feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/shmoop/The Brothers Karamazov/section_77_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: The Brothers Karamazov.book 11.chapter 9
feat_summary_id: book 11, chapter 9
feat_summary: {"name": "Book 11, Chapter 9", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-11-chapter-9", "summary": "Poof! The devil! Well, not with the horns and pitchfork and flames and all that. Ivan's Satan appears in the manner of a mild-mannered, impoverished, elderly gentleman sitting amiably on his sofa. Ivan sternly tells the nice old man that he's just a figment of everything that's base and, above all, stupid in his imagination, but the devil insists on his reality. The devil reminds him that he had gone to see Smerdyakov to find out what he had told Katerina, which he still doesn't know. But Ivan tells the devil that this is no proof of the devil's existence: the devil only remembers this point because Ivan was about to. Ivan then decides to wet a towel and place it on his head. Of course - wouldn't you if you were sitting across from the devil? The devil then reminds Ivan that he had once accused Alyosha of spying on their conversations . Ivan admits that this was a momentary lapse, but insists that the devil is still a hallucination. The devil goes on to tell some silly stories about himself and his adventures incarnated on earth. He wants nothing more than to be a simple \"fat, 250-pound merchant's wife\" and light candles to God, but instead he ends up with rheumatism. Ivan decides the wet towel is useless and throws it away. The devil complains about catching a cold while flying through the freezing heavens. But he was fortunately cured by Hoff's extract of malt. Ivan rejects all of these anecdotes as stupid. The devil justifies his existence by claiming he exists only to \"negate,\" to create doubt, because if everything was meaningful, there would be no more events. He tells the story of a philosopher who all his life denied the existence of an afterlife. Upon his death, he discovered there was an afterlife, but he refused to go to heaven because it went against his convictions. He was then sentenced to walk a quadrillion kilometers as punishment, but since this also went against his convictions, he refused to walk. After a thousand years, he decided, oh heck, I'll walk. Once he got to heaven he sang its praises enthusiastically. Ivan again rejects the devil - the anecdote wasn't his, it was a story Ivan made up when he was 17. The devil tells another couple of stories: the first is about a man who lost his nose to some dreadful disease. The man complained to his priest that he wanted his nose back, but the priest told him that, hey, at least without your nose you won't have to worry about your nose being \"out of joint\" about its being out of joint ever again. Pretty punny. The second story is about a young floozy who confesses to her priest that she has slept with a man. After her confession, the priest and the floozy set up a booty call. Ivan just becomes more and more infuriated by the devil's stupid stories . The devil continues to mock his philosophy and his writings to his face, including the one about the Grand Inquisitor. At his wit's end, Ivan throws an inkstand at the devil. Their conversation is interrupted by a knock at the window. Suddenly Ivan feels as if he's been tied to his chair. He breaks free from what seem to be imaginary bonds and opens the window. It's Alyosha, and Ivan lets him in. Alyosha announces that Smerdyakov has hanged himself.", "analysis": ""}
text: Chapter IX. The Devil. Ivan's Nightmare
  
  
  I am not a doctor, but yet I feel that the moment has come when I must
  inevitably give the reader some account of the nature of Ivan's illness.
  Anticipating events I can say at least one thing: he was at that moment on
  the very eve of an attack of brain fever. Though his health had long been
  affected, it had offered a stubborn resistance to the fever which in the
  end gained complete mastery over it. Though I know nothing of medicine, I
  venture to hazard the suggestion that he really had perhaps, by a terrible
  effort of will, succeeded in delaying the attack for a time, hoping, of
  course, to check it completely. He knew that he was unwell, but he loathed
  the thought of being ill at that fatal time, at the approaching crisis in
  his life, when he needed to have all his wits about him, to say what he
  had to say boldly and resolutely and "to justify himself to himself."
  
  He had, however, consulted the new doctor, who had been brought from
  Moscow by a fantastic notion of Katerina Ivanovna's to which I have
  referred already. After listening to him and examining him the doctor came
  to the conclusion that he was actually suffering from some disorder of the
  brain, and was not at all surprised by an admission which Ivan had
  reluctantly made him. "Hallucinations are quite likely in your condition,"
  the doctor opined, "though it would be better to verify them ... you must
  take steps at once, without a moment's delay, or things will go badly with
  you." But Ivan did not follow this judicious advice and did not take to
  his bed to be nursed. "I am walking about, so I am strong enough, if I
  drop, it'll be different then, any one may nurse me who likes," he
  decided, dismissing the subject.
  
  And so he was sitting almost conscious himself of his delirium and, as I
  have said already, looking persistently at some object on the sofa against
  the opposite wall. Some one appeared to be sitting there, though goodness
  knows how he had come in, for he had not been in the room when Ivan came
  into it, on his return from Smerdyakov. This was a person or, more
  accurately speaking, a Russian gentleman of a particular kind, no longer
  young, _qui faisait la cinquantaine_, as the French say, with rather long,
  still thick, dark hair, slightly streaked with gray and a small pointed
  beard. He was wearing a brownish reefer jacket, rather shabby, evidently
  made by a good tailor though, and of a fashion at least three years old,
  that had been discarded by smart and well-to-do people for the last two
  years. His linen and his long scarf-like neck-tie were all such as are
  worn by people who aim at being stylish, but on closer inspection his
  linen was not over-clean and his wide scarf was very threadbare. The
  visitor's check trousers were of excellent cut, but were too light in
  color and too tight for the present fashion. His soft fluffy white hat was
  out of keeping with the season.
  
