Sergey Petrovich was a third-year student in the faculty of natural sciences. He had parents, brothers and sisters (some older, some younger) in Smolensk. One of his brothers, the eldest, was already a doctor and earned a good salary, but he was unable to help support the family, as he had already started his own. Sergey Petrovich was thus obliged to live on fifteen roubles a month, and this sufficed, since he ate for free in the students’ dining hall, didn’t smoke and drank only a little vodka. Before Novikov had left, they drank an awful lot, but that didn’t cost Sergey Petrovich anything, because Novikov covered the costs of their drinking bouts; he always had students who paid well for language lessons. Once, a local judge sentenced both companions to a fine of ten roubles—it was Novikov’s fault, as he was fond of sitting, drunk, in the branches of the trees lining the boulevard, and Sergey Petrovich would scramble up after him—and it was Novikov who paid the fine. Given their unaffected friendship, this was completely natural and no one thought twice about it, except for Sergey Petrovich himself. But the absence of money was a fact he had to accept.
There were other facts that he had to accept as well, and when Sergey Petrovich examined his own life more closely, he reckoned that it, too, belonged in that category. He was ordinary-looking—not ugly, but plain, like hundreds and thousands of other people. His flat nose, thick lips and low forehead made him look like other people and blurred the individuality of his face. He hardly ever went near a mirror and even combed his hair without looking; and when he did look in a mirror, he would gaze deeply into his own eyes, which he thought looked murky, like pea soup through which a knife could easily penetrate to the very bottom without hitting anything solid. In that respect, as in many others, he differed from his friend Novikov, who had sharp-sighted, bold eyes, a high forehead and a fine-featured, handsome oval face. Sergey Petrovich’s own tall body seemed to him not an asset, but a flaw, if it had to carry a head like his, and perhaps that was why he hunched over when he walked. But the hardest fact of all for Sergey Petrovich was that he was not smart. In school his teachers considered him downright stupid and in the first few years they had said so straight out. Once, an inarticulate response provoked the priest to call him a “Smolensk-and-Mogilev muddlehead,” and even though the nickname didn’t stick to him personally, but became a common noun applying to any dull student, Sergey Petrovich never forgot its origin. And it seemed he was the only one in the whole class who never did get a nickname, if you don’t count the name “Sergey Petrovich,” which everyone—teachers, pupils and custodians—called him. There just wasn’t anything special about him that could lend itself to a clever sobriquet. At the university his peers, who very much liked to divide their fellow students into groups according to intelligence, put Sergey Petrovich in the ranks of the “shallow,” although they never said so straight to his face; but he figured it out on his own, because no one ever approached him with a serious question or conversation, but only with jokes. But as soon as Novikov showed up, the conversation would turn immediately to serious topics. At first Sergey Petrovich tacitly protested against the general view of him as shallow, and tried to do, say or write something intelligent, but nothing except laughter ever came of it.
Then he himself became convinced of his shallowness. He was so firmly convinced of it that, had the whole world hailed him as a genius, he wouldn’t have believed it. For the world did not and could not know what Sergey Petrovich knew about himself. The world might possibly hear an intelligent thought from him, but it might not know that Sergey Petrovich had stolen that thought, or else acquired it through inordinate effort, which rendered the thought totally worthless. What others learnt without even trying cost him excruciating effort and even at that, even when it was pounded into his memory for good, it remained alien and extraneous, as though it were not a living idea, but a book that had ended up in his head, banging its corners painfully into his brain. The especial likeness to a book was accentuated by the fact that the page on which he had read the idea always stood clearly and distinctly beside it. Meanwhile, the ideas that didn’t have pages beside them, and which therefore Sergey Petrovich considered his own, were the most simple, ordinary and unintelligent ones, and they were exactly like thousands of other ideas on earth, just as his face resembled thousands of other faces. It was hard to accept this fact, but Sergey Petrovich finally did. In comparison with that, the other disturbing facts—his lack of talent, weak chest, clumsiness and pennilessness—seemed trivial.
So gradually that he himself didn’t notice, Sergey Petrovich became a dreamer, a naïve and rather shallow one. He might fantasise about winning 200,000 roubles and taking a trip around Europe, but he couldn’t picture anything beyond boarding the train, because he had no imagination. Or he would think about some kind of miracle that would suddenly make him handsome, intelligent and irresistibly attractive. After an opera he would imagine that he was a singer; after a book, a scholar; after leaving the Tretyakov Gallery, an artist; and in each scenario there was always a crowd: “them”—Novikov and the others—and they would all bow down before his beauty or talent, and he would make them happy. Whenever Sergey Petrovich entered the dining hall with his long, uncertain steps, hanging his head in his faded cap, it never occurred to anyone that at that very minute this insignificant student with the flat, ordinary face possessed all the world’s treasures. In the dining hall he would sit hunched over and hastily swallow his modest meal, and whenever a student he knew walked by, looking for an unoccupied spot, he tried to look in some other direction. He was afraid of those sorts of meetings, since he never knew what to say, and he would sit in silence, feeling awkward. The daydreams that recurred so often began to take on a shade of reality, but the more clearly Sergey Petrovich saw what he might become, what he wanted to become, the more difficult it became to accept the harsh fact of his life.
