The Adolescent

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Not long before the French Revolution, a man named Law25 appeared in Paris and undertook a project that was brilliant in principle (afterwards, in fact, it crashed terribly). All Paris was astir; Law’s shares were snapped up, there was a stampede. Money came pouring from all over Paris, as if from a sack, into the house where the subscription was announced; but the house, finally, was not enough: the public crowded in the street—all estates, conditions, ages; bourgeois, nobility, their children, countesses, marquises, public women—everything churned up into a raging, half-crazed mass of people bitten by a rabid dog; ranks, prejudices of breeding and pride, even honor and good name—everything was trampled in the same mud; everyone sacrificed (even women) in order to obtain a few shares. The subscription finally passed into the street, but there was nowhere to write. Here one hunchback was asked to lend his hump for a time, as a table for subscribing to shares. The hunchback accepted—you can imagine for what price! Some time later (very little), it all went bankrupt, it all crashed, the idea went to the devil, and the shares lost all value. Who profited? Only the hunchback, precisely because he did not take shares, but cash in louis d’ors. Well, sirs, I am that very same hunchback! Didn’t I have strength enough not to eat and to save up seventy-two roubles out of kopecks? I’ll also have enough to restrain myself, right in the whirl of the fever that overcomes everybody, to prefer sure money to big money. I’m trifling only in trifles, but in great things I’m not. I often lacked the character for a small forbearance, even after the “idea” was born, but for a big one I’ll always have enough. When my mother served me cold coffee in the morning before I went to work, I got angry and was rude to her, and yet I was the same man who survived a whole month on nothing but bread and water.

  In short, not to make money, not to learn how to make money, would be unnatural. It would also be unnatural, with continuous and regular accumulation, with continuous attention and sobermindedness, restraint, economy, with ever-increasing energy, it would be unnatural, I repeat, not to become a millionaire. How did the beggar make his money, if not by fanaticism of character and persistence? Am I worse than that beggar? “And, finally, suppose I don’t achieve anything, suppose my calculation is wrong, suppose I crash and fail—all the same, I’m going. I’m going because I want it that way.” That’s what I said still in Moscow.

  They’ll tell me there’s no “idea” here, and precisely nothing new. But I say, and for the last time now, that there’s incalculably much idea and infinitely much that’s new.

  Oh, I did anticipate how trivial all the objections would be, and how trivial I myself would be, explaining the “idea”: well, what have I said? I didn’t say even a hundredth part; I feel that it came out petty, crude, superficial, and even somehow younger than my years.

  III

  IT REMAINS TO answer the “what for” and “why,” the “moral or not,” and so on, and so forth. I’ve promised to answer that.

  I feel sad to disappoint the reader at once, sad but glad as well. Be it known that the goals of my “idea” have absolutely no feeling of “revenge,” nothing “Byronic”—no curse, no orphaned complaints, no tears of illegitimacy, nothing, nothing. In short, a romantic lady, if she were to come across my “Notes,” would be crestfallen at once. The whole goal of my “idea” is—solitude.

  “But one can achieve solitude without any bristling up about becoming Rothschild. What has Rothschild got to do with it?”

  “Just this, that, besides solitude, I also need power.”

  I’ll preface that. The reader will perhaps be horrified at the frankness of my confession and will ask himself simpleheartedly: how is it that the author doesn’t blush? I reply that I’m not writing for publication; I’ll probably have a reader only in some ten years, when everything is already so apparent, past and proven, that there will no longer be any point in blushing. And therefore, if I sometimes address the reader in my notes, it’s merely a device. My reader is a fantastic character.

  No, it was not the illegitimacy for which they taunted me so much at Touchard’s, not my sad childhood years, not revenge or the right to protest that was the beginning of my “idea”; my character alone is to blame for it all. From the age of twelve, I think, that is, almost from the birth of proper consciousness, I began not to like people. Not so much not to like, but they somehow became oppressive to me. It was sometimes all too sad for me myself, in my pure moments, that I could in no way speak everything out even to those close to me, that is, I could, but I didn’t want to, I restrained myself for some reason; that I was mistrustful, sullen, and unsociable. Then, too, I had long noticed a feature in myself, almost from childhood, that I all too often accuse others, that I’m all too inclined to accuse them; but this inclination was quite often followed immediately by another thought, which was all too oppressive for me: “Is it not I myself who am to blame, instead of them?” And how often I accused myself in vain! To avoid resolving such questions, I naturally sought solitude. Besides, I never found anything in the company of people, however I tried, and I did try; at least all my peers, all my comrades to a man, proved to be inferior to me in thinking; I don’t remember a single exception.

  Yes, I’m glum, I’m continually closed. I often want to leave society. I may also do good to people, but often I don’t see the slightest reason for doing good to them. And people are not at all so beautiful that they should be cared for so much. Why don’t they come forward directly and openly, and why is it so necessary that I should go and foist myself on them? That’s what I asked myself. I’m a grateful being, and I’ve already proved it by a hundred follies. I would instantly respond with openness to an open person and begin to love him at once. And so I did; but they all cheated me at once and closed themselves to me in mockery. The most open of them was Lambert, who used to beat me badly in childhood; but he, too, was merely an open scoundrel and robber; and here, too, his openness came merely from stupidity. These were my thoughts when I came to Petersburg.

  Having left Dergachev’s then (God knows what pushed me to go there), I approached Vasin and, on a rapturous impulse, praised him to the skies. And what then? That same evening I already felt that I liked him much less. Why? Precisely because, by praising him, I had lowered myself before him. Yet it seems it should have been the opposite: a man so just and magnanimous as to give another his due, even to his own detriment, such a man is almost superior in his personal dignity to everyone else. And what, then—I knew this, and still I liked Vasin less, even much less, I purposely give an example already familiar to the reader. Even Kraft I remembered with a bitter and sour feeling, because he brought me out to the front hall himself, and so it remained right up to another day, when everything about Kraft became perfectly clear and it was impossible to be angry. From the very lowest grade in school, as soon as any of my comrades got ahead of me in studies, or in witty answers, or in physical strength, I at once stopped keeping company with him and speaking to him. Not that I hated him or wished him to fail; I simply turned away, because such was my character.

  Yes, I’ve thirsted for power all my life, power and solitude. I dreamed of them even at such an age that decidedly anyone would have laughed in my face if he had made out what I had inside my skull. That is why I came to love secrecy so much. Yes, I dreamed with all my might and to a point where I had no time to talk; this led to the conclusion that I was unsociable, and my absentmindedness led to a still worse conclusion in my regard, but my rosy cheeks proved the contrary.

  I was especially happy when, going to bed and covering myself with a blanket, I began, alone now, in the most complete solitude, with no people moving around and not a single sound from them, to re-create life in a different key. The fiercest dreaming was my companion until I discovered the “idea,” when all my dreams went at once from stupid to reasonable, and from a dreamy form of novel passed on to the rationalistic form of reality.

  Everything merged into a single goal. However, they weren’t so stupid even before, though there
were myriad upon myriad and thousand upon thousand of them. But I had some favorites . . . However, there’s no point bringing them in here.

  Power! I’m convinced that a great many people would find it very funny to learn that such “trash” was aiming at power. But I’ll amaze them still more: maybe from my very first dreams, that is, almost from my very childhood, I was unable to imagine myself otherwise than in the first place, always and in all turns of life. I’ll add a strange confession: maybe that goes on even to this day. And I’ll also note that I’m not apologizing.

