finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Brothers Karamazov/section_9_part_4.txt
The Brothers Karamazov.book 7.chapter 4
book 7, chapter 4
{"name": "book 7, Chapter 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section10/", "summary": "Cana of Galilee Alyosha returns to the monastery and goes to Zosima's cell. There, listening to another monk reading from the Bible, he falls asleep and dreams that he is with Christ at the wedding in Cana. Zosima is also there, and he tells Alyosha to be happy. He says that Alyosha has helped to redeem Grushenka and that the young woman will now find her salvation. Alyosha wakes with a deep joy welling in his heart. He goes outside, falls to his knees, and begins to kiss the earth. He feels as though he has come to a deeper understanding of life, faith, and God.", "analysis": "Book VII: Alyosha, Chapters 1-4 The panic in the monastery over the stench exuded by Zosima's corpse is less bizarre than it may first appear. For modern readers, the idea of a corpse emitting a bad smell as it begins to decay is only natural. But in the lore of ancient monasteries, as in ancient medicine, odor was considered an extremely important and revealing quality. The Renaissance physician Paul Zacchias, whose 1557 work Quaestiones medico-legales was at the cutting edge of medical knowledge for its time, wrote that poison, infection, and disease were all transmittable through smell: \"We have a thousand and one examples of living beings that have been infected by olfaction alone. We see many people every day who fall into a serious or very serious state because of good or bad odors. The way something smelled, then, was deeply revealing of its inner quality. A bad smell could be proof that something was internally diseased or corrupted. The importance of smell explains why Zosima's enemies within the monastery go into such a frenzy when Zosima's corpse begins to stink. They take the stench itself as proof of an inner unworthiness on Zosima's part, so that the smell of his corpse threatens to invalidate the wisdom of his teaching. Additionally, the stench drives many of Zosima's followers into despair, especially those who consider him nearly a saint. In monastic legend, from the medieval era through at least the eighteenth century, the smell of a corpse is often connected to the saintliness of the soul that inhabited it so that a corpse that does not stink is a miraculous sign of the authenticity and goodness of the recently deceased person. The Jesuit historian Michel de Certeau wrote, \"In innumerable stories from the convents, you can tell whether the object seen in a vision is authentic by the smell it gives off, or whether a deceased religious is a saint by the good odor surrounding her. The Brothers Karamazov is set in an era far removed, in some respects, from the medieval superstitions that underlie these legends--Ivan, for instance, would certainly scoff at them. But within the monastery, in a cloister in a small town in a remote part of Russia, it seems that the legends are more enduring. The high hopes that most of Zosima's followers have for a miracle following his death are dashed by the smell of his corpse, which, because of the monks' superstitions about odor, implies not only that Zosima was not a saint, but that he may not even have been a good man. In the Grand Inquisitor chapter, we see how Christ rejects the Devil's temptation to throw himself off the pinnacle, seek salvation from the angels, and show the people below a miracle that would restore their faith. The Grand Inquisitor's insistence that Christ made a mistake in refusing to show the people a miracle is based on his emphatic belief that free will is not enough for most people to find salvation through faith: the monks illustrate this general principle that people need to witness miracles, because they are too weak to hold onto their faith without them. Everyone, even Alyosha, is optimistic about the possibility of a miracle after Zosima's death, and the speedy putrefaction of Zosima's corpse is an unpleasant reminder that, in the real world, there are no dazzling miracles, and faith is something that must be achieved without evidence. In these chapters, Dostoevsky creates a powerful and disturbing symbol of the problem of free will in religious belief. Without the security of miracles, people are left to their own devices, to choose either faith or doubt. The choice to doubt or disbelieve can be based on a model of rational evidence, but the choice to believe must be more mystical, based on a positive feeling of meaning and profundity that is often at odds with the world as we usually experience it. Zosima's corpse represents a worldly impediment to faith. The physical reality of the world stubbornly works against the claims of faith, giving believers no validation for their belief. Even Alyosha, whose veneration of Zosima continually strengthens and protects his own faith, is driven to doubt by the events surrounding Zosima's death. The anger that he feels toward God is similar to the cold, intellectual fury that underlies Ivan's entire project of doubt. Both men are angry about God's injustice: Alyosha because God permits the posthumous humiliation of his beloved Zosima, and Ivan because God permits the suffering of children. Rakitin and Grushenka first conspire to bring Alyosha to Grushenka's because they are threatened by his apparently unshakable purity. Their mistrust and self-doubt are manifest in Rakitin's smirking cynicism and Grushenka's angry pride. They want to upset, frighten, or corrupt Alyosha so that his own faith no longer threatens their shared belief that the world is corrupt, painful, and ugly. When the opposite happens, and Alyosha's troubled goodness elicits a chord of feeling and sympathy in Grushenka, the two young people each find unexpected salvation in their sudden understanding of one another. For Grushenka, finding a man who cares about her renews her faith in the world. Alyosha's experience with Grushenka, on the other hand, reminds him that the validation of faith lies not in miracles, but in good deeds. He believes that faith is not invalidated simply because a corpse develops a stench, but that it can be validated by active love of mankind. Alyosha's dream of Zosima demonstrates that Zosima's legacy has not died with his body, but lives on in Alyosha's good deeds, in the forgiveness and love that are the cornerstones of his faith. Alyosha's kissing of the earth after he wakes up is a turning point for him. A deliberate echo of Zosima's final act before dying, it signifies that Alyosha has stepped into Zosima's shoes and is now fully committed to leaving the monastery and doing good in the world"}
Chapter IV. Cana Of Galilee


