Dostoevsky's Mountain of Meaning
The Chiastic Structure in The Brothers Karamazov
After fifteen years and three separate attempts, I finally finished Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. My first attempt came to an end when it was time for me to study abroad in Germany. Ridiculous luggage restrictions made massive novels impractical for that particular journey. About a decade ago, shortly after being received into the Orthodox Church, I made my second attempt, since Dostoevsky is almost standard issue for freshly minted converts. Naturally, I spent so much time savoring the homilies of Elder Zosima that I never made it past the middle.
As I entered into 2024, I was adamant that I would read The Brothers Karamazov cover-to-cover—no matter what it took. By the end of January, my first reading buddy bailed in the first third of the book. By February, another one dropped out in the same spot. As we entered fall, I convinced a handful of friends (with perhaps a soupçon of literary shame) that they should also finish it with me during the winter. Providentially, one of them was a professor teaching a course on Dostoevsky, so at least one of us had to read the whole thing. Over the course of three meetings in three different taverns, we discussed the entire book. (And some of us even read it.)
Perhaps it goes without saying, but this book is a mountain. Anything around four hundred pages can become a challenging read, but The Brothers Karamazov doubles that page count. Also, the trails blazed by these erratic characters do not always lead straight to the top; you must always be wary of your footing when traversing the loose scree of their frantic words. As the tension rises and conversations ascend to loftier ideals, the air can get a bit thin up there—leaving both the characters and readers exasperated and feeling their minds spin. This literary hike demands both attention and endurance to reach the summit.
But what makes this book most like a mountain is that it slopes on more than one side. In the past, I always left off in the middle of the book which felt to me like the apogee of the novel. Whenever people bring up this book (or Dostoevsky in general) they mostly extract and discuss Ivan’s monologues in “Rebellion” and “The Grand Inquisitor” or the homilies of Fr Zosima—but those are only in the first half! There’s a lot more on the other side of this mountain. There is a way up and a way down, and the way down is just as precarious.
Upon closing the book, I discovered that Dostoevsky had set up some cairns to guide us through this great novel. Dramatic stories put the greatest action toward the end with a concluding denouement swiftly following the climax. Mysteries tend to put the action up front and gradually unpack the details of that event for the rest of the story. But Dostoevsky puts the climactic action almost right in the middle. By doing so, the first half reads like a traditional drama and the second half reads more like a mystery. He balances both styles.
The Brothers Karamazov relies more on a chiastic structure where events on either side of the central action mirror each other. Thus, an event just before the climax mirrors an event just after it; an event in the middle of the second half reminds us of an event in the middle of the first half; and, of course, the end echoes the beginning. When we visually map these mirrored pairs of events, we see a shape that looks like a bell curve—or a mountain.
Let me outline the major chiastic pairs I found that give The Brothers Karamazov its shape, working from the climactic center out towards the beginning and end.
The Death of Fathers: The novel centers around the deaths of the spiritual father, Elder Zosima and the physical father, Fyodor Pavlovich. The whole novel has been a tension between the selfless spirituality of Zosima and the selfish sensuality of the Karamazov. Both the stinking corpse of Zosima and the bludgeoned corpse of Fydor shock and scandalize everyone. Dostoevsky brings the deaths of these two very different fathers together like flint and steel; the fire they create in the middle of the story sheds light on all other events.
Evil Conversations: Moving outward from the middle, we find Ivan’s famous philosophical conversations, “Rebellion” and “The Grand Inquisitor” in the first half, which are mirrored by later interactions with Smerdyakov and the Devil in the second. Both cases begin with fairly abstract and lofty (though no less disturbing) conversations, which explore nihilism, suffering, and the nature of human freedom. These conversations then give way to personal confrontations with wicked entities that embody or answer the ideas previously discussed.
Love Triangles: From there we find, on either side of the story, Dmitri in a love triangle with Katerina and Grushenka. In both cases, while Grushenka has power over Dmitri’s passions, he has still obliged himself to Katya. Whether it was his offer of marriage or his tavern-scrawled letter, Katya has power over his fate.
Muddled Confessions: Earlier in the first half, we see Dmitri attempt a series of drunken confessions to his brother Alyosha, but neither eloquent verses nor plain speech help absolve him of his guilt. Likewise, in the second half Dmitri is repeatedly called upon to testify concerning his role in the death of his father. But, again, he cannot seem to articulate his story in a way that could exonerate him.
Places to Sort Things Out: The novel opens with the brothers assembled at the monastery so Elder Zosima can adjudicate a dispute between Fyodor and Dmitri. The novel ends with the brothers assembled in a court room so the judge can sort out what happened between Dmitri and Fyodor. While Fyodor made a fool of himself at the monastery in the first half, we find the rational, intellectual Ivan making a fool in the court room later on.
A Nice Little Family: Finally, we end where we began: a group of boys are assembled as brothers around a father figure. Fyodor and his sons in the beginning; Alyosha and his schoolyard boys in the end. Will Alyosha be a better role model for them than his father was to him and his brothers? The second volume which Dostoevsky never got to write may have given us an answer. But for the time being, the story leaves off with Alyosha’s rousing and hopeful words of brotherly love and the sweet aroma that came from Ilyusha’s body.1
In many ways, The Brothers Karamazov is a novel about reconciliation. Can brothers be reconciled with their fathers and with each other? Can we who suffer in the world be reconciled with the God who created it? Can we be reconciled with ourselves? In his very writing, Dostoevsky balances his chaotic characters and sporadic prose with this solid chiastic structure and his profound religious and moral foundations.
This method of chiastic doubling allows Dostoevsky to juxtapose contrary forces and opposing events in way that strengthens his narrative’s meaning and tension. By mirroring one another the form invites disparate episodes to be reconciled.
Perhaps this balanced structure reflects his early training as an architect and engineer. Perhaps this structure of his last novel revives an idea from one of his early novels, The Doubler. Perhaps all the events in this story would’ve found corresponding events in the second volume he never wrote.
In the end, it seems one of the greatest reconciliations present in The Brothers Karamazov is between the finished and unfinished. As much as Dostoevsky might seem hectic and disorganized, this structure gives the novel a complete and balanced symmetry. Yet, Dostoevsky writes fiction that fractals. Here, he may have only just spelled out an initial theme in a literary fugue that would’ve been explored through more variations and counterpoint later on. Maybe this masterpiece was only the back of a tapestry, with volume two turning the story around to reveal a brilliance only hinted at on this side. As far as I can see, he would continued settings scenes against one another to strengthen the base, building his story higher and higher. Like St Gregory of Nyssa’s The Life of Moses, this is a mountain whose summit soarers higher the more you climb. Maybe I was not wrong in my first several failures to finish reading Dostoevsky. Maybe you can never finish reading Dostoevsky.
Links
The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky, translation Pevear & Volokhonsky
The Life of Moses by St Gregory of Nyssa
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Footnotes
During our conversation on the parallelism between the noxious stench of Zosima’s body and the pleasant fragrance of Ilyusha’s body, my priest mentioned: “We tend to undervalue scent, but it is a very important sense for Dostoevsky.” To which I responded, “Is that why his name is Fy-Odor?” You’re welcome.