Who He Is
Elder Zosima, Zinovi in the world, is the spiritual master of Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov and the third and last of a line of startsy in a monastery without relics or miraculous icons, famous because of them (ch. V of Book I). Born in a northern town, orphaned of his father at two, raised by his mother and marked by the death of his elder brother, Markel, when he was nine (ch. II of Book VI), he passes through the St. Petersburg cadet corps, serves as an officer, challenges a rival over a girl and, on the eve of the duel, strikes his orderly and realises what he has done; he throws the pistol into the air, asks forgiveness and leaves the army. In the town he hears the confession of a man who killed a widow fourteen years earlier and, five months later, enters the monastery (ch. II of Book VI). It is the novel's positive answer to Ivan's revolt: where the Inquisitor offers miracle, mystery and authority to spare man the burden of freedom, Zosima returns the three terms inverted, silent evidence of lived love, authority that springs from one who chooses to obey, and freedom as discipline, not as a burden (ch. III of Book VI). He dies still in the middle of the novel, on his knees and kissing the earth, and the early decomposition of his body is the proof that the monastery sets on top of Alyosha (ch. III of Book VI, ch. I of Book VII).
Trajectory
In ch. V of Book I, the narrator presents the starchestvo as an institution before presenting the man, and defines the starets:
Старец — это берущий вашу душу, вашу волю в свою душу и в свою волю, The elder is one who takes your soul and your will into his own soul and his own will.
When the meeting is arranged in his cell, as a joke by Fyodor Pavlovich, Zosima says only to Alyosha, with a smile:
«Кто меня поставил делить между ними?», Who appointed me to divide between them?
In ch. II of Book II, in the cell, the elder does not answer the buffoon with a sermon: when Miusov wants to leave, he holds his hands and seats him again, and to Fyodor he says to make himself at home:
А главное, не стыдитесь столь самого себя, ибо от сего лишь всё и выходит., And above all, do not be so ashamed of yourself, for everything comes from that alone.
Fyodor kneels and asks what he must do to inherit eternal life, and the elder answers him:
Главное, самому себе не лгите., The main thing: do not lie to yourself.
In ch. III of Book II, before this, he receives the common women, and to a mother who grieves for her three-year-old son he says not to be consoled, to weep, and to remember that her little son is one of God's angels:
И не утешайся, и не надо тебе утешаться, не утешайся и плачь, только каждый раз, когда плачешь, вспоминай неуклонно, что сыночек твой — есть единый от ангелов божиих, And do not be consoled, nor is it needful for you to be consoled. Do not be consoled, but weep, only each time you weep, remember without fail that your little son is one of the angels of God.
To a young widow who accuses herself of having thought about the death of the husband who beat her, he says that no sin can exhaust God's love, and gives the reason:
Да и совершить не может совсем такого греха великого человек, который бы истощил бесконечную божью любовь. Али может быть такой грех, чтобы превысил божью любовь?, Nor can a man commit so great a sin as would exhaust God's infinite love. Or can there be a sin that would exceed God's love?
Любовью всё покупается, всё спасается., By love everything is bought, everything is saved.
In ch. IV of Book II, to Madame Khokhlakova, who suffers because she does not believe in the life to come and asks for a proof, he answers with experience:
Опытом деятельной любви., By the experience of active love.
He tells her what he heard from a doctor, and the difference between the two forms of love:
чем больше я люблю человечество вообще, тем меньше я люблю людей в частности, то есть порознь, как отдельных лиц, the more I love humanity in general, the less I love people in particular, that is, one by one, as individuals.
Любовь мечтательная жаждет подвига скорого, быстро удовлетворимого и что бы все на него глядели. Тут действительно доходит до того, что даже и жизнь отдают, только бы не продлилось долго, а поскорей совершилось, как бы на сцене, и чтобы все глядели и хвалили. Любовь же деятельная — это работа и выдержка, а для иных так, пожалуй, целая наука., Dreamy love craves a swift feat, quickly satisfied, and that everyone should look on at it. It really comes to the point of giving even one's life, provided it does not last long, but is accomplished quickly, as if on a stage, and that everyone looks on and praises. Active love, on the other hand, is labour and endurance, and for some, perhaps, a whole science.
