Director, Playwright, Essayist
The following is an excerpt from Act II, Scene 6 of Part I of The Brothers Karaamzov. It is an adaptation of the scene from the novel in which Alyosha and Ivan Karamazov meet in a tavern. The play is antholgized in Playing with Canons, which can be bought at
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/playing-with-canons-martin-denton/1008227905?ean=9780967023489
Ivan: But we didn’t really meet to talk about Katerina or about the old man and Dmitry, did we?
Alyosha: No, I don’t think so.
Ivan: Where shall we begin? How about God: does he exist or not?
Alyosha: Last night at father’s, you said he didn’t.
Ivan: I said that to tease you. But, now I’m serious. I want to get close to you Alyosha, because I have no friends. I want to try. Would it surprise you if I told you that I believe in God?
Alyosha: Yes. Unless you’re joking.
Ivan: No, I’m not joking. Let me say simply and plainly that I accept God. Now, he created me with a mind that can understand the principles of Euclidean geometry and nothing more. My mind is capable of grasping only three dimensions of space - and yet, there have been and still are mathematicians and philosophers who dare to dream that two parallel lines which, according to Euclid, cannot possibly meet on Earth, do, in fact, meet somewhere in infinity. I cannot grasp that. My brain is an earthly Euclidean brain and I cannot deal with matters that are not of this world. And I would advise you, too, Alyosha, never to worry about these matters, least of all about God: whether he exists or not. Such questions are quite unsuitable to a mind created to conceive of only three dimensions. And so I accept God without question -I accept His wisdom
and His purpose. But, I do not accept His world.
Alyosha: Will you explain to me why you won’t accept His world?
Ivan: Of course. Alyosha, I’m not trying to destroy your faith. No, I want you to heal me.
Now, I’ve never understood how it is possible to love one’s neighbors – and I mean one’s neighbors. I can conceive of the possibility of loving people who are far away, but if I must love my neighbor, he better hide his face - for the moment I see his face, there’s an end to my love.
Alyosha: But Ivan, that’s true for everybody. Father Zosima said so just yesterday to Madame Khokhalakova.
Ivan: Well, I’m glad to hear I’m in such august company as Madame Khokhalakova. However, I still believe it is impossible for human beings to truly have sympathy for the sufferings of others, for “how can their suffering be as great as mine?” Therefore, I will speak only of the suffering of children, for it is possible to love children, even at close quarters, even if they are ugly -although, to me, a child’s face is never really ugly. I love children, Alyosha. Does that surprise you?
Alyosha: No.
Ivan: The Turks, among others, take a particularly voluptuous pleasure from torturing children. They do everything from cutting unborn babes out of their mother’s wombs to tossing nursing infants in the air and catching them on the points of their bayonets as the mothers watch. But, they’re far more refined than that, they’ve thought up an amusing little game. They tickle a baby, they laugh to make it laugh. When it laughs, a Turk aims his pistol at it, holding it four inches from the baby’s face. The baby giggles and tries to catch the shiny pistol in its tiny hands. At that moment, the “artist” pulls the trigger and splits the infant’s skull in half. Pure art, isn’t it? By the way, the Turks are particularly fond of sweet things.
Alyosha: What are you trying to say, Brother? What are you driving at?
Ivan: What am I driving at? I’m just sharing my collection with you. I collect certain little facts - from newspaper items, from stories people tell me. The Turks are part of my collection, but they’re just foreigners. I have quite a few Russian facts that are even better than the Turkish ones. To us, spitting infants on bayonets is unthinkable - we are Europeans, after all. Flogging is more to our tastes. I have a story about a five year-old girl whose parents beat her until her whole body was nothing but bruises. Once, they dragged her into their outhouse in the middle of the night on the pretext that she had dirtied her bed. They smeared her face with excrement and her mother made her eat it. From that night on, she was made to sleep in the outhouse. Can you understand why this angelic creature, who cannot even comprehend what is being done to her, sits trembling in the cold and the dark and the stench, beating her sore little chest with her tiny fists, weeping hot, unresentful tears, and begging “gentle Jesus” to help her? Can you understand this nonsensical thing, Alyosha? What is the purpose of this absurdity? Am I hurting you? Do you want me to stop?
Alyosha: Go on. I want to suffer with you.
