Introduction

As a standalone story, “The Grand Inquisitor” is arguably the most important excerpt out of all of Dostoevsky’s writings, but it’s a real hot mess of a text. This post is written to be accessible to those who haven’t read this chapter or The Brothers Karamazov yet, serving as a roadmap to the basic plot points and essential topics in the Inquisitor’s monologue. This isn’t exhaustive by any means, but covers enough to understand what’s going on.

Although this guide is meant to be as accessible as possible with no background, please don’t treat it as a substitute for the text! Dostoevsky says some very controversial things that’s too easy to take out of context. I strongly urge you to read “The Grand Inquisitor” first, then this guide, or at least alternate between them as you’re reading.

As Part 1, this post will only cover the plot and dialogue in detail. In Part 2, I’ll continue a broader discussion of the themes in “The Grand Inquisitor” and how they fit into The Brothers Karamazov.

Background

If you haven’t read The Brothers Karamazov and happened to come across this post in curiosity, this section is for you! Feel free to skip it otherwise.

• What’s the “The Grand Inquisitor”? It’s a chapter containing a prose poem of the same name in The Brothers Karamazov.

• What do I need to know about The Brothers Karamazov? This chapter can be read as an excerpt more or less independently from the novel because it’s just a story within a story. Plot-wise, all you need to know is that Ivan is telling his brother Alyosha about the story he wrote.

• What makes “The Grand Inquisitor” so special? It’s widely considered one of the most significant works in world literature. Though a devout Christian, Dostoevsky wrote “The Grand Inquisitor” as the crest of the atheist arguments put forth in The Brothers Karamazov, exploring theodicy and the link between faith and free will, culminating in a scathing indictment on Christianity. It may seem strange he would write such a frank work, but as Renee Girard says of The Idiot, the failure of an idea leads to the triumph of an even greater one, in this case, faith forged through skepticism.

• Why would I read it if I’m not religious? I’m not either, and I’d avoid writing about religion if I could, but “The Grand Inquisitor” is virtually the center of The Brothers Karamazov. If you’re atheist, you’ll probably like it, but not for the reason you think. If you’re religious, you’ll probably also like it in a different way, also not for the reason you think. Even if you’re not interested in religion, this chapter hints at faith as a stepping stone to something even more fundamental that’s not about religion, but to cover that topic in the future, “The Grand Inquisitor” really is that crucial of a prerequisite.

Disclaimers

• This post contains no major spoilers.

• Citations are for the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation.

• Nothing here should be considered my personal opinion or view on religion. This is exclusively a summary of what Dostoevsky writes in The Brothers Karamazov and relevant works.

Table of Contents

The chapter lacks clear structure, mainly consisting of the Inquisitor’s turbulent stream of consciousness. I’ll structure this according to what I believe is the easiest way to follow along:

• Preface—Ivan begins with a literary preface to his poem.

• The Beginning—Quickly covering the plot points at the start:

  • Jesus Arrives—Jesus arrives in Seville.

  • Jesus in Jail—The Inquisitor arrests Jesus.

• The Three Temptations of Christ—The Inquisitor’s diatribe is broken down into the following subsections:

  • The First Temptation: Miracle—Turning stone into bread.

  • Interlude I—The Inquisitor transitions into the next topic.

  • The Second Temptation: Mystery—Jumping off the tower.

  • Interlude II—The Inquisitor rambles some more.

  • The Third Temptation: Authority—Uniting all kingdoms.

• The End?—The poem is briefly interrupted by a discussion between Alyosha and Ivan, followed by the ending of the poem.

• Epilogue—Ivan and Alyosha part ways.

Each section will contain a plot summary followed by notes highlighting some important concepts and connections to his other works. You can click the navbar on the left for a Table of Contents view to follow along.

Preface

Acknowledging that “it’s impossible to do without a preface”, Ivan begins with one to set the literary and historical context for his prose poem, “The Grand Inquisitor”. He describes a few similar works, the most significant of which is the poem The Mother of God Visits the Torments, where the Mother of God begs God out of compassion for the sinners in Hell to relieve them from torture once a year.

Moving on to his poem, Ivan says 15 centuries have passed before Jesus decided to return to earth. Although a handful of miracles occurred in this time, some people deny their authenticity. Nevertheless, over the centuries, believers still prayed and waited for Jesus to appear again.

Notes

Ivan’s preface carries a tone of cynicism and disdain for Western works, religion, and even himself. The main point in common among Ivan’s poem and the three referenced works is deus ex machina, “god in a machine”, a literary device referring to the literal descending of the divine to earth. The discussions in the previous chapters reveal Ivan feels some conflict between his sympathies for Western ideology and Russian nationalism. In particular, he implies that works using deus ex machina, including his own, are “done quite artlessly” because it’s too simple and unoriginal of a device for someone writing about religion, a meta-commentary by Dostoevsky. In other words, he admits it’s awfully blunt to be making a point about religion through a story where Jesus himself literally shows up (this point is touched on in Notes From Underground and Demons). Nevertheless, he concedes that his poem has been influenced by these works, unsurprising for an ambivalent Westernizer.

The Mother of God Visits the Torments is the only work Ivan describes in detail, as it’s indeed very thematically similar to his poem. Ivan clearly considers the Inquisitor, not Jesus, to be the savior of mankind. Just as how the Mother of God acts out of compassion to relieve sinners of their suffering, the Inquisitor creates his society to help the majority of mankind who’re weak and suffering, also out of compassion. In contrast, the Inquisitor accuses Jesus of forsaking instead of saving them:

You chose everything that was unusual, enigmatic, and indefinite, you chose everything that was beyond men’s strength, and thereby acted as if you did not love them at all… (p271)

The Beginning

This section briefly covers the plot up to the real meat of the chapter, the Three Temptations of Christ.

Jesus Arrives

Jesus arrives in the town square of Seville during the Spanish Inquisition. Despite not being seen in over 15 centuries, everyone instantly recognizes him. Just the day prior, the Inquisitor burned 100 heretics at the stake.

Various scenes of celebration and miracles follow:

• Jesus blesses the crowd, and people are healed just by touching his clothes. A blind man even regains his sight.

• Children cheer for him and scatter flowers.

• Jesus resurrects a dead girl from her coffin.

The Inquisitor, a sinister-looking 90 year old man, witnesses these miracles. The crowd silently parts for him as the guards arrest Jesus.

Jesus in Jail

Once in prison, the Inquisitor asks Jesus if it’s really him, then orders him to remain silent, declaring he will burn at the stake tomorrow. In fact, the Inquisitor can command the people who just worshipped him moments ago to heap the coals around his feet, for such is the material power he wields over immaterial faith.

The Inquisitor explains that Jesus must remain silent because everything he needed to say is already in the Bible, and according to Roman Catholicism, Jesus’ departure entailed handing over full spiritual authority to the pope. Therefore, saying anything at all would undermine the “freedom of faith” that Jesus wanted for mankind. In fact, that very freedom was a burden, but the Inquisitor says they’re now free from freedom and taunts Jesus if this was the outcome he expected.

Notes

The entire poem can be considered a manifestation of the “unresolved question” Zosima identifies in Ivan. The dark, cramped, suffocating atmosphere of the jail cell represents the Inquisitor’s (and by extension, Ivan’s) conscience, or the inner battleground of faith, and the lamp he carries is a common symbol of someone seeking answers on a journey of self-discovery.

