Some of my readers may imagine
that my young man was a sickly, ecstatic, poorly developed creature, a pale,
consumptive dreamer. On the contrary, Alyosha was at this time a well-grown,
red-cheeked, clear-eyed lad of nineteen, radiant with health. He was very handsome,
too, graceful, moderately tall, with hair of a dark brown, with a regular,
rather long, oval-shaped face, and wide-set dark grey, shining eyes; he was
very thoughtful, and apparently very serene. I shall be told, perhaps, that red
cheeks are not incompatible with fanaticism and mysticism; but I fancy that
Alyosha was more of a realist than anyone. Oh! no doubt, in the monastery he
fully believed in miracles, but, to my thinking, miracles are never a
stumbling-block to the realist. It is not miracles that dispose realists to
belief. The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will always find strength
and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if he is confronted with a
miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather disbelieve his own senses than
admit the fact. Even if he admits it, he admits it as a fact of nature till
then unrecognised by him. Faith does not, in the realist, spring from the
miracle but the miracle from faith. If the realist once believes, then he is
bound by his very realism to admit the miraculous also. The Apostle Thomas said
that he would not believe till he saw, but when he did see he said, "My
Lord and my God!" Was it the miracle forced him to believe? Most likely
not, but he believed solely because he desired to believe and possibly he fully
believed in his secret heart even when he said, "I do not believe till I
see."
I shall be told, perhaps, that
Alyosha was stupid, undeveloped, had not finished his studies, and so on. That
he did not finish his studies is true, but to say that he was stupid or dull
would be a great injustice. I'll simply repeat what I have said above. He
entered upon this path only because, at that time, it alone struck his
imagination and presented itself to him as offering an ideal means of escape
for his soul from darkness to light. Add to that that he was to some extent a
youth of our last epoch- that is, honest in nature, desiring the truth, seeking
for it and believing in it, and seeking to serve it at once with all the
strength of his soul, seeking for immediate action, and ready to sacrifice
everything, life itself, for it. Though these young men unhappily fail to
understand that the sacrifice of life is, in many cases, the easiest of all
sacrifices, and that to sacrifice, for instance, five or six years of their
seething youth to hard and tedious study, if only to multiply tenfold their
powers of serving the truth and the cause they have set before them as their
goal such a sacrifice is utterly beyond the strength of many of them. The path
Alyosha chose was a path going in the opposite direction, but he chose it with
the same thirst for swift achievement. As soon as he reflected seriously he was
convinced of the existence of God and immortality, and at once he instinctively
said to himself: "I want to live for immortality, and I will accept no compromise."
In the same way, if he had decided that God and immortality did not exist, he
would at once have become an atheist and a socialist. For socialism is not
merely the labour question, it is before all things the atheistic question, the
question of the form taken by atheism to-day, the question of the tower of
Babel built without God, not to mount to heaven from earth but to set up heaven
on earth. Alyosha would have found it strange and impossible to go on living as
before. It is written: "Give all that thou hast to the poor and follow Me,
if thou wouldst be perfect.
"Alyosha said to himself:
"I can't give two roubles instead of 'all,' and only go to mass instead of
'following Him.'" Perhaps his memories of childhood brought back our
monastery, to which his mother may have taken him to mass. Perhaps the slanting
sunlight and the holy image to which his poor "crazy" mother had held
him up still acted upon his imagination. Brooding on these things he may have
come to us perhaps only to see whether here he could sacrifice all or only
"two roubles," and in the monastery he met this elder. I must digress
to explain what an "elder" is in Russian monasteries, and I am sorry
that I do not feel very competent to do so. I will try, however, to give a
superficial account of it in a few words. Authorities on the subject assert
that the institution of "elders" is of recent date, not more than a
hundred years old in our monasteries, though in the orthodox East, especially
in Sinai and Athos, it has existed over a thousand years. It is maintained that
it existed in ancient times in Russia also, but through the calamities which
overtook Russia- the Tartars, civil war, the interruption of relations with the
East after the destruction of Constantinople- this institution fell into
oblivion. It was revived among us towards the end of last century by one of the
great "ascetics," as they called him, Paissy Velitchkovsky, and his
disciples. But to this day it exists in few monasteries only, and has sometimes
been almost persecuted as an innovation in Russia. It flourished especially in
the celebrated Kozelski Optin Monastery. When and how it was introduced into
our monastery I cannot say. There had already been three such elders and
Zossima was the last of them. But he was almost dying of weakness and disease,
and they had no one to take his place. The question for our monastery was an important
one, for it had not been distinguished by anything in particular till then:
they had neither relics of saints, nor wonder- working ikons, nor glorious
traditions, nor historical exploits. It had flourished and been glorious all
over Russia through its elders, to see and hear whom pilgrims had flocked for
thousands of miles from all parts.
