50 Fun Facts About The Brothers Karamazov

Which kitchen tool does Dmitri Karamazov snatch up as he runs to his father's house that night?

A brass pestle, little more than six inches long, goes into his pocket as he bolts from Grushenka's kitchen. The maid who sees him grab it is soon telling the whole story.

In what guise does the devil visit Ivan Karamazov in a feverish hallucination before the trial?

A shabby gentleman of about fifty, in a brownish jacket years out of fashion, turns up on Ivan's sofa. He talks like a poor relation who lives by visiting richer friends.

Which scandal after the death of the revered elder Zosima shakes the faith of Alyosha Karamazov?

His body quickly decays, and a smell rises from the coffin within a day, when the town expected a holy man's remains to stay incorrupt. His rivals in the monastery call it a judgment.

In Ivan Karamazov's poem The Grand Inquisitor, which city sees Christ return during the Inquisition?

Seville is where he walks the hot pavements a day after almost a hundred heretics were burned. The crowd knows him at once, and the old cardinal has him arrested.

How does the silent prisoner answer the Grand Inquisitor's long accusation in Ivan Karamazov's poem?

With a kiss on the old man's bloodless lips, and not one word. The Inquisitor shudders, opens the cell door and tells him to go; Ivan is delighted when Alyosha then copies the gesture on him.

Which future TV star won his first Hollywood film role in the 1958 version of The Brothers Karamazov?

William Shatner played the youngest brother, Alyosha, eight years before Star Trek reached television. Rumour had Marilyn Monroe in talks to play Grushenka, but the part went to Maria Schell.

Which physicist, C. P. Snow recalled, rated The Brothers Karamazov the summit of all literature?

Albert Einstein said so in 1919 and, Snow found, had not changed his mind when the two talked in 1937.

Which sum does Dmitri Karamazov owe Katerina Ivanovna, the same amount his father offers Grushenka?

Three thousand roubles runs through the whole book: it is the debt of honour, the bait in the old man's sealed envelope and the amount the prosecutor says was stolen.

What is Alyosha Karamazov, the youngest brother, when the narrator introduces him as the hero?

A novice monk in a cassock is how the hero first appears, a year into life at the local monastery. He is no pale dreamer: the narrator calls him red-cheeked and radiant with health.

By Ivan Karamazov's most quoted idea, what becomes lawful once belief in God and immortality goes?

Everything, even cannibalism, is how the idea is first reported in the elder's cell. The servant who idolises Ivan later claims he only put the theory into practice.

Which punishment follows when the jury convicts Dmitri Karamazov of killing his father?

Hard labour in Siberia, twenty years of it, is the price of a murder he did not commit. Dmitri says he is ready to suffer, yet his family is already plotting his escape.

How does Smerdyakov die on the night before Dmitri Karamazov's trial, soon after confessing to Ivan?

Hangs himself, leaving a note that he acts of his own will so that no one is blamed. With him goes the only witness who could have cleared Dmitri.

Which medical emergency does Smerdyakov later admit he faked on the night of the Karamazov murder?

An epileptic fit on the cellar steps puts him in bed with a ready alibi, and because he suffers real ones nobody doubts it. He had hinted to Ivan a day earlier that he might take just such a fall.

Where on Fyodor Karamazov's property is Smerdyakov born to the homeless Stinking Lizaveta?

In the bathhouse by the garden gate, where an old servant finds her after hearing groans in the night. She dies at dawn, and Fyodor later builds the boy's surname out of her nickname.

Which instrument does Alyosha Karamazov overhear Smerdyakov playing for a neighbour's daughter?

Guitar in hand, he sings to Marya Kondratyevna in a falsetto and tells her he hates all Russia. The scene gives a chapter its title.

What does the elder Zosima suddenly do to Dmitri Karamazov at the family meeting in the monastery?

Bows down at his feet until his forehead touches the floor, and gives no reason. He later tells Alyosha he was bowing to the great suffering in store for Dmitri.

In Grushenka's fable for Alyosha Karamazov, which gift to a beggar is a wicked woman's one good deed?

