I was unmoved the last time I'd read Dostoevsky - Crime & Punishment, Xmas 99 - but I remember thrashing through the latter parts of that with a right bastard case of flu, probably the only real case of flu I've ever had.
So - cracked on, and found a good bit in chapter 4, where old man Karamazov rambles with his sweetest son about the hooks that pick off the sinners and drag them into Hell: "and if they don't drag me down, what justice is there...? They'd have to invent them, those hooks, on purpose for me alone, for if only you knew Alyosha..."
But then we're quickly into book 2 (the aptly named Unfortunate Gathering) and the interminable family visit to the monastery, which almost defines the concept of eternity. Never one to give up 200 words where 20 would do, on & on we go from one tale of suffering to another tale of lost faith, from one long speech about Church & State to another long speech about the Word. Because in those days they didn't have conversations; no, they all turned stiffly to one another and delivered vasty monologues.
Remember Pascal's brilliant line? - which went something like: I'm sorry for writing such a long letter; I didn't have time to write a short one.
I just know I'm not going to get through it. Not because of the subject. It is of course plunged deep. Dostoevsky is so awash in the scriptures, he's like Macbeth in his world of blood ("stepped in so far that should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o'er") but I suppose an observation like that reflects more badly on me.
I can't blame my translator because I liked the way Constance Garnett treated us to Anna Karenina.
It's not because of the story, nor its design. It's about the noise it makes in the telling.
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