Seeking some heavenly nourishment, Goethe’s Faust turns to the holy Greek original of the Gospel of John. “In the beginning was the Word,” the scholar reads, but he cannot understand this mystery. “In the beginning was the Meaning,” he entertains, but he finds little creative potency in the mere content of a thought. “In the beginning was the Power,” while briefly attractive, won’t do either. Finally der Geist—Spirit, human or divine—inspires him to write, “In the beginning was the Deed.”

Dostoevsky incorporates all of these Faustian variations in his own raw and vital formulation: In the beginning was Fyodor Karamazov. God’s Gift (theo + doron), Fyodor is a man of primordial energies and seemingly insatiable appetites. Although he is impoverished when he comes of age as a nobleman, he is a scrappy climber of considerable intelligence. His shrewd investments in taverns fuel a riotous life of aristocratic decadence. A hubristic farceurwho speaks French and relishes Voltairean mockery, Fyodor spends his days gratifying his sensual impulses and performing outrageous stunts. But he is sometimes deeply shaken by existential loneliness, and he is capable of uttering the name of the Lord in sincere blessing, as he does in his very last words to Ivan: “God be with you! God be with you! . . . Christ be with you!” Broad, muddled, ironic, and generally intoxicated, he is Hamlet’s debauched Russian cousin, a man of gushing sap but “too too solid [or sullied] flesh.”