The Brothers Karamazov

Sobs suddenly burst from Mitya’s breast. He seized Alyosha’s hand. “My friend, my friend, still fallen, still fallen even now. There’s so terribly muchsuffering for man on earth, so terribly much grief for him! Don’t think I’m just a brute of an officer who drinks cognac and goes whoring. No, brother, I hardly think of anything else, of anything but that fallen man, if only I’m not lying now. God keep me from lying, and from praising myself! I think about that man, because I myself am such a man.

That men to man again may soar,

Let man and Earth with one another Make a compact evermore—

Man the son, and Earth the mother ...[86]

There’s just one thing: how can I make a compact with the earth evermore? I don’t kiss the earth, I don’t tear open her bosom; what should I do, become a peasant or a shepherd? I keep going, and I don’t know: have I gotten into stench and shame, or into light and joy? That’s the whole trouble, because everything on earth is a riddle. And whenever I happened to sink into the deepest, the very deepest shame of depravity (and that’s all I ever happened to do), I always read that poem about Ceres and man. Did it set me right? Never! Because I’m a Karamazov. Because when I fall into the abyss, I go straight into it, head down and heels up, and I’m even pleased that I’m falling in just such a humiliating position, and for me I find it beautiful. And so in that very shame I suddenly begin a hymn. Let me be cursed, let me be base and vile, but let me also kiss the hem of that garment in which my God is clothed; let me be following the devil at the same time, but still I am also your son, Lord, and I love you, and I feel a joy without which the world ca

Joy is the mainspring of the whole

Of endless Nature’s calm rotation; Joy moves the dazzling wheels that roll

Within the great heart of creation; Joy breathes on buds, and flowers they are;

Joy beckons, suns come forth from heaven; Joy moves the spheres in realms afar,

Ne’er to thy glass, dim wisdom, given!

All being drinks the mother-dew

Of joy from Nature’s holy bosom; And good and evil both pursue

Her steps that strew the rose’s blossom. The brimming cup, love’s loyalty

Joy gives to us; beneath the sod, To insects—sensuality;

In heaven the cherub looks on God![87]

But enough poetry! I shed tears; well, then, let me cry. Maybe everyone will laugh at this foolishness, but you won’t. Your eyes are shining, too. Enough poetry. I want to tell you now about the ‘insects,’ about those to whom God gave sensuality:

To insects—sensuality!

I am that very insect, brother, and those words are precisely about me. And all of us Karamazovs are like that, and in you, an angel, the same insect lives and stirs up storms in your blood. Storms, because sensuality is a storm, more than a storm! Beauty is a fearful and terrible thing! Fearful because it’s undefinable, and it ca

Chapter 4: The Confession of an Ardent Heart. In Anecdotes

“I was leading a wild life there. Father said I used to pay several thousand to seduce girls. That’s a swinish phantom, it never happened, and as for what did happen, ‘that,’ in fact, never required any money. For me, money is an accessory, a fever of the soul, an ambience. Today, here she is, my lady—tomorrow a little street girl is in her place. I entertained the one and the other. I threw fistfuls of money around—music, noise, gypsy women. If need be, I’d give her something, because they do take it, they take it eagerly, one must admit, and are pleased, and grateful. The ladies used to love me, not all of them, but it happened, it happened; but I always liked the back lanes, dark and remote little cra

“You say that because I blushed,” Alyosha suddenly remarked. “I blushed not at your words, and not at your deeds, but because I’m the same as you.”

“You? Well, that’s going a bit too far.”

“No, not too far,” Alyosha said hotly. (Apparently the thought had been with him for some time.) “The steps are all the same. I’m on the lowest, and you are above, somewhere on the thirteenth. That’s how I see it, but it’s all one and the same, all exactly the same sort of thing. Whoever steps on the lowest step will surely step on the highest.”

“So one had better not step at all.” “Not if one can help it.”

“Can you?”

“It seems not.”

“Stop, Alyosha, stop, my dear, I want to kiss your hand, just out of tenderness. That rogue Grushenka has an eye for men; she once told me she’d eat you up some day. I’ll stop, I’ll stop! From abominations, from this flyblown margin, let us move on to my tragedy, another flyblown margin, covered with all kinds of baseness. The thing is that though the old man lied about seducing i