Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (837 page)
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Authors: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“‘Receiving bread from us, they will see clearly that we take the bread made by their hands from them, to give it to them, without any miracle. They will see that we do not change the stones to bread, but in truth they will be more thankful for taking it from our hands than for the bread itself! For they will remember only too well that in old days, without our help, even the bread they made turned to stones in their hands, while since they have come back to us, the very stones have turned to bread in their hands. Too, too well will they know the value of complete submission! And until men know that, they will be unhappy. Who is most to blame for their not knowing it?-speak! Who scattered the flock and sent it astray on unknown paths? But the flock will come together again and will submit once more, and then it will be once for all. Then we shall give them the quiet humble happiness of weak creatures such as they are by nature. Oh, we shall persuade them at last not to be proud, for Thou didst lift them up and thereby taught them to be proud. We shall show them that they are weak, that they are only pitiful children, but that childlike happiness is the sweetest of all. They will become timid and will look to us and huddle close to us in fear, as chicks to the hen. They will marvel at us and will be awe-stricken before us, and will be proud at our being so powerful and clever that we have been able to subdue such a turbulent flock of thousands of millions. They will tremble impotently before our wrath, their minds will grow fearful, they will be quick to shed tears like women and children, but they will be just as ready at a sign from us to pass to laughter and rejoicing, to happy mirth and childish song. Yes, we shall set them to work, but in their leisure hours we shall make their life like a child’s game, with children’s songs and innocent dance. Oh, we shall allow them even sin, they are weak and helpless, and they will love us like children because we allow them to sin. We shall tell them that every sin will be expiated, if it is done with our permission, that we allow them to sin because we love them, and the punishment for these sins we take upon ourselves. And we shall take it upon ourselves, and they will adore us as their saviours who have taken on themselves their sins before God. And they will have no secrets from us. We shall allow or forbid them to live with their wives and mistresses, to have or not to have children according to whether they have been obedient or disobedient — and they will submit to us gladly and cheerfully. The most painful secrets of their conscience, all, all they will bring to us, and we shall have an answer for all. And they will be glad to believe our answer, for it will save them from the great anxiety and terrible agony they endure at present in making a free decision for themselves. And all will be happy, all the millions of creatures except the hundred thousand who rule over them. For only we, we who guard the mystery, shall be unhappy. There will be thousands of millions of happy babes, and a hundred thousand sufferers who have taken upon themselves the curse of the knowledge of good and evil. Peacefully they will die, peacefully they will expire in Thy name, and beyond the grave they will find nothing but death. But we shall keep the secret, and for their happiness we shall allure them with the reward of heaven and eternity. Though if there were anything in the other world, it certainly would not be for such as they. It is prophesied that Thou wilt come again in victory, Thou wilt come with Thy chosen, the proud and strong, but we will say that they have only saved themselves, but we have saved all. We are told that the harlot who sits upon the beast, and holds in her hands the mystery, shall be put to shame, that the weak will rise up again, and will rend her royal purple and will strip naked her loathsome body. But then I will stand up and point out to Thee the thousand millions of happy children who have known no sin. And we who have taken their sins upon us for their happiness will stand up before Thee and say: “Judge us if Thou canst and darest.” Know that I fear Thee not. Know that I too have been in the wilderness, I too have lived on roots and locusts, I too prized the freedom with which Thou hast blessed men, and I too was striving to stand among Thy elect, among the strong and powerful, thirsting “to make up the number.” But I awakened and would not serve madness. I turned back and joined the ranks of those who have corrected Thy work. I left the proud and went back to the humble, for the happiness of the humble. What I say to Thee will come to pass, and our dominion will be built up. I repeat, to-morrow Thou shalt see that obedient flock who at a sign from me will hasten to heap up the hot cinders about the pile on which I shall burn Thee for coming to hinder us. For if anyone has ever deserved our fires, it is Thou. To-morrow I shall burn Thee. Dixi.’”*
* I have spoken.
Dostoyevsky’s last address and the building in which he died — now a museum in St. Petersburg
Dostoyevsky’s study in St. Petersburg
Translated by S. Koteliansky and J. Middleton Murry
CONTENTS
THE DREAM OF A QUEER FELLOW
I
I am a queer fellow. They call me mad now. That would be a promotion, if I were not still the same queer fellow for them as before. But I’m not cross with them any more; now I love them all — even when they laugh at me, somehow I love them more than ever. I would laugh with them myself — not at myself, but for love of them — if it did not make me so sad to look at them; sad, because they do not know the truth, and I do. How hard it is for one man who knows the truth! But they won’t understand this. They won’t understand it.
