Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction:
The Brothers Karamazov
I read The Brothers Karamazov for the first time in 2004. I found an exhilarated post I wrote about it (but of course, at this point in the baseball season, I am merely struck by the fateful DATE of that post!!) And here’s the post I wrote when I finished it. I remember that sensation: of forcing myself to slow down my reading speed as I neared the end of the book, because I so dreaded it to end. Not that it would be a sad ending, but that I was upset that the experience I was having with that book would soon be over. It’s tremendous, one of the greatest novels ever written. It’s an examination of faith, family, Russia, love, justice – and it stays with you long after it is over. I reference it quite often in my mind. I’m never done with it – it’s not a book you read, put down, and move on. It percolates. Sometimes it nags. It makes you question things. It does not have A side. It shows all side. Ivan Karamazov isn’t the star of the book – it’s divided up between Dmitri and Alyosha and Ivan … the three “aspects” of the Russian character, as Dostoevsky sees it – and each gets equal time. Alyosha is the spiritual one, the man of faith (in the best sense). Dmitri is spoiled, indulged, a man of great appetites – and Ivan (my favorite) is the tormented intellectual. Alyosha does emerge as the compass of the thing – which is not surprising, considering Dostoevsky’s views on human nature, and the value of suffering. The end of Crime and Punishment, with its searing redemption – for ALL – is also Alyosha’s journey, and it is not an easy one. Alyosha, a man not just determined to see the good in his fellow man – but under an obligation to do so – is constantly rocked by the suffering and sorrow around him – not just in the town, and in Russia – but in his own family. How did that family, with all its issues, produce him?
The “Grand Inquisitor” chapter is something you hear about often when people talk about this book – it’s usually one of the first things mentioned. I went into it knowing some of the context of it, knowing: “Oh. Here is that famous chapter” – so I almost geared up for it, I tried to go into it fresh – to just let myself experience it for the first time, without all the commentary I’d heard about it trickle down and influence my response. I had to calm down, literally, as I went into that chapter. “Okay, Sheila. Breathe. Just start it. And take it slow.” I read someone say in an Amazon review that it (the “Grand Inquisitor” chapter) is one of the most “spine-tingling critiques of organized religion ever written”. And is it ever. It was so brilliant that I found myself actually blocking it out AS I read it. I couldn’t deal with it. Then I had to take a break, clear the ol’ noggin’, and go back to it. It wasn’t that it was dense, or intellectual – it was that it was like a laser beam of light cutting me in half, and it was too intense.
The whole book felt like that (well, except for the Father Zossima section which felt, frankly, endless to me – but once I finished the book, I realized why it was there. The book would not be the same without it.)
If you haven’t had the pleasure of reading this feast of intellect and soul and passion: do yourself a favor.
It’s a book that you will never forget.
I had a helluva time picking an excerpt. I wanted to stay far away from the Grand Inquisitor chapter – because to excerpt that would feel just WRONG … and I wanted to stay away from the defense attorneys speech and the prosecutors speech at the end of the book (again: SO brilliant and thought-provoking: each side having their say. Dostoevsky, dude. I tip my hat to you!!) This is one of the best crime novels ever written. With an AWESOME trial.
So I decided to excerpt from a long conversation (it spans many chapters) between the brothers Ivan and Alyosha … it culminates in the Grand Inquisitor chapter – they obviously are talking (arguing) about God. Religion. Suffering. Russia. Classic Russian stuff. Ivan dominates this particular argument – it’s his “turn” to speak without interruption. And he does.
Here’s an excerpt.
EXCERPT FROM The Brothers Karamazov
“I must make one confession,” Ivan began. “I could never understand how one can love one’s neighbors. It’s just one’s neighbors, to my mind, that one can’t love, though one might love those who live at a distance. I once read somewhere of the saint, John the Merciful. When a hungry, frozen beggar came to him, he took him into his bed, held him in his arms, and began breathing into his mouth, which was putrid and loathsome from some awful disease. I am convinced that he did that from ‘self-laceration’, from self-laceration of falseness, for the sake of the charity imposed by duty, as a penance laid on him. For anyone to love a man, he must be hidden, for as soon as he shows his face, love is gone.”
“Father Zossima has talked of that more than once,” observed Alyosha. “He, too, said that the face of a man often hinders people not practiced in love, from loving him. But yet there’s a great deal of love in mankind, an almost Christ-like love. I know that myself, Ivan.”
“Well, I know nothing of it so far, and can’t understand it, and the mass of mankind are with me there. The question is, whether this lack of ability to love is due to men’s bad qualities or whether it’s inherent in their nature. To my thinking, Christ-like love for men is a miracle impossible on earth. He was God. But we are not gods. Suppose I, for instance, suffer intensely. Another can never know how much I suffer, because he is another and not I. And what’s more, a man is rarely ready to admit another’s suffering. Why won’t he admit it, do you think? Because I smell unpleasant, because I have a stupuid face, because I once trod on his foot. Besides there is suffering and suffering; degrading, humiliating suffering such as humbles me – hunger, for instance. But when you come to higher suffering – for an idea, for instance – he will very rarely admit it, perhaps because my face he thinks is not the face of a man who suffers for an idea. And so he deprives me instantly of his favor, and not at all from badness of heart. Beggars, especially genteel beggars, should never show themselves, but ask for charity through the newspapers.