  In brief there was every appearance of gentility on straitened means. It
  looked as though the gentleman belonged to that class of idle landowners
  who used to flourish in the times of serfdom. He had unmistakably been, at
  some time, in good and fashionable society, had once had good connections,
  had possibly preserved them indeed, but, after a gay youth, becoming
  gradually impoverished on the abolition of serfdom, he had sunk into the
  position of a poor relation of the best class, wandering from one good old
  friend to another and received by them for his companionable and
  accommodating disposition and as being, after all, a gentleman who could
  be asked to sit down with any one, though, of course, not in a place of
  honor. Such gentlemen of accommodating temper and dependent position, who
  can tell a story, take a hand at cards, and who have a distinct aversion
  for any duties that may be forced upon them, are usually solitary
  creatures, either bachelors or widowers. Sometimes they have children, but
  if so, the children are always being brought up at a distance, at some
  aunt's, to whom these gentlemen never allude in good society, seeming
  ashamed of the relationship. They gradually lose sight of their children
  altogether, though at intervals they receive a birthday or Christmas
  letter from them and sometimes even answer it.
  
  The countenance of the unexpected visitor was not so much good-natured, as
  accommodating and ready to assume any amiable expression as occasion might
  arise. He had no watch, but he had a tortoise-shell lorgnette on a black
  ribbon. On the middle finger of his right hand was a massive gold ring
  with a cheap opal stone in it.
  
  Ivan was angrily silent and would not begin the conversation. The visitor
  waited and sat exactly like a poor relation who had come down from his
  room to keep his host company at tea, and was discreetly silent, seeing
  that his host was frowning and preoccupied. But he was ready for any
  affable conversation as soon as his host should begin it. All at once his
  face expressed a sudden solicitude.
  
  "I say," he began to Ivan, "excuse me, I only mention it to remind you.
  You went to Smerdyakov's to find out about Katerina Ivanovna, but you came
  away without finding out anything about her, you probably forgot--"
  
  "Ah, yes," broke from Ivan and his face grew gloomy with uneasiness. "Yes,
  I'd forgotten ... but it doesn't matter now, never mind, till to-morrow,"
  he muttered to himself, "and you," he added, addressing his visitor, "I
  should have remembered that myself in a minute, for that was just what was
  tormenting me! Why do you interfere, as if I should believe that you
  prompted me, and that I didn't remember it of myself?"
  
  "Don't believe it then," said the gentleman, smiling amicably, "what's the
  good of believing against your will? Besides, proofs are no help to
  believing, especially material proofs. Thomas believed, not because he saw
  Christ risen, but because he wanted to believe, before he saw. Look at the
  spiritualists, for instance.... I am very fond of them ... only fancy,
  they imagine that they are serving the cause of religion, because the
  devils show them their horns from the other world. That, they say, is a
  material proof, so to speak, of the existence of another world. The other
  world and material proofs, what next! And if you come to that, does
  proving there's a devil prove that there's a God? I want to join an
  idealist society, I'll lead the opposition in it, I'll say I am a realist,
  but not a materialist, he he!"
  
  "Listen," Ivan suddenly got up from the table. "I seem to be delirious....
  I am delirious, in fact, talk any nonsense you like, I don't care! You
  won't drive me to fury, as you did last time. But I feel somehow
  ashamed.... I want to walk about the room.... I sometimes don't see you
  and don't even hear your voice as I did last time, but I always guess what
  you are prating, for it's I, _I myself speaking, not you_. Only I don't
  know whether I was dreaming last time or whether I really saw you. I'll
  wet a towel and put it on my head and perhaps you'll vanish into air."
  
  Ivan went into the corner, took a towel, and did as he said, and with a
  wet towel on his head began walking up and down the room.
  
  "I am so glad you treat me so familiarly," the visitor began.
  
  "Fool," laughed Ivan, "do you suppose I should stand on ceremony with you?
  I am in good spirits now, though I've a pain in my forehead ... and in the
  top of my head ... only please don't talk philosophy, as you did last
  time. If you can't take yourself off, talk of something amusing. Talk
  gossip, you are a poor relation, you ought to talk gossip. What a
  nightmare to have! But I am not afraid of you. I'll get the better of you.
  I won't be taken to a mad-house!"
  
  "_C'est charmant_, poor relation. Yes, I am in my natural shape. For what
  am I on earth but a poor relation? By the way, I am listening to you and
  am rather surprised to find you are actually beginning to take me for
  something real, not simply your fancy, as you persisted in declaring last
  time--"
  
  "Never for one minute have I taken you for reality," Ivan cried with a
  sort of fury. "You are a lie, you are my illness, you are a phantom. It's
  only that I don't know how to destroy you and I see I must suffer for a
  time. You are my hallucination. You are the incarnation of myself, but
  only of one side of me ... of my thoughts and feelings, but only the
  nastiest and stupidest of them. From that point of view you might be of
  interest to me, if only I had time to waste on you--"
  
  "Excuse me, excuse me, I'll catch you. When you flew out at Alyosha under
  the lamp-post this evening and shouted to him, 'You learnt it from _him_!
  How do you know that _he_ visits me?' you were thinking of me then. So for
  one brief moment you did believe that I really exist," the gentleman
  laughed blandly.
  
  "Yes, that was a moment of weakness ... but I couldn't believe in you. I
  don't know whether I was asleep or awake last time. Perhaps I was only
  dreaming then and didn't see you really at all--"
  
  "And why were you so surly with Alyosha just now? He is a dear; I've
  treated him badly over Father Zossima."
  
  "Don't talk of Alyosha! How dare you, you flunkey!" Ivan laughed again.
  
  "You scold me, but you laugh--that's a good sign. But you are ever so much
  more polite than you were last time and I know why: that great resolution
  of yours--"
  
  "Don't speak of my resolution," cried Ivan, savagely.
  
