Anyway, one of my old Pastors (Earl Palmer - I want to be this guy when i'm old) used to frequently quote Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. I decided to dive into it during a little Christmas break up here in Seattle and frankly it's blowing my mind. It has everything - love, hate, brotherhood, family, philosophy, religion, psychology, and on and on. Here's some quotes from my reading so far:
The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.
I looked at her for three seconds, or five perhaps, with fearful hatred - that hate which is only a hair's-breath from love, from the maddest love!
"Remember, young man, unceasingly," Father Paissy began, without preface, "that the science of this world, which has become a great power, has, especially in the last century, analysed everything devine handed down to us in the holy books. After this cruel analysis the learned of this world have nothing left of all that was sacred of old. But they have only analysed the parts and overlooked the whole, and indeed their blindness is marvelous. Yet the whole still stands steadfast before their eyes, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Has it not lasted nineteen centuries, is it not still a living, a moving power in the individual soul and in the masses of people? Is it still as strong and living even in the souls of athiests, who have destroyed everything! For even those who have renounced Christianity and attack it, in their inmost being still follow the Christian ideal, for hitherto neither their subtlety nor the ardour of their hearts has been able to create a higher ideal of man and of virtue than the ideal given by Christ of old. When it has been attempted, the result has been only grotesque. Remember this especially, young man, since you are being sent into the world by your departing elder. Maybe, remembering this great day, you will not forget my words, uttered from the heart for your guidance, seeing you are young, and the temptations of the world are great and beyond your strength to endure. Well, now, go my orphan."
I am going now; but believe me, Katerina Ivanova, you really love him. And the more he insults you, the more you love him - that's your laceration. You love him just as he is; you love him for insulting you. If he reformed, you'd give him up at once and cease to love him. But you need him so as to contemplate continually your heroic fidelity and to reproach him for infidelity. and it all comes from your pride. Oh, there's a great deal of humiliation and self-abasement about it, but it all comes from pride...I am too young and i've loved you too much. I know that I ought not to say this, that it would be more dignified on my part just to leave you, and it would be less offensive for you. But I am going far away and shall never come back...It is forever. I don't want to sit beside a laceration...But i don't know how to speak now. I've said everything...Goodbye Katerina Ivanova; you can't be angry with me, for i am a hundred time more severely punished than you, if only by the fact that i shall never see you again. goodbye!
All we Karamazovs are such insects, and, angel as you are, that insect lives in you, too, and will stir up a tempest in your blood.
1 comment:
i think you should keep posting passages as you read. i like these.
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