Day 60

Book 11 / Chapter 10

“And do you think you’ve really decided? No, you haven’t decided yet. You’ll sit all night trying to decide whether to go or not. But you will go all the same, and you know you will go, you know yourself that no matter how much you try to decide it, the decision no longer depends on you. You will go because you don’t dare not to. Why you don’t dare—figure out for yourself, there’s a riddle for you!”

First the long version of the devil’s visit, and now this illuminating revision—the dream updated, expanded upon in the telling, to include both the news of Smerdyakov’s suicide and its consequences for Ivan, as if together with his devil he knew all this before. “And you did chase him away,” he tells Alyosha,

“he disappeared as soon as you came. I love your face, Alyosha. Did you know that I love your face? And he—is me. Alyosha, me myself. All that’s low, all that’s mean and contemptible in me!”

Alyosha, again on the scene to serve as our witness, offers possibly the most reliable perspective on all that is unfolding:

He was beginning to understand Ivan’s illness: “The torments of a proud decision, a deep conscience!” God, in whom he did not believe, and his truth were overcoming his heart, which still did not want to submit. … “Yes, … yes, with Smerdyakov dead, no one will believe Ivan’s testimony, but he will go and testify! …God will win!” he thought. “He will either rise into the light of truth, or … perish in hatred, taking revenge on himself and everyone for having served something he does not believe in,” Alyosha added bitterly, and again prayed for Ivan.

---