“One can love one’s neighbors in the abstract, or even at a distance, but at close quarters it’s almost impossible. If it were as on the stage, in the ballet, where if beggars come in, they wear silken rags and tattered lace and beg for alms dancing gracefully, then one might enjoy looking at them. But even then we should not love them. But enough of that. I simply wanted to show you my point of view. I meant to speak of the suffering of mankind generally. But we had better confine ourselves to the sufferings of children. That reduces the scope of my argument to a tenth of what it would be. Still we’d better keep to children, though it does weaken my case. But, in the first place, children can be loved even at close quarters, even when they are dirty, even when they are ugly. The second reason why I won’t speak of grown-up people is that, besides being disgusting and unworthy of love, they have a compensation – they’ve eaten the apple and know good and evil, and they have become ‘like god’. They go on eating it still. But children haven’t eaten anything, and are innocent. Are you fond of children, Alyosha? I know you are, and you will understand why I prefer to speak of them. If they, too, suffer horribly on earth, they must suffer for their fathers’ sins, they must be punished for their fathers, who have eaten the apple. But that reasoning is of the other world and is incomprehensible for the heart of man here on earth. The innocent must not suffer for another’s sins, and especially such innocents! You may be surprised at me, Alyosha, but I am awfully fond of children, too. And remember, cruel people, the violent, the rapacious, the Karamazovs are sometimes very fond of children. Children whil they are quite little – up to seven, for instance – are so remote from grown-up people; they are different creatures, as it were, of a different species. I knew a criminal in prison who had murdered whole families, including several children. But when he was in prison, he had a strange affection for them. He spent all his time at his window watching the children playing in the prison yard. He trained one little boy to come up to his window and made friends with him … You don’t know why I am telling you all this, Alyosha? My head aches and I am sad.”
“You speak in such a strange way,” observed Alyosha uneasily, “as though you were not quite yourself.”
“By the way, a Bulgarian I met lately in Moscow,” Ivan went on, seeming not to hear his brother’s words, “told me about the crimes committed by Turks and Circassians in Bulgaria through fear of a general uprising of the Slavs. They burned villages, murdered, outraged women and children, they nailed their prisoners by the ears to the fences, left them till morning, and in the morning they hanged 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 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 mother’s eyes. Doing it before the mother’s 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 game; 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, holds out its little hands to the pistol, and the Turk 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.”
“Ivan, what are you driving at?” asked Alyosha.
“I think if the devil doesn’t exist, then man has created him. He has created him in his own image and likeness.”
“Just as man created 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 like to collect certain facts, and, would you believe, I even copy anecdotes of a certain sort from newspapers and books. I’ve already got a fine collection. The Turks, of course, are included, but they are foreigners. I have Russian examples 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. It isso 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 twenty-three, who repented and was converted to the Christian faith at the scaffold. This Richard was illegitimate and had been 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 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 to treat him in this way. On the contrary, they thought they had every right, for Richard had been given to them as chattel, and they did not even see the necessity of feeding him. Richard himself described 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 given him light and shown him grace.
“All Geneva was excited 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 did 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 you 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,’ cried 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 walked or drove to the scaffold behind the prison van. At the scaffold they called to Richard: ‘Die, brother, die in the Lord, for even thou hast found grace!’ And so, covered with his brothers’ kisses, Richard was dragged 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 our people.
“Richard’s case 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 specialty, which is 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,’ everyone must have seen it. It’s typically Russian. He describes how a feeble little nag had foundered under too heavy a load and could not move. The peasant beats it, beats it savagely, beats it at last not knowing what he is doing in the intoxication of cruelty. He thrashes it mercilessly over and over again. ‘However weak you are, you must pull, even if you die doing 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. 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 man and his wife beat their own child with a birch rod, a girl of seven. I have an account of it. The father 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 that 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 lawyer is engaged. The Russian people have long called a lawyer ‘a conscience for hire’. The lawyer protests in his client’s defense. ‘It’s such a simple thing,’ he says, ‘an everyday occurrence. A father punishes 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 type of humanity these torturers behave mildly and kindly, like cultivated and humane Europeans. But they are very fond of tormenting children. 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 the tormentor’s 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, kicked her for no reason till her body was on ebruise. Then, they went to greater refinements of cruelty – shut her up all night in the cold and frost in a privy, because she didn’t ask to be taken up at night (as though a child of five sleeping its sound sleep could be trained to wake and ask), they smeared her face and filled her mouth with excrement. It was her mother, her mother who did this. And that mother could sleep, hearing her 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, Alyosha, 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. I’ll stop if you like.”
“Never mind. I want to suffer too,” muttered Alyosha.
Wow, Oliver Wendell Holmes to Dostoevsky – pick me up, then crash me down.
I love anything set in Russia or about Russians. I’ve been wanting to read this for a while. Maybe that will be my next book.
sarah – oh man, you have to let me know when you read it. It’s a mind-blower!!
Hard to pick just one passage to excerpt, isn’t it? Thank you.