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 realised 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 realisation 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 not 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 that 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 not 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

dishonourable action and had there been put to such shame and ignominy

as one can only conceive and realise 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.