Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (557 page)

That is the question I asked myself.  I am a grateful creature, and have shown it by a hundred imbecilities.  If some one were frank with me, I should instantly respond with frankness and begin to love them at once.  And so I have done, but they have all deceived me promptly, and have withdrawn from me with a sneer.  The most candid of them all was Lambert, who beat me so much as a child, but he was only an open brute and scoundrel.  And even his openness was only stupidity.  Such was my state of mind when I came to Petersburg.

When I came out from Dergatchev’s (and goodness only knows what made me go to him) I had gone up to Vassin, and in a rush of enthusiasm I had begun singing his praises.  And that very evening I felt that I liked him much less.  Why?  Just because by my praise of him I had demeaned myself before him.  Yet one might have thought it would have been the other way: a man just and generous enough to give another his due, even to his own detriment, ought to stand higher in personal dignity than anyone.  And though I quite understood this, I did like Vassin less, much less in fact.  I purposely choose an example with which the reader is familiar.  I even thought of Kraft with a bitter, sickly feeling, because he had led me into the passage, and this feeling lasted till the day when Kraft’s state of mind at the time was revealed, and it was impossible to be angry with him.  From the time when I was in the lowest class in the grammar-school, as soon as any of my comrades excelled me in school work, or witty answers or physical strength, I immediately gave up talking or having anything to do with them.  Not that I disliked them or wished them not to succeed; I simply turned away from them because such was my character.

Yes, I thirsted for power, I’ve thirsted for it all my life, power and solitude.  I dreamed of it at an age when every one would have laughed at me to my face if they could have guessed what was in my head.  That was why I so liked secrecy.  And indeed all my energy went into dreams, so much so that I had no time to talk.  This led to my being unsociable, and my absentmindedness led people to more unpleasant conclusions about me, but my rosy cheeks belied their suspicions.

I was particularly happy when, covering myself up in bed at night, I began in complete solitude, with no stir or sound of other people round me, to re-create life on a different plan.  I was most desperately dreamy up to the time of the “idea,” when all my dreams became rational instead of foolish, and passed from the fantastic realms of romance to the reasonable world of reality.

Everything was concentrated into one object.  Not that they were so very stupid before, although there were masses and masses of them.  But I had favourites . . . there is no need to bring them in here, however.

Power!  I am convinced that very many people would think it very funny if they knew that such a “pitiful” creature was struggling for power.  But I shall surprise them even more: perhaps from my very first dreams that is, almost from my earliest childhood, I could never imagine myself except in the foremost place, always and in every situation in life.  I will add a strange confession: it is the same perhaps to this day.  At the same time, let me observe that I am not apologizing for it.

That is the point of my idea, that is the force of it, that money is the one means by which the humblest nonentity may rise to the FOREMOST PLACE.  I may not be a nonentity, but I know from the looking-glass that my exterior does not do me justice, for my face is commonplace.  But if I were as rich as Rothschild, who would find fault with my face?  And wouldn’t thousands of women be ready to fly to me with all their charms if I whistled to them?  I am sure that they would honestly consider me good-looking.  Suppose I am clever.  But were I as wise as Solomon some one would be found wiser still, and I should be done for.  But if I were a Rothschild what would that wise man be beside me?  Why, they would not let him say a word beside me!  I may be witty, but with Talleyrand or Piron I’m thrown into the shade; but if I were Rothschild, where would Piron be, and where Talleyrand even, perhaps?  Money is, of course, despotic power, and at the same time it is the greatest leveller, and that is its chief power.  Money levels all inequality.  I settled all that in Moscow.

You will see, of course, in this idea nothing but insolence, violence, the triumph of the nonentity over the talented.  I admit that it is an impudent idea (and for that reason a sweet one).  But let it pass: you imagine that I desire power to be able to crush, to avenge myself.  That is just the point, that that is how the commonplace would behave.  What is more, I’m convinced that thousands of the wise and talented who are so exalted, if the Rothschilds’ millions suddenly fell to their lot could not resist behaving like the most vulgar and commonplace, and would be more oppressive than any.  My idea is quite different.  I’m not afraid of money.  It won’t crush me and it won’t make me crush others.

