The
Dream Of a Ridiculous Man
Fyodor
Dostoevsky
(Translated by
Constance Garnett)
IV
And do you know what? Well,
granted that it was only a dream, yet the sensation of the love
of those innocent and beautiful people has remained with me for
ever, and I feel as though their love is still flowing out to me
from over there. I have seen them myself, have known them and
been convinced; I loved them, I suffered for them afterwards. Oh,
I understood at once even at the time that in many things I could
not understand them at all; as an up-to-date Russian progressive
and contemptible Petersburger, it struck me as inexplicable that,
knowing so much, they had, for instance, no science like our. But
I soon realized that their knowledge was gained and fostered by
intuitions different from those of us on earth, and that their
aspirations, too, were quite different. They desired nothing and
were at peace; they did not aspire to knowledge of life as we
aspire to understand it, because their lives were full. But their
knowledge was higher and deeper than ours; for our science seeks
to explain what life is, aspires to understand it in order to
teach others how to love, while they without science knew how to
live; and that I understood, but I could not understand their
knowledge. They showed me their trees, and I could not understand
the intense love with which they looked at them; it was as though
they were talking with creatures like themselves. And perhaps I
shall not be mistaken if I say that they conversed with them.
Yes, they had found their language, and I am convinced that the
trees understood them. They looked at all Nature like that - at
the animals who lived in peace with them and did not attack them,
but loved them, conquered by their love. They pointed to the
stars and told me something about them which I could not
understand, but I am convinced that they were somehow in touch
with the stars, not only in thought, but by some living channel.
Oh, these people did not persist in trying to make me understand
them, they loved me without that, but I knew that they would
never understand me, and so I hardly spoke to them about our
earth. I only kissed in their presence the earth on which they
lived and mutely worshipped them themselves. And they saw that
and let me worship them without being abashed at my adoration,
for they themselves loved much. They were not unhappy on my
account when at times I kissed their feet with tears, joyfully
conscious of the love with which they would respond to mine. At
times I asked myself with wonder how it was they were able never
to offend a creature like me, and never once to arouse a feeling
of jealousy or envy in me? Often I wondered how it could be that,
boastful and untruthful as I was, I never talked to them of what
I knew - of which, of course, they had no notion - that I was
never tempted to do so by a desire to astonish or even to benefit
them.
They were as gay and
sportive as children. They wandered about their lovely woods and
copses, they sang their lovely songs; their fair was light - the
fruits of their trees, the honey from their woods, and the milk
of the animals who loved them. The work they did for food and
raiment was brief and not laborious. They loved and begot
children, but I never noticed in them the impulse of that cruel
sensuality which overcomes almost every man on this earth, all
and each, and is the source of almost every sin of mankind on
earth. They rejoiced at the arrival of children as new beings to
share their happiness. There was no quarrelling, no jealousy
among them, and they did not even know what the words meant.
Their children were the children of all, for they all made up one
family. There was scarcely any illness among them, though there
was death; but their old people died peacefully, as though
falling asleep, giving blessings and smiles to those who
surrounded them to take their last farewell with bright and
lovely smiles. I never saw grief or tears on those occasions, but
only love, which reached the point of ecstasy, but a calm
ecstasy, made perfect and contemplative. One might think that
they were still in contact with the departed after death, and
that their earthly union was not cut short by death. They
scarcely understood me when I questioned them about immortality,
but evidently they were so convinced of it without reasoning that
it was not for them a question at all. They had no temples, but
they had a real living and uninterrupted sense of oneness with
the whole of the universe; they had no creed, but they had a
certain knowledge that when their earthly joy had reached the
limits of earthly nature, then there would come for them, for the
living and for the dead, a still greater fullness of contact with
the whole of the universe. They looked forward to that moment
with joy, but without haste, not pining for it, but seeming to
have a foretaste of it in their hearts, of which they talked to
one another.
In the evening before going
to sleep they liked singing in musical and harmonious chorus. In
those songs they expressed all the sensations that the parting
day had given them, sang its glories and took leave of it. They
sang the praises of nature, of the sea, of the woods. They liked
making songs about one another, and praised each other like
children; they were the simplest songs, but they sprang from
their hearts and went to one's heart. And not only in their songs
but in all their lives they seemed to do nothing but admire one
another. It was like being in love with each other, but an
all-embracing, universal feeling.
Some of their songs, solemn
and rapturous, I scarcely understood at all. Though I understood
the words I could never fathom their full significance. It
remained, as it were, beyond the grasp of my mind, yet my heart
unconsciously absorbed it more and more. I often told them that I
had had a presentiment of it long before, that this joy and glory
had come to me on our earth in the form of a yearning melancholy
that at times approached insufferable sorrow; that I had had a
foreknowledge of them all and of their glory in the dreams of my
heart and the visions of my mind; that often on our earth I could
not look at the setting sun without tears. . . that in my hatred
for the men of our earth there was always a yearning anguish: why
could I not hate them without loving them? why could I not help
forgiving them? and in my love for them there was a yearning
grief: why could I not love them without hating them? They
listened to me, and I saw they could not conceive what I was
saying, but I did not regret that I had spoken to them of it: I
knew that they understood the intensity of my yearning anguish
over those whom I had left. But when they looked at me with their
sweet eyes full of love, when I felt that in their presence my
heart, too, became as innocent and just as theirs, the feeling of
the fullness of life took my breath away, and I worshipped them
in silence.
Oh, everyone laughs in my
face now, and assures me that one cannot dream of such details as
I am telling now, that I only dreamed or felt one sensation that
arose in my heart in delirium and made up the details myself when
I woke up. And when I told them that perhaps it really was so, my
God, how they shouted with laughter in my face, and what mirth I
caused! Oh, yes, of course I was overcome by the mere sensation
of my dream, and that was all that was preserved in my cruelly
wounded heart; but the actual forms and images of my dream, that
is, the very ones I really saw at the very time of my dream, were
filled with such harmony, were so lovely and enchanting and were
so actual, that on awakening I was, of course, incapable of
clothing them in our poor language, so that they were bound to
become blurred in my mind; and so perhaps I really was forced
afterwards to make up the details, and so of course to distort
them in my passionate desire to convey some at least of them as
quickly as I could. But on the other hand, how can I help
believing that it was all true? It was perhaps a thousand times
brighter, happier and more joyful than I describe it. Granted
that I dreamed it, yet it must have been real. You know, I will
tell you a secret: perhaps it was not a dream at all! For then
something happened so awful, something so horribly true, that it
could not have been imagined in a dream. My heart may have
originated the dream, but would my heart alone have been capable
of originating the awful event which happened to me afterwards?
How could I alone have invented it or imagined it in my dream?
Could my petty heart and fickle, trivial mind have risen to such
a revelation of truth? Oh, judge for yourselves: hitherto I have
concealed it, but now I will tell the truth. The fact is that I .
. . corrupted them all!
III
V