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Let me start with the end of the first chapter of The Brothers Karamazov:

Finally she fled the house and ran away from Fyodor Pavlovich with a destitute seminarian, leaving the three-year-old Mitya in his father’s hands.  Fyodor Pavlovich immediately set up a regular harem in his house and gave himself to the most unbridled drinking.  In the intermissions, he drove over most of the province, tearfully complaining to all and sundry that Adelaida had abandoned him, going into details that any husband ought to have been too ashamed to reveal about his married life.  The thing was that he seemed to enjoy and even feel flattered by playing the ludicrous role of the offended husband, embroidering on and embellishing the details of the offense.  “One would think you had been promoted, Fyodor Pavlovich,” the scoffers used to say, “you’re so pleased despite all your woes!”  Many even added that he was glad to brush up his old role of buffoon, and that, to make things funnier still, he pretended not to notice his ridiculous position.  But who knows, perhaps he was simply naïve.  At last he managed to find the trail of his runaway wife.  The poor woman turned out to be in Petersburg, where she had gone to live with her seminarian and where she had thrown herself into the most complete emancipation.  Fyodor Pavlovich at once began bustling about, making ready to go to Petersburg.  Why?  He, of course, had no idea.  True, he might even have gone; but having undertaken such a decision, he at once felt fully entitled to get up his courage for the journey by throwing himself into more boundless drinking.  Just then his wife’s family received news of her death in Petersburg.  She died somehow suddenly, in some garret, of typhus according to one version, of starvation according to another.  Fyodor Pavlovich was drunk when he learned of his wife’s death, and the story goes that he ran down the street, lifting his hands to the sky and joyfully shouting, “Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.”  Others say he wept and sobbed like a little child, so much so that they say he was pitiful to see, however repulsive they found him.  Both versions may very well be true – that is, that he rejoiced at his release and wept for her who released him, all at the same time.  In most cases, people, even wicked people, are far more naïve and simple-hearted than one generally assumes.  And so are we. (9)

This is superior work in every respect – the work of the master at the height of his powers.  I present so large a quotation out of sheer pleasure.  But my target is the quotation from the Gospel, the canticle of St. Simeon, which is used by Fyodor Pavlovich in the most inappropriate – and to a true believer, hilarious – way imaginable.  Years after I first read this passage, the thing I remembered was that when old Karamazov’s wife died, he skipped down the street shouting, “Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.”  The allusion – precisely the thing that in most authors is most likely to be artificial, forced, aridly intellectual, and worthless – here is the most vivid bit of detailing in the whole narrative.

This is not an isolated instance, but almost a hallmark of Dostoevsky’s maturity.  The allusions in The Brothers Karamazov 1) are some of the very best material in the entire book and 2) gain by their new setting.  They are textbook examples of the technique.  I will provide a few more in proof of these contentions.

The most recent translation of Dostoevsky, by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, emphasizes Dostoevsky’s colloquial, rather than literary tone.  An example is a phrase Ivan uses to describe the glories of spring – “the sticky little leaves:”

Alyosha, I want to live, and I do live, even if it be against logic.  Though I do not believe in the order of things, still the sticky little leaves that come out in the spring are dear to me, the blue sky is dear to me, some people are dear to me, whom one loves sometimes, would you believe it, without even knowing why; some human deeds are dear to me, which one has perhaps long ceased believing in, but still honors with one’s heart, out of old habit. (230)

Again, this phrase nails the passage to the wall of our memory; I have thought of this phrase, and this passage, every spring since I read it.  And for appropriateness in expressing a love that is awakened in you without knowing why, nothing could excel these “sticky little leaves.”  And yet it is not Dostoevsky’s: the phrase comes from a poem of Pushkin.  No matter: Dostoevsky has branded it with the name Ivan Karamazov, the man who accepts God but cannot accept the Godless, unjust world – and is mystified by his involuntary love of it.

