With some horror, Ivan witnesses the gradual decline of his body. His breath has grown hoarse, his movements sluggish; he aches in his extremities, and his head throbs with an unaccustomed heat. In his private thoughts, he admits that he doesn't know whether he can take another bout of fever ( Read more... )

There is an ancient legend that might serve to illuminate the future life of communist militancy: that of Saint Francis of Assisi. Consider his work. To denounce the poverty of the multitude he adopted that common condition and discovered there the ontological power of a new society. The communist militant does the same, identifying in the ( Read more... )

Ivan is sitting on his bed in his dark little room, everything meticulously put in order there--the comforter neatly tucked, the books organized tidily, the sunflower by the window. Earlier, he was pretending to read, but he found himself glancing absently over the pages without seeing the words; therefore, he is only sitting now, waiting for ( Read more... )

Ivan is in the library--not reading, although he has a book in his hands, but sitting in the padded window seat and peering out the panels of the window. He is struck by the way the light bends through the beveled edges of the panes, making rainbows along the lines of lead; when he turns his head just slightly, the window breaks new light into a ( Read more... )

Ivan had never been the kind of man who crossed people's backyards and hopped over their fences, when he lived in Skotoprigonyevsk; perhaps it was because he had been too controlled, too dignified for such informalities--but more likely, it was because he loathed the thought of encountering people as he crossed the town ( Read more... )

The day is warm and inviting; the air conditioning in the Mansion is cold. Ivan takes himself out to the lake, meaning to contemplate Solzhenitsyn's accounts of the next century but instead entranced by the way little minnows dart in the shallows. He finds himself overcome with a kind of languor. He promises himself that he is only resting his ( Read more... )

As Alyosha is walking on the grounds, he will feel a sudden jolt like having his momentum arrested and his arm wrenched out of joint. That would be Ivan politely taking his elbow. "Good afternoon, brother," he says, just about as politely.

Ivan has never been very good at providing for his own meals. Either women have made them for him, or servants have; even when he was a student, he lived so frugally that he could not be said to have cooked ( Read more... )