The Brothers Karamazov E-Book

Fyodor Dostoevsky

• Herausgeber: Synapse Publishing
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

When brutal landowner Fyodor Karamazov is murdered, the lives of his sons are changed irrevocably: Mitya, the sensualist, whose bitter rivalry with his father immediately places him under suspicion for parricide; Ivan, the intellectual, whose mental tortures drive him to breakdown; the spiritual Alyosha, who tries to heal the family's rifts; and the shadowy figure of their bastard half-brother Smerdyakov. As the ensuing investigation and trial reveal the true identity of the murderer, Dostoyevsky's dark masterpiece evokes a world where the lines between innocence and corruption, good and evil, blur and everyone's faith in humanity is tested. Fyodor Dostoyevsky's powerful meditation on faith, meaning and morality, The Brothers Karamazov is a masterpiece of russian literature.
Unabridged edition with an interactive table of contents.

Leseprobe

THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Translated from the Russian by Constance Garnett

© 2019 Synapse Publishing

By the same author in the Synapse catalogue:

The idiot

Demons

Crime and punishment

Poor folk

Notes from Underground

The gambler

The house of the dead

White nights and other stories

PART I

Book I. The History Of A Family

Chapter I. Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov

Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovitch

Karamazov, a land owner well known in our district in his own day, and

still remembered among us owing to his gloomy and tragic death, which

happened thirteen years ago, and which I shall describe in its proper

place. For the present I will only say that this “landowner”—for so we

used to call him, although he hardly spent a day of his life on his own

estate—was a strange type, yet one pretty frequently to be met with, a

type abject and vicious and at the same time senseless. But he was one of

those senseless persons who are very well capable of looking after their

worldly affairs, and, apparently, after nothing else. Fyodor Pavlovitch,

for instance, began with next to nothing; his estate was of the smallest;

he ran to dine at other men’s tables, and fastened on them as a toady, yet

at his death it appeared that he had a hundred thousand roubles in hard

cash. At the same time, he was all his life one of the most senseless,

fantastical fellows in the whole district. I repeat, it was not

stupidity—the majority of these fantastical fellows are shrewd and

intelligent enough—but just senselessness, and a peculiar national form of

it.

He was married twice, and had three sons, the eldest, Dmitri, by his first

wife, and two, Ivan and Alexey, by his second. Fyodor Pavlovitch’s first

wife, Adelaïda Ivanovna, belonged to a fairly rich and distinguished noble

family, also landowners in our district, the Miüsovs. How it came to pass

that an heiress, who was also a beauty, and moreover one of those

vigorous, intelligent girls, so common in this generation, but sometimes

also to be found in the last, could have married such a worthless, puny

weakling, as we all called him, I won’t attempt to explain. I knew a young

lady of the last “romantic” generation who after some years of an

enigmatic passion for a gentleman, whom she might quite easily have

married at any moment, invented insuperable obstacles to their union, and

ended by throwing herself one stormy night into a rather deep and rapid

river from a high bank, almost a precipice, and so perished, entirely to

satisfy her own caprice, and to be like Shakespeare’s Ophelia. Indeed, if

this precipice, a chosen and favorite spot of hers, had been less

picturesque, if there had been a prosaic flat bank in its place, most

likely the suicide would never have taken place. This is a fact, and

probably there have been not a few similar instances in the last two or

three generations. Adelaïda Ivanovna Miüsov’s action was similarly, no

doubt, an echo of other people’s ideas, and was due to the irritation

caused by lack of mental freedom. She wanted, perhaps, to show her

feminine independence, to override class distinctions and the despotism of

her family. And a pliable imagination persuaded her, we must suppose, for

a brief moment, that Fyodor Pavlovitch, in spite of his parasitic

position, was one of the bold and ironical spirits of that progressive

epoch, though he was, in fact, an ill‐natured buffoon and nothing more.

What gave the marriage piquancy was that it was preceded by an elopement,

and this greatly captivated Adelaïda Ivanovna’s fancy. Fyodor Pavlovitch’s

position at the time made him specially eager for any such enterprise, for

he was passionately anxious to make a career in one way or another. To

attach himself to a good family and obtain a dowry was an alluring

prospect. As for mutual love it did not exist apparently, either in the

bride or in him, in spite of Adelaïda Ivanovna’s beauty. This was,

perhaps, a unique case of the kind in the life of Fyodor Pavlovitch, who

was always of a voluptuous temper, and ready to run after any petticoat on

the slightest encouragement. She seems to have been the only woman who

made no particular appeal to his senses.

Immediately after the elopement Adelaïda Ivanovna discerned in a flash

that she had no feeling for her husband but contempt. The marriage

accordingly showed itself in its true colors with extraordinary rapidity.

Although the family accepted the event pretty quickly and apportioned the

runaway bride her dowry, the husband and wife began to lead a most

disorderly life, and there were everlasting scenes between them. It was

said that the young wife showed incomparably more generosity and dignity

than Fyodor Pavlovitch, who, as is now known, got hold of all her money up

to twenty‐five thousand roubles as soon as she received it, so that those

thousands were lost to her for ever. The little village and the rather

fine town house which formed part of her dowry he did his utmost for a

long time to transfer to his name, by means of some deed of conveyance. He

would probably have succeeded, merely from her moral fatigue and desire to

get rid of him, and from the contempt and loathing he aroused by his

persistent and shameless importunity. But, fortunately, Adelaïda

Ivanovna’s family intervened and circumvented his greediness. It is known

for a fact that frequent fights took place between the husband and wife,

but rumor had it that Fyodor Pavlovitch did not beat his wife but was

beaten by her, for she was a hot‐tempered, bold, dark‐browed, impatient

woman, possessed of remarkable physical strength. Finally, she left the

house and ran away from Fyodor Pavlovitch with a destitute divinity

student, leaving Mitya, a child of three years old, in her husband’s

hands. Immediately Fyodor Pavlovitch introduced a regular harem into the

house, and abandoned himself to orgies of drunkenness. In the intervals he

used to drive all over the province, complaining tearfully to each and all

of Adelaïda Ivanovna’s having left him, going into details too disgraceful

for a husband to mention in regard to his own married life. What seemed to

gratify him and flatter his self‐love most was to play the ridiculous part

of the injured husband, and to parade his woes with embellishments.

