The Brothers Karamazov
heavenly light. Believe that if they were not saved, they will be saved
hereafter. And if they are not saved hereafter, then their sons will be
saved, for your light will not die even when you are dead. The
righteous man departs, but his light remains. Men are always saved
after the death of the deliverer. Men reject their prophets and slay
them, but they love their martyrs and honor those whom they have slain.
You are working for the whole, you are acting for the future. Seek no
reward, for great is your reward on this earth: the spiritual joy which
is only vouchsafed to the righteous man. Fear not the great nor the
mighty, but be wise and ever serene. Know the measure, know the times,
study that. When you are left alone, pray. Love to throw yourself on
the earth and kiss it. Kiss the earth and love it with an unceasing,
consuming love. Love all men, love everything. Seek that rapture and
ecstasy. Water the earth with the tears of your joy and love those
tears. Don’t be ashamed of that ecstasy, prize it, for it is a gift of
God and a great one; it is not given to many but only to the elect.
_(i) Of Hell and Hell Fire, a Mystic Reflection_
Fathers and teachers, I ponder, “What is hell?” I maintain that it is
the suffering of being unable to love. Once in infinite existence,
immeasurable in time and space, a spiritual creature was given on his
coming to earth, the power of saying, “I am and I love.” Once, only
once, there was given him a moment of active _living_ love, and for
that was earthly life given him, and with it times and seasons. And
that happy creature rejected the priceless gift, prized it and loved it
not, scorned it and remained callous. Such a one, having left the
earth, sees Abraham’s bosom and talks with Abraham as we are told in
the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, and beholds heaven and can go
up to the Lord. But that is just his torment, to rise up to the Lord
without ever having loved, to be brought close to those who have loved
when he has despised their love. For he sees clearly and says to
himself, “Now I have understanding, and though I now thirst to love,
there will be nothing great, no sacrifice in my love, for my earthly
life is over, and Abraham will not come even with a drop of living
water (that is the gift of earthly active life) to cool the fiery
thirst of spiritual love which burns in me now, though I despised it on
earth; there is no more life for me and will be no more time! Even
though I would gladly give my life for others, it can never be, for
that life is passed which can be sacrificed for love, and now there is
a gulf fixed between that life and this existence.”
They talk of hell fire in the material sense. I don’t go into that
mystery and I shun it. But I think if there were fire in material
sense, they would be glad of it, for I imagine that in material agony,
their still greater spiritual agony would be forgotten for a moment.
Moreover, that spiritual agony cannot be taken from them, for that
suffering is not external but within them. And if it could be taken
from them, I think it would be bitterer still for the unhappy
creatures. For even if the righteous in Paradise forgave them,
beholding their torments, and called them up to heaven in their
infinite love, they would only multiply their torments, for they would
arouse in them still more keenly a flaming thirst for responsive,
active and grateful love which is now impossible. In the timidity of my
heart I imagine, however, that the very recognition of this
impossibility would serve at last to console them. For accepting the
love of the righteous together with the impossibility of repaying it,
by this submissiveness and the effect of this humility, they will
attain at last, as it were, to a certain semblance of that active love
which they scorned in life, to something like its outward
expression.... I am sorry, friends and brothers, that I cannot express
this clearly. But woe to those who have slain themselves on earth, woe
to the suicides! I believe that there can be none more miserable than
they. They tell us that it is a sin to pray for them and outwardly the
Church, as it were, renounces them, but in my secret heart I believe
that we may pray even for them. Love can never be an offense to Christ.
For such as those I have prayed inwardly all my life, I confess it,
fathers and teachers, and even now I pray for them every day.
Oh, there are some who remain proud and fierce even in hell, in spite
of their certain knowledge and contemplation of the absolute truth;
there are some fearful ones who have given themselves over to Satan and
his proud spirit entirely. For such, hell is voluntary and ever
consuming; they are tortured by their own choice. For they have cursed
themselves, cursing God and life. They live upon their vindictive pride
like a starving man in the desert sucking blood out of his own body.
But they are never satisfied, and they refuse forgiveness, they curse
God Who calls them. They cannot behold the living God without hatred,
and they cry out that the God of life should be annihilated, that God
should destroy Himself and His own creation. And they will burn in the
fire of their own wrath for ever and yearn for death and annihilation.
But they will not attain to death....
Here Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov’s manuscript ends. I repeat, it is
incomplete and fragmentary. Biographical details, for instance, cover
only Father Zossima’s earliest youth. Of his teaching and opinions we
find brought together sayings evidently uttered on very different
occasions. His utterances during the last few hours have not been kept
separate from the rest, but their general character can be gathered
from what we have in Alexey Fyodorovitch’s manuscript.
