Mihail’s attempted murder of Zossima

Mihail’s attempted murder of Zossima emerges as a near-fatal episode from the past, disclosed only when Mihail is dying. The revelation turns a seemingly minor midnight return into evidence of a murder that was contemplated and abandoned: Mihail had hated Zossima as a witness who knew the truth, but ultimately did not act on that hatred.

The Midnight Return

The episode begins with Zossima’s recollection of praying in tears before the icon of the Holy Mother of God. It was about midnight when the door opened and Mihail came in again. Zossima asked where he had been; Mihail said he thought he had forgotten something, perhaps his handkerchief. At the time, the explanation left the visit obscure. The later confession gives the return its real significance: Mihail had come back with the intention of killing Zossima.

The contrast between the ordinary excuse and the concealed purpose governs the scene’s retrospective force. The handkerchief is offered as a reason for returning, while Mihail’s later account identifies the dagger on Zossima’s table as the means he had noticed. The threat remains undisclosed to Zossima during the midnight encounter; its meaning becomes legible only after Mihail names what he had intended.

The Confession

Years later, gravely ill and struggling to speak, Mihail presses Zossima’s hand and asks whether he remembers the second midnight visit. He says that he had told Zossima to remember it, and now explains what he had returned for: he came to kill him. The confession is not an accusation that Zossima had harmed him. Rather, Mihail describes hating him as though Zossima were responsible for everything because Zossima was alive, knew the truth, and condemned him.

Mihail recalls that he knew of the dagger lying on Zossima’s table. He sat down and asked Zossima to sit down too, then pondered for a minute. He says that he did not think about the ruin a murder would bring, nor did he want to think about it then; his immediate motive was hatred and a desire for revenge. That interval of hesitation marks the attempted murder as more than a passing threat: Mihail had returned, recognized an available means, and considered acting, but did not carry the plan through.

Restraint and Its Consequences

Mihail tells Zossima that the Lord vanquished the devil in his heart. The account therefore presents the abandoned attack as a struggle in which revenge nearly becomes action but is checked. Mihail insists on the seriousness of the danger, telling Zossima that he had never been nearer death. Zossima’s survival was not due to an absence of intent: Mihail explicitly admits the intended killing and the minute in which he weighed what to do.

The episode’s delayed disclosure changes the meaning of the earlier visit without altering its outward details. A return ostensibly prompted by a forgotten handkerchief becomes the hidden climax of Mihail’s hostility; a pause at the table becomes the point at which violence is left undone. By confiding this to Zossima while dying, Mihail makes the old threat part of a final reckoning between the man who contemplated murder and the man he had nearly killed.

Narrative Significance

The attempted murder is conveyed through recollection and confession rather than through a narrated attack. Its suspense lies in the gap between what Zossima knew at midnight and what Mihail later reveals: the reader learns retrospectively that Zossima had been in immediate danger while the visit appeared to have an unremarkable explanation. The reveal also gives precise form to Mihail’s remorse. He does not speak only in general terms about hatred; he identifies the return, the dagger, the minute of deliberation, and the desire for revenge.

A week after the confession, Mihail dies, and the whole town follows him to the grave. His death closes the opportunity for any further conversation, leaving the admission itself as the final account of the abandoned murder. The episode thus stands as both a disclosure of Zossima’s past danger and a last act of truth-telling by a dying man.