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(آندرو نجيب؛ الصفحة الشخصية)

Adelaida Ivanona Miusov's action was similarly, no doubt, an echo of other people's ideas, and was due to the irritation caused by lack of mental freedom. She wanted, perhaps, to show her feminine independence, to override class distinctions and the despotism of her family

…of this old woman, who was apparently not bad-hearted but had become an unsufferable tyrant through idleness.

So, up to now, the family is Fyodor, Adelaida, and Mitya. Fyodor forgot Mitya, Adelaida died in the garret in one version, or of starvation in another. Anyways, Gregory took care of Mitya.

Peter was impressed by the erudite Ivan who has just published a satirical burlesque article on the Ecclesiastical courts.

"…but I fancy that Alyosha was more of a realist than anyone. Oh! no doubt, in the monastery he fully believed in miracles, but to my thinking, miracles ar never a stumbling-block to the realist. It is not miracles that dispose realists to belief.

I want to live for immortality, and I will accept no compromise.

"What was such an elder? AN elder was one who took your soul, our will, into his soul and his will. When you choose an elder, you renounce your own will and yield it to him in complete submission, complete self-abnegation. This novitiate, this terrible school of abnegation, is undertaken voluntarily, in the hope of self-conquest, of self-mastery, in order, after a life of obediance, to attain perfect freedom, that is, from self; to escape the lot of those who have lived their whole life without finding their true selves in themslves."

Now, I know myself, I am annoyed, I shall lose my temper and begin to quarrel-and lower myself and my ideas.

There was also a tall young man, who looked about two and twenty, standing in the corner throughout the interview. He had a broad, fresh face, and clever, observant, narrow brown eyes, and was wearing ordinary dress. He was a divinity student, living under the protection of the monastery. His expression was one of unquestioning, but self-respecting, reverence. Being in a subordinate and dependent position, and so not on an equality with the guests, he did not gree them with a bow.

Miusov took a cursory glance at all these 'conventional' surroundings and bent an intent look upon the elder. He had a high opinion of his own insight, a weakness excusable in him as he was fifty, an age at which a clever man of the world of established position can hardly help taking himself rather seriously.

Do not trouble. Make yourself quite at home. And, above all, do not be so ashamed of yourself, for that is at the root of it all

don't give way to sensual lust; and, above all, to the love of money. And close your taverns. If you can't close all, at least two or three. And, above all-don't lie.

…Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others.

And having no respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to passions and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himself.#+begin_quote

I do not know what saint. I do not know and can't tell. I was deceived. I was told story. I had heard it, and do you know who told it.#+begin_quote

..and that it is a terrible illness to which women are subject, especially prevalent among us in Russia, and that it is due to the harrd lot of the peasant women. It is a disease, I was told, arising from exhausting toil too soon after hard, abnormal, and unassisted labour in childbirth, and from the hopeless misery, from beatings, and so on, which some women were not able to endure like others.

which had been explained to me as due to the malingering and the trickery of the clericals, aros probably in the most natural manner.#+begin_quote

Lamentations comfort only by lacerating the heart still more. It feeds on the sense of its hopelessness. **Lamentations spring only from the constant craving to re-open the wound**#+begin_quote

Man cannot commit a sin so great as to exhaust the infinite love of God."

#+begin_quote or men re made for happiness, and anyone who is completely happy has a right to say to himself, I am doing God's will on earth. All the righteous all the saints, all the holy martyrs were happy.

But, I only believed when I was a little child, mechanically, without thinking of anything

"if you have been talking to me so sincerely, simply to gain approbation for your frankness, as you did from me just now, then, of course, you will not attain to anything in the achievemnt of real love; it willl all get no further than dreams and your whole life will slip away like a phantom.

Don't be frightened overmuch even at your evil actions**. I am sorry I can say nothing more consoling to you, for love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams.#+begin_quote

…and behold clearly the miraculous power of the Lord who has been all the time loving and mysteriously guiding you."

You must admit that. Consequently, the security of society is not preserved for, although the obnoxious member is mechanically cut off and sent far away out of sight, another criminal always comes to take his place at once and often two of them. If anything odes preserve society even in our time, and does regenerate and transform the criminal, it is only the law of Christ speaking in his conscience. It is only by recognizing his wrongdoing as a son of a Christian society.