“One would think that you’d got a promotion, Fyodor Pavlovitch, you seem

so pleased in spite of your sorrow,” scoffers said to him. Many even added

that he was glad of a new comic part in which to play the buffoon, and

that it was simply to make it funnier that he pretended to be unaware of

his ludicrous position. But, who knows, it may have been simplicity. At

last he succeeded in getting on the track of his runaway wife. The poor

woman turned out to be in Petersburg, where she had gone with her divinity

student, and where she had thrown herself into a life of complete

emancipation. Fyodor Pavlovitch at once began bustling about, making

preparations to go to Petersburg, with what object he could not himself

have said. He would perhaps have really gone; but having determined to do

so he felt at once entitled to fortify himself for the journey by another

bout of reckless drinking. And just at that time his wife’s family

received the news of her death in Petersburg. She had died quite suddenly

in a garret, according to one story, of typhus, or as another version had

it, of starvation. Fyodor Pavlovitch was drunk when he heard of his wife’s

death, and the story is that he ran out into the street and began shouting

with joy, raising his hands to Heaven: “Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant

depart in peace,” but others say he wept without restraint like a little

child, so much so that people were sorry for him, in spite of the

repulsion he inspired. It is quite possible that both versions were true,

that he rejoiced at his release, and at the same time wept for her who

released him. As a general rule, people, even the wicked, are much more

naïve and simple‐hearted than we suppose. And we ourselves are, too.

Chapter II. He Gets Rid Of His Eldest Son

You can easily imagine what a father such a man could be and how he would

bring up his children. His behavior as a father was exactly what might be

expected. He completely abandoned the child of his marriage with Adelaïda

Ivanovna, not from malice, nor because of his matrimonial grievances, but

simply because he forgot him. While he was wearying every one with his

tears and complaints, and turning his house into a sink of debauchery, a

faithful servant of the family, Grigory, took the three‐year‐old Mitya

into his care. If he hadn’t looked after him there would have been no one

even to change the baby’s little shirt.

It happened moreover that the child’s relations on his mother’s side

forgot him too at first. His grandfather was no longer living, his widow,

Mitya’s grandmother, had moved to Moscow, and was seriously ill, while his

daughters were married, so that Mitya remained for almost a whole year in

old Grigory’s charge and lived with him in the servant’s cottage. But if

his father had remembered him (he could not, indeed, have been altogether

unaware of his existence) he would have sent him back to the cottage, as

the child would only have been in the way of his debaucheries. But a

cousin of Mitya’s mother, Pyotr Alexandrovitch Miüsov, happened to return

from Paris. He lived for many years afterwards abroad, but was at that

time quite a young man, and distinguished among the Miüsovs as a man of

enlightened ideas and of European culture, who had been in the capitals

and abroad. Towards the end of his life he became a Liberal of the type

common in the forties and fifties. In the course of his career he had come

into contact with many of the most Liberal men of his epoch, both in

Russia and abroad. He had known Proudhon and Bakunin personally, and in

his declining years was very fond of describing the three days of the

Paris Revolution of February 1848, hinting that he himself had almost

taken part in the fighting on the barricades. This was one of the most

grateful recollections of his youth. He had an independent property of

about a thousand souls, to reckon in the old style. His splendid estate

lay on the outskirts of our little town and bordered on the lands of our

famous monastery, with which Pyotr Alexandrovitch began an endless

lawsuit, almost as soon as he came into the estate, concerning the rights

of fishing in the river or wood‐cutting in the forest, I don’t know

exactly which. He regarded it as his duty as a citizen and a man of

culture to open an attack upon the “clericals.” Hearing all about Adelaïda

Ivanovna, whom he, of course, remembered, and in whom he had at one time

been interested, and learning of the existence of Mitya, he intervened, in

spite of all his youthful indignation and contempt for Fyodor Pavlovitch.

He made the latter’s acquaintance for the first time, and told him

directly that he wished to undertake the child’s education. He used long

afterwards to tell as a characteristic touch, that when he began to speak

of Mitya, Fyodor Pavlovitch looked for some time as though he did not

understand what child he was talking about, and even as though he was

surprised to hear that he had a little son in the house. The story may

have been exaggerated, yet it must have been something like the truth.

Fyodor Pavlovitch was all his life fond of acting, of suddenly playing an

unexpected part, sometimes without any motive for doing so, and even to

his own direct disadvantage, as, for instance, in the present case. This

habit, however, is characteristic of a very great number of people, some

of them very clever ones, not like Fyodor Pavlovitch. Pyotr Alexandrovitch

carried the business through vigorously, and was appointed, with Fyodor

Pavlovitch, joint guardian of the child, who had a small property, a house

and land, left him by his mother. Mitya did, in fact, pass into this

cousin’s keeping, but as the latter had no family of his own, and after

securing the revenues of his estates was in haste to return at once to

Paris, he left the boy in charge of one of his cousins, a lady living in

Moscow. It came to pass that, settling permanently in Paris he, too,

forgot the child, especially when the Revolution of February broke out,

making an impression on his mind that he remembered all the rest of his

life. The Moscow lady died, and Mitya passed into the care of one of her

married daughters. I believe he changed his home a fourth time later on. I

won’t enlarge upon that now, as I shall have much to tell later of Fyodor

Pavlovitch’s firstborn, and must confine myself now to the most essential

facts about him, without which I could not begin my story.

