by Leo Tolstoy
‘I think you are,’ I said, feeling my voice tremble and my face flush from the thought that the time had come to prove to him that I was ‘clever’. ‘I think everyone is, and that whatever anyone does, it’s all done from pride.’
‘Then what is pride, in your view?’ Nekhlyudov asked with a slightly superior smile, as it seemed to me.
‘Pride,’ I said, ‘is the conviction that I’m better and cleverer than anyone else.’
‘But how can everyone be convinced of that?’
‘I don’t know if it’s fair or not, only no one but me admits it. I’m convinced that I’m cleverer than everyone else in the world, and I’m sure that you’re convinced of the same thing.’
‘No, I would be the first to say that I’ve met people whom I’ve acknowledged to be cleverer than I am,’ Nekhlyudov said.
‘That’s impossible,’ I replied with conviction.
‘Is that really what you think?’ Nekhlyudov said, staring intently at me.
‘I’m serious,’ I answered.
And then an idea suddenly came to me, which I at once put into words.
‘I’ll prove it to you. Why is it that we love ourselves more than we do other people? Because we regard ourselves as better than others, as more worthy of love. If we found others to be better than ourselves, then we would love them more than we do ourselves, yet that never happens. And even if it did, I’m still right,’ I added with a smug little smile.
Nekhlyudov was silent for a moment.
‘Well, I never thought that you were so clever!’ he said to me with such a nice, good-natured smile that all of a sudden I felt extraordinarily happy.
Praise has such a powerful effect not only on a person’s feelings but also on his mind that it seemed under its pleasant influence that I had become much cleverer, and new thoughts entered my mind one after another with unusual speed. From pride we moved indiscernibly to love, and the conversation on that subject seemed inexhaustible. Although our discussions might have sounded like arrant nonsense to anyone listening – so vague and one-sided were they – they still held a lofty meaning for us. Our souls were so well attuned that the slightest brushing of a string by one found an echoing response in the other. And it was in the resonance of those different strings struck in conversation that we found our pleasure. It seemed to us that we had neither words nor time to express to each other all the ideas that wanted to come out.
TWENTY-SEVEN
The Start of a Friendship
From that time rather odd but extraordinarily pleasant relations were established between Dmitry Nekhlyudov and me. Around others, he paid almost no attention at all to me, but as soon as we were alone we would sit down in a comfortable corner and start discussing, forgetting everything and not noticing the time fly.
We talked about our future lives, about the arts, about government service, about marriage, about raising children, and it never occurred to us that everything we were saying was the most awful rubbish. It didn’t occur to us because the rubbish was nice, clever rubbish, and when you’re young you still value cleverness, you still believe in it. When you’re young all the powers of your soul are directed towards the future, and it assumes such varied, vivid and entrancing forms under the sway of an optimism based not on past experience but on an imagined possibility of happiness, that those shared conceptions of future happiness are themselves the true happiness of that time of life. In the metaphysical discussions that were the mainstay of our conversations, I liked the moment when the ideas followed each other ever more rapidly and, growing more and more abstract, ultimately reached such a degree of nebulosity that you saw no way of ever expressing them, and while assuming you were saying what you thought, you said something completely different. I liked the moment when, soaring higher and higher in the realm of thought, you suddenly grasped the boundlessness of it all and became aware of the impossibility of going any further.
It happened the week before Lent,45 however, that Nekhlyudov was so preoccupied with various pleasures that although he came to see us several times for the day, he and I didn’t talk even once, and I was so offended by it that he again seemed like a proud, unpleasant person to me. All I was waiting for was the chance to show that I placed no value at all on his company, and had no particular affection for him.
The first time he showed an interest in conversation with me after that, I told him I needed to prepare some lessons and went upstairs, but a quarter-hour later the classroom door opened and Nekhlyudov came in.
‘Am I disturbing you?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I answered, even though I meant to say that I really did have things to do.
‘Why did you leave Volodya’s room? After all, it’s been a long time since we’ve had a discussion. And I’m so used to them that it’s as if something has been missing.’
My vexation evaporated in an instant, and Dmitry again became in my eyes the same kind and dear person he had been before.
‘You probably know why I left, don’t you?’
