The Brother’s Kara­ma­zov was pub­lished shortly before its authors death. Dos­toyevsky used to col­lect clip­pings of child mur­ders and per­ver­sion he read about in the news­pa­per, pre­sum­ably because he wanted reminders of the deprav­ity a per­son and all peo­ple can sink to. For more long excerpts from The Brother’s Kara­ma­zov look under the Cat­e­gories section.

“I am telling it. If I tell the whole truth just as it hap­pened I shan’t spare myself. My first idea was a—Karamazov one. Once I was bit­ten by a cen­tipede, brother, and laid up a fort­night with fever from it. Well, I felt a cen­tipede bit­ing at my heart then—a nox­ious insect, you under­stand? I looked her up and down. You’ve seen her? She’s a beauty. But she was beau­ti­ful in another way then. At that moment she was beau­ti­ful because she was noble, and I was a scoundrel; she in all the grandeur of her gen­eros­ity and sac­ri­fice for her father, and I—a bug! And, scoundrel as I was, she was alto­gether at my mercy, body and soul. She was hemmed in. I tell you frankly, that thought, that ven­omous thought, so pos­sessed my heart that I almost swooned with sus­pense. It seemed as if there could be no resist­ing it; as though I should act like a bug, like a ven­omous spi­der, with­out a spark of pity.”

…“But, on my oath, I looked at her for three sec­onds, or five per­haps, with fear­ful hatred—that hate which is only a hair’s-breath from love, from the mad­dest love!

I went to the win­dow, put my fore­head against the frozen pane, and I remem­ber the ice burnt my fore­head like fire. I did not keep her long, don’t be afraid. I turned round, went up to the table, opened the drawer and took out a ban­knote for five thou­sand rou­bles (it was lying in a French dic­tio­nary). Then I showed it her in silence, folded it, handed it to her, opened the door into the pas­sage, and, step­ping back, made her a deep bow, a most respect­ful, a most impres­sive bow, believe me! She shud­dered all over, gazed at me for a sec­ond, turned hor­ri­bly pale—white as a sheet, in fact—and all at once, not impetu­ously but softly, gen­tly, bowed down to my feet—not a boarding-house cour­tesy, but a Russ­ian bow, with her fore­head to the floor. She jumped up and ran away. I was wear­ing my sword. I drew it and nearly stabbed myself with it on the spot; why, I don’t know. It would have been fright­fully stu­pid, of course. I sup­pose it was from delight. Can you under­stand that one might kill one­self from delight? But I didn’t stab myself. I only kissed my sword and put it back in the scabbard—which there was no need to have told you, by the way. And I fancy that in telling you about my inner con­flict I have laid it on rather thick to for­tify myself. But let it pass, and to hell with all who pry into the human heart!”

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Part One, Book III, Sec­tion III

“To see the pref­er­ence given…to a mon­ster who, though he is betrothed and all eyes are fixed on him, can’t restrain his debaucheries—and before the very eyes of his betrothed! And a man like me is pre­ferred, while [Ivan] is rejected. And why? Because a girl wants to sac­ri­fice her life and des­tiny out of gratitude.”

Part One, Book III, Sec­tion III

But [Smerdyakov] had sud­denly spo­ken. The sub­ject was a strange one. Grig­ory [his guardian] had gone in the morn­ing to make pur­chases, and had heard from the shop­keeper Lukyanov the story of a Russ­ian sol­dier which ahd appeared in the news­pa­per of that day. This sol­dier had been taken pris­oner in some remote part of Asia, and was threat­ened with an imme­di­ate ago­niz­ing death if he did not renounce Chris­tian­ity and fol­low Islam. He refused to deny his faith, and was tor­tured, flayed alive, and died, prais­ing and glo­ri­fy­ing Christ. Grig­ory had related the story at table. Fyo­dor always liked, over the dessert after din­ner, to laugh and talk, if only with Grig­ory [who was his ser­vant]. This after­noon he was in a par­tic­u­larly good-humoured and expan­sive mood. Sip­ping his brandy and lis­ten­ing to the story, he observed that they ought to make a saint of a sol­dier like that, and to take his skin to some monastery. “That would make the peo­ple flock, and bring the money in.”

Grig­ory frowned, see­ing that Fyo­dor was by no means touched, but, as usual, was begin­ning to scoff. At that moment Smerdyakov, who was stand­ing by the door, smiled. Smerdyakov often waited at table towards the end of din­ner, and since Ivan’s arrival in our town he had done so every day.

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“What are you grin­ning at?” asked Fyo­dor, catch­ing the smile instantly, and know­ing that it referred to Grigory.

“Well, my opin­ion is,” Smerdyakov began sud­denly and unex­pect­edly in a loud voice, “that if that laud­able soldier’s exploit was so very great there would have been, to my think­ing, no sin in it if he had on such an emer­gency renounced, so to speak, the name of Christ and his own chris­ten­ing, to save by that same his life, for good deeds, by which, in the course of years to expi­ate his cowardice.”

“How could it not be a sin? You’re talk­ing non­sense. For that you’ll go straight to hell and be roasted there like mut­ton,” put in Fyodor.

