The Brothers Karamazov: A Novel in Four Parts With Epilogue

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

But what, one might think, is so surprising, what is so especially horrifying about it? For us, for us especially? We’re so used to all that! And here is the real horror, that such dark affairs have almost ceased to horrify us! It is this, and not the isolated crime of one individual or another, that should horrify us: that we are so used to it. Where lie the reasons for our indifference, our lukewarm attitude towards such affairs, such signs of the times, which prophesy for us an unenviable future? In our cynicism, in an early exhaustion of mind and imagination in our society, so young and yet so prematurely decrepit? In our moral principles, shattered to their foundations, or, finally, in the fact that we, perhaps, are not even possessed of such moral principles at all? I do not mean to resolve these questions; nevertheless they are painful, and every citizen not only ought, but is even obliged, to suffer over them.

But what is most important is that a great number of our Russian, our national, criminal cases bear witness precisely to something universal, to some general malaise that has taken root among us, and with which, as with universal evil, it is already very difficult to contend.

Granted he is a monster, but now, in our time, I no longer dare say he is just an isolated monster. Another man may not kill, perhaps, but he will think and feel exactly the same way, in his heart he is just as dishonest as the first.

without the least Hamletian question of ‘what lies beyond,’3 without a trace of such questions, as if this matter of our spirit, and all that awaits us beyond the grave, had been scrapped long ago in them, buried and covered with dust.

For now we are either horrified or pretend that we are horrified, while, on the contrary, relishing the spectacle, like lovers of strong, eccentric sensations that stir our cynical and lazy idleness, or, finally, like little children waving the frightening ghosts away, and hiding our heads under the pillow until the frightening vision is gone, so as to forget it immediately afterwards in games and merriment.

“what is this Karamazov family that has suddenly gained such sad notoriety all over Russia? Perhaps I am greatly exaggerating, but it seems to me that certain basic, general elements of our modern-day educated society shine through, as it were, in the picture of this nice little family—oh, not all the elements, and they shine only microscopically, ‘like to the sun in a small water-drop,’

Of the spiritual sort of fatherly duties—none at

Everything contrary to the idea of a citizen, a complete, even hostile separation from society: ‘Let the whole world burn, so long as I am all right.’

intelligent observer, and that is why I am mentioning it now: ‘If,’ he said to me, ‘any one of the sons most resembles Fyodor Pavlovich in character, it is him, Ivan Fyodorovich!’

In him, it seems to me, unconsciously, as it were, and so early on, that timid despair betrayed itself which leads so many in our poor society, fearing its cynicism and depravity, and mistakenly ascribing all evil to European enlightenment, to throw themselves, as they put it, to the ‘native soil,’ so to speak, into the motherly embrace of the native earth, like children frightened by ghosts, who even at the dried-up breast of a paralyzed mother wish only to fall peacefully asleep and even to sleep for the rest of their lives, simply not to see the horrors that frighten them.

our dear mother Russia, we can smell her, we can hear her. Oh, we are ingenuous, we are an amazing mixture of good and evil, we are lovers of enlightenment and Schiller, and at the same time we rage in taverns and tear out the beards of little drunkards, our tavern mates.

Precisely because we are of a broad, Karamazovian nature—and this is what I am driving at—capable of containing all possible opposites and of contemplating both abysses at once, the abyss above us, an abyss of lofty ideals, and the abyss beneath us, an abyss of the lowest and foulest degradation.

‘Send me, send me to hard labor with him, I drove him to it, I am the guiltiest of all!’—this woman herself exclaimed,

There is a good deal of posturing here, of romantic frenzy, of wild Karamazovian unrestraint and sentimentality—yes, and also something else, gentlemen of the jury, something that cries out in the soul, that throbs incessantly in his mind, and poisons his heart unto death; this something is conscience, gentlemen of the jury,

“whatever eloquent and moving words, aimed at your emotions, will resound here, remember still that at this moment you are in the sanctuary of our justice. Remember that you are the defenders of our truth, the defenders of our holy Russia, of her foundations, of her family, of all that is holy in her!

“And browbeating, did you notice how he kept browbeating us? Remember the troika? ‘They have their Hamlets, but so far we have only Karamazovs!’ That was clever.” “Courting liberalism. Afraid.” “He’s also afraid of the defense attorney.” “Yes, what will Mr. Fetyukovich

His voice was beautiful, loud, and attractive, and even in this voice itself one seemed to hear something genuine and guileless.

‘Since he was in the garden, it means he also killed him.’ On these two words—since he was, it also inevitably means—everything, the entire accusation, rests: ‘He was, therefore it means.’

Grigory and his wife, who had been his childhood benefactors. He cursed Russia and laughed at her. He dreamed of going to France and remaking himself as a Frenchman.

Our tribune, gentlemen of the jury, should be a school of truth and sensible ideas.”

Let other nations have the letter and punishment, we have the spirit and meaning, the salvation and regeneration of the lost. And if so, if such indeed are Russia and her courts, then—onward, Russia! And do not frighten us, oh, do not frighten us with your mad troikas, which all nations stand aside from in disgust! Not a mad troika, but a majestic Russian chariot will arrive solemnly and peacefully at its goal. In your hands is the fate of my client, in your hands is also the fate of our Russian truth. You will save it, you will champion it, you will prove that there are some to preserve it, that it is in good hands!”

The feebleminded idiot Smerdyakov, transformed into some sort of Byronic hero revenging himself upon society for his illegitimate birth—is this not a poem in the Byronic fashion?

“Folks are clever nowadays. Do we have any truth in Russia, gentlemen, or is there none at all?”

“Yes, sir, our good peasants stood up for themselves.” “And finished off our Mitenka.”

“How can such a man suffer? Men like him never suffer!”

The features of his emaciated face were hardly changed at all, and, strangely, there was almost no smell from the corpse.

“It’s all so strange, Karamazov, such grief, and then pancakes all of a sudden—how unnatural it all is in our religion!”

let us never forget how good we once felt here, all together, united by such good and kind feelings as made us, too, for the time that we loved the poor boy, perhaps better than we actually are.