Текст книги "The Brothers Karamazov"
Автор книги: Федор Достоевский
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“True, Katya!” Mitya suddenly yelled. “I looked in your eyes, knowing that you were dishonoring me, and yet I took your money! Despise the scoundrel, all of you, despise me, I deserve it!”
“Defendant,” cried the judge, “one more word and I’ll order you to be removed.”
“That money tormented him,” Katya continued, hurrying convulsively, “he wanted to give it back to me, he wanted to, it’s true, but he also needed money for that creature. So he killed his father, but he still did not give me back the money, but went with her to that village where he was seized. There he again squandered the money he had stolen from his father, whom he had killed. And the day before he killed his father, he wrote me that letter, he was drunk when he wrote it, I saw that at once, he wrote it out of spite, and knowing, knowing for certain that I wouldn’t show the letter to anyone, even if he did kill him. Otherwise he wouldn’t have written it. He knew I would not want to revenge myself and ruin him! But read it, read it closely, please, read it more closely and you’ll see that he described everything in the letter, everything beforehand: how he would kill his father, and where he kept his money. Look, please don’t miss this one phrase there: ‘I will kill him, if only Ivan goes away.’ So he thought it all out beforehand, how he was going to kill him,” Katerina Ivanovna went on, gloatingly, and insidiously prompting the court. Oh, one could see that she had thoroughly examined this fatal letter and studied every little detail of it. “If he hadn’t been drunk, he would never have written to me, but see how everything is described beforehand, everything exactly as he killed him afterwards, the whole program!”
So she went on exclaiming, beside herself, and, of course, heedless of all consequences for herself, though she had certainly foreseen them, perhaps as much as a month before, because even then, perhaps, shuddering with malice, she had imagined: “Why don’t I read it in court?” And now it was as if she had thrown herself off the mountain. I seem to recall the clerk reading the letter aloud precisely at that moment, and it made a tremendous impression. Mitya was asked if he acknowledged the letter.
“It’s mine, mine!” cried Mitya. “If I hadn’t been drunk, I’d never have written it...! We hated each other for many things, Katya, but I swear, I swear I loved you even as I hated you, and you—didn’t!”
He sank back on his seat, wringing his hands in despair. The prosecutor and the defense attorney began cross-examining her, mainly in one sense: “What prompted you to withhold such a document till now and to testify previously in a completely different spirit and tone?”
“Yes, yes, I was lying before, it was all lies, against my honor and conscience, but then I wanted to save him, because he hated me so, and despised me so,” Katya exclaimed wildly. “Oh, he despised me terribly, he despised me always, and you know, you know—he despised me from the very moment when I bowed at his feet for that money. I saw it ... I felt it right then, at once, but for a long time I didn’t believe myself. How many times I’ve read it in his eyes: ‘Still, it was you who came to me that time.’ Oh, he didn’t understand, he didn’t understand at all why I came running then, he can only imagine the basest reasons! He measured me by his own measure, he thought everyone was like him,” Katya snarled fiercely, now in an utter frenzy. “And he wanted to marry me only because of the inheritance I received, that’s why, that’s why, I’ve always suspected that was why! Oh, he’s a beast! He was sure I would go on trembling before him all my life out of shame for having come to him that time, and that he could despise me eternally and so hold himself above me– that’s why he wanted to marry me! It’s true, it’s true! I tried to win him over with my love, love without end, I was even willing to endure his betrayal, but he understood nothing, nothing! And how could he understand anything! He’s a monster! That letter I received only the next day, in the evening, they brought it to me from the tavern, and still that morning, still in the morning of that same day, I was willing to forgive him everything, everything, even his betrayal!”
The judge and the prosecutor tried, of course, to calm her down. I am sure that they were all, perhaps, ashamed to be taking advantage in such a way of her frenzy, and to be listening to such confessions. I remember hearing them say to her: “We understand how difficult it is for you, believe us. we are not unfeeling,” and so on, and so on—and yet they did extract evidence from the raving, hysterical woman. She finally described with extraordinary clarity, which often shines through briefly even in moments of such an overwrought condition, how for those two whole months Ivan Fyodorovich had been driving himself nearly out of his mind over saving “the monster and murderer,” his brother.
