Gotta love Dostoevsky!
The Dream Of a Ridiculous Man
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Translated by Constance Garnett.
I
I am a ridiculous person. Now they call me a madman. That
would be a promotion if it were not that I remain as
ridiculous in their eyes as before. But now I do not resent it,
they are all dear to me now, even when they laugh at me -
and, indeed, it is just then that they are particularly dear to
me. I could join in their laughter - not exactly at myself, but
through affection for them, if I did not feel so sad as I look at
them. Sad because they do not know the truth and I do know
it. Oh, how hard it is to be the only one who knows the
truth! But they won't understand that. No, they won't
understand it.
In old days I used to be miserable at seeming ridiculous.
Not seeming, but being. I have always been ridiculous, and
I have known it, perhaps, from the hour I was born. Perhaps
from the time I was seven years old I knew I was ridiculous.
Afterwards I went to school, studied at the university, and, do
you know, the more I learned, the more thoroughly I
understood that I was ridiculous. So that it seemed in the end
as though all the sciences I studied at the university existed
only to prove and make evident to me as I went more deeply
into them that I was ridiculous. It was the same with life as
it was with science. With every year the same consciousness
of the ridiculous figure I cut in every relation grew and
strengthened. Everyone always laughed at me. But not one
of them knew or guessed that if there were one man on earth
who knew better than anybody else that I was absurd, it was
myself, and what I resented most of all was that they did not
know that. But that was my own fault; I was so proud that
nothing would have ever induced me to tell it to anyone.
This pride grew in me with the years; and if it had happened
that I allowed myself to confess to anyone that I was
ridiculous, I believe that I should have blown out my brains
the same evening. Oh, how I suffered in my early youth
from the fear that I might give way and confess it to my
schoolfellows. But since I grew to manhood, I have for some
unknown reason become calmer, though I realised my awful
characteristic more fully every year. I say 'unknown', for to
this day I cannot tell why it was. Perhaps it was owing to the
terrible misery that was growing in my soul through
something which was of more consequence than anything
else about me: that something was the conviction that had
come upon me that nothing in the world mattered. I had long
had an inkling of it, but the full realisation came last year
almost suddenly. I suddenly felt that it was all the same to
me whether the world existed or whether there had never
been anything at all: I began to feel with all my being that
there was nothing existing. At first I fancied that many
things had existed in the past, but afterwards I guessed that
there never had been anything in the past either, but that it
had only seemed so for some reason. Little by little I
guessed that there would be nothing in the future either.
Then I left off being angry with people and almost ceased to
notice them. Indeed this showed itself even in the pettiest
trifles: I used, for instance, to knock against people in the
street. And not so much from being lost in thought: what had
I to think about? I had almost given up thinking by that time;
nothing mattered to me. If at least I had solved my
problems! Oh, I had not settled one of them, and how many
there were! But I gave up caring about anything, and all the
problems disappeared.
And it was after that that I found out the truth. I learnt the
truth last November - on the third of November, to be precise
- and I remember every instant since. It was a gloomy
evening, one of the gloomiest possible evenings. I was going
home at about eleven o'clock, and I remember that I thought
that the evening could not be gloomier. Even physically.
Rain had been falling all day, and it had been a cold, gloomy,
almost menacing rain, with, I remember, an unmistakable
spite against mankind. Suddenly between ten and eleven it
had stopped, and was followed by a horrible dampness,
colder and damper than the rain, and a sort of steam was
rising from everything, from every stone in the street, and
from every by-lane if one looked down it as far as one could.
A thought suddenly occurred to me, that if all the street
lamps had been put out it would have been less cheerless,
that the gas made one's heart sadder because it lighted it all
up. I had had scarcely any dinner that day, and had been
spending the evening with an engineer, and two other friends
had been there also. I sat silent - I fancy I bored them. They
talked of something rousing and suddenly they got excited
over it. But they did not really care, I could see that, and
only made a show of being excited. I suddenly said as much
to them. "My friends," I said, "you really do not care one
way or the other." They were not offended, but they laughed
at me. That was because I spoke without any not of
reproach, simply because it did not matter to me. They saw
it did not, and it amused them.
As I was thinking about the gas lamps in the street I
looked up at the sky. The sky was horribly dark, but one
could distinctly see tattered clouds, and between them
fathomless black patches. Suddenly I noticed in one of these
patches a star, and began watching it intently. That was
because that star had given me an idea: I decided to kill
myself that night. I had firmly determined to do so two
months before, and poor as I was, I bought a splendid
revolver that very day, and loaded it. But two months had
passed and it was still lying in my drawer; I was so utterly
indifferent that I wanted to seize a moment when I would not
be so indifferent - why, I don't know. And so for two months
every night that I came home I thought I would shoot myself.
I kept waiting for the right moment. And so now this star
gave me a thought. I made up my mind that it should
certainly be that night. And why the star gave me the
thought I don't know.
And just as I was looking at the sky, this little girl took me
by the elbow. The street was empty, and there was scarcely
anyone to be seen. A cabman was sleeping in the distance in
his cab. It was a child of eight with a kerchief on her head,
wearing nothing but a wretched little dress all soaked with
rain, but I noticed her wet broken shoes and I recall them
now. They caught my eye particularly. She suddenly pulled
me by the elbow and called me. She was not weeping, but
was spasmodically crying out some words which could not
utter properly, because she was shivering and shuddering all
over. She was in terror about something, and kept crying,
"Mammy, mammy!" I turned facing her, I did not say a word
and went on; but she ran, pulling at me, and there was that
note in her voice which in frightened children means despair.
I know that sound. Though she did not articulate the words,
I understood that her mother was dying, or that something of
the sort was happening to them, and that she had run out to
call someone, to find something to help her mother. I did not
go with her; on the contrary, I had an impulse to drive her
away. I told her first to go to a policeman. But clasping her
hands, she ran beside me sobbing and gasping, and would not
leave me. Then I stamped my foot and shouted at her. She
called out "Sir! sir! . . ." but suddenly abandoned me and
rushed headlong across the road. Some other passerby
appeared there, and she evidently flew from me to him.
I mounted up to my fifth storey. I have a room in a flat
where there are other lodgers. Mr room is small and poor,
with a garret window in the shape of a semicircle. I have a
sofa covered with American leather, a table with books on it,
two chairs and a comfortable arm-chair, as old as old can be,
but of the good old-fashioned shape. I sat down, lighted the
candle, and began thinking. In the room next to mine,
through the partition wall, a perfect Bedlam was going on.
It had been going on for the last three days. A retired captain
lived there, and he had half a dozen visitors, gentlemen of
doubtful reputation, drinking vodka and playing stoss with
old cards. The night before there had been a fight, and I
know that two of them had been for a long time engaged in
dragging each other about by the hair. The landlady wanted
to complain, but she was in abject terror of the captain.
There was only one other lodger in the flat, a thin little
regimental lady, on a visit to Petersburg, with three little
children who had been taken ill since they came into the
lodgings. Both she and her children were in mortal fear of
the captain, and lay trembling and crossing themselves all
night, and the youngest child had a sort of fit from fright.
That captain, I know for a fact, sometimes stops people in the
Nevsky Prospect and begs. They won't take him into the
service, but strange to say (that's why I am telling this), all
this month that the captain has been here his behaviour has
caused me no annoyance. I have, of course, tried to avoid his
acquaintance from the very beginning, and he, too, was bored
with me from the first; but I never care how much they shout
the other side of the partition nor how many of them there are
in there: I sit up all night and forget them so completely that
I do not even hear them. I stay awake till daybreak, and have
been going on like that for the last year. I sit up all night in
my arm-chair at the table, doing nothing. I only read by day.
I sit - don't even think; ideas of a sort wander through my
mind and I let them come and go as they will. A whole
candle is burnt every night. I sat down quietly at the table,
took out the revolver and put it down before me. When I had
put it down I asked myself, I remember, "Is that so?" and
answered with complete conviction, "It is." That is, I shall
shoot myself. I knew that I should shoot myself that night
for certain, but how much longer I should go on sitting at the
table I did not know. And no doubt I should have shot
myself if it had not been for that little girl.
II
You see, though nothing mattered to me, I could feel pain,
for instance. If anyone had stuck me it would have hurt me.
It was the same morally: if anything very pathetic happened,
I should have felt pity just as I used to do in old days when
there were things in life that did matter to me. I had felt pity
that evening. I should have certainly helped a child. Why,
then, had I not helped the little girl? Because of an idea that
occurred to me at the time: when she was calling and pulling
at me, a question suddenly arose before me and I could not
settle it. The question was an idle one, but I was vexed. I
was vexed at the reflection that if I were going to make an
end of myself that night, nothing in life ought to have
mattered to me. Why was it that all at once I did not feel a
strange pang, quite incongruous in my position. Really I do
not know better how to convey my fleeting sensation at the
moment, but the sensation persisted at home when I was
sitting at the table, and I was very much irritated as I had not
been for a long time past. One reflection followed another.