What was such an elder? An elder
was one who took your soul, your will, into his soul and his will. When you choose
an elder, you renounce your own will and yield it to him in complete submission,
complete self-abnegation. This novitiate, this terrible school of abnegation,
is undertaken voluntarily, in the hope of self-conquest, of self-mastery, in
order, after a life of obedience, to attain perfect freedom, that is, from
self; to escape the lot of those who have lived their whole life without
finding their true selves in themselves. This institution of elders is not founded
on theory, but was established in the East from the practice of a thousand years.
The obligations due to an elder are not the ordinary "obedience"
which has always existed in our Russian monasteries. The obligation involves confession
to the elder by all who have submitted themselves to him, and to the indissoluble
bond between him and them.
The story is told, for instance,
that in the early days of Christianity one such novice, failing to fulfil some
command laid upon him by his elder, left his monastery in Syria and went to
Egypt. There, after great exploits, he was found worthy at last to suffer
torture and a martyr's death for the faith. When the Church, regarding him as a
saint, was burying him, suddenly, at the deacon's exhortation, "Depart all
ye unbaptised," the coffin containing the martyr's body left its place and was cast forth
from the church, and this took place three times. And only at last they learnt
that this holy man had broken his vow of obedience and left his elder, and,
therefore, could not be forgiven without the elder's absolution in spite of his
great deeds. Only after this could the funeral take place. This, of course, is
only an old legend. But here is a recent instance.
A monk was suddenly commanded by
his elder to quit Athos, which he loved as a sacred place and a haven of
refuge, and to go first to Jerusalem to do homage to the Holy Places and then
to go to the north to Siberia: "There is the place for thee and not
here." The monk, overwhelmed with sorrow, went to the Oecumenical
Patriarch at Constantinople and be-sought him to release him from his
obedience. But the Patriarch replied that not only was he unable to release
him, but there was not and could not be on earth a power which could release
him except the elder who had himself laid that duty upon him. In this way the
elders are endowed in certain cases with unbounded and inexplicable authority.
That is why in many of our monasteries the institution was at first resisted
almost to persecution. Meantime the elders immediately began to be highly
esteemed among the people. Masses of the ignorant people as well as of
distinction flocked, for instance, to the elders of our monastery to confess their
doubts, their sins, and their sufferings, and ask for counsel and admonition. Seeing
this, the opponents of the elders declared that the sacrament of confession was
being arbitrarily and frivolously degraded, though the continual opening of the
heart to the elder by the monk or the layman had nothing of the character of
the sacrament. In the end, however, the institution of elders has been retained
and is becoming established in Russian monasteries. It is true, perhaps, that
this instrument which had stood the test of a thousand years for the moral
regeneration of a man from slavery to freedom and to moral perfectibility may
be a two-edged weapon and it may lead some not to humility and complete self-control
but to the most Satanic pride, that is, to bondage and not to freedom.
The elder Zossima was sixty-five.
He came of a family of landowners, had been in the army in early youth, and
served in the Caucasus as an officer. He had, no doubt, impressed Alyosha by
some peculiar quality of his soul. Alyosha lived in the cell of the elder, who
was very fond of him and let him wait upon him. It must be noted that Alyosha was
bound by no obligation and could go where he pleased and be absent for whole days.
Though he wore the monastic dress it was voluntarily, not to be different from
others. No doubt he liked to do so. Possibly his youthful imagination was
deeply stirred by the power and fame of his elder. It was said that so many
people had for years past come to confess their sins to Father Zossima and to
entreat him for words of advice and healing, that he had acquired the keenest
intuition and could tell from an unknown face what a new-comer wanted, and what
was the suffering on his conscience. He sometimes astounded and almost alarmed
his visitors by his knowledge of their secrets before they had spoken a word.
