V. Elders

Some reader may think, perhaps, that my young man was a sickly, ecstatic, poorly developed nature, a pale dreamer, a puny, wasted little man. On the contrary, Alyosha was at that time a well-built, red-cheeked, clear-eyed youth of nineteen, glowing with health. He was even very handsome at that time, slender, a little above medium height, with dark brown hair, a regular though somewhat elongated oval face, and shining dark gray eyes set wide apart; he was very thoughtful and apparently very calm. People will say, perhaps, that red cheeks are no obstacle either to fanaticism or to mysticism; but it seems to me that Alyosha was even more of a realist than anyone. Oh, of course, in the monastery he believed in miracles absolutely, but in my opinion miracles will never trouble a realist. It is not miracles that incline a realist to faith. A true realist, if he is not a believer, will always find in himself the strength and the ability not to believe even a miracle, and if a miracle stands before him as an undeniable fact, he will sooner disbelieve his own senses than admit the fact. And if he does admit it, he will admit it as a natural fact that had simply been unknown to him until then. In a realist, faith is not born of the miracle; the miracle is born of faith. Once a realist believes, then precisely because of his realism he must also admit the miracle. The apostle Thomas declared that he would not believe until he saw, and when he had seen, he said: “My Lord and my God!” Was it a miracle, then, that made him believe? Most likely not; he believed solely because he wanted to believe, and perhaps he already believed fully, in the secret depths of his being, even when he was saying, “I will not believe until I see.”

People will say, perhaps, that Alyosha was dull, undeveloped, had not finished his course, and so on. That he had not finished his course was true, but to say that he was dull or stupid would be a great injustice. I will simply repeat what I said above: he set out on this road only because at that time it alone struck him and offered him at once the whole ideal of a way out for his soul, which was struggling from darkness toward the light. Add that he was a young man partly of our own most recent time, that is, honest by nature, demanding the truth, seeking it and believing in it, and once believing, demanding immediate participation in it with all the strength of his soul, demanding a quick great deed, with an unfailing desire to sacrifice everything for that deed, even life itself. Though, unfortunately, these young men do not understand that the sacrifice of life is perhaps the easiest of all sacrifices in a great many such cases, and that to give up, say, five or six years of their seething youth to hard, difficult study, to learning, if only in order to multiply tenfold their strength to serve that same truth and that same deed which they have come to love and have set themselves to accomplish—such a sacrifice is, as often as not, almost entirely beyond the strength of many of them. Alyosha simply chose the road opposite to everyone else’s, but with the same thirst for a quick great deed. As soon as he had thought seriously and been struck by the conviction that immortality and God exist, he at once, naturally, said to himself: “I mean to live for immortality, and I accept no halfway compromise.” In just the same way, had he decided that there is no immortality and no God, he would at once have joined the atheists and the socialists (for socialism is not just the labor question, or the question of the so-called fourth estate, but above all the atheist question, the question of the modern incarnation of atheism, the question of the Tower of Babel, built precisely without God, not to reach heaven from earth but to bring heaven down to earth). It even seemed strange and impossible to Alyosha to go on living as before. It is said: “Give away everything and follow me, if you would be perfect.” And Alyosha said to himself: “I cannot give two rubles instead of ‘everything,’ and instead of ‘follow me’ just go to the liturgy.” Among the memories of his early childhood, perhaps, something remained of our monastery outside town, where his mother may have taken him to the liturgy. Perhaps the slanting rays of the sun going down, before the icon to which his shrieker mother had held him out had their effect, too. He came to us then, thoughtful, perhaps only to have a look: is it everything here, or only two rubles here, too? and—in the monastery he met this elder…