I saw clearly that so long as I was still a human being and not
nothingness, I was alive and so could suffer, be angry and
feel shame at my actions. So be it. But if I am going to kill
myself, in two hours, say, what is the little girl to me and
what have I to do with shame or with anything else in the
world? I shall turn into nothing, absolutely nothing. And
can it really be true that the consciousness that I shall
completely cease to exist immediately and so everything else
will cease to exist, does not in the least affect my feeling of
pity for the child nor the feeling of shame after a
contemptible action? I stamped and shouted at the unhappy
child as though to say - not only I feel no pity, but even if I
behave inhumanly and contemptibly, I am free to, for in
another two hours everything will be extinguished. Do you
believe that that was why I shouted that? I am almost
convinced of it now. I seemed clear to me that life and the
world somehow depended upon me now. I may almost say
that the world now seemed created for me alone: if I shot
myself the world would cease to be at least for me. I say
nothing of its being likely that nothing will exist for anyone
when I am gone, and that as soon as my consciousness is
extinguished the whole world will vanish too and become
void like a phantom, as a mere appurtenance of my
consciousness, for possibly all this world and all these people
are only me myself. I remember that as I sat and reflected,
I turned all these new questions that swarmed one after
another quite the other way, and thought of something quite
new. For instance, a strange reflection suddenly occurred to
me, that if I had lived before on the moon or on Mars and
there had committed the most disgraceful and dishonourable
action and had there been put to such shame and ignominy as
one can only conceive and realise in dreams, in nightmares,
and if, finding myself afterwards on earth, I were able to
retain the memory of what I had done on the other planet and
at the same time knew that I should never, under any
circumstances, return there, then looking from the earth to
the moon - should I care or not? Should I feel shame for that
action or not? These were idle and superfluous questions for
the revolver was already lying before me, and I knew in
every fibre of my being that it would happen for certain, but
they excited me and I raged. I could not die now without
having first settled something. In short, the child had saved
me, for I put off my pistol shot for the sake of these
questions. Meanwhile the clamour had begun to subside in
the captain's room: they had finished their game, were
settling down to sleep, and meanwhile were grumbling and
languidly winding up their quarrels. At that point, I suddenly
fell asleep in my chair at the table - a thing which had never
happened to me before. I dropped asleep quite unawares.
Dreams, as we all know, are very queer things: some parts
are presented with appalling vividness, with details worked
up with the elaborate finish of jewellery, while others one
gallops through, as it were, without noticing them at all, as,
for instance, through space and time. Dreams seem to be
spurred on not by reason but by desire, not by the head but
by the heart, and yet what complicated tricks my reason has
played sometimes in dreams, what utterly incomprehensible
things happen to it! Mr brother died five years ago, for
instance. I sometimes dream of him; he takes part in my
affairs, we are very much interested, and yet all through my
dream I quite know and remember that my brother is dead
and buried. How is it that I am not surprised that, though he
is dead, he is here beside me and working with me? Why is
it that my reason fully accepts it? But enough. I will begin
about my dream. Yes, I dreamed a dream, my dream of the
third of November. They tease me now, telling me it was
only a dream. But does it matter whether it was a dream or
reality, if the dream made known to me the truth? If once
one has recognized the truth and seen it, you know that it is
the truth and that there is no other and there cannot be,
whether you are asleep or awake. Let it be a dream, so be it,
but that real life of which you make so much I had meant to
extinguish by suicide, and my dream, my dream - oh, it
revealed to me a different life, renewed, grand and full of
power!
Listen.
III
I have mentioned that I dropped asleep unawares and even
seemed to be still reflecting on the same subjects. I suddenly
dreamt that I picked up the revolver and aimed it straight at
my heart - my heart, and not my head; and I had determined
beforehand to fire at my head, at my right temple. After
aiming at my chest I waited a second or two, and suddenly
my candle, my table, and the wall in front of me began
moving and heaving. I made haste to pull the trigger.
In dreams you sometimes fall from a height, or are
stabbed, or beaten, but you never feel pain unless, perhaps,
you really bruise yourself against the bedstead, then you feel
pain and almost always wake up from it. It was the same in
my dream. I did not feel any pain, but it seemed as though
with my shot everything within me was shaken and
everything was suddenly dimmed, and it grew horribly black
around me. I seemed to be blinded, and it benumbed, and I
was lying on something hard, stretched on my back; I saw
nothing, and could not make the slightest movement. People
were walking and shouting around me, the captain bawled,
the landlady shrieked - and suddenly another break and I was
being carried in a closed coffin. And I felt how the coffin
was shaking and reflected upon it, and for the first time the
idea struck me that I was dead, utterly dead, I knew it and
had no doubt of it, I could neither see nor move and yet I was
feeling and reflecting. But I was soon reconciled to the
position, and as one usually does in a dream, accepted the
facts without disputing them.
And now I was buried in the earth. They all went away, I
was left alone, utterly alone. I did not move. Whenever
before I had imagined being buried the one sensation I
associated with the grave was that of damp and cold. So now
I felt that I was very cold, especially the tips of my toes, but
I felt nothing else.
I lay still, strange to say I expected nothing, accepting
without dispute that a dead man had nothing to expect. But
it was damp. I don't know how long a time passed - whether
an hour or several days, or many days. But all at once a drop
of water fell on my closed left eye, making its way through
the coffin lid; it was followed a minute later by a second,
then a minute later by a third - and so on, regularly every
minute. There was a sudden glow of profound indignation in
my heart, and I suddenly felt in it a pang of physical pain.
"That's my wound," I thought; "that's the bullet . . ." And
drop after drop every minute kept falling on my closed
eyelid. And all at once, not with my voice, but with my
entire being, I called upon the power that was responsible for
all that was happening to me:
"Whoever you may be, if you exist, and if anything more
rational that what is happening here is possible, suffer it to be
here now. But if you are revenging yourself upon me for my
senseless suicide by the hideousness and absurdity of this
subsequent existence, then let me tell you that no torture
could ever equal the contempt which I shall go on dumbly
feeling, though my martyrdom may last a million years!"
I made this appeal and held my peace. There was a full
minute of unbroken silence and again another drop fell, but
I knew with infinite unshakable certainty that everything
would change immediately. And behold my grave suddenly
was rent asunder, that is, I don't know whether it was opened
or dug up, but I was caught up by some dark and unknown
being and we found ourselves in space. I suddenly regained
my sight. It was the dead of night, and never, never had
there been such darkness. We were flying through space far
away from the earth. I did not question the being who was
taking me; I was proud and waited. I assured myself that I
was not afraid, and was thrilled with ecstasy at the thought
that I was not afraid. I do not know how long we were
flying, I cannot imagine; it happened as it always does in
dreams when you skip over space and time, and the laws of
thought and existence, and only pause upon the points for
which the heart yearns. I remember that I suddenly saw in
the darkness a star. "Is that Sirius?" I asked impulsively,
though I had not meant to ask questions.
"No, that is the star you saw between the clouds when you
were coming home," the being who was carrying me replied.
I knew that it had something like a human face. Strange
to say, I did not like that being, in fact I felt an intense
aversion for it. I had expected complete non-existence, and
that was why I had put a bullet through my heart. And here
I was in the hands of a creature not human, of course, but yet
living, existing. "And so there is life beyond the grave," I
thought with the strange frivolity one has in dreams. But in
its inmost depth my heart remained unchanged. "And if I
have got to exist again," I thought, "and live once more under
the control of some irresistible power, I won't be vanquished
and humiliated."
"You know that I am afraid of you and despise me for
that," I said suddenly to my companion, unable to refrain
from the humiliating question which implied a confession,
and feeling my humiliation stab my heart as with a pin. He
did not answer my question, but all at once I felt that he was
not even despising me, but was laughing at me and had no
compassion for me, and that our journey had an unknown
and mysterious object that concerned me only. Fear was
growing in my heart. Something was mutely and painfully
communicated to me from my silent companion, and
permeated my whole being. We were flying through dark,
unknown space. I had for some time lost sight of the
constellations familiar to my eyes. I knew that there were
stars in the heavenly spaces the light of which took thousands
or millions of years to reach the earth. Perhaps we were
already flying through those spaces. I expected something
with a terrible anguish that tortured my heart. And suddenly
I was thrilled by a familiar feeling that stirred me to the
depths: I suddenly caught sight of our sun! I knew that it
could not be our sun, that gave life to our earth, and that we
were an infinite distance from our sun, but for some reason
I knew in my whole being that it was a sun exactly like ours,
a duplicate of it. A sweet, thrilling feeling resounded with
ecstasy in my heart: the kindred power of the same light
which had given me light stirred an echo in my heart and
awakened it, and I had a sensation of life, the old life of the
past for the first time since I had been in the grave.
"But if that is the sun, if that is exactly the same as our
sun," I cried, "where is the earth?"
And my companion pointed to a star twinkling in the
distance with an emerald light. We were flying straight
towards it.
"And are such repetitions possible in the universe? Can
that be the law of Nature? . . . And if that is an earth there,
can it be just the same earth as ours . . . just the same, as
poor, as unhappy, but precious and beloved for ever,
arousing in the most ungrateful of her children the same
poignant love for her that we feel for our earth?" I cried out,
shaken by irresistible, ecstatic love for the old familiar earth
which I had left. The image of the poor child whom I had
repulsed flashed through my mind.
