Sobs suddenly burst from Mitya’s breast. He seized Alyosha’s hand. “My friend, my friend, still fallen, still fallen even now. There’s so terribly muchsuffering for man on earth, so terribly much grief for him! Don’t think I’m just a brute of an officer who drinks cognac and goes whoring. No, brother, I hardly think of anything else, of anything but that fallen man, if only I’m not lying now. God keep me from lying, and from praising myself! I think about that man, because I myself am such a man.

That men to man again may soar,

Let man and Earth with one another Make a compact evermore—

Man the son, and Earth the mother ...^[86]

There’s just one thing: how can I make a compact with the earth evermore? I don’t kiss the earth, I don’t tear open her bosom; what should I do, become a peasant or a shepherd? I keep going, and I don’t know: have I gotten into stench and shame, or into light and joy? That’s the whole trouble, because everything on earth is a riddle. And whenever I happened to sink into the deepest, the very deepest shame of depravity (and that’s all I ever happened to do), I always read that poem about Ceres and man. Did it set me right? Never! Because I’m a Karamazov. Because when I fall into the abyss, I go straight into it, head down and heels up, and I’m even pleased that I’m falling in just such a humiliating position, and for me I find it beautiful. And so in that very shame I suddenly begin a hymn. Let me be cursed, let me be base and vile, but let me also kiss the hem of that garment in which my God is clothed; let me be following the devil at the same time, but still I am also your son, Lord, and I love you, and I feel a joy without which the world cannot stand and be.

Joy is the mainspring of the whole

Of endless Nature’s calm rotation; Joy moves the dazzling wheels that roll

Within the great heart of creation; Joy breathes on buds, and flowers they are;

Joy beckons, suns come forth from heaven; Joy moves the spheres in realms afar,

Ne’er to thy glass, dim wisdom, given!

All being drinks the mother-dew

Of joy from Nature’s holy bosom; And good and evil both pursue

Her steps that strew the rose’s blossom. The brimming cup, love’s loyalty

Joy gives to us; beneath the sod, To insects—sensuality;

In heaven the cherub looks on God!^[87]

But enough poetry! I shed tears; well, then, let me cry. Maybe everyone will laugh at this foolishness, but you won’t. Your eyes are shining, too. Enough poetry. I want to tell you now about the ‘insects,’ about those to whom God gave sensuality:

To insects—sensuality!

I am that very insect, brother, and those words are precisely about me. And all of us Karamazovs are like that, and in you, an angel, the same insect lives and stirs up storms in your blood. Storms, because sensuality is a storm, more than a storm! Beauty is a fearful and terrible thing! Fearful because it’s undefinable, and it cannot be defined, because here God gave us only riddles. Here the shores converge, here all contradictions live together. I’m a very uneducated man, brother, but I’ve thought about it a lot. So terribly many mysteries! Too many riddles oppress man on earth. Solve them if you can without getting your feet wet. Beauty! Besides, I can’t bear it that some man, even with a lofty heart and the highest mind, should start from the ideal of the Madonna and end with the ideal of Sodom. It’s even more fearful when someone who already has the ideal of Sodom in his soul does not deny the ideal of the Madonna either, and his heart burns with it, verily, verily burns, as in his young, blameless years. No, man is broad, even too broad, I would narrow him down. Devil knows even what to make of him, that’s the thing! What’s shame for the mind is beauty all over for the heart. Can there be beauty in Sodom? Believe me, for the vast majority of people, that’s just where beauty lies—did you know that secret? The terrible thing is that beauty is not only fearful but also mysterious. Here the devil is struggling with God, and the battlefield is the human heart. But, anyway, why kick against the pricks? Listen, now to real business.”

Chapter 4: The Confession of an Ardent Heart. In Anecdotes

“I was leading a wild life there. Father said I used to pay several thousand to seduce girls. That’s a swinish phantom, it never happened, and as for what did happen, ‘that,’ in fact, never required any money. For me, money is an accessory, a fever of the soul, an ambience. Today, here she is, my lady—tomorrow a little street girl is in her place. I entertained the one and the other. I threw fistfuls of money around—music, noise, gypsy women. If need be, I’d give her something, because they do take it, they take it eagerly, one must admit, and are pleased, and grateful. The ladies used to love me, not all of them, but it happened, it happened; but I always liked the back lanes, dark and remote little crannies, away from the main square—there lay adventure, there lay the unexpected, nuggets in the dirt. I’m speaking allegorically, brother. In that little town there were no such back lanes, physically, but morally there were. If you were the same as me, you’d know what that means. I loved depravity, I also loved the shame of depravity. I loved cruelty: am I not a bedbug, an evil insect? In short—a Karamazov! Once there was a picnic for the whole town; we went in seven troikas; in the darkness, in winter, in the sleigh, I began squeezing a girl’s hand, the girl who was next to me, and forced her to kiss me—an official’s daughter, a poor, nice, meek, submissive girl. She let me, she let me do a lot in the darkness. She thought, the poor dear, that I would come the next day and propose (I was prized, above all, as an eligible young man); but after that I didn’t say a word to her for five months, not even half a word. I’d see her eyes watching me from the corner of the room when we used to dance (in that town they were always having dances), I saw them burning like little flames—flames of meek indignation. This game only amused my insect sensuality, which I was nurturing in myself. After five months she married an official and left ... angry, and maybe still in love with me. Now they’re living happily together. Note that I didn’t tell anyone, I didn’t defame her; though I have base desires and love baseness, I’m not dishonorable. You’re blushing; your eyes flashed. Enough of this filth for you. And it’s all nothing yet, just Paul de Kock’s little flowers,^[88] though the cruel insect was already growing, spreading out in my soul. I have a whole album of memories, brother. God bless the little dears. I preferred not to quarrel when breaking up. And I never gave them away, I never defamed even one of them. But enough. You don’t think I called you in here just for this trash, do you? No, I’ll tell you something more curious; but don’t be surprised that I’m not ashamed before you, but even seem to be glad.”

“You say that because I blushed,” Alyosha suddenly remarked. “I blushed not at your words, and not at your deeds, but because I’m the same as you.”

“You? Well, that’s going a bit too far.”

“No, not too far,” Alyosha said hotly. (Apparently the thought had been with him for some time.) “The steps are all the same. I’m on the lowest, and you are above, somewhere on the thirteenth. That’s how I see it, but it’s all one and the same, all exactly the same sort of thing. Whoever steps on the lowest step will surely step on the highest.”

“So one had better not step at all.” “Not if one can help it.”

“Can you?”

“It seems not.”

“Stop, Alyosha, stop, my dear, I want to kiss your hand, just out of tenderness. That rogue Grushenka has an eye for men; she once told me she’d eat you up some day. I’ll stop, I’ll stop! From abominations, from this flyblown margin, let us move on to my tragedy, another flyblown margin, covered with all kinds of baseness. The thing is that though the old man lied about seducing innocence, essentially, in my tragedy, that’s how it was, though only once, and even so it never took place. The old man reproached me with a fable, but this fact he doesn’t know: I’ve never told anyone, you’ll be the first, except for Ivan, of course, Ivan knows everything. He’s known it for a long time before you. But Ivan is a grave.”