chapter, that main novel to which this magnificent books is mere introduction, almost not a novel at all. How amazing would that next book have been? It's mind-boggling! I'm filled with longing for this impossible thing.

But, back to that research. Various sources mention an unfinished epic called "The Life of a Great Sinner," with hints that Karamazov was to be the first piece of the larger project. I had to know more, and turned to a little book called Stavrogin's Confession and the Plan of The Life of a Great Sinner, which includes Dostoevsky's notes about the project. It turns out that the link between Karamazov and Great Sinner is not nearly so direct, despite that tantalizing preface. All his life, Dostoevsky had a profusion of ideas that never made it into finished form. In fact, he spoke of two epic novels in the last years of his life, and spent time planning them: Atheism and The Life of a Great Sinner, neither of which ever took shape. An essay by Nicolai Brodsky in the book above shares my longing for the unwritten works:

Whoa, wait minute! What a terrible, pessimistic way to look at his finished works! Why give his notes precedence over the hard work that goes into writing an actual book? No matter how attractive his plans, who is to say that the ideas that made it past internal censors, that made it onto the page in published form, aren't better, more truly Dostoevsky, than his ambitions and notes? It's clear to me, at any rate, that The Brothers Karamazov is no pale shadow of a greater idea. In fact, his notebooks make clear that it contains many of his best ideas. Scholars have had a field day linking those notes and letters to his various novels, teasing out the vast and confusing middle ground between Dostoevsky's life experiences and their final fictional forms. And, this is where I have to confront my earlier yearnings; it's ridiculous to imply that those years of thought and planning were wasted, when so much of that work (in terms of characters, plots, and ideas) made it into print in at least three novels: The Raw Youth, Demons, and The Brothers Karamazov. The latter, at least, is magnificent, one of the greatest books I've ever read. Dreams of another, better book are truly unnecessary.

Karamazovi: This odd little film follows a Czech theater troupe to Poland where they've been invited to stage an adaptation of The Brothers Karamazov in a foundry with Solidariność history. While there, they meet a grieving father, an employee of the foundry, who starts to consider their rehearsal a personal performance. It definitely benefits from the solid foundation of a time-tested dramatic adaptation by Evald Schorm. The dialogue and staging are surprisingly compact and effective, though the sketched-in nature is clearly tailored to those already familiar with the story. The modern-day drama that buzzes around the edges of the production was always going to appear weak next to Dostoevsky (the low point an inexplicable puppet show making light of epilepsy), but it includes some valiant attempts to engage the novel's themes and ideas. Visually, it makes decent use of its unusual setting, with an chalky blue-green palette and some lovely filtered sunlight.

Here it is: the two-and-a-half-hour Hollywood production of The Brothers Karamazov, with Yul Brynner, Maria Schell, and (yes) William Shatner. This wasn't bad... To be honest, I am having trouble separating my book-hewing obsessions from the looser requirements of the Hollywood epic. All the characters have been simplified, their inner contradictions sacrificed for clarity, and the story distilled down to a star vehicle for Yul Brynner, which makes a sort of literary (if not thematic) sense. But, real efforts have been made to hit all the narrative high points and small touches pay homage to missing chapters; it's not the filmmakers' fault that the spirit of the novel resides so much around the edges, in earnest conversations and tangential characters. Taken for what it is, the best thing about this (besides Brynner's smolder) is the way every scene is bathed in rich primary colors. It's all done with lighting, and the effect is dramatic and beautiful. And, yeah, I think I'm coming around. I'd watch this again, just for Brynner and Schell.

The Russians did it! Bratya Karamazovy is exactly what I wished for: 232 minutes of careful, faithful enactment of the novel. With one glaring exception at the very end, this is an almost word-for-word adaptation. Of course, there isn't time for everything, but the characters get to retain most of their contradictions and complexity. The stories people tell each other remain stories told, not the more filmic flashbacks or narrative compressions you might expect. Does that sound boring? It isn't, primarily because it's so well acted. The only real flaw is the actor who plays Alyosha, who seems to think he's in a silent film. He makes William Shatner look like a genius, haha. But, my favorite thing is that, with so much of the dialogue intact, many of the ideas make it in, too (in abbreviated form, of course). And, that's really admirable! Visually, it's hard to judge, since I don't have the best copy. It's obviously not trying for clever camerawork, but there's a delicate charm to many of the scenes. But, after all, it's faithfulness that's aimed for, and that's what it achieves. And it's good. It is! It's just not as much fun as the Hollywood one.