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the very mention of his name a cause for embarrassment. Very early in life, almost in infancy (at least so some people claimed), the boy started to display an uncanny aptitude for learning. I don’t know exactly how it came to pass, but when he was barely thirteen he left Polenov’s family, being sent to a secondary school in Moscow, where he boarded at the house of a celebrated and experienced educator, a boyhood friend of Polenov’s. Later, Ivan Karamazov liked to say that he had been sent to Moscow thanks to “Mr. Polenov’s zeal for good works,” because Polenov had been carried away by the idea that a boy endowed with a genius for learning should be taught by a teacher of genius.
    However, neither Mr. Polenov nor the brilliant educator was alive by the time Ivan entered the university. And since Polenov had somehow neglected to make the proper arrangements to cut through the usual Russian red tape and make the bequests (now worth more than two thousand rubles each) quickly available to the boys, Ivan could not get the money and had to earn his own living during his first two years at the university. It must be pointed out that, on this occasion, he made no attempt whatsoever to ask his father for assistance. It is uncertain whether he acted out of pride, out of contempt for his father, or simply because he reasoned in a cold and detached way that he would never get any substantial help from him anyway. In any case, the young man did not despair and quickly found work—first tutoring at a few kopeks an hour, then making the rounds of the editorial offices of newspapers, peddling ten-line news items on street incidents or the like that he signed “Eyewitness.” I gather that these items were so originally and strikingly presented that the newspapers were glad to run them. This in itself goes to show the young man’s superiority in practical and intellectual matters over the crowd of needy students of both sexes, who night and day swarm through the offices of the Moscow and Petersburg newspapers and magazines, unable to think up anything more original than to beg for translations from the French or for odd copying jobs. Once Ivan Karamazov got to know people on the editorial staffs, he kept in touch with them, so that during his last years at the university he was able to publish reviews of books on a variety of specialized subjects, in which he showed considerable talent; thus he gradually gained a good reputation in literary circles. However, it was not until quite recently that he succeeded in attracting the attention of a wider circle of readers, and it was one particular incident that made them notice and remember him—and a rather curious incident at that. Ivan Karamazov had been graduated from the university, had collected his two thousand rubles, and was planning to take a trip abroad, when one of the major newspapers carried a very strange article of his that caught the interest even of non-specialists. The most remarkable thing about it was that the topic seemed to be quite outside Ivan’s field, since he had specialized in the natural sciences. The article was devoted to a problem much discussed at the time—the ecclesiastical courts. After examining various opinions that had already been expressed on the subject, Ivan presented his own views. The impact was due mostly to the tone and to the unexpectedness of the conclusions. First, many clerics greeted the author as one of their camp. Then, not only secularists but even outright atheists joined in the applause. Finally, however, some perspicacious persons decided that the whole article was a hoax, an insolent joke he had played on them all.
    I have mentioned this incident because the article and the argument it stirred up even reached our famous monastery, where the matter of the ecclesiastical courts elicited great interest. They were perplexed by it, and when they noticed the signature under it, their interest increased even further, since the