The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (reading an ebook TXT) 📗

Chapter 6

The Prosecutor’s Speech. Sketches of Character

 

IPPOLIT KIRILLOVITCH began his speech, trembling with nervousness,

with cold sweat on his forehead, feeling hot and cold all over by

turns. He described this himself afterwards. He regarded this speech

as his chef-d’oeuvre, the chef-d’oeuvre of his whole life, as his

swan-song. He died, it is true, nine months later of rapid

consumption, so that he had the right, as it turned out, to compare

himself to a swan singing his last song. He had put his whole heart

and all the brain he had into that speech. And poor Ippolit

Kirillovitch unexpectedly revealed that at least some feeling for

the public welfare and “the eternal question” lay concealed in him.

Where his speech really excelled was in its sincerity. He genuinely

believed in the prisoner’s guilt; he was accusing him not as an

official duty only, and in calling for vengeance he quivered with a

genuine passion “for the security of society.” Even the ladies in thee

audience, though they remained hostile to Ippolit Kirillovitch,

admitted that he made an extraordinary impression on them. He began in

a breaking voice, but it soon gained strength and filled the court

to the end of his speech. But as soon as he had finished, he almost

fainted.

 

“Gentlemen of the jury,” began the prosecutor, “this case has made

a stir throughout Russia. But what is there to wonder at, what is

there so peculiarly horrifying in it for us? We are so accustomed to

such crimes! That’s what’s so horrible, that such dark deeds have

ceased to horrify us. What ought to horrify us is that we are so

accustomed to it, and not this or that isolated crime. What are the

causes of our indifference, our lukewarm attitude to such deeds, to

such signs of the times, ominous of an unenviable future? Is it our

cynicism, is it the premature exhaustion of intellect and

imagination in a society that is sinking into decay, in spite of its

youth? Is it that our moral principles are shattered to their

foundations, or is it, perhaps, a complete lack of such principles

among us? I cannot answer such questions; nevertheless they are

disturbing, and every citizen not only must, but ought to be

harassed by them. Our newborn and still timid press has done good

service to the public already, for without it we should never have

heard of the horrors of unbridled violence and moral degradation which

are continually made known by the press, not merely to those who

attend the new jury courts established in the present reign, but to

everyone. And what do we read almost daily? Of things beside which the

present case grows pale, and seems almost commonplace. But what is

most important is that the majority of our national crimes of violence

bear witness to a widespread evil, now so general among us that it

is difficult to contend against it.

 

“One day we see a brilliant young officer of high society, at

the very outset of his career, in a cowardly underhand way, without

a pang of conscience, murdering an official who had once been his

benefactor, and the servant girl, to steal his own I O U and what

ready money he could find on him; ‘it will come in handy for my

pleasures in the fashionable world and for my career in the future.’

After murdering them, he puts pillows under the head of each of his

victims; he goes away. Next, a young hero ‘decorated for bravery’

kills the mother of his chief and benefactor, like a highwayman, and

to urge his companions to join him he asserts that ‘she loves him like

a son, and so will follow all his directions and take no precautions.’

Granted that he is a monster, yet I dare not say in these days that he

is unique. Another man will not commit the murder, but will feel and

think like him, and is as dishonourable in soul. In silence, alone

with his conscience, he asks himself perhaps, ‘What is honour, and

isn’t the condemnation of bloodshed a prejudice?’

 

“Perhaps people will cry out against me that I am morbid,

hysterical, that it is a monstrous slander, that I am exaggerating.

Let them say so-and heavens! I should be the first to rejoice if it

were so! Oh, don’t believe me, think of me as morbid, but remember

my words; if only a tenth, if only a twentieth part of what I say is

true-even so it’s awful! Look how our young people commit suicide,

without asking themselves Hamlet’s question what there is beyond,

without a sign of such a question, as though all that relates to the

soul and to what awaits us beyond the grave had long been erased in

their minds and buried under the sands. Look at our vice, at our

profligates. Fyodor Pavlovitch, the luckless victim in the present

case, was almost an innocent babe compared with many of them. And

yet we all knew him, ‘he lived among us!’…

 

“Yes, one day perhaps the leading intellects of Russia and of

Europe will study the psychology of Russian crime, for the subject

is worth it. But this study will come later, at leisure, when all

the tragic topsy-turvydom of to-day is farther behind us, so that it’s

possible to examine it with more insight and more impartiality than

I can do. Now we are either horrified or pretend to be horrified,

though we really gloat over the spectacle, and love strong and

eccentric sensations which tickle our cynical, pampered idleness.