This elder, as I have already explained above, was the elder Zosima; but I ought to say a few words here about what “elders” in our monasteries are in general, and it is a pity that on this road I feel myself not competent and firm enough. I will try, however, to give an account in few words and superficially. And first of all, specialists and competent people assert that elders and the institution of elders appeared among us, in our Russian monasteries, only quite recently, not even a hundred years ago, whereas in the whole Orthodox East, especially on Sinai and on Athos, they have existed for well over a thousand years. They assert that the institution of elders existed among us in Rus in the most ancient times too, or certainly must have existed, but that as a result of Russia’s calamities, the Tatar yoke, the times of trouble, the break in former relations with the East after the conquest of Constantinople, this institution was forgotten among us and the line of elders died out. It was revived among us again from the end of the last century by one of the great ascetics (as he is called), Paisy Velichkovsky, and his disciples, but even now, almost a hundred years later, it exists in very few monasteries as yet, and has even at times been subjected almost to persecution, as an innovation unheard of in Russia. It flourished especially among us in Rus in one famous hermitage, the Optina Hermitage at Kozelsk. When and by whom it was planted in our monastery outside town I cannot say, but the succession of elders there was already in its third generation, and the elder Zosima was the last of them; but he too was almost dying of weakness and illness, and they did not even know who could replace him. The question was an important one for our monastery, since until then our monastery had not been particularly famous for anything: it had no relics of holy saints, no wonder-working icons that had appeared miraculously, not even any glorious traditions connected with our history; no historic deeds or services to the fatherland were counted to its credit. It flourished and became famous all over Russia precisely because of its elders, to see and hear whom pilgrims flocked to us in crowds from all over Russia, from thousands of versts away. So then, what is an elder? An elder is one who takes your soul, your will, into his soul and his will. Having chosen an elder, you renounce your own will and give it to him in complete obedience, with complete self-renunciation. This trial, this terrible school of life, the one who dooms himself to it accepts voluntarily, in the hope that after a long trial he will conquer himself, master himself so far that he may at last attain, through a lifetime of obedience, a perfect freedom, that is, freedom from himself, and escape the lot of those who have lived their whole lives without finding themselves in themselves. This invention, that is, the institution of elders, is not theoretical but was derived in the East from practice, a practice already a thousand years old in our time. The obligations toward an elder are not the ordinary “obedience” that has always existed in our Russian monasteries as well. Here there is recognized the perpetual confession to the elder of all who are striving, and an indissoluble bond between the one who binds and the one who is bound. They tell, for instance, that once, in the most ancient times of Christianity, one such novice, having failed to fulfill a certain obedience laid on him by his elder, left him and the monastery and went to another country, from Syria to Egypt. There, after long and great ascetic feats, he was at last found worthy to suffer torture and a martyr’s death for the faith. But when the church was burying his body, already honoring him as a saint, suddenly, at the deacon’s cry, “Catechumens, depart!” the coffin with the martyr’s body lying in it tore loose from its place and was cast out of the church, and so up to three times. And at last they learned that this holy passion-bearer had broken his obedience and gone away from his elder, and so, great as his feats were, he could not be forgiven unless the elder released him. But only when the elder was summoned and absolved him of his obedience could his burial take place. Of course, all this is only an ancient legend, but here is a recent true story: one of our contemporary monks was working out his salvation on Athos, and suddenly his elder commanded him to leave Athos, which he loved to the depths of his soul as a holy place, as a quiet refuge, and to go first to Jerusalem to venerate the holy places, and then back to Russia, to the north, to Siberia: “There is your place, not here.” Stunned and crushed with grief, the monk went to Constantinople, to the ecumenical patriarch, and begged him to release him from his obedience, and the ecumenical prelate answered him that not only could he, the ecumenical patriarch, not release him, but there was not and could not be any power on the whole earth that could release him from an obedience once imposed by an elder, except only the power of the very elder who had imposed it. Thus the institution of elders is endowed in certain cases with a boundless and incomprehensible power. That is why in many monasteries among us it was at first met almost with persecution. Meanwhile the people at once began to hold the elders in high esteem. To the elders of our monastery there flocked, for instance, both common people and the most distinguished persons, in order to prostrate themselves before them, confess to them their doubts, their sins, their sufferings, and to ask for advice and guidance. At the sight of this, the elders’ opponents cried out, among other accusations, that here the sacrament of confession was being cheapened, willfully and lightly, though the unbroken confession of one’s soul to an elder by his novice or by a layman is not performed as a sacrament at all. In the end, however, the institution of elders held its ground and is gradually establishing itself in Russian monasteries. It is perhaps also true that this tested instrument, already a thousand years old, for the moral regeneration of man from slavery to freedom and to moral perfection may turn into a double-edged weapon, so that it may lead one man, perhaps, not to humility and final self-mastery but, on the contrary, to the most satanic pride, that is, to chains and not to freedom.

