Текст книги "Demons"
Автор книги: Федор Достоевский
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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 56 страниц)
"By the way you put it, I must inevitably conclude, and, I suppose, as quickly as possible, that it is the Russian nation ..."
"And you're laughing already—oh, what a tribe!" Shatov reared up.
"Calm yourself, I beg you; on the contrary, I precisely expected something of this sort."
"Expected something of this sort? And are these words not familiar to you?"
"Quite familiar; I see only too well what you're driving at. Your whole phrase and even the expression 'god-bearing' nation is simply the conclusion of our conversation that took place more than two years ago, abroad, not long before your departure for America ... At least as far as I now recall."
"The phrase is entirely yours, not mine. Your own, and not merely the conclusion of our conversation. There wasn't any 'our' conversation: there was a teacher uttering immense words, and there was a disciple who rose from the dead. I am that disciple and you are the teacher."
"But, if you recall, it was precisely after my words that you joined that society, and only then left for America."
"Yes, and I wrote to you about it from America; I wrote to you about everything. Yes, I could not all at once tear myself bloodily from what I had grown fast to since childhood, to which I had given all the raptures of my hopes and all the tears of my hatred ... It is hard to change gods. I did not believe you then because I did not want to believe, and I clung for the last time to this filthy cesspool... But the seed remained and grew. Seriously, tell me seriously, did you read to the end of my letter from America? Perhaps you didn't read it at all?"
"I read three pages of it, the first two and the last, and glanced quickly over the middle as well. Though I kept meaning to..."
"Eh, it makes no difference, to hell with it!" Shatov waved his hand. "If you've now renounced those words about the nation, how could you have uttered them then?... That's what weighs on me now."
"But I was not joking with you then, either; in persuading you, I was perhaps more concerned with myself than with you," Stavrogin said mysteriously.
"Not joking! In America I lay on straw for three months next to a certain... unfortunate man, and I learned from him that at the very same time as you were planting God and the motherland in my heart– at that very same time, perhaps even in those very same days, you were pouring poison into the heart of this unfortunate man, this maniac, Kirillov ... You confirmed lies and slander in him and drove his reason to frenzy... Go and look at him now, he's your creation... You've seen him, however."
"First, I shall note for you that Kirillov himself has just told me he is happy and he is beautiful. Your assumption that all this happened at one and the same time is almost correct; well, and what of it? I repeat, I was not deceiving either one of you."
"You are an atheist? An atheist now?"
"Yes."
"And then?"
"Exactly the same as then."
"I wasn't asking your respect for myself when I began this conversation; with your intelligence, you should have understood that," Shatov muttered indignantly.
"I didn't get up at your first word, didn't close the conversation, didn't walk out on you, but have sat here all the while humbly answering your questions and... shouts, which means that my respect for you is still intact."
Shatov interrupted him, waving his hand:
"Do you remember your expression: 'An atheist cannot be Russian, an atheist immediately ceases to be Russian'—remember that?"
"Really?" Nikolai Vsevolodovich seemed to want the question repeated.
"You ask? You've forgotten? And yet this is one of the most precise indications of one of the main peculiarities of the Russian spirit, which you figured out. You can't have forgotten it? I'll remind you of more– you said at the same time: 'He who is not Orthodox cannot be Russian.’”
"A Slavophil notion, I suppose."
"No, the Slavophils nowadays disavow it. People have grown smarter nowadays. But you went even further: you believed that Roman Catholicism was no longer Christianity; you affirmed that Rome proclaimed a Christ who had succumbed to the third temptation of the devil, and that, having announced to the whole world that Christ cannot stand on earth without an earthly kingdom, Catholicism thereby proclaimed the Antichrist, thus ruining the whole Western world. You precisely pointed out that if France is suffering, Catholicism alone is to blame, for she rejected the foul Roman God but has not found a new one. That is what you were able to say then! I remember our conversations." [91]
"If I had belief, I would no doubt repeat it now as well; I wasn't lying, speaking as a believer," Nikolai Vsevolodovich said very seriously. "But I assure you that this repetition of my past thoughts produces an all too unpleasant impression on me. Couldn't you stop?"
"If you had belief?" Shatov cried, paying not the slightest attention to the request. "But wasn't it you who told me that if someone proved to you mathematically that the truth is outside Christ, you would better agree to stay with Christ than with the truth? [92]Did you say that? Did you?"
