The Brothers Karamazov

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Indeed, I always feel when I meet people that I am lower than all, and that they all take me for a buffoon. So I say, ‘Let me really play the buffoon.

“You have known for a long time what you must do. You have sense enough: don’t give way to drunkenness and incontinence of speech; don’t give way to sensual lust; and, above all, to the love of money. And close your taverns. If you can’t close all, at least two or three. And, above all—don’t lie.”

Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to passions and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himself.

It is a disease, I was told, arising from exhausting toil too soon after hard, abnormal, and unassisted labour in childbirth, and from the hopeless misery, from beatings, and so on, which some women were not able to endure like others.

Lamentations comfort only by lacerating the heart still more. Such grief does not desire consolation. It feeds on the sense of its hopelessness. Lamentations spring only from the constant craving to reopen the wound.

Love is such a priceless treasure that you can redeem the whole world by it, and expiate not only your own sins but the sins of others.”

“By the experience of active love. Strive to love your neighbor actively and indefatigably. In as far as you advance in love you will grow surer of the reality of God and of the immortality of your soul. If you attain to perfect self-forgetfulness in the love of your neighbor, then you will believe without doubt, and no doubt can possibly enter your soul. This has been tried. This is certain.”

In short, I am a hired servant, I expect my payment at once—that is, praise, and the repayment of love with love. Otherwise I am incapable of loving any one.”

The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular.

In my dreams,’ he said, ‘I have often come to making enthusiastic schemes for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually have faced crucifixion if it had been suddenly necessary; and yet I am incapable of living in the same room with any one for two days together, as I know by experience.

I am sorry I can say nothing more consoling to you, for love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all. Men will even give their lives if only the ordeal does not last long but is soon over, with all looking on and applauding as though on the stage.

“Why didn’t you go away just now, after the ‘courteously kissing’? Why did you consent to remain in such unseemly company? It was because you felt insulted and aggrieved, and you remained to vindicate yourself by showing off your intelligence. Now you won’t go till you’ve displayed your intellect to them.”

The latter, at last, answered him, not condescendingly, as Alyosha had feared, but with modesty and reserve, with evident goodwill and apparently without the slightest arrière-pensée.

The socialist who is a Christian is more to be dreaded than a socialist who is an atheist.’

“European Liberals in general, and even our liberal dilettanti, often mix up the final results of socialism with those of Christianity.

Ivan Fyodorovitch added in parenthesis that the whole natural law lies in that faith, and that if you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up. Moreover, nothing then would be immoral, everything would be lawful, even cannibalism. That’s not all. He ended by asserting that for every individual, like ourselves, who does not believe in God or immortality, the moral law of nature must immediately be changed into the exact contrary of the former religious law, and that egoism, even to crime, must become not only lawful but even recognised as the inevitable, the most rational, even honourable outcome of his position.

“Excuse me,” Dmitri cried suddenly; “if I’ve heard aright, crime must not only be permitted but even recognised as the inevitable and the most rational outcome of his position for every infidel! Is that so or not?” “Quite so,” said Father Païssy. “I’ll remember it.”

“Is that really your conviction as to the consequences of the disappearance of the faith in immortality?” the elder asked Ivan suddenly. “Yes. That was my contention. There is no virtue if there is no immortality.” “You are blessed in believing that, or else most unhappy.” “Why unhappy?” Ivan asked smiling. “Because, in all probability you don’t believe yourself in the immortality of your soul, nor in what you have written yourself in your article on Church jurisdiction.” “Perhaps you are right! . . . But I wasn’t altogether joking,” Ivan suddenly and strangely confessed, flushing quickly.

You know that that is the peculiarity of your heart, and all its suffering is due to it. But thank the Creator who has given you a lofty heart capable of such suffering; of thinking and seeking higher things, for our dwelling is in the heavens. God grant that your heart will attain the answer on earth, and may God bless your path.”

“Speak without buffoonery, and don’t begin by insulting the members of your family,” answered the elder, in a faint, exhausted voice. He was obviously getting more and more fatigued, and his strength was failing.

With old liars who have been acting all their lives there are moments when they enter so completely into their part that they tremble or shed tears of emotion in earnest, although at that very moment, or a second later, they are able to whisper to themselves, “You know you are lying, you shameless old sinner! You’re acting now, in spite of your ‘holy’ wrath.”

She fell perhaps in her youth, ruined by her environment. But she loved much, and Christ himself forgave the woman ‘who loved much.’” “It was not for such love Christ forgave her,” broke impatiently from the gentle Father Iosif. “Yes, it was for such, monks, it was! You save your souls here, eating cabbage, and think you are the righteous. You eat a gudgeon a day, and you think you bribe God with gudgeon.” “This is unendurable!” was heard on all sides in the cell.

Gentlemen, one man has the heart of Alexander of Macedon and another the heart of the little dog Fido. Mine is that of the little dog Fido.

Remember my words, for although I shall talk with you again, not only my days but my hours are numbered.”

