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The seriousness of art is not the same as the seriousness of philosophy, or the seriousness of injustice.
All the oddities of his prose are deliberate; they are a sort of “learned ignorance,” a willed imperfection of artistic means, that is essential to his vision.
But strangeness and oddity will sooner harm than justify any claim to attention, especially when everyone is striving to unite particulars and find at least some general sense in the general senselessness.
I have been wasting fruitless words and precious time, first, out of politeness, and, second, out of cunning.
the chafings of a mind imprisoned.1
In most cases, people, even wicked people, are far more naive and simple-hearted than one generally assumes. And so are we.
but simply because he totally forgot about him.
After her death, almost exactly the same thing happened with both boys as had happened with the first one, Mitya: they were totally forgotten and forsaken by their father and wound up in the same cottage with the same servant, Grigory.
As for the slaps he had gotten, he drove all over town telling the story himself.
If there was anyone to whom the brothers were indebted for their upbringing and education for the rest of their lives, it was to this Yefim Petrovich, a most generous and humane man, of a kind rarely found.
unable to invent anything better than the eternal repetition of one and the same plea for copying work or translations from the French.
I must present my future hero to the reader, from the first scene of his novel, dressed in the cassock of a novice.
I will give my full opinion beforehand: he was simply an early lover of mankind,1
But he did love people; he lived all his life, it seemed, with complete faith in people, and yet no one ever considered him either naive or a simpleton.
Thus he possessed in himself, in his very nature, so to speak, artlessly and directly, the gift of awakening a special love for himself.
However, he himself liked to make jokes about his own face, although he was apparently pleased with it.
The only trouble is this terrible Russianism, there are no French women at all, not so far, and there could be, the money’s there, plenty of it.
You see, stupid as I am, I still keep thinking about it, I keep thinking, every once in a while, of course, not all the time.
He was sentimental. He was wicked and sentimental.
Some will say, perhaps, that red cheeks are quite compatible with both fanaticism and mysticism, but it seems to me that Alyosha was even more of a realist than the rest of us.
In the realist, faith is not born from miracles, but miracles from faith.
he believed first and foremost because he wished to believe, and maybe already fully believed in his secret heart even as he was saying: “I will not believe until I see.”
Although, unfortunately, these young men do not understand that the sacrifice of life is, perhaps, the easiest of all sacrifices in many cases, while to sacrifice, for example, five or six years of their ebulliently youthful life to hard, difficult studies, to learning, in order to increase tenfold their strength to serve the very truth and the very deed that they loved and set out to accomplish—such sacrifice is quite often almost beyond the strength of many of them.
The monks used to say of him that he was attached in his soul precisely to those who were the more sinful, and that he who was most sinful the elder loved most of all.
Alyosha was reticent himself, and seemed as if he were waiting for something, as if he were ashamed of something;
Alyosha also kept wondering whether the learned atheist did not feel some sort of contempt for him, the silly little novice.
Dmitri Fyodorovich spoke of their brother Ivan with the deepest respect; he talked about him with a special sort of feeling.
Dmitri’s rapturous words about his brother Ivan were all the more significant in Alyosha’s eyes since, compared with Ivan, Dmitri was an almost entirely uneducated man, and the two placed side by side would seem to present so striking a contrast, in personality as well as in character, that it would perhaps be impossible to imagine two men more unlike each other.
Dmitri Fyodorovich, who had never been at the elder’s and had never even seen him, thought, of course, that they wanted to frighten him with the elder, as it were, but since he secretly reproached himself for a number of especially harsh outbursts recently in his arguments with his father, he decided to accept the challenge.
I repeat, this boy was not at all as naive as everyone thought he was.
His gaze sometimes acquired a strange fixity: like all very distracted people, he would sometimes look directly at you, and for a long time, without seeing you at all.
Only Petrusha Kalganov took a ten-kopeck piece from his purse and, embarrassed for some reason, hastily shoved it at one woman, saying quickly: “To be shared equally.” None of his companions said anything to him, so there was no point in his being embarrassed; which, when he noticed it, made him even more embarrassed.
The whole ceremony was performed very seriously, not at all like some everyday ritual, but almost with a certain feeling. To Miusov, however, it all seemed done with deliberate suggestion.
But now, seeing all this bowing and kissing of the hieromonks, he instantly changed his mind: gravely and with dignity he made a rather deep bow, by worldly standards, and went over to a chair. Fyodor Pavlovich did exactly the same, this time, like an ape, mimicking Miusov perfectly.
The blood rushed to Alyosha’s cheeks; he was ashamed. His forebodings were beginning to come true.
(Alyosha cringed all over at this “sacred elder.”)
“I myself am always very punctual, to the minute, remembering that punctuality is the courtesy of kings.”3
couldn’t help myself; why not a little pleasant banter, I thought? ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I did tickle her, sir.’ Well, at that he gave me quite a tickling … !
I’m always damaging myself like that!” “You’re doing it now, too,” Miusov muttered in disgust. The elder silently looked from one to the other.
So that suddenly this buffoonery displayed by Fyodor Pavlovich, with no respect for the place he was in, produced in the onlookers, at least in some of them, both astonishment and bewilderment.
Alyosha was on the verge of tears and stood looking downcast. What seemed strangest of all to him was that his brother, Ivan Fyodorovich, on whom alone he had relied and who alone had enough influence on their father to have been able to stop him, was now sitting quite motionless in his chair, looking down and waiting, apparently with some kind of inquisitive curiosity, to see how it would all end, as if he himself were a complete stranger there.
And above all do not be so ashamed of yourself, for that is the cause of everything.”
You know, blessed father, you shouldn’t challenge me to be in my natural state, you shouldn’t risk it …
That is exactly how it all seems to me, when I walk into a room, that I’m lower than anyone else, and that everyone takes me for a buffoon, so ‘Why not, indeed, play the buffoon, I’m not afraid of your opinions, because you’re all, to a man, lower than me!’
It was hard even now to tell whether he was joking or was indeed greatly moved.
A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others.
Fyodor Pavlovich was flushed with pathos, though by now it was quite clear to everyone that he was acting again.
There is among the people a silent, long-suffering grief; it withdraws into itself and is silent. But there is also a grief that is strained; a moment comes when it breaks through with tears, and from that moment on it pours itself out in lamentations. Especially with women. But it is no easier to bear than the silent grief.
If anyone had looked at Alyosha, who was standing a step behind the elder, he would have noticed a quick blush momentarily coloring his cheeks. His eyes flashed and he looked down.
“It is, of course, too early to speak of that. Improvement is not yet a complete healing, and might also occur for other reasons. Still, if there was anything, it came about by no one else’s power save the divine will. Everything is from God.
