Who He Is
Smerdyakov is the servant and cook of the household of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, whom the town gives the old man as a father, on a rumour never confirmed or denied within the novel: he was born to Lisaveta Smerdyashchaya, the holy fool whom a gang of drunkards found asleep among the nettles, and hence comes the surname invented by Fyodor himself (ch. II of Book III). He was raised by the servant couple Grigory and Marfa, who took him in as a replacement for the son who was born with six fingers and soon died, and he grew up epileptic, distrustful and odd at the table (ch. I of Book III, ch. VI of Book III). As an adult, he returns from Moscow yellowish, almost a eunuch and an excellent cook, and he is finally the material author of the parricide that the novel investigates without ever showing: he kills Fyodor with an iron paperweight, steals the three thousand rubles from the envelope and hands moral authorship of the crime back to Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov before hanging himself (ch. VIII of Book XI, ch. X of Book XI). The trait that defines him is a cold logic put in the service of a resentment that never declares itself.
Trajectory
In ch. II of Book III the narrator tells the whole origin. Lisaveta, pregnant, crosses the garden wall of Fyodor on the eve of the birth, and the child is saved while the mother dies at dawn. Grigory, who had defended the master against the rumour by naming another culprit, takes in the newborn:
«Она сама, низкая, виновата», — говорил он утвердительно, а обидчиком был не кто иной, как «Карп с винтом», "She is to blame herself, the vile creature," he said firmly, and the offender was none other than "Karp with the Screw."
Божье дитя-сирота — всем родня, а нам с тобой подавно. Этого покойничек наш прислал, а произошел сей от бесова сына и от праведницы. Питай и впредь не плачь, God's orphaned child is kin to everyone, and to us two all the more. This our deceased little one sent him, but this one came from a devil's son and a righteous woman. Feed him and do not weep any more.
The boy is baptised Pavel, and by his patronymic everyone begins to call him Fyodorovich without anyone's order. In ch. VI of Book III, at the age of twelve, during the sacred history lesson, he smiles and asks Grigory where the light shone from on the first day, if the sun was only created on the fourth, and is beaten for it; a week later he has his first epileptic fit. At fifteen, when Fyodor gives him Gogol's Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka, he returns the book with a sullen face. The boy's question and the young man's answer:
Свет создал господь бог в первый день, а солнце, луну и звезды на четвертый день. Откуда же свет-то сиял в первый день?, The Lord God created the light on the first day, and the sun, the moon and the stars on the fourth day. Where, then, did the light shine from on the first day?
Про неправду всё написано, Everything is written about falsehood.
Fyodor sends him to study cooking in Moscow and trusts him without reserve, because he returned three banknotes that had been lost in the mud. In ch. VI of Book II, when Mitya arrives late at the elder's cell, it is Smerdyakov who had twice assured him of the wrong hour. In ch. VII of Book III, faced with the story of the soldier flayed alive for refusing to renounce Christ, he makes the first argument that reveals him: there would be no sin in renouncing under threat, because a man excommunicated by God himself the moment he thinks of renouncing is no longer a Christian and does not lie when he says he is not one.
рассуждая, что с одного вола двух шкур не дерут, reasoning that two hides are not stripped from one ox.
Fyodor calls him a casuist and a stinking Jesuit, and Smerdyakov, quoting Scripture, proposes to Grigory that he tell the mountain to move:
попробуйте сами-с сказать сей горе, чтобы не то чтобы в море (потому что до моря отсюда далеко-с), но даже хоть в речку нашу вонючую съехала, вот что у нас за садом течет, то и увидите сами в тот же момент, что ничего не съедет-с, try telling this mountain yourself, not to move into the sea (because the sea is far from here), but even just into our stinking little river that flows behind the garden, and you will see for yourself at that very moment that nothing will move.
In ch. II of Book V, at the neighbour's house, he sings to the guitar and courts Maria Kondratyevna in his finery. When she asks him for another verse, he dismisses it as useless, and what comes out of him next is complete contempt:
Это чтобы стих-с, то это существенный вздор-с. Рассудите сами: кто же на свете в рифму говорит? И если бы мы стали все в рифму говорить, хотя бы даже по приказанию начальства, то много ли бы мы насказали-с? Стихи не дело, Марья Кондратьевна, As for verse, that is essentially nonsense. Judge for yourself: who in the world speaks in rhyme? And if we all began to speak in rhyme, even by order of the authorities, how much would we actually say? Verse is no business, Maria Kondratyevna.