It was very late, according to the monastery ideas, when Alyosha returned
to the hermitage; the door-keeper let him in by a special entrance. It had
struck nine o'clock--the hour of rest and repose after a day of such
agitation for all. Alyosha timidly opened the door and went into the
elder's cell where his coffin was now standing. There was no one in the
cell but Father Paissy, reading the Gospel in solitude over the coffin,
and the young novice Porfiry, who, exhausted by the previous night's
conversation and the disturbing incidents of the day, was sleeping the
deep sound sleep of youth on the floor of the other room. Though Father
Paissy heard Alyosha come in, he did not even look in his direction.
Alyosha turned to the right from the door to the corner, fell on his knees
and began to pray.

His soul was overflowing but with mingled feelings; no single sensation
stood out distinctly; on the contrary, one drove out another in a slow,
continual rotation. But there was a sweetness in his heart and, strange to
say, Alyosha was not surprised at it. Again he saw that coffin before him,
the hidden dead figure so precious to him, but the weeping and poignant
grief of the morning was no longer aching in his soul. As soon as he came
in, he fell down before the coffin as before a holy shrine, but joy, joy
was glowing in his mind and in his heart. The one window of the cell was
open, the air was fresh and cool. "So the smell must have become stronger,
if they opened the window," thought Alyosha. But even this thought of the
smell of corruption, which had seemed to him so awful and humiliating a
few hours before, no longer made him feel miserable or indignant. He began
quietly praying, but he soon felt that he was praying almost mechanically.
Fragments of thought floated through his soul, flashed like stars and went
out again at once, to be succeeded by others. But yet there was reigning
in his soul a sense of the wholeness of things--something steadfast and
comforting--and he was aware of it himself. Sometimes he began praying
ardently, he longed to pour out his thankfulness and love....

But when he had begun to pray, he passed suddenly to something else, and
sank into thought, forgetting both the prayer and what had interrupted it.
He began listening to what Father Paissy was reading, but worn out with
exhaustion he gradually began to doze.

"_And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee;_" read Father
Paissy. "_And the mother of Jesus was there; And both Jesus was called,
and his disciples, to the marriage._"

"Marriage? What's that?... A marriage!" floated whirling through Alyosha's
mind. "There is happiness for her, too.... She has gone to the feast....
No, she has not taken the knife.... That was only a tragic phrase.... Well
... tragic phrases should be forgiven, they must be. Tragic phrases
comfort the heart.... Without them, sorrow would be too heavy for men to
bear. Rakitin has gone off to the back alley. As long as Rakitin broods
over his wrongs, he will always go off to the back alley.... But the high
road ... The road is wide and straight and bright as crystal, and the sun
is at the end of it.... Ah!... What's being read?"...

