The Brothers Karamazov: Bicentennial Edition

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

“I am leaving for Moscow tomorrow, if you want to know—early tomorrow morning—and that’s it!” he said suddenly, with malice, loudly and distinctly, wondering afterwards why he had felt any need to tell this to Smerdyakov. “That’s for the best, sir,” the latter put in, as if it was just what he had been waiting for.

But Ivan Fyodorovich, much to Smerdyakov’s surprise, suddenly laughed and walked quickly through the gate, still laughing. Anyone seeing his face would certainly have concluded that he was not laughing at all out of merriment. And for the life of him he himself could not have explained what was happening to him at that moment. He moved and walked as if in spasms.

“It’s Always Interesting to Talk with an Intelligent Man”

I love this chapter title

It was already very late, but Ivan Fyodorovich was still awake and pondering. That night he went to bed late, at about two. But we will not relate the whole train of his thought, nor is it time yet for us to enter into this soul—this soul will have its turn.

Remembering this night long afterwards, Ivan Fyodorovich recalled with particular disgust how he suddenly would get up from the sofa and quietly, as though terribly afraid of being seen, open the door, go out to the head of the stairs, and listen to Fyodor Pavlovich moving around below, wandering through the downstairs rooms—he would listen for a long time, five minutes at a stretch, with a sort of strange curiosity, holding his breath, his heart pounding—and why he was doing all that, what he was listening for, he, of course, did not know himself. All his life afterwards he referred to this “action” as “loathsome,” and all his life, deep in himself, in the inmost part of his soul, he considered it the basest action of his whole life.

The old man listened to the announcement with no sign of surprise, and quite indecently forgot to feel any grief at his boy’s departure; instead he suddenly got into a great flutter, having just incidentally remembered some urgent business of his own.

“So it’s true what they say, that it’s always interesting to talk with an intelligent man,” Smerdyakov replied firmly, giving Ivan Fyodorovich a penetrating look.

*ding*

Brother Anfim, all but illiterate, quiet and taciturn, rarely speaking to anyone, the humblest of the humble, who had the look of a man who has been permanently frightened by something great and awesome that was more than his mind could sustain.

But from a very bad family, too, one can keep precious memories, if only one’s soul knows how to seek out what is precious.

Read to them, and especially to the children, of how certain brothers sold their own brother into slavery, the dear youth Joseph,11 a dreamer and a great prophet, and told their father that a wild beast had torn him, showing him his bloodstained garments. Read how afterwards the brothers went to Egypt for bread, and Joseph, now a great courtier, unrecognized by them, tormented them, accused them, seized his brother Benjamin, and all the while loving them:”I love you, and loving you, I torment you.” For all his life he constantly remembered how they had sold him to the merchants, somewhere in the hot steppe, by a well, and how he, wringing his hands, had wept and begged his brothers not to sell him into slavery in a strange land, and now, seeing them after so many years, he again loved them beyond measure, but oppressed and tormented them even as he loved them.

Only the people and their future spiritual power will convert our atheists, who have severed themselves from their own land.

We were all but proud of our drunkenness, debauchery, and bravado. I would not say we were wicked; they were all good young men, but they behaved wickedly, and I most of all.

Until one has indeed become the brother of all, there will be no brotherhood. No science or self-interest will ever enable people to share their property and their rights among themselves without offense. Each will always think his share too small, and they will keep murmuring, they will envy and destroy one another.

Everywhere now the human mind has begun laughably not to understand that a man’s true security lies not in his own solitary effort, but in the general wholeness of humanity.

“Lord!” I thought to myself, “he thinks about people’s respect at such a moment!” And I felt so much pity for him then that I believe I would have shared his lot if it would have made it easier for him. I could see that he was nearly in a frenzy. I was horrified, having understood by then, not with reason alone but with my living soul, how great was the cost of such a resolution.

For the world says: “You have needs, therefore satisfy them, for you have the same rights as the noblest and richest men. Do not be afraid to satisfy them, but even increase them”—this is the current teaching of the world. And in this they see freedom. But what comes of this right to increase one’s needs? For the rich, isolation and spiritual suicide; for the poor, envy and murder, for they have been given rights, but have not yet been shown any way of satisfying their needs.

Obedience, fasting, and prayer are laughed at, yet they alone constitute the way to real and true freedom: I cut away my superfluous and unnecessary needs, through obedience I humble and chasten my vain and proud will, and thereby, with God’s help, attain freedom of spirit, and with that, spiritual rejoicing!