  "I understand, I understand, _c'est noble, c'est charmant_, you are going
  to defend your brother and to sacrifice yourself ... _C'est
  chevaleresque_."
  
  "Hold your tongue, I'll kick you!"
  
  "I shan't be altogether sorry, for then my object will be attained. If you
  kick me, you must believe in my reality, for people don't kick ghosts.
  Joking apart, it doesn't matter to me, scold if you like, though it's
  better to be a trifle more polite even to me. 'Fool, flunkey!' what
  words!"
  
  "Scolding you, I scold myself," Ivan laughed again, "you are myself,
  myself, only with a different face. You just say what I am thinking ...
  and are incapable of saying anything new!"
  
  "If I am like you in my way of thinking, it's all to my credit," the
  gentleman declared, with delicacy and dignity.
  
  "You choose out only my worst thoughts, and what's more, the stupid ones.
  You are stupid and vulgar. You are awfully stupid. No, I can't put up with
  you! What am I to do, what am I to do?" Ivan said through his clenched
  teeth.
  
  "My dear friend, above all things I want to behave like a gentleman and to
  be recognized as such," the visitor began in an excess of deprecating and
  simple-hearted pride, typical of a poor relation. "I am poor, but ... I
  won't say very honest, but ... it's an axiom generally accepted in society
  that I am a fallen angel. I certainly can't conceive how I can ever have
  been an angel. If I ever was, it must have been so long ago that there's
  no harm in forgetting it. Now I only prize the reputation of being a
  gentlemanly person and live as I can, trying to make myself agreeable. I
  love men genuinely, I've been greatly calumniated! Here when I stay with
  you from time to time, my life gains a kind of reality and that's what I
  like most of all. You see, like you, I suffer from the fantastic and so I
  love the realism of earth. Here, with you, everything is circumscribed,
  here all is formulated and geometrical, while we have nothing but
  indeterminate equations! I wander about here dreaming. I like dreaming.
  Besides, on earth I become superstitious. Please don't laugh, that's just
  what I like, to become superstitious. I adopt all your habits here: I've
  grown fond of going to the public baths, would you believe it? and I go
  and steam myself with merchants and priests. What I dream of is becoming
  incarnate once for all and irrevocably in the form of some merchant's wife
  weighing eighteen stone, and of believing all she believes. My ideal is to
  go to church and offer a candle in simple-hearted faith, upon my word it
  is. Then there would be an end to my sufferings. I like being doctored
  too; in the spring there was an outbreak of smallpox and I went and was
  vaccinated in a foundling hospital--if only you knew how I enjoyed myself
  that day. I subscribed ten roubles in the cause of the Slavs!... But you
  are not listening. Do you know, you are not at all well this evening? I
  know you went yesterday to that doctor ... well, what about your health?
  What did the doctor say?"
  
  "Fool!" Ivan snapped out.
  
  "But you are clever, anyway. You are scolding again? I didn't ask out of
  sympathy. You needn't answer. Now rheumatism has come in again--"
  
  "Fool!" repeated Ivan.
  
  "You keep saying the same thing; but I had such an attack of rheumatism
  last year that I remember it to this day."
  
  "The devil have rheumatism!"
  
  "Why not, if I sometimes put on fleshly form? I put on fleshly form and I
  take the consequences. Satan _sum et nihil humanum a me alienum puto_."
  
  "What, what, Satan _sum et nihil humanum_ ... that's not bad for the
  devil!"
  
  "I am glad I've pleased you at last."
  
  "But you didn't get that from me." Ivan stopped suddenly, seeming struck.
  "That never entered my head, that's strange."
  
  "_C'est du nouveau, n'est-ce pas?_ This time I'll act honestly and explain
  to you. Listen, in dreams and especially in nightmares, from indigestion
  or anything, a man sees sometimes such artistic visions, such complex and
  real actuality, such events, even a whole world of events, woven into such
  a plot, with such unexpected details from the most exalted matters to the
  last button on a cuff, as I swear Leo Tolstoy has never invented. Yet such
  dreams are sometimes seen not by writers, but by the most ordinary people,
  officials, journalists, priests.... The subject is a complete enigma. A
  statesman confessed to me, indeed, that all his best ideas came to him
  when he was asleep. Well, that's how it is now, though I am your
  hallucination, yet just as in a nightmare, I say original things which had
  not entered your head before. So I don't repeat your ideas, yet I am only
  your nightmare, nothing more."
  
  "You are lying, your aim is to convince me you exist apart and are not my
  nightmare, and now you are asserting you are a dream."
  
  "My dear fellow, I've adopted a special method to-day, I'll explain it to
  you afterwards. Stay, where did I break off? Oh, yes! I caught cold then,
  only not here but yonder."
  
  "Where is yonder? Tell me, will you be here long? Can't you go away?" Ivan
  exclaimed almost in despair. He ceased walking to and fro, sat down on the
  sofa, leaned his elbows on the table again and held his head tight in both
  hands. He pulled the wet towel off and flung it away in vexation. It was
  evidently of no use.
  
  "Your nerves are out of order," observed the gentleman, with a carelessly
  easy, though perfectly polite, air. "You are angry with me even for being
  able to catch cold, though it happened in a most natural way. I was
  hurrying then to a diplomatic _soiree_ at the house of a lady of high rank
  in Petersburg, who was aiming at influence in the Ministry. Well, an
  evening suit, white tie, gloves, though I was God knows where and had to
  fly through space to reach your earth.... Of course, it took only an
  instant, but you know a ray of light from the sun takes full eight
  minutes, and fancy in an evening suit and open waistcoat. Spirits don't
  freeze, but when one's in fleshly form, well ... in brief, I didn't think,
  and set off, and you know in those ethereal spaces, in the water that is
  above the firmament, there's such a frost ... at least one can't call it
  frost, you can fancy, 150 degrees below zero! You know the game the
  village girls play--they invite the unwary to lick an ax in thirty degrees
  of frost, the tongue instantly freezes to it and the dupe tears the skin
  off, so it bleeds. But that's only in 30 degrees, in 150 degrees I imagine
  it would be enough to put your finger on the ax and it would be the end of
  it ... if only there could be an ax there."
  
