Who He Is
Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov, Mitya, is the eldest son of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, a twenty-eight-year-old former officer who looks older, muscular, with a military stride and a gaze that does not follow his mood (ch. VI of Book II). Forgotten by his father at three and passed from hand to hand, raised first by the servant Grigory, he reaches adulthood convinced he has a fortune and discovers, when he settles accounts with his father, that nothing is left (ch. II of Book I). His adult life revolves around two women whom the book sets on opposite sides, Katerina Ivanovna, the noble fiancée to whom he owes three thousand rubles, and Grushenka, the woman who drives him mad and whom his father also desires (ch. IV of Book III, ch. V of Book III). Between the two, money and the old man, the night comes in which his father is killed, and Mitya is arrested, questioned, and convicted of a crime he did not commit (ch. IX of Book IX, ch. XIV of Book XII). The trait that defines him is feeling honor as shame in the body and confessing aloud even what incriminates him, and that is why the inquest reads him as guilty and those who know him read him as innocent.
Trajectory
In ch. II of Book I, the narrator tells of his disorderly youth: he does not finish gymnasium, goes through a military school, goes to the Caucasus, fights a duel, is demoted, serves again, carouses and runs up debts. When he loses patience and returns to end the fight over the inheritance once and for all, he discovers that his father, through advances and agreements he himself wanted to sign, has spent everything, and the narrator calls this the catastrophe of the first novel:
Вот это-то обстоятельство и привело к катастрофе, изложение которой и составит предмет моего первого вступительного романа, it was precisely this circumstance that led to the catastrophe, whose account will form the subject of my first novel, the introductory one.
In ch. VI of Book II, he arrives late at the elder's cell (Smerdyakov had assured him twice that the meeting was at one o'clock), kisses the elder's hand, makes a deep bow to his father, and says he came meaning to forgive and to ask forgiveness. Accused before the monks of owing thousands and of having traded his noble fiancée for a seductress, he asks, slowly, pointing at the old man:
Зачем живет такой человек!, Why does such a man live!
The elder kneels before him and touches the floor with his forehead, and Mitya cries out to God and flees with his face in his hands. In ch. III of Book III, in the garden next to his father's, it is he who waits for Alyosha for the confession that the book considers the longest. He begins with Schiller's hymn to joy and gives himself the name of family:
Потому что я Карамазов. Потому что если уж полечу в бездну, то так-таки прямо, головой вниз и вверх пятами, и даже доволен, что именно в унизительном таком положении падаю и считаю это для себя красотой., Because I am a Karamazov. Because if I am going to fly into the abyss, I'll go straight, head first and heels up, and I'm even pleased to fall in that humiliating position and count it, for myself, as beauty.
в тебе, ангеле, это насекомое живет и в крови твоей бури родит. Это — бури, потому что сладострастье буря, больше бури! Красота — это страшная и ужасная вещь!, in you, angel, this insect lives and breeds storms in your blood. They are storms, because sensuality is a storm, more than a storm! Beauty is a terrible and frightful thing!
He says that the ideal of the Madonna and that of Sodom live in the same heart, and that it is there the two forces battle:
иной, высший даже сердцем человек и с умом высоким, начинает с идеала Мадонны, а кончает идеалом содомским, a man with even a lofty heart and a high mind begins with the ideal of the Madonna and ends with the ideal of Sodom.
Тут дьявол с богом борется, а поле битвы — сердца людей., Here the devil wrestles with God, and the battlefield is the hearts of men.
In ch. IV of Book III, he hears from Alyosha the ladder of vice, which one climbs entirely once the first step is taken:
Кто ступил на нижнюю ступеньку, тот всё равно непременно вступит и на верхнюю., Whoever has stepped on the lowest step will, without fail, step onto the highest one as well.
and he tells the story of Katerina Ivanovna, without sparing himself. An ensign in the battalion, he learned that her father, the commander, was in trouble for lacking four thousand five hundred rubles in the battalion's cash box, and sent word to the elder daughter that her sister, the girl from the institute, should come secretly to get the money. She came, and his first thought, he says, was a Karamazov's:
Красива была она тем в ту минуту, что она благородная, а я подлец, что она в величии своего великодушия и жертвы своей за отца, а я клоп., She was beautiful at that moment because she was noble and I a scoundrel, because she was in the greatness of her generosity and her sacrifice for her father, and I a bedbug.
She bows to the floor, Russian-style, and he, who could have taken advantage, kisses the blade of his sword and lets her go with the money:
склонилась вся и прямо мне в ноги — лбом до земли, не по-институтски, по-русски!, she bowed all the way down, straight at my feet, with her forehead to the ground, not in the way of institute girls, but in the Russian way!
In ch. V of Book III, he explains to Alyosha the second half, which he calls the tragedy: Katerina entrusts him with three thousand rubles to send to her sister in Moscow, and he spends them on Grushenka and says he sent them, and for that he considers himself a thief. About what he feels for Grushenka he says:
Грянула гроза, ударила чума, заразился и заражен доселе, и знаю, что уж всё кончено, что ничего другого и никогда не будет. Цикл времен совершен., The storm has broken, the plague has struck, I caught it and am infected to this day, and I know that everything is already over, that nothing else will ever be. The cycle of times is complete.
He knows his father set aside three thousand rubles in an envelope for her, and he keeps watch in the garden. He asks Alyosha to go to the old man and fetch the money, asks God for a miracle, and warns that if his father takes her:
Чуду промысла божьего. Богу известно мое сердце, он видит всё мое отчаяние. Он всю эту картину видит. Неужели он попустит совершиться ужасу? Алеша, я чуду верю, иди!, In the miracle of God's providence. God knows my heart, He sees all my despair. He sees this whole picture. Will He allow the horror to come to pass? Alyosha, I believe in the miracle, go!
А коль если, так убью. Так не переживу., And if it happens, I'll kill. I won't survive it.
Старика. Ее не убью., The old man. Her I won't kill.
In ch. IX of Book III, he breaks into his father's house looking for Grushenka, knocks Grigory down with a punch and beats the old man, stamping on his face, and goes out shouting that he does not regret the blood. In ch. XI of Book III, under a willow on the road to the monastery, he plays at bandits with Alyosha, speaks of hanging himself, and after laughing uproariously at the scene of the two women, beats his chest and says a terrible dishonor is being prepared there:
вот тут, вот тут — готовится страшное бесчестие., here, here, a terrible dishonor is being prepared.
Ну так знай же, что я его совершу, а не остановлю., Then know that I will commit it, and not stop it.
In ch. VII of Book IV, Captain Snegiryov tells Alyosha that Mitya dragged him from the tavern to the square by the beard, in front of his son Ilyusha, who ran alongside, and that the offender even proposed an officers' duel:
Ты, говорит, офицер, и я офицер, если можешь найти секунданта, порядочного человека, то присылай — дам удовлетворение, хотя бы ты и мерзавец!, you are an officer, he says, and so am I; if you can find a second, a decent man, send him, and I'll give you satisfaction, even if you are a scoundrel!
In ch. I of Book VIII, the debt to Katerina is what keeps him from beginning a new life with Grushenka, and he says so with his usual frankness:
я карманный вор, я подлец, а новую жизнь я не хочу начинать подлецом, I'm a pickpocket, I'm a scoundrel, and I don't want to start a new life as a scoundrel.
лучше даже «убить и ограбить кого-нибудь, но долг Кате возвратить», it is even better "to kill and rob someone, but to repay the debt to Katya."
The three thousand he seeks do not appear: Samsonov refuses him and sends him to Lyagavy, the merchant who buys his father's woodland (ch. I of Book VIII), and in Ilyinskoye Mitya finds only the drunken man, nearly dies of charcoal poisoning, and suspects he was sent there on purpose (ch. II of Book VIII); Madame Khokhlakova offers him gold mines instead of money, and he, after pawning his dueling pistols, pounds the table and goes out crying into the street (ch. III of Book VIII). In ch. IV of Book VIII, not knowing where Grushenka is, he circles his father's house, climbs the fence, crouches behind the bushes, and looks through the lit window. What he feels before the old man, he says later:
Ненавижу я его кадык, его нос, его глаза, его бесстыжую насмешку. Личное омерзение чувствую., I hate his Adam's apple, his nose, his eyes, his shameless mockery. I feel a personal disgust.
