II
The printing was in fact foreign: three little sheets of ordinary small-sized writing-paper printed and stitched together. It must have been printed secretly at a Russian press abroad, and the sheets at the first glance looked very much like a political pamphlet. The title read: “From Stavrogin.”
I insert the document literally in my chronicle.[[24]] I have allowed myself to correct the spelling, for the mistakes are rather numerous and have surprised me a little, considering after all that the author was a man of education and even well-read (of course, relatively speaking). But in the style I have made no alterations whatever, in spite of its irregularities. It is at any rate clear that the writer was above all not a man of letters.[[25]]
“From Stavrogin.
“I, Nikolai Stavrogin, retired officer, lived in the year 186.. in Petersburg, abandoned to vice, in which I found no pleasure. For a certain period at that time I rented three lodgings. In one of them I lived myself and boarded and lodged, and there at that time lived Marya Lebiadkin, now my lawful wife. My other two lodgings I rented by the month for the purpose of an intrigue: in one I received a certain lady who loved me, and in the other her maid, and for a time I was much engrossed with the notion of contriving that both the lady and the maid should meet each other at my lodging.[[26]] Knowing the characters of both, I anticipated for myself great pleasure from that joke.
“While I was gradually preparing for this meeting, I had to go more often to one of the two lodgings in a large house in Gorokhovaya Street, since that was the place where the maid and I met. I had only one room there, on the fifth floor, which I rented from some Russian working-class people. They themselves fitted themselves into the adjoining room, which was smaller than mine and so much so that the door dividing my room from theirs always stood open, which was what I wanted. The husband, a clerk in some office, used to be out from early morning till night. His wife, a woman of about forty, was occupied in cutting down old clothes and making them up into new, and she also frequently left the house to deliver her work. I remained alone with their daughter,[[27]] who was quite a child to look at. They called her Matryosha. Her mother loved her, but often beat her, and, as is the custom of these people, shouted at her horribly. This little girl waited on me and tidied up after me behind the screens. I declare I have forgotten the number of the house. Now, upon enquiry, I find that the old house has been demolished, and, where there were then two or three houses, there is now one very large new house. I have also forgotten my landlord’s name (or perhaps I never knew it even at the time). I remember that the woman was called Stepanida, I believe, Mikhailovna. Him I do not remember.[[28]] I suppose that if a search were started and all possible enquiries made by the Petersburg police, they could be traced. The flat was in a courtyard, in the corner. All happened in June. The house was painted a bright sky-blue.
“One day I missed from my table a penknife which I did not need in the least, and which lay there for no particular reason. I told my landlady, without thinking that she would thrash her daughter for it. But the landlady had just been scolding the little girl[[29]] for the loss of some rag, suspecting that she had stolen it, and had even pulled her hair. When that rag was found under the tablecloth, the little girl did not utter a single word of complaint, and just looked in silence. I noticed that, and then for the first time I observed the face of the little girl, which until then I had hardly noticed properly. She had fair hair, and a freckled ordinary face, but there was much in it that was childish and quiet, extraordinarily quiet. The mother did not like it that the daughter made no complaint for having been beaten for nothing, and she raised her fist, but did not strike; and just at that moment the subject of the penknife came up. Besides the three of us, there was in fact nobody, and only the little girl went behind my screen. The woman flew into a rage at having for the first time punished her unjustly, and she rushed for the broom, tore twigs from it, and thrashed the little girl in my presence until her body was covered with scars, although the child was already in her twelfth year. Matryosha did not cry at the thrashing, probably because I was there, but she gave a strange sob at each blow. And afterwards she sobbed very much for a whole hour.
“But there was just this before that happened: at the very moment when the landlady rushed for the broom to pull out twigs, I found the penknife on my bed, where it had somehow or other fallen from the table. Instantly it occurred to my mind not to say so, in order that she should be thrashed. I decided on it instantaneously; in such moments my breathing always stops. But I mean to tell the whole thing in the plainest language, so that there can no longer remain anything concealed.
“Every unusually disgraceful, utterly degrading, dastardly, and, above all, ridiculous situation, in which I ever happened to be in my life, always roused in me, side by side with extreme anger, an incredible delight. I felt exactly this in moments of committing crimes and in moments when life was in danger. If I stole, I would feel, while committing the theft, a rapture from the consciousness of the depth of my vileness. It was not the vileness that I loved (here my mind was perfectly sound), but I enjoyed rapture from the tormenting consciousness of the baseness. In the same way each time when, standing at the barrier, I waited for my opponent to fire, I experienced just the same disgraceful and wild sensation; and once I did so with extraordinary vividness. I confess that I often myself looked out for it, because it is to me the strongest of sensations of the kind. When I received a slap in the face (and I received two in my life), it was there too, in spite of my terrible anger. But if the anger is checked by it, then the delight surpasses anything that can be imagined. I never spoke of this to any one, even by a hint, and I concealed it as a shame and disgrace. But when I was once soundly beaten in a public-house in Petersburg and was dragged by the hair, I did not experience that sensation, but only an incredible anger, not being intoxicated, and I put up a fight. But had I been seized by my hair and forced down by the French Viscount abroad who slapped me on the cheek and whose lower jaw I shot away for it, I should have felt a rapture and, perhaps, should not have felt anger. So it seemed to me then.
“I tell all this in order that every one may know that the feeling never absorbed the whole of me absolutely, but there always remained the most perfect consciousness (on that consciousness indeed it was all based). And although it would take hold of me to the pitch of madness, or, so to say, obstinacy, it would never reach the point of making me forget myself. It reached in me the point of a perfect fire, but I could at the same time overcome it completely, even stop it at its climax; only I never wished to stop it. I am convinced that I could live all my life as a monk, in spite of the brutal voluptuousness with which I am gifted and which I always called forth.[[30]] I am always master of myself when I want to be. And so let it be understood that I do not claim irresponsibility for my crimes, either on account of environment or of disease.
“The thrashing over, I put the penknife in my waistcoat pocket and, without saying a single word, left the house and threw it away in the street, a long distance from the house, so that nobody should ever discover it. Then I waited two days. The little girl, after she had cried, became even more silent; against me, I am convinced, she had no spite. Though she was, certainly, ashamed that she had been punished in that way in my presence.[[31]] But for the shame she, like the child she was, assuredly blamed no one but herself.[[32]]
“It was precisely during those two days that I once put to myself the question, could I go away and give up the plan I had invented, and I immediately felt that I could, that I could at any moment and at once. About that time I wished to kill myself from the disease of indifference; or rather I don’t know the reason, but during those two or three days (for it was necessary to wait till the little girl forgot it all) I, probably in order to divert myself from the idea which obsessed me, or for fun, committed a theft in the rooms. This was the only theft of my life.
