Masterly humor. Game. But risky, because it destroys the dignity of the narrative. It's the opposite of Flaubert, who sees only one explanation and the opposite of Proust, who heaps up explanations, who posits a great number of motives or interpretations, but never demonstrates that an opposite explanation is permissible.
Did I read Brothers Karamazov badly? I read it as a joke. With affirmation, and worthily, Dostoevsky destroys preconceptions about what a work of art should be with this book.
It seems to me, after this reading, that every novel or poem or painting or piece of music is an imposture if it does not destroy itself, I mean does not construct itself as a carnival duck shoot, where it is one of the heads we aim at.
They talk a lot these days about laughing at the gods. The work of art constructed on assertions alone, which are never questioned, is an imposture that hides something more important. Frans Hals must have laughed a lot with The Women of the Regents and The Regents. Rembrandt too, with the sleeve of The Jewish Bride. Mozart, composing his Requiem and even Don Giovanni. Everything was allowed them. They were free. Shakespeare, too, with King Lear. After having had talent and genius, they know something rarer: they know how to laugh at their genius.
submitted to Gallimard 1981
trns. by C. Mandell
in:
Brothers Karamazov