Ivan: Just one more little sketch. It happened at the beginning of the century during the darkest days of serfdom.There was a very powerful general who retired from the army and settled down on his estate of 2,000 souls. One day a serf-boy -eight years-old - was playing in the courtyard. He threw a stone and inadvertently hit the general’s favorite hound in the leg. When the general found out, he had the boy taken from his mother and locked in the guardroom all night. At dawn the general rides out to the hunt in full dress, surrounded by obsequious neighbors, hounds, kennel attendants, huntsmen - all mounted on horseback. All the serfs of the estate are summoned - for their edification -, the boy’s mother in front of them all. The child is led out of the guardroom - it’s a chilly, bleak, foggy day - ideal for hunting. The boy is stripped naked - he’s paralyzed with fear, unable to speak. The general orders the huntsmen to drive the boy, so they prod him forward and he starts to run. The general roars “Sic ‘im!” and the whole pack sets on the boy and the hounds tear him to pieces. He hunted him down before his mother’s eyes. I believe that, as a result of this, the general was later declared incompetent to manage his affairs without a supervisory body. Well, what should we do with him, Alyosha? Shoot him? Shoot him for our moral satisfaction?
Alyosha: Yes. Shoot him.
Ivan: Bravo.
Alyosha: Ivan, what I just said is absurd, but ...
Ivan: “But-” that’s exactly the point - “but -”. Absurdity is very much needed on this earth of ours, Alyosha. The whole universe is founded on absurdity and what little we know is absurd.
Alyosha: And what do you know?
Ivan: I don’t understand anything and I no longer want to understand anything. The minute I start trying to understand, I distort the facts. And I’ve made up my mind to stick to the facts.
Alyosha: Why Ivan? Why are you testing me? Will you finally tell me that?
Ivan: Because I love you and I have no intention of giving you up to that Elder Zosima of yours. I want you to understand me - I spoke only of children to make my point more obvious. I did not speak of the other human tears with which our earth is soaked form crust to core because I was deliberately narrowing the focus. I’m an insect and I recognize, in all humility, that it is quite beyond my comprehension why things are arranged as they are. All that my puny, Euclidean, Earth-bound brain can grasp is that there is such a thing as suffering, that no one can be blamed for it, that quite uncomplicatedly cause precedes effect, that everything that flows finds its proper level -but all that is just Euclidean gibberish and I cannot agree to live by it. I need retribution. And not retribution somewhere and sometime in infinity, but retribution here and now on Earth. I believe in justice and I want to see justice done with my own eyes. I want to see with my own eyes the lamb lie down with the lion and the murdered man rise up and embrace his murderer. I want to be there when everyone finally finds out what it was all for. All human religions are based on this desire and so I am a believer. But then, what about the children? For the hundredth time I repeat, there are many questions to be asked, but I ask you only one. This is not blasphemy, Alyosha. I believe the universe will tremble when everything in Heaven and everything down in the entrails of the Earth merge together in one voice of praise, when all that lives and all that has lived cries aloud, “Thou art just, O Lord, for thy ways have been revealed.” When the mother and the torturer whose hounds tore her son to pieces will embrace and all three will cry out with tears, “Thou art just, O Lord,” and the crown of knowledge will come and all will be explained. But this is exactly what I cannot accept. I do not really want to see the mother embrace the man who had her son torn to pieces. She has no right to forgive him. She may forgive him for her own immeasurable suffering, but not for her child’s. And if I am right, if they cannot forgive, how can there be harmony? Is there in the whole world a single being who could and would have the right to forgive? I feel, moreover, that harmony is rather overpriced. We cannot afford to pay so much for admission. I want no part of their eternal harmony -- for the love of Mankind, I do not want it. It is not worth one single tear of that martyred girl who beat her breast in that stinking outhouse. And so I hasten to return my ticket. And if I am honest, it is my duty to return it as far in advance of the show as possible. It ‘s not that I reject God, Alyosha, I am simply returning to him, most respectfully, the ticket that would entitle me to a seat.
Alyosha: That’s rebellion.
Ivan: I wish you hadn’t used that word. I don’t believe it’s possible to live in a state of rebellion and I want to live. But let me ask you one more question. Let’s say you were called upon to build the edifice of human destiny so that Mankind would be happy at last, so that we would finally be at peace. But to do so you would have to torture just one child. Would you do it?
Alyosha: No, I would not. But now, let me ask you a question, Ivan. A moment ago, you asked if there was, in the whole world, a being who could and would have the right to forgive. But there is such a being, Ivan, and He can forgive everything -forgive all and for all because He, Himself, gave His innocent blood for all and for everything. Why didn’t you mention him? It is on His blood and His unavenged tears that the edifice is being built and it is to Him we will all cry aloud, “Thou art just, O Lord, for thy ways have been revealed.” Why did you not mention him, Ivan?
Ivan: No, Alyosha, I haven’t forgotten about Him. I was just waiting for you to bring Him into it. Alright. Now, don’t laugh, Alyosha, but I’ve written a poem about Him.
Alyosha: I didn’t know you wrote poetry.
Ivan: I don’t. I’ve never written two lines of verse in my whole life. I made up this poem and memorized it. Will you be my first reader...or audience?
Alyosha: I’m listening carefully.
Ivan: It’s called “The Grand Inquisitor.” Actually, it’s ridiculous... but, I’ll recite it anyway.