"You shall see it all," answered my companion, and there
was a note of sorrow in his voice.
But we were rapidly approaching the planet. It was
growing before my eyes; I could already distinguish the
ocean, the outline of Europe; and suddenly a feeling of a
great and holy jealousy glowed in my heart.
"How can it be repeated and what for? I love and can love
only that earth which I have left, stained with my blood,
when, in my ingratitude, I quenched my life with a bullet in
my heart. But I have never, never ceased to love that earth,
and perhaps on the very night I parted from it I loved it more
than ever. Is there suffering upon this new earth? On our
earth we can only love with suffering and through suffering.
We cannot love otherwise, and we know of no other sort of
love. I want suffering in order to love. I long, I thirst, this
very instant, to kiss with tears the earth that I have left, and
I don't want, I won't accept life on any other!"
But my companion had already left me. I suddenly, quite
without noticing how, found myself on this other earth, in the
bright light of a sunny day, fair as paradise. I believe I was
standing on one of the islands that make up on our globe the
Greek archipelago, or on the coast of the mainland facing
that archipelago. Oh, everything was exactly as it is with us,
only everything seemed to have a festive radiance, the
splendour of some great, holy triumph attained at last. The
caressing sea, green as emerald, splashed softly upon the
shore and kissed it with manifest, almost conscious love.
The tall, lovely trees stood in all the glory of their blossom,
and their innumerable leaves greeted me, I am certain, with
their soft, caressing rustle and seemed to articulate words of
love. The grass glowed with bright and fragrant flowers.
Birds were flying in flocks in the air, and perched fearlessly
on my shoulders and arms and joyfully struck me with their
darling, fluttering wings. And at last I saw and knew the
people of this happy land. That came to me of themselves,
they surrounded me, kissed me. The children of the sun, the
children of their sun - oh, how beautiful they were! Never
had I seen on our own earth such beauty in mankind. Only
perhaps in our children, in their earliest years, one might
find, some remote faint reflection of this beauty. The eyes of
these happy people shone with a clear brightness. Their
faces were radiant with the light of reason and fullness of a
serenity that comes of perfect understanding, but those faces
were gay; in their words and voices there was a note of
childlike joy. Oh, from the first moment, from the first
glance at them, I understood it all! It was the earth
untarnished by the Fall; on it lived people who had not
sinned. They lived just in such a paradise as that in which,
according to all the legends of mankind, our first parents
lived before they sinned; the only difference was that all this
earth was the same paradise. These people, laughing
joyfully, thronged round me and caressed me; they took me
home with them, and each of them tried to reassure me. Oh,
they asked me no questions, but they seemed, I fancied, to
know everything without asking, and they wanted to make
haste to smoothe away the signs of suffering from my face.
IV
And do you know what? Well, granted that it was only a
dream, yet the sensation of the love of those innocent and
beautiful people has remained with me for ever, and I feel as
though their love is still flowing out to me from over there.
I have seen them myself, have known them and been
convinced; I loved them, I suffered for them afterwards. Oh,
I understood at once even at the time that in many things I
could not understand them at all; as an up-to-date Russian
progressive and contemptible Petersburger, it struck me as
inexplicable that, knowing so much, they had, for instance,
no science like our. But I soon realised that their knowledge
was gained and fostered by intuitions different from those of
us on earth, and that their aspirations, too, were quite
different. They desired nothing and were at peace; they did
not aspire to knowledge of life as we aspire to understand it,
because their lives were full. But their knowledge was
higher and deeper than ours; for our science seeks to explain
what life is, aspires to understand it in order to teach others
how to love, while they without science knew how to live;
and that I understood, but I could not understand their
knowledge. They showed me their trees, and I could not
understand the intense love with which they looked at them;
it was as though they were talking with creatures like
themselves. And perhaps I shall not be mistaken if I say that
they conversed with them. Yes, they had found their
language, and I am convinced that the trees understood them.
They looked at all Nature like that - at the animals who lived
in peace with them and did not attack them, but loved them,
conquered by their love. They pointed to the stars and told
me something about them which I could not understand, but
I am convinced that they were somehow in touch with the
stars, not only in thought, but by some living channel. Oh,
these people did not persist in trying to make me understand
them, they loved me without that, but I knew that they would
never understand me, and so I hardly spoke to them about
our earth. I only kissed in their presence the earth on which
they lived and mutely worshipped them themselves. And
they saw that and let me worship them without being abashed
at my adoration, for they themselves loved much. They were
not unhappy on my account when at times I kissed their feet
with tears, joyfully conscious of the love with which they
would respond to mine. At times I asked myself with
wonder how it was they were able never to offend a creature
like me, and never once to arouse a feeling of jealousy or
envy in me? Often I wondered how it could be that, boastful
and untruthful as I was, I never talked to them of what I
knew - of which, of course, they had no notion - that I was
never tempted to do so by a desire to astonish or even to
benefit them.
They were as gay and sportive as children. They
wandered about their lovely woods and copses, they sang
their lovely songs; their fair was light - the fruits of their
trees, the honey from their woods, and the milk of the
animals who loved them. The work they did for food and
raiment was brief and not labourious. They loved and begot
children, but I never noticed in them the impulse of that cruel
sensuality which overcomes almost every man on this earth,
all and each, and is the source of almost every sin of mankind
on earth. They rejoiced at the arrival of children as new
beings to share their happiness. There was no quarrelling, no
jealousy among them, and they did not even know what the
words meant. Their children were the children of all, for
they all made up one family. There was scarcely any illness
among them, though there was death; but their old people
died peacefully, as though falling asleep, giving blessings
and smiles to those who surrounded them to take their last
farewell with bright and lovely smiles. I never saw grief or
tears on those occasions, but only love, which reached the
point of ecstasy, but a calm ecstasy, made perfect and
contemplative. One might think that they were still in
contact with the departed after death, and that their earthly
union was not cut short by death. They scarcely understood
me when I questioned them about immortality, but evidently
they were so convinced of it without reasoning that it was not
for them a question at all. They had no temples, but they had
a real living and uninterrupted sense of oneness with the
whole of the universe; they had no creed, but they had a
certain knowledge that when their earthly joy had reached the
limits of earthly nature, then there would come for them, for
the living and for the dead, a still greater fullness of contact
with the whole of the universe. They looked forward to that
moment with joy, but without haste, not pining for it, but
seeming to have a foretaste of it in their hearts, of which they
talked to one another.
In the evening before going to sleep they liked singing in
musical and harmonious chorus. In those songs they
expressed all the sensations that the parting day had given
them, sang its glories and took leave of it. They sang the
praises of nature, of the sea, of the woods. They liked
making songs about one another, and praised each other like
children; they were the simplest songs, but they sprang from
their hearts and went to one's heart. And not only in their
songs but in all their lives they seemed to do nothing but
admire one another. It was like being in love with each
other, but an all-embracing, universal feeling.
Some of their songs, solemn and rapturous, I scarcely
understood at all. Though I understood the words I could
never fathom their full significance. It remained, as it were,
beyond the grasp of my mind, yet my heart unconsciously
absorbed it more and more. I often told them that I had had
a presentiment of it long before, that this joy and glory had
come to me on our earth in the form of a yearning
melancholy that at times approached insufferable sorrow;
that I had had a foreknowledge of them all and of their glory
in the dreams of my heart and the visions of my mind; that
often on our earth I could not look at the setting sun without
tears. . . that in my hatred for the men of our earth there was
always a yearning anguish: why could I not hate them
without loving them? why could I not help forgiving them?
and in my love for them there was a yearning grief: why
could I not love them without hating them? They listened to
me, and I saw they could not conceive what I was saying, but
I did not regret that I had spoken to them of it: I knew that
they understood the intensity of my yearning anguish over
those whom I had left. But when they looked at me with
their sweet eyes full of love, when I felt that in their presence
my heart, too, became as innocent and just as theirs, the
feeling of the fullness of life took my breath away, and I
worshipped them in silence.
Oh, everyone laughs in my face now, and assures me that
one cannot dream of such details as I am telling now, that I
only dreamed or felt one sensation that arose in my heart in
delirium and made up the details myself when I woke up.
And when I told them that perhaps it really was so, my God,
how they shouted with laughter in my face, and what mirth
I caused! Oh, yes, of course I was overcome by the mere
sensation of my dream, and that was all that was preserved in
my cruelly wounded heart; but the actual forms and images
of my dream, that is, the very ones I really saw at the very
time of my dream, were filled with such harmony, were so
lovely and enchanting and were so actual, that on awakening
I was, of course, incapable of clothing them in our poor
language, so that they were bound to become blurred in my
mind; and so perhaps I really was forced afterwards to make
up the details, and so of course to distort them in my
passionate desire to convey some at least of them as quickly
as I could. But on the other hand, how can I help believing
that it was all true? It was perhaps a thousand times brighter,
happier and more joyful than I describe it. Granted that I
dreamed it, yet it must have been real. You know, I will tell
you a secret: perhaps it was not a dream at all! For then
something happened so awful, something so horribly true,
that it could not have been imagined in a dream. My heart
may have originated the dream, but would my heart alone
have been capable of originating the awful event which
happened to me afterwards? How could I alone have
invented it or imagined it in my dream? Could my petty
heart and fickle, trivial mind have risen to such a revelation
of truth? Oh, judge for yourselves: hitherto I have concealed
it, but now I will tell the truth. The fact is that I . . .
corrupted them all!