‘Perhaps I do,’ he answered, sitting down next to me, ‘but even if I can guess, I still can’t say why, whereas you can.’
‘Then I will. I left because I was angry with you. Or not angry but vexed. It’s just that I’ve always been afraid that you despise me for being so young.’
‘Do you know why you and I became such friends?’ he said, responding to my admission with a kind-hearted, clever look, ‘or why it is that I like you more than I do people I know better and have more in common with? I’ve just decided why. You have a remarkable, rare quality: candour.’
‘Yes, I always say the very things that I’m embarrassed to admit,’ I confirmed, ‘but only to people I’m sure of.’
‘Yes, but to be sure of someone, you have to be complete friends with him, and you and I still aren’t, Nicolas. You remember what we said about friendship – that true friends must have confidence in each other?’
‘To be confident that whatever I tell you, you won’t tell anyone else,’ I said, ‘for the most important, interesting thoughts are, in fact, the ones we won’t tell each other for anything.’
‘And such vile thoughts! Such base thoughts that if we knew we had to admit to them, we would never dare to let them into our minds. You know what idea has just occurred to me, Nicolas?’ he added, getting up from his chair and rubbing his palms together with a smile. ‘Let’s do that, and you’ll see how beneficial it will be for both of us. We’ll give each other our word to admit everything to each other. We’ll know each other and won’t be embarrassed. And so we won’t be afraid of outsiders, we’ll give each other our word never to say anything to anybody about each other. Let’s do that.’
‘All right,’ I said.
And we really did do that. Of what came of it, I’ll speak later.
Karr46 said that there are two sides in every attachment: one loves and the other lets himself be loved; one kisses and the other offers his cheek. That’s absolutely right: in our friendship I kissed and Dmitry offered his cheek, but he was also ready to kiss me. We loved equally, because we knew and appreciated each other mutually, even if that didn’t keep him from influencing me, or me from allowing him to.
It goes without saying that under Nekhlyudov’s influence I involuntarily adopted his outlook, the essence of which was a rapturous adoration of the idea of virtue, and the conviction that man’s purpose lies in continual self-improvement. To reform all humanity and eradicate all human vice and unhappiness seemed plausible enough to us at the time, just as it seemed an easy and uncomplicated matter to reform ourselves, to master all virtues and be happy …
God alone knows, however, just how absurd those noble dreams of youth were, or who was to blame that they were never realized …
YOUTH
ONE
What I Consider the Beginning of Youth
I said that my friendship with Dmitry revealed to me a new view of li
fe and its purpose and relations. The essence of that view was the conviction that it is the goal of each to strive for moral improvement, and that such improvement is easy, possible and lasting. So far, however, the only enjoyment I had obtained was discovering the new ideas that followed from that conviction, and making brilliant plans for an active moral future, since my life continued the same trivial, confused and idle round as before.
The ideas of virtue I examined in conversation with my cherished friend Dmitry – with ‘marvellous Mitya’ as I sometimes called him in a whisper to myself – had appealed only to my intellect and not to my feelings. But the time came when those ideas entered my mind with such a fresh power of revelation that it scared me to think how much time I had wasted, and I wanted at once, wanted that very second, to apply them to life with the firm intention of never betraying them.
And it’s that time that I consider the beginning of youth.
I was nearly sixteen. The teachers continued to come, St-Jérôme supervised my studies, and against my will and reluctantly I prepared for the university. Besides studying, my activities consisted of solitary, disconnected daydreaming and reflection, doing gymnastics to make myself the strongest man in the world, wandering with no particular purpose or idea in all the rooms, but especially in the hallway to the maids’ room, and looking at myself in the mirror, even if the last activity always left me with a painful feeling of dejection and even disgust. Not only was I ugly, I was convinced, but I couldn’t even depend on the usual consolation in such cases. I couldn’t say that I had an expressive, clever or noble face. There was nothing expressive about it – the most common, coarse, homely features and tiny grey eyes that were more stupid than clever, especially when I examined myself in the mirror. Of manliness there was even less, for although I was very strong for my age and fairly tall, the features of my face were soft, limp and vague. And there wasn’t anything noble either; on the contrary, it was the face of a simple peasant, and I had the same big hands and feet, which seemed quite shameful to me at the time.
