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, I didn'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.
Ladies used to be fond of me: not all of them, but it happened, it happened. But I always liked side-paths, little dark back-alleys behind the main road- there one finds adventures and surprises, and precious metal in the dirt.
I am speaking figuratively, brother.
In the town I was in, there were no such back-alleys in the literal sense, but morally there were.
If you were like me, you'd know what that means.
I loved vice, I loved the ignominy of vice.
I loved cruelty; am I not a bug, am I not a noxious insect?
In fact a Karamazov!
Once we went, a whole lot of us, for a picnic, in seven sledges. It was dark, it was winter, and I began squeezing a girl's hand, and forced her to kiss me. She was the daughter of an official, a sweet, gentle, submissive creature.
She allowed me, she allowed me much in the dark.
She thought, poor thing, that I should come next day to make her an offer (I was looked upon as a good match, too). But I didn't say a word to her for five months.
I used to see her in a corner at dances (we were always having dances), her eyes watching me. I saw how they glowed with fire- a fire of gentle indignation.
This game only tickled that insect lust I cherished in my soul.
Five months later she married an official and left the town, still angry, and still, perhaps, in love with me.
Now they live happily.
Observe that I told no one. I didn't boast of it. Though I'm full of low desires, and love what's low, I'm not dishonourable.
You're blushing; your eyes flashed.
Enough of this filth with you.
And all this was nothing much- wayside blossoms a la Paul de Kock- though the cruel insect had already grown strong in my soul.
I've a perfect album of reminiscences, brother.