V
Yes, yes, it ended in my corrupting them all! How it could
come to pass I do not know, but I remember it clearly. The
dream embraced thousands of years and left in me only a
sense of the whole. I only know that I was the cause of their
sin and downfall. Like a vile trichina, like a germ of the
plague infecting whole kingdoms, so I contaminated all this
earth, so happy and sinless before my coming. They learnt
to lie, grew fond of lying, and discovered the charm of
falsehood. Oh, at first perhaps it began innocently, with a
jest, coquetry, with amorous play, perhaps indeed with a
germ, but that germ of falsity made its way into their hearts
and pleased them. Then sensuality was soon begotten,
sensuality begot jealousy, jealousy - cruelty . . . Oh, I don't
know, I don't remember; but soon, very soon the first blood
was shed. They marvelled and were horrified, and began to
be split up and divided. They formed into unions, but it was
against one another. Reproaches, upbraidings followed.
They came to know shame, and shame brought them to
virtue. The conception of honour sprang up, and every union
began waving its flags. They began torturing animals, and
the animals withdrew from them into the forests and became
hostile to them. They began to struggle for separation, for
isolation, for individuality, for mine and thine. They began
to talk in different languages. They became acquainted with
sorrow and loved sorrow; they thirsted for suffering, and said
that truth could only be attained through suffering. Then
science appeared. As they became wicked they began talking
of brotherhood and humanitarianism, and understood those
ideas. As they became criminal, they invented justice and
drew up whole legal codes in order to observe it, and to
ensure their being kept, set up a guillotine. They hardly
remembered what they had lost, in fact refused to believe that
they had ever been happy and innocent. They even laughed
at the possibility o this happiness in the past, and called it a
dream. They could not even imagine it in definite form and
shape, but, strange and wonderful to relate, though they lost
all faith in their past happiness and called it a legend, they so
longed to be happy and innocent once more that they
succumbed to this desire like children, made an idol of it, set
up temples and worshipped their own idea, their own desire;
though at the same time they fully believed that it was
unattainable and could not be realised, yet they bowed down
to it and adored it with tears! Nevertheless, if it could have
happened that they had returned to the innocent and happy
condition which they had lost, and if someone had shown it
to them again and had asked them whether they wanted to go
back to it, they would certainly have refused. They answered
me:
"We may be deceitful, wicked and unjust, we know it and
weep over it, we grieve over it; we torment and punish
ourselves more perhaps than that merciful Judge Who will
judge us and whose Name we know not. But we have
science, and by the means of it we shall find the truth and we
shall arrive at it consciously. Knowledge is higher than
feeling, the consciousness of life is higher than life. Science
will give us wisdom, wisdom will reveal the laws, and the
knowledge of the laws of happiness is higher than
happiness."
That is what they said, and after saying such things
everyone began to love himself better than anyone else, and
indeed they could not do otherwise. All became so jealous
of the rights of their own personality that they did their very
utmost to curtail and destroy them in others, and made that
the chief thing in their lives. Slavery followed, even
voluntary slavery; the weak eagerly submitted to the strong,
on condition that the latter aided them to subdue the still
weaker. Then there were saints who came to these people,
weeping, and talked to them of their pride, of their loss of
harmony and due proportion, of their loss of shame. They
were laughed at or pelted with stones. Holy blood was shed
on the threshold of the temples. Then there arose men who
began to think how to bring all people together again, so that
everybody, while still loving himself best of all, might not
interfere with others, and all might live together in something
like a harmonious society. Regular wars sprang up over this
idea. All the combatants at the same time firmly believed
that science, wisdom and the instinct of self-preservation
would force men at last to unite into a harmonious and
rational society; and so, meanwhile, to hasten matters, 'the
wise' endeavoured to exterminate as rapidly as possible all
who were 'not wise' and did not understand their idea, that
the latter might not hinder its triumph. But the instinct of
self-preservation grew rapidly weaker; there arose men,
haughty and sensual, who demanded all or nothing. In order
to obtain everything they resorted to crime, and if they did
not succeed - to suicide. There arose religions with a cult of
non-existence and self-destruction for the sake of the
everlasting peace of annihilation. At last these people grew
weary of their meaningless toil, and signs of suffering came
into their faces, and then they proclaimed that suffering was
a beauty, for in suffering alone was there meaning. They
glorified suffering in their songs. I moved about among
them, wringing my hands and weeping over them, but I loved
them perhaps more than in old days when there was no
suffering in their faces and when they were innocent and so
lovely. I loved the earth they had polluted even more than
when it had been a paradise, if only because sorrow had
come to it. Alas! I always loved sorrow and tribulation, but
only for myself, for myself; but I wept over them, pitying
them. I stretched out my hands to them in despair, blaming,
cursing and despising myself. I told them that all this was
my doing, mine alone; that it was I had brought them
corruption, contamination and falsity. I besought them to
crucify me, I taught them how to make a cross. I could not
kill myself, I had not the strength, but I wanted to suffer at
their hands. I yearned for suffering, I longed that my blood
should be drained to the last drop in these agonies. But they
only laughed at me, and began at last to look upon me as
crazy. They justified me, they declared that they had only
got what they wanted themselves, and that all that now was
could not have been otherwise. At last they declared to me
that I was becoming dangerous and that they should lock me
up in a madhouse if I did not hold my tongue. Then such
grief took possession of my soul that my heart was wrung,
and I felt as though I were dying; and then . . . then I awoke.
It was morning, that is, it was not yet daylight, but about
six o'clock. I woke up in the same arm-chair; my candle had
burnt out; everyone was asleep in the captain's room, and
there was a stillness all round, rare in our flat. First of all I
leapt up in great amazement: nothing like this had ever
happened to me before, not even in the most trivial detail; I
had never, for instance, fallen asleep like this in my
arm-chair. While I was standing and coming to myself I
suddenly caught sight of my revolver lying loaded, ready -
but instantly I thrust it away! Oh, now, life, life! I lifted up
my hands and called upon eternal truth, not with words, but
with tears; ecstasy, immeasurable ecstasy flooded my soul.
Yes, life and spreading the good tidings! Oh, I at that
moment resolved to spread the tidings, and resolved it, of
course, for my whole life. I go to spread the tidings, I want
to spread the tidings - of what? Of the truth, for I have seen
it, have seen it with my own eyes, have seen it in all its glory.
And since then I have been preaching! Moreover I love all
those who laugh at me more than any of the rest. Why that
is so I do not know and cannot explain, but so be it. I am
told that I am vague and confused, and if I am vague and
confused now, what shall I be later on? It is true indeed: I
am vague and confused, and perhaps as time goes on I shall
be more so. And of course I shall make many blunders
before I find out how to preach, that is, find out what words
to say, what things to do, for it is a very difficult task. I see
all that as clear as daylight, but, listen, who does not make
mistakes? An yet, you know, all are making for the same
goal, all are striving in the same direction anyway, from the
sage to the lowest robber, only by different roads. It is an old
truth, but this is what is new: I cannot go far wrong. For I
have seen the truth; I have seen and I know that people can
be beautiful and happy without losing the power of living on
earth. I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal
condition of mankind. And it is just this faith of mine that
they laugh at. But how can I help believing it? I have seen
the truth - it is not as though I had invented it with my mind,
I have seen it, seen it, and the living image of it has filled my
soul for ever. I have seen it in such full perfection that I
cannot believe that it is impossible for people to have it. And
so how can I go wrong? I shall make some slips no doubt,
and shall perhaps talk in second-hand language, but not for
long: the living image of what I saw will always be with me
and will always correct and guide me. Oh, I am full of
courage and freshness, and I will go on and on if it were for
a thousand years! Do you know, at first I meant to conceal
the fact that I corrupted them, but that was a mistake - that
was my first mistake! But truth whispered to me that I was
lying, and preserved me and corrected me. But how establish
paradise - I don't know, because I do not know how to put it
into words. After my dream I lost command of words. All
the chief words, anyway, the most necessary ones. But never
mind, I shall go and I shall keep talking, I won't leave off, for
anyway I have seen it with my own eyes, though I cannot
describe what I saw. But the scoffers do not understand that.
It was a dream, they say, delirium, hallucination. Oh! As
though that meant so much! And they are so proud! A
dream! What is a dream? And is not our life a dream? I will
say more. Suppose that this paradise will never come to pass
(that I understand), yet I shall go on preaching it. And yet
how simple it is: in one day, in one hour everything could be
arranged at once! The chief thing is to love others like
yourself, that's the chief thing, and that's everything; nothing
else is wanted - you will find out at once how to arrange it
all. And yet it's an old truth which has been told and retold
a billion times - but it has not formed part of our lives! The
consciousness of life is higher than life, the knowledge of the
laws of happiness is higher than happiness - that is what one
must contend against. And I shall. If only everyone wants
it, it can be arranged at once.
And I tracked down that little girl . . . and I shall go on and
on!