“He tormented himself,” she exclaimed, “he kept trying to minimize his brother’s guilt, confessing to me that he had not loved his father either, and perhaps had wished for his death himself. Oh, he has a deep, deep conscience! He tormented himself with his conscience! He revealed everything to me, everything, he would come to see me and talk with me every day as with his only friend. I have the honor of being his only friend!” she exclaimed suddenly, as if with some sort of defiance, and her eyes flashed. “Twice he went to see Smerdyakov. Once he came to me and said: ‘If it wasn’t my brother who killed him, but Smerdyakov’ (because everyone here had been spreading this fable that Smerdyakov killed him), ‘then perhaps I am guilty, too, because Smerdyakov knew that I did not like my father, and perhaps thought I wished for my father’s death.’ Then I took out that letter and showed it to him, and he was totally convinced that his brother was the killer, and it totally overwhelmed him. He could not bear it that his own brother was a parricide! Already a week ago I saw that he had become ill from it. In the past few days, sitting with me, he was raving. I saw that he was losing his mind. He went about raving, he was seen like that in the streets. The visiting doctor, at my request, examined him the day before yesterday and told me that he was close to brain fever—all because of him, all because of the monster! And yesterday he learned that Smerdyakov had died—he was so struck by it that he’s lost his mind ... and all because of the monster, all to save the monster!”
Oh, to be sure, one can speak thus and confess thus only once in one’s life—in the moment before death, for instance, mounting the scaffold. But it was precisely Katya’s character and Katya’s moment. It was the same impetuous Katya who had once rushed to a young libertine in order to save her father; the very same Katya who, proud and chaste, had just sacrificed herself and her maiden’s honor before the whole public by telling of “Mitya’s noble conduct,” in order to soften at least somewhat the fate in store for him. So now, in just the same way, she again sacrificed herself, this time for another man, and perhaps only now, only that minute, did she feel and realize fully how dear this other man was to her! She sacrificed herself in fear for him, imagining suddenly that he had ruined himself with his testimony that he, and not his brother, was the killer, sacrificed herself in order to save him, his good name, his reputation! And yet a terrible thought flashed through one’s mind: was she lying about Mitya in describing her former relations with him?—that was the question. No, no, she was not slandering him deliberately when she cried out that Mitya despised her for bowing to him! She believed it herself, she was deeply convinced, and had been perhaps from the moment of the bow itself, that the guileless Mitya, who adored her even then, was laughing at her and despised her. And only out of pride had she then attached herself to him with a hysterical and strained love, love out of wounded pride, a love that resembled not love but revenge. Oh, perhaps this strained love would have grown into real love, perhaps Katya wished for nothing else, but Mitya insulted her to the depths of her soul with his betrayal, and her soul did not forgive. The moment of revenge came unexpectedly, and everything that had been long and painfully accumulating in the offended woman’s breast burst out all at once and, again, unexpectedly. She betrayed Mitya, but she betrayed herself as well! And, naturally, as soon as she had spoken it out, the tension broke, and shame overwhelmed her. Hysterics began again, she collapsed, sobbing and screaming. She was taken away. The moment she was taken out, Grushenka rushed to Mitya with a cry, so that there was no time to hold her back.
“Mitya!” she cried out, “your serpent has destroyed you! See, she’s shown you what she is!” she shouted to the court, shaking with anger. At a sign from the judge, they seized her and attempted to remove her from the courtroom. She would not give in, fought and strained to reach Mitya. Mitya cried out and also strained to reach her. He was seized.
Yes, I suppose our lady spectators were left satisfied: the spectacle had been a rich one. Then I remember how the visiting Moscow doctor appeared. It seems that the presiding judge had sent the marshal out earlier with orders to render assistance to Ivan Fyodorovich. The doctor reported to the court that the sick man was suffering from a most dangerous attack of brain fever, and that he ought to be taken away at once. Questioned by the prosecutor and the defense attorney, he confirmed that the patient had come to him two days earlier, and that he had warned him then that brain fever was imminent, but that he had not wished to be treated. “And he was definitely not in a good state of mind, he confessed to me himself that he saw visions while awake, met various persons in the street who were already dead, and that Satan visited him every evening,” the doctor concluded. Having given his testimony, the famous doctor withdrew. The letter produced by Katerina Ivanovna was added to the material evidence. After conferring, the court ruled that the investigation be continued and that both unexpected testimonies (Katerina Ivanovna’s and Ivan Fyodorovich’s) be entered into the record.