Before, I used to suffer deeply, because I seemed queer. Not seemed, but was. I always was queer; perhaps I ‘ve known it from the day of my birth. Perhaps when I was only seven I knew that I was queer. Afterwards I went to school, then to the university, and — well, the more I studied the more I discovered that I was queer. So that finally it seemed to me that all my university knowledge existed only to explain and prove to me, the deeper I plunged into it, that I was queer. Each day increased and strengthened my consciousness that I looked queer in every way. Everybody always laughed at me. But no t one of them knew or guessed that if there was a man on earth who really knew how queer I was, that man was myself; their not knowing that was quite the most insulting thing of all, but there I was to blame. I was always so proud that nothing would induce me to confess that to any one. My pride increased with years, and I verily believe that if it had happened that I had allowed myself to confess that I was queer to any living soul, I would have blown out my brains with a revolver on the spot. Oh, how much I suffered as a youth for fear I might not be able to hold out, and might suddenly, somehow, confess to my comrades.
But since I became a young man, though each year I realised my awful nature more and more, for some reason I have been a little calmer. For some reason or other, I say, for even now I cannot define it. Perhaps because a terrible anguish had been born in my soul of one thing which was infinitely higher than the whole of me — it was the conviction that had descended upon me that it is all the same, everywhere on earth. I had suspected it long before, but the full eonviction came somehow suddenly last year. I suddenly felt that it would be all the same to me if the world really existed, or if there was nothing anywhere. I began to feel with all my being that there had been nothing behind me. At first I thought that there really had been a great deal, but afterwards I guessed that even before there had been nothing, but it had only seemed so, somehow. Little by little I became convince’d that there never would be anything. Then I suddenly stopped being angry with people, and began almost not to notice them. Indeed, that was shown in the most trivial things. It would happen, for instance, that I would walk in the street and knoek into people. Not beeause I was lost in thought — what had I to think about, I had utterly ceased to think by then? — it was all the same to me. And as for solving questions; oh, I didn’t solve one, yet what thousands there were! But it had become all the same to me, and all the questions disappeared.
Just after that, I learned the truth. I learned the truth last November, the 3rd of November last, and I remember every instant since that day. It was a gloomy night, the gloomiest night you can conceive. I was going home at about eleven o’cloek, and I remember I thought that it would be impossible to find a gloomier hour. Even physically. It had poured with rain all day, the coldest and gloomiest rain; some of it, I remember, was positively menacing, manifestly hostile to humankind. Suddenly, at eleven o’clock it stopped, and a horrible dampness followed, damper even and colder than when the rain was pouring. A mist ascended from everything, from every stone in the street, and from every alley, when I looked away from the street into the depths. I suddenly thought that it would be comfortable if the gas went out, for the heart was sadder with the gas alight, because it lit up all those mists. That day I had had praetieally no food; from the early evening I had been sitting with an engineer I knew, who had two other friends with him. I was silent all the while, and I believe I bored them. They talked of something provocative and suddenly they became quite exeited. But it was really all the same to them. I saw that. They were exeited all for nothing. Suddenly I broke out: ‘ I say, gentlemen, . . . but it’s all the same to you.’ They were not offended, but they all began to laugh at me. That was because I spoke without any reproach, just’ because it was all the same to me. They saw it was all the same to me, and cheered up.
While I was thinking about the gas in the street, I glanced at the sky. The sky was terribly black, but I could clearly distinguish the ragged clouds, and between them bottomless spaces of black. Suddenly I caught sight of a little star in one of these spaces and began to stare at it. For the little star had given me an idea: I proposed to kill myself that night. 1 had firmly decided to kill myself two months before, and though I was very poor, I bought myself an excellent revolver and loaded it that very same day. Two months had passed since and it still lay in my drawer; it was so much the same to me that at last I longed to find a day when it would not be all the same, — why, I do not know. So, every night for these two months, as I returned home, I thought that I would shoot myself. But all the while I was waiting for the moment. Now the little star had given me the idea, and I decided that it would happen that night infallibly. But why the little star should have given me the idea — I do not know.
And just as I was looking at the sky, that girl suddenly caught me by the arm. The street was already empty; hardly a soul was in it. Far away, a cabman was asleep on his box. The girl was about eight years old, and wore a little shawl. She had no coat and was wet through. But I particularly remember her wet, ragged boots; I remember them even now. They caught my eye particularly. She suddenly began to pull me by the arm and to cry out. She did not weep, but cried out some words abruptly somehow. She could not utter the words properly because she continually shivered all over from the cold. She was terrified by something and cried despairingly: ‘ Mother, Mother!’ I turned my face towards her, but did not speak. I walked on. But she ran and pulled at me. In her voice was the sound which with very frightened people means despair. I know that sound. Though she had not uttered the words, I realised that her mother was dying somewhere, or something had happened to them, and she had run out to call some one or find something to help mother. But I did not follow her; on the contrary, the idea suddenly came to me to drive her away. First, I told her to find a policeman. But she suddenly clasped her hands together and kept running at my side, sobbing and breathless, and would not leave me. Then I stamped my foot and shouted at her. She only cried out: ‘ Please, sir, sir . . .’; but suddenly she left me and rushed across the street. A passer-by appeared. Evidently she had rushed from me to him.