The Brothers Karamazov: Bicentennial Edition

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

God gave us too little time, he only allotted twenty-four hours to a day, so that there isn’t even time enough to sleep, let alone repent.

But if precisely at that moment I tried all that, and deliberately cried unto that mountain: ‘Crush my tormentors’—and it didn’t crush them, then how, tell me, should I not doubt then, in such a terrible hour of great mortal fear?

I’d know even without that that I wasn’t going to reach the fullness of the Kingdom of Heaven (because the mountain didn’t move at my word, so they must not trust much in my faith there, and no very great reward awaits me in the other world), so why, on top of that, should I let myself be flayed to no purpose ?

“He’s storing up his thoughts,” Ivan smirked.

omg meeeee

It really makes me mad, my friend. Because if there’s a God, if he exists, well, then of course I’m guilty and I’ll answer for it, but if there’s no God at all, then what do those fathers of yours deserve? It’s not enough just to cut off their heads—because they hold up progress.

But still I’d put an end to that little monastery of yours. Take all this mysticism and abolish it at once all over the Russian land, and finally bring all the fools to reason. And think how much silver, how much gold would come into the mint!” “But why abolish it?” asked Ivan. “To let the truth shine forth sooner, that’s why.” “But if this truth shines forth, you will be the first to be robbed and then .. abolished.” “Bah! You’re probably right. Ah, what an ass I am!”

Lord, just think how much faith, how much energy of all kinds man has spent on this dream, and for so many thousands of years!

Ivan? For the last time, definitely: is there a God or not? It’s the last time I’ll ask.” “For the last time—no.” “Then who is laughing at mankind, Ivan?” “Must be the devil,” Ivan smirked. “And is there a devil?” “No, there is no devil, either.” “Too bad. Devil knows, then, what I wouldn’t do to the man who first invented God! Hanging from the bitter aspen tree would be too good for him.”

The old man would not be still. He had reached that level of drunkenness at which some drunkards, who until then have been peaceable, suddenly want to get angry and make a show of themselves.

But here something very strange happened, if only for a moment. The notion that Alyosha’s mother was also Ivan’s mother really seemed to have gone clean out of the old man’s mind …

And breaking away from Ivan, he again rushed at Dmitri. But Dmitri raised both hands and suddenly seized the old man by the two surviving wisps of hair on his temples, pulled, and smashed him against the floor. He even had time to kick the fallen man in the face two or three times with his heel.

“Brother, let me ask you one more thing: can it be that any man has the right to decide about the rest of mankind, who is worthy to live and who is more unworthy?” “But why bring worth into it? The question is most often decided in the hearts of men not at all on the basis of worth, but for quite different reasons, much more natural ones.

He’s just in despair, but I can still save him.

no sweetie, you can't…

She seemed to be in love with her.

gaaayyyyy

His heart trembled as he entered the elder’s cell: Why, why had he left? Why had the elder sent him “into the world”? Here was quiet, here was holiness, and there—confusion, and a darkness in which one immediately got lost and went astray …

It was even brought up before the diocesan authorities that such confessions not only do not achieve any good purpose, but really and knowingly lead to sin and temptation; that for many of the brothers it was a burden to go to the elder, and that they went against their will, because everyone went, and to avoid being considered proud and rebellious in thought.

It was assumed, of course, that this all should be done freely and sincerely, without reservation, for the sake of free humility and saving instruction, but in reality, as it turned out, it sometimes was also done quite insincerely and, on the contrary, artificially and falsely. Yet the older and more experienced of the brothers stood their ground, arguing that “for those who have sincerely entered these walls in order to be saved, all these obediences and deeds will no doubt work for salvation and be of great benefit; as for those who, on the contrary, find them burdensome and murmur against them, for them it is the same as if they were not monks, and they have come to the monastery in vain, for their place is in the world.

Wickedness is sweet: everyone denounces it, but everyone lives in it, only they all do it on the sly and I do it openly.

Ivan’s a braggart, and he doesn’t have so much learning … or any special education either; he’s silent, and he grins at you silently—that’s how he gets by.”

Alyosha began with this practical remark, without any premeditated guile, which, incidentally, is the only way for an adult to begin if he wants to gain the immediate confidence of a child, and especially of a whole group of children. One must begin precisely in a serious and practical way so as to be altogether on an equal footing. Alyosha instinctively understood this.