In ch. V of Book II, when the cell discusses Ivan's article, Zosima intervenes, and everyone turns towards him:
настоящей кары, единственной действительной, единственной устрашающей и умиротворяющей, заключающейся в сознании собственной совести, of a true punishment, the only real one, the only one that terrifies and pacifies, which consists in the consciousness of one's own conscience.
In ch. VI of Book II, after hearing Ivan's thesis, that once faith in immortality is destroyed nothing will be immoral, he asks whether Ivan still holds it, and says what he sees:
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 tormented man too sometimes likes to amuse himself with his despair, as if also out of despair.
When the scene reaches the grotesque, he rises, goes to Mitya, kneels and touches the floor with his forehead. And he says:
Простите! Простите все!, Forgive! Forgive everyone!
In ch. VII of Book II, he sends Alyosha to the abbot's lunch, says there is no peace there, and leaves him the order to leave the monastery when he dies:
Как только сподобит бог преставиться мне — и уходи из монастыря. Совсем иди., As soon as God grants me to depart, leave the monastery. Go away for good.
Горе узришь великое и в горе сем счастлив будешь. Вот тебе завет: в горе счастья ищи., You will see great grief, and in that grief you will be happy. This is my testament to you: seek happiness in grief.
In ch. I of Book IV, on the last day, he confesses to Païssy, receives communion and the anointing, and teaches as long as he has a voice:
Любите друг друга, отцы [...] Не святее же мы мирских за то, что сюда пришли и в сих стенах затворились, а, напротив, всякий сюда пришедший, уже тем самым, что пришел сюда, познал про себя, что он хуже всех мирских и всех и вся на земле, Love one another, fathers [...] We are no holier than the laymen because we have come here and shut ourselves within these walls; on the contrary, whoever comes here, merely by having come, has recognised within himself that he is worse than all the laymen and than all and everything on earth.
каждый единый из нас виновен за всех и за вся на земле несомненно, не только по общей мировой вине, а единолично каждый за всех людей и за всякого человека на сей земле, each one of us is undoubtedly guilty before all and for all on earth, not only through the common guilt of the world, but each one alone for all men and for every man on this earth.
He promises Alyosha, in exchange for his going to see his people, the last word:
не умру без того, чтобы не сказать при тебе последнее мое на земле слово. Тебе скажу это слово, сынок, тебе и завещаю его, I will not die without speaking my last word on earth in your presence. I will say that word to you, son, and I bequeath it to you.
In ch. I of Book VI, on the last night, surrounded by four friends of many years, he receives Alyosha tenderly, asks first about Mitya, before whom he had prostrated himself, and says what he saw in him:
Здравствуй, тихий, здравствуй, милый, вот и ты. И знал, что прибудешь., Hello, quiet one, hello, dear one, here you are. I knew you would come.
Поспеши найти, завтра опять ступай и поспеши, всё оставь и поспеши. Может, еще успеешь что-либо ужасное предупредить. Я вчера великому будущему страданию его поклонился., Hurry and find him, tomorrow go again and hurry, leave everything and hurry. Perhaps you may still have time to prevent something terrible. Yesterday I bowed down before his great future suffering.
Не любопытствуй. Показалось мне вчера нечто страшное… словно всю судьбу его выразил вчера его взгляд., Do not be curious. Something terrible seemed to me yesterday... as if his look yesterday expressed his whole fate.
He cites the verse of the grain of wheat:
Если пшеничное зерно, падши в землю, не умрет, то останется одно; а если умрет, то принесет много плода, If a grain of wheat falls into the ground and does not die, it remains alone; but if it dies, it brings forth much fruit.
And he tells Alyosha what will become of him, and to whom he compares him:
изыдешь из стен сих, а в миру пребудешь как инок. Много будешь иметь противников, но и самые враги твои будут любить тебя. Много несчастий принесет тебе жизнь, но ими-то ты и счастлив будешь, и жизнь благословишь, и других благословить заставишь — что важнее всего., you will leave these walls, but in the world you will remain as a monk. You will have many adversaries, but even your enemies will love you. Life will bring you many misfortunes, but it is through them that you will be happy, and you will bless life, and make others bless it too, which is the most important of all.
