“Permit me, Dergachev, that’s not the way to put it,” Tikhomirov again picked up impatiently (Dergachev yielded at once). “In view of the fact that Kraft has done serious research, has deduced deductions on the basis of physiology, which he considers mathematical, and has killed maybe two years on his idea (which I would quite calmly accept a priori), in view of that, that is, in view of Kraft’s anxieties and seriousness, this matter presents itself as a phenomenon. A question arises from all this which Kraft cannot comprehend, and that is what we should occupy ourselves with, that is, Kraft’s incomprehension, because it is a phenomenon. We should decide whether this is a clinical phenomenon, as a singular case, or is a property that may normally be repeated in others; this is of interest in view of the common cause. I shall believe Kraft about Russia and even say that I am perhaps also glad; if this idea were adopted by everyone, it would unbind hands and free many from patriotic prejudice . . .”
“It’s not out of patriotism,” said Kraft, as if with strain. This whole debate seemed disagreeable to him.
“Patriotism or not, that can be left aside,” said Vasin, who was very silent.
“But, tell me, how could Kraft’s deduction weaken the striving for the general human cause?” shouted the teacher (he alone shouted, all the rest spoke quietly). “Suppose Russia is destined to be second-rate; but it is possible not to work for Russia alone. And, besides, how can Kraft be a patriot, if he has ceased to believe in Russia?”
“Anyhow he’s German,” a voice was heard again.
“I’m Russian,” said Kraft.
“That question is not directly related to the matter,” Dergachev pointed out to the one who had interrupted.
“Abandon the narrowness of your idea.” Tikhomirov wouldn’t listen to anything. “If Russia is only material for nobler races, why shouldn’t she serve as such material? It’s a handsome enough role. Why not settle on this idea with a view to broadening the task? Mankind is on the eve of its regeneration, which has already begun. Only blind men can deny the forthcoming task. Leave Russia, if you’ve lost faith in her, and work for the future—for the future of a still unknown people, but which will be composed of all mankind, with no distinction of races. Even without that, Russia will die one day; peoples, even the most gifted of them, live no more than fifteen hundred, two thousand years at most; what difference does it make, two thousand or two hundred years? The Romans didn’t survive even fifteen hundred years as a living entity, and they also became material. They’re long gone, but they left an idea, and it entered into the destinies of mankind as an element of things to come. How can you tell a man there’s nothing to do? I can’t imagine a situation in which there could ever be nothing to do! Do it for mankind and don’t worry about the rest. There’s so much to do that a lifetime won’t be enough, if you look around attentively.”
“We must live by the law of nature and truth,”16 Mrs. Dergachev said from behind the door. The door was slightly ajar, and she could be seen standing there, holding the baby to her breast, with her breast covered, and listening ardently.
Kraft listened, smiling slightly, and finally said, as if with a somewhat weary look, though with great sincerity:
“I don’t understand how it’s possible, while under the influence of some dominant idea, to which your mind and heart are totally subject, to live by anything that lies outside that idea.”
“But if you’re told logically, mathematically, that your deduction is mistaken, that the whole thought is mistaken, that you do not have the least right to exclude yourself from general useful activity only because Russia is predestined to be second-rate; if you are shown that, instead of a narrow horizon, an infinity is open to you, that instead of a narrow idea of patriotism . . .”
“Eh!” Kraft quietly waved his hand, “but I told you it’s not a matter of patriotism.”
“There’s obviously a misunderstanding here,” Vasin suddenly mixed in. “The mistake is that for Kraft it’s not just a logical deduction, but, so to speak, a deduction that has turned into a feeling. Not all natures are the same; for many, a logical deduction sometimes turns into the strongest feeling, which takes over their whole being, and which it is very difficult to drive out or alter. To cure such a person, it’s necessary in that case to change the feeling itself, which can be done only by replacing it with another that is equally strong. That is always difficult, and in many cases impossible.”
