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The Brothers Karamazov
p267 “I must make one confession,” Ivan began. “I could never understand how one can love one’s neighbors. It’s just one’s neighbors, to my mind, that one can’t love, though one might love those who live at a distance. I once read somewhere of the saint, John the Merciful. When a hungry, frozen beggar came to him, he took him into his bed, held him in his arms, and began breathing into his mouth, which was putrid and loathsome from some awful disease. I am convinced that he did that from ‘self-laceration,’ from self-laceration of falseness, for the sake of charity imposed by duty, as a penance laid on him. For anyone to love a man, he must be hidden, for as soon as he shows his face, love is gone.”
Can’t help noticing that he failed to feed the hungry man before pulling him into his bed. Also can’t help wondering how cold the Merciful John was before entertaining his guest.
“Father Zossima has talked of that more than once,” observed Alyosha. “He, too, said that the face of a man often hinders people not practiced in love, from loving him. But yet there’s a great deal of love in mankind, an almost Christ-like love. I know that myself, Ivan.”
So now Madame H. and Ivan have talked about this and Katerina seems to be infected with it -- I say since I’m with Ivan here. This was (will be?) also a favorite subject with Naphtha. Madame H., even if she doesn’t mean it, and Katerina are certainly better spokespersons, but you still have to wonder about the motive of the person who wishes to be Christ-like. What kind of person seeks mortification and why. Also you get that devilish conundrum where Ivan or I would be more charitable were we to perform a similarly mortifying good deed against our inclination than some holy person who get’s off on it. Or maybe not.
“Well, I know nothing of it so far, and can’t understand it, and the mass of mankind are with me there. The question is, whether this lack of ability to love is due to men’s bad qualities or whether it’s inherent in their nature. To my thinking, Christ-like love for men is a miracle impossible on earth. He was God. But we are not gods. Suppose I, for instance, suffer intensely. Another can never know how much I suffer, because he is another and not I. And what’s more, a man is rarely ready to admit another’s suffering. Why won’t he admit it, do you think? Because I smell unpleasant, because I have a stupid face, because I once trod on his foot. [Because he is the cause of that suffering but doesn’t wish to acknowledge that -- that’s a good one he should have mentioned.] Besides there is suffering and suffering; degrading, humiliating suffering such as humbles me -- hunger, for instance. But when you come to higher suffering -- for an idea, for instance -- he will very rarely admit it, perhaps because my face he thinks is not the face of a man who suffers for an idea. And so he deprives me instantly of his favor, and not at all from badness of heart. Beggars, especially genteel beggars, should never show themselves, but ask for charity through the newspapers.
“One can love one’s neighbors in the abstract, or even at a distance, but at close quarters it’s almost impossible... But we had better confine ourselves to the sufferings of children... children can be loved even at close quarters, even when they are dirty, even when they are ugly. The second reason why I won’t speak of grown-up people is that, besides being disgusting and unworthy of love, they have a compensation -- they’ve eaten the apple and know good and evil, and they have become ‘like God.’ They go on eating it still. But children haven’t eaten anything, and are innocent... If they, too, suffer horribly on earth, they must suffer for their fathers’ sins, they must be punished for their fathers, who have eaten the apple. But that reasoning is of the other world and is incomprehensible for the heart of man here on earth. The innocent must not suffer for another’s sins, and especially such innocents! You may be surprised at me, Alyosha, but I am awfully fond of children, too. And remember, cruel people, the violent, the rapacious, the Karamazovs are sometimes very fond of children. Children while they are quite little -- up to seven, for instance -- are so remote from grown-up people; they are different creatures, as it were, of a different species...”
p269 “You speak in such a strange way,” observed Alyosha uneasily, “as though you were not quite yourself.”
There follows an extensive description of outrages against children. I am not so convinced of the “innocence” of children even under seven, but Ivan still makes a good case for the existence of evil.
p271 “Ivan, what are you driving at?” asked Alyosha.
“I think if the devil doesn’t exist, then man has created him. He has created him in his own image and likeness.”
Ah, the obverse side of the coin at last.
“Just as man created God, then?” observed Alyosha.
“ ‘It’s wonderful how you can turn words,’ as Polonius says in Hamlet,” laughed Ivan. “You turn my words against me. Well, I am glad. Yours must be a fine God, if man created Him in His image and likeness... [still more outrages against children.]
...
p275 “... Let me tell you, novice, that the absurd is only too necessary on earth. The world stands on absurdities, and perhaps nothing would have come to pass in it without them. We know what we know!”
“What do we know?”
“I understand nothing,” Ivan went on, as though delirious. “I don’t want to understand anything now. I want to stick to the facts. I made up my mind long ago not to understand. If I try to understand anything, I will be false to the facts and I have determined to stick to the facts.”
“Why are you testing me?” Alyosha cried. “Will you say what you mean?”
“Of course, I will. That’s what I’ve been leading up to. You are dear to me. I don’t want to let you go. And I won’t give you up to your Zossima.”
Ivan was silent for a minute. His face became all at once very sad.