I have even seen ten-year-old children in the factories: frail, sickly, stooped, and already depraved. The stuffy workshop, work all day long, depraved talk, and wine, wine—is that what the soul of such a little child needs? He needs sunshine, children’s games, bright examples all around, and to be given at least a drop of love.

I began while still in my officer’s uniform, after my duel, to speak about servants at social gatherings, and everyone, I remember, kept marveling at me: “What?” they said, “shall we sit our servants on the sofa and offer them tea?” “Why not,” I would say, “at least once in a while?” Then everyone laughed. Their question was frivolous, and my answer vague, yet I think there was some truth in it.

Love the animals: God gave them the rudiments of thought and an untroubled joy. Do not trouble it, do not torment them, do not take their joy from them, do not go against God’s purpose. Man, do not exalt yourself above the animals: they are sinless, and you, you with your grandeur, fester the earth by your appearance on it, and leave your festering trace behind you—alas, almost every one of us does!

Much on earth is concealed from US,10 but in place of it we have been granted a secret, mysterious sense of our living bond with the other world, with the higher heavenly world, and the roots of our thoughts and feelings are not here but in other worlds. That is why philosophers say it is impossible on earth to conceive the essence of things. God took seeds from other worlds and sowed them on this earth, and raised up his garden; and everything that could sprout sprouted, but it lives and grows only through its sense of being in touch with other mysterious worlds; if this sense is weakened or destroyed in you, that which has grown up in you dies. Then you become indifferent to life, and even come to hate it. So I think.

Fathers and teachers, I ask myself: “What is hell?” And I answer thus: “The suffering of being no longer able to love.”13

She considered Rakitin a most devout and religious young man—so skillful was he in manipulating everyone and presenting himself to everyone according to the wishes of each, whenever he saw the least advantage for himself.

Alyosha glanced up at him, uncovering his face, which was swollen with tears like a little child’s, but turned away at once without saying a word and again hid his face in his hands. “Ah, perhaps it’s just as well,” Father Paissy said thoughtfully, “perhaps you should weep, Christ has sent you these tears.” And he added, to himself now, “Your tender tears are a relief for your soul and will serve to gladden your dear heart.” And he moved away from Alyosha, thinking of him with love. He hastened to go, incidentally, because he felt that, looking at him, he might start weeping himself.

Nevertheless I shall frankly admit that it would be very difficult for me now to convey clearly the precise meaning of this strange and uncertain moment in the life of the hero of my story, whom I love so much and who is still so young.

To the rueful question Father Paissy addressed to Alyosha: “Or are you, too, with those of little faith?”—I could, of course, answer firmly for Alyosha: “No, he is not with those of little faith.” Moreover, it was even quite the opposite: all his dismay arose precisely because his faith was so great. But dismay there was, it did arise, and it was so tormenting that even later, long afterwards, Alyosha considered this rueful day one of the most painful and fatal days of his life.

“Your dear brother Vanechka once pronounced me a ‘giftless liberal windbag. ’ And you, too, could not help letting me know once that I was ‘dishonest’ … Very well! Now we’ll see how gifted and honest you are” (Rakitin finished the phrase to himself, in a whisper).

It was not at all to make Grushenka glad that he was leading Alyosha to her; he was a serious man and never undertook anything without the aim of profiting from it. His aim this time was twofold: first, a revengeful one—that is, to see “the disgrace of the righteous man,” the probable “fall” of Alyosha “from the saints to the sinners,” which he was already savoring in anticipation—and second, he had in mind a material aim as well, one rather profitable for himself, of which more shall be said below.

“Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies.”

The great grief in his soul absorbed all the feelings his heart might have conceived, and if he had been able at that moment to give himself a full accounting, he would have understood that he was now wearing the strongest armor against any seduction and temptation.

“Rakitin,” he suddenly said loudly and firmly, “don’t taunt me with having rebelled against my God. I don’t want to hold any anger against you, and therefore you be kinder, too. I’ve lost such a treasure as you never had, and you cannot judge me now. You’d do better to look here, at her: did you see how she spared me? I came here looking for a wicked soul—I was drawn to that, because I was low and wicked myself, but I found a true sister, I found a treasure—a loving soul … She spared me just now … I’m speaking of you, Agrafena Alexandrovna. You restored my soul just now.” Alyosha was breathless and his lips began to tremble. He stopped.

“One loves for some reason, and what has either of you done for me?” “You should love for no reason, like Alyosha.”