THE END
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Translated by Constance Garnett.
I
I am a ridiculous person. Now they call me a madman. That
would be a promotion if it were not that I remain as
ridiculous in their eyes as before. But now I do not resent it,
they are all dear to me now, even when they laugh at me -
and, indeed, it is just then that they are particularly dear to
me. I could join in their laughter - not exactly at myself, but
through affection for them, if I did not feel so sad as I look at
them. Sad because they do not know the truth and I do know
it. Oh, how hard it is to be the only one who knows the
truth! But they won't understand that. No, they won't
understand it.
In old days I used to be miserable at seeming ridiculous.
Not seeming, but being. I have always been ridiculous, and
I have known it, perhaps, from the hour I was born. Perhaps
from the time I was seven years old I knew I was ridiculous.
Afterwards I went to school, studied at the university, and, do
you know, the more I learned, the more thoroughly I
understood that I was ridiculous. So that it seemed in the end
as though all the sciences I studied at the university existed
only to prove and make evident to me as I went more deeply
into them that I was ridiculous. It was the same with life as
it was with science. With every year the same consciousness
of the ridiculous figure I cut in every relation grew and
strengthened. Everyone always laughed at me. But not one
of them knew or guessed that if there were one man on earth
who knew better than anybody else that I was absurd, it was
myself, and what I resented most of all was that they did not
know that. But that was my own fault; I was so proud that
nothing would have ever induced me to tell it to anyone.
This pride grew in me with the years; and if it had happened
that I allowed myself to confess to anyone that I was
ridiculous, I believe that I should have blown out my brains
the same evening. Oh, how I suffered in my early youth
from the fear that I might give way and confess it to my
schoolfellows. But since I grew to manhood, I have for some
unknown reason become calmer, though I realised my awful
characteristic more fully every year. I say 'unknown', for to
this day I cannot tell why it was. Perhaps it was owing to the
terrible misery that was growing in my soul through
something which was of more consequence than anything
else about me: that something was the conviction that had
come upon me that nothing in the world mattered. I had long
had an inkling of it, but the full realisation came last year
almost suddenly. I suddenly felt that it was all the same to
me whether the world existed or whether there had never
been anything at all: I began to feel with all my being that
there was nothing existing. At first I fancied that many
things had existed in the past, but afterwards I guessed that
there never had been anything in the past either, but that it
had only seemed so for some reason. Little by little I
guessed that there would be nothing in the future either.
Then I left off being angry with people and almost ceased to
notice them. Indeed this showed itself even in the pettiest
trifles: I used, for instance, to knock against people in the
street. And not so much from being lost in thought: what had
I to think about? I had almost given up thinking by that time;
nothing mattered to me. If at least I had solved my
problems! Oh, I had not settled one of them, and how many
there were! But I gave up caring about anything, and all the
problems disappeared.
And it was after that that I found out the truth. I learnt the
truth last November - on the third of November, to be precise
- and I remember every instant since. It was a gloomy
evening, one of the gloomiest possible evenings. I was going
home at about eleven o'clock, and I remember that I thought
that the evening could not be gloomier. Even physically.
Rain had been falling all day, and it had been a cold, gloomy,
almost menacing rain, with, I remember, an unmistakable
spite against mankind. Suddenly between ten and eleven it
had stopped, and was followed by a horrible dampness,
colder and damper than the rain, and a sort of steam was
rising from everything, from every stone in the street, and
from every by-lane if one looked down it as far as one could.
A thought suddenly occurred to me, that if all the street
lamps had been put out it would have been less cheerless,
that the gas made one's heart sadder because it lighted it all
up. I had had scarcely any dinner that day, and had been
spending the evening with an engineer, and two other friends
had been there also. I sat silent - I fancy I bored them. They
talked of something rousing and suddenly they got excited
over it. But they did not really care, I could see that, and
only made a show of being excited. I suddenly said as much
to them. "My friends," I said, "you really do not care one
way or the other." They were not offended, but they laughed
at me. That was because I spoke without any not of
reproach, simply because it did not matter to me. They saw
it did not, and it amused them.
As I was thinking about the gas lamps in the street I
looked up at the sky. The sky was horribly dark, but one
could distinctly see tattered clouds, and between them
fathomless black patches. Suddenly I noticed in one of these
patches a star, and began watching it intently. That was
because that star had given me an idea: I decided to kill
myself that night. I had firmly determined to do so two
months before, and poor as I was, I bought a splendid
revolver that very day, and loaded it. But two months had
passed and it was still lying in my drawer; I was so utterly
indifferent that I wanted to seize a moment when I would not
be so indifferent - why, I don't know. And so for two months
every night that I came home I thought I would shoot myself.
I kept waiting for the right moment. And so now this star
gave me a thought. I made up my mind that it should
certainly be that night. And why the star gave me the
thought I don't know.
And just as I was looking at the sky, this little girl took me
by the elbow. The street was empty, and there was scarcely
anyone to be seen. A cabman was sleeping in the distance in
his cab. It was a child of eight with a kerchief on her head,
wearing nothing but a wretched little dress all soaked with
rain, but I noticed her wet broken shoes and I recall them
now. They caught my eye particularly. She suddenly pulled
me by the elbow and called me. She was not weeping, but
was spasmodically crying out some words which could not
utter properly, because she was shivering and shuddering all
over. She was in terror about something, and kept crying,
"Mammy, mammy!" I turned facing her, I did not say a word
and went on; but she ran, pulling at me, and there was that
note in her voice which in frightened children means despair.
I know that sound. Though she did not articulate the words,
I understood that her mother was dying, or that something of
the sort was happening to them, and that she had run out to
call someone, to find something to help her mother. I did not
go with her; on the contrary, I had an impulse to drive her
away. I told her first to go to a policeman. But clasping her
hands, she ran beside me sobbing and gasping, and would not
leave me. Then I stamped my foot and shouted at her. She
called out "Sir! sir! . . ." but suddenly abandoned me and
rushed headlong across the road. Some other passerby
appeared there, and she evidently flew from me to him.
I mounted up to my fifth storey. I have a room in a flat
where there are other lodgers. Mr room is small and poor,
with a garret window in the shape of a semicircle. I have a
sofa covered with American leather, a table with books on it,
two chairs and a comfortable arm-chair, as old as old can be,
but of the good old-fashioned shape. I sat down, lighted the
candle, and began thinking. In the room next to mine,
through the partition wall, a perfect Bedlam was going on.
It had been going on for the last three days. A retired captain
lived there, and he had half a dozen visitors, gentlemen of
doubtful reputation, drinking vodka and playing stoss with
old cards. The night before there had been a fight, and I
know that two of them had been for a long time engaged in
dragging each other about by the hair. The landlady wanted
to complain, but she was in abject terror of the captain.
There was only one other lodger in the flat, a thin little
regimental lady, on a visit to Petersburg, with three little
children who had been taken ill since they came into the
lodgings. Both she and her children were in mortal fear of
the captain, and lay trembling and crossing themselves all
night, and the youngest child had a sort of fit from fright.
That captain, I know for a fact, sometimes stops people in the
Nevsky Prospect and begs. They won't take him into the
service, but strange to say (that's why I am telling this), all
this month that the captain has been here his behaviour has
caused me no annoyance. I have, of course, tried to avoid his
acquaintance from the very beginning, and he, too, was bored
with me from the first; but I never care how much they shout
the other side of the partition nor how many of them there are
in there: I sit up all night and forget them so completely that
I do not even hear them. I stay awake till daybreak, and have
been going on like that for the last year. I sit up all night in
my arm-chair at the table, doing nothing. I only read by day.
I sit - don't even think; ideas of a sort wander through my
mind and I let them come and go as they will. A whole
candle is burnt every night. I sat down quietly at the table,
took out the revolver and put it down before me. When I had
put it down I asked myself, I remember, "Is that so?" and
answered with complete conviction, "It is." That is, I shall
shoot myself. I knew that I should shoot myself that night
for certain, but how much longer I should go on sitting at the
table I did not know. And no doubt I should have shot
myself if it had not been for that little girl.
II
You see, though nothing mattered to me, I could feel pain,
for instance. If anyone had stuck me it would have hurt me.
It was the same morally: if anything very pathetic happened,
I should have felt pity just as I used to do in old days when
there were things in life that did matter to me. I had felt pity
that evening. I should have certainly helped a child. Why,
then, had I not helped the little girl? Because of an idea that
occurred to me at the time: when she was calling and pulling
at me, a question suddenly arose before me and I could not
settle it. The question was an idle one, but I was vexed. I
was vexed at the reflection that if I were going to make an
end of myself that night, nothing in life ought to have
mattered to me. Why was it that all at once I did not feel a
strange pang, quite incongruous in my position. Really I do
not know better how to convey my fleeting sensation at the
moment, but the sensation persisted at home when I was
sitting at the table, and I was very much irritated as I had not
been for a long time past. One reflection followed another.