So that it is only against the Church, and not against the State, that the criminal of to-day can recognize that he has sinned. If society, as a Church, had jurisdiction, then it would know when to bring back from exclusion and to reunite to itself

Now the Church having no real jurisdiction, ut only the power of moral condemnation, withdraws of her own accord from punishing the criminal actively. She does not excommunicate him but simply persists in motherly exhortation

"The subject was the scoialist revolutionaries who where at that time persecuted. I will quote only one most curious remark ropped by this person. 'We are not particularly fraid.' said he, 'of all these socialists, anarchists, infidels, and revolutionists; we keep watch on them and know all their goings on. But there are a few peculiar men among them who believe in God and are Christians, but at the same time are scoialists. These are the people we are most afraid of.' They are dreadful peple! The socialist who is a CHristian is more ot be dreaded than a socialist who is an atheist.' The words struck me at the time, and now they have suddenly back to me here, gentlemen'"

'I'm extremely obliged to you, and expected no less from your goodness Saying this, Dimitri bowed once more."

The sense of respect is evocative.

…he solemnly declared in argument that thre was nothing in the whole world to make men love their neighbours. That there was no law of nature that man should love mankind, and that, if there had been any love on earth hitherto, it was not owing to a natural law, but simply because men have believed in immportality.

Similar to having a repeated setting in a zero-sum game. The invovled players have to eventually cooperate.

Ivan the continues

…added in parenthesis that the whole natural law lies in that fairth, and that if you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up. Moreover, nothing then would be immoral, everything would be lawful, even caannibalism. That's not all. He ended by asserting that for every individual like ourselves, who does not believe in God or immortality, the moral law of nature must immediately be changed into the exact contrary of the former religious law, and that egoism, even to crime, must become not only lawful but even recognized as the inevitable, the most rational, even honourable outcome of his position.

…He longed, moreover, to ask the significance of his bowing to Dmitri, the question was on the tip of his tongue, but he dared not ask it. He knew that the elder would have explained it unasked if he had thought fit. But evidently it was not his will

Learning to trust in the perspicacity of the older people.

"A man will fall in love with some beauty, with a woman's body, or even with a part of a woman's body ( a sensualist can understand that), and he'll abandon his own children for her, sell his father and mother, and his country, Russia, too. If he's honest, he'll steal; if he's humane, he'll murder; if he's faithful, he'll deceive"

Similar to what was said in Early Corrupted Young

"Those are the most fatal people! Who the devil can make you out? He recognises his vileness and goes on with it!"

"It was said of old, 'Many have begun to speak against me and have uttered evil sayings about me. And hearing it I have said to myself: it is the correction of the Lord and He has sent it to heal my vain soul' And so we humbly thank you, honoured guest!"

Grigory knew too, that he had an indisputable influence over his master. It was true, and he was aware of it. Fyodor Pavlovitch was an obstinate and cunning buffoon, yet, though his will was strong enough in some of the affairs of life

Marva Ignatyevna was by no means foolish; she was probably, cleverer than her husband, or, at least, more prudent than he in worldly affairs, and yet she had given in to him in everything without question or complaint ever since her marriage, and respected him for his spiritual superiority. It was remarkable how little they spoke to one another in the course of their lives, and only of the most necessary daily lives. The grave and dignified Grigory thought over all his cares and duties alone, so that Marfa Ignatyevna had long grown used to knowing that he did not need her advice. She felt that her husband respected her silence, and took it as a sign of her good sense.

It was not her beauty which troubled him, but something else. And the vagueness of his apprehension increased the apprehension itself.

You may be in love with a woman and yet hate her.

You are an angel on earth. You will hear and judge and forgive. And that's what I need, that someone above me should forgive.

I pray God I'm not lying and showing off.

Beauty is a terrible and awful thing! It is terrible because it has not been fathomed and never can be fathomed, for God sets us nothing but riddles.

"You say that because I blushed," Alyosha said suddenly. "I wasn't blushing at what you were saying or at what you've done. I blushed because I am the same as you are".

"You? Come, that's going a little too far!"

"No, it's not too far," said Alyosha warmly (obviously the idea was not a new one). "The ladder's the same. I'm at the bottom step, and you're above, somewhere about the thirteenth. That's how I see it. But it's all the same. Absolutely the same kind. Anyone on the bottom step is bound to go up to the top one." "Then one ought not to step on at all."

