Zosima confides details of his own early years that fill out the picture of his spiritual formation, and here again Dostoevsky draws on particularities from his own life, recalling the deep impression made on him by the book of Job during a pre-Easter mass. The ancient biblical cry of anguish against a presumably merciful God, who submits His faithful servitor to the worst torments in order to test his loyalty, bears the closest connection with Dostoevsky’s thematics, and Zosima is still deeply moved by it: “I’ve never been able to read that sacred book without tears.” Some have been incited by it to mock and blame God because of the terrible fate so unjustly meted out to the righteous Job; but the greatness of the work “lies just in the fact that it is a mystery—that the passing earthly scene and the eternal verity are brought together in it” (14: 265). Zosima says nothing about Job’s anguished outcries and accusations. The “mystery” of the tale for him is that, despite his “earthly” sufferings, Job still proclaims his faith in God and in the goodness of God’s creation.
If Zosima’s first narrative is associatively linked to Alyosha, then the second, dealing with his own life as a young man, is related to Dimitry. Sent by his mother to a school for military cadets in Petersburg, Zinovy (his secular name) had, by the time he graduated, been “transformed into a cruel, absurd, almost savage creature” (14: 268). The calamitous events that follow, precipitated by a blow to his vanity and pride, lead to a crisis during which, implicitly, the lessons of Markel begin to work in his soul (14: 270). He participates in a duel but refuses to fire, apologizes to his servant for having beaten him, and resigns his Army commission, announcing that he was entering a monastery. Here is a foreshadowing of Dimitry’s future self-discovery and moral transformation.
The third story, “The Mysterious Visitor,” is clearly connected with Ivan. A respected citizen, well known for his charitable activities, visits Zinovy, who has become known for acting in accordance with his moral conscience rather than submitting to the non-Christian code of his position and rank. The older man’s interest was inspired by “a secret motive”—he himself is a murderer! (14: 274). As a young man, out of jealousy, he had killed a girl who refused his suit, and he had successfully made it appear as a robbery. He had hoped that family life would help him escape brooding over his past; but the presence of his wife and children only made the memory of his crime more oppressively painful, and he became haunted by the idea of ending his torments with a full confession.
Like Ivan, the visitor was concerned with the general moral situation of society and human life. He reiterates one of the favorite ideas expressed in the Diary, that the modern world is living through a period of “isolation” in which the solidarity of humans with each other has been replaced by separation and division. Change can come only through “a spiritual, psychological process. . . . Until you have become really, in actual fact, a brother to everyone, brotherhood will not come to pass. No sort of scientific teaching, no kind of common interest, will ever teach us to share property and privileges with equal consideration for all.” Eventually, “this terrible individualism must indubitably have an end. . . . And then the sign of the Son of Man will be seen in the heavens,” the sign presumably announcing the Second Coming of Christ (14: 274).
Despite all the torments that the visitor knows will ensue, he follows Zinovy’s advice to confess. Nobody believes the confession of this model citizen, who has led such an exemplary life (any more than Ivan will be believed in the courtroom scene later). And when the mysterious visitor, producing evidence of his crime, is declared insane, the parallel with Ivan could not be clearer. A few days later the penitent murderer is taken ill and dies; before his death he admits to Zinovy that, on his last visit, he had come back to kill him. But “the Lord vanquished the devil in my heart” and stayed his hand (exactly as will occur with Dimitry) (14: 283). All three stories are a mise en abyme, that is, a relatively subordinate narrative element either reproducing in nuce the main theme of the work, or presenting it as here in a form somewhat altered but still recognizable. Zosima’s zhitie is not his alone but that of the three Karamazov brothers as well. Each story indicates the paths that all (including Ivan) will take in the remainder of the book to refute his Legend of the Grand Inquisitor.
