Dostoevsky
are introduced into this world under cover of a _gratuitous act_.
After Kirillov resolves to take his life, everything becomes a matter
of profound indifference to him. His peculiar state of mind which
sanctions and accounts for his suicide (gratuitous, but _not_ without a
motive) will leave him unmoved by the imputation of a crime others will
commit and which he will calmly suffer to be laid at his own door. Such
at least is Pyotr Stepanovitch’s belief.
Pyotr Stepanovitch imagines the crime he is planning will strengthen
the bonds between the conspirators he heads and over whom he feels his
control weakening. He reckons that each individual party to the plot,
having shared in the crime, will feel his complicity and be unable,
indeed will not dare, to break away. Who is to be sacrificed?
Pyotr Stepanovitch is still undecided. It is necessary that the victim
should present himself spontaneously.
The conspirators are met together in a large room; in the course of
conversation, the question is asked, “Can there be, even now, an
informer in our midst?” An extraordinary commotion follows this remark:
everybody begins to talk at once.
“‘Gentlemen, if that is so,’ Verhovensky went on, ‘I have compromised
myself more than anyone, and so I will ask you to answer one question,
if you care to, of course. You are all perfectly free.’
“‘What question? What question?’ every one clamoured.
“‘A question that will make it clear whether we are to remain together,
or take up our hats and go our several ways without speaking.’
“‘The question! The question!’
“‘If any one of us knew of a proposed political murder, would he, in
view of the consequences, go to give information, or would he stay at
home and await events? Opinions may differ on this point. The answer
to the question will tell us clearly whether we are to separate, or to
remain together, and for far longer than this one evening.’
“After which Pyotr Stepanovitch begins to interrogate apart several
members of this secret society. He is interrupted.
“‘It’s an unnecessary question. Every one will make the same answer.
There are no informers here.’
“‘What’s that gentleman getting up for?’ cried the girl student.
“‘That’s Shatov. What are you getting up for?’ cried the lady of the
house.
“Shatov did, in fact, stand up. He was holding his cap in his hand and
looking at Verhovensky. Apparently he wanted to say something to him,
but was hesitating. His face was pale and wrathful, but he controlled
himself. He did not say one word, but in silence walked towards the
door.
“‘Shatov, this won’t make things better for you!’ Verhovensky called
after him enigmatically.
“‘But it will for you, since you are a spy and a scoundrel!’ Shatov
shouted to him from the door as he went out.
“Shouts and exclamations again.
“‘That’s what comes of a test,’ cried a voice.”[126]
Thus the victim is marked, and by his own hand. Haste is imperative:
Shatov’s murder must anticipate his denunciation.
We must admire Dostoevsky’s art in this, because constantly carried
away in my enthusiasm to discuss his ideas, I am afraid I have
neglected all too much his wonderful skill in exposition.
At this juncture in the narrative, an astounding thing comes to pass
which raises a particular artistic problem. It is a commonplace that,
passed a certain point in the evolution of the plot, there must be
nothing to deflect attention: events must move more quickly and lead
straight to the ultimate issue. Well, this is the moment, when the
action has entered on its phase of maximum rapidity, that Dostoevsky
contrives to introduce the most startling interruptions. He is
conscious that so tense is his reader’s attention everything will
assume an importance out of all proportion. With this knowledge, he
does not hesitate to distract attention from the main course of events
by brusque modulations which develop his most cherished ideas. The very
night Shatov is destined to turn informer or be murdered, his wife,
whom he has not seen for years, suddenly reappears at his house. Her
time is at hand, but at first Kirillov does not realize her condition.
Inadequately handled, this scene could become grotesque. It ranks
amongst the finest in the book. In theatrical jargon it would be
described as a _utility_, in literature as a _cheville_, but it is
precisely one of the rarest manifestations of Dostoevsky’s artistry.
Like Pushkin he could say, “I have never treated anything lightly,”
which is the hallmark of a great artist, utilizing everything,
transforming disadvantage into opportunity. At this stage the pace
needs must slacken, and every detail that can arrest events in their
precipitancy becomes of supreme importance. The passages where
Dostoevsky describes the arrival, unannounced, of Shatov’s wife, the
conversation between husband and wife, Kirillov’s interposition, and
the prompt establishment of an intimacy between the two men, constitute
perhaps the most moving chapter in the book. We marvel anew at the
utter absence of jealousy I discussed with you on a previous occasion.
Shatov knows that his wife is going to have a child, but the father of
this child she expects is not even mentioned. Shatov is consumed with
love for this suffering creature who can find none but words that wound.
“It was only that fact [i.e. his wife’s reappearance] that saved the
scoundrels from Shatov’s carrying out his intention, and at the same
time helped them to get rid of him. To begin with, it agitated Shatov,
threw him out of his regular routine, and deprived him of his usual
clear-sightedness and caution. Any idea of his own danger would be the
last thing to enter his head at this moment when he was absorbed with
such different considerations.”[127]
But to come back to Kirillov: the time is at hand when Pyotr
Stepanovitch calculates personal advantage from the other man’s
suicide. What grounds has Kirillov for taking his own life? Pyotr
Stepanovitch questions him: he has no clear idea, and is seeking
clumsily to get at the truth. Up till the last minute, he is in terror
lest Kirillov change his mind and thus escape him. But no!
