The Dedalus Book of Literary Suicides

by Gary Lachman

  And for all the wealth of Indies

  Would do nothing that might hurt her.

  So he sighed and pined and ogled,

  And his passion boiled and bubbled;

  Till he blew his silly brains out,

  And no more was by them troubled.

  Charlotte, having seen his body

  Borne before her on a shutter,

  Like a well conducted person

  Went on cutting bread and butter.

  *

  Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed (or, as it is sometimes translated, The Devils) remains, I think, with Hesse’s Steppenwolf, the novel of suicide. Not only because the two main characters, Kirilov and Stavrogin, both kill themselves, but because their suicides are embedded in a profound meditation on the dangers and responsibility of human freedom. In these excerpts, Kirilov tries to elucidate how his suicide is an expression of his free will, and Stavrogin’s ‘Confession’ shows how the abyss of freedom can lead a man to the saintly or the demonic.

  From The Possessed (translator Constance Garnett)

  FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY

  “You still have the same intentions?” Stavrogin asked after a moment’s silence, and with a certain wariness.

  “Yes,” answered Kirilov shortly, guessing at once from his voice what he was asking about, and he began taking the weapons from the table.

  “When?” Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch inquired still more cautiously, after a pause.

  In the meantime Kirilov had put both boxes back in the trunk, and sat down at his place again.

  “That doesn’t depend on me, as you know – when they tell me,” he muttered, as though disliking; but at the same time with evident readiness to answer any other question. He kept his black, lustreless eyes fixed continually on Stavrogin with a calm but warm and kindly expression in them.

  “I understand shooting oneself, of course,” Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch began suddenly, frowning a little, after a dreamy silence lasted three minutes. “I sometimes have the thought of it myself, and then there always came a new idea: if one did something wicked, or worse still, something shameful, that is, disgraceful, only very shameful and … ridiculous, such as people would remember for a thousand years and hold in scorn for a thousand years, and suddenly the thought comes: ‘One blow in the temple and there would be nothing more.’ One wouldn’t care then for men and that they would hold one in scorn for a thousand years, would one?”

  “You call that a new idea?” said Kirilov, after a moment’s thought.

  “I … didn’t call it so, but when I thought it I felt it was a new idea.”

  “You ‘felt the idea’?” observed Kirilov. “That’s good. There are lots of ideas that are always there and yet suddenly become new. That’s true. I see a great deal now as though it were for the first time.”

  “Supposed you had lived in the moon,” Stavrogin interrupted, not listening, but pursuing his own thought, “and suppose there you had done all these nasty and ridiculous things […] You know from here for certain they will laugh at you and hold you in scorn for a thousand years as long as the moon lasts. But now you are here, looking at the moon from here. You don’t care here for anything you’ve done there, and that the people there will hold you in scorn for a thousand years, do you?”

  “I don’t know,” answered Kirilov. “I’ve not been in the moon,” he added, without irony, simply to state the fact.

  “Whose baby was that just now?”

  “The old woman’s mother-in-law is here – no, daughter-in-law, it’s all the same. Three days. She’s lying ill with the baby, it cries a lot at night, it’s the stomach. The mother sleeps, but the old woman picks it up; I play ball with it. The ball’s from Hamburg. I bought it in Hamburg to throw and catch, it strengthens the spine. It’s a girl.”

  “Are you fond of children?”

  “I am,” answered Kirilov, though rather indifferently.

  “Then, you’re fond of life?”

  “Yes, I’m fond of life! What of it?”

  “Though you’ve made up your mind to shoot yourself!”

  “What of it? Why connect it? Life’s one thing and that’s another. Life exists, but death doesn’t at all.

  “You’ve begun to believe in a future eternal life?”

  “No, not in a future eternal life, but in eternal life here. There are moments, you reach moments, and time suddenly stands still, and it will become eternal.”

  “You hope to reach such a moment?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’ll scarcely be possible in our time,” Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch responded slowly and, as it were, dreamily; the two spoke without the slightest irony. “In the Apocalypse the angel swears that there will be no more time.”

  “I know. That’s very true; distinct and exact. When all mankind attains happiness then there will be no more time, for there’ll be no need of it – a very true thought.”

  “Where will they put it?”

  “Nowhere. Time’s not an object but an idea. It will be extinguished in the mind.”

  “The old commonplaces of philosophy, the same from the beginning of time,” Stavrogin muttered with a kind of disdainful compassion.

  “Always the same, always the same, from the beginning of time, and never any other,” Kirilov said with sparkling eyes, as though there were almost a triumph in that idea.

  “You seem to be very happy, Kirilov.”

  “Yes, very happy,” he answered, as though making the most ordinary reply.

  “But you were so distressed lately, angry with Liputin.”

  “H’m … I’m not scolding now. I didn’t know then that I was happy. Have you seen a leaf, a leaf from a tree?”

  “Yes.”

  “I saw a yellow one lately, a little green. It was decayed at the edges. It was blown by the wind. When I was ten years old I used to shut my eyes in the winter on purpose and fancy a green leaf, bright, with veins on it, and the sun shining. I used to open my eyes and not believe them, because it was very nice, and I used to shut them again.”