“There were many people crowded in those rooms. Amongst others there lived there a minor official with his family in two rooms; he was about forty, not altogether a fool, and had a decent appearance, but was poor. I did not make friends with him, and he was afraid of the company that surrounded me there. He had only just received his salary—thirty-five roubles. What chiefly influenced me was that I at that moment needed money (although four days later I received money by post), so that I stole, as though out of want, and not for fun. It was done impudently and obviously: I simply entered his room, when he, his wife, and children were dining in the other little room. There on the chair by the door lay his folded uniform. The idea suddenly occurred to me when I was in the corridor. I put my hand into the pocket and took the purse. But the official heard a movement and looked out of his room. He, it seems, actually saw, at any rate, something, but as he did not see it all, he, of course, did not believe his eyes. I said that, as I was passing down the corridor, I had come in to see the time by his clock. ‘It has stopped,’ he said, and I went out.
“At that time I drank a great deal, and in my rooms was a whole crowd, Lebiadkin amongst them. I threw away the purse and the small coins, but kept the notes. There were thirty-two roubles, three red notes and two yellow. I immediately changed one red note and sent for champagne; then I sent the second red note, and the third. About four hours later towards evening the official was waiting for me in the corridor.
“‘Nikolai Vsevolodovich, when you came in just now, did you by any chance let my uniform fall off the chair ... it was by the door?’
“‘No, I don’t remember; was your uniform there?’
“‘Yes, it was.’
“‘On the floor?’
“‘First on the chair, and then on the floor.’
“‘Did you pick it up?’
“‘I did.’
“‘Well, what more do you want?’
“‘In that case, it’s all right....’
“He dared not finish, nor did he dare tell anybody in the rooms—so timid are those people. In the lodgings every one was extremely afraid of me and respected me. After that I liked to catch his eye a couple of times in the corridor. Soon I got bored with it.
“After three days[[33]] I returned to Gorokhovaya Street. The mother was just going out with a bundle; the man, of course, was not at home; Matryosha and myself were left alone. The windows were open. The house was all inhabited by artisans, and all day long from every floor was heard the knocking of hammers or of singing. About an hour passed. Matryosha sat in her room, on a bench, with her back to me, and occupied with her needle. At last, she suddenly began to sing softly, very softly, as was sometimes her way. I took out my watch and looked at the time; it was two o’clock. My heart began beating.[[34]] I got up and began approaching her stealthily. On their window-sill stood pots of geranium, and the sun shone very brightly. I quietly sat down near her on the floor. She started, and at first was terribly frightened and jumped up. I took her hand and kissed it quietly, sat her down again on the little bench, and began looking into her eyes. My kissing her hand made her suddenly laugh like a baby, but only for one second, because she impetuously jumped up for the second time and was in such a fright that a spasm passed across her face. She looked at me with eyes motionless with terror, and her lips began to twitch as if she were about to cry, but she did not cry. I kissed her hand again, and took her on my knee.[[35]] Then she suddenly pulled herself away and smiled as if ashamed, with a wry smile. All her face flushed with shame. I was whispering to her all the time, as though drunk. At last, all of a sudden, such a strange thing happened, which I shall never forget and which bewildered me: the little girl flung her arms round my neck and suddenly began to kiss me passionately. Her face expressed perfect ecstasy. I almost got up to go away—so unpleasant was this to me in the little creature from the sense of pity that I suddenly felt.[[36]]...
“When all was over, she was confused. I did not try to reassure her and no longer fondled her. She looked at me, smiling timidly. Her face suddenly appeared to me stupid. The confusion rapidly with each minute took an increasing hold over her. At last she covered her face with her hands and stood in the corner with her face to the wall motionless. I was afraid that she might be frightened again, as she had been just before, and silently I left the house.
“I think that all that happened must have seemed to her, in the end, infinitely horrible, a deadly horror. Notwithstanding the Russian swear words and all sorts of queer conversations that she must have heard from her very cradle, I am completely convinced that she did not yet know anything. For indeed it appeared to her in the end that she had committed an immense crime, and was guilty of a mortal sin. ‘She had killed God.’
“That night I had the row in the bar which I mentioned in passing. But I woke up in my rooms in the morning; Lebiadkin took me home. My first thought when I awoke was whether she had told or not. It was a minute of real fear, although as yet not very intense. I was very gay that morning and extremely good-natured with every one, and the whole company was very pleased with me. But I left them all and went to Gorokhovaya Street. I met her downstairs in the passage. She was coming in from the grocer’s shop where she had been sent for chicory. On seeing me she dashed off in a terrible fright upstairs. When I entered, her mother had just given her a cuff[[37]] for bursting in ‘like a maniac,’ and thus the real reason of her fright was concealed. So far then all was safe. She hid in a corner and did not come out while I was there. I stayed about an hour and then went away.
“Towards evening I again felt the fear, but incomparably more intense. Of course I could deny all knowledge, but might be given the lie. Penal servitude glimmered for me in the distance. I had never felt fear, and all my life, except in this one case, I never before nor after was afraid of anything—particularly of Siberia, although I might have been deported there more than once. But this time I was frightened and really felt fear, I don’t know why, for the first time in my life—a very tormenting sensation. Besides, that evening in my rooms, I got to hate her to such an extent that I decided to kill her. My chief hatred was at the recollection of her smile. I began to feel contempt and immense loathing for her having, after the whole thing was over, rushed off to the corner and covered her face with her hands; an inexplicable rage seized me, and then cold shivering, and, when towards the morning I began to feel feverish, I was again seized with fear, but such an intense fear that I never knew any torment more violent. Yet I no longer hated the little girl—at any rate it did not reach such a paroxysm as on the previous evening. I realized that intense fear completely drives away hatred and the feeling of revenge.
“I woke about mid-day, feeling well and surprised even at the force of yesterday’s sensations. Yet I was in a bad humour and was again compelled to go to Gorokhovaya Street, in spite of all my aversion. I remember that I wished intensely at that minute to pick a quarrel on the way with any one, so long as it was a violent quarrel. But when I reached Gorokhovaya Street, I suddenly found Nina Savelevna, the maid, in my room, where she had been waiting for an hour already. I did not like the girl altogether, so that she had come half afraid that I should be angry with her for coming unasked. But I suddenly felt very glad to see her. She was not bad-looking, but unassuming, with those manners of which common people are very fond, so that my landlady had for long sung her praises to me. I found them both drinking coffee together, and the landlady highly pleased with the polite conversation. In the corner of their room I saw Matryosha. She stood looking at her mother and at the visitor without stirring. When I came in she did not hide as before and did not run away. It only appeared to me that she had grown very thin and was in a fever. I was cordial to Nina, and locked my door against the landlady, which I had not done for a long time, so that Nina left perfectly delighted. We left together and for two days I did not return to Gorokhovaya Street. I was already bored with it. I resolved to put an end to it all, to give up my rooms and leave Petersburg.