He gives the agreed signal that makes his father open the window, takes the pestle from his pocket, and the novel cuts the scene, leaving only the phrase he will repeat afterward. What follows is Grigory fallen and Mitya on top of him, believing him dead:
Бог, — как сам Митя говорил потом, — сторожил меня тогда, God, as Mitya himself said later, was guarding me then.
убил так убил… Попался старик и лежи!, Killed him, killed him... The old man's had it, let him lie there!
In ch. V of Book VIII, he learns from Fenya that Grushenka went to Mokroye to meet the officer from five years earlier, and rushes to Perkhotin's house with blood-stained hands and a wad of notes. Asked whose blood it is, he deflects with a joke:
Это я старушонку одну на площади сейчас раздавил. [...] Старика!, It was an old woman I just crushed in the square. [...] An old man!
Then he says what he intends to do to himself:
Казню себя за всю жизнь, всю жизнь мою наказую!, I execute myself for my whole life, I punish my whole life!
In ch. VI of Book VIII, in Andrei's troika, he asks forgiveness of everyone and prays:
Господи, прими меня во всем моем беззаконии, но не суди меня. Пропусти мимо без суда твоего… Не суди, потому что я сам осудил себя; не суди, потому что люблю тебя, господи!, Lord, receive me in all my iniquity, but do not judge me. Let me pass by without your judgment... Do not judge me, because I have already condemned myself; do not judge me, because I love you, Lord!
In ch. VII of Book VIII, in Mokroye, he asks to stay until morning in the room where Grushenka is with the Poles, and offers the pan three thousand rubles to leave. He tells her this, and she feels sold and turns against both of them:
хочешь три тысячи, бери и уезжай куда знаешь. [...] Бери три тысячи и убирайся ко всем чертям, you want three thousand? Take it and go wherever you like. [...] Take the three thousand and go to the devil.
In ch. VIII of Book VIII, alone in the dark of the balcony, he understands that the officer who pursued him has become something small and comic, prays that the cup pass from him, and has a ray of hope: if the old man lives, he will return the money. He comes back and finds Grushenka behind the curtain, weeping and saying to herself:
Его ли любила али только злобу мою? Нет, его! Ох, его!, Was it him I loved, or only my spite? No, him! Oh, him!
She tells him she will plow the earth with him, and Mitya, on his knees, can think of only one thing:
Груша, ты хочешь, чтобы честно, а я вор. Я у Катьки деньги украл… Позор, позор!, Grusha, you want me to be honest, and I am a thief. I stole the money from Katka... Shame, shame!
When the curtain opens and the ispravnik, the assistant prosecutor, and the examining magistrate come in, he hears the accusation without understanding it at once:
Старик! [...] старик и его кровь!.. По-ни-маю!, Old man! [...] the old man and his blood!.. I-un-der-stand!
In ch. III of Book IX, at the first ordeal, he cries that he is not guilty of his father's blood, but that he wanted to kill, and to his interrogators, relieved, he speaks of Grigory as a real father:
Не повинен! В этой крови не повинен! В крови отца моего не повинен… Хотел убить, но не повинен! Не я!, I am not guilty! Of this blood I am not guilty! Of my father's blood I am not guilty... I wanted to kill, but I am not guilty! It was not I!
Этот старик — ведь он носил меня на руках, господа, мыл меня в корыте, когда меня трехлетнего ребенка все покинули, был отцом родным!.., This old man carried me in his arms, gentlemen, washed me in the tub when I was a three-year-old child whom everyone had abandoned; he was a real father!..
