Do it—cut me off, I don’t want you to study together with my children.
—When the old couple used to be very drunk and roll about, the lame girl used to cry over them. At first he beat her, but then ceased.
—They killed a goose.—
—The Bible. Jacob bowed three times. He gets muddled with the Bible. The lame girl laughs.
—The habit of beating her; he did not want to kiss her.
(The lame girl was not frozen to death. They found her. But she disappeared from the house of the Alfonskys.)
His incessant thinking. From the time he began to remember himself: What shall I be and how shall I do it all?
Then doubt: is power alone worth everything and could one not be the slave of all the strongest.
He began training his will power. He is stung by passions.
That in each line should be heard: I know what I am writing and I am not writing in vain.
- The First Pages.—(1) The tone, (2) ideas to be artistically and concisely fitted in.
The First N.B.—The Tone (the story is a life—i.e. although from the author, it must be concise, without being meagre in explanations, but also representing by means of scenes. In this harmony is needed). The concision of the story is at times that of Gil Blas. As though no importance is attached (by the author) to dramatic and scenic passages.
But the dominating idea of the Life should be seen,—i.e. although the whole dominating idea is not explained and is always left vague, the reader should always realize that the idea is religious, that the Life is of such importance that it is worth while to begin even from the years of extreme childhood—also, in the selection of that in which the story consists, of all facts, there is continuously displayed (something) and the man to be is constantly exhibited and set on a pedestal.
Chief Nota Bene: He began saving money from a vague idea, but that idea was all the time becoming solid, and showing itself to him in the further development of the affair.
But the chief impulse was his coming to live at Alfonsky’s.
(1) Caught a mouse.
The lame girl.
The old couple.
The nurse, bathing, the badge, and retirement.
Anna and Vasilissa ran away.
The last communion (the Italian, money from pocket)When I shall be grown up. The first idea.
The teacher (drunk).
The first confession, what has he got there in the little boxes, and in the cup? Is there a God?
To convert the Devil.
The beating of the lame girl. The corpse by the hedge. Kilyan.
Vasilissa was sold— Interest on money and conversations with the guest.
Readings. On Suvorov. Arabian tales.
Dreams.— Umnov and Gogol—(the lame girl laughs).
The old couple grow weaker and weaker.
He locked them in. He got drunk.
Stole with the boy. Thrashed him.
Fighting with older boys.
Complete depravity.
He beats the lame girl to make her fight the boys.
She would like to come out, but she was thrashed and she cried—
Dreams of power and will. Umnov (looks at naked girls, tries to assault the lame girl).
When the old couple died—he is eleven years old, and the lame girl is ten,—Alfonsky—The old man and woman. Death. He makes a speech to the lame girl upon how to behave.
—Before that: They teased the lady—fell on her, they were dragged home, flogging—He was afraid to complain.
The first fight, he rushed to beat the gentleman with the badge.
I shall never play the coward.
—I’ll learn not to play the coward. (He was afraid, but thrashed the boy.)
—He cut himself for a test.
—Instruction from the boy as to fornic…on (Therese-Philosophe gave him a beating for it).
But the book she took away from him.
He began to save money.
To amass (he tells the lame girl).
The lame girl was taken into the Alfonsky family before.[80]
He, directly he arrived, puts her through an examination. (Advice to her: do not speak of Gogol and of nothing of ours.)
First part. The boy is wild, but thinks a tremendous lot of himself.
—The man-servant Osip—at first he was taken into the house to amuse them by telling stories, by his jovial character. Alfonsky had whipped Osip’s brother to death, then he took Osip and pressed him for the army. Immediately Osip escaped (he is also Kulikov). They killed Orlov. They part. Kulikov (Osip) let him off.
—In a year and a half’s time the hero’s step-mother weeps at Alfonsky’s betrayal of her. He keeps a mistress openly. Osip’s sister (for that reason he whipped Osip’s brother to death). Alfonsky is killed by the peasants (?).