“But when I came to give notice to my landlady, I found her much worried and distressed: Matryosha had been ill for three days, had a high temperature, and was delirious every night. Of course I asked what she said in her delirium (we spoke in whispers in my room); she whispered back that she raved of ‘horrors’: ‘“I killed God,” she says.’ I offered to have a doctor at my own expense, but she did not wish it. ‘By God’s will it will pass without doctors; she is not in bed all the time; during the day she gets up; she has just run round to the grocer’s shop.’ I determined to see Matryosha alone, and, as the landlady let out that she had to go to the Petersburg Road about five o’clock, I decided to come back in the evening.
“I had a meal in a public-house. Exactly at a quarter past five I returned. I always let myself in with my key. There was no one there but Matryosha. She lay on her mother’s bed behind a screen, and I saw her peep out; but I pretended not to have seen her. All the windows were open. The air outside was warm, and even hot. I walked up and down and then sat down on the sofa. I remember everything up to the last moment. It decidedly gave me pleasure not to speak to Matryosha, but to keep her in suspense; I don’t know why. I waited a whole hour, when suddenly she sprang from her bed behind the screen. I heard both her feet thud upon the floor and then fairly quick steps, and she stood on the threshold of my room. She stood and looked silently. I was so mean that my heart thrilled with joy that I had kept up my character and waited for her to come first. During these days, when I had not once seen her close, she had grown very thin. Her face had shrunk, and her head, I was sure, was hot.
“Her eyes had grown large and gazed at me without moving, with a dull curiosity, as I thought at first. I sat still and looked and did not move. And then suddenly I felt hatred for her again. But I very soon noticed that she was not in the least afraid of me, but was perhaps rather delirious. But she was not delirious either. She suddenly began shaking her head repeatedly at me, as simple uneducated people without manners do when they find fault with you. And suddenly she raised her tiny fist and began threatening from where she stood. The first moment her gesture seemed to me ridiculous, but then I could stand it no longer.[[38]] On her face was such despair as was unendurable to see on a child’s face. She shook her tiny fist at me all the while threateningly, and nodded her head reproachfully. I rose and moved towards her in fear, and warily began saying something softly and kindly, but I saw that she would not understand. Then suddenly she covered her face impulsively with both hands, as she had done before, and moved off and stood by the window with her back to me. I returned to my room and sat by the window. I cannot possibly make out why I did not leave then, but remained as though waiting for something. Soon I again heard her quick steps; she came out of the door on to the wooden landing which led to the stairs. I hastily ran to my door, opened it, and had just time to see that Matryosha went into the tiny box-room, which was like a hen-roost and was next door to the water-closet. A very curious idea shot through my mind. To this day I can’t make out why all of a sudden this idea came into my head—everything turned upon it. I half closed the door and sat down again by the window. Of course, it was still impossible to believe in this sudden idea:—‘but after all....’ (I remember everything, and my heart beat violently).
“After a minute I looked at my watch and noted the time with perfect accuracy. Why I should need to know the time so precisely I don’t know, but I was able to do it, and altogether at that moment I wanted to notice everything. So that I remember now what I noticed and see it as if it were before me. The evening drew on. A fly buzzed about my head and settled continually on my face. I caught it, held it in my fingers, and put it out of the window. Very loudly a van entered the courtyard below. Very loudly (and for some time before) a tailor, sitting at his window in the corner of the courtyard, sang a song. He sat at his work, and I could see him there. It struck me that, as nobody had met me when I passed through the gate and came upstairs, it was also, of course, not necessary that I should be seen now when I should be going downstairs; and I moved my chair from the window purposely so that I could not be seen by the lodgers. I took a book, but threw it away, and began looking at a tiny reddish spider on the leaf of a geranium, and I fell into a trance. I remember everything up to the last moment.
“Suddenly I took out my watch. Twenty minutes had passed since she went out of the room. The conjecture was assuming the shape of a probability. But I determined to wait precisely fifteen minutes more. It also crossed my mind that perhaps she had come back, and that I perhaps had not heard her. But that was impossible: there was a dead silence, and I could hear the hum of every small fly. Suddenly my heart began bounding again. I looked at my watch: it was three minutes short of the quarter. I sat them out, though my heart beat so as to hurt me. Then I got up, put on my hat, buttoned my overcoat, and looked round the room[[39]]—had I left any traces of my visit? I moved the chair closer to the window just as it had been before. At last I gently opened the door, locked it with my key, and went to the little box-room. It was closed, but not locked; I knew that it did not lock, but I did not want to open it, and I stood on tiptoe and began looking through the chink. At that moment, standing on tiptoe, I remembered that, when I sat by the window and looked at the little red spider and fell into a trance, I had been thinking of how I should stand on tiptoe and peer through this very chink. I mention this detail because I wish to prove fully to what an extent I was obviously in possession of my mental faculties and I hold myself responsible for everything. For a long time I peered through the chink, but it was dark there, but not absolutely, so that at last I saw what I wanted....[[40]]
“At last I decided to leave.[[41]] I met no one on the stairs. Three hours later we were all drinking tea in our shirt-sleeves in our rooms and playing with a pack of old cards; Lebiadkin recited poetry. Many stories were told, and, as if on purpose, they were good and amusing, and not as foolish as usual. Kirillov too was there. No one drank, although there was a bottle of rum, but only Lebiadkin took a pull at it now and then.
“Prokhor Malov once said that ‘when Nikolai Vsevolodovich is pleased to be cheerful and does not sulk, the whole lot of us are happy and talk cleverly.’ I remembered this at that time; consequently I was merry, cheerful, and not sulky. This was how it looked. But I remember being conscious that I was simply a low and despicable coward for my joy at having escaped and that I should never be an honest man.
“About eleven o’clock the doorkeeper’s little daughter came from the landlady at Gorokhovaya Street, with a message to me that Matryosha had hanged herself. I went with the little girl and saw that the landlady herself did not know why she had sent for me. She wailed aloud and beat her head[[42]]; there was a crowd and policemen. I stood about for a time[[43]] and went away.
“I was scarcely disturbed all that time, yet I was asked the usual questions. But all I said was that the girl had been ill and delirious, so that I had offered to call a doctor at my own expense. They also questioned me about the penknife, and I said that the landlady had thrashed her, but that there was nothing in that. Nobody knew about my having been there that evening.[[44]]
“For about a week I did not call there. I went at last[[45]] to give notice about the room. The landlady was still crying, although she was already messing about with her rags and sewing as usual. ‘It was for your penknife that I wronged her,’ she said to me, but without much reproach. I settled my account with her, and gave as an excuse for going that I could not remain in a house like that to receive Nina Savelevna. At parting, she again praised Nina Savelevna to me. When I left, I gave her five roubles over and above what was due for the room.
“In the main I was sick of life, to the verge of madness. The incident in Gorokhovaya Street, after the danger was over, I would have completely forgotten, just as I forgot all the other events of that time, had I not for a certain time remembered with anger what a coward I had been.
“I vented my anger on any one I could find. About that time, altogether for no definite reason, I took it into my head to cripple my life, but only in as disgusting a way as possible. Already for about a year I had been thinking of shooting myself; but something better presented itself.
