9 - Afterword

Summary

The importance of memory in The Brothers Karamazov gains an added dimension when seen against the background of Dostoevsky's notes and diaries during the last years of his life where we find many reflections on memory. Muzhik Marei is a reminiscence about a compassionate peasant based on an episode from his own childhood. In a ‘Memento, For my whole life’ of 1877, Dostoevsky made a note of four future literary projects, all of which are grounded on memory: ‘to write a Russian Candide, a book about Jesus Christ’, his ‘reminiscences’ and a ‘poem Sorokoviny’ (the prayers said 40 days after a person's decease). All these elements found their way into The Brothers Karamazov. The essential goodness of the simple Russian people as the repository of the true Christian spirit is one of Zosima's main themes. The philosophical tale and the polemic with Voltaire's ideas are among the major thematic and generic components of the novel. Fictional reminiscences shape its form, the theme of remembrance fills its content, and Christ is its generative ideal. The ‘Sorokoviny’ theme also occurs in the novel: metaphorically in Mitya's torments (mytarstva); concretely, in the funeral supper for Ilyusha; and mystically, in Alyosha's vision of the feast of the resurrected in Heaven. All the novel's commemorative, resurrectional and prophetic currents are reaching for an imitation of Christ on earth. All its negations of the meaning of Christ's verbal image become imitations of the devil.