Rebellion from The Brothers Karamazov (Fyodor Dostoyevsky). Trans: Constance Garnett. Project Gutenber Edition. “I must make you one confession,” Ivan
171 KB – 8 Pages
PAGE – 1 ============
!”!Book V, Chapter IV. Rebellion from The Brothers Karamazov (Fyodor Dostoyevsky) Trans: Constance Garnett Project Gutenber Edition ÒI must make you one confession,Ó Ivan began. ÒI could never understand how one can love one’s neighbors. It’s just one’s neighbors, to my mind, that one can’t love, though one might love those at a distance. I once read somewhere of John the Merciful, a saint, that when a hungry, frozen beggar came to him, he took him into his bed, held him in his arms, and began breathing into his mouth, which was putrid and loathsome from some awful disease. I am convinced that he did that from Ôself -laceration,Õ from the self -laceration of falsity, for the sake of the charity imposed by duty, as a penance laid on him. For any one to love a man, he must be hidden, for as soon as he shows his fa ce, love is gone.Ó ÒFather Zossima has talked of that more than once,Ó observed Alyosha; Òhe, too, said that the face of a man often hinders many people not practiced in love, from loving him. But yet there’s a great deal of love in mankind, and almost Chr ist -like love. I know that myself, Ivan.Ó ÒWell, I know nothing of it so far, and can’t understand it, and the innumerable mass of mankind are with me there. The question is, whether that’s due to men’s bad qualities or whether it’s inherent in their natur e. To my thinking, Christ -like love for men is a miracle impossible on earth. He was God. But we are not gods. Suppose I, for instance, suffer intensely. Another can never know how much I suffer, because he is another and not I. And what’s more, a man is rarely ready to admit another’s suffering (as though it were a distinction). Why won’t he admit it, do you think? Because I smell unpleasant, because I have a stupid face, because I once trod on his foot. Besides, there is suffering and suffering; degrading, humiliating suffering such as humbles me Ñhunger, for instance Ñmy benefactor will perhaps allow me; but when you come to higher suffering Ñfor an idea, for instance Ñhe will very rarely admit that, perhaps because my face strikes him as not at all what he fancies a man should have who suffers for an idea. And so he deprives me instantly of his favor, and not at all from badness of heart. Beggars, especially genteel beggars, ought never to show themselves, but to ask for charity through the newspaper s. One can love one’s neighbors in the abstract, or even at a distance, but at close quarters it’s almost impossible. If it were as on the stage, in the ballet, where if beggars come in, they wear silken rags and tattered lace and beg for alms dancing grac efully, then one might like looking at them. But even then we should not love them. But enough of that. I simply wanted to show you my point of view. I meant to speak of the suffering of mankind generally, but we had better confine ourselves to the sufferi ngs of the children. That reduces the scope of my argument to a tenth of what it would be. Still we’d better keep to the children, though it does weaken my case. But, in the first place, children can be loved even at close quarters, even when they are dirt y, even when they are ugly (I fancy, though, children never are ugly). The second reason why I won’t speak of grown -up people is that, besides being disgusting and unworthy of love, they have a compensation Ñthey’ve eaten the apple and know good and evil, a nd they have become Ôlike gods.Õ They go on eating it still. But the children haven’t eaten anything, and are so far innocent. Are you fond of children, Alyosha? I know you are, and you will understand why I prefer to speak of them. If they, too, suffer ho rribly on earth, they must suffer for their fathers’ sins, they must be punished for their fathers, who have eaten the apple; but that reasoning is of the other world and is incomprehensible for the heart of
PAGE – 2 ============
!#!man here on earth. The innocent must not suffer for another’s sins, and especially such innocents! You may be surprised at me, Alyosha, but I am awfully fond of children, too. And observe, cruel people, the violent, the rapacious, the Karamazovs are sometimes very fond of children. Children whi le they are quite little Ñup to seven, for instance Ñare so remote from grown -up people; they are different creatures, as it were, of a different species. I knew a criminal in prison who had, in the course of his career as a burglar, murdered whole families, including several children. But when he was in prison, he had a strange affection for them. He spent all his time at his window, watching the children playing in the prison yard. He trained one little boy to come up to his window and made great friends wi th him. You don’t know why I am telling you all this, Alyosha? My head aches and I am sad.