The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories
might suit me. I was buried in rottenness, and at the same time I
looked for virgins, whose purity was worthy of me! Many of them were
rejected: they did not seem to me pure enough!
“Finally I found one that I considered on a level with myself. She was
one of two daughters of a landed proprietor of Penza, formerly very
rich and since ruined. To tell the truth, without false modesty, they
pursued me and finally captured me. The mother (the father was away)
laid all sorts of traps, and one of these, a trip in a boat, decided my
future.
“I made up my mind at the end of the aforesaid trip one night, by
moonlight, on our way home, while I was sitting beside her. I admired
her slender body, whose charming shape was moulded by a jersey, and her
curling hair, and I suddenly concluded that _this was she_. It seemed
to me on that beautiful evening that she understood all that I thought
and felt, and I thought and felt the most elevating things.
“Really, it was only the jersey that was so becoming to her, and her
curly hair, and also the fact that I had spent the day beside her, and
that I desired a more intimate relation.
“I returned home enthusiastic, and I persuaded myself that she realized
the highest perfection, and that for that reason she was worthy to be
my wife, and the next day I made to her a proposal of marriage.
“No, say what you will, we live in such an abyss of falsehood, that,
unless some event strikes us a blow on the head, as in my case, we
cannot awaken. What confusion! Out of the thousands of men who marry,
not only among us, but also among the people, scarcely will you find a
single one who has not previously married at least ten times. (It is
true that there now exist, at least so I have heard, pure young people
who feel and know that this is not a joke, but a serious matter. May
God come to their aid! But in my time there was not to be found one
such in a thousand.)
“And all know it, and pretend not to know it. In all the novels are
described down to the smallest details the feelings of the characters,
the lakes and brambles around which they walk; but, when it comes to
describing their _great_ love, not a word is breathed of what _He_, the
interesting character, has previously done, not a word about his
frequenting of disreputable houses, or his association with
nursery-maids, cooks, and the wives of others.
“And if anything is said of these things, such _improper_ novels are
not allowed in the hands of young girls. All men have the air of
believing, in presence of maidens, that these corrupt pleasures, in
which _everybody_ takes part, do not exist, or exist only to a very
small extent. They pretend it so carefully that they succeed in
convincing themselves of it. As for the poor young girls, they believe
it quite seriously, just as my poor wife believed it.
“I remember that, being already engaged, I showed her my ‘memoirs,’
from which she could learn more or less of my past, and especially my
last _liaison_ which she might perhaps have discovered through the
gossip of some third party. It was for this last reason, for that
matter, that I felt the necessity of communicating these memoirs to
her. I can still see her fright, her despair, her bewilderment, when
she had learned and understood it. She was on the point of breaking the
engagement. What a lucky thing it would have been for both of us!”
Posdnicheff was silent for a moment, and then resumed:—
“After all, no! It is better that things happened as they did, better!”
he cried. “It was a good thing for me. Besides, it makes no difference.
I was saying that in these cases it is the poor young girls who are
deceived. As for the mothers, the mothers especially, informed by their
husbands, they know all, and, while pretending to believe in the purity
of the young man, they act as if they did not believe in it.
“They know what bait must be held out to people for themselves and
their daughters. We men sin through ignorance, and a determination not
to learn. As for the women, they know very well that the noblest and
most poetic love, as we call it, depends, not on moral qualities, but
on the physical intimacy, and also on the manner of doing the hair, and
the color and shape.
“Ask an experienced coquette, who has undertaken to seduce a man, which
she would prefer,—to be convicted, in presence of the man whom she is
engaged in conquering, of falsehood, perversity, cruelty, or to appear
before him in an ill-fitting dress, or a dress of an unbecoming color.
She will prefer the first alternative. She knows very well that we
simply lie when we talk of our elevated sentiments, that we seek only
the possession of her body, and that because of that we will forgive
her every sort of baseness, but will not forgive her a costume of an
ugly shade, without taste or fit.
“And these things she knows by reason, where as the maiden knows them
only by instinct, like the animal. Hence these abominable jerseys,
these artificial humps on the back, these bare shoulders, arms, and
throats.
“Women, especially those who have passed through the school of
marriage, know very well that conversations upon elevated subjects are
only conversations, and that man seeks and desires the body and all
that ornaments the body. Consequently, they act accordingly? If we
reject conventional explanations, and view the life of our upper and
lower classes as it is, with all its shamelessness, it is only a vast
perversity. You do not share this opinion? Permit me, I am going to
prove it to you (said he, interrupting me).
“You say that the women of our society live for a different interest
from that which actuates fallen women. And I say no, and I am going to
prove it to you. If beings differ from one another according to the
purpose of their life, according to their _inner life_, this will
necessarily be reflected also in their _outer life_, and their exterior
will be very different. Well, then, compare the wretched, the despised,
with the women of the highest society: the same dresses, the same
fashions, the same perfumeries, the same passion for jewelry, for
brilliant and very expensive articles, the same amusements, dances,
music, and songs. The former attract by all possible means; so do the
latter. No difference, none whatever!
