The Brothers Karamazov

“Let us remember his face, and his clothes, and his poor boots, and his little coffin, and his unfortunate, sinful father, and how he bravely rose up against the whole class for him!”

“We will, we will remember!” the boys cried again, “he was brave, he was kind!”

“Ah, how I loved him!” exclaimed Kolya. “Ah, children, ah, dear friends, do not be afraid of life! How good life is when you do something good and rightful!”

“Yes, yes,” the boys repeated ecstatically.

“Karamazov, we love you!” a voice, which seemed to be Kartashov’s, exclaimed irrepressibly.

“We love you, we love you,” everyone joined in. Many had tears shining in their eyes.

“Hurrah for Karamazov!” Kolya proclaimed ecstatically.

“And memory eternal for the dead boy!” Alyosha added again, with feeling.

“Memory eternal!” the boys again joined in.

“Karamazov!” cried Kolya, “can it really be true as religion says, that we shall all rise from the dead, and come to life, and see one another again, and everyone, and Ilyushechka?”

“Certainly we shall rise, certainly we shall see and gladly, joyfully tell one another all that has been,” Alyosha replied, half laughing, half in ecstasy.

“Ah, how good that will be!” burst from Kolya.

“Well, and now let’s end our speeches and go to his memorial dinner. Don’t be disturbed that we’ll be eating pancakes. It’s an ancient, eternal thing, and there’s good in that, too,” laughed Alyosha. “Well, let’s go! And we go like this now, hand in hand.”

“And eternally so, all our lives hand in hand! Hurrah for Karamazov!” Kolya cried once more ecstatically, and once more all the boys joined in his exclamation.

NOTES

Biblical references, unless otherwise noted, are to the King James Version. Parenthetical references are to Victor Terras, A Karamazov Companion: Commentary on the Genesis, Language, and Style of Dostoevsky’s Novel (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981). The Brothers Karamazov is abbreviated B.K. and sections are identified by part, book, and chapter numbers: for example, 1.3.2 signifies part 1, book 3, chapter 2.

Dedication

Anna Grigorievna Dostoevsky, née Snitkin (1846-1918), was Dostoevsky’s second wife.

^[1]the chafings of a mind imprisoned: quotation from Mikhail Lermontov’s poem “Do not, do not believe yourself . . “(1839).

^[2]Nowlettest thou ...: from the prayer of St. Simeon (Luke 2:29), read at Vespers in the Orthodox Church.

^[3]Proudhon and Bakunin: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-65), French philosopher, a principal socialist theorist. Mikhail Bakunin (1814-76), Russian radical activist, a leader of the First International, later a major theorist of anarchism.

^[4]February revolution . . .: the three-day revolution in 1848 that ended the reign of Louis-Philippe and proclaimed the Second Republic.

^[5]souls: before the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, Russian estates were evaluated according to the number of “souls,” or adult male serfs, living on them.

^[6] provincial marshal of nobility: the highest elective office in a province, before the reforms of the 1860s. Governors and administrators were appointed by the tsar.

^[7]ecclesiastical courts: courts exercising canon law rather than civil law. The Judicial Reform Act of 1864 raised the question of their continued existence, which was much debated in the press, by Dostoevsky among others.

^[8] lover of mankind: an epithet for Christ in many Orthodox prayers and liturgical exclamations.

^[9]holy fools: a “holy fool” (or “fool in God,” or “fool for Christ”—yurodivyi in Russian) could be a harmless village idiot (cf. “Stinking Lizaveta,” B.K. 1.3.2), but there are also saintly persons or ascetics whose saintliness is expressed as “folly.” Holy fools of this sort were known early in Orthodox tradition. The term reappears several times in B.K., notably in reference to Alyosha.

^[10]Il faudrait les inventer. “They would have to be invented.” A variation of Voltaire’s Si Dieu n’existait pas, il faudrait l’inventer (“If God did not exist, he would have to be invented”).

^[11]J’ai vu . . .: “I saw the shade of a coachman scrubbing the shade of a carriage with the shade of a brush.” A popular quotation from a seventeenth-century French parody of the Aeneid (book 6, the descent to the underworld) by Charles Perrault and others.

^[12]Apostle Thomas: John 20:24-29.

^[13] Tower of Babel: Genesis 11:1-9.

^[14]Ifthou wilt be perfect. . .: see Matthew 19:21, Mark 10:21, Luke 18:22.

^[15]Sinaiand Athos: the monastery of St. Catherine in the Sinai and the many monasteries on Mt. Athos in Greece, both ancient and still active Orthodox monastic centers.