Short Stories
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 my 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!
V
Yes, yes, it ended in my corrupting them all! How it could come to pass I
do not know, but I remember it clearly. The dream embraced thousands of
years and left in me only a sense of the whole. I only know that I was the
cause of their sin and downfall. Like a vile trichina, like a germ of the
plague infecting whole kingdoms, so I contaminated all this earth, so happy
and sinless before my coming. They learnt to lie, grew fond of lying, and
discovered the charm of falsehood. Oh, at first perhaps it began
innocently, with a jest, coquetry, with amorous play, perhaps indeed with a
germ, but that germ of falsity made its way into their hearts and pleased
them. Then sensuality was soon begotten, sensuality begot jealousy,
jealousy--cruelty.... Oh, I don't know, I don't remember; but soon, very
soon the first blood was shed. They marvelled and were horrified, and began
to be split up and divided. They formed into unions, but it was against one
another. Reproaches, upbraidings followed. They came to know shame, and
shame brought them to virtue. The conception of honour sprang up, and every
union began waving its flags. They began torturing animals, and the animals
withdrew from them into the forests and became hostile to them. They began
to struggle for separation, for isolation, for individuality, for mine and
thine. They began to talk in different languages. They became acquainted
with sorrow and loved sorrow; they thirsted for suffering, and said that
truth could only be attained through suffering. Then science appeared. As
they became wicked they began talking of brotherhood and humanitarianism,
and understood those ideas. As they became criminal, they invented justice
and drew up whole legal codes in order to observe it, and to ensure their
being kept, set up a guillotine. They hardly remembered what they had lost,
in fact refused to believe that they had ever been happy and innocent. They
even laughed at the possibility of this happiness in the past, and called
it a dream. They could not even imagine it in definite form and shape, but,
strange and wonderful to relate, though they lost all faith in their past
happiness and called it a legend, they so longed to be happy and innocent
once more that they succumbed to this desire like children, made an idol of
it, set up temples and worshipped their own idea, their own desire; though
at the same time they fully believed that it was unattainable and could not
be realised, yet they bowed down to it and adored it with tears!
Nevertheless, if it could have happened that they had returned to the
innocent and happy condition which they had lost, and if some one had shown
it to them again and had asked them whether they wanted to go back to it,
they would certainly have refused. They answered me:
"We may be deceitful, wicked and unjust, we _know_ it and weep over it, we
grieve over it; we torment and punish ourselves more perhaps than that
merciful Judge Who will judge us and whose Name we know not. But we have
science, and by means of it we shall find the truth and we shall arrive at
it consciously. Knowledge is higher than feeling, the consciousness of life
is higher than life. Science will give us wisdom, wisdom will reveal the
laws, and the knowledge of the laws of happiness is higher than happiness."
That is what they said, and after saying such things every one began to
love himself better than any one else, and indeed they could not do
otherwise. All became so jealous of the rights of their own personality
that they did their very utmost to curtail and destroy them in others, and
made that the chief thing in their lives. Slavery followed, even voluntary
slavery; the weak eagerly submitted to the strong, on condition that the
latter aided them to subdue the still weaker. Then there were saints who
came to these people, weeping, and talked to them of their pride, of their
loss of harmony and due proportion, of their loss of shame. They were
laughed at or pelted with stones. Holy blood was shed on the threshold of
the temples. Then there arose men who began to think how to bring all
people together again, so that everybody, while still loving himself best
of all, might not interfere with others, and all might live together in
something like a harmonious society. Regular wars sprang up over this idea.
All the combatants at the same time firmly believed that science, wisdom
and the instinct of self-preservation would force men at last to unite into
a harmonious and rational society; and so, meanwhile, to hasten matters,
"the wise" endeavoured to exterminate as rapidly as possible all who were
"not wise" and did not understand their idea, that the latter might not
hinder its triumph. But the instinct of self-preservation grew rapidly
weaker; there arose men, haughty and sensual, who demanded all or nothing.
