Who He Is
Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov is the second son of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov and of Sofya Ivanovna, a blood brother of Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov and a half-brother of Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov. He grows up gloomy and closed, not at all timid, with the idea, from the age of ten, that he lives in someone else's house and that his father is someone one is ashamed to speak of; he studies in Moscow, supports himself with lessons and newspaper pieces, and becomes known in literary circles (ch. III of Book I). He returns to his father's town with the air of a mediator between him and Mitya (ch. III of Book I), wrote an article on ecclesiastical courts, discussed in the elder's cell (ch. V of Book II), and is the son of the intellect: where Mitya answers abandonment with the body and Alyosha with faith, Ivan answers by building the strongest argument ever made against the world God created, and pays for it with his own reason, in a brain fever that the novel leaves open (ch. IV of Book V, ch. IX of Book XI, ch. I of the Epilogue). The trait that defines him is the distance between what he says and what he wants: he promises to defend his father and brother and reserves for himself the right to desire (ch. IX of Book III), leaves for Moscow without preventing what he senses, and calls himself a scoundrel on arriving (ch. VII of Book V).
Trajectory
In ch. III of Book I, when he arrives in town, Miusov says of him that he is proud, always finds himself a kopeck, and even now has money to go abroad, and asks what he wants there:
«Он горд, — говорил он нам тогда про него, — всегда добудет себе копейку, у него и теперь есть деньги на заграницу — чего ж ему здесь надо?, He is proud, he used to say to us about him, always gets himself a kopeck, and even now he has money to go abroad: what does he want here?
In ch. V of Book II, in the elder's cell, the article on ecclesiastical courts shows the thesis of an Ivan whom Alyosha expected to be arrogant and who presents himself with modesty: the Church should not occupy a corner of the State, it should contain the whole of it.
церковь должна заключать сама в себе всё государство, а не занимать в нем лишь некоторый угол, the Church must contain within itself the whole State, and not occupy merely a corner of it.
Father Paisy, who supports him and corrects him, sums up the difference between the thesis and that of Rome:
государство обращается в церковь, восходит до церкви и становится церковью на всей земле, the State turns into the Church, rises up to the Church, and becomes the Church over the whole earth.
In ch. VI of Book II, Miusov recounts that Ivan maintained in a circle of ladies that there is no natural law that makes man love humanity and that, once faith in immortality is destroyed, nothing will be immoral. The elder asks him whether he still holds the opinion, and says what he sees in him:
Идея эта еще не решена в вашем сердце и мучает его. Но и мученик любит иногда забавляться своим отчаянием, как бы тоже от отчаяния., This idea is not yet resolved in your heart, and it torments it. But the martyr too sometimes likes to amuse himself with his despair, as if also out of despair.
In ch. VII of Book II, Rakitin insists that Ivan is waiting for the collision between father and Mitya so that he can keep the fiancée and the dowry, and Alyosha answers him, firmly, about his brother:
Он мучения, может быть, ищет., He seeks torment, perhaps.
In ch. VIII of Book III, at his drunken father's table, when the father asks him seriously whether there is a God, he answers without irony:
Нет, нету бога., No, there is no God.
When the father forgets that Alyosha's mother was also his, it is Ivan who reminds him, with contained contempt:
Да ведь и моя, я думаю, мать его мать была, как вы полагаете?, But mine, I believe, was also his mother, what do you think?
In ch. IX of Book III, after pulling Mitya off the old man, he whispers to Alyosha what he would not say aloud, and in the courtyard, facing Alyosha's question, he promises to defend them and keeps for himself the freedom of his desires:
Один гад съест другую гадину, обоим туда и дорога!, One reptile will devour the other, and it serves them both right!
Но в желаниях моих я оставляю за собою в данном случае полный простор., But in my desires I reserve for myself, in this case, full freedom.
In ch. V of Book IV, in the scene of the nadryv, Ivan hears Alyosha tell Katerina Ivanovna that she torments him because she loves Mitya, retorts with a youthful frankness Alyosha had never seen in him, and leaves without taking her hand:
Она держала меня при себе для беспрерывного мщения. Она мстила мне и на мне за все оскорбления, которые постоянно и всякую минуту выносила во весь этот срок от Дмитрия, оскорбления с первой встречи их, She kept me at her side for an unending revenge. She avenged herself on me, and through me, for all the insults she suffered constantly, every moment, during all this time, from Dmitri, insults from their very first meeting.