“Yes, and I, too, was captivated by jerseys, bustles, and curly hair.”
CHAPTER VII.
“And it was very easy to capture me, since I was brought up under
artificial conditions, like cucumbers in a hothouse. Our too abundant
nourishment, together with complete physical idleness, is nothing but
systematic excitement of the imagination. The men of our society are
fed and kept like reproductive stallions. It is sufficient to close the
valve,—that is, for a young man to live a quiet life for some time,—to
produce as an immediate result a restlessness, which, becoming
exaggerated by reflection through the prism of our unnatural life,
provokes the illusion of love.
“All our idyls and marriage, all, are the result for the most part of
our eating. Does that astonish you? For my part, I am astonished that
we do not see it. Not far from my estate this spring some moujiks were
working on a railway embankment. You know what a peasant’s food
is,—bread, _kvass_,[*] onions. With this frugal nourishment he lives,
he is alert, he makes light work in the fields. But on the railway this
bill of fare becomes _cacha_ and a pound of meat. Only he restores this
meat by sixteen hours of labor pushing loads weighing twelve hundred
pounds.
[*] _Kvass_, a sort of cider.
“And we, who eat two pounds of meat and game, we who absorb all sorts
of heating drinks and food, how do we expend it? In sensual excesses.
If the valve is open, all goes well; but close it, as I had closed it
temporarily before my marriage, and immediately there will result an
excitement which, deformed by novels, verses, music, by our idle and
luxurious life, will give a love of the finest water. I, too, fell in
love, as everybody does, and there were transports, emotions, poesy;
but really all this passion was prepared by mamma and the dressmakers.
If there had been no trips in boats, no well-fitted garments, etc., if
my wife had worn some shapeless blouse, and I had seen her thus at her
home, I should not have been seduced.”
CHAPTER VIII.
“And note, also, this falsehood, of which all are guilty; the way in
which marriages are made. What could there be more natural? The young
girl is marriageable, she should marry. What simpler, provided the
young person is not a monster, and men can be found with a desire to
marry? Well, no, here begins a new hypocrisy.
“Formerly, when the maiden arrived at a favorable age, her marriage was
arranged by her parents. That was done, that is done still, throughout
humanity, among the Chinese, the Hindoos, the Mussulmans, and among our
common people also. Things are so managed in at least ninety-nine per
cent. of the families of the entire human race.
“Only we riotous livers have imagined that this way was bad, and have
invented another. And this other,—what is it? It is this. The young
girls are seated, and the gentlemen walk up and down before them, as in
a bazaar, and make their choice. The maidens wait and think, but do not
dare to say: ‘Take me, young man, me and not her. Look at these
shoulders and the rest.’ We males walk up and down, and estimate the
merchandise, and then we discourse upon the rights of woman, upon the
liberty that she acquires, I know not how, in the theatrical halls.”
“But what is to be done?” said I to him. “Shall the woman make the
advances?”
“I do not know. But, if it is a question of equality, let the equality
be complete. Though it has been found that to contract marriages
through the agency of match-makers is humiliating, it is nevertheless a
thousand times preferable to our system. There the rights and the
chances are equal; here the woman is a slave, exhibited in the market.
But as she cannot bend to her condition, or make advances herself,
there begins that other and more abominable lie which is sometimes
called _going into society_, sometimes _amusing one’s self_, and which
is really nothing but the hunt for a husband.
“But say to a mother or to her daughter that they are engaged only in a
hunt for a husband. God! What an offence! Yet they can do nothing else,
and have nothing else to do; and the terrible feature of it all is to
see sometimes very young, poor, and innocent maidens haunted solely by
such ideas. If only, I repeat, it were done frankly; but it is always
accompanied with lies and babble of this sort:—
“‘Ah, the descent of species! How interesting it is!’
“‘Oh, Lily is much interested in painting.’
“‘Shall you go to the Exposition? How charming it is!’
“‘And the troika, and the plays, and the symphony. Ah, how adorable!’
“‘My Lise is passionately fond of music.’
“‘And you, why do you not share these convictions?’
“And through all this verbiage, all have but one single idea: ‘Take me,
take my Lise. No, me! Only try!’”
CHAPTER IX.
“Do you know,” suddenly continued Posdnicheff, “that this power of
women from which the world suffers arises solely from what I have just
spoken of?”
“What do you mean by the power of women?” I said. “Everybody, on the
contrary, complains that women have not sufficient rights, that they
are in subjection.”
“That’s it; that’s it exactly,” said he, vivaciously. “That is just
what I mean, and that is the explanation of this extraordinary
phenomenon, that on the one hand woman is reduced to the lowest degree
of humiliation and on the other hand she reigns over everything. See
the Jews: with their power of money, they avenge their subjection, just