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October 8, 2021 - May 8, 2022
The lawyer Fetyukovich would have charged more, but the case has become known all over Russia, they’re talking about it in all the newspapers and magazines, so Fetyukovich agreed to come more for the sake of glory, because
the case has become so famous. I saw him yesterday.”
They want to establish that my brother is crazy and killed in a fit of madness, not knowing what he was doing,” Alyosha smiled quietly, “only my brother won’t agree to it.”
but he’s suddenly started talking about a wee one—that is, about some baby, ‘Why is the wee one poor?’ he says. ‘For that wee one I’ll go to Siberia now, I’m not a murderer, but I must go to Siberia!’ What does he mean, what wee one? I didn’t understand a thing. I just started crying as he was speaking, because he spoke so well, and he was crying himself, and I started crying, and suddenly he kissed me and made the sign of the cross over me. What is it, Alyosha, tell me, what is this ‘wee one’?” “It’s Rakitin, for some reason he’s taken to visiting him,” Alyosha smiled, “although … that is not
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“I won’t lie to you. Ivan is not in love with Katerina Ivanovna, that is what I think.” “That’s what I immediately
This Katya—cette charmante personne, she’s shattered all my hopes: now she’ll follow your one brother to Siberia, and your other brother will follow her and live in the next town, and they’ll all torment one another.
yesterday. Here, in the newspaper Rumors, from Petersburg. These Rumors just started coming out this year, I’m terribly fond of rumors, so I subscribed, and now I’ve been paid back for it, this is the sort of rumors they turned out to be. Here, this passage, read
So, look: a man sits there and he’s not crazy at all, only suddenly he has a fit of passion. He may be fully conscious and know what he’s doing, but at the same time he’s in a fit of passion. And so, apparently, Dmitri Fyodorovich also had a fit of passion. They found out about the fit of passion as soon as they opened the new law courts. It’s a blessing of the new courts. The doctor was here and questioned me about that evening, I mean about the gold mines: ‘How was he then?’ he said. Of course it was a fit of passion—he came in shouting: ‘Money, money, three thousand, give me three
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“On the contrary, I am very pleased. I’ve just been thinking over for the thirtieth time how good it is that I refused you and am not going to be your wife. You’re unfit to be a husband: I’d marry you, and suddenly give you a note to take to someone I’d have fallen in love with after you, and you would take it and make sure to deliver it, and even bring back the reply. And you’d be forty years old and still carrying such notes.”
“I wanted to tell you a wish of mine. I want someone to torment me, to marry me and then torment me, deceive me, leave me and go away. I don’t want to be happy!” “You’ve come to love disorder?” “Ah, I want disorder. I keep wanting to set fire to the house. I imagine how I’ll sneak up and set fire to it on the sly, it must be on the sly. They’ll try to put it out, but it will go on burning. And I’ll know and say nothing. Ah, what foolishness! And so boring!”
“I want to ruin myself. There’s a boy here, and he lay down under the rails while a train rode over him. Lucky boy! Listen, your brother is on trial now for killing his father, and they all love it that he killed his father.” “They love it that he killed his father?” “They love it, they all love it! Everyone says it’s terrible, but secretly they all love it terribly. I’m the first to love it.” “There’s some truth in what you say about everyone,” Alyosha said softly.
Ah, I’ll tell you a funny dream of mine: sometimes I have a dream about devils, it seems to be night, I’m in my room with a candle, and suddenly there are devils everywhere, in all the corners, and under the tables, and they open the door, and outside the door there’s a crowd of them, and they want to come in and grab me. And they’re coming close, they’re about to grab me. But I suddenly cross myself and they all draw back, afraid, only they don’t quite go away, they stand by the door and in the corners, waiting. And suddenly I have a terrible desire to start reviling God out loud, and so I
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she spoke suddenly in a pleading voice. “I’ll always come to see you, all my life,” Alyosha answered firmly.
