The Brothers Karamazov
“He wants to write an article about me, about my case, and so begin his
literary career. That’s what he comes for; he said so himself. He wants
to prove some theory. He wants to say ‘he couldn’t help murdering his
father, he was corrupted by his environment,’ and so on. He explained
it all to me. He is going to put in a tinge of Socialism, he says. But
there, damn the fellow, he can put in a tinge if he likes, I don’t
care. He can’t bear Ivan, he hates him. He’s not fond of you, either.
But I don’t turn him out, for he is a clever fellow. Awfully conceited,
though. I said to him just now, ‘The Karamazovs are not blackguards,
but philosophers; for all true Russians are philosophers, and though
you’ve studied, you are not a philosopher—you are a low fellow.’ He
laughed, so maliciously. And I said to him, ‘_De ideabus non est
disputandum_.’ Isn’t that rather good? I can set up for being a
classic, you see!” Mitya laughed suddenly.
“Why is it all over with you? You said so just now,” Alyosha
interposed.
“Why is it all over with me? H’m!... The fact of it is ... if you take
it as a whole, I am sorry to lose God—that’s why it is.”
“What do you mean by ‘sorry to lose God’?”
“Imagine: inside, in the nerves, in the head—that is, these nerves are
there in the brain ... (damn them!) there are sort of little tails, the
little tails of those nerves, and as soon as they begin quivering ...
that is, you see, I look at something with my eyes and then they begin
quivering, those little tails ... and when they quiver, then an image
appears ... it doesn’t appear at once, but an instant, a second, passes
... and then something like a moment appears; that is, not a
moment—devil take the moment!—but an image; that is, an object, or an
action, damn it! That’s why I see and then think, because of those
tails, not at all because I’ve got a soul, and that I am some sort of
image and likeness. All that is nonsense! Rakitin explained it all to
me yesterday, brother, and it simply bowled me over. It’s magnificent,
Alyosha, this science! A new man’s arising—that I understand.... And
yet I am sorry to lose God!”
“Well, that’s a good thing, anyway,” said Alyosha.
“That I am sorry to lose God? It’s chemistry, brother, chemistry!
There’s no help for it, your reverence, you must make way for
chemistry. And Rakitin does dislike God. Ough! doesn’t he dislike Him!
That’s the sore point with all of them. But they conceal it. They tell
lies. They pretend. ‘Will you preach this in your reviews?’ I asked
him. ‘Oh, well, if I did it openly, they won’t let it through,’ he
said. He laughed. ‘But what will become of men then?’ I asked him,
‘without God and immortal life? All things are lawful then, they can do
what they like?’ ‘Didn’t you know?’ he said laughing, ‘a clever man can
do what he likes,’ he said. ‘A clever man knows his way about, but
you’ve put your foot in it, committing a murder, and now you are
rotting in prison.’ He says that to my face! A regular pig! I used to
kick such people out, but now I listen to them. He talks a lot of
sense, too. Writes well. He began reading me an article last week. I
copied out three lines of it. Wait a minute. Here it is.”
Mitya hurriedly pulled out a piece of paper from his pocket and read:
“‘In order to determine this question, it is above all essential to
put one’s personality in contradiction to one’s reality.’ Do you
understand that?”
“No, I don’t,” said Alyosha. He looked at Mitya and listened to him
with curiosity.
“I don’t understand either. It’s dark and obscure, but intellectual.
‘Every one writes like that now,’ he says, ‘it’s the effect of their
environment.’ They are afraid of the environment. He writes poetry,
too, the rascal. He’s written in honor of Madame Hohlakov’s foot. Ha ha
ha!”
“I’ve heard about it,” said Alyosha.
“Have you? And have you heard the poem?”
“No.”
“I’ve got it. Here it is. I’ll read it to you. You don’t know—I haven’t
told you—there’s quite a story about it. He’s a rascal! Three weeks ago
he began to tease me. ‘You’ve got yourself into a mess, like a fool,
for the sake of three thousand, but I’m going to collar a hundred and
fifty thousand. I am going to marry a widow and buy a house in
Petersburg.’ And he told me he was courting Madame Hohlakov. She hadn’t
much brains in her youth, and now at forty she has lost what she had.
‘But she’s awfully sentimental,’ he says; ‘that’s how I shall get hold
of her. When I marry her, I shall take her to Petersburg and there I
shall start a newspaper.’ And his mouth was simply watering, the beast,
not for the widow, but for the hundred and fifty thousand. And he made
me believe it. He came to see me every day. ‘She is coming round,’ he
declared. He was beaming with delight. And then, all of a sudden, he
was turned out of the house. Perhotin’s carrying everything before him,
bravo! I could kiss the silly old noodle for turning him out of the
house. And he had written this doggerel. ‘It’s the first time I’ve
soiled my hands with writing poetry,’ he said. ‘It’s to win her heart,
so it’s in a good cause. When I get hold of the silly woman’s fortune,
I can be of great social utility.’ They have this social justification
for every nasty thing they do! ‘Anyway it’s better than your Pushkin’s
poetry,’ he said, ‘for I’ve managed to advocate enlightenment even in
that.’ I understand what he means about Pushkin, I quite see that, if
he really was a man of talent and only wrote about women’s feet. But
wasn’t Rakitin stuck up about his doggerel! The vanity of these
fellows! ‘On the convalescence of the swollen foot of the object of my
affections’—he thought of that for a title. He’s a waggish fellow.
A captivating little foot,
Though swollen and red and tender!