The elder’s death came in the end quite unexpectedly. For although
those who were gathered about him that last evening realized that his
death was approaching, yet it was difficult to imagine that it would
come so suddenly. On the contrary, his friends, as I observed already,
seeing him that night apparently so cheerful and talkative, were
convinced that there was at least a temporary change for the better in
his condition. Even five minutes before his death, they said afterwards
wonderingly, it was impossible to foresee it. He seemed suddenly to
feel an acute pain in his chest, he turned pale and pressed his hands
to his heart. All rose from their seats and hastened to him. But though
suffering, he still looked at them with a smile, sank slowly from his
chair on to his knees, then bowed his face to the ground, stretched out
his arms and as though in joyful ecstasy, praying and kissing the
ground, quietly and joyfully gave up his soul to God.
The news of his death spread at once through the hermitage and reached
the monastery. The nearest friends of the deceased and those whose duty
it was from their position began to lay out the corpse according to the
ancient ritual, and all the monks gathered together in the church. And
before dawn the news of the death reached the town. By the morning all
the town was talking of the event, and crowds were flocking from the
town to the monastery. But this subject will be treated in the next
book; I will only add here that before a day had passed something
happened so unexpected, so strange, upsetting, and bewildering in its
effect on the monks and the townspeople, that after all these years,
that day of general suspense is still vividly remembered in the town.
PART III
Book VII. Alyosha
Chapter I.
The Breath Of Corruption
The body of Father Zossima was prepared for burial according to the
established ritual. As is well known, the bodies of dead monks and
hermits are not washed. In the words of the Church Ritual: “If any one
of the monks depart in the Lord, the monk designated (that is, whose
office it is) shall wipe the body with warm water, making first the
sign of the cross with a sponge on the forehead of the deceased, on the
breast, on the hands and feet and on the knees, and that is enough.”
All this was done by Father Païssy, who then clothed the deceased in
his monastic garb and wrapped him in his cloak, which was, according to
custom, somewhat slit to allow of its being folded about him in the
form of a cross. On his head he put a hood with an eight-cornered
cross. The hood was left open and the dead man’s face was covered with
black gauze. In his hands was put an ikon of the Saviour. Towards
morning he was put in the coffin which had been made ready long before.
It was decided to leave the coffin all day in the cell, in the larger
room in which the elder used to receive his visitors and fellow monks.
As the deceased was a priest and monk of the strictest rule, the
Gospel, not the Psalter, had to be read over his body by monks in holy
orders. The reading was begun by Father Iosif immediately after the
requiem service. Father Païssy desired later on to read the Gospel all
day and night over his dead friend, but for the present he, as well as
the Father Superintendent of the Hermitage, was very busy and occupied,
for something extraordinary, an unheard-of, even “unseemly” excitement
and impatient expectation began to be apparent in the monks, and the
visitors from the monastery hostels, and the crowds of people flocking
from the town. And as time went on, this grew more and more marked.
Both the Superintendent and Father Païssy did their utmost to calm the
general bustle and agitation.
When it was fully daylight, some people began bringing their sick, in
most cases children, with them from the town—as though they had been
waiting expressly for this moment to do so, evidently persuaded that
the dead elder’s remains had a power of healing, which would be
immediately made manifest in accordance with their faith. It was only
then apparent how unquestionably every one in our town had accepted
Father Zossima during his lifetime as a great saint. And those who came
were far from being all of the humbler classes.
This intense expectation on the part of believers displayed with such
haste, such openness, even with impatience and almost insistence,
impressed Father Païssy as unseemly. Though he had long foreseen
something of the sort, the actual manifestation of the feeling was
beyond anything he had looked for. When he came across any of the monks
who displayed this excitement, Father Païssy began to reprove them.
“Such immediate expectation of something extraordinary,” he said,
“shows a levity, possible to worldly people but unseemly in us.”
But little attention was paid him and Father Païssy noticed it
uneasily. Yet he himself (if the whole truth must be told), secretly at
the bottom of his heart, cherished almost the same hopes and could not
but be aware of it, though he was indignant at the too impatient
expectation around him, and saw in it light-mindedness and vanity.
Nevertheless, it was particularly unpleasant to him to meet certain
persons, whose presence aroused in him great misgivings. In the crowd
in the dead man’s cell he noticed with inward aversion (for which he
immediately reproached himself) the presence of Rakitin and of the monk
from Obdorsk, who was still staying in the monastery. Of both of them
Father Païssy felt for some reason suddenly suspicious—though, indeed,
he might well have felt the same about others.
The monk from Obdorsk was conspicuous as the most fussy in the excited
crowd. He was to be seen everywhere; everywhere he was asking
questions, everywhere he was listening, on all sides he was whispering
with a peculiar, mysterious air. His expression showed the greatest
impatience and even a sort of irritation.
As for Rakitin, he, as appeared later, had come so early to the