Although a practical reason for Jesus’ silence is offered, it’s symbolic of someone who struggles with faith. Dostoevsky implies that you can ask questions, rationalize, pray, or even threaten a higher power, but you will only ever be met with silence—in fact, this is the first step to discovering the very thing the Devil taunts Ivan with, “faith passed through the crucible of doubt.”

There’s an interesting side discussion when Alyosha interrupts to ask if this is qui pro quo, or a case of mistaken identity. Ivan’s response is that it doesn’t even matter if the Inquisitor was delirious from old age and just arrested some random dude—what really matters is that he feels like he’s venting his spiritual frustration to an avatar of divinity, even if it’s not really happening. This moment is disorienting for being both a narrative disruption and an abrupt reversal of faith. As his poem will hint later, Ivan acknowledges that faith does not seek validation from reality, but more significantly, Alyosha ironically doubts whether Jesus is even real in a story.

The Three Temptations of Christ

The Inquisitor begins with a preface to the Temptations of Christ before diving into each one. He says the real miracle of Christianity lies in the very existence of the 3 questions asked by the Devil because they so perfectly and cleverly encompass the trials of faith that it’d be impossible for the most brilliant minds in the world to come up with any 3 questions that match their depth:

“Do you think that all the combined wisdom of the earth could think up anything faintly resembling in power and depth those three questions that were actually presented to you then by the mighty and intelligent spirit in the wilderness? By the questions alone, simply by the miracle of their appearance, one can see that one is dealing with a mind not human and transient but eternal and absolute.” (p268)

The Temptations are really that important to Dostoevsky. The Inquisitor identifies each of the three temptations as representing miracle, mystery, and authority, though he doesn’t mention this until later.

The First Temptation: Miracle

The Devil first suggests that Jesus turn the stones in the desert into bread so that mankind will follow him out of gratitude and desperation for food. Jesus objects to it, since bribing mankind for obedience undermines the freedom of faith he wishes for them—buying their faith by easing earthly suffering or promising some eternal reward (i.e. “heavenly bread”) is not true faith.

The Inquisitor says this is a mistake and even an act of cruelty to humanity. How can you possibly expect people to maintain their faith when millions are hungry yet could be instantly fed? Furthermore, how can crimes committed out of this hunger and poverty be considered sins? It’s unreasonable to let people starve to death for the sake of making a point about faith—who cares about being right on principle when people are dying from hunger? Over time, mankind will eventually rebel against Christianity once deducing that

…there is no crime, and therefore no sin, but only hungry men. “Feed them first, then ask virtue of them!”—that is what they will write on the banner they raise against you, and by which your temple will be destroyed. (p269)

After a thousand years of suffering in their atheistic rebellion, people will eventually seek out the Inquisitor and his dictatorship, begging him to take their freedom in exchange for the food that Jesus denied them.

The Inquisitor claims that what he does is truly an act of love. There may be a handful of people who have the strength to maintain faith even in hunger, but what about the “tens of thousands of millions of creatures who will not be strong enough to forgo earthly bread for the sake of the heavenly?” Not only are the vast majority weak, they are not to blame for their weakness. The Inquisitor wants to ease earthly suffering for everyone, including the weak, and accuses Jesus of only caring about the few who are strong.

Notes

The previous section is pretty self-explanatory, but there are a few interesting connections.

• Crime and Punishment and Demons contain similar discussions about rationalism’s muddling perspective on morality. Dostoevsky explores the problematic notion that people aren’t necessarily responsible for their crimes due to the influence of society, environment, systematic failures, etc. therefore some people may believe sins don’t really exist if they’re justified.

• Renee Girard writes that The Idiot is about the failure of “disincarnate idealism” to save, mourning the flaws of Christianity and its “inability to embody itself.” This “disincarnate idealism” reappears here when the Inquisitor criticizes Jesus of prioritizing the noble, idealistic, abstract principle of freedom rather than doing something practical for others, whereas the Inquisitor does the reverse. As Ivan points out, earthly and heavenly bread must remain mutually exclusive.

In context of the poem and the prior chapters, it should be clear Dostoevsky regards “hunger” as a metaphor for worldly suffering and “earthly bread” as a panacea. The main reason Jesus didn’t cure mankind’s suffering despite having the ability to do so is because it would’ve undermined freedom of faith. According to the Inquisitor, the question of authenticity of faith is crucial because one can follow Jesus without actually having any faith at all, which is what the Devil offers but is not what Jesus wants.

Interlude I

The Inquisitor rambles as he transitions into the second temptation. These exact same points are repeated multiple times throughout the chapter.

He and the other leaders will lie to the masses that the society they set up is in the name of Jesus, so the masses will be grateful to them and still praise Jesus—in other words, they will live in peace both physically and spiritually. Only the select few leaders will bear the burden and suffer on behalf of all of humanity for knowing about this lie.

Why is this acceptable to the masses? Because man’s greatest desire is to find something to bow down to that is not only all-powerful but also universally accepted. This search constitutes man’s greatest torment:

Had you accepted the “loaves,” you would have answered the universal and everlasting anguish of man as an individual being, and of the whole of mankind together, namely: “before whom shall I bow down?” There is no more ceaseless or tormenting care for man…to bow down before that which is indisputable…for it must be all together. And this need for communality of worship is the chief torment of each man individually, and of mankind as a whole… (p270)

This passage also hosts one of Dostoevsky’s most popular and edgy quotes:

For the mystery of man’s being is not only in living, but in what one lives for. Without a firm idea of what he lives for, man will not consent to live and will sooner destroy himself than remain on earth…Did you forget that peace and even death are dearer to man than free choice in the knowledge of good and evil? There is nothing more seductive for man than the freedom of his conscience, but there is nothing more tormenting either. (p270)

Notes

The search for some “ultimate idea” is also mentioned in his other works. This is not necessarily limited to the search for religion; Dostoevsky regards the notion of spirituality more broadly as the search for whatever you feel gives your life meaning:

• In Notes From Underground, this is the topic of his infamously censored chapter. The Underground Man logically deduces that this “thing” must be the foundation of faith—and for atheists, it is the exact same foundation of something equivalent, because it’s found in both the creation and dissolution of religion, and even in the Inquisitor himself. Dostoevsky never explicitly names this “thing” which is at once torment and worship, but Marcel Proust alludes to it later on (to be covered in a future post).

• In The Idiot and Demons, Dostoevsky discusses the problems of Slavic nationalism arising from the friction between Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Western ideologies. Essentially, he satirizes the new “ultimate idea” which displaced Russian national identity as one that the young, nihilistic, bandwagoning intellectuals and aristocrats treat with religious zeal, as all ideologies, religious or otherwise, share the commonalities alluded to in Notes From Underground.

The Second Temptation: Mystery

Next, the Devil suggests that Jesus should jump off the top of the Temple. God would not allow harm to come to him, so angels would have to appear to carry him to safety, thereby proving to humanity that he is indeed the Son of God.

