Who He Is
Hippolyte Kirillovich is the assistant city prosecutor, a man of about thirty-five, ill with a chest complaint, married to a fat woman without children, ambitious and irritable, who considers himself a psychologist and wronged in his career (ch. II of Book IX). The young examining magistrate, Nikolai Parfenovich, reveres him, and he, in return, loves the young man as the only person who admires him (ch. IV of Book IX). Hurt since Petersburg at having been poorly recognised, he sees in Mitya's case the chance to revive his career, and fears meeting the head of the defence, Fetyukovich, an old enemy from the Petersburg days (ch. I of Book XII). He wants to be recognised as a psychologist and as a talent that his career never rewarded. At the trial he delivers the speech he considers his masterpiece and his swan song, nine months before he dies of tuberculosis (ch. VI of Book XII). The trait that defines him is sincerity put in the service of a version: he truly believes in Mitya's guilt, and that is what makes what he says dangerous.
Trajectory
In ch. II of Book IX, at the house of the police chief, where he happens to be when Pierkhotin arrives with the news, he hears that Mitya loaded the pistol and wrote a note, and closes the reasoning with the image of the young man who steals fifteen hundred rubles and goes to the girls:
это точь-в-точь у подобных сорванцов так и делается: завтра убью себя, а пред смертью кутеж, that is exactly how such scoundrels do it: tomorrow I'll kill myself, and before death, a binge.
In ch. III of Book IX, at the first ordeal, he interrupts Mitya to say that he should not grieve over Grigory, who is alive, and Mitya, in ecstasy, thanks God. In ch. IV of Book IX, with the magistrate, who had agreed with him on the journey on the plan for the case, they read in each other's eyes what they want from Mitya. When the interrogation corners him, Mitya compares the inquiry to the dream of being hunted by someone who pretends not to know where he is hiding:
Теперь уж не сон! Реализм, господа, реализм действительной жизни! Я волк, а вы охотники, ну и травите волка., Now it is no longer a 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 asks, as if not noticing, whether the garden door, at the other end of the house, was open, and he reads the jump back into the garden, after wounding Grigory, as coldness, because Mitya's account does not contain what would explain it:
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, although he remembered it, that he jumped down out of pity and, standing over the man he took to be dead, even said a few pitiful words: "The old man has come to grief, there is nothing to be done, well, lie there."
In ch. VI of Book IX, while Mitya is undressed behind the curtains, he informs him that Grigory, on regaining consciousness, swears he saw the door wide open. Mitya reacts with the only word he has:
Дверь, дверь [...] Это фантом! Бог против меня!, The door, the door [...] It's a phantom! God is against me!
The magistrate, moved, was about to promise that a full confession can ease his lot, and the prosecutor touches him under the table, and he falls silent. In ch. VII of Book IX Mitya reveals the secret of the fifteen hundred, and the prosecutor finds the shame small for a secret so costly, and Mitya answers:
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 the fact that I separated those fifteen hundred from the three thousand.
In ch. IX of Book IX the arrest report closes the trap of language: the inquiry processes only verifiable fact, and Mitya can speak only of conscience. It is the point at which the psychologist makes his greatest mistake: he reads as cold calculation precisely the moments when Mitya is most transparent.
In ch. IV of Book XII he asks Alyosha whether Mitya told him he would kill his father, and forces him to admit, after a frank answer, that he has no proof except his brother's face. In ch. VI of Book XII he opens the trembling speech, with cold sweat and shivers, and wins because he is sincere. He begins with the horror of no longer being horrified:
В том и ужас наш, что такие мрачные дела почти перестали для нас быть ужасными!, Our horror lies in the fact that such gloomy affairs have almost ceased to appear horrible to us!
He presents the family as a mirror, and Mitya as immediate Russia, with good and evil mixed together:
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 at once both abysses, the abyss above us, of the highest ideals, and the abyss beneath us, of the lowest and most fetid fall.
He applies the thesis to the three thousand rubles and sets aside the amulet, which Mitya said he had kept for a month:
Легенда же об ладонке — это такое противоречие с действительностью, какого более и представить нельзя., And the legend of the amulet is such a contradiction of reality as can scarcely be imagined.
In ch. VII of Book XII he replaces the expert's explanation, mania, with another, jealousy:
не в трех тысячах, не в сумме собственно заключался предмет постоянного и исступленного озлобления подсудимого, а в том, что была тут особая причина, возбуждавшая его гнев. Причина эта — ревность!, The object of the defendant's constant and frenzied rancour lay not in the three thousand, nor in the sum itself, but in the fact that there was a special cause here that aroused his anger. That cause was jealousy!
And he undoes the defence's plea that the deed was done in drunkenness, with the letter that Katerina Ivanovna presented:
в пьяном виде написал то, что задумал в трезвом. Не было бы задумано в трезвом, не написалось бы в пьяном., He wrote drunk what he had planned sober. If it had not been planned sober, it would not have been written drunk.
In ch. VIII of Book XII he examines the suspicion against Smerdyakov: the first to shout that it was him was the defendant himself, in prison, without offering a fact, and only the two brothers and Grushenka support it, all out of ties. He concludes that the accusation against the dead man arises from there being no other name:
Именно только по тому одному, что другого некого подобрать!, precisely and only for this reason: because there is no one else to be found!
He reads the suicide's note as a silence that clears him:
Ну что б ему прибавить в записке: убийца я, а не Карамазов. Но этого он не прибавил: на одно совести хватило, а на другое нет?, What would it have cost him to add to the note: I am the murderer, not Karamazov? But he did not add that: his conscience was enough for one thing, but not for the other?
And he reads Mitya's jump back into the garden as the wish to know whether the only witness was dead.
In ch. IX of Book XII he closes the analysis of the planned suicide:
Нет, господа присяжные, у тех Гамлеты, а у нас еще пока Карамазовы!, No, gentlemen of the jury, others have Hamlets, but we still have Karamazovs for now!
He asks for a fact in the defendant's favour:
Что же мы, шакалы, жаждущие крови человеческой? Дайте, укажите нам хоть один факт в пользу подсудимого, и мы обрадуемся, Are we jackals, then, thirsting for human blood? Give us, show us just one fact in the defendant's favour, and we shall be glad.
And he concludes, feverishly, that the jurors represent Russia and that the fatal troika may head for disaster, and he nearly faints in the adjoining room. In ch. XIV of Book XII, after the defence attorney's speech, he rises for the rebuttal, hated by the hall, pale and trembling, and carries the other man's thesis to where it becomes frightening:
Но если отцеубийство есть предрассудок и если каждый ребенок будет допрашивать своего отца: „Отец, зачем я должен любить тебя?“ — то что станется с нами, что станется с основами общества, куда денется семья?, But if parricide is a prejudice, and if every child is going to question his father: "Father, why must I love you?" then what will become of us, what will become of the foundations of society, where will the family go?
The president interrupts him for excess, Fetyukovich answers with a proverb, and the ladies consider him crushed for ever.
Themes Embodied
Hippolyte Kirillovich is justice that reads the man as a type. The braggart who kills himself after the revelry (ch. II of Book IX), the cold calculator who premeditates (ch. XIV of Book XII), the jealous man who decides to kill (ch. VII of Book XII) are versions in which the money, the door and the pestle all fit, and each one dispenses with reading the defendant as a person. The theme he carries is that of Justice and law, and that of Reason taken as psychology, in the sense of someone who uses knowledge of the heart to close a case.
What moves him is not malice, and the text says so in several ways: he believes in the guilt, sees in the case a disease of society, and asks, with the frankness of one who trembles, that he be shown one fact in the defendant's favour (ch. IX of Book XII). What blinds him is the method. The thesis of the two abysses, which serves to explain why Mitya is noble before Katerina and vile in spending her money, serves the defence equally well (ch. VI of Book XII, ch. XI of Book XII), and the reasoning that the accusation against the dead man arises from the lack of another name holds for him too (ch. VIII of Book XII). Whoever reads Mitya as a type no longer needs to read him as a person, and Hippolyte Kirillovich's ambition does the rest (ch. II of Book IX).
Divergent Readings
The book stages two responses to his method, both from the defence attorney. The first says that psychology is a stick that can be grasped at any end:
Но ведь психология, господа, хоть и глубокая вещь, а все-таки похожа на палку о двух концах, But psychology, gentlemen, however profound a thing, is nevertheless like a stick with two ends.
The second accuses the construction of being a novel:
И такими-то романами мы готовы погубить жизнь человеческую!, And with novels like these we are ready to destroy a human life!
On the defence attorney's reading, the prosecutor is a novelist who makes of a man the character that suits him, and psychology is the instrument of fantasy (ch. XI of Book XII). On the narrator's reading, he is a sincere, sick and ambitious man, who believes what he says, and who keeps in his speech about Ivan a personal revenge for old clashes in debates (ch. VI of Book XII). The text sustains both and adds a third, the harshest: the prosecutor errs for the same reason as the defence attorney, because each needs Mitya to be simple in order to close his own thesis (ch. XIV of Book XII). The error, in his case, is not one of bad faith, and that is what makes it dangerous (ch. VIII of Book XII).
Relationships
- Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov: the defendant whom he interrogates on the night of the arrest, strips, hears and accuses; Mitya calls him a hunter, him and the magistrate (ch. IV of Book IX), and he reads the jump back into the garden as coldness (ch. V of Book IX).
- Fetyukovich: the head of the defence whom he fears (ch. I of Book XII) and who hands him back psychology as a double-edged stick (ch. X of Book XII, ch. XI of Book XII).
- Grigory: the witness to the open door, whose word he uses as decisive proof (ch. VI of Book IX).
- Smerdyakov: the dead man whom he examines and excludes for lack of another name (ch. VIII of Book XII).
- Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov: the brother whom he asks whether Mitya threatened his father (ch. IV of Book XII).
- Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov: the portrait he gives of Ivan, of strong intelligence and without faith, carries a personal revenge (ch. VI of Book XII).