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Existentialism
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821 - 1881)
The Dream Of a Ridiculous Man
translated by Constance Garnett |
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I
I am a
ridiculous person. Now they call me a madman. That would be
a promotion if it were not that I remain as ridiculous in
their eyes as before. But now I do not resent it, they are
all dear to me now, even when they laugh at me - and, indeed,
it is just then that they are particularly dear to me. I could
join in their laughter - not exactly at myself, but through
affection for them, if I did not feel so sad as I look at
them. Sad because they do not know the truth and I do know
it. Oh, how hard it is to be the only one who knows the truth!
But they won't understand that. No, they won't understand
it.
In old
days I used to be miserable at seeming ridiculous. Not seeming,
but being. I have always been ridiculous, and I have known
it, perhaps, from the hour I was born. Perhaps from the time
I was seven years old I knew I was ridiculous. Afterwards
I went to school, studied at the university, and, do you know,
the more I learned, the more thoroughly I understood that
I was ridiculous. So that it seemed in the end as though all
the sciences I studied at the university existed only to prove
and make evident to me as I went more deeply into them that
I was ridiculous. It was the same with life as it was with
science. With every year the same consciousness of the ridiculous
figure I cut in every relation grew and strengthened. Everyone
always laughed at me. But not one of them knew or guessed
that if there were one man on earth who knew better than anybody
else that I was absurd, it was myself, and what I resented
most of all was that they did not know that. But that was
my own fault; I was so proud that nothing would have ever
induced me to tell it to anyone. This pride grew in me with
the years; and if it had happened that I allowed myself to
confess to anyone that I was ridiculous, I believe that I
should have blown out my brains the same evening. Oh, how
I suffered in my early youth from the fear that I might give
way and confess it to my schoolfellows. But since I grew to
manhood, I have for some unknown reason become calmer, though
I realized my awful characteristic more fully every year.
I say 'unknown', for to this day I cannot tell why it was.
Perhaps it was owing to the terrible misery that was growing
in my soul through something which was of more consequence
than anything else about me: that something was the conviction
that had come upon me that nothing in the world mattered.
I had long had an inkling of it, but the full realization
came last year almost suddenly. I suddenly felt that it was
all the same to me whether the world existed or whether there
had never been anything at all: I began to feel with all my
being that there was nothing existing. At first I fancied
that many things had existed in the past, but afterwards I
guessed that there never had been anything in the past either,
but that it had only seemed so for some reason. Little by
little I guessed that there would be nothing in the future
either. Then I left off being angry with people and almost
ceased to notice them. Indeed this showed itself even in the
pettiest trifles: I used, for instance, to knock against people
in the street. And not so much from being lost in thought:
what had I to think about? I had almost given up thinking
by that time; nothing mattered to me. If at least I had solved
my problems! Oh, I had not settled one of them, and how many
there were! But I gave up caring about anything, and all the
problems disappeared.
And it
was after that that I found out the truth. I learnt the truth
last November - on the third of November, to be precise -
and I remember every instant since. It was a gloomy evening,
one of the gloomiest possible evenings. I was going home at
about eleven o'clock, and I remember that I thought that the
evening could not be gloomier. Even physically. Rain had been
falling all day, and it had been a cold, gloomy, almost menacing
rain, with, I remember, an unmistakable spite against mankind.
Suddenly between ten and eleven it had stopped, and was followed
by a horrible dampness, colder and damper than the rain, and
a sort of steam was rising from everything, from every stone
in the street, and from every by-lane if one looked down it
as far as one could. A thought suddenly occurred to me, that
if all the street lamps had been put out it would have been
less cheerless, that the gas made one's heart sadder because
it lighted it all up. I had had scarcely any dinner that day,
and had been spending the evening with an engineer, and two
other friends had been there also. I sat silent - I fancy
I bored them. They talked of something rousing and suddenly
they got excited over it. But they did not really care, I
could see that, and only made a show of being excited. I suddenly
said as much to them. "My friends," I said, "you
really do not care one way or the other." They were not
offended, but they laughed at me. That was because I spoke
without any note of reproach, simply because it did not matter
to me. They saw it did not, and it amused them.
As I was
thinking about the gas lamps in the street I looked up at
the sky. The sky was horribly dark, but one could distinctly
see tattered clouds, and between them fathomless black patches.
Suddenly I noticed in one of these patches a star, and began
watching it intently. That was because that star had given
me an idea: I decided to kill myself that night. I had firmly
determined to do so two months before, and poor as I was,
I bought a splendid revolver that very day, and loaded it.
