"Let us first of all and before all be kind, then honest, and then – let us never forget one another. I say it again. I give you my word, gentlemen, that for my part I will never forget any one of you; each face that is looking at me now, at this moment, I will remember, be it even after thirty years."

- The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Epilogue, Chapter 3

The Brothers Karamazov, Epilogue & Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, Part I.

i.

A small detail in the novel's epilogue which might be of no much significance but which I found interesting is the fact that Alyosha who seems to have resisted the "Karamazovian ways" throughout the novel, and has stayed "innocent and pure", allows himself a transgression from the law by admitting to assist Dmitri in his escape. A small detail, but one which I found interesting, as it shows that when Alyosha firmly believes in what he sees to be the truth, he is willing to transgress from society's rules. In the heartbreaking funeral of Ilyushecka, there was an interesting motive surrounding the flowers. Mainly, Snegiryov's relation to the flowers evolve interestingly in only a few pages. First, when the mama asks him to take one from Ilyushecka's hands and give to her, he exclaims: "I'm not giving anything, not to anybody!" Ninochka then interjects, asking Snegiryov to give mama the flowers, but he again asserts: "I won't give anything, to her least of all! She didn't love him." Later on there's an interesting moment where Snegiryov crumbles the pieces of bread over Ilyushecka's grave and one of the boys suggests to him that it must be awkward to crumble the bread with flowers in his hand, and that he should let someone else hold them for a time. But Snegiryov would not let them go, and "suddenly became afraid for his flowers..." when he unexpectedly turns away from the grave to walk home he exclaims: "Flowers for mama, flowers for mama! Mama's hurt!" He goes on to give mama the flowers, as if finally parting from his son's death, from his son's grave – he can part from the flowers and see the pain of others – of his wife. Last thing, when Snegiryov sees Ilyusha's empty boots standing in the corner and starts crying out: "Ilyushechka, dear fellow, dear old fellow, where are your little feet?" I was again reminded of Constance's speech in Shakespeare King John, after the death of her son Arthur, which I will quote here:

Grief fills the room up of my absent child,

Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,

Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,

Remembers me of all his gracious parts,

Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;

Then, have I reason to be fond of grief?

Fare you well: had you such a loss as I,I could give better comfort than you do.

O Lord! my boy, my Arthur, my fair son!

My life, my joy, my food, my all the world!My widow-comfort, and my sorrows’ cure!

ii.

After finishing the epilogue, I went right back to the Author's Note at the start of the novel, trying to fully absorb the phenomenon of Alyosha and how a character who seems so mild, repeatedly defined more by what he is not than his own assertions, becomes, if not the hero, then at least the most free of all the characters. (I have a friend who orders his coffee the same way as whomever he is having coffee with, which seems, as a principle, a constraint; he insists it is freeing--he lets go of himself, and steps closer to the person he is with. Alyosha.) Aside from picking up on the hints that Dostoevsky intended to revisit these characters in a sequel (? completely missed that the first time around), I understand better why the author insists that Alyosha is the hero, though he knows the reader may be unwilling to accept such a subtle conqueror. In keeping with the unresolved tenor of the novel, no intervention Alyosha performs in all his running to and fro is successful in changing any material outcomes (Fyodor is murdered, Ilyusha dies, one brother goes mad, the other is found guilty), yet his very essence seems to have a transformative effect on the other characters and provide them with spiritual strategies for managing their grief (well, not everybody!) Initially, my conclusions were that this is what Dostoevsky wants to offer us as the rewards of faith; a way of if not integrating our binary selves (thought and action, doubt and faith, love and violence) at least putting them in some order. And equally that the argument proffered by the Grand Inquisitor, that of the failure of the functional ability of Christ's love and values in our daily lives, can be somewhat resolved by accepting this as a mistaken expectation (common theodician slight of hand) and by effort itself, by "active love", by listening, lack of judgement and by forgiveness (as exemplified by Alyosha).