…“As for mut­ton, that’s not so, and there’ll be noth­ing there for this, and there shouldn’t be either, if it’s accord­ing to jus­tice,” Smerdyakov main­tained stoutly.

“How do you mean ‘accord­ing to jus­tice’?” Fyo­dor cried still more gaily, nudg­ing Alyosha with his knee.

“He’s a ras­cal, that’s what he is!” burst from Grig­ory. He looked Smerdyakov wrath­fully in the face.

“As for being a ras­cal, wait a lit­tle, Grig­ory,” answered Smerdyakov with per­fect com­po­sure. “You’d bet­ter con­sider your­self that, once I am taken pris­oner by the ene­mies of the Chris­t­ian race, and they demand from me to curse the name of God and to renounce my holy chris­ten­ing, I am fully enti­tled to act by my own rea­son, since there would be no sin in it.”

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“But you’ve said that before. Don’t waste words. Prove it,” cried Fyodor.

“Soup maker!” mut­tered Grig­ory contemptuously.

“As for being a soup maker, wait a bit, too, and con­sider for your­self, Grig­ory, with­out abus­ing me. For as soon as  I say to those ene­mies, ‘No, I’m not a Chris­t­ian, and I curse my true God,’ then at once, by God’s high judg­ment, I become imme­di­ately and spe­cially anath­ema accursed, and am cut off from the Holy Church, exactly as though I were a hea­then, so that at that very instant, not only when I say it aloud, but when I think of say­ing it, before a quar­ter of a sec­ond has passed, I am cut off. Is that so or not, Grigory?”

He addressed Grig­ory with obvi­ous sat­is­fac­tion, though he was really answer­ing Fyodor’s ques­tions, and was well aware of it, and inten­tion­ally pre­tend­ing that Grig­ory had asked the questions.

…“You’re anath­ema accursed, as it is,” Grig­ory sud­denly burst out, “and how dare you argue, you ras­cal, after that, if…”

“Don’t scold him, Grig­ory, don’t scold him, ” Fyo­dor cut him short.

“You should wait, Grig­ory, if only a short time, and lis­ten, for I haven’t fin­ished all I had to say. For at the very moment I become accursed, at that same high­est moment, I become exactly like a hea­then, and my chris­ten­ing is taken off me and becomes of no avail. Isn’t that so?”

“Make haste and fin­ish my boy,” Fyo­dor urged him, sip­ping from his wine-glass with relish.

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“And if I’ve ceased to be a Chris­t­ian, then I told no lie to the enemy when they asked whether I was a Chris­t­ian or not, see­ing I had already been relieved by God him­self of my Chris­tian­ity by rea­son of the thought alone, before I had time to utter a word to the enemy. And if I have already been dis­charged, in what man­ner and with what sort of jus­tice can I be held respon­si­ble as a Chris­t­ian in the oher world for hav­ing denied Christ, when, through the very thought alone, before deny­ing Him I had been relieved from my chris­ten­ing? If I’m no longer a Chris­t­ian, then I can’t renounce Christ, for I’ve noth­ing then to renounce. Who will hold an unclean Tatar respon­si­ble, Grig­ory, even in heaven, for not hav­ing been born a Chris­t­ian? And who would pun­ish him for that, con­sid­er­ing that you can’t take two skins off one ox? For God Almighty Him­self, even if He did make the Tatar respon­si­ble, when he dies would give him the small­est pos­si­ble pun­ish­ment, I imag­ine (since he must be pun­ished) judg­ing that he is not to blame if he has come into the world an unclean hea­then, from hea­then par­ents. The Lord God can’t surely take a Tatar and say he was a Chris­t­ian? That would mean that the Almighty would tell a real untruth. And can the Lord of Heaven and Earth tell a lie, even in one word?”

Grig­ory was thun­der­struck and looked at the ora­tor, his eyes nearly start­ing out of his head. Though he did not clearly under­stand what was said, he had caught some­thing in this rig­ma­role, and stood, look­ing like a man who has just hit his head a wall. Fyo­dor emp­tied his glass and went off into his shrill laugh.

…“Don’t cry, Grig­ory, we’ll reduce him to smoke and ashes in a moment. Tell me this, oh, ass; you may be right before your ene­mies, but you have renounced your faith all the same in your own heart, and you say your­self that in that very hour you became anath­ema accursed. And if once you’re anath­ema they won’t pat you on the head for it in hell. What do you say to that, my fine Jesuit?”

“There is no doubt that I have renounced it in my own heart, but there was no spe­cial sin in that. Or if there was sin, it was the most ordinary.”

“How’s that the most ordinary?”

“You lie, accursed one!” hissed Grigory.

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“Con­sider your­self, Grig­ory,” Smerdyakov went on, staid and unruf­fled, con­scious of his tri­umph, but, as it were, gen­er­ous to his van­quished foe. “Con­sider your­self, Grig­ory; it is said in the Scrip­ture that if you have faith, even as a mus­tard seed, and bid a moun­tain move into the sea, it will move with­out the least delay at your bid­ding. Well, Grig­ory, if I’m with­out faith and you have so great a faith that you are con­tin­u­ally swear­ing at me, you try your­self telling this moun­tain, not to move into the sea for that’s a long way off, but even to our stink­ing lit­tle river which runs at the bot­tom of the gar­den. You’ll see for your­self that it won’t budge, but will remain just where it is how­ever much you shout at it, and will remain just where it is how­ever much you shout at it, and that shows, Grig­ory, that you haven’t faith in the proper man­ner, and only abuse oth­ers about it. Again, tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion that no one in our day, not only you, but actu­ally no one, from the high­est per­son to the low­est peas­ant can shove moun­tains into the sea—except per­haps some one man in the world, or, at most, two, and they most likely are sav­ing their souls in secret some­where in the Egypt­ian desert, so you wouldn’t find them—if so it be, if all the rest have no faith, will God curse all the rest? that is, the pop­u­la­tion of the whole earth, except about two her­mits in the desert, and in His well-known mercy will He not for­give one of them? And so I’m per­suaded that though I may once have doubted I shall be for­given if I shed tears of repentance.”

“Your words are worth a gold piece, oh, ass, and I’ll give it to you to-day. But as to the rest you talk non­sense, non­sense, non­sense. Let me tell you, stu­pid, that we here are all of lit­tle faith, only from care­less­ness, because we haven’t time; things are too much for us, and, in the sec­ond place, the Lord God has given us so lit­tle time, only twenty-four hours in the day, so that one hasn’t even time to get sleep enough, much less to repent of one’s sins. While you have denied your faith to your ene­mies when you’d noth­ing else to think about but to show your faith! So I con­sider, brother, that it con­sti­tutes a sin.”

“Con­sti­tutes a sin it may, but con­sider your­self, Grig­ory, that it only exten­u­ates it, if it does con­sti­tute. If I had believed then in very truth, as I ought to have believed, then it really would have been sin­ful if I had not faced tor­tures for my faith, and had gone over to the pagan Mohammedan faith. But, of course, it wouldn’t have come to tor­ture then, because I should only have had to say at that instant to the moun­tain ‘move and crush the tor­men­tor,’ and it would have moved and at that very instant have crushed him like a black-beetle, and I should have walked away as though noth­ing had hap­pened, prais­ing and glo­ri­fy­ing God. But, sup­pose at that very moment I had tried all that, and cried to that moun­tain, ‘Crush these tor­men­tors,’ and it hadn’t crushed them, how could I have helped doubt­ing, pray, at such a time, and at such a dread hour of mor­tal ter­ror? And apart from that, I should know already that I could not attain to the full­ness of the King­dom of Heaven (for since the moun­tain had no moved at my word, they could not think very much of my faith up aloft, and there could be no very great reward await­ing me in the world to come). So why should I let them flay the skin off me as well, and to no good pur­pose? For, even though they had flayed my skin half off my back, even then the moun­tain would not have moved at my word or at my cry. And at such a moment not only doubt might come over one but one might lose one’s rea­son from fear, so that one would not be able to think at all. And, there­fore, how should I be par­tic­u­larly to blame if not see­ing my advan­tage or reward there or here, I should, at least, save my skin. And so trust­ing fully in the grace of the Lord I should cher­ish the hope that I might be alto­gether forgiven.”

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Part I, Book III, Sec­tion XII

“Love one another, Fathers,” said Father Zos­sima, as far as Alyosha could remem­ber after­wards. “Love God’s peo­ple. Because we have come here [to the monastery] and shut our­selves within these walls, we are no holier than those that are out­side, but on the con­trary, from the very fact of com­ing here, each of us has con­fessed to him­self that he is worse than oth­ers, than all men on earth.…And the longer the monk lives in his seclu­sion, the more keenly he must rec­og­nize that. Else he would have had no rea­son to come here. When he real­izes that he is not only worse than oth­ers, but that he is respon­si­ble to all men for all and every­thing, for all human sins, national and indi­vid­ual, only then the aim of our seclu­sion is attained. For know, dear ones, that every one of us is undoubt­edly respon­si­ble for all men and every­thing on earth, not morally through the gen­eral sin­ful­ness of cre­ation, but each one per­son­ally for all mankind and every indi­vid­ual man. This knowl­edge is the crown of life for the monk and for every man. For monks are not a spe­cial sort of men, but only what all men ought to be. Only through that knowl­edge, our heart grows soft with infi­nite, uni­ver­sal, inex­haustible love. Then every one of you will have the power to win over the whole world by love and to wash away the sins of the world with your tears…”

Part II, Book IV, Sec­tion I

“For even those who have renounced Chris­tian­ity and attack it, in their inmost being still fol­low the Chris­t­ian ideal given by Christ of old. When it has been attempted, the result has been only grotesque. Remem­ber this espe­cially, young man, since you are being sent into the world by your depart­ing elder.”

Part II, Book IV, Sec­tion I

Now Alyosha was impressed by Madame Hohlakov’s blunt and per­sis­tent asser­tion that Kate­rina Ivanovna was in love with Ivan, and only deceived her­self through some sort of pose, from “self-laceration,” and tor­tured her­self by her pre­tended love for Dmitri from some fan­cied duty of grat­i­tude. “Yes,” he thought, “per­haps the whole truth lies in those words.” But in that case what was Ivan’s posi­tion? Alyosha felt instinc­tively that a char­ac­ter like Kate­rina Ivanovna’s must dom­i­nate, and she could only dom­i­nate some one like Dmitri, and never a man like Ivan. For Dmitri might at last sub­mit to her dom­i­na­tion “to his own hap­pi­ness” (which was what Alyosha would have desired), but Ivan—no, Ivan could not sub­mit to her, and such sub­mis­sion would not give him hap­pi­ness. Alyosha could not help believ­ing that of IVan. And now all these doubts and reflec­tions flit­ted through his mind as he entered the drawing-room.

