Wild and fearful in his cavern Hid the naked troglodyte, And the homeless nomad wandered Laying waste the fertile plain.
Menacing with spear and arrow In the woods the hunter strayed....
Woe to all poor wretches stranded On those cruel and hostile shores!
From the peak of high Olympus Came the mother Ceres down, Seeking in those savage regions Her lost daughter Proserpine.
But the Goddess found no refuge, Found no kindly welcome there, And no temple bearing witness To the worship of the gods.
From the fields and from the vineyards Came no fruits to deck the feasts, Only flesh of bloodstained victims Smouldered on the altar-fires, And where'er the grieving goddess Turns her melancholy gaze, Sunk in vilest degradation Man his loathsomeness displaysMitya broke into sobs and seized Alyosha's hand.
"My dear, my dear, in degradation, in degradation now, too.
There's a terrible amount of suffering for man on earth, a terrible lot of trouble.Don't think I'm only a brute in an officer's uniform, wallowing in dirt and drink.I hardly think of anything but of that degraded man- if only I'm not lying.I pray God I'm not lying and showing off.I think about that man because I am that man myself.
Would he purge his soul from vileness And attain to light and worth, He must turn and cling for ever To his ancient Mother Earth.
But the difficulty is how am I to cling for ever to Mother Earth.I don't kiss her.I don't cleave to her bosom.Am I to become a peasant or a shepherd? I go on and I don't know whether I'm going to shame or to light and joy.That's the trouble, for everything in the world is a riddle! And whenever I've happened to sink into the vilest degradation (and it's always been happening) I always read that poem about Ceres and man.Has it reformed me? Never! For I'm a Karamazov.For when I do leap into the pit, I go headlong with my heels up, and am pleased to be falling in that degrading attitude, and pride myself upon it.And in the very depths of that degradation Ibegin a hymn of praise.Let me be accursed.Let me be vile and base, only let me kiss the hem of the veil in which my God is shrouded.
Though I may be following the devil, I am Thy son, O Lord, and Ilove Thee, and I feel the joy without which the world cannot stand.
Joy everlasting fostereth The soul of all creation, It is her secret ferment fires The cup of life with flame.
'Tis at her beck the grass hath turned Each blade towards the light And solar systems have evolved From chaos and dark night, Filling the realms of boundless space Beyond the sage's sight.
At bounteous Nature's kindly breast, All things that breathe drink Joy, And birds and beasts and creeping things All follow where She leads.
Her gifts to man are friends in need, The wreath, the foaming must, To angels- vision of God's throne, To insects- sensual lust.
But enough poetry! I am in tears; let me cry.It may be foolishness that everyone would laugh at.But you won't laugh.Your eyes are shining, too.Enough poetry.I want to tell you now about the insects to whom God gave 'sensual lust.'
To insects- sensual lust.
I am that insect, brother, and it is said of me specially.All we Karamazovs are such insects, and, angel as you are, that insect lives in you, too, and will stir up a tempest in your blood.Tempests, because sensual lust is a tempest worse than a tempest! Beauty is a terrible and awful thing! It is terrible because it has not been fathomed and never can be fathomed, for God sets us nothing but riddles.Here the boundaries meet and all contradictions exist side by side.I am a cultivated man, brother, but I've thought a lot about this.It's terrible what mysteries there are! Too many riddles weigh men down on earth.We must solve them as we can, and try to keep a dry skin in the water.Beauty! I can't endure the thought that a man of lofty mind and heart begins with the ideal of the Madonna and ends with the ideal of Sodom.What's still more awful is that a man with the ideal of Sodom in his soul does not renounce the ideal of the Madonna, and his heart may be on fire with that ideal, genuinely on fire, just as in his days of youth and innocence.Yes, man is broad, too broad, indeed.I'd have him narrower.The devil only knows what to make of it! What to the mind is shameful is beauty and nothing else to the heart.Is there beauty in Sodom? Believe me, that for the immense mass of mankind beauty is found in Sodom.Did you know that secret? The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible.God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.But a man always talks of his own ache.Listen, now to come to facts."Chapter 4
The Confession of a Passionate Heart- In Anecdote"I was leading a wild life then.Father said just now that I spent several thousand roubles in seducing young girls.That's a swinish invention, and there was nothing of the sort.And if there was, Ididn't need money simply for that.With me money is an accessory, the overflow of my heart, the framework.To-day she would be my lady, to-morrow a wench out of the streets in her place.I entertained them both.I threw away money by the handful on music, rioting, and Gypsies.Sometimes I gave it to the ladies, too, for they'll take it greedily, that must be admitted, and be pleased and thankful for it.
