The Brothers Karamazov

But I will not describe the rest of the examination. In any case, the testimony of the remaining witnesses was merely a repetition and confirmation of the previous testimony, though each with its characteristic peculiarities. But, I repeat, everything will be drawn together in the speech of the prosecutor, which I shall come to presently. Everyone was excited, everyone was electrified by the latest catastrophe and only waited with burning impatience for a quick denouement, the speeches of both sides and the verdict. Fetyukovich was visibly shaken by Katerina Ivanovna’s evidence. But the prosecutor was triumphant. When the examination was over, an intermission in the proceedings was announced, which lasted for nearly an hour. Finally the presiding judge called for the closing debate. I believe it was precisely eight o’clock in the evening when our prosecutor, Ippolit Kirillovich, began his statement for the prosecution.

Chapter 6: The Prosecutor’s Speech. Characterizations

Ippolit Kirillovich began his statement for the prosecution all nervously atremble, with a cold, sickly sweat on his forehead and temples, feeling alternately chilled and feverish all over. He said so afterwards himself. He considered this speech his chef d’oeuvre, the chef d’oeuvre of his whole life, his swan song. True, he died nine months later of acute consumption, so that indeed, as it turned out, he would have been right to compare himself to a swan singing its last song, had he anticipated his end beforehand. Into this speech he put his whole heart and all the intelligence he possessed, and unexpectedly proved that in him were hidden both civic feeling and the “accursed” questions, ^[336]insofar at least as our poor Ippolit Kirillovich could contain them in himself. Above all, his speech went over because it was sincere: he sincerely believed in the defendant’s guilt; his accusation was not made to order, it was not merely dutiful, and, in calling for “revenge,” he really was trembling with the desire to “save society.” Even our ladies, ultimately hostile to Ippolit Kirillovich, nonetheless admitted the greatness of the impression made. He began in a cracked, faltering voice, but very soon his voice grew stronger and rang through the whole courtroom, and so to the end of his speech. But as soon as he finished it, he nearly fainted.

“Gentlemen of the jury,” the prosecutor began, “the present case has resounded throughout all Russia. But what, one might think, is so surprising, what is so especially horrifying about it? For us, for us especially? We’re so used to all that! And here is the real horror, that such dark affairs have almost ceased to horrify us! It is this, and not the isolated crime of one individual or another, that should horrify us: that we are so used to it. Where lie the reasons for our indifference, our lukewarm attitude towards such affairs, such signs of the times, which prophesy for us an unenviable future? In our cynicism, in an early exhaustion of mind and imagination in our society, so young and yet so prematurely decrepit? In our moral principles, shattered to their foundations, or, finally, in the fact that we, perhaps, are not even possessed of such moral principles at all? I do not mean to resolve these questions; nevertheless they are painful, and every citizen not only ought, but is even obliged, to suffer over them. Our budding, still timid press has all the same rendered some service to society, for without it we should never have learned, in any measure of fullness, of those horrors of unbridled will and moral degradation that it ceaselessly reports in its pages, to everyone, not merely to those who attend the sessions of the new open courts granted us by the present reign. ^[337]And what do we read almost daily? Oh, hourly we read of things before which the present case pales and seems almost something ordinary. But what is most important is that a great number of our Russian, our national, criminal cases bear witness precisely to something universal, to some general malaise that has taken root among us, and with which, as with universal evil, it is already very difficult to contend. Here we have a brilliant young officer of high society, just setting out on his life and career, who basely, stealthily, without any remorse, puts a knife into a petty official, in part his former benefactor, and his serving-woman, in order to steal his own promissory document, and the rest of the official’s cash along with it: ‘It will come in handy for my social pleasures and my future career.’ Having stabbed them both to death, he leaves, putting pillows under the heads of the two corpses. Or again we have a young hero, all hung with medals for valor, who, like a robber on the highway, kills the mother of his chief and benefactor and, to urge his comrades on, assures them that ‘she loves him like her own son, and will therefore follow all his advice and take no precautions.’ Granted he is a monster, but now, in our time, I no longer dare say he is just an isolated monster. Another man may not kill, perhaps, but he will think and feel exactly the same way, in his heart he is just as dishonest as the first. In silence, alone with his conscience, perhaps he asks himself: ‘What is honor, after all, and why this prejudice against shedding blood?’ Perhaps people will cry out against me, and say of me that I am a morbid man, a hysterical man, that I am raving, exaggerating, slandering monstrously. Let them, let them—and, God, how I would be the first to rejoice! Oh, do not believe me, consider me a sick man, but still remember my words: for if only a tenth, only a twentieth part of what I say is true, even then it is terrible! Look, gentlemen, look at how our young men are shooting themselves—oh, without the least Hamletian question of ‘what lies beyond,’ ^[338] without a trace of such questions, as if this matter of our spirit, and all that awaits us beyond the grave, had been scrapped long ago in them, buried and covered with dust. Look, finally, at our depravity, at our sensualists. Fyodor Pavlovich, the unfortunate victim in the current trial, is almost an innocent babe next to some of them. And we all knew him, ‘he lived among us’ . . . ^[339]Yes, perhaps some day the foremost minds both here and in Europe will consider the psychology of Russian crime, for the subject is worthy of it. But this study will be taken up later on, at leisure, and when the whole tragic topsy-turveydom of our present moment has moved more into the background so that it will be possible to examine it more intelligently and more impartially than people like myself, for example, can do. For now we are either horrified or pretend that we are horrified, while, on the contrary, relishing the spectacle, like lovers of strong, eccentric sensations that stir our cynical and lazy idleness, or, finally, like little children waving the frightening ghosts away, and hiding our heads under the pillow until the frightening vision is gone, so as to forget it immediately afterwards in games and merriment. But should not we, too, some day begin to live soberly and thoughtfully; should not we, too, take a look at ourselves as a society; should not we, too, understand at least something of our social duty, or at least begin to understand? A great writer of the previous epoch, in the finale of the greatest of his works, personifying all of Russia as a bold Russian troika galloping towards an unknown goal, exclaims: ‘Ah, troika, bird-troika, who invented you!’—and in proud rapture adds that all nations respectfully stand aside for this troika galloping by at breakneck speed. Let it be so, gentlemen, let them stand aside, respectfully or not, but in my sinful judgment the artistic genius ended like that either in a fit of innocently infantile sunnymindedness, or simply from fear of contemporary censorship. For if his troika were to be drawn by none but his own heroes, the Sobakeviches, Nozdryovs, and Chichikovs, then no matter who is sitting in the coachman’s box, it would be impossible to arrive at anything sensible with such horses! And those were still former horses, a far cry from our own, ours are no comparison . . .” ^[340]

Here Ippolit Kirillovich’s speech was interrupted by applause. They liked the liberalism of his depiction of the Russian troika. True, only two or three claps broke out, so that the presiding judge did not even find it necessary to address the public with a threat to “clear the court” and merely gave the clappers a stern look. But Ippolit Kirillovich was encouraged: never had he been applauded before! For so many years no one had wanted to listen to the man, and suddenly there came an opportunity to speak out for all Russia to hear!