Ó ÒYou speak with a strange air,Ó observed Alyosha uneasily, Òas though you were not quite yourself.Ó ÒBy the way, a Bulgarian I met lately in Moscow,Ó Ivan went o n, seeming not to hear his brother’s words, Òtold me about the crimes committed by Turks and Circassians in all parts of Bulgaria through fear of a general rising of the Slavs. They burn villages, murder, outrage women and children, they nail their prisone rs by the ears to the fences, leave them so till morning, and in the morning they hang them Ñall sorts of things you can’t imagine. People talk sometimes of bestial cruelty, but that’s a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so crue l as a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that’s all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he were able to do it. These Turks took a pleasure in torturing children, too; cutting the unborn child fro m the mother’s womb, and tossing babies up in the air and catching them on the points of their bayonets before their mothers’ eyes. Doing it before the mothers’ eyes was what gave zest to the amusement. Here is another scene that I thought very interesting . Imagine a trembling mother with her baby in her arms, a circle of invading Turks around her. They’ve planned a diversion: they pet the baby, laugh to make it laugh. They succeed, the baby laughs. At that moment a Turk points a pistol four inches from the baby’s face. The baby laughs with glee, holds out its little hands to the pistol, and he pulls the trigger in the baby’s face and blows out its brains. Artistic, wasn’t it? By the way, Turks are particularly fond of sweet things, they say.Ó ÒBrother, what are you driving at?Ó asked Alyosha. ÒI think if the devil doesn’t exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.Ó ÒJust as he did God, then?Ó observed Alyosha. Ò!ÔIt’s wonderful how you can turn wor ds,Õ as Polonius says in Hamlet ,Ó laughed Ivan. ÒYou turn my words against me. Well, I am glad. Yours must be a fine God, if man created Him in his image and likeness. You asked just now what I was driving at. You see, I am fond of collecting certain facts , and, would you believe, I even copy anecdotes of a certain sort from newspapers and books, and I’ve already got a fine collection. The Turks, of course, have gone into it, but they are foreigners. I have specimens from home that are even better than the Turks. You know we prefer beating Ñrods and scourges Ñthat’s our national institution.
PAGE – 3 ============
!$!Nailing ears is unthinkable for us, for we are, after all, Europeans. But the rod and the scourge we have always with us and they cannot be taken from us. Abroad now they scarcely do any beating. Manners are more humane, or laws have been passed, so that they don’t dare to flog men now. But they make up for it in another way just as national as ours. And so national that it would be practically impossible among us, though I believe we are being inoculated with it, since the religious movement began in our aristocracy. I have a charming pamphlet, translated from the French, describing how, quite recently, five years ago, a murderer, Richard, was executed Ña young man, I believ e, of three and twenty, who repented and was converted to the Christian faith at the very scaffold. This Richard was an illegitimate child who was given as a child of six by his parents to some shepherds on the Swiss mountains. They brought him up to work for them. He grew up like a little wild beast among them. The shepherds taught him nothing, and scarcely fed or clothed him, but sent him out at seven to herd the flock in cold and wet, and no one hesitated or scrupled to treat him so. Quite the contrary, they thought they had every right, for Richard had been given to them as a chattel, and they did not even see the necessity of feeding him. Richard himself describes how in those years, like the Prodigal Son in the Gospel, he longed to eat of the mash give n to the pigs, which were fattened for sale. But they wouldn’t even give him that, and beat him when he stole from the pigs. And that was how he spent all his childhood and his youth, till he grew up and was strong enough to go away and be a thief . The savage began to earn his living as a day laborer in Geneva. He drank what he earned, he lived like a brute, and finished by killing and robbing an old man. He was caught, tried, and condemned to death. They are not sentimentalists there. And in priso n he was immediately surrounded by pastors, members of Christian brotherhoods, philanthropic ladies, and the like. They taught him to read and write in prison, and expounded the Gospel to him. They exhorted him, worked upon him, drummed at him incessantly, till at last he solemnly confessed his crime. He was converted. He wrote to the court himself that he was a monster, but that in the end God had vouchsafed him light and shown grace. All Geneva was in excitement about him Ñall philanthropic and religious G eneva. All the aristocratic and well -bred society of the town rushed to the prison, kissed Richard and embraced him; ÔYou are our brother, you have found grace.Õ And Richard does nothing but weep with emotion, ÔYes, I’ve found grace! All my youth and child hood I was glad of pigs’ food, but now even I have found grace. I am dying in the Lord.Õ ÔYes, Richard, die in the Lord; you have shed blood and must die. Though it’s not your fault that you knew not the Lord, when you coveted the pigs’ food and were beate n for stealing it (which was very wrong of you, for stealing is forbidden); but you’ve shed blood and you must die.Õ And on the last day, Richard, perfectly limp, did nothing but cry and repeat every minute: ÔThis is my happiest day. I am going to the Lord .Õ ÔYes,Õ cry the pastors and the judges and philanthropic ladies. ÔThis is the happiest day of your life, for you are going to the Lord!Õ They all walk or drive to the scaffold in procession behind the prison van. At the scaffold they call to Richard: ÔDi e, brother, die in the Lord, for even thou hast found grace!Õ And so, covered with his brothers’ kisses, Richard is dragged on to the scaffold, and led to the guillotine. And they chopped off his head in brotherly fashion, because he had found grace. Yes, that’s characteristic. That pamphlet is translated into Russian by some Russian philanthropists of aristocratic rank and evangelical aspirations, and has been distributed gratis for the enlightenment of the people. The case of Richard is interesting becaus e it’s national. Though to us it’s absurd to cut off a man’s head, because he has become our brother and has found grace, yet we have our own speciality, which is all but worse. Our historical pastime is the direct satisfaction of inflicting pain. There are lines in Nekrassov describing how a peasant lashes a horse on the eyes, Ôon its meek eyes,Õ every one
PAGE – 4 ============
!%!must have seen it. It’s peculiarly Russian. He describes how a feeble little nag has foundered under too heavy a load and cannot move. The peas ant beats it, beats it savagely, beats it at last not knowing what he is doing in the intoxication of cruelty, thrashes it mercilessly over and over again. ÔHowever weak you are, you must pull, if you die for it.Õ The nag strains, and then he begins lashin g the poor defenseless creature on its weeping, on its Ômeek eyes.Õ The frantic beast tugs and draws the load, trembling all over, gasping for breath, moving sideways, with a sort of unnatural spasmodic action Ñit’s awful in Nekrassov. But that’s only a hor se, and God has given horses to be beaten. So the Tatars have taught us, and they left us the knout as a remembrance of it. But men, too, can be beaten. A well -educated, cultured gentleman and his wife beat their own child with a birch -rod, a girl of seven . I have an exact account of it. The papa was glad that the birch was covered with twigs. ÔIt stings more,Õ said he, and so he began stinging his daughter. I know for a fact there are people who at every blow are worked up to sensuality, to literal sensual ity, which increases progressively at every blow they inflict. They beat for a minute, for five minutes, for ten minutes, more often and more savagely. The child screams. At last the child cannot scream, it gasps, ÔDaddy! daddy!Õ By some diabolical unseeml y chance the case was brought into court. A counsel is engaged. The Russian people have long called a barrister Ôa conscience for hire.Õ The counsel protests in his client’s defense. ÔIt’s such a simple thing,Õ he says, Ôan everyday domestic event. A fathe r corrects his child. To our shame be it said, it is brought into court.Õ The jury, convinced by him, give a favorable verdict. The public roars with delight that the torturer is acquitted. Ah, pity I wasn’t there! I would have proposed to raise a subscrip tion in his honor! Charming pictures. ÒBut I’ve still better things about children. I’ve collected a great, great deal about Russian children, Alyosha. There was a little girl of five who was hated by her father and mother, Ômost worthy and respectable peo ple, of good education and breeding.