In ch. III of Book V, at the tavern, it is he who seeks out his younger brother, and the conversation begins with what sustains him. Ivan says what he loves and confesses what he lacks:
дороги мне клейкие, распускающиеся весной листочки, дорого голубое небо, дорог иной человек, которого иной раз, поверишь ли, не знаешь за что и любишь, dear to me are the sticky little leaves that unfold in spring, dear the blue sky, dear a certain person whom sometimes, can you believe it, you love without knowing why.
Я с тобой хочу сойтись, Алеша, потому что у меня нет друзей, попробовать хочу., I want to get close to you, Alyosha, because I have no friends; I want to try.
Непременно так, полюбить прежде логики, как ты говоришь, непременно чтобы прежде логики, и тогда только я и смысл пойму., Certainly so: to love before logic, as you say, certainly before logic, and only then will I understand its meaning.
When Alyosha asks about Mitya, he answers with Cain's question:
Сторож я, что ли, моему брату Дмитрию? [...] Каинов ответ богу об убитом брате, а?, Am I, by any chance, the keeper of my brother Dmitri? [...] Cain's answer to God about his murdered brother, eh?
He defines himself by the mind he has and by what he does not accept:
у меня ум эвклидовский, земной, I have a Euclidean, earthly mind.
Я не бога не принимаю, пойми ты это, я мира, им созданного, мира-то божьего не принимаю и не могу согласиться принять, It is not God that I do not accept, understand this: it is the world created by Him, God's world, that I do not accept, and I cannot agree to accept it.
In ch. IV of Book V, in Rebellion, he begins with the love of one's neighbor, which he finds impossible, and moves on to children, whose suffering science cannot buy. The theme is developed in "Rebellion":
Именно ближних-то, по-моему, и невозможно любить, а разве лишь дальних., it is precisely our neighbors, in my view, who are impossible to love; only the distant ones, perhaps.
весь мир познания не стоит тогда этих слезок ребеночка к «боженьке», the whole world of knowledge is not worth then these little tears of the baby to "dear God."
The mother of a child torn apart by the general's dogs has no right to forgive the torturer, and the ticket Ivan returns to God is the refusal of the harmony bought with that tear:
Не хочу я, наконец, чтобы мать обнималась с мучителем, растерзавшим ее сына псами! Не смеет она прощать ему!, I do not want, after all, the mother to embrace the torturer who had her son torn to pieces by dogs! She has no right to forgive him!
свой билет на вход спешу возвратить обратно [...] Не бога я не принимаю, Алеша, я только билет ему почтительнейше возвращаю., I hasten to return my ticket of admission [...] It is not God that I do not accept, Alyosha; I merely return the ticket to him with the greatest respect.
He asks Alyosha whether he would accept being the architect of the happiness of men at the price of a single tortured child:
согласился ли бы ты быть архитектором на этих условиях, скажи и не лги! [...] Нет, не согласился бы, would you agree to be the architect on these terms? Tell me, and do not lie! [...] No, you would not agree.
In ch. V of Book V, he recites the poem of the Grand Inquisitor, in which the cardinal of Seville tells the imprisoned Christ that only three forces can conquer the conscience of the weak:
Есть три силы, единственные три силы на земле, могущие навеки победить и пленить совесть этих слабосильных бунтовщиков, для их счастия, — эти силы: чудо, тайна и авторитет., there are three forces, the only three forces on earth able to conquer and hold captive for ever the conscience of these weak rebels, for their happiness: these forces are miracle, mystery and authority.
The prisoner answers the old man with a silent kiss:
он вдруг молча приближается к старику и тихо целует его в его бескровные девяностолетние уста. Вот и весь ответ., he suddenly approaches the old man in silence and gently kisses his bloodless ninety-year-old lips. That is his whole answer.
