The Karamazov Brothers

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  ‘You’re talking strangely,’ remarked Alyosha anxiously, ‘as if you were in the grip of some madness.’

  ‘Incidentally,’ continued Ivan Fyodorovich, as if he had not heard his brother, ‘not long ago a Bulgarian I met in Moscow was telling me about the atrocities being committed all over Bulgaria by the Turks and the Circassians,* who fear a mass uprising by the Slavs—it appears they set fire to homes and property, they cut people’s throats, they rape women and children, they nail prisoners to the palisades by their ears and leave them there till the morning and then hang them, and so on; it really defies imagination. We often talk of man’s “bestial” cruelty, but this is terribly unjust and insulting to beasts: a wild animal can never be as cruel as man, as artistic, as refined in his cruelty. The tiger mauls and tears its prey because that is all it knows. It would never enter its head to leave people all night nailed by their ears, even if it could do it. These Turks, incidentally, took a sadistic pleasure in torturing children, starting with cutting them out of their mothers’ wombs with a dagger, and going so far as to throw babes-in-arms into the air and impale them on the points of their bayonets before their mothers’ very eyes. Doing it before the mothers’ eyes was what gave it particular piquancy. But here is one example that I find quite fascinating. Picture the scene: an infant in the arms of its trembling mother, surrounded by Turks. They have thought up an amusing game: they caress the child, laugh to make it laugh; they succeed, the child laughs. At just that moment a Turk aims his pistol at the child, six inches from its face.* The child chuckles gleefully, holds out its little hands to grab the pistol, and suddenly the evil joker discharges the pistol full in its face and blows its little head to pieces… Artistic, isn’t it? By the way, they say Turks have a very sweet tooth.’

  ‘Ivan, what’s the point of all this?’

  ‘I think that if the devil didn’t exist and if man has created him, then he has created him in his own image and likeness.’

  ‘You mean, the way he created God?’

