The Brothers Karamazov
such complex and real actuality, such events, even a whole world of
events, woven into such a plot, with such unexpected details from the
most exalted matters to the last button on a cuff, as I swear Leo
Tolstoy has never invented. Yet such dreams are sometimes seen not by
writers, but by the most ordinary people, officials, journalists,
priests.... The subject is a complete enigma. A statesman confessed to
me, indeed, that all his best ideas came to him when he was asleep.
Well, that’s how it is now, though I am your hallucination, yet just as
in a nightmare, I say original things which had not entered your head
before. So I don’t repeat your ideas, yet I am only your nightmare,
nothing more.”
“You are lying, your aim is to convince me you exist apart and are not
my nightmare, and now you are asserting you are a dream.”
“My dear fellow, I’ve adopted a special method to-day, I’ll explain it
to you afterwards. Stay, where did I break off? Oh, yes! I caught cold
then, only not here but yonder.”
“Where is yonder? Tell me, will you be here long? Can’t you go away?”
Ivan exclaimed almost in despair. He ceased walking to and fro, sat
down on the sofa, leaned his elbows on the table again and held his
head tight in both hands. He pulled the wet towel off and flung it away
in vexation. It was evidently of no use.
“Your nerves are out of order,” observed the gentleman, with a
carelessly easy, though perfectly polite, air. “You are angry with me
even for being able to catch cold, though it happened in a most natural
way. I was hurrying then to a diplomatic _soirée_ at the house of a
lady of high rank in Petersburg, who was aiming at influence in the
Ministry. Well, an evening suit, white tie, gloves, though I was God
knows where and had to fly through space to reach your earth.... Of
course, it took only an instant, but you know a ray of light from the
sun takes full eight minutes, and fancy in an evening suit and open
waistcoat. Spirits don’t freeze, but when one’s in fleshly form, well
... in brief, I didn’t think, and set off, and you know in those
ethereal spaces, in the water that is above the firmament, there’s such
a frost ... at least one can’t call it frost, you can fancy, 150
degrees below zero! You know the game the village girls play—they
invite the unwary to lick an ax in thirty degrees of frost, the tongue
instantly freezes to it and the dupe tears the skin off, so it bleeds.
But that’s only in 30 degrees, in 150 degrees I imagine it would be
enough to put your finger on the ax and it would be the end of it ...
if only there could be an ax there.”
“And can there be an ax there?” Ivan interrupted, carelessly and
disdainfully. He was exerting himself to the utmost not to believe in
the delusion and not to sink into complete insanity.
“An ax?” the guest interrupted in surprise.
“Yes, what would become of an ax there?” Ivan cried suddenly, with a
sort of savage and insistent obstinacy.
“What would become of an ax in space? _Quelle idée!_ If it were to fall
to any distance, it would begin, I think, flying round the earth
without knowing why, like a satellite. The astronomers would calculate
the rising and the setting of the ax, _Gatzuk_ would put it in his
calendar, that’s all.”
“You are stupid, awfully stupid,” said Ivan peevishly. “Fib more
cleverly or I won’t listen. You want to get the better of me by
realism, to convince me that you exist, but I don’t want to believe you
exist! I won’t believe it!”
“But I am not fibbing, it’s all the truth; the truth is unhappily
hardly ever amusing. I see you persist in expecting something big of
me, and perhaps something fine. That’s a great pity, for I only give
what I can—”
“Don’t talk philosophy, you ass!”
“Philosophy, indeed, when all my right side is numb and I am moaning
and groaning. I’ve tried all the medical faculty: they can diagnose
beautifully, they have the whole of your disease at their finger-tips,
but they’ve no idea how to cure you. There was an enthusiastic little
student here, ‘You may die,’ said he, ‘but you’ll know perfectly what
disease you are dying of!’ And then what a way they have sending people
to specialists! ‘We only diagnose,’ they say, ‘but go to such-and-such
a specialist, he’ll cure you.’ The old doctor who used to cure all
sorts of disease has completely disappeared, I assure you, now there
are only specialists and they all advertise in the newspapers. If
anything is wrong with your nose, they send you to Paris: there, they
say, is a European specialist who cures noses. If you go to Paris,
he’ll look at your nose; I can only cure your right nostril, he’ll tell
you, for I don’t cure the left nostril, that’s not my speciality, but
go to Vienna, there there’s a specialist who will cure your left
nostril. What are you to do? I fell back on popular remedies, a German
doctor advised me to rub myself with honey and salt in the bath-house.
Solely to get an extra bath I went, smeared myself all over and it did
me no good at all. In despair I wrote to Count Mattei in Milan. He sent
me a book and some drops, bless him, and, only fancy, Hoff’s malt
extract cured me! I bought it by accident, drank a bottle and a half of
it, and I was ready to dance, it took it away completely. I made up my
mind to write to the papers to thank him, I was prompted by a feeling
of gratitude, and only fancy, it led to no end of a bother: not a
single paper would take my letter. ‘It would be very reactionary,’ they
said, ‘no one will believe it. _Le diable n’existe point._ You’d better
remain anonymous,’ they advised me. What use is a letter of thanks if
it’s anonymous? I laughed with the men at the newspaper office; ‘It’s
reactionary to believe in God in our days,’ I said, ‘but I am the
devil, so I may be believed in.’ ‘We quite understand that,’ they said.
