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

don’t laugh at my idea! The talented prosecutor

laughed mercilessly just now at my client for loving Schiller-loving the sublime and beautiful! I should not have laughed at that in

his place. Yes, such natures-oh, let me speak in defence 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 instance, 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.

 

“I said just now that I would not venture to touch upon my

client’s engagement. But I may say half a word. What we heard just now

was not evidence, but only the scream of a frenzied and revengeful

woman, and it was not for her-oh, not for her!- to reproach him

with treachery, for she has betrayed him! If she had had but a

little time for reflection she would not have given such evidence. Oh,

do not believe her! No, my client is not a monster, as she called him!

 

“The Lover of Mankind on the eve of His Crucifixion said: ‘I am

the Good Shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep,

so that not one of them might be lost.’ Let not a man’s soul be lost

through us!

 

“I asked just now what does ‘father’ mean, and exclaimed that it

was a great word, a precious name. But one must use words honestly,

gentlemen, and I venture to call things by their right names: such a

father as old Karamazov cannot be called a father and does not deserve

to be. Filial love for an unworthy father is an absurdity, an

impossibility. Love cannot be created from nothing: only God can

create something from nothing.

 

“‘Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath,’ the apostle

writes, from a heart glowing with love. It’s not for the sake of my

client that I quote these sacred words, I mention them for all

fathers. Who has authorised me to preach to fathers? No one. But as

a man and a citizen I make my appeal-vivos voco! We are not long on

earth, we do many evil deeds and say many evil words. So let us all

catch a favourable moment when we are all together to say a good

word to each other. That’s what I am doing: while I am in this place I

take advantage of my opportunity. Not for nothing is this tribune

given us by the highest authority-all Russia hears us! I am not

speaking only for the fathers here present, I cry aloud to all

fathers: ‘Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath.’ Yes, let us

first fulfil Christ’s injunction ourselves and only then venture to

expect it of our children. Otherwise we are not fathers, but enemies

of our children, and they are not our children, but our enemies, and

we have made them our enemies ourselves. ‘What measure ye mete it

shall be measured unto you again’- it’s not I who say that, it’s the

Gospel precept, measure to others according as they measure to you.

How can we blame children if they measure us according to our measure?

 

“Not long ago a servant girl in Finland was suspected of having

secretly given birth to a child. She was watched, and a box of which

no one knew anything was found in the corner of the loft, behind

some bricks. It was opened and inside was found the body of a newborn

child which she had killed. In the same box were found the skeletons

of two other babies which, according to her own confession, she had

killed at the moment of their birth.

 

“Gentlemen of the jury, was she a mother to her children? She gave

birth to them, indeed; but was she a mother to them? Would anyone

venture to give her the sacred name of mother? Let us be bold,

gentlemen, let us be audacious even: it’s our duty to be so at this

moment and not to be afraid of certain words and ideas like the Moscow

women in Ostrovsky’s play, who are scared at the sound of certain

words. No, let us prove that the progress of the last few years has

touched even us, and let us say plainly, the father is not merely he

who begets the child, but he who begets it and does his duty by it.

 

“Oh, of course, there is the other meaning, there is the other

interpretation of the word ‘father,’ which insists that any father,

even though he be a monster, even though he be the enemy of his

children, still remains my father simply because he begot me. But this

is, so to say, the mystical meaning which I cannot comprehend with

my intellect, but can only accept by faith, or, better to say, on

faith, like many other things which I do not understand, but which

religion bids me believe. But in that case let it be kept outside

the sphere of actual life. In the sphere of actual life, which has,

indeed, its own rights, but also lays upon us great duties and

obligations, in that sphere, if we want to be humane-Christian, in

fact-we must, or ought to, act only upon convictions justified by

reason and experience, which have been passed through the crucible

of analysis; in a word, we must act rationally, and not as though in

dream and delirium, that we may not do harm, that we may not ill-treat

and ruin a man. Then it will be real Christian work, not only

mystic, but rational and philanthropic….”

 

There was violent applause at this passage from many parts of

the court, but Fetyukovitch waved his hands as though imploring them

to let him finish without interruption. The court relapsed into

silence at once. The orator went on.