Zosima’s narratives are followed by a chapter of his “conversations and exhortations,” in which Dostoevsky, without concern for their didacticism, develops some of his own most cherished ideas. Monasticism and the Russian monks are defended against their numerous critics. Zosima replies in terms of Dostoevsky’s religious messianism, which views the Russian monks as those who “keep the image of Christ pure and undefiled.” By contrast, those worldly people who criticize the monks “have science, but in science there is nothing but what is the object of sense. The spiritual world, the higher part of man’s being is rejected altogether, dismissed with a sort of triumph, even hatred.” The modern world has proclaimed “the reign of freedom” and “the multiplication of desires,” but such an unregulated existence can only lead among the rich to “isolation and spiritual suicide; in the poor, [to] envy and murder; for they have been given rights, but have not been shown the means of satisfying their wants” (14: 284).
Zosima plays variations on this contrast between the life of the worldly, who sacrifice everything to their ever-increasing desires, and the regime of the monks, which consists of “obedience, fasting, and prayer.” For Dostoevsky, “freedom” meant mastery and suppression of one’s desires, not liberation from all constraints on their satisfaction; such a life of self-control was for him the only “way to real, true freedom.” But the humble, believing Russian people were not immune to the new forces of disintegration undermining society, and Zosima utters a horrified castigation of “the fire of corruption” spreading through the peasantry itself, here touching on the actual problems of Russian society, including drunkenness and child labor (14: 286). But what will ultimately save the Russians, Zosima affirms, is the consciousness of their iniquity—one of the extremely dubious linchpins of Dostoevsky’s ideology since the early 1860s.
Zosima launches into an encomium of the Russian peasantry, and he dreams of a halcyon social future, one that “will come to pass when even the most corrupt of our rich will end by being ashamed of his riches before the poor, and the poor, seeing his humility, will understand and give way before him, and will respond joyfully and kindly to his honorable shame” (14: 286). Here, unquestionably, is Dostoevsky’s own dream-world of the Russian future, expressed with all the naïveté suitable for Zosima. Of course, all these ingenuous expectations will be met with mockery, but Zosima thinks that those who rely on reason alone to reach the same goal of unity and solidarity (the Socialists) “have more fantastic dreams than we. They aim at justice, but, denying Christ, they will end flooding the earth with blood.” Indeed, “were it not for Christ’s covenant, they would slaughter one another down to the last two men on earth,” and even those two would kill each other “in their pride” (14: 287–288).
In his most overtly theological preachment, he tells them to pray every day for all those whose souls were appearing before God at that moment. Such prayer is only one expression of the universality of love that is the leitmotif of Zosima’s admonitions. “For all is like an ocean, all is flowing and bending; a touch in one place sets up movement at the other end of the earth.” He also insists that it is necessary “to love a man even in his sin, for that is the semblance of the Divine love and is the highest love on earth.” Love “all God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it . . . every ray of God’s light, love the animals, love the plants, love everything” (14: 288–289).
Because sin is omnipresent, a good deal of effort is required to achieve the state of mind that he recommends. As a remedy, “there is only one means of salvation”: “Take yourself and make yourself responsible for everything and for all men, you will see at once that it is really so, and that you are to blame for everyone and for all things.” To take on oneself
the burden of universal guilt thus becomes the only antidote to despair at the existence of evil. Only by taking responsibility for all sin could they avoid “sharing the pride of Satan and murmuring against God” (as Ivan had done). Even a judge appointed by law should “act in the same spirit so far as possible, for [the criminal] will go away and condemn himself more bitterly than you have done” (14: 290–291). Such would be the ideal situation, already mentioned by Zosima in discussing Ivan’s article, when the state would be transformed into a church and the punishment of a criminal would be exclusively the work of his own moral conscience. If the criminal should go away unredeemed, however, “mocking at you,” his self-chastisement will eventually occur. Nothing that happens can thus infirm such a faith.
