BROTHERS IN LAW

Dostoyevsky’s novel of a family at war with itself

- JENNIFER WILSON

“No, gentlemen of the jury, they have their Hamlets, while we still have only our Karamazovs!” Arguments are under way in the state’s case against Dmitry Karamazov, on trial for the murder of his father, Fyodor Karamazov, and for the theft of three thousand rubles from the old man’s room. In a crowded courtroom, the prosecutor, Ippolit Kirillovich, is reminding his audience of the unpredictable, inconsistent nature of the Russian character. Dmitry has a reputation for generosity (he was known to treat peasants to champagne), but this does not make a man incapable of murder, least of all in Russia. “We possess broad natures, Karamazov natures,” the prosecutor declares. “We’re capable of combining all possible contradictions and simultaneously contemplating both abysses at the same time, the abyss above, that of lofty ideals, and the abyss below, that of the most vile and stinking degradation.”

The prosecutor’s speech is crammed with quotable lines for journalists who have flocked to the town of Skotoprigonevsk (derived from the Russian word for “cattle yard”) to attend Dmitry’s trial. “ ‘They have their Hamlets, while we still have only our Karamazovs!’ That was clever,” someone in the crowd remarks afterward. The trial is national news, the object of “feverish, irritating interest” across Russia. A star defense attorney has arrived from Moscow, and medical experts trained in the latest science, psychology, have been shipped in to determine whether Dmitry was overtaken by a newly discovered phenomenon: a fit of passion. “I read about this recently,” one of the townswomen offers. “Doctors confirm it: they confirm everything.”