Jesus rejects, knowing that in trying to provoke a miracle, this would instantly invalidate faith, so God would instead just allow him fall to his death. The Inquisitor says that Jesus rejected hoping to serve as an example to man to not seek miracles as proof of faith:

But you did not know that as soon as man rejects miracles, he will at once reject God as well, for man seeks not so much God as miracles. And since man cannot bear to be left without miracles, he will go and create new miracles for himself…you did not want to enslave man by a miracle and thirsted for faith that is free, not miraculous. You thirsted for love that is free, and not for the servile raptures of a slave before a power that has left him permanently terrified. (p272)

The rejection of miracles is a test of faith, one that man is doomed to fail because he will forever be fascinated by the mystery of miracles. The ultimate evidence of the divine is proving that the mechanism behind miracles is absolutely unknowable. If God will not provide miracles, man will continue to seek them elsewhere, even hallucinating them as needed.

Notes

“Mystery” shows up under the guise of different themes in his other works. In Notes From Underground, this is equivalent to the “basis” of action that the Underground Man says “unintelligent” men are able to find easily. Dostoevsky implies this criticism extends to those who blindly follow religion without questioning the reasons for doing so, whereas those who are “intelligent” are unable to be complacent with religion due to their unrelenting skepticism. Paradoxically, the Underground Man begins with the disillusionment of religion by reason, yet ends with logically deducing the need for religion. Dostoevsky hints at a solution to this contradiction in Myshkin’s epilepsy and unease of nature in The Idiot, and later in The Brothers Karamazov.

Interlude II

What follows is a reprisal of the same topics mentioned before:

• Freedom of faith defines authenticity of faith.

• Mankind will rebel and ultimately lead to the creation of the Inquisitor’s dystopian vision.

• Only a minority of mankind will be able to have true faith, but it’s not the fault of the weak that they can’t bear the burden of freedom:

Is it the fault of the weak soul that it is unable to contain such terrible gifts? Can it be that you indeed came only to the chosen ones and for the chosen ones? But if so, there is a mystery here, and we cannot understand it. And if it is a mystery, then we, too, had the right to preach mystery and to teach them that it is not the free choice of the heart that matters, and not love, but the mystery, which they must blindly obey, even setting aside their own conscience. (p273)

The Third Temptation: Authority

Finally, the Devil offers to unite all kingdoms under Jesus, which the Inquisitor argues he should’ve accepted:

Had you accepted that third counsel of the mighty spirit, you would have furnished all that man seeks on earth, that is: someone to bow down to, someone to take over his conscience, and a means for uniting everyone at last into a common, concordant, and incontestable anthill—for the need for universal union is the third and last torment of men. (p274)

The Inquisitor decides to unify people himself, declaring that he chose to serve the Devil and reject Jesus. Once again, the Inquisitor prophesies that mankind in their rebellion against Jesus will fight among and exterminate themselves until they eventually beg the Inquisitor for salvation in exchange for their freedom. Under his dictatorship, the masses will be sweet, happy, and innocent like children:

• They’ll be taught that they’re weak and feeble, thereby learning humility and forgetting the pride that Jesus taught them.

• Though the leaders will make them work, their lives are arranged to allow for play.

• They will even be told whether they’re allowed to marry and have children, all according to their level of obedience.

Most importantly:

Oh, we will allow them to sin, too; they are weak and powerless, and they will love us like children for allowing them to sin. We will tell them that every sin will be redeemed if it is committed with our permission; and that we allow them to sin because we love them, and as for the punishment for these sins, very well, we take it upon ourselves. And we will take it upon ourselves, and they will adore us as benefactors, who have borne their sins before God. (p275)

According to the Inquisitor, there is no sin without knowledge of sin. The leaders of this dystopia will permit the masses to commit sins, allowing them to fully enjoy the pleasure of it because they have absolutely no free will to do or know any better, so it’s completely not their fault. The leaders will bear the burden of sin out of love for them, causing the people to love their leaders even more. The whole time, the leaders will lie to the masses that this is what it means to serve Jesus.

There will be thousands of millions of happy babes, and a hundred thousand sufferers who have taken upon themselves the curse of the knowledge of good and evil. Peacefully they will die, peacefully they will expire in your name, and beyond the grave they will find only death. But we will keep the secret, and for their own happiness we will entice them with a heavenly and eternal reward. For even if there were anything in the next world, it would not, of course, be for such as they. (p276)

The Inquisitor admits none of the leaders, including himself, will go to heaven since they knowingly deceived the masses for their own good. But this is a small price to pay, for the rest of humanity will die peacefully believing they were faithful to God. When Jesus returns to judge them (as prophesied in the Bible), the Inquisitor will declare triumphantly:

I will stand up and point out to you the thousands of millions of happy babes who do not know sin. And we, who took their sins upon ourselves for their happiness, we will stand before you and say: “Judge us if you can and dare.” (p276)

Whereas Jesus will save only the few who are strong, the Inquisitor will save all of the weak—what could be wrong about self-sacrifice for the greater good of humanity? The Inquisitor confesses that he once loved and worshipped Jesus, striving to be one of his chosen ones. However, in enduring the trials of faith, the Inquisitor “awoke and did not want to serve madness.” Therefore, for the crimes of rejecting the Temptations, he declares Jesus will burn at the stake.

Notes

The Inquisitor’s dystopian rule is unsurprisingly based on Ivan’s article from earlier: not only should there be no separation of church and state, the church should even subsume the state. Recall that Zosima unexpectedly agrees with the mechanics of Ivan’s conclusion, though not the means, and Father Paissy even references the Third Temptation:

“It is not the Church that turns into the state, you see. That is Rome and its dream. That is the third temptation of the devil! But, on the contrary, the state turns into the Church, it rises up to the Church and becomes the Church over all the earth, which is the complete opposite of Ultramontanism and of Rome, and of your interpretation, and is simply the great destiny of Orthodoxy on earth.” (p70)

The key difference is that Zosima and Father Paissy (as monks) describe the state rising up to the same level as the Church, whereas Ivan (as an atheist) advocates the reverse.

Note the ironic description of how the Inquisitor will bring salvation to all of humanity as he bears the burden of their sins—in rejecting Christ, the Inquisitor becomes him. I’ll continue discussion in Part 2.

The End?

Alyosha is absolutely flabbergasted:

“But…that’s absurd!” he cried, blushing. “Your poem praises Jesus, it doesn’t revile him…as you meant it to. And who will believe you about freedom?” (p277)

He shrewdly notes the Inquisitor’s society mirrors the political structure of the Roman Catholic Church, and suggests the Inquisitor may be manipulating spiritual authority for earthly power and material wealth.

Ivan laughs, and asks even if that’s the case:

“…why should your Jesuits and Inquisitors have joined together only for material wicked lucre? Why can’t there happen to be among them at least one sufferer who is tormented by great sadness and loves mankind?” (p277)

The realization finally dawns on Alyosha:

“…Except maybe for godlessness, that’s their whole secret. Your Inquisitor doesn’t believe in God, that’s his whole secret!”

“What of it! At last you’ve understood. Yes, indeed, that alone is the whole secret, but is it not suffering, if only for such a man as he, who has wasted his whole life on a great deed in the wilderness and still has not been cured of his love for mankind?…”

“Maybe you’re a Mason yourself!” suddenly escaped from Alyosha. “You don’t believe in God,” he added, this time with great sorrow. Besides, it seemed to him that his brother was looking at him mockingly. (p278)

Alyosha asks how the poem ends. Ivan says Jesus kisses the Inquisitor on the lips. The Inquisitor releases Jesus and tells him to never return, and “the kiss burns in his heart, but the old man holds to his former idea.”