Alyosha asks whether the formula everything is permitted is true, and Ivan does not renounce it, and Alyosha kisses him, and Ivan thanks him with a literary theft:
Я, брат, уезжая, думал, что имею на всем свете хоть тебя [...] а теперь вижу, что и в твоем сердце мне нет места, мой милый отшельник. От формулы «всё позволено» я не отрекусь, ну и что же, за это ты от меня отречешься, да, да?, I thought, brother, when I left, that I had at least you in the whole world [...] and now I see that there is no place for me even in your heart, my dear hermit. From the formula "everything is permitted" I will not renounce, and so, for that, you will renounce me, yes, yes?
Литературное воровство! [...] это ты украл из моей поэмы! Спасибо, однако., Literary theft! [...] You stole that from my poem! Thanks, though.
In ch. VI of Book V, returning to his father's house, he recognizes that the lackey Smerdyakov is also seated in his own soul, and at the gate, where the servant tells him the knock code agreed with the old man and advises him to go to Chermashnya, Ivan tells the servant that Mitya's threats are only frenzy:
Иван Федорович с первого взгляда на него понял, что и в душе его сидел лакей Смердяков и что именно этого-то человека и не может вынести его душа., Ivan Fyodorovich, at first glance at him, understood that the lackey Smerdyakov was also seated in his soul, and that it was precisely this man his soul could not bear.
Все эти угрозы брата Дмитрия только азартные слова и больше ничего. Не убьет он тебя; убьет, да не тебя!, All these threats from my brother Dmitri are only words spoken in passion, and nothing more. He will not kill you; he will kill, but not you!
In ch. VII of Book V, at night, he hears from the stairs his father moving below, and that act he will call vile for the rest of his life. In the morning he announces that he is leaving and, to Smerdyakov, who is arranging the blanket, says without meaning to:
Этот «поступок» он всю жизнь свою потом называл «мерзким» и всю жизнь свою считал, глубоко про себя, в тайниках души своей, самым подлым поступком изо всей своей жизни., This "deed" he later called "vile" all his life, and all his life he considered it, deep inside himself, in the secret places of his soul, the most base act of his whole life.
Видишь… в Чермашню еду…, See... I'm going to Chermashnya...
He gets on the train promising to look ahead, and at dawn, entering Moscow, he wakes:
Я подлец!, I am a scoundrel!
In ch. V of Book XI, on the eve of the trial, Alyosha tells him in the street what no one dares to say, and Ivan, instead of defending himself, grips him by the shoulder and whispers:
Не ты убил отца, не ты!, It was not you who killed our father, not you!
Ты был у меня! [...] Ты был у меня ночью, когда он приходил… Признавайся… ты его видел, видел?, You were with me! [...] You were with me at night, when he came... Confess... you saw him, saw him?
In ch. VI of Book XI, in the first conversation with Smerdyakov, he feels relieved that the guilty one is Mitya and not the servant, and the narrator notes what is strange about this:
он чувствовал, что действительно был успокоен, и именно тем обстоятельством, что виновен не Смердяков, а брат его Митя, хотя, казалось бы, должно было выйти напротив, he felt that he was truly calmed, and precisely by the circumstance that the guilty one was not Smerdyakov but his brother Mitya, although one would have thought it should be the opposite.
Two weeks later the earlier thoughts return, and Ivan asks Alyosha in the street whether that day he thought his brother wanted their father dead. Alyosha answers:
Прости меня, я и это тогда подумал, Forgive me, I thought that too at the time.
In ch. VII of Book XI, in the second conversation, the servant tells him that he wanted another to kill, and that the departure was permission:
Чтоб убить — это вы сами ни за что не могли-с, да и не хотели, а чтобы хотеть, чтобы другой кто убил, это вы хотели., To kill, that you yourself could never have done, nor did you want to; but to want that someone else should kill, that you did want.
если предчувствовали на меня и в то же самое время уезжали, значит, мне тем самым точно как бы сказали: это ты можешь убить родителя, а я не препятствую., if you foresaw this of me and at the same time went away, it was as if you had told me: you may kill your father, and I will not hinder you.