  In this lies my “idea,” in this lies its strength, that money is the only path that will bring even a nonentity to the first place. Maybe I’m not a nonentity, but I know from the mirror, for instance, that my appearance does me harm, because my face is ordinary. But if I were as rich as Rothschild—who would question my face, and wouldn’t thousands of women rush to me with their charms if I merely whistled? I’m even certain that, in the end, they themselves would quite sincerely find me handsome. Maybe I’m also intelligent. But even if I had a forehead seven inches wide, there would inevitably turn up in society a man with a forehead eight inches wide, and that would be the end of me. Whereas if I were Rothschild—would this smarty with the eight-inch forehead mean anything next to me? He wouldn’t even be allowed to speak next to me! Maybe I’m witty; yet here next to me is Talleyrand or Piron26—and I’m put in the shade; but once I’m Rothschild—where is Piron, and maybe even Talleyrand? Money is, of course, a despotic power, but at the same time it’s also the highest equalizer, and that is its chief strength. Money equalizes all inequalities. I had already decided all that in Moscow.

  You will, of course, see nothing in this thought but impudence, violence, the triumph of nonentity over talent. I agree that it’s a bold thought (and therefore sweet). But so what, so what? Do you think I wished for power then in order to crush unfailingly, to take revenge? That’s just the point, that the ordinary man would unfailingly behave that way. Moreover, I’m certain that if Rothschild’s millions were heaped on them, the thousands of talents and smarties, who are so above it all, would lose control at once and behave like the most banal of ordinary men, and crush more than anybody else. My idea is not that. I’m not afraid of money; it won’t crush me and won’t make me crush others.

  I don’t need money, or, better, it’s not money that I need; it’s not even power; I need only what is obtained by power and simply cannot be obtained without power: the solitary and calm awareness of strength! That is the fullest definition of freedom, which the world so struggles over! Freedom! I have finally inscribed that great word . . . Yes, the solitary awareness of strength is fascinating and beautiful. I have strength, and I am calm. Jupiter holds thunder-bolts in his hand, and what then? He’s calm. Do we often hear him thunder? A fool might think he was asleep. But put some writer or foolish peasant woman in Jupiter’s place—oh, what thunder, what thunder there will be!

  If only I had power, I reasoned, I’d have no need at all to use it; I assure you that I myself, of my own free will, would take the last place everywhere. If I were Rothschild, I’d go about in an old coat and carry an umbrella. What do I care if I’m jostled in the street, if I’m forced to go skipping through the mud so as not to be run over by cabs? The awareness that it was I, Rothschild himself, would even amuse me at that moment. I know that I can have a dinner like nobody else, and from the world’s foremost chef, and it’s enough for me that I know it. I’ll eat a piece of bread and ham and be satisfied with my awareness. I think so even now.

  It’s not I who will get in with the aristocracy, but they who will get in with me; it’s not I who will chase after women, but they who will flow to me like water, offering me everything a woman can offer. The “banal” ones will come running for money, but the intelligent ones will be drawn by curiosity to a strange, proud, closed being, indifferent to everything. I’ll be nice to the ones and to the others, and maybe give them money, but I won’t take anything from them myself. Curiosity gives rise to passion, maybe I’ll also inspire passion. They’ll go away with nothing, I assure you, except perhaps a few presents. I’ll only become twice as curious for them.

  ... enough for me

  Is the awareness of it.27

  The strange thing is that this picture (a correct one, by the way) tempted me when I was no more than seventeen.

  I don’t want to crush or torment anyone and I won’t; but I know that if I did want to ruin such-and-such a person, my enemy, no one would keep me from doing it, but everyone would be obliging; and again, enough. I wouldn’t even take revenge on anyone. I was always surprised at how James Rothschild could agree to become a baron! Why, what for, when he’s superior to everyone in the world without that? “Oh, let this insolent general offend me at the posting station, where we’re both waiting for horses; if he knew who I was, he’d run to hitch them up himself and jump out and hasten to seat me in my modest tarantass! They wrote that a certain foreign count or baron, at a certain Viennese railway station, before the public, helped a certain local banker into his shoes, and the man was so ordinary that he allowed it. Oh, let her, let this fearsome beauty (precisely fearsome, there are such!)—the daughter of this magnificent and high-born aristocratic lady, having met me by chance on a steamboat or wherever, look askance and, turning up her nose, wonder scornfully how this humble and puny little man with a newspaper or book in his hands could dare to show up beside her in first class! But if she only knew who was sitting next to her! And she will know—she will know, and will sit down next to me, obedient, timid, gentle, seeking my eyes, glad of my smile . . .” I have purposely introduced these early pictures in order to express my idea more vividly, but the pictures are pale and perhaps trivial. Reality alone justifies everything.

