Being the dull introvert that I am, I've never done a lot of celebrating on New Year's Eve, though I usually am awake at midnight, and usually having a drink of something suitable for raising a toast to the passing of the old and the arrival of the new. Last night I didn't intend to do even that much. Two of our grandchildren, ages three-and-a-half and almost two, were spending the night with us, and since I expected them to wake us pretty early the next morning, I didn't plan to stay up late. 

But I ended up awake at midnight after all. I've been re-reading The Brothers Karamazov for the first time since my mostly-forgotten reading of it in my twenties, and I happened to be at the Grand Inquisitor section, and wanted to read through till the end. As you probably know, it is a parable composed by the cynical Ivan Karamazov, a disturbing look at the fundamental questions of faith, happiness, and freedom--not political but spiritual, existential freedom. I won't attempt a summary--I don't think I'm capable of a summary--but one of the questions it raises implicitly is whether there is any sense for the great mass of human beings in pursuing anything but material security. The Inquisitor is committed to the brutal suppression of the freedom of this great mass, for their own happiness.

Ivan delivers this parable to his brother, the monk (or would-be monk) Alyosha. This exchange takes place just afterwards;  Alyosha accuses Ivan of wanting to join the forces of lies and repression; Ivan speaks first here, then Alyosha:

"Good lord, what do I care? As I told you: I just want to drag on until I'm thirty, and then--smash the cup on the floor!"

"And the sticky little leaves, and the precious graves, and the blue sky, and the woman you love! How will you live, what will you love them with?.... Is it possible, with such hell in your heart and in your head?

Alyosha is referring to some remarks made earlier by Ivan:

"I want to go to Europe, Alyosha, I'll go straight from here. Of course I know that I will only be going to a graveyard, that's the thing! The precious dead lie there, each stone over them speaks of such ardent past life, of such passionate faith in their deeds, their truth, their struggle, and their science, that I--this I know beforehand--will fall to the ground and kiss those stones and weep over them--being wholeheartedly convinced, at the same time, that it has all long been a graveyard and nothing more. And I will not weep from despair, but simply because I will be happy in my shed tears. I will be drunk with my own tenderness. Sticky spring leaves, the blue sky--I love them, that's all! Such things you love not with your mind, not with logic, but with your insides, your guts, you love your first young strength... Do you understand any of this blather, Alyosha, or not?" Ivan suddenly laughed.

"I understand it all too well, Ivan: to want to love with your insides, your guts--you said it beautifully, and I'm terribly glad that you want so much to love," Alyosha exclaimed. "I think that everyone should love life before everything else in the world."

"Love life more than its meaning?"

"Certainly, love it before logic, as you say, certainly before logic, and only then will I also understand its meaning. That is how I've long imagined it. Half your work is done and acquired, Ivan: you love life. Now you need only apply yourself to the second half, and you are saved."

There is a page or two more of denouement, and the Grand Inquisitor chapter ends. Just as I was finishing it, I heard the noise of fireworks announcing that the new year had arrived. What will I love them with?, I wondered. It isn't clear, even if one believes with Alyosha rather than Ivan: does one have even the equipment, so to speak, for love? I ponder it as another year opens.

"Sticky little leaves" is a reference to this poem by Pushkin. It's a reference to the bright new leaves of the birch trees which abound in the north. I'm reading, by the way, the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation, and liking it. For what it's worth, I find it more convincing than the Constance Garnett translation of Crime and Punishment which I read a few years ago.