The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky
Contents
The Brothers Karamazov
PART I
Book I — The History of a Family
Chapter 1 — Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov
Chapter 2 — He Gets Rid of His Eldest Son
Chapter 3 — The Second Marriage and the Second Family
Chapter 4 — The Third Son, Alyosha
Chapter 5 — Elders
Book II — An Unfortunate Gathering
Chapter 1 — They Arrive at the Monastery
Chapter 2 — The Old Buffoon
Chapter 3 — Peasant Women Who Have Faith
Chapter 4 — A Lady of Little Faith
Chapter 5 — So Be It! So Be It!
Chapter 6 — Why Is Such a Man Alive?
Chapter 7 — A Young Man Bent on a Career
Chapter 8 — The Scandalous Scene
Book III — The Sensualists
Chapter 1 — In the Servants’ Quarters
Chapter 2 — Lizaveta
Chapter 3 — The Confession of a Passionate Heart- in Verse
Chapter 4 — The Confession of a Passionate Heart- In Anecdote
Chapter 5 — The Confession of a Passionate Heart- Heels Up
Chapter 6 — Smerdyakov
Chapter 7 — The Controversy
Chapter 8 — Over the Brandy
Chapter 9 — The Sensualists
Chapter 10 — Both Together
Chapter 11 — Another Reputation Ruined
PART II
Book IV — Lacerations
Chapter 1 — Father Ferapont
Chapter 2 — At His Father’s
Chapter 3 — A Meeting with the Schoolboys
Chapter 4 — At the Hohlakovs’
Chapter 5 — A Laceration in the Drawing-Room
Chapter 6 — A Laceration in the Cottage
Chapter 7 — And in the Open Air
Book V — Pro and Contra
Chapter 1 — The Engagement
Chapter 2 — Smerdyakov with a Guitar
Chapter 3 — The Brothers Make Friends
Chapter 4 — Rebellion
Chapter 5 — The Grand Inquisitor
Chapter 6 — For Awhile a Very Obscure One
Chapter 7 — It’s Always Worth While Speaking to a Clever Man
Book VI — The Russian Monk
Chapter 1 — Father Zossima and His Visitors
Chapter 2 — Recollections of Father Zossima’s Youth before he became a Monk. The Duel
Chapter 3 — Conversations and Exhortations of Father Zossima. The Russian Monk and his possible Significance
PART III
Book VII — Alyosha
Chapter 1 — The Breath of Corruption
Chapter 2 — A Critical Moment
Chapter 3 — An Onion
Chapter 4 — Cana of Galilee
Book VIII — Mitya
Chapter 1 — Kuzma Samsonov
Chapter 2 — Lyagavy
Chapter 3 — Gold Mines
Chapter 4 — In the Dark
Chapter 5 — A Sudden Resolution
Chapter 6 — I Am Coming, Too!
Chapter 7 — The First and Rightful Lover
Chapter 8 — Delirium
Book IX — The Preliminary Investigation
Chapter 1 — The Beginning of Perhotin’s Official Career
Chapter 2 — The Alarm
Chapter 3 — The Sufferings of a Soul
Chapter 4 — The Second Ordeal
Chapter 5 — The Third Ordeal
Chapter 6 — The Prosecutor Catches Mitya
Chapter 7 — Mitya’s Great Secret Received with Hisses
Chapter 8 — The Evidences of the Witnesses. The Babe
Chapter 9 — They Carry Mitya Away
PART IV
Book X — The Boys
Chapter 1 — Kolya Krassotkin
Chapter 2 — Children
Chapter 3 — The Schoolboy
Chapter 4 — The Lost Dog
Chapter 5 — By Ilusha’s Bedside
Chapter 6 — Precocity
Chapter 7 — Ilusha
Book XI — Ivan
Chapter 1 — At Grushenka’s
Chapter 2 — The Injured Foot
Chapter 3 — A Little Demon
Chapter 4 — A Hymn and a Secret
Chapter 5 — Not You, Not You!
Chapter 6 — The First Interview with Smerdyakov
Chapter 7 — The Second Visit to Smerdyakov
Chapter 8 — The Third and Last Interview with Smerdyakov
Chapter 9 — The Devil. Ivan’s Nightmare
Chapter 10 — It Was He Who Said That
Book XII — A Judicial Error
Chapter 1 — The Fatal Day
Chapter 2 — Dangerous Witnesses
Chapter 3 — The Medical Experts and a Pound of Nuts
Chapter 4 — Fortune Smiles on Mitya
Chapter 5 — A Sudden Catastrophe
Chapter 6 — The Prosecutor’s Speech. Sketches of Character
Chapter 7 — An Historical Survey
Chapter 8 — A Treatise on Smerdyakov
Chapter 9 — The Galloping Troika. The End of the Prosecutor’s Speech
Chapter 10 — The Speech for the Defence. An Argument that Cuts Both Ways
Chapter 11 — There Was No Money. There Was No Robbery
Chapter 12 — And There Was No Murder Either
Chapter 13 — A Corrupter of Thought
Chapter 14 — The Peasants Stand Firm
EPILOGUE
Chapter 1 — Plans for Mitya’s Escape
Chapter 2 — For a Moment the Lie Becomes Truth
Chapter 3 — Ilusha’s Funeral. The Speech at the Stone
Chapter 1 - Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov
ALEXEY Fyodorovitch Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, a landowner well known in our district in his own day, and still remembered among us owing to his gloomy and tragic death, which happened thirteen years ago, and which I shall describe in its proper place. For the present I will only say that this «landowner»- for so we used to call him, although he hardly spent a day of his life on his own estate- was a strange type, yet one pretty frequently to be met with, a type abject and vicious and at the same time senseless.