In ch. IV of Book IX, he has it written down that he took the pestle to kill his father, and tells of the dream in which someone seeks him in the dark and pretends not to know where he is; now, he tells the prosecutor and the judge, the dream is real: he is the wolf and they are the hunters:
Теперь уж не сон! Реализм, господа, реализм действительной жизни! Я волк, а вы охотники, ну и травите волка., Now it is no dream! Realism, gentlemen, the realism of real life! I am the wolf, and you are the hunters, so hunt the wolf.
In ch. V of Book IX, at the third ordeal, he recounts precisely what he felt at the window and how he fled, and refuses to say where the money he carried came from, because the shame of saying it is, he claims, greater than that of having killed and robbed his father, had he done so:
Потому, господа, умалчиваю, что тут для меня позор. В ответе на вопрос: откуда взял эти деньги, заключен для меня такой позор, с которым не могло бы сравняться даже и убийство, и ограбление отца, если б я его убил и ограбил., I keep silent, gentlemen, because here there is a disgrace for me. In the answer to the question of where I got this money there is locked for me such a shame that not even the murder and robbery of my father could match it, if I had killed and robbed him.
In ch. VI of Book IX, undressed before peasants and examined as evidence, he says that whoever unlocked the door for his father and went in through it is the murderer, and that this is not he, even when the prosecutor tells him that Grigory, on regaining consciousness, swears he saw the door open:
Тот, который отпер к отцу дверь и вошел этою дверью, тот и убил его, тот и обокрал. Кто он — я теряюсь и мучаюсь, но это не Дмитрий Карамазов, The one who unlocked the door for my father and went in through that door, he is the one who killed him, he is the one who robbed him. Who he is, I lose myself and am tormented, but it is not Dmitri Karamazov.
In ch. VII of Book IX, he reveals the secret of the fifteen hundred rubles he carried sewn to his neck, half of Katerina's money, kept to flee with Grushenka. The shame lies not in the sum but in having set aside half of the other:
Не в полутора тысячах заключался позор, а в том, что эти полторы тысячи я отделил от тех трех тысяч, The shame did not lie in the fifteen hundred, but in having set those fifteen hundred apart from the three thousand.
And he fixes the difference that moves him:
Подлецом может быть всякий, да и есть, пожалуй, всякий, но вором может быть не всякий, а только архиподлец., Anyone can be a scoundrel, and perhaps everyone is one, but not everyone can be a thief; only the arch-scoundrel can.
In ch. VIII of Book IX, after hearing Grushenka swear that he does not deceive against conscience, he sleeps and dreams of a wet snowy steppe, a half-burned village and a thin woman with bare, purple arms and a child crying in her arms:
почему не кормят дитё?, why don't they feed the little child?
He wakes with a pillow under his head and the joy of someone who has been treated as a human being:
Я хороший сон видел, господа, I had a good dream, gentlemen.
In ch. IX of Book IX, as he is led to prison, he states the guilt he accepts, which is not the one the inquest seeks:
Господа, все мы жестоки, все мы изверги, все плакать заставляем людей, матерей и грудных детей, но из всех — пусть уж так будет решено теперь — из всех я самый подлый гад!, Gentlemen, we are all cruel, we are all monsters, we all make people weep, mothers and nursing infants, but of all of us, let it be decided so now, I am the vilest worm of them all!
In ch. IV of Book XI, two months later, still in prison, what was once shame has become a desire to sing a hymn, and Mitya tells Alyosha he will go to the mines for everyone, and for a boy:
За «дитё» и пойду. Потому что все за всех виноваты. За всех «дитё», потому что есть малые дети и большие дети. Все — «дитё». За всех и пойду, потому что надобно же кому-нибудь и за всех пойти. Я не убил отца, но мне надо пойти. Принимаю!, it is for the boy that I will go. Because all are guilty for all. For everyone, the boy, because there are small children and big children. All are "the boy." I will go for all, because someone must go for everyone. I did not kill my father, but I must go. I accept!
Да здравствует бог и его радость! Люблю его!, Long live God and his joy! I love him!