In order to obtain everything they resorted to crime, and if they did not
succeed--to suicide. There arose religions with a cult of non-existence and
self-destruction for the sake of the everlasting peace of annihilation. At
last these people grew weary of their meaningless toil, and signs of
suffering came into their faces, and then they proclaimed that suffering
was a beauty, for in suffering alone was there meaning. They glorified
suffering in their songs. I moved about among them, wringing my hands and
weeping over them, but I loved them perhaps more than in old days when
there was no suffering in their faces and when they were innocent and so
lovely. I loved the earth they had polluted even more than when it had been
a paradise, if only because sorrow had come to it. Alas! I always loved
sorrow and tribulation, but only for myself, for myself; but I wept over
them, pitying them. I stretched out my hands to them in despair, blaming,
cursing and despising myself. I told them that all this was my doing, mine
alone; that it was I had brought them corruption, contamination and
falsity. I besought them to crucify me, I taught them how to make a cross.
I could not kill myself, I had not the strength, but I wanted to suffer at
their hands. I yearned for suffering, I longed that my blood should be
drained to the last drop in these agonies. But they only laughed at me, and
began at last to look upon me as crazy. They justified me, they declared
that they had only got what they wanted themselves, and that all that now
was could not have been otherwise. At last they declared to me that I was
becoming dangerous and that they should lock me up in a madhouse if I did
not hold my tongue. Then such grief took possession of my soul that my
heart was wrung, and I felt as though I were dying; and then ... then I
awoke.
* * * * *
It was morning, that is, it was not yet daylight, but about six o'clock. I
woke up in the same arm-chair; my candle had burnt out; every one was
asleep in the captain's room, and there was a stillness all round, rare in
our flat. First of all I leapt up in great amazement: nothing like this had
ever happened to me before, not even in the most trivial detail; I had
never, for instance, fallen asleep like this in my arm-chair. While I was
standing and coming to myself I suddenly caught sight of my revolver lying
loaded, ready--but instantly I thrust it away! Oh, now, life, life! I
lifted up my hands and called upon eternal truth, not with words but with
tears; ecstasy, immeasurable ecstasy flooded my soul. Yes, life and
spreading the good tidings! Oh, I at that moment resolved to spread the
tidings, and resolved it, of course, for my whole life. I go to spread the
tidings, I want to spread the tidings--of what? Of the truth, for I have
seen it, have seen it with my own eyes, have seen it in all its glory.
And since then I have been preaching! Moreover I love all those who laugh
at me more than any of the rest. Why that is so I do not know and cannot
explain, but so be it. I am told that I am vague and confused, and if I am
vague and confused now, what shall I be later on? It is true indeed: I am
vague and confused, and perhaps as time goes on I shall be more so. And of
course I shall make many blunders before I find out how to preach, that is,
find out what words to say, what things to do, for it is a very difficult
task. I see all that as clear as daylight, but, listen, who does not make
mistakes? And yet, you know, all are making for the same goal, all are
striving in the same direction anyway, from the sage to the lowest robber,
only by different roads. It is an old truth, but this is what is new: I
cannot go far wrong. For I have seen the truth; I have seen and I know
that people can be beautiful and happy without losing the power of living
on earth. I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition
of mankind. And it is just this faith of mine that they laugh at. But how
can I help believing it? I have seen the truth--it is not as though I had
invented it with my mind, I have seen it, seen it, and _the living image_
of it has filled my soul for ever. I have seen it in such full perfection
that I cannot believe that it is impossible for people to have it. And so
how can I go wrong? I shall make some slips no doubt, and shall perhaps
talk in second-hand language, but not for long: the living image of what I
saw will always be with me and will always correct and guide me. Oh, I am
full of courage and freshness, and I will go on and on if it were for a
thousand years! Do you know, at first I meant to conceal the fact that I
corrupted them, but that was a mistake--that was my first mistake! But
truth whispered to me that I was _lying_, and preserved me and corrected
me. But how establish paradise--I don't know, because I do not know how to
put it into words. After my dream I lost command of words. All the chief
words, anyway, the most necessary ones. But never mind, I shall go and I
shall keep talking, I won't leave off, for anyway I have seen it with my
own eyes, though I cannot describe what I saw. But the scoffers do not
understand that. It was a dream, they say, delirium, hallucination. Oh! As
though that meant so much! And they are so proud! A dream! What is a dream?