In the first place, this Mitya, or rather Dmitri Fyodorovitch, was the

only one of Fyodor Pavlovitch’s three sons who grew up in the belief that

he had property, and that he would be independent on coming of age. He

spent an irregular boyhood and youth. He did not finish his studies at the

gymnasium, he got into a military school, then went to the Caucasus, was

promoted, fought a duel, and was degraded to the ranks, earned promotion

again, led a wild life, and spent a good deal of money. He did not begin

to receive any income from Fyodor Pavlovitch until he came of age, and

until then got into debt. He saw and knew his father, Fyodor Pavlovitch,

for the first time on coming of age, when he visited our neighborhood on

purpose to settle with him about his property. He seems not to have liked

his father. He did not stay long with him, and made haste to get away,

having only succeeded in obtaining a sum of money, and entering into an

agreement for future payments from the estate, of the revenues and value

of which he was unable (a fact worthy of note), upon this occasion, to get

a statement from his father. Fyodor Pavlovitch remarked for the first time

then (this, too, should be noted) that Mitya had a vague and exaggerated

idea of his property. Fyodor Pavlovitch was very well satisfied with this,

as it fell in with his own designs. He gathered only that the young man

was frivolous, unruly, of violent passions, impatient, and dissipated, and

that if he could only obtain ready money he would be satisfied, although

only, of course, for a short time. So Fyodor Pavlovitch began to take

advantage of this fact, sending him from time to time small doles,

installments. In the end, when four years later, Mitya, losing patience,

came a second time to our little town to settle up once for all with his

father, it turned out to his amazement that he had nothing, that it was

difficult to get an account even, that he had received the whole value of

his property in sums of money from Fyodor Pavlovitch, and was perhaps even

in debt to him, that by various agreements into which he had, of his own

desire, entered at various previous dates, he had no right to expect

anything more, and so on, and so on. The young man was overwhelmed,

suspected deceit and cheating, and was almost beside himself. And, indeed,

this circumstance led to the catastrophe, the account of which forms the

subject of my first introductory story, or rather the external side of it.

But before I pass to that story I must say a little of Fyodor Pavlovitch’s

other two sons, and of their origin.

Chapter III. The Second Marriage And The Second Family

Very shortly after getting his four‐year‐old Mitya off his hands Fyodor

Pavlovitch married a second time. His second marriage lasted eight years.

He took this second wife, Sofya Ivanovna, also a very young girl, from

another province, where he had gone upon some small piece of business in

company with a Jew. Though Fyodor Pavlovitch was a drunkard and a vicious

debauchee he never neglected investing his capital, and managed his

business affairs very successfully, though, no doubt, not over‐

scrupulously. Sofya Ivanovna was the daughter of an obscure deacon, and

was left from childhood an orphan without relations. She grew up in the

house of a general’s widow, a wealthy old lady of good position, who was

at once her benefactress and tormentor. I do not know the details, but I

have only heard that the orphan girl, a meek and gentle creature, was once

cut down from a halter in which she was hanging from a nail in the loft,

so terrible were her sufferings from the caprice and everlasting nagging

of this old woman, who was apparently not bad‐hearted but had become an

insufferable tyrant through idleness.

Fyodor Pavlovitch made her an offer; inquiries were made about him and he

was refused. But again, as in his first marriage, he proposed an elopement

to the orphan girl. There is very little doubt that she would not on any

account have married him if she had known a little more about him in time.

But she lived in another province; besides, what could a little girl of

sixteen know about it, except that she would be better at the bottom of

the river than remaining with her benefactress. So the poor child

exchanged a benefactress for a benefactor. Fyodor Pavlovitch did not get a

penny this time, for the general’s widow was furious. She gave them

nothing and cursed them both. But he had not reckoned on a dowry; what

allured him was the remarkable beauty of the innocent girl, above all her

innocent appearance, which had a peculiar attraction for a vicious

profligate, who had hitherto admired only the coarser types of feminine

beauty.

“Those innocent eyes slit my soul up like a razor,” he used to say

afterwards, with his loathsome snigger. In a man so depraved this might,

of course, mean no more than sensual attraction. As he had received no

dowry with his wife, and had, so to speak, taken her “from the halter,” he

did not stand on ceremony with her. Making her feel that she had “wronged”

him, he took advantage of her phenomenal meekness and submissiveness to

trample on the elementary decencies of marriage. He gathered loose women

into his house, and carried on orgies of debauchery in his wife’s

presence. To show what a pass things had come to, I may mention that

Grigory, the gloomy, stupid, obstinate, argumentative servant, who had

always hated his first mistress, Adelaïda Ivanovna, took the side of his

new mistress. He championed her cause, abusing Fyodor Pavlovitch in a

manner little befitting a servant, and on one occasion broke up the revels

and drove all the disorderly women out of the house. In the end this

unhappy young woman, kept in terror from her childhood, fell into that

kind of nervous disease which is most frequently found in peasant women

who are said to be “possessed by devils.” At times after terrible fits of

hysterics she even lost her reason. Yet she bore Fyodor Pavlovitch two

sons, Ivan and Alexey, the eldest in the first year of marriage and the

second three years later. When she died, little Alexey was in his fourth

year, and, strange as it seems, I know that he remembered his mother all

his life, like a dream, of course. At her death almost exactly the same

thing happened to the two little boys as to their elder brother, Mitya.

They were completely forgotten and abandoned by their father. They were

looked after by the same Grigory and lived in his cottage, where they were

found by the tyrannical old lady who had brought up their mother. She was

still alive, and had not, all those eight years, forgotten the insult done

her. All that time she was obtaining exact information as to her Sofya’s

manner of life, and hearing of her illness and hideous surroundings she

declared aloud two or three times to her retainers:

“It serves her right. God has punished her for her ingratitude.”

Exactly three months after Sofya Ivanovna’s death the general’s widow

suddenly appeared in our town, and went straight to Fyodor Pavlovitch’s

house. She spent only half an hour in the town but she did a great deal.