Ivan concludes that if it was the servant and not Mitya, then the murderer is he too:
Если б убил не Дмитрий, а Смердяков, то, конечно, я тогда с ним солидарен, ибо я подбивал его. Подбивал ли я его — еще не знаю. Но если только он убил, а не Дмитрий, то, конечно, убийца и я., if it was not Dmitri who killed, but Smerdyakov, then of course I am in solidarity with him, because I incited him. Whether I incited him, I still do not know. But if he alone killed, and not Dmitri, then of course I too am the murderer.
In ch. VIII of Book XI, in the third conversation, Smerdyakov confesses and gives back to him the moral authorship of the crime:
Вы убили, вы главный убивец и есть, а я только вашим приспешником был, слугой Личардой верным, и по слову вашему дело это и совершил., you killed him, you are the principal murderer, and I was only your accomplice, your faithful servant Licharda, and at your word I did this deed.
Это вы вправду меня учили-с, ибо много вы мне тогда этого говорили: ибо коли бога бесконечного нет, то и нет никакой добродетели, да и не надобно ее тогда вовсе., you really did teach me that, sir, for you said it to me many times then: for if there is no infinite God, then there is no virtue at all, and none is needed.
In ch. IX of Book XI, in fever, he receives the visitor, his devil, and recognizes him as part of himself:
Ты моя галлюцинация. Ты воплощение меня самого, только одной, впрочем, моей стороны… моих мыслей и чувств, только самых гадких и глупых., You are my hallucination. You are the embodiment of myself, only of one side of me... of my thoughts and feelings, only the most vile and stupid ones.
The devil recites, by heart, Ivan's own reasoning:
Для бога не существует закона! Где станет бог — там уже место божие! Где стану я, там сейчас же будет первое место… «всё дозволено», и шабаш!, For God there is no law! Where God stands, there is the place of God! Where I stand, there at once will be the first place... "everything is permitted," and that's the end of it!
In ch. X of Book XI, when Alyosha brings the news that Smerdyakov has hanged himself, Ivan says that the devil told him this, and that the devil is himself:
А он — это я, Алеша, я сам. Всё мое низкое, всё мое подлое и презренное! [...] я бы очень желал, чтоб он в самом деле был он, а не я!, And he is I, Alyosha, I myself. All that is low in me, all that is vile and contemptible! [...] I would very much wish that he were truly himself, and not I!
Совесть! Что совесть? Я сам ее делаю. Зачем же я мучаюсь? По привычке. По всемирной человеческой привычке за семь тысяч лет. Так отвыкнем и будем боги, Conscience! What is conscience? I make it myself. Why then do I torment myself? Out of habit. Out of the universal human habit of seven thousand years. Then let us disaccustom ourselves and be gods.
In ch. V of Book XII, in court, he presents the money from the envelope and says that the one who killed the father was Smerdyakov, whom he taught to kill, for who does not desire the father's death? When the president asks whether he is mad, he turns to the audience, and then answers him:
Убили отца, а притворяются, что испугались, — проскрежетал он с яростным презрением. [...] Друг пред другом кривляются. Лгуны! Все желают смерти отца. Один гад съедает другую гадину… Не будь отцеубийства — все бы они рассердились и разошлись злые… Зрелищ! «Хлеба и зрелищ!», They killed the father, and they pretend to be frightened, he gnashed with furious contempt. [...] They grimace at one another. Liars! All of them desire the father's death. One reptile devours the other... Were there no parricide, they would all be angry and leave in bad humor... Spectacles! "Bread and circuses!"
Успокойтесь, не помешанный, я только убийца!, Calm yourselves, I am not mad, I am only a murderer!
In ch. I of the Epilogue, five days later, he lies in fever in a room next to Katerina's, who shelters him, and the novel does not say whether he survives.
Themes Embodied
Ivan carries the thesis that everything is permitted, which runs through the whole novel: first as an ambiguous article on ecclesiastical courts (ch. V of Book II), then as an idea that torments him (ch. VI of Book II), as a philosophy he argues with pride (ch. III of Book V, ch. IV of Book V), and finally as an accusation he can no longer separate from himself (ch. VIII of Book XI, ch. IX of Book XI). He formulates the finest distinction in the book, between denying God and denying the world God made, and the poem of the Inquisitor is the most elaborate answer he gives to his own revolt, while the devil of Book XI is that answer returned in a vulgar voice, to show that the distance between thinking an idea and being possessed by it is smaller than he supposed. That is why the theme he carries is that of Reason, measured against the Faith of Alyosha and the Freedom and Oppression of the Inquisitor.
What he wants is a world in which the suffering of a child is not the price of harmony, and he also wants a friend, something he says he does not have (ch. III of Book V). What he fears is his own baseness, the force of the Karamazovian baseness, which he recognizes in Alyosha's question (ch. V of Book V), and what he knows of himself is little: he does not know, after the gate, whether he wanted his father to die (ch. VII of Book V, ch. VII of Book XI). Where he is wrong is in believing that the idea stays in the study: the servant carries it into crime (ch. VIII of Book XI), and the devil shows that the idea was his (ch. IX of Book XI). The book gives reason to both sides: the revolt is honest, and the servant did not invent it, but it is Ivan who taught it, and the guilt that consumes him comes not from having killed, but from having allowed it.
Divergent Readings
The book places within itself opposing readings of the man whom only the reader sees whole. The elder says that the idea is not resolved in his heart and that the tormented man amuses himself with his own despair (ch. VI of Book II), and Alyosha tells Rakitin that he seeks torment (ch. VII of Book II). The devil, whom Ivan cites in ch. X of Book XI, reads him as someone about to perform an act of virtue in which he does not believe, and that is what enrages him:
Ты идешь совершить подвиг добродетели, а в добродетель-то и не веришь — вот что тебя злит и мучит, you are going to perform a feat of virtue, and you do not believe in virtue: that is what enrages you and torments you.
Alyosha, lying beside him while he sleeps, thinks and prays that Ivan will either rise into the light of truth or perish in hatred, avenging himself and everyone for having served what he does not believe in:
Бог победит! [...] Или восстанет в свете правды, или… погибнет в ненависти, мстя себе и всем за то, что послужил тому, во что не верит, God will win! [...] Either he will rise in the light of truth, or... he will perish in hatred, avenging himself and everyone for having served that in which he does not believe.
In Frank - 07 - Karamazov and Death, Smerdyakov is read as Ivan's alter ego, who takes his theories to their logical and repugnant extreme:
Smerdyakov serves as Ivan's alter ego in the same way that Svidrigailov served Raskolnikov; he takes Ivan's theories to their logical and repugnant extreme and displays their distorted and dangerous refraction in a cruder and less noble nature.
The readings diverge over what Ivan lost. For those who see him as a mind that is lost on its own, the fever is proof that the argument without God does not hold up. For those who see him as a man who loves but cannot act, it is proof that love without act is only atmosphere. The text authorizes both and gives a third: he accepts the cross, not the gallows (ch. X of Book XI), and leaves the novel on Katerina's bed, alive and without resolution (ch. I of the Epilogue). Against the reading of the mind, it is worth noting that Ivan's devil is vulgar, not brilliant (ch. IX of Book XI); against the reading of love without act, that his act in court is paying the price of what he did (ch. V of Book XII).
Relationships
- Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov: the father whose shame he carries and whom he resembles more than he admits (ch. III of Book I, ch. VIII of Book XI); the old man is afraid of him (ch. IX of Book III) and asks him to stop at Chermashnya (ch. VII of Book V).
- Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov: the older brother, whom he mediates with his father (ch. III of Book I), whom he visits in prison and to whom he proposes flight (ch. I of Book XI, ch. IV of Book XI).
- Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov: the brother to whom he says he wants to come closer because he has no friends (ch. III of Book V) and whom he kisses after the poem (ch. V of Book V).
- Smerdyakov: the servant who reads Ivan better than he reads himself (ch. VI of Book V, ch. VII of Book XI, ch. VIII of Book XI).
- Katerina Ivanovna: Mitya's fiancée, whom he loves without saying so and who leaves him in the nadryv (ch. V of Book IV), with whom he later becomes involved (ch. VI of Book XI), and from whom he receives shelter (ch. I of the Epilogue).