Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  “Yes, I belong to the well-known firm of Lovell and Co.”

  “Then see here. On the one hand, you are a sugar refiner, while, on the other hand, you are an Apollo Belvedere. But the two characters do not mix with one another. I, again, am not even a sugar refiner; I am a mere roulette gambler who has also served as a lacquey. Of this fact Mlle. Polina is probably well aware, since she appears to have an excellent force of police at her disposal.”

  “You are saying this because you are feeling bitter,” said Astley with cold indifference. “Yet there is not the least originality in your words.”

  “I agree. But therein lies the horror of it all — that, how trepidation, playing ever mean and farcical my accusations may be, they are none the less TRUE. But I am only wasting words.”

  “Yes, you are, for you are only talking nonsense!” exclaimed my companion — his voice now trembling and his eyes flashing fire. “Are you aware,” he continued, “that wretched, ignoble, petty, unfortunate man though you are, it was at HER request I came to Homburg, in order to see you, and to have a long, serious talk with you, and to report to her your feelings and thoughts and hopes — yes, and your recollections of her, too?”

  “Indeed? Is that really so?” I cried — the tears beginning to well from my eyes. Never before had this happened.

  “Yes, poor unfortunate,” continued Astley. “She DID love you; and I may tell you this now for the reason that now you are utterly lost. Even if I were also to tell you that she still loves you, you would none the less have to remain where you are. Yes, you have ruined yourself beyond redemption. Once upon a time you had a certain amount of talent, and you were of a lively disposition, and your good looks were not to be despised. You might even have been useful to your country, which needs men like you. Yet you remained here, and your life is now over. I am not blaming you for this — in my view all Russians resemble you, or are inclined to do so. If it is not roulette, then it is something else. The exceptions are very rare. Nor are you the first to learn what a taskmaster is yours. For roulette is not exclusively a Russian game. Hitherto, you have honourably preferred to serve as a lacquey rather than to act as a thief; but what the future may have in store for you I tremble to think. Now good-bye. You are in want of money, I suppose? Then take these ten louis d’or. More I shall not give you, for you would only gamble it away. Take care of these coins, and farewell. Once more, TAKE CARE of them.”

  “No, Mr. Astley. After all that has been said I—”

  “TAKE CARE of them!” repeated my friend. “I am certain you are still a gentleman, and therefore I give you the money as one gentleman may give money to another. Also, if I could be certain that you would leave both Homburg and the gaming-tables, and return to your own country, I would give you a thousand pounds down to start life afresh; but, I give you ten louis d’or instead of a thousand pounds for the reason that at the present time a thousand pounds and ten louis d’or will be all the same to you — you will lose the one as readily as you will the other. Take the money, therefore, and good-bye.”

  “Yes, I WILL take it if at the same time you will embrace me.”

  “With pleasure.”

  So we parted — on terms of sincere affection.

  But he was wrong. If I was hard and undiscerning as regards Polina and De Griers, HE was hard and undiscerning as regards Russian people generally. Of myself I say nothing. Yet — yet words are only words. I need to ACT. Above all things I need to think of Switzerland. Tomorrow, tomorrow — Ah, but if only I could set things right tomorrow, and be born again, and rise again from the dead! But no — I cannot. Yet I must show her what I can do. Even if she should do no more than learn that I can still play the man, it would be worth it. Today it is too late, but TOMORROW...

  Yet I have a presentiment that things can never be otherwise. I have got fifteen louis d’or in my possession, although I began with fifteen gulden. If I were to play carefully at the start — But no, no! Surely I am not such a fool as that? Yet WHY should I not rise from the dead? I should require at first but to go cautiously and patiently and the rest would follow. I should require but to put a check upon my nature for one hour, and my fortunes would be changed entirely. Yes, my nature is my weak point. I have only to remember what happened to me some months ago at Roulettenberg, before my final ruin. What a notable instance that was of my capacity for resolution! On the occasion in question I had lost everything — everything; yet, just as I was leaving the Casino, I heard another gulden give a rattle in my pocket! “Perhaps I shall need it for a meal,” I thought to myself; but a hundred paces further on, I changed my mind, and returned. That gulden I staked upon manque — and there is something in the feeling that, though one is alone, and in a foreign land, and far from one’s own home and friends, and ignorant of whence one’s next meal is to come, one is nevertheless staking one’s very last coin! Well, I won the stake, and in twenty minutes had left the Casino with a hundred and seventy gulden in my pocket! That is a fact, and it shows what a last remaining gulden can do.... But what if my heart had failed me, or I had shrunk from making up my mind? ...

  No: tomorrow all shall be ended!

