The Theme in the Work
The novel does not ask whether God exists. It asks what men put in his place when they stop believing, and what it costs those who try. The answers come in four voices that do not understand one another. Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky believes in a being that becomes conscious of itself within him, and declares himself more an ancient pagan than a Christian. Ivan Shatov makes God the personality of a people and believes in Russia, and when asked whether he believes in God, he can only answer in the future tense. Alexei Kirillov locates God in the pain of the fear of death and concludes that whoever conquers the fear will be a god. Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky believes in none of the three and uses everyone's faith. In the middle of them, Nikolai Vsevolodovich Stavrogin, from whom Shatov and Kirillov received their ideas, does not come to believe in any of them, and the book leads him to a monastery, where Tikhon tells him what he does not tell himself.
In Part One, Chapter I, Stepan says he believes in a being that becomes conscious of itself within him, and Shatov, who tends to explode on such occasions, answers that whoever loses the people also loses God.
Нельзя любить то, чего не знаешь, а они ничего в русском народе не смыслили [...] А у кого нет народа, у того нет и бога, one cannot love what one does not know, and they understood nothing of the Russian people. [...] And whoever has no people has no God either.
In Part One, Chapter III, Kirillov receives the chronicler in the pavilion, serves tea, and sets out what he is looking for: why no one dares to kill himself. The stone hanging over someone, he says, hurts only in the fear.
Его нет, но он есть. В камне боли нет, но в страхе от камня есть боль. Бог есть боль страха смерти. Кто победит боль и страх, тот сам станет бог, he does not exist, but he exists. There is no pain in the stone, but there is pain in the fear of the stone. God is the pain of the fear of death. Whoever conquers pain and fear will himself become God.
In Part One, Chapter IV, at the Lebyadkins' house, Marya Timofeyevna Lebyadkina tells what an old penitent woman said to her about the Mother of God, and it is the only moment in the book when the divine appears without theory.
Так, говорит, богородица — великая мать сыра земля есть, и великая в том для человека заключается радость. И всякая тоска земная и всякая слеза земная — радость нам есть, so, she says, the Mother of God is the great mother, damp earth, and in this lies a great joy for man. And every earthly anguish and every earthly tear is joy for us.
In Part Two, Chapter I, Kirillov names what will come after God.
Он придет, и имя ему человекобог, he will come, and his name is man-god.
On the same night, Shatov gives Nikolai Vsevolodovich Stavrogin the thesis he says he holds from him, and it resolves faith by way of the people.
Бог есть синтетическая личность всего народа, взятого с начала его и до конца, God is the synthetic personality of the whole people, taken from its beginning to its end.
When Stavrogin asks him point-blank whether he believes in God, Shatov answers with a chain of creeds that does not name God.
Я верую в Россию, я верую в ее православие… Я верую в тело Христово… Я верую, что новое пришествие совершится в России… Я верую…, I believe in Russia, I believe in her Orthodoxy... I believe in the body of Christ... I believe that the new coming will take place in Russia... I believe...
In Part Two, Chapter VII, at Virginsky's meeting, the only one who speaks of faith without formula is a major, whom the room treats as a comic figure.
Я хоть и не верую вполне, но все-таки не скажу, что бога расстрелять надо[...]вскочишь ночью с постели в одних носках и давай кресты крестить пред образом, чтобы бог веру послал, потому что я и тогда не мог быть спокойным: есть бог или нет?, though I do not believe fully, still I would not say that God should be shot. [...] you leap out of bed at night, in your socks alone, and start making the sign of the cross before the icon so that God will send faith, because even then I could never be at peace: is there a God or not?
In Part Three, Chapter IV, Fedka, who has stripped pearls from icons, demands from Pyotr the faith he has lost.
что в самого бога, творца истинного, перестал по разврату своему веровать, that out of depravity you ceased to believe in God himself, the true Creator.
In Part Three, Chapter VI, on the night of his death, Kirillov reduces the doctrine to a rule.
Если нет бога, то я бог, if there is no God, then I am God.
Before the image of the Savior and the lamp, Kirillov gives the underlying reason.
если законы природы не пожалели и Этого, даже чудо свое же не пожалели, а заставили и Его жить среди лжи и умереть за ложь, то, стало быть, вся планета есть ложь и стоит на лжи и глупой насмешке. Стало быть, самые законы планеты ложь и диаволов водевиль. Для чего же жить, отвечай, если ты человек, if the laws of nature did not spare even Him, did not spare even His own miracle, but forced Him too to live amid lies and to die for a lie, then the whole planet is a lie and rests on lies and a stupid mockery. That is to say, the very laws of the planet are a lie and the devil's vaudeville. Then what is the point of living, answer me, if you are a man?
In Part Three, Chapter VII, sick in an inn, Stepan hears the letter to the lukewarm and makes his profession of faith.