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Part II, Book IV, Sec­tion V

“I’ve already decided, even if he mar­ries that—creature (she began solemnly), whom I never, never can for­give, even then I will not aban­don him. Hence­for­ward I will never, never aban­don him!” she cried, break­ing into a sort of pale, hys­ter­i­cal ecstasy. “Not that I would run after him con­tin­u­ally, get in his way and worry him. Oh, no! I will go away to another town—where you like—but I will watch over him all my life—I will watch over him all my life unceas­ingly. When he becomes unhappy with that woman, and that is bound to hap­pen quite soon, let him come to me and he will find a friend, a sister.…Only a sis­ter, of course, and so for ever; but he will learn at least that that sis­ter is really his sis­ter, who loves him and has sac­ri­ficed all her life to him. I will gain my point.  I will insist on his know­ing me and con­fid­ing entirely in me, with­out reserve,” she cried, in a sort of frenzy. “I will be a god to whom he can pray—and that, at least, he owes me for his treach­ery and for what I suf­fered yes­ter­day through him. And let him see that all my life I will be true to him and the promise I gave him, in spite of his being untrue and betray­ing me. I will—I will become noth­ing but a means for his hap­pi­ness, or—how shall I say?—an instru­ment, a machine for his hap­pi­ness, and that for my whole life…”

Part II, Book IV, Sec­tion V

“He is a man of weak and tim­o­rous char­ac­ter; he has suf­fered so much and is very good-natured. I keep won­der­ing why he took offence so sud­denly, for I assure you, up to the last minute, he did not know that he was going to tram­ple on the notes [of money]. And I think now that there was a great deal to offend him…and it could not have been oth­er­wise in his position…To begin with, he was sore at hav­ing been so glad of the money in my pres­ence and not hav­ing con­cealed it from me. If he had been pleased, but not so much; he if had not shown it: if he had begun affect­ing scru­ples and dif­fi­cul­ties, as other peo­ple do when they take money, he might still endure to take it. But he was too gen­uinely delighted, and that was mor­ti­fy­ing. Ah, Lise, he is a good and truth­ful man—that’s the worst of the whole busi­ness. All the while he talked, his voice was so weak, so bro­ken, he talked so fast, so fast, he kept laugh­ing such a laugh, or per­haps he was crying—yes, I am sure he was cry­ing, he was so delighted—and he talked about his daughters—and about the sit­u­a­tion he could get in another town.…And when he had poured out his heart, he felt ashamed at hav­ing shown me his inmost soul like that. So he began to hate me at once. He is one of those awfully sen­si­tive poor peo­ple. What had made him feel most ashamed was that he had given in too soon and accepted me as a friend, you see. At first he almost flew at me and tried to intim­i­date me, but as soon as he saw the money he had begun embrac­ing me; he kept tuch­ing me with his hands. This must have been how he came to feel it all so humil­i­at­ing, and then I made the blun­der, a very impor­tant one. I sud­denly said to him that if he had not money enough to move to another town, we would give it to him, and indeed, I myself would give him as much as he wanted out of my own money. That struck him all at once. Why, he thought, did I put myself for­ward to help him? You know, Lise, it’s awfully hard for a man who has been injured, when other peo­ple look at him as though they were his benefactors.

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Part II, Book V, Sec­tion I

“Do you know I’ve been sit­ting here think­ing to myself: that if I didn’t believe in life, if I lost faith in the woman I love, lost faith in the order of things, wre con­vinced in fact that every­thing is a dis­or­derly, damnable, and per­haps devil-ridden chaos, if I were struck by every hor­ror of man’s disillusionment—still I should want to live and, hav­ing once tasted of the cop, I would not turn away from it till I had drained it! At thirty though, I shall be sure to leave the cup, even if I’ve not emp­tied it, and turn away—where I don’t know. But till I am thirty, I know that my youth will tri­umph over everything—every dis­il­lu­sion­ment, every dis­gust with life. I’ve asked myself many times whether there is in the world any despair that would over­come this fran­tic and per­haps unseemly thirst for life in me, and I’ve come to the con­clu­sion that there isn’t, that is till I am thirty, and then I shall lose it of myself I fancy. Some dri­v­el­ling con­sump­tive moralists—and poets especially—often call that thirst for life base. It’s a fea­ture of the Kara­ma­zovs it’s true, that thirst for life regard­less of every­thing; you have it no doubt too, but why is it base? The cen­tripetal force on our planet is still fear­fully strong, Alyosha. I have a long­ing for life, and I go on liv­ing in spite of logic. Though I may not believe in the order of the uni­verse, yet I love the sticky lit­tle leaves as they open in spring. I love the blue sky, I love some peo­ple, whom one loves you know some­times with­out know­ing why. I love some great deeds done by men, though I’ve long ceased per­haps to have faith in them, yet from old habit one’s heart prizes them. Here they have brought the soup for you, eat it, it will do you good. It’s first-rate soup, they know how to make it here. I want to travel in Europe, Alyosha, I shall set off from here. And yet I know that I am only going to a grave­yard, but it’s a most pre­cious grave­yard, that’s what it is! Pre­cious are the dead that lie there, every stone over them speaks of such burn­ing life in the past, of such pas­sion­ate faith in their work, their truth, their strug­gle and their sci­ence, that I know I shall fall on the ground and kiss those stones and weep over them; though I’m con­vinced in my hear that it’s long been noth­ing but a grave­yard. And I shall not weep from despair, but sim­ply because I shall be happy in my tears, I shall steep my soul in my emo­tion. I love the sticky leaves in spring, the blue sky—that’s all it is. It’s not a mat­ter of intel­lect or logic, it’s lov­ing with one’s inside, with one’s stom­ach. One loves the first strength of one’s youth.”

