Kirillov

“ He found Kirillov still pacing up and down his room so preoccupied that he had forgotten the arrival of Shatov’s wife, and heard what he said without understanding him.
“Oh, yes!” he recollected suddenly, as though tearing himself with an effort and only for an instant from some absorbing idea, “yes ... an old woman.... A wife or an old woman? Stay a minute: a wife and an old woman, is that it? I remember. I’ve been, the old woman will come, only not just now. Take the pillow. Is there anything else? Yes.... Stay, do you have moments of the eternal harmony, Shatov?” ”

“ “‘Vive la république démocratique sociale et universelle ou la mort!’ No, no, that’s not it. ‘Liberté, égalité, fraternité ou la mort.’ There, that’s better, that’s better.” He wrote it gleefully under his signature.
“Enough, enough,” repeated Pyotr Stepanovitch.
“Stay, a little more. I’ll sign it again in French, you know. ‘De Kirillov, gentilhomme russe et citoyen du monde.’ Ha ha!” ”

“ Even negation has not come from me. Everything has always been petty and spiritless. Kirillov, in the greatness of his soul, could not compromise with an idea, and shot himself; but I see, of course, that he was great-souled because he had lost his reason. I can never lose my reason, and I can never believe in an idea to such a degree as he did. I cannot even be interested in an idea to such a degree. I can never, never shoot myself.
“I know I ought to kill myself, to brush myself off the earth like a nasty insect; but I am afraid of suicide, for I am afraid of showing greatness of soul. ”

“ Fyodor says that Kirillov lives for his belly. That’s comprehensible and rational. All of us as rational beings can’t do anything else but live for our belly. And all of a sudden the same Fyodor says that one mustn’t live for one’s belly, but must live for truth, for God, and at a hint I understand him! And I and millions of men, men who lived ages ago and men living now—peasants, the poor in spirit and the learned, who have thought and written about it, in their obscure words saying the same thing—we are all agreed about this one thing: what we must live for and what is good. ”

“ Pyotr Stepanovitch muttered malignantly.
“I am bound to show my unbelief,” said Kirillov, walking about the room. “I have no higher idea than disbelief in God. I have all the history of mankind on my side. Man has done nothing but invent God so as to go on living, and not kill himself; that’s the whole of universal history up till now. I am the first one in the whole history of mankind who would not invent God. Let them know it once for all.”
“He won’t shoot himself,” Pyotr Stepanovitch thought anxiously. ”

“ If the lie were ended and if you realised that all the falsity comes from the belief in that former God?”
“So at last you understand!” cried Kirillov rapturously. “So it can be understood if even a fellow like you understands. Do you understand now that the salvation for all consists in proving this idea to every one? Who will prove it? I! I can’t understand how an atheist could know that there is no God and not kill himself on the spot. To recognise that there is no God and not to recognise at the same instant that one is God oneself is an absurdity, else one would certainly kill oneself. ”

“ Pyotr Stepanovitch looked at him intently, still not recognising him; but seeing Liputin peeping in from the kitchen, he smiled his hateful smile and suddenly got up, picking up his revolver from the floor.
“If you take it into your head to run away to-morrow like that scoundrel Stavrogin,” he cried, pouncing furiously on Kirillov, pale, stammering, and hardly able to articulate his words, “I’ll hang you ... like a fly ... or crush you ... if it’s at the other end of the world ... do you understand!” ”

“ Erkel came in.
“Don’t come in,” whispered Shatov, and impulsively seizing him by the hand he drew him back towards the gate. “Wait here, I’ll come directly, I’d completely forgotten you, completely! Oh, how you brought it back!”
He was in such haste that he did not even run in to Kirillov’s, but only called the old woman. Marie was in despair and indignation that “he could dream of leaving her alone.”
“But,” he cried ecstatically, “this is the very last step! And then for a new life and we’ll never, never think of the old horrors again!” ”

