The Idiot

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  This visit to Rogozhin was very exhausting for me. Besides, I had been feeling unwell since morning; by evening I was very weak and lay in bed, and at times felt very feverish and even momentarily delirious. Kolya stayed with me till eleven o’clock. However, I remember everything that he said and that we talked about. But when my eyes closed at moments, I kept picturing Ivan Fomich, who had supposedly received millions in cash. He did not know where to put it, racked his brains over it, trembled from fear that it might be stolen from him, and finally seemed to decide to bury it in the ground. I finally advised him, instead of burying such a heap of gold in the ground for nothing, to cast it into a little gold coffin for the “frozen” child, and to dig the child up for that purpose. Surikov took this mockery of mine with tears of gratitude and at once set about realizing the plan. It seems I spat and left him there. Kolya assured me, when I had completely come to my senses, that I had not been asleep at all, but had been talking with him the whole time about Surikov. At moments I was in great anguish and confusion, so that Kolya left in alarm. When I got up to lock the door after him, I suddenly remembered the picture I had seen that day at Rogozhin’s, in one of the gloomiest rooms of his house, above the door. He himself had shown it to me in passing; I think I stood before it for about five minutes. There was nothing good about it in the artistic respect; but it produced a strange uneasiness in me.

  This picture portrays Christ just taken down from the cross. It seems to me that painters are usually in the habit of portraying Christ, both on the cross and taken down from the cross, as still having a shade of extraordinary beauty in his face; they seek to preserve this beauty for him even in his most horrible suffering. But in Rogozhin’s picture there is not a word about beauty; this is in the fullest sense the corpse of a man who had endured infinite suffering before the cross, wounds, torture, beating by the guards, beating by the people as he carried the cross and fell down under it, and had finally suffered on the cross for six hours (at least according to my calculation). True, it is the face of a man who has only just been taken down from the cross, that is, retaining in itself a great deal of life, of warmth; nothing has had time to become rigid yet, so that the dead man’s face even shows suffering as if he were feeling it now (the artist has caught that very well); but the face has not been spared in the least; it is nature alone, and truly as the dead body of any man must be after such torments. I know that in the first centuries the Christian Church already established that Christ suffered not in appearance but in reality, and that on the cross his body, therefore, was fully and completely subject to the laws of nature. In the picture this face is horribly hurt by blows, swollen, with horrible, swollen, and bloody bruises, the eyelids are open, the eyes crossed; the large, open whites have a sort of deathly, glassy shine. But, strangely, when you look at the corpse of this tortured man, a particular and curious question arises: if all his disciples, his chief future apostles, if the women who followed him and stood by the cross, if all those who believed in him and worshipped him had seen a corpse like that (and it was bound to be exactly like that), how could they believe, looking at such a corpse, that this sufferer would resurrect? Here the notion involuntarily occurs to you that if death is so terrible and the laws of nature are so powerful, how can they be overcome? How overcome them, if they were not even defeated now, by the one who defeated nature while he lived, whom nature obeyed, who exclaimed: “Talitha cumi” and the girl arose, “Lazarus, come forth” and the dead man came out?18 Nature appears to the viewer of this painting in the shape of some enormous, implacable, and dumb beast, or, to put it more correctly, much more correctly, strange though it is—in the shape of some huge machine of the most modern construction, which has senselessly seized, crushed, and swallowed up, blankly and unfeelingly, a great and priceless being—such a being as by himself was worth the whole of nature and all its laws, the whole earth, which was perhaps created solely for the appearance of this being alone! The painting seems precisely to express this notion of a dark, insolent, and senselessly eternal power, to which everything is subjected, and it is conveyed to you involuntarily. The people who surrounded the dead man, none of whom is in the painting, must have felt horrible anguish and confusion on that evening, which at once smashed all their hopes and almost their beliefs. They must have gone off in terrible fear, though each carried within himself a tremendous thought that could never be torn out of him. And if this same teacher could have seen his own image on the eve of the execution, would he have gone to the cross and died as he did? That question also comes to you involuntarily as you look at the painting.