…“Love life more than the mean­ing of it?”

Part II, Book V, Sec­tion III

“But why, why, asks the pros­e­cu­tor, did not Smerdyakov con­fess in his last let­ter? Why did his con­science prompt him to one step and not to both? But, excuse me, con­science implies pen­i­tence, and the sui­cide may not have felt pen­i­tence, but only despair.Despair and pen­i­tence are two very dif­fer­ent things. Despair may be vin­dic­tive and irrec­on­cil­able, and the sui­cide, lay­ing his hands on him­self, may well have felt redou­bled hatred for those whom he envied all his life.

Gen­tle­men of the jury, beware of a mis­car­riage of jus­tice! What is there unlikely in all I have put before you just now?…if there is but a shade of pos­si­bil­ity, but a shade of prob­a­bil­ity in my propo­si­tions, do not con­demn him. And is there only a shade? I swear by all that is sacred, I fully believe in the expla­na­tion of the mur­der I have just put for­ward. What trou­bles me and makes me indig­nant is that of all the mass of facts heaped up by the pros­e­cu­tion against the pris­oner, there is not a sin­gle one cer­tain and irrefutable. And yet the unhappy man is to be ruined by the accu­mu­la­tion of these facts. Yes, the accu­mu­lated effort is awful: the blood, the blood drip­ping from his fin­gers, the blood-stained shirt, the dark night resound­ing with the shout ‘Par­ri­cide!’ and the old man falling with a bro­ken head. And then the mass of phrases, state­ments, ges­tures, shouts!…this has so much influ­ence, it can so bias the mind; but, gen­tle­men of the jury, can it bias your minds? Remem­ber, you have been given absolute power to bind and to loose, but the greater the power, the more ter­ri­ble its responsibility.”

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Book X. Sec­tion 12

“Gen­tle­men of the jury, peo­ple like my client, who are fierce, unruly, and uncon­trolled on the sur­face, are some­times, most fre­quently indeed, exceed­ingly tender-hearted, only they don’t express it. Don’t laugh, don’t laugh at my idea! The tal­ented pros­e­cu­tor laughed mer­ci­lessly just now at my client lov­ing Schiller—loving the sub­lime and the beau­ti­ful! I should not have laughed at that in his place. Yes, such natures—oh, let me speak in defense of such natures, so often and so cru­elly misunderstood—these natures often thirst for ten­der­ness, good­ness, and jus­tice, as it were, in con­trast to them­selves, their unruli­ness, their ferocity—they thirst for it uncon­sciously. Pas­sion­ate and fierce on the sur­face, they are painfully capa­ble of lov­ing woman, for instant, and with a spir­i­tual and ele­vated love. Again do not laugh at me, this is very often the case in such natures. But they can­not hide their passions—sometimes very coarse—and that is con­spic­u­ous and is noticed, but the inner man is unseen. Their pas­sions are quickly exhausted; but, by the side of a noble and lofty crea­ture that seem­ingly coarse and rough man seeks a new life, seeks to cor­rect him­self, to be bet­ter, to become noble and hon­ourable, ‘sub­lime and beau­ti­ful,’ how­ever much the expres­sion has been ridiculed.

Book X. Sec­tion 13

…Mitya went on, with a sud­den ring in his voice. “If they beat me on the way or out there, I won’t sub­mit to it. I shall kill some one, and shall be shot for it. And this will be going on for twenty years! They speak to me rudely as it is. I’ve been lying here all night, pass­ing judg­ment on myself. I am not ready! I am not able to resign myself. I wanted to sing a ‘hymn’; but if a guard speaks to me, I have not the strength to bear it. For Grusha I would bear anything…anything except blows…But she won’t be allowed to come there.”

Alyosha smiled gently.

“Lis­ten, brother, once for all,” he said. “This is what I think about it. And you know that I would not tell you a lie. Lis­ten: you are not ready, and such a cross is not for you. What’s more, you don’t need such a martyr’s cross when you are not ready for it. If you had mur­dered our father, it would grieve me that you should reject your pun­ish­ment. But you are inno­cent, and such a cross is too much for you. You wanted to make your­self another man by suf­fer­ing. I say, only remem­ber that other man always, all your life and wher­ever you go; and that will be enough for you. Your refusal of that great cross will only serve to make you feel all your life an even greater duty, and that con­stant feel­ing will do more to make you a new man, per­haps, than if you went there [to a Siber­ian labor camp]. For there you would not endure it and would repine, and per­haps at last would say: ‘I am quits.’

