Who He Is
Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov is the landowner of the district, a voluntary buffoon and unbridled sensualist, father of Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov, of Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov and of Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov, and perhaps also of Smerdyakov, if the town gossip is worth anything (ch. I of Book I, ch. III of Book I, ch. II of Book III). He married twice, always by abduction: to Adelaida Ivanovna Miusova, rich and well-born, who despised him and ran away, and to Sofya Ivanovna, a sixteen-year-old orphan raised by a benefactress, who fell ill in his house (ch. I of Book I, ch. III of Book I). He began with almost nothing and leaves about a hundred thousand rubles in cash, the fruit of a cleverness that the narrator deliberately separates from foolishness (ch. I of Book I, ch. IV of Book I), and at fifty-five he wants to live twenty more years as a man (ch. II of Book IV). He is the origin of what the sons inherit and against which each reacts in his own way: where they still wrangle between ideal and appetite, he has already settled the dispute in favor of appetite, and does so without drama, but not without fear (ch. I of Book III, ch. IX of Book III). He dies murdered offstage, and the envelope of money he kept for Grushenka is what drives the plot of the inquest (ch. IV of Book VIII, ch. II of Book IX).
Trajectory
In ch. I of Book I, before telling what he did, the narrator defines him by the mixture the book will unfold: vile and dissolute, but not for money.
человека не только дрянного и развратного, но вместе с тем и бестолкового, a man not only vile and dissolute, but also scatterbrained.
Married to Adelaida, who took him for a bold man when he was only a vicious buffoon, Fyodor sees his wife run off with a seminarian and leave him their three-year-old son, sets up a harem at home, and roams the province weeping over the abandoned woman. When news of her death arrives, drunk, he either runs through the street raising his hands to heaven, or sobs, and the narrator refuses to choose:
Очень может быть, что было и то, и другое, то есть что и радовался он своему освобождению, и плакал по освободительнице — всё вместе., it is quite possible that both happened, that is, that he rejoiced at his own liberation and wept for the liberator, all at once.
In ch. II of Book I he forgets the boy, and the narrator separates abandonment from hatred: it is not malice, it is forgetfulness, and the trait of character that explains it is a taste for playing unexpected roles, even without need and to his own harm.
не по злобе к нему или не из каких-нибудь оскорбленно-супружеских чувств, а просто потому, что забыл о нем совершенно, not out of malice toward him, nor from any feeling of an offended husband, but simply because he had forgotten him completely.
Федор Павлович всю жизнь свою любил представляться, вдруг проиграть пред вами какую-нибудь неожиданную роль, и, главное, безо всякой иногда надобности, даже в прямой ущерб себе, Fyodor Pavlovich all his life liked to pretend, to suddenly play before you some unexpected role, and, above all, sometimes without any need, even to his own direct detriment.
Mitya is looked after by the servant Grigory. When the son, now grown, comes to settle accounts, Fyodor realizes that he overestimates what he owns and exploits him with small remittances until nothing is left, all through agreements the young man himself wanted to sign, and from this reckoning comes the catastrophe the narrator promises:
Вот это-то обстоятельство и привело к катастрофе, изложение которой и составит предмет моего первого вступительного романа, it was precisely this circumstance that led to the catastrophe, whose account will form the subject of my first novel, the introductory one.
In ch. III of Book I he marries Sofya Ivanovna, whom he proposes to abduct after being sent away, and what attracted him to her, as he himself would say later, was her innocent gaze, something he had never known:
«Меня эти невинные глазки как бритвой тогда по душе полоснули», Those innocent little eyes slashed my soul back then, like a razor.
With her come orgies in the house, which Grigory once forcibly expels, and two sons forgotten like the first. When Sofya dies, the generalsha who raised her appears without warning, slaps him twice, pulls his forelock, slaps Grigory as well, and takes the boys; Fyodor sees a good deal in the scene and goes about town recounting the slaps.
In ch. IV of Book I, back after years in Odessa, older and more brazen, owner of taverns, watched over by Grigory almost as by a tutor, he finds the image of his second wife in Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov and tells him he resembles the possessed woman, the klikusha, as the people call women who have fits:
что ты на нее похож, на кликушу-то?, that you resemble her, the possessed woman?
He takes a thousand rubles to the monastery for the soul of his first wife, the one who used to beat him, and not for Alyosha's mother, and he jokes about his own ugliness, which he turns into a character:
«Настоящий римский, — говорил он, — вместе с кадыком настоящая физиономия древнего римского патриция времен упадка», a genuine Roman, he would say, and along with the Adam's apple, a genuine face of an ancient Roman patrician from the age of decline.
