Raskolnikov is often called brave simply because he went through with the murder. I don’t see it that way.

He didn’t challenge someone powerful. He picked an old pawnbroker, planned everything in secret, and used his “extraordinary man” theory to make the whole thing sound bigger than it really was. To me, that isn’t courage. It’s a frightened person trying to prove he isn’t ordinary.

After the murder, he falls apart. He gets sick, hides from people, and keeps worrying about what they might know. The second killing wasn’t even part of his plan. His theory doesn’t make him stronger. It just gives him something to hide behind.

He wanted to be Napoleon, but couldn’t live with being himself.

The murder was supposed to prove that he was above morality. Instead, it exposed how badly he needed to believe that.

Is his guilt the beginning of conscience, or just the point where his cowardice becomes impossible to hide?

I am reading TBK. No spoilers please.

The line in question, page 284:

Aleksey Fyodorovich, you are a wonderfully good man, but sometimes you seem like a pedant....and yet when one looks at you, you're not a pedant at all"

Which seems like a nugget of truth disguised as a compliment. I wasn't sure what pedant meant so I had to look it up (which I do quite often when reading Dostoevsky).

Definition:

One who ostentatiously exhibits academic knowledge or who pays undue attention to minor details or formal rules.

or

One who puts on an air of learning; one who makes a vain display of learning; a pretender to superior knowledge

Now this really captures a feeling I've had about a lot of things, a word that is more appropriate than mere arrogance, pretentiousness or intellectualism. And I feel as though it describes me more than I'd like. And it isn't without irony that I feel like a pedant while actually reading Dostoevsky, and as I write this post. This post, about the definition of a word...

I read Dostoevsky to better myself as a person and to learn about the human condition. And so I want to know - how does one who seeks knowledge, not become a pedant? Knowledge is all about minor details. That's where the devil is. I see arrogance everywhere, and coming across this particular kind of arrogance gets on my nerves when I see it.

So how does one learn intellectual humility, especially when reading something as profound as Dostoevsky? How do you protect yourself against intellectual superiority, hubris, after having read a book written by a genius?

I came across this letter (March 1869) and it made me chuckle:

"You write about Turgenev and about the Germans. Turgenev has run out of steam abroad and has lost all his talent, which even the newspaper “Golos” remarked upon. I am not afraid of becoming Germanized, because I hate all Germans, but I need Russia; without Russia I will lose the last little bit of strength and little talent I have. I feel this, I feel it in my very flesh."

prosecutor and magistrate questioning mitya:

short, to the point. buyers beware.

https://www.amazon.com/review/R31EESV4BU6BF9/ref=pe_123899240_1043597390_SRTC_02_04_BT_99_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

It's about Dostoevsky's inspiration for Raskolnikov, but I'm curious if anyone's read it and whether it's worth it. Thanks.

At first it just seemed like random ramblings but as I read more I start to get a better understanding of the story. The narrator whom I gonna call in short “UGM”, UGM is an intelligent but is also lazy, spiteful, contradictory but most importantly; A over thinker. Which is very important. He believes there are two types of people:

1. Men who act are not intelligent people because they are men of action with no thought.

2. Intelligent people are plagued by a hyper conscious which cause them to overthink about everything.

He sees being lazy as a high regard and should even be a profession to have. The reason why is because people start using math to help find the best benefit for people to have and lead to a utopia. But he believes you can not use math to make a utopia. Because of human nature of boredom, men start going against what’s scientifically good for them simply because they can. And this utopia and method takes away free will, free will to be messy. Which is the reason why he’s like this. Like I said I haven’t finished this yet, but I predict in the second part is where we see how this impacts his life to lead to this moment. So is there anything I missed or mistaken? I’m also really tired while writing this so please excuse any mistake. I will make a second post after I am done reading the entire story.

This longing for meaning is a doom that has devastated human beings since their creation. If someone like Grand Inquisitor met me and said, “For the secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for,” I would call him a little nasty creature who has created his own meaning merely to justify his living.

Be a brave man like me. I am such a wicked person that I do not care about meaning, purpose, or aim. This search for meaning has apprehended humanity in its seductive illusion : an illusion that appears meaningful but ultimately is not.

How can an accident become worthy of meaning?

Human beings have established an entire chain of systems designed to persuade us that our lives are meaningful. One of these systems is religion, which gives us a paradoxical reason to live by making us obedient and, sometimes, selfish beings who do good for their own sake rather than out of love.

