I, for example, quiet plainly and simply insist upon annihilation for myself. No, they say, you must go on living, for without you there would be nothing. If everything on earth were reasonable, nothing would ever happen. Without you there would be no events, and it is necessary that there should be events. Well, and so on I drudge with unwilling heart so that there be events, and bring about unreason by command. People think toute cette comedie is something serious, all there unquestionable intelligence notwithstanding. There lies there tragedy. Well, and they suffer, of course, but … al the same they live, they live in reality, not in fantasy; for suffering is also life. Without suffering what pleasure would there be in it? Everything would turn into one single, endless church service: much holy soaring, but rather boring. Well, and I? I suffer, but even so I do not live. I am the x in an indeterminate equation. I am one of life’s ghosts, who has lost all the ends and the beginnings, and even at last forgotten what to call myself. You are laughing . . . No, you are not laughing, you are angry again. You are eternally angry, you would like there to be nothing but intelligence, but I will tell you again that I would renounce all this empyrean existence, all these honours and ranks just in order to be able to take fleshy form in the person of a seven-pood merchant’s wife and set up candles to God in church. ‘So, you don’t believe in God either?’ Ivan said, smiling with hatred. ‘Well, how can I explain it to you, if you are serious, that is . . . ‘ ‘Does God exist or not?’ Ivan barked, again with ferocious insistence. ‘Ah, so you are serious? My dear little dove, I swear to God I do not know, pour vous dire le grand mot.
But man seeks to worship what is established beyond dispute, so that all men would agree at once to worship it. For these pitiful creatures are concerned not only to find what one or the other can worship, but to find community of worship is the chief misery of every man individually and of all humanity from the beginning of time. For the sake of common worship they've slain each other with the sword. They have set up gods and challenged one another, "Put away your gods and come and worship ours, or we will kill you and your gods!
Look around you — the clear sky, the pure air, the tender grass, the birds; nature is beautiful and sinless, and we, only we, are foolish and we don’t understand that life is heaven, for we have only to understand that and it will at once be fulfilled in all its beauty, we shall embrace each other and weep.
...they ate the apple, and knew good and evil, and became 'as gods.' And they still go on eating it. But little children have not eaten anything and are not yet guilty of anything...If they, too, suffer terribly on earth, it is, of course, for their fathers; they are punished for their fathers who ate the apple--but that is reasoning from another world; for the human heart here on earth it is incomprehensible.
Rebellion? I don't like hearing such a word from you," Ivan said with feeling. "One cannot live by rebellion, and I want to live. Tell me straight out, I call on you--answer me: imagine that you yourself are building the edifice of human destiny with the object of making people happy in the finale, of giving them peace and rest at last, but for that you must inevitably and unavoidably torture just one tiny creature, that same child who was beating her chest with her little fist, and raise your edifice on the foundation of her unrequited tears--would you agree to be the architect on such conditions? Tell me the truth.""No, I would not agree," Alyosha said softly."And can you admit the idea that the people for whom you are building would agree to accept their happiness on the unjustified blood of a tortured child, and having accepted it, to remain forever happy?""No, I cannot admit it.
Truly,' I answered him, 'all things are good and fair, because all is truth. Look,' said I, 'at the horse, that great beast that is so near to man; or the lowly, pensive ox, which feeds him and works for him; look at their faces, what meekness, what devotion to man, who often beats them mercilessly. What gentleness, what confidence and what beauty! It's touching to know that there's no sin in them, for all, all except man, is sinless, and Christ has been with them before us.
الغيرة! "ليس عطيل غيورا، إنه واثق" كذلك قال بوشكين. إن هذه الملاحظة البسيطة تشهد بعمق عبقرية شاعرنا القومي. إن ما عاناه عطيل من قلق النفس واضطراب الأفكار ناشيء عن إنه "فقد إيمانه بمثله الأعلى". ولكن عطيل ما كان له أبدا أن يرضى لنفسه هوان المرابطة في مكان ما من أجل أن يتجسس ويترصد ويترقب: إنه أكثر ثقة من أن يفعل ذلك. بالعكس: كان لا بد من دفعه ومن تقديم البراهين له، ومن تحريضه بالأدلة الدامغة لحمله على تصور الخيانة. ولا كذلك الغيور الحق. لا يستطيع المرء أن يتخيل مدى ما يمكن أن يهوى إليه الغيور من درك الدناءة والحطة دون أن يشعر بأي خجل من ذلك. وليس معنى هذا أن الغيورين يتصفون بحقارة النفس حتما. لا... رب رجل نبيل القلب نقيّ الحب مخلص العاطفة، يرتضي مع ذلك أن يختبي تحت السرر، وأن يرشي أناسا قذرين، وأن يستخدم أحط أنواع التجسس! وما كان لعطيل أبدا أن يذعن للخيانة – أقول يذعن للخيانة ولا أقول يغفرها – رغم أن له نفسا رقيقة بريئة كنفس طفل صغير. ولا كذلك الغيور الحق! ما من شيء إلا ويمكن أن يذعن له الغيور وما من شيء إلا ويمكن أن يغفره عند الحاجة. إن الغيورين أسرع الناس إلى الغفران، والنساء يعرفن هذا! هم قادرون – مثلا – على أن يمسحوا خيانة مشهودة (بعد أن يثوروا ثورة عنيفة في البداية طبعا)، وقبلات وعناقات رأوها بأعينهم، شريطة أن يستطيعوا أن يقولوا لأنفسهم "إن هذه آخر مرة" وأن الغريم سيغيب وأنه سيرحل إلى بلد في آخر العالم، أو أنهم سيمضون هم أنفسهم بحبيبتهم إلى منطقة نائية لا يستطيع الخصم الكريه أن يدركها فيها يوما. ثم لا تدوم المصالحة أكثر من ساعة طبعا. ذلك أنهم، ولو اختفى الخصم، ما يلبثون أن يكتشفوا خصما جديدا منذ الغد، فإذا هم يستأنفون عذاب أنفسهم بسبب هذه "الخيانة" الجديدة. رب متسائل يتسائل: ما في نظرهم قيمة حب يقتضي هذه الاحتياطات كلها، ويتطلب هذه المراقبة الدائمة المتصلة، وهل المرأة التي يتصورون خيانتها تستحق منهم هذا الحب كله. إلا أن هذا السؤال بعينه هو ما لا يلقيه الغيورون الحقيقيون على أنفسهم، مع أن منهم أناسا لهم نفوs سامية رفيعة، وهناك أمر جدير بالملاحظة أيضا: إن ذوي العواطف النبيلة من هؤلاء الغيورين يستطيعون، وهم مختبئون في ركن من الأركان للتجسس والمباغتة، يستطيعون أن يفهموا تماما، "لنبل قلوبهم" أنهم ينحدرون من الخزي والعار، ولكنهم مع ذلك لا يشعرون بشيء من عذاب الضمير، ما ظلوا مختبئين في أوكارهم على الأقل
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...
There’s a book here in which I read about the trial of a Jew, who took a child of four years old and cut off the fingers from both hands, and then crucified him on the wall, hammered nails into him and crucified him, and afterwards, when he was tried, he said that the child died soon, within four hours. That was ‘soon’! He said the child moaned, kept on moaning and he stood admiring it. That’s nice!Nice?Nice; I sometimes imagine that it was I who crucified him. He would hang there moaning and I would sit opposite him eating pineapple compote. I am awfully fond of pineapple compote. Do you like it?Alyosha looked at her in silence. Her pale, sallow face was suddenly contorted, her eyes burned.You know, when I read about that Jew I shook with sobs all night. I kept fancying how the little thing cried and moaned (a child of four years old understands, you know), and all the while the thought of pineapple compote haunted me. In the morning I wrote a letter to a certain person, begging him particularly to come and see me. He came and I suddenly told him all about the child and the pineapple compote. All about it, all, and said that it was nice. He laughed and said it really was nice. Then he got up and went away. He was only here five minutes. Did he despise me? Did he despise me? Tell me, tell me, Alyosha, did he despise me or not? She sat up on the couch, with flashing eyes.
Why, the isolation that prevails everywhere, above all in our age—it has not fully developed, it has not reached its limit yet. For every one strives to keep his individuality as apart as possible, wishes to secure the greatest possible fullness of life for himself; but meantime all his efforts result not in attaining fullness of life but self-destruction, for instead of self-realization he ends by arriving at complete solitude. All mankind in our age have split up into units, they all keep apart, each in his own groove; each one holds aloof, hides himself and hides what he has, from the rest, and he ends by being repelled by others and repelling them. He heaps up riches by himself and thinks, ‘How strong I am now and how secure,’ and in his madness he does not understand that the more he heaps up, the more he sinks into self-destructive impotence. For he is accustomed to rely upon himself alone and to cut himself off from the whole; he has trained himself not to believe in the help of others, in men and in humanity, and only trembles for fear he should lose his money and the privileges that he has won for himself. Everywhere in these days men have, in their mockery, ceased to understand that the true security is to be found in social solidarity rather than in isolated individual effort. But this terrible individualism must inevitably have an end, and all will suddenly understand how unnaturally they are separated from one another. It will be the spirit of the time, and people will marvel that they have sat so long in darkness without seeing the light.