  ‘It’s amazing how you manage “to crack the wind of the poor phrase”,* as Polonius says in Hamlet,’ laughed Ivan. ‘You’ve caught me out, fair enough, I don’t mind admitting it. He’s fine, your God, if man has made him in his own image and likeness. You want to know what point I’m making, do you? You see, I’m a collector of certain little facts that appeal to me, and, would you believe it, I note down and save anecdotes of a particular kind from newspapers and stories, wherever I find them, and I already have a good collection. The Turks of course feature in the collection, but they’re all foreigners. I have some stories from this part of the world too, and they’re even better than the Turkish ones. You know, with us it’s more likely to be birching, flogging, and whipping,* it’s a question of national characteristics. For us it would be unthinkable to nail someone up by the ears, after all, we’re Europeans, but the birch, the whip—that’s our speciality, and no one can take it away from us. Abroad, apparently, they don’t allow flogging at all now, either because of a better social awareness or because the laws are such that a man daren’t even lay a finger on another person, but then they’ve compensated for it in another way, as unique to them as our way is to us, so much so in fact that it would probably be impossible in Russia, although, incidentally, it seems it’s beginning to catch on here, especially since the start of the religious movement among our upper classes. I have one delightful pamphlet translated from French, which describes the execution in Geneva, as recently as five years ago, of a criminal, a murderer, a youth of twenty-three called Richard, who it seems repented and was converted to Christianity when he was actually on the scaffold. This Richard was somebody’s natural son and had been given away by his parents at the tender age of six to some shepherds in the Swiss mountains, who treated him like a slave. He had grown up with them like a young wild animal: the shepherds didn’t teach him anything; on the contrary, when he was seven they sent him to graze the flocks in the wet and the cold, with hardly any clothes on and almost without any food. And, of course, they saw nothing wrong in this and felt no remorse for the way they treated him; indeed, they even considered themselves quite within their rights, as Richard had been given to them as one might donate an object, and they didn’t even feel obliged to feed him. Richard himself testified that during those years, like the prodigal son in the Bible, he desperately wanted to eat the swill that they fed to the pigs they were fattening for sale, but they wouldn’t even give him that and they beat him when he stole from the pigs, and that’s how his whole childhood and youth were spent, until he grew big enough and strong enough to go stealing. This savage began to earn money as a day labourer in Geneva, drank all his wages, lived like an animal, and ended up by robbing and killing some old man. He was caught, tried, and sentenced to death. They’re not sentimental in those parts. And there he was in prison, where he was at once surrounded by preachers and members of various Christian fraternities, philanthropic ladies, and so on. In prison they taught him to read and write, they expounded the Bible to him, appealed to his conscience, they exhorted him, nagged, admonished and pressured him until, in the end, he solemnly confessed to his crime. He was converted, and he himself wrote to the tribunal that he was a monster but that he had been privileged to see the light, and God had blessed him with His grace. The whole of Geneva was moved, all the pious and philanthropic people of Geneva. All the most high-born and well-brought-up people rushed to visit him in prison; they embraced and kissed Richard, saying, “You are our brother, you have been touched by the grace of God!” And Richard himself just wept from emotion: “Yes, I have been touched by the grace of God! All through my childhood and youth I was grateful for pigswill, but now I have been blessed and will die in a state of grace!” “Yes, yes, you will die in the Lord, you have shed blood and you must die in the Lord. Granted, you are innocent, you knew nothing of the Lord when you envied the pigs their food and when you were beaten for stealing it (though you did wrong because it is forbidden to steal)—nevertheless, you still shed blood and you must die.” Then his last day dawned. Richard, weakened, did nothing but weep, and kept repeating, “This is the best day of my life, I am going to my God!” “Yes,” cried the pastors, the judges, and the philanthropic ladies, “this is your happiest day, for you are going to the Lord!” They all wended their way in their carriages or on foot behind the tumbril in which Richard was being transported to the scaffold. “Die, dear brother,” they called to Richard when they reached the scaffold, “die in the Lord, for you have been touched by the grace of God.” And so, smothered with the kisses of his brothers, brother Richard was dragged on to the scaffold, his head was placed under the guillotine and fraternally chopped off for having been touched by the grace of God. Isn’t that just typical! That pamphlet was translated into Russian by some aristocratic Russian Lutheran philanthropists and was distributed free with newspapers and other publications for the edification of the Russian people. The interesting thing about Richard’s case is that it’s typical of that country. Here it is considered mad to cut off your brother’s head simply because he’s become your brother and has been touched by the grace of God, but, as I’ve already said, we have a custom of our own that would almost match it. Historically, the infliction of pain by beating has been our favourite national pastime. Nekrasov* wrote a poem about a peasant who lashes a horse across its eyes, its “gentle eyes”. Who hasn’t seen such things; it’s the Russian way. He describes a feeble old nag, overburdened, getting stuck with her load and unable to drag it. The peasant beats her and beats her until, intoxicated by his own cruelty, he no longer knows what he’s doing and is raining countless, painful blows on her. “Even if you haven’t the strength, pull; even if it kills you, go on, pull!” The defenceless old horse strains at the harness, and he begins to beat her on her weeping “gentle eyes”. Beside herself with terror, she makes a supreme effort and, trembling all over, scarcely breathing, starts to stagger with a kind of stumbling, crab-like motion, somehow unnatural
and shameful—Nekrasov portrays the full horror of it. But after all, it’s only a horse, and God Himself created horses to be beaten. The Tatars taught us that and left us the knout as a memento. But you know, one can thrash human beings too. An educated, cultured couple beat their own daughter with a birch, a little girl of seven*—I took detailed notes of this. Her father was glad they had left the switches with butts on them—“that’ll hurt more”, he says—and begins to lay about his own daughter. I know there are people who certainly take a sadistic pleasure in thrashing, enjoying every stroke literally to the point of ecstasy, becoming progressively more frenzied with every stroke. They start off by thrashing for a minute, and finish by thrashing for five minutes, ten minutes, even longer, and harder and quicker. The child screams and then at last can’t scream any more and sobs, “Papa, papa!” By some devilish twist of fate the matter comes to court. A lawyer is engaged. The Russian people have long called a lawyer a “hired conscience”. The lawyer protests in defence of his client, “It’s just a simple ordinary domestic matter, a father chastising his daughter, and that’s all there is to it—it’s a shameful sign of our times that the case was ever brought to court!” The jury are convinced, they retire and bring in a verdict of “not guilty”. The public whoops with delight to see the torturer acquitted. Alas, I wasn’t there, otherwise I’d have shouted out that a foundation should be set up in honour of the torturer!… A pretty picture, isn’t it?… But I have even better ones of children, I’ve lots more of Russian children, Alyosha. A little girl of five* was abused by her parents, “decent and most respectable people, well educated and cultured”. You see, once more I firmly maintain that in many people there’s a particular trait, and that’s a delight in torturing children, but only children. Towards the rest of humanity these same torturers are considerate, even gentle, as befits educated and humanitarian Europeans, but they love to torture children; in a sense, that’s their way of loving children. It’s precisely the defencelessness and the angelic trust of children that seduces these cruel people; the children have nowhere to run and no one to turn to—that’s what inflames the vile instincts of the torturer. Of course, in every person there lurks a beast, a demon of fury, whose passions are inflamed by the cries of the victim, an unrestrained wild beast loosed from his chains, a beast riddled with disease contracted through debauchery—gout, liver disorder, and so on. Those educated parents subjected that poor little five-year-old to every conceivable torture. They beat her, whipped her, kicked her till she was black and blue, all for no reason. Finally, they thought of the ultimate punishment; they shut her up all night in the outside privy, in the cold and the frost, because she wet herself at night (as if a five-year-old, sleeping soundly like an angel, could excuse herself in time)—for this, they smeared her face with her excrement and forced her to eat it, and it was her mother, her mother who did this to her! And that mother slept unconcernedly at night, oblivious to the sobs of the poor child shut up in that foul place! Can you understand such a thing: that small child, unable even to comprehend what is being done to her, in the dark and the cold of that foul place, beating her little panting breast with her tiny fists, sobbing, weeping humble tears of bloodstained innocence, praying to “Dear Father God” to protect her—do you understand this obscenity, my friend, my brother, my holy and meek monk, do you understand why such an obscenity should be so necessary, and what is the point of it? They say that without it man could not live on this earth, for he would not understand the difference between good and evil. Why should one understand that damned difference between good and evil if that’s the price to be paid? All the knowledge in the world is not worth that child’s tearful prayers to “Dear Father God”. I’m not talking about the suffering of adults, they have eaten of the apple, they can go to the devil and suffer all the fires of hell, but the little ones, the children! I’m making you suffer, Alyosha, you seem distressed. I’ll stop if you like.’