Õ You see, I must repeat again, it is a peculiar characteristic of many people, this love of torturing children, and children only. To all other types of humanity these torturers behave mildly and benevolently, like cultivated and humane Europeans; but they are very fond of tormenting children, even fond of children themselves in that sense. It’s just their defenselessness that tempts the tormentor, just the angelic confidence of the child who has no refuge and n o appeal, that sets his vile blood on fire. In every man, of course, a demon lies hidden Ñthe demon of rage, the demon of lustful heat at the screams of the tortured victim, the demon of lawlessness let off the chain, the demon of diseases that follow on vi ce, gout, kidney disease, and so on. ÒThis poor child of five was subjected to every possible torture by those cultivated parents. They beat her, thrashed her, kicked her for no reason till her body was one bruise. Then, they went to greater refinements of cruelty Ñshut her up all night in the cold and frost in a privy, and because she didn’t ask to be taken up at night (as though a child of five sleeping its angelic, sound sleep could be trained to wake and ask), they smeared her face and filled her mouth w ith excrement, and it was her mother, her mother did this. And that mother could sleep, hearing the poor child’s groans! Can you understand why a little creature, who can’t even understand what’s done to her, should beat her little aching heart with her ti ny fist in the dark and the cold, and weep her meek unresentful tears to dear, kind God to protect her? Do you understand that, friend and brother, you pious and humble novice? Do you understand why this infamy must be and is permitted? Without it, I am to ld, man could not have existed on earth, for he could not have known good and evil. Why should he know that
PAGE – 5 ============
!&!diabolical good and evil when it costs so much? Why, the whole world of knowledge is not worth that child’s prayer to Ôdear, kind GodÕ! I say nothin g of the sufferings of grown -up people, they have eaten the apple, damn them, and the devil take them all! But these little ones! I am making you suffer, Alyosha, you are not yourself. I’ll leave off if you like.Ó ÒNever mind. I want to suffer too,Ó mutter ed Alyosha. ÒOne picture, only one more, because it’s so curious, so characteristic, and I have only just read it in some collection of Russian antiquities. I’ve forgotten the name. I must look it up. It was in the darkest days of serfdom at the b eginning of the century, and long live the Liberator of the People! There was in those days a general of aristocratic connections, the owner of great estates, one of those men Ñsomewhat exceptional, I believe, even then Ñwho, retiring from the service into a life of leisure, are convinced that they’ve earned absolute power over the lives of their subjects. There were such men then. So our general, settled on his property of two thousand souls, lives in pomp, and domineers over his poor neighbors as though the y were dependents and buffoons. He has kennels of hundreds of hounds and nearly a hundred dog -boys Ñall mounted, and in uniform. One day a serf -boy, a little child of eight, threw a stone in play and hurt the paw of the general’s favorite hound. ÔWhy is my favorite dog lame?Õ He is told that the boy threw a stone that hurt the dog’s paw. ÔSo you did it.Õ The general looked the child up and down. ÔTake him.Õ He was taken Ñtaken from his mother and kept shut up all night. Early that morning the general comes ou t on horseback, with the hounds, his dependents, dog -boys, and huntsmen, all mounted around him in full hunting parade. The servants are summoned for their edification, and in front of them all stands the mother of the child. The child is brought from the lock -up. It’s a gloomy, cold, foggy autumn day, a capital day for hunting. The general orders the child to be undressed; the child is stripped naked. He shivers, numb with terror, not daring to cry. ÔMake him run,Õ commands the general. ÔRun! run!Õ shou t the dog -boys. The boy runs. ÔAt him!Õ yells the general, and he sets the whole pack of hounds on the child. The hounds catch him, and tear him to pieces before his mother’s eyes! I believe the general was afterwards declared incapable of administer ing his estates. Well Ñwhat did he deserve? To be shot? To be shot for the satisfaction of our moral feelings? Speak, Alyosha!Ó ÒTo be shot,Ó murmured Alyosha, lifting his eyes to Ivan with a pale, twisted smile. ÒBravo!Ó cried Ivan, delighted. ÒIf even you say so. You’re a pretty monk! So there is a little devil sitting in your heart, Alyosha Karamazov!Ó ÒWhat I said was absurd, but ÑÓ ÒThat’s just the point, that ÔbutÕ!Ó cried Ivan. ÒLet me tell you, novice, that the absurd is only too necessary on earth. The world stands on absurdities, and perhaps nothing would have come to pass in it without them. We know what we know!Ó ÒWhat do you know?Ó ÒI understand nothing,Ó Ivan went on, as though in delirium. ÒI don’t want to understand anything now. I want to stick to the fact. I made up my mind long ago not to understand. If
