Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov





Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovitch

Karamazov, a land owner well known in our district in his own day, and

still remembered among us owing to his gloomy and tragic death, which

happened thirteen years ago, and which I shall describe in its proper

place. For the present I will only say that this “landowner”—for so we

used to call him, although he hardly spent a day of his life on his own

estate—was a strange type, yet one pretty frequently to be met with, a

type abject and vicious and at the same time senseless. But he was one

of those senseless persons who are very well capable of looking after

their worldly affairs, and, apparently, after nothing else. Fyodor

Pavlovitch, for instance, began with next to nothing; his estate was of

the smallest; he ran to dine at other men’s tables, and fastened on

them as a toady, yet at his death it appeared that he had a hundred

thousand roubles in hard cash. At the same time, he was all his life

one of the most senseless, fantastical fellows in the whole district. I

repeat, it was not stupidity—the majority of these fantastical fellows

are shrewd and intelligent enough—but just senselessness, and a

peculiar national form of it.



He was married twice, and had three sons, the eldest, Dmitri, by his

first wife, and two, Ivan and Alexey, by his second. Fyodor

Pavlovitch’s first wife, Adelaïda Ivanovna, belonged to a fairly rich

and distinguished noble family, also landowners in our district, the

Miüsovs. How it came to pass that an heiress, who was also a beauty,

and moreover one of those vigorous, intelligent girls, so common in

this generation, but sometimes also to be found in the last, could have

married such a worthless, puny weakling, as we all called him, I won’t

attempt to explain. I knew a young lady of the last “romantic”

generation who after some years of an enigmatic passion for a

gentleman, whom she might quite easily have married at any moment,

invented insuperable obstacles to their union, and ended by throwing

herself one stormy night into a rather deep and rapid river from a high

bank, almost a precipice, and so perished, entirely to satisfy her own

caprice, and to be like Shakespeare’s Ophelia. Indeed, if this

precipice, a chosen and favorite spot of hers, had been less

picturesque, if there had been a prosaic flat bank in its place, most

likely the suicide would never have taken place. This is a fact, and

probably there have been not a few similar instances in the last two or

three generations. Adelaïda Ivanovna Miüsov’s action was similarly, no

doubt, an echo of other people’s ideas, and was due to the irritation

caused by lack of mental freedom. She wanted, perhaps, to show her

feminine independence, to override class distinctions and the despotism

of her family. And a pliable imagination persuaded her, we must

suppose, for a brief moment, that Fyodor Pavlovitch, in spite of his

parasitic position, was one of the bold and ironical spirits of that

progressive epoch, though he was, in fact, an ill‐natured buffoon and

nothing more. What gave the marriage piquancy was that it was preceded

by an elopement, and this greatly captivated Adelaïda Ivanovna’s fancy.

Fyodor Pavlovitch’s position at the time made him specially eager for

any such enterprise, for he was passionately anxious to make a career

in one way or another. To attach himself to a good family and obtain a

dowry was an alluring prospect. As for mutual love it did not exist

apparently, either in the bride or in him, in spite of Adelaïda

Ivanovna’s beauty. This was, perhaps, a unique case of the kind in the

life of Fyodor Pavlovitch, who was always of a voluptuous temper, and

ready to run after any petticoat on the slightest encouragement. She

seems to have been the only woman who made no particular appeal to his

senses.



Immediately after the elopement Adelaïda Ivanovna discerned in a flash

that she had no feeling for her husband but contempt. The marriage

accordingly showed itself in its true colors with extraordinary

rapidity. Although the family accepted the event pretty quickly and

apportioned the runaway bride her dowry, the husband and wife began to

lead a most disorderly life, and there were everlasting scenes between

them. It was said that the young wife showed incomparably more

generosity and dignity than Fyodor Pavlovitch, who, as is now known,

got hold of all her money up to twenty‐five thousand roubles as soon as

she received it, so that those thousands were lost to her for ever. The

little village and the rather fine town house which formed part of her

dowry he did his utmost for a long time to transfer to his name, by

means of some deed of conveyance. He would probably have succeeded,

merely from her moral fatigue and desire to get rid of him, and from

the contempt and loathing he aroused by his persistent and shameless

importunity. But, fortunately, Adelaïda Ivanovna’s family intervened

and circumvented his greediness. It is known for a fact that frequent

fights took place between the husband and wife, but rumor had it that

Fyodor Pavlovitch did not beat his wife but was beaten by her, for she

was a hot‐tempered, bold, dark‐browed, impatient woman, possessed of

remarkable physical strength. Finally, she left the house and ran away

from Fyodor Pavlovitch with a destitute divinity student, leaving

Mitya, a child of three years old, in her husband’s hands. Immediately

Fyodor Pavlovitch introduced a regular harem into the house, and

abandoned himself to orgies of drunkenness. In the intervals he used to

drive all over the province, complaining tearfully to each and all of

Adelaïda Ivanovna’s having left him, going into details too disgraceful

for a husband to mention in regard to his own married life. What seemed

to gratify him and flatter his self‐love most was to play the

ridiculous part of the injured husband, and to parade his woes with

embellishments.



“One would think that you’d got a promotion, Fyodor Pavlovitch, you

seem so pleased in spite of your sorrow,” scoffers said to him. Many

even added that he was glad of a new comic part in which to play the

buffoon, and that it was simply to make it funnier that he pretended to

be unaware of his ludicrous position. But, who knows, it may have been

simplicity. At last he succeeded in getting on the track of his runaway

wife. The poor woman turned out to be in Petersburg, where she had gone

with her divinity student, and where she had thrown herself into a life

of complete emancipation. Fyodor Pavlovitch at once began bustling

about, making preparations to go to Petersburg, with what object he

could not himself have said. He would perhaps have really gone; but

having determined to do so he felt at once entitled to fortify himself

for the journey by another bout of reckless drinking. And just at that

time his wife’s family received the news of her death in Petersburg.

She had died quite suddenly in a garret, according to one story, of

typhus, or as another version had it, of starvation. Fyodor Pavlovitch

was drunk when he heard of his wife’s death, and the story is that he

ran out into the street and began shouting with joy, raising his hands

to Heaven: “Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace,” but

others say he wept without restraint like a little child, so much so

that people were sorry for him, in spite of the repulsion he inspired.

It is quite possible that both versions were true, that he rejoiced at

his release, and at the same time wept for her who released him. As a

general rule, people, even the wicked, are much more naïve and

simple‐hearted than we suppose. And we ourselves are, too.