"But allow me also to ask, finally," Stavrogin raised his voice, "what this whole impatient and... spiteful examination is leading to?"
"This examination will end forever and you will never be reminded of it."
"You keep insisting that we are outside space and time..."
"Be silent!" Shatov suddenly shouted. "I'm stupid and clumsy, but let my name perish in ridiculousness! Will you permit me to repeat before you your main thought of that time... Oh, only ten lines, just the conclusion."
"Repeat it, if it's just the conclusion..."
Stavrogin nearly made a move to look at his watch, but refrained and did not look.
Shatov again leaned forward a little on his chair, and even raised his finger again for a moment.
"Not one nation," he began, as if reciting line by line, and at the same time still looking menacingly at Stavrogin, "not one nation has ever set itself up on the principles of science and reason; there has never been an example of it, unless perhaps only for a moment, out of foolishness. Socialism by its very essence must be atheism, because it has precisely declared, from the very first line, that it is an atheistic order, and intends to set itself up on the principles of science and reason exclusively. Reason and science always, now, and from the beginning of the ages, have performed only a secondary and auxiliary task in the life of nations; and so they will to the end of the ages. Nations are formed and moved by another ruling and dominating force, whose origin is unknown and inexplicable. This force is the force of the unquenchable desire to get to the end, while at the same time denying the end. It is the force of a ceaseless and tireless confirmation of its own being and a denial of death. The Spirit of life, as Scripture says, the 'rivers of living water,' whose running dry is so threatened in the Apocalypse. [93]The aesthetic principle, as philosophers say, the moral principle, as they also identify it. 'Seeking for God'—as I call it in the simplest way. The aim of all movements of nations, of every nation and in every period of its existence, is solely the seeking for God, its own God, entirely its own, and faith in him as the only true one. God is the synthetic person of the whole nation, taken from its beginning and to its end. It has never yet happened that all or many nations have had one common God, but each has always had a separate one. It is a sign of a nation's extinction when there begin to be gods in common. When there are gods in common, they die along with the belief in them and with the nations themselves. The stronger the nation, the more particular its God. There has never yet been a nation without a religion, that is, without an idea of evil and good. Every nation has its own idea of evil and good, and its own evil and good. When many nations start having common ideas of evil and good, then the nations die out and the very distinction between evil and good begins to fade and disappear. Reason has never been able to define evil and good, or even to separate evil from good, if only approximately; on the contrary, it has always confused them, shamefully and pitifully; and science has offered the solution of the fist. Half-science has been especially distinguished for that—the most terrible scourge of mankind, worse than plague, hunger, or war, unknown till our century. Half-science is a despot such as has never been seen before. A despot with its own priests and slaves, a despot before whom everything has bowed down with a love and superstition unthinkable till now, before whom even science itself trembles and whom it shamefully caters to. These are all your own words, Stavrogin, all except the words about half-science; those are mine, because I myself am only half-science, and therefore I especially hate it. As for your thoughts and even your very words, I haven't changed anything, not a word."
"I wouldn't say you haven't," Stavrogin remarked cautiously. "You took it ardently, and have altered it ardently without noticing it. The fact alone that you reduce God to a mere attribute of nationality..."
He suddenly began to observe Shatov with increased and particular attention, not so much his words as the man himself.
"I reduce God to an attribute of nationality?" Shatov cried. "On the contrary, I raise the nation up to God. Has it ever been otherwise? The nation is the body of God. Any nation is a nation only as long as it has its own particular God and rules out all other gods in the world with no conciliation; as long as it believes that through its God it will be victorious and will drive all other gods from the world. Thus all have believed from the beginning of time, all great nations at least, all that were marked out to any extent, all that have stood at the head of mankind. There is no going against the fact. The Jews lived only to wait for the true God, and left the true God to the world. The Greeks deified nature, and bequeathed the world their religion, that is, philosophy and art. Rome deified the nation in the state, and bequeathed the state to the nations. France, throughout her whole long history, has simply been the embodiment and development of the idea of the Roman God, and if she has finally flung her Roman God down into the abyss and plunged into atheism, which for the time being they call socialism, that is solely because atheism is, after all, healthier than Roman Catholicism. If a great nation does not believe that the truth is in it alone (precisely in it alone, and that exclusively), if it does not believe that it alone is able and called to resurrect and save everyone with its truth, then it at once ceases to be a great nation, and at once turns into ethnographic material and not a great nation. A truly great nation can never be reconciled with a secondary role in mankind, or even with a primary, but inevitably and exclusively with the first. Any that loses this faith is no longer a nation. But the truth is one, and therefore only one among the nations can have the true God, even if the other nations do have their particular and great gods. The only 'god-bearing' nation is the Russian nation, and... and ... do you, do you really regard me as such a fool, Stavrogin," he suddenly cried out frenziedly, "who cannot even tell whether his words now are old, decrepit rubbish, ground up in all the Slavophil mills of Moscow, or a completely new word, the last word, the only word of renewal and resurrection, and... what do I care about your laughter at this moment! What do I care that you don't understand me at all, not at all, not a word, not a sound! ... Oh, how I despise your proud laughter and look at this moment!"