Epi­logue, Sec­tion 2

At that instant Katya appeared in the door­way. For a moment she stood still, gaz­ing at Mitya with a dazed expres­sion. He leapt impul­sively to his feet, and a scared look came into his face. He turned pale,  but a timid, plead­ing smile appeared on his lips at once, and with an irre­sistible impulse he held out both hands to Katya. See­ing it, she flew impetu­ously to him. She seized him by the hands, and almost by force made him sit down on the bed. She sat down beside him, and still keep­ing his hands pressed them vio­lently. Sev­eral times they both strove to speak, but stopped short and again gazed speeech­less with a strange smile, their eyes fas­tened on one another. So passed two minutes.

“Have you for­given me?” Mitya fal­tered at last, and at the same moment turn­ing to Alyosha, his face work­ing with joy, he cried, “Do you hear what I am ask­ing, do you hear?”

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“That’s what I loved you for, that you are gen­er­ous at heart!” broke from Katya. “My for­give­ness is no good to you, nor yours to me; whether you for­give me or not, you will always be a sore place in my heart, and I in yours—so it must be…” She stopped to take breathe. “What have I come for?” she began again with ner­vous haste: “to embrace your feet, to press your hands like this, till it hurts—you remem­ber how in Moscow I used to squeeze them—to tell you again that you are my god, my joy, to tell you that I love you madly,” she moaned in anguish, and sud­denly pressed his hand greed­ily to her lips. Tears streamed from her eyes. Alyosha stood speech­less and con­founded; he had never expected what he was seeing.

“Love is over, Mitya!” Katya began again, “but the past is painfully dear to me. Know that will always be so. But now let what might have been come true for one minute,” she fal­tered, with a drawn smile, look­ing into his face joy­fully again. “You love another woman, and I love another man, and yet I shall love you for ever, and you will love; do you know that? Do you hear? Love me, love me all your life!” she cried, with a quiver almost of men­ace, in her voice.

…So they mur­mured to one another fran­tic words, almost mean­ing­less, per­haps not even true, but at that moment it was all true, and they both believed what they said implicitly.

Epi­logue, Sec­tion 2

They had not far to carry the cof­fin to the church, not more than three hun­dred paces. It was a still clear day, with a slight frost. The church bells were still ring­ing. Sne­giryov [the griev­ing father] ran fuss­ing and dis­tracted after the cof­fin, in his short old sum­mer over­coat, with his head bare and his soft, old, wide-brimmed hat in his hand. He seemed in a state of bewil­dered anx­i­ety. At one minute he stretched out his hand to sup­port the head of the cof­fin and only hin­dered the bear­ers, at another he ran along­side and tried to find a place for him­self there. A flower fell on the snow and he rushed to pick it up as though every­thing in the world depeneded on the loss of that flower.

“And the crust of bread, we’ve for­got­ten the crust!” he cried sud­denly in dis­may. But the boys reminded him at once that he had taken the crust of bread already and that it was in his pocket. He instantly pulled it out and was reassured.

“Illusha told me to, Illusha,” he explained at once to Alyosha. “I was sit­ting by him one night and he sud­denly told me: ‘Father, when my grave is filled up crum­ble a piece of bread on it so that the spar­rows may fly down, I shall hear and it will cheer me up not to be lying alone.”

“That’s a good thing,” said Alyosha, “we must often take some.”

“Every day, every day!” said the cap­tain quickly, seem­ing cheered at the thought.

They reached the church at last and set the cof­fin in the mid­dle of it. The boys sur­rounded it and remained rev­er­ently stand­ing so, all through the ser­vice. It was an old and rather poor church. Many of the ikons were with­out set­ting but such churches are the best for pray­ing in. Dur­ing the mass Sne­giryov became some­what calmer, though at times he had out­bursts of the same uncon­scious and, as it were, inco­her­ent anx­i­ety. At one moment he went up to the cof­fin to set straight the cover or the wreath, when a can­dle fell out of the can­dle­stick he rushed to replace it and was a fear­ful time fum­bling over it, then he sub­sided and stood qui­etly by the cof­fin with a look of blank uneasi­ness and per­plex­ity. After the Epis­tle he sud­denly whis­pered to Alyosha, who was stand­ing beside him, that the Epis­tle had not been read prop­erly but did not explain what he meant. Dur­ing the prayer, “Like the Cheru­bim,” he joined in the singing but did not go on to the end. Falling on his knees, he pressed his fore­head to the stone floor and lay so for a long while.