“One day, as I looked at the lame Marya Timofeevna Lebiadkin, the woman who in a sense tidied up the rooms, and at that time was not yet mad, but simply an exalted idiot, in secret madly in love with me (which my friends had discovered), I suddenly determined to marry her. The idea of the marriage of Stavrogin with that lowest of creatures excited my nerves. Anything more monstrous it was impossible to imagine.[[46]] At any rate I married her, not simply because of ‘a bet made after dinner in one’s cups.’ The witnesses were Kirillov and Peter Verkhovensky, who happened to be in Petersburg; and lastly, Lebiadkin himself and Prokhor Malov (who is now dead). No one else ever knew of it, and those who did swore to keep silence. That silence always seemed to me a kind of meanness, but it has not been broken up till now, although I intended to make it public; now I make it public as well as the rest.
“The wedding over, I went to the country to stay with my mother. I went to distract myself.[[47]] In our town I had left behind me the idea that I was mad—which idea still persists even now and undoubtedly does me harm, as I shall explain later. After that I went abroad and remained there four years.
“I was in the East in the monastery on Mount Athos and attended religious services which lasted eight hours; I was in Egypt, lived in Switzerland, travelled even in Iceland; spent a whole year at Göttingen University. During the last year I became very friendly with a distinguished Russian family in Paris, and with two Russian girls in Switzerland. About two years ago, in Frankfort, passing a stationer’s shop, I noticed amongst the photographs for sale a portrait of a little girl, dressed in an elegant childish dress, but very much like Matryosha.
I bought the portrait at once, and when I returned to my hotel I put it on the mantelpiece of my room. There it lay for a week untouched, and I did not once look at it; and when I left Frankfort I forgot to take it with me.
“I mention this fact only to prove to what an extent I could master my memories and had become indifferent to them. I dismissed the whole lot of them at one go en masse, and the whole mass obediently disappeared, each time, directly I wished it to disappear. To recall the past always bored me, and I never could talk about the past, as nearly all people do, the more so that it was, like everything else concerning me, hateful to me. As for Matryosha, I even forgot to take her picture from the mantelpiece. About a year ago, in the spring, travelling through Germany, I forgot absentmindedly to get out at the station where I had to change, and so went on the wrong line. At the next station I had to get out; it was past two o’clock in the afternoon and a fine bright day. It was a tiny German town. I was shown to a hotel. I had to wait, for the next train did not arrive until eleven o’clock at night. I was even pleased with my adventure, as I was in no hurry to get anywhere. The hotel turned out a wretched little place, but it was all wooded and surrounded with flower-beds. I was given a very small room. I made a large meal, and, as I had been travelling all night, I fell sound asleep after lunch at about four o’clock in the afternoon.
“In my sleep I had a dream which was completely new to me, for I had never had one like it. In the Dresden gallery there is a picture by Claude Lorraine, called in the catalogue, I think, ‘Acis and Galatea,’ but I always called it ‘The Golden Age,’ I don’t know why. I had seen it before, but about three days ago, as I passed through Dresden, I saw it again. I even went on purpose to have a look at it, and possibly for this alone I stopped at Dresden. It was that picture I dreamt of, but not as of a picture, but as of a reality.
“A corner of the Greek Archipelago; blue caressing waves, islands and rocks; fertile shore, a magic vista on the horizon, the appeal of the setting sun—no words could describe it. Here was the cradle of European man, here were the first scenes of the mythological world, here its green paradise.... Here had once lived a beautiful race. They rose and went to sleep happy and innocent; they filled the woods with their joyful songs; the great abundance of their virgin powers went out into love and into simple happiness. The sun bathed these islands and sea in its beams, rejoicing in its beautiful children. Wonderful dream, splendid illusion! A dream the most incredible of all that had ever been dreamt, but upon it the whole of mankind has lavished all its powers throughout history; for this it has made every sacrifice, for this men have died on the cross and their prophets have been killed; without this, nations will not live and are unable even to die. I lived through all these feelings in my dream; I do not know what exactly I dreamt about, but the rocks, the sea, and the slanting rays of the setting sun—all these seemed to be still visible to me, when I woke and opened my eyes and, for the first time in my life, found them full of tears. A feeling of happiness, until then unfamiliar to me, went through my whole heart, even painfully. It was now evening; through the window of my tiny room, through the green leaves of the flowers standing on the sill, poured a shaft of bright slanting rays from the setting sun, and bathed me in their light. I quickly shut my eyes again, as if longing to bring back the vanished dream, but suddenly, in the middle of the bright, bright light, I saw a tiny point. The point began suddenly to take a definite form, and all of a sudden I distinctly pictured to myself a tiny reddish spider. At once I remembered it on the leaf of the geranium, upon which, too, had poured the rays of the setting sun. It was as though something were plunged through me; I raised myself and sat on my bed.
“(That’s all how it happened then!)
“I saw before me! (Oh, not in the flesh! Would that the vision had been true!) I saw before me Matryosha, emaciated, with feverish eyes, in every point exactly as she was when she stood on the threshold of my room and, shaking her head at me, threatened me with her tiny fist. Nothing has ever been so agonizing to me! The pitiable despair of a helpless creature[[48]] with an unformed mind, threatening me (with what? what could she do to me, O Lord?), but blaming, of course, herself alone! Nothing like that has ever happened to me. I sat, till night came, without moving, having lost count of time. Is this what they call remorse or repentance? I do not know, and even now cannot say.[[49]] But it was intolerable to me, that image of her standing on the threshold with her raised and threatening little fist, merely that vision of her then, that moment ‘then,’ that shaking of her head. It is precisely that which I cannot endure, because since then it has come to me almost every day. Not that it comes itself, but that I bring it before myself and cannot help bringing it, although I can’t live with it. Oh, if I could ever see her in the flesh, even though it were an hallucination![[50]]
“Why, then, do no other of the memories of my life rouse in me anything like this?—and I had indeed many memories, perhaps much worse in the judgment of men. They rouse merely hatred in me, and that only because they are stimulated by my present state; but formerly I forgot them callously and dismissed them from my mind.
“I wandered after that for nearly the whole of the following year, and tried to find some occupation. I know I can dismiss the thought of Matryosha even now whenever I want to. I am as completely master of my will as ever. But the whole point is that I never wanted to do it; I myself do not want to, and never shall.[[51]] So it will go on until I go mad.
“In Switzerland two months later I was seized with a fit of the same passion and one of the same furious impulses which I used to have before.[[52]] I felt a terrible temptation to commit a new crime, namely, to commit bigamy (for I was already married). But I fled on the advice of another girl to whom I had confided almost everything, even that I had no love for her whom I desired so much, and that I could never love any one. Moreover, the fresh crime would not in any way rid me of Matryosha.