Alyosha noticed that many, almost
all, went in to the elder for the first time with apprehension and uneasiness,
but came out with bright and happy faces. Alyosha was particularly struck by
the fact that Father Zossima was not at all stern. On the contrary, he was
always almost gay. The monks used to say that he was more drawn to those who were
more sinful, and the greater the sinner the more he loved him. There were, no
doubt, up to the end of his life, among the monks some who hated and envied
him, but they were few in number and they were silent, though among them were
some of great dignity in the monastery, one, for
instance, of the older monks distinguished for his strict keeping of fasts and
vows of silence. But the majority were on Father Zossima's side and very many
of them loved him with all their hearts, warmly and sincerely. Some were almost
fanatically devoted to him, and declared, though not quite aloud, that he was a
saint, that there could be no doubt of it, and, seeing that his end was near,
they anticipated miracles and great glory to the monastery in the immediate
future from his relics. Alyosha had unquestioning faith in the miraculous power
of the elder, just as he had unquestioning faith in the story of the coffin
that flew out of the church. He saw many who came with sick children or
relatives and besought the elder to lay hands on them and to pray over them,
return shortly after- some the next day-and, falling in tears at the elder's
feet, thank him for healing their sick.
Whether they had really been
healed or were simply better in the natural course of the disease was a
question which did not exist for Alyosha, for he fully believed in the
spiritual power of his teacher and rejoiced in his fame, in his glory, as
though it were his own triumph. His heart throbbed, and he beamed, as it were,
all over when the elder came out to the gates of the hermitage into the waiting
crowd of pilgrims of the humbler class who had flocked from all parts of Russia
on purpose to see the elder and obtain his blessing. They fell down before him,
wept, kissed his feet, kissed the earth on which he stood, and wailed, while
the women held up their children to him and brought him the sick
"possessed with devils." The elder spoke to them, read a brief prayer
over them, blessed them, and dismissed them. Of late he had become so weak
through attacks of illness that he was sometimes unable to leave his cell, and
the pilgrims waited for him to come out for several days. Alyosha did not
wonder why they loved him so, why they fell down before him and wept with
emotion merely at seeing his face. Oh! he understood that for the humble soul
of the Russian peasant, worn out by grief and toil, and still more by the
everlasting injustice and everlasting sin, his own and the world's, it was the
greatest need and comfort to find someone or something holy to fall down before
and worship.
"Among us there is sin,
injustice, and temptation, but yet, somewhere on earth there is someone holy
and exalted. He has the truth; he knows the truth; so it is not dead upon the
earth; so it will come one day to us, too, and rule over all the earth
according to the promise.
"Alyosha knew that this was
just how the people felt and even reasoned. He understood it, but that the
elder Zossima was this saint and custodian of God's truth- of that he had no
more doubt than the weeping peasants and the sick women who held out their
children to the elder. The conviction that after his death the elder would
bring extraordinary glory to the monastery was even stronger in Alyosha than in
anyone there, and, of late, a kind of deep flame of inner ecstasy burnt more
and more strongly in his heart. He was not at all troubled at this elder's
standing as a solitary example before him.
"No matter. He is holy. He
carries in his heart the secret of renewal for all: that power which will, at
last, establish truth on the earth, and all men will be holy and love one
another, and there will be no more rich nor poor, no exalted nor humbled, but
all will be as the children of God, and the true Kingdom of Christ will
come." That was the dream in Alyosha's heart.
The arrival of his two brothers,
whom he had not known till then, seemed to make a great impression on Alyosha.