But I will not describe the rest of the examination. In any case, the testimony of the remaining witnesses was merely a repetition and confirmation of the previous testimony, though each with its characteristic peculiarities. But, I repeat, everything will be drawn together in the speech of the prosecutor, which I shall come to presently. Everyone was excited, everyone was electrified by the latest catastrophe and only waited with burning impatience for a quick denouement, the speeches of both sides and the verdict. Fetyukovich was visibly shaken by Katerina Ivanovna’s evidence. But the prosecutor was triumphant. When the examination was over, an intermission in the proceedings was announced, which lasted for nearly an hour. Finally the presiding judge called for the closing debate. I believe it was precisely eight o’clock in the evening when our prosecutor, Ippolit Kirillovich, began his statement for the prosecution.
Chapter 6: The Prosecutor’s Speech. Characterizations
Ippolit Kirillovich began his statement for the prosecution all nervously atremble, with a cold, sickly sweat on his forehead and temples, feeling alternately chilled and feverish all over. He said so afterwards himself. He considered this speech his chef d’oeuvre, the chef d’oeuvre of his whole life, his swan song. True, he died nine months later of acute consumption, so that indeed, as it turned out, he would have been right to compare himself to a swan singing its last song, had he anticipated his end beforehand. Into this speech he put his whole heart and all the intelligence he possessed, and unexpectedly proved that in him were hidden both civic feeling and the “accursed” questions, [336]insofar at least as our poor Ippolit Kirillovich could contain them in himself. Above all, his speech went over because it was sincere: he sincerely believed in the defendant’s guilt; his accusation was not made to order, it was not merely dutiful, and, in calling for “revenge,” he really was trembling with the desire to “save society.” Even our ladies, ultimately hostile to Ippolit Kirillovich, nonetheless admitted the greatness of the impression made. He began in a cracked, faltering voice, but very soon his voice grew stronger and rang through the whole courtroom, and so to the end of his speech. But as soon as he finished it, he nearly fainted.
“Gentlemen of the jury,” the prosecutor began, “the present case has resounded throughout all Russia. But what, one might think, is so surprising, what is so especially horrifying about it? For us, for us especially? We’re so used to all that! And here is the real horror, that such dark affairs have almost ceased to horrify us! It is this, and not the isolated crime of one individual or another, that should horrify us: that we are so used to it. Where lie the reasons for our indifference, our lukewarm attitude towards such affairs, such signs of the times, which prophesy for us an unenviable future? In our cynicism, in an early exhaustion of mind and imagination in our society, so young and yet so prematurely decrepit? In our moral principles, shattered to their foundations, or, finally, in the fact that we, perhaps, are not even possessed of such moral principles at all? I do not mean to resolve these questions; nevertheless they are painful, and every citizen not only ought, but is even obliged, to suffer over them. Our budding, still timid press has all the same rendered some service to society, for without it we should never have learned, in any measure of fullness, of those horrors of unbridled will and moral degradation that it ceaselessly reports in its pages, to everyone, not merely to those who attend the sessions of the new open courts granted us by the present reign. [337]And what do we read almost daily? Oh, hourly we read of things before which the present case pales and seems almost something ordinary. But what is most important is that a great number of our Russian, our national, criminal cases bear witness precisely to something universal, to some general malaise that has taken root among us, and with which, as with universal evil, it is already very difficult to contend. Here we have a brilliant young officer of high society, just setting out on his life and career, who basely, stealthily, without any remorse, puts a knife into a petty official, in part his former benefactor, and his serving-woman, in order to steal his own promissory document, and the rest of the official’s cash along with it: ‘It will come in handy for my social pleasures and my future career.’ Having stabbed them both to death, he leaves, putting pillows under the heads of the two corpses. Or again we have a young hero, all hung with medals for valor, who, like a robber on the highway, kills the mother of his chief and benefactor and, to urge his comrades on, assures them that ‘she loves him like her own son, and will therefore follow all his advice and take no precautions.’ Granted he is a monster, but now, in our time, I no longer dare say he is just an isolated monster. Another man may not kill, perhaps, but he will think and feel exactly the same way, in his heart he is just as dishonest as the first. In silence, alone with his conscience, perhaps he asks himself: ‘What is honor, after all, and why this prejudice against shedding blood?’ Perhaps people will cry out against me, and say of me that I am a morbid man, a hysterical man, that I am raving, exaggerating, slandering monstrously. Let them, let them—and, God, how I would be the first to rejoice! Oh, do not believe me, consider me a sick man, but still remember my words: for if only a tenth, only a twentieth part of what I say is true, even then it is terrible! Look, gentlemen, look at how our young men are shooting themselves—oh, without the least Hamletian question of ‘what lies beyond,’ [338] without a trace of such questions, as if this matter of our spirit, and all that awaits us beyond the grave, had been scrapped long ago in them, buried and covered with dust. Look, finally, at our depravity, at our sensualists. Fyodor Pavlovich, the unfortunate victim in the current trial, is almost an innocent babe next to some of them. And we all knew him, ‘he lived among us’ . . . [339]Yes, perhaps some day the foremost minds both here and in Europe will consider the psychology of Russian crime, for the subject is worthy of it. But this study will be taken up later on, at leisure, and when the whole tragic topsy-turveydom of our present moment has moved more into the background so that it will be possible to examine it more intelligently and more impartially than people like myself, for example, can do. For now we are either horrified or pretend that we are horrified, while, on the contrary, relishing the spectacle, like lovers of strong, eccentric sensations that stir our cynical and lazy idleness, or, finally, like little children waving the frightening ghosts away, and hiding our heads under the pillow until the frightening vision is gone, so as to forget it immediately afterwards in games and merriment. But should not we, too, some day begin to live soberly and thoughtfully; should not we, too, take a look at ourselves as a society; should not we, too, understand at least something of our social duty, or at least begin to understand? A great writer of the previous epoch, in the finale of the greatest of his works, personifying all of Russia as a bold Russian troika galloping towards an unknown goal, exclaims: ‘Ah, troika, bird-troika, who invented you!’—and in proud rapture adds that all nations respectfully stand aside for this troika galloping by at breakneck speed. Let it be so, gentlemen, let them stand aside, respectfully or not, but in my sinful judgment the artistic genius ended like that either in a fit of innocently infantile sunnymindedness, or simply from fear of contemporary censorship. For if his troika were to be drawn by none but his own heroes, the Sobakeviches, Nozdryovs, and Chichikovs, then no matter who is sitting in the coachman’s box, it would be impossible to arrive at anything sensible with such horses! And those were still former horses, a far cry from our own, ours are no comparison . . .” [340]
Here Ippolit Kirillovich’s speech was interrupted by applause. They liked the liberalism of his depiction of the Russian troika. True, only two or three claps broke out, so that the presiding judge did not even find it necessary to address the public with a threat to “clear the court” and merely gave the clappers a stern look. But Ippolit Kirillovich was encouraged: never had he been applauded before! For so many years no one had wanted to listen to the man, and suddenly there came an opportunity to speak out for all Russia to hear!