At last came the funeral ser­vice itself and can­dles were dis­trib­uted. The dis­tracted father began fuss­ing about again, but the touch­ing and impres­sive funeral prayers moved and roused his soul. He seemed sud­denly to strink together and broke into rapid, short sobs, which he tried at first to smother, but at last sobbed aloud.…Gradually he seemed to sink into brood­ing and did not resist when the cof­fin was lifted up and car­ried to the grave. It was an expen­sive one in the church­yard close to the church, Kate­rina Ivanovna had paid for it. After the cus­tom­ary rites the grave-diggers low­ered the cof­fin. Sne­giryov with his flow­ers in his hands bent down so low over the open grave that the boys caught hold of his coat in alarm and pulled him back. He did not seem to under­stand fully what was hap­pen­ing. When they began fill­ing up the grave, he sud­denly pointed anx­iously at the falling earth and began try­ing to say some­thing, but no one could make out what he meant, and he stopped sud­denly. Then he was reminded that he must crum­ble the bread and he was awfully excited, snatched up the bread and began pulling it to pieces and fling­ing the morsels on the grave.

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“Come, fly down, birds, fly down, spar­rows!” he mut­tered anxiously.

One of the boys observed that it was awk­ward for him to crum­ble the bread with the flow­ers in his hands and sug­gested he should give them to some one to hold for a time. But he would not do this and seemed indeed sud­denly alarmed for his flow­ers, as though they wanted to take them from him alto­gether. And after look­ing at the grave and, as it were, sat­is­fy­ing him­self that every­thing had been done and the bread had been crum­bled, he sud­denly, to the sur­prise of every one, turned, quite com­pos­edly even, and made his way home­wards. But his steps became more and more hur­ried, he almost ran. The boys and Alyosha kept up with him.

“The flow­ers are for mamma, the flow­ers are for mamma! I was unkind to mamma,” he began exclaim­ing sud­denly. [Because he had refused to let her, a degen­er­ated woman, have any when she asked for them from the hands of her dead son.]

Some one called to him to put on his hat as it was cold. But he flung the hat in the snow as though he were angry and kept repeat­ing, “I won’t have the hat, I won’t have the hat.” Smurov picked it up and car­ried it after him. All the boys were cry­ing, and Kolya and the boy who dis­cov­ered about Troy most of all. Though Smurov, with the captain’s hat in his hand, was cry­ing bit­terly too, he man­aged, as he ran, to snatch up a piece of red brick that lay on the snow of the path, to fling it at the flock of spar­rows that was fly­ing by. He missed them, of course, and went on cry­ing as he ran. Half way, Sne­giryov sud­denly stopped, stood still for half a minute, as though struck by some­thing, and sud­denly turn­ing back to the church, ran towards the deserted grave. But the boys instantly over­took him and caught hold of him on all sides. Then he fell help­less on the snow as though he had been knocked down, and strug­gling, sob­bing, and wail­ing, he began cry­ing out, “Illusha, old man, dear old man!” Alyosha and Kolya tried to make him get up, sooth­ing and per­suad­ing him.

“Cap­tain, give over, a brave man must show for­ti­tude,” mut­tered Kolya.

“You’ll spoil the flow­ers,” said Alyosha, “and mamma is expect­ing them, she is sit­ting cry­ing because you would not give her any before, Illusha’s lit­tle bed is still there…”

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“Yes, yes, mamma!” Sne­giryov sud­denly rec­ol­lected, “they’ll take away the bed, they’ll take it away,” he added as though alarmed that they really would. He jumped up and ran home­wards again. But it was not far off and they all arrived together. Sne­giryov opened the door hur­riedly and called to his wife with whome he had so cru­elly quar­relled just before:

“Mamma, poor crip­pled dar­ling, Illusha has sent you these flow­ers,” he cried, hold­ing out to her a lit­tle bunch of flow­ers that had been frozen and bro­ken while he was strug­gling in the snow. But at that instant he saw in the cor­ner, by the lit­tle bed, Illusha’s lit­tle boots, which the land­lady had put tidily side by side. See­ing the old, patched, rusty-looking, stiff boots he flung up his hands and rushed to them, fell on his knees, snatched up one boot and, press­ing his lips to it, began kiss­ing it greed­ily, crying,“Illusha, old man, dear old man, where are your lit­tle feet?”

“Where have you taken him away? Where have you taken him?” the lunatic cried in a heartrend­ing voice. Nina, too, broke into sobs. Kolya ran out of the room, the boys fol­lowed him. At last Alyosha too went out.

“Let them weep,” he said to Kolya, “it’s no use try­ing to com­fort them just now. Let us wait a minute and then go back.”

“No, it’s no use, it’s awful,” Kolya assented. “Do you know, Kara­ma­zov,” he dropped his voice so that no one could hear them, “I feel dread­fully sad, and if it were only pos­si­ble to bring him back, I’d give any­thing in the world to do it.”

“Ah, so would I,” said Alyosha.

“What do you think, Kara­ma­zov, had we bet­ter come back here tonight? He’ll be drunk, you know.”

“Per­haps he will. Let us come together, you and I, that will be enough, to spend an hour with them, with the mother and Nina. If we all come together we shall remind them of every­thing again,” Alyosha suggested.

“The land­lady is lay­ing the table for them now—there’ll be a funeral din­ner or some­thing, the priest is com­ing; shall we go back to it, Karamazov?”

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“Of course,” said Alyosha.

“It’s all so strange, Kara­ma­zov, such sor­row and then pan­cakes after it, it all seems so unnat­ural in our religion.”