His detachment from the world of living people was happening just as imperceptibly, and Sergey Petrovich suspected it least of all. With the social habit ingrained in him from his schooldays, he took part in all student organisations and dutifully attended meetings. There he would listen to speakers, joke when he was joked with, and then put his “aye” or “nay” on a scrap of paper, or more often decline to vote, since he couldn’t decide in such a short time which side was in the right. But as a rule his decisions were always based on the opinion of the majority, and blended in with it. Sergey Petrovich made social calls as well, and he would always drink with his hosts and the other guests. Then he would sing along with them in his hollow, booming voice, kiss them and be kissed, and go to the brothels. These were the only women he knew, and at that only when he was drunk. When he was sober, they aroused only loathing and fear in him. He never sought out other women, the pure and good kind, since he was certain that not one of them would like him. He knew some of the women students, and he blushed, bowing, when he met them in the street, but they never spoke to this limited and plain-looking student, although they knew, as everyone did, that his name was Sergey Petrovich. Thus, to all appearances he was not one of those isolated students who lived their solitary, secluded lives and appeared only at exams with dismayed expressions and a mass of written summaries, but in reality he utterly lacked the vital connection with people that makes their society desirable and necessary. And he did not love a single one of those with whom he joked, drank vodka and exchanged kisses.
When Sergey Petrovich was not daydreaming or busy, he read a lot and indiscriminately, for the sole purpose of banishing boredom. He did not enjoy reading; serious books had too much in them he did not understand, and novels were either too lifelike and sad as life itself is, or else they were false and not true to life, like his daydreams. He might dream about winning millions, but when he read about such an event in a book, it made him feel laughable and pathetic for having such dreams. Russian novels seemed like true stories to him, but it was painful to read them if he thought about how he himself was one of those small people, ground down by life, about whom
those thick, depressing books were written. But there were two novels—both translations—that he loved to read and reread. One of them he liked to read on sad, dreary days, when autumn, dolefully weeping and sighing heavily, looked through the windows and into his soul, and he was ashamed to mention this book. It was 20,000 Leagues under the Sea by Jules Verne. What attracted him to it was the mighty and elementally free character of Captain Nemo, who had turned his back on people for the unfathomable depths of the ocean, from whence he arrogantly scorned the earth. The other book was Spielhagen’s In Rank and File, and he liked to talk about it with his fellow students and was glad when they, too, ecstatically yielded to the noble despot, Leo. Subsequently, on the advice of Novikov, who had noticed Sergey Petrovich’s love for great men, he began to read their biographies; and he read with interest, but nonetheless invariably thought to himself: he was not like me. And the more he learnt about great men, the smaller he himself became.
And so Sergey Petrovich reached the age of twenty-three. In his first year at university he failed physics, and from then on he began to work in earnest. And since in the faculty of natural sciences there is plenty of work to do, time passed swiftly in labour’s iron embrace. The acute pain occasioned by sad thoughts about his failed life gradually eased, and Sergey Petrovich became accustomed to being an ordinary, unintelligent and unoriginal man. Sergey Petrovich’s mind was on the borderline of stupidity and intelligence, and from there it was equally easy to see in both directions: to contemplate the supreme nobility of a mighty intellect, understanding what happiness it gives its possessor, and to see the pathetic vulgarity of self-satisfied stupidity, happy behind the walls of its thick skull and as invulnerable as in a fortress. And now he looked more often to that side, and saw that there were many people worse than he, and the sight of those people made him feel glad and at peace. Sergey Petrovich began to read less and drink more vodka, but he drank not a lot all at once, as he used to, but just a glass with lunch and dinner, and it was better that way, being merely pleasant and enjoyable, without the painful effects of a hangover. In the summer, in Smolensk, he had his first love affair, which was highly amusing for everyone else, but for him it was pleasant, poetic and new. His heroine was the girl who came regularly to weed the garden beds, and she was plain-looking, stupid and kind. Sergey Petrovich did not know why she liked him and he felt slightly disdainful towards her for her love, but he liked the secret meetings in the dark garden, the whispering, and the fear. As he was leaving that autumn for Moscow, she wept, and he felt like a new man, proud and pleased with himself, since he, too, had turned out to be no worse than others: he, too, had a real woman who loved him for free and wept at their parting. Like many other people, Sergey Petrovich gave no thought to the fact that he was alive, and he stopped noticing life, and it flowed along and was trivial, shallow and dull, like a marsh stream. But there were moments when he would wake up as if from a deep sleep and realise with horror that he was still the same old shallow, insignificant man; then he would have suicidal fantasies for whole nights at a time, until his angry and demanding hatred towards himself and his fate gave way to peaceful, meek compassion. And then life would again take over, and once again he would remind himself that he had to accept the facts of life.
