finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Brothers Karamazov/section_14_part_6.txt
The Brothers Karamazov.book 12.chapter 6
book 12, chapter 6
{"name": "book 12, Chapter 6", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section15/", "summary": "The Prosecutor's Speech. Characterizations When order is restored, the lawyers give their closing speeches. The prosecutor, Kirrillovich, runs down the facts of the case", "analysis": ""}
Chapter VI. The Prosecutor's Speech. Sketches Of Character


Ippolit Kirillovitch began his speech, trembling with nervousness, with
cold sweat on his forehead, feeling hot and cold all over by turns. He
described this himself afterwards. He regarded this speech as his _chef-
d'oeuvre_, the _chef-d'oeuvre_ of his whole life, as his swan-song. He died,
it is true, nine months later of rapid consumption, so that he had the
right, as it turned out, to compare himself to a swan singing his last
song. He had put his whole heart and all the brain he had into that
speech. And poor Ippolit Kirillovitch unexpectedly revealed that at least
some feeling for the public welfare and "the eternal question" lay
concealed in him. Where his speech really excelled was in its sincerity.
He genuinely believed in the prisoner's guilt; he was accusing him not as
an official duty only, and in calling for vengeance he quivered with a
genuine passion "for the security of society." Even the ladies in the
audience, though they remained hostile to Ippolit Kirillovitch, admitted
that he made an extraordinary impression on them. He began in a breaking
voice, but it soon gained strength and filled the court to the end of his
speech. But as soon as he had finished, he almost fainted.

"Gentlemen of the jury," began the prosecutor, "this case has made a stir
throughout Russia. But what is there to wonder at, what is there so
peculiarly horrifying in it for us? We are so accustomed to such crimes!
That's what's so horrible, that such dark deeds have ceased to horrify us.
What ought to horrify us is that we are so accustomed to it, and not this
or that isolated crime. What are the causes of our indifference, our
lukewarm attitude to such deeds, to such signs of the times, ominous of an
unenviable future? Is it our cynicism, is it the premature exhaustion of
intellect and imagination in a society that is sinking into decay, in
spite of its youth? Is it that our moral principles are shattered to their
foundations, or is it, perhaps, a complete lack of such principles among
us? I cannot answer such questions; nevertheless they are disturbing, and
every citizen not only must, but ought to be harassed by them. Our newborn
and still timid press has done good service to the public already, for
without it we should never have heard of the horrors of unbridled violence
and moral degradation which are continually made known by the press, not
merely to those who attend the new jury courts established in the present
reign, but to every one. And what do we read almost daily? Of things
beside which the present case grows pale, and seems almost commonplace.
But what is most important is that the majority of our national crimes of
violence bear witness to a widespread evil, now so general among us that
it is difficult to contend against it.

"One day we see a brilliant young officer of high society, at the very
outset of his career, in a cowardly underhand way, without a pang of
conscience, murdering an official who had once been his benefactor, and
the servant girl, to steal his own I.O.U. and what ready money he could
find on him; 'it will come in handy for my pleasures in the fashionable
world and for my career in the future.' After murdering them, he puts
pillows under the head of each of his victims; he goes away. Next, a young
hero 'decorated for bravery' kills the mother of his chief and benefactor,
like a highwayman, and to urge his companions to join him he asserts that
'she loves him like a son, and so will follow all his directions and take
no precautions.' Granted that he is a monster, yet I dare not say in these
days that he is unique. Another man will not commit the murder, but will
feel and think like him, and is as dishonorable in soul. In silence, alone
with his conscience, he asks himself perhaps, 'What is honor, and isn't
the condemnation of bloodshed a prejudice?'

"Perhaps people will cry out against me that I am morbid, hysterical, that
it is a monstrous slander, that I am exaggerating. Let them say so--and
heavens! I should be the first to rejoice if it were so! Oh, don't believe
me, think of me as morbid, but remember my words; if only a tenth, if only
a twentieth part of what I say is true--even so it's awful! Look how our
young people commit suicide, without asking themselves Hamlet's question
what there is beyond, without a sign of such a question, as though all
that relates to the soul and to what awaits us beyond the grave had long
been erased in their minds and buried under the sands. Look at our vice,
at our profligates. Fyodor Pavlovitch, the luckless victim in the present
case, was almost an innocent babe compared with many of them. And yet we
all knew him, 'he lived among us!'...

"Yes, one day perhaps the leading intellects of Russia and of Europe will
study the psychology of Russian crime, for the subject is worth it. But
this study will come later, at leisure, when all the tragic topsy-turvydom
of to-day is farther behind us, so that it's possible to examine it with
more insight and more impartiality than I can do. Now we are either
horrified or pretend to be horrified, though we really gloat over the
spectacle, and love strong and eccentric sensations which tickle our
cynical, pampered idleness. Or, like little children, we brush the
dreadful ghosts away and hide our heads in the pillow so as to return to
our sports and merriment as soon as they have vanished. But we must one
day begin life in sober earnest, we must look at ourselves as a society;
it's time we tried to grasp something of our social position, or at least
to make a beginning in that direction.

"A great writer(9) of the last epoch, comparing Russia to a swift troika
galloping to an unknown goal, exclaims, 'Oh, troika, birdlike troika, who
invented thee!' and adds, in proud ecstasy, that all the peoples of the
world stand aside respectfully to make way for the recklessly galloping
troika to pass. That may be, they may stand aside, respectfully or no, but
in my poor opinion the great writer ended his book in this way either in
an access of childish and naive optimism, or simply in fear of the
censorship of the day. For if the troika were drawn by his heroes,
Sobakevitch, Nozdryov, Tchitchikov, it could reach no rational goal,
whoever might be driving it. And those were the heroes of an older
generation, ours are worse specimens still...."

At this point Ippolit Kirillovitch's speech was interrupted by applause.
The liberal significance of this simile was appreciated. The applause was,
it's true, of brief duration, so that the President did not think it
necessary to caution the public, and only looked severely in the direction
of the offenders. But Ippolit Kirillovitch was encouraged; he had never
been applauded before! He had been all his life unable to get a hearing,
and now he suddenly had an opportunity of securing the ear of all Russia.

"What, after all, is this Karamazov family, which has gained such an
unenviable notoriety throughout Russia?" he continued. "Perhaps I am
exaggerating, but it seems to me that certain fundamental features of the
educated class of to-day are reflected in this family picture--only, of
course, in miniature, 'like the sun in a drop of water.' Think of that
unhappy, vicious, unbridled old man, who has met with such a melancholy
end, the head of a family! Beginning life of noble birth, but in a poor
dependent position, through an unexpected marriage he came into a small
fortune. A petty knave, a toady and buffoon, of fairly good, though
undeveloped, intelligence, he was, above all, a moneylender, who grew
bolder with growing prosperity. His abject and servile characteristics
disappeared, his malicious and sarcastic cynicism was all that remained.
On the spiritual side he was undeveloped, while his vitality was
excessive. He saw nothing in life but sensual pleasure, and he brought his
children up to be the same. He had no feelings for his duties as a father.
He ridiculed those duties. He left his little children to the servants,
and was glad to be rid of them, forgot about them completely. The old
man's maxim was _Apres moi le deluge_. He was an example of everything
that is opposed to civic duty, of the most complete and malignant
individualism. 'The world may burn for aught I care, so long as I am all
right,' and he was all right; he was content, he was eager to go on living
in the same way for another twenty or thirty years. He swindled his own
son and spent his money, his maternal inheritance, on trying to get his
mistress from him. No, I don't intend to leave the prisoner's defense
altogether to my talented colleague from Petersburg. I will speak the
truth myself, I can well understand what resentment he had heaped up in
his son's heart against him.

"But enough, enough of that unhappy old man; he has paid the penalty. Let
us remember, however, that he was a father, and one of the typical fathers
of to-day. Am I unjust, indeed, in saying that he is typical of many
modern fathers? Alas! many of them only differ in not openly professing
such cynicism, for they are better educated, more cultured, but their
philosophy is essentially the same as his. Perhaps I am a pessimist, but
you have agreed to forgive me. Let us agree beforehand, you need not
believe me, but let me speak. Let me say what I have to say, and remember
something of my words.

"Now for the children of this father, this head of a family. One of them
is the prisoner before us, all the rest of my speech will deal with him.
Of the other two I will speak only cursorily.

"The elder is one of those modern young men of brilliant education and
vigorous intellect, who has lost all faith in everything. He has denied
and rejected much already, like his father. We have all heard him, he was
a welcome guest in local society. He never concealed his opinions, quite
the contrary in fact, which justifies me in speaking rather openly of him
now, of course, not as an individual, but as a member of the Karamazov
family. Another personage closely connected with the case died here by his
own hand last night. I mean an afflicted idiot, formerly the servant, and
possibly the illegitimate son, of Fyodor Pavlovitch, Smerdyakov. At the
preliminary inquiry, he told me with hysterical tears how the young Ivan
Karamazov had horrified him by his spiritual audacity. 'Everything in the
world is lawful according to him, and nothing must be forbidden in the
future--that is what he always taught me.' I believe that idiot was driven
out of his mind by this theory, though, of course, the epileptic attacks
from which he suffered, and this terrible catastrophe, have helped to
unhinge his faculties. But he dropped one very interesting observation,
which would have done credit to a more intelligent observer, and that is,
indeed, why I've mentioned it: 'If there is one of the sons that is like
Fyodor Pavlovitch in character, it is Ivan Fyodorovitch.'

