finished_summaries/shmoop/The Brothers Karamazov/section_33_part_0.txt
The Brothers Karamazov.book 5.chapter 3
book 5, chapter 3
{"name": "Book 5, Chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-5-chapter-3", "summary": "Ivan tells Alyosha that it's about time they got acquainted, since they haven't really gotten to know each other since Ivan left for school when he was 15 and Alyosha 11. Thinking about his dramatic scene with Katerina, Ivan tells Alyosha that he still thirsts for life, which he believes is a very Karamazov quality. Alyosha agrees and professes that we should all love life, even more than meaning. Ivan asks Alyosha whether he's seen Dmitri today. Alyosha says no, but he did see Smerdyakov. Ivan is intensely interested in what Smerdyakov had to say. Alyosha asks Ivan what will happen between Dmitri and their father, and Ivan fends off the question, asking Alyosha if he's Dmitri's \"keeper\" . Despite everything, Ivan seems to be in a celebratory mood and is positively happy about being free of Katerina. In fact, he wonders if he ever loved her in the first place. He then claims that it's important for Alyosha to understand exactly what kind of man he is, and goes off on a long monologue about how he believes in God but rejects the world that God created.", "analysis": ""}
Chapter III. The Brothers Make Friends


Ivan was not, however, in a separate room, but only in a place shut off by
a screen, so that it was unseen by other people in the room. It was the
first room from the entrance with a buffet along the wall. Waiters were
continually darting to and fro in it. The only customer in the room was an
old retired military man drinking tea in a corner. But there was the usual
bustle going on in the other rooms of the tavern; there were shouts for
the waiters, the sound of popping corks, the click of billiard balls, the
drone of the organ. Alyosha knew that Ivan did not usually visit this
tavern and disliked taverns in general. So he must have come here, he
reflected, simply to meet Dmitri by arrangement. Yet Dmitri was not there.

"Shall I order you fish, soup or anything. You don't live on tea alone, I
suppose," cried Ivan, apparently delighted at having got hold of Alyosha.
He had finished dinner and was drinking tea.

"Let me have soup, and tea afterwards, I am hungry," said Alyosha gayly.

"And cherry jam? They have it here. You remember how you used to love
cherry jam when you were little?"

"You remember that? Let me have jam too, I like it still."

Ivan rang for the waiter and ordered soup, jam and tea.

"I remember everything, Alyosha, I remember you till you were eleven, I
was nearly fifteen. There's such a difference between fifteen and eleven
that brothers are never companions at those ages. I don't know whether I
was fond of you even. When I went away to Moscow for the first few years I
never thought of you at all. Then, when you came to Moscow yourself, we
only met once somewhere, I believe. And now I've been here more than three
months, and so far we have scarcely said a word to each other. To-morrow I
am going away, and I was just thinking as I sat here how I could see you
to say good-by and just then you passed."

"Were you very anxious to see me, then?"

"Very. I want to get to know you once for all, and I want you to know me.
And then to say good-by. I believe it's always best to get to know people
just before leaving them. I've noticed how you've been looking at me these
three months. There has been a continual look of expectation in your eyes,
and I can't endure that. That's how it is I've kept away from you. But in
the end I have learned to respect you. The little man stands firm, I
thought. Though I am laughing, I am serious. You do stand firm, don't you?
I like people who are firm like that whatever it is they stand by, even if
they are such little fellows as you. Your expectant eyes ceased to annoy
me, I grew fond of them in the end, those expectant eyes. You seem to love
me for some reason, Alyosha?"

"I do love you, Ivan. Dmitri says of you--Ivan is a tomb! I say of you,
Ivan is a riddle. You are a riddle to me even now. But I understand
something in you, and I did not understand it till this morning."

"What's that?" laughed Ivan.

"You won't be angry?" Alyosha laughed too.

"Well?"

"That you are just as young as other young men of three and twenty, that
you are just a young and fresh and nice boy, green in fact! Now, have I
insulted you dreadfully?"

"On the contrary, I am struck by a coincidence," cried Ivan, warmly and
good-humoredly. "Would you believe it that ever since that scene with her,
I have thought of nothing else but my youthful greenness, and just as
though you guessed that, you begin about it. Do you know I've been sitting
here thinking to myself: that if I didn't believe in life, if I lost faith
in the woman I love, lost faith in the order of things, were convinced in
fact that everything is a disorderly, damnable, and perhaps devil-ridden
chaos, if I were struck by every horror of man's disillusionment--still I
should want to live and, having once tasted of the cup, I would not turn
away from it till I had drained it! At thirty, though, I shall be sure to
leave the cup, even if I've not emptied it, and turn away--where I don't
know. But till I am thirty, I know that my youth will triumph over
everything--every disillusionment, every disgust with life. I've asked
myself many times whether there is in the world any despair that would
overcome this frantic and perhaps unseemly thirst for life in me, and I've
come to the conclusion that there isn't, that is till I am thirty, and
then I shall lose it of myself, I fancy. Some driveling consumptive
moralists--and poets especially--often call that thirst for life base. It's
a feature of the Karamazovs, it's true, that thirst for life regardless of
everything; you have it no doubt too, but why is it base? The centripetal
force on our planet is still fearfully strong, Alyosha. I have a longing
for life, and I go on living in spite of logic. Though I may not believe
in the order of the universe, yet I love the sticky little leaves as they
open in spring. I love the blue sky, I love some people, whom one loves
you know sometimes without knowing why. I love some great deeds done by
men, though I've long ceased perhaps to have faith in them, yet from old
habit one's heart prizes them. Here they have brought the soup for you,
eat it, it will do you good. It's first-rate soup, they know how to make
it here. I want to travel in Europe, Alyosha, I shall set off from here.
And yet I know that I am only going to a graveyard, but it's a most
precious graveyard, that's what it is! Precious are the dead that lie
there, every stone over them speaks of such burning life in the past, of
such passionate faith in their work, their truth, their struggle and their
science, that I know I shall fall on the ground and kiss those stones and
weep over them; though I'm convinced in my heart that it's long been
nothing but a graveyard. And I shall not weep from despair, but simply
because I shall be happy in my tears, I shall steep my soul in my emotion.
I love the sticky leaves in spring, the blue sky--that's all it is. It's
not a matter of intellect or logic, it's loving with one's inside, with
one's stomach. One loves the first strength of one's youth. Do you
understand anything of my tirade, Alyosha?" Ivan laughed suddenly.

"I understand too well, Ivan. One longs to love with one's inside, with
one's stomach. You said that so well and I am awfully glad that you have
such a longing for life," cried Alyosha. "I think every one should love
life above everything in the world."

"Love life more than the meaning of it?"

"Certainly, love it, regardless of logic as you say, it must be regardless
of logic, and it's only then one will understand the meaning of it. I have
thought so a long time. Half your work is done, Ivan, you love life, now
you've only to try to do the second half and you are saved."

"You are trying to save me, but perhaps I am not lost! And what does your
second half mean?"

"Why, one has to raise up your dead, who perhaps have not died after all.
Come, let me have tea. I am so glad of our talk, Ivan."

"I see you are feeling inspired. I am awfully fond of such _professions de
foi_ from such--novices. You are a steadfast person, Alexey. Is it true
that you mean to leave the monastery?"

"Yes, my elder sends me out into the world."

"We shall see each other then in the world. We shall meet before I am
thirty, when I shall begin to turn aside from the cup. Father doesn't want
to turn aside from his cup till he is seventy, he dreams of hanging on to
eighty in fact, so he says. He means it only too seriously, though he is a
buffoon. He stands on a firm rock, too, he stands on his sensuality--though
after we are thirty, indeed, there may be nothing else to stand on.... But
to hang on to seventy is nasty, better only to thirty; one might retain 'a
shadow of nobility' by deceiving oneself. Have you seen Dmitri to-day?"

"No, but I saw Smerdyakov," and Alyosha rapidly, though minutely,
described his meeting with Smerdyakov. Ivan began listening anxiously and
questioned him.

"But he begged me not to tell Dmitri that he had told me about him," added
Alyosha. Ivan frowned and pondered.

"Are you frowning on Smerdyakov's account?" asked Alyosha.

"Yes, on his account. Damn him, I certainly did want to see Dmitri, but
now there's no need," said Ivan reluctantly.

"But are you really going so soon, brother?"

"Yes."

"What of Dmitri and father? how will it end?" asked Alyosha anxiously.

"You are always harping upon it! What have I to do with it? Am I my
brother Dmitri's keeper?" Ivan snapped irritably, but then he suddenly
smiled bitterly. "Cain's answer about his murdered brother, wasn't it?
Perhaps that's what you're thinking at this moment? Well, damn it all, I
can't stay here to be their keeper, can I? I've finished what I had to do,
and I am going. Do you imagine I am jealous of Dmitri, that I've been
trying to steal his beautiful Katerina Ivanovna for the last three months?
Nonsense, I had business of my own. I finished it. I am going. I finished
it just now, you were witness."

"At Katerina Ivanovna's?"

"Yes, and I've released myself once for all. And after all, what have I to
do with Dmitri? Dmitri doesn't come in. I had my own business to settle
with Katerina Ivanovna. You know, on the contrary, that Dmitri behaved as
though there was an understanding between us. I didn't ask him to do it,
but he solemnly handed her over to me and gave us his blessing. It's all
too funny. Ah, Alyosha, if you only knew how light my heart is now! Would
you believe, it, I sat here eating my dinner and was nearly ordering
champagne to celebrate my first hour of freedom. Tfoo! It's been going on
nearly six months, and all at once I've thrown it off. I could never have
guessed even yesterday, how easy it would be to put an end to it if I
wanted."

"You are speaking of your love, Ivan?"

"Of my love, if you like. I fell in love with the young lady, I worried
myself over her and she worried me. I sat watching over her ... and all at
once it's collapsed! I spoke this morning with inspiration, but I went
away and roared with laughter. Would you believe it? Yes, it's the literal
truth."

"You seem very merry about it now," observed Alyosha, looking into his
face, which had suddenly grown brighter.

"But how could I tell that I didn't care for her a bit! Ha ha! It appears
after all I didn't. And yet how she attracted me! How attractive she was
just now when I made my speech! And do you know she attracts me awfully
even now, yet how easy it is to leave her. Do you think I am boasting?"

"No, only perhaps it wasn't love."

"Alyosha," laughed Ivan, "don't make reflections about love, it's unseemly
for you. How you rushed into the discussion this morning! I've forgotten
to kiss you for it.... But how she tormented me! It certainly was sitting
by a 'laceration.' Ah, she knew how I loved her! She loved me and not
Dmitri," Ivan insisted gayly. "Her feeling for Dmitri was simply a self-
laceration. All I told her just now was perfectly true, but the worst of
it is, it may take her fifteen or twenty years to find out that she
doesn't care for Dmitri, and loves me whom she torments, and perhaps she
may never find it out at all, in spite of her lesson to-day. Well, it's
better so; I can simply go away for good. By the way, how is she now? What
happened after I departed?"

Alyosha told him she had been hysterical, and that she was now, he heard,
unconscious and delirious.

"Isn't Madame Hohlakov laying it on?"

"I think not."

"I must find out. Nobody dies of hysterics, though. They don't matter. God
gave woman hysterics as a relief. I won't go to her at all. Why push
myself forward again?"

"But you told her that she had never cared for you."

"I did that on purpose. Alyosha, shall I call for some champagne? Let us
drink to my freedom. Ah, if only you knew how glad I am!"

"No, brother, we had better not drink," said Alyosha suddenly. "Besides I
feel somehow depressed."

"Yes, you've been depressed a long time, I've noticed it."

"Have you settled to go to-morrow morning, then?"

"Morning? I didn't say I should go in the morning.... But perhaps it may
be the morning. Would you believe it, I dined here to-day only to avoid
dining with the old man, I loathe him so. I should have left long ago, so
far as he is concerned. But why are you so worried about my going away?
We've plenty of time before I go, an eternity!"

"If you are going away to-morrow, what do you mean by an eternity?"

"But what does it matter to us?" laughed Ivan. "We've time enough for our
talk, for what brought us here. Why do you look so surprised? Answer: why
have we met here? To talk of my love for Katerina Ivanovna, of the old man
and Dmitri? of foreign travel? of the fatal position of Russia? Of the
Emperor Napoleon? Is that it?"

"No."

"Then you know what for. It's different for other people; but we in our
green youth have to settle the eternal questions first of all. That's what
we care about. Young Russia is talking about nothing but the eternal
questions now. Just when the old folks are all taken up with practical
questions. Why have you been looking at me in expectation for the last
three months? To ask me, 'What do you believe, or don't you believe at
all?' That's what your eyes have been meaning for these three months,
haven't they?"

"Perhaps so," smiled Alyosha. "You are not laughing at me, now, Ivan?"

"Me laughing! I don't want to wound my little brother who has been
watching me with such expectation for three months. Alyosha, look straight
at me! Of course I am just such a little boy as you are, only not a
novice. And what have Russian boys been doing up till now, some of them, I
mean? In this stinking tavern, for instance, here, they meet and sit down
in a corner. They've never met in their lives before and, when they go out
of the tavern, they won't meet again for forty years. And what do they
talk about in that momentary halt in the tavern? Of the eternal questions,
of the existence of God and immortality. And those who do not believe in
God talk of socialism or anarchism, of the transformation of all humanity
on a new pattern, so that it all comes to the same, they're the same
questions turned inside out. And masses, masses of the most original
Russian boys do nothing but talk of the eternal questions! Isn't it so?"

"Yes, for real Russians the questions of God's existence and of
immortality, or, as you say, the same questions turned inside out, come
first and foremost, of course, and so they should," said Alyosha, still
watching his brother with the same gentle and inquiring smile.

"Well, Alyosha, it's sometimes very unwise to be a Russian at all, but
anything stupider than the way Russian boys spend their time one can
hardly imagine. But there's one Russian boy called Alyosha I am awfully
fond of."

"How nicely you put that in!" Alyosha laughed suddenly.

"Well, tell me where to begin, give your orders. The existence of God,
eh?"

"Begin where you like. You declared yesterday at father's that there was
no God." Alyosha looked searchingly at his brother.

"I said that yesterday at dinner on purpose to tease you and I saw your
eyes glow. But now I've no objection to discussing with you, and I say so
very seriously. I want to be friends with you, Alyosha, for I have no
friends and want to try it. Well, only fancy, perhaps I too accept God,"
laughed Ivan; "that's a surprise for you, isn't it?"

"Yes, of course, if you are not joking now."