"_And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have
no wine_" ... Alyosha heard.

"Ah, yes, I was missing that, and I didn't want to miss it, I love that
passage: it's Cana of Galilee, the first miracle.... Ah, that miracle! Ah,
that sweet miracle! It was not men's grief, but their joy Christ visited,
He worked His first miracle to help men's gladness.... 'He who loves men
loves their gladness, too' ... He was always repeating that, it was one of
his leading ideas.... 'There's no living without joy,' Mitya says.... Yes,
Mitya.... 'Everything that is true and good is always full of
forgiveness,' he used to say that, too" ...

"_Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what has it to do with thee or me? Mine
hour is not yet come._

"_His mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do
it_" ...

"Do it.... Gladness, the gladness of some poor, very poor, people.... Of
course they were poor, since they hadn't wine enough even at a wedding....
The historians write that, in those days, the people living about the Lake
of Gennesaret were the poorest that can possibly be imagined ... and
another great heart, that other great being, His Mother, knew that He had
come not only to make His great terrible sacrifice. She knew that His
heart was open even to the simple, artless merrymaking of some obscure and
unlearned people, who had warmly bidden Him to their poor wedding. 'Mine
hour is not yet come,' He said, with a soft smile (He must have smiled
gently to her). And, indeed, was it to make wine abundant at poor weddings
He had come down to earth? And yet He went and did as she asked Him....
Ah, he is reading again"....

"_Jesus saith unto them, Fill the waterpots with water. And they filled
them up to the brim._

"_And he saith unto them, Draw out now and bear unto the governor of the
feast. And they bare it._

"_When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and
knew not whence it was; (but the servants which drew the water knew;) the
governor of the feast called the bridegroom,_

"_And saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine;
and when men have well drunk, that which is worse; but thou hast kept the
good wine until now._"

"But what's this, what's this? Why is the room growing wider?... Ah, yes
... It's the marriage, the wedding ... yes, of course. Here are the
guests, here are the young couple sitting, and the merry crowd and ...
Where is the wise governor of the feast? But who is this? Who? Again the
walls are receding.... Who is getting up there from the great table?
What!... He here, too? But he's in the coffin ... but he's here, too. He
has stood up, he sees me, he is coming here.... God!"...

Yes, he came up to him, to him, he, the little, thin old man, with tiny
wrinkles on his face, joyful and laughing softly. There was no coffin now,
and he was in the same dress as he had worn yesterday sitting with them,
when the visitors had gathered about him. His face was uncovered, his eyes
were shining. How was this, then? He, too, had been called to the feast.
He, too, at the marriage of Cana in Galilee....

"Yes, my dear, I am called, too, called and bidden," he heard a soft voice
saying over him. "Why have you hidden yourself here, out of sight? You
come and join us too."

It was his voice, the voice of Father Zossima. And it must be he, since he
called him!

The elder raised Alyosha by the hand and he rose from his knees.

"We are rejoicing," the little, thin old man went on. "We are drinking the
new wine, the wine of new, great gladness; do you see how many guests?
Here are the bride and bridegroom, here is the wise governor of the feast,
he is tasting the new wine. Why do you wonder at me? I gave an onion to a
beggar, so I, too, am here. And many here have given only an onion
each--only one little onion.... What are all our deeds? And you, my gentle
one, you, my kind boy, you too have known how to give a famished woman an
onion to-day. Begin your work, dear one, begin it, gentle one!... Do you
see our Sun, do you see Him?"

"I am afraid ... I dare not look," whispered Alyosha.

"Do not fear Him. He is terrible in His greatness, awful in His sublimity,
but infinitely merciful. He has made Himself like unto us from love and
rejoices with us. He is changing the water into wine that the gladness of
the guests may not be cut short. He is expecting new guests, He is calling
new ones unceasingly for ever and ever.... There they are bringing new
wine. Do you see they are bringing the vessels...."

Something glowed in Alyosha's heart, something filled it till it ached,
tears of rapture rose from his soul.... He stretched out his hands,
uttered a cry and waked up.

