DOI 10.52172/2587-6945_2022_22_4_28
Abstract
In the final novel, Dostoevsky right in the title brings two elements, brotherhood and Karamazovshchina, to a "confrontation", which can be understood as expressions of horizons of expectations. The writer paid a lot of attention to brotherhood in early journalism, but he did not have any recipes for developing this ideal form of relationship at that time. In "The Brothers Karamazov", the writer is looking for an artistic solution to the problem. He tries to distinguish between "fraternal" instincts in the monastic environment, which according to formal signs (the postulates of Christianity) is intended to be a breeding ground for brotherhood. However, even among monasticism, the writer discovers and exposes the lack of brotherhood and the signs of Karamazovshchina.
Using the example of the main characters of the novel, the author discovers in their mental life the correlation between brotherhood andKaramazovshchina, when one affects the other on the background of and at the expense of it. Even the most obvious exponent of Karamazov principles, the father of the family, Fyodor Pavlovich, cannot get rid of respect for fraternal instincts and craving for them. To varying degrees, this is characteristic of the rest, both the main and secondary characters of the novel.
The reconstruction of Dostoevsky's main idea of this novel leads us to the following conclusion. The coexistence of brotherhood and Karamazovshchina is possible only in a dynamic balance, when one is not able to completely overcome the other in order to remain "pure" itself. In the struggle of these natural instincts, a changing and multifaceted spiritual life is revealed. In the light of this, the semantic connection between the title of the novel and the epigraph to it is revealed: brotherhood is a grain that, dying in Karamazovshchina, gives "a lot of fruit".
Keywords
Horizons of expectations, monastic environment, dynamic balance, spiritual element, system of images, author's solutions.