  "And can there be an ax there?" Ivan interrupted, carelessly and
  disdainfully. He was exerting himself to the utmost not to believe in the
  delusion and not to sink into complete insanity.
  
  "An ax?" the guest interrupted in surprise.
  
  "Yes, what would become of an ax there?" Ivan cried suddenly, with a sort
  of savage and insistent obstinacy.
  
  "What would become of an ax in space? _Quelle idee!_ If it were to fall to
  any distance, it would begin, I think, flying round the earth without
  knowing why, like a satellite. The astronomers would calculate the rising
  and the setting of the ax, _Gatzuk_ would put it in his calendar, that's
  all."
  
  "You are stupid, awfully stupid," said Ivan peevishly. "Fib more cleverly
  or I won't listen. You want to get the better of me by realism, to
  convince me that you exist, but I don't want to believe you exist! I won't
  believe it!"
  
  "But I am not fibbing, it's all the truth; the truth is unhappily hardly
  ever amusing. I see you persist in expecting something big of me, and
  perhaps something fine. That's a great pity, for I only give what I can--"
  
  "Don't talk philosophy, you ass!"
  
  "Philosophy, indeed, when all my right side is numb and I am moaning and
  groaning. I've tried all the medical faculty: they can diagnose
  beautifully, they have the whole of your disease at their finger-tips, but
  they've no idea how to cure you. There was an enthusiastic little student
  here, 'You may die,' said he, 'but you'll know perfectly what disease you
  are dying of!' And then what a way they have sending people to
  specialists! 'We only diagnose,' they say, 'but go to such-and-such a
  specialist, he'll cure you.' The old doctor who used to cure all sorts of
  disease has completely disappeared, I assure you, now there are only
  specialists and they all advertise in the newspapers. If anything is wrong
  with your nose, they send you to Paris: there, they say, is a European
  specialist who cures noses. If you go to Paris, he'll look at your nose; I
  can only cure your right nostril, he'll tell you, for I don't cure the
  left nostril, that's not my speciality, but go to Vienna, there there's a
  specialist who will cure your left nostril. What are you to do? I fell
  back on popular remedies, a German doctor advised me to rub myself with
  honey and salt in the bath-house. Solely to get an extra bath I went,
  smeared myself all over and it did me no good at all. In despair I wrote
  to Count Mattei in Milan. He sent me a book and some drops, bless him,
  and, only fancy, Hoff's malt extract cured me! I bought it by accident,
  drank a bottle and a half of it, and I was ready to dance, it took it away
  completely. I made up my mind to write to the papers to thank him, I was
  prompted by a feeling of gratitude, and only fancy, it led to no end of a
  bother: not a single paper would take my letter. 'It would be very
  reactionary,' they said, 'no one will believe it. _Le diable n'existe
  point._ You'd better remain anonymous,' they advised me. What use is a
  letter of thanks if it's anonymous? I laughed with the men at the
  newspaper office; 'It's reactionary to believe in God in our days,' I
  said, 'but I am the devil, so I may be believed in.' 'We quite understand
  that,' they said. 'Who doesn't believe in the devil? Yet it won't do, it
  might injure our reputation. As a joke, if you like.' But I thought as a
  joke it wouldn't be very witty. So it wasn't printed. And do you know, I
  have felt sore about it to this day. My best feelings, gratitude, for
  instance, are literally denied me simply from my social position."
  
  "Philosophical reflections again?" Ivan snarled malignantly.
  
  "God preserve me from it, but one can't help complaining sometimes. I am a
  slandered man. You upbraid me every moment with being stupid. One can see
  you are young. My dear fellow, intelligence isn't the only thing! I have
  naturally a kind and merry heart. 'I also write vaudevilles of all sorts.'
  You seem to take me for Hlestakov grown old, but my fate is a far more
  serious one. Before time was, by some decree which I could never make out,
  I was pre-destined 'to deny' and yet I am genuinely good-hearted and not
  at all inclined to negation. 'No, you must go and deny, without denial
  there's no criticism and what would a journal be without a column of
  criticism?' Without criticism it would be nothing but one 'hosannah.' But
  nothing but hosannah is not enough for life, the hosannah must be tried in
  the crucible of doubt and so on, in the same style. But I don't meddle in
  that, I didn't create it, I am not answerable for it. Well, they've chosen
  their scapegoat, they've made me write the column of criticism and so life
  was made possible. We understand that comedy; I, for instance, simply ask
  for annihilation. No, live, I am told, for there'd be nothing without you.
  If everything in the universe were sensible, nothing would happen. There
  would be no events without you, and there must be events. So against the
  grain I serve to produce events and do what's irrational because I am
  commanded to. For all their indisputable intelligence, men take this farce
  as something serious, and that is their tragedy. They suffer, of course
  ... but then they live, they live a real life, not a fantastic one, for
  suffering is life. Without suffering what would be the pleasure of it? It
  would be transformed into an endless church service; it would be holy, but
  tedious. But what about me? I suffer, but still, I don't live. I am x in
  an indeterminate equation. I am a sort of phantom in life who has lost all
  beginning and end, and who has even forgotten his own name. You are
  laughing-- no, you are not laughing, you are angry again. You are for ever
  angry, all you care about is intelligence, but I repeat again that I would
  give away all this super-stellar life, all the ranks and honors, simply to
  be transformed into the soul of a merchant's wife weighing eighteen stone
  and set candles at God's shrine."
  