Again the coffin, the open window, and the soft, solemn, distinct reading
of the Gospel. But Alyosha did not listen to the reading. It was strange,
he had fallen asleep on his knees, but now he was on his feet, and
suddenly, as though thrown forward, with three firm rapid steps he went
right up to the coffin. His shoulder brushed against Father Paissy without
his noticing it. Father Paissy raised his eyes for an instant from his
book, but looked away again at once, seeing that something strange was
happening to the boy. Alyosha gazed for half a minute at the coffin, at
the covered, motionless dead man that lay in the coffin, with the ikon on
his breast and the peaked cap with the octangular cross, on his head. He
had only just been hearing his voice, and that voice was still ringing in
his ears. He was listening, still expecting other words, but suddenly he
turned sharply and went out of the cell.

He did not stop on the steps either, but went quickly down; his soul,
overflowing with rapture, yearned for freedom, space, openness. The vault
of heaven, full of soft, shining stars, stretched vast and fathomless
above him. The Milky Way ran in two pale streams from the zenith to the
horizon. The fresh, motionless, still night enfolded the earth. The white
towers and golden domes of the cathedral gleamed out against the sapphire
sky. The gorgeous autumn flowers, in the beds round the house, were
slumbering till morning. The silence of earth seemed to melt into the
silence of the heavens. The mystery of earth was one with the mystery of
the stars....

Alyosha stood, gazed, and suddenly threw himself down on the earth. He did
not know why he embraced it. He could not have told why he longed so
irresistibly to kiss it, to kiss it all. But he kissed it weeping, sobbing
and watering it with his tears, and vowed passionately to love it, to love
it for ever and ever. "Water the earth with the tears of your joy and love
those tears," echoed in his soul.

What was he weeping over?

Oh! in his rapture he was weeping even over those stars, which were
shining to him from the abyss of space, and "he was not ashamed of that
ecstasy." There seemed to be threads from all those innumerable worlds of
God, linking his soul to them, and it was trembling all over "in contact
with other worlds." He longed to forgive every one and for everything, and
to beg forgiveness. Oh, not for himself, but for all men, for all and for
everything. "And others are praying for me too," echoed again in his soul.
But with every instant he felt clearly and, as it were, tangibly, that
something firm and unshakable as that vault of heaven had entered into his
soul. It was as though some idea had seized the sovereignty of his
mind--and it was for all his life and for ever and ever. He had fallen on
the earth a weak boy, but he rose up a resolute champion, and he knew and
felt it suddenly at the very moment of his ecstasy. And never, never, all
his life long, could Alyosha forget that minute.

"Some one visited my soul in that hour," he used to say afterwards, with
implicit faith in his words.

Within three days he left the monastery in accordance with the words of
his elder, who had bidden him "sojourn in the world."