"Joking? I was told at the elder's yesterday that I was joking. You know,
dear boy, there was an old sinner in the eighteenth century who declared
that, if there were no God, he would have to be invented. _S'il n'existait
pas Dieu, il faudrait l'inventer._ And man has actually invented God. And
what's strange, what would be marvelous, is not that God should really
exist; the marvel is that such an idea, the idea of the necessity of God,
could enter the head of such a savage, vicious beast as man. So holy it
is, so touching, so wise and so great a credit it does to man. As for me,
I've long resolved not to think whether man created God or God man. And I
won't go through all the axioms laid down by Russian boys on that subject,
all derived from European hypotheses; for what's a hypothesis there, is an
axiom with the Russian boy, and not only with the boys but with their
teachers too, for our Russian professors are often just the same boys
themselves. And so I omit all the hypotheses. For what are we aiming at
now? I am trying to explain as quickly as possible my essential nature,
that is what manner of man I am, what I believe in, and for what I hope,
that's it, isn't it? And therefore I tell you that I accept God simply.
But you must note this: if God exists and if He really did create the
world, then, as we all know, He created it according to the geometry of
Euclid and the human mind with the conception of only three dimensions in
space. Yet there have been and still are geometricians and philosophers,
and even some of the most distinguished, who doubt whether the whole
universe, or to speak more widely the whole of being, was only created in
Euclid's geometry; they even dare to dream that two parallel lines, which
according to Euclid can never meet on earth, may meet somewhere in
infinity. I have come to the conclusion that, since I can't understand
even that, I can't expect to understand about God. I acknowledge humbly
that I have no faculty for settling such questions, I have a Euclidian
earthly mind, and how could I solve problems that are not of this world?
And I advise you never to think about it either, my dear Alyosha,
especially about God, whether He exists or not. All such questions are
utterly inappropriate for a mind created with an idea of only three
dimensions. And so I accept God and am glad to, and what's more, I accept
His wisdom, His purpose--which are utterly beyond our ken; I believe in the
underlying order and the meaning of life; I believe in the eternal harmony
in which they say we shall one day be blended. I believe in the Word to
Which the universe is striving, and Which Itself was 'with God,' and Which
Itself is God and so on, and so on, to infinity. There are all sorts of
phrases for it. I seem to be on the right path, don't I? Yet would you
believe it, in the final result I don't accept this world of God's, and,
although I know it exists, I don't accept it at all. It's not that I don't
accept God, you must understand, it's the world created by Him I don't and
cannot accept. Let me make it plain. I believe like a child that suffering
will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of
human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the
despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidian mind
of man, that in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony,
something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all
hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all
the crimes of humanity, of all the blood they've shed; that it will make
it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened with
men--but though all that may come to pass, I don't accept it. I won't
accept it. Even if parallel lines do meet and I see it myself, I shall see
it and say that they've met, but still I won't accept it. That's what's at
the root of me, Alyosha; that's my creed. I am in earnest in what I say. I
began our talk as stupidly as I could on purpose, but I've led up to my
confession, for that's all you want. You didn't want to hear about God,
but only to know what the brother you love lives by. And so I've told
you."

Ivan concluded his long tirade with marked and unexpected feeling.

"And why did you begin 'as stupidly as you could'?" asked Alyosha, looking
dreamily at him.

"To begin with, for the sake of being Russian. Russian conversations on
such subjects are always carried on inconceivably stupidly. And secondly,
the stupider one is, the closer one is to reality. The stupider one is,
the clearer one is. Stupidity is brief and artless, while intelligence
wriggles and hides itself. Intelligence is a knave, but stupidity is
honest and straightforward. I've led the conversation to my despair, and
the more stupidly I have presented it, the better for me."

"You will explain why you don't accept the world?" said Alyosha.

"To be sure I will, it's not a secret, that's what I've been leading up
to. Dear little brother, I don't want to corrupt you or to turn you from
your stronghold, perhaps I want to be healed by you." Ivan smiled suddenly
quite like a little gentle child. Alyosha had never seen such a smile on
his face before.





Book 5, Chapter 3
Ivan tells Alyosha that it's about time they got acquainted, since they haven't really gotten to know each other since Ivan left for school when he was 15 and Alyosha 11. Thinking about his dramatic scene with Katerina, Ivan tells Alyosha that he still thirsts for life, which he believes is a very Karamazov quality. Alyosha agrees and professes that we should all love life, even more than meaning. Ivan asks Alyosha whether he's seen Dmitri today. Alyosha says no, but he did see Smerdyakov. Ivan is intensely interested in what Smerdyakov had to say. Alyosha asks Ivan what will happen between Dmitri and their father, and Ivan fends off the question, asking Alyosha if he's Dmitri's "keeper" . Despite everything, Ivan seems to be in a celebratory mood and is positively happy about being free of Katerina. In fact, he wonders if he ever loved her in the first place. He then claims that it's important for Alyosha to understand exactly what kind of man he is, and goes off on a long monologue about how he believes in God but rejects the world that God created.