The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky [children's books read aloud TXT] 📗

soaked from its

crust to its centre, I will say nothing. I have narrowed my subject on

purpose. I am a bug, and I recognise in all humility that I cannot

understand why the world is arranged as it is. Men are themselves to

blame, I suppose; they were given paradise, they wanted freedom, and

stole fire from heaven, though they knew they would become unhappy, so

there is no need to pity them. With my pitiful, earthly, Euclidian

understanding, all I know is that there is suffering and that there

are none guilty; that cause follows effect, simply and directly;

that everything flows and finds its level-but that’s only Euclidian

nonsense, I know that, and I can’t consent to live by it! What comfort

is it to me that there are none guilty and that cause follows effect

simply and directly, and that I know it?- I must have justice, or I

will destroy myself. And not justice in some remote infinite time

and space, but here on earth, and that I could see myself. I have

believed in it. I want to see it, and if I am dead by then, let me

rise again, for if it all happens without me, it will be too unfair.

Surely I haven’t suffered simply that I, my crimes and my

sufferings, may manure the soil of the future harmony for somebody

else. I want to see with my own eyes the hind lie down with the lion

and the victim rise up and embrace his murderer. I want to be there

when everyone suddenly understands what it has all been for. All the

religions of the world are built on this longing, and I am a believer.

But then there are the children, and what am I to do about them?

That’s a question I can’t answer. For the hundredth time I repeat,

there are numbers of questions, but I’ve only taken the children,

because in their case what I mean is so unanswerably clear. Listen! If

all must suffer to pay for the eternal harmony, what have children

to do with it, tell me, please? It’s beyond all comprehension why they

should suffer, and why they should pay for the harmony. Why should

they, too, furnish material to enrich the soil for the harmony of

the future? I understand solidarity in sin among men. I understand

solidarity in retribution, too; but there can be no such solidarity

with children. And if it is really true that they must share

responsibility for all their fathers’ crimes, such a truth is not of

this world and is beyond my comprehension. Some jester will say,

perhaps, that the child would have grown up and have sinned, but you

see he didn’t grow up, he was torn to pieces by the dogs, at eight

years old. Oh, Alyosha, I am not blaspheming! I understand, of course,

what an upheaval of the universe it will be when everything in

heaven and earth blends in one hymn of praise and everything that

lives and has lived cries aloud: ‘Thou art just, O Lord, for Thy

ways are revealed.’ When the mother embraces the fiend who threw her

child to the dogs, and all three cry aloud with tears, ‘Thou art just,

O Lord!’ then, of course, the crown of knowledge will be reached and

all will be made clear. But what pulls me up here is that I can’t

accept that harmony. And while I am on earth, I make haste to take

my own measures. You see, Alyosha, perhaps it really may happen that

if I live to that moment, or rise again to see it, I, too, perhaps,

may cry aloud with the rest, looking at the mother embracing the

child’s torturer, ‘Thou art just, O Lord!’ but I don’t want to cry

aloud then. While there is still time, I hasten to protect myself, and

so I renounce the higher harmony altogether. It’s not worth the

tears of that one tortured child who beat itself on the breast with

its little fist and prayed in its stinking outhouse, with its

unexpiated tears to ‘dear, kind God’! It’s not worth it, because those

tears are unatoned for. They must be atoned for, or there can be no

harmony. But how? How are you going to atone for them? Is it possible?

By their being avenged? But what do I care for avenging them? What

do I care for a hell for oppressors? What good can hell do, since

those children have already been tortured? And what becomes of

harmony, if there is hell? I want to forgive. I want to embrace. I

don’t want more suffering. And if the sufferings of children go to

swell the sum of sufferings which was necessary to pay for truth, then

I protest that the truth is not worth such a price. I don’t want the

mother to embrace the oppressor who threw her son to the dogs! She

dare not forgive him! Let her forgive him for herself, if she will,

let her forgive the torturer for the immeasurable suffering of her

mother’s heart. But the sufferings of her tortured child she has no

right to forgive; she dare not forgive the torturer, even if the child

were to forgive him! And if that is so, if they dare not forgive, what

becomes of harmony? Is there in the whole world a being who would have

the right to forgive and could forgive? I don’t want harmony. From

love for humanity I don’t want it. I would rather be left with the

unavenged suffering. I would rather remain with my unavenged suffering

and unsatisfied indignation, even if I were wrong. Besides, too high a

price is asked for harmony; it’s beyond our means to pay so much to

enter on it. And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket, and if I

am an honest man I am bound to give it back as soon as possible. And

that I am doing. It’s not God that I don’t accept, Alyosha, only I

most respectfully return him the ticket.”

 

“That’s rebellion,” murmered Alyosha, looking down.

 

“Rebellion? I am sorry you call it that,” said Ivan earnestly.

“One can hardly live in rebellion, and I want to live. Tell me

yourself, I challenge your answer. Imagine that you are creating a

fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the

end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and

inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature-that baby

beating its breast with its fist, for instance-and to found that

edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the

architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth.”

 

“No, I wouldn’t consent,” said Alyosha softly.

 

“And can you admit the idea that men for whom you are building

it would agree to accept their happiness on the foundation of the

unexpiated blood of a little victim? And accepting it would remain

happy for ever?”

 

“No, I can’t admit it. Brother,” said Alyosha suddenly, with

flashing eyes, “you said just now, is there a being in the whole world

who would have the right to forgive and could forgive? But there is

a Being and He can forgive everything, all and for all, because He

gave His innocent blood for all and everything. You have forgotten

Him, and on Him is built the edifice, and it is to Him they cry aloud,

‘Thou art just, O Lord, for Thy ways are revealed!’

 

“Ah! the One without sin and His blood! No, I have not forgotten

Him; on the contrary I’ve been wondering all the time how it was you

did not bring Him in before, for usually all arguments on your side

put Him in the foreground. Do you know, Alyosha-don’t laugh I made

a poem about a year ago. If you can waste another ten minutes on me,

I’ll tell it to you.”

 

“You wrote a poem?”

 

“Oh, no, I didn’t write it,” laughed Ivan, and I’ve never

written two lines of poetry in my life. But I made up this poem in

prose and I remembered it. I was carried away when I made it up. You

will be my first reader-that is listener. Why should an author forego

even one listener?” smiled Ivan. “Shall I tell it to you?”

 

“I am all attention.” said Alyosha.

 

“My poem is called The Grand Inquisitor; it’s a ridiculous

thing, but I want to tell it to you.