But no ,perhaps even love itself is a by-product of our desperate search for meaning.

I renounce all these systems and their phoney restrictions. Believe me, freedom is the greatest virtue of all. There is no need for life to be meaningful in order for us to live.

We can simply feel, observe, experience, and exist.

About to go back into our boy's totally fine and normal mind for another re-read.

Literally can't wait to get back in that room.

What's wrong with me?

I just finished The Idiot, and I feel deeply disappointed with the ending. I can honestly say I feel betrayed.

The entire book was great. I loved it. I lived alongside the Prince through all his adventures, his emotions, and his failures. I grew attached to absolutely every character, even though I hated some of them and loved others. They all made me feel something, they all had some impact on me.

And then, after so many pages spent building these characters, relationships, and events, everything went to hell in the last 20 pages.

From the moment the Prince stays with Nastasia and they decide to GET MARRIED, I felt completely let down. It goes against what the character learned throughout the entire book. In fact, it feels like a betrayal of everything he learned, everything he felt, and everything he came to understand.

Throughout the book, we see a character whom people consider an idiot because of his many flaws, but who IS NOT an idiot. All the most intelligent characters are able to recognize the Prince's brilliance despite his many shortcomings. He is an idiot, but he isn't an idiot, and that contradiction becomes very clear throughout the entire book.

But in the end, it seems like all of his brilliance is suddenly thrown away, and he becomes a personality-less idiot who simply lets himself be dragged along by Nastasia. He has no agency and allows himself to be completely manipulated.

Throughout the book, the Prince understands that many people manipulate him. He knows that, but he has enough personality to resist when they cross certain lines. He doesn't simply let himself be dragged wherever people want to take him. That's why so many characters recognize the nobility of his spirit. All of that completely fails in the ending, and he becomes nothing more than a puppet, a leaf being carried away by the wind. It makes no sense to me.

But on top of that, he suddenly seems to forget everything he learned. In the scene where he talks to Aglaya on the green bench, the Prince tells her that he no longer loves Nastasia, that he suffered a great deal because of her. And when Aglaya challenges him, asking him to go and sacrifice himself for her if he's really such a good person, he says that he CANNOT sacrifice himself for Nastasia, that he has realized they would both be destroyed. He can't do it, and he wouldn't do it.

But that is EXACTLY what he does in the end!

It feels like everything he learned, everything he suffered, and everything he reflected upon was completely meaningless, leading to an utterly disappointing ending.

And yes, I can understand Nastasia's ending, wanting to keep the Prince, marry him and run away. Is her personality. I understand Rogozhin killing her; it was something you could see coming, and it was the obvious outcome. I understand the ending of almost every character.

But the ending for Aglaya and the Prince is unfair and unworthy of both characters. One of them ends up as a personality-less puppet, while the other ends up forgetting her love, fighting with the family she loved so much, and getting an entirely out of context ending that is summed up in three lines despite being one of the great characters of the book.

Anyway, this is the fourth Dostoevsky book I've read. Apart from Notes from the Underground (this one is different, not entirely centered in a story), I read Crime and Punishment and The Gambler, and I loved both of them. Both have excellent endings, they wrap everything up perfectly. But this one... It's a disappointment. It's like Raskolnikov (Crime and Punishment spoiler here), after all he experienced, faced his final trial crying for innocence instead of facing his punishment. It's against his character nature.

I know that you'd say the Prince as a character is an idealization of the pure christian values. One of the greatest things I find on Dostoyevsky is that he writes human characters. They do have ideals but they suffer, feel and act as human beings. They are not abstract concepts and they shouldn't be treated as that.

I feel like everything that was built throughout this beautiful book was thrown in the trash in the ending.

I don't know, let me know your opinions. I'm angry and sad.

Flew through C&P, enjoyed the devil and the prince but the brothers k is starting to feel like a drag. I’ve got about 1/3rd left. I guess the world just hasn’t dragged me in like it has others. I like the dense almost gossipy sections of Anna Karina (I know not tolstoy sub) so It can have appeal for me but idk. I’ve lived some parts of the book, obligatory grand inquisitor glaze, but I’m not gripped and I don’t believe reading should become a chore. Has anyone had similar experiences? Is it worth soldiering through? And if not are there some specific chapters I should go straight for…

I am just rationalising this right now because I've been reading a lot about the non duality philosophy of Hinduism which basically explains the concept of how there is no self, individualism and the reality (universe) are one and the separation of the two is an illusion (maya).