Алексей казался мне до того схожим с тем духовно, что много раз считал я его как бы прямо за того юношу, брата моего, пришедшего ко мне на конце пути моего таинственно, для некоего воспоминания и проникновения, Alexei seemed to me so spiritually similar to him that many times I took him almost for that young man, my brother, who came to me at the end of my road in a mysterious way, for some remembrance and insight.
In ch. II of Book VI, he tells the life, in Alyosha's manuscript. Markel, the brother who at seventeen refused fasting and said there was no God, falls ill with tuberculosis and, as he is dying, changes. To his mother he says they already live in paradise without wanting to know it, that each answers for all, and he asks forgiveness of the little birds:
Мама [...] не плачь, жизнь есть рай, и все мы в раю, да не хотим знать того, а если бы захотели узнать, завтра же и стал бы на всем свете рай, Mother [...] do not weep, life is paradise, and we are all in paradise, only we do not want to know it, and if we wanted to know it, paradise would come to the whole world tomorrow.
воистину всякий пред всеми за всех и за всё виноват. Не знаю я, как истолковать тебе это, но чувствую, что это так до мучения., truly each one is guilty before all, for all and for everything. I do not know how to explain this to you, but I feel that it is so, to the point of torment.
была такая божия слава кругом меня: птички, деревья, луга, небеса, один я жил в позоре, один всё обесчестил, а красы и славы не приметил вовсе, there was such a glory of God all around me: the little birds, the trees, the meadows, the skies; only I lived in shame, only I dishonoured everything, and did not notice the beauty and the glory at all.
One afternoon, alone with the boy, he holds him by the shoulders and, after a minute, says to him:
Ну, говорит, ступай теперь, играй, живи за меня!, Well, he says, go now, play, live for me! he says.
In Petersburg, during the almost eight years in the cadet corps, he stifles the impressions of childhood and becomes cruel. On the eve of the duel, he strikes his orderly Afanassy and, thrown on the bed, remembers what his brother used to say to the servants, that each answers for all. He throws himself on his knees before the orderly, asks his forgiveness, and at the place of the duel, twelve paces away, accepts that his rival fire first, throws the pistol into the air and says to the other man:
Туда, кричу, тебе и дорога!, That way, I shout, is your road!
Милостивый государь, говорю, простите меня, глупого молодого человека, что по вине моей вас разобидел, а теперь стрелять в себя заставил. Сам я хуже вас в десять крат, а пожалуй, еще и того больше, My lord, I say, forgive me, a foolish young man, for having offended you through my fault, and now having made you fire at me. I am ten times worse than you, and perhaps even more so.
Shortly after the duel, a benefactor of the town tells him that paradise is hidden in each of us and that man was made for union and not for isolation:
Рай, говорит, в каждом из нас затаен, вот он теперь и во мне кроется, и, захочу, завтра же настанет он для меня в самом деле и уже на всю мою жизнь, Paradise, he says, is hidden in each of us, and now it is hidden in me too, and if I want it, it will come for me in truth tomorrow, and for my whole life.
A month later, in the middle of a conversation, he confesses that he killed a man fourteen years earlier and let the suspicion fall on a servant who died in prison:
Я… знаете ли вы… я… человека убил., I... do you know... I... killed a man.
Over two weeks of visits, the man says that paradise will come to him when he declares it:
Знаю, что наступит рай для меня, тотчас же и наступит, как объявлю. Четырнадцать лет был во аде. Пострадать хочу. Приму страдание и жить начну., I know that paradise will come for me, it will come at once when I declare it. For fourteen years I was in hell. I want to suffer. I will accept the suffering and begin to live.