When his son asks permission to enter the monastery, he answers half-drunk, mocking the devil's iron hooks, and lets him go with a request that belies the mockery:
ступай, доберись там до правды, да и приди рассказать: всё же идти на тот свет будет легче, коли наверно знаешь, что там такое [...] ведь я чувствую же, что ты единственный человек на земле, который меня не осудил, мальчик ты мой милый, я ведь чувствую же это, не могу же я это не чувствовать!.., go, find the truth there and come back to tell me: it will be easier to go to the other world if one knows for certain what is there [...] for I feel that you are the only man on earth who has not condemned me, my dear boy, I do feel it, how could I not feel it!...
The narrator sums up the man in two words:
Он был зол и сентиментален., He was wicked and sentimental.
In ch. V of Book I it is Fyodor, in jest, who suggests that the whole family gather with Elder Zosima, and the meeting called to divide an inheritance becomes his stage. In ch. II of Book II, in the cell, he gets ahead of the others' judgment:
Вы видите пред собою шута, шута воистину!, You see before you a buffoon, a true buffoon!
Я шут коренной, с рождения, всё равно, ваше преподобие, что юродивый, I am a buffoon through and through, from birth, your reverence, no different from a holy fool.
When the elder tells him not to be so ashamed of himself, for that is where everything comes from, Fyodor returns the advice as a confession:
Вот потому я и шут, от стыда шут, старец великий, от стыда. От мнительности одной и буяню., That is why I am a buffoon, a buffoon from shame, great elder, from shame. It is from suspiciousness alone that I make a racket.
The elder then tells him what matters: the lie that is not seen, the one one tells oneself, makes one lose respect for everyone.
Главное, самому себе не лгите., Above all, do not lie to yourself.
In ch. VI of Book II he accuses Mitya before the monks, challenges him to a pistol duel at three paces, and hears from him the question the book leaves hanging over the father:
Зачем живет такой человек!, Why does such a man live!
In ch. VIII of Book II he decides to leave, returns to the abbot's luncheon because he remembered the buffoon's part he had promised to play, and attacks the monks in the name of the muzhik:
Ведь вы, отцы святые, народ сосете!, For you, holy fathers, suck the people dry!
In ch. I of Book III we see that his house depends on a faithful man: on nights of drunkenness, spiritual fear wakes him, and what comforts him is looking at Grigory's face. Alyosha gives him, without meaning to, what no one had ever given him:
Дело было именно в том, чтобы был непременно другой человек, старинный и дружественный, чтобы в больную минуту позвать его, только с тем чтобы всмотреться в его лицо, пожалуй переброситься словцом, совсем даже посторонним каким-нибудь, и коли он ничего, не сердится, то как-то и легче сердцу, а коли сердится, ну, тогда грустней., The point was that there must be another man, an old and friendly one, whom to call in a sick moment, only to look into his face, perhaps to exchange a word, something quite unrelated, and if he is all right, if he is not angry, the heart is somehow lighter, and if he is angry, well, then it is sadder.
жил, всё видел и ничего не осудил, lived, saw everything, and condemned nothing.
In ch. II of Book III he swears that he left with the band of drunkards who mocked the holy fool Lizaveta, and the narrator notes that perhaps it was so, and that no one ever knew:
может быть, так именно и было, никто этого не знает наверно и никогда не знал, perhaps it was just like that; no one knows this for certain, and no one ever has.
In ch. VI of Book III he fully trusts the young servant Smerdyakov, who returned three hundred-ruble notes lost in the mud, and in ch. VII of Book III, faced with the story of the soldier who preferred to be flayed rather than renounce Christ, he responds with profit calculation and blasphemy and with the most direct confession he makes about faith:
такого солдата следовало бы произвести сейчас же во святые и снятую кожу его препроводить в какой-нибудь монастырь, such a soldier should be made a saint on the spot, and his flayed skin sent to some monastery.
здесь мы все от легкомыслия лишь не веруем, потому что нам некогда: во-первых, дела одолели, а во-вторых, времени бог мало дал, всего во дню определил только двадцать четыре часа, так что некогда и выспаться, не только покаяться., here we all do not believe out of frivolity alone, because we have no time: first, business overwhelms us, and second, God has given us little time, appointing only twenty-four hours in the day, so there is no time even to sleep, let alone to repent.
In ch. VIII of Book III he asks Ivan and Alyosha, one after the other, whether God exists, and, without an answer that helps him, begins to speak of the elder:
Это иезуит, русский то есть., He is a Jesuit, that is, a Russian Jesuit.
