The main thing is that it seems no one is capable of doing this; it is as if it were still too early even for our greatest artists. One cannot deny that a way of life in Russia is disintegrating; consequently, family life disintegrates as well. But certainly there is also a life that is being formed anew, on new principles. Who will pick these out and show them to us? Who can, even in small measure, define and express the laws of this disintegration and this new formation? Or is it still too early? But have we even taken complete note of what is old and past?
EDITOR’S NOTE
I. Despite the categorical statement in my December Diary, people continue to send me letters asking whether I will be publishing the new magazine, Light; they even enclose postage stamps for my reply. To all who have been enquiring I announce once more, and for the last time, that it is not I who will publish the magazine Light but Nikolai Petrovich Wagner, and that I will play no part in editing it.
II. Miss O. A. An——ova, who wrote to the editor regarding study for her examinations, is requested to supply her correct address. The address on Mokhovaia Street that she provided earlier proved to be incorrect.
The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
A FANTASTIC STORY
(April 1877)
I
I am a ridiculous man. They call me a madman now. It would have been a promotion for me had I not appeared as ridiculous to them as ever. But I no longer mind – they are all dear to me now, even when they are laughing at me, something endears them to me particularly then. I would laugh with them – not at myself, that is, but because I love them – I would laugh if I did not feel so sad looking at them. What saddens me is that they do not know the truth, and I do. Oh, how hard it is to be the only one to know the truth! But they will not understand this. No, they will not.
It used to hurt me very much that I seemed ridiculous. I did not seem it, I was. I have always been ridiculous and I think I’ve known it since the day I was born. I believe I realised it when I was seven, I went to school and then to the university, but what of it?
The more I studied the more I came to realise that I was ridiculous. And so, as far as I was concerned, the ultimate meaning of science was to prove and explain to me, the more I probed it, that I was indeed ridiculous. Life taught me the same thing. With every year my awareness of how ridiculous I was in every respect grew and developed.
I was laughed at by everyone and all the time. But none of them knew or guessed that of all the people in the world I knew best how ridiculous I was, and it was the fact that they did not know this that hurt me most of all, but the fault was entirely mine: I was always so proud that I would never admit this knowledge to anyone. My pride swelled in me with the years, and had I allowed myself to admit to anyone that I was ridiculous, I believe I would have blown my brains out that same night.
Oh, the torment I went through in my adolescence for fear that I would weaken and make the admission to my friends! As I grew to manhood I learned more and more of this awful shortcoming of mine with every year, but in spite of this I took it a little more calmly for some reason. I repeat – for some reason, because to this day I fail to give it a clear definition. Perhaps it was because of that hopeless sadness that was mounting in my soul about something that was infinitely greater than myself: this something was a mounting conviction that nothing mattered. I had begun to suspect this long ago, but positive conviction came to me all at once, one day last year. I suddenly knew that I would not have cared if the world existed at all or if there was nothing anywhere.
I began to know and feel with all my being that there has been nothing since I have been there. At first I kept thinking that there must have been a great deal before, but then I realised that there had not been anything before either, and that it only seemed so for some reason. Gradually, I became convinced that there would never be anything at all. It was then I suddenly ceased minding people and no longer noticed them at all. It was quite true, even in the merest trifles: for instance, I would walk into people as I went along the street. Not that I was lost in thought either, for what was there to think about, I had given up thinking altogether then: I did not care. Neither did I solve any problems; no, not a single one, and yet there was a host of them. But I did not care now, and all the problems receded into the background.
And it was much later that I learned the Truth. It was in November, the third of November to be exact, that I learned the Truth, and since then I remember every moment of my life. It happened on a gloomy night, the gloomiest night that could ever be. I was walking home, the time being after ten, and I remember thinking that no hour could be gloomier. It was so even physically. It had been raining all day, and it was the coldest and gloomiest rain, even an ominous rain, I remember, obviously hostile to people, and suddenly after ten it stopped and a horrible dampness set in, which was colder and damper than during the rain, and steam rose from everything, from every cobblestone, from every alleyway if you peered into his deepest and darkest recesses.
I suddenly fancied that if all the gas-lights were to go out it would be more cheerful, for gas-light, showing up all this, made one feel even sadder. I had hardly eaten anything that day, and since late afternoon I had been at an engineer’s I knew, with two other friends of his. I said nothing all evening and I believe I bored them. They were discussing something exciting and actually lost their tempers over it. They did not care, I could see, but lost their tempers just like that. I went and blurted it out to them: ‘Gentlemen,’ I said, ‘you don’t really care, you know.’ They took no offence, they just laughed at me. That was because there was no sting in my remark, I simply made it because I did not care. They saw that I did not care and it made them laugh.
When, walking home, I thought of the gas-light, I glanced up at the sky. The sky was terribly dark, but I could clearly make out the ragged clouds and the fathomless black pits between them. Suddenly I noticed a tiny star twinkling in one of those pits and I stopped to stare at it.
That was because the tiny star gave me an idea: I made up my mind to kill myself that night. I had made up my mind to do it fully two months before, and poor though I am I had bought a splendid revolver and had loaded it that same day. Two months had already passed, however, and it was still lying in my desk drawer; my feeling of not caring had been so strong then that I wanted to choose a moment when it would be a little less so to do it in, why – I do not know. And so every night, for two months, I had gone home with the thought of killing myself. I was watching for the right moment. And now this star gave me the idea, and I made up my mind that it had to be that night. I do not know why the tiny star gave me the idea.
There I stood staring at the sky when suddenly the little girl clutched at my arm. The street was already deserted and there was hardly a soul about. A droshky was standing some way off with the driver dozing in it. The girl must have been about eight.
All she wore in this cold was a poor cotton frock and a kerchief, she was drenched through, but I particularly noticed her sodden, broken shoes. I remember them even now. They struck me particularly. She suddenly began to tug at my elbow and cry. She was not weeping, but was crying out snatches of words which she could not articulate properly because she was shivering all over as in a fever. Something had frightened her, and she called out desperately: ‘My mummy, my mummy!’ I half-turned towards her but said not a word and