“ This topic leads directly to a very curious set of political phenomena. It can be described as political pathology. The line between sanity and madness is just as hazy here as it is in other areas. But one can usually distinguish between one man who is intelligently dedicated to a goal and another who is a fanatic. Dostoyevsky intended that all his revolutionaries should represent very dangerous forms of madness. It is obvious that Kirillov, who believes he can become God by killing himself, is insane. ”

“ There is a tickling at Elena Kirillovna’s throat. There is a slight giddiness in her head. Elena Kirillovna makes haste to go. She descends the staircase, and proceeds upon her customary morning stroll.
[3] Literally: “Little mother—gentlewoman.”
XIX
Glasha soon overtakes her. With an exaggerated loudness she runs stamping down the stairs, showing a wing-like glimmer of her strong legs from under the pink skirt, set a-flutter by her vigorous movement. She calls out in a clear, solicitously joyous voice:
“Barinya, you have come out! The sun will scorch you. I’ve fetched your hat.” ”

“ A quarter of an hour had not elapsed when their squeaking became audible again, and Kiríllovna entered the boudoir with the same composed expression on her face, with the same crafty intelligence in her eyes.
"Well,"—inquired her mistress,—"how about Akím?"
[Pg 297]
"'T is all right, ma'am. He says, ma'am, that everything is in your power, he submits himself wholly to the will of your Graciousness, and if only you keep well and prosperous, he will forever be satisfied with his lot." ”

“ In conversation she frequently alludes to Akím, and avers that ever since she discovered all his fine qualities, she has come to cherish a great respect for the Russian peasant. Kiríllovna has purchased her freedom from Lizavéta Prókhorovna for a considerable sum and has married, for love, some fair-haired young butler or other, at whose hands she endures bitter torture ”

“ Elena Kirillovna looks out of the window. She is returning, as it were, once more from some dark, abstract world to the bright, profusely-coloured, resonant impressions of a rough, cheery, not altogether disagreeable life.
Small white clouds tinged with red float slowly in the heights and merge imperceptibly in the vivid blue. Ablaze like a piece of coal at red heat their soul seems to fuse with their cold white bodies, to consume them as well as itself with fire, and to sink exhausted in the cold blue heights. ”

“ Silent again, Stepanida is once more busy with the samovar; the disenchanted bee flies away, its buzzing growing less and less audible behind the fence.
The pungent smell of tar causes Elena Kirillovna to frown. She says:
“What makes the thing smell so strongly? You had better leave it for a while, or you will get giddy.”
Stepanida, without moving, answers languidly and indifferently:
“It’s nothing, barinya. We are used to it. It’s but a slight smell, and it is the juniper.”
Through the blue, curling smoke of juniper her sweet voice seems dull and bitter. ”

“ There is no other doctor here, you know. For God’s sake come! I am not asking you for myself. . . . I am not the patient!”
A silence followed. Kirilov turned his back on Abogin, stood still a moment, and slowly walked into the drawing-room. Judging from his unsteady, mechanical step, from the attention with which he set straight the fluffy shade on the unlighted lamp in the drawing-room and glanced into a thick book lying on the table, at that instant he had no intention, no desire, was thinking of nothing and most likely did not remember that there was a stranger in the entry. ”

“ The time is precious, Doctor! Let us go, I beg of you."
"I can't come," Kirilov said after a pause, and stepped into his drawing-room.
Aboguin followed him and seized him by the sleeve.
"You're in sorrow. I understand. But I'm not asking you to cure a toothache, or to give expert evidence,—but to save a human life." He went on imploring like a beggar. "This life is more than any personal grief. I ask you for courage, for a brave deed—in the name of humanity."
"Humanity cuts both ways," Kirilov said irritably. "In the name of the same humanity I ask you not to take me away. ”

“ Kirilov and Abogin were silent almost all the way. Only once Abogin heaved a deep sigh and muttered:
“It’s an agonizing state! One never loves those who are near one so much as when one is in danger of losing them.”
And when the carriage slowly drove over the river, Kirilov started all at once as though the splash of the water had frightened him, and made a movement. ”

