Have you ever thought about what fiction is? Probably, such a question may seem surprising: and so everything is clear. Every person throughout his life has to repeatedly create the works he needs for specific purposes - statements, autobiographies, dictations - using not gypsum or clay, not musical notes, not paints, but just a word. At the same time, almost every person will be very surprised if he is told that he thereby created a work of fiction, which is very different from visual art, music and sculpture making. However, everyone understands that a student's essay or dictation is fundamentally different from novels, short stories, news that are created by professional writers. In the works of professionals there is the most important difference - excogitation. But, oddly enough, in a school literature course, you don’t realize the full power of fiction. So using our website in your free time discover fiction for yourself. 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
not have them bow down to me as an idol,” thundered Father Ferapont.
“Nowadays folk destroy the true faith. The dead man, your saint,” he
turned to the crowd, pointing with his finger to the coffin, “did
not believe in devils. He gave medicine to keep off the devils. And so
they have become as common as spiders in the corners. And now he has
begun to stink himself. In that we see a great sign from God.”
The incident he referred to was this. One of the monks was haunted
in his dreams and, later on, in waking moments, by visions of evil
spirits. When in the utmost terror he confided this to Father Zossima,
the elder had advised continual prayer and rigid fasting. But when
that was of no use, he advised him while persisting in prayer and
fasting, to take a special medicine. Many persons were shocked at
the time and wagged their heads as they talked over it-and most of
all Father Ferapont, to whom some of the censorious had hastened to
report this “extraordinary” counsel on the part of the elder.
“Go away, Father!” said Father Paissy, in a commanding voice,
“it’s not for man to judge but for God. Perhaps we see here a ‘sign’
which neither you, nor I, nor anyone of us is able to comprehend.
Go, Father, and do not trouble the flock!” he repeated impressively.
“He did not keep the fasts according to the rule and therefore the
sign has come. That is clear and it’s a sin to hide it,” the
fanatic, carried away by a zeal that outstripped his reason, would not
be quieted. “He was seduced by sweetmeats, ladies brought them to
him in their pockets, he sipped tea, he worshipped his belly,
filling it with sweet things and his mind with haughty thoughts….
And for this he is put to shame….”
“You speak lightly, Father.” Father Paissy, too, raised his voice.
“I admire your fasting and severities, but you speak lightly like some
frivolous youth, fickle and childish. Go away, Father, I command you!”
Father Paissy thundered in conclusion.
“I will go,” said Ferapont, seeming somewhat taken aback, but
still as bitter. “You learned men! You are so clever you look down
upon my humbleness. I came hither with little learning and here I have
forgotten what I did know; God Himself has preserved me in my weakness
from your subtlety.”
Father Paissy stood over him, waiting resolutely. Father
Ferapont paused and, suddenly leaning his cheek on his hand
despondently, pronounced in a singsong, voice, looking at the
coffin of the dead elder:
“To-morrow they will sing over him ‘Our Helper and Defender’- a
splendid anthem-and over me when I die all they’ll sing will be ‘What
Earthly Joy’- a little cantical,”* he added with tearful regret.
“You are proud and puffed up, this is a vain place!” he shouted
suddenly like a madman, and with a wave of his hand he turned
quickly and quickly descended the steps. The crowd awaiting him
below wavered; some followed him at once and some lingered, for the
cell was still open, and Father Paissy, following Father Ferapont on
to the steps, stood watching him. the excited old fanatic was not
completely silenced. Walking twenty steps away, he suddenly turned
towards the setting sun, raised both his arms and, as though someone
had cut him down, fell to the ground with a loud scream.
* When a monk’s body is carried out from the cell to the church
and from the church to the graveyard, the canticle “What Earthly
Joy…” is sung. If the deceased was a priest as well as a monk the
canticle “Our Helper and Defender” is sung instead.
“My God has conquered! Christ has conquered the setting sun!” he
shouted frantically, stretching up his hands to the sun, and falling
face downwards on the ground, he sobbed like a little child, shaken by
his tears and spreading out his arms on the ground. Then all rushed up
to him; there were exclamations and sympathetic sobs… a kind of
frenzy seemed to take possession of them all.
“This is the one who is a saint! This is the one who is a holy
man!” some cried aloud, losing their fear. “This is he who should be
an elder,” others added malignantly.
“He wouldn’t be an elder… he would refuse… he wouldn’t serve a
cursed innovation… he wouldn’t imitate their foolery,” other
voices chimed in at once. And it is hard to say how far they might
have gone, but at that moment the bell rang summoning them to service.
All began crossing themselves at once. Father Ferapont, too, got up
and crossing himself went back to his cell without looking round,
still uttering exclamations which were utterly incoherent. A few
followed him, but the greater number dispersed, hastening to
service. Father Paissy let Father Iosif read in his place and went
down. The frantic outcries of bigots could not shake him, but his
heart was suddenly filled with melancholy for some special reason
and he felt that. He stood still and suddenly wondered, “Why am I
sad even to dejection?” and immediately grasped with surprise that his
sudden sadness was due to a very small and special cause. In the crowd
thronging at the entrance to the cell, he had noticed Alyosha and he
remembered that he had felt at once a pang at heart on seeing him.