But two months had passed and it was still lying in my drawer;
I was so utterly indifferent that I wanted to seize a moment
when I would not be so indifferent - why, I don't know. And
so for two months every night when I came home I thought I
would shoot myself. I kept waiting for the right moment. And
so now this star gave me a thought. I made up my mind that
it should certainly be that night. And why the star gave me
the thought I don't know.
And just
as I was looking at the sky, this little girl took me by the
elbow. The street was empty, and there was scarcely anyone
to be seen. A cabman was sleeping in the distance in his cab.
It was a child of eight with a kerchief on her head, wearing
nothing but a wretched little dress all soaked with rain,
but I noticed her wet broken shoes and I recall them now.
They caught my eye particularly. She suddenly pulled me by
the elbow and called me. She was not weeping, but was spasmodically
crying out some words which could not utter properly, because
she was shivering and shuddering all over. She was in terror
about something, and kept crying, "Mammy, mammy!"
I turned facing her, I did not say a word and went on; but
she ran, pulling at me, and there was that note in her voice
which in frightened children means despair. I know that sound.
Though she did not articulate the words, I understood that
her mother was dying, or that something of the sort was happening
to them, and that she had run out to call someone, to find
something to help her mother. I did not go with her; on the
contrary, I had an impulse to drive her away. I told her first
to go to a policeman. But clasping her hands, she ran beside
me sobbing and gasping, and would not leave me. Then I stamped
my foot and shouted at her. She called out "Sir! sir!
. . ." but suddenly abandoned me and rushed headlong
across the road. Some other passerby appeared there, and she
evidently flew from me to him.
I mounted
up to my fifth storey. I have a room in a flat where there
are other lodgers. Mr room is small and poor, with a garret
window in the shape of a semicircle. I have a sofa covered
with American leather, a table with books on it, two chairs
and a comfortable arm-chair, as old as old can be, but of
the good old-fashioned shape. I sat down, lighted the candle,
and began thinking. In the room next to mine, through the
partition wall, a perfect Bedlam was going on. It had been
going on for the last three days. A retired captain lived
there, and he had half a dozen visitors, gentlemen of doubtful
reputation, drinking vodka and playing stoss with old cards.
The night before there had been a fight, and I know that two
of them had been for a long time engaged in dragging each
other about by the hair. The landlady wanted to complain,
but she was in abject terror of the captain. There was only
one other lodger in the flat, a thin little regimental lady,
on a visit to Petersburg, with three little children who had
been taken ill since they came into the lodgings. Both she
and her children were in mortal fear of the captain, and lay
trembling and crossing themselves all night, and the youngest
child had a sort of fit from fright. That captain, I know
for a fact, sometimes stops people in the Nevsky Prospect
and begs. They won't take him into the service, but strange
to say (that's why I am telling this), all this month that
the captain has been here his behaviour has caused me no annoyance.
I have, of course, tried to avoid his acquaintance from the
very beginning, and he, too, was bored with me from the first;
but I never care how much they shout the other side of the
partition nor how many of them there are in there: I sit up
all night and forget them so completely that I do not even
hear them. I stay awake till daybreak, and have been going
on like that for the last year. I sit up all night in my arm-chair
at the table, doing nothing. I only read by day. I sit - don't
even think; ideas of a sort wander through my mind and I let
them come and go as they will. A whole candle is burnt every
night. I sat down quietly at the table, took out the revolver
and put it down before me. When I had put it down I asked
myself, I remember, "Is that so?" and answered with
complete conviction, "It is." That is, I shall shoot
myself. I knew that I should shoot myself that night for certain,
but how much longer I should go on sitting at the table I
did not know. And no doubt I should have shot myself if it
had not been for that little girl.
II
You see,
though nothing mattered to me, I could feel pain, for instance.
If anyone had stuck me it would have hurt me. It was the same
morally: if anything very pathetic happened, I should have
felt pity just as I used to do in old days when there were
things in life that did matter to me. I had felt pity that
evening. I should have certainly helped a child. Why, then,
had I not helped the little girl? Because of an idea that
occurred to me at the time: when she was calling and pulling
at me, a question suddenly arose before me and I could not
settle it. The question was an idle one, but I was vexed.