я бы дозволил убить себя еще во чреве с тем, чтобы лишь на свет не происходить вовсе-с, I would let myself be killed still in the womb, just so as not to come into the light at all.
Я всю Россию ненавижу, Марья Кондратьевна., I hate the whole of Russia, Maria Kondratyevna.
хорошо, кабы нас тогда покорили эти самые французы: умная нация покорила бы весьма глупую-с и присоединила к себе, it would have been good if those very French had conquered us then: an intelligent nation would have subjugated a very stupid one and annexed it to itself.
He says that Mitya threatens him with death if he lets Grushenka in, and that he is very afraid:
Если, говорят, Аграфену Александровну пропущу и она здесь переночует, — не быть тебе первому живу. Боюсь я их очень-с, If I let Agrafena Alexandrovna in and she spends the night here, they say, you will not be the first one alive. I am very afraid of them, sir.
In ch. VI of Book V, at the gate, he advises Ivan to go to Chermashnya, tells him the knocking code agreed with the old man, and predicts a long epileptic fit for the next day:
первый-то знак в пять стуков означает: «Аграфена Александровна пришли», а второй знак в три стука — «оченно, дескать, надоть», the first signal, of five knocks, means: "Agrafena Alexandrovna has come," and the second signal, of three knocks, "I very much need you, you understand."
Ivan asks him what he means by the advice, and the servant, with an open face, says he speaks out of pity:
На вашем месте, если бы только тут я, так всё бы это тут же бросил… чем у такого дела сидеть-с…, In your place, if it were me here, I would drop all of it right away... rather than sit beside such a business...
In ch. VII of Book V, when Ivan leaves and tells him without meaning to that he is going to Chermashnya, the servant firmly returns a sentence that Ivan will carry afterwards:
Значит, правду говорят люди, что с умным человеком и поговорить любопытно, So people speak the truth: even talking with a clever man is interesting.
He then falls to the cellar, in convulsions and with foam at his mouth, and Dr. Herzenstube says the attack may be dangerous. In ch. V of Book IX, when the prosecutor suggests that perhaps he gave the signal, Mitya dismisses it: in his view, a coward who kissed his boots and does not like money. In ch. VI of Book XI, Ivan visits him in the hospital, and the servant defends himself by saying that, had he planned it, he would not have warned the master's son that he knows how to feign fits. In ch. VII of Book XI, at the second conversation, in Maria Kondratyevna's house, in a dressing gown and spectacles, he gives Ivan back, for the first time, what he thinks:
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 is what you wanted.
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 it of me and at the same time went away, then in that very act it was as if you had told me: you can kill your father, and I will not stand in the way.
In ch. VIII of Book XI, at the third conversation, he tells Ivan that he can sleep without fear, because he did not kill, and when Ivan seizes him, he whispers:
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 chief murderer, and I was only your accomplice, your faithful servant Lichard, and at your word I did this deed.
Ivan fears that the servant is a ghost, and the servant replies that there is no phantom here, only the two of them and a third:
Никакого тут призрака нет-с, кроме нас обоих-с, да еще некоторого третьего [...] Третий этот — бог-с, самое это провидение-с, тут оно теперь подле нас-с, только вы не ищите его, не найдете., There is no ghost here, sir, apart from the two of us, and also a certain third [...] This third one is God, sir, Providence itself; it is right beside us now, only do not look for it, you will not find it.
He takes the three thousand rubles out of his stocking and covers the money from Maria Kondratyevna's eyes with the only book in sight:
Святого отца нашего Исаака Сирина слова, The words of our holy father Isaac the Syrian.
He recounts in order the plan and the blow: a feigned fit in the cellar, the signals knocked on the window, the three blows of the paperweight, the envelope thrown on the floor, the money hidden in an apple tree. He says that Ivan is the most legitimate murderer there is:
А вы самый законный убивец и есть!, And you are the most legitimate murderer there is!
He explains why he returns the money, without having come to believe in God:
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, for you said a great deal of it to me then: for if there is no infinite God, then there is no virtue at all, and there is no need for it either.