Then I read the Bahktin and felt ridiculous for feeling I'd understood what Dostoevsky has in mind, or that it could be something that could be summed up as I just tried to do above. Which is not to say that what I came up with is not there in the text; it's just there along with EVERYTHING else. I am experiencing the act of reading Bahktin much the same way he experiences and writes about the momentum of Dostoevsky--the sheer volume and simultaneity of ideas; the beauty and challenge of not prioritizing one voice over another; the triumph and failure of language to communicate, to sum up, to locate absolute truth. The exhilerating chaos of ideas and consciousnesses in motion, the feeling of active participation while reading. I realize that this sounds a bit vague and untethered, but I'm thinking of a way I've often related to art, lit, music--that there is the effort (the art), there is my willingness to try to understand (my attention) and then there is a third, unnamed thing that is created by the collision of those two consciousnesses, and it is this feeling, of apprehending beyond the words themselves the sheer activity of Idea and Thinking--

Also, I love the ideas about the hero and position of the author in the 2nd chapter of Bahktin; that a hero in a monologic author's hand is doing a "performance" of the hero, but that in coming into focus dialogically, he cannot be controlled in the same way, cannot be conclusively formed, and can't plan to align with the outer/social version of himself. He is as much at his own mercy as we are.

iii.

A parallel emerges in the Epilogue that was not previously evident to me. This is between the characters of Zosima and Ilyusha. Though the first connection that I noticed was quite obvious, there followed a great deal of details that were interesting to consider. This first connection was in the description of Ilyusha in death:

“In a blue coffin decorated with white lace, his hands folded and his eyes closed, lay Ilyusha. The features of his emaciated face were hardly changed at all, and, strangely, there was almost no smell emanating from the corpse” (769).

Roughly five days have passed since Mitya’s sentencing, and therefore three days since Ilyusha’s death. Zosima’s corpse, on the other hand, so notoriously emitted an “odor of corruption” after “not even a day” (331). I think that the relationship between them I find to be most interesting is that of “truth” and the difference between their circumstances—how the impacts of their deaths (physical, in their respective “odors,” and social/emotional, in how they are perceived after death) as a product of their lives captures more than anything their perspectives of the “truth.” And there is no verdict on this, really—I do not get an authorial impression of Zosima’s nature. But I do think that this difference in a sort of social understanding/disillusionment is explained by Snegiryov, when he is talking to Alyosha about the impact that Mitya’s actions had on Ilyusha:

“And that is how our children — I mean, not yours but ours sir, the children of the despised but noble poor —learn the truth on earth when they are just nine years old, sir. The rich ones—what do they know? In their whole lives they never sound such depths, and my Ilyusha, at that very moment in the square, sir, when he kissed his hand, in that very moment he went through the whole truth, sir. This truth, sir, entered into him and crushed him forever” (205-206).

Though it could be argued that Ilyusha’s corpse does not smell simply because he is a child and is therefore incapable of sin, I think that it is something more that is in this passage. He is on a crucial precipice, for he is old enough to feel “wrath,” to act in the name of justice, but not yet old enough to resort to the Karamazovian impulses that Zosima recounts as an adolescent:

“We were all but proud of our drunkenness, debauchery, and bravado. I would not say we were wicked; they were all good young men, but they behaved wickedly, and I most of all” (296).

A few pages earlier, Zosima tells the story of his brother Markel and being, at the age of nine, horrified by his atheism (287). Ilyusha is “no more than ten years old, or even less” (177) when he both confronts this “truth” and when he dies. He has the potential to be a Zosima-like figure—revered by some, rejected by others—or an Alyosha, but he is now destined to be a memory. In this memorialization, he becomes like his stone: mythologized, symbolic, and perhaps more important to the world he previously inhabited than he was in life. On page 774, the sight of Ilyusha’s stone prompts Alyosha to give the boys a rather beautiful little speech, and I think that his point about memory informs so much of its absence in Ivan, Mitya, and Fyodor. It also encompasses Zosima’s recollections, and Alyosha’s formative memory of his mother:

“You must know that there is nothing higher, or stronger, or sounder, or more useful afterwards in life, than some good memory, especially a memory from childhood, from the parental home. You hear a lot said about your education, yet some beautiful, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education.”

