But she is forced to sing in time with Mein leiber Augustin. Her melody passes foolishly into Augustin. She yields and dies away. And only in snatches it is heard again qu'un sang impur. . . . But suddenly it passes over into the vulgar waltz. She submits altogether. It is Jules Favre sobbing on Bismark's bosom and surrendering everything. . . . Here Augustin grows fierce. Hoarse sounds are heard. There is a suggestion of countless gallons of beer, of a frenzy of self-glorification, demand for millions, for fine cigars, champagne and hostages. Augustin becomes a wild yell."
The Brothers Karamazov (1880)
The Brothers Karamazov is the most perfect example of the detective story technique as constantly used by Dostoevski in his other novels. It is a long novel (more than 1,000 pages), and it is a curious novel. The things that are curious about it are numerous; even the chapter headings are curious. It is worth noting that the author not only is well aware of this quaint and weird nature of his book but he even seems to be all the time pointing to it, teasing his reader, using every device to excite the reader's curiosity. Let us look, for instance, at the index of chapters. I have just mentioned how unusual and how puzzling: a man, unfamiliar with the novel, could be easily misled into imagining that the book offered him is not a novel but rather the libretto of some whimsical vaudeville. Chapter 3: "Confession of a Fiery Heart, Expressed in Verse." Chapter 4: "Confession of a Fiery Heart, Expressed in Anecdotes." Chapter 5: "Confession of a Fiery Heart, 'Upside Down.' " Then in the second volume, Chapter 5: "Nerve Storm in a Drawing Room." Chapter 6: "Nerve Storm in a Peasant Hut." Chapter 7:
"And Outofdoors." Some headings surprise us by their odd diminutives: "A Cozy Little Chat Over Brandikins" (Za kon'yachkom: kon'yak - brandy; kon'yachok - diminutive form), or an elderly lady's aching little foot (nozbka - diminutive of noga). Most of these titles do not hint even ever so slightly at the contents of the chapter, as "One more reputation destroyed" or "The third and indisputable thing," headings that are meaningless. Finally a number of headings with their flippancy and their bantering choice of words read actually like an index to a collection of humorous stories. Only in part six, in fact, incidentally the weakest part of the book, are the names of chapters in agreement with their content.
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Vladimir Nabokov: Lectures on Russian literature
In this taunting and teasing way the cunning author quite deliberately entices his reader. However, this is not the only way in which he does it. He is constantly preoccupied with various means for keeping and whetting the reader's attention throughout the book. Take for instance the manner in which he finally discloses the name of the town where the action has been taking place from the very start of the novel. This revelation of the town's name does not occur until close to the end: "Skotoprigonyevsk [place towards which cattle herds are driven, clearing place for cattle, something like oxtown], Skotoprigonyevsk," he says, "such alas is the name of our town, I have been long trying to conceal it." This over-sensitivity, over-concern of the writer in regard to the reader—when the reader is thought of simultaneously as the victim being drawn into a trap by the writer and as a hunter before whose path the writer keeps crossing and recrossing like a fleeing hare—this consciousness of the reader on the part of the writer derives partly from the Russian literary tradition. Pushkin in Evgeniy Onegin, Gogol in Dead Souls, often apostrophize, address themselves to the reader in a sudden aside, sometimes with an apology, sometimes with a request or with a joke. But it also derives from the tradition of the Western detective story, or rather from its predecessor, the criminal novel. It is in accordance with this latter tradition that Dostoevski uses an amusing device: with deliberate frankness, as if he were putting down before you all his cards, he comes out at the very beginning with the statement that a murder has been committed. "Aleksey Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Karamazov, a landowner of our county, who became so famous for a time . . . through his tragic and unclarified death." This apparent sincerity on the part of the author is nothing but a stylistic device, the object being to inform the reader from the first of the fact of this "tragic and unclarified death."
The book is a typical detective story, a riotous whodunit—in slow motion. The initial situation is the following. We have the father Karamazov, a lecherous, hideous old man, one of those unlamentable victims neatly prepared for murder by every farsighted writer of detective fiction. And we also have his four sons—three legitimate and one illegitimate—each of whom might be his murderer. The youngest son, the saintly Aleksey (Alyosha) is definitely a positive character, but if for once we accept Dostoevski's world and its rules, we may consider it a possibility that even Alyosha may kill his father, whether for the sake of his brother Dmitri in whose way the old man most deliberately stands, or in a sudden rebellion against the evil which his father represents, or for any other reason. The plot is presented in such a way that for a long time the reader keeps guessing who the murderer is; moreover, when the alleged murderer goes on trial it is the wrong man who is being tried, the eldest son of the murdered man, Dmitri, whereas the actual murderer happens to be the illegitimate son, Smerdyakov.
In accordance with Dostoevski's purpose to entangle the credulous reader in the guesswork that goes with the enjoyment of detective fiction, the author carefully prepares in the reader's mind the necessary portrait of the possible murderer, Dmitri. The pattern of deception begins when Dmitri after feverish and vain attempts to secure the three thousand rubles he desperately needs, seizes on the run a copper pestle seven inches long, shoves it into his pocket, and rushes off. "Oh Lord, he sure wants to murder someone," a woman exclaims.
The girl Dmitri loves, another of those Dostoevskian "infernal" women, Grushenka, has also caught the fancy of the old man, who has promised her money if she pays him a visit, and Dmitri is persuaded that she has accepted the offer.
Convinced that Grushenka was with his father, he leaped over the fence into the garden, from where he could see the lighted windows of his father's house; then "he stealthily approached and hid in the shadow, behind a bush. One half of the bush was lit by the lighted window. 'A bush with berries, how red they are,' he whispered, not knowing why." When he went up to the bedroom window, "the whole bedroom of Fyodor Pavlovich, a small chamber, lay before him as if in the palm of his hand." That little room was divided in two by red screens. Fyodor, the father, stood there, beside the window,
"in his new striped silk dressing gown belted with a silk cord with tassels. From under the collar of the dressing gown appeared clean smart linen, a shirt of fine Holland cloth with golden studs. . . . "The old man almost climbed out of the window while trying to see the garden door which was further on the right side. . . . Dmitri was looking from the side and stood motionless. The whole detested profile of the old man, with its sagging skin on the Adam's apple, his lips smiling in voluptuous anticipation, all of it was obliquely lit on the left side by the lamp. A terrible boundless fury arose in Dmitri's heart," and losing all self-control, he suddenly snatched the copper pestle he had in his pocket.