In ch. IX of Book III Mitya breaks into the house looking for Grushenka, knocks Grigory down with a punch, and beats his father, stamping on his face. Lying down, with a wet cloth on his head, the old man confesses to Alyosha where his fear lies:
я Ивана боюсь; я Ивана больше, чем того, боюсь. Я только тебя одного не боюсь…, I am afraid of Ivan; I am more afraid of Ivan than of the other one. Only of you am I not afraid...
In ch. II of Book IV, in a red handkerchief on his purple forehead, he sets out to Alyosha the philosophy he lives by: no paradise and no account to give, only the pleasure to be enjoyed to the end and something put aside for when the pleasure costs.
А в рай твой, Алексей Федорович, я не хочу, это было бы тебе известно, да порядочному человеку оно даже в рай-то твой и неприлично, если даже там и есть он. По-моему, заснул и не проснулся, и нет ничего, поминайте меня, коли хотите, а не хотите, так и черт вас дери. Вот моя философия, as for your paradise, Alexei Fyodorovich, I do not want it, you should know that, and for a decent man it is even improper to go to your paradise, if there even is one. In my view, he fell asleep and never woke up, and there is nothing; remember me if you like, and if you don't, the devil take you. Here is my philosophy.
Alyosha answers him that he is not a wicked man, he is a crippled one, and the old man admits that only with his son has he had his little hours of kindness. The calculation he makes about the beating is another one: not to prosecute Mitya, so that Grushenka will leave him and come to visit the old man, bruised. The threat that comes out of him is repeated:
Не злой вы человек, а исковерканный, you are not a wicked man, you are a crippled one.
Засади я его, подлеца, она услышит, что я его засадил, и тотчас к нему побежит. А услышит если сегодня, что тот меня до полусмерти, слабого старика, избил, так, пожалуй, бросит его, да ко мне придет навестить, if I put the scoundrel in jail, she will hear that I put him there and run straight to him. But if she hears today that he beat me nearly to death, a feeble old man, she may leave him and come to visit me.
А Митьку я раздавлю, как таракана. Я черных тараканов ночью туфлей давлю: так и щелкнет, как наступишь. Щелкнет и Митька твой, and Mitya I will crush like a cockroach. I crush black cockroaches at night with my slipper: they go snap when you step on them. Your Mitya will go snap too.
In ch. VII of Book V, with Ivan on the road to Moscow and Fyodor convinced that he reads people by the beard of a timber buyer, the narrator leaves him almost happy, shut in, waiting for Grushenka and the five agreed knocks:
никогда еще сердце его не купалось в более сладкой надежде, never had his heart bathed in a sweeter hope.
In ch. IV of Book VIII, Mitya sees him through the lit window, in a new dressing gown, examining his bruises in the mirror, and hears him answer the agreed signal, in a trembling voice, that he has a little gift for the angel he supposes is coming. In ch. II of Book IX, dead, his head split open, probably by the same instrument that wounded Grigory, he leaves behind the screen the torn and empty envelope, with the inscription in his own hand:
Гостинчик в три тысячи рублей ангелу моему Грушеньке, если захочет прийти [...] и цыпленочку, A little gift of three thousand rubles for my angel Grushenka, if she wants to come [...] and for the little chick.
Themes Embodied
Fyodor is the Karamazov excess without the storm that torments the sons. Where Mitya feels the duel of God and the devil in his own breast (ch. III of Book III) and Ivan builds arguments against the world God made (ch. IV of Book V), Fyodor feels no conflict: only appetite satisfied or frustrated, and a nighttime fear that he covers with a joke (ch. I of Book III). The narrator comes close to naming what is inherited from him in ch. V of Book I, when he imagines Alyosha as capable of becoming an atheist and a socialist as easily as a novice: not faith or the lack of it, but the inability to live by halves. That is why the theme he carries is that of Family, measured from end to end by the father who was and the son who ends up accused of killing him.
What he wants is not to be condemned and to have Grushenka, and the book gives him the first thing only in Alyosha (ch. IV of Book I, ch. I of Book III). What he fears is Ivan, the son who did not strike him, more than the one who beat him (ch. IX of Book III). What he knows of himself is more than he lets on, because he describes his own shame with precision before the elder (ch. II of Book II). Where he is wrong is in taking himself for a reader of people: he trusts without reserve the servant who will kill him (ch. VI of Book III) and, in teaching Ivan to read the beard of a buyer, does not notice the anger of the son in front of him (ch. VII of Book V). Book V leaves him with the sweetest hope of a woman who does not come, in a house where Smerdyakov lies fallen in a fit and Grigory is bedridden.
