The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky (the reader ebook txt) 📖

and quite naturally, as though he were talking to someone of his own age, or even older. Kolya was particularly struck by Alyosha’s apparent diffidence about his opinion of Voltaire. He seemed to be leaving the question for him, little Kolya, to settle.

“Have you read Voltaire?” Alyosha finished.

“No, not to say read.⁠ ⁠… But I’ve read Candide in the Russian translation⁠ ⁠… in an absurd, grotesque, old translation⁠ ⁠… (At it again! again!)”

“And did you understand it?”

“Oh, yes, everything.⁠ ⁠… That is⁠ ⁠… Why do you suppose I shouldn’t understand it? There’s a lot of nastiness in it, of course.⁠ ⁠… Of course I can understand that it’s a philosophical novel and written to advocate an idea.⁠ ⁠…” Kolya was getting mixed by now. “I am a Socialist, Karamazov, I am an incurable Socialist,” he announced suddenly, apropos of nothing.

“A Socialist?” laughed Alyosha. “But when have you had time to become one? Why, I thought you were only thirteen?”

Kolya winced.

“In the first place I am not thirteen, but fourteen, fourteen in a fortnight,” he flushed angrily, “and in the second place I am at a complete loss to understand what my age has to do with it? The question is what are my convictions, not what is my age, isn’t it?”

“When you are older, you’ll understand for yourself the influence of age on convictions. I fancied, too, that you were not expressing your own ideas,” Alyosha answered serenely and modestly, but Kolya interrupted him hotly:

“Come, you want obedience and mysticism. You must admit that the Christian religion, for instance, has only been of use to the rich and the powerful to keep the lower classes in slavery. That’s so, isn’t it?”

“Ah, I know where you read that, and I am sure someone told you so!” cried Alyosha.

“I say, what makes you think I read it? And certainly no one told me so. I can think for myself.⁠ ⁠… I am not opposed to Christ, if you like. He was a most humane person, and if He were alive today, He would be found in the ranks of the revolutionists, and would perhaps play a conspicuous part.⁠ ⁠… There’s no doubt about that.”

“Oh, where, where did you get that from? What fool have you made friends with?” exclaimed Alyosha.

“Come, the truth will out! It has so chanced that I have often talked to Mr. Rakitin, of course, but⁠ ⁠… old Byelinsky said that, too, so they say.”

“Byelinsky? I don’t remember. He hasn’t written that anywhere.”

“If he didn’t write it, they say he said it. I heard that from a⁠ ⁠… but never mind.”

“And have you read Byelinsky?”

“Well, no⁠ ⁠… I haven’t read all of him, but⁠ ⁠… I read the passage about Tatyana, why she didn’t go off with Onyegin.”

“Didn’t go off with Onyegin? Surely you don’t⁠ ⁠… understand that already?”

“Why, you seem to take me for little Smurov,” said Kolya, with a grin of irritation. “But please don’t suppose I am such a revolutionist. I often disagree with Mr. Rakitin. Though I mention Tatyana, I am not at all for the emancipation of women. I acknowledge that women are a subject race and must obey. Les femmes tricottent, as Napoleon said.” Kolya, for some reason, smiled, “And on that question at least I am quite of one mind with that pseudo-great man. I think, too, that to leave one’s own country and fly to America is mean, worse than mean⁠—silly. Why go to America when one may be of great service to humanity here? Now especially. There’s a perfect mass of fruitful activity open to us. That’s what I answered.”

“What do you mean? Answered whom? Has someone suggested your going to America already?”

“I must own, they’ve been at me to go, but I declined. That’s between ourselves, of course, Karamazov; do you hear, not a word to anyone. I say this only to you. I am not at all anxious to fall into the clutches of the secret police and take lessons at the Chain bridge.

Long will you remember
The house at the Chain bridge.

Do you remember? It’s splendid. Why are you laughing? You don’t suppose I am fibbing, do you?” (“What if he should find out that I’ve only that one number of The Bell in father’s bookcase, and haven’t read any more of it?” Kolya thought with a shudder.)

“Oh, no, I am not laughing and don’t suppose for a moment that you are lying. No, indeed, I can’t suppose so, for all this, alas! is perfectly true. But tell me, have you read Pushkin⁠—Onyegin, for instance?⁠ ⁠… You spoke just now of Tatyana.”

“No, I haven’t read it yet, but I want to read it. I have no prejudices, Karamazov; I want to hear both sides. What makes you ask?”

“Oh, nothing.”

“Tell me, Karamazov, have you an awful contempt for me?” Kolya rapped out suddenly and drew himself up before Alyosha, as though he were on drill. “Be so kind as to tell me, without beating about the bush.”

“I have a contempt for you?” Alyosha looked at him wondering. “What for? I am only sad that a charming nature such as yours should be perverted by all this crude nonsense before you have begun life.”

“Don’t be anxious about my nature,” Kolya interrupted, not without complacency. “But it’s true that I am stupidly sensitive, crudely sensitive. You smiled just now, and I fancied you seemed to⁠—”

“Oh, my smile meant something quite different. I’ll tell you why I smiled. Not long ago I read the criticism made by a German who had lived in Russia, on our students and schoolboys of today. ‘Show a Russian schoolboy,’ he writes, ‘a map of the stars, which he knows nothing about, and he will give you back the map next day with corrections on it.’ No knowledge and unbounded conceit⁠—that’s what the German meant to say about the Russian schoolboy.”

“Yes, that’s perfectly right,” Kolya laughed suddenly, “exactly so! Bravo the German! But he did not see the good side, what do you think? Conceit may be, that comes from youth, that will be corrected if need be,