Karamazov Brothers-I need help

[serhanbener]

"But it's clever, anyway. Shall we go over and have a look at it, eh? Alyosha, are you blushing? Don't be bashful, child. I'm sorry I didn't stay to dinner at the Superior's and tell the monks about the girls at Mokroe. Alyosha, don't be angry that I offended your Superior this morning. I lost my temper."

In the sentence below Dostoyevski makes a word game. "Mokroe" mean "wet" in Russian but I couldn't understand why Fyodor Pavlovitch says that ?

"Don't be bashful, child. I'm sorry I didn't stay to dinner at the Superior's and tell the monks about the girls at Mokroe. "

[Rores28]

Well the monastery is all about celibacy, and Fyodor threatening to tell about the girls seems like it would suggest a lack of that in some way. Alyosha is embarrassed of his Dad and his dad is messing with him. Placing girls right next to the word wet, may be a way of making it the more obscene and uncomfortable, which as you go through the book you will realize seems to be Fyodor's MO.

Though remind me who are the girls at Mokroe?

[serhanbener]

Thanks for your help.The girls are anonym. I think "wet" symbolizes "decay". But I am not sure.

[Rores28]

That seems possible also. I'm not really sure if sexually speaking wet has the same meaning in Russian..

[TANSTAAFL2]

Mokroye

[russellb]

perhaps there's a sort of paradox, he's playing with Alyosha by suggesting he might have told celibate monks about girls (no doubt in a salacious way) but if wet, at least in English, has a sexual connotation, water, I am guessing, is a universal symbol of spirit...at any rate it is in the Christian tradition. Monasticism, at least, separates off spirit from sexuality while Dostoevsky may be slyly hanging them together. Just a thought...

[WyattGwyon]

That seems possible also. I'm not really sure if sexually speaking wet has the same meaning in Russian..

I'm guessing that's universal :wink5: