The Brothers Karamazov
live yet, long to rejoice with you, and life is glad and joyful.”
“Ah, dear boy, how can you talk of joy when you lie feverish at night,
coughing as though you would tear yourself to pieces.”
“Don’t cry, mother,” he would answer, “life is paradise, and we are all
in paradise, but we won’t see it, if we would, we should have heaven on
earth the next day.”
Every one wondered at his words, he spoke so strangely and positively;
we were all touched and wept. Friends came to see us. “Dear ones,” he
would say to them, “what have I done that you should love me so, how
can you love any one like me, and how was it I did not know, I did not
appreciate it before?”
When the servants came in to him he would say continually, “Dear, kind
people, why are you doing so much for me, do I deserve to be waited on?
If it were God’s will for me to live, I would wait on you, for all men
should wait on one another.”
Mother shook her head as she listened. “My darling, it’s your illness
makes you talk like that.”
“Mother, darling,” he would say, “there must be servants and masters,
but if so I will be the servant of my servants, the same as they are to
me. And another thing, mother, every one of us has sinned against all
men, and I more than any.”
Mother positively smiled at that, smiled through her tears. “Why, how
could you have sinned against all men, more than all? Robbers and
murderers have done that, but what sin have you committed yet, that you
hold yourself more guilty than all?”
“Mother, little heart of mine,” he said (he had begun using such
strange caressing words at that time), “little heart of mine, my joy,
believe me, every one is really responsible to all men for all men and
for everything. I don’t know how to explain it to you, but I feel it is
so, painfully even. And how is it we went on then living, getting angry
and not knowing?”
So he would get up every day, more and more sweet and joyous and full
of love. When the doctor, an old German called Eisenschmidt, came:
“Well, doctor, have I another day in this world?” he would ask, joking.
“You’ll live many days yet,” the doctor would answer, “and months and
years too.”
“Months and years!” he would exclaim. “Why reckon the days? One day is
enough for a man to know all happiness. My dear ones, why do we
quarrel, try to outshine each other and keep grudges against each
other? Let’s go straight into the garden, walk and play there, love,
appreciate, and kiss each other, and glorify life.”
“Your son cannot last long,” the doctor told my mother, as she
accompanied him to the door. “The disease is affecting his brain.”
The windows of his room looked out into the garden, and our garden was
a shady one, with old trees in it which were coming into bud. The first
birds of spring were flitting in the branches, chirruping and singing
at the windows. And looking at them and admiring them, he began
suddenly begging their forgiveness too: “Birds of heaven, happy birds,
forgive me, for I have sinned against you too.” None of us could
understand that at the time, but he shed tears of joy. “Yes,” he said,
“there was such a glory of God all about me: birds, trees, meadows,
sky; only I lived in shame and dishonored it all and did not notice the
beauty and glory.”
“You take too many sins on yourself,” mother used to say, weeping.
“Mother, darling, it’s for joy, not for grief I am crying. Though I
can’t explain it to you, I like to humble myself before them, for I
don’t know how to love them enough. If I have sinned against every one,
yet all forgive me, too, and that’s heaven. Am I not in heaven now?”
And there was a great deal more I don’t remember. I remember I went
once into his room when there was no one else there. It was a bright
evening, the sun was setting, and the whole room was lighted up. He
beckoned me, and I went up to him. He put his hands on my shoulders and
looked into my face tenderly, lovingly; he said nothing for a minute,
only looked at me like that.
“Well,” he said, “run and play now, enjoy life for me too.”
I went out then and ran to play. And many times in my life afterwards I
remembered even with tears how he told me to enjoy life for him too.
There were many other marvelous and beautiful sayings of his, though we
did not understand them at the time. He died the third week after
Easter. He was fully conscious though he could not talk; up to his last
hour he did not change. He looked happy, his eyes beamed and sought us,
he smiled at us, beckoned us. There was a great deal of talk even in
the town about his death. I was impressed by all this at the time, but
not too much so, though I cried a good deal at his funeral. I was young
then, a child, but a lasting impression, a hidden feeling of it all,
remained in my heart, ready to rise up and respond when the time came.
So indeed it happened.
_(b) Of the Holy Scriptures in the Life of Father Zossima_
I was left alone with my mother. Her friends began advising her to send
me to Petersburg as other parents did. “You have only one son now,”
they said, “and have a fair income, and you will be depriving him
perhaps of a brilliant career if you keep him here.” They suggested I
should be sent to Petersburg to the Cadet Corps, that I might
afterwards enter the Imperial Guard. My mother hesitated for a long
time, it was awful to part with her only child, but she made up her
mind to it at last, though not without many tears, believing she was
acting for my happiness. She brought me to Petersburg and put me into
the Cadet Corps, and I never saw her again. For she too died three
years afterwards. She spent those three years mourning and grieving for
both of us.
From the house of my childhood I have brought nothing but precious
memories, for there are no memories more precious than those of early
childhood in one’s first home. And that is almost always so if there is
any love and harmony in the family at all. Indeed, precious memories
may remain even of a bad home, if only the heart knows how to find what
is precious. With my memories of home I count, too, my memories of the
Bible, which, child as I was, I was very eager to read at home. I had a
book of Scripture history then with excellent pictures, called _A
Hundred and Four Stories from the Old and New Testament_, and I learned
to read from it. I have it lying on my shelf now, I keep it as a
precious relic of the past. But even before I learned to read, I
remember first being moved to devotional feeling at eight years old. My
mother took me alone to mass (I don’t remember where my brother was at
the time) on the Monday before Easter. It was a fine day, and I
remember to-day, as though I saw it now, how the incense rose from the
censer and softly floated upwards and, overhead in the cupola, mingled
in rising waves with the sunlight that streamed in at the little
window. I was stirred by the sight, and for the first time in my life I
consciously received the seed of God’s word in my heart. A youth came
out into the middle of the church carrying a big book, so large that at
the time I fancied he could scarcely carry it. He laid it on the
reading desk, opened it, and began reading, and suddenly for the first
time I understood something read in the church of God. In the land of
Uz, there lived a man, righteous and God-fearing, and he had great
wealth, so many camels, so many sheep and asses, and his children
feasted, and he loved them very much and prayed for them. “It may be
that my sons have sinned in their feasting.” Now the devil came before
the Lord together with the sons of God, and said to the Lord that he
had gone up and down the earth and under the earth. “And hast thou
considered my servant Job?” God asked of him. And God boasted to the
devil, pointing to his great and holy servant. And the devil laughed at
God’s words. “Give him over to me and Thou wilt see that Thy servant
will murmur against Thee and curse Thy name.” And God gave up the just
man He loved so, to the devil. And the devil smote his children and his
cattle and scattered his wealth, all of a sudden like a thunderbolt
from heaven. And Job rent his mantle and fell down upon the ground and
cried aloud, “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I
return into the earth; the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away.
Blessed be the name of the Lord for ever and ever.”
Fathers and teachers, forgive my tears now, for all my childhood rises
up again before me, and I breathe now as I breathed then, with the
breast of a little child of eight, and I feel as I did then, awe and
wonder and gladness. The camels at that time caught my imagination, and
Satan, who talked like that with God, and God who gave His servant up
to destruction, and His servant crying out: “Blessed be Thy name
although Thou dost punish me,” and then the soft and sweet singing in
the church: “Let my prayer rise up before Thee,” and again incense from
the priest’s censer and the kneeling and the prayer. Ever since
then—only yesterday I took it up—I’ve never been able to read that
sacred tale without tears. And how much that is great, mysterious and
unfathomable there is in it! Afterwards I heard the words of mockery
and blame, proud words, “How could God give up the most loved of His
saints for the diversion of the devil, take from him his children,
smite him with sore boils so that he cleansed the corruption from his
sores with a pot-sherd—and for no object except to boast to the devil!
‘See what My saint can suffer for My sake.’” But the greatness of it
lies just in the fact that it is a mystery—that the passing earthly
show and the eternal verity are brought together in it. In the face of
the earthly truth, the eternal truth is accomplished. The Creator, just
as on the first days of creation He ended each day with praise: “That
is good that I have created,” looks upon Job and again praises His
creation. And Job, praising the Lord, serves not only Him but all His
creation for generations and generations, and for ever and ever, since
for that he was ordained. Good heavens, what a book it is, and what
lessons there are in it! What a book the Bible is, what a miracle, what
strength is given with it to man! It is like a mold cast of the world
and man and human nature, everything is there, and a law for everything
for all the ages. And what mysteries are solved and revealed! God
raises Job again, gives him wealth again. Many years pass by, and he
has other children and loves them. But how could he love those new ones
when those first children are no more, when he has lost them?
Remembering them, how could he be fully happy with those new ones,
however dear the new ones might be? But he could, he could. It’s the
great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet,
tender joy. The mild serenity of age takes the place of the riotous
blood of youth. I bless the rising sun each day, and, as before, my
hearts sings to meet it, but now I love even more its setting, its long
slanting rays and the soft, tender, gentle memories that come with
them, the dear images from the whole of my long, happy life—and over
all the Divine Truth, softening, reconciling, forgiving! My life is
ending, I know that well, but every day that is left me I feel how my
earthly life is in touch with a new infinite, unknown, that approaching
life, the nearness of which sets my soul quivering with rapture, my
mind glowing and my heart weeping with joy.
Friends and teachers, I have heard more than once, and of late one may
hear it more often, that the priests, and above all the village
priests, are complaining on all sides of their miserable income and
their humiliating lot. They plainly state, even in print—I’ve read it
myself—that they are unable to teach the Scriptures to the people