T D R

F D

P : 1877
S :W
T :C G , 1916

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 T D R M

F D

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 note 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. It 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
fare 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!

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? And 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!

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2. The Dream of a Ridiculous Man