“Thus I decided to have these little sheets printed and three hundred copies sent to Russia. When the time comes, I shall send some of them to the police and to the local authorities; simultaneously I shall send them to the editors of all newspapers with a request that they shall be published; I shall also send them to a number of people in Petersburg and in Russia who know me. They will also come out in a translation abroad. I know that I shall, perhaps, not be worried by the law, at any rate not to any considerable extent. It is I who am informing against myself and I have no accuser; besides, the evidence is extraordinarily slight or non-existent. Finally, the rooted idea that I am mentally unbalanced and, certainly, the efforts of my family, who will make use of that idea, will quash any legal prosecution that might threaten me. By the way, I make this statement in order to prove that I am now of sound mind and understand my situation. But there will remain those who will know everything and will look at me, and I at them.[[53]] I want every one to look at me. Will it relieve me? I don’t know. I come to this as to my last resource.
“Once more: if a good search be made by the Petersburg police, perhaps something might be discovered. The landlady and her husband might be living even now in Petersburg. The house, of course, must be remembered. It was painted a bright sky-blue. For myself, I shall not go anywhere, and for a certain length of time (a year or two) I shall always be found at Skvoreshniki, my mother’s estate. If required, I will appear anywhere.
“Nikolai Stavrogin.”
CHAPTER IX[[54]]
The reading lasted for about an hour. Tikhon read slowly, and, possibly, read certain passages twice over. All the time Stavrogin had sat silent and motionless.[[55]] Tikhon took off his glasses, paused, and, looking up at him, was the first to begin to speak rather guardedly.
“Can’t certain corrections be made in this document?”
“Why should there? I wrote sincerely,” Stavrogin replied.
“Some corrections in the style should....”
“I forgot to warn you,” he said quickly and peremptorily, pulling himself up, “that all you say will be useless; I shall not postpone my intention; don’t try to dissuade me. I shall publish it.”
“You did not forget to tell me that, before I began to read.”
“Never mind,” Stavrogin interrupted peremptorily, “I repeat it again: however great the force of your objections may be, I shall not give up my intention. And observe that, by this clumsy or clever phrase—think of it what you like—I am not trying to get you at once to start arguing and coaxing me.”[[56]]
“I shall not argue with you, still less coax you, to give up your intention, nor could I do it either. Your idea is a great idea, and it would be impossible to express more perfectly a Christian idea. Repentance cannot go further than the wonderful deed which you have conceived, if only....”
“If only what?”
“If it were indeed repentance and indeed a Christian idea.”
“I wrote sincerely.”[[57]]
“You seem deliberately to wish to make yourself out coarser than your heart would desire....” Tikhon gradually became bolder. Evidently “the document” made a strong impression on him.
“‘Make myself out’? I repeat to you, I did not ‘make myself out,’ still less did I ‘pose.’”[[58]]
Tikhon quickly cast his eyes down.
“This document comes straight from the needs of a heart which is mortally wounded,—am I not right in this?” he said emphatically and with extraordinary earnestness. “Yes, it is repentance and natural need of repentance that has overcome you, and you have taken the great way, the rarest way. But you, it seems, already hate and despise beforehand all those who will read what is written here, and you challenge them. You were not ashamed of admitting your crime; why are you ashamed of repentance?”
“Ashamed?”
“You are ashamed and afraid!”
“Afraid?”
“Mortally. Let them look at me, you say; well, and you, how will you look at them? Certain passages in your statement are emphasized; you seem to be luxuriating in your own psychology and clutch at each detail, in order to surprise the reader by a callousness which is not really in you. What is this but a haughty defiance of the judge by the accused?”
“Where is the defiance? I kept out all personal discussion.”
Tikhon was silent. His pale cheeks flushed.
“Let us leave that,” Stavrogin said peremptorily. “Allow me to put to you a question on my side: we have now been talking for five minutes since you read that” (he nodded at the pages), “and I do not see in you any expression of aversion or shame.... You don’t seem to be squeamish....”
He did not finish.[[59]]
“I shall not conceal anything from you: I was horrified at the great idle force that had been deliberately wasted in abomination. As for the crime itself, many people sin like that, but they live in peace and quiet with their conscience, even considering it to be the inevitable delinquency of youth. There are old men, too, who sin in the same way—yes, lightly and indulgently. The world is full of these horrors. But you have felt the whole depth to a degree which is extremely rare.”
“Have you come to respect me after these pages?” Stavrogin said, with a wry smile.
“I am not going to answer that straight off. But there certainly is not, nor can there be, a greater and more terrible crime than your behaviour towards the girl.”
“Let us stop this measuring by the yard.[[60]] Perhaps I do not suffer so much as I have made out, and perhaps I have even told many lies against myself,” he added suddenly.
Tikhon once more let this pass in silence.[[61]]
“And the young lady,”[[62]] Tikhon began again, “with whom you broke off in Switzerland; where, if I may ask, is she ... at this moment?”
“Here.”
There was silence again.
“Perhaps I did lie much against myself,” Stavrogin persisted once more. “Well, what does it matter that I challenge them by the coarseness of my confession, if you noticed the challenge? I shall make them hate me still more, that’s all. Surely that will make it easier for me.”[[63]]
“That is, anger in you will rouse responsive anger in them, and, in hating, you will feel easier than if you accepted their pity.”
“You are right. You understand.” He laughed suddenly. “They may perhaps call me a Jesuit and sanctimonious hypocrite after the document, ha, ha, ha! Yes?”
“Certainly there is sure to be some such opinion. And do you expect to carry out your intention soon?”
“To-day, to-morrow, the day after to-morrow, how do I know? But very soon. You are right: I think, indeed, it will in the end happen that I shall publish it unexpectedly, and, indeed, in a revengeful, hateful moment, when I hate them most.”
“Answer me one question, but sincerely, to me alone, only to me,” Tikhon said in quite a different voice; “if some one forgave you for this” (Tikhon pointed at the pages), “and not one of those whom you respect or fear, but a stranger, a man whom you will never know, if, reading your terrible confession, he forgave you, in the privacy of his heart—would you feel relieved, or would it be just the same to you?”
“I should feel easier,” Stavrogin said in an undertone. “If you forgave me, I should feel very much relieved,” he added, casting his eyes down.
“Provided that you forgive me too,” Tikhon murmured in a penetrating voice.[[64]]
“It is false humility. All these monastic formulas, you know, are not fine in the least. I will tell you the whole truth: I want you to forgive me. And besides you—one or two more, but as for the rest—let the rest rather hate me. But I want this, so that I may bear it with humility....”
“And universal pity for you—could you not bear it with the same humility?”
“Perhaps I could not.[[65]] Why do you....”[[66]]
“I feel the extent of your sincerity and am, of course, very much to blame, but I am not good at approaching people. I have always felt it a great fault in myself,” Tikhon said sincerely and intimately, looking straight into Stavrogin’s eyes. “I just say this, because I am afraid for you,” he added; “there is an almost impassable abyss before you.”
“That I shan’t be able to bear it? Not able to endure[[67]] their hatred?” Stavrogin gave a start.
“Not their hatred alone.”
“What else?”
“Their laughter.” Tikhon half whispered these words, as if it were more than he had strength for.