Notes

The term “atheist” in Dostoevsky’s works doesn’t actually refer to someone who doesn’t believe in the existence of God. In their first meeting, Ivan explicitly says he does believe in the existence of God, but doesn’t accept the world that he created. This is pretty much the historical usage of “atheist”: someone who doesn’t accept or support God, without regard to question of existence.

Alyosha is so idealistic that he can’t possibly believe someone like the Inquisitor really means what he says—how can someone who’s practically a caricature of evil proclaim their love for humanity? How can such a person utterly lack the self-awareness to see their words and actions don’t align? The most logical explanation to Alyosha would be if the Inquisitor’s ulterior motive is to abuse his authority as head of church and state to satisfy his hunger for money and power. Oddly, Alyosha’s idealism smacks of cynicism; we’re much more used to seeing this from Ivan.

Much like his Inquisitor, Ivan doesn’t believe in God because he can’t accept a world where suffering exists, especially child abuse. Atheism doesn’t necessarily imply selfishness or self-deception, a statement which appears in various degrees of irony throughout The Brothers Karamazov but is only ever spoken sincerely by Ivan. Why can’t someone like the Inquisitor already exist—someone who once loved but now abandoned God, someone who renounced faith not despite but precisely because of his incurable love for all of humanity? I’ll continue discussing this also in Part 2.

Epilogue

The remainder of the chapter after Ivan concludes his poem links back to the earlier discussions of theodicy between him and Alyosha. There’s way too much to cover here to provide full context, so I’ll only briefly summarize the plot.

Ivan says he doesn’t know why Alyosha is getting so upset over his little poem. Alyosha essentially accuses him of being disingenuous—it’s clear that Ivan’s materialist, atheist ideologies will lead to his own spiritual death. Ivan won’t renounce his “formula” that “everything is permitted,” and challenges Alyosha if he’ll renounce him for that. Imitating Jesus from the poem, Alyosha kisses Ivan in response. Parting ways for the last time, Ivan says he’ll always love him, and tells him to return to Zosima at the monastery.

You can find an in-depth discussion of the ending here:

Next Time…

This post was only meant to summarize the plot in finer detail, offering some notes on important quotes and references. However, I still skipped over some quotes that aren’t integral to a first read, but I’ll cover them in Part 2 on how this chapter fits into the larger picture of The Brothers Karamazov. Please feel free to post or DM any questions, and I might address them in the next post!

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This is a slightly edited version of what was originally posted on Reddit. Spoilers for Crime and Punishment.

In looking around for answers to this question, I was surprised to find this was asked a couple times before yet never actually answered. The most common response is that Porfiry is merely bluffing, but not only does this belie the compassionate justice which motivates his visit in the first place, it is in fact explicitly mentioned.

I’ll give page numbers for the P&V translation, which refers to it as “a little trace” instead of “a little fact”, so I may use them interchangeably.

To set the context, Porfiry visits Raskolnikov in his room and comes clean to him, ironically as investigator to murderer. Before they part, Raskolnikov says:

“Listen, Porfiry Petrovich, you said yourself it was just psychology, and meanwhile you’ve gone off into mathematics. But what if you’re actually mistaken now?”

“No, Rodion Romanych, I’m not mistaken. I’ve got that little trace. I did find that little trace then, sir—a godsend!”

“What little trace?”

“I won’t tell you, Rodion Romanych...” (p483)

Porfiry states this key evidence earlier in this chapter:

“And then, when I heard about those little bells, I even stopped dead, I even began shivering. ‘Now,’ I thought, ‘here’s that little trace! This is it!’” (p478)

This is in reference to when Raskolnikov wanders back to the scene of the crime in his feverish delirium and repeatedly rings the bell — the same bell that rang when he was trapped after the murder:

Instead of answering, Raskolnikov stood up, walked out to the landing, took hold of the bell-pull, and rang. The same bell, the same tinny sound! He rang a second, a third time; he listened and remembered. The former painfully horrible, hideous sensation began to come back to him more clearly, more vividly; he shuddered with each ring, and enjoyed the feeling more and more. (p182)

So, it’s pretty clear Porfiry’s “little trace/fact” is Raskolnikov ringing the bell. However, it brings up two questions:

1. Why does Porfiry consider this evidence, and

2. Why does he say he won’t tell Raskolnikov?

The answer to the first one can be found in rereading the massive wall of text where he mentions the bells, which I’ll paraphrase here. Up this point, Porfiry lists off the evidence he has so far that Raskolnikov is guilty, but openly admits it’s circumstantial, psychological evidence that’s not solid enough to arrest him, but it is enough to paint a mental profile of him. Because of this, he’s certain Raskolnikov will come, but like a monkey’s paw wish, Raskolnikov actually does voluntarily go to Zametov, but Porfiry is flummoxed by the fact that he pretty much outright confesses to the murder. He can’t make sense of it in a way that could serve as evidence: “...that’s the whole catch, that this cursed psychology is double-ended!” Learning about the bell ringing was the missing puzzle piece because he finally realizes Raskolnikov is indeed subject to the masochism of his own conscience, so he’s now completely confident in his psychological profiling:

“It wasn’t enough for him to endure the torment of standing behind the door while the door was being forced and the bell was ringing—no, later he goes back to the empty apartment, in half-delirium, to remind himself of that little bell, feeling a need to experience again that spinal chill…” (p481)

This is, of course, ironic in that it is still not hard evidence. That brings us to the second question: why did he say he won’t he tell Raskolnikov? Porfiry means the fact is enough for himself but not enough for Raskolnikov — though not a bluff, it’s not really evidence, either. In other words, the question Raskolnikov asks is, “You’ve transitioned from talking about psychology to talking about logic in trying to convince me to confess, but how are you sure you’re right?” Porfiry’s response is basically, “Oh, I’m right. I may not have concrete evidence, but I KNOW I’m right.” Throughout the chapter, Porfiry is completely honest, not out of arrogance or even spite, but simply because he understands Raskolnikov’s mind so well he knows exactly how this will play out, so by this point he just wants to help him.

The reason Porfiry outright admits he doesn’t have any hard evidence is because he doesn’t need it at all anymore. He’s so disturbingly perceptive that he knew Mikolka falsely confessed to the crime in a misguided attempt to worship the beauty of suffering. Porfiry knows Raskolnikov will “decide to embrace suffering” because, contrary to how he sees himself, Raskolnikov truly has the makings of “the extraordinary man”, but needs to finish his journey of spiritual redemption to accept himself:

Be of great heart, and fear less...You’re not going to miss your comforts, are you, with a heart like yours?...The point lies in you, not in time. Become a sun, and everyone will see you. The sun must be the sun first of all.” (p486)

The repeated mentions of heart link back to one of Dostoevsky’s most famous quotes, spoken by Raskolnikov himself:

“Suffering and pain are always obligatory for a broad consciousness and a deep heart. Truly great men, I think, must feel great sorrow in this world.” (p278)

TLDR: The “little fact” was Raskolnikov ringing the bell. This was Porfiry’s most important psychological evidence because this was the missing link to understanding why he would eventually confess by himself.

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This is a reformatted and slightly edited version of this Reddit post. Heavy spoilers for The Brothers Karamazov.

Lise has very little presence in The Brothers Karamazov, but nevertheless is a fascinating and deeply underrated character that warrants a deep dive. Citations are for the P&V bicentennial edition.

I think the best way to frame Lise is that she is a demonstration of Zosima’s teachings that “all is like an ocean, all flows and connects” and the greater theme of universal guilt. By the end of the book, the source of her inner suffering is a tumultuous mix of external influences that’s unclear if she is even aware exists within her.

Her words and actions echo those of other characters:

• Similarly to Zosima right before his duel, Lise slaps her maid then later begs at her feet in apology, hinting her conscience does bring her suffering, even if that may not be clear from what she says.

• Madam Khoklakov hides “bad books...under her pillow” (p617), which Lise steals to read and Alyosha says are ruining her. Tbh I’m not sure if it’s said anywhere what these books are about, but I assume they’re either smutty romances or violent historical accounts.

• Just as how Ivan inspires Smerdyakov with his ideas, he infects Lise with his rational skepticism. I believe it’s implied that Lise learned about Ivan’s ideas by eavesdropping on his conversation with Katerina, just as how she was eavesdropping on Alyosha’s conversation with her mom, and how Madame Kokhlakov eavesdropped on their engagement in “A Betrothal”. Like mother, like daughter.

Lise doesn’t quite fully understand it herself and so cannot articulate it, but she yearns for the joy of spiritual redemption:

“So that there will be nothing left anywhere. Ah, how good it would be if there were nothing left! You know, Alyosha, I sometimes think about doing an awful lot of evil, all sorts of nasty things, and I’d be doing them on the sly for a long time, and suddenly everyone would find out. They would all surround me and point their fingers at me, and I would look at them all. That would be very pleasant. Why would it be so pleasant, Alyosha?” (p616)

She is exactly describing Dmitri’s trial, and wishes she could be in his place: she wants to commit evil so that she will be accused of guilt and experience this pleasure. But what pleasure is she talking about?

The Underground Man

The best way to describe this is from Notes From Underground:

...I would gnaw, gnaw at myself with my teeth, inwardly, secretly, tear and suck at myself until the bitterness finally turned into some shameful, accursed sweetness, and finally – into a decided, serious pleasure! Yes, a pleasure, a pleasure! I stand upon it. The reason I’ve begun to speak is that I keep wanting to find out for certain: do other people have such pleasures? I’ll explain to you: the pleasure here lay precisely in the too vivid consciousness of one’s own humiliation...So it turns out, for example, as a result of heightened consciousness: right, you’re a scoundrel – as if it were a consolation for the scoundrel himself to feel that he is indeed a scoundrel.

The whole quote is quite long, but to loosely paraphrase, the Underground Man is describing committing a wicked deed and reveling in the masochistic pleasure of his own tormented conscience, the “humiliation” being the realization and acceptance you cannot change who you are, which therefore absolves you of moral responsibility of your actions; hence, a scoundrel is relieved in accepting that is his identity and human nature. (There is much more that can be unpacked, but this is sufficient for now.)

Lise is tragically becoming an echo of Ivan. They both descend into madness over disillusionment of the suffering in the world. He hallucinates the devil whereas Lise sees demons in her nightmare. Even Lise’s anecdote of the boy and pineapple compote is a parallel to how Ivan is disturbed by cruelty against children, but whereas Ivan constructively uses his feeling of empathy and indignation as justification for his atheism, Lise instead takes a sadistic pleasure in it that does nothing but make her suffer even more.

Much like the Underground Man, she struggles with existential suffering (”Ah, how good it would be if there were nothing left!”), compelling her to embrace wickedness without knowing why. Unlike the Underground Man, however, it does not seem she has the same level of consciousness to understand why she loves pain:

“I wanted to tell you a wish of mine. I want someone to torment me, to marry me and then torment me, deceive me, leave me and go away. I don’t want to be happy!” (p615)

She is full of these contradictions. She tells her mom she would never come to see her, yet when her mom comes, Lise cries, kisses her, and shoves her out of her room. She also says she hates Ivan, yet she sends for him to come again, and even “offers” herself to him (p635).

Kolya Krasotkin

But by far the most important character to compare to Lise is not Ivan, but Kolya. She only mentions him once, with jealousy:

“I want to ruin myself. There’s a boy here, and he lay down under the rails while a train rode over him. Lucky boy!” (p617)

Seemingly unrelated at first glance, she later confesses to Alyosha:

“I tell this to you alone,” Liza began again. “Only to myself, and also to you. You alone in the whole world. And rather to you than to myself. And I’m not at all ashamed with you. Alyosha, why am I not at all ashamed with you, not at all?” (p618)

It doesn’t seem like it would have anything to do with Kolya, but it actually mirrors his confession to Alyosha:

“And you know, Karamazov, you must admit that you yourself feel a little ashamed with me now … I can see it in your eyes,” Kolya smiled somehow slyly, but also with almost a sort of happiness.

“Ashamed of what?”

“Why did you blush, then?”

“But it was you who made me blush!” Alyosha laughed, and indeed blushed all over. “Well, yes, a little ashamed, God knows why, I don’t know … ,” he muttered, even almost embarrassed.

“Oh, how I love you and value you right now, precisely because you, too, are ashamed of something with me! Because you’re just like me!” Kolya exclaimed, decidedly in ecstasy. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes shining. (p591)

I wrote more about Kolya in this post, but to summarize, in the chapter “Precocity” Kolya starts out wanting to impress Alyosha with his, well, precocity, out of vanity, to be seen as intelligent and worldly to gain Alyosha’s respect. However, in a moment of honesty, he develops self-awareness and his vanity crumbles, allowing him to finally reciprocate Alyosha’s love. It’s a beautiful demonstration of “guilty for all and before all” and how treating someone with love can influence them to be a better person.

Kolya confesses shame, which is mirrored in Alyosha, and this mutual feeling deepens their bond. However, Lise seemingly speaks honestly, yet feels no shame. She even confesses her dream of the little devils and is fascinated by Alyosha’s admission that he dreamt the same before, yet it does not spark growth the same way as it did for Kolya. The key difference between Kolya and Lise is that she’s missing self-honesty, introspection, or in other words, a genuine acceptance of “guilty for all and before all.” When she describes how people love the drama of Dmitri’s trial, she exclaims, “Everyone says it’s terrible, but secretly they all love it terribly. I’m the first to love it” (p617). This is a profaned analogy of: “we are all guilty, but I am guilty most of all” to “they love this wickedness, but I love it the most”, a perplexing admission of guilt that brings her pleasure.

Perhaps the best way to frame Lise is as a foil to Kolya. Their attitudes even follow opposite arcs: Kolya is initially standoffish by acting like an adult but grows to love Alyosha, whereas Lise initially loves him with a childlike innocence but becomes serious and miserable. They both admire Dmitri and express mimetic desires for him (see more in this post), but in wildly opposite ways. Kolya respects the nobility of his sacrifice for truth and wants to imitate it, whereas Lise envies Dmitri’s position of being accused of wickedness and simply wants to accept it.