It was evening. Fyodor Pavlovitch, whom she had not seen for those eight

years, came in to her drunk. The story is that instantly upon seeing him,

without any sort of explanation, she gave him two good, resounding slaps

on the face, seized him by a tuft of hair, and shook him three times up

and down. Then, without a word, she went straight to the cottage to the

two boys. Seeing, at the first glance, that they were unwashed and in

dirty linen, she promptly gave Grigory, too, a box on the ear, and

announcing that she would carry off both the children she wrapped them

just as they were in a rug, put them in the carriage, and drove off to her

own town. Grigory accepted the blow like a devoted slave, without a word,

and when he escorted the old lady to her carriage he made her a low bow

and pronounced impressively that, “God would repay her for the orphans.”

“You are a blockhead all the same,” the old lady shouted to him as she

drove away.

Fyodor Pavlovitch, thinking it over, decided that it was a good thing, and

did not refuse the general’s widow his formal consent to any proposition

in regard to his children’s education. As for the slaps she had given him,

he drove all over the town telling the story.

It happened that the old lady died soon after this, but she left the boys

in her will a thousand roubles each “for their instruction, and so that

all be spent on them exclusively, with the condition that it be so

portioned out as to last till they are twenty‐one, for it is more than

adequate provision for such children. If other people think fit to throw

away their money, let them.” I have not read the will myself, but I heard

there was something queer of the sort, very whimsically expressed. The

principal heir, Yefim Petrovitch Polenov, the Marshal of Nobility of the

province, turned out, however, to be an honest man. Writing to Fyodor

Pavlovitch, and discerning at once that he could extract nothing from him

for his children’s education (though the latter never directly refused but

only procrastinated as he always did in such cases, and was, indeed, at

times effusively sentimental), Yefim Petrovitch took a personal interest

in the orphans. He became especially fond of the younger, Alexey, who

lived for a long while as one of his family. I beg the reader to note this

from the beginning. And to Yefim Petrovitch, a man of a generosity and

humanity rarely to be met with, the young people were more indebted for

their education and bringing up than to any one. He kept the two thousand

roubles left to them by the general’s widow intact, so that by the time

they came of age their portions had been doubled by the accumulation of

interest. He educated them both at his own expense, and certainly spent

far more than a thousand roubles upon each of them. I won’t enter into a

detailed account of their boyhood and youth, but will only mention a few

of the most important events. Of the elder, Ivan, I will only say that he

grew into a somewhat morose and reserved, though far from timid boy. At

ten years old he had realized that they were living not in their own home

but on other people’s charity, and that their father was a man of whom it

was disgraceful to speak. This boy began very early, almost in his infancy

(so they say at least), to show a brilliant and unusual aptitude for

learning. I don’t know precisely why, but he left the family of Yefim

Petrovitch when he was hardly thirteen, entering a Moscow gymnasium, and

boarding with an experienced and celebrated teacher, an old friend of

Yefim Petrovitch. Ivan used to declare afterwards that this was all due to

the “ardor for good works” of Yefim Petrovitch, who was captivated by the

idea that the boy’s genius should be trained by a teacher of genius. But

neither Yefim Petrovitch nor this teacher was living when the young man

finished at the gymnasium and entered the university. As Yefim Petrovitch

had made no provision for the payment of the tyrannical old lady’s legacy,

which had grown from one thousand to two, it was delayed, owing to

formalities inevitable in Russia, and the young man was in great straits

for the first two years at the university, as he was forced to keep

himself all the time he was studying. It must be noted that he did not

even attempt to communicate with his father, perhaps from pride, from

contempt for him, or perhaps from his cool common sense, which told him

that from such a father he would get no real assistance. However that may

have been, the young man was by no means despondent and succeeded in

getting work, at first giving sixpenny lessons and afterwards getting

paragraphs on street incidents into the newspapers under the signature of

“Eye‐Witness.” These paragraphs, it was said, were so interesting and

piquant that they were soon taken. This alone showed the young man’s

practical and intellectual superiority over the masses of needy and

unfortunate students of both sexes who hang about the offices of the

newspapers and journals, unable to think of anything better than

everlasting entreaties for copying and translations from the French.

Having once got into touch with the editors Ivan Fyodorovitch always kept

up his connection with them, and in his latter years at the university he

published brilliant reviews of books upon various special subjects, so

that he became well known in literary circles. But only in his last year

he suddenly succeeded in attracting the attention of a far wider circle of

readers, so that a great many people noticed and remembered him. It was

rather a curious incident. When he had just left the university and was

preparing to go abroad upon his two thousand roubles, Ivan Fyodorovitch

published in one of the more important journals a strange article, which

attracted general notice, on a subject of which he might have been

supposed to know nothing, as he was a student of natural science. The

article dealt with a subject which was being debated everywhere at the

time—the position of the ecclesiastical courts. After discussing several

opinions on the subject he went on to explain his own view. What was most

striking about the article was its tone, and its unexpected conclusion.

Many of the Church party regarded him unquestioningly as on their side.

And yet not only the secularists but even atheists joined them in their

applause. Finally some sagacious persons opined that the article was

nothing but an impudent satirical burlesque. I mention this incident

particularly because this article penetrated into the famous monastery in

our neighborhood, where the inmates, being particularly interested in the

question of the ecclesiastical courts, were completely bewildered by it.

Learning the author’s name, they were interested in his being a native of

the town and the son of “that Fyodor Pavlovitch.” And just then it was

that the author himself made his appearance among us.

Why Ivan Fyodorovitch had come amongst us I remember asking myself at the

time with a certain uneasiness. This fateful visit, which was the first

step leading to so many consequences, I never fully explained to myself.

It seemed strange on the face of it that a young man so learned, so proud,

and apparently so cautious, should suddenly visit such an infamous house

and a father who had ignored him all his life, hardly knew him, never

thought of him, and would not under any circumstances have given him

money, though he was always afraid that his sons Ivan and Alexey would

also come to ask him for it. And here the young man was staying in the

house of such a father, had been living with him for two months, and they

were on the best possible terms. This last fact was a special cause of

wonder to many others as well as to me. Pyotr Alexandrovitch Miüsov, of

whom we have spoken already, the cousin of Fyodor Pavlovitch’s first wife,

happened to be in the neighborhood again on a visit to his estate. He had

come from Paris, which was his permanent home. I remember that he was more

surprised than any one when he made the acquaintance of the young man, who

interested him extremely, and with whom he sometimes argued and not

without an inner pang compared himself in acquirements.