What made it worse was that I felt that 'Katenka' was not an innocent boarding-school miss, but a person of character, proud and really high-principled; above all, she had education and intellect, and I had neither. You think I meant to make her an offer? No, I simply wanted to revenge myself, because I was such a hero and she didn't seem to feel it.

So you're already saving me, though I may not be lost at all!

Joking? They said I was joking at the elder's yesterday. You see, my dear chap, there was an old sinner in the eighteenth century who delivered himself of the statement that if there were no God, it would have been necessary to invent him: S'il n'estait pas Dieu il faudrait l'inventer. And, to be sure, man has invented God. And what is so strange, and what would be so marvellous, is not that God actually exists, but that such an idea - the idea of necessity of God- should have entered the head of such a savage and vicious animal as man - so holy it is, so moving and so wise and so much does it redound to man's honour

if God really exists, and if he really has created the world, then, as we all know, he created it in accordance with the Euclidean geometry, and he created the human mind with the conception of only the three dimensions of space. And yet there have been and there still are mathematicians and philosophers, some of them indeed men of extraordinary genius, who doubt whether the whole universe. or, to put it more widely, all existence was created only according to Euclidean geometry and they even dare to dream that two parallel lines which, according to Euclid can never meet on earth, may meet somewhere in infinity. I, my dear chap, have come to the conclusion that if I can't understand even that, then how can I be expected to understand about God? I humbly admit that I have no abilities for settling such questions. I have a Euclidean, an earthly mind, and so how can I be expected to solve problems which are not of this world.

Oh, all that my pitiful earthly Euclidean mind can grasp is that suffering exists, that no one is to blame, that effect follows cause, simply and directly, that everything flows and finds its level - but then this is only Euclidean nonsense. I know that and I refuse to live by it! What do I care that no one is to blame, that effect follows cause simply and directly and that I know it – I must have retribution or I shall destroy myself. And retribution not somewhere in the infinity of the space and time, but here on earth, and so that I could see it myself. And if I'm dead by that time, let them resurrect me, for if it all happens without me, it will be too unfair. Surely the reason for my suffering was not that I as well as my evil deeds and sufferings may serve as manure for some future harmony for someone else. I want to see with my own eyes the lion lie down with the lamb band the murdered man rise up and embrace his murderer. I want to be there when everyone suddenly finds out what it has all been for. All religions on earth are based on this desire, and I am a believer.

We cannot afford to pay so much for admission. And therefore I hasten to return my ticket of admission. And indeed, if I am an honest man, I'm bound ot hand it back as soon as possible. This I am doing. It is not God that I do not accept, Alyosha. I merely most respectfully return him the ticket.'

'This is rebellion' Alyosha said softly, dropping his eyes.

'Rebellion? I;m sorry to hear you say that' Ivan said with feeling.

He came down into the hot "streets and lanes" of the southern city just at the moment when, a day before, nearly a hundred heretics had been burnt all at once by the cardinal, the Grand Inquisitor, ad majorem gloriam Dei in "a magnificent auto da fé", in the presence of the king, the court, the knights, the cardinals, and the fairest ladies of the Court and the whole population of Seville.

And could anything be truer have been said than what he revealed to you in his three questions and what you rejected, and what you in the books are called 'temptations'? And yet if ever there has been on earth a real, prodigious miracle, it was on that day, on the day of the three temptations.

You want to go into the world and you are going empty-handed, with some promise of freedom, which men in their simplicity and their innate lawlessness cannot even comprehend, which they fear and dread–for nothing has ever been more unendurable to man and to human society than freedom!

For we alone, we who guard the mystery, we alone shall be unhappy.

We shall deceive them again, for we shall not let you come near us again.

But man seeks to worship only what is incontestable, so incontestable, indeed, that all men at once agree to worship it all together. For the chief concern of those miserable creatures is not only to find something that I or someone else can worship, but to find something all believe in and worship, and the absolutely essential thing is that they should do so all together.

Or did you forget that a tranquil mind and even death is dearer to man than the free choice in the knowledge of good and evil? There is nothing more alluring to man than this freedom of conscience, but there is nothing more tormenting, either.

The worst of it was that, as I learned then, the young landowner had been engaged to her a long time and that I myself had often met him at her house, but, blinded by my high opinion of myself, I had noticed nothing.

'Yesterday', I replied gaily, 'I was still a food, but I'm wiser today.'