Conclusion

Lise deserves our compassion. Indeed, the chapter ends with Lise wanting to commit suicide because her suffering is too much to bear:

“Save me,” she almost groaned. “Would I tell anyone in the world what I told you? But I told you the truth, the truth, the truth! I’ll kill myself, because everything is so loathsome to me! I don’t want to live, because everything is so loathsome to me.” (p619)

She slams her finger in the door, reminiscent of Alyosha’s finger injury from first meeting Kolya. Alyosha’s injury is inflicted upon him by the wrath of another, yet he is unmoved by it and even continues to heal Kolya the perpetrator. Lise inflicts this pain on herself because she desperately seeks spiritual healing, the kind that can be found in a journey of suffering and self-discovery as the other characters have, except her pain is meaningless.

In his homily, Zosima describes the tragedy of those who scorn active love:

But woe to those who have destroyed themselves on earth, woe to the suicides! I think there can be no one unhappier than they...Oh, there are those who remain proud and fierce even in hell, in spite of their certain knowledge and contemplation of irrefutable truth; there are terrible ones, wholly in communion with Satan and his proud spirit. For them hell is voluntary and insatiable; they are sufferers by their own will. For they have cursed themselves by cursing God and life. They feed on their wicked pride, as if a hungry man in the desert were to start sucking his own blood from his body. But they are insatiable unto ages of ages, and reject forgiveness, and curse God who calls to them. They cannot look upon the living God without hatred, and demand that there be no God of life, that God destroy himself and all his creation. And they will burn eternally in the fire of their wrath, thirsting for death and nonexistence. But they will not find death…(p343)

Lise’s final chapter is called “A Little Demon”. At first, one would think it’s a reference to the devils in her nightmares. Later on, Ivan literally calls her “that little demon” (p635); Dostoevsky makes it very clear the chapter title refers to Lise as well in case we didn’t catch it the first time. Corrupted by the influence of others — Ivan’s ideas, Kolya’s stunt, her mom’s “bad books” — she spirals into suffering and self-loathing, practically sucking her own blood out of her body (the door slam), and despises the world around her to the point she wants to kill herself. Lise is a warning of Zosima’s teachings. Active love is what restores Alyosha’s faith and redeems Dmitri, Grushenka, and Kolya, and is precisely what Lise must learn to avert a great tragedy.

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Some housekeeping

No major spoilers for The Idiot. This article may continue to be updated in the future, or I may post a new version.

• All page numbers are for the P&V translation.

• Asterisks refer to topics I’ll expand on in future posts.

• As someone who is not religious, nothing written here should be considered an endorsement or criticism of religion.

In The Idiot

The iconic line first appears during Myshkin’s birthday party:

“Is it true, Prince, that you once said ‘beauty’ would save the world? Gentlemen,” he cried loudly to them all, “the prince insists that beauty will save the world!” (p382)

Ippolit misquotes Myshkin, who never said this — the closest thing he says is when he sees Nastasya’s portrait for the first time:

“An astonishing face!” replied the prince. “And I’m convinced that her fate is no ordinary one. It’s a gay face, but she has suffered terribly, eh? It speaks in her eyes, these two little bones, the two points under her eyes where the cheeks begin. It’s a proud face, terribly proud, and I don’t know whether she’s kind or not. Ah, if only she were kind! Everything would be saved!” (p36)

It is not beauty but rather kindness that will save the world. This is brought up again later during his epileptic episode:

Compassion is the chief and perhaps the only law of being for all mankind. (p230)

Needless to say, the idea of world-changing kindness is a common theme across all of Dostoevsky’s works. For instance, through a rare crack in his cynical nihilism, Ippolit acknowledges in his manuscript how a single good deed can have a rippling effect in the world (more on this later). This is expanded upon in The Brothers Karamazov when Zosima says “all is like an ocean, all flows and connects; touch it in one place and it echoes at the other end of the world.”

The fact that it’s a misquote is itself symbolic. Myshkin explicitly points out the mechanism for this earlier:

“I only wanted to say that the distortion of ideas and notions (as Evgeny Pavlych put it) occurs very often, and is unfortunately much more of a general than a particular case. And to the point that, if this distortion were not such a general case, there might not be such impossible crimes as these …” (p338)

The fact that “kindness” somehow got misquoted as “beauty” through some game of telephone is precisely a distortion of an idea. Myshkin is constantly dismissed as overly naive or idealistic, and although some people are receptive to his Christian humility, nobody even comes close to understanding his profound, ineffable (quite literally, see p423) connection to beauty as a mediating force that awakens you to something greater than yourself. In a society ravaged by status and greed, it makes sense that beauty is a more concrete, valuable, comprehensible concept than that of abstract selflessness. Note this misquote isn’t entirely wrong — kindness, morality, and pity really are all forms of beauty, but there are very few instances excluding Myshkin where characters demonstrate this awareness. Ippolit ironically demonstrates this awareness but rejects it out of pure spite; for him, “beauty” is merely a hackneyed concept spouted by well-meaning, hypocritical Christians who praise the meaning of life in ignorance of the true despair of death:

“What sort of morality needs, on top of your life, also your last gasp, with which you give up the last atom of life, listening to the consolations of the prince, who is bound to go as far in his Christian reasoning as the happy thought that, essentially, it’s even better that you’re dying. (Christians like him always get to that idea: it’s their favorite hobbyhorse.)” (p412)

But much like the Underground Man and Ivan Karamazov, Ippolit despises himself for not just wanting something he can never have, but rather being so powerless in changing his desires.

The end of the world

What exactly is beauty/kindness saving the world from? The Apocalypse! The end of the world is brought up several times, an extremely heavy-handed leitmotif underscoring how the spiritual decay in the microcosm of society portrayed in the novel is but a symptom of the Westernization of Russia. Lebedev explains this in his interpretation of the Apocalypse:

“It means there was something stronger than fire and flame and even than a twenty-year habit! It means there was a thought stronger than all calamities...which mankind would have been unable to endure without that thought which binds men together, guides their hearts, and makes fruitful the wellsprings of the life of thought!...Show me a thought binding present-day mankind together that is half as strong as in those centuries. There is greater wealth, but less force; the binding idea is gone...” (p379)

This “binding idea” is never explicitly named, but it is clearly related to morality and conscience. Perhaps the best way to frame this binding idea is in Myshkin’s words: “Compassion is the chief and perhaps the only law of being for all mankind.” Industrialization is symbolic of materialism — not meaning consumerism (although that’s certainly related) but the idea that material, physical things are more important, beneficial, and therefore reasonable, giving impetus to rational egoism*. It is ideology itself, the “distortion of ideas”, that is ending the world, as we abuse logic to not only justify helping ourselves over others but to even feel good about it in the process. To Dostoevsky, this is the most terrifying aspect of ideology, the complete and utter erasure of self-awareness, or in other words, how the criminal doesn’t even know that he’s a criminal:

“...the most inveterate and unrepentant murderer still knows that he is a criminal, that is, in all conscience he considers that he has done wrong, though without any repentance. And every one of them is the same; but those whom Evgeny Pavlych has begun speaking about do not even want to consider themselves criminals and think to themselves that they had the right and … even did a good thing, or almost. That, in my opinion, is what makes the terrible difference. And note that they’re all young people, that is, precisely of an age when they can most easily and defenselessly fall under the influence of perverse ideas.” (p339)

What Ippolit considers beauty

It may seem like we’ve wandered away from the original quote, but this detour was required in order to fully understand what Ippolit considers perhaps the most grotesque distortion of an idea of all:

“Yes, nature is given to mockery! Why does she,” he suddenly continued ardently, “why does she create the best beings only so as to mock them afterwards? Didn’t she make it so that the single being on earth who has been acknowledged as perfect … didn’t she make it so that, having shown him to people, she destined him to say things that have caused so much blood to be shed, that if it had been shed all at once, people would probably have drowned in it! (p296)

How can nature create the perfectly beautiful, perfectly virtuous Christ, only to mock his very existence in the gruesome reality of death, not only in the mundanity of his corpse but also in the countless wars fought supposedly in his name, for the sake of peace? Ippolit’s concept of beauty lies in reality, the cold yet comforting truth written on “Meyer’s wall”, the “dark, insolent, and senselessly eternal power” evoked in Christ’s dead face.