  All this came to me in fragments, perhaps indeed through delirium, sometimes even in images, for a whole hour and a half after Kolya left. Can something that has no image come as an image? But it was as if it seemed to me at moments that I could see that infinite power, that blank, dark, and dumb being, in some strange and impossible form. I remember it seemed as if someone holding a candle led me by the hand and showed me some huge and repulsive tarantula and started assuring me that this was that dark, blank, and all-powerful being, and laughed at my indignation. In my room a little lamp is always lighted before the icon at night—the light is dim and negligible, but nevertheless you can see everything, and close to the lamp you can even read. I think it was already going on one o’clock; I was completely awake and lay with open eyes; suddenly the door of my room opened, and Rogozhin came in.

  He came in, closed the door, silently looked at me, and quietly went to the corner, to the table that stands almost under the icon lamp. I was very surprised and watched in expectation; Rogozhin leaned his elbow on the little table and started looking at me silently. Two or three minutes passed that way, and I remember that his silence greatly offended and vexed me. Why did he not want to speak? The fact that he had come so late seemed strange to me, of course, yet I remember that I was not so greatly astonished by that in itself. Even the opposite: though I had not spoken my thought out clearly to him in the morning, I know he had understood it; and that thought was of such kind that, apropos of it, of course, one might come for another talk, even though it was very late. And so I thought he had come for that. In the morning we had parted somewhat hostilely, and I even remember him glancing at me very mockingly a couple of times. That mockery, which I could now read in his glance, was what offended me. That it actually was Rogozhin himself, and not a vision, not delirium, I at first did not doubt in the least. I did not even think of it.

  Meanwhile he went on sitting and looking at me with the same smile. I turned over spitefully on my bed, also leaned my elbow on the pillow, and decided to be silent on purpose, even if we sat like that the whole time. For some reason I absolutely wanted him to begin first. I think about twenty minutes passed that way. Suddenly a thought occurred to me: what if it is not Rogozhin, but only a vision?

  Neither during my illness nor before it have I ever once seen a single apparition; but it always seemed to me, when I was still a boy, and even now, that is, recently, that if I should see an apparition just once, I would die right on the spot, even though I do not believe in apparitions. But as soon as it occurred to me that it was not Rogozhin, but only an apparition, I remember that I wasn’t frightened in the least. Not only that, but it even made me angry. Another strange thing was that the answer to the question whether it was an apparition or Rogozhin himself somehow did not interest or trouble me as much as it would seem it should have; it seems to me that I was thinking about something else then. For some reason I was much more interested in why Rogozhin, who had been wearing a dressing gown and slippers earlier, was now in a tailcoat, a white waistcoat, and a white tie. The thought also flashed: if this is an apparition, and I am not afraid of it, why not get up, go over to it, and make sure myself? It may be, however, that I didn’t dare and was afraid. But I just had time to think I was afraid, when suddenly it was as if ice passed all over my body; I felt cold in my back, and my knees trembled. At that very moment, as if he had guessed that I w
as afraid, Rogozhin drew back the arm he had been leaning on, straightened up, and began to extend his mouth, as if getting ready to laugh; he looked at me point-blank. I was so infuriated that I decidedly wanted to fall upon him, but as I had sworn that I would not begin speaking first, I stayed in bed, the more so as I was not sure whether it was Rogozhin himself or not.

  I do not remember for certain how long this went on; nor do I remember for certain whether I had moments of oblivion or not. Only, in the end Rogozhin got up, looked me over as slowly and attentively as before, when he came in, but stopped grinning and quietly, almost on tiptoe, went to the door, opened it, closed it, and was gone. I did not get out of bed; I don’t remember how long I lay there thinking with open eyes; God knows what I was thinking about; I also don’t remember how I became oblivious. The next morning I woke up when they knocked at my door, past nine o’clock. I had arranged it so that if I myself did not open the door by nine o’clock and call for tea to be served, Matryona herself should knock for me. When I opened the door to her, the thought immediately occurred to me: how could he have come in if the door was locked? I made inquiries and became convinced that the real Rogozhin could not have come in, because all our doors are locked for the night.