What I want isn’t money, or rather money is not necessary to me, nor power either.  I only want what is obtained by power, and cannot be obtained without it; that is, the calm and solitary consciousness of strength!  That is the fullest definition of liberty for which the whole world is struggling!  Liberty!  At last I have written that grand word. . . .  Yes, the solitary consciousness of strength is splendid and alluring.  I have strength and I am serene.  With the thunderbolts in his hands Jove is serene; are his thunders often heard?  The fool fancies that he is asleep.  But put a literary man or a peasant-woman in Jove’s place, and the thunder would never cease!

If I only have power, I argued, I should have no need to use it.  I assure you that of my own free will I should take the lowest seat everywhere.  If I were a Rothschild, I would go about in an old overcoat with an umbrella.  What should I care if I were jostled in the crowd, if I had to skip through the mud to avoid being run over?  The consciousness that I was myself, a Rothschild, would even amuse me at the moment.  I should know I could have a dinner better than anyone, that I could have the best cook in the world, it would be enough for me to know it.  I would eat a piece of bread and ham and be satisfied with the consciousness of it.  I think so even now.

I shouldn’t run after the aristocracy, but they would run after me.  I shouldn’t pursue women, but they would fly to me like the wind, offering me all that women can offer.  “The vulgar” run after money, but the intelligent are attracted by curiosity to the strange, proud and reserved being, indifferent to everything.  I would be kind, and would give them money perhaps, but I would take nothing from them.  Curiosity arouses passion, perhaps I may inspire passion.  They will take nothing away with them I assure you, except perhaps presents that will make me twice as interesting to them.

          . . . to me enough                 The consciousness of this.

It is strange, but true, that I have been fascinated by this picture since I was seventeen.

I don’t want to oppress or torment anyone and I won’t, but I know that if I did want to ruin some man, some enemy of mine, no one could prevent me, and every one would serve me, and that would be enough again.  I would not revenge myself on anyone.  I could never understand how James Rothschild could consent to become a Baron!  Why, for what reason, when he was already more exalted than anyone in the world.  “Oh, let that insolent general insult me at the station where we are both waiting for our horses!  If he knew who I was he would run himself to harness the horses and would hasten to assist me into my modest vehicle!  They say that some foreign count or baron at a Vienna railway station put an Austrian banker’s slippers on for him in public; and the latter was so vulgar as to allow him to do it.  Oh, may that terrible beauty (yes, terrible, there are such!), that daughter of that luxurious and aristocratic lady meeting me by chance on a steamer or somewhere, glance askance at me and turn up her nose, wondering contemptuously how that humble, unpresentable man with a book or paper in his hand could dare to be in a front seat beside her!  If only she knew who was sitting beside her!  And she will find out, she will, and will come to sit beside me of her own accord, humble, timid, ingratiating, seeking my glance, radiant at my smile.” . . .  I purposely introduce these early day-dreams to express what was in my mind.  But the picture is pale, and perhaps trivial.  Only reality will justify everything.

I shall be told that such a life would be stupid: why not have a mansion, keep open house, gather society round you, why not have influence, why not marry?  But what would Rothschild be then?  He would become like every one else.  All the charm of the “idea” would disappear, all its moral force.  When I was quite a child I learnt Pushkin’s monologue of the “Miserly Knight.”  Pushkin has written nothing finer in conception than that!  I have the same ideas now.

“But yours is too low an ideal,” I shall be told with contempt.  “Money, wealth.  Very different from the common weal, from self- sacrifice for humanity.”

