Vennad Karamazovid

〔費奧多爾·帕夫洛維奇·卡拉馬佐夫是個小地主、小丑兼淫棍，結過兩次婚，把兒子們全都棄之不顧，聽天由命。長子德米特里是第一個妻子所生，由僕人格里戈里和母親的親戚撫養成人；伊凡和阿列克塞是第二個妻子所生，在外人的施捨中長大。多年之後，三人都回到了故鄉小城。〕

[Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, a petty landowner, a buffoon and a sensualist, was twice married and abandoned all his sons to the mercy of fate. The eldest, Dmitri, the son of his first wife, was brought up by the servant Grigory and by his mother’s relations; Ivan and Alexei, the sons of his second wife, grew up among strangers who took them in out of charity. Many years later all three come together in their native town.]

四、第三個兒子阿列沙

IV. The Third Son, Alyosha

那時他才二十歲（他哥哥伊凡那時是二十四歲，而他們的大哥德米特里則是二十八歲）。首先我要聲明，這個青年阿列沙絕不是什麼狂熱的信徒，而且依我看，至少他甚至根本算不上神祕主義者。我先把我的看法完整說出來：他只不過是個早熟的博愛者，若說他一頭撞上了修道院這條路，那也只是因為當時唯有這條路使他震動，並且可以說，向他呈現了一種理想的出路——他的靈魂正從塵世惡毒的幽暗中拚命掙脫，奔向愛的光明。而這條路之所以令他震動，僅僅是因為他在這條路上遇見了一個在他看來非凡的人物——我們那位著名的修道院長老佐西馬，他以那顆無法饜足的心懷著全部熾熱的初戀之情依戀著他。不過，我並不否認，他那時也已經很古怪了，甚至從襁褓時起就是如此。順便說一句，我已經提到過他，他母親去世時他才剛滿四歲，可他後來一生都記著她，記著她的臉，她的愛撫，「彷彿她活生生地站在我面前」。這樣的記憶（這是人人都知道的）甚至可以從更早的年齡留存下來，甚至從兩歲起，但終其一生只是像幽暗中的幾個光點般浮現出來，像從一幅巨大圖畫上撕下的一角，那整幅畫已經黯滅消失，只剩下這麼一個小角落。他的情形正是這樣：他記得一個夏天的傍晚，靜靜的，窗子敞開著，落日的斜暉（正是那斜斜的光線記得最清楚），房間角落裡有一幅聖像，聖像前點著一盞長明燈，而在聖像前跪著他的母親，像犯了癲症一般痛哭，尖叫著、喊叫著，她用兩手抓住他，把他緊緊摟住，摟得他發痛，一邊向聖母為他祈求，一邊從懷裡用雙手把他舉向聖像，彷彿要把他託付給聖母的庇護……忽然，保姆跑了進來，驚慌地把他從她手裡奪走。這就是那幅圖畫！阿列沙也記住了母親在那一瞬間的臉：他說那張臉是癲狂的，但很美，就他所能回想起來的而言。可是他很少願意把這段記憶告訴別人。童年和少年時期他不大外露，甚至不大愛說話，但這並非出於不信任人，也不是由於怯懦或陰鬱孤僻，恰恰相反，而是由於別的緣故，由於某種彷彿內在的牽念，純屬他個人的，與旁人無關，但對他卻如此重要，以致他為此彷彿把旁人都忘了。然而他愛人們：他似乎一生都完全信任人們地活著，然而從來沒有人把他當成傻子或天真的人。他身上有某種東西在說明、在暗示（往後一生也是如此），他不願做人們的審判者，他不願承擔起責人之責，而且無論如何也不會責備誰。甚至看來他對一切都能容納，絲毫不加責難，儘管常常為此極其苦澀地憂傷。不僅如此，在這方面他到了這樣的地步：誰也不能使他驚訝，誰也不能使他害怕，甚至在他最早的青年時代就是這樣。 二十歲上他來到父親身邊，那簡直是一個骯髒淫亂的巢穴，而他這個貞潔純淨的人，在看不下去的時候只是默默走開，卻絲毫沒有對任何人表示出輕蔑或責難的樣子。父親當年曾做過食客，因此是個對受辱之事敏感而細膩的人，起初懷著不信任、陰沉沉地接待他（說是「他話太少，心裡想得太多」），然而不過兩個禮拜光景，結果竟變成常常沒完沒了地擁抱他、親吻他，固然帶著醉後的眼淚，是酒意中的多情，但顯然是真心而深切地愛上了他，愛得像他這樣的人當然從來不曾愛過任何人……

