Front Matter (Preface) The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Verily, verily I say unto you, except a
corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it
bringeth forth much fruit.
John xii,24
Preface
IN STARTING out on
the life of my hero, Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov, I feel somewhat at a loss.
By this I mean that, although I refer to Alexei (Alyosha) as my hero, I am well
aware that he is by no means a great man, and this leads me to anticipate such
obvious questions as: “What is so remarkable about your Alexei Karamazov that
you should choose him as your hero? What exactly did he accomplish? Who has
heard of him and what is he famous for? And why should I, the reader, spend
time learning the facts of his life?”
The last question is the fateful one
because all I can answer is: “You may find that out for yourself from the
novel.” But what if they read the novel and are still unconvinced that my
Alexei is a remarkable man? I say this because I sadly anticipate it. To me,
he is remarkable, but I very much doubt I
will succeed in proving it to the reader. The trouble is that, although I
suppose he may be described as “a man of good works,” he is still
indeterminate, not fully recognizable as such. But then, would it not be rather
strange to expect to find clear-cut characters in times like ours? One thing,
though, is beyond doubt: he is a strange person, we might even say an
eccentric. And peculiarity and eccentricity are more likely to create prejudice
against a man than make people listen to him, especially nowadays when everyone
tries to lump all the special cases together and to read some general meaning
into the general meaninglessness. Isn’t that so?
Now, if you don’t agree with this, if you
believe that it is not true, or at least not necessarily true, it will give me
hope that my hero may be of some interest to you. For an eccentric is not
necessarily an exception or an isolated phenomenon; indeed, it often happens
that it is he who embodies the very essence of his time while his
contemporaries somehow seem to have been cut loose from it by gusts of an alien
wind.
Had it not been for one more difficulty, I
would not have ventured into these boring and unclear explanations. I would
have started the novel directly without any introduction, reasoning that a
reader will finish the book anyway, if he is enjoying it. The additional
difficulty is that, although I have only one life story to tell, there are
really two novels here. The main novel is the second one, which describes the
life of my hero in our time, at this very moment. As to the first novel, it takes
place thirteen years ago and is perhaps not even really a novel but just the
description of an important phase of the early youth of my hero. However, I
cannot dispense with this first novel because much of the second one would be
incomprehensible without it. And this complicates my original difficulty even
further: if I, the biographer, feel that even one novel may be too much for a
modest and obscure hero like mine, how can I come forward with two novels about
him? How can I justify such presumptuousness?
Being unable to puzzle out these questions,
I have decided to leave them unanswered. No doubt, a perspicacious reader will
have guessed from the outset that this was what I was driving at and will be
all the more irritated with me for spouting useless phrases and wasting his
precious time. Well, I’ll answer that precisely: I have been spouting useless
phrases and wasting precious time, first of all, out of politeness and,
secondly, out of slyness, to be able to say later: “Well, I more or less warned
you, didn’t I?” Besides, I am really quite glad that my novel split into two
stories, while the essential unity of the whole was preserved. Once he has
acquainted himself with the first story, the reader will be able to decide for
himself whether it is worth his while to start the second. Of course, no one is
bound in any way, and the book can be put aside after a couple of pages of the
first story, too, and never picked up again. However, there are always some
scrupulous readers who are determined to read to the end, no matter what, so
that they can pass a fair and impartial judgment. Such, for instance, are all
the Russian literary critics. And so I will feel less guilty toward these
people if, scrupulous and thorough as they are, I give them a legitimate excuse
for putting my story down in the middle of the very first episode.
So this is all my introduction. I fully
agree that it is quite unnecessary, but since it is already written, I shall
let it stand.
And
now let’s get down to business.
