Bros Karamazov

I feel scholarly today. That's why I'm re-embarking on a major project: understanding Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. I’ve read it before but this morning I suddenly felt the need to read it again. All 936 pages of font-size 8 text in a Bantam paperback. Am pretty excited, yet daunted about it. This book is no easy read. Periodic pauses and breathers midway through the novel are needed just to make sense of all the complexity.

I expect mawiwindang ako sa book na ito. But I take consolation in the fact that the author himself ay may "ka-windangan" ding taglay. A memoir written by a friend relates: “He would clutch his head as though there immediately rushed into it so many ideas that he found it difficult to begin.” A critic has written: “As was his thought so were his novels, excessively complicated and entangled.” In short, may ka-praningan din daw sya. ;-p

Nevertheless, even if both author and work are malabo, the message in both the author's life and the novel's theme is clear: crippling guilt is met and is conquered by all-encompassing redemption. The brothers Karamazov, like Dostoevsky after his imprisonment in Siberia, shared tragedy and were purified through suffering: Ivan with his “murderous thought”, Dmitry his “destructive passion”, and Alyosha his “quiet boy” passivity. In the end, however, all the brothers, and Dostoevsky himself, gained life reborn.

Exciting ano? I look forward to spending stormy days with this book. I can’t wait to finish the entire thing again... and rediscover why Yancey called this book “probably the greatest book ever written.”