“Listen! I spoke of children only to make my case clearer. Of the other tears of humanity with which the earth is soaked from its crust to its center, I will say nothing. I have narrowed my subject on purpose. And I recognize in all humility that I cannot understand why the world is arranged as it is. Men are themselves to blame, I suppose: they were given paradise, they wanted freedom, they stole fire from heaven, though they knew they would become unhappy. So there is no need to pity them. [On the one hand I’m delighted to see him combining the Fall and Prometheus, but I have to ask how could they have known the consequences of either of these myths? I agree they would have acted the same had they known, but you would have to say that, without the knowledge of good and evil, they would have been innocent had they consciously chosen something they didn’t understand. As innocent as children, in fact.] With my earthly, Euclidian understanding, all I know is that there is suffering and that there are none guilty; that cause follows effect, simply and directly; that everything flows and finds its level -- but that’s only Euclidian nonsense, I know that, and I can’t consent to live by it! What comfort is it to me that there are none guilty and that cause follows effect simply and directly, [He keeps saying this but where does he get it? Could this be a typo? Though a quick search did give me me This.] and that I know it -- I must have justice, or I will destroy myself. And not justice in some remote infinite time and space, but here on earth. Justice that I can see myself. I have believed in it. I want to see it. And if I am dead by then, let me rise again, for if it all happens without me, it will be too unfair. Surely I haven’t suffered, simply that I, my crimes and my sufferings, may manure the soil of future harmony for somebody else. I want to see with my own eyes the lamb lie down with the lion and the victim rise up and embrace his murderer. I want to be there when everyone suddenly understands what it has all been about. All the religions of the world are built on this longing, and I am a believer.
“... Listen! If all must suffer to pay for eternal harmony, what have children to do with it? Tell me, please. It’s beyond all comprehension why they should suffer and why they should pay for the harmony... I understand solidarity in retribution, too; but there can be no such solidarity with children. And if it is really true that they must share responsibility for all their fathers’ crimes, such a truth is not of this world and is beyond my comprehension. Some jester will say, perhaps, that the child would have grown up and have sinned, but you see he didn’t grow up, he was torn to pieces by the dogs, at eight years of age.
“Oh, Alyosha, I am not blaspheming! I understand, of course, what an upheaval of the universe it will be, when everything in heaven and earth blends in one hymn of praise and everything that lives and has lived cries aloud: ‘Thou are just, O Lord, for Thy ways are revealed.’ ... But what troubles me is that I can’t accept that harmony. And while I am on earth, I hurry to take my own measures. You see, Alyosha, perhaps it really may happen that if I live to that moment, or rise again to see it, I, too, perhaps, may cry aloud with the rest... ‘Thou art just, O Lord!’ But I don’t want to cry aloud then. While there is still time, I want to protect myself and renounce the higher harmony altogether. It’s not worth the tears of that one tortured child who beat himself on the breast with its little fists and prayed in its stinking outhouse, with its tears to ‘dear, kind God’! It’s not worth it, because those tears are unatoned for. They must be atoned for or there is not harmony. But how? How are you going to atone for them? Is it possible? By their being avenged? But what do I care for avenging them? What do I care for a hell for oppressors? What good can hell do, since those children have already been tortured? And what becomes of harmony, if there is hell? I want to forgive. I want to embrace. I don’t want more suffering... I don’t want harmony. From love for humanity I don’t want it. I would rather be left with unavenged suffering. I would rather remain with my unavenged suffering and unsatisfied indignation, even if I were wrong. Besides, too high a price is asked for harmony; it’s beyond our means to pay so much. And so I give back my entrance ticket, and if I am an honest man I give it back as soon as possible. And that I am doing. It’s not God that I don’t accept, Alyosha, only I must respectfully return the ticket to Him.”
p278 “That’s rebellion,” murmured Alyosha, looking down.
“Rebellion? I am sorry you call it that,” said Ivan earnestly. “One can hardly live in rebellion, and I want to live. Tell me yourself, I challenge you -- answer. Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last. Imagine that you are doing this but that it is essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature -- that child beating its breast with its fist, for instance -- in order to found that edifice on its unavenged tears. Would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me. Tell the truth.”
This was (perhaps) one of Goethe’s themes at the close of Faust. It’s also my flip side of the Golden Rule, where you can judge people (or gods) for doing what you would not do in their place.
“No, I wouldn’t consent.” said Alyosha softly.
“And can you accept the idea that the men for whom you are building would agree to receive their happiness from the unatoned blood of a little victim? And accepting it would remain happy forever?”
This is also the dark side of Hans Castorp’s dream in "Snow."
“No, I can’t admit it,” said Alyosha suddenly, with flashing eyes. “But, Ivan, you asked just now, is there a person in the world who has a right to forgive and can forgive? But there is a Being and He can forgive everything, all and for all, because He gave His innocent blood for all and everything. You have forgotten Him, and on Him is built the edifice, and it is to Him they cry aloud, ‘Thou art just, O Lord, for Thy ways are revealed!”
“Ah! The One without sin and His blood! No, I have not forgotten Him. On the contrary I’ve been wondering all the time how it was you did not bring Him in before, for usually all arguments on your side put Him in the foreground. Do you know, Alyosha -- don’t laugh! I wrote a poem about a year ago. If you can waste another ten minutes, I’ll tell it to you.”
...
“My poem is called ‘The Grand Inquisitor.’ It’s a ridiculous thing, but I want to tell it to you.”
Again, I'm going to take a break here because the next section is a real killer. Also, I imagine we've had enough laughs for one day.
Small Victories
"Voices"
p245 “...there was hugely screwed-up stuff going on in my family’s life... that could not possibly be God’s will for us, especially not for the young ones in my family. How can God possibly expect us to accept God’s will, when it can be such awful stuff? Why would you possibly pray for the power to carry out God’s will when, if God will just hear you out, you think it’s a very poor plan?”
I’m not being clever here, I really did just read these two chapters back to back and without prior planning. I love Lamott’s voice, her humor. If anyone else was writing this I would have put it down long ago. I wonder if anyone is funny enough to sell me IS’s bill of goods?
Jump to Next: TBK. Bk V. 5.
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