And Liza, as soon as Alyosha was gone, unlatched the door at once, opened it a little, put her finger into the chink, and, slamming the door, crushed it with all her might. Ten seconds later, having released her hand, she went quietly and slowly to her chair, sat straight up in it, and began looking intently at her blackened finger and the blood oozing from under the nail. Her lips trembled, and she whispered very quickly to herself: “Mean, mean, mean, mean!”
since the moment of his imprisonment he had come to look on him more and more leniently: “He was probably a man of good soul, and then came to grief like a Swede at Poltava,1 from drinking and disorder!” His initial horror gave place in his heart to some sort of pity.
“What are you talking about, Mitya?” “Ideas, ideas, that’s what! Ethics. What is ethics?” “Ethics?” Alyosha said in surprise. “Yes, what is it, some sort of science?” “Yes, there is such a science … only … I must confess I can’t explain to you what sort of science it is.” “Rakitin knows. Rakitin knows a lot, devil take him! He won’t become a monk. He’s going to go to Petersburg. There, he says, he’ll get into the department of criticism, but with a noble tendency. Why not? He can be useful and make a career. Oof, how good they are at making careers! Devil take ethics!
He wants something with a tendency: ‘It was impossible for him not to kill, he was a victim of his environment,’ and so on, he explained it to me. It will have a tinge of socialism, he says.
‘What, are you going to push for that in the department of criticism?’ I asked. ‘Well, they won’t let me do it openly,’ he said, and laughed. ‘But,’ I asked, ‘how will man be after that? Without God and the future life? It means everything is permitted now, one can do anything?’ ‘Didn’t you know?’ he said. And he laughed. ‘Everything is permitted to the intelligent man,’ he said. ‘The intelligent man knows how to catch crayfish, but you killed and fouled it up,’ he said, ‘and now you’re rotting in prison!’
That’s why I’ve been thirsting for you. You see, for a long time I’ve been wanting to say many things to you here, within these peeling walls, but I’ve kept silent about the most important thing: the time didn’t seem to have come yet. I’ve been waiting till this last time to pour out my soul to you. Brother, in these past two months I’ve sensed a new man in me, a new man has arisen in me! He was shut up inside me, but if it weren’t for this thunderbolt, he never would have appeared. Frightening! What do I care if I spend twenty years pounding out iron ore in the mines, I’m not afraid of that
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All of this came to me here … within these peeling walls. And there are many, there
hundreds of them, underground, with hammers in their hands. Oh, yes, we’ll be in chains, and there will be no freedom, but then, in our great grief, we will arise once more into joy, without which it’s not possible for man to live, or for God to be, for God gives joy, it’s his prerogative, a great one
hands. Oh, yes, we’ll be in chains, and there will be no freedom, but then, in our great grief, we will arise once more into joy, without which it’s not possible for man to live, or for God to be,...
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underground! It’s impossible for a convict to be without God, even more impossible than for a non-convict!
And then from the depths of the earth, we, the men underground,
the men underground, will start singing a tragic hymn to God, in whom there is joy! Hail to G...
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And besides, what is suffering? I’m not afraid of it, even if it’s numberless. I’m not afraid of it now; I was before. You know, maybe I won’t even give any answers in court … And it seems to me there’s so much strength in me now that I can overcome everything, all sufferings, only in order to say and tell myself every moment: I am! In a thousand torments—I am; writhing under torture—but I am. Locked up in a tower, but still I exist, I see the sun, and if I don’t see the sun, still I know it is. And the whole of life is there—in knowing that the sun is. Alyosha, my cherub, all these
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… And it seems to me there’s so much strength in me now that I can overcome everything, all sufferings, only in order to say and tell myself every moment: I am! In a thousand torments—I am; writhing under torture—but I am.
Locked up in a tower, but still I exist, I see the sun, and if I don’t see the sun, still I know it is. And the whole of life ...
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keep thinking about it. Because whom will he love then—man, I mean? To whom will he be thankful, to whom will he sing the hymn?