But he was one of those senseless persons who are very well capable of looking after their worldly affairs, and, apparently, after nothing else. Fyodor Pavlovitch, for instance, began with next to nothing; his estate was of the smallest; he ran to dine at other men’s tables, and fastened on them as a toady, yet at his death it appeared that he had a hundred thousand roubles in hard cash. At the same time, he was all his life one of the most senseless, fantastical fellows in the whole district. I repeat, it was not stupidity- the majority of these fantastical fellows are shrewd and intelligent enough- but just senselessness, and a peculiar national form of it.
He was married twice, and had three sons, the eldest, Dmitri, by his first wife, and two, Ivan and Alexey, by his second. Fyodor Pavlovitch’s first wife, Adelaida Ivanovna, belonged to a fairly rich and distinguished noble family, also landowners in our district, the Miusovs. How it came to pass that an heiress, who was also a beauty, and moreover one of those vig-orous intelligent girls, so common in this generation, but sometimes also to be found in the last, could have married such a worthless, puny weakling, as we all called him, I won’t attempt to explain. I knew a young lady of the last «romantic» generation who after some years of an enigmatic passion for a gentleman, whom she might quite easily have married at any moment, invented insuperable obstacles to their union, and ended by throwing herself one stormy night into a rather deep and rapid river from a high bank, almost a precipice, and so perished, entirely to satisfy her own caprice, and to be like Shakespeare’s Ophelia. Indeed, if this precipice, a chosen and favourite spot of hers, had been less picturesque, if there had been a prosaic flat bank in its place, most likely the suicide would never have taken place.
This is a fact, and probably there have been not a few similar instances in the last two or three generations. Adelaida Ivanovna Miusov’s action was similarly, no doubt, an echo of other people’s ideas, and was due to the irritation caused by lack of mental freedom. She wanted, perhaps, to show her feminine independence, to override class distinctions and the despotism of her family. And a pliable imagination persuaded her, we must suppose, for a brief moment, that Fyodor Pavlovitch, in spite of his parasitic position, was one of the bold and ironical spirits of that progressive epoch, though he was, in fact, an ill-natured buffoon and nothing more. What gave the marriage piquancy was that it was preceded by an elope-ment, and this greatly captivated Adelaida Ivanovna’s fancy. Fyodor Pavlovitch’s position at the time made him specially eager for any such enterprise, for he was passionately anxious to make a career in one way or another. To attach himself to a good family and obtain a
1 book page, Chapter 1 — Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov
dowry was an alluring prospect. As for mutual love it did not exist apparently, either in the bride or in him, in spite of Adelaida Ivanovna’s beauty. This was, perhaps, a unique case of the kind in the life of Fyodor Pavlovitch, who was always of a voluptuous temper, and ready to run after any petticoat on the slightest encouragement. She seems to have been the only woman who made no particular appeal to his senses.
Immediatley after the elopement Adelaida Ivanovna discerned in a flash that she had no feeling for her husband but contempt. The marriage accordingly showed itself in its true colours with extraordinary rapidity. Although the family accepted the event pretty quickly and apportioned the runaway bride her dowry, the husband and wife began to lead a most disorderly life, and there were everlasting scenes between them. It was said that the young wife showed incomparably more generosity and dignity than Fyodor Pavlovitch, who, as is now known, got hold of all her money up to twenty five thousand roubles as soon as she received it, so that those thousands were lost to her forever. The little village and the rather fine town house which formed part of her dowry he did his utmost for a long time to transfer to his name, by means of some deed of conveyance.
He would probably have suc-ceeded, merely from her moral fatigue and desire to get rid of him, and from the contempt and loathing he aroused by his persistent and shameless importunity. But, fortunately, Ad-elaida Ivanovna’s family intervened and circumvented his greediness. It is known for a fact that frequent fights took place between the husband and wife, but rumour had it that Fyodor Pavlovitch did not beat his wife but was beaten by her, for she was a hot-tempered, bold, dark-browed, impatient woman, possessed of remarkable physical strength. Finally, she left the house and ran away from Fyodor Pavlovitch with a destitute divinity student,