But how can anyone tell how I should use my wealth?  In what way is it immoral, in what way is it degrading, that these millions should pass out of dirty, evil, Jewish hands into the hands of a sober and resolute ascetic with a keen outlook upon life?  All these dreams of the future, all these conjectures, seem like a romance now, and perhaps I am wasting time in recording them.  I might have kept them to myself.  I know, too, that these lines will very likely be read by no one, but if anyone were to read them, would he believe that I should be unable to stand the test of the Rothschild millions?  Not because they would crush me, quite the contrary.  More than once in my dreams I have anticipated that moment in the future, when my consciousness will be satiated, and power will not seem enough for me.  Then, not from ennui, not from aimless weariness, but because I have a boundless desire for what is great, I shall give all my millions away, let society distribute all my wealth, and I — I will mix with nothingness again!  Maybe I will turn into a beggar like the one who died on the steamer, with the only difference that they wouldn’t find money sewn up in my shirt.  The mere consciousness that I had had millions in my hands and had flung them away into the dirt like trash would sustain me in my solitude.  I am ready to think the same even now.  Yes, my “idea” is a fortress in which I can always, at every turn, take refuge from every one, even if I were a beggar dying on a steamer.  It is my poem!  And let me tell you I must have the WHOLE of my vicious will, simply to prove TO MYSELF that I can renounce it.

No doubt I shall be told that this is all romance, and that if I got my millions I should not give them up and become a beggar.  Perhaps I should not.  I have simply sketched the ideal in my mind.

But I will add seriously that if I did succeed in piling up as much money as Rothschild, that it really might end in my giving it all up to the public (though it would be difficult to do so before I reached that amount).  And I shouldn’t give away half because that would be simply vulgar: I should be only half as rich, that would be all.  I should give away all, all to the last farthing, for on becoming a beggar I should become twice as rich as Rothschild!  If other people don’t understand this it’s not my fault; I’m not going to explain it.

“The fanaticism, the romanticism of insignificance and impotence!” people will pronounce, “the triumph of commonplaceness and mediocrity!”  Yes, I admit that it is in a way the triumph of commonplaceness and mediocrity, but surely not of impotence.  I used to be awfully fond of imagining just such a creature, commonplace and mediocre, facing the world and saying to it with a smile, “You are Galileos, and Copernicuses, Charlemagnes and Napoleons, you are Pushkins and Shakespeares, you are field- marshals and generals, and I am incompetence and illegitimacy, and yet I am higher than all of you, because you bow down to it yourself.”  I admit that I have pushed this fancy to such extremes that I have struck out even my education.  It seemed to me more picturesque if the man were sordidly ignorant.  This exaggerated dream had a positive influence at the time on my success in the seventh form of the grammar-school.  I gave up working simply from fanaticism, feeling that lack of education would add a charm to my ideal.  Now I’ve changed my views on that point; education does not detract from it.

Gentlemen, can it be that even the smallest independence of mind is so distasteful to you?  Blessed he who has an ideal of beauty, even though it be a mistaken one!  But I believe in mine.  It is only that I’ve explained it clumsily, crudely.  In ten years, of course, I should explain it better, and I treasure that in my memory.

4

I’ve finished with my idea.  If my account of it has been commonplace and superficial it is I that am to blame and not the idea.  I have already pointed out that the simplest ideas are always the most difficult to understand.

Now I will add that they are also the most difficult to explain; moreover, I have described my “idea” in its earliest phase.  The converse is the rule with ideas: commonplace and shallow ideas are extraordinarily quickly understood, and are invariably understood by the crowd, by the whole street.  What is more, they are regarded as very great, and as the ideas of genius, but only for the day of their appearance.  The cheap never wears.  For a thing to be quickly understood is only a sign of its commonplaceness.  Bismarck’s idea was received as a stroke of genius instantly, and Bismarck himself was looked on as a genius, but the very rapidity of its reception was suspicious.  Wait for ten years, and then we shall see what remains of the idea and of Bismarck himself.  I introduce this extremely irrelevant observation, of course, not for the sake of comparison, but also for the sake of remembering it.  (An explanation for the too unmannerly reader.)