Faith does not require confirmation by miracles, nor should failure in combating evil lead to discouragement. Zosima urges his listeners to subdue any “desire for vengeance on the evildoers” by seeking suffering and blaming only themselves. “If you had been a light, you would have lighted the path for others too. . . . And even though your light was shining, yet you see men were not saved by it, hold firm and doubt not the power of the heavenly light. . . . Men are always saved after the death of the deliverer” (14: 292). This later redemption is what occurred in the case of Christ, and we will see it repeated after Zosima’s death as well.
Dostoevsky well knew that these injunctions are difficult for human reason to understand, and as a last resort Zosima falls back on the mystery of human life itself. Much is concealed in the earthly life of humankind, and “many of the strongest feelings and movements of our nature we cannot comprehend. . . . On earth, indeed, we are as it were astray, and if it were not for the precious image of Christ before us, we should be undone and altogether lost, as was the human race before the flood.” Dostoevsky then sets down Zosima’s often-quoted words of the link between earthly life and other worlds: “God took seeds from different worlds and sowed them on the earth, . . . but what grows . . . is alive only through the feeling of its contact with other mysterious worlds.” Once “such contact is lost, then you will be indifferent to life and even grow to hate it.” Zosima returns to the Franciscan note of cosmic mysticism in affirming the beauty and goodness of all God’s creation: “Love to throw yourself on the earth and kiss it. Kiss the earth and love it with an unceasing, consuming love. Love all men, love everything. . . . Water the earth with the tears of your joy and love those tears” (14: 290–292).
After such an ecstatic summation, Zosima shifts back to the problem of the human condition. Hell contains no scenario of hooks and grappling irons, à la Feodor. Rather, according to Zosima, hell is this eternal torment, “the suffering of no longer being able to love.” So far as “hellfire in the material sense” is concerned, he declares that “I don’t go into that mystery and I shun it” (14: 293). Hell is purely a spiritual torment, not to be depicted, pace Dante and Milton, in physical imagery at all. Dostoevsky thus remains faithful to his poetics of subjectivity by transforming even hell into an attribute of the human psyche. Milton had preceded him when Satan declares in Paradise Lost, “The mind is its own place, and in itself / Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven,”4 but this is not accompanied in Milton by a rejection of the traditional imagery.5
So ends Alyosha’s rendition of Zosima’s zhitie, and the thread of the story is then taken up again by the narrator. We return to the cell where Zosima was speaking to his intimates, “so cheerful and talkative” that he seemed to have undergone a temporary recovery, but he dies on this very day, his peacefully solemn demise fully in accord with the sanctity of his life since becoming a priest, and with the teachings that Alyosha had recorded.
1 Vaclav Cerny, Essai sur le titanisme dans la poésie romantique occidentale entre 1815 et 1850 (Prague, 1935).
2 Roger L. Cox, Between Earth and Heaven (New York, 1969), 194.
3 No part of the Legend has been more influential and important than this prediction of what is the world of twentieth-century totalitarianism. Dostoevsky’s nightmare vision of the surrender of inner freedom for untroubled security was also a predecessor of the literary genre of Dystopia, represented by such works as Evgeny Zamiatin’s We, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and George Orwell’s 1984.
4 John Milton, Paradise Lost, ed. Merritt Y. Hughes (New York, 1933), 235.
5 Dostoevsky’s depiction of the monastic milieu and the zhitie of Zosima was subjected to severe censure by Konstantin Leontiyev, who also reported that it had displeased the community of Optyna Pustin. He found that “a genuine mystical sentiment was . . . expressed rather weakly, but the sentiment of humanitarian idealization even in the speeches of the monks was expressed very ardently and at length” (PSS, 15: 497). Indeed, in the assertion made by Markel that it is entirely within man’s will to make paradise come true, nothing is said about any cooperation of man with God in effectuating such a transformation, and it thus appears to be an entirely secular event, only requiring, as the Utopian Socialists had once preached, the unconditional application of the Christian law of love to earthly life. Nor does the cosmic mysticism indigenous to Eastern Orthodoxy, as Zosima expresses it, require any supernatural grace to be experienced.
