The Brothers Karamazov
course, would mean the end of everything, even of magazines and
newspapers, for who would take them in? I know that at the end of all
things I shall be reconciled. I, too, shall walk my quadrillion and
learn the secret. But till that happens I am sulking and fulfill my
destiny though it’s against the grain—that is, to ruin thousands for
the sake of saving one. How many souls have had to be ruined and how
many honorable reputations destroyed for the sake of that one righteous
man, Job, over whom they made such a fool of me in old days! Yes, till
the secret is revealed, there are two sorts of truths for me—one, their
truth, yonder, which I know nothing about so far, and the other my own.
And there’s no knowing which will turn out the better.... Are you
asleep?”
“I might well be,” Ivan groaned angrily. “All my stupid ideas—outgrown,
thrashed out long ago, and flung aside like a dead carcass—you present
to me as something new!”
“There’s no pleasing you! And I thought I should fascinate you by my
literary style. That hosannah in the skies really wasn’t bad, was it?
And then that ironical tone _à la_ Heine, eh?”
“No, I was never such a flunkey! How then could my soul beget a flunkey
like you?”
“My dear fellow, I know a most charming and attractive young Russian
gentleman, a young thinker and a great lover of literature and art, the
author of a promising poem entitled _The Grand Inquisitor_. I was only
thinking of him!”
“I forbid you to speak of _The Grand Inquisitor_,” cried Ivan, crimson
with shame.
“And the _Geological Cataclysm_. Do you remember? That was a poem,
now!”
“Hold your tongue, or I’ll kill you!”
“You’ll kill me? No, excuse me, I will speak. I came to treat myself to
that pleasure. Oh, I love the dreams of my ardent young friends,
quivering with eagerness for life! ‘There are new men,’ you decided
last spring, when you were meaning to come here, ‘they propose to
destroy everything and begin with cannibalism. Stupid fellows! they
didn’t ask my advice! I maintain that nothing need be destroyed, that
we only need to destroy the idea of God in man, that’s how we have to
set to work. It’s that, that we must begin with. Oh, blind race of men
who have no understanding! As soon as men have all of them denied
God—and I believe that period, analogous with geological periods, will
come to pass—the old conception of the universe will fall of itself
without cannibalism, and, what’s more, the old morality, and everything
will begin anew. Men will unite to take from life all it can give, but
only for joy and happiness in the present world. Man will be lifted up
with a spirit of divine Titanic pride and the man-god will appear.
From hour to hour extending his conquest of nature infinitely by his
will and his science, man will feel such lofty joy from hour to hour in
doing it that it will make up for all his old dreams of the joys of
heaven. Every one will know that he is mortal and will accept death
proudly and serenely like a god. His pride will teach him that it’s
useless for him to repine at life’s being a moment, and he will love
his brother without need of reward. Love will be sufficient only for a
moment of life, but the very consciousness of its momentariness will
intensify its fire, which now is dissipated in dreams of eternal love
beyond the grave’... and so on and so on in the same style. Charming!”
Ivan sat with his eyes on the floor, and his hands pressed to his ears,
but he began trembling all over. The voice continued.
“The question now is, my young thinker reflected, is it possible that
such a period will ever come? If it does, everything is determined and
humanity is settled for ever. But as, owing to man’s inveterate
stupidity, this cannot come about for at least a thousand years, every
one who recognizes the truth even now may legitimately order his life
as he pleases, on the new principles. In that sense, ‘all things are
lawful’ for him. What’s more, even if this period never comes to pass,
since there is anyway no God and no immortality, the new man may well
become the man-god, even if he is the only one in the whole world, and
promoted to his new position, he may lightheartedly overstep all the
barriers of the old morality of the old slave-man, if necessary. There
is no law for God. Where God stands, the place is holy. Where I stand
will be at once the foremost place ... ‘all things are lawful’ and
that’s the end of it! That’s all very charming; but if you want to
swindle why do you want a moral sanction for doing it? But that’s our
modern Russian all over. He can’t bring himself to swindle without a
moral sanction. He is so in love with truth—”
The visitor talked, obviously carried away by his own eloquence,
speaking louder and louder and looking ironically at his host. But he
did not succeed in finishing; Ivan suddenly snatched a glass from the
table and flung it at the orator.
“_Ah, mais c’est bête enfin_,” cried the latter, jumping up from the
sofa and shaking the drops of tea off himself. “He remembers Luther’s
inkstand! He takes me for a dream and throws glasses at a dream! It’s
like a woman! I suspected you were only pretending to stop up your
ears.”
A loud, persistent knocking was suddenly heard at the window. Ivan
jumped up from the sofa.
“Do you hear? You’d better open,” cried the visitor; “it’s your brother
Alyosha with the most interesting and surprising news, I’ll be bound!”
“Be silent, deceiver, I knew it was Alyosha, I felt he was coming, and
of course he has not come for nothing; of course he brings ‘news,’”
Ivan exclaimed frantically.
“Open, open to him. There’s a snowstorm and he is your brother.
_Monsieur sait-il le temps qu’il fait? C’est à ne pas mettre un chien
dehors_.”
The knocking continued. Ivan wanted to rush to the window, but
something seemed to fetter his arms and legs. He strained every effort
to break his chains, but in vain. The knocking at the window grew
louder and louder. At last the chains were broken and Ivan leapt up
from the sofa. He looked round him wildly. Both candles had almost
burnt out, the glass he had just thrown at his visitor stood before him
on the table, and there was no one on the sofa opposite. The knocking
on the window frame went on persistently, but it was by no means so
loud as it had seemed in his dream; on the contrary, it was quite
subdued.