  "Then even you don't believe in God?" said Ivan, with a smile of hatred.
  
  "What can I say?--that is, if you are in earnest--"
  
  "Is there a God or not?" Ivan cried with the same savage intensity.
  
  "Ah, then you are in earnest! My dear fellow, upon my word I don't know.
  There! I've said it now!"
  
  "You don't know, but you see God? No, you are not some one apart, you are
  myself, you are I and nothing more! You are rubbish, you are my fancy!"
  
  "Well, if you like, I have the same philosophy as you, that would be true.
  _Je pense, donc je suis_, I know that for a fact; all the rest, all these
  worlds, God and even Satan--all that is not proved, to my mind. Does all
  that exist of itself, or is it only an emanation of myself, a logical
  development of my ego which alone has existed for ever: but I make haste
  to stop, for I believe you will be jumping up to beat me directly."
  
  "You'd better tell me some anecdote!" said Ivan miserably.
  
  "There is an anecdote precisely on our subject, or rather a legend, not an
  anecdote. You reproach me with unbelief, you see, you say, yet you don't
  believe. But, my dear fellow, I am not the only one like that. We are all
  in a muddle over there now and all through your science. Once there used
  to be atoms, five senses, four elements, and then everything hung together
  somehow. There were atoms in the ancient world even, but since we've
  learned that you've discovered the chemical molecule and protoplasm and
  the devil knows what, we had to lower our crest. There's a regular muddle,
  and, above all, superstition, scandal; there's as much scandal among us as
  among you, you know; a little more in fact, and spying, indeed, for we
  have our secret police department where private information is received.
  Well, this wild legend belongs to our middle ages--not yours, but ours--and
  no one believes it even among us, except the old ladies of eighteen stone,
  not your old ladies I mean, but ours. We've everything you have, I am
  revealing one of our secrets out of friendship for you; though it's
  forbidden. This legend is about Paradise. There was, they say, here on
  earth a thinker and philosopher. He rejected everything, 'laws,
  conscience, faith,' and, above all, the future life. He died; he expected
  to go straight to darkness and death and he found a future life before
  him. He was astounded and indignant. 'This is against my principles!' he
  said. And he was punished for that ... that is, you must excuse me, I am
  just repeating what I heard myself, it's only a legend ... he was
  sentenced to walk a quadrillion kilometers in the dark (we've adopted the
  metric system, you know) and when he has finished that quadrillion, the
  gates of heaven would be opened to him and he'll be forgiven--"
  
  "And what tortures have you in the other world besides the quadrillion
  kilometers?" asked Ivan, with a strange eagerness.
  
  "What tortures? Ah, don't ask. In old days we had all sorts, but now they
  have taken chiefly to moral punishments--'the stings of conscience' and all
  that nonsense. We got that, too, from you, from the softening of your
  manners. And who's the better for it? Only those who have got no
  conscience, for how can they be tortured by conscience when they have
  none? But decent people who have conscience and a sense of honor suffer
  for it. Reforms, when the ground has not been prepared for them,
  especially if they are institutions copied from abroad, do nothing but
  mischief! The ancient fire was better. Well, this man, who was condemned
  to the quadrillion kilometers, stood still, looked round and lay down
  across the road. 'I won't go, I refuse on principle!' Take the soul of an
  enlightened Russian atheist and mix it with the soul of the prophet Jonah,
  who sulked for three days and nights in the belly of the whale, and you
  get the character of that thinker who lay across the road."
  
  "What did he lie on there?"
  
  "Well, I suppose there was something to lie on. You are not laughing?"
  
  "Bravo!" cried Ivan, still with the same strange eagerness. Now he was
  listening with an unexpected curiosity. "Well, is he lying there now?"
  
  "That's the point, that he isn't. He lay there almost a thousand years and
  then he got up and went on."
  
  "What an ass!" cried Ivan, laughing nervously and still seeming to be
  pondering something intently. "Does it make any difference whether he lies
  there for ever or walks the quadrillion kilometers? It would take a
  billion years to walk it?"
  
  "Much more than that. I haven't got a pencil and paper or I could work it
  out. But he got there long ago, and that's where the story begins."
  
  "What, he got there? But how did he get the billion years to do it?"
  
  "Why, you keep thinking of our present earth! But our present earth may
  have been repeated a billion times. Why, it's become extinct, been frozen;
  cracked, broken to bits, disintegrated into its elements, again 'the water
  above the firmament,' then again a comet, again a sun, again from the sun
  it becomes earth--and the same sequence may have been repeated endlessly
  and exactly the same to every detail, most unseemly and insufferably
  tedious--"
  
  "Well, well, what happened when he arrived?"
  
  "Why, the moment the gates of Paradise were open and he walked in, before
  he had been there two seconds, by his watch (though to my thinking his
  watch must have long dissolved into its elements on the way), he cried out
  that those two seconds were worth walking not a quadrillion kilometers but
  a quadrillion of quadrillions, raised to the quadrillionth power! In fact,
  he sang 'hosannah' and overdid it so, that some persons there of lofty
  ideas wouldn't shake hands with him at first--he'd become too rapidly
  reactionary, they said. The Russian temperament. I repeat, it's a legend.
  I give it for what it's worth. So that's the sort of ideas we have on such
  subjects even now."
  