I saw clearly that so long as I was still a human being and not
nothingness, I was alive and so could suffer, be angry and
feel shame at my actions. So be it. But if I am going to kill
myself, in two hours, say, what is the little girl to me and
what have I to do with shame or with anything else in the
world? I shall turn into nothing, absolutely nothing. And
can it really be true that the consciousness that I shall
completely cease to exist immediately and so everything else
will cease to exist, does not in the least affect my feeling of
pity for the child nor the feeling of shame after a
contemptible action? I stamped and shouted at the unhappy
child as though to say - not only I feel no pity, but even if I
behave inhumanly and contemptibly, I am free to, for in
another two hours everything will be extinguished. Do you
believe that that was why I shouted that? I am almost
convinced of it now. I seemed clear to me that life and the
world somehow depended upon me now. I may almost say
that the world now seemed created for me alone: if I shot
myself the world would cease to be at least for me. I say
nothing of its being likely that nothing will exist for anyone
when I am gone, and that as soon as my consciousness is
extinguished the whole world will vanish too and become
void like a phantom, as a mere appurtenance of my
consciousness, for possibly all this world and all these people
are only me myself. I remember that as I sat and reflected,
I turned all these new questions that swarmed one after
another quite the other way, and thought of something quite
new. For instance, a strange reflection suddenly occurred to
me, that if I had lived before on the moon or on Mars and
there had committed the most disgraceful and dishonourable
action and had there been put to such shame and ignominy as
one can only conceive and realise in dreams, in nightmares,
and if, finding myself afterwards on earth, I were able to
retain the memory of what I had done on the other planet and
at the same time knew that I should never, under any
circumstances, return there, then looking from the earth to
the moon - should I care or not? Should I feel shame for that
action or not? These were idle and superfluous questions for
the revolver was already lying before me, and I knew in
every fibre of my being that it would happen for certain, but
they excited me and I raged. I could not die now without
having first settled something. In short, the child had saved
me, for I put off my pistol shot for the sake of these
questions. Meanwhile the clamour had begun to subside in
the captain's room: they had finished their game, were
settling down to sleep, and meanwhile were grumbling and
languidly winding up their quarrels. At that point, I suddenly
fell asleep in my chair at the table - a thing which had never
happened to me before. I dropped asleep quite unawares.
Dreams, as we all know, are very queer things: some parts
are presented with appalling vividness, with details worked
up with the elaborate finish of jewellery, while others one
gallops through, as it were, without noticing them at all, as,
for instance, through space and time. Dreams seem to be
spurred on not by reason but by desire, not by the head but
by the heart, and yet what complicated tricks my reason has
played sometimes in dreams, what utterly incomprehensible
things happen to it! Mr brother died five years ago, for
instance. I sometimes dream of him; he takes part in my
affairs, we are very much interested, and yet all through my
dream I quite know and remember that my brother is dead
and buried. How is it that I am not surprised that, though he
is dead, he is here beside me and working with me? Why is
it that my reason fully accepts it? But enough. I will begin
about my dream. Yes, I dreamed a dream, my dream of the
third of November. They tease me now, telling me it was
only a dream. But does it matter whether it was a dream or
reality, if the dream made known to me the truth? If once
one has recognized the truth and seen it, you know that it is
the truth and that there is no other and there cannot be,
whether you are asleep or awake. Let it be a dream, so be it,
but that real life of which you make so much I had meant to
extinguish by suicide, and my dream, my dream - oh, it
revealed to me a different life, renewed, grand and full of
power!
Listen.
III
I have mentioned that I dropped asleep unawares and even
seemed to be still reflecting on the same subjects. I suddenly
dreamt that I picked up the revolver and aimed it straight at
my heart - my heart, and not my head; and I had determined
beforehand to fire at my head, at my right temple. After
aiming at my chest I waited a second or two, and suddenly
my candle, my table, and the wall in front of me began
moving and heaving. I made haste to pull the trigger.
In dreams you sometimes fall from a height, or are
stabbed, or beaten, but you never feel pain unless, perhaps,
you really bruise yourself against the bedstead, then you feel
pain and almost always wake up from it. It was the same in
my dream. I did not feel any pain, but it seemed as though
with my shot everything within me was shaken and
everything was suddenly dimmed, and it grew horribly black
around me. I seemed to be blinded, and it benumbed, and I
was lying on something hard, stretched on my back; I saw
nothing, and could not make the slightest movement. People
were walking and shouting around me, the captain bawled,
the landlady shrieked - and suddenly another break and I was
being carried in a closed coffin. And I felt how the coffin
was shaking and reflected upon it, and for the first time the
idea struck me that I was dead, utterly dead, I knew it and
had no doubt of it, I could neither see nor move and yet I was
feeling and reflecting. But I was soon reconciled to the
position, and as one usually does in a dream, accepted the
facts without disputing them.
And now I was buried in the earth. They all went away, I
was left alone, utterly alone. I did not move. Whenever
before I had imagined being buried the one sensation I
associated with the grave was that of damp and cold. So now
I felt that I was very cold, especially the tips of my toes, but
I felt nothing else.
I lay still, strange to say I expected nothing, accepting
without dispute that a dead man had nothing to expect. But
it was damp. I don't know how long a time passed - whether
an hour or several days, or many days. But all at once a drop
of water fell on my closed left eye, making its way through
the coffin lid; it was followed a minute later by a second,
then a minute later by a third - and so on, regularly every
minute. There was a sudden glow of profound indignation in
my heart, and I suddenly felt in it a pang of physical pain.
"That's my wound," I thought; "that's the bullet . . ." And
drop after drop every minute kept falling on my closed
eyelid. And all at once, not with my voice, but with my
entire being, I called upon the power that was responsible for
all that was happening to me:
"Whoever you may be, if you exist, and if anything more
rational that what is happening here is possible, suffer it to be
here now. But if you are revenging yourself upon me for my
senseless suicide by the hideousness and absurdity of this
subsequent existence, then let me tell you that no torture
could ever equal the contempt which I shall go on dumbly
feeling, though my martyrdom may last a million years!"
I made this appeal and held my peace. There was a full
minute of unbroken silence and again another drop fell, but
I knew with infinite unshakable certainty that everything
would change immediately. And behold my grave suddenly
was rent asunder, that is, I don't know whether it was opened
or dug up, but I was caught up by some dark and unknown
being and we found ourselves in space. I suddenly regained
my sight. It was the dead of night, and never, never had
there been such darkness. We were flying through space far
away from the earth. I did not question the being who was
taking me; I was proud and waited. I assured myself that I
was not afraid, and was thrilled with ecstasy at the thought
that I was not afraid. I do not know how long we were
flying, I cannot imagine; it happened as it always does in
dreams when you skip over space and time, and the laws of
thought and existence, and only pause upon the points for
which the heart yearns. I remember that I suddenly saw in
the darkness a star. "Is that Sirius?" I asked impulsively,
though I had not meant to ask questions.
"No, that is the star you saw between the clouds when you
were coming home," the being who was carrying me replied.
I knew that it had something like a human face. Strange
to say, I did not like that being, in fact I felt an intense
aversion for it. I had expected complete non-existence, and
that was why I had put a bullet through my heart. And here
I was in the hands of a creature not human, of course, but yet
living, existing. "And so there is life beyond the grave," I
thought with the strange frivolity one has in dreams. But in
its inmost depth my heart remained unchanged. "And if I
have got to exist again," I thought, "and live once more under
the control of some irresistible power, I won't be vanquished
and humiliated."
"You know that I am afraid of you and despise me for
that," I said suddenly to my companion, unable to refrain
from the humiliating question which implied a confession,
and feeling my humiliation stab my heart as with a pin. He
did not answer my question, but all at once I felt that he was
not even despising me, but was laughing at me and had no
compassion for me, and that our journey had an unknown
and mysterious object that concerned me only. Fear was
growing in my heart. Something was mutely and painfully
communicated to me from my silent companion, and
permeated my whole being. We were flying through dark,
unknown space. I had for some time lost sight of the
constellations familiar to my eyes. I knew that there were
stars in the heavenly spaces the light of which took thousands
or millions of years to reach the earth. Perhaps we were
already flying through those spaces. I expected something
with a terrible anguish that tortured my heart. And suddenly
I was thrilled by a familiar feeling that stirred me to the
depths: I suddenly caught sight of our sun! I knew that it
could not be our sun, that gave life to our earth, and that we
were an infinite distance from our sun, but for some reason
I knew in my whole being that it was a sun exactly like ours,
a duplicate of it. A sweet, thrilling feeling resounded with
ecstasy in my heart: the kindred power of the same light
which had given me light stirred an echo in my heart and
awakened it, and I had a sensation of life, the old life of the
past for the first time since I had been in the grave.
"But if that is the sun, if that is exactly the same as our
sun," I cried, "where is the earth?"
And my companion pointed to a star twinkling in the
distance with an emerald light. We were flying straight
towards it.
"And are such repetitions possible in the universe? Can
that be the law of Nature? . . . And if that is an earth there,
can it be just the same earth as ours . . . just the same, as
poor, as unhappy, but precious and beloved for ever,
arousing in the most ungrateful of her children the same
poignant love for her that we feel for our earth?" I cried out,
shaken by irresistible, ecstatic love for the old familiar earth
which I had left. The image of the poor child whom I had
repulsed flashed through my mind.