PAGE – 6 ============
!’!I try to understand anything, I shall be false to the fact, and I have determined to stick to the fact.Ó ÒWhy are you trying me?Ó Alyosha cried, with sudden distress. ÒWill you say what you mean at last?Ó ÒOf course, I will; that’s what I’ve been leading up to. You are dear to me, I don’t want to let you go, and I won’t give you up to your Zossima.Ó Ivan for a minute was silent, his face became all at once very sad. ÒListen! I took the case of children only to make my case clearer. Of the other tears of humanity with which the earth is soaked from its crust to its center, I will say nothing. I have narrowed my subject on purpose. I am a bug, and I recognize in all humi lity that I cannot understand why the world is arranged as it is. Men are themselves to blame, I suppose; they were given paradise, they wanted freedom, and stole fire from heaven, though they knew they would become unhappy, so there is no need to pity the m. With my pitiful, earthly, Euclidian understanding, all I know is that there is suffering and that there are none guilty; that cause follows effect, simply and directly; that everything flows and finds its level Ñbut that’s only Euclidian nonsense, I know that, and I can’t consent to live by it! What comfort is it to me that there are none guilty and that cause follows effect simply and directly, and that I know it? ÑI must have justice, or I will destroy myself. And not justice in some remote infinite time and space, but here on earth, and that I could see myself. I have believed in it. I want to see it, and if I am dead by then, let me rise again, for if it all happens without me, it will be too unfair. Surely I haven’t suffered, simply that I, my crimes a nd my sufferings, may manure the soil of the future harmony for somebody else. I want to see with my own eyes the hind lie down with the lion and the victim rise up and embrace his murderer. I want to be there when every one suddenly understands what it has all been for. All the religions of the world are built on this longing, and I am a believer. But then there are the children, and what am I to do about them? That’s a question I can’t answer. For the hundredth time I repeat, there are numbers of questions, but I’ve only taken the children, because in their case what I mean is so unanswerably clear. Listen! If all must suffer to pay for the eternal harmony, what have children to do with it, tell me, please? It’s beyond all comprehension why they s hould suffer, and why they should pay for the harmony. Why should they, too, furnish material to enrich the soil for the harmony of the future? I understand solidarity in sin among men. I understand solidarity in retribution, too; but there can be no such solidarity with children. And if it is really true that they must share responsibility for all their fathers’ crimes, such a truth is not of this world and is beyond my comprehension. Some jester will say, perhaps, that the child would have grown up and ha ve sinned, but you see he didn’t grow up, he was torn to pieces by the dogs, at eight years old. Oh, Alyosha, I am not blaspheming! I understand, of course, what an upheaval of the universe it will be, when everything in heaven and earth blends in one hymn of praise and everything that lives and has lived cries aloud: ÔThou art just, O Lord, for Thy ways are revealed.Õ When the mother embraces the fiend who threw her child to the dogs, and all three cry aloud with tears, ÔThou art just, O Lord!Õ then, of co urse, the crown of knowledge will be reached and all will be made clear. But what pulls me up here is that I can’t accept that harmony. And while I am on earth, I make haste to take my own measures. You see, Alyosha, perhaps it really may happen that if I live to that moment, or rise again to see it, I, too, perhaps, may cry aloud
PAGE – 8 ============
!)!been wondering all the time how it was you did not bring Him in before, for usually all arguments on your side put Him in the foreground. Do you know, Alyosha Ñdon’t laugh! I made a poem about a year ago. If you can waste another ten minutes on me, I’ll tell it to you.Ó ÒYou wrote a poem?Ó ÒOh, no, I didn’t write it,Ó laughed Ivan, Òand I’ve never written two lines of poetry in my life. But I made up this poem in pros e and I remembered it. I was carried away when I made it up. You will be my first reader Ñthat is listener. Why should an author forego even one listener?Ó smiled Ivan. ÒShall I tell it to you?Ó ÒI am all attention,Ó said Alyosha. ÒMy poem is called ÔThe Gr and InquisitorÕ; it’s a ridiculous thing, but I want to tell it to you.Ó
171 KB – 8 Pages