book 7, Chapter 4
Cana of Galilee Alyosha returns to the monastery and goes to Zosima's cell. There, listening to another monk reading from the Bible, he falls asleep and dreams that he is with Christ at the wedding in Cana. Zosima is also there, and he tells Alyosha to be happy. He says that Alyosha has helped to redeem Grushenka and that the young woman will now find her salvation. Alyosha wakes with a deep joy welling in his heart. He goes outside, falls to his knees, and begins to kiss the earth. He feels as though he has come to a deeper understanding of life, faith, and God.
Book VII: Alyosha, Chapters 1-4 The panic in the monastery over the stench exuded by Zosima's corpse is less bizarre than it may first appear. For modern readers, the idea of a corpse emitting a bad smell as it begins to decay is only natural. But in the lore of ancient monasteries, as in ancient medicine, odor was considered an extremely important and revealing quality. The Renaissance physician Paul Zacchias, whose 1557 work Quaestiones medico-legales was at the cutting edge of medical knowledge for its time, wrote that poison, infection, and disease were all transmittable through smell: "We have a thousand and one examples of living beings that have been infected by olfaction alone. We see many people every day who fall into a serious or very serious state because of good or bad odors. The way something smelled, then, was deeply revealing of its inner quality. A bad smell could be proof that something was internally diseased or corrupted. The importance of smell explains why Zosima's enemies within the monastery go into such a frenzy when Zosima's corpse begins to stink. They take the stench itself as proof of an inner unworthiness on Zosima's part, so that the smell of his corpse threatens to invalidate the wisdom of his teaching. Additionally, the stench drives many of Zosima's followers into despair, especially those who consider him nearly a saint. In monastic legend, from the medieval era through at least the eighteenth century, the smell of a corpse is often connected to the saintliness of the soul that inhabited it so that a corpse that does not stink is a miraculous sign of the authenticity and goodness of the recently deceased person. The Jesuit historian Michel de Certeau wrote, "In innumerable stories from the convents, you can tell whether the object seen in a vision is authentic by the smell it gives off, or whether a deceased religious is a saint by the good odor surrounding her. The Brothers Karamazov is set in an era far removed, in some respects, from the medieval superstitions that underlie these legends--Ivan, for instance, would certainly scoff at them. But within the monastery, in a cloister in a small town in a remote part of Russia, it seems that the legends are more enduring. The high hopes that most of Zosima's followers have for a miracle following his death are dashed by the smell of his corpse, which, because of the monks' superstitions about odor, implies not only that Zosima was not a saint, but that he may not even have been a good man. In the Grand Inquisitor chapter, we see how Christ rejects the Devil's temptation to throw himself off the pinnacle, seek salvation from the angels, and show the people below a miracle that would restore their faith. The Grand Inquisitor's insistence that Christ made a mistake in refusing to show the people a miracle is based on his emphatic belief that free will is not enough for most people to find salvation through faith: the monks illustrate this general principle that people need to witness miracles, because they are too weak to hold onto their faith without them. Everyone, even Alyosha, is optimistic about the possibility of a miracle after Zosima's death, and the speedy putrefaction of Zosima's corpse is an unpleasant reminder that, in the real world, there are no dazzling miracles, and faith is something that must be achieved without evidence. In these chapters, Dostoevsky creates a powerful and disturbing symbol of the problem of free will in religious belief. Without the security of miracles, people are left to their own devices, to choose either faith or doubt. The choice to doubt or disbelieve can be based on a model of rational evidence, but the choice to believe must be more mystical, based on a positive feeling of meaning and profundity that is often at odds with the world as we usually experience it. Zosima's corpse represents a worldly impediment to faith. The physical reality of the world stubbornly works against the claims of faith, giving believers no validation for their belief. Even Alyosha, whose veneration of Zosima continually strengthens and protects his own faith, is driven to doubt by the events surrounding Zosima's death. The anger that he feels toward God is similar to the cold, intellectual fury that underlies Ivan's entire project of doubt. Both men are angry about God's injustice: Alyosha because God permits the posthumous humiliation of his beloved Zosima, and Ivan because God permits the suffering of children. Rakitin and Grushenka first conspire to bring Alyosha to Grushenka's because they are threatened by his apparently unshakable purity. Their mistrust and self-doubt are manifest in Rakitin's smirking cynicism and Grushenka's angry pride. They want to upset, frighten, or corrupt Alyosha so that his own faith no longer threatens their shared belief that the world is corrupt, painful, and ugly. When the opposite happens, and Alyosha's troubled goodness elicits a chord of feeling and sympathy in Grushenka, the two young people each find unexpected salvation in their sudden understanding of one another. For Grushenka, finding a man who cares about her renews her faith in the world. Alyosha's experience with Grushenka, on the other hand, reminds him that the validation of faith lies not in miracles, but in good deeds. He believes that faith is not invalidated simply because a corpse develops a stench, but that it can be validated by active love of mankind. Alyosha's dream of Zosima demonstrates that Zosima's legacy has not died with his body, but lives on in Alyosha's good deeds, in the forgiveness and love that are the cornerstones of his faith. Alyosha's kissing of the earth after he wakes up is a turning point for him. A deliberate echo of Zosima's final act before dying, it signifies that Alyosha has stepped into Zosima's shoes and is now fully committed to leaving the monastery and doing good in the world