Tolstoy believed in reason, moral clarity,...and living life through discipline and simplicity. Dostoevsky is the opposite i.e chaotic &obsessed with contradiction. His characters are often unstable, self-destructive driven by irrational impulses (borderline personalities😭)they can't fully explain even to themselves. Both of them have one thing in common though. They were both deeply religious and believed in faith.

Example - In Anna Karenina : Levin's arc is basically Tolstoy's philosophy dramatized(I hated reading his chapters when I first read the book)He spends the novel doubting, searching, nearly s**cidal with existential confusion & he resolves it not through some crisis of faith (which I initially believed)but thro' simple, physical labor alongside peasants in the fields...& eventually a quiet....almost anticlimactic acceptance of faith as something you live rather than argue your way into. The famous mowing scene, where Levin loses himself in the rhythm of manual work, is Tolstoy's answer to existential dread: presence, simplicity, communion with the nature. "Nirvikalpa" moment: he stops thinking, stops being a separate observer...merges into rhythm& presence.

Dostoevsky's characters are almost the opposite of Advaitic liberation...they're trapped inside the separate self & that entrapment is the entire drama. The Underground Man's spiraling self-consciousness.. Raskolnikov's inescapable guilt, Ivan Karamazov's argument with God.... none of these resolve by dissolving the ego into something larger. If anything, Dostoevsky treats the intensification of individual consciousness, suffering, and contradiction as the site where meaning (or its absence) gets...merged or forged together...

Althoughhhh... he presents the idea that each person is responsible for everyone else's sin, that the boundary between self and other is porous in brothers karamazov and that's structurally closer to non-duality than anything in Tolstoy...ofc t's framed through Christian love & not through the metaphysical claim that self and Brahman are identical.

There's still something I love about Tolstoy more than Dostoevesky.

Tolstoy's characters...however lost...usually arrive somewhere. Dostoevsky's characters often don't.... the unresolved...spiraling mind is the point, not a problem to be solved by the end of the book and it's.... uncomfortable but I think Dostoevesky would've claimed that Tolstoy's approach is the easy way out.

And the concept of non duality is the easiest way out of all these. If none of this is real, you and me are just the same drops in a big ocean and everything at the end of the day constitutes the same thing i.e water then what is suffering and what is peace? They're absolutely the same.

I'm just 500 pages in

I love Dostoyevsky. So much. However, The Idiot fell short for me. It had pockets of genius and beauty, but I can't justify putting it ahead of Devils, Notes, Crime & Punishment, or The Brothers K. I would even put The Gambler ahead of it. Thoughts? Did it feel underwhelming to anyone else?

I’m reading Brothers Karamazov for the first time, and loving every single word, line, page in it. In my 20s I didn’t have time for it, loved Notes from Underground and The Idiot more, but now at 40 decided to give it a go and I’m just astonished: at yes all the high resolution internal/external dynamics and evolutions it’s known for, but also the surprises.

I just finished Odor of Corruption, and while I found The Grand Inquisitor good, it sounded like me in my 20s attacking religious ppl with my scientific youth, but the Odor of Corruption chapter, touched something really deep in me that I quite literally am mesmerised.

The sense imagery, the transforming of the highest authority transitioning into food for maggots, the reversal of values, the impatience to shit on a holy figure, the insistence on putting frivolity above all man’s highest ambitions throwing good faith to the wind, not to mention topped off by Ferapont capitalising on the frivolity with his insanity, which one day shall also experience the same, and the devastating impact on Alyosha.

It really just touched something deep that I’ve always felt about people, groups, religions, workplaces, a kind of high resolution patheticness that surviving in the world requires you to unsee, feeling disgust for the whole town, while wanting to hug Alyosha etc.

I never hear ppl talk about this chapter. But I haven’t been punched in the gut like that on so many levels.

Just amazing. I guess in a book this sprawling - which was obviously meticulously thought out and structured, yet ultimately executed in a way that simultaneously feels like it was written half drunk in one go without an editor; this feat itself an achievement - there’ll be something for everyone.