Despite being a self-proclaimed nihilist, he does not accept his own ideology; as Zosima says of Ivan in The Brothers Karamazov, “A tormented person, too, sometimes likes to toy with his despair, also from despair.” It is only in moments of profound suffering that he reveals his secret desire for what he considers true beauty:

“Oh, it’s good that I’m dying! I, too, might utter some terrible lie, nature would arrange it that way!… I haven’t corrupted anybody … I wanted to live for the happiness of all people, for the discovery and proclaiming of the truth!… I looked through my window at Meyer’s wall and thought I could talk for only a quarter of an hour and everybody, everybody would be convinced, and for once in my life I got together … with you, if not with the people!” (p296)

Ippolit wants to share his feeling of unconditional love with those around him, but does not know how to do it. Worse yet, he worries his words will be misconstrued — in fact, this is precisely what happens when he reads his manuscript for everyone, who laughs and ridicules his melodrama. The fact they misunderstood his genuine intentions is itself “a distortion of an idea”, the very thing Ippolit feared, and ironically the same crime he is guilty of in advocating nihilism. Ippolit says about good deeds,

“And how do you know what share you will have in the future outcome of human destiny? And if the knowledge and the whole life of this work finally raises you so high that you are able to plant a tremendous seed, to bequeath a tremendous thought to mankind, then …” (p405)

It’s hinted that this “tremendous seed”, the greatest good that could possibly be done, is Christ’s sacrifice. In the same way Kolya wishes to imitate Dmitri’s virtue in The Brothers Karamazov, Ippolit’s manuscript about self-sacrifice for the sake of a beautiful ideology hints at a desire to imitate Christ. Ippolit wishes to spread the truth of love, but much like Myshkin’s nonverbal “idiocy”, he is tormented by his inability to communicate. Ippolit may not know how to say it, and he may be too ashamed to admit it, but for him, true beauty is kindness.

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Contains no major spoilers.

Introduction

I recently came across a great translation of the famous Russian poem “Chill Winds Still Blow” by Alexander Pushkin which was not easy to find online, so I wanted to share it here in hopes it’ll be easier for others in the future.

For those who may not be familiar, the phrase “sticky little leaves” from the poem is referenced several times in one of the most important scenes in The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, a monumental work on the nature of love and suffering. My main motivation is to synthesize my personal notes to better understand these allusions — in other words, I’m really just writing this for myself, but hopefully it’ll be interesting to you, too. Feel free to share your thoughts or questions in the comments.

This post is written in two parts:

1. I’ll share Pushkin’s poem and briefly go over it, so you don’t need to have read The Brothers Karamazov for this.

2. If you have read it, or are just curious, you can continue on where I trace references to “sticky little leaves” through Alyosha and Ivan’s discussions about joy, or you can just skip to the Conclusion. Although I assume prior knowledge of the book, most spoilers are avoided.

“Chill Winds Still Blow” by Pushkin

This translation is titled, “Winter’s chill blasts of wind are still blowing”, an excerpt from My Talisman, a collection of poems by Alexander Pushkin, translated by Julian Henry Lowenfeld. (The only other source I found is this more literal translation which also includes the original Russian, but I prefer this version.)

The footnote reads, “This is said to have been Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s favourite poem.”

Poem Overview

I’m admittedly a weak reader when it comes to poetry, so I’ll just briefly share my notes since I’m more interested in discussing The Brothers Karamazov.

The arrival of spring may be a common symbol of resurrection, hope, life, etc. but it is cleverly portrayed here. The chronological progression of the poem subtly reflects the transition from winter to spring, contrasting with the fact the entire scene takes place in a single winter morning, as if we’re gradually being drawn into the future:

• Lines 1-2 are explicitly about winter’s cold,

• Line 3 transitions from winter to spring,

• And from line 4 onwards, there is absolutely no mention of winter anymore.

The narrator’s anticipation of renewal transfigures his very awareness of the present; for him, the chill winds vanish entirely. The repetition of “very first” on lines 7-8 link back to line 4, connecting the bee to the blossoms despite the distance in text. The introduction of the bee mirrors the arrival of spring — the narrator does not actually observe where the bee comes from, instead imagining a “magic wax kingdom”, connoting a sense of awe and mysticism appropriate for the wonder of nature.

The questions at the end involve the sensory descriptors “wavy”, “sticky”, and “sweet fragrance”, all of which precisely describe honey and the beehive — in fact, the honeycomb cell is explicitly described as “sweet-scented.” It’s clearly an intentional link, but frankly I’m not totally sure why. My best guess is that it’s about the abstract “essence” of nature, hinting at how the birch is a source of life for the bee, honey as a pure distillation of this essence which retains those invariant properties. And of course, the second to last line is the famous “sticky little leaves.”

Although there’s more to be said about rhyme and rhythm throughout the poem — for instance, the alliteration of “silver-light slight leaves sticky” — I won’t comment on them since I’m not sure how sounds and tone may or may not be preserved in translation. If anyone is able to read Russian, I would love to hear your thoughts on the original poem.

In The Brothers Karamazov

A couple points before we begin:

• All page numbers are for the P&V translation.

• Asterisks refer to topics that I will revisit in future posts and may retroactively add links, since the discussions here are far from exhaustive.

• If you’re not that interested in reading the details, you can just skip to the Conclusion — I won’t be offended.

• There are many religious themes across Dostoevsky’s works, so as someone who is not religious, nothing written here should be considered an endorsement or criticism of religion.