The doctors come and plasters put,
But still they cannot mend her.
Yet, ’tis not for her foot I dread—
A theme for Pushkin’s muse more fit—
It’s not her foot, it is her head:
I tremble for her loss of wit!
For as her foot swells, strange to say,
Her intellect is on the wane—
Oh, for some remedy I pray
That may restore both foot and brain!
He is a pig, a regular pig, but he’s very arch, the rascal! And he
really has put in a progressive idea. And wasn’t he angry when she
kicked him out! He was gnashing his teeth!”
“He’s taken his revenge already,” said Alyosha. “He’s written a
paragraph about Madame Hohlakov.”
And Alyosha told him briefly about the paragraph in _Gossip_.
“That’s his doing, that’s his doing!” Mitya assented, frowning. “That’s
him! These paragraphs ... I know ... the insulting things that have
been written about Grushenka, for instance.... And about Katya, too....
H’m!”
He walked across the room with a harassed air.
“Brother, I cannot stay long,” Alyosha said, after a pause. “To-morrow
will be a great and awful day for you, the judgment of God will be
accomplished ... I am amazed at you, you walk about here, talking of I
don’t know what ...”
“No, don’t be amazed at me,” Mitya broke in warmly. “Am I to talk of
that stinking dog? Of the murderer? We’ve talked enough of him. I don’t
want to say more of the stinking son of Stinking Lizaveta! God will
kill him, you will see. Hush!”
He went up to Alyosha excitedly and kissed him. His eyes glowed.
“Rakitin wouldn’t understand it,” he began in a sort of exaltation;
“but you, you’ll understand it all. That’s why I was thirsting for you.
You see, there’s so much I’ve been wanting to tell you for ever so
long, here, within these peeling walls, but I haven’t said a word about
what matters most; the moment never seems to have come. Now I can wait
no longer. I must pour out my heart to you. Brother, these last two
months I’ve found in myself a new man. A new man has risen up in me. He
was hidden in me, but would never have come to the surface, if it
hadn’t been for this blow from heaven. I am afraid! And what do I care
if I spend twenty years in the mines, breaking ore with a hammer? I am
not a bit afraid of that—it’s something else I am afraid of now: that
that new man may leave me. Even there, in the mines, under-ground, I
may find a human heart in another convict and murderer by my side, and
I may make friends with him, for even there one may live and love and
suffer. One may thaw and revive a frozen heart in that convict, one may
wait upon him for years, and at last bring up from the dark depths a
lofty soul, a feeling, suffering creature; one may bring forth an
angel, create a hero! There are so many of them, hundreds of them, and
we are all to blame for them. Why was it I dreamed of that ‘babe’ at
such a moment? ‘Why is the babe so poor?’ That was a sign to me at that
moment. It’s for the babe I’m going. Because we are all responsible for
all. For all the ‘babes,’ for there are big children as well as little
children. All are ‘babes.’ I go for all, because some one must go for
all. I didn’t kill father, but I’ve got to go. I accept it. It’s all
come to me here, here, within these peeling walls. There are numbers of
them there, hundreds of them underground, with hammers in their hands.
Oh, yes, we shall be in chains and there will be no freedom, but then,
in our great sorrow, we shall rise again to joy, without which man
cannot live nor God exist, for God gives joy: it’s His privilege—a
grand one. Ah, man should be dissolved in prayer! What should I be
underground there without God? Rakitin’s laughing! If they drive God
from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground. One cannot exist in
prison without God; it’s even more impossible than out of prison. And
then we men underground will sing from the bowels of the earth a
glorious hymn to God, with Whom is joy. Hail to God and His joy! I love
Him!”
Mitya was almost gasping for breath as he uttered his wild speech. He
turned pale, his lips quivered, and tears rolled down his cheeks.
“Yes, life is full, there is life even underground,” he began again.
“You wouldn’t believe, Alexey, how I want to live now, what a thirst
for existence and consciousness has sprung up in me within these
peeling walls. Rakitin doesn’t understand that; all he cares about is
building a house and letting flats. But I’ve been longing for you. And
what is suffering? I am not afraid of it, even if it were beyond
reckoning. I am not afraid of it now. I was afraid of it before. Do you
know, perhaps I won’t answer at the trial at all.... And I seem to have
such strength in me now, that I think I could stand anything, any
suffering, only to be able to say and to repeat to myself every moment,
‘I exist.’ In thousands of agonies—I exist. I’m tormented on the
rack—but I exist! Though I sit alone on a pillar—I exist! I see the
sun, and if I don’t see the sun, I know it’s there. And there’s a whole
life in that, in knowing that the sun is there. Alyosha, my angel, all
these philosophies are the death of me. Damn them! Brother Ivan—”
“What of brother Ivan?” interrupted Alyosha, but Mitya did not hear.
“You see, I never had any of these doubts before, but it was all hidden
away in me. It was perhaps just because ideas I did not understand were
surging up in me, that I used to drink and fight and rage. It was to
stifle them in myself, to still them, to smother them. Ivan is not
Rakitin, there is an idea in him. Ivan is a sphinx and is silent; he is
always silent. It’s God that’s worrying me. That’s the only thing
that’s worrying me. What if He doesn’t exist? What if Rakitin’s
right—that it’s an idea made up by men? Then if He doesn’t exist, man
is the chief of the earth, of the universe. Magnificent! Only how is he
going to be good without God? That’s the question. I always come back
to that. For whom is man going to love then? To whom will he be
thankful? To whom will he sing the hymn? Rakitin laughs. Rakitin says