 

“Do you suppose, gentlemen, that our children as they grow up

and begin to reason can avoid such questions? No, they cannot, and

we will not impose on them an impossible restriction. The sight of

an unworthy father involuntarily suggests tormenting questions to a

young creature, especially when he compares him with the excellent

fathers of his companions. The conventional answer to this question

is: ‘He begot you, and you are his flesh and blood, and therefore

you are bound to love him.’ The youth involuntarily reflects: ‘But did

he love me when he begot me?’ he asks, wondering more and more. ‘Was

it for my sake he begot me? He did not know me, not even my sex, at

that moment, at the moment of passion, perhaps, inflamed by wine,

and he has only transmitted to me a propensity to drunkenness-that’s all he’s done for me…. Why am I bound to love him simply

for begetting me when he has cared nothing for me all my life after?’

 

“Oh, perhaps those questions strike you as coarse and cruel, but

do not expect an impossible restraint from a young mind. ‘Drive nature

out of the door and it will fly in at the window,’ and, above all, let

us not be afraid of words, but decide the question according to the

dictates of reason and humanity and not of mystic ideas. How shall

it be decided? Why, like this. Let the son stand before his father and

ask him, ‘Father, tell me, why must I love you? Father, show me that I

must love you,’ and if that father is able to answer him and show

him good reason, we have a real, normal, parental relation, not

resting on mystical prejudice, but on a rational, responsible and

strictly humanitarian basis. But if he does not, there’s an end to the

family tie. He is not a father to him, and the son has a right to look

upon him as a stranger, and even an enemy. Our tribune, gentlemen of

the jury, ought to be a school of true and sound ideas.”

 

(Here the orator was interrupted by irrepressible and almost

frantic applause. Of course, it was not the whole audience, but a good

half of it applauded. The fathers and mothers present applauded.

Shrieks and exclamations were heard from the gallery, where the ladies

were sitting. Handkerchiefs were waved. The President began ringing

his bell with all his might. He was obviously irritated by the

behaviour of the audience, but did not venture to clear the court as

he had threatened. Even persons of high position, old men with stars

on their breasts, sitting on specially reserved seats behind the

judges, applauded the orator and waved their handkerchiefs. So that

when the noise died down, the President confined himself to

repeating his stern threat to clear the court, and Fetyukovitch,

excited and triumphant, continued his speech.)

 

“Gentlemen of the jury, you remember that awful night of which

so much has been said to-day, when the son got over the fence and

stood face to face with the enemy and persecutor who had begotten him.

I insist most emphatically it was not for money he ran to his father’s

house: the charge of robbery is an absurdity, as I proved before.

And it was not to murder him he broke into the house, oh, no! If he

had had that design he would, at least, have taken the precaution of

arming himself beforehand. The brass pestle he caught up instinctively

without knowing why he did it. Granted that he deceived his father

by tapping at the window, granted that he made his way in-I’ve said

already that I do not for a moment believe that legend, but let it

be so, let us suppose it for a moment. Gentlemen, I swear to you by

all that’s holy, if it had not been his father, but an ordinary enemy,

he would, after running through the rooms and satisfying himself

that the woman was not there, have made off, post-haste, without doing

any harm to his rival. He would have struck him, pushed him away

perhaps, nothing more, for he had no thought and no time to spare

for that. What he wanted to know was where she was. But his father,

his father! The mere sight of the father who had hated him from his

childhood, had been his enemy, his persecutor, and now his unnatural

rival, was enough! A feeling of hatred came over him involuntarily,

irresistibly, clouding his reason. It all surged up in one moment!

It was an impulse of madness and insanity, but also an impulse of

nature, irresistibly and unconsciously (like everything in nature)

avenging the violation of its eternal laws.

 

“But the prisoner even then did not murder him-I maintain that, I

cry that aloud!- no, he only brandished the pestle in a burst of

indignant disgust, not meaning to kill him, not knowing that he

would kill him. Had he not had this fatal pestle in his hand, he would

have only knocked his father down perhaps, but would not have killed

him. As he ran away, he did not know whether he had killed the old

man. Such a murder is not a murder. Such a murder is not a

parricide. No, the murder of such a father cannot be called parricide.

Such a murder can only be reckoned parricide by prejudice.

 

“But I appeal