The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (best e book reader for android txt) 📖
- Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Performer: 0140449248
Book online «The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (best e book reader for android txt) 📖». Author Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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
Comments (0)