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The Brothers Karamazov

Translated from the Russian of

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

by Constance Garnett

Part I

Book I. The History Of A Family

Chapter I. Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov

Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, a land owner well known in our district in his own day, and still remembered among us owing to his gloomy and tragic death, which happened thirteen years ago, and which I shall describe later.

Fyodor Pavlovitch, the man himself, was, to begin with, a buffoon. I do not mean merely that he was a jester or a wag; he was not by any means a man of ready wit or prone to telling amusing stories. No, he was a buffoon in a different sense: he was a buffoon in his life, in his manners, in his very appearance. He was a stoutish, rather short man, with a soft, almost feminine face, a round, fleshy head that was perpetually glistening with sweat, and a little, silly, pointed beard. His eyes were small, dark, and restless, and they seemed always to be darting about, as if in search of something they had just dropped. He was a man of sixty-five, perhaps, but he was perpetually trying to look younger. He dressed in a fashionable, almost foppish way, wearing coloured shirts and rings on his fingers, and always carried a little handkerchief, which he was constantly using to dab the perspiration from his brow.

He had a reputation, too, for being a man who would do anything for money, and yet he was known to give away large sums on a sudden impulse. He was a sensualist, given to every sort of excess, and yet he was capable of moments of deep, almost religious contemplation, which were, however, always followed by a fresh wave of vulgarity. He was, in short, a man who lived entirely for his appetites and his whims.

Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov was, as I have said, well known in our district, and the subject of much gossip. He was not exactly a villain, but rather a man so devoid of moral sense that he seemed utterly unaware of the existence of such a thing in others. His behaviour was unpredictable, often outrageous, and always aimed at attracting attention, though he was equally ready to laugh at himself or the object of his ridicule.

He was married twice. His first marriage was a scandal in itself.

Chapter II. He Gets Rid Of His Eldest Son

Fyodor Pavlovitch’s first wife was the beautiful, high-born, and very rich heiress, Adelaida Ivanovna Miusova. She belonged to a family of which it was said that all the women were beautiful and all the men were fools. The Miusovs were known for their liberal ideas and their penchant for grand passions. Adelaida Ivanovna was a woman of great spirit and, apparently, great infatuation, for she ran away with Fyodor Pavlovitch, despite the furious opposition of her family.

Their marriage, however, was a disaster almost from the beginning. Fyodor Pavlovitch, being what he was, soon tired of his beautiful, perhaps too spirited, wife. He treated her with open neglect and humiliation, finding particular amusement in subjecting her to public ridicule. Adelaida Ivanovna, unable to bear the shame and misery, fell into a state of perpetual melancholy, and finally fled from him, taking her only son, Dmitri, with her, to live with her sister in Dresden. She died there a few years later, leaving Dmitri to the care of her relations, and Fyodor Pavlovitch inherited her considerable fortune.

It was in Dresden that Adelaida Ivanovna died. Her relations, the Miusovs, made a great fuss over the child, but Fyodor Pavlovitch, having secured the money, showed little interest in his son. He gave him a modest allowance and left him to the guardianship of others, quite content to forget the tragedy of his first marriage.

Dmitri Fyodorovitch, the eldest son, grew up to be a man of a very different stamp from his father. He was handsome, impetuous, and prone to extravagance, inheriting something of his mother’s passionate nature.

Chapter III. The Second Marriage And The Second Family

About ten years after the death of his first wife, Fyodor Pavlovitch reappeared in our district and, to the astonishment of everyone, announced his intention of marrying again. This time he chose a bride from among his own dependents, a pale, sickly, and deeply pious young woman named Sofia Ivanovna Cherevako, whom he had, in fact, kept under his roof in a position somewhere between servant and protégée.

Sofia Ivanovna was barely sixteen. She was plain, timid, and utterly without fortune, but she possessed a religious fervour that Fyodor Pavlovitch found initially amusing and perhaps strangely compelling. He married her quickly, primarily, it was rumoured, to gain possession of a small property she secretly owned, which abutted his own estate.

This marriage was even more unfortunate than the first. Sofia Ivanovna was completely crushed by her coarse and vulgar husband. She lived in constant terror of him, and the birth of their second son, Ivan, brought her no joy, only deeper anxiety. She died within a few years, worn out by her unhappy life, leaving behind two sons: Ivan and Alexey.

The elder of these two, Ivan Fyodorovitch, was the intellectual, the brooding and fiercely independent thinker. The younger, Alexey Fyodorovitch, Alyosha, was marked from childhood by a gentler, more reserved nature.

Fyodor Pavlovitch took no personal charge of either of these sons. Ivan was educated partly by his mother’s relatives and partly through private tutors, showing early signs of a remarkable mind. Alyosha was entrusted to the care of an old family retainer, Pyotr Alexandrovitch Fyodorovitch, a retired tutor who brought the boy up with great devotion in a distant village.

When Fyodor Pavlovitch’s affairs required his presence in town again, the three brothers were scattered: Dmitri with the Miusovs, Ivan and Alexey being brought up elsewhere. The family estate, the focus of much of the local drama, was now dominated by Fyodor Pavlovitch and the peculiar staff that had gathered around him, most notably his household manager, Pyotr Alexandrovitch Pyotr, and the two men who would later play such dark roles: the buffoonish valet Smerdyakov, and the housekeeper, Madam Khokhlakov’s former nurse.

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