And now I will tell two anecdotes to wind up my account of the “idea,” that it may not hinder my story again.

In July, two months before I came to Petersburg, when my time was all my own, Marie Ivanovna asked me to go to see an old maiden lady who was staying in the Troitsky suburb to take her a message of no interest for my story.  Returning the same day, I noticed in the railway carriage an unattractive-looking young man, not very poorly though grubbily dressed, with a pimply face and a muddy dark complexion.  He distinguished himself by getting out at every station, big and little, to have a drink.  Towards the end of the journey he was surrounded by a merry throng of very low companions.  One merchant, also a little drunk, was particularly delighted at the young man’s power of drinking incessantly without becoming drunk.  Another person, who was awfully pleased with him, was a very stupid young fellow who talked a great deal.  He was wearing European dress and smelt most unsavoury — he was a footman as I found out afterwards; this fellow got quite friendly with the young man who was drinking, and, every time the train stopped, roused him with the invitation:  “It’s time for a drop of vodka,” and they got out with their arms round each other.  The young man who drank scarcely said a word, but yet more and more companions joined him, he only listened to their chatter, grinning incessantly with a drivelling snigger, and only from time to time, always unexpectedly, brought out a sound something like “Ture-lure-loo!” while he put his finger up to his nose in a very comical way.  This diverted the merchant, and the footman and all of them, and they burst into very loud and free and easy laughter.  It is sometimes impossible to understand why people laugh.  I joined them too, and, I don’t know why, the young man attracted me too, perhaps by his very open disregard for the generally accepted conventions and proprieties.  I didn’t see, in fact, that he was simply a fool.  Anyway, I got on to friendly terms with him at once, and, as I got out of the train, I learnt from him that he would be in the Tverskoy Boulevard between eight and nine.  It appeared that he had been a student.  I went to the Boulevard, and this was the diversion he taught me: we walked together up and down the boulevards, and a little later, as soon as we noticed a respectable woman walking along the street, if there were no one else near, we fastened upon her.  Without uttering a word we walked one on each side of her, and with an air of perfect composure as though we didn’t see her, began to carry on a most unseemly conversation.  We called things by their names, preserving unruffled countenances as though it were the natural thing to do; we entered into such subtleties in our description of all sorts of filth and obscenity as the nastiest mind of the lewdest debauchee could hardly have conceived.  (I had, of course, acquired all this knowledge at the boarding school before I went to the grammar school, though I knew only words, nothing of the reality.)  The woman was dreadfully frightened, and made haste to try and get away, but we quickened our pace too — and went on in the same way.  Our victim, of course, could do nothing; it was no use to cry out, there were no spectators; besides, it would be a strange thing to complain of.  I repeated this diversion for eight days.  I can’t think how I can have liked doing it; though, indeed, I didn’t like doing it — I simply did it.  At first I thought it original, as something outside everyday conventions and conditions, besides I couldn’t endure women.  I once told the student that in his “Confessions” Jean Jacques Rousseau describes how, as a youth, he used to behave indecently in the presence of women.  The student responded with his “ture-lure-loo!”  I noticed that he was extraordinarily ignorant, and that his interests were astonishingly limited.  There was no trace in him of any latent idea such as I had hoped to find in him. Instead of originality I found nothing in him but a wearisome monotony.  I disliked him more and more.  The end came quite unexpectedly.  One night when it was quite dark, we persecuted a girl who was quickly and timidly walking along the boulevard.  She was very young, perhaps sixteen or even less, very tidily and modestly dressed; possibly a working girl hurrying home from work to an old widowed mother with other children; there is no need to be sentimental though.  The girl listened for some time, and hurried as fast as she could with her head bowed and her veil drawn over her face, frightened and trembling.  But suddenly she stood still, threw back her veil, showing, as far as I remember, a thin but pretty face, and cried with flashing eyes: