The Brothers Karamazov

“I repeat, moderate your demands, don’t demand ‘all that is great and beautiful’^[321] of me, and we shall live in peace and harmony, you’ll see,” the gentleman said imposingly. “Indeed, you’re angry with me that I have not appeared to you in some sort of red glow, ‘in thunder and lightning,’ with scorched wings, but have presented myself in such a modest form. You’re insulted, first, in your aesthetic feelings, and, second, in your pride: how could such a banal devil come to such a great man? No, you’ve still got that romantic little streak in you, so derided by Belinsky.^[322] It can’t be helped, young man. This evening, as I was getting ready to come to you, I did think of appearing, for a joke, in the form of a retired Regular State Councillor who had served in the Caucasus, with the star of the Lion and Sun pinned to my frock coat, but I was decidedly afraid, because you’d have thrashed me just for daring to tack the Lion and Sun on my frock coat, instead of the North Star or Sirius at least.^[323]And you keep saying how stupid I am. But, my God, I don’t make any claims to being your equal in intelligence. Mephistopheles, when he comes to Faust, testifies of himself that he desires evil, yet does only good.^[324] Well, let him do as he likes, it’s quite the opposite with me. I am perhaps the only man in all of nature who loves the truth and sincerely desires good. I was there when the Word who died on the cross was ascending into heaven, carrying on his bosom the soul of the thief who was crucified to the right of him, I heard the joyful shrieks of the cherubim singing and shouting ‘Hosannah,’ and the thundering shout of rapture from the seraphim, which made heaven and all creation shake. And, I swear by all that’s holy, I wanted to join the chorus and shout ‘Hosannah’ with everyone else. It was right on my lips, it was already bursting from my breast ... you know, I’m very sensitive and artistically susceptible. But common sense—oh, it’s the most unfortunate quality of my nature—kept me within due bounds even then, and I missed the moment! For what—I thought at that same moment—what will happen after my ‘Hosannah? Everything in the world will immediately be extinguished and no events will occur. And so, solely because of my official duty and my social position, I was forced to quash the good moment in myself and stay with my nasty tricks. Someone takes all the honor of the good for himself and only leaves me the nasty tricks. But I don’t covet the honor of living as a moocher, I’m not ambitious. Why, of all beings in the world, am I alone condemned to be cursed by all decent people, and even to be kicked with boots, for, when I become incarnate, I must occasionally take such consequences as well? There’s a secret here, I know, but they won’t reveal this secret to me for anything, because then, having learned what it’s all about, I might just roar ‘Hosannah,’ and the necessary minus would immediately disappear and sensibleness would set in all over the world, and with it, of course, the end of everything, even of newspapers and journals, because who would subscribe to them? I know that I will finally be reconciled, that I, too, will finish my quadrillion and be let in on the secret. But until that happens I sulk and grudgingly fulfill my purpose: to destroy thousands so that one may be saved. For instance, how many souls had to be destroyed, and honest reputations put to shame, in order to get just one righteous Job, with whom they baited me so wickedly in olden times! No, until the secret is revealed, two truths exist for me: one is theirs, from there, and so far completely unknown to me; the other is mine. And who knows which is preferable ... Are you asleep?”

“What else?” Ivan groaned spitefully. “Everything in my nature that is stupid, long outlived, mulled over in my mind, flung away like carrion—you are now offering to me as some kind of news!”

“Displeased again! And I hoped you might even be charmed by such a literary rendition: that ‘Hosannah’ in heaven really didn’t come out too badly, did it? And then that sarcastic tone, à la Heine,^[325] eh? Don’t you agree?”

“No, never have I been such a lackey! How could my soul produce such a lackey as you?”

“My friend, I know a most charming and dear young Russian gentleman: a thinker and a great lover of literature and other fine things, the author of a promising poem entitled ‘The Grand Inquisitor’... It was him only that I had in mind.”

“I forbid you to speak of ‘The Grand Inquisitor,’” Ivan exclaimed, blushing all over with shame.

“Well, and what about the ‘Geological Cataclysm’? Remember that? What a poem!”

“Shut up, or I’ll kill you!”