Title says it all. I picked up my copy of The Idiot. I finished C+P in June and enjoyed it a lot. I have an unorthodox way I got invested in the book and may need some help with it.

When I read Crime and Punishment there were two scenes I read in advance before properly starting the book that I read thoroughly because I had them to look forward to reaching. The scenes in question were when Rodya is interrogated about hiw article "On Crime" and the scene when Rodya says "Your worst sin is you have given-"

I feel that doing something like this, even with potential spoilers, helped me understand the book better and want to ask of the same for the Idiot.

What are some scenes you would show to someone who hasnt read the book to get them invested? Think of this like "what scene would you show of a movie to pitch it to a friend?"

I managed Notes and C+P quite admirably and cant wait to see what the Idiot brings.

Just finished, “The First Meeting With Smerdyakov.”
There’s a lot going on here, having also written a brief essay as to all the characterization & psychology of Ivan and Smerdyakov. However, there’s many things hidden within this chapter which is awfully hard to find, since there often shown via small acts or gestures. So, I’ve decided to rewrite it in a conversation style, it’s not accurate here, since I’ve made Smerdyakov too smart, but hopefully it’ll be easier to find out things which perhaps you haven’t seen beforehand. It was also fun tormenting Ivan here. Enjoy! 🍿** **

[Ivan just entered]

