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From chaos and dark night,
Filling the realms of boundless space
Beyond the sage’s sight.
At bounteous Nature’s kindly breast,
All things that breathe drink Joy,
And birds and beasts and creeping things
All follow where She leads.
Her gifts to man are friends in need,
The wreath, the foaming must,
To angels — vision of God’s throne,
To insects — sensual lust.
But enough poetry! I am in tears; let me cry. It may be
foolishness that everyone would laugh at. But you won’t
laugh. Your eyes are shining, too. Enough poetry. I want to
tell you now about the insects to whom God gave ‘sensual
lust.’
To insects — sensual lust.
I am that insect, brother, and it is said of me special-
ly. All we Karamazovs are such insects, and, angel as you
are, that insect lives in you, too, and will stir up a tempest
in your blood. Tempests, because sensual lust is a tempest
worse than a tempest! Beauty is a terrible and awful thing!
It is terrible because it has not been fathomed and never can
be fathomed, for God sets us nothing but riddles. Here the
boundaries meet and all contradictions exist side by side. I
am a cultivated man, brother, but I’ve thought a lot about
this. It’s terrible what mysteries there are! Too many rid-
dles weigh men down on earth. We must solve them as we
can, and try to keep a dry skin in the water. Beauty! I can’t