“Misha,” he said, “don’t be angry. You’re offended with her, but don’t be angry. Did you hear her just now? One cannot ask so much of a human soul, one should be more merciful …” Alyosha said this from an unrestrainable impulse of his heart.

But Rakitin looked at him with a sneer, and Alyosha suddenly stopped. “They just loaded you with your elder, and now you’ve fired your elder off at me, Alyoshenka, little man of God,”3 Rakitin said with a hateful smile.

Alyosha fell silent, because his breath failed him. Rakitin, despite all his anger, watched in amazement. He had never expected such a tirade from the quiet Alyosha.

Rakitin was suddenly stung, as if someone had touched him on an open wound. He had been expecting something quite different when he brought Grushenka and Alyosha together; what had happened was something other than what he had wanted so much.

It should be noted that at the time Grushenka concealed from him the last lines of the letter, which spoke with more certainty about his return.

He thirsted for this resurrection and renewal. The vile bog he had gotten stuck in of his own will burdened him too much, and, like a great many men in such cases, he believed most of all in a change of place: if only it weren’t for these people, if only it weren’t for these circumstances, if only one could fly away from this cursed place—then everything would be reborn! That was what he believed in and what he longed for.

He looked upon that past with infinite compassion, and decided with all the fire of his passion that once Grushenka told him she loved him and would marry him, a completely new Grushenka would begin at once, and together with her a completely new Dmitri Fyodorovich, with no vices now, but with virtues only: they would forgive each other and start their life quite anew.

In any case, there was much simple-heartedness here on Mitya’s part, for with all his vices this was a very simple-hearted man. Because of his simple-heartedness, by the way, he was seriously convinced that old Kuzma, preparing to depart to another world, felt sincerely repentant for his past with Grushenka, and that she had no more faithful patron and friend than this already-harmless old man.

Later, much later, when the whole catastrophe had already taken place, old Samsonov himself admitted, laughing, that he had made a fool of the “captain.” This was a spiteful, cold, and sarcastic man, full of morbid antipathies as well.

His jealousy was precisely of such a sort that, separated from the beloved woman, he at once invented all kinds of horrors about what was happening with her, and how she had gone and “betrayed” him; but, running back to her, shaken, crushed, convinced irretrievably that she had managed to betray him, with the first look at her face, at the gay, laughing, tender face of this woman, his spirits would at once revive, he would at once lose all suspicion, and with joyful shame reproach himself for his jealousy.

Mitya went into ecstasies developing his new idea, but that is what always happened to him in all his undertakings, all his sudden decisions. He gave himself passionately to every new idea.

I’ve looked at you a hundred times as you walked by, saying to myself: here is an energetic man who must go to the mines.

HE YEARNS FOR THE MINES

Strangely, some weird and unreasonable vexation suddenly boiled up in his heart because she was not there. “Not because she’s not here,” Mitya reasoned and corrected himself at once, “but because I have no way of knowing for certain whether she’s here or not.” Mitya himself later recalled that his mind at that moment was remarkably clear and took in everything to the last detail, grasped every smallest feature. But anguish, the anguish of ignorance and indecision, was growing in his heart with exceeding rapidity.

The whole of the old man’s profile, which he found so loathsome, the whole of his drooping Adam’s apple, his hooked nose, smiling in sweet expectation, his lips—all was brightly lit from the left by the slanting light of the lamp shining from the room. Terrible, furious anger suddenly boiled up in Mitya’s heart: “There he was, his rival, his tormentor, the tormentor of his life!” It was a surge of that same sudden, vengeful, and furious anger of which he had spoken, as if in anticipation, to Alyosha during their conversation in the gazebo four days earlier, in response to Alyosha’s question, “How can you say you will kill father?”

Dmitri Fyodorovich, as Perkhotin also testified later, “was not quite himself, as it were, not that he was drunk, but he seemed to be in some sort of ecstasy, quite distracted, and at the same time apparently concentrated, as if he were thinking about something, getting at something, but could not make up his mind. He was in a great hurry, responded abruptly in a very strange manner, and at moments seemed not grieved at all but even cheerful.”

Pyotr Ilyich at once ordered him to use more soap and scrub harder. It was as if, at that moment, he was gaining more and more of an upper hand over Mitya. Let us note in passing that the young man was not of a timid nature.

They also laughed, especially in the tavern, over Mitya’s own frank and public confession (of course, they did not laugh in his face; it was rather dangerous to laugh in his face)

It’s very good for you to get to know such beings, in order to learn to value many other things besides, which you will learn precisely from knowing these beings,” Alyosha observed warmly. “That will remake you more than anything.”