Zosima, without voice, has him declare it and shows him the verse from John; the man reads the denunciation in public on the day of his own birthday and afterwards reveals to him what led him to the second visit:
А помнишь ли, как я к тебе тогда в другой раз пришел, в полночь! [...] Знаешь ли, для чего я входил? Я ведь убить тебя приходил!, And do you remember how I came to you the second time, at midnight? [...] Do you know why I came in? I came to kill you!
Zosima leaves the town, which turns against him, and five months later enters the monastery. In ch. III of Book VI, in his teaching, he speaks of the monks, of the world and of the people:
Провозгласил мир свободу, в последнее время особенно, и что же видим в этой свободе ихней: одно лишь рабство и самоубийство!, The world has proclaimed freedom, especially in recent times, and what do we see in this freedom of theirs? Nothing but slavery and suicide!
He asks that they love all of God's creation, that they always decide through humble love, and that they judge no one:
Любите всё создание божие, и целое и каждую песчинку. Каждый листик, каждый луч божий любите. Любите животных, любите растения, любите всякую вещь. Будешь любить всякую вещь и тайну божию постигнешь в вещах., Love all God's creation, both the whole and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of God. Love the animals, love the plants, love every thing. If you love every thing, you will grasp the mystery of God in things.
Взять ли силой али смиренною любовью?» Всегда решай: «Возьму смиренною любовью». Решишься так раз навсегда и весь мир покорить возможешь. Смирение любовное — страшная сила изо всех сильнейшая, подобной которой и нет ничего., "Shall I take it by force or by humble love?" Always decide: "I will take it by humble love." If you decide this once and for all, you will be able to conquer the whole world. Humble love is a terrible force, the strongest of all forces, and there is nothing like it.
Помни особенно, что не можешь ничьим судиею быти. Ибо не может быть на земле судья преступника, прежде чем сам сей судья не познает, что и он такой же точно преступник, как и стоящий пред ним, и что он-то за преступление стоящего пред ним, может, прежде всех и виноват., Remember especially that you cannot be anyone's judge. For there cannot be on earth a judge of a criminal until the judge himself recognises that he too is exactly as much a criminal as the one standing before him, and that he may be, before all others, guilty of the crime of the one standing before him.
If everyone abandons him, he says, let him fall to the ground and kiss it, and hell, he says, is the suffering of no longer being able to love:
Если же все оставят тебя и уже изгонят тебя силой, то, оставшись один, пади на землю и целуй ее, омочи ее слезами твоими, и даст плод от слез твоих земля, хотя бы и не видал и не слыхал тебя никто в уединении твоем., If all abandon you and even drive you out by force, then, left alone, fall to the earth and kiss it, wet it with your tears, and the earth will bring forth fruit from your tears, even if no one has seen or heard you in your solitude.
Страдание о том, что нельзя уже более любить, the suffering of no longer being able to love.
Alyosha's manuscript ends there, and the narrator tells of the death:
тихо опустился с кресел на пол и стал на колени, затем склонился лицом ниц к земле, распростер свои руки и, как бы в радостном восторге, целуя землю и молясь (как сам учил), тихо и радостно отдал душу богу, he quietly sank from the armchair to the floor and knelt, then bowed with his face to the earth, stretched out his arms and, as though in joyful rapture, kissing the earth and praying (as he himself had taught), quietly and joyfully gave his soul to God.
In ch. I of Book VII, with the smell from the coffin, the monastery divides. Some rejoice more than the unbelievers, and the narrator recalls a phrase of the dead man himself, that people love the fall of the righteous. The monks, for their part, take the smell as a sign that the deceased went ahead of nature:
«любят люди падение праведного и позор его», people love the fall of the righteous and his disgrace.
«этот естество предупредил», стало быть, тут никто как бог и нарочитый перст его. Указать хотел., "he went ahead of nature," so no one but God and his deliberate finger is here. He wanted to point something out.
Father Ferapont, an enemy of the starchestvo, enters and blesses the walls; his formula and Païssy's answer:
Извергая извергну!, Casting out, I will cast out!
не человеки судят, а бог. Может, здесь «указание» видим такое, коего не в силах понять ни ты, ни я и никто., it is not men who judge, but God. Perhaps here we see a "sign" such as neither you, nor I, nor anyone has the strength to understand.