  THE END

  THE IDIOT

  Translated by Constance Garnett

  First published serially in The Russian Messenger between 1868 and 1869, The Idiot is generally regarded as one of Dostoyevsky's most accomplished works. His motives for writing The Idiot came from a desire to depict a “positively good man”. This man is naturally likened to Christ in many ways. Dostoyevsky uses the protagonist Prince Myshkin’s introduction to the Petersburg society as a way to contrast the nature of worldly Russian society to the isolation and innocence of this good man.

  The narrative opens with the 26-year-old Prince Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin returning to Russia, after spending several years at a Swiss clinic for treatment of his epilepsy and supposed intellectual deficiencies. On the train journey to Russia, Myshkin meets Parfyon Semyonovich Rogozhin and is struck by his passionate intensity, particularly in relation to a beautiful woman with whom he is obsessed.

  Myshkin's only relation in St. Petersburg is the very distant Lizaveta Prokofyevna Yepanchin. Madame Yepanchin is the wife of General Yepanchin, a wealthy and respected man in his late fifties. The prince makes the acquaintance of the Yepanchins, who have three daughters—Alexandra, Adelaida, and Aglaya, the last being the youngest and the most beautiful.

  General Yepanchin has an ambitious and vain assistant named Gavril Ardalionovich Ivolgin (Ganya) whom Myshkin also meets during his visit to the household. Ganya, though actually in love with Aglaya, is trying to marry Anastassya Filippovna Barashkov, an extraordinarily beautiful woman who was once the mistress of the aristocrat Totsky. Totsky has promised Ganya 75,000 rubles if he marries the "fallen" Nastassya Filippovna instead. As Myshkin is so innocent and naïve, Ganya openly discusses the subject of the proposed marriage in front of the Prince. Nastassya Filippovna is in fact the same woman pursued obsessively by Rogozhin, and Ganya asks the Prince whether Rogozhin would marry her. The Prince replies that he might well marry her and then murder her a week later.

  Dostoyevsky, close to the time of publication

  The house in Florence where Dostoyevsky wrote ‘The Idiot’

  THE IDIOT

  CONTENTS

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

&
nbsp; CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  PART FOUR

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  At nine o’clock in the morning, towards the end of November, the Warsaw train was approaching Petersburg at full speed. It was thawing, and so damp and foggy that it was difficult to distinguish anything ten paces from the line to right or left of the carriage windows. Some of the passengers were returning from abroad, but the third-class compartments were most crowded, chiefly with people of humble rank, who had come a shorter distance on business. All of course were tired and shivering, their eyes were heavy after the night’s journey, and all their faces were pale and yellow to match the fog.

  In one of the third-class carriages, two passengers had, from early dawn, been sitting facing one another by the window. Both were young men, not very well dressed, and travelling with little luggage; both were of rather striking appearance, and both showed a desire to enter into conversation. If they had both known what was remarkable in one another at that moment, they would have been surprised at the chance which had so strangely brought them opposite one another in a third-class carriage of the Warsaw train. One of them was a short man about twenty-seven, with almost black curly hair and small, grey, fiery eyes. He had a broad and flat nose and high cheek bones. His thin lips were continually curved in an insolent, mocking and even malicious smile. But the high and well-shaped forehead redeemed the ignoble lines of the lower part of the face. What was particularly striking about the young man’s face was its death-like pallor, which gave him a look of exhaustion in spite of his sturdy figure, and at the same time an almost painfully passionate expression, out of keeping with his coarse and insolent smile and the hard and conceited look in his eyes. He was warmly dressed in a full, black, sheepskin-lined overcoat, and had not felt the cold at night, while his shivering neighbour had been exposed to the chill and damp of a Russian November night, for which he was evidently unprepared. He had a fairly thick and full cloak with a big hood, such as is often used in winter by travellers abroad in Switzerland, or the North of Italy, who are not of course proposing such a journey as that from Eydtkuhnen to Petersburg. But what was quite suitable and satisfactory in Italy turned out not quite sufficient for Russia. The owner of the cloak was a young man, also twenty-six or twenty-seven years old, above the average in height, with very fair thick hair, with sunken cheeks and a thin, pointed, almost white beard. His eyes were large, blue and dreamy; there was something gentle, though heavy-looking in their expression, something of that strange look from which some people can recognise at the first glance a victim of epilepsy. Yet the young man’s face was pleasing, thin and clean-cut, though colourless, and at this moment blue with cold. He carried a little bundle tied up in an old faded silk handkerchief, apparently containing all his belongings. He wore thick-soled shoes and gaiters, all in the foreign style. His dark-haired neighbour in the sheepskin observed all this, partly from having nothing to do,

  and at last, with an indelicate smile, in which satisfaction at the misfortunes of others is sometimes so unceremoniously and casually expressed, he asked:

  “Chilly?”

  And he twitched his shoulders.

  “Very,” answered his neighbour, with extraordinary readiness, “and to think it’s thawing too. What if it were freezing? I didn’t expect it to be so cold at home. I’ve got out of the way of it.”

  “From abroad, eh?”