In the same chapter he recounts Ivan's plan, the flight to America with Grushenka, and hesitates: where would the hymn be if he fled from the cross? In ch. I of Book XII, opening the trial, he confesses himself guilty of drunkenness and debauchery and denies the robbery:
Признаю себя виновным в пьянстве и разврате, I admit myself guilty of drunkenness and debauchery.
Дмитрий Карамазов подлец, но не вор!, Dmitri Karamazov is a scoundrel, but not a thief!
In ch. III of Book XII, Doctor Herzenstube tells that he took a pound of nuts to the boy without boots from his father's yard, and that twenty-three years later the young man came into his office to thank him for the gift:
Я сейчас приехал и пришел вас благодарить за фунт орехов; ибо мне никто никогда не покупал тогда фунт орехов, а вы один купили мне фунт орехов, I have just arrived and have come to thank you for the pound of nuts, for no one ever bought me a pound of nuts back then, and you alone bought me a pound of nuts.
From the dock, Mitya answers the old man:
И теперь плачу, немец, и теперь плачу, божий ты человек!, And even now I weep, German, even now I weep, man of God!
In ch. IV of Book XII, when Katerina testifies in his favor and tells of the visit to the young officer, the bow to the floor and the five thousand rubles, Mitya rises and cries out with arms outstretched:
Катя, зачем меня погубила!, Katya, why did you ruin me!
In ch. XIV of Book XII, after the two speeches, he speaks little, with a weak and humble voice:
„В крови отца моего — нет, не виновен!“ В последний раз повторяю: „Не я убил“, "Of my father's blood, no, I am not guilty!" For the last time I repeat: "It was not I who killed him."
He asks the jurors not to deprive him of his God, because, knowing himself, he would rebel. When he hears the verdict, guilty on all counts and without mitigation, he cries out with open arms the forgiveness of the woman who ruined him:
Но пощадите, не лишите меня бога моего, знаю себя: возропщу!, But spare me, do not deprive me of my God, I know myself: I will rebel!
И потом по всем пунктам пошло всё то же: виновен да виновен, и это без малейшего снисхождения!, and then, on every count, it was the same: guilty and guilty, and without the slightest leniency!
Катя, прощаю тебе! Братья, други, пощадите другую!, Katya, I forgive you! Brothers, friends, spare the other woman!
In ch. II of the Epilogue, in the hospital, with nervous fever, he tells Alyosha that he will flee with Grushenka to America and return disguised to die in Russia, and what holds him to the country is this:
Россию люблю, Алексей, русского бога люблю, хоть я сам и подлец!, I love Russia, Alexei, I love the Russian God, even though I am a scoundrel myself!
When he confesses that he loves Grushenka terribly, that he spent the night judging himself, and that the cross frightens him, Alyosha answers him:
ты не готов, и не для тебя такой крест, you are not ready, and such a cross is not for you.
In the same chapter Katerina comes to see him, Grushenka enters the room, and the book does not say whether he flees.
Themes Embodied
Mitya is the raw energy of the family, the one who opens the well of crime and the possibility of beauty, without the novel accepting to separate the two. The father's inheritance is in appetite, but in him appetite confesses itself: he names the insect and the bedbug, and hears from Alyosha the ladder of vice (ch. III of Book III, ch. IV of Book III), and that is why the debt to Katerina weighs on him more than the death of the father, which he did not commit (ch. VII of Book IX). The theme he carries is that of Guilt, measured in three voices: that of the inquest, which knows only facts; his own, which knows only shame; and that of the dream of the hungry child, where guilt ceases to belong to someone and becomes everyone's (ch. IX of Book IX). The prosecutor reads him as someone who contemplates both abysses at once, the highest ideal and the most fetid fall (ch. VI of Book XII):
способные вмещать всевозможные противоположности и разом созерцать обе бездны, бездну над нами, бездну высших идеалов, и бездну под нами, бездну самого низшего и зловонного падения, capable of containing every possible contrary and of contemplating both abysses at once, the abyss above us, of the highest ideals, and the abyss beneath us, of the lowest and most fetid fall.