Alyosha sensed by some sort of instinct that a character like Katerina Ivanovna must rule, and that she could only rule over a man like Dmitri, but by no means over a man like Ivan. For only Dmitri (in the long run, let us say) might finally submit to her “for his own happiness” (which Alyosha even desired), but not Ivan, Ivan could not submit to her, and such submission would not bring him happiness.

One could get completely lost in this tangle, and Alyosha’s heart could not bear uncertainty, for the nature of his love was always active. He could not love passively; once he loved, he immediately also began to help.

Alyosha noticed it all immediately, and his heart was moved to compassion.

He spoke decidedly with a sort of malice, evidently deliberate, and even, perhaps, not wishing to conceal his intentions—that is, that he was speaking deliberately and in mockery.

“You are mistaken, my good Alyosha,” he said, with an expression on his face that Alyosha had never seen there before—an expression of some youthful sincerity and strong, irresistibly frank emotion.

All I did all the time was listen to her love for him. I am leaving now; but know, Katerina Ivanovna, that you indeed love only him. And the more he insults you, the more you love him. That is your strain. You precisely love him as he is, you love him insulting you. If he reformed, you would drop him at once and stop loving him altogether. But you need him in order to continually contemplate your high deed of faithfulness, and to reproach him for his unfaithfulness. And it all comes from your pride.

I know I shouldn’t be telling you this, that it would be more dignified on my part simply to walk out of here; it would not be so insulting to you. But I am going far away and shall never come back. It is forever … I do not want to sit next to a strain … However, I cannot even speak anymore, I’ve said everything … Farewell, Katerina Ivanovna, you must not be angry with me, because I am punished a hundred times more than you: punished already by this alone, that I shall never see you again. Farewell. I do not want your hand. You’ve been tormenting me so consciously that I am unable to forgive you at the moment. Later I shall forgive you, but no hand now: Den Dank, Dame, begehr ich nicht,”1 he added with a crooked smile, incidentally proving, quite unexpectedly, that he, too, could read Schiller, enough so as to learn him by heart, which Alyosha would not have believed before.

“Ivan,” he called after him desperately, “come back, Ivan! No, no, nothing will bring him back now!” he exclaimed again in a rueful illumination; “but it’s my fault, mine, I started it! Ivan spoke spitefully, wrongly. Unjustly and spitefully … ,” Alyosha kept exclaiming like a half-wit.

Forgive me, Alexei Fyodorovich, I cannot recall without indignation this shameful act of his … one of those acts that Dmitri Fyodorovich alone could bring himself to do, in his wrath … and in his passions!

Alyosha did not have time to say a word—and he wanted to. He wanted to ask forgiveness, to blame himself, to say at least something, because his heart was full, and he decidedly did not want to go from the room without that.

“But she was crying, she’s been insulted again!” Alyosha exclaimed. “Don’t believe in women’s tears, Alexei Fyodorovich—I’m always against the women in such cases, and for the men.”

He was indeed in real grief, of a kind he had seldom experienced before. He had gone and “put his foot in it”—and in what? An affair of the heart!

Alyosha looked at him attentively; it was the first time in his life he had seen the man. There was something angular, hurried, and irritable in him.

His face expressed a sort of extreme insolence, and at the same time—which was strange—an obvious cowardice. He looked like a man who had been submissive for a long time and suffered much, but had suddenly jumped up and tried to assert himself. Or, better still, like a man who wants terribly to hit you, but is terribly afraid that you are going to hit him.

The rich ones—what do they know? In their whole lives they never sound such depths, and my Ilyushka, at that very moment in the square, sir, when he kissed his hand, at that very moment he went through the whole truth, sir. This truth, sir, entered into him and crushed him forever,” the captain said fervently, again as if in a frenzy, hitting his left palm with his right fist, as if he wished to show physically how “the truth” had crushed his Ilyusha.

You know, when children are silent and proud, and have been holding back their tears for a long time, when they suddenly burst out, if a great grief comes, the tears don’t just flow, sir, they pour out in streams.

...me...

He ended on the same note of cracked and spiteful humor. Alyosha felt, however, that he already trusted him, and that if someone else were in his, Alyosha’s, place, with someone else the man would not have “talked” as he had, would not have said all that he had just said to him. This encouraged Alyosha, whose soul was trembling with tears.

isn’t there some contempt for him, for this wretched man … that we’re examining his soul like this, as if we were looking down on him? That we have decided so certainly, now, that he will accept the money?” “No, Lise, there is no contempt in it,” Alyosha answered firmly, as if he were already prepared for the question. “I thought it over myself, on the way here. Consider, what contempt can there be if we ourselves are just the same as he is, if everyone is just the same as he is? Because we are just the same, not better. And even if we were better, we would still be the same in his place

for myself I consider that my soul is petty in many ways.

