Pyotr: And I know too that you didn't eat the idea, but the idea has eaten you, so you won’t put it off.
Kirillov: What? The idea has eaten me?
P: Yes.
K: And not I ate the idea? That’s good. You have some small intelligence.
(original text is "syela" (съела), "to eat").
This is reminiscent of Liza's monologue to Stavrogin in the previous chapter:
Pyotr Stepanovitch skipped up to me and explained it all to me at once. He revealed to me that you were dominated by a ‘great idea,’ before which he and I were as nothing, but yet that I was a stumbling-block in your path.
The phrase "great idea" (or "great ideal") appears several times in the first two parts in connection with Stepan. He concludes Part 2 with "I do this for the sake of a great idea"; presumably his great idea is a humanistic form of socialism unsullied by the crude materialism of the younger generation. From 1.1.VI
you cannot imagine what wrath and sadness overcome your whole soul when a great idea, which you have long cherished as holy, is caught up by the ignorant and dragged forth before fools like themselves into the street, and you suddenly meet it in the market unrecognisable, in the mud, absurdly set up, without proportion, without harmony, the plaything of foolish louts! No! In our day it was not so, and it was not this for which we strove.
Pyotr: And I know too that you didn't eat the idea, but the idea has eaten you, so you won’t put it off.
Kirillov: What? The idea has eaten me?
P: Yes.
K: And not I ate the idea? That’s good. You have some small intelligence.
(original text is "syela" (съела), "to eat").
This is reminiscent of Liza's monologue to Stavrogin in the previous chapter:
Pyotr Stepanovitch skipped up to me and explained it all to me at once. He revealed to me that you were dominated by a ‘great idea,’ before which he and I were as nothing, but yet that I was a stumbling-block in your path.
The phrase "great idea" (or "great ideal") appears several times in the first two parts in connection with Stepan. He concludes Part 2 with "I do this for the sake of a great idea"; presumably his great idea is a humanistic form of socialism unsullied by the crude materialism of the younger generation. From 1.1.VI
you cannot imagine what wrath and sadness overcome your whole soul when a great idea, which you have long cherished as holy, is caught up by the ignorant and dragged forth before fools like themselves into the street, and you suddenly meet it in the market unrecognisable, in the mud, absurdly set up, without proportion, without harmony, the plaything of foolish louts! No! In our day it was not so, and it was not this for which we strove.