The Clever Men

The chapter title is "It's Always Worth While Speaking to a Clever Man." It's placed there by the author, attributed to no one. The implication is that Ivan said this earlier — in a previous conversation, offhandedly, before it became the caption for what he was about to do.

What he was about to do: sit down with a man who wanted to tell him something, without either of them saying what it was.

Smerdyakov is the illegitimate son of Fyodor Pavlovitch, raised in the household, a cook and epileptic, widely considered slightly simple. He is not slightly simple. He has listened, for years, to the conversations going on above him — including Ivan's philosophical discussions, including the position that "everything is lawful" if there is no God.

On the evening before Ivan leaves for Moscow, he sits down near the gate, intending to walk past Smerdyakov. He doesn't walk past.

What follows is among the strangest conversations in the novel: two men who never say what they're talking about, both of whom know exactly what they're talking about.

Smerdyakov's briefing, item by item:

He will have a fit tomorrow. He might. He has had them before. Grigory and Marfa — the servants — will be unconscious from a sleeping remedy in their medicine. Their door signals won't be guarded. Dmitri has been told the door-knock signals Fyodor uses to admit Grushenka. The old man has three thousand rubles waiting for her. Ivan should go to Tchermashnya — not Moscow, which is farther — but in any case: away.

None of this is said in those terms. Each item floats by in the language of concern, of domestic information, of travel advice. "If I were in your place I should simply throw it all up," Smerdyakov says. "That's all!"

Ivan says he's going to Moscow. Then: "Couldn't I be sent for from Tchermashnya, too — in case anything happened?"

He goes through the gate still laughing. "And even he didn't know himself why he laughed. Nor could he have explained himself what he was feeling at that instant."

This is the anatomy of deniable consent.

Neither man has said: I will kill Fyodor Pavlovitch. I am giving you permission. You will not be present. You will not stop it.

Both men have acted as if something has been agreed upon.

The structure requires the intelligence of both parties. A stupid Smerdyakov couldn't have delivered the briefing in language this precise. A stupid Ivan would have named what was happening, destroyed the structure, forced a real refusal or a real assent. The conversation depends on two clever men who want the same outcome and need to not-know that they want it.

Smerdyakov needs Ivan's absence and non-interference. Ivan needs his father's inheritance and cannot be a murderer. Both needs can be served by a conversation in which nothing is stated, after which Ivan gets on a train.

"It's always worth while speaking to a clever man."

The cost of the structure becomes legible on the train. Moscow to Voronezh, or wherever — dawn, and: "I am a scoundrel."

He waited until he was far enough away to say it. The recognition is what the whole previous chapter was tracking — the thing that "vaguely irritated" him, the "something" he couldn't name. He knew, before the conversation, what the conversation was for. He could not stop himself from sitting down. He could not stop himself from asking whether he could be sent for from Tchermashnya.

"I am a scoundrel" is what you say when you have done something but cannot name what you did, because naming it would be intolerable. He bought deniability. The sentence is the price.

There's a philosophical register to all of this that Dostoevsky is careful to trace. Ivan's position, stated most clearly in the tavern conversation with Alyosha, is that without God, "everything is lawful." Not that everything is desirable or wise or recommended — just that there's no metaphysical backstop that says no. If Ivan believes this and acts on it, the father's murder is simply: a thing that happens. Everything is lawful.

Smerdyakov has been listening. He understood.

Later, on trial for the murder, Ivan confronts Smerdyakov directly. Smerdyakov says: "You taught me that everything is lawful. If there is no God, why should I be held back?" He says it as though quoting a text. He is.

Ivan didn't teach Smerdyakov how to commit murder. He taught him a philosophical principle and then modeled that principle in action: sat at the gate, received the briefing, said "Tchermashnya," laughed, left. Everything is lawful. Ivan goes to Moscow.

The chapter title is ironic in both directions.

It IS always worth while speaking to a clever man — if you're Smerdyakov. You can convey everything without saying anything. The intelligence of the listener is what makes the structure work; a less clever man would force you to be explicit.

It is NOT worth while speaking to a clever man — if you're Ivan. His intelligence is what makes the trap. A stupid man would have named what was happening, would have said no or said yes, would have been a real person with a real position. Ivan's cleverness lets him not-name it. He can stay inside the deniable structure all the way to Moscow, and then all the way to "I am a scoundrel."

The man who taught Smerdyakov that everything is lawful is destroyed not by the philosophy but by his own intelligence, which is clever enough to understand the conversation and too proud to survive what understanding it cost.