“Mistake!” the arguer yelled. “A logical deduction in itself already breaks down prejudices. An intelligent conviction generates the same feeling. Thought proceeds from feeling and, installing itself in a person in its turn, formulates the new!”
“People are very varied: some change their feelings easily, others with difficulty,” replied Vasin, as if not wishing to prolong the argument; but I was delighted with his idea.
“It’s precisely as you say!” I suddenly turned to him, breaking the ice and suddenly beginning to speak. “It’s precisely necessary to put one feeling in the place of another, so as to replace it. Four years ago, in Moscow, a certain general . . . You see, gentlemen, I didn’t know him, but . . . Maybe he, indeed, could not inspire respect on his own . . . And besides, the fact itself might seem unreasonable, but . . . However, you see, his child died, that is, as a matter of fact, two girls, one after the other, of scarlet fever . . . Well, he was suddenly so crushed that he was sad all the time, so sad that he went around and you couldn’t even look at him—and he ended by dying in about half a year. That he died of it is a fact! What, then, could have resurrected him? Answer: a feeling of equal strength! Those two girls should have been dug up from the grave and given to him—that’s all, or something of the sort. So he died. And meanwhile you could have presented him with beautiful deductions: that life is fleeting, that everyone is mortal; presented him with calendar statistics,17 how many children die of scarlet fever . . . He was retired . . .”
I stopped, breathless, and looked around.
“That’s not it at all,” someone said.
“The fact you cite, though not of the same kind as the given case, still resembles it and clarifies the matter,” Vasin turned to me.
IV
HERE I MUST confess why I was delighted with Vasin’s argument about the “idea-feeling,” and along with that I must confess to an infernal shame. Yes, I was scared to go to Dergachev’s, though not for the reason Efim supposed. I was scared because I had already been afraid of them in Moscow. I knew that they (that is, they or others of their sort—it makes no difference) were dialecticians and would perhaps demolish “my idea.” I was firmly convinced in myself that I would not betray or tell my idea to them; but they (that is, again, they or their sort) might tell me something on their own that would make me disappointed in my idea, even without my mentioning it to them. There were questions in “my idea” that I hadn’t resolved yet, but I didn’t want anyone to resolve them except me. In the last two years I had even stopped reading books, afraid of coming across some passage that would not be in favor of the “idea,” that might shake me. And suddenly Vasin resolves the problem at a stroke and sets me at peace in the highest sense. Indeed, what was I afraid of, and what could they do to me with no matter what dialectics? Perhaps I was the only one there who understood what Vasin said about the “idea-feeling”! It’s not enough to refute a beautiful idea, one must replace it with something equally beautiful; otherwise, in my heart, unwilling to part with my feeling for anything, I will refute the refutation, even by force, whatever they may say. And what could they give me instead? And therefore I should have been braver, I was obliged to be more courageous. Delighted with Vasin, I felt shame, felt myself an unworthy child!
This resulted in yet another shame. Not the vile little urge to boast of my intelligence that had made me break the ice there and start talking, but also a desire to “throw myself on their necks.” This desire to throw myself on people’s necks so that they recognize me as good and start embracing me or something like that
(swinishness, in short), I consider the most loathsome of all my shames, and I had suspected it in myself for a very long time—namely, ever since the corner I had kept myself in for so many years, though I don’t regret it. I knew that I had to be gloomier among people. What comforted me, after each such disgrace, was simply that the “idea” was with me all the same, in secret as always, and that I hadn’t betrayed it to them. With a sinking feeling, I sometimes imagined that once I had spoken my idea to someone, I would suddenly have nothing left, so that I’d become like everybody else, and might even abandon the idea; and so I preserved and cherished it and trembled at the thought of babbling. And then at Dergachev’s, almost with the first encounter, I had been unable to hold out, I hadn’t betrayed anything, of course, but I had babbled inadmissibly; the result was disgrace. A nasty recollection! No, it’s impossible for me to live with people; I think so even now; I say it for forty years to come. My idea is—my corner.