"With that remark I conclude my sketch of his character, feeling it
indelicate to continue further. Oh, I don't want to draw any further
conclusions and croak like a raven over the young man's future. We've seen
to-day in this court that there are still good impulses in his young
heart, that family feeling has not been destroyed in him by lack of faith
and cynicism, which have come to him rather by inheritance than by the
exercise of independent thought.

"Then the third son. Oh, he is a devout and modest youth, who does not
share his elder brother's gloomy and destructive theory of life. He has
sought to cling to the 'ideas of the people,' or to what goes by that name
in some circles of our intellectual classes. He clung to the monastery,
and was within an ace of becoming a monk. He seems to me to have betrayed
unconsciously, and so early, that timid despair which leads so many in our
unhappy society, who dread cynicism and its corrupting influences, and
mistakenly attribute all the mischief to European enlightenment, to return
to their 'native soil,' as they say, to the bosom, so to speak, of their
mother earth, like frightened children, yearning to fall asleep on the
withered bosom of their decrepit mother, and to sleep there for ever, only
to escape the horrors that terrify them.

"For my part I wish the excellent and gifted young man every success; I
trust that his youthful idealism and impulse towards the ideas of the
people may never degenerate, as often happens, on the moral side into
gloomy mysticism, and on the political into blind chauvinism--two elements
which are even a greater menace to Russia than the premature decay, due to
misunderstanding and gratuitous adoption of European ideas, from which his
elder brother is suffering."

Two or three people clapped their hands at the mention of chauvinism and
mysticism. Ippolit Kirillovitch had been, indeed, carried away by his own
eloquence. All this had little to do with the case in hand, to say nothing
of the fact of its being somewhat vague, but the sickly and consumptive
man was overcome by the desire to express himself once in his life. People
said afterwards that he was actuated by unworthy motives in his criticism
of Ivan, because the latter had on one or two occasions got the better of
him in argument, and Ippolit Kirillovitch, remembering it, tried now to
take his revenge. But I don't know whether it was true. All this was only
introductory, however, and the speech passed to more direct consideration
of the case.

"But to return to the eldest son," Ippolit Kirillovitch went on. "He is
the prisoner before us. We have his life and his actions, too, before us;
the fatal day has come and all has been brought to the surface. While his
brothers seem to stand for 'Europeanism' and 'the principles of the
people,' he seems to represent Russia as she is. Oh, not all Russia, not
all! God preserve us, if it were! Yet, here we have her, our mother
Russia, the very scent and sound of her. Oh, he is spontaneous, he is a
marvelous mingling of good and evil, he is a lover of culture and
Schiller, yet he brawls in taverns and plucks out the beards of his boon
companions. Oh, he, too, can be good and noble, but only when all goes
well with him. What is more, he can be carried off his feet, positively
carried off his feet by noble ideals, but only if they come of themselves,
if they fall from heaven for him, if they need not be paid for. He
dislikes paying for anything, but is very fond of receiving, and that's so
with him in everything. Oh, give him every possible good in life (he
couldn't be content with less), and put no obstacle in his way, and he
will show that he, too, can be noble. He is not greedy, no, but he must
have money, a great deal of money, and you will see how generously, with
what scorn of filthy lucre, he will fling it all away in the reckless
dissipation of one night. But if he has not money, he will show what he is
ready to do to get it when he is in great need of it. But all this later,
let us take events in their chronological order.

"First, we have before us a poor abandoned child, running about the back-
yard 'without boots on his feet,' as our worthy and esteemed fellow
citizen, of foreign origin, alas! expressed it just now. I repeat it
again, I yield to no one the defense of the criminal. I am here to accuse
him, but to defend him also. Yes, I, too, am human; I, too, can weigh the
influence of home and childhood on the character. But the boy grows up and
becomes an officer; for a duel and other reckless conduct he is exiled to
one of the remote frontier towns of Russia. There he led a wild life as an
officer. And, of course, he needed money, money before all things, and so
after prolonged disputes he came to a settlement with his father, and the
last six thousand was sent him. A letter is in existence in which he
practically gives up his claim to the rest and settles his conflict with
his father over the inheritance on the payment of this six thousand.

"Then came his meeting with a young girl of lofty character and brilliant
education. Oh, I do not venture to repeat the details; you have only just
heard them. Honor, self-sacrifice were shown there, and I will be silent.
The figure of the young officer, frivolous and profligate, doing homage to
true nobility and a lofty ideal, was shown in a very sympathetic light
before us. But the other side of the medal was unexpectedly turned to us
immediately after in this very court. Again I will not venture to
conjecture why it happened so, but there were causes. The same lady,
bathed in tears of long-concealed indignation, alleged that he, he of all
men, had despised her for her action, which, though incautious, reckless
perhaps, was still dictated by lofty and generous motives. He, he, the
girl's betrothed, looked at her with that smile of mockery, which was more
insufferable from him than from any one. And knowing that he had already
deceived her (he had deceived her, believing that she was bound to endure
everything from him, even treachery), she intentionally offered him three
thousand roubles, and clearly, too clearly, let him understand that she
was offering him money to deceive her. 'Well, will you take it or not, are
you so lost to shame?' was the dumb question in her scrutinizing eyes. He
looked at her, saw clearly what was in her mind (he's admitted here before
you that he understood it all), appropriated that three thousand
unconditionally, and squandered it in two days with the new object of his
affections.