“He is proud,” he used to say, “he will never be in want of pence; he has

got money enough to go abroad now. What does he want here? Every one can

see that he hasn’t come for money, for his father would never give him

any. He has no taste for drink and dissipation, and yet his father can’t

do without him. They get on so well together!”

That was the truth; the young man had an unmistakable influence over his

father, who positively appeared to be behaving more decently and even

seemed at times ready to obey his son, though often extremely and even

spitefully perverse.

It was only later that we learned that Ivan had come partly at the request

of, and in the interests of, his elder brother, Dmitri, whom he saw for

the first time on this very visit, though he had before leaving Moscow

been in correspondence with him about an important matter of more concern

to Dmitri than himself. What that business was the reader will learn fully

in due time. Yet even when I did know of this special circumstance I still

felt Ivan Fyodorovitch to be an enigmatic figure, and thought his visit

rather mysterious.

I may add that Ivan appeared at the time in the light of a mediator

between his father and his elder brother Dmitri, who was in open quarrel

with his father and even planning to bring an action against him.

The family, I repeat, was now united for the first time, and some of its

members met for the first time in their lives. The younger brother,

Alexey, had been a year already among us, having been the first of the

three to arrive. It is of that brother Alexey I find it most difficult to

speak in this introduction. Yet I must give some preliminary account of

him, if only to explain one queer fact, which is that I have to introduce

my hero to the reader wearing the cassock of a novice. Yes, he had been

for the last year in our monastery, and seemed willing to be cloistered

there for the rest of his life.

Chapter IV. The Third Son, Alyosha

He was only twenty, his brother Ivan was in his twenty‐fourth year at the

time, while their elder brother Dmitri was twenty‐seven. First of all, I

must explain that this young man, Alyosha, was not a fanatic, and, in my

opinion at least, was not even a mystic. I may as well give my full

opinion from the beginning. He was simply an early lover of humanity, and

that he adopted the monastic life was simply because at that time it

struck him, so to say, as the ideal escape for his soul struggling from

the darkness of worldly wickedness to the light of love. And the reason

this life struck him in this way was that he found in it at that time, as

he thought, an extraordinary being, our celebrated elder, Zossima, to whom

he became attached with all the warm first love of his ardent heart. But I

do not dispute that he was very strange even at that time, and had been so

indeed from his cradle. I have mentioned already, by the way, that though

he lost his mother in his fourth year he remembered her all his life—her

face, her caresses, “as though she stood living before me.” Such memories

may persist, as every one knows, from an even earlier age, even from two

years old, but scarcely standing out through a whole lifetime like spots

of light out of darkness, like a corner torn out of a huge picture, which

has all faded and disappeared except that fragment. That is how it was

with him. He remembered one still summer evening, an open window, the

slanting rays of the setting sun (that he recalled most vividly of all);

in a corner of the room the holy image, before it a lighted lamp, and on

her knees before the image his mother, sobbing hysterically with cries and

moans, snatching him up in both arms, squeezing him close till it hurt,

and praying for him to the Mother of God, holding him out in both arms to

the image as though to put him under the Mother’s protection ... and

suddenly a nurse runs in and snatches him from her in terror. That was the

picture! And Alyosha remembered his mother’s face at that minute. He used

to say that it was frenzied but beautiful as he remembered. But he rarely

cared to speak of this memory to any one. In his childhood and youth he

was by no means expansive, and talked little indeed, but not from shyness

or a sullen unsociability; quite the contrary, from something different,

from a sort of inner preoccupation entirely personal and unconcerned with

other people, but so important to him that he seemed, as it were, to

forget others on account of it. But he was fond of people: he seemed

throughout his life to put implicit trust in people: yet no one ever

looked on him as a simpleton or naïve person. There was something about

him which made one feel at once (and it was so all his life afterwards)

that he did not care to be a judge of others—that he would never take it

upon himself to criticize and would never condemn any one for anything. He

seemed, indeed, to accept everything without the least condemnation though

often grieving bitterly: and this was so much so that no one could

surprise or frighten him even in his earliest youth. Coming at twenty to

his father’s house, which was a very sink of filthy debauchery, he, chaste

and pure as he was, simply withdrew in silence when to look on was

unbearable, but without the slightest sign of contempt or condemnation.

His father, who had once been in a dependent position, and so was

sensitive and ready to take offense, met him at first with distrust and

sullenness. “He does not say much,” he used to say, “and thinks the more.”

But soon, within a fortnight indeed, he took to embracing him and kissing

him terribly often, with drunken tears, with sottish sentimentality, yet

he evidently felt a real and deep affection for him, such as he had never

been capable of feeling for any one before.

