What It Is
The foul smell of decomposition that rises from the coffin of Elder Zosima before three in the afternoon of the day after his death, too soon for what the monastery expected of a saint. In itself, it is the natural smell of any corpse, and the narrator recalls that other righteous elders had died and given off the same odor without anyone being shaken. With Zosima it becomes a sign, because the monastery kept the tradition of two ancient elders held to be incorrupt, and because he had been loved and hated in life for reasons the smell now allows one to say. The symbol works as a test: what each person made of the smell shows what he expected of the dead man.
Where It Appears
In chapter I of Book VII, the body is displayed for the reading of the Gospel, with the faithful arriving in crowds, some with sick children in their arms, waiting for a cure. When the smell appears, the narrator cites what Zosima himself had said about the town that turned against him in chapter II of Book VI, after the death of the mysterious visitor.
«любят люди падение праведного и позор его»
, people love the fall of the righteous man and his disgrace.
The monks bring the argument that seems to them irrefutable: the smell came before its natural hour, and the wrong hour would be the finger of God.
«этот естество предупредил», стало быть, тут никто как бог и нарочитый перст его. Указать хотел.
, "this one anticipated nature", so then here no one but God and his deliberate finger is at work. He wanted to point something out.
Father Iosif objects that incorruptibility is not dogma, and no one listens to him. Then Father Ferapont comes in, tolerated in the monastery as a holy fool, who hated the dead man, and he blesses the walls.
Извергая извергну!
, Expelling, I will expel!
Father Paisy answers him that it is not men who judge.
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" of such a kind that neither you, nor I, nor anyone has the power to understand.
On leaving, Ferapont throws himself on the ground before the setting sun, and the crowd acclaims him as the next elder.
Мой господь победил! Христос победил заходящу солнцу!
, My Lord has conquered! Christ has conquered the setting sun!
At the end of the chapter, Paisy meets Alyosha, who leaves the hermitage without asking for a blessing.
Или и ты соблазнился? [...] да неужто же и ты с маловерными!
, So you too have been seduced? [...] Are you too among the faint of faith!
In chapter II of Book VII, the narrator explains Alyosha's wound, and Rakitin, who sees nothing but the smell, asks whether he is angry with God only because his elder stank.
Но не чудес опять-таки ему нужно было, а лишь «высшей справедливости», которая была, по верованию его, нарушена и чем так жестоко и внезапно было поранено сердце его., But once again it was not miracles that he needed, only "supreme justice", which had been, in his belief, violated, and by which his heart had been so cruelly and suddenly wounded.
Alyosha's answer to Rakitin takes the smell out of the center: what he refuses is the world, and not God.
Я против бога моего не бунтуюсь, я только «мира его не принимаю», I am not rebelling against my God, I only "do not accept his world."
In chapter IV of Book VII, back in the cell, with a window open and the fresh air, Alyosha no longer feels the tearful grief of the morning, and the thought of the smell does not disturb him. The body stays in the coffin, and the change is only in the one who looks at it.
«Кто-то посетил мою душу в тот час», "Someone visited my soul at that hour."
What It Means
The smell proves nothing, neither against nor in favor of Zosima's holiness, and the chapter is built so that no one can treat it as irrelevant. For the monks hostile to the starchestvo it is a verdict, and their joy shows the envy the saint aroused. For the devout who loved him it is a scandal, and the haste with which they fall silent shows that their faith depended on a sign. For Ferapont it is a consecration in reverse, which puts him in the dead man's place. Father Paisy rejects both readings, and he himself confessed to himself that he had expected a miracle.
The symbol shows what the monastery and Alyosha expected of Zosima, and that is why decomposition plays in the book the role that a miracle would play. Two readings. In one, the smell is the banal fact that unmasks the faith of those who demanded proof, and Alyosha learns in chapter IV of Book VII a faith that lasts without it. In the other, it is a trial left on purpose, the "sign" that Paisy says no one has the power to understand, and the dream at Cana would be the answer without proof. The text does not decide. The stench has yet another address in the book: Smerdyakov's surname comes from his mother's nickname, Lizaveta Smerdyashchaya, "the Stinker", which Fyodor Pavlovich gives her in chapter II of Book III.
Relationships
- Default themes: Faith, Justice and law.
- Themes of the work: Faith, Justice and law.
- Characters: Elder Zosima, Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov, Rakitin, Smerdyakov.
- Neighboring symbols: the onion, the turning point of the same night, and bread and stones, the miracle that the Grand Inquisitor says the crowd demands.