Just as it seemed both possible and probable that he would resign himself fully to the facts, Sergey Petrovich became friends with Novikov. Their fellow students did not understand this strange intimacy, since Novikov was considered the smartest, and Sergey Petrovich the dullest of the students from Smolensk. Eventually they decided that the arrogant and vain Novikov wanted a convenient mirror to reflect his brilliant mind, and they laughed at his choice of such a cheap, crooked one. They considered Novikov’s protestations that Sergey Petrovich was not at all as stupid as he seemed to be an expression of that very arrogance. Perhaps it was indeed so, but Novikov was so very reserved and tactful about showing his superiority that Sergey Petrovich came to love him. And this was the first person he had ever loved and the first friend life had given him. He was proud of Novikov, and he read whatever books he was reading, humbly followed him to various restaurants, climbed up trees, and thought about the good luck that had allowed him to be the friend of a man who was destined by fate for great things. With respectful amazement he followed the feverish activity of Novikov’s mind, which left philosophical, historical and economic theories behind it like milestones and boldly surged ahead, always ahead. Sergey Petrovich pathetically trotted along after him, until he realised that with each passing day he was falling further and further behind. And it was a hard day when Sergey Petrovich, who had wanted to drown his own “I” in someone else’s deep, strong “I,” realised that this was impossible, and that intellectually he was just as far from the friend with whom he lived as from those great men he had read about. It was Nietzsche who helped him realise this—and it was Novikov who introduced him to Nietzsche.
II
When Sergey Petrovich had read through part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, he felt as if the sun had finally risen in the night of his life. But it was a dreary, midnight sun, and it shone not on a joyful scene, but on the cold, deathly and dreary wilderness that was Sergey Petrovich’s soul and life. But it was light nonetheless, and he rejoiced in the light as he had never in his life rejoiced about anything. At that time in Russia, not so very long ago, only a few people knew of Nietzsche, and neither newspapers nor journals had a word to say about him. And the profound silence surrounding Zarathustra made his words meaningful, forceful and pure, as if they had fallen straight out of the sky and onto Sergey Petrovich. He did not know who Nietzsche was and did not think about whether he was old or young, alive or dead. He saw before him only thoughts shrouded in the severe and mystical form of Gothic letters, and this detachment of the thoughts from the mind that had created them, from everything on earth that had accompanied their birth, made them seem divine and eternal. And like an ardent believer, a youthful pagan priest upon whom a long-awaited deity had descended, he tried to keep his deity safe from the eyes of outsiders and was pained when it was touched by rude, bold hands—like Novikov’s.
Sometimes in the evening, after they had translated several chapters together, Novikov would begin to talk about what they had read. He sat at his table as if it were a rostrum and spoke in ringing tones, clearly and distinctly, articulating each word separately, making logical emphases and observing punctuation marks with short pauses. His large, short-cropped head, resembling a chiselled sphere except for the prominent protuberances on the forehead, sat firm and unmoving on his short neck. His face was always pale, and even when he got extremely agitated only his protruding ears would flame red, like two scraps of red calico stuck to a yellow billiard ball. He spoke of Nietzsche’s predecessors in philosophy, of the connections of his teachings to the century’s economic and social trends, and he maintained that Nietzsche had leapt a thousand years ahead with his basic thesis of individualism: “I will.” Sometimes he scoffed at the book’s obscure language, which seemed mannered to him, and Sergey Petrovich would protest feebly. What Novikov was saying seemed very intelligent to him—he himself would never have been able to think it up—but it wasn’t the real truth. And Sergey Petrovich felt that he had a better and more intimate understanding of Zarathustra’s words, but when he began to try and explain them, it came out flat and pathetic and not at all like what he meant. And he would fall silent, angry at his tongue and head. But sometimes it happened that Novikov got carried away by the beauty of Zarathustra’s rhythmical speech and fell under the influence of what was left unsaid. Then he would recite in his clear, strong voice, and Sergey Petrovich would listen enraptured, with his plain, flat head lowered, and every word would burn itself into his sleepy, dull brain.
Sergey Petrovich did not notice the moment when the tranquil contemplation of the facts and the dull melancholy of accepting them came to an end within him. It was as if someone had lit the fuse to a powder keg, and he did not know how long the
fuse had been burning. But he knew who had lit it. It was the vision of the superman, that incomprehensible but nonetheless human being who had fully realised his inherent potential and attained his rightful strength, happiness and freedom. It was a strange vision. Bright to the point of pain in the eyes and heart, it was murky and uncertain in its outlines; wonderful and inscrutable, it was simple and real. And by its bright light Sergey Petrovich examined his life, and it appeared totally new and interesting, like a familiar face in the glow of a fire. He looked at what lay ahead and behind him, and what he saw was like a long, narrow, grey corridor, devoid of air and light. Behind him the corridor disappeared into the grey memories of a joyless childhood; ahead it was lost in the twilight of a comparable future. And along the whole length of the corridor not a single sharp, sudden turn could be seen, not a single door to the outside, where the sun shone and living people laughed and cried. All around Sergey Petrovich, grey shadows of people floated down the corridor, devoid of laughter and tears and soundlessly nodding the dull heads that cruel nature mocked so pitilessly.
Dedalus Book of Russian Decadence Page 28