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The Brothers Karamazov · Book VI

A Russian monk

GuiltSufferingFaithJustice and LawFreedom and Oppression

Summary of the book

After the poem of the Grand Inquisitor, the novel does not answer with an argument. It answers with an afternoon in the cell of a man who is going to die. In Chapter I, Elder Zosima gathers his friends of many years, receives Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov, sends him to look for his brother Dmitri, and tells why he loves his face. In Chapter II, the life of the elder, as Alyosha wrote it from memory: his brother Markel, who dies asking forgiveness of the servants and the birds; the young officer who strikes his orderly, goes to a duel, and asks forgiveness of his rival; the mysterious visitor who confesses the murder committed fourteen years earlier and is taken for a madman. In Chapter III, the lessons: the freedom that multiplies needs, set against the freedom of the monk; humble love; the judge who cannot judge; hell as the suffering of not being able to love; and death, which the narrator tells in a few lines, with the old man kissing the earth. What the book proposes is not a refutation but a life and a way of acting; the question it leaves is whether this answers Ivan's rebellion or only runs alongside it.

Chapter I: The Elder's Guests

Chapter summary

Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov enters the cell of Elder Zosima afraid of finding him dying and unconscious, and sees him seated in an armchair, exhausted but with a cheerful face, surrounded by four friends of many years: Fathers Iosif and Paissy, Father Mikhail, superior of the hermitage, a firm and simple man, and Brother Anfim, an old, nearly illiterate and silent monk with whom Zosima had traveled across Russia forty years before, begging alms for the poor monastery of Kostroma. They had gathered because Zosima had promised in the morning, as he lay down, to get up once more to talk with them, and Paissy believes every word of the dying master so completely that he would not believe in the death even if he saw him without breath, provided the master had promised to return.

Analysis

Не умру прежде, чем еще раз не упьюсь беседой с вами, возлюбленные сердца моего, на милые лики ваши погляжу, душу мою вам еще раз изолью, I will not die before I have once more drunk my fill of talk with you, beloved of my heart, before I have gazed once more upon your dear faces and poured out my soul to you once again.

Zosima makes the promise as he lies down that morning, and chooses for the farewell the verb of the banquet, "to get drunk on talk," instead of a silent goodbye. He wants to share, not only to teach. Paissy takes it literally, and the text shows why: the strictest need a marked word in order to accept that the master is dying.

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Chapter II: The Elder's Life

GuiltSuffering

Chapter summary

Elder Zosima tells, in the manuscript of Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov, that he was born in a northern town, the son of a minor nobleman who died when he was two, and that his name was Zinovy. His mother raised him, with an older brother eight years his senior, Markel, of an irritable and silent temper, who at seventeen began to frequent an exiled philosopher and, during Lent, refused to fast and said that there was no God, frightening his mother, the servants, and the nine-year-old boy. In the sixth week he fell ill with galloping tuberculosis, and the doctor warned his mother that he would not last until spring. She, weeping, asked him to confess and take communion; he was offended, realized he was gravely ill, and went, "to make the lady happy," he said. That is where the change began. At Easter, seated in his armchair and smiling, he accepted that the old nurse light the lamp before the icon, which he had not allowed before, saying that she prayed to God by lighting the light, and that he, rejoicing with her, prayed too, so that they prayed to the same God. To his mother, who wept beside him, he answered:

Analysis

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Chapter III: The Elder's Teachings

GuiltSufferingJustice and LawFreedom and Oppression

Chapter summary

Elder Zosima moves from life to doctrine and begins by asking what a monk is. In the "enlightened" world the word is spoken with mockery, or as an insult, and there are indeed parasites, gluttons, and vagabonds in the monastery; but there are many meek and humble people, who long for solitude and prayer, and from them, he says, salvation may yet come to the Russian land, because they keep the image of Christ intact, in the purity of God's truth, and will show it to the world when needed. He then turns to the world, where science admits only what is felt and the life of the spirit has been driven out:

Analysis

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Reading of the book

Analysis

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