He more quickly made friends with his half-brother Dmitri (though he arrived
later) than with his own brother Ivan. He was extremely interested in his
brother Ivan, but when the latter had been two months in the town, though they
had met fairly often, they were still not intimate. Alyosha was naturally silent,
and he seemed to be expecting something, ashamed about something, while his
brother Ivan, though Alyosha noticed at first that he looked long and curiously
at him, seemed soon to have left off thinking of him. Alyosha noticed it with
some embarrassment. He ascribed his brother's indifference at first to the
disparity of their age and education. But he also wondered whether the absence
of curiosity and sympathy in Ivan might be due to some other cause entirely
unknown to him. He kept fancying that Ivan was absorbed in something- something
inward and important- that he was striving towards some goal, perhaps very hard
to attain, and that that was why he had no thought for him. Alyosha wondered,
too, whether there was not some contempt on the part of the learned atheist for
him- a foolish novice. He knew for certain that his brother was an atheist. He
could not take offence at this contempt, if it existed; yet, with an uneasy embarrassment
which he did not himself understand, he waited for his brother to come nearer
to him. Dmitri used to speak of Ivan with the deepest respect and with a
peculiar earnestness. From him Alyosha learnt all the details of the important
affair which had of late formed such a close and remarkable bond between the
two elder brothers. Dmitri's enthusiastic references to Ivan were the more
striking in Alyosha's eyes since Dmitri was, compared with Ivan, almost
uneducated, and the two brothers were such a contrast in personality and
character that it would be difficult to find two men more unlike.
It was at this time that the
meeting, or, rather gathering of the members of this inhar-monious family took
place in the cell of the elder who had such an extraordinary influence on
Alyosha. The pretext for this gathering was a false one. It was at this time
that the discord between Dmitri and his father seemed at its acutest stage and
their relations had become insufferably strained. Fyodor Pavlovitch seems to
have been the first to suggest, apparently in joke, that they should all meet
in Father Zossima's cell, and that, without appealing to his direct
intervention, they might more decently come to an understanding under the
conciliating influence of the elder's presence. Dmitri, who had never seen the
elder, naturally supposed that his father was trying to intimidate him, but, as
he secretly blamed himself for his outbursts of temper with his father on several
recent occasions, he accepted the challenge. It must be noted that he was not,
like Ivan, staying with his father, but living apart at the other end of the
town. It happened that Pyotr Alexandrovitch Miusov, who was staying in the
district at the time, caught eagerly at the idea. A Liberal of the forties and
fifties, a free-thinker and atheist, he may have been led on by boredom or the
hope of frivolous diversion. He was suddenly seized with the desire to see the
monastery and the holy man. As his lawsuit with the monastery still dragged on,
he made it the pretext for seeing the Superior, in order to attempt to settle
it amicably. A visitor coming with such laudable intentions might be received
with more attention and consideration than if he came from simple curiosity.
Influences from within the monastery were brought to bear on the elder, who of
late had scarcely left his cell, and had been forced by illness to deny even
his ordinary visitors. In the end he consented to see them, and the day was
fixed.
"Who has made me a judge
over them?" was all he said, smilingly, to Alyosha.
Alyosha was much perturbed when
he heard of the proposed visit. Of all the
wrangling, quarrelsome party, Dmitri was the only one who could regard
the interview seriously. All the others would come from frivolous motives,
perhaps insulting to the elder. Alyosha was well aware of that. Ivan and Miusov
would come from curiosity, perhaps of the coarsest kind, while his father might
be contemplating some piece of buffoonery. Though he said nothing, Alyosha
thoroughly understood his father. The boy, I repeat, was far from being so
simple as everyone thought him. He awaited the day with a heavy heart. No doubt
he was always pondering in his mind how the family discord could be ended. But
his chief anxiety concerned the elder. He trembled for him, for his glory, and
dreaded any affront to him, especially the refined, courteous irony of Miusov
and the supercilious half-utterances of the highly educated Ivan. He even
wanted to venture on warning the elder, telling him something about them, but,
on second thoughts, said nothing. He only sent word the day before, through a
friend, to his brother Dmitri, that he loved him and expected him to keep his
promise. Dmitri wondered, for he could not remember what he had promised, but
he answered by letter that he would do his utmost not to let himself be provoked
"by vileness," but that, although he had a deep respect for the elder
and for his brother Ivan, he was convinced that the meeting was either a trap
for him or an unworthy farce.
"Nevertheless I would rather
bite out my tongue than be lacking in respect to the sainted man whom you
reverence so highly," he wrote in conclusion. Alyosha was not greatly
cheered by the letter.
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