He was only twenty at the time (his brother Ivan was then in his twenty-fourth year, and their eldest brother, Dmitri, in his twenty-eighth). First of all I declare that this youth, Alyosha, was by no means a fanatic, and, to my mind at least, not even in the least a mystic. I will state my full opinion beforehand: he was simply an early lover of mankind, and if he took to the monastic road, it was only because at that time it alone struck him and presented to him, so to speak, the ideal way out for his soul, which was straining out of the darkness of worldly malice towards the light of love. And that road struck him only because upon it he then met an extraordinary being, as he considered — our famous monastery elder Zosima, to whom he became attached with all the ardent first love of his unquenchable heart. Nevertheless, I do not dispute that he was even then already very strange, having been so from the very cradle. I have already mentioned of him, by the way, that, though he was left motherless in only his fourth year, he remembered her afterwards all his life, her face, her caresses, “exactly as though she were standing alive before me.” Such memories may be retained (as everyone knows) even from a still earlier age, even from the age of two, but they only emerge throughout one’s whole life like bright points out of the darkness, like a corner torn from an enormous picture which has all gone out and vanished, save for that one little corner. So it was precisely with him: he remembered one evening, a summer evening, still, the window open, the slanting rays of the setting sun (it was the slanting rays he remembered most of all), an ikon in the corner of the room, a lighted lamp before it, and before the ikon, on her knees, his mother, sobbing as though in hysterics, with shrieks and cries, who had seized him in both her arms, embracing him so tightly that it hurt, praying for him to the Mother of God and holding him out from her embrace with both hands towards the ikon, as though beneath the Mother of God’s protection… and suddenly the nurse runs in and snatches him from her in terror. What a picture! Alyosha remembered his mother’s face too at that moment: he used to say that it was frenzied, but beautiful, so far as he could recall it. But he rarely cared to confide this memory to anyone. In childhood and youth he was little given to expansiveness, and even little given to talk, yet not from mistrust, not from shyness or sullen unsociability — quite the contrary, indeed — but from something else, from a kind of inward preoccupation, strictly personal, which concerned no one else, but was so important to him that because of it he seemed to forget others. But he loved people: all his life, it seemed, he lived in complete faith in people, and yet no one ever thought him either a simpleton or a naïve man. There was something in him which told one, and impressed upon one (and did so all his life afterwards), that he did not wish to be a judge of men, that he would not take censure upon himself and would not condemn anyone for anything. It even seemed that he allowed everything, without condemning in the least, though often grieving very bitterly. More than that: in this respect he went so far that no one could either surprise him or frighten him, and this even in his earliest youth. Arriving in his twentieth year at his father’s, positively into a den of filthy debauchery, he, chaste and pure, would merely withdraw in silence when it was unbearable to look on, yet without the slightest air of contempt or condemnation towards anyone whatsoever. His father, who had once been a hanger-on and was therefore quick and delicate in sensing offence, at first met him mistrustfully and sullenly (“he is very silent, they say, and reasons a great deal to himself”), but soon ended, however, by embracing and kissing him terribly often, within no more than a couple of weeks — with drunken tears, it is true, and in maudlin sentimentality, but plainly having come to love him sincerely and deeply, and in a way such a man as he had, of course, never managed to love anyone…