The Brothers Karamazov
general rising of the Slavs. They burn villages, murder, outrage women
and children, they nail their prisoners by the ears to the fences,
leave them so till morning, and in the morning they hang them—all 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 cruel 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 from 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.”
“Brother, what are you driving at?” asked Alyosha.
“I think if the devil doesn’t exist, but man has created him, he has
created him in his own image and likeness.”
“Just as he did God, then?” observed Alyosha.
“‘It’s wonderful how you can turn words,’ as Polonius says in
_Hamlet_,” laughed Ivan. “You 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—rods and scourges—that’s our
national institution. 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—a young
man, I believe, 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 given 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 prison 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—all philanthropic and
religious Geneva. All the aristocratic and well-bred society of the
town rushed to the prison, kissed Richard and embraced him; ‘You are
our brother, you have found grace.’ And Richard does nothing but weep
with emotion, ‘Yes, I’ve found grace! All my youth and childhood I was
glad of pigs’ food, but now even I have found grace. I am dying in the
Lord.’ ‘Yes, 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 beaten for stealing it (which was very
wrong of you, for stealing is forbidden); but you’ve shed blood and you
must die.’ And on the last day, Richard, perfectly limp, did nothing
but cry and repeat every minute: ‘This is my happiest day. I am going
to the Lord.’ ‘Yes,’ cry the pastors and the judges and philanthropic
ladies. ‘This is the happiest day of your life, for you are going to
the Lord!’ They all walk or drive to the scaffold in procession behind
the prison van. At the scaffold they call to Richard: ‘Die, brother,
die in the Lord, for even thou hast found grace!’ 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 because 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, ‘on
its meek eyes,’ every one 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 peasant 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. ‘However weak you are, you
must pull, if you die for it.’ The nag strains, and then he begins
lashing the poor defenseless creature on its weeping, on its ‘meek
eyes.’ The frantic beast tugs and draws the load, trembling all over,
gasping for breath, moving sideways, with a sort of unnatural spasmodic
action—it’s awful in Nekrassov. But that’s only a horse, 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. ‘It stings more,’
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
sensuality, 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, ‘Daddy! daddy!’ By some diabolical unseemly chance the case
was brought into court. A counsel is engaged. The Russian people have
long called a barrister ‘a conscience for hire.’ The counsel protests
in his client’s defense. ‘It’s such a simple thing,’ he says, ‘an
everyday domestic event. A father corrects his child. To our shame be
it said, it is brought into court.’ 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
subscription in his honor! Charming pictures.
“But 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, ‘most worthy and
respectable people, of good education and breeding.’ 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 no appeal, that sets his
vile blood on fire. In every man, of course, a demon lies hidden—the
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 vice, gout, kidney disease, and so on.
“This 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—shut 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 with
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 tiny 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 told, man could not have existed on earth, for he
could not have known good and evil. Why should he know that diabolical
good and evil when it costs so much? Why, the whole world of knowledge
is not worth that child’s prayer to ‘dear, kind God’! I say nothing 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.”
“Never mind. I want to suffer too,” muttered Alyosha.
“One 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 beginning 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—somewhat exceptional, I believe, even then—who, 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,