Am I a monk, Lise? Didn’t you say somehow a moment ago that I was a monk?” “Yes, I said that.” “And, look, maybe I don’t even believe in God.” “You don’t believe? What’s the matter with you?” Lise asked softly and cautiously. But Alyosha did not answer.

With his whole being Alyosha felt drawn to the monastery, to his “great” dying man, but the need to see his brother Dmitri outweighed everything: with each hour the conviction kept growing in Alyosha’s mind that an inevitable, terrible catastrophe was about to occur. What precisely the catastrophe consisted in, and what he would say at that moment to his brother, he himself would perhaps have been unable to define. “Let my benefactor die without me, but at least I won’t have to reproach myself all my life that I might have saved something and did not, but passed by, in a hurry to get home. In doing so, I shall be acting in accordance with his great word …

Dmitri Fyodorovich is worse than any lackey, in his behavior, and in his intelligence, and in his poverty, miss, and he’s not fit for anything, but, on the contrary, he gets honor from everybody.

I’ve been sitting here now, and do you know what I was saying to myself? If I did not believe in life, if I were to lose faith in the woman I love, if I were to lose faith in the order of things, even if I were to become convinced, on the contrary, that everything is a disorderly, damned, and perhaps devilish chaos, if I were struck even by all the horrors of human disillusionment—still I would want to live, and as long as I have bent to this cup, I will not tear myself from it until I’ve drunk it all! However, by the age of thirty, I will probably drop the cup, even if I haven’t emptied it, and walk away … I don’t know where. But until my thirtieth year, I know this for certain, my youth will overcome everything—all disillusionment, all aversion to life. I’ve asked myself many times: is there such despair in the world as could overcome this wild and perhaps indecent thirst for life in me, and have decided that apparently there is not—that is, once again, until my thirtieth year, after which I myself shall want no more, so it seems to me.

True, it’s a feature of the Karamazovs, to some extent, this thirst for life despite all; it must be sitting in you, too;

I want to live, and I do live, even if it be...

Sticky spring leaves, the blue sky—I love them, that’s all! Such things you love not with your mind, not with logic, but with your insides, your guts, you love your first young strength … Do you understand any of this blather, Alyoshka, or not?” Ivan suddenly laughed. “I understand it all too well, Ivan: to want to love with your insides, your guts—you said it beautifully, and I’m terribly glad that you want so much to live,” Alyosha exclaimed. “I think that everyone should love life before everything else in the world.” “Love life more than its meaning?” “Certainly, love it before logic, as you say, certainly before logic, and only then will I also understand its meaning.

“Are you really leaving so soon, brother?” “Yes.” “What about Dmitri and father? How will it end between them?” Alyosha said anxiously. “Don’t drag that out again! What have I got to do with it? Am I my brother Dmitri’s keeper or something?” Ivan snapped irritably, but suddenly smiled somehow bitterly. “Cain’s answer to God about his murdered brother, eh? Maybe that’s what you’re thinking at the moment? But, devil take it, I can’t really stay on here as their keeper! I’ve finished my affairs and I’m leaving.

“So you know yourself what for. Some people need one thing, but we green youths need another, we need first of all to resolve the everlasting questions, that is what concerns us. All of young Russia is talking now only about the eternal questions. Precisely now, just when all the old men have suddenly gotten into practical questions.

How have Russian boys handled things up to now? Some of them, that is. Take, for instance, some stinking local tavern. They meet there and settle down in a corner. They’ve never seen each other before in their whole lives, and when they walk out of the tavern, they won’t see each other again for forty years. Well, then, what are they going to argue about, seizing this moment in the tavern? About none other than the universal questions: is there a God, is there immortality? And those who do not believe in God, well, they will talk about socialism and anarchism, about transforming the whole of mankind according to a new order, but it’s the same damned thing, the questions are all the same, only from the other end.

You see, my dear, there was in the eighteenth century an old sinner who stated that if God did not exist, he would have to be invented: S’il n’existait pas Dieu, il faudrait l’inventer.5 And man has, indeed, invented God.