Every one, indeed, loved this young man wherever he went, and it was so

from his earliest childhood. When he entered the household of his patron

and benefactor, Yefim Petrovitch Polenov, he gained the hearts of all the

family, so that they looked on him quite as their own child. Yet he

entered the house at such a tender age that he could not have acted from

design nor artfulness in winning affection. So that the gift of making

himself loved directly and unconsciously was inherent in him, in his very

nature, so to speak. It was the same at school, though he seemed to be

just one of those children who are distrusted, sometimes ridiculed, and

even disliked by their schoolfellows. He was dreamy, for instance, and

rather solitary. From his earliest childhood he was fond of creeping into

a corner to read, and yet he was a general favorite all the while he was

at school. He was rarely playful or merry, but any one could see at the

first glance that this was not from any sullenness. On the contrary he was

bright and good‐tempered. He never tried to show off among his

schoolfellows. Perhaps because of this, he was never afraid of any one,

yet the boys immediately understood that he was not proud of his

fearlessness and seemed to be unaware that he was bold and courageous. He

never resented an insult. It would happen that an hour after the offense

he would address the offender or answer some question with as trustful and

candid an expression as though nothing had happened between them. And it

was not that he seemed to have forgotten or intentionally forgiven the

affront, but simply that he did not regard it as an affront, and this

completely conquered and captivated the boys. He had one characteristic

which made all his schoolfellows from the bottom class to the top want to

mock at him, not from malice but because it amused them. This

characteristic was a wild fanatical modesty and chastity. He could not

bear to hear certain words and certain conversations about women. There

are “certain” words and conversations unhappily impossible to eradicate in

schools. Boys pure in mind and heart, almost children, are fond of talking

in school among themselves, and even aloud, of things, pictures, and

images of which even soldiers would sometimes hesitate to speak. More than

that, much that soldiers have no knowledge or conception of is familiar to

quite young children of our intellectual and higher classes. There is no

moral depravity, no real corrupt inner cynicism in it, but there is the

appearance of it, and it is often looked upon among them as something

refined, subtle, daring, and worthy of imitation. Seeing that Alyosha

Karamazov put his fingers in his ears when they talked of “that,” they

used sometimes to crowd round him, pull his hands away, and shout

nastiness into both ears, while he struggled, slipped to the floor, tried

to hide himself without uttering one word of abuse, enduring their insults

in silence. But at last they left him alone and gave up taunting him with

being a “regular girl,” and what’s more they looked upon it with

compassion as a weakness. He was always one of the best in the class but

was never first.

At the time of Yefim Petrovitch’s death Alyosha had two more years to

complete at the provincial gymnasium. The inconsolable widow went almost

immediately after his death for a long visit to Italy with her whole

family, which consisted only of women and girls. Alyosha went to live in

the house of two distant relations of Yefim Petrovitch, ladies whom he had

never seen before. On what terms he lived with them he did not know

himself. It was very characteristic of him, indeed, that he never cared at

whose expense he was living. In that respect he was a striking contrast to

his elder brother Ivan, who struggled with poverty for his first two years

in the university, maintained himself by his own efforts, and had from

childhood been bitterly conscious of living at the expense of his

benefactor. But this strange trait in Alyosha’s character must not, I

think, be criticized too severely, for at the slightest acquaintance with

him any one would have perceived that Alyosha was one of those youths,

almost of the type of religious enthusiast, who, if they were suddenly to

come into possession of a large fortune, would not hesitate to give it

away for the asking, either for good works or perhaps to a clever rogue.

In general he seemed scarcely to know the value of money, not, of course,

in a literal sense. When he was given pocket‐money, which he never asked

for, he was either terribly careless of it so that it was gone in a

moment, or he kept it for weeks together, not knowing what to do with it.

In later years Pyotr Alexandrovitch Miüsov, a man very sensitive on the

score of money and bourgeois honesty, pronounced the following judgment,

after getting to know Alyosha:

“Here is perhaps the one man in the world whom you might leave alone

without a penny, in the center of an unknown town of a million

inhabitants, and he would not come to harm, he would not die of cold and

hunger, for he would be fed and sheltered at once; and if he were not, he

would find a shelter for himself, and it would cost him no effort or

humiliation. And to shelter him would be no burden, but, on the contrary,

would probably be looked on as a pleasure.”

He did not finish his studies at the gymnasium. A year before the end of

the course he suddenly announced to the ladies that he was going to see

his father about a plan which had occurred to him. They were sorry and

unwilling to let him go. The journey was not an expensive one, and the

ladies would not let him pawn his watch, a parting present from his

benefactor’s family. They provided him liberally with money and even

fitted him out with new clothes and linen. But he returned half the money

they gave him, saying that he intended to go third class. On his arrival

in the town he made no answer to his father’s first inquiry why he had

come before completing his studies, and seemed, so they say, unusually

thoughtful. It soon became apparent that he was looking for his mother’s

tomb. He practically acknowledged at the time that that was the only

object of his visit. But it can hardly have been the whole reason of it.

It is more probable that he himself did not understand and could not

explain what had suddenly arisen in his soul, and drawn him irresistibly

into a new, unknown, but inevitable path. Fyodor Pavlovitch could not show

him where his second wife was buried, for he had never visited her grave

since he had thrown earth upon her coffin, and in the course of years had

entirely forgotten where she was buried.

Fyodor Pavlovitch, by the way, had for some time previously not been

living in our town. Three or four years after his wife’s death he had gone

to the south of Russia and finally turned up in Odessa, where he spent

several years. He made the acquaintance at first, in his own words, “of a

lot of low Jews, Jewesses, and Jewkins,” and ended by being received by

“Jews high and low alike.” It may be presumed that at this period he

developed a peculiar faculty for making and hoarding money. He finally

returned to our town only three years before Alyosha’s arrival. His former

acquaintances found him looking terribly aged, although he was by no means

an old man. He behaved not exactly with more dignity but with more

effrontery. The former buffoon showed an insolent propensity for making

buffoons of others. His depravity with women was not simply what it used

to be, but even more revolting. In a short time he opened a great number

of new taverns in the district. It was evident that he had perhaps a

hundred thousand roubles or not much less. Many of the inhabitants of the

town and district were soon in his debt, and, of course, had given good

security. Of late, too, he looked somehow bloated and seemed more

irresponsible, more uneven, had sunk into a sort of incoherence, used to

begin one thing and go on with another, as though he were letting himself

go altogether. He was more and more frequently drunk. And, if it had not

been for the same servant Grigory, who by that time had aged considerably

too, and used to look after him sometimes almost like a tutor, Fyodor

Pavlovitch might have got into terrible scrapes. Alyosha’s arrival seemed

to affect even his moral side, as though something had awakened in this

prematurely old man which had long been dead in his soul.