TWO
Spring
Bright week came quite late in April the year I was to enter the university, and the entrance examinations were scheduled for Thomas week, with the result that during Passion week I had to fast1 and finish my studies.
Following the wet snow, which Karl Ivanych used to refer to as ‘the son coming for the father’,2 the weather had been calm, warm and clear for three days or so. There wasn’t a wisp of snow to be seen on the streets, and the dirty slush had been replaced by glistening wet pavement and rapid rivulets. The last drops on the rooftops were evaporating in the sunshine, buds were swelling on the trees in the front garden, the backyard path leading past a pile of frozen dung to the stable was dry, and the moss between the flagstones by the back steps was turning green. It was the special time in spring that acts most powerfully on the human soul: a brilliant but not hot sun shining down on everything, rivulets and thawed patches, a fresh fragrance in the air, and a delicate blue sky with long, translucent clouds. I don’t know why, but it seems that the effect on the soul of that first period of spring’s rebirth is felt even more strongly in a big city – you see less, but anticipate more.
I was standing next to a double-frame window, through which the morning sun cast dusty beams on the floor of the insufferable classroom, and working out a long algebra equation on the blackboard. In one hand I held a tattered copy of Francoeur’s3 soft-cover Algebra, and in the other a small piece of chalk, which I had got all over my hands and face and the elbows of my jacket. Nikolay, in an apron and with his sleeves rolled up, was using pliers to remove the putty and bend back the nails of the inner frame of the window, which looked out onto the front garden. His activity and the noise it made kept me from concentrating. I was, moreover, in an extremely bad, dissatisfied mood. None of it was working out for me: I had made a mistake at the beginning of the calculation and had to start again; I had dropped the chalk twice and could feel it all over my face and hands; the sponge had disappeared somewhere; and the tapping noise Nikolay was making was getting painfully on my nerves. I was about to get angry and start grumbling, and threw down the chalk and the Algebra and started to walk around the room. But then I remembered that I should refrain from doing anything bad, since it was Passion Wednesday, when we had to make our confessions, and my mood changed at once to a sort of special, mild one, and I went over to Nikolay.
‘Let me help you, Nikolay,’ I said, trying to give my voice the mildest expression, my mood made even milder by the thought that in suppressing my vexation and helping him I was doing good.
The putty had been removed and the nails bent back, but although Nikolay was pulling on the crosspiece with all his might, the frame wouldn’t yield.
‘If it comes out at once when I pull on it with him,’ I thought, ‘that will mean that it’s a sin to study and I should stop for the day.’ The frame gave to the side and slipped out.
‘Where shall I take it?’ I asked.
‘I’ll deal with it myself, with your permission,’ Nikolay replied, apparently surprised by my zeal and, I think, unhappy with it. ‘They mustn’t get mixed up, since I keep them in the storage closet by number.’
‘I’ll take note of that,’ I said, picking up the frame.
I think that if the storage closet had been a mile away and the frame twice as heavy, I would have been even more pleased. I wanted to wear myself out doing that service for Nikolay. When I came back, the little bricks and salt pyramids had been moved to the sill, and Nikolay was sweeping the grit and drowsy flies out of the open window with a goose wing.4 Fresh, fragrant air had already entered the room and begun to fill it. Through the window came the noise of the city and the chirping of sparrows in the front garden.
Everything in the room was brightly lit, cheering it up, and a light breeze rustled the pages of my Algebra and the hair on Nikolay’s head. I went over to the window, sat down on the sill, leaned out over the garden, and lapsed into thought.
A new, exceptionally strong and pleasurable feeling suddenly filled my soul. The moist earth in which bright-green blades of grass with yellow stems were breaking through here and there, the sunshine gleaming in the rivulets along which swirled tiny fragments of wood and earth, the swelling buds on the reddening branches of lilac swaying just below the window, the fussy chirping of little birds hopping about in the lilac, the fence darkened with melted snow, and especially the fragrant damp air and the joyful sun – all that spoke clearly and distinctly to me of something new and wonderful that I’m unable to convey as it expressed itself to me then, although I’ll try to do so as I perceived it. It spoke to me of beauty, happiness and virtue, saying that each was possible and easy for me, that none could exist without the others, and that beauty, happiness and virtue were even the same thing. ‘How could I have failed to realize that? How bad I was before, and how good and happy I could have been and might be in the future!’ I said to myself. ‘I must hurry, hurry, and this very minute become a different person and start to live differently.’ Despite that, however, I continued to sit in the window a long time, daydreaming and doing nothing.