These very honest but passionate people have a line which mustn’t be crossed. If it were, he’d run at your father with a knife. But your father’s a drunken and abandoned old sinner, who can never draw the line—if they both let themselves go, they’ll both come to grief.”

Do you know, I simply wonder at you, Alyosha, how you can have kept your purity. You’re a Karamazov too, you know! In your family sensuality is carried to a disease.

“Grushenka? No, brother, he doesn’t despise her. Since he has openly abandoned his betrothed for her, he doesn’t despise her.

A man will fall in love with some beauty, with a woman’s body, or even with a part of a woman’s body (a sensualist can understand that), and he’ll abandon his own children for her, sell his father and mother, and his country, Russia, too. If he’s honest, he’ll steal; if he’s humane, he’ll murder; if he’s faithful, he’ll deceive.

You’re a sensualist from your father, a crazy saint from your mother.

Do you know, Grushenka has been begging me to bring you along. ‘I’ll pull off his cassock,’ she says.

Your brother Ivan writes theological articles in joke, for some idiotic, unknown motive of his own, though he’s an atheist, and he admits it’s a fraud himself—that’s your brother Ivan. He’s trying to get Mitya’s betrothed for himself, and I fancy he’ll succeed, too. And what’s more, it’s with Mitya’s consent. For Mitya will surrender his betrothed to him to be rid of her, and escape to Grushenka.

And they’ll come into collision, the precious father and son, on that path! But Grushenka favors neither of them, she’s still playing with them, and teasing them both, considering which she can get most out of. For though she could filch a lot of money from the papa he wouldn’t marry her, and maybe he’ll turn stingy in the end, and keep his purse shut. That’s where Mitya’s value comes in; he has no money, but he’s ready to marry her.

“Oh, yes, I’d forgotten she was a relation of yours.” “A relation! That Grushenka a relation of mine!” cried Rakitin, turning crimson. “Are you mad? You’re out of your mind!” “Why, isn’t she a relation of yours? I heard so.” “Where can you have heard it?

“I may have reasons of my own for visiting her. That’s not your business. But as for relationship, your brother, or even your father, is more likely to make her yours than mine.

Miüsov, as a man of breeding and delicacy, could not but feel some inward qualms, when he reached the Father Superior’s with Ivan: he felt ashamed of having lost his temper. He felt that he ought to have disdained that despicable wretch, Fyodor Pavlovitch, too much to have been upset by him in Father Zossima’s cell, and so to have forgotten himself.

I won’t argue, I’ll fall in with everything, I’ll win them by politeness, and . . . and . . . show them that I’ve nothing to do with that Æsop, that buffoon, that Pierrot, and have merely been taken in over this affair, just as they have.”

“I sincerely deplore his absence. Perhaps at our table he might have learnt to like us, and we him.

It was at this moment that Fyodor Pavlovitch played his last prank.

“I always feel when I meet people that I am lower than all, and that they all take me for a buffoon; so I say let me play the buffoon, for you are, every one of you, stupider and lower than I.”

“Well, there is no rehabilitating myself now. So let me shame them for all I am worth. I will show them I don’t care what they think—that’s all!”

“No! this I cannot endure!” he cried. “I absolutely cannot! and . . . I certainly cannot!”

Allow me, Father Superior, though I am a buffoon and play the buffoon, yet I am the soul of honour, and I want to speak my mind.

A kiss on the lips and a dagger in the heart,

It must be noted again that our monastery never had played any great part in his life, and he never had shed a bitter tear owing to it. But he was so carried away by his simulated emotion, that he was for one moment almost believing it himself. He was so touched he was almost weeping. But at that very instant, he felt that it was time to draw back.

After a pause of two minutes, looking askance at his son, “Why, it was you got up all this monastery business. You urged it, you approved of it. Why are you angry now?” “You’ve talked rot enough. You might rest a bit now,” Ivan snapped sullenly.

“I understand what duty means, Grigory Vassilyevitch, but why it’s our duty to stay here I never shall understand,” Marfa answered firmly.

“Well, don’t understand then. But so it shall be. And you hold your tongue.”

What he needed was to feel that there was another man, an old and tried friend, that he might call him in his sick moments merely to look at his face, or, perhaps, exchange some quite irrelevant words with him.

The baby had six fingers. Grigory was so crushed by this, that he was not only silent till the day of the christening, but kept away in the garden.

Going into the cottage where the clergy were assembled and the visitors had arrived, including Fyodor Pavlovitch, who was to stand godfather, he suddenly announced that the baby “ought not to be christened at all.” He announced this quietly, briefly, forcing out his words, and gazing with dull intentness at the priest. “Why not?” asked the priest with good-humoured surprise. “Because it’s a dragon,” muttered Grigory. “A dragon? What dragon?” Grigory did not speak for some time. “It’s a confusion of nature,” he muttered vaguely, but firmly, and obviously unwilling to say more.