"You shall see it all," answered my companion, and there
was a note of sorrow in his voice.
But we were rapidly approaching the planet. It was
growing before my eyes; I could already distinguish the
ocean, the outline of Europe; and suddenly a feeling of a
great and holy jealousy glowed in my heart.
"How can it be repeated and what for? I love and can love
only that earth which I have left, stained with my blood,
when, in my ingratitude, I quenched my life with a bullet in
my heart. But I have never, never ceased to love that earth,
and perhaps on the very night I parted from it I loved it more
than ever. Is there suffering upon this new earth? On our
earth we can only love with suffering and through suffering.
We cannot love otherwise, and we know of no other sort of
love. I want suffering in order to love. I long, I thirst, this
very instant, to kiss with tears the earth that I have left, and
I don't want, I won't accept life on any other!"
But my companion had already left me. I suddenly, quite
without noticing how, found myself on this other earth, in the
bright light of a sunny day, fair as paradise. I believe I was
standing on one of the islands that make up on our globe the
Greek archipelago, or on the coast of the mainland facing
that archipelago. Oh, everything was exactly as it is with us,
only everything seemed to have a festive radiance, the
splendour of some great, holy triumph attained at last. The
caressing sea, green as emerald, splashed softly upon the
shore and kissed it with manifest, almost conscious love.
The tall, lovely trees stood in all the glory of their blossom,
and their innumerable leaves greeted me, I am certain, with
their soft, caressing rustle and seemed to articulate words of
love. The grass glowed with bright and fragrant flowers.
Birds were flying in flocks in the air, and perched fearlessly
on my shoulders and arms and joyfully struck me with their
darling, fluttering wings. And at last I saw and knew the
people of this happy land. That came to me of themselves,
they surrounded me, kissed me. The children of the sun, the
children of their sun - oh, how beautiful they were! Never
had I seen on our own earth such beauty in mankind. Only
perhaps in our children, in their earliest years, one might
find, some remote faint reflection of this beauty. The eyes of
these happy people shone with a clear brightness. Their
faces were radiant with the light of reason and fullness of a
serenity that comes of perfect understanding, but those faces
were gay; in their words and voices there was a note of
childlike joy. Oh, from the first moment, from the first
glance at them, I understood it all! It was the earth
untarnished by the Fall; on it lived people who had not
sinned. They lived just in such a paradise as that in which,
according to all the legends of mankind, our first parents
lived before they sinned; the only difference was that all this
earth was the same paradise. These people, laughing
joyfully, thronged round me and caressed me; they took me
home with them, and each of them tried to reassure me. Oh,
they asked me no questions, but they seemed, I fancied, to
know everything without asking, and they wanted to make
haste to smoothe away the signs of suffering from my face.
IV
And do you know what? Well, granted that it was only a
dream, yet the sensation of the love of those innocent and
beautiful people has remained with me for ever, and I feel as
though their love is still flowing out to me from over there.
I have seen them myself, have known them and been
convinced; I loved them, I suffered for them afterwards. Oh,
I understood at once even at the time that in many things I
could not understand them at all; as an up-to-date Russian
progressive and contemptible Petersburger, it struck me as
inexplicable that, knowing so much, they had, for instance,
no science like our. But I soon realised that their knowledge
was gained and fostered by intuitions different from those of
us on earth, and that their aspirations, too, were quite
different. They desired nothing and were at peace; they did
not aspire to knowledge of life as we aspire to understand it,
because their lives were full. But their knowledge was
higher and deeper than ours; for our science seeks to explain
what life is, aspires to understand it in order to teach others
how to love, while they without science knew how to live;
and that I understood, but I could not understand their
knowledge. They showed me their trees, and I could not
understand the intense love with which they looked at them;
it was as though they were talking with creatures like
themselves. And perhaps I shall not be mistaken if I say that
they conversed with them. Yes, they had found their
language, and I am convinced that the trees understood them.
They looked at all Nature like that - at the animals who lived
in peace with them and did not attack them, but loved them,
conquered by their love. They pointed to the stars and told
me something about them which I could not understand, but
I am convinced that they were somehow in touch with the
stars, not only in thought, but by some living channel. Oh,
these people did not persist in trying to make me understand
them, they loved me without that, but I knew that they would
never understand me, and so I hardly spoke to them about
our earth. I only kissed in their presence the earth on which
they lived and mutely worshipped them themselves. And
they saw that and let me worship them without being abashed
at my adoration, for they themselves loved much. They were
not unhappy on my account when at times I kissed their feet
with tears, joyfully conscious of the love with which they
would respond to mine. At times I asked myself with
wonder how it was they were able never to offend a creature
like me, and never once to arouse a feeling of jealousy or
envy in me? Often I wondered how it could be that, boastful
and untruthful as I was, I never talked to them of what I
knew - of which, of course, they had no notion - that I was
never tempted to do so by a desire to astonish or even to
benefit them.
They were as gay and sportive as children. They
wandered about their lovely woods and copses, they sang
their lovely songs; their fair was light - the fruits of their
trees, the honey from their woods, and the milk of the
animals who loved them. The work they did for food and
raiment was brief and not labourious. They loved and begot
children, but I never noticed in them the impulse of that cruel
sensuality which overcomes almost every man on this earth,
all and each, and is the source of almost every sin of mankind
on earth. They rejoiced at the arrival of children as new
beings to share their happiness. There was no quarrelling, no
jealousy among them, and they did not even know what the
words meant. Their children were the children of all, for
they all made up one family. There was scarcely any illness
among them, though there was death; but their old people
died peacefully, as though falling asleep, giving blessings
and smiles to those who surrounded them to take their last
farewell with bright and lovely smiles. I never saw grief or
tears on those occasions, but only love, which reached the
point of ecstasy, but a calm ecstasy, made perfect and
contemplative. One might think that they were still in
contact with the departed after death, and that their earthly
union was not cut short by death. They scarcely understood
me when I questioned them about immortality, but evidently
they were so convinced of it without reasoning that it was not
for them a question at all. They had no temples, but they had
a real living and uninterrupted sense of oneness with the
whole of the universe; they had no creed, but they had a
certain knowledge that when their earthly joy had reached the
limits of earthly nature, then there would come for them, for
the living and for the dead, a still greater fullness of contact
with the whole of the universe. They looked forward to that
moment with joy, but without haste, not pining for it, but
seeming to have a foretaste of it in their hearts, of which they
talked to one another.
In the evening before going to sleep they liked singing in
musical and harmonious chorus. In those songs they
expressed all the sensations that the parting day had given
them, sang its glories and took leave of it. They sang the
praises of nature, of the sea, of the woods. They liked
making songs about one another, and praised each other like
children; they were the simplest songs, but they sprang from
their hearts and went to one's heart. And not only in their
songs but in all their lives they seemed to do nothing but
admire one another. It was like being in love with each
other, but an all-embracing, universal feeling.
Some of their songs, solemn and rapturous, I scarcely
understood at all. Though I understood the words I could
never fathom their full significance. It remained, as it were,
beyond the grasp of my mind, yet my heart unconsciously
absorbed it more and more. I often told them that I had had
a presentiment of it long before, that this joy and glory had
come to me on our earth in the form of a yearning
melancholy that at times approached insufferable sorrow;
that I had had a foreknowledge of them all and of their glory
in the dreams of my heart and the visions of my mind; that
often on our earth I could not look at the setting sun without
tears. . . that in my hatred for the men of our earth there was
always a yearning anguish: why could I not hate them
without loving them? why could I not help forgiving them?
and in my love for them there was a yearning grief: why
could I not love them without hating them? They listened to
me, and I saw they could not conceive what I was saying, but
I did not regret that I had spoken to them of it: I knew that
they understood the intensity of my yearning anguish over
those whom I had left. But when they looked at me with
their sweet eyes full of love, when I felt that in their presence
my heart, too, became as innocent and just as theirs, the
feeling of the fullness of life took my breath away, and I
worshipped them in silence.
Oh, everyone laughs in my face now, and assures me that
one cannot dream of such details as I am telling now, that I
only dreamed or felt one sensation that arose in my heart in
delirium and made up the details myself when I woke up.
And when I told them that perhaps it really was so, my God,
how they shouted with laughter in my face, and what mirth
I caused! Oh, yes, of course I was overcome by the mere
sensation of my dream, and that was all that was preserved in
my cruelly wounded heart; but the actual forms and images
of my dream, that is, the very ones I really saw at the very
time of my dream, were filled with such harmony, were so
lovely and enchanting and were so actual, that on awakening
I was, of course, incapable of clothing them in our poor
language, so that they were bound to become blurred in my
mind; and so perhaps I really was forced afterwards to make
up the details, and so of course to distort them in my
passionate desire to convey some at least of them as quickly
as I could. But on the other hand, how can I help believing
that it was all true? It was perhaps a thousand times brighter,
happier and more joyful than I describe it. Granted that I
dreamed it, yet it must have been real. You know, I will tell
you a secret: perhaps it was not a dream at all! For then
something happened so awful, something so horribly true,
that it could not have been imagined in a dream. My heart
may have originated the dream, but would my heart alone
have been capable of originating the awful event which
happened to me afterwards? How could I alone have
invented it or imagined it in my dream? Could my petty
heart and fickle, trivial mind have risen to such a revelation
of truth? Oh, judge for yourselves: hitherto I have concealed
it, but now I will tell the truth. The fact is that I . . .
corrupted them all!
