all is said, the central figure
of the book is born out of fantasy. He is a grotesque made alive by
sheer imaginative intensity and passion. He is as distantly related to
the humanity we know in life and the humanity we know in literature as
the sober peasant who cut his friend's throat, saying, "God forgive me,
for Christ's sake!"

One does not grudge an artist an abnormal character or two. Dostoevsky,
however, has created a whole flock of these abnormal characters and
watches over them as a hen over her chickens. He invents vicious
grotesques as Dickens invents comic grotesques. In _The Brothers
Karamazov_ he reveals the malignance of Smerdyakov by telling us that he
was one who, in his childhood,

was very fond of hanging cats, and burying them with great
ceremony. He used to dress up in a sheet as though it were a
surplice, and sang, and waved some object over the dead cat as
though it were a censer.

As for the Karamazovs themselves, he portrays the old father and the
eldest of his sons hating each other and fighting like brutal maniacs:

Dmitri threw up both hands and suddenly clutched the old man by the
two tufts of hair that remained on his temples, tugged at them, and
flung him with a crash on the floor. He kicked him two or three
times with his heel in the face. The old man moaned shrilly. Ivan,
though not so strong as Dmitri, threw his arms round him, and with
all his might pulled him away. Alyosha helped him with his slender
strength, holding Dmitri in front.

"Madman! You've killed him!" cried Ivan.

"Serve him right!" shouted Dmitri, breathlessly. "If I haven't
killed him, I'll come again and kill him."

It is easy to see why Dostoevsky has become a popular author. Incident
follows breathlessly upon incident. No melodramatist ever poured out
incident upon the stage from such a horn of plenty. His people are
energetic and untamed, like cowboys or runaway horses. They might be
described as runaway human beings.

And Dostoevsky knows how to crowd his stage as only the inveterate
melodramatists know. Scenes that in an ordinary novel would take place
with two or three figures on the stage are represented in Dostoevsky as
taking place before a howling, seething mob. "A dozen men have broken
in," a maid announces in one place in _The Idiot_, "and they are all
drunk." "Show them all in at once," she is bidden. Dostoevsky is always
rea