  They’ll say it’s stupid to live like that. Why not have a mansion, an open house, gather society, exert influence, get married? But what would Rothschild be then? He’d become like everybody else. All the charm of the “idea” would vanish, all its moral force. As a child I had already learned by heart the monologue of Pushkin’s covetous knight; Pushkin never produced a higher idea than that! I’m also of the same mind now.

  “But your ideal is too low,” they’ll say with scorn. “Money, riches! A far cry from social usefulness and humane endeavors!”

  But who knows how I’ll use my riches? What is immoral, what is low, in having these millions flow out of a multitude of dirty and pernicious Jewish hands, into the hands of a sober and firm ascetic, who keenly studies the world? Generally, all these dreams of the future, all these conjectures—all this is still like a novel now, and maybe I shouldn’t be writing it down; it should have stayed inside my skull; I also know that maybe no one will read these lines; but if anyone does, would he believe that maybe I, too, was unable to endure the Rothschildian millions? Not because they would crush me, but in quite a different sense, the opposite. In my dreams, I had more than once seized on that moment in the future when my consciousness would be too well satisfied and power would seem all too little. Then—not from boredom, and not from aimless anguish, but because I will desire something boundlessly greater—I will give all my millions away to people; let society distribute all my riches, and I—I will once more mingle with nonentity! Maybe I’ll even turn into that beggar who died on the steamboat, with this difference, that they won’t find anything sewn into my rags. The awareness alone that I had had millions in my hands and had flung them into the mud, would feed me in my wilderness like a raven.28 I’m prepared to think so even now. Yes, my “idea” is that fortress in which I can always and in any case hide from all people, be it even like the beggar who died on the steamboat. This is my poem! And know that I need precisely my whole depraved will—solely to prove to myself that I’m strong enough to renounce it.

  They’ll undoubtedly object that this is poetry, and that I’ll never let go of millions, if I’ve got them, and will not turn into a Saratov beggar. Maybe I won’t let go; I’ve merely trace
d out the ideal of my thought. But I’ll add seriously now: if, in the accumulation of wealth, I should reach the same figure as Rothschild, then it might indeed end with my flinging it to society. (However, it would be hard to do that before the Rothschildian figure.) And I wouldn’t give away half, because then it would be nothing but a banality: I’d only become twice poorer and nothing more; but precisely all, all to the last kopeck, because, having become a beggar, I’d suddenly become twice as rich as Rothschild! If they don’t understand that, it’s not my fault; I won’t explain.

  “Fakirism, the poetry of nonentity and impotence,” people will decide, “the triumph of untalentedness and mediocrity!” Yes, I admit that it’s partly the triumph of both untalentedness and mediocrity, but hardly of impotence. I liked terribly to imagine a being, precisely an untalented and mediocre one, standing before the world and telling it with a smile: you are Galileos and Copernicuses, Charlemagnes and Napoleons, you are Pushkins and Shakespeares, you are field marshals and hofmarshals, and here I am—giftlessness and illegitimacy, and all the same I’m superior to you, because you submit to it yourselves. I confess, I’ve pushed this fantasy to such a verge that I’ve even ruled out education. It seemed to me that it would be more beautiful if this person was even filthily uneducated. This already exaggerated dream even influenced my results then in the final grade of high school; I stopped studying precisely out of fanaticism: it was as if lack of education added beauty to the ideal. Now I’ve changed my convictions on this point; education doesn’t hurt.