“Indeed,” he went on, “what is this Karamazov family that has suddenly gained such sad notoriety all over Russia? Perhaps I am greatly exaggerating, but it seems to me that certain basic, general elements of our modern-day educated society shine through, as it were, in the picture of this nice little family—oh, not all the elements, and they shine only microscopically, like to the sun in a small water-drop,’ [341]yet something has been reflected, something has betrayed itself. Look at this wretched, unbridled, and depraved old man, this ‘paterfamilias,’ who has so sadly ended his existence. A nobleman by birth, starting out his career as a poor little sponger, who through an accidental and unexpected marriage grabs a small capital as a dowry, at first a petty cheat and flattering buffoon with a germ of mental capacity, a far from weak one, by the way, and above all a usurer. As the years go by—that is, as his capital grows– he gets bolder. Self-deprecation and fawning disappear, only a jeering and wicked cynic and sensualist remains. The whole spiritual side has been scrapped, but there is an extraordinary thirst for life. In the end he sees nothing in life apart from sensual pleasure, and thus he teaches his children. Of the spiritual sort of fatherly duties—none at all. He laughs at them, he brings his little children up in the backyard and is glad when they are taken away from him. He even forgets about them altogether. The old man’s whole moral rule is– après moi le déluge. [342] Everything contrary to the idea of a citizen, a complete, even hostile separation from society: ‘Let the whole world burn, so long as I am all right. ‘ And he is all right, he is perfectly content, he wants to live like that for another twenty or thirty years. He cheats his own son, and with the son’s money, his maternal inheritance, which he does not want to give him, he takes his own son’s mistress away. No, I have no intention of handing over the defense of the accused to the highly talented attorney from Petersburg. I myself can speak the truth, I myself understand the sum total of indignation he has stored up in his son’s heart. But enough, enough of that unfortunate old man, he has his reward. Let us recall, however, that he is a father, and one of our modern-day fathers. Shall I offend society if I say that he is even one of many modern-day fathers? Alas, so many modern-day fathers simply do not speak their minds as cynically as this one did, for they are better bred, better educated, but essentially they are of almost the same philosophy as he. But allow that I am a pessimist, allow that I am. You will forgive me: that was our arrangement. Let us settle it beforehand: do not believe me, do not believe me, I shall speak, but do not believe me. But still let me speak my mind, still you may remember a little something of what I say. Now, however, we come to the children of this old man, this paterfamilias: one of them stands before us in the dock, we shall have much to say of him later; the others I shall mention only in passing. The elder of the two is one of our modern young men, brilliantly educated, with quite a powerful mind, who, however, no longer believes in anything, who has already scrapped and rejected much, too much in life, exactly as his father had done. We have all heard him, he was received amicably in our society. He did not conceal his opinions, even the opposite, quite the opposite, which now emboldens me to speak of him somewhat frankly, not as a private person, of course, but only as a member of the Karamazov family. Yesterday a certain sick idiot died here, on the outskirts of our town, by suicide; a person much involved in the present case, the former servant and, perhaps, illegitimate son of Fyodor Pavlovich, Smerdyakov. In the preliminary investigation he told me, with hysterical tears, how this young Karamazov, Ivan Fyodorovich, had horrified him with his spiritual unrestraint. ‘Everything, according to him, is permitted, whatever there is in the world, and from now on nothing should be forbidden—that’s what he kept teaching me about.’ It seems that this thesis, which he was taught, ultimately caused the idiot to lose his mind, though, of course, his mental disorder was also affected by his falling sickness, and by this whole terrible catastrophe that had broken out in their house. But this idiot let drop one very, very curious remark, which would do honor even to a more intelligent observer, and that is why I am mentioning it now: ‘If,’ he said to me, ‘any one of the sons most resembles Fyodor Pavlovich in character, it is him, Ivan Fyodorovich!’ At this remark I shall interrupt the characterization I have begun, considering it indelicate to continue further. Oh, I do not want to draw any further conclusions and, like the raven, only croak ruin over a young fate. We have just seen, here in this hall, that the direct force of the truth still lives in his young heart, that the feeling of family loyalty has not yet been stifled in him by unbelief and moral cynicism, acquired more as an inheritance than through real mental suffering. Now the other son—oh, still a youth, pious and humble, who, in contrast to the dark, corrupting world view of his brother, seeks to cling to ‘popular foundations,’ so to speak, or to what goes by that clever name among us in certain theoretical corners of our thinking intelligentsia. He clung to the monastery, you see; he all but became a monk himself. In him, it seems to me, unconsciously, as it were, and so early on, there betrayed itself that timid despair that leads so many in our poor society, fearing its cynicism and depravity, and mistakenly ascribing all evil to European enlightenment, to throw themselves, as they put it, to the ‘native soil,’ so to speak, into the motherly embrace of the native earth, like children frightened by ghosts, who even at the dried-up breast of a paralyzed mother wish only to fall peacefully asleep and even to sleep for the rest of their lives, simply not to see the horrors that frighten them. For my part, I wish the good and gifted young man all the best, I hope that his youthful brightheartedness and yearning for popular foundations will not turn later, as so often happens, into dark mysticism on the moral side, and witless chauvinism on the civic side [343]—two qualities that perhaps threaten more evil for the nation than even the premature corruption owing to a falsely understood and gratuitously acquired European enlightenment from which his elder brother suffers.”