  This particular case, which I have described in such detail, was the reason why I became completely “resolved.” Which means that what contributed to my definitive resolve was not logic, not logical conviction, but revulsion. It is impossible to remain in a life that assumes such strange, offensive forms. This apparition humiliated me. I am unable to submit to a dark power that assumes the shape of a tarantula. And it was only at twilight, when I finally sensed in myself the definitive moment of full resolution, that I felt better. That was only the first moment; for the second moment I went to Pavlovsk, but that has already been sufficiently explained.

  VII

  I HAD A SMALL pocket pistol, I acquired it when I was still a child, at that ridiculous age when one suddenly begins to like stories about duels, about highway robberies, about how I, too, would be challenged to a duel, and how nobly I would stand facing the pistol. A month ago I examined it and prepared it. I found two bullets in the box with it, and enough powder in the powder horn for three shots. It is a trashy pistol, doesn’t shoot straight, and is accurate only up to fifteen paces; but, of course, it would shove your skull sideways if you put it right to your temple.

  I decided to die in Pavlovsk, at sunrise, and to do it in the park, so as not to trouble anyone in the dacha. My “Explanation” will sufficiently explain the whole matter to the police. Fanciers of psychology and those who feel the need can deduce whatever they like from it. However, I would not want this manuscript to be made public. I ask the prince to keep one copy for himself and to convey the other copy to Aglaya Ivanovna Epanchin. Such is my will. I bequeath my skeleton to the Medical Academy for the benefit of science.

  I recognize no judges over me and know that I am now beyond all judicial power. Not long ago I was amused by a certain supposition: what if I should suddenly take it into my head now to kill whomever I like, even a dozen people at once, or to do something most terrible, that is simply considered the most terrible thing in the world, what a quandary the court would find itself in before me, with my two- or three-week term and with torture and the rack abolished! I would die comfortably in their hospital, in warmth, and with an attentive doctor, and perhaps be much more comfortable and warm than in my own house. I don’t understand why the same thought doesn’t occur to people in the same situation as mine, if only as a joke? However, maybe it does occur to them; there are lots of merry people to be found among us, too.

  But if I do not recognize any judgment over me, I know all the same that I will be judged, once I have become a deaf and speechless defendant. I do not want to go without leaving a word of reply—a free word, not a forced one—not to justify myself—oh, no! I have nothing to ask forgiveness for from anyone—but just because I myself want it so.

  First of all, there is a strange thought here: who, in the name of what right, in the name of what motive, would now take it into his head to dispute my right to these two or three weeks of my term? What court has any business here? Who precisely needs that I should not only be sentenced, but should graciously keep to the term of my sentence? Can it really be that anyone needs that? For the sake of morality? If, in the bloom of health and strength, I were to make an attempt on my life, which “could be useful to my neighbor,” and so on, then I could understand that morality might reproach me, out of old habit, for having dealt with my life arbitrarily, or whatever. But now, now, when the term of the sentence has been read out to me? What sort of morality needs, on top of your life, also your last gasp, with which you give up the last atom of life, listening to the consolations of the prince, who is bound to go as far in his Christian reasoning as the happy thought that, essentially, it’s even better that you’re dying. (Christians like him always get to that idea: it’s their favorite hobbyhorse.) And what do they want to do with their ridiculous “Pavlovsk trees”? Sweeten the last hours of my life? Don’t they understand that the more oblivious I become, the more I give myself up to that last phantom of life and love with which they want to screen my Meyer’s wall from me, with all that is written on it so frankly and simple-heartedly, the more unhappy they will make me? What do I need your nature for, your Pavlovsk park, your sunrises and sunsets, your blue sky, and your all-contented faces, when this whole banquet, which has no end, began by counting me alone as superfluous? What do I care about all this beauty, when every minute, every second, I must and am forced to know that even this tiny fly that is now buzzing near me in a ray of sunlight, even it participates in this banquet and chorus, knows its place, loves it, and is happy, while I alone am a castaway, and only in my pusillanimity did not want to understand it till now! Oh, don’t I know how the prince and all of them would like to drive me to the point where, instead of all these “perfidious and spiteful” speeches, I would sing, out of good behavior and for the triumph of morality, the famous and classical strophe of Millevoye:19