Stavrogin blushed; his face expressed alarm.
“I foresaw it,” he said; “I must have appeared to you a very comic character after your reading of my ‘document.’[[68]] Don’t be uncomfortable. Don’t look disconcerted. I expected it.”
“The horror will be universal and, of course, more false than sincere. People fear only what directly threatens their personal interests. I am not talking of pure souls: they will be horrified in themselves and will blame themselves, but no notice will be taken of them—besides they will keep silent. But the laughter will be universal.”[[69]]
“I am surprised what a low opinion you have of people and how they disgust you.” Stavrogin spoke with some show of anger.
“Believe me, I judged rather by myself than by other people!” Tikhon exclaimed.
“Indeed? but is there also something in your soul that makes you amused at my misery?”
“Who knows, perhaps there is? oh, perhaps there is!”
“Enough. Tell me, then, where exactly am I ridiculous in my manuscript? I know myself, but I want you to put your finger on it. And tell it as cynically as possible, tell me with all the sincerity of which you are capable. And I repeat to you again that you are a terribly queer fellow.”
“In the very form of this great penance there is something ridiculous. Oh, don’t let yourself think that you won’t conquer!” he suddenly exclaimed, almost in ecstasy. “Even this form will conquer” (he pointed to the pages), “if only you sincerely accept the blows and the spitting. It always ended in the most ignominious cross becoming a great glory and a great strength, if the humility of the deed was sincere. Perhaps even in your lifetime you will be comforted!...”
“So you find something ridiculous in the form itself?”[[70]] Stavrogin insisted.
“And in the substance. The ugliness of it will kill it,” Tikhon said in a whisper, looking down.
“Ugliness! what ugliness?”
“Of the crime. There are truly ugly crimes. Crimes, whatever they be, the more blood, the more horror in them, the more imposing they are, so to say, more picturesque. But there are crimes shameful, disgraceful, past all horror, they are, so to say, almost too inelegant....”
Tikhon did not finish.
“You mean to say,” Stavrogin caught him up in agitation, “you find me a very ridiculous figure when I kissed the hands of the dirty little girl....[[71]] I understand you very well, and that is why you despair for me, that it is ugly, revolting—not precisely revolting, but shameful, ridiculous, and you think that that is what I shall least of all be able to bear.”
Tikhon was silent.[[72]]
“I understand why you asked about the young lady from Switzerland, whether she was here.”
“You are not prepared, not hardened,” Tikhon said timidly in a whisper, casting his eyes down; “you are uprooted, you do not believe.”
“Listen, Father Tikhon: I want to forgive myself, and that is my object, my whole object!” Stavrogin suddenly said with gloomy ecstasy in his eyes. “Then only, I know, that vision will disappear. That is why I seek boundless suffering. I seek it myself. Don’t make me afraid, or I shall die in anger.”
The sincerity was so unexpected that Tikhon got up.
“If you believe that you can forgive yourself and attain that forgiveness in this world through your suffering; if you set that object before you with faith, then you already believe completely!” Tikhon exclaimed rapturously. “Why did you say, then, that you did not believe in God?”
Stavrogin made no answer.
“For your unbelief God will forgive you, for you respect the Holy Spirit without knowing Him.”
“Christ will forgive too?” asked Stavrogin, with a wry smile and in a quickly changed tone; and in the tone of his question a suspicion of irony could be heard.
“It says in the Book: ‘And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones,’ you remember. According to the Gospel there is no greater crime....”[[73]]
“Quite plainly, you don’t want a row, and you are laying a trap for me, venerable Father Tikhon,” Stavrogin muttered scornfully and with annoyance, making as if to get up; “in a word, you want me to settle down, to marry, perhaps, and end my life as a member of the local club, and visit your monastery on holidays. Why, that’s penance! isn’t it so? though as a reader of hearts you, perhaps, foresee that it will certainly be so, and all that is needed now is for me to be nicely wheedled into it for form’s sake, since I am only too eager for that,—isn’t it so?”
He gave a wry smile.
“No, not that penance, I am preparing another for you!” Tikhon went on earnestly, without taking the least notice of Stavrogin’s smile and remark.
“I know an old man, a hermit and ascetic, not here, but not far from here, of such great Christian wisdom that he is even beyond your and my understanding. He will listen to my request. I will tell him about you. Go to him, into retreat, as a novice under his guidance, for five years, for seven, for as many as you find necessary. Make a vow to yourself, and by this great sacrifice you will acquire all that you long for and don’t even expect, for you cannot possibly realize now what you will obtain.”
Stavrogin listened gravely.
“You suggest that I enter the monastery as a monk.”[[74]]
“You must not be in the monastery, nor take orders as a monk; be only a lay-brother, a secret, not an open one; it may be that, even living altogether in society....”
“Enough, Father Tikhon.” Stavrogin interrupted him with aversion and rose from his chair. Tikhon also rose.
“What is the matter with you?” he suddenly exclaimed almost in fear, staring at Tikhon. Tikhon stood before him, with his hands clasped, and a painful convulsion seemed to pass for a moment across his face as if from the greatest fear.
“What’s the matter with you? What’s the matter?” Stavrogin repeated, rushing to him in order to support him. It seemed to him that Tikhon was going to fall.
“I see ... I see, as if it stood before me,” Tikhon exclaimed in a voice which penetrated the soul and with an expression of the most violent grief, “that you, poor, lost youth, have never been so near another and a still greater crime than you are at this moment.”
“Calm yourself!” pleaded Stavrogin, decidedly alarmed for him. “Perhaps I shall still postpone it.... You are right....”
“No, not after the publication, but before it, a day, an hour, perhaps, before the great step, you will throw yourself on a new crime, as a way out, and you will commit it solely in order to avoid the publication of these pages.”
Stavrogin shuddered with anger and almost with fear.[[75]] “You cursed psychologist!”—he suddenly cut him short in fury and, without looking round, left the cell.
PLAN OF THE NOVEL
THE LIFE OF A GREAT SINNER
THE LIFE OF A GREAT SINNER
Page 8.
20/8 December.
—Accumulation of wealth.
—The birth of strong passions.
—Strengthening of the will and of the inner powers.
—Measureless pride and struggle with ambition.
—The prose of life and a passionate belief that incessantly overcomes it.
—That all should plead; I only demand.
—Not to be afraid of anything. The sacrifices of life.
—The influence of vice; the horror and coldness from it.
—A desire to defile every one.
—The romance of the years of childhood. Maccary.[[76]]
—Schooling and first ideals.
—Gets to know everything secretly.
—Alone, to prepare himself for anything.
(He is incessantly preparing himself for something, although he does not know for what, and—what is strange—he does not care about the what, as though perfectly sure that it will come of itself.)