I was vexed at the reflection that if I were going to make
an end of myself that night, nothing in life ought to have
mattered to me. Why was it that all at once I did feel a strange
pang, quite incongruous in my position. Really I do not know
better how to convey my fleeting sensation at the moment,
but the sensation persisted at home when I was sitting at
the table, and I was very much irritated as I had not been
for a long time past. One reflection followed another. I saw
clearly that so long as I was still a human being and not
nothingness, I was alive and so could suffer, be angry and
feel shame at my actions. So be it. But if I am going to kill
myself, in two hours, say, what is the little girl to me and
what have I to do with shame or with anything else in the
world? I shall turn into nothing, absolutely nothing. And
can it really be true that the consciousness that I shall
completely cease to exist immediately and so everything else
will cease to exist, does not in the least affect my feeling
of pity for the child nor the feeling of shame after a contemptible
action? I stamped and shouted at the unhappy child as though
to say - not only I feel no pity, but even if I behave inhumanly
and contemptibly, I am free to, for in another two hours everything
will be extinguished. Do you believe that that was why I shouted
that? I am almost convinced of it now. I seemed clear to me
that life and the world somehow depended upon me now. I may
almost say that the world now seemed created for me alone:
if I shot myself the world would cease to be at least for
me. I say nothing of its being likely that nothing will exist
for anyone when I am gone, and that as soon as my consciousness
is extinguished the whole world will vanish too and become
void like a phantom, as a mere appurtenance of my consciousness,
for possibly all this world and all these people are only
me myself. I remember that as I sat and reflected, I turned
all these new questions that swarmed one after another quite
the other way, and thought of something quite new. For instance,
a strange reflection suddenly occurred to me, that if I had
lived before on the moon or on Mars and there had committed
the most disgraceful and dishonorable action and had there
been put to such shame and ignominy as one can only conceive
and realize in dreams, in nightmares, and if, finding myself
afterwards on earth, I were able to retain the memory of what
I had done on the other planet and at the same time knew that
I should never, under any circumstances, return there, then
looking from the earth to the moon - should I care or not?
Should I feel shame for that action or not? These were idle
and superfluous questions for the revolver was already lying
before me, and I knew in every fibre of my being that it would
happen for certain, but they excited me and I raged. I could
not die now without having first settled something. In short,
the child had saved me, for I put off my pistol shot for the
sake of these questions. Meanwhile the clamour had begun to
subside in the captain's room: they had finished their game,
were settling down to sleep, and meanwhile were grumbling
and languidly winding up their quarrels. At that point, I
suddenly fell asleep in my chair at the table - a thing which
had never happened to me before. I dropped asleep quite unawares.
Dreams,
as we all know, are very queer things: some parts are presented
with appalling vividness, with details worked up with the
elaborate finish of jewellery, while others one gallops through,
as it were, without noticing them at all, as, for instance,
through space and time. Dreams seem to be spurred on not by
reason but by desire, not by the head but by the heart, and
yet what complicated tricks my reason has played sometimes
in dreams, what utterly incomprehensible things happen to
it! Mr brother died five years ago, for instance. I sometimes
dream of him; he takes part in my affairs, we are very much
interested, and yet all through my dream I quite know and
remember that my brother is dead and buried. How is it that
I am not surprised that, though he is dead, he is here beside
me and working with me? Why is it that my reason fully accepts
it? But enough. I will begin about my dream. Yes, I dreamed
a dream, my dream of the third of November. They tease me
now, telling me it was only a dream. But does it matter whether
it was a dream or reality, if the dream made known to me the
truth? If once one has recognized the truth and seen it, you
know that it is the truth and that there is no other and there
cannot be, whether you are asleep or awake. Let it be a dream,
so be it, but that real life of which you make so much I had
meant to extinguish by suicide, and my dream, my dream - oh,
it revealed to me a different life, renewed, grand and full
of power!
Listen.
III
I have
mentioned that I dropped asleep unawares and even seemed to
be still reflecting on the same subjects. I suddenly dreamt
that I picked up the revolver and aimed it straight at my
heart - my heart, and not my head; and I had determined beforehand
to fire at my head, at my right temple. After aiming at my
chest I waited a second or two, and suddenly my candle, my
table, and the wall in front of me began moving and heaving.
I made haste to pull the trigger.
In dreams
you sometimes fall from a height, or are stabbed, or beaten,
but you never feel pain unless, perhaps, you really bruise
yourself against the bedstead, then you feel pain and almost
always wake up from it. It was the same in my dream. I did
not feel any pain, but it seemed as though with my shot everything
within me was shaken and everything was suddenly dimmed, and
it grew horribly black around me. I seemed to be blinded,
and it benumbed, and I was lying on something hard, stretched
on my back; I saw nothing, and could not make the slightest
movement. People were walking and shouting around me, the
captain bawled, the landlady shrieked - and suddenly another
break and I was being carried in a closed coffin. And I felt
how the coffin was shaking and reflected upon it, and for
the first time the idea struck me that I was dead, utterly
dead, I knew it and had no doubt of it, I could neither see
nor move and yet I was feeling and reflecting. But I was soon
reconciled to the position, and as one usually does in a dream,
accepted the facts without disputing them.