V
AS SOON AS VASIN praised me, I suddenly felt an irrepressible urge to speak.
“In my opinion, each of us has the right to have his own feelings . . . if it’s from conviction . . . so that no one should reproach him for them,” I addressed Vasin. Though I spoke glibly, it was as if it wasn’t me, but as if somebody else’s tongue was moving in my mouth.
“Re-e-eally, sir?” a voice picked up at once, drawling ironically, the same that had interrupted Dergachev and had shouted to Kraft that he was a German.
Considering him a total nonentity, I turned to the teacher, as if it was he who had shouted.
“My conviction is that I cannot judge anyone,” I trembled, already knowing that I was going to fly off.
“Why such secrecy?” the nonentity’s voice rang out again.
“Each of us has his idea,” I looked point-blank at the teacher, who, on the contrary, was silent and studied me with a smile.
“Do you?” shouted the nonentity.
“It’s too long to tell . . . But part of my idea is precisely that I should be left in peace. As long as I’ve got two roubles, I want to live alone, not depending on anybody (don’t worry, I know the objections), and not doing anything—even for that great future of mankind for which Mr. Kraft has been invited to work. Personal freedom, I mean my own, sir, is foremost, and I do not want to know anything beyond that.”
My mistake was that I got angry.
“That is, you preach the placidity of a sated cow?”
“Let it be so. There’s no insult in a cow. I don’t owe anyone anything, I pay society money in the form of fiscal impositions, so that I won’t be robbed, beaten, or killed, and no one dares to demand anything more from me. I personally may have other ideas, and would like to serve mankind, and will, and maybe even ten times more than all the preachers, but I only want it to be so that no one dares to demand it of me, or forces me, like Mr. Kraft; my full freedom, even if I don’t lift a finger. And to run around throwing yourself on other people’s necks out of love for mankind, and burn with tears of tenderness—that is merely a fashion. And why should I necessarily love my neighbor or your future mankind, which I’ll never see, which will not know about me, and which in its turn will rot without leaving any trace or remembrance (time means nothing here), when the earth in its turn will become an icy stone and fly through airless space together with an infinite multitude of identical icy stones, that is, more meaningless than anything one can possibly imagine! There’s your teaching! Tell me, why should I necessarily be noble, especially if it all lasts no more than a minute?”
“B-bah!” shouted the voice.
I had fired all this off nervously and spitefully, snapping all the ropes. I knew I was falling into a pit, but I hurried for fear of objections. I sensed only too well that I was pouring as if through a sieve, incoherently, and skipping ten thoughts to get to the eleventh, but I was in a hurry to convince and reconquer them. This was so important for me! I’d been preparing for three years! But, remarkably, they suddenly fell silent, said absolutely nothing, and listened. I went on addressing the teacher:
“Precisely, sir. A certain extremely intelligent man said, among other things, that there is nothing more difficult than to answer the question, ‘Why must one necessarily be noble?’ You see, sir, there are three sorts of scoundrels in the world: naïve scoundrels, that is, those who are convinced that their meanness is the highest nobility; ashamed scoundrels, that is, those who are ashamed of their meanness, but fully intend to go through with it anyway; and, finally, sheer scoundrels, purebred scoundrels. With your permission, sir: I had a friend, Lambert, who at the age of sixteen said to me that when he was rich, his greatest pleasure would be to feed dogs bread and meat, while the children of the poor were dying of hunger, and when they had no wood for their stoves, he would buy a whole lumberyard, stack it up in a field, and burn it there, and give not a stick to the poor. Those were his feelings! Tell me, what answer should I give this purebred scoundrel when he asks, ‘Why should I necessarily be noble?’ And especially now, in our time, which you have so refashioned. Because it has never been worse than it is now. Things are not at all clear in our society, gentlemen. I mean, you deny God, you deny great deeds, what sort of deaf, blind, dull torpor can make me act this way, if it’s more profitable for me otherwise? You say, ‘A reasonable attitude towards mankind is also to my profit’; but what if I find all these reasonablenesses unreasonable, all these barracks and phalansteries?18 What the devil do I care about them, or about the future, when I live only once in this world? Allow me to know my own profit myself: it’s more amusing. What do I care what happens to this mankind of yours in a thousand years, if, by your code, I get no love for it, no future life, no recognition of my great deed? No, sir, in that case I shall live for myself in the most impolite fashion, and they can all go to blazes!”
