Dostoevsky has become over the years, alongside Goethe, my favourite author by quite a distance when comparing to others. This admiration I have for him increased when I read the Idiot a couple of years ago, and also after reading Crime and Punishment, which I did last year. But definitely, for me The Brothers Karamazov is his masterpiece. This is by far his book that I most enjoyed reading, and the one which has the most profound and beautiful dialogues and scenes. Contrarily to most of Dostoevsky's book, there is in this one a lot of space for beauty, kindness and peace, which is specially portrayed in the character of Alexei Karamazov, or simply Alyosha, one of the Brothers Karamazov. This I never found in any other novel written by him, at least not to the same extend. It was quite a good surprise for me, because I always had Dostoevsky as a pessimist author which wondered in the dark depths of humans souls describing mostly feelings and thoughts that were very conflicting, sometimes evil, painful and degradable. All those aspects are of course also present in The Brother Karamazov, specially in figures of the father Fyodor Karamazov and one of his sons Dmitri Karamazov, but the interesting difference to me here is that in this book more than in others there is a new aspect of Dostoevsky clearly and strongly present. A true religious feeling and a big peace of soul and mind. Obviously this is never alone in the book, it always comes problematised by different characters and events. The third brother, Ivan Karamazov, for example, is a master in bringing conflict to this religious feeling, which very interestingly appears in some long dialogues he has with his brother Alyosha.
The main event in the book is a parricide, that for some time you don't even know who committed it. So it has obviously the tense inner world a criminal like there is in Crime and Punishment, but as I said, there is more than that in the book. The first half of it is indeed not about a crime at all, and a lot of it happens even inside of a monastery where Alyosha lives during some time in his life. The book is very rich in a lot of different aspects. You can get the religious tensions in it, the political toughs of Ivan discussing even socialism on the light of human morality, and the final crime itself with its inner and public judgments.
It is a very long book, but definitely worth reading. It is possibly the best novel I have ever read. Nietzsche and Freud have both said something in this sense as well. Dostoevsky himself once said that Ivan Karamazov was his biggest creation. I think it was Alyosha, but this is a debate for another time. The most rich of his novels, possibly also because here he managed to separate into different characters aspects of his inner being that were previously always condensed and living in conflict in a single character. Each character can therefore in peace, or not, represent and evolve more specific aspects of the human spectrum. I think this is what allowed Alyosha to exist. His religious feelings, you could find somewhere in other books from Dostoevsky, but they were never alone in a single person, at least not in one of the main characters. I was happy to see Dostoevsky coming into that form and really being able to write a book, which not always but in a lot of moments, as a narrator that transmits peace. This was the last book written by him before his death, which gives me the impression that it was really good for him to be Dostoevsky during his life. You can really feel that at times there is even a lot of good in there. And as I was commenting with a friend the other day, The Brothers Karamazov is one of those rare human creations that even makes you feel really proud of being part of a specie that is able to create such a marvellous thing. All thanks to our dear Fyodor Dostoevsky.