  "I've caught you!" Ivan cried, with an almost childish delight, as though
  he had succeeded in remembering something at last. "That anecdote about
  the quadrillion years, I made up myself! I was seventeen then, I was at
  the high school. I made up that anecdote and told it to a schoolfellow
  called Korovkin, it was at Moscow.... The anecdote is so characteristic
  that I couldn't have taken it from anywhere. I thought I'd forgotten it
  ... but I've unconsciously recalled it--I recalled it myself--it was not you
  telling it! Thousands of things are unconsciously remembered like that
  even when people are being taken to execution ... it's come back to me in
  a dream. You are that dream! You are a dream, not a living creature!"
  
  "From the vehemence with which you deny my existence," laughed the
  gentleman, "I am convinced that you believe in me."
  
  "Not in the slightest! I haven't a hundredth part of a grain of faith in
  you!"
  
  "But you have the thousandth of a grain. Homeopathic doses perhaps are the
  strongest. Confess that you have faith even to the ten-thousandth of a
  grain."
  
  "Not for one minute," cried Ivan furiously. "But I should like to believe
  in you," he added strangely.
  
  "Aha! There's an admission! But I am good-natured. I'll come to your
  assistance again. Listen, it was I caught you, not you me. I told you your
  anecdote you'd forgotten, on purpose, so as to destroy your faith in me
  completely."
  
  "You are lying. The object of your visit is to convince me of your
  existence!"
  
  "Just so. But hesitation, suspense, conflict between belief and
  disbelief--is sometimes such torture to a conscientious man, such as you
  are, that it's better to hang oneself at once. Knowing that you are
  inclined to believe in me, I administered some disbelief by telling you
  that anecdote. I lead you to belief and disbelief by turns, and I have my
  motive in it. It's the new method. As soon as you disbelieve in me
  completely, you'll begin assuring me to my face that I am not a dream but
  a reality. I know you. Then I shall have attained my object, which is an
  honorable one. I shall sow in you only a tiny grain of faith and it will
  grow into an oak-tree--and such an oak-tree that, sitting on it, you will
  long to enter the ranks of 'the hermits in the wilderness and the saintly
  women,' for that is what you are secretly longing for. You'll dine on
  locusts, you'll wander into the wilderness to save your soul!"
  
  "Then it's for the salvation of my soul you are working, is it, you
  scoundrel?"
  
  "One must do a good work sometimes. How ill-humored you are!"
  
  "Fool! did you ever tempt those holy men who ate locusts and prayed
  seventeen years in the wilderness till they were overgrown with moss?"
  
  "My dear fellow, I've done nothing else. One forgets the whole world and
  all the worlds, and sticks to one such saint, because he is a very
  precious diamond. One such soul, you know, is sometimes worth a whole
  constellation. We have our system of reckoning, you know. The conquest is
  priceless! And some of them, on my word, are not inferior to you in
  culture, though you won't believe it. They can contemplate such depths of
  belief and disbelief at the same moment that sometimes it really seems
  that they are within a hair's-breadth of being 'turned upside down,' as
  the actor Gorbunov says."
  
  "Well, did you get your nose pulled?"(8)
  
  "My dear fellow," observed the visitor sententiously, "it's better to get
  off with your nose pulled than without a nose at all. As an afflicted
  marquis observed not long ago (he must have been treated by a specialist)
  in confession to his spiritual father--a Jesuit. I was present, it was
  simply charming. 'Give me back my nose!' he said, and he beat his breast.
  'My son,' said the priest evasively, 'all things are accomplished in
  accordance with the inscrutable decrees of Providence, and what seems a
  misfortune sometimes leads to extraordinary, though unapparent, benefits.
  If stern destiny has deprived you of your nose, it's to your advantage
  that no one can ever pull you by your nose.' 'Holy father, that's no
  comfort,' cried the despairing marquis. 'I'd be delighted to have my nose
  pulled every day of my life, if it were only in its proper place.' 'My
  son,' sighs the priest, 'you can't expect every blessing at once. This is
  murmuring against Providence, who even in this has not forgotten you, for
  if you repine as you repined just now, declaring you'd be glad to have
  your nose pulled for the rest of your life, your desire has already been
  fulfilled indirectly, for when you lost your nose, you were led by the
  nose.' "
  
  "Fool, how stupid!" cried Ivan.
  
  "My dear friend, I only wanted to amuse you. But I swear that's the
  genuine Jesuit casuistry and I swear that it all happened word for word as
  I've told you. It happened lately and gave me a great deal of trouble. The
  unhappy young man shot himself that very night when he got home. I was by
  his side till the very last moment. Those Jesuit confessionals are really
  my most delightful diversion at melancholy moments. Here's another
  incident that happened only the other day. A little blonde Norman girl of
  twenty--a buxom, unsophisticated beauty that would make your mouth
  water--comes to an old priest. She bends down and whispers her sin into the
  grating. 'Why, my daughter, have you fallen again already?' cries the
  priest. 'O Sancta Maria, what do I hear! Not the same man this time, how
  long is this going on? Aren't you ashamed!' '_Ah, mon pere_,' answers the
  sinner with tears of penitence, '_ca lui fait tant de plaisir, et a moi si
  peu de peine!_' Fancy, such an answer! I drew back. It was the cry of
  nature, better than innocence itself, if you like. I absolved her sin on
  the spot and was turning to go, but I was forced to turn back. I heard the
  priest at the grating making an appointment with her for the
  evening--though he was an old man hard as flint, he fell in an instant! It
  was nature, the truth of nature asserted its rights! What, you are turning
  up your nose again? Angry again? I don't know how to please you--"
  
  "Leave me alone, you are beating on my brain like a haunting nightmare,"
  Ivan moaned miserably, helpless before his apparition. "I am bored with
  you, agonizingly and insufferably. I would give anything to be able to
  shake you off!"
  