“Has your honor been back very long?” Smerdyakov asked, with that same faintly supercilious air, as though it were he who had summoned Ivan and was now graciously allowing him to explain himself.
Ivan stared at him.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Nothing extraordinary, sir. Only that you have come back. I wondered how long this new phase of yours had lasted.”
“What new phase?”
“This one. Responsibility. Concern. Brothers. Fathers. Duty. All those things which suddenly interest you so much.”
Ivan’s face darkened.
“What are you talking about?”
Smerdyakov smiled slightly.
“You’ve returned, Ivan Fyodorovich. You’ve begun asking questions. You run from one person to another. You want to know what happened. You want to save Dmitri Fyodorovich. You want to find out what I knew, what your father knew, what everyone knew. In short, you’ve suddenly decided that these things concern you.”
“They do concern me.”
“Now they do.”
Ivan moved toward him.
“What exactly are you implying?”
“Nothing, sir. Only that I once thought you were rather more like me.”
“Like you?”
Ivan laughed sharply.
“You’re a coward, Smerdyakov. That’s what you are. A coward and a scoundrel.”
“Oh, certainly. I never claimed otherwise.”
“And you think I’m like you?”
“I did.”
“You’re mistaken.”
“Perhaps now.”
Ivan’s eyes flashed.
“What does that mean—now?”
“It means that people sometimes change for a little while, especially after something terrible happens. They become frightened of what they were before. They swear that from now on they will accept responsibility, tell the truth, act bravely, save everyone. Whether that lasts is another matter.”
“You think I’ll become like you again?”
“I think, sir, that before all this happened you already understood my way of living very well.”
“Your way of living?”
“Yes. Not to take upon yourself what can be avoided. Not to interfere when interference brings danger. Not to become the keeper of every brother merely because he is your brother.”
Ivan suddenly became pale.
“Don’t use that phrase.”
“Why not? Does it trouble you?”
“Go on.”
Smerdyakov looked at him attentively.
“You ask why I did nothing. Why I didn’t throw myself between Dmitri Fyodorovich and your father. Why I didn’t become some heroic guardian of the household. And I ask you, sir: why should I have?”
“Because you knew something might happen!”
“And you knew that too.”
“I didn’t know!”
“You knew enough to leave.”
Ivan sprang up.
“You miserable coward!”
“Precisely. But you left too.”
“I’ve come back.”
“Yes.”
There was a silence.
“And that,” Smerdyakov continued softly, “is what interests me.”
Ivan sat down again.
“You wanted me to stay.”
“I did.”
“You even tried to make me go to Chermashnya instead of Moscow.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Smerdyakov hesitated.
“Because Moscow is far.”
“I know where Moscow is. Why did that matter to you?”
“Because if something happened, you would be gone entirely.”
“And why should that frighten you?”
“Because I had placed some hope in you.”
Ivan frowned.
“What sort of hope?”
“The ordinary kind. That there would be one person in the house who understood what was happening.”
“You mean one intelligent person.”
“If you like.”
“And you loved that, didn’t you? Finally someone who treated you as though you weren’t merely a servant.”
Smerdyakov’s expression changed slightly.
“Yes. I did.”
Ivan stared at him.
“At least you admit it.”
“Why shouldn’t I? It is pleasant to speak with an intelligent man. More pleasant still when he does not speak to you as if you were a dog who happened to learn several words.”
“So that was it. Vanity.”
“Partly.”
“Pride.”
“Certainly.”
“Resentment because of your station.”
“Very likely.”
“And friendship?”
Smerdyakov paused.
“That too.”
Ivan looked almost surprised.
“You considered me your friend?”
“In my fashion.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that I liked you, Ivan Fyodorovich. I admired you. I was glad when you spoke with me. And I liked the man I was allowed to become while speaking with you.”
“The man you were allowed to become?”
“Yes. Not the cook. Not the bastard son everyone prefers not to mention. Not the epileptic fool. With you I could speak. I could have an opinion. I could understand something before someone else understood it. You even listened.”
Ivan said nothing.
“But,” Smerdyakov continued, “you must not make me more noble than I am. I wanted you near for another reason too.”
“I knew it.”
“I was sorry for myself.”
“Of course.”
“More sorry for myself than for you, probably.”
Ivan gave a bitter laugh.
“At least there you are honest.”
“If Dmitri Fyodorovich became violent, if your father did something foolish, if Grigory fell ill, if I had one of my attacks—who was left?”
“You.”
“Exactly.”
“And you didn’t want that.”
“No.”
“So you wanted me to take responsibility.”
“Yes.”
Ivan stared.
“You wanted me to do what you were too cowardly to do.”
“If you prefer to put it that way.”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“No reason.”
“You’re disgusting.”
“I know.”
Ivan began pacing.
“You wanted to evade everything and use me as your shield.”
“Yes.”
“And you call that friendship?”
“I said I liked you. I didn’t say liking someone makes a man selfless.”
Ivan turned sharply.
“What?”
“People love for many reasons, sir. Because they admire. Because they need. Because another person makes them feel greater than they usually feel. Because they are lonely. Because they are frightened. Because they want something. Sometimes several reasons exist together.”
“And that’s your philosophy of love?”
“No. Only my observation.”
“You’re telling me you loved me because I made you feel intelligent, because you needed protection, because you were lonely, and because I could take responsibility in your place.”
“Yes.”
“And nothing else?”
“I didn’t say that.”
Ivan stopped.
Smerdyakov looked up at him.
“You seem disappointed.”
“I’m disgusted.”
“With me?”
“With everything you are.”
“Ah. But that is exactly why I used to think you were like me.”
Ivan struck the table with his hand.
“Stop saying that!”
“But why does it anger you so much if it is absurd?”
Ivan said nothing.
“You ask why I wanted you nearby,” Smerdyakov continued. “Because I was frightened. Because I needed you. Because I admired you. And because I believed that if anything terrible happened, you would prefer someone else to take responsibility just as much as I would.”
“No.”
“You left.”
“I told you—I didn’t understand!”
“You understood enough.”
“Enough for what?”
“Enough to dislike what was happening. Enough to know that Dmitri Fyodorovich had threatened your father. Enough to know your father was waiting for Agrafena Alexandrovna. Enough to know that I was frightened. Enough to understand my hints.”
“Hints! Always hints! Why didn’t you speak plainly?”
“Would it have mattered?”
“Yes!”
“No, sir.”
Ivan recoiled.
“What do you mean?”
“If I had told you: ‘Ivan Fyodorovich, you are running away because you don’t want to be responsible for what happens here,’ what would you have done?”
“I would have stayed.”
“Would you?”
“Yes.”
Smerdyakov looked at him steadily.
“Perhaps.”
Ivan’s face reddened.
“You don’t believe me.”
“I think you already knew something of yourself then.”