What he wants is Grushenka and honor, and the book shows that the two things cross in the same object, Katerina's money (ch. I of Book VIII, ch. VII of Book IX). What he fears is being, in his own eyes, a thief and not a murderer, and the scale of guilts that the inquest imposes on him is the reverse of his own (ch. V of Book IX). What he knows is that Grigory's blood is on his hands, and what he does not know is that his father was already dead by the moment of his arrest (ch. VIII of Book VIII). Where he is wrong is in believing that shame is resolved by an act, paying the debt, killing himself, fleeing, and it is the suffering he did not choose that changes him (ch. IV of Book XI). The cross that Alyosha says he is not yet ready to bear (ch. II of the Epilogue) is the same one the hymn already accepted (ch. IV of Book XI).
Divergent Readings
The book sets out two readings of Mitya's crime that close around him. The prosecutor needs a man who premeditates and reads the drunken letter as a plan, and the defense needs a man who never wanted to kill, and each wants Mitya simple in order to close its own thesis. For the defense, the guilty one is the servant, and the proof is the distinction it draws when reading the suicide's note:
Отчаяние и раскаяние — две вещи совершенно различные., despair and remorse are two completely different things.
Mitya's own sentence stands between the two:
Принимаю казнь не за то, что убил его, а за то, что хотел убить и, может быть, в самом деле убил бы…, I accept the execution, not because I killed him, but because I wanted to kill him, and perhaps I really would have done it...
The same gesture, returning to the garden to see the old man, has two descriptions: he says he jumped down out of pity, and the prosecutor reads the coldness of someone confirming that the only witness is dead.
Увы, Мите и в голову не пришло рассказать, хотя он и помнил это, что соскочил он из жалости и, став над убитым, произнес даже несколько жалких слов: «Попался старик, нечего делать, ну и лежи»., Alas, it never occurred to Mitya to tell, though he remembered it, that he jumped down out of pity and, standing over the one he thought dead, even uttered a few pitiful words: "The old man's had it, nothing to be done, so let him lie there."
As for what Mitya carries, the readings diverge. For the prosecutor, the excess is an indication of crime; for the defense, it is proof of innocence; for a symbolic reading, that of the body, it is the limit of a path that exhausts itself in the senses; for a biographical reading, it is the jealousy the author knew; for another, it is the word of honor, a criterion of truth that the inquest, of the Western kind, has stopped accepting. The book gives reason to all of them in part, and to none entirely: he is capable of the crime and does not commit it, and it is in the interval between the two things that the novel's notion of guilt lives (ch. IX of Book IX, ch. XIV of Book XII). Against the reading of the body, it is worth noting that the hymn of ch. IV of Book XI is Mitya's, not Ivan's.
Relationships
- Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov: the father who forgot and exploited him (ch. II of Book I), from whom he inherits unbridled appetite and whom he nearly kills out of hatred, without managing to kill him (ch. IX of Book III, ch. IV of Book VIII).
- Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov: the brother to whom he proposes flight, though in Mitya's opinion Ivan believes that Mitya was the killer, and to whom Mitya asks whether then everything is permitted (ch. IV of Book XI).
- Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov: the brother to whom he makes the longest confession in the novel (ch. III of Book III, ch. IV of Book III, ch. V of Book III) and to whom the hymn is said in prison (ch. IV of Book XI).
- Katerina Ivanovna: the fiancée to whom he owes three thousand rubles and for whom he considers himself a thief (ch. V of Book III, ch. VII of Book IX); in the Epilogue, their last encounter (ch. II of the Epilogue).
- Grushenka: the woman for whom he was ready to kill his father (ch. V of Book III), whom he finds again in Mokroye and from whom he takes leave in prison (ch. VIII of Book VIII, ch. IX of Book IX).
- Smerdyakov: the servant who gave him the wrong hour for the meeting (ch. VI of Book II), who knows the agreed signals (ch. V of Book III), and who is the true murderer (ch. VIII of Book XI).
- Grigory: the servant who raised him and whom he wounds in the garden (ch. II of Book I, ch. IV of Book VIII, ch. III of Book IX).