“An excellent wish!”
“However, I’m always ready to join in.”
“Even better!” (This was still that same voice.)
The rest went on being silent, they went on peering at me and studying me; but tittering gradually began to come from different ends of the room, still quiet, but they all tittered right in my face. Only Vasin and Kraft did not titter. The one with the black side-whiskers also grinned; he looked at me point-blank and listened.
“Gentlemen,” I was trembling all over, “I won’t tell you my idea for anything, but, on the contrary, I will ask you from your own point of view—don’t think it’s mine, because it may be that I love mankind a thousand times more than all of you taken together! Tell me—and you absolutely must answer me now, you are duty bound, because you’re laughing—tell me, how will you entice me to follow you? Tell me, how will you prove to me that with you it will be better? Where are you going to put the protest of my person in your barracks? I have long wished to meet you, gentlemen! You will have barracks, communal apartments, stricte necessaire,18 atheism, and communal wives without children—that’s your finale, I know it, sirs. And for all that, for that small share of middling profit that your reasonableness secures for me, for a crust and some warmth, you take my whole person in exchange! With your permission, sir: say my wife is taken away; are you going to subdue my person so that I won’t smash my rival’s head in? You’ll say that I myself will become more reasonable then; but what will the wife of such a reasonable husband say, if she has the slightest respect for herself? No, it’s unnatural, sirs; shame on you!”
“And you’re what—a specialist in the ladies’ line?” the gleeful voice of the nonentity rang out.
For a moment I had the thought of throwing myself at him and pounding him with my fists. He was a shortish fellow, red-haired and freckled . . . but, anyhow, devil take his looks!
“Don’t worry, I’ve never yet known a woman,” I said curtly, addressing him for the first time.
“Precious information, which might have been given more politely, in view of the ladies!”
But they all suddenly began stirring densely; they all started tak
ing their hats and preparing to leave—not on account of me, of course, but because the time had come; but this silent treatment of me crushed me with shame. I also jumped to my feet.
“Allow me, however, to know your name, you did keep looking at me,” the teacher suddenly stepped towards me with the meanest smile.
“Dolgoruky.”
“Prince Dolgoruky?”
“No, simply Dolgoruky, the son of the former serf Makar Dolgoruky and the illegitimate son of my former master, Mr. Versilov. Don’t worry, gentlemen, I’m not saying it so that you’ll throw yourselves on my neck and we’ll all start lowing like calves from tenderness!”
A loud and most unceremonious burst of laughter came at once, so that the baby who had fallen asleep behind the door woke up and squealed. I was trembling with fury. They all shook hands with Dergachev and left, paying no attention to me.
“Let’s go,” Kraft nudged me.
I went up to Dergachev, squeezed his hand as hard as I could, and shook it several times, also as hard as I could.
“I apologize for the constant insults from Kudriumov” (that was the red-haired one), Dergachev said to me.
I followed Kraft out. I wasn’t ashamed of anything.
VI
OF COURSE, BETWEEN me as I am now and me as I was then there is an infinite difference.
Continuing to be “not ashamed of anything,” I caught up with Vasin while still on the stairs, having left Kraft behind as second-rate, and with the most natural air, as if nothing had happened, asked:
“It seems you know my father—that is, I mean to say, Versilov?”
“We’re not, in fact, acquainted,” Vasin answered at once (and without a whit of that offensive, refined politeness assumed by delicate people when speaking with someone who has just disgraced himself ), “but I know him slightly; I’ve met him and listened to him.”
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