—Either slavery or domination. He believes. And that only. Unbelief for the first time—strangely springing up and taking shape only in the monastery. The little lame girl. Katya. Brother Misha. The Stolen Money. Underwent punishment. Fearlessness. A Cornfield. Do not kill me, Uncle. Love of Kulikov. John. Brutilov. The Frenchman Pougot. Upbraids Brutilov. Goes on with his studies. The diver. Albert.[[77]] Shibo. Receiving the communion. Albert does not believe in God. The old people. Loves a great many things secretly and keeps them to himself. They call him a brute and thus he behaves like a brute. Passionate desire to surprise all by unexpectedly impertinent tricks? But not from ambition. By himself. The old people. Songs, Therese-Philosophe John, Brin, Brutilov—Brother, Albert. Friends, and yet they torture a friend; disgusting. A meek, good and pure friend before whom he blushes. Training himself by hardships and accumulating money. Humboldt.
They immediately inform him that he is not their brother.
He makes friends with Kulikov. The lady doctor. He sees her in a halo. A passionate desire to foul himself, to degrade himself in her eyes, but not to please her. A theft took place. They accuse him, he exculpates himself, but the affair becomes clear. The step-brother committed the theft.
Page 7.
A strong and permanent trait.
Disrespect for the people round him, but this is not yet based on reason, but solely on a repulsion for them. Much repulsion. I eat grapes. He is beaten and flogged for his repulsion. He only shuts himself up in himself and hates still more. Haughty contempt for his persecutors, and rapidity of judgment. Extraordinary quickness of judgment signifies a strong passionate individuality. He begins to feel that he ought not to make quick judgments and for this he must strengthen his will.
First signs of expansiveness.
The mother’s boys are at Sushar’s and at Chermak’s. (Their repulsion comes from stupidity.)
—It is a lie, mon Mushvar.
Arkashka and French conversations.
Arkashka, Brutilov and himself keep together.
At Sushar’s—only Brutilov and his history; altogether two chapters—
All up. Because he slapped Sushar. The beginning of Albert.
The boarding-school. An unjust punishment takes place in the house. Exams. In the country. Self-renunciation. Katya. In the town and in the boarding-school he surprises by his brutality. Lambert. Heroic acts—to run away with Katya. Kulikov, with him. Murder. He does not forgive any lie or falsehood and without reasoning instantly rushes into a fight. For a long time he does not believe Katya, then he put her to the test and at last intimidated her with the disgrace.
—Strength of will—this he set before himself as the chief thing.
—After Kulikov, he immediately goes to ask about the lame girl.
Just here they caught him.
—In the country the lady doctor falls in love with him.
He caught her with a lover.
The lady doctor. Mr. Alfonsky—characters.
Page 9.
At the house of the old people. With the old man—reading Karamzin, Arabian tales—On Suvorov, etc. On interest on money. He offended the younger old lady. Ask pardon, I do not want to. He locked them in. Death. Anna and Vasilissa ran away. They sold Vasilissa. The last communion. The first confession. Repulsion. Is there a God? Bible and reading.
January 2.
He smashed the mirror deliberately.
He decides to keep silent and not to say a single word—
—St. mother: why do you make a show of yourself as a sacrifice? (An ideal and strange creature.)
Alfonsky, the father. (His speeches to his son and aspirations.)
—A feeling of destruction.
How many sciences must one know (his conversation with Vanka).
—Voluptuousness (he wants to remain in this state until he has money).
—And the enormous idea of domination (a direct feeling) is hidden so deep in him that he does not feel able, by himself, to adjust himself to these people.
He is surprised at himself, puts himself to the test, and loves to plunge into the abyss—
—The running away with the little girl and the murderer Kulikov immediately after his removal from Sushar’s to Chermak’s. (The fact which produces an overwhelming effect on him and which has even somewhat unsettled him so that he feels a natural need to contract inwardly and to reflect so as to lean on something.) He leans after all on money.
Of God meanwhile he does not think.
His silence ends after a year and a half by his confession about Kulikov.
After Kulikov, he is humble at home and in the boarding-school in order to reflect and
find himself,
to concentrate.
—But he is unsociable and uncommunicative, nor could it be otherwise, remembering and knowing such a horror, and looking at all the other children, for instance, as at something perfectly alien to him, from which he had fled away into another path, into a good path or a bad one—
The blood at times torments him. But the chief thing:
(He is violently carried away by something, by Hamlet, for instance.)
The Inhabitants of the Moon.
It is not this alone that isolates him from everybody, but really his dreams of power and his enormous height above everything.
From that height he is kept back by science, poetry, etc., i.e. in the sense that these are higher things and that it is therefore necessary that he should be higher and better in them too.
Only to prepare oneself, but he is strangely certain that it will all come by itself. Money will solve all questions.
The chief thing. The meaning of the first part—Hesitation, insatiable desire for the ideal, instinctive consciousness of superiority, power and strength. Looking for a fixed point to rest upon. But at any rate an unusual man.
Page 11.[[78]]
or better:—Not a single dream of what to be and what’s his vocation prevented him from amassing money.
—But doubt is always solved by the necessity of money and the chance of amassing a fortune (he sells himself to the men-servants).
Concerning a horse that went mad, or a fire.
The father gave him a flogging—a rupture between them—I do not consider you my father.
—He sells himself to the men-servants, and for this he is held in general contempt, but
—Finds a pocket-book—the infatuation that possessed him finally on account of his exam.—he nearly yields.
But after this the history of Katya’s disgrace, and then the hellish debauchery with Albert, crime and blasphemy and denouncing himself as accessory to the murder with Kulikov—straight into the abyss. The Monastery.
—Although money concentrates him terribly on a certain firm point and solves all questions, at times the point wavers (poetry and many other things) and he cannot find a way out. This state of wavering forms the novel.
—Strengthening of his will, wounds and burns—feed his pride. He wishes to be ready for anything.
—He made up his mind to make money in an honest way. His hesitation with regard to the pocket-book.
—Since a great many things at times move him sincerely, in a terrible fit of spite and pride he plunges into debauchery.
(This is the chief thing.)
—His estrangement from people was furthered by the fact that they all looked upon him as an eccentric and laughed or feared him.
—A broken head (pantalons en haut), he is ill.
Then Chermak left him alone. (Mango.)
—By the process of thinking he arrived at the conclusion, for instance, that it is not necessary to act dishonestly, because acting honestly he would make money even better, since to the rich all privileges for any evil are granted even without that.
—Albert and he steal a star from the crown and escape successfully (he incited), but when Albert began to blaspheme, he began beating him. And then he declared himself before the court as an atheist.
—Idea: that he could gain a still greater power by flattery, like Von Brin.
But no—he thinks—I want to reach the same end without flattery.
Page 12.
I myself am God, and he makes Katya worship him. (God knows what he does with her. “I shall love you then when you can do everything.”)
—In the vagaries of his imagination he has endless dreams, up to the overthrow of God and putting himself in the place of God. (Kulikov had a strong influence.)