And now
I was buried in the earth. They all went away, I was left
alone, utterly alone. I did not move. Whenever before I had
imagined being buried the one sensation I associated with
the grave was that of damp and cold. So now I felt that I
was very cold, especially the tips of my toes, but I felt
nothing else.
I lay
still, strange to say I expected nothing, accepting without
dispute that a dead man had nothing to expect. But it was
damp. I don't know how long a time passed - whether an hour
or several days, or many days. But all at once a drop of water
fell on my closed left eye, making its way through the coffin
lid; it was followed a minute later by a second, then a minute
later by a third - and so on, regularly every minute. There
was a sudden glow of profound indignation in my heart, and
I suddenly felt in it a pang of physical pain. "That's
my wound," I thought; "that's the bullet . . ."
And drop after drop every minute kept falling on my closed
eyelid. And all at once, not with my voice, but with my entire
being, I called upon the power that was responsible for all
that was happening to me:
"Whoever
you may be, if you exist, and if anything more rational than
what is happening here is possible, suffer it to be here now.
But if you are revenging yourself upon me for my senseless
suicide by the hideousness and absurdity of this subsequent
existence, then let me tell you that no torture could ever
equal the contempt which I shall go on dumbly feeling, though
my martyrdom may last a million years!"
I made
this appeal and held my peace. There was a full minute of
unbroken silence and again another drop fell, but I knew with
infinite unshakable certainty that everything would change
immediately. And behold my grave suddenly was rent asunder,
that is, I don't know whether it was opened or dug up, but
I was caught up by some dark and unknown being and we found
ourselves in space. I suddenly regained my sight. It was the
dead of night, and never, never had there been such darkness.
We were flying through space far away from the earth. I did
not question the being who was taking me; I was proud and
waited. I assured myself that I was not afraid, and was thrilled
with ecstasy at the thought that I was not afraid. I do not
know how long we were flying, I cannot imagine; it happened
as it always does in dreams when you skip over space and time,
and the laws of thought and existence, and only pause upon
the points for which the heart yearns. I remember that I suddenly
saw in the darkness a star. "Is that Sirius?" I
asked impulsively, though I had not meant to ask questions.
"No,
that is the star you saw between the clouds when you were
coming home," the being who was carrying me replied.
I knew
that it had something like a human face. Strange to say, I
did not like that being, in fact I felt an intense aversion
for it. I had expected complete non-existence, and that was
why I had put a bullet through my heart. And here I was in
the hands of a creature not human, of course, but yet living,
existing. "And so there is life beyond the grave,"
I thought with the strange frivolity one has in dreams. But
in its inmost depth my heart remained unchanged. "And
if I have got to exist again," I thought, "and live
once more under the control of some irresistible power, I
won't be vanquished and humiliated."
"You
know that I am afraid of you and despise me for that,"
I said suddenly to my companion, unable to refrain from the
humiliating question which implied a confession, and feeling
my humiliation stab my heart as with a pin. He did not answer
my question, but all at once I felt that he was not even despising
me, but was laughing at me and had no compassion for me, and
that our journey had an unknown and mysterious object that
concerned me only. Fear was growing in my heart. Something
was mutely and painfully communicated to me from my silent
companion, and permeated my whole being. We were flying through
dark, unknown space. I had for some time lost sight of the
constellations familiar to my eyes. I knew that there were
stars in the heavenly spaces the light of which took thousands
or millions of years to reach the earth. Perhaps we were already
flying through those spaces. I expected something with a terrible
anguish that tortured my heart. And suddenly I was thrilled
by a familiar feeling that stirred me to the depths: I suddenly
caught sight of our sun! I knew that it could not be our sun,
that gave life to our earth, and that we were an infinite
distance from our sun, but for some reason I knew in my whole
being that it was a sun exactly like ours, a duplicate of
it. A sweet, thrilling feeling resounded with ecstasy in my
heart: the kindred power of the same light which had given
me light stirred an echo in my heart and awakened it, and
I had a sensation of life, the old life of the past for the
first time since I had been in the grave.
"But
if that is the sun, if that is exactly the same as our sun,"
I cried, "where is the earth?"
And my
companion pointed to a star twinkling in the distance with
an emerald light. We were flying straight towards it.
"And
are such repetitions possible in the universe? Can that be
the law of Nature? . . . And if that is an earth there, can
it be just the same earth as ours . . . just the same, as
poor, as unhappy, but precious and beloved for ever, arousing
in the most ungrateful of her children the same poignant love
for her that we feel for our earth?" I cried out, shaken
by irresistible, ecstatic love for the old familiar earth
which I had left. The image of the poor child whom I had repulsed
flashed through my mind.
"You
shall see it all," answered my companion, and there was
a note of sorrow in his voice.
But we
were rapidly approaching the planet. It was growing before
my eyes; I could already distinguish the ocean, the outline
of Europe; and suddenly a feeling of a great and holy jealousy
glowed in my heart.
"How
can it be repeated and what for? I love and can love only
that earth which I have left, stained with my blood, when,
in my ingratitude, I quenched my life with a bullet in my
heart. But I have never, never ceased to love that earth,
and perhaps on the very night I parted from it I loved it
more than ever. Is there suffering upon this new earth? On
our earth we can only love with suffering and through suffering.
We cannot love otherwise, and we know of no other sort of
love. I want suffering in order to love. I long, I thirst,
this very instant, to kiss with tears the earth that I have
left, and I don't want, I won't accept life on any other!"
But my
companion had already left me. I suddenly, quite without noticing
how, found myself on this other earth, in the bright light
of a sunny day, fair as paradise. I believe I was standing
on one of the islands that make up on our globe the Greek
archipelago, or on the coast of the mainland facing that archipelago.
Oh, everything was exactly as it is with us, only everything
seemed to have a festive radiance, the splendour of some great,
holy triumph attained at last. The caressing sea, green as
emerald, splashed softly upon the shore and kissed it with
manifest, almost conscious love. The tall, lovely trees stood
in all the glory of their blossom, and their innumerable leaves
greeted me, I am certain, with their soft, caressing rustle
and seemed to articulate words of love. The grass glowed with
bright and fragrant flowers. Birds were flying in flocks in
the air, and perched fearlessly on my shoulders and arms and
joyfully struck me with their darling, fluttering wings. And
at last I saw and knew the people of this happy land. That
came to me of themselves, they surrounded me, kissed me. The
children of the sun, the children of their sun - oh, how beautiful
they were! Never had I seen on our own earth such beauty in
mankind. Only perhaps in our children, in their earliest years,
one might find, some remote faint reflection of this beauty.
The eyes of these happy people shone with a clear brightness.
Their faces were radiant with the light of reason and fullness
of a serenity that comes of perfect understanding, but those
faces were gay; in their words and voices there was a note
of childlike joy. Oh, from the first moment, from the first
glance at them, I understood it all! It was the earth untarnished
by the Fall; on it lived people who had not sinned. They lived
just in such a paradise as that in which, according to all
the legends of mankind, our first parents lived before they
sinned; the only difference was that all this earth was the
same paradise. These people, laughing joyfully, thronged round
me and caressed me; they took me home with them, and each
of them tried to reassure me. Oh, they asked me no questions,
but they seemed, I fancied, to know everything without asking,
and they wanted to make haste to smoothe away the signs of
suffering from my face.
IV
And do
you know what? Well, granted that it was only a dream, yet
the sensation of the love of those innocent and beautiful
people has remained with me for ever, and I feel as though
their love is still flowing out to me from over there. I have
seen them myself, have known them and been convinced; I loved
them, I suffered for them afterwards. Oh, I understood at
once even at the time that in many things I could not understand
them at all; as an up-to-date Russian progressive and contemptible
Petersburger, it struck me as inexplicable that, knowing so
much, they had, for instance, no science like our. But I soon
realized that their knowledge was gained and fostered by intuitions
different from those of us on earth, and that their aspirations,
too, were quite different. They desired nothing and were at
peace; they did not aspire to knowledge of life as we aspire
to understand it, because their lives were full. But their
knowledge was higher and deeper than ours; for our science
seeks to explain what life is, aspires to understand it in
order to teach others how to love, while they without science
knew how to live; and that I understood, but I could not understand
their knowledge. They showed me their trees, and I could not
understand the intense love with which they looked at them;
it was as though they were talking with creatures like themselves.
And perhaps I shall not be mistaken if I say that they conversed
with them. Yes, they had found their language, and I am convinced
that the trees understood them. They looked at all Nature
like that - at the animals who lived in peace with them and
did not attack them, but loved them, conquered by their love.
They pointed to the stars and told me something about them
which I could not understand, but I am convinced that they
were somehow in touch with the stars, not only in thought,
but by some living channel. Oh, these people did not persist
in trying to make me understand them, they loved me without
that, but I knew that they would never understand me, and
so I hardly spoke to them about our earth. I only kissed in
their presence the earth on which they lived and mutely worshipped
them themselves. And they saw that and let me worship them
without being abashed at my adoration, for they themselves
loved much. They were not unhappy on my account when at times
I kissed their feet with tears, joyfully conscious of the
love with which they would respond to mine. At times I asked
myself with wonder how it was they were able never to offend
a creature like me, and never once to arouse a feeling of
jealousy or envy in me? Often I wondered how it could be that,
boastful and untruthful as I was, I never talked to them of
what I knew - of which, of course, they had no notion - that
I was never tempted to do so by a desire to astonish or even
to benefit them.