“ But once he is dead and men are at last enlightened, this earth will be peopled with tsars and lighted up with human glory. Kirilov’s pistol shot will be the signal for the last revolution. Thus, it is not despair that urges him to death, but love of his neighbor for his own sake. ”

“ It is true that Bering found sincere support in the able and influential Ivan Kirilovich Kiriloff, but to no one else could he turn for a just and competent judge. The great Russian empire had not yet produced a scientific aristocracy. ”

“ But there are even graver difficulties in Kirěevskii's philosophy of history. Above all, we have to ask ourselves how the true and unitary church universal could have been defeated so disastrously by Roman pride, the divine overthrown by the human. Kirěevskii himself moots the question why Russian civilisation, in view of its advantages, failed to develop more fully than European civilisation. Why, he enquires, did not Russia outstrip Europe? Why did not Russia become the leader of civilisation? Why has Russia had to borrow her civilisation from Europe? ”

“ He preaches with passionate earnestness upon the beauty of innocence and the agony of losing it. "That once lost," he says, "the old careless joy of youth never returns."
The village parliament in the moonlit churchyard after service comment with humour on the sermon, and on Cyril's eloquence, learning, and good heart. Granfer, the village oracle, prophesies that the queen will make a bishop of him. Ben Lee, talking with Judkins by the harness-room fire, supposes that Cyril was thinking of Alma in his sermon. "He always had a kind heart." ”

“ The death of Nicholas Kiréeff was a kind of spark falling on a train of gunpowder. In a month's time the whole of Russia was roused.
"The news of the death of Nicholas Kiréeff," said Aksakoff, in one of his most famous speeches, "at once stimulated hundreds to become volunteers—an event that repeated itself when the news was received of the deaths of further Russian volunteers. Death did not frighten, but, as it were, attracted them. At the beginning of the movement the volunteers were men who had belonged to the army, and chiefly from among the nobles. ”

“ Krilof, Ivan Andreevich, the great Russian fabulist, born at Moscow, son of a soldier; began his literary career writing dramas and editing magazines; was some time secretary to the governor of Livonia, and for years lived an idle roving life; at 40 his fables in the Moscow Spectator brought him fame in 1805; next year he was appointed to a Government post at St. Petersburg, and in 1821 to a post in the Imperial Public Library; he was an eccentric, much-loved man, and the humour and sympathy of his writings have won for him the title of the La Fontaine of Russia (1768-1844) . ”

“ When I think of the tragedy surrounding the death of my brother, Nicholas Kiréeff, I can now see that he served Russia better by his death than he could by living for her.
The news of his heroic fall passed from one end {34} of Russia to the other like the notes of a bugle calling an army into being. But for his death my own humble efforts to bring about a better understanding between two great nations might possibly never have been attempted. There is probably no evil out of which good cannot be formed. ”

“ Diavilev, with the inbred habit of years, gave his congratulations. Krylov stood looking at him closely, half-smiling, rubbing again at his cheek. There was something infinitely chilling in the moment, but Diavilev was able to smile back.
"This station has been in existence," said Krylov, "for slightly more than a week. There are not fifty people in the entire world who know of it. You have become one. You are therefore most important." ”

“ I must just send my assistant to my wife. She is alone, you know!”
Abogin did not speak. The carriage swaying from side to side and crunching over the stones drove up the sandy bank and rolled on its way. Kirilov moved restlessly and looked about him in misery. Behind them in the dim light of the stars the road could be seen and the riverside willows vanishing into the darkness. On the right lay a plain as uniform and as boundless as the sky; here and there in the distance, probably on the peat marshes, dim lights were glimmering. ”

“ For the secret of Kreisler’s personality and his music lies in that finely balanced combination of qualities: a sensuousness that would be a little overpowering, a little drugging, without the gigantic strength that seems to hold it in leash. That balance makes possible his little air of military jauntiness, of sad Vienna gayety; it gives him that huge effect of power that always makes me feel I’m watching the king of the forest stride through his kingdom. You need never expect emotionalism from this musician; he’s too strong to give you anything but passion. ”