  ‘It’s all right. I’m happy to suffer too,’ muttered Alyosha.

  ‘Just one more example, just for curiosity’s sake. It’s very typical. I just read about it in some antiquarian collection, The Archive or Ancient Times, I forget which; I’ll have to check. It was during the very darkest period of feudal times, at the beginning of the century—thank God for our Tsar Liberator!* At that time, at the beginning of the century, there lived a certain General, a fabulously rich landowner* with connections in high places. He was one of those individuals (even then it seems they were very few in number) who, having retired from active service, were almost convinced that they had earned the right of life and death over their serfs. Such people existed then. Well, this General lived on his estates with two thousand serfs. He considered himself very high and mighty, and treated his poorer neighbours as spongers and made them the butt of his jokes. He had kennels with hundreds of dogs, and close on a hundred huntsmen, all in uniform and all on horseback. Well, a little serf boy, not more than eight years old, threw a stone while playing and hit the paw of the General’s favourite hound. “Why’s my favourite dog limping?” They explained to him that apparently this child had thrown a stone at it and hurt its paw. “Aha, it was you, was it?” said the General, taking a good look at him. “Seize him!” They seized him, dragged him away from his mother, and locked him up all night in a closet. At dawn the General emerged all ready for the hunt; he sat on his horse, surrounded by his retainers, his dogs, his servants, and his huntsmen on horseback. All the domestic staff were assembled for their edification, and in front of them all was the mother of the guilty boy. The boy was brought out of the lock-up. It was a dark, cold, foggy autumn day, splendid for hunting. The General ordered that the child be undressed, and he stood there stark naked, shivering and petrified with fear, not daring to make a sound… “Make him run!” ordered the General. “Run, run!” the huntsmen shouted at him, and the boy ran… “After him!” roared the General, and set his whole pack of borzoi hounds on him. Before his mother’s very eyes, the child was hunted down and torn to pieces by the dogs!… The General had his estates put into trusteeship, I believe. Well… what should they have done with him? Shot him? Should he have been shot to gratify moral outrage? Tell me, Alyosha!’

  ‘Yes, shot him!’ muttered Alyosha, looking at his brother with a kind of weak, twisted smile.

  ‘Bravo!’ whooped Ivan, delighted. ‘If you say that, it means… What a fine monk you are! So there’s a proper little demon residing in your heart after all, Alyoshka Karamazov!’

  ‘What I said was absurd, but…’

  ‘Ah, but that “but” is all important… You know, novice, absurdity is all too necessary on this earth. The world rests on absurdity, and without it perhaps nothing would be accomplished. We know what we know.’

  ‘What do you know?’

  ‘I understand nothing, and now’, Ivan went on as if delirious, ‘I don’t want to understand anything. I want to stick to facts. I gave up trying to understand long ago. As soon as I feel I want to understand something I immediately have to renounce facts, whereas I have decided to stay true to facts…’