“Can that boy mean so much to my heart now?” he asked himself,
wondering.
At that moment Alyosha passed him, hurrying away, but not in the
direction of the church. Their eyes met. Alyosha quickly turned away
his eyes and dropped them to the ground, and from the boy’s look
alone, Father Paissy guessed what a great change was taking place in
him at that moment.
“Have you, too, fallen into temptation?” cried Father Paissy. “Can
you be with those of little faith?” he added mournfully.
Alyosha stood still and gazed vaguely at Father Paissy, but
quickly turned his eyes away again and again looked on the ground.
He stood sideways and did not turn his face to Father Paissy, who
watched him attentively.
“Where are you hastening? The bell calls to service,” he asked
again, but again Alyosha gave no answer.
“Are you leaving the hermitage? What, without asking leave,
without asking a blessing?”
Alyosha suddenly gave a wry smile, cast a strange, very strange,
look at the Father to whom his former guide, the former sovereign of
his heart and mind, his beloved elder, had confided him as he lay
dying. And suddenly, still without speaking, waved his hand, as though
not caring even to be respectful, and with rapid steps walked
towards the gates away from the hermitage.
“You will come back again!” murmured Father Paissy, looking
after him with sorrowful surprise.
A Critical Moment
FATHER PAISSY, of course, was not wrong when he decided that his
“dear boy” would come back again. Perhaps indeed, to some extent, he
penetrated with insight into the true meaning of Alyosha’s spiritual
condition. Yet I must frankly own that it would be very difficult
for me to give a clear account of that strange, vague moment in the
life of the young hero I love so much. To Father Paissy’s sorrowful
question, “Are you too with those of little faith?” I could, of
course, confidently answer for Alyosha, “No, he is not with those of
little faith. Quite the contrary.” Indeed, all his trouble came from
the fact that he was of great faith. But still the trouble was there
and was so agonising that even long afterwards Alyosha thought of that
sorrowful day as one of the bitterest and most fatal days of his life.
If the question is asked: “Could all his grief and disturbance have
been only due to the fact that his elder’s body had shown signs of
premature decomposition instead of at once performing miracles?” I
must answer without beating about the bush, “Yes, it certainly was.” I
would only beg the reader not to be in too great a hurry to laugh at
my young hero’s pure heart. I am far from intending to apologise for
him or to justify his innocent faith on the ground of his youth, or
the little progress he had made in his studies, or any such reason.
I must declare, on the contrary, that I have genuine respect for the
qualities of his heart. No doubt a youth who received impressions
cautiously, whose love was lukewarm, and whose mind was too prudent
for his age and so of little value, such a young man might, I admit,
have avoided what happened to my hero. But in some cases it is
really more creditable to be carried away by an emotion, however
unreasonable, which springs from a great love, than to be unmoved. And
this is even truer in youth, for a young man who is always sensible is
to be suspected and is of little worth-that’s my opinion!
“But,” reasonable people will exclaim perhaps, “every young man
cannot believe in such a superstition and your hero is no model for
others.”
To this I reply again, “Yes! my hero had faith, a faith holy and
steadfast, but still I am not going to apologise for him.”
Though I declared above, and perhaps too hastily, that I should
not explain or justify my hero, I see that some explanation is
necessary for the understanding of the rest of my story. Let me say
then, it was not a question of miracles. There was no frivolous and
impatient expectation of miracles in his mind. And Alyosha needed no
miracles at the time, for the triumph of some preconceived idea-oh
no, not at all-what he saw before all was one figure-the figure of
his beloved elder, the figure of that holy man whom he revered with
such adoration. The fact is that all the love that lay concealed in
his pure young heart for everyone and everything had, for the past
year, been concentrated-and perhaps wrongly so-on one being, his
beloved elder. It is true that being had for so long been accepted
by him as his ideal, that all his young strength and energy could
not but turn towards that ideal, even to the forgetting at the
moment “of everyone and everything.” He remembered afterwards how,
on that terrible day, he had entirely forgotten his brother Dmitri,
about whom he had been so anxious and troubled the day before; he
had forgotten, too, to take the two hundred roubles to Ilusha’s
father, though he had so warmly intended to do so the preceding
evening. But again it was not miracles he needed but only “the
higher justice” which had been in his belief outraged by the blow that
had so suddenly and cruelly wounded his heart. And what does it
signify that this “justice” looked for by Alyosha inevitably took
the shape of miracles to be wrought immediately by the ashes of his
adored teacher? Why, everyone in the monastery cherished the same
thought and the same hope, even those whose intellects Alyosha
revered, Father Paissy himself, for instance. And so Alyosha,
untroubled by doubts, clothed his dreams too in the same form as all
the rest. And a whole year of life in the monastery had formed the
habit of this expectation in his heart. But it was justice, justice,
he thirsted for, not simply miracles.
And now the man who should, he believed, have been exalted above
everyone in the whole world, that man, instead of receiving the
glory that was his due, was suddenly degraded and dishonoured! What
for? Who had judged him? Who could have decreed this?
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