From the first mention

The “sticky little leaves” appear only a handful of times, first appearing in the chapter “The Brothers Get Acquainted”:

“Though I do not believe in the order of things, still the sticky little leaves that come out in the spring are dear to me, the blue sky is dear to me, some people are dear to me, whom one loves sometimes, would you believe it, without even knowing why; some human deeds are dear to me, which one has perhaps long ceased believing in, but still honors with one’s heart, out of old habit.” (p244)

This is the first scene where we (and Alyosha) properly get to know Ivan. Our introduction to him in Part 1 is filtered through Alyosha’s estrangement from him, leading us to share his anxious expectation of Ivan to be some condescending, rationalist skeptic ready to start arguing with the monks — however, much to everyone’s surprise, he was in fact the most well-behaved and respectful guest at the monastery. Though he is admittedly a cynical atheist (“Though I do not believe in the order of things…”), he genuinely harbors a deep love for life that he cherishes even if he doesn’t understand it, but this is precisely the source of his suffering. Ivan’s compassion for mankind may even rival Alyosha’s:

“The precious dead lie there, each stone over them speaks of such ardent past life, of such passionate faith in their deeds, their truth, their struggle, and their science, that I—this I know beforehand—will fall to the ground and kiss those stones and weep over them—being wholeheartedly convinced, at the same time, that it has all long been a graveyard and nothing more. And I will not weep from despair, but simply because I will be happy in my shed tears. I will be drunk with my own tenderness. Sticky spring leaves, the blue sky—I love them, that’s all! Such things you love not with your mind, not with logic, but with your insides, your guts, you love your first young strength…” (p245)

Just as how Zosima kisses the earth (p344), and how Alyosha weeps tears of joy as he embraces the ground (p384), Ivan will kiss and embrace the earth as he waters the graves with tears of tenderness. The similarities are telling, but the differences are even more striking. Alyosha kisses the ground after witnessing Zosima do it, and in his spiritual reawakening, parts of Zosima’s homily come flooding back to him — relatedly, Richard Pevear notes much of Alyosha’s dialogue consists of echoing the words of other characters. On the other hand, Ivan is not influenced by anyone (besides, arguably, Western ideologies), and he even precedes Alyosha and Zosima; in a sense, he demonstrates greater agency than Alyosha.

Unto ages of ages

Ivan uses the metaphor of a graveyard to describe Western Europe, which Dostoevsky has a roiling love-hate relationship with (mostly hate) due to the Westernization of Russia. A common theme across his works is how certain rationalist ideologies lead to moral degeneration and corruption of religion, but they are not only a necessary evil in understanding the nature of faith, they paradoxically cannot be resolved with free will, only the lack of it — and yet, a solution exists*. This is the cornerstone of the Grand Inquisitor’s condemnation of the Temptations of Christ and Ivan’s nightmare of the Devil. Across books, this can be found in Myshkin’s epilepsy in The Idiot, Raskolnikov’s dialectics in Crime and Punishment, and the entirety of Notes From Underground. To get to the point, Ivan is calling Western Europe spiritually dead. (Although some may disagree, I make the following distinction between spirituality and religion at least for the scope of my own writing: in short, Dostoevsky regards spirituality as not necessarily synonymous with religion but rather analogous to “being in touch with oneself” so to speak, or self-honesty.)

The juxtaposition of life (sticky little leaves) and death (the graveyard) transitions into:

“Half your work is done and acquired, Ivan: you love life. Now you need only apply yourself to the second half, and you are saved.”

“You’re already saving me, though maybe I wasn’t perishing. And what does this second half consist of?”

“Resurrecting your dead, who may never have died.” (p245)

Alyosha’s mention of resurrection is strangely abrupt and immediately abandoned, but we’ll revisit this later. It’s difficult to do this line justice without inadvertently reeling in the entire body of his works, as remembrance is tightly intertwined with many other themes. In The Idiot, beauty is an ineffable force which awakens Myshkin to the self-actualization, perfection, and emptiness — some may recognize this as “divinity” — dormant in nature which, cruelly, forever lies beyond his comprehension:

Similarly, memory is the mechanism which awakens characters to morality and rouses compassion in moments of profound suffering that transcend logic. The novel even begins with Alyosha’s earliest memory of his weeping mother, which is implied to have compelled him to enter the monastery after her death, and ends with his homily on remembrance:

“You must know that there is nothing higher, or stronger, or sounder, or more useful afterwards in life, than some good memory…If a man stores up many such memories to take into life, then he is saved for his whole life. And even if only one good memory remains with us in our hearts, that alone may serve some day for our salvation.” (p821)

For Alyosha, memory is ignited by suffering and sustains him through it. On the other hand, Ivan acknowledges that although his burning passion shields him from “all the horrors of human disillusionment”, it’s only a matter of time before he succumbs to existential suffering: “I just want to drag on until I’m thirty, and then—smash the cup on the floor!” (p279). After hearing Ivan’s poem of the Grand Inquisitor, Alyosha fears for him:

“And the sticky little leaves, and the precious graves, and the blue sky, and the woman you love! How will you live, what will you love them with? ... Is it possible, with such hell in your heart and in your head? No, you’re precisely going in order to join them … and if not, you’ll kill yourself, you won’t endure it!” (p279)

Just as how the Grand Inquisitor disavows Jesus’ kiss, Ivan renounces his ability to love life in an act of “Rebellion”, of self-destruction. If you’ve happened to have read the short story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin, this is the exact same concept — fun fact, Ivan quite literally describes the entire plot in a single sentence (p261).

Conclusion

Pushkin’s poem is a straightforward message about spiritual resurrection, how hope manifested in the coming spring makes bearable our present suffering, but Ivan disagrees. This is made clear in his infamous line about atheism:

“Besides, they have put too high a price on harmony; we can’t afford to pay so much for admission. And therefore I hasten to return my ticket.” (p261)

The “ticket” is a reference to the poem “Resignation” by Friedrich Schiller* — in short, it is about the loss of faith, the mockery of religion by the material sacrifices made for immaterial reward, yet hidden in disillusionment is a glimpse of true faith, which ironically only adds to the mockery. In the end, the speaker acknowledges that hope in an afterlife and earthly pleasure to numb suffering are mutually exclusive. Nevertheless, he chooses faith, knowing that although it must be its own reward, there remains doubt whether it can compensate for what is lost in life. Some of you may recognize this as the premise for Ivan’s dialectics around theodicy and the Grand Inquisitor.

In a departure from Pushkin, Dostoevsky believes there is something even stronger than unsubstantiated hope for the future: past memories of love. Just as how Alyosha’s memory of Zosima saves him from a moment of self-destruction, or how Marcel Proust describes in In Search of Lost Time the resurrection of his hometown in the taste of the madeleine, or the torment of denying one’s past in Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, memory is a near-omnipotent force which transfigures consciousness and cannot be resisted*.

Earlier, in response to Ivan’s admission of how he is headed to a “graveyard” of spiritual death, Alyosha remarks that the nature of joy lies in two parts: loving life beyond all meaning, and “resurrecting your dead, who may never have died.” His cryptic line about remembrance contains a second meaning: those “who may never have died” are, in fact, the living. Alyosha refers to those who are spiritually dead, having surrendered life and resigned to suffering, unable to show compassion for others and, therefore, themselves. This is seen in Lise’s dream of eating pineapple compote as she watches a boy being tortured, or in Crime and Punishment when Raskolnikov recognizes his inner death mirrored in Sonya. Zosima’s final homily emphasizes the interconnectedness of humanity — in the same way that memory is a transformative force for oneself, acts of unconditional love are a transformative force for others.

Richard Pevear in his Forward to Notes From Underground writes:

Inner movement...is always a condition of spiritual good, though it may also be a source of suffering, division, disharmony, in this life. What moves may always rise.

Across all of Dostoevsky’s works, characters are stirred to action by compassion amidst suffering; the sublime terror of death; and above all, the self-effacement of receiving a love you feel you don’t deserve, all of which culminate beautifully in Alyosha’s kiss of resurrection:

“So, Alyosha,” Ivan spoke in a firm voice, “if, indeed, I hold out for the sticky little leaves, I shall love them only remembering you.”

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