The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky [children's books read aloud TXT] 📗
- Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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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 goitre 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 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 anyone 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.”
* It would be neccessary to invent them.
“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.”
* I’ve seen the shadow of a coachman rubbing the shadow of a coach
with the shadow of a brush.
And he even began blubbering. He was sentimental. He was wicked
and sentimental.
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 grey,
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 anyone. 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 unrecognised
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 labour 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, Paissy 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
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