‘Who doesn’t believe in the devil? Yet it won’t do, it might injure our
reputation. As a joke, if you like.’ But I thought as a joke it
wouldn’t be very witty. So it wasn’t printed. And do you know, I have
felt sore about it to this day. My best feelings, gratitude, for
instance, are literally denied me simply from my social position.”
“Philosophical reflections again?” Ivan snarled malignantly.
“God preserve me from it, but one can’t help complaining sometimes. I
am a slandered man. You upbraid me every moment with being stupid. One
can see you are young. My dear fellow, intelligence isn’t the only
thing! I have naturally a kind and merry heart. ‘I also write
vaudevilles of all sorts.’ You seem to take me for Hlestakov grown old,
but my fate is a far more serious one. Before time was, by some decree
which I could never make out, I was pre-destined ‘to deny’ and yet I am
genuinely good-hearted and not at all inclined to negation. ‘No, you
must go and deny, without denial there’s no criticism and what would a
journal be without a column of criticism?’ Without criticism it would
be nothing but one ‘hosannah.’ But nothing but hosannah is not enough
for life, the hosannah must be tried in the crucible of doubt and so
on, in the same style. But I don’t meddle in that, I didn’t create it,
I am not answerable for it. Well, they’ve chosen their scapegoat,
they’ve made me write the column of criticism and so life was made
possible. We understand that comedy; I, for instance, simply ask for
annihilation. No, live, I am told, for there’d be nothing without you.
If everything in the universe were sensible, nothing would happen.
There would be no events without you, and there must be events. So
against the grain I serve to produce events and do what’s irrational
because I am commanded to. 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. But what about me? I suffer,
but still, I don’t live. I am x in an indeterminate equation. I am a
sort of phantom in life who has lost all beginning and end, and who has
even forgotten his own name. You are laughing— no, you are not
laughing, you are angry again. You are for ever angry, all you care
about is intelligence, but I repeat again that I would give away all
this super-stellar life, all the ranks and honors, simply to be
transformed into the soul of a merchant’s wife weighing eighteen stone
and set candles at God’s shrine.”
“Then even you don’t believe in God?” said Ivan, with a smile of
hatred.
“What can I say?—that is, if you are in earnest—”
“Is there a God or not?” Ivan cried with the same savage intensity.
“Ah, then you are in earnest! My dear fellow, upon my word I don’t
know. There! I’ve said it now!”
“You don’t know, but you see God? No, you are not some one apart, you
are myself, you are I and nothing more! You are rubbish, you are my
fancy!”
“Well, if you like, I have the same philosophy as you, that would be
true. _Je pense, donc je suis_, I know that for a fact; all the rest,
all these worlds, God and even Satan—all that is not proved, to my
mind. Does all that exist of itself, or is it only an emanation of
myself, a logical development of my ego which alone has existed for
ever: but I make haste to stop, for I believe you will be jumping up to
beat me directly.”
“You’d better tell me some anecdote!” said Ivan miserably.
“There is an anecdote precisely on our subject, or rather a legend, not
an anecdote. You reproach me with unbelief, you see, you say, yet you
don’t believe. But, my dear fellow, I am not the only one like that. We
are all in a muddle over there now and all through your science. Once
there used to be atoms, five senses, four elements, and then everything
hung together somehow. There were atoms in the ancient world even, but
since we’ve learned that you’ve discovered the chemical molecule and
protoplasm and the devil knows what, we had to lower our crest. There’s
a regular muddle, and, above all, superstition, scandal; there’s as
much scandal among us as among you, you know; a little more in fact,
and spying, indeed, for we have our secret police department where
private information is received. Well, this wild legend belongs to our
middle ages—not yours, but ours—and no one believes it even among us,
except the old ladies of eighteen stone, not your old ladies I mean,
but ours. We’ve everything you have, I am revealing one of our secrets
out of friendship for you; though it’s forbidden. This legend is about
Paradise. There was, they say, here on earth a thinker and philosopher.
He rejected everything, ‘laws, conscience, faith,’ and, above all, the
future life. He died; he expected to go straight to darkness and death
and he found a future life before him. He was astounded and indignant.
‘This is against my principles!’ he said. And he was punished for that
... that is, you must excuse me, I am just repeating what I heard
myself, it’s only a legend ... he was sentenced to walk a quadrillion
kilometers in the dark (we’ve adopted the metric system, you know) and
when he has finished that quadrillion, the gates of heaven would be
opened to him and he’ll be forgiven—”
“And what tortures have you in the other world besides the quadrillion
kilometers?” asked Ivan, with a strange eagerness.
“What tortures? Ah, don’t ask. In old days we had all sorts, but now
they have taken chiefly to moral punishments—‘the stings of conscience’
and all that nonsense. We got that, too, from you, from the softening
of your manners. And who’s the better for it? Only those who have got
no conscience, for how can they be tortured by conscience when they