“I won’t put it off. I want to kill myself now,”[128] says Kirillov.
The conversation between Verhovensky and Kirillov is especially
obscure, obscure even in Dostoevsky’s own mind. As we have earlier
observed, Dostoevsky never expresses his ideas as ideas pure and
simple, but always through the medium of his characters who become
their interpreters. Kirillov is in a highly unusual pathological state,
for in a moment or two he is going to take his own life, and his talk
is agitated and incoherent. We are left to unravel in it the clue to
Dostoevsky’s own thought.
The idea which prompts Kirillov’s suicide is of a mystic nature and
closed to Pyotr Stepanovitch’s comprehension.
“If God exists, all is His will, and from His will I cannot escape. If
not, it’s all my will, and I am bound to show self-will.... I am bound
to show myself because the highest point of my self-will is to kill
myself with my own hands....”
“‘God is necessary and so must exist,’ said Kirillov.
“‘Well, that’s all right then,’ encouraged Pyotr Stepanovitch.
“‘But I know He doesn’t and can’t.’
“‘That’s more likely.’
“‘Surely you must understand that a man with two such ideas can’t go on
living?’
“‘Must shoot himself, you mean?’
“‘Surely you understand that one might shoot oneself for that alone?’
“‘But you won’t be the only one to kill yourself: there are lots of
suicides.’
“‘With good cause! But to do it without any cause at all, simply for
self-will, I am the only one.’
“‘He won’t shoot himself,’ flashed across Pyotr Stepanovitch’s mind
again.
“‘Do you know,’ he observed irritably, ‘if I were in your place, I
should kill someone else to show my self-will, not myself. You might
be of use. I’ll tell you whom, if you are not afraid. Then you needn’t
shoot yourself to-day, perhaps. We may come to terms.’”[129]
For a moment Pyotr Stepanovitch dreams, in the event of Kirillov’s
refusing to carry out his plan of self-destruction, of using him as
the instrument to murder Shatov, instead of merely imputing the crime
to him.
“‘To kill someone else would be the lowest point of self-will, and you
should show your whole soul in that. I am not you; I want the highest
point, and I’ll kill myself.... I am bound to show my unbelief,’ said
Kirillov, walking about the room. ‘I have no higher idea than disbelief
in God. I have all the history of mankind on my side. Man has done
nothing but invent God so as to go on living, and not kill himself:
that’s the whole of universal history up till now. I am the first one
in the whole history of mankind who would not invent God.’”[130]
Do not forget Dostoevsky’s Christianity is real. What he reveals in
Kirillov’s declaration is again a case of moral bankruptcy. Dostoevsky,
I repeat, has visions of salvation only through renunciation. But a
fresh idea has crept in to complicate his theory: to illuminate it, I
must have recourse once more to William Blake’s _Proverbs of Hell_.
“_If others had not been foolish, we should be so._” In order that we
might be spared foolishness, others consented to foolishness before us.
Into Kirillov’s half-mad brain enters the idea of sacrifice: “I will
begin and open the door and save--mankind.”
If it is necessary that Kirillov be abnormal in order to entertain such
ideas--ideas moreover which Dostoevsky does not unreservedly sanction
since they betoken insubordination--there is none the less a particle
of truth in his conception, and if it is necessary that Kirillov be
abnormal in order to entertain such ideas, it is that we also may have
them in our day, yet be in our right mind.
“‘So at last you understand!’ cried Kirillov rapturously. ‘So it can
be understood if even a fellow like you understands. Do you understand
now that salvation for all consists in proving this idea to every one?
Who will prove it? I! I can’t understand how an atheist could know that
there is no God and not kill himself on the spot. To recognize that
there is no God, and not to recognize at the same instant that one is
God oneself is an absurdity, else one would certainly kill oneself. If
you recognize it, you are sovereign, and then you won’t kill yourself,
but live in the greatest glory. But one, the first, must kill himself,
for else who will begin and prove it? So I must certainly kill myself,
to begin and prove it. Now I am only a God against my will, and I am
unhappy, because I am bound to assert my will. All are unhappy because
all are afraid to express their will. Man has hitherto been so unhappy
and so poor because he has been afraid to assert his will up to the
highest point, and has shown his self-will only in little things, like
a schoolboy.... But I will assert my will, I am bound to believe that
I don’t believe. I will begin and will make an end of it and open
the door, and save--mankind. For three years I’ve been seeking the
attribute of my Godhead and I’ve found it; the attribute of my Godhead
is self-will. That’s all I can do to prove in the highest point my
independence and my new terrible freedom. For it is very terrible,
and I am killing myself to prove my independence and my new terrible
freedom.’”[131]
Blasphemous as Kirillov’s words may appear, rest assured that
Dostoevsky, in drawing his figure, was possessed by the idea of Christ,
by the necessity of the Crucifixion as a sacrifice to redeem mankind.
If Christ had to be offered up, was it not that we, Christians, might
be such without dying His death? “_If Thou be Christ, save Thyself!_”
If Christ had saved Himself, mankind would have been lost: to save it,
He surrendered His own life.