V
Yes, yes, it ended in my corrupting them all! How it could
come to pass I do not know, but I remember it clearly. The
dream embraced thousands of years and left in me only a
sense of the whole. I only know that I was the cause of their
sin and downfall. Like a vile trichina, like a germ of the
plague infecting whole kingdoms, so I contaminated all this
earth, so happy and sinless before my coming. They learnt
to lie, grew fond of lying, and discovered the charm of
falsehood. Oh, at first perhaps it began innocently, with a
jest, coquetry, with amorous play, perhaps indeed with a
germ, but that germ of falsity made its way into their hearts
and pleased them. Then sensuality was soon begotten,
sensuality begot jealousy, jealousy - cruelty . . . Oh, I don't
know, I don't remember; but soon, very soon the first blood
was shed. They marvelled and were horrified, and began to
be split up and divided. They formed into unions, but it was
against one another. Reproaches, upbraidings followed.
They came to know shame, and shame brought them to
virtue. The conception of honour sprang up, and every union
began waving its flags. They began torturing animals, and
the animals withdrew from them into the forests and became
hostile to them. They began to struggle for separation, for
isolation, for individuality, for mine and thine. They began
to talk in different languages. They became acquainted with
sorrow and loved sorrow; they thirsted for suffering, and said
that truth could only be attained through suffering. Then
science appeared. As they became wicked they began talking
of brotherhood and humanitarianism, and understood those
ideas. As they became criminal, they invented justice and
drew up whole legal codes in order to observe it, and to
ensure their being kept, set up a guillotine. They hardly
remembered what they had lost, in fact refused to believe that
they had ever been happy and innocent. They even laughed
at the possibility o this happiness in the past, and called it a
dream. They could not even imagine it in definite form and
shape, but, strange and wonderful to relate, though they lost
all faith in their past happiness and called it a legend, they so
longed to be happy and innocent once more that they
succumbed to this desire like children, made an idol of it, set
up temples and worshipped their own idea, their own desire;
though at the same time they fully believed that it was
unattainable and could not be realised, yet they bowed down
to it and adored it with tears! Nevertheless, if it could have
happened that they had returned to the innocent and happy
condition which they had lost, and if someone had shown it
to them again and had asked them whether they wanted to go
back to it, they would certainly have refused. They answered
me:
"We may be deceitful, wicked and unjust, we know it and
weep over it, we grieve over it; we torment and punish
ourselves more perhaps than that merciful Judge Who will
judge us and whose Name we know not. But we have
science, and by the means of it we shall find the truth and we
shall arrive at it consciously. Knowledge is higher than
feeling, the consciousness of life is higher than life. Science
will give us wisdom, wisdom will reveal the laws, and the
knowledge of the laws of happiness is higher than
happiness."
That is what they said, and after saying such things
everyone began to love himself better than anyone else, and
indeed they could not do otherwise. All became so jealous
of the rights of their own personality that they did their very
utmost to curtail and destroy them in others, and made that
the chief thing in their lives. Slavery followed, even
voluntary slavery; the weak eagerly submitted to the strong,
on condition that the latter aided them to subdue the still
weaker. Then there were saints who came to these people,
weeping, and talked to them of their pride, of their loss of
harmony and due proportion, of their loss of shame. They
were laughed at or pelted with stones. Holy blood was shed
on the threshold of the temples. Then there arose men who
began to think how to bring all people together again, so that
everybody, while still loving himself best of all, might not
interfere with others, and all might live together in something
like a harmonious society. Regular wars sprang up over this
idea. All the combatants at the same time firmly believed
that science, wisdom and the instinct of self-preservation
would force men at last to unite into a harmonious and
rational society; and so, meanwhile, to hasten matters, 'the
wise' endeavoured to exterminate as rapidly as possible all
who were 'not wise' and did not understand their idea, that
the latter might not hinder its triumph. But the instinct of
self-preservation grew rapidly weaker; there arose men,
haughty and sensual, who demanded all or nothing. In order
to obtain everything they resorted to crime, and if they did
not succeed - to suicide. There arose religions with a cult of
non-existence and self-destruction for the sake of the
everlasting peace of annihilation. At last these people grew
weary of their meaningless toil, and signs of suffering came
into their faces, and then they proclaimed that suffering was
a beauty, for in suffering alone was there meaning. They
glorified suffering in their songs. I moved about among
them, wringing my hands and weeping over them, but I loved
them perhaps more than in old days when there was no
suffering in their faces and when they were innocent and so
lovely. I loved the earth they had polluted even more than
when it had been a paradise, if only because sorrow had
come to it. Alas! I always loved sorrow and tribulation, but
only for myself, for myself; but I wept over them, pitying
them. I stretched out my hands to them in despair, blaming,
cursing and despising myself. I told them that all this was
my doing, mine alone; that it was I had brought them
corruption, contamination and falsity. I besought them to
crucify me, I taught them how to make a cross. I could not
kill myself, I had not the strength, but I wanted to suffer at
their hands. I yearned for suffering, I longed that my blood
should be drained to the last drop in these agonies. But they
only laughed at me, and began at last to look upon me as
crazy. They justified me, they declared that they had only
got what they wanted themselves, and that all that now was
could not have been otherwise. At last they declared to me
that I was becoming dangerous and that they should lock me
up in a madhouse if I did not hold my tongue. Then such
grief took possession of my soul that my heart was wrung,
and I felt as though I were dying; and then . . . then I awoke.
It was morning, that is, it was not yet daylight, but about
six o'clock. I woke up in the same arm-chair; my candle had
burnt out; everyone was asleep in the captain's room, and
there was a stillness all round, rare in our flat. First of all I
leapt up in great amazement: nothing like this had ever
happened to me before, not even in the most trivial detail; I
had never, for instance, fallen asleep like this in my
arm-chair. While I was standing and coming to myself I
suddenly caught sight of my revolver lying loaded, ready -
but instantly I thrust it away! Oh, now, life, life! I lifted up
my hands and called upon eternal truth, not with words, but
with tears; ecstasy, immeasurable ecstasy flooded my soul.
Yes, life and spreading the good tidings! Oh, I at that
moment resolved to spread the tidings, and resolved it, of
course, for my whole life. I go to spread the tidings, I want
to spread the tidings - of what? Of the truth, for I have seen
it, have seen it with my own eyes, have seen it in all its glory.
And since then I have been preaching! Moreover I love all
those who laugh at me more than any of the rest. Why that
is so I do not know and cannot explain, but so be it. I am
told that I am vague and confused, and if I am vague and
confused now, what shall I be later on? It is true indeed: I
am vague and confused, and perhaps as time goes on I shall
be more so. And of course I shall make many blunders
before I find out how to preach, that is, find out what words
to say, what things to do, for it is a very difficult task. I see
all that as clear as daylight, but, listen, who does not make
mistakes? An yet, you know, all are making for the same
goal, all are striving in the same direction anyway, from the
sage to the lowest robber, only by different roads. It is an old
truth, but this is what is new: I cannot go far wrong. For I
have seen the truth; I have seen and I know that people can
be beautiful and happy without losing the power of living on
earth. I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal
condition of mankind. And it is just this faith of mine that
they laugh at. But how can I help believing it? I have seen
the truth - it is not as though I had invented it with my mind,
I have seen it, seen it, and the living image of it has filled my
soul for ever. I have seen it in such full perfection that I
cannot believe that it is impossible for people to have it. And
so how can I go wrong? I shall make some slips no doubt,
and shall perhaps talk in second-hand language, but not for
long: the living image of what I saw will always be with me
and will always correct and guide me. Oh, I am full of
courage and freshness, and I will go on and on if it were for
a thousand years! Do you know, at first I meant to conceal
the fact that I corrupted them, but that was a mistake - that
was my first mistake! But truth whispered to me that I was
lying, and preserved me and corrected me. But how establish
paradise - I don't know, because I do not know how to put it
into words. After my dream I lost command of words. All
the chief words, anyway, the most necessary ones. But never
mind, I shall go and I shall keep talking, I won't leave off, for
anyway I have seen it with my own eyes, though I cannot
describe what I saw. But the scoffers do not understand that.
It was a dream, they say, delirium, hallucination. Oh! As
though that meant so much! And they are so proud! A
dream! What is a dream? And is not our life a dream? I will
say more. Suppose that this paradise will never come to pass
(that I understand), yet I shall go on preaching it. And yet
how simple it is: in one day, in one hour everything could be
arranged at once! The chief thing is to love others like
yourself, that's the chief thing, and that's everything; nothing
else is wanted - you will find out at once how to arrange it
all. And yet it's an old truth which has been told and retold
a billion times - but it has not formed part of our lives! The
consciousness of life is higher than life, the knowledge of the
laws of happiness is higher than happiness - that is what one
must contend against. And I shall. If only everyone wants
it, it can be arranged at once.
And I tracked down that little girl . . . and I shall go on and
on!
THE END