This is sort of rambling now. But I was struck by the role that memory (or lack of memory) plays in all of this, and the fact that Ilyusha is both fated to be relegated to a memory, and destined to be that “beautiful, sacred” one of which Alyosha speaks.

iv.

What I found so striking about this epilogue was the theme of redemption, particularly the way it’s presented through Alyosha’s faithful eyes. He doesn’t have to reconcile his faith with his plan to break Dmitri out of prison because he, like Ivan, has cultivated a belief system and a personal understanding of right and wrong. Dmitri’s redemption is linked to Alyosha’s redemption in a fundamental way.

The scene between Katya and Grushenka, when they confront each other face to face at last, was so emotionally charged and yet layered again with this same theme of redemption. Redemption is necessary for almost every character and their experiences with it differ greatly—ex., Ivan falling ill, Grushenka and Katerina Ivanovna arguing face to face and acknowledging what has happened between them; this is how some kind of redemption manifests between these two women.

v.

The epilogue of The Brothers Karamazov was a very interesting read for me because I felt as though we finally got to see a bit of a different side of Alyosha and somewhat of a different perspective. As Dmitri is In prison and Alyosha is trying to help him escape despite all of their differences. There are continuing recurring themes of forgiveness and repentance; When Katerina begs for Dmitri's forgiveness after she had betrayed him. It's interesting that even in the Epilogue Alyosha is still characterized as somewhat of a peacemaker and the embodiment of morality among all the other characters. There is a sense of remorse and repentance finally at the end of this epilogue and somewhat of a tragic ending with Ilyushin funeral. As Alyosha receives more and more praise the theme finally concludes that Alyosha's superiority is solidified.

I enjoyed how this novel ended with the epilogue in somewhat of a more optimistic tone with Alyosha becoming somewhat of a figure of leadership and as a teacher. The parallels between Alyosha and Jesus became more and more uncanny as the book progressed but to me were seen the most in the epilogue. Throughout the novel there is a recurring theme that the ‘Karamazov Family’ have hereditary qualities that are associated with their father and often negative. It was interesting to see this narrative be somewhat flipped at the end as there finally is a sense of redemption to the families name. I didn't really see how the novel was related to the theme of legacy and what legacy people will leave behind in the world but I finally gained clarity towards this theme in the final moments of the Epilogue. With the Families name redeemed there can finally be some closure despite all the tragedy and negativity previously surrounding them.

vi.

We discussed this already, but it was something I wanted to bring up, so here goes.

I couldn’t help notice a parallel between that moment we read in class when Zosima calms the women who’s lost her boy, and the ending when the children have trouble understanding death then pancakes. Aloysha explains,

“Well, and now let’s end our speeches and go this memorial dinner. Don’t be disturbed that we’ll be eating pancakes. It’s an ancient, eternal thing, and there’s good in that too,” laughed Aloysha. “Well let’s go! And we go like this now, hand in hand.”

I find him as heroic as heroic can be in  Dostoevsky’s world. Besides that maniacal look, half laugh, half ecstasy, he does his very best to make that “general sense out of general senselessness.”

Death and then Pancakes. It all goes together. He listens and acknowledges Mitya’s idea about leaving to America with Grushenka. He calls the boys gentleman, in hopes that they can understand how important their role in the future may be.

The stench of Zosima was such a to-do. With the older group of monks, doubt spread, and his reputation was in a way tainted.  Yet  Ilyusha dies, and he doesn’t smell. I would have to say, Aloysha, being in a way a new teacher, a new guide, may have something to do with a new generation. A new way to interpret life. Find joy, trusting Zosima’s last wishes that Aloysha needs to be among the people.