They were
as gay and sportive as children. They wandered about their
lovely woods and copses, they sang their lovely songs; their
fair was light - the fruits of their trees, the honey from
their woods, and the milk of the animals who loved them. The
work they did for food and raiment was brief and not laborious.
They loved and begot children, but I never noticed in them
the impulse of that cruel sensuality which overcomes almost
every man on this earth, all and each, and is the source of
almost every sin of mankind on earth. They rejoiced at the
arrival of children as new beings to share their happiness.
There was no quarrelling, no jealousy among them, and they
did not even know what the words meant. Their children were
the children of all, for they all made up one family. There
was scarcely any illness among them, though there was death;
but their old people died peacefully, as though falling asleep,
giving blessings and smiles to those who surrounded them to
take their last farewell with bright and lovely smiles. I
never saw grief or tears on those occasions, but only love,
which reached the point of ecstasy, but a calm ecstasy, made
perfect and contemplative. One might think that they were
still in contact with the departed after death, and that their
earthly union was not cut short by death. They scarcely understood
me when I questioned them about immortality, but evidently
they were so convinced of it without reasoning that it was
not for them a question at all. They had no temples, but they
had a real living and uninterrupted sense of oneness with
the whole of the universe; they had no creed, but they had
a certain knowledge that when their earthly joy had reached
the limits of earthly nature, then there would come for them,
for the living and for the dead, a still greater fullness
of contact with the whole of the universe. They looked forward
to that moment with joy, but without haste, not pining for
it, but seeming to have a foretaste of it in their hearts,
of which they talked to one another.
In the
evening before going to sleep they liked singing in musical
and harmonious chorus. In those songs they expressed all the
sensations that the parting day had given them, sang its glories
and took leave of it. They sang the praises of nature, of
the sea, of the woods. They liked making songs about one another,
and praised each other like children; they were the simplest
songs, but they sprang from their hearts and went to one's
heart. And not only in their songs but in all their lives
they seemed to do nothing but admire one another. It was like
being in love with each other, but an all-embracing, universal
feeling.
Some of
their songs, solemn and rapturous, I scarcely understood at
all. Though I understood the words I could never fathom their
full significance. It remained, as it were, beyond the grasp
of my mind, yet my heart unconsciously absorbed it more and
more. I often told them that I had had a presentiment of it
long before, that this joy and glory had come to me on our
earth in the form of a yearning melancholy that at times approached
insufferable sorrow; that I had had a foreknowledge of them
all and of their glory in the dreams of my heart and the visions
of my mind; that often on our earth I could not look at the
setting sun without tears. . . that in my hatred for the men
of our earth there was always a yearning anguish: why could
I not hate them without loving them? why could I not help
forgiving them? and in my love for them there was a yearning
grief: why could I not love them without hating them? They
listened to me, and I saw they could not conceive what I was
saying, but I did not regret that I had spoken to them of
it: I knew that they understood the intensity of my yearning
anguish over those whom I had left. But when they looked at
me with their sweet eyes full of love, when I felt that in
their presence my heart, too, became as innocent and just
as theirs, the feeling of the fullness of life took my breath
away, and I worshipped them in silence.
Oh, everyone
laughs in my face now, and assures me that one cannot dream
of such details as I am telling now, that I only dreamed or
felt one sensation that arose in my heart in delirium and
made up the details myself when I woke up. And when I told
them that perhaps it really was so, my God, how they shouted
with laughter in my face, and what mirth I caused! Oh, yes,
of course I was overcome by the mere sensation of my dream,
and that was all that was preserved in my cruelly wounded
heart; but the actual forms and images of my dream, that is,
the very ones I really saw at the very time of my dream, were
filled with such harmony, were so lovely and enchanting and
were so actual, that on awakening I was, of course, incapable
of clothing them in our poor language, so that they were bound
to become blurred in my mind; and so perhaps I really was
forced afterwards to make up the details, and so of course
to distort them in my passionate desire to convey some at
least of them as quickly as I could. But on the other hand,
how can I help believing that it was all true? It was perhaps
a thousand times brighter, happier and more joyful than I
describe it. Granted that I dreamed it, yet it must have been
real. You know, I will tell you a secret: perhaps it was not
a dream at all! For then something happened so awful, something
so horribly true, that it could not have been imagined in
a dream. My heart may have originated the dream, but would
my heart alone have been capable of originating the awful
event which happened to me afterwards? How could I alone have
invented it or imagined it in my dream? Could my petty heart
and fickle, trivial mind have risen to such a revelation of
truth? Oh, judge for yourselves: hitherto I have concealed
it, but now I will tell the truth. The fact is that I . .
