Chapter 4 The Brothers Karamazov

Nietzsche once said: "Only Dostoevsky taught me a little psychology." Dostoevsky's position among us is very strange.M. de Vaugueil, who had introduced Russian literature to France some twenty years ago, seemed frightened by this gigantic monster.In his own defense, he politely told his first readers that they would be baffled.Thanks to him we like Turgenev, confidently admire Pushkin and Gogol, and come to believe in Tolstoy, but Dostoyevsky... is too Russian.M. de Vaugueil warned of danger.At best, he agrees to direct the first curious readers to the two or three works which he considers most accessible, and the genius does not require the reader to trouble himself.However, after he did this, alas!He then excludes the most meaningful works, perhaps the most difficult to read, but we dare say the most perfect works today.Some feel that this caution is necessary, perhaps as necessary as it is to familiarize the public with a gradual habit before offering the Symphony in Choral.If it was right then to detain and confine the initially curious reader to The Poor Man, Notes from the House of the Dead, and so on, it is time to confront them today with the great works: The Idiot, and especially The Brothers Karamazov.

The novel "The Brothers Karamazov" is Dostoevsky's last work, which should have been the first in a series.Toshi, who was fifty-nine at the time, wrote: "I often find painfully that I can't express even one-twentieth of what I want to express, or maybe even be able to express. What saves me is the perseverance of hope. May God give me strength and inspiration someday. Let me express more completely, in short, let me express all my heart and imagination." He is one of those rare geniuses who keep striving and producing works until death suddenly destroys him.Old age is stronger and stronger, without the slightest decline, unlike Rembrandt or Beethoven, whose thinking has indeed deteriorated in his later years, strongly deteriorated: I always like to compare Dolce with them.

He has no tolerance for himself, is never complacent, and is strict with himself to the point where he can't do anything to himself, but he has a clear vision of his own value; when he started writing "The Brothers Karamazov", he was secretly happy, feeling that he had finally grasped Themes within its reach, captured themes to match its genius.He wrote: "I have seldom had anything fresher, more complete and more original to say." This book became Tolstoy's bedside book on his deathbed. Our original translators were horrified by this incomparable book, and produced a fragmented translation.On the pretext of uniformity in appearance, entire chapters and sections were deleted here and there, and a supplementary volume was published with the deleted chapters, entitled "The Precocious Man".Out of an abundance of caution, Karamazov's name was changed to Chestomazov so as to completely confuse the reader.As far as the translated parts are concerned, that translation is all well translated, and I still think it is better than the later translations.Some people may think that the readers at that time were immature and unable to bear the full translation of such a full-bodied masterpiece based on the time of publication. I just blame the book for not marking the excerpts.

Four years ago, Messrs. Pijenstock and Nor published a new translation.One of the great advantages of this translation is that the fonts of the whole book are closely arranged in one volume, which is economical.I would like to say that this translation restores the parts deleted by the first translator in their original places, but condenses them all. The third of the sentence, often the entire paragraph is skipped, and it is often the most meaningful.The result is bare, stark, light and dark, like zinc engraving, or, to put it more subtly, like a dense portrait of Rembrandt copied in a single line.For all its shortcomings, this book is admirably valuable!This book waits patiently for its dawn, just as Stendahl's books come and go.The time for Doshi's book to become popular has finally arrived.

In Germany, translations of Dolce's works continued one after another, and each one became more accurate and rigorous.Uncharitable and unexciting Britain is thinking about catching up.On March 23 this year, Arnold Bennett previewed the translation of Mrs. Constance Garnett on "New Times", hoping that all novelists in the UK can learn "the most imaginative works that have never been done before", And of The Brothers Karamazov in particular: "Hey, passion at its highest intensity. The book presents us with a dozen absolutely towering characters." Who can tell whether these "tall figures" are directly appealing to the Russians in Russia itself as they are to us?Could their voices have been so tight before today?The three brothers Ivan, Dmitry, and Alyosha are closely related by blood and relatives. The pitiful and despicable figure of their servant and half-brother Smerdyakov follows them closely, making them feel anxious. disturbed.Ivan the intellectual, Dmitry the fanatic of emotion, and Alyosha the fanatic of faith, the three of them seem to share the spiritual world that the old father had the audacity to betray.I know they have had a very unseemly influence on many young people.Their voices are no strangers to us.What do I mean?That is to say, the dialogue of the three brothers can be heard in ourselves.However, the structure of the work is devoid of any anachronistic symbolism.We know that a banal social tidbit or a dubious "lawsuit" that a penetrating psychologist is trying to disentangle would lend itself to this book.Nothing could be more truthful than these meaningful characters, who are never far from the urgent reality.

The problem today is staging them: not all works of the imagination or all historical figures are worthy of the stage; what matters is knowing whether we recognize the bewildered voices of actors by their coordinated tones. The question is also whether the adaptors are good at describing to us the events necessary to fit these character conflicts without distorting them too much.I think the adaptor is extremely smart and capable. I am sure he understands that in order to meet the needs of the stage, it is not enough to rely on the usual editing method; Instead, we should go back to the source, re-arrange, generalize, and arrange the materials in different backgrounds.

The ultimate question is whether audiences who don't have a deep understanding of this work are willing to view these characters with enough enthusiasm.Probably this kind of audience is not as "bizarrely conceited and astonishingly ignorant" like Russian intellectuals, which Doshi has always deeply regretted.Otherwise, he hopes to stop them on the path of negation, or at least to make them think, to ask questions. I'm writing this for nothing else.