  "I repeat, moderate your expectations, don't demand of me 'everything
  great and noble' and you'll see how well we shall get on," said the
  gentleman impressively. "You are really angry with me for not having
  appeared to you in a red glow, with thunder and lightning, with scorched
  wings, but have shown myself in such a modest form. You are wounded, in
  the first place, in your esthetic feelings, and, secondly, in your pride.
  How could such a vulgar devil visit such a great man as you! Yes, there is
  that romantic strain in you, that was so derided by Byelinsky. I can't
  help it, young man, as I got ready to come to you I did think as a joke of
  appearing in the figure of a retired general who had served in the
  Caucasus, with a star of the Lion and the Sun on my coat. But I was
  positively afraid of doing it, for you'd have thrashed me for daring to
  pin the Lion and the Sun on my coat, instead of, at least, the Polar Star
  or the Sirius. And you keep on saying I am stupid, but, mercy on us! I
  make no claim to be equal to you in intelligence. Mephistopheles declared
  to Faust that he desired evil, but did only good. Well, he can say what he
  likes, it's quite the opposite with me. I am perhaps the one man in all
  creation who loves the truth and genuinely desires good. I was there when
  the Word, Who died on the Cross, rose up into heaven bearing on His bosom
  the soul of the penitent thief. I heard the glad shrieks of the cherubim
  singing and shouting hosannah and the thunderous rapture of the seraphim
  which shook heaven and all creation, and I swear to you by all that's
  sacred, I longed to join the choir and shout hosannah with them all. The
  word had almost escaped me, had almost broken from my lips ... you know
  how susceptible and esthetically impressionable I am. But common sense--oh,
  a most unhappy trait in my character--kept me in due bounds and I let the
  moment pass! For what would have happened, I reflected, what would have
  happened after my hosannah? Everything on earth would have been
  extinguished at once and no events could have occurred. And so, solely
  from a sense of duty and my social position, I was forced to suppress the
  good moment and to stick to my nasty task. Somebody takes all the credit
  of what's good for Himself, and nothing but nastiness is left for me. But
  I don't envy the honor of a life of idle imposture, I am not ambitious.
  Why am I, of all creatures in the world, doomed to be cursed by all decent
  people and even to be kicked, for if I put on mortal form I am bound to
  take such consequences sometimes? I know, of course, there's a secret in
  it, but they won't tell me the secret for anything, for then perhaps,
  seeing the meaning of it, I might bawl hosannah, and the indispensable
  minus would disappear at once, and good sense would reign supreme
  throughout the whole world. And that, of course, would mean the end of
  everything, even of magazines and newspapers, for who would take them in?
  I know that at the end of all things I shall be reconciled. I, too, shall
  walk my quadrillion and learn the secret. But till that happens I am
  sulking and fulfill my destiny though it's against the grain--that is, to
  ruin thousands for the sake of saving one. How many souls have had to be
  ruined and how many honorable reputations destroyed for the sake of that
  one righteous man, Job, over whom they made such a fool of me in old days!
  Yes, till the secret is revealed, there are two sorts of truths for
  me--one, their truth, yonder, which I know nothing about so far, and the
  other my own. And there's no knowing which will turn out the better....
  Are you asleep?"
  
  "I might well be," Ivan groaned angrily. "All my stupid ideas--outgrown,
  thrashed out long ago, and flung aside like a dead carcass--you present to
  me as something new!"
  
  "There's no pleasing you! And I thought I should fascinate you by my
  literary style. That hosannah in the skies really wasn't bad, was it? And
  then that ironical tone _a la_ Heine, eh?"
  
  "No, I was never such a flunkey! How then could my soul beget a flunkey
  like you?"
  
  "My dear fellow, I know a most charming and attractive young Russian
  gentleman, a young thinker and a great lover of literature and art, the
  author of a promising poem entitled _The Grand Inquisitor_. I was only
  thinking of him!"
  
  "I forbid you to speak of _The Grand Inquisitor_," cried Ivan, crimson
  with shame.
  
  "And the _Geological Cataclysm_. Do you remember? That was a poem, now!"
  
  "Hold your tongue, or I'll kill you!"
  
  "You'll kill me? No, excuse me, I will speak. I came to treat myself to
  that pleasure. Oh, I love the dreams of my ardent young friends, quivering
  with eagerness for life! 'There are new men,' you decided last spring,
  when you were meaning to come here, 'they propose to destroy everything
  and begin with cannibalism. Stupid fellows! they didn't ask my advice! I
  maintain that nothing need be destroyed, that we only need to destroy the
  idea of God in man, that's how we have to set to work. It's that, that we
  must begin with. Oh, blind race of men who have no understanding! As soon
  as men have all of them denied God--and I believe that period, analogous
  with geological periods, will come to pass--the old conception of the
  universe will fall of itself without cannibalism, and, what's more, the
  old morality, and everything will begin anew. Men will unite to take from
  life all it can give, but only for joy and happiness in the present world.
  Man will be lifted up with a spirit of divine Titanic pride and the man-
  god will appear. From hour to hour extending his conquest of nature
  infinitely by his will and his science, man will feel such lofty joy from
  hour to hour in doing it that it will make up for all his old dreams of
  the joys of heaven. Every one will know that he is mortal and will accept
  death proudly and serenely like a god. His pride will teach him that it's
  useless for him to repine at life's being a moment, and he will love his
  brother without need of reward. Love will be sufficient only for a moment
  of life, but the very consciousness of its momentariness will intensify
  its fire, which now is dissipated in dreams of eternal love beyond the
  grave'... and so on and so on in the same style. Charming!"
  
  Ivan sat with his eyes on the floor, and his hands pressed to his ears,
  but he began trembling all over. The voice continued.
  