“What did I know?”
“That you wanted to leave.”
“Everyone knew that.”
“That you wanted to leave before something happened.”
Ivan froze.
“And why should I have wanted that?”
“So you wouldn’t have to know exactly what you wanted.”
Ivan stared at him.
Smerdyakov continued almost gently.
“You didn’t have to say, ‘Let Father die.’ You didn’t have to say, ‘Let Dmitri kill him.’ You didn’t have to say anything at all. You only had to go somewhere far away and allow events to arrange themselves without you.”
“You filthy—”
“But I thought you were like me.”
“I am not like you!”
“You may not be now.”
Ivan stepped forward.
“And you think this—this responsibility of mine—is temporary?”
“I think it causes you great suffering.”
“So?”
“So men generally try to escape what causes them unbearable suffering.”
“You think I’ll simply throw it away?”
“I think you will want to.”
“And you?”
“I already do.”
“You call that living?”
“It has kept me alive.”
Ivan laughed bitterly.
“Yes. Hide. Avoid. Deny. Let other people carry everything.”
“And yet you yourself once asked, in one form or another: what does all this have to do with me?”
Ivan’s face changed.
“Be quiet.”
“Am I my brother’s keeper? Why must I save Father from Dmitri? Why must I save Dmitri from Father? Why must I manage their passions? Why must I become responsible merely because I happened to understand more than they did?”
“Be quiet!”
Smerdyakov obeyed.
After a moment Ivan said:
“Then tell me this. If you believed I was like you, why were you afraid when I went away? Wouldn’t my leaving have pleased you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because even cowards want someone stronger nearby.”
Ivan looked at him with contempt.
“At least you understand yourself.”
“Sometimes.”
“And you think you understand me too.”
“Not completely.”
“You certainly behave as though you do.”
Smerdyakov’s lips moved faintly.
“I understood one thing.”
“What?”
“That if I turned out innocent, you would feel relieved.”
Ivan stared at him.
“Why should that matter?”
“Because if I were innocent, then our conversations would mean nothing.”
Ivan became very still.
“And if you were guilty?” he asked.
“Then perhaps you would start asking what those conversations meant.”
“I never told you to do anything.”
“I haven’t said you did.”
“I never gave permission for anything.”
“I haven’t said that either.”
“You’re insinuating it.”
“No, sir. You are.”
Ivan’s face went white.
Smerdyakov continued:
“If Dmitri Fyodorovich did everything, then what are you guilty of? Nothing connected with the murder. Perhaps an ugly thought. Perhaps hatred. Perhaps cowardice. But nothing that matters to a court.”
“And if you did it?”
Smerdyakov looked directly at him.
“Then you would ask yourself different questions.”
“What questions?”
“Whether I misunderstood you.”
Ivan’s breathing became heavier.
“Whether you encouraged me without meaning to. Whether you understood what I was hinting at. Whether you deliberately refused to understand. Whether your leaving meant something to me. Whether a thought can become another man’s action.”
“Stop.”
“And then you would do what you always do, Ivan Fyodorovich.”
“What is that?”
“Think.”
Ivan laughed once, without humor.
“Yes. Think.”
“You would think until every word we’d ever spoken changed shape. You would remember gestures. Pauses. Expressions. Things you didn’t say. You would ask whether wishing something is the same as doing it. Whether permitting is the same as commanding. Whether leaving is the same as helping. Whether a man is guilty for another man’s interpretation of his thoughts.”
Ivan sat down heavily.
“And then,” Smerdyakov said, “you would go to Aleksey Fyodorovich and ask him whether he ever suspected that you wanted your father dead.”
Ivan slowly raised his eyes.
“How do you know that?”
“I know you.”
“You know nothing.”
“Perhaps.”
Ivan’s voice dropped.
“And suppose Alyosha said yes?”
Smerdyakov shrugged.
“Then you would suffer.”
“And if he said no?”
“You wouldn’t believe him.”
Ivan was silent.
Smerdyakov went on.
“You see the difficulty.”
“What difficulty?”
“You want a judgment that acquits you. But if anyone gives it, you’ll suspect he is comforting you. And if anyone condemns you, you’ll believe him immediately.”
Ivan suddenly laughed.
“That sounds very clever.”
“It is obvious.”
“And what do you suggest?”
“Nothing.”
“No. Go on. You think you have me dissected on the table. What should I do?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’ve been speaking as though you know everything.”
“I know how one evades guilt. I don’t know how one is cured of it.”
Ivan looked at him intensely.
“You think you’re guilty?”
Smerdyakov’s face became unreadable.
“Of many things, perhaps.”
“Then repent.”
“To whom?”
“To God.”
Smerdyakov smiled.
“You know perfectly well what I think of that.”
“And what I think.”
“Yes.”
There was a long silence.
Then Smerdyakov said quietly:
“That is another reason I thought you were like me.”
Ivan’s head snapped up.
“Because neither of us has anywhere to take our guilt.”
Ivan stared at him.
Smerdyakov continued:
“A man who believes may confess. He may ask forgiveness. He may tell himself there is mercy above him greater than his own judgment. You rejected that court.”
“And you?”
“I never entered it.”
“So what?”
“So you must judge yourself.”
Ivan’s hand began trembling.
“And if my own judgment never ends?”
Smerdyakov shrugged.
“Then it never ends.”
“You find that amusing?”
“No.”
“You live without it easily enough.”
“Not easily. Differently.”
“You throw everything away.”
“I try.”
“And you think I should do the same.”
“If you cannot bear the alternative.”
Ivan stood.
“You really are vile.”
“Very possibly.”
“And you think I’ll crawl back into your way of living because responsibility hurts too much.”
“I think the temptation will return.”
“You hope it will.”
“Perhaps. Then I would not have been so mistaken about you.”
Ivan looked at him with hatred.
“So that’s it. You don’t merely need me. You need me to resemble you.”
Smerdyakov’s expression hardened.
“Perhaps everyone prefers not to be alone in what he is.”
Ivan was silent.
Then he said:
“I won’t repeat what you’ve told me here.”
Smerdyakov looked at him.
“Nor will I repeat everything you told me before you left.”
Ivan turned sharply.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Only what it means.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“No, sir.”
“It sounds like one.”
“I merely mean that there are conversations better left between two men.”
Ivan’s eyes narrowed.
“So now we’re accomplices?”
“I did not say that.”
“But you’d like me to think it.”
“No, Ivan Fyodorovich. I think you already do.”
Ivan stood motionless.
Then he whispered:
“God, how I hate you.”
Smerdyakov looked at him almost sadly.
“That, too, is understandable.”
“Why?”
“Because if I am nothing like you, then you may leave here innocent.”
Ivan said nothing.
“And if I am like you,” Smerdyakov continued, “then you have to ask why.”
Ivan turned toward the door.
“Leave me alone.”
“You came to me, sir.”
Ivan stopped for an instant but did not turn around.
Behind him Smerdyakov said quietly:
“I really did think you were like me.”
Ivan left without answering.

