SHATOV: I sent a very clear letter.
PETER: We didn’t understand it clearly. They say that you might denounce them now. I defended you.
SHATOV: Yes, just as there are lawyers who make a business of getting people hanged.
PETER: In any case, they have agreed now for you to be free if only you return the printing press and the papers.
PETER: Where is the press?
SHATOV: In the forest. Near the Brykovo clearing. I buried everything in the ground.
PETER (ivith a sort of smile): In the ground? Very good! Why, it’s very good indeed!
(There is a knock at the door. The plotters enter: LIPUTIN, VIRGINSKY, SHIGALOV, LYAMSHIN, and a defrocked seminarian. As they settle doivn, they are already talking, SHATOV and KIRILOV in a comer.)
VIRGINSKY (at the door): Ah! Here is Stavrogin. LIPUTIN: He’s just in time.
THE SEMINARIAN: Gentlemen, I am not accustomed to waste my time. Since you were so kind as to invite me to this meeting, may I ask a question? LIPUTIN: GO ahead, comrade, go ahead. Everyone here likes you since you played that practical joke on the woman distributing religious tracts by sticking obscene photographs in her Bibles. THE SEMINARIAN: It wasn’t a practical joke. I did it out of conviction, being of the opinion that God must be destroyed.
LIPUTIN: Is that what they teach in the seminary? THE SEMINARIAN: No. In the seminary they suffer because of God. Consequently they hate him. In any case, here is my question: has the meeting begun or not?
SHIGALOV: Allow me to point’but that we continue to talk aimlessly. Can the authorities tell us why we are here?
(All look toward Verkhovensky, tuho changes his position as if he avere about to speak.) LIPUTIN (in a hurry): Lyamshin, please, sit down at the piano.
LYAMSHIN: What? Again! It’s the same every time! LIPUTIN: If you play, no one can hear us. Play, Lvamshin! For the cause!
VIRGINSKY: Why, yes, play, Lyamshin.
(LYASSSHIN sits doivn at the piano and plays a ivaltz haphazardly. All look toward VERKHOVENSKY, who, far from speaking, has resumed his somnolent position.)
LIPUTIN: Verkhovensky, have you no declaration to make?
PETER (yawning): Absolutely none. But I should like a glass of cognac.
LIPUTIN: And you, Stavrogin?
STAVROGIN: NO, thanks, I’ve given up drinking. LIPUTIN: I’m not talking of cognac. I’m asking you if you want to speak.
STAVROGIN: Speak? What about? No. (VIRGINSKY gives the bottle of cognac to PETER VERKHOVENSKY, who drinks a great deal during the evening. But SHIGALOV rises, dull and somberlooking, and lays on the table a thick notebook filled with fine writing, which all look at with fear.)
SHIGALOV: I request the floor. VIRGINSKY: You have it. Take it. (LYAMSHIN plays louder.)
THE SEMINARIAN: Please, Mr. Lyamshin, but really we can’t hear ourselves.
(LYAMSHIN stops playing.)
SHIGALOV: Gentlemen, in asking for your attention, I owe you a few preliminary explanations. PETER: Lyamshin, pass me the scissors that are on the piano.
LYAMSHIN: Scissors? For what?
PETER: I forgot to cut my nails. I should have done so three days ago. Go on, Shigalov, go on; I’m not listening.
SHIGALOV: Having devoted myself wholeheartedly to studying the society of the future, I reached the conclusion that from the earliest times down to the present all creators of social systems simply indulged in nonsense. So I had to build my own system of organization. Here it is! (He strikes the notebook.) To tell the truth, my system is not completely finished. In its present state, however, it deserves discussion. For I shall have to explain to you also the contradiction to which it leads. Starting from unlimited freedom, I end up in fact with unlimited despotism.
VIRGINSKY: That will be hard to make the people swallow!
SHIGALOV: Yes. And yet—let me insist upon it— there is not and there cannot be any other solution to the social problem than mine. It may lead to despair, but there is no other way.
THE SEMINARIAN: If I have understood properly, the agenda concerns Mr. Shigalov’s vast despair. SHIGALOV: Your expression is more nearly correct than you think. Yes, I was brought smack up against despair. And yet there was no other way out but my solution. If you don’t adopt it, you will do nothing worth while. And someday you’ll come around to it.
THE SEMINARIAN: I suggest voting to find out just how far Mr. Shigalov’s despair interests us and whether it is necessary for us to devote our meeting to the reading of his book.
VIRGINSKY: Let’s vote! Let’s vote! LYAMSHIN: Yes, yes.