  "The question now is, my young thinker reflected, is it possible that such
  a period will ever come? If it does, everything is determined and humanity
  is settled for ever. But as, owing to man's inveterate stupidity, this
  cannot come about for at least a thousand years, every one who recognizes
  the truth even now may legitimately order his life as he pleases, on the
  new principles. In that sense, 'all things are lawful' for him. What's
  more, even if this period never comes to pass, since there is anyway no
  God and no immortality, the new man may well become the man-god, even if
  he is the only one in the whole world, and promoted to his new position,
  he may lightheartedly overstep all the barriers of the old morality of the
  old slave-man, if necessary. There is no law for God. Where God stands,
  the place is holy. Where I stand will be at once the foremost place ...
  'all things are lawful' and that's the end of it! That's all very
  charming; but if you want to swindle why do you want a moral sanction for
  doing it? But that's our modern Russian all over. He can't bring himself
  to swindle without a moral sanction. He is so in love with truth--"
  
  The visitor talked, obviously carried away by his own eloquence, speaking
  louder and louder and looking ironically at his host. But he did not
  succeed in finishing; Ivan suddenly snatched a glass from the table and
  flung it at the orator.
  
  "_Ah, mais c'est bete enfin_," cried the latter, jumping up from the sofa
  and shaking the drops of tea off himself. "He remembers Luther's inkstand!
  He takes me for a dream and throws glasses at a dream! It's like a woman!
  I suspected you were only pretending to stop up your ears."
  
  A loud, persistent knocking was suddenly heard at the window. Ivan jumped
  up from the sofa.
  
  "Do you hear? You'd better open," cried the visitor; "it's your brother
  Alyosha with the most interesting and surprising news, I'll be bound!"
  
  "Be silent, deceiver, I knew it was Alyosha, I felt he was coming, and of
  course he has not come for nothing; of course he brings 'news,' " Ivan
  exclaimed frantically.
  
  "Open, open to him. There's a snowstorm and he is your brother. _Monsieur
  sait-il le temps qu'il fait? C'est a ne pas mettre un chien dehors_."
  
  The knocking continued. Ivan wanted to rush to the window, but something
  seemed to fetter his arms and legs. He strained every effort to break his
  chains, but in vain. The knocking at the window grew louder and louder. At
  last the chains were broken and Ivan leapt up from the sofa. He looked
  round him wildly. Both candles had almost burnt out, the glass he had just
  thrown at his visitor stood before him on the table, and there was no one
  on the sofa opposite. The knocking on the window frame went on
  persistently, but it was by no means so loud as it had seemed in his
  dream; on the contrary, it was quite subdued.
  
  "It was not a dream! No, I swear it was not a dream, it all happened just
  now!" cried Ivan. He rushed to the window and opened the movable pane.
  
  "Alyosha, I told you not to come," he cried fiercely to his brother. "In
  two words, what do you want? In two words, do you hear?"
  
  "An hour ago Smerdyakov hanged himself," Alyosha answered from the yard.
  
  "Come round to the steps, I'll open at once," said Ivan, going to open the
  door to Alyosha.
  
  
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Book 11, Chapter 9
target: Poof! The devil! Well, not with the horns and pitchfork and flames and all that. Ivan's Satan appears in the manner of a mild-mannered, impoverished, elderly gentleman sitting amiably on his sofa. Ivan sternly tells the nice old man that he's just a figment of everything that's base and, above all, stupid in his imagination, but the devil insists on his reality. The devil reminds him that he had gone to see Smerdyakov to find out what he had told Katerina, which he still doesn't know. But Ivan tells the devil that this is no proof of the devil's existence: the devil only remembers this point because Ivan was about to. Ivan then decides to wet a towel and place it on his head. Of course - wouldn't you if you were sitting across from the devil? The devil then reminds Ivan that he had once accused Alyosha of spying on their conversations . Ivan admits that this was a momentary lapse, but insists that the devil is still a hallucination. The devil goes on to tell some silly stories about himself and his adventures incarnated on earth. He wants nothing more than to be a simple "fat, 250-pound merchant's wife" and light candles to God, but instead he ends up with rheumatism. Ivan decides the wet towel is useless and throws it away. The devil complains about catching a cold while flying through the freezing heavens. But he was fortunately cured by Hoff's extract of malt. Ivan rejects all of these anecdotes as stupid. The devil justifies his existence by claiming he exists only to "negate," to create doubt, because if everything was meaningful, there would be no more events. He tells the story of a philosopher who all his life denied the existence of an afterlife. Upon his death, he discovered there was an afterlife, but he refused to go to heaven because it went against his convictions. He was then sentenced to walk a quadrillion kilometers as punishment, but since this also went against his convictions, he refused to walk. After a thousand years, he decided, oh heck, I'll walk. Once he got to heaven he sang its praises enthusiastically. Ivan again rejects the devil - the anecdote wasn't his, it was a story Ivan made up when he was 17. The devil tells another couple of stories: the first is about a man who lost his nose to some dreadful disease. The man complained to his priest that he wanted his nose back, but the priest told him that, hey, at least without your nose you won't have to worry about your nose being "out of joint" about its being out of joint ever again. Pretty punny. The second story is about a young floozy who confesses to her priest that she has slept with a man. After her confession, the priest and the floozy set up a booty call. Ivan just becomes more and more infuriated by the devil's stupid stories . The devil continues to mock his philosophy and his writings to his face, including the one about the Grand Inquisitor. At his wit's end, Ivan throws an inkstand at the devil. Their conversation is interrupted by a knock at the window. Suddenly Ivan feels as if he's been tied to his chair. He breaks free from what seem to be imaginary bonds and opens the window. It's Alyosha, and Ivan lets him in. Alyosha announces that Smerdyakov has hanged himself.