“Do you know,” he used often to say, looking at Alyosha, “that you are

like her, ‘the crazy woman’ ”—that was what he used to call his dead wife,

Alyosha’s mother. Grigory it was who pointed out the “crazy woman’s” grave

to Alyosha. He took him to our town cemetery and showed him in a remote

corner a cast‐iron tombstone, cheap but decently kept, on which were

inscribed the name and age of the deceased and the date of her death, and

below a four‐lined verse, such as are commonly used on old‐fashioned

middle‐class tombs. To Alyosha’s amazement this tomb turned out to be

Grigory’s doing. He had put it up on the poor “crazy woman’s” grave at his

own expense, after Fyodor Pavlovitch, whom he had often pestered about the

grave, had gone to Odessa, abandoning the grave and all his memories.

Alyosha showed no particular emotion at the sight of his mother’s grave.

He only listened to Grigory’s minute and solemn account of the erection of

the tomb; he stood with bowed head and walked away without uttering a

word. It was perhaps a year before he visited the cemetery again. But this

little episode was not without an influence upon Fyodor Pavlovitch—and a

very original one. He suddenly took a thousand roubles to our monastery to

pay for requiems for the soul of his wife; but not for the second,

Alyosha’s mother, the “crazy woman,” but for the first, Adelaïda Ivanovna,

who used to thrash him. In the evening of the same day he got drunk and

abused the monks to Alyosha. He himself was far from being religious; he

had probably never put a penny candle before the image of a saint. Strange

impulses of sudden feeling and sudden thought are common in such types.

I have mentioned already that he looked bloated. His countenance at this

time bore traces of something that testified unmistakably to the life he

had led. Besides the long fleshy bags under his little, always insolent,

suspicious, and ironical eyes; besides the multitude of deep wrinkles in

his little fat face, the Adam’s apple hung below his sharp chin like a

great, fleshy goiter, which gave him a peculiar, repulsive, sensual

appearance; add to that a long rapacious mouth with full lips, between

which could be seen little stumps of black decayed teeth. He slobbered

every time he began to speak. He was fond indeed of making fun of his own

face, though, I believe, he was well satisfied with it. He used

particularly to point to his nose, which was not very large, but very

delicate and conspicuously aquiline. “A regular Roman nose,” he used to

say, “with my goiter I’ve quite the countenance of an ancient Roman

patrician of the decadent period.” He seemed proud of it.

Not long after visiting his mother’s grave Alyosha suddenly announced that

he wanted to enter the monastery, and that the monks were willing to

receive him as a novice. He explained that this was his strong desire, and

that he was solemnly asking his consent as his father. The old man knew

that the elder Zossima, who was living in the monastery hermitage, had

made a special impression upon his “gentle boy.”

“That is the most honest monk among them, of course,” he observed, after

listening in thoughtful silence to Alyosha, and seeming scarcely surprised

at his request. “H’m!... So that’s where you want to be, my gentle boy?”

He was half drunk, and suddenly he grinned his slow half‐drunken grin,

which was not without a certain cunning and tipsy slyness. “H’m!... I had

a presentiment that you would end in something like this. Would you

believe it? You were making straight for it. Well, to be sure you have

your own two thousand. That’s a dowry for you. And I’ll never desert you,

my angel. And I’ll pay what’s wanted for you there, if they ask for it.

But, of course, if they don’t ask, why should we worry them? What do you

say? You know, you spend money like a canary, two grains a week. H’m!...

Do you know that near one monastery there’s a place outside the town where

every baby knows there are none but ‘the monks’ wives’ living, as they are

called. Thirty women, I believe. I have been there myself. You know, it’s

interesting in its own way, of course, as a variety. The worst of it is

it’s awfully Russian. There are no French women there. Of course they

could get them fast enough, they have plenty of money. If they get to hear

of it they’ll come along. Well, there’s nothing of that sort here, no

‘monks’ wives,’ and two hundred monks. They’re honest. They keep the

fasts. I admit it.... H’m.... So you want to be a monk? And do you know

I’m sorry to lose you, Alyosha; would you believe it, I’ve really grown

fond of you? Well, it’s a good opportunity. You’ll pray for us sinners; we

have sinned too much here. I’ve always been thinking who would pray for

me, and whether there’s any one in the world to do it. My dear boy, I’m

awfully stupid about that. You wouldn’t believe it. Awfully. You see,

however stupid I am about it, I keep thinking, I keep thinking—from time

to time, of course, not all the while. It’s impossible, I think, for the

devils to forget to drag me down to hell with their hooks when I die. Then

I wonder—hooks? Where would they get them? What of? Iron hooks? Where do

they forge them? Have they a foundry there of some sort? The monks in the

monastery probably believe that there’s a ceiling in hell, for instance.

Now I’m ready to believe in hell, but without a ceiling. It makes it more

refined, more enlightened, more Lutheran that is. And, after all, what

does it matter whether it has a ceiling or hasn’t? But, do you know,

there’s a damnable question involved in it? If there’s no ceiling there

can be no hooks, and if there are no hooks it all breaks down, which is

unlikely again, for then there would be none to drag me down to hell, and

if they don’t drag me down what justice is there in the world? _Il

faudrait les inventer_, those hooks, on purpose for me alone, for, if you

only knew, Alyosha, what a blackguard I am.”

“But there are no hooks there,” said Alyosha, looking gently and seriously

at his father.

“Yes, yes, only the shadows of hooks, I know, I know. That’s how a

Frenchman described hell: ‘_J’ai vu l’ombre d’un cocher qui avec l’ombre

d’une brosse frottait l’ombre d’une carrosse._’ How do you know there are

no hooks, darling? When you’ve lived with the monks you’ll sing a

different tune. But go and get at the truth there, and then come and tell

me. Anyway it’s easier going to the other world if one knows what there is

there. Besides, it will be more seemly for you with the monks than here

with me, with a drunken old man and young harlots ... though you’re like

an angel, nothing touches you. And I dare say nothing will touch you

there. That’s why I let you go, because I hope for that. You’ve got all

your wits about you. You will burn and you will burn out; you will be

healed and come back again. And I will wait for you. I feel that you’re

the only creature in the world who has not condemned me. My dear boy, I

feel it, you know. I can’t help feeling it.”