  “What’s that? An allegory?”

  “N-no … why? I’m not speaking of an allegory, but of a leaf, only a leaf. The leaf is good. Everything’s good.”

  “Everything?”

  “Everything. Man is unhappy because he doesn’t know he’s happy. It’s only that. That’s all, that’s all! If anyone finds out he’ll become happy at once, that minute. The mother-in-law will die, but the baby will remain. It’s all good. I discovered it all of a sudden.”

  “And if anyone dies of hunger, and if anyone insults and outrages the little girl, is that good?”

  “Yes! And if anyone blows his brains out for the baby, that’s good too. And if anyone doesn’t, that’s good too. It’s all good, all. It’s good for all those who know that its all good. If they knew that it was good for them, it would be good for them, but as long as they don’t know it’s good for them, it will be bad for them. That’s the whole idea, the whole if it.”

  “When did you find out you were so happy?”

  “Last week, on Tuesday – no, Wednesday, for it was Wednesday by that time, in the night.”

  “By what reasoning?”

  “I don’t remember; I was walking about the room; never mind. I stopped my clock. It was thirty-seven minutes past two.”

  *

  “Kirilov, I’ve never been able to understand why you mean to kill yourself. I only know it’s from conviction … strong conviction. But if you feel a yearning to express yourself, so to say, I am at your service […] Only you must think of the time.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Oh oh, just two.” Pyotr Stepanovitch looked at his watch and lighted a cigarette.

  “It seems we can come to terms after all,” he reflected.

  “I’ve nothing to say to you,” muttered Kirilov.

  “I remember that something about God comes into it […] you explained it to me once – twice, in fact. If you shoot yourself, you bec
ome God; that’s it, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, I become God.”

  Pyotr Stepanovitch did not even smile; he waited. Kirilov looked at him subtly.

  “You are a political impostor and intriguer. You want to lead me on into philosophy and enthusiasm and to bring about a reconciliation so as to disperse my anger, and then, when I am reconciled with you, beg from me a note to say I killed Shatov.”

  Pyotr Stepanovitch answered with almost natural frankness.

  “Well, supposing I am such a scoundrel. But at the last moments, does that matter to you, Kirilov? What are we quarrelling about? Tell me, please. You are one sort of man and I am another – what of it? And what’s more, we are both of us…”

  “Scoundrels.”

  “Yes, scoundrels if you like. But you know that that’s only words.”

  “All my life I wanted it not to be only words. I lived because I did not want it to be. Even now every day I want it to be not words.”

  “Well, everyone seeks to be where he is best off. The fish … that is, everyone seeks his own comfort, that’s all. That’s been a commonplace for ages and ages.”

  “Comfort, do you say?”

  “Oh, it’s not worth while quarrelling over words.”

  “No, you were right in what you said; let it be comfort. God is necessary and so must exist.”

  “Well, that’s all right, then.”

  “But I know He doesn’t and can’t.”

  “That’s more likely.”

  “Surely you must understand that a man with two such ideas can’t go on living?”

  “Must shoot himself, you mean?”

  “Surely you must understand that one might shoot oneself for that alone? You don’t understand that there may be one man, one man out of your thousands of millions, one man who won’t bear it and does not want to.”

  “All I understand is that you seem to be hesitating […]That’s very bad.”

  *

  “If there is no God, then I am God.”

  “There, I could never understand that point of yours: why are you God?”

  “If God exists, all is His will and from His will I cannot escape. If not, it’s all my will and I am bound to show my self-will.”

  “Self-will? But why are you bound?”

  “Because all will has become mine. Can it be that no one in the whole planet, after making an end of God and believing in his own will, will dare to express his self-will on the most vital point? It’s like a beggar inheriting a fortune and being afraid of it and not daring to approach the bag of gold, thinking himself too weak to own it. I want to manifest my self-will. I may be the only one, but I’ll do it.”

  “Do it by all means.”

  “I am bound to shoot myself because the highest point of my self-will is to kill myself with my own hands.”

  “But you won’t be the only one to kill yourself; there are lots of suicides.”

  “With good cause. But to do it without any cause at all, simply for self-will, I am the only one.”

  “He won’t shoot himself,” flashed across Pyotr Stepanovitch’s mind again.

  “Do you know,” he observed irritably, “if I were in your place I should kill someone else to show my self-will, not myself. You might be of use. I’ll tell you whom, if you are not afraid. Then you needn’t shoot yourself today, perhaps. We may come to terms.”

  “To kill someone would be the lowest point of self-will, and you show your whole soul in that. I am not you: I want the highest point and I’ll kill myself.”

  *

  From “Stavrogin’s Confession”

  I’ve tried my strength everywhere. You advised me to do this “that I might learn to know myself.” As long as I was experiencing for myself and for others it seemed infinite, as it has all my life. Before your eyes I endured a blow from your brother; I acknowledged my marriage in public. But to what to apply my strength, that is what I’ve never seen, and do not see now in spite of all your praises […] I am still capable, as I always was, of desiring to do something good, and of feeling pleasure from it; at the same time I desire evil and feel pleasure from that too. But both feelings are always too petty, and are never very strong. My desires are too weak; they are not enough to guide me. On a log one may cross a river but not on a chip […]

  As always I blame no one. I’ve tried the depths of debauchery and wasted my strength over it. But I don’t like vice and I didn’t want it […]. One may argue about everything endlessly, but from me nothing has come but negation, with no greatness of soul, no force. Even negation has not come from me. Everything has always been petty and spiritless. Kirilov, in the greatness of his soul, could not compromise with an idea, and shot himself; but I see, of course, that he was great-souled because he had lost his reason. I can never lose my reason, and I can never believe in an idea to such a degree as he did. I cannot even be interested in an idea to such a degree […]

  I know I ought to kill myself, to brush myself off the earth like a nasty insect; but I am afraid of suicide, for I am afraid of showing greatness of soul. I know that it will be another sham again – the last deception in an endless series of deceptions. What good is there in deceiving oneself? Simply to play at greatness of soul? Indignation and shame I can never feel, therefore not despair […]

  In Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch’s wing of the house all the doors were open and he was nowhere to be seen.

  “Wouldn’t he be upstairs?”

  It was remarkable that several servants followed Varvara Petrovna while the others all stood waiting in the drawing room. They would never have dared to commit such a breach of etiquette before. Varara Petrovna saw it and said nothing.

  They went upstairs. There, there were three rooms; but they found no one there.

  “Wouldn’t his honour have gone up there?” someone suggested, pointing to the door of the loft. And in fact, the door of the loft which was always closed had been opened and was standing ajar. The loft was right under the roof and was reached by a long, very steep and narrow wooden ladder. There was a sort of little room up there too.

  “I am not going up there. Why should he go up there?” said Varvara Petrovna, turning terribly pale as she looked at the servants. They gazed back at her and said nothing. Dasha was trembling.

  Varvara Petrovna rushed up the ladder; Dasha followed, but she had hardly entered the loft when she uttered a scream and fell senseless.

  Stavrogin was hanging there behind the door. On the table lay a piece of paper with the words in pencil: “No one is to blame, I did it myself.” Beside it on the table lay a hammer, a piece of soap, and a large nail – obviously an extra one in case of need. The strong silk cord upon which Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch had hanged himself had evidently been chosen and prepared beforehand and was thickly smeared with soap. Everything proved that there had been premeditation and consciousness up to the last moment.

  At the inquest our doctors absolutely and emphatically rejected all idea of insanity.”

  *

  Although Schopenhauer argued that life was a tremendous mistake, he did not promote suicide, and he himself enjoyed a rather comfortable existence. Here he takes argument with the idea that suicide should be considered a crime. It is, he feels, although inadvisable in most instances, rather an understandable blunder.

  On Suicide

  ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER

  As far as I know, none but the votaries of the monotheistic, that is, Jewish, religions look upon suicide as a crime. This is all the more striking, inasmuch as neither in the Old nor in the New Testament is there to be found any prohibition or positive disapproval of it; so the religious teachers are forced to base their condemnations of suicide on philosophical grounds of their own invention. These are so very bad that writers of this kind endeavour to make up for the weakness of their arguments by the strong terms in which they express their abhorrence of the practice; in other words, the declaim against it. They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice; that o
nly a madman could be guilty of it; and other insipidities of the same kind; or else they make the nonsensical remark that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world which every man has a more unassailable title to than his own life and person.

  Suicide is actually accounted a crime; and a crime which, especially under the vulgar bigotry that prevails in England, is followed by an ignominious burial and the seizure of the man’s property; and for that reason, in a case of suicide, the jury almost always brings in a verdict of insanity. Now let the reader’s own moral feeling decide as to whether or not suicide is a criminal act. Think of the impression that would be made upon you by the news that someone you know has committed the crime, say, of murder or theft, or been guilty of some act of cruelty or deception; and compare it with your feelings when you hear that he has met a voluntary death. While in the one case a lively sense of indignation and extreme resentment will be aroused, and you will call loudly for punishment or revenge, in the other you will be moved to grief and sympathy; and mingled with your thoughts will be admiration for his courage, rather than the moral disapproval which follows upon a wicked action. Who has not had acquaintances, friends, relations, who of their own free will have left this world; and are these to be thought of with horror as criminals?

  I am of the opinion that the clergy should be challenged to explain what right they have to go into the pulpit, or take up their pens, and stamp as a crime an action which many men whom we hold in affection and honour have committed; and to refuse an honourable burial to those who relinquish this world voluntarily. They have no Biblical authority to boast of, justifying their condemnation of suicide; nay, not even any philosophical arguments that will hold water; and it must be understood that it is arguments we want, and that we will not be put off with mere phrases or words of abuse. If the criminal law forbids suicide, that is not an argument valid in the Church; and besides, the prohibition is ridiculous, for what penalty can frighten a man who is not afraid of death itself? If the law punishes people for trying to commit suicide, it is punishing the want of skill that makes the attempt a failure […]