"All of us Karamazovs are like that, and in you [Alyosha], an angel, the same insect [sensuality] lives and stirs up storms in your blood. Storms, because sensuality is a storm, more than a storm! Beauty is a fearful and terrible thing! Fearful because it's undefinable, and it cannot be defined, because here God gave us only riddles. Here the shores converge, here all contradictions live together. I'm a very uneducated man, brother, but I've thought about it a lot. So terribly many mysteries! Too many riddles oppress man on earth. Solve them if you can without getting your feet wet. Beauty! Besides, I can't bear it that some man, even with a lofty heart and the highest mind, should start from the ideal of the Madonna and end with the ideal of Sodom. It's even more fearful when someone who already has the ideal of Sodom in his soul does not deny the ideal of the Madonna either, and his heart burns with it, verily, verily burns, as in his young, blameless years. No, man is broad, even too broad, I would narrow him down. Devil knows what to make of him, that's the thing! What's shame for the mind is beauty al over for the heart. Can there be beauty in Sodom? Believe me, for the vast majority of people, that;s just where beauty lies--did you know that secret? The terrible thing is that beauty is not only fearful but also mysterious. Here the devil is struggling with God, and the battlefield is the human heart."
-The Brothers Karamazov (Book III. Chpt. 3)
I have a feeling that this will be one of many quotes that I shall be posting from this novel. Truly amazing.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Ideals of Beauty
Posted by Miss Lemon at 9:46 AM
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1 comments:
This part was particularly frightening for me. I had so much love for Alyosha and hope for him that I didn't want him to have this "insect". But all three brothers have head, heart, and hand. All three struggle with the disharmony between the three elements.
Heather VW
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