“It was not a dream! No, I swear it was not a dream, it all happened
just now!” cried Ivan. He rushed to the window and opened the movable
pane.
“Alyosha, I told you not to come,” he cried fiercely to his brother.
“In two words, what do you want? In two words, do you hear?”
“An hour ago Smerdyakov hanged himself,” Alyosha answered from the
yard.
“Come round to the steps, I’ll open at once,” said Ivan, going to open
the door to Alyosha.
Chapter X.
“It Was He Who Said That”
Alyosha coming in told Ivan that a little over an hour ago Marya
Kondratyevna had run to his rooms and informed him Smerdyakov had taken
his own life. “I went in to clear away the samovar and he was hanging
on a nail in the wall.” On Alyosha’s inquiring whether she had informed
the police, she answered that she had told no one, “but I flew straight
to you, I’ve run all the way.” She seemed perfectly crazy, Alyosha
reported, and was shaking like a leaf. When Alyosha ran with her to the
cottage, he found Smerdyakov still hanging. On the table lay a note: “I
destroy my life of my own will and desire, so as to throw no blame on
any one.” Alyosha left the note on the table and went straight to the
police captain and told him all about it. “And from him I’ve come
straight to you,” said Alyosha, in conclusion, looking intently into
Ivan’s face. He had not taken his eyes off him while he told his story,
as though struck by something in his expression.
“Brother,” he cried suddenly, “you must be terribly ill. You look and
don’t seem to understand what I tell you.”
“It’s a good thing you came,” said Ivan, as though brooding, and not
hearing Alyosha’s exclamation. “I knew he had hanged himself.”
“From whom?”
“I don’t know. But I knew. Did I know? Yes, he told me. He told me so
just now.”
Ivan stood in the middle of the room, and still spoke in the same
brooding tone, looking at the ground.
“Who is _he_?” asked Alyosha, involuntarily looking round.
“He’s slipped away.”
Ivan raised his head and smiled softly.
“He was afraid of you, of a dove like you. You are a ‘pure cherub.’
Dmitri calls you a cherub. Cherub!... the thunderous rapture of the
seraphim. What are seraphim? Perhaps a whole constellation. But perhaps
that constellation is only a chemical molecule. There’s a constellation
of the Lion and the Sun. Don’t you know it?”
“Brother, sit down,” said Alyosha in alarm. “For goodness’ sake, sit
down on the sofa! You are delirious; put your head on the pillow,
that’s right. Would you like a wet towel on your head? Perhaps it will
do you good.”
“Give me the towel: it’s here on the chair. I just threw it down
there.”
“It’s not here. Don’t worry yourself. I know where it is—here,” said
Alyosha, finding a clean towel, folded up and unused, by Ivan’s
dressing-table in the other corner of the room. Ivan looked strangely
at the towel: recollection seemed to come back to him for an instant.
“Stay”—he got up from the sofa—“an hour ago I took that new towel from
there and wetted it. I wrapped it round my head and threw it down here
... How is it it’s dry? There was no other.”
“You put that towel on your head?” asked Alyosha.
“Yes, and walked up and down the room an hour ago ... Why have the
candles burnt down so? What’s the time?”
“Nearly twelve.”
“No, no, no!” Ivan cried suddenly. “It was not a dream. He was here; he
was sitting here, on that sofa. When you knocked at the window, I threw
a glass at him ... this one. Wait a minute. I was asleep last time, but
this dream was not a dream. It has happened before. I have dreams now,
Alyosha ... yet they are not dreams, but reality. I walk about, talk
and see ... though I am asleep. But he was sitting here, on that sofa
there.... He is frightfully stupid, Alyosha, frightfully stupid.” Ivan
laughed suddenly and began pacing about the room.
“Who is stupid? Of whom are you talking, brother?” Alyosha asked
anxiously again.
“The devil! He’s taken to visiting me. He’s been here twice, almost
three times. He taunted me with being angry at his being a simple devil
and not Satan, with scorched wings, in thunder and lightning. But he is
not Satan: that’s a lie. He is an impostor. He is simply a devil—a
paltry, trivial devil. He goes to the baths. If you undressed him,
you’d be sure to find he had a tail, long and smooth like a Danish
dog’s, a yard long, dun color.... Alyosha, you are cold. You’ve been in
the snow. Would you like some tea? What? Is it cold? Shall I tell her
to bring some? _C’est à ne pas mettre un chien dehors._...”
Alyosha ran to the washing-stand, wetted the towel, persuaded Ivan to
sit down again, and put the wet towel round his head. He sat down
beside him.
“What were you telling me just now about Lise?” Ivan began again. (He
was becoming very talkative.) “I like Lise. I said something nasty
about her. It was a lie. I like her ... I am afraid for Katya
to-morrow. I am more afraid of her than of anything. On account of the
future. She will cast me off to-morrow and trample me under foot. She
thinks that I am ruining Mitya from jealousy on her account! Yes, she
thinks that! But it’s not so. To-morrow the cross, but not the gallows.
No, I shan’t hang myself. Do you know, I can never commit suicide,
Alyosha. Is it because I am base? I am not a coward. Is it from love of
life? How did I know that Smerdyakov had hanged himself? Yes, it was
_he_ told me so.”