The elder Zosima was about sixty-five, came of a landowning family, had once, in his earliest youth, been in the army, and had served in the Caucasus as a commissioned officer. No doubt he had struck Alyosha by some special quality of his soul. Alyosha lived in the elder’s very cell; the elder had grown very fond of him and allowed him to be near him. It must be noted that Alyosha, living in the monastery at the time, was not yet bound by anything, could go out wherever he liked, even for whole days, and if he wore his cassock, it was of his own free will, so as not to stand out from anyone in the monastery. But of course he liked it himself as well. Perhaps Alyosha’s youthful imagination was strongly affected by the power and the fame that constantly surrounded his elder. Many said of the elder Zosima that, having received for so many years all who came to him to confess their hearts and who thirsted for his counsel and healing word, he had taken into his soul so many revelations, contritions, and confessions that in the end he had acquired an insight so subtle that from the first glance at the face of a stranger who came to him he could guess what the man had come with, what he needed, and even what sort of torment was racking his conscience, and he would astonish, confuse, and at times almost frighten the visitor by such knowledge of his secret before he had uttered a word. But Alyosha almost always noticed at the same time that many, almost all, who went in to the elder for the first time for a private talk went in in fear and anxiety, and almost always came out from him bright and joyful, and the gloomiest face would turn into a happy one. Alyosha was also extraordinarily struck by the fact that the elder was not at all severe; on the contrary, he was almost always cheerful in his manner. The monks said of him that he became attached in his soul precisely to the one who was more sinful, and whoever was most sinful of all, him he would love most of all. There were among the monks, even at the very end of the elder’s life, those who hated and envied him, but they were becoming few now, and they kept silent, though among them were several very famous and important persons in the monastery, as, for instance, one of the oldest monks, a great keeper of silence and an extraordinary faster. But all the same, the vast majority were already undoubtedly on the elder Zosima’s side, and a great many of them even loved him with all their hearts, ardently and sincerely; and some were attached to him almost fanatically. These said straight out, though not quite aloud, that he was a saint, that there was no longer any doubt about it, and, foreseeing his approaching death, they expected even immediate miracles and great glory for the monastery from the departed in the very near future. Alyosha too believed unquestioningly in the elder’s miraculous power, just as he unquestioningly believed the tale of the coffin flying out of the church. He saw how many of those who came with sick children or grown relatives and begged the elder to lay his hands on them and read a prayer over them soon returned, some of them the very next day, and falling in tears before the elder thanked him for the healing of their sick. Whether it was really healing or only a natural improvement in the course of the illness, for Alyosha there was no question about it, for he already fully believed in the spiritual power of his teacher, and the elder’s fame was as it were his own triumph. His heart trembled especially, and he seemed to shine all over, when the elder came out to the crowd of pilgrims from among the common people who waited for him to come out at the gates of the hermitage, who had flocked from all over Russia on purpose to see the elder and receive his blessing. They prostrated themselves before him, wept, kissed his feet, kissed the ground on which he stood, wailed; the women held out their children to him and led up the sick shriekers. The elder spoke with them, read a short prayer over them, blessed them, and let them go. Lately, because of attacks of his illness, he sometimes became so weak that he was hardly able to leave his cell, and the pilgrims sometimes waited in the monastery for several days for him to come out. For Alyosha there was no question at all why they loved him so, why they prostrated themselves before him and wept with tenderness at the mere sight of his face. Oh, he understood perfectly well that for the humble soul of the Russian common man, worn out by toil and grief, and above all by everlasting injustice and everlasting sin, his own as well as the world’s, there is no stronger need and consolation than to find a holy thing or a holy man, to fall down before him and bow to him: “If among us there is sin, injustice, and temptation, all the same there is on earth, in such and such a place, somewhere, a holy and higher one; he, at least, has the truth, he, at least, knows the truth; so it does not die on earth, and therefore someday it will come to us too and will reign over all the earth, as was promised.” Alyosha knew that this was exactly how the people felt and even reasoned, he understood it, but that the elder was precisely this very saint, this keeper of God’s truth in the eyes of the people, of this he himself had no doubt whatever, together with these weeping peasants and their sick women holding out their children to the elder. And the conviction that the elder, after his death, would bring extraordinary glory to the monastery reigned in Alyosha’s soul perhaps even more strongly than in anyone else’s in the monastery. And in general, all this latest time, a sort of deep, flaming inner rapture had been kindling more and more strongly in his heart. It did not trouble him in the least that this elder stood before him, after all, as a single individual: “All the same, he is holy, in his heart is the secret of renewal for everyone, the power that will at last set up the truth on earth, and all will be holy, and will love one another, and there will be neither rich nor poor, neither the exalted nor the humbled, but all will be like children of God, and the real kingdom of Christ will come.” Such was the dream of Alyosha’s heart.