The Canvas of the Novel.—The hero’s step-mother, Alfonsky’s wife (a society lady), when she pined, becoming an old maid, had a fiancé (an officer or some one—teacher).
But she married Alfonsky. Unhappy and offended by Alfonsky (she slapped his mistress in the face) she renewed relations with her first lover who happened to turn up at that time. The boy saw them kissing. “You may report it to your father,” and then begged him not to tell. The boy kept silence; but Alfonsky knows that his son knows that he has horns and that the step-mother has a lover.
He made a row in the village on account of the lame girl. He mocked Katya. The mother was beside herself because of Katya. In town with Lambert—and so on.
Here (Al——y) who made a row in the village, the peasants might have killed him, which the boy might witness,—and—
(I may make up about the step-mother and her lover, and to what extent and degree the boy is involved in that liaison.)
—Alfonsky has a benefactor—and indeed his chief enemy, because he is a benefactor. All the benefactor’s favours humiliate his pride. The benefactor does not like to live unless he can act the part of benefactor, but for one inch of favour demands three yards of gratitude. Both humiliate themselves, humiliate each other, and hate each other to the verge of illness.
—The extraordinary pride of the boy has the result that he can neither pity nor despise these men.
Nor can he be very indignant with them. He cannot sympathize either with his father or mother. At the exam, he distinguished himself unexpectedly,—he wanted to appear an imbecile. He despises himself greatly because he could not restrain himself and distinguished himself.
—The dangerous and uncommon idea that he is to become an extraordinary man possessed him from his first childhood. He thinks of it incessantly. Cleverness, skill, learning—all these he wishes to acquire as a means to being extraordinary in the future.
Again money seems to him at least not unnecessary, a power useful on all occasions, and he decides on money:
Knowledge appears to him terribly difficult.
Now again it seems to him that even if he is not to be an extraordinary man, but most ordinary, money will give him everything,—i.e. power and the right to despise—
And at last he repents and is tormented in his conscience because he wishes so basely to be extraordinary.
But he himself does not know what he will be.
The pure ideal of a free man flashes across him at times; all this when at the boarding school.
—He made friends with Osip, about the Khlysti, they almost sleep together.
—Umnov; he knows Gogol by heart.
Monastery—God give us and all animals a good night—(To make a study of Humboldt’s description of animals, Buffon and the Russians.)
—Science as worship.
—About the bear.
—Of his first love and how he became a monk—(chastity).
—On the nature of Satan?
—Anikita goes to Chaadaev to exhort him. He calls Tikhon: the latter comes, argues, and then asks to be forgiven.
—On little insects and the universal joy of Living Life, Tikhon’s inspiriting stories.
—His friendship with the boy, who allows himself to torment Tikhon by pranks. (The devil is in him.)
—Tikhon learns of Therese-Philosophe—He blesses him in his downfall and revolt.
—Tikhon’s clear stories about life and happiness on earth. Of his family, father, mother, brothers. Extraordinarily simple and therefore moving stories from Tikhon of his transgressions against his people, of pride, ambition, mockery (I wish I could unmake all this again now, Tikhon says).
This alone is in itself moving, that he has become friends with the boy.
Tikhon’s story of his first love, of children, it is lower to live as a Monk; one must have children, and it is higher when one has a vocation.
—Therese-Philosophe disturbed Tikhon. And I thought that he had already been hardened. He vowed obedience to the boy. He obeys him.
(Loftily, vigorously, and movingly.)
Tikhon says to a certain lady that she is a traitor to Russia as well as a malefactor towards her children; of how they are deprived of childish visions even from their very childhood. The study of them (by Leo Tolstoi and Turgenev), although they are exact, reveals an alien life. Pushkin alone is a real Russian.
The boy has at times a low opinion of Tikhon: he is so funny, he does not know things, he is so weak and helpless, he comes to me for advice,