Mysticism and chauvinism again drew two or three claps. And of course Ippolit Kirillovich had gotten carried away, and all this scarcely suited the present case, to say nothing of its being rather vague, but this consumptive and embittered man had too great a desire to speak his whole mind at least once in his life. It was said afterwards that in characterizing Ivan Fyodorovich, he had even been prompted by an indelicate feeling, because the young man had publicly snubbed him once or twice in argument, and Ippolit Kirillovich, remembering it, now desired to have his revenge. But I do not know that it is possible to draw such a conclusion. In any event, all this was merely a preamble, and further on the speech became more direct and to the point. “But now we have the third son of this father of a modern-day family,” Ippolit Kirillovich continued. “He is in the dock, he stands before us. Before us also stand his deeds, his life and acts: the hour has come, and everything has been unfolded, everything has been revealed. In contrast to the ‘Europeanism’ and the ‘popular foundations’ of his brothers, he seems to represent ingenuous Russia—oh, not all, not all, and God forbid it should be all! Yet she is here, our dear mother Russia, we can smell her, we can hear her. Oh, we are ingenuous, we are an amazing mixture of good and evil, we are lovers of enlightenment and Schiller, and at the same time we rage in taverns and tear out the beards of little drunkards, our tavern mates. Oh, we can also be good and beautiful, but only when we are feeling good and beautiful ourselves. We are, on the contrary, even possessed—precisely possessed—by the noblest ideals, but only on condition that they be attained by themselves, that they fall on our plate from the sky, and, above all, gratuitously, gratuitously, so that we need pay nothing for them. We like very much to get things, but terribly dislike having to pay for them, and so it is with everything. Oh, give us, give us all possible good things in life (precisely all, we won’t settle for less) and, more particularly, do not obstruct our character in any way, and then we, too, will prove that we can be good and beautiful. We are not greedy, no, but give us money, more and more money, as much money as possible, and then you will see how generously, with what scorn for filthy lucre, we can throw it away in one night of unrestrained carousing. And if we are not given any money, we will show how we manage to get it anyway when we want it badly enough. But of that later—let us take things in order. First of all, we see a poor, neglected boy, ‘in the backyard, without any shoes,’ as it was just put by our venerable and respected citizen—alas, of foreign origin! Once more I repeat, I yield to no one in defending the accused. I am prosecutor, but also defender. Yes, we, too, are human and are able to weigh the influence on a man’s character of the earliest impressions of childhood and the parental nest. But then the boy becomes a youth, a young man, an officer; for riotous conduct, for a challenge to a duel, he is exiled to one of the remote frontier towns of our bounteous Russia. There he serves, there he carouses, and of course a big ship needs a big sea. We need money, money above all, and so, after a long dispute, he and his father agree on a final six thousand, which is sent to him. Note that he signed this document, that this letter exists in which he all but renounces everything, and on payment of this six thousand ends his dispute with his father over the inheritance. Here occurs his encounter with a young girl of lofty character and development. Oh, I dare not repeat the details, you have only just heard them: here is honor, here is selflessness, I shall say no more. The image of a young man, thoughtless and depraved, who nonetheless bows to true nobility, to a lofty idea, flashed before us extremely sympathetically. But suddenly, after that, in this same courtroom, the other side of the coin followed quite unexpectedly. Again I dare not venture to guess, and will refrain from analyzing, why it followed thus. And yet there were reasons why it followed thus. This same person, all in tears from her long-concealed indignation, declares to us that he, he himself, was the first to despise her for her perhaps imprudent and impetuous, but all the same lofty and magnanimous impulse. It was in him, in this girl’s fiancé, before anyone else, that this derisive smile flashed, which from him alone she could not endure. Knowing that he had already betrayed her (betrayed her in the prior conviction that now she must bear with him in everything, even in his betrayal), knowing this, she deliberately offers him three thousand roubles, and clearly, all too clearly, lets him understand that she is offering him money to betray her: ‘Well, will you take it or not, will you be so cynical?’ she says to him silently with her probing and accusing eyes. He looks at her, he understands her thoughts perfectly (he himself confessed here before you that he understood everything), and without reservation he appropriates the three thousand and squanders it in two days with his new sweetheart! What are we to believe, then? The first legend—the impulse of a lofty nobility giving its last worldly means and bowing down before virtue, or the other side of the coin, which is so repugnant? It is usually so in life that when there are two opposites one must look for truth in the middle; in the present case it is literally not so. Most likely in the first instance he was sincerely noble, and in the second just as sincerely base. Why? Precisely because we are of a broad, Karamazovian nature—and this is what I am driving at—capable of containing all possible opposites and of contemplating both abysses at once, the abyss above us, an abyss of lofty ideals, and the abyss beneath us, an abyss of the lowest and foulest degradation. Recall the brilliant thought expressed earlier by a young observer who has profoundly and closely contemplated the whole Karamazov family, Mr. Rakitin: ‘A sense of the lowness of degradation is as necessary for these unbridled, unrestrained natures as the sense of the loftiest nobility’– and it is true: they precisely need this unnatural mixture, constantly and ceaselessly. Two abysses, two abysses, gentlemen, in one and the same moment—without that we are wretched and dissatisfied, our existence is incomplete. We are broad, broad as our whole mother Russia, we will embrace everything and get along with everything! Incidentally, gentlemen of the jury, we have now touched on these three thousand roubles, and I shall take the liberty of getting somewhat ahead of myself. Simply imagine him, this broad nature, having obtained this money—in such a way, through such shame, such disgrace, such uttermost humiliation—simply imagine him supposedly being capable that same day of setting aside half of it, of sewing it into an amulet, and being firm enough after that to carry it around his neck for a whole month, despite all temptations and extreme needs! Not while drinking riotously in the taverns, not when flying out of town to get, God knows from whom, the money he so badly needed to save his sweetheart from seduction by his rival, his own father—would he venture to touch this amulet. But if only precisely not to leave her to the seduction of the old man of whom he was so jealous, he ought to have opened his amulet and stayed home to keep relentless watch over his sweetheart, waiting for the moment when she would finally say to him: ‘I am yours,’ and he would fly off with her somewhere far away from the present fatal situation. But no, he would not touch his talisman, and on what pretext? The original pretext was, we have said, precisely so that when he was told: ‘I am yours, take me wherever you like,’ he would have the wherewithal to take her. But this first pretext, according to the defendant’s own words, paled beside the second one. As long as I carry this money on myself, he said, ‘I am a scoundrel, but not a thief,’ for I can always go to my insulted fiancée and, laying before her this half of the whole sum I fraudulently appropriated, I can always say to her: ‘You see, I squandered half of your money, and proved thereby that I am a weak and immoral man, a scoundrel if you like’ (I am using the defendant’s own language), ‘but even if I am a scoundrel, I am still not a thief, for if I were a thief, I would not have brought you this remaining half of the money, but would have appropriated it as I did the first half.’ An astonishing explanation of the fact! This most violent but weak man, who was unable to resist the temptation of accepting the three thousand roubles along with such disgrace—this same man suddenly finds in himself such stoic firmness that he can carry thousands of roubles around his neck without venturing to touch them! Is this even slightly congruous with the character we are analyzing? No, and I shall permit myself to tell you how the real Dmitri Karamazov would have acted in such a case, even if he had indeed decided to sew his money into an amulet. At the very first temptation—say, again to provide some entertainment for this same new sweetheart with whom he had already squandered the first half of the money—he would undo his amulet and take out, well, maybe just a hundred roubles to begin with, for why should he need to return exactly half, that is, fifteen hundred—fourteen hundred will do, it comes to the same thing: ‘a scoundrel, but not a thief, because I’ve at least brought back fourteen hundred, and a thief would have taken it all and brought back nothing.’ Then in a little while he would undo the amulet again, and take out a second hundred, then a third, then a fourth, and by no later than the end of the month he would have taken out all but the last hundred: so I’ll bring back a hundred, it comes to the same thing: ‘a scoundrel, but not a thief. I squandered twenty-nine hundred, but I’ve brought back one at least, a thief would not have done that. ‘ And finally, having squandered all but the last hundred, he would look at that last hundred and say to himself: ‘But there’s really no point in giving a hundred back—why don’t I squander this, too!’ That is how the real Dmitri Karamazov, as we know him, would have acted. But as for the legend of this amulet– it is hard even to imagine anything more contrary to reality. One can suppose anything but that. But we shall come back to that later.”