“They are going to have salmon, too,” [Kar­tashov] the boy who had dis­cov­ered about Troy observed in a loud voice.

“I beg you most earnestly, Kar­tashov, not to inter­rupt again with your idi­otic remarks, espe­cially when one is not talk­ing to you and doesn’t care to know wether you exist or not!” Jolya snapped out irri­ta­bly. The boy flushed crim­son but did not dare to reply.

Mean­time they were strolling slowly along the path and sud­denly Smurov exclaimed:

“There’s Illusha’s stone, under which they wanted to bury him.”

They all stood still by the big stone. Alyosha looked and the whole pic­ture of what Sne­giryov had described to him that day, how Illusha weep­ing and hug­ging his father, had cried, “Father, father, how he insulted you,” rose at once before his imag­i­na­tion. A sud­den impulse seemed to come into his soul. With a seri­ous and earnest expres­sion he looked frm one to another of the bright, pleas­ant faces of Illusha’s school-fellows, and sud­denly said to them:

“Boys, I should like to say one word to you, here at this place.”

The boys stood round him and at once bent atten­tive and expec­tant eyes upon him.

“Boys, we shall soon part. I shall be for some time with my two broth­ers, of whom one is going to Siberia and the other is lying at death’s door. But soon I shall leave this town, per­haps for a long time, so we shall part. Let us make a com­pact, here at Illusha’s stone that we will never for­get Illusha and one another. And what­ever hap­pens to us later in life, if we don’t meet for twenty years after­wards, let us always remem­ber how we buried the poor boy at whom we once threw stones, do you remem­ber, by the bridge? and after­wards we all grew so fond of him. He was a fine boy, a kind-hearted, brave boy, he felt for his father’s hon­our and resented the cruel insult to him and stood up for him. And so in the first place, we will remem­ber him, boys, all our lives. And even if we are occu­pied with most impor­tant things, if we attain hon­our or fall into great misfortune—still let us remem­ber how good it was once here, when we were all together, united by a good and kind feel­ing which made us, for the time we were lov­ing that poor boy, bet­ter per­haps than we are. My lit­tle doves—let me call you so, for you are very like them, those pretty blue birds, at this minute as I look at your good dear faces. My dear chil­dren, per­haps you won’t under­stand what I am say­ing to you, because I often speak very unin­tel­li­gi­bly, but you’ll remem­ber it all the same and will agree with my words some­time. You must know that there is noth­ing higher and stronger and more whole­some and good for life in the future than some good mem­ory, espe­cially a mem­ory of child­hood, of home. Peo­ple talk to you a great deal about your edu­ca­tion, but some good, sacred mem­ory, pre­served from child­hood, is per­haps the best edu­ca­tion. If a man car­ries many such mem­o­ries with him into life, he is safe to the end of his days, and if one has only one good mem­ory left in one’s heart, even that may some­time be the means of sav­ing us. Per­haps we may even grow wicked later on, may be unable to refrain from a bad action, may laugh at men’s tears and at those who say as Kolya did just now, ‘I want to suf­fer for all men,’ and may even jeer spite­fully at such peo­ple. But how­ever bad we become—which God forbit—yet, when we recall how we buried Illusha, how we loved him in his last days, and how we have been talk­ing like friends all together, at this stone, the cru­ellest and mostk­ing of us—if we do become so—will not dare to laugh inwardly at hav­ing been kind and good at this moment! What’s more, per­haps, that one mem­ory may keep him from great evil and he will reflect and say, ‘Yes, I was good and brave and hon­est then!’ Let him laugh at him­self, that’s no mat­ter, a man often laughs at what’s good and kind. That’s only from thought­less­ness. But I assure you, boys, that as he laughs he will say at once in his heart, ‘No, I do wrong to laugh, for that’s not a thing to laugh at.’”

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.…“I say this in case we become bad,” Alyosha went on, “but there’s no rea­son why we should become bad, is there, boys? Let us be, first and above all, kind, then hon­est and then let us never for­get each other! I say that again. I give you my word for my part that I’ll never for­get one of you. Every face look­ing at me now I shall remem­ber even for thirty years. Just now Kolya said to Kar­tashov that we did not care to know whether he exists or not. But I can­not for­get that Kar­tashov exists and that he is not blush­ing now as he did when he dis­cov­ered the founders of Troy, but is look­ing at me with his jolly, kind dear lit­tle eyes. Boys, my dear boys, let us all be gen­er­ous like Illusha, clever, brave and gen­er­ous like Kolya (though he will be ever so much clev­erer when he is grown up), and let us all be as mod­est, as clever and sweet as Kar­tashov. But why am I talk­ing about those two! You are all dear to me, boys, from this day forth, I have a place in my heart for you all, and I beg you to keep a place in your hearts for me! Well, and who has united us in this kind, good feel­ing which we shall remem­ber and intend to remem­ber all our lives? Who, if not Illusha, the good boy, the dear boy, pre­cious to us for ever! Let us never for­get him. May his mem­ory live for ever in our hearts from this time forth!”

Epi­logue, Sec­tion 2

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Tags: Christianity, crime, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, madness, religion, Russian literature, suffering, The Brothers Karamazov