Use of Narrative Voice and Language in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov and Crime & Punishment

In a recent issue of The New Yorker, Dostoevsky translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky discussed the prose style of The Brothers Karamazov-a style that detractors such as Vladimir Nabokov have attacked as clumsy "gothic rodomontade." Pevear has a different take, though: "�It's deliberate,'" he says. "�[Dostoevsky's] narrator is not him; it's always a bad provincial writer who has an unpolished quality but is deeply expressive.'"[1] Indeed, a closer look reveals quite clearly that Dostoevsky's stylistic choices are all masterfully executed, with a careful eye on the emotion evoked by the final product; after all, The Brothers Karamazov, in spite of its sometimes disparate tones and unconventional narrative approach, hangs together remarkably well. When contrasted with another of Dostoevsky's novels, Crime & Punishment, the language of Brothers takes on a new significance. C&P's straightforward, direct style aims to heighten the urgency surrounding Raskolnikov's inner struggle; Brothers, with its shifting tones and purposefully muddled writing, serves to elucidate the conflicting joy and darkness that pervade the lives of its characters.

The multiple devices that Dostoevsky adopts in Brothers are easier to notice after reading Crime & Punishment, from which they are more or less absent. The stylistic choices in C&P are more conventional and consistent-from start to finish, the novel's tone remains relatively unchanged. Dostoevsky's prose is often terse, spare, and direct; eschewing lyricism, Raskolnikov's story unfolds quickly and fluidly, never stopping to listen to the sound of its own voice. The pacing is brisk, and emotions are concisely but convincingly evoked without the extensive use of figurative language. Dostoevsky writes from an unfettered third-person perspective with a keen sense of immediacy and a certain grittiness; his tone at once anticipates and avoids the overdone banality of modern detective-murder thrillers. The early description of Raskolnikov's apartment perfectly captures this direct, factual, dirty-fingernails approach: