The Brothers Karamazov

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

“I was boasting when I told Rakitin I had given away an onion, but it’s not to boast I tell you about it. It’s only a story, but it’s a nice story. I used to hear it when I was a child from Matryona, my cook, who is still with me. It’s like this. Once upon a time there was a peasant woman and a very wicked woman she was. And she died and did not leave a single good deed behind. The devils caught her and plunged her into the lake of fire. So her guardian angel stood and wondered what good deed of hers he could remember to tell to God; ‘she once pulled up an onion in her garden,’ said he, ‘and gave it to a beggar woman.’ And God answered: ‘You take that onion then, hold it out to her in the lake, and let her take hold and be pulled out. And if you can pull her out of the lake, let her come to Paradise, but if the onion breaks, then the woman must stay where she is.’ The angel ran to the woman and held out the onion to her. ‘Come,’ said he, ‘catch hold and I’ll pull you out.’ And he began cautiously pulling her out. He had just pulled her right out, when the other sinners in the lake, seeing how she was being drawn out, began catching hold of her so as to be pulled out with her. But she was a very wicked woman and she began kicking them. ‘I’m to be pulled out, not you. It’s my onion, not yours.’ As soon as she said that, the onion broke. And the woman fell into the lake and she is burning there to this day. So the angel wept and went away. So that’s the story, Alyosha; I know...

fools are made for wise men’s profit.”

“One loves people for some reason, but what have either of you done for me?” “You should love people without a reason, as Alyosha does.”

This soul is not yet at peace with itself, one must be tender with it . . . there may be a treasure in that soul .

“Perhaps my heart is only getting ready to forgive. I shall struggle with my heart. You see, Alyosha, I’ve grown to love my tears in these five years . . . Perhaps I only love my resentment, not him . . .”

He left me a thin, consumptive cry-baby of seventeen. I’ll sit by him, fascinate him and work him up. ‘Do you see what I am like now?’ I’ll say to him; ‘well, and that’s enough for you, my dear sir, there’s many a slip twixt the cup and the lip!’

“What has he said to you so special?” asked Rakitin irritably. “I can’t say, I don’t know. I don’t know what he said to me, it went straight to my heart; he has wrung my heart . . . He is the first, the only one who has pitied me, that’s what it is. Why did you not come before, you angel?” She fell on her knees before him as though in a sudden frenzy. “I’ve been waiting all my life for some one like you, I knew that some one like you would come and forgive me. I believed that, nasty as I am, some one would really love me, not only with a shameful love!”

“I only gave you an onion, nothing but a tiny little onion, that was all!”

“Well, so you’ve saved the sinner?” he laughed spitefully. “Have you turned the Magdalene into the true path? Driven out the seven devils, eh? So you see the miracles you were looking out for just now have come to pass!”

If you think about it, Father Zosima's corpse stinking led directly to this little miracle.

Within three days he left the monastery in accordance with the words of his elder, who had bidden him “sojourn in the world.”

A letter from Lise should appear here but doesn't in this edition. apparently it reads: Here is the text of Lise's letter to Alyosha, from Book VII, Chapter 4, "Cana of Galilee" (as found in the classic Constance Garnett translation, which is widely available): "My dear, kind, good Alexei Fyodorovitch, I feel that I don't love you at all, and that on the contrary I love Ivan Fyodorovitch. I have the greatest respect for him. I want to leave you, Alexei Fyodorovitch, and to give you back your word, and to ask you to release me from mine. I know I am acting dishonorably. I know it very well, but I don't want to wound you, but to do what's right. Because I really do love Ivan Fyodorovitch. I think he is a wonderful man. And I have the greatest respect for him. I think I am doing what's right. I'm afraid to make you happy, because I don't want to make you unhappy. I am very bad, Alexei Fyodorovitch. I am like a devil. And I love everything bad. I love everything that's bad in myself. It is all the time with me, this love of evil. It is a devil in me, Alexei Fyodorovitch. I am very bad, and I am glad I am so. I am afraid of you, Alexei Fyodorovitch, because you are so good. I am a great sinner. I have lied to you that I love you. I do not love you. I love only Ivan Fyodorovitch. Please forgive me, and let me go. I am so afraid, Alexei Fyodorovitch. I am so very afraid. I am afraid of you, and I am afraid of myself. I'm afraid because I don't want to do what's right. I have a tiny voice in my soul, like a tiny little spider, and it says to me: 'You are bad, very bad, you are vile, vile.' And I feel it is true, that I am vile. I am sending you a kopeck. I don't know why. Forgive me. Your Lise." Lise's strange descent into madness makes no sense, but even less without this letter.

If she were to say to him: “I’m yours; take me away,” how could he take her away? Where had he the means, the money to do it?

Strange to say, though one would have supposed there was nothing left for him but despair—for what chance had he, with nothing in the world, to raise such a sum?—yet to the very end he persisted in hoping that he would get that three thousand, that the money would somehow come to him of itself, as though it might drop from heaven. That is just how it is with people who, like Dmitri, have never had anything to do with money, except to squander what has come to them by inheritance without any effort of their own, and have no notion how money is obtained.

And one might wonder what there was in a love that had to be so watched over, what a love could be worth that needed such strenuous guarding.

“How red the whitebeam berries are!”

He knocked the signal the old man had agreed upon with Smerdyakov, twice slowly and then three times more quickly, the signal that meant “Grushenka is here!”

“Go and enjoy yourself. Tell them to dance, to make merry, ‘let the stove and cottage dance’; as we had it last time,” she kept exclaiming.

And, bending over him tenderly, she kissed his forehead. Kalganov instantly opened his eyes, looked at her, stood up, and with the most anxious air inquired where was Maximov? “So that’s who it is you want.” Grushenka laughed. “Stay with me a minute. Mitya, run and find his Maximov.”

“Be quiet, boy! If I call him a scoundrel, it doesn’t mean that I called all Poland so. One lajdak doesn’t make a Poland. Be quiet, my pretty boy, eat a sweetmeat.”

Though the fare was not recherché, it was abundant.

“Such violent and protracted epileptic fits, recurring continually for twenty-four hours, are rarely to be met with, and are of interest to science,”

don’t know how to express it. That’s just what’s made me wretched all my life, that I yearned to be honourable, that I was, so to say, a martyr to a sense of honour, seeking for it with a lantern, with the lantern of Diogenes, and yet all my life I’ve been doing filthy things like all of us, gentlemen . . . that is like me alone.

He’s not a coward, he’s the epitome of all the cowardice in the world walking on two legs.

“And I’m coming with you. I won’t leave you now for the rest of my life, I’m coming with you,” he heard close beside him Grushenka’s tender voice, thrilling with emotion. And his heart glowed, and he struggled forward towards the light, and he longed to live, to live, to go on and on, towards the new, beckoning light, and to hasten, hasten, now, at once!

“Gentlemen, we’re all cruel, we’re all monsters, we all make men weep, and mothers, and babes at the breast, but of all, let it be settled here, now, of all I am the lowest reptile! I’ve sworn to amend, and every day I’ve done the same filthy things. I understand now that such men as I need a blow, a blow of destiny to catch them as with a noose, and bind them by a force from without. Never, never should I have risen of myself!

I accept the torture of accusation, and my public shame, I want to suffer and by suffering I shall be purified.

I accept my punishment, not because I killed him, but because I meant to kill him, and perhaps I really might have killed him.

“Forgive me, Grusha, for my love, for ruining you, too, with my love.”

“Karamazov’s a riddle to me all the same. I might have made his acquaintance long ago, but I like to have a proper pride in some cases. Besides, I have a theory about him which I must work out and verify.” Kolya subsided into dignified silence. Smurov, too, was silent. Smurov, of course, worshiped Krassotkin and never dreamed of putting himself on a level with him.

Perezvon ran about in the wildest spirits, sniffing about first one side, then the other. When he met other dogs they zealously smelt each other over according to the rules of canine etiquette.

Now there’ll be a hubbub among them all day. I like to stir up fools in every class of society.

“Grown-up people go to the theatre and there the adventures of all sorts of heroes are represented—sometimes there are robbers and battles, too—and isn’t that just the same thing, in a different form, of course? And young people’s games of soldiers or robbers in their play-time are also art in its first stage. You know, they spring from the growing artistic instincts of the young. And sometimes these games are much better than performances in the theatre, the only difference is that people go there to look at the actors, while in these games the young people are the actors themselves.

Kolya was much pleased with Alyosha. What struck him most was that he treated him exactly like an equal and that he talked to him just as if he were “quite grown up.”

The present paragraph in the paper Gossip was under the heading, “The Karamazov Case at Skotoprigonyevsk.” (That, alas! was the name of our little town. I had hitherto kept it concealed.)

In case you were wondering, this is not a real town. No, Skotoprigonyevsk is not a real town in Russia. It is a completely fictional town created by Fyodor Dostoevsky for The Brothers Karamazov. As we discussed, the name itself is highly symbolic and carries significant meaning within the novel. It's derived from Russian words like "skot" (cattle) and "prigon" (a driving place or pen), suggesting a place of base instincts, materialism, and a lack of spiritual elevation. Dostoevsky chose this name specifically to reflect his thematic concerns about the human condition when divorced from higher moral and spiritual values.

“There are moments when people love crime,” said Alyosha thoughtfully. “Yes, yes! You have uttered my thought; they love crime, every one loves crime, they love it always, not at some ‘moments.’ You know, it’s as though people have made an agreement to lie about it and have lied about it ever since. They all declare that they hate evil, but secretly they all love it.”