And this is another aspect of Dostoevsky’s allusions: they typically come from the characters themselves.  This is the opposite of most authors, where the author is presumed to be smarter than the characters; he is certainly more “literary” than they are; and so he uses big words, and they don’t, and he alludes to Joyce, and they don’t.  As a rule, an author presuming he is superior to his characters is as offensive as presumption is in general.  But it is terribly common, and to me, one of the most reliably offensive things to come upon: the writer may know such-and-such a work well and allude to it in the narrative, but he presumes that his characters are too dumb for such things: in them it would be only pretense.  A whole host of writers create characters to despise – and even the resultant humor they offer the reader is of a slightly sickening variety.  Dostoevsky does not look down on his characters.  They are as capable as Dostoevsky himself of good, evil, depth, oddness, reading, thinking, believing, disbelieving.  And they not only refer to literature, but they refer to it with real feeling: these are people – let us be honest, like you and me – who have found phrases, situations, and ideas in books that have haunted their thoughts ever since.  Ivan probably read that Pushkin phrase years ago himself, and thinks of it come springtime, as you or I read it in Dostoevsky, and do the same.  Ivan describes his own planned suicide in a phrase borrowed from a Schiller poem – “I hasten to return my ticket” – and another which I presume is a Gethsemane reference – “I will smash the cup to the ground.”  Even if the metaphor “drink the cup” is so built into our culture that it need not, by this stage, refer to anything, the point is that it is the character who is interacting with the metaphor.  Hence it becomes in Dostoevsky’s hands a technique for sketching characters, not displaying the prowess of the author; and a technique which, moreover, gives to Dostoevsky’s characters the sort of dignity lesser authors reserve only for themselves.

Sometimes, this is merely a dignity in indignity.  Look at this priceless scene of Fyodor Karamazov speaking to the Elder Zosima, in the presence of his modernist friend Miusov:

“But to make up for it, I believe, I believe in God.  It’s only lately that I’ve begun to have doubts, but to make up for it I’m sitting and waiting to hear lofty words.  I am, reverend father, like the philosopher Diderot.  Do you know, most holy father, how Diderot the philosopher came to see Metropolitan Platon in the time of the empress Catherine?  He walks in and says right off: ‘There is no God.’  To which the great hierarch raises his finger and answers: ‘The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.’  Right then and there our man falls at his feet: ‘I believe,’ he cries, ‘I will accept baptism!’  And so they baptized him at once.  Princess Dashkova was his godmother, and his godfather was Potiomkin…”
“Fyodor Pavlovich, this is unbearable!  You know yourself that you are lying, that your silly story isn’t true.  Why are you clowning?”  Miusov said in a trembling voice, losing all control of himself.
“All my life I’ve had a feeling that it wasn’t true!” Fyodor Pavlovich cried excitedly.  “No, let me tell you the whole truth, gentlemen.  Great elder!  Forgive me, but that last part, about Diderot’s baptism, I invented myself just a moment ago, while I was telling it to you.  It never occurred to me before.  I made it up for its piquancy.” (41-2)

Again, what other author can draw a character by letting him tinker with a legend about Diderot?  Later on in this scene is another priceless bit:

“Great elder, by the way, I amost forgot, though I did intend, as long as two years ago, to inquire here, to stop by on purpose and insistently make inquiries and to ask – only please tell Pyotr Alexandrovich [Miusov] not to interrupt.  This I ask you: is it true, great father, that somewhere in the Lives of the Saints there is a story about some holy wonder-worker who was martyred for his faith, and when they finally cut his head off, he got up, took his head, ‘kissed it belovingly,’ and walked on for a long time carrying it in his hands and ‘kissing it belovingly’?  Is this true or not, honored fathers?”
“No, it is not true,” said the elder. (44-5)

Voltaire apparently made up this satire of a Saint Dennis/Dionysus and stuck it in the notes to one of his works.  It made its way thence to Fyodor Karamazov.  The ludicrous story, the ludicrous diction, the speaking all this in the presence of a serious (even great) religious figure and an embarrassed atheist, the common occurrence of a man getting his picture of religion from an enemy of religion – all combine to make this, once again, one of the most memorable parts of the book.

There are many other allusions.  Much of the strength of this novel comes from its subtle engagement with the Bible, especially Job (brought up explicitly), the Garden of Gethsemane (also explicitly discussed), and the Temptations (discussed at great length).  And there are other references all over, especially to Pushkin and Schiller and Voltaire.  And throughout, they are superb: rarely contrived, never throwing Dostoevsky’s own writing into shadow, deeply felt by the characters, and adding depth and vibrancy to the novel.  If you want to study allusion, look no further.