CHAPTER 60
The Brothers Karamazov: Books 7–12
Ivan’s Legend and Zosima’s zhitie have established the polarities of the conflict between reason and faith, and each of the main characters will be confronted by a crisis that requires choosing between them. Faith of some kind will prevail in all of these climactic moments—not necessarily faith in a specifically moral-religious form, as will occur with Alyosha, but a faith that incarnates some aspect of the morality of love and the self-transcendence of egoism represented and preached by Zosima. Alyosha is the first of the three brothers whose life experiences have been foreshadowed by those of Zosima, and there is a structural parallel between the unrolling of the crisis situations and the order of the linkage of the brothers with Zosima’s life. It is thus with Alyosha that the first conflict between reason and faith is posed and resolved.
Alyosha’s disaccord occurs on the moral-religious level and arises as a result of Zosima’s death and the accompanying expectation throughout the monastic community and the town that God would provide some external reward for the sanctity of his life. The monks were filled with excitement and expectation to such a degree that the learned Father Paissy, versed in Church doctrine and history, considered it “unseemly” and “an evil temptation.” And so it was: a version of the second temptation of Christ, who had refused to demonstrate his immunity to the laws of nature by leaping unharmed from the pinnacle of the temple. Yet even Paissy “secretly, at the bottom of his heart, cherished almost the same hopes and could not but be aware of it” (14: 296).
At the very least, the sanctity of Zosima’s life might have guaranteed a respite from the normal laws of earthly decay; and so the unexpected “odor of corruption” emitted by the corpse was immediately seized on by those unfriendly to him as a sign of heavenly disapproval, unleashing a malevolent chorus of criticism. “I feel it almost repulsive to recall that event,” says the narrator, and he would not have done so “if it had not exerted a very strong influence on the heart and soul of the chief, though future, hero of my story” (14: 297). Ivan’s powerful attack on God for having created a world of suffering and injustice had continued to undermine Alyosha’s faith; and the death of Zosima, coupled with this seeming disgrace, had dealt a staggering blow to the tranquil stability of Alyosha’s convictions. But his faith will reemerge strengthened from the trial and this reaffirmation is already foreshadowed by his encounters with Grushenka, who is struggling between feelings of resentment and rage against the Polish officer who had seduced and abandoned her and the desire to forgive.
The narrator insists that “it was not miracles [Alyosha] needed but only ‘the higher justice’ which had been in his belief outraged by the blow that had so suddenly and so cruelly wounded his heart.” Because such “higher
justice” presumably would have meant displaying a certain immunity to “the pitiless laws of nature,” all the narrator’s apologetic efforts cannot conceal that, even if inspired by the greatness of his love, Alyosha has yielded like the others to the second temptation of the devil. And at this moment, quite appropriately, Alyosha also recalls the “vague but tormenting impression left by his conversation with Ivan the day before,” who had also found intolerable this lack of any “higher justice” in a creation that allowed the suffering of innocent children (14: 306–307).
Most likely this is why, for the first and only time, the narrator allows himself to criticize the character he had taken under his wing: “All the love that lay concealed in his pure heart for ‘everyone and everything’ had, for the past year, been concentrated—and perhaps wrongly so—primarily . . . on his beloved elder, now dead” (14: 306). As a result, the shock of the event led him to neglect his obligations to “everyone and everything”—for example, to his brother Dimitry, whom he had been told to watch over, and to the utterly destitute Snegiryov family, for whom he had been entrusted with two hundred rubles by Katerina. Alyosha’s situation is similar to that of Ivan, whose “rebellion” allowed him to stifle any resistance to a possible murder. The parallel is clearly drawn in his conversation with the cynical and disabused Rakitin. Observing Alyosha’s disillusionment, the latter scoffs at his dismay “because your old man had begun to stink,” amusedly accusing him of “being in a temper with your God, you are rebelling against him.” Alyosha’s reply—“I am not rebelling against my God; I simply ‘don’t accept his world’ ”—quotes Ivan’s very words (14: 308).
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