In ch. X of Book XI he is found hanged from a nail by Maria Kondratyevna, who runs to tell Alyosha, and he leaves a note saying that he is killing himself of his own will, so as not to blame anyone. In ch. VIII of Book XII, the prosecutor describes him as weak, cowardly and terrified of Mitya, and the accusation against the dead man, he says, arises from the fact that no one else can be found:
Именно только по тому одному, что другого некого подобрать!, precisely and only for this reason: because there is no one else to be found!
And he notes, about the note, the omission that decides:
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?
Themes Embodied
Smerdyakov is the hardest case of the thesis that Zosima preaches and Ivan denies, namely that each is guilty of everything before everyone (ch. III of Book VI, ch. IV of Book XI). He does not invent "everything is permitted": he learns it from Ivan, repeats it back as an accusation, and carries it out to the letter while Ivan is still discussing it as a philosophy of the study (ch. VII of Book XI, ch. VIII of Book XI). He is also the fourth son whom the family never acknowledges, and the novel uses that non-recognition to ask how far a father, and a brother, answer for the son who pretends not to have one (ch. II of Book III, ch. VIII of Book XI). The theme he carries is that of Guilt, measured against the Freedom and oppression that the Inquisitor discusses.
What he wants is to be treated as an equal by whoever he thinks intelligent: the phrase with which he dismisses Ivan, that it is pleasant to talk with a clever man, he later explains as a rebuke and not as praise (ch. VII of Book V, ch. VI of Book XI). What he fears is Mitya, and the death threat also serves him as an alibi (ch. II of Book V). What he knows is exact: the money, the signals, the hour (ch. VIII of Book XI). Where he is wrong is in taking the soldier's logic, that what is not said is not sin (ch. VII of Book III), for a rule of the world: after the crime the rule does not protect him, and he hangs himself. The sophism about the soldier, in Book III, is already the Smerdyakov of Book XI in miniature, perfect formal logic that is morally hideous, years before the logic turned into murder.
Divergent Readings
The book holds within itself opposing readings of the servant. The prosecutor describes him as weak, sick and terrified of Mitya, incapable of planning, and says that the accusation against the dead man arises only because no other name can be found (ch. VIII of Book XII). The servant himself, in his confession, describes a plan with three branches: if Mitya killed, he would take the money; if he only beat him, he would also; if he did not come, he would do nothing (ch. VIII of Book XI). In reply, the prosecutor still says the defence attorney made Smerdyakov a Byronic figure (ch. XIV of Book XII).
Smerdyakov serves as Ivan's alter ego in the same way that Svidrigailov had served Raskolnikov; he carries Ivan's theories to their logical and repugnant extreme and displays their distorted and dangerous refraction in a cruder and less noble nature
Readings diverge over what Smerdyakov is: agent or instrument. For the prosecutor, the servant was too weak to plan; for a symbolic reading, he is the instrument of the intellectual; for Frank, the projection of Ivan's thought; for his own confession, the agent of a calculation that Ivan's idea authorised. The book sustains all four, and that is where the question stays open. Against the reading of pure instrument, it is worth noting that he describes the three branches of the plan, and that the note keeps silent what his conscience did not keep silent before (ch. VIII of Book XII). Against the reading of pure agent, there is his claim that without Ivan's departure he would have done nothing (ch. VIII of Book XI).
Relationships
- Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov: the centre of the relationship, in which Smerdyakov commits the crime and hands Ivan back moral authorship, on the argument that whoever teaches the doctrine is as much a murderer as whoever strikes (ch. VI of Book V, ch. VII of Book XI, ch. VIII of Book XI).
- Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov: the presumed father, who never acknowledges him, who gives him the key to the cupboard and trusts him completely, and the victim (ch. VI of Book III, ch. VIII of Book XI).
- Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov: the legitimate son who threatens him with death and who, by the signals the servant reveals to him, becomes the suspect (ch. II of Book V, ch. V of Book IX).
- Grigory and Marfa: they raise Smerdyakov as a replacement for the dead son, without ever treating him as an equal (ch. II of Book III).
- Maria Kondratyevna: the neighbour he courts with a guitar and in whose house he hangs himself (ch. II of Book V, ch. X of Book XI).