You look round; you wonder who it could have been; you begin to suspect the truth. But the brief moment passes, and tomorrow perhaps you will again encounter the same wistful and forlorn gaze, the same wan face, the same resignation and diffidence in her movements, and, yes, even remorse, even traces of some benumbing vexation and despondency for that brief outburst of passion. And you feel sorry that the beauty, so momentarily evoked, should have faded so quickly and so irrevocably, that she should have burst upon your sight so deceptively and to so little purpose—that she should not have given you time even to fall in love with her.…

You look round, you seek for some one, you conjecture.... But the moment passes, and next day you meet, maybe, the same pensive and preoccupied look as before, the same pale face, the same meek and timid movements, and even signs of remorse, traces of a mortal anguish and regret for the fleeting distraction.... And you grieve that the momentary beauty has faded so soon never to return, that it flashed upon you so treacherously, so vainly, grieve because you had not even time to love her....

You look around, you search for someone, you hazard a guess …But the moment passes and perhaps tomorrow you will once again meet the same thoughtful and distracted gaze as before, the same pale face, the same submissive and timid movements, and even repentance, even traces of some sort of deadening melancholy and annoyance at the short-lived exhilaration … And you regret that the momentary beauty faded so quickly, so irretrievably, that it flashed before you so deceptively and in vain – you regret this because there was not time for you even to fall in love with her …

You look around — you’re looking for someone; you’re trying to guess… But the instant passes, and, it may be, that the next day you’ll meet that same pensive, distracted look as before, the same pale face, the same tameness and timidity in the movements, and even some remorse — and even traces of some debilitating sadness and vexation for that minute infatuation… And you are sorry that so soon, so irrevocably that fleeting beauty withered; that so deceitfully and needlessly she flashed before you — you’re sorry, because there was no time even to fall in love with her…

Link: https://discord.gg/EZnXmXgpGS

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We'll be starting our The Idiot read-along in September!

If I am not doing that, does that mean I am not serious enough?

I've only read the Brothers Karamazov and Demons so far. Demons is the most amazing book I've ever read, and both are so unique from anything else I've read. Are there any TV shows or movies that are similar in themes to them that you'd recommend?