And he even began blubbering. He was sentimental. He was wicked and

sentimental.

Chapter V. Elders

Some of my readers may imagine that my young man was a sickly, ecstatic,

poorly developed creature, a pale, consumptive dreamer. On the contrary,

Alyosha was at this time a well‐grown, red‐cheeked, clear‐eyed lad of

nineteen, radiant with health. He was very handsome, too, graceful,

moderately tall, with hair of a dark brown, with a regular, rather long,

oval‐shaped face, and wide‐set dark gray, shining eyes; he was very

thoughtful, and apparently very serene. I shall be told, perhaps, that red

cheeks are not incompatible with fanaticism and mysticism; but I fancy

that Alyosha was more of a realist than any one. Oh! no doubt, in the

monastery he fully believed in miracles, but, to my thinking, miracles are

never a stumbling‐block to the realist. It is not miracles that dispose

realists to belief. The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will

always find strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if

he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather

disbelieve his own senses than admit the fact. Even if he admits it, he

admits it as a fact of nature till then unrecognized by him. Faith does

not, in the realist, spring from the miracle but the miracle from faith.

If the realist once believes, then he is bound by his very realism to

admit the miraculous also. The Apostle Thomas said that he would not

believe till he saw, but when he did see he said, “My Lord and my God!”

Was it the miracle forced him to believe? Most likely not, but he believed

solely because he desired to believe and possibly he fully believed in his

secret heart even when he said, “I do not believe till I see.”

I shall be told, perhaps, that Alyosha was stupid, undeveloped, had not

finished his studies, and so on. That he did not finish his studies is

true, but to say that he was stupid or dull would be a great injustice.

I’ll simply repeat what I have said above. He entered upon this path only

because, at that time, it alone struck his imagination and presented

itself to him as offering an ideal means of escape for his soul from

darkness to light. Add to that that he was to some extent a youth of our

last epoch—that is, honest in nature, desiring the truth, seeking for it

and believing in it, and seeking to serve it at once with all the strength

of his soul, seeking for immediate action, and ready to sacrifice

everything, life itself, for it. Though these young men unhappily fail to

understand that the sacrifice of life is, in many cases, the easiest of

all sacrifices, and that to sacrifice, for instance, five or six years of

their seething youth to hard and tedious study, if only to multiply

tenfold their powers of serving the truth and the cause they have set

before them as their goal—such a sacrifice is utterly beyond the strength

of many of them. The path Alyosha chose was a path going in the opposite

direction, but he chose it with the same thirst for swift achievement. As

soon as he reflected seriously he was convinced of the existence of God

and immortality, and at once he instinctively said to himself: “I want to

live for immortality, and I will accept no compromise.” In the same way,

if he had decided that God and immortality did not exist, he would at once

have become an atheist and a socialist. For socialism is not merely the

labor question, it is before all things the atheistic question, the

question of the form taken by atheism to‐day, the question of the tower of

Babel built without God, not to mount to heaven from earth but to set up

heaven on earth. Alyosha would have found it strange and impossible to go

on living as before. It is written: “Give all that thou hast to the poor

and follow Me, if thou wouldst be perfect.”

Alyosha said to himself: “I can’t give two roubles instead of ‘all,’ and

only go to mass instead of ‘following Him.’ ” Perhaps his memories of

childhood brought back our monastery, to which his mother may have taken

him to mass. Perhaps the slanting sunlight and the holy image to which his

poor “crazy” mother had held him up still acted upon his imagination.

Brooding on these things he may have come to us perhaps only to see

whether here he could sacrifice all or only “two roubles,” and in the

monastery he met this elder. I must digress to explain what an “elder” is

in Russian monasteries, and I am sorry that I do not feel very competent

to do so. I will try, however, to give a superficial account of it in a

few words. Authorities on the subject assert that the institution of

“elders” is of recent date, not more than a hundred years old in our

monasteries, though in the orthodox East, especially in Sinai and Athos,

it has existed over a thousand years. It is maintained that it existed in

ancient times in Russia also, but through the calamities which overtook

Russia—the Tartars, civil war, the interruption of relations with the East

after the destruction of Constantinople—this institution fell into

oblivion. It was revived among us towards the end of last century by one

of the great “ascetics,” as they called him, Païssy Velitchkovsky, and his

disciples. But to this day it exists in few monasteries only, and has

sometimes been almost persecuted as an innovation in Russia. It flourished

especially in the celebrated Kozelski Optin Monastery. When and how it was

introduced into our monastery I cannot say. There had already been three

such elders and Zossima was the last of them. But he was almost dying of

weakness and disease, and they had no one to take his place. The question

for our monastery was an important one, for it had not been distinguished

by anything in particular till then: they had neither relics of saints,

nor wonder‐working ikons, nor glorious traditions, nor historical

exploits. It had flourished and been glorious all over Russia through its

elders, to see and hear whom pilgrims had flocked for thousands of miles

from all parts.

What was such an elder? An elder was one who took your soul, your will,

into his soul and his will. When you choose an elder, you renounce your

own will and yield it to him in complete submission, complete self‐

abnegation. This novitiate, this terrible school of abnegation, is

undertaken voluntarily, in the hope of self‐conquest, of self‐mastery, in

order, after a life of obedience, to attain perfect freedom, that is, from

self; to escape the lot of those who have lived their whole life without

finding their true selves in themselves. This institution of elders is not

founded on theory, but was established in the East from the practice of a

thousand years. The obligations due to an elder are not the ordinary

“obedience” which has always existed in our Russian monasteries. The

obligation involves confession to the elder by all who have submitted

themselves to him, and to the indissoluble bond between him and them.

The story is told, for instance, that in the early days of Christianity