It seems that the arrival of both his brothers, whom until then he had not known at all, made the strongest impression on Alyosha. He became friends with his brother Dmitri Fyodorovich more quickly and more closely, though Dmitri had arrived later, than with his other brother (by the same mother), Ivan Fyodorovich. He was terribly interested in getting to know his brother Ivan, but Ivan had been living there two months now, and though they saw each other fairly often, they still did not become close at all: Alyosha was himself silent and seemed to be waiting for something, seemed ashamed of something, while brother Ivan, though Alyosha had noticed at first his long and curious looks at him, seemed soon to stop even thinking about him. Alyosha noticed this with some embarrassment. He attributed his brother’s indifference to the difference in their ages and especially in their education. But Alyosha also thought something else: such scant curiosity about him and interest in him might perhaps come from something in Ivan entirely unknown to Alyosha. It kept seeming to him for some reason that Ivan was occupied with something, something inward and important, that he was striving toward some goal, perhaps a very difficult one, so that he had no time for him, and that this was the only reason he looked at Alyosha so absentmindedly. Alyosha also wondered whether there was not some contempt in this for him, for a silly little novice, on the part of a learned atheist. He knew perfectly well that his brother was an atheist. He could not be offended by this contempt, if there was any, but all the same, with an anxious embarrassment he could not understand himself, he waited for the time when his brother would want to come closer to him. Brother Dmitri Fyodorovich spoke of brother Ivan with the deepest respect, spoke of him with a sort of special insight. It was from him that Alyosha learned all the details of the important business that had lately bound the two elder brothers in a remarkable and close bond. Dmitri’s rapturous opinions of brother Ivan were all the more characteristic in Alyosha’s eyes because brother Dmitri was, compared with Ivan, a man almost entirely without education, and the two of them, placed side by side, seemed to form such a vivid contrast as personalities and characters that it would perhaps be impossible to think up two men more unlike each other.

It was precisely at this time that the meeting, or, better to say, the family gathering, of all the members of this discordant family took place in the elder’s cell, a gathering that had an extraordinary influence on Alyosha. The pretext for this gathering was, in truth, a false one. It was just then that the disagreements between Dmitri Fyodorovich and his father, Fyodor Pavlovich, over the inheritance and the property accounts had apparently reached an impossible point. Relations had grown strained and become unbearable. It was Fyodor Pavlovich, it seems, who first, and, it seems, in jest, put forward the idea that they should all meet in the elder Zosima’s cell and, without resorting to his direct mediation, still somehow come to an agreement more decently, since the elder’s dignity and person might have something inspiring and conciliatory about them. Dmitri Fyodorovich, who had never been to the elder’s and had never even seen him, thought, of course, that they wanted to frighten him with the elder somehow; but since he himself secretly reproached himself for many especially harsh outbursts in his quarrel with his father lately, he accepted the challenge. It should be noted, by the way, that he did not live in his father’s house, as Ivan Fyodorovich did, but separately, at the other end of town. It happened that Pyotr Alexandrovich Miusov, who was staying among us at the time, seized especially on this idea of Fyodor Pavlovich’s. A liberal of the forties and fifties, a freethinker and an atheist, he took an extraordinary part in this affair, out of boredom perhaps, or perhaps for frivolous amusement. He suddenly felt like having a look at the monastery and at the “saint.” Since his old disputes with the monastery were still going on, and the lawsuit over the boundary of their lands, over some rights to woodcutting in the forest and fishing in the river, and so on, was still dragging on, he hastened to take advantage of this on the pretext that he himself would like to come to an agreement with the Father Abbot about whether their disputes could somehow be ended amicably. A visitor with such good intentions might, of course, be received in the monastery with more attention and consideration than a merely curious one. As a result of all these considerations, a certain influence from inside the monastery could be brought to bear on the sick elder, who lately had almost entirely stopped leaving his cell and, because of his illness, had refused even ordinary visitors. It ended with the elder giving his consent, and a day was set. “Who made me a divider between them?” was all he said to Alyosha, with a smile.

When he learned of the meeting, Alyosha was very troubled. If any of these litigating and wrangling parties could take this gathering seriously, it was without doubt only brother Dmitri; all the rest would come for frivolous purposes, perhaps insulting to the elder: that was what Alyosha understood. Brother Ivan and Miusov would come out of curiosity, perhaps of the crudest kind, and his father perhaps for some buffoonish and theatrical scene. Oh, though Alyosha kept silent, he already knew his father well enough and deeply. I repeat, this boy was not at all as simple-hearted as everyone thought him. With a heavy feeling he waited for the appointed day. No doubt he was very anxious in himself, in his heart, that all these family disagreements might somehow come to an end. Nevertheless his chief concern was for the elder: he trembled for him, for his fame, feared insults to him, especially Miusov’s subtle, polite mockery and the learned Ivan’s lofty reticence and hints; that was how it all pictured itself to him. He even wanted to risk warning the elder, to tell him something about these persons who might come, but he thought better of it and said nothing. He only sent word to brother Dmitri the day before the appointed day, through an acquaintance, that he loved him very much and expected him to keep his promise. Dmitri wondered, because he could not remember having promised him anything, and answered only with a letter saying that he would restrain himself with all his might “before baseness,” and that though he deeply respected the elder and brother Ivan, he was convinced that there was either some sort of trap for him in this or an unworthy comedy. “Nevertheless I will sooner swallow my tongue than fail in respect for the holy man whom you respect so much,” Dmitri concluded his little letter. It did not much encourage Alyosha.