Мое бессмертие уже потому необходимо, что бог не захочет сделать неправды и погасить совсем огонь раз возгоревшейся к нему любви в моем сердце. И что дороже любви? Любовь выше бытия, любовь венец бытия, и как же возможно, чтобы бытие было ей неподклонно? Если я полюбил его и обрадовался любви моей — возможно ли, чтоб он погасил и меня и радость мою и обратил нас в нуль? Если есть бог, то и я бессмертен! Voilà ma profession de foi, my immortality is necessary already for this reason: God will not want to commit an injustice and extinguish altogether the fire of love for him that was kindled in my heart. And what is dearer than love? Love is higher than being, love is the crown of being, and how could being not be subject to it? If I have loved him and rejoiced in my love, is it possible that he should extinguish me and my joy and reduce us to nothing? If there is a God, then I too am immortal! Voilà ma profession de foi.
In "With Tikhon", Stavrogin hears from Tikhon that a complete atheist is more respectable than worldly indifference, a reply that turns denial back against him.
Слушайте, отец Тихон: я хочу простить сам себе, и вот моя главная цель, вся моя цель![...]Я знаю, что только тогда исчезнет видение. Вот почему я и ищу страдания безмерного, сам ищу его. Не пугайте же меня. — Если веруете, что можете простить сами себе и сего прощения себе в сем мире достигнуть, то вы во всё веруете!, listen, Father Tikhon: I want to forgive myself, and this is my main aim, my whole aim! [...] I know that only then will the vision disappear. That is why I seek suffering without measure, I seek it myself. Do not frighten me. If you believe that you can forgive yourselves and attain that forgiveness in this world, then you believe in everything!
Every doctrine in the book about God is spoken by someone who cannot hold it. Shatov builds a theology of the people and does not take the step it presupposes; Kirillov makes himself the God he did not find and ends up biting and shouting before the shot; Stepan reaches immortality through the argument of love, in fever, after having lived without it; Pyotr uses them all without believing in any. The faith that remains is in those who do not defend it: the penitent woman who teaches Marya Timofeyevna the joy of damp earth, the major who gets up at night to make the sign of the cross without knowing whether he believes, the deaf old woman who lights the lamp. The novel takes God out of the hands of those who make systems and leaves him with those who do not ask.
Who Embodies It
Kirillov is atheism taken seriously, with a clear rule: if God does not exist, self-will is his, and its highest point is to take one's own life. Shatov is faith without God, the people in the place of the Father, and the phrase that defines him is the one he cannot finish. Tikhon is the only declared believer whom the book puts in conversation about God with an atheist, in "With Tikhon". Stepan, who spends the book between the pagan and the Christian, reaches the Gospel by way of a woman who sells books, and it is her reading that returns him to the passage of the pigs, in Part Three, Chapter VII.
Where It Appears
- Part One, Chapter I: Stepan Trofimovich says he believes in a being that becomes conscious of itself within him, and Shatov answers that whoever loses the people also loses God.
- Part One, Chapter III: Kirillov says God does not exist, but exists as the pain of the fear of death, and that whoever conquers fear will be a god.
- Part One, Chapter IV: Marya Timofeyevna tells what an old penitent told her about the Mother of God, the great mother, damp earth, and the joy that lies in tears.
- Part Two, Chapter I: Kirillov announces the man-god, and Shatov, with the thesis of the people as the body of God, can only say that he believes in Russia.
- Part Two, Chapter IV: Pyotr tells the governor that he does not believe for his own sake and needs faith only to brutalize the people.
- Part Two, Chapter VII: A major confesses that, even without believing fully, he jumps out of bed at night to make the sign of the cross before the icon.
- Part Three, Chapter IV: Fedka accuses Pyotr of having ceased to believe in God out of depravity, and justifies himself with the legend of the merchant who stole the pearl of the Mother of God.
- Part Three, Chapter V: Marie asks Shatov what he preaches, he says he preaches God, and she answers that he does not believe in him.
- Part Three, Chapter VI: Kirillov concludes that if there is no God, he is God, and draws from the day of the three crosses a sentence against the whole planet.
- Part Three, Chapter VII: Stepan hears the letter to the lukewarm and makes a profession of faith about love and immortality, which Varvara Petrovna barely understands.
- With Tikhon: Tikhon tells Stavrogin that the complete atheist is more respectable than the indifferent man, and that whoever believes he can forgive himself believes in everything.
Where the Readings Diverge
There are two readings of what the novel does with God. In one, it is a demonstration: every attempt to put something in his place, the people, man, the organization, ends in death, and the book closes with Stepan affirming that immortality is necessary, because God would not extinguish the love kindled in him. In the other, there is no refutation at all, and what the book gives each atheist and each believer is a wound: Kirillov through the three crosses, Shatov through the Stavrogin who planted in him God and homeland and no longer believes, Stepan through his twenty years of pose. The novel would be less a thesis than a diagnosis.
What sustains the second reading is the book's refusal to show a God who answers. Tikhon is the nearest it comes, and even he speaks in the name of a humility that Stavrogin refuses. What sustains the first is the coincidence of the endings: the man-god kills himself shouting, the prophet of the people-God is murdered in the park on the day his son is born, and only Stepan, the ancient pagan, dies confessed and communed. The text does not choose between the two, and Stavrogin's ending, found hanged after hearing from Tikhon that whoever believes he can forgive himself believes in everything, serves both.