Has it ever happened to you in the summer to lie down for a nap in the afternoon in overcast, rainy weather and then, on waking around sunset, to open your eyes and, in the expanding rectangle of a window under the linen blind as it fills with air and bangs against the sill like a branch, to see the violet, shady side of an avenue of lindens wet from the rain, and a damp garden path lit up with bright slanting rays, or suddenly to hear the joyful life of birds in the garden, or glimpse in the opening of the window hovering insects translucent in the sunlight, or smell the air after the rain and think, ‘How shameful to sleep away such an evening,’ and then to jump up and run out to the garden to rejoice in life? If that has ever happened to you, then you will have a sample of the strong feeling I was experiencing that day.
THREE
Daydreams
‘I’ll make my confession today and purify myself of all my sins,’ I thought, ‘and never again will I …’ (and here I recalled all the sins I was most tormented by). ‘I’ll go to church every Sunday without fail, and afterwards I’ll read the Gospel a whole hour, and then from the twenty-five roubles I’ll receive every month after I’ve entered the university, I’ll give two roubles fifty (a tithe) to the poor without fail, and in such a way that no one will know, and not to beggars, but I’ll find some poor people, an orphan or an old woman, whom no one knows about.
‘I’ll have my own room (St-Jérôme’s, very likely), and I’ll take care of it myself and keep it exceptionally clean, and I won’t make my servant do anything for me. After all, he’s the same as I am. Then I’ll walk to the university every day (if they give me a droshky,5 I’ll sell it and put that money aside for the poor), and I’ll carry out everything just so.’ Exactly what that ‘everything’ was I certainly couldn’t have said at the time, although I did vividly understand and feel that it was all a rational, moral, irreproachable life entailed. ‘I’ll summarize the lectures and even go over the subjects beforehand, so that I’ll be at the top of the first-year class and write a thesis. In the second year I’ll already know everything in advance, and they’ll be able to move me directly to the third year, so that at eighteen I’ll finish the year with a first-class baccalaureate and two gold medals, and then I’ll do a master’s and a doctorate and become the leading scholar in Russia … Or even in Europe … Well, and what then?’ I asked myself, but then I remembered that such daydreams were pride, a sin I would have to tell my confessor that very evening, and I returned to the beginning of my reflections. ‘To prepare for the lectures I’ll walk to Sparrow Hills,6 choose a place under a tree there for myself, and read through the previous lectures, sometimes taking something to snack on: some cheese or a pastry from Pedotti’s7 or something else. I’ll have a rest and then I’ll start to read some good book or sketch the view or play an instrument (I’ll learn to play the flute without fail). Then she’ll start taking walks to Sparrow Hills, too, and at some point will come over to me and ask who I am. I’ll look at her sadly like this, and say I’m the son of a priest and only happy when I’m there alone, completely by myself. She’ll give me her hand, say something and sit down beside me. And we’ll both go there every day and become friends and I’ll kiss her … No, that’s no good. On the contrary, from this day forward I won’t look at women. I’ll never, never go to the maids’ room and will try not to walk past it, and in three years I won’t be a dependant any more and will get married without fail. I’ll make a point of exercising as much as possible and do gymnastics every day, so that when I’m twenty-five I’ll be stronger than Rappo.8 The first day I’ll hold twenty pounds at arm’s length for five minutes; the next day, twenty-one pounds; the third day, twenty-two; and so on, ending with 160 pounds in each hand and stronger than any of the servants. And if someone should all of a sudden think he can insult me or start referring to her disrespectfully, then I’ll just take him by the chest like this, and lift him several feet off the ground with one hand, and hold him there long enough for him to feel my strength, and then let him go. Actually, that’s no good either. No, it’s all right, since I won’t be doing him any harm, but only showing that I …’