‘And without God,’ I said, ‘you’ll hike up the price of beef yourself, if the chance comes your way, and make a rouble on every kopeck.’
Because what is virtue?—answer me that, Alexei. I have one virtue and a Chinese has another—so it’s a relative thing. Or not? Not relative? Insidious question! You mustn’t laugh if I tell you that I didn’t sleep for two nights because of
my dear, I’ll tell you frankly and simply: every decent man ought to be under the heel of some woman at least. That’s my conviction; not a conviction, but a feeling. A man ought to be magnanimous, and that’s no stain on a man. It’s no stain even on a hero, even on Caesar! Well, but still don’t go asking forgiveness, not ever, not for anything.
“The whole truth, the whole, don’t lie!” Mitya repeated. “Never for a single moment have I believed that you are the murderer,” the trembling voice suddenly burst from Alyosha’s breast,
irritably to himself, but Alyosha heard it. “Allow
“You’ve accused yourself and confessed to yourself that you and you alone are the murderer. But it was not you who killed him, you are mistaken, the murderer was not you, do you hear, it was not you! God has sent me to tell you that.”
it was not you! God has sent me to tell you that.”
“I cannot bear prophets and epileptics, messengers from God especially, you know that only too well. From this moment on I am breaking with you, and, I suppose, forever. I ask you to leave me this instant, at this very crossroads. Besides, your way home is down this lane. Beware especially of coming to me today! Do you hear?”
formerly Fyodor Pavlovich’s neighbor, who used to come to Fyodor Pavlovich’s kitchen to get soup and to whom Smerdyakov, in those
“The money was mine, it was mine,” Mitya kept repeating, “even if I had stolen it, I’d be right.”
“That anticipating such a calamity, sir, you were abandoning your own parent and did not want to protect us, because they could have hauled me in anytime for that three thousand, for having stolen it, sir.”
“I understand ver-ry well, sir. And since you won’t testify about that, sir, I also will not report the whole of our conversation
stubbornly insisting that Dmitri was not the murderer, and that “in all probability”
Ivan Fyodorovich stood up all trembling with indignation, put his coat on, and no longer replying to Smerdyakov, not even looking at him, quickly left the cottage. The fresh evening air refreshed him. The moon was shining brightly in the sky. A terrible nightmare of thoughts and feelings seethed in his soul. “Go and denounce Smerdyakov right now? But denounce him for what: he’s innocent all the same. On the contrary, he will accuse me. Why, indeed, did I go to Chermashnya then? Why? Why?” Ivan Fyodorovich kept asking. “Yes, of course, I was expecting something, he’s right
“If it was not Dmitri but Smerdyakov who killed father, then, of course, I am solidary with him, because I put him up to it. Whether I did put him up to it—I don’t know yet. But if it was he who killed him, and not Dmitri, then, of course, I am a murderer,
Better hard labor than your love, for I love another, and you’ve found out too much about her today to be able to forgive. I will kill my thief.
This letter suddenly assumed a mathematical significance in his eyes.
of iridescent hundred-rouble bills. “It’s all there, sir, all three thousand, no need to count it. Have it, sir,” he invited Ivan, nodding towards the money. Ivan sank onto the chair. He was white as a sheet. “You frightened me … with that stocking …,” he said, grinning somehow strangely. “Can it possibly be that you didn’t know till now?” Smerdyakov asked once again. “No, I didn’t. I kept thinking it was Dmitri. Brother! Brother! Ah!” he suddenly seized his head with both hands. “Listen: did you kill him alone? Without my brother, or with him?”
Therefore I want to prove it to your face tonight that in all this the chief murderer is you alone, sir, and I’m just not the real chief one, though I did kill him. It’s you who are the most lawful murderer!”
such a flurry? It was all thought out beforehand.” “Well … well, then the devil himself helped you!” Ivan Fyodorovich exclaimed again. “No, you’re not stupid, you’re much more intelligent than I thought …” He rose, obviously intending to walk about the room.
“So now you’ve come to believe in God, since you’re giving back the money?” “No,