"What are we to believe then? The first legend of the young officer
sacrificing his last farthing in a noble impulse of generosity and doing
reverence to virtue, or this other revolting picture? As a rule, between
two extremes one has to find the mean, but in the present case this is not
true. The probability is that in the first case he was genuinely noble,
and in the second as genuinely base. And why? Because he was of the broad
Karamazov character--that's just what I am leading up to--capable of
combining the most incongruous contradictions, and capable of the greatest
heights and of the greatest depths. Remember the brilliant remark made by
a young observer who has seen the Karamazov family at close quarters--Mr.
Rakitin: 'The sense of their own degradation is as essential to those
reckless, unbridled natures as the sense of their lofty generosity.' And
that's true, they need continually this unnatural mixture. Two extremes at
the same moment, or they are miserable and dissatisfied and their
existence is incomplete. They are wide, wide as mother Russia; they
include everything and put up with everything.

"By the way, gentlemen of the jury, we've just touched upon that three
thousand roubles, and I will venture to anticipate things a little. Can
you conceive that a man like that, on receiving that sum and in such a
way, at the price of such shame, such disgrace, such utter degradation,
could have been capable that very day of setting apart half that sum, that
very day, and sewing it up in a little bag, and would have had the
firmness of character to carry it about with him for a whole month
afterwards, in spite of every temptation and his extreme need of it!
Neither in drunken debauchery in taverns, nor when he was flying into the
country, trying to get from God knows whom, the money so essential to him
to remove the object of his affections from being tempted by his father,
did he bring himself to touch that little bag! Why, if only to avoid
abandoning his mistress to the rival of whom he was so jealous, he would
have been certain to have opened that bag and to have stayed at home to
keep watch over her, and to await the moment when she would say to him at
last 'I am yours,' and to fly with her far from their fatal surroundings.

"But no, he did not touch his talisman, and what is the reason he gives
for it? The chief reason, as I have just said, was that when she would
say, 'I am yours, take me where you will,' he might have the wherewithal
to take her. But that first reason, in the prisoner's own words, was of
little weight beside the second. While I have that money on me, he said, I
am a scoundrel, not a thief, for I can always go to my insulted betrothed,
and, laying down half the sum I have fraudulently appropriated, I can
always say to her, 'You see, I've squandered half your money, and shown I
am a weak and immoral man, and, if you like, a scoundrel' (I use the
prisoner's own expressions), 'but though I am a scoundrel, I am not a
thief, for if I had been a thief, I shouldn't have brought you back this
half of the money, but should have taken it as I did the other half!' A
marvelous explanation! This frantic, but weak man, who could not resist
the temptation of accepting the three thousand roubles at the price of
such disgrace, this very man suddenly develops the most stoical firmness,
and carries about a thousand roubles without daring to touch it. Does that
fit in at all with the character we have analyzed? No, and I venture to
tell you how the real Dmitri Karamazov would have behaved in such
circumstances, if he really had brought himself to put away the money.

"At the first temptation--for instance, to entertain the woman with whom he
had already squandered half the money--he would have unpicked his little
bag and have taken out some hundred roubles, for why should he have taken
back precisely half the money, that is, fifteen hundred roubles? why not
fourteen hundred? He could just as well have said then that he was not a
thief, because he brought back fourteen hundred roubles. Then another time
he would have unpicked it again and taken out another hundred, and then a
third, and then a fourth, and before the end of the month he would have
taken the last note but one, feeling that if he took back only a hundred
it would answer the purpose, for a thief would have stolen it all. And
then he would have looked at this last note, and have said to himself,
'It's really not worth while to give back one hundred; let's spend that,
too!' That's how the real Dmitri Karamazov, as we know him, would have
behaved. One cannot imagine anything more incongruous with the actual fact
than this legend of the little bag. Nothing could be more inconceivable.
But we shall return to that later."

After touching upon what had come out in the proceedings concerning the
financial relations of father and son, and arguing again and again that it
was utterly impossible, from the facts known, to determine which was in
the wrong, Ippolit Kirillovitch passed to the evidence of the medical
experts in reference to Mitya's fixed idea about the three thousand owing
him.





book 12, Chapter 6
The Prosecutor's Speech. Characterizations When order is restored, the lawyers give their closing speeches. The prosecutor, Kirrillovich, runs down the facts of the case