LIPUTIN:’ Gentlemen! Gentlemen! Let’s not get excited. Shigalov is too modest. I have read his book. Certain of its conclusions are debatable. But he started from human nature as we now know it through science and he really solved the social problem.
THE SEMINARIAN: Really?
LIPUTIN: Yes indeed. He proposes dividing humanity into two unequal parts. About a tenth will have absolute freedom and unlimited authority over the other nine tenths, who will have to lose their personality and become like a flock of sheep. Kept in the state of complete submission of sheep, they will, on the other hand, achieve the state of innocence of sheep. In short, it will be Eden, except that men will have to work. SHIGALOV: Yes. That’s how I achieve equality. All men are slaves and equal in their slavery. They can’t be equal otherwise. Hence it is essential to level. For instance, the level of education and talent will be lowered. Since men of talent always tend to rise, Cicero’s tongue will have to be torn out, Copemicus’s eyes gouged out, and Shakespeare stoned. There is my system.
LIPUTIN: Yes, Mr. Shigalov discovered that superior faculties are germs of inequality, hence of despotism. Consequently, as soon as a man is seen to have superior gifts, he is shot down or imprisoned. Even very handsome people are suspect in this regard and must be suppressed.
SHIGALOV: And even fools, if they are very notable fools, for they might lead others into the temptation of glorying in their superiority, which is a germ of despotism. By these means, on the other hand, equality will be absolute.
THE SEMINARIAN: But you have fallen into a contradiction. Such equality is despotism. SHIGALOV: That’s true, and that’s what drives me to despair. But the contradiction disappears the
moment you say that such despotism is equality. PETER (yawning): What nonsense!
LIPUTIN: Is it really nonsense? On the contrary, I find it very realistic.
PETER: I wasn’t speaking of Shigalov or of his ideas, which bear the mark of genius, of course, but I meant all such discussions.
LIPUTIN: By discussing, one might reach a result. That is better than maintaining silence while posing as a dictator.
(All approve this direct blow.)
PETER: Writing and constructing systems is just nonsense. An aesthetic pastime. You are simply bored here, that’s all.
LIPUTIN: We are merely provincial, to be sure, and therefore worthy of pity. But up to now you haven’t brought out anything sensational either. Those tracts you gave us say that universal society will be improved only by lopping off a hundred million heads. That doesn’t seem to me any easier to put into practice than Shigalov’s ideas.
PETER: The fact is that, by lopping off a hundred million heads you progress faster, obviously. THE SEMINARIAN: You also run the risk of getting your own head lopped off.
PETER: It’s a disadvantage. And that’s the risk you always run when you try to establish a new religion. But I can very well understand, sir, that you would hesitate. And I consider that you have the right to withdraw.
THE SEMINARIAN: I didn’t say that. And I am ready to bind myself difinitively to an organization if it proves serious and efficient.
PETER: What, you would be willing to take an oath of allegiance to the group we are organizing?
THE SEMINARIAN: That is to say . . . Why not, if . . .
PETER: Listen, gentlemen. I can understand very ‘well that you expect from me explanations and revelations about the workings of our organization. But I cannot give them to you unless I am sure of you unto death. So let me ask you a question. Are you in favor of endless discussions or in favor of millions of heads? Of course, this is merely an image. In other words, are you in favor of wallowing in the swamp or of crossing it at full speed?
LYAMSHIN (gaily): At full speed, of course, at full speed! Why wallow?
PETER: Are you therefore in agreement as to the methods set forth in the tracts I gave you?
THE SEMINARIAN: That is to say . . . Why, of course . . . But they still have to be specified!
PETER: If you are afraid, there is no point in specifying.
THE SEMINARIAN: No one here is afraid and you know it. But you are treating us like pawns on a chessboard. Explain things to us clearly and we can consider them with you.
PETER: Are you ready to bind yourself to the organization by oath?
VIRGINSKY: Certainly, if you ask it of us decently. PETER (nodding toward SHATOV): Liputin, you haven’t said anything.
LIPUTIN: I am ready to answer that question and any others. But I should first like to be sure that there is no stool pigeon here.
(Tumult, LYAMSHIN rushes to the piano.)
PETER (apparently very much alarmed); What? What do you mean? You alarm me. Is it possible that there is a spy among us?
(All talk at once.)
LIPUTIN: We would be compromised!
PETER: I’d be more compromised than you. Hence, you must all answer a question which will decide whether we are to separate or go on. If one of you learned that a murder
