Thursday, August 9, 2007

passage from The Brothers Karamazov

This passage was amazing. Can't say anything intelligent about it, you just have to read it:

"You see, Alyosha, perhaps it really may happen that if I live to that moment, or rise again to see it, I, too, perhaps, may cry aloud with the rest, looking at the mother embracing the child's torturer, 'Thou art just, O Lord!' but I don't want to cry aloud then. While there is still time, I hasten to protect myself and so I renounce the higher harmony altogether. It's not wort the tears of that one tortured child who beat itself on the breast with its little fist and prayed on its stinking outhouse, with its unexpatiated tears to 'dear, kind God! It's not worth it, because those tears are unatoned for. They may be atoned for, or there can be no harmony. But how? How are you going to atone for them? Is it possible? By their being avenged? But what do I care for avenging them? What do I care for a hell for oppressors? What good can hell do, since those children have already been tortured? And what becomes of harmony, if there is hell? I want to forgive. I want to embrace, I don't want more suffering. And if the sufferings of children go to swell the sum of sufferings which was necessary to pay for truth, then I protest that the truth is not worth such a price. ... I don't want harmony. From love for humanity I don't want it. I would rather be left with the unavenged suffering, I would rather remain with my unavenged suffering and unsatisfied indignation, even if I were wrong. Besides, too high high a price is asked for harmony; its beyond our means to pay so much to enter on it. And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket, and if I am an honest man I am bound to give it back as soon as possible. And that I am doing. Its not God that I don't accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return Him the ticket." - Ivan Karamazov, Dostoevsky

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