  O, puissent voir votre beauté sacrée

  Tant d’amis sourds à mes adieux!

  Qu’ils meurent pleins de jours, que leur mort soit pleurée,

  Qu’un ami leur ferme les yeux!‖

  But believe me, believe me, simple-hearted people, in this well-behaved strophe, in this academic blessing of the world in French verse, there is lodged so much hidden bile, so much implacable spite indulging itself in rhymes, that even the poet himself, perhaps, was duped and took this spite for tears of tenderness, and died with that—may he rest in peace! Know that there is a limit to disgrace in the consciousness of one’s own nonentity and weakness, beyond which man cannot go and at which he begins to take a tremendous pleasure in the disgrace itself … Well, of course, humility is a tremendous force in this sense, I admit that—though not in the sense in which religion takes humility for a force.

  Religion! I do admit eternal life and perhaps have always admitted it. Let consciousness be lit up by the will of a higher power, let it look at the world and say: “I am!” and let the higher power suddenly decree its annihilation, because for some reason—or even without explaining for what reason—that is needed: let it be so, I admit all that, but again comes the eternal question: why is my humility needed here? Isn’t it possible simply to eat me, without demanding that I praise that which has eaten me? Can it be that someone there will indeed be offended that I don’t want to wait for two weeks? I don’t believe it; and it would be much more likely to suppose that my insignificant life, the life of an atom, was simply needed for the fulfillment of some universal harmony as a whole, for some plus and minus, for some sort of contrast, and so on and so forth, just as daily sacrifice requires the lives of a multitude of beings, without whose death the rest of the world could not stand (though it must be noted that this is not a very magnanimous thought in itself). But so be it! I agree that it was quite impossible to arrange the wo
rld otherwise, that is, without the ceaseless devouring of each other; I even agree to admit that I understand nothing of this arrangement; but on the other hand, I know this for certain: if I have once been given the consciousness that “I am,” what business is it of mine that the world has been arranged with mistakes and that otherwise it cannot stand? Who is going to judge me after that, and for what? Say what you will, all this is impossible and unjust.

  And meanwhile, even in spite of all my desire, I could never imagine to myself that there is no future life and no providence. Most likely there is all that, but we don’t understand anything about the future life and its laws. But if it is so difficult and even completely impossible to understand it, can it be that I will have to answer for being unable to comprehend the unknowable? True, they say, and the prince, of course, along with them, that it is here that obedience is necessary, that one must obey without reasoning, out of sheer good behavior, and that I am bound to be rewarded for my meekness in the other world. We abase providence too much by ascribing our own notions to it, being vexed that we can’t understand it. But, again, if it’s impossible to understand it, then, I repeat, it is hard to have to answer for something it is not given to man to understand. And if so, how are they going to judge me for being unable to understand the true will and laws of providence? No, we’d better leave religion alone.

  But enough. When I get to these lines, the sun will probably already be risen and “resounding in the sky,” and a tremendous, incalculable force will pour out on all that is under the sun. So be it! I will die looking straight into the wellspring of force and life, and I will not want this life! If it had been in my power not to be born, I probably would not have accepted existence on such derisive conditions. But I still have the power to die, though I’m giving back what’s already numbered. No great power, no great rebellion either.