. corrupted them all!
V
Yes, yes,
it ended in my corrupting them all! How it could come to pass
I do not know, but I remember it clearly. The dream embraced
thousands of years and left in me only a sense of the whole.
I only know that I was the cause of their sin and downfall.
Like a vile trichina, like a germ of the plague infecting
whole kingdoms, so I contaminated all this earth, so happy
and sinless before my coming. They learnt to lie, grew fond
of lying, and discovered the charm of falsehood. Oh, at first
perhaps it began innocently, with a jest, coquetry, with amorous
play, perhaps indeed with a germ, but that germ of falsity
made its way into their hearts and pleased them. Then sensuality
was soon begotten, sensuality begot jealousy, jealousy - cruelty
. . . Oh, I don't know, I don't remember; but soon, very soon
the first blood was shed. They marvelled and were horrified,
and began to be split up and divided. They formed into unions,
but it was against one another. Reproaches, upbraidings followed.
They came to know shame, and shame brought them to virtue.
The conception of honour sprang up, and every union began
waving its flags. They began torturing animals, and the animals
withdrew from them into the forests and became hostile to
them. They began to struggle for separation, for isolation,
for individuality, for mine and thine. They began to talk
in different languages. They became acquainted with sorrow
and loved sorrow; they thirsted for suffering, and said that
truth could only be attained through suffering. Then science
appeared. As they became wicked they began talking of brotherhood
and humanitarianism, and understood those ideas. As they became
criminal, they invented justice and drew up whole legal codes
in order to observe it, and to ensure their being kept, set
up a guillotine. They hardly remembered what they had lost,
in fact refused to believe that they had ever been happy and
innocent. They even laughed at the possibility of this happiness
in the past, and called it a dream. They could not even imagine
it in definite form and shape, but, strange and wonderful
to relate, though they lost all faith in their past happiness
and called it a legend, they so longed to be happy and innocent
once more that they succumbed to this desire like children,
made an idol of it, set up temples and worshipped their own
idea, their own desire; though at the same time they fully
believed that it was unattainable and could not be realized,
yet they bowed down to it and adored it with tears! Nevertheless,
if it could have happened that they had returned to the innocent
and happy condition which they had lost, and if someone had
shown it to them again and had asked them whether they wanted
to go back to it, they would certainly have refused. They
answered me:
"We
may be deceitful, wicked and unjust, we know it and weep over
it, we grieve over it; we torment and punish ourselves more
perhaps than that merciful Judge Who will judge us and whose
Name we know not. But we have science, and by the means of
it we shall find the truth and we shall arrive at it consciously.
Knowledge is higher than feeling, the consciousness of life
is higher than life. Science will give us wisdom, wisdom will
reveal the laws, and the knowledge of the laws of happiness
is higher than happiness."
That is
what they said, and after saying such things everyone began
to love himself better than anyone else, and indeed they could
not do otherwise. All became so jealous of the rights of their
own personality that they did their very utmost to curtail
and destroy them in others, and made that the chief thing
in their lives. Slavery followed, even voluntary slavery;
the weak eagerly submitted to the strong, on condition that
the latter aided them to subdue the still weaker. Then there
were saints who came to these people, weeping, and talked
to them of their pride, of their loss of harmony and due proportion,
of their loss of shame. They were laughed at or pelted with
stones. Holy blood was shed on the threshold of the temples.
Then there arose men who began to think how to bring all people
together again, so that everybody, while still loving himself
best of all, might not interfere with others, and all might
live together in something like a harmonious society. Regular
wars sprang up over this idea. All the combatants at the same
time firmly believed that science, wisdom and the instinct
of self-preservation would force men at last to unite into
a harmonious and rational society; and so, meanwhile, to hasten
matters, 'the wise' endeavored to exterminate as rapidly as
possible all who were 'not wise' and did not understand their
idea, that the latter might not hinder its triumph. But the
instinct of self-preservation grew rapidly weaker; there arose
men, haughty and sensual, who demanded all or nothing. In
order to obtain everything they resorted to crime, and if
they did not succeed - to suicide. There arose religions with
a cult of non-existence and self-destruction for the sake
of the everlasting peace of annihilation. At last these people
grew weary of their meaningless toil, and signs of suffering
came into their faces, and then they proclaimed that suffering
was a beauty, for in suffering alone was there meaning. They
glorified suffering in their songs. I moved about among them,
wringing my hands and weeping over them, but I loved them
perhaps more than in old days when there was no suffering
in their faces and when they were innocent and so lovely.