Problem. Memento.
| To find the mean proportional. | Act 1. Early Childhood, the old man and woman. |
| " 2. The family, Sushar, the running away and Kulikov— | |
| " 3. Chermak—exams. | |
| " 4. The Country and Katya, debauchery with Albert. |
| 20 Childhood. | |
| 20 Monastery. | |
| 40 Before deportation. | |
| 20 Woman and Satan. | |
| 40 Heroic Acts. |
—Repulsion for people from the very first consciousness as a child (through the passion of a proud and domineering nature). Out of contempt:
—“I will carry it with a high hand, shan’t degrade myself with the flattery and dexterity of a Brin.”
—And this too is from repulsion for people and from contempt for them from the earliest years of childhood—
—“Oh, if I only took upon myself the rôle of a flatterer like Brin,—what could I not achieve!”
—And begins at times to reason: “Shall I not become a flatterer? (he consults the lame girl about it). This too is a power of the spirit—to endure oneself as a flatterer. But no, I do not want it, it is foul—besides I shall have an instrument—money, so that they, willy-nilly, whether they choose or not, will all come to me and bow to me.”
| With Kulikov he displays his spiritual power. | |
| Kulikov does not kill him; but the murderer, the runaway soldier, they killed together. |
13
2
27
12
3
5
—
35 years ago
born in 1835.
If any one overheard his dreams, he believes he would die; but he confesses himself in everything to the lame girl.
—Whatever he reads, he tells in a peculiar way of his own to the lame girl.
—“A slap in the face is the greatest offence.” With blood.—
—The first organized dream of the significance of money.
—The lame girl keeps everything he is telling her secret—she does it without thinking, without his command, having subtly realized it for herself, so that in most cases he does not remind her of the necessity of keeping things secret.
The lame girl does not agree to become an atheist.
He does not beat her for that.
Page 13.
—A single, but detailed psychological analysis of how writers, for instance, “The Hero of Our Time” (Lermontov), affect a child.
—The indignation of a child at the guests as they arrive; at the frankness and impertinence which they allow themselves. (Uvar) “How dare they?”—the child thinks.
—The fall of the old couple.
—The theatre. Sit on my knees—
—They flog him for his repulsion.
—When he and the little girl come to live with the Alfonskys, he tells her not to say a word about Gogol or about what concerns us, about travels. She should not say a word.—
—He has read an immense amount (Walter Scott, etc.).
—At the Alfonskys—not brothers. He is made to feel it.
—He pretends to be rude, undeveloped, and a fool.
—With the men-servants.
—Mrs. Alfonsky suggests the idea that they should not mix with the children.
—At Sushar’s. Alfonsky flogs him. It turns out to be for no fault.
—Mrs. Alfonsky has invented, the running away. With Kulikov—Caught.
—A guest: they call him. They examine him. Candid thoughts.
The guest is surprised.—The house is set on fire, or something—illness.
—Alfonsky delivers speeches.
—At Chermak’s. Progress in studies, reading. Exam.
—After Exam. Alfonsky makes some one fall in love with—Alfonsky questions.
For the lame girl. With Katya. A cornfield.—Family scenes—Alfonsky, his friend, a box on the ear.
In Moscow, Lambert—
About classical education at Chermak’s (Herr Teider).
Jan. 27
He is astonished that all these (grown up) people completely believe in their nonsense, and are much more stupid and insignificant than they seem from the outside.
(One of the scholarly guests, falls down intoxicated and goes with gypsies in the Maryin Woods.)
A period of unbelief in God. Essential to write how the New Testament had affected him. He agrees with the Gospel.
The chief thing meantime is his own I and his interests. Philosophical questions engage him in so far as they touch him.
Page 14.[[79]]
Lambert.
The lame girl: and I will tell how you said that you will be a king (or something ludicrous).
—He wounds her for this—
| Lambert and he—a complete picture of depravity. But Lambert is intoxicated with it and finds nothing higher than this. National levity. | Of what does he speak with the lame girl? Of all his dreams— |
| But he plunges into debauchery with an irresistible desire, but also with fear. The hollowness, dirt, and absurdity of immorality astonish him. He gives it all up and after terrible crimes he denounces himself with bitterness. | When I am grown up, I shall marry not you. So that it is not necessary to say he dreamt of this or that, but he went to the lame girl and said to her this or that. Of what he will be and of money. He beat her because the money did not increase. |
| He talked to her about the reading of Karamzin, tales, etc. He was taught French and German by the young lady, the old, etc. They went for their lessons to other children (there they made fun of him). | |
| Because the lame girl did not flare into a passion for Karamzin—he beat her. | |
| He knew the whole Bible—he told her. | |
| —The history of the world—but was weak in geography. | |
| (Dreams of travels, Kul and the lame girl.) They read novels.—He is highly developed and knows a great deal about many things. He knows Gogol and Pushkin. He never pretends tenderness for the lame girl until the time when he carried her in his arms.— | He meets Umnov who proves that he knows more than he. Coming home he tells the lame girl that Umnov is a fool and knows nothing and gave the lame girl a slight beating; after that he pays great attention to Umnov. |
———————————————
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.
Page 16.
That in each line should be heard: I know what I am writing and I am not writing in vain.
1. 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.
Page 18.
—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.
Page 17.
—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.
Page 70.
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, but at last he perceives that Tikhon’s mind is as strong as a babe is pure; that he cannot have an evil thought, cannot be tempted, and therefore all his acts are clear and beautiful.
Page 71.
Tikhon. On humility (how mighty humility is).
All about humility and free will.
—Of forgiving the unforgivable sinner (that this torment is the most tormenting).
Page 19.
The Main Idea.
May 3/15.
After the Monastery and Tikhon the Great Sinner comes out into the world in order to be the greatest of men. He is sure that he will be the greatest of men. And in that way he behaves: he is the proudest of the proud and behaves with the greatest haughtiness towards people. The vagueness as to the form of his future greatness coincides perfectly with his youth. But he (and this is cardinal) has through Tikhon got hold of the idea (conviction) that in order to conquer the whole world one must conquer oneself only. Conquer thyself and thou shalt conquer the world. Does not choose a career, but neither has he the time: he begins to watch himself profoundly. But along with this there are also certain contradictions:
(1) Gold (amassing) (a family on his hands); amassing money was suggested to him by a usurer, a terrible man, the antithesis of Tikhon. (2) Education (Comte—Atheism—Friends). Education—He is tormented by ideas and philosophy but he masters that which is essential.
Suddenly youth and debauchery. A martyr’s act and terrible crimes. Self-renunciation. But out of mad pride he becomes an ascetic and pilgrim. Travels in Russia. (Romance of love. Thirst for humiliation), etc., etc., and so on.
(The canvas is rich.)
Fallings and risings.
Extraordinary man—but what has he done and achieved.
Traits.—Out of pride and infinite haughtiness towards people he becomes meek and charitable to all because he is already higher than all.
He wanted to shoot himself (a child was exposed at his door).
He ends with establishing a Foundling Hospital and becomes a Haase.[[81]] Everything is becoming clear.
He dies confessing a crime.