The Brothers Karamazov

“Indeed,” he went on, “what is this Karamazov family that has suddenly gained such sad notoriety all over Russia? Perhaps I am greatly exaggerating, but it seems to me that certain basic, general elements of our modern-day educated society shine through, as it were, in the picture of this nice little family—oh, not all the elements, and they shine only microscopically, like to the sun in a small water-drop,’^[341] yet something has been reflected, something has betrayed itself. Look at this wretched, unbridled, and depraved old man, this ‘paterfamilias,’ who has so sadly ended his existence. A nobleman by birth, starting out his career as a poor little sponger, who through an accidental and unexpected marriage grabs a small capital as a dowry, at first a petty cheat and flattering buffoon with a germ of mental capacity, a far from weak one, by the way, and above all a usurer. As the years go by—that is, as his capital grows— he gets bolder. Self-deprecation and fawning disappear, only a jeering and wicked cynic and sensualist remains. The whole spiritual side has been scrapped, but there is an extraordinary thirst for life. In the end he sees nothing in life apart from sensual pleasure, and thus he teaches his children. Of the spiritual sort of fatherly duties—none at all. He laughs at them, he brings his little children up in the backyard and is glad when they are taken away from him. He even forgets about them altogether. The old man’s whole moral rule is—après moi le déluge.^[342] Everything contrary to the idea of a citizen, a complete, even hostile separation from society: ‘Let the whole world burn, so long as I am all right. ‘ And he is all right, he is perfectly content, he wants to live like that for another twenty or thirty years. He cheats his own son, and with the son’s money, his maternal inheritance, which he does not want to give him, he takes his own son’s mistress away. No, I have no intention of handing over the defense of the accused to the highly talented attorney from Petersburg. I myself can speak the truth, I myself understand the sum total of indignation he has stored up in his son’s heart. But enough, enough of that unfortunate old man, he has his reward. Let us recall, however, that he is a father, and one of our modern-day fathers. Shall I offend society if I say that he is even one of many modern-day fathers? Alas, so many modern-day fathers simply do not speak their minds as cynically as this one did, for they are better bred, better educated, but essentially they are of almost the same philosophy as he. But allow that I am a pessimist, allow that I am. You will forgive me: that was our arrangement. Let us settle it beforehand: do not believe me, do not believe me, I shall speak, but do not believe me. But still let me speak my mind, still you may remember a little something of what I say. Now, however, we come to the children of this old man, this paterfamilias: one of them stands before us in the dock, we shall have much to say of him later; the others I shall mention only in passing. The elder of the two is one of our modern young men, brilliantly educated, with quite a powerful mind, who, however, no longer believes in anything, who has already scrapped and rejected much, too much in life, exactly as his father had done. We have all heard him, he was received amicably in our society. He did not conceal his opinions, even the opposite, quite the opposite, which now emboldens me to speak of him somewhat frankly, not as a private person, of course, but only as a member of the Karamazov family. Yesterday a certain sick idiot died here, on the outskirts of our town, by suicide; a person much involved in the present case, the former servant and, perhaps, illegitimate son of Fyodor Pavlovich, Smerdyakov. In the preliminary investigation he told me, with hysterical tears, how this young Karamazov, Ivan Fyodorovich, had horrified him with his spiritual unrestraint. ‘Everything, according to him, is permitted, whatever there is in the world, and from now on nothing should be forbidden—that’s what he kept teaching me about.’ It seems that this thesis, which he was taught, ultimately caused the idiot to lose his mind, though, of course, his mental disorder was also affected by his falling sickness, and by this whole terrible catastrophe that had broken out in their house. But this idiot let drop one very, very curious remark, which would do honor even to a more intelligent observer, and that is why I am mentioning it now: ‘If,’ he said to me, ‘any one of the sons most resembles Fyodor Pavlovich in character, it is him, Ivan Fyodorovich!’ At this remark I shall interrupt the characterization I have begun, considering it indelicate to continue further. Oh, I do not want to draw any further conclusions and, like the raven, only croak ruin over a young fate. We have just seen, here in this hall, that the direct force of the truth still lives in his young heart, that the feeling of family loyalty has not yet been stifled in him by unbelief and moral cynicism, acquired more as an inheritance than through real mental suffering. Now the other son—oh, still a youth, pious and humble, who, in contrast to the dark, corrupting world view of his brother, seeks to cling to ‘popular foundations,’ so to speak, or to what goes by that clever name among us in certain theoretical corners of our thinking intelligentsia. He clung to the monastery, you see; he all but became a monk himself. In him, it seems to me, unconsciously, as it were, and so early on, there betrayed itself that timid despair that leads so many in our poor society, fearing its cynicism and depravity, and mistakenly ascribing all evil to European enlightenment, to throw themselves, as they put it, to the ‘native soil,’ so to speak, into the motherly embrace of the native earth, like children frightened by ghosts, who even at the dried-up breast of a paralyzed mother wish only to fall peacefully asleep and even to sleep for the rest of their lives, simply not to see the horrors that frighten them. For my part, I wish the good and gifted young man all the best, I hope that his youthful brightheartedness and yearning for popular foundations will not turn later, as so often happens, into dark mysticism on the moral side, and witless chauvinism on the civic side^[343]—two qualities that perhaps threaten more evil for the nation than even the premature corruption owing to a falsely understood and gratuitously acquired European enlightenment from which his elder brother suffers.”