He jumped up from his place; there was even foam on his lips.
"On the contrary, Shatov, on the contrary," Stavrogin said, with remarkable seriousness and restraint, without rising from his place, "on the contrary, with your ardent words you've revived many extremely powerful recollections in me. I recognize in your words my own state of mind two years ago, and I shall no longer say to you, as I just did, that you have exaggerated my thoughts of that time. It even seems to me that they were still more exceptional, still more absolute, and I assure you for the third time that I would wish very much to confirm everything you've said, even to a word, but..."
"But you need a hare?"
"Wha-a-at?"
"Your own vile expression," Shatov laughed spitefully, sitting down again.”‘To make sauce from a hare, you need a hare; to have belief in God, you need a God,' you went around saying in Petersburg, I'm told, like Nozdryov, who wanted to catch a hare by its hind legs." [94]
"No, he was precisely boasting that he'd already caught it. Incidentally, though, allow me to trouble you with a question as well, the more so as it seems to me I now have full right to ask. Tell me about your hare—have you caught it, or is it still running around?"
"Do not dare to ask me in such words; use others, others!" Shatov suddenly trembled all over.
"As you wish, here are your others," Nikolai Vsevolodovich looked at him sternly. "I simply wanted to know: do you yourself believe in God, or not?"
"I believe in Russia, I believe in her Orthodoxy ... I believe in the body of Christ ... I believe that the new coming will take place in Russia ... I believe..." Shatov babbled frenziedly.
"But in God? In God?"
"I ... I will believe in God."
Not a muscle moved in Stavrogin's face. Shatov looked at him fierily, defiantly, as if he wanted to burn him with his eyes.
"But I didn't tell you I don't believe at all!" he finally cried. "I'm only letting you know that I am a wretched, boring book, and nothing more so far, so far... But perish my name! The point is in you, not me... I'm a man without talent, and can only give my blood, and nothing more, like any other man without talent. Perish my blood as well! I'm talking about you, I've been waiting here two years for you... I've just been dancing naked for you for half an hour. You, you alone could raise this banner! ..."
He did not finish, but leaned his elbows on the table and propped his head in both hands, as if in despair.
"I'll merely note, incidentally, as a strange thing," Stavrogin suddenly interrupted, "why is it that everyone is foisting some banner on me? Pyotr Verkhovensky is also convinced that I could 'raise their banner,' or so at least his words were conveyed to me. He's taken it into his head that I could play the role of Stenka Razin [95]for them, 'owing to my extraordinary capacity for crime'—also his words."
"How's that?" Shatov asked.”‘Owing to your extraordinary capacity for crime'?"
"Precisely."
"Hm. And is it true that you," he grinned spitefully, "is it true that in Petersburg you belonged to some secret society of bestial sensualists? Is it true that the Marquis de Sade [96]could take lessons from you? Is it true that you lured and corrupted children? Speak, do not dare to lie," he cried, completely beside himself, "Nikolai Stavrogin cannot lie before Shatov who hit him in the face! Speak everything, and if it's true, I'll kill you at once, right here, on the spot!"
"I did speak those words, but it was not I who offended children," said Stavrogin, but only after too long a silence. He turned pale, and his eyes lit up.
"But you spoke of it!" Shatov went on imperiously, not taking his flashing eyes from Stavrogin. "Is it true that you insisted you knew no difference in beauty between some brutal sensual stunt and any great deed, even the sacrifice of life for mankind? Is it true that you found a coincidence of beauty, a sameness of pleasure at both poles?"