I loved the earth they had polluted even more than when it
had been a paradise, if only because sorrow had come to it.
Alas! I always loved sorrow and tribulation, but only for
myself, for myself; but I wept over them, pitying them. I
stretched out my hands to them in despair, blaming, cursing
and despising myself. I told them that all this was my doing,
mine alone; that it was I who had brought them corruption,
contamination and falsity. I besought them to crucify me,
I taught them how to make a cross. I could not kill myself,
I had not the strength, but I wanted to suffer at their hands.
I yearned for suffering, I longed that my blood should be
drained to the last drop in these agonies. But they only laughed
at me, and began at last to look upon me as crazy. They justified
me, they declared that they had only got what they wanted
themselves, and that all that now was could not have been
otherwise. At last they declared to me that I was becoming
dangerous and that they should lock me up in a madhouse if
I did not hold my tongue. Then such grief took possession
of my soul that my heart was wrung, and I felt as though I
were dying; and then . . . then I awoke.
It was
morning, that is, it was not yet daylight, but about six o'clock.
I woke up in the same arm-chair; my candle had burnt out;
everyone was asleep in the captain's room, and there was a
stillness all round, rare in our flat. First of all I leapt
up in great amazement: nothing like this had ever happened
to me before, not even in the most trivial detail; I had never,
for instance, fallen asleep like this in my arm-chair. While
I was standing and coming to myself I suddenly caught sight
of my revolver lying loaded, ready - but instantly I thrust
it away! Oh, now, life, life! I lifted up my hands and called
upon eternal truth, not with words, but with tears; ecstasy,
immeasurable ecstasy flooded my soul. Yes, life and spreading
the good tidings! Oh, I at that moment resolved to spread
the tidings, and resolved it, of course, for my whole life.
I go to spread the tidings, I want to spread the tidings -
of what? Of the truth, for I have seen it, have seen it with
my own eyes, have seen it in all its glory.
And since
then I have been preaching! Moreover I love all those who
laugh at me more than any of the rest. Why that is so I do
not know and cannot explain, but so be it. I am told that
I am vague and confused, and if I am vague and confused now,
what shall I be later on? It is true indeed: I am vague and
confused, and perhaps as time goes on I shall be more so.
And of course I shall make many blunders before I find out
how to preach, that is, find out what words to say, what things
to do, for it is a very difficult task. I see all that as
clear as daylight, but, listen, who does not make mistakes?
And yet, you know, all are making for the same goal, all are
striving in the same direction anyway, from the sage to the
lowest robber, only by different roads. It is an old truth,
but this is what is new: I cannot go far wrong. For I have
seen the truth; I have seen and I know that people can be
beautiful and happy without losing the power of living on
earth. I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal
condition of mankind. And it is just this faith of mine that
they laugh at. But how can I help believing it? I have seen
the truth - it is not as though I had invented it with my
mind, I have seen it, seen it, and the living image of it
has filled my soul for ever. I have seen it in such full perfection
that I cannot believe that it is impossible for people to
have it. And so how can I go wrong? I shall make some slips
no doubt, and shall perhaps talk in second-hand language,
but not for long: the living image of what I saw will always
be with me and will always correct and guide me. Oh, I am
full of courage and freshness, and I will go on and on if
it were for a thousand years! Do you know, at first I meant
to conceal the fact that I corrupted them, but that was a
mistake - that was my first mistake! But truth whispered to
me that I was lying, and preserved me and corrected me. But
how establish paradise - I don't know, because I do not know
how to put it into words. After my dream I lost command of
words. All the chief words, anyway, the most necessary ones.
But never mind, I shall go and I shall keep talking, I won't
leave off, for anyway I have seen it with my own eyes, though
I cannot describe what I saw. But the scoffers do not understand
that. It was a dream, they say, delirium, hallucination. Oh!
As though that meant so much! And they are so proud! A dream!
What is a dream? And is not our life a dream? I will say more.
Suppose that this paradise will never come to pass (that I
understand), yet I shall go on preaching it. And yet how simple
it is: in one day, in one hour everything could be arranged
at once! The chief thing is to love others like yourself,
that's the chief thing, and that's everything; nothing else
is wanted - you will find out at once how to arrange it all.
And yet it's an old truth which has been told and retold a
billion times - but it has not formed part of our lives! The
consciousness of life is higher than life, the knowledge of
the laws of happiness is higher than happiness - that is what
one must contend against. And I shall. If only everyone wants
it, it can be arranged at once.
And I
tracked down that little girl . . . and I shall go on and
on!
Ce
qu'on fait n'est jamais compris mais seulement loué ou blâmé.
Nietzsche, Gay Science |
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