An onion is what her guardian angel holds out to pull her from the lake of fire. It snaps the moment she starts kicking away the other sinners clinging to her.

Which loyal old servant does Dmitri Karamazov strike down while fleeing his father's garden?

Grigory had looked after the neglected little Dmitri when nobody else would even change the boy's shirt. Dmitri jumps back to check on him, and the blood on his hands follows him all night.

In which village is Dmitri Karamazov arrested after a night of wild feasting with Grushenka?

Mokroe is where he had already thrown away a small fortune on Grushenka a month earlier. The officials walk in just after she has told him she loves him.

What tie binds Dmitri Karamazov to the proud Katerina Ivanovna while he pursues Grushenka?

They are engaged, a match that began after he rescued her father from a scandal over missing army funds. Pride and gratitude hold her to him more than love does.

What does the dying elder Zosima tell Alyosha Karamazov to do once the old man is gone?

Go out into the world is the order, and Zosima adds that Alyosha will have to take a wife too. He blesses him for great service among ordinary people rather than behind walls.

As a young officer, the future elder Zosima of The Brothers Karamazov walks away from which contest?

A duel is under way when he lets his rival fire first, then hurls his own pistol into the wood and asks forgiveness. The night before, he had beaten his orderly bloody and could not bear the memory.

Which Gospel story is being read over Zosima's coffin when Alyosha Karamazov dozes and dreams of him?

The wedding at Cana, where water became wine, turns into a dream in which Zosima sits happily among the guests. Alyosha wakes, runs outside and throws himself down on the earth in tears.

Which nationality is the first lover who returns to claim Grushenka in The Brothers Karamazov?

Polish and pompous, he is caught playing with marked cards on the very night of their reunion. A few hours in his company cure Grushenka of five years of longing.

Which piece of evidence does Katerina Ivanovna suddenly produce in court against Dmitri Karamazov?

A drunken letter in which Dmitri wrote that he would kill his father. She hands it over moments after Ivan's own testimony collapses in delirium.

Where does Dmitri Karamazov claim he carried half of Katerina Ivanovna's money for a whole month?

Around his neck, sewn up in a rag, he says, and he tore it open only for his last spree. The investigators never find the rag and do not believe him.

What does the schoolboy Ilyusha do to Alyosha Karamazov the first time the two of them meet?

Bites his finger to the bone and clings on for ten seconds. Alyosha later learns the boy was avenging his father, whom Dmitri had humiliated in public.

How does Dmitri Karamazov drag the poor Captain Snegiryov out of a tavern and down the street?

By his beard, a thin tuft the town's schoolboys then mock as a wisp of tow. The captain's small son ran alongside, begging Dmitri to let his father go.

What does Captain Snegiryov first do with the two hundred roubles Alyosha Karamazov brings him?

Tramples them underfoot in the sand, crying that he does not sell his honour. A minute earlier he had been dreaming aloud of what the money could buy, and he does accept it later.

Which dare wins the schoolboy Kolya Krasotkin a fearless reputation in The Brothers Karamazov?

Lying under a passing train, flat between the rails, wins him a two-rouble bet with older boys. He admitted long afterwards that he had fainted as it rolled over him.

Which psychoanalyst called The Brothers Karamazov the most magnificent novel ever written?

Sigmund Freud said it in a 1928 essay on its author and the theme of father-killing. He read the sons' hatred of old Fyodor as an Oedipal drama.

Which Soviet leader filled the margins of his copy of The Brothers Karamazov with notes?

Joseph Stalin had read Dostoevsky since his youth and thought him a great psychologist. Researchers have since pored over the passages he marked.

In the chapter Rebellion, whose suffering makes Ivan Karamazov hand back his ticket to God?

Children are his whole case, built on real cruelties such as a serf boy torn apart by a general's hounds. No future harmony, Ivan says, is worth the tears of one tortured child.

Which post does Smerdyakov hold in Fyodor Karamazov's household besides acting as his valet?

Cook and lackey, he lives in the lodge with the old couple who raised him. Ivan, Dmitri and Fyodor all underestimate how shrewd he is.

Which fellow Russian novelist, days before he died, wrote home asking for The Brothers Karamazov?

Leo Tolstoy found Dostoevsky's style an obstacle, yet after leaving home for the last time he asked his daughter to send the novel's second volume.

Which Hollywood star played Dmitri in MGM's 1958 film of The Brothers Karamazov?

Yul Brynner played the fiery eldest son, and Lee J. Cobb earned an Oscar nomination as his father. Director Richard Brooks wanted to shoot in Russia, but Cold War politics ruled it out.

Beside which landmark does Alyosha Karamazov address the boys after Ilyusha's funeral?

A big stone is where Ilyusha had asked to be buried, and his father still calls it theirs. Alyosha asks the boys never to forget how good they were that day, and they cheer him.

Which Gospel supplies the grain-of-wheat epigraph printed at the start of The Brothers Karamazov?

John 12:24 says a grain that falls and dies bears much fruit. Zosima quotes the verse to Alyosha, and years earlier he had shown it to a visitor hiding a murder.

Which funeral-dinner dish does Kolya find strange in the last pages of The Brothers Karamazov?

Pancakes after such sorrow seem unnatural to him, but Alyosha calls it a very old custom with something nice in it. They set off to eat hand in hand.

Which ambitious seminarian is promised twenty-five roubles to bring Alyosha Karamazov to Grushenka?

Rakitin hopes to watch a saint fall and even offers the grieving Alyosha sausage on the way. Grushenka pays him, but she and Alyosha part as friends.

Which fiercely fasting hermit of The Brothers Karamazov denounces Zosima and claims to see devils?

Father Ferapont lives behind the apiary on a little bread brought every three days. When Zosima dies he storms into the cell, roaring that he is casting out demons.

Which gift from old Dr Herzenstube does Dmitri Karamazov still remember from his neglected boyhood?

A pound of nuts was the first anyone had bought the barefoot boy, and it came with a lesson in naming the Trinity in German. Dmitri returned as a grown man to say thank you.

In The Brothers Karamazov, under which new name does Kolya bring the lost dog Zhuchka to Ilyusha?

Perezvon is what Kolya called the mangy stray while he kept it hidden at home for a month. Ilyusha thought he had killed the dog, so its return is the best gift he gets.

Which title heads Book Five of The Brothers Karamazov, home to Rebellion and The Grand Inquisitor?

Pro and Contra, Latin for 'for and against', holds Ivan's case against God's creation. Dostoevsky wrote the following book, on Zosima's teachings, as the reply.

Which celebrated defence lawyer, drawn by the fame of the case, speaks for Dmitri Karamazov at trial?

Fetyukovich took the job more for glory than money, since the case had become notorious. He argues there was no robbery and perhaps no murder at all, yet the jury will not budge.

Which spa town, where Dostoevsky wrote much of The Brothers Karamazov, inspired its setting?

Staraya Russa was the family's summer home, and the house is now a museum. In the book the town stays nameless for hundreds of pages before the narrator admits to Skotoprigonyevsk.

Which monastery did the grieving Dostoevsky visit in 1878 while planning The Brothers Karamazov?

Optina gave him a living model for Zosima in its elder, Father Ambrose. Dostoevsky went there after his small son Alyosha died that May.

Which journal serialised The Brothers Karamazov from January 1879 to November 1880?

The Russian Messenger ran the novel in instalments for nearly two years. Dostoevsky died less than four months after the last one appeared.

Which French writer analysed Ivan Karamazov's revolt in a 1951 book on rebellion?

Albert Camus discussed Ivan's revolt in The Rebel. By the middle of the twentieth century the character had become an icon of existentialist revolt.

Where do Ivan and Katerina Ivanovna plan to send Dmitri Karamazov if he escapes on the road to exile?

America is the goal, with Grushenka at his side, and Ivan has put up a small fortune for the scheme. Dmitri already hates the place and says it will be a second exile.