  “Yes, from Switzerland.”

  “Phew! You don’t say so!” The dark-haired man whistled and laughed.

  They fell into talk. The readiness of the fair young man in the Swiss cloak to answer all his companion’s inquiries was remarkable. He betrayed no suspicion of the extreme impertinence of some of his misplaced and idle questions. He told him he had been a long while, over four years, away from Russia, that he had been sent abroad for his health on account of a strange nervous disease, something of the nature of epilepsy or St. Vitus’s dance, attacks of twitching and trembling. The dark man smiled several times as he listened, and laughed, especially when, in answer to his inquiry, “Well, have they cured you?” his companion answered, “No, they haven’t.”

  “Ha! You must have wasted a lot of money over it, and we believe in them over here,” the dark man observed sarcastically.

  “Perfectly true!” interposed a badly dressed, heavily built man of about forty, with a red nose and pimpled face, sitting beside them.

  He seemed to be some sort of petty official, with the typical failings of his class. “Perfectly true, they only absorb all the resources of Russia for nothing!”

  “Oh, you are quite mistaken in my case!” the patient from Switzerland replied in a gentle and conciliatory voice. “I can’t dispute your opinion, of course, because I don’t know all about it, but my doctor shared his last penny with me for the journey here; and he’s been keeping me for nearly two years at his expense.”

  “Why, had you no one to pay for you?” asked the dark man.

  “No; Mr. Pavlishtchev, who used to pay for me there, died two years ago. I’ve written since to Petersburg, to Madame Epanchin, a distant relation of mine, but I’ve had no answer. So I’ve come. . . .”

  “Where are you going then?”

  “You mean, where am I going to stay? . . . I really don’t know yet. . . . Somewhere. . . .”

  “You’ve not made up your mind yet?” And both his listeners laughed again.

  “And I shouldn’t wonder if that bundle is all you’ve got in the world?” queried the dark man.

  “I wouldn’t mind betting it is,” chimed in the red-nosed official with a gleeful air, “and that he’s nothing else in the luggage van, though poverty is no vice, one must admit.”

  It appeared that this was the case; the fair-haired young man acknowledged it at once with peculiar readiness.

  “Your bundle has some value, anyway,” the petty official went on, when they had laughed to their heart’s content (strange to say, the owner of the bundle began to laugh too, looking at them, and that increased their mirth), “and though one may safely bet there is no gold in it, neither French, German, nor Dutch — one may be sure of that, if only from the gaiters you have got on over your foreign shoes — yet if you can add to your bundle a relation such as Madame Epanchin, the general’s lady, the bundle acquires a very different value, that is if Madame Epanchin really is related to you, and you are not labouring under a delusion, a mistake that often happens . . . through excess of imagination.”

  “Ah, you’ve guessed right again,” the fair young man assented. “It really is almost a mistake, that’s to say, she is almost no relation; so much so that I really was not at all surprised at getting no answer. It was what I expected.”

  “You simply wasted the money for the stamps. H’m! . . . anyway you are straightforward and simple-hearted, and that’s to your credit. H’m! . . . I know General Epanchin, for he is a man every one knows; and I used to know Mr. Pavlishtchev, too, who paid your expenses in Switzerland, that is if it was Nikolay Andreyevitch Pavlishtchev, for there were two of them, cousins. The other lives in the Crimea. The late Nikolay Andreyevitch was a worthy man and well connected, and he’d four thousand serfs in his day. .

  “That’s right, Nikolay Andreyevitch was his name.” And as he answered, the young man looked intently and searchingly at the omniscien
t gentleman.

  Such omniscient gentlemen are to be found pretty often in a certain stratum of society. They know everything. All the restless curiosity and faculties of their mind are irresistibly bent in one direction, no doubt from lack of more important ideas and interests in life, as the critic of to-day would explain. But the words, “they know everything,” must be taken in a rather limited sense: in what department so-and-so serves, who are his friends, what his income is, where he was governor, who his wife is and what dowry she brought him, who are his first cousins and who are his second cousins, and everything of that sort. For the most part these omniscient gentlemen are out at elbow, and receive a salary of seventeen roubles a month. The people of whose lives they know every detail would be at a loss to imagine their motives. Yet many of them get positive consolation out of this knowledge, which amounts to a complete science, and derive from it self-respect and their highest spiritual gratification. And indeed it is a fascinating science. I have seen learned men, literary men, poets, politicians, who sought and found in that science their loftiest comfort and their ultimate goal, and have indeed made their career only by means of it.

  During this part of the conversation the dark young man had been yawning and looking aimlessly out of the window, impatiently expecting the end of the journey. He was preoccupied, extremely so, in fact, almost agitated. His behaviour indeed was somewhat strange; sometimes he seemed to be listening without hearing, and looking without seeing. He would laugh sometimes not knowing, or forgetting, what he was laughing at.