In ch. IV of Book VII, in Alyosha's dream, he reappears alive at the feast at Cana, in the same clothes as yesterday, and says to him:
Я луковку подал, вот и я здесь. И многие здесь только по луковке подали, по одной только маленькой луковке…, I gave an onion, and here I am. And many here gave only an onion, only one small little onion...
Themes Embodied
Zosima embodies an authority received through choice and not through fear, the exact counterpart of the cardinal in The Grand Inquisitor (ch. III of Book VI). Where the Inquisitor decides for humanity that it cannot bear freedom, Zosima dies demonstrating the freedom that remains after renouncing everything, without fear, surrounded by love (ch. III of Book VI). The doctrine of mutual guilt, planted by his brother Markel and revived in the duel of his youth (ch. II of Book VI), is what Smerdyakov takes to the opposite extreme: accepting the guilt of all for everything can liberate, as in Zosima, or serve as an excuse for one's own crime, as in Smerdyakov, who hands the guilt back to Ivan instead of assuming it (ch. VIII of Book XI). The themes he carries are those of Faith and Guilt.
What he wants is for what he knows to pass to a disciple before he dies, and that is why he promises Alyosha the last word (ch. I of Book IV). What he fears is the suffering of no longer being able to love, which he defines as hell (ch. III of Book VI). What he knows is how to see people's faces, as in the case of Mitya (ch. I of Book VI), and where he is wrong, if he is wrong at all, is in believing that humble love is enough against evil: the smell shows that the community had not learned it (ch. I of Book VII). The novel's answer to the problem of evil is not a better argument than Ivan's, it is a whole life told from within, and that is why Zosima's life weighs more in the novel than any isolated quotation.
Divergent Readings
The book holds within itself opposing readings of the state of the body. For the monastery, the smell is a sign that the dead man went ahead of nature; for Païssy, a sign that no one has the strength to understand; for Ferapont, the triumph of what he always said (ch. I of Book VII). For Alyosha, it is the violation of supreme justice, and the answer he receives in the dream does not explain the smell, it shifts the criterion (ch. II of Book VII, ch. IV of Book VII).
In Frank, 07 - Karamazov and death, the novel's hell is read as an attribute of the psyche, faithful to the author's poetics of subjectivity:
Frank closes Zosima's preaching at a point that the comparison with Dante, Milton and Shakespeare, at the opening of the chapter, had only announced: the novel's hell has no hooks or irons, it isthe suffering of no longer being able to love, and before the "material fire" Zosima says that he does not investigate the mystery, he is afraid. Dostoevsky, Frank writes,remains faithful to his poetics of subjectivity, transforming even hell into an attribute of the human psyche.
Readings differ over what Zosima is for the book: answer, devotion or scandal. The book sustains all three, and whichever weighs most changes depending on whether the reader reaches Book VII with Alyosha's answer in mind or Ferapont's. Against the reading of pure answer, it is worth noting that the master dies without having avoided the smell or the shock to his disciple; against the reading of devotion without argument, the doctrine of ch. III returns, one by one, the terms of the Inquisitor (ch. III of Book VI).
Relationships
- Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov: the favourite disciple, compared by Zosima to his own brother Markel, who receives from him the order to leave the monastery and live in the world (ch. VII of Book II, ch. I of Book VI).
- Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov: they never meet in direct debate, but Zosima's doctrine is the novel's structural answer to the poem of the Inquisitor (ch. VI of Book II, ch. III of Book VI).
- Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov: receives Zosima's inexplicable prostration in Book II and the prophecy of future suffering in Book VI (ch. VI of Book II, ch. I of Book VI).
- Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov: the buffoon who makes the scandal in the cell, in the only meeting the two have (ch. II of Book II).
- Grushenka: the sinner whose onion reappears in the dream at Cana (ch. IV of Book VII).
- Father Ferapont: an opponent within the monastery itself, he embodies the distrust of the starchestvo that the death of Zosima exposes (ch. I of Book IV, ch. I of Book VII).