The
Dream Of a Ridiculous Man
Fyodor
Dostoevsky
(Translated by
Constance Garnett)
I
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 realized 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 realization 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 when 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.
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