Divergent Readings
The book places two explanations of the buffoon inside itself. The first is the elder's, who tells him that he should not be so ashamed of himself, because that is where the role comes from:
А главное, не стыдитесь столь самого себя, ибо от сего лишь всё и выходит., And above all, do not be so ashamed of yourself, for that is the only source of everything.
The other shows a man who cannot bear being forgiven: the hatred springs from what he did and not from what he suffered, and the monastery that received him with courtesy is the one he must attack.
он, правда, мне ничего не сделал, но зато я сделал ему одну бессовестнейшую пакость, и только что сделал, тотчас же за то и возненавидел его, he, it is true, did nothing to me, but in return I played a most shameless dirty trick on him, and the moment I did it, I began to hate him for it.
The narrator also does not decide whether the emotion is true or staged: he says the old man acts and suffers in earnest at once, and that there are moments when the liar sinks so deep into the role that he trembles and weeps with real emotion.
Есть у старых лгунов, всю жизнь свою проактерствовавших, минуты, когда они до того зарисуются, что уже воистину дрожат и плачут от волнения, несмотря на то, что даже в это самое мгновение (или секунду только спустя) могли бы сами шепнуть себе: «Ведь ты лжешь, старый бесстыдник, ведь ты актер и теперь, несмотря на весь твой „святой“ гнев и „святую“ минуту гнева»., There are, in old liars who have spent their whole lives acting, moments when they get so carried away that they truly tremble and weep with emotion, although in that very instant (or a second later) they could whisper to themselves: "But you are lying, shameless old man, you are an actor even now, in spite of all your holy wrath and this holy moment of wrath."
After the death, the novel casts three looks on the father. Smerdyakov, in his confession, tells Ivan that of all the sons he is the one who most took after the old man:
Вы как Федор Павлович, наиболее-с, изо всех детей наиболее на него похожи вышли, с одною с ними душой-с., you are like Fyodor Pavlovich, more than any; of all the sons you turned out most like him, with the very same soul.
At the trial, the lawyer denies the dead man the title that the parricide presupposes:
родивший не есть еще отец, а отец есть — родивший и заслуживший, one who begot is not yet a father; a father is one who begot and deserved it.
and the prosecutor, in rebuttal, answers that if killing the father is only a prejudice, every child will demand that the father prove the duty of being loved:
Но если отцеубийство есть предрассудок и если каждый ребенок будет допрашивать своего отца: „Отец, зачем я должен любить тебя?“ — то что станется с нами, что станется с основами общества, куда денется семья?, but if parricide is a prejudice, and if every child begins to question his father: "Father, why must I love you?", what will become of us, what will become of the foundations of society, where will the family go?
The readings diverge over what Fyodor is: person, symbol, or mirror. The book holds all three, and none cancels the others. As a person, he disappears after death, because the plot uses him as a pretext, and the parricide becomes a fact that no one mourns; as a symbol, he is worth what the trial says of him and what Mitya asks in ch. VI of Book II; as a mirror, he is worth Smerdyakov's phrase in ch. VIII of Book XI, which makes him present in Ivan after he is dead. Against the reading of the symbol, it is worth noting that the text does not let the reader forget that he also weeps, also fears, and also chooses, among his sons, the only one he does not guard himself against (ch. IX of Book III).
Relationships
- Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov: the eldest son, forgotten among the servants and exploited over the inheritance (ch. II of Book I), accused before the monks (ch. VI of Book II), the son who beat him and a rival for the same woman (ch. IX of Book III, ch. II of Book IV).
- Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov: the son he asks whether God exists and of whom he is more afraid than of Mitya (ch. VIII of Book III, ch. IX of Book III), and whom he asks to stop at Chermashnya on the day of departure (ch. VII of Book V).
- Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov: the son who does not condemn him and whom he asks to come back from the monastery to tell what is there (ch. IV of Book I, ch. I of Book III).
- Smerdyakov: the servant and cook of the house, whom town gossip gives the old man as a father (ch. II of Book III), whom he trusts completely (ch. VI of Book III) and who kills him (ch. VIII of Book XI).
- Grushenka: the woman he disputes with Dmitri and who, on the night of his own death, waits with an envelope of three thousand rubles (ch. IV of Book VIII, ch. II of Book IX).
- Elder Zosima: the one scandalized in his own cell, at the only meeting the two have in the novel (ch. II of Book II).
- Grigory: the faithful servant whom he wakes on drunken nights only to look at his face (ch. I of Book III).