"It's impossible to answer like this ... I won't answer," muttered Stavrogin, who could very well have gotten up and left, but did not get up and leave.
"I don't know why evil is bad and good is beautiful either, but I do know why the sense of this distinction is faded and effaced in such gentlemen as the Stavrogins," Shatov, trembling all over, would not let go. "Do you know why you married so disgracefully and basely then? Precisely because here the disgrace and senselessness reached the point of genius! Oh, you don't go straying along the verge, you boldly fly down headfirst. You married out of a passion for torture, out of a passion for remorse, out of moral sensuality. It was from nervous strain... The challenge to common sense was too enticing! Stavrogin and a scrubby, feebleminded, beggarly lame girl! When you bit the governor's ear, did you feel the sensuality of it? Did you? Idle, loafing young squire—did you feel it?"
"You're a psychologist," Stavrogin was turning paler and paler, "though you are partly mistaken about the reasons for my marriage ... And who, incidentally, could have given you all this information?" he forced himself to grin. "Could it be Kirillov? But he had no part in it..."
"You're turning pale?"
"What do you want, anyway?" Nikolai Vsevolodovich finally raised his voice. "I've sat for half an hour under your lash, you could at least politely let me go ... if you indeed have no reasonable purpose in acting this way with me."
"Reasonable purpose?"
"Undoubtedly. It was your duty at least to announce your purpose to me finally. I kept waiting for you to do so, but all I've found is frenzied spite. I ask you to open the gate for me."
He got up from the chair. Shatov rushed frantically after him.
"Kiss the earth, flood it with tears, ask forgiveness!" he cried out, seizing him by the shoulder.
"Anyhow, I didn't kill you... that morning ... I put both hands behind my back..." Stavrogin said, almost with pain, looking down.
"Say it all, say it all! You came to warn me about the danger, you allowed me to speak, you want to announce your marriage publicly tomorrow! ... Can't I see by your face that you're at grips with some awesome new thought?... Stavrogin, why am I condemned to believe in you unto ages of ages? Would I be able to talk like this with anyone else? I have chastity, yet I wasn't afraid of my nakedness, for I was speaking with Stavrogin. I wasn't afraid to caricature a great thought by my touch, for Stavrogin was listening to me... Won't I kiss your footprints when you've gone? I cannot tear you out of my heart, Nikolai Stavrogin!"
"I'm sorry I cannot love you, Shatov," Nikolai Vsevolodovich said coldly.
"I know you cannot, and I know you're not lying. Listen, I can set everything right: I'll get you that hare!"
Stavrogin was silent.
"You're an atheist because you're a squire, an ultimate squire. You've lost the distinction between evil and good because you've ceased to recognize your own nation. A new generation is coming, straight from the nation's heart, and you won't recognize it, neither will the Verkhovenskys, son or father, nor will I, for I, too, am a squire—I, the son of your serf and lackey Pashka... Listen, acquire God by labor; the whole essence is there, or else you'll disappear like vile mildew; do it by labor."
"God by labor? What labor?"
"Peasant labor. Go, leave your wealth... Ah! you're laughing, you're afraid it will turn out to be flimflam."
But Stavrogin was not laughing.
"You suppose God can be acquired by labor, and precisely by peasant labor?" he repeated, after a moment's thought, as if he had indeed encountered something new and serious which was worth pondering. "Incidentally," he suddenly passed on to a new thought, "you've just reminded me: do you know that I'm not rich at all, so there's nothing to leave? I'm hardly even able to secure Marya Timofeevna's future... Another thing: I came to ask you if it's possible for you not to abandon Marya Timofeevna in the future, since you alone may have some influence on her poor mind ... I say it just in case."
"All right, all right, you and Marya Timofeevna," Shatov waved his hand, holding a candle in the other, "all right, later, of itself... Listen, go to Tikhon."
"Who?"
"Tikhon. Tikhon, a former bishop, retired for reasons of health, lives here in town, within town limits, in our Saint Yefimi-Bogorodsky monastery."
"What's it all about?"
"Never mind. People go and see him. You should go to him; what is it to you? Well, what is it to you?"
"First time I've heard of him, and... I've never seen that sort of people before. Thank you, I'll go."
"This way," Shatov walked downstairs with the light. "Go," he flung open the gate to the street.
"I won't come to you anymore, Shatov," Stavrogin said softly, stepping through the gate.
Darkness and rain continued as before.