For a woman—devil only knows what to make of a woman! I know something about them, anyway. But try acknowledging you are in fault to a woman. Say, ‘I am sorry, forgive me,’ and a shower of reproaches will follow! Nothing will make her forgive you simply and directly, she’ll humble you to the dust, bring forward things that have never happened, recall everything, forget nothing, add something of her own, and only then forgive you.

“As for the murder, you couldn’t have done that and didn’t want to, but as for wanting some one else to do it, that was just what you did want.”

For if you had a foreboding about me and yet went away, you as good as said to me, ‘You can murder my parent, I won’t hinder you!’”

They were like two enemies in love with one another.

“But why are your eyes so yellow? The whites are quite yellow. Are you so worried?” He smiled contemptuously and suddenly laughed outright.

I believe these descriptions reflect alcohol abuse. probably exacerbated by guilt or stress..

And if you come to that, does proving there’s a devil prove that there’s a God?

“You keep saying the same thing; but I had such an attack of rheumatism last year that I remember it to this day.” “The devil have rheumatism!” “Why not, if I sometimes put on fleshly form? I put on fleshly form and I take the consequences. Satan sum et nihil humanum a me alienum puto.” “What, what, Satan sum et nihil humanum . . . that’s not bad for the devil!” “I am glad I’ve pleased you at last.” “But you didn’t get that from me.” Ivan stopped suddenly, seeming struck. “That never entered my head, that’s strange.” “C’est du nouveau, n’est ce pas? This time I’ll act honestly and explain to you.

For all their indisputable intelligence, men take this farce as something serious, and that is their tragedy. They suffer, of course . . . but then they live, they live a real life, not a fantastic one, for suffering is life. Without suffering what would be the pleasure of it? It would be transformed into an endless church service; it would be holy, but tedious.

A little blonde Norman girl of twenty—a buxom, unsophisticated beauty that would make your mouth water—comes to an old priest. She bends down and whispers her sin into the grating. ‘Why, my daughter, have you fallen again already?’ cries the priest. ‘O Sancta Maria, what do I hear! Not the same man this time, how long is this going on? Aren’t you ashamed!’ ‘Ah, mon père,’ answers the sinner with tears of penitence, ‘ça lui fait tant de plaisir, et à moi si peu de peine!’ Fancy, such an answer! I drew back. It was the cry of nature, better than innocence itself, if you like. I absolved her sin on the spot and was turning to go, but I was forced to turn back. I heard the priest at the grating making an appointment with her for the evening—though he was an old man hard as flint, he fell in an instant! It was nature, the truth of nature asserted its rights! What, you are turning up your nose again? Angry again? I don’t know how to please you . . .”

Mephistopheles declared to Faust that he desired evil, but did only good.

I may remark, too, that in conversation, through absent-mindedness he often forgot the most ordinary words, which sometimes went out of his head, though he knew them perfectly. The same thing happened, though, when he spoke German, and at such times he always waved his hand before his face as though trying to catch the lost word, and no one could induce him to go on speaking till he had found the missing word.

Oh, I remember him very well, a little chap so high, left neglected by his father in the back yard, when he ran about without boots on his feet, and his little breeches hanging by one button.”

“Oh, yes, I was a young man then . . . I was . . . well, I was forty-five then, and had only just come here. And I was so sorry for the boy then; I asked myself why shouldn’t I buy him a pound of . . . a pound of what? I’ve forgotten what it’s called. A pound of what children are very fond of, what is it, what is it?” The doctor began waving his hands again. “It grows on a tree and is gathered and given to every one . . .” “Apples?” “Oh, no, no. You have a dozen of apples, not a pound . . . No, there are a lot of them, and all little. You put them in the mouth and crack.” “Nuts?” “Quite so, nuts, I say so.”

Twenty-three years passed. I am sitting one morning in my study, a white-haired old man, when there walks into the room a blooming young man, whom I should never have recognised, but he held up his finger and said, laughing, ‘Gott der Vater, Gott der Sohn, and Gott der heilige Geist. I have just arrived and have come to thank you for that pound of nuts, for no one else ever bought me a pound of nuts; you are the only one that ever did.’

And I embraced him and blessed him. And I shed tears. He laughed, but he shed tears, too . . . for the Russian often laughs when he ought to be weeping.

And, obviously only now for the first time struck by an idea, he recounted eagerly how, at his last interview with Mitya that evening under the tree, on the road to the monastery, Mitya had struck himself on the breast, “the upper part of the breast,” and had repeated several times that he had a means of regaining his honour, that that means was here, here on his breast. “I thought, when he struck himself on the breast, he meant that it was in his heart,” Alyosha continued, “that he might find in his heart strength to save himself from some awful disgrace which was awaiting him and which he did not dare confess even to me. I must confess I did think at the time that he was speaking of our father, and that the disgrace he was shuddering at was the thought of going to our father and doing some violence to him. Yet it was just then that he pointed to something on his breast, so that I remember the idea struck me at the time that the heart is not on that part of the breast, but below, and that he struck himself much too high, just below the neck, and kept pointing to that place.