Or, like little children, we brush the dreadful ghosts away and hide

our heads in the pillow so as to return to our sports and merriment as

soon as they have vanished. But we must one day begin life in sober

earnest, we must look at ourselves as a society; it’s time we tried to

grasp something of our social position, or at least to make a

beginning in that direction.

 

“A great writer* of the last epoch, comparing Russia to a swift

troika galloping to an unknown goal, exclaims, ‘Oh, troika, birdlike

troika, who invented thee!’ and adds, in proud ecstasy, that all the

peoples of the world stand aside respectfully to make way for the

recklessly galloping troika to pass. That may be, they may stand

aside, respectfully or no, but in my poor opinion the great writer

ended his book in this way either in an excess of childish and naive

optimism, or simply in fear of the censorship of the day. For if the

troika were drawn by his heroes, Sobakevitch, Nozdryov, Tchitchikov,

it could reach no rational goal, whoever might be driving it. And

those were the heroes of an older generation, ours are worse specimens

still….”

 

* Gogol.

 

At this point Ippolit Kirillovitch’s speech was interrupted by

applause. The liberal significance of this simile was appreciated. The

applause was, it’s true, of brief duration, so that the President

did not think it necessary to caution the public, and only looked

severely in the direction of the offenders. But Ippolit Kirillovitch

was encouraged; he had never been applauded before! He had been all

his life unable to get a hearing, and now he suddenly had an

opportunity of securing the ear of all Russia.

 

“What, after all, is this Karamazov family, which has gained

such an unenviable notoriety throughout Russia?” he continued.

“Perhaps I am exaggerating, but it seems to me that certain

fundamental features of the educated class of to-day are reflected

in this family picture-only, of course, in miniature, ‘like the sun

in a drop of water.’ Think of that unhappy, vicious, unbridled old

man, who has met with such a melancholy end, the head of a family!

Beginning life of noble birth, but in a poor dependent position,

through an unexpected marriage he came into a small fortune. A petty

knave, a toady and buffoon, of fairly good, though undeveloped,

intelligence, he was, above all, a moneylender, who grew bolder with

growing prosperity. His abject and servile characteristics

disappeared, his, malicious and sarcastic cynicism was all that

remained. On the spiritual side he was undeveloped, while his vitality

was excessive. He saw nothing in life but sensual pleasure, and he

brought his children up to be the same. He had no feelings for his

duties as a father. He ridiculed those duties. He left his little

children to the servants, and was glad to be rid of them, forgot about

them completely. The old man’s maxim was Apres moi le deluge.* He

was an example of everything that is opposed to civic duty, of the

most complete and malignant individualism. ‘The world may burn for

aught I care, so long as I am all right,’ and he was all right; he was

content, he was eager to go on living in the same way for another

twenty or thirty years. He swindled his own son and spent his money,

his maternal inheritance, on trying to get his mistress from him.

No, I don’t intend to leave the prisoner’s defence altogether to my

talented colleague from Petersburg. I will speak the truth myself, I

can well understand what resentment he had heaped up in his son’s

heart against him.

 

* After me, the deluge.

 

“But enough, enough of that unhappy old man; he has paid the

penalty. Let us remember, however, that he was a father, and one of

the typical fathers of to-day. Am I unjust, indeed, in saying that

he is typical of many modern fathers? Alas! many of them only differ

in not openly professing such cynicism, for they are better

educated, more cultured, but their philosophy is essentially the

same as his. Perhaps I am a pessimist, but you have agreed to

forgive me. Let us agree beforehand, you need not believe me, but

let me speak. Let me say what I have to say, and remember something of

my words.

 

“Now for the children of this father, this head of a family. One

of them is the prisoner before us, all the rest of my speech will deal

with him. Of the other two I will speak only cursorily.

 

“The elder is one of those modern young men of brilliant education

and vigorous intellect, who has lost all faith in everything. He has

denied and rejected much already, like his father. We have all heard

him, he was a welcome guest in local society. He never concealed his