Not long after visiting his mothers grave Alyosha suddenly announced that he wanted to enter the monastery, and that the monks were willing to receive him as a novice. He explained that this was his strong desire, and that he was solemnly asking his consent as his father. The old man knew that the elder Zossima, who was living in the monastery hermitage, had made a special impression upon his gentle boy.
That is the most honest monk among them, of course, he observed, after listening in thoughtful silence to Alyosha, and seeming scarcely surprised at his request. Hm!So thats where you want to be, my gentle boy?
He was half drunk, and suddenly he grinned his slow halfdrunken grin, which was not without a certain cunning and tipsy slyness. Hm!I had a presentiment that you would end in something like this. Would you believe it? You were making straight for it. Well, to be sure you have your own two thousand. Thats a dowry for you. And Ill never desert you, my angel. And Ill pay whats wanted for you there, if they ask for it. But, of course, if they dont ask, why should we worry them? What do you say? You know, you spend money like a canary, two grains a week. Hm! Do you know that near one monastery theres a place outside the town where every baby knows there are none but the monks wives living, as they are called. Thirty women, I believe. I have been there myself. You know, its interesting in its own way, of course, as a variety. The worst of it is its awfully Russian. There are no French women there. Of course they could get them fast enough, they have plenty of money. If they get to hear of it theyll come along. Well, theres nothing of that sort here, no monks wives, and two hundred monks. Theyre honest. They keep the fasts. I admit it. Hm. So you want to be a monk? And do you know Im sorry to lose you, Alyosha; would you believe it, Ive really grown fond of you? Well, its a good opportunity. Youll pray for us sinners; we have sinned too much here. Ive always been thinking who would pray for me, and whether theres any one in the world to do it. My dear boy, Im awfully stupid about that. You wouldnt believe it. Awfully. You see, however stupid I am about it, I keep thinking, I keep thinkingfrom time to time, of course, not all the while. Its impossible, I think, for the devils to forget to drag me down to hell with their hooks when I die. Then I wonderhooks? Where would they get them? What of? Iron hooks? Where do they forge them? Have they a foundry there of some sort? The monks in the monastery probably believe that theres a ceiling in hell, for instance. Now Im ready to believe in hell, but without a ceiling. It makes it more refined, more enlightened, more Lutheran that is. And, after all, what does it matter whether it has a ceiling or hasnt? But, do you know, theres a damnable question involved in it? If theres no ceiling there can be no hooks, and if there are no hooks it all breaks down, which is unlikely again, for then there would be none to drag me down to hell, and if they dont drag me down what justice is there in the world? Il faudrait les inventer, those hooks, on purpose for me alone, for, if you only knew, Alyosha, what a blackguard I am.
But there are no hooks there, said Alyosha, looking gently and seriously at his father.
Yes, yes, only the shadows of hooks, I know, I know. Thats how a Frenchman described hell: Jai bu lombre dun cocher qui avec lombre dune brosse frottait lombre dune carrosse. How do you know there are no hooks, darling? When youve lived with the monks youll sing a different tune. But go and get at the truth there, and then come and tell me. Anyway its easier going to the other world if one knows what there is there. Besides, it will be more seemly for you with the monks than here with me, with a drunken old man and young harlots though youre like an angel, nothing touches you. And I dare say nothing will touch you there. Thats why I let you go, because I hope for that. Youve got all your wits about you. You will burn and you will burn out; you will be healed and come back again. And I will wait for you. I feel that youre the only creature in the world who has not condemned me. My dear boy, I feel it, you know. I cant help feeling it.
And he even began blubbering. He was sentimental. He was wicked and sentimental.
Chapter V.
Elders
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 wellgrown, redcheeked, cleareyed 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, ovalshaped face, and wideset dark gray, 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 any one. Oh! no doubt, in the monastery he fully believed in miracles, but, to my thinking, miracles are never a stumblingblock 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 unrecognized 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. Ill 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 epochthat 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 goalsuch 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 labor question, it is before all things the atheistic question, the question of the form taken by atheism today, 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 cant 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 Russiathe Tartars, civil war, the interruption of relations with the East after the destruction of Constantinoplethis 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, Païssy 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 wonderworking 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 selfabnegation. This novitiate, this terrible school of abnegation, is undertaken voluntarily, in the hope of selfconquest, of selfmastery, 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.