White nights, and other stories
monkey, then it is no use scowling, accept it for a fact. When they
prove to you that in reality one drop of your own fat must be dearer to
you than a hundred thousand of your fellow creatures, and that this
conclusion is the final solution of all so-called virtues and duties and
all such prejudices and fancies, then you have just to accept it, there
is no help for it, for twice two is a law of mathematics. Just try
refuting it.
"Upon my word, they will shout at you, it is no use protesting: it is a
case of twice two makes four! Nature does not ask your permission, she
has nothing to do with your wishes, and whether you like her laws or
dislike them, you are bound to accept her as she is, and consequently
all her conclusions. A wall, you see, is a wall ... and so on, and so
on."
Merciful Heavens! but what do I care for the laws of nature and
arithmetic, when, for some reason I dislike those laws and the fact that
twice two makes four? Of course I cannot break through the wall by
battering my head against it if I really have not the strength to knock
it down, but I am not going to be reconciled to it simply because it is
a stone wall and I have not the strength.
As though such a stone wall really were a consolation, and really did
contain some word of conciliation, simply because it is as true as twice
two makes four. Oh, absurdity of absurdities! How much better it is to
understand it all, to recognize it all, all the impossibilities and the
stone wall; not to be reconciled to one of those impossibilities and
stone walls if it disgusts you to be reconciled to it; by the way of the
most inevitable, logical combinations to reach the most revolting
conclusions on the everlasting theme, that even for the stone wall you
are yourself somehow to blame, though again it is as clear as day you
are not to blame in the least, and therefore grinding your teeth in
silent impotence to sink into luxurious inertia, brooding on the fact
that there is no one even for you to feel vindictive against, that you
have not, and perhaps never will have, an object for your spite, that it
is a sleight of hand, a bit of juggling, a card-sharper's trick, that it
is simply a mess, no knowing what and no knowing who, but in spite of
all these uncertainties and jugglings, still there is an ache in you,
and the more you do not know, the worse the ache.
IV
"Ha, ha, ha! You will be finding enjoyment in toothache next," you cry,
with a laugh.
"Well? Even in toothache there is enjoyment," I answer. I had toothache
for a whole month and I know there is. In that case, of course, people
are not spiteful in silence, but moan; but they are not candid moans,
they are malignant moans, and the malignancy is the whole point. The
enjoyment of the sufferer finds expression in those moans; if he did not
feel enjoyment in them he would not moan. It is a good example,
gentlemen, and I will develop it. Those moans express in the first place
all the aimlessness of your pain, which is so humiliating to your
consciousness; the whole legal system of nature on which you spit
disdainfully, of course, but from which you suffer all the same while
she does not. They express the consciousness that you have no enemy to
punish, but that you have pain; the consciousness that in spite of all
possible Vagenheims you are in complete slavery to your teeth; that if
some one wishes it, your teeth will leave off aching, and if he does
not, they will go on aching another three months; and that finally if
you are still contumacious and still protest, all that is left you for
your own gratification is to thrash yourself or beat your wall with your
fist as hard as you can, and absolutely nothing more. Well, these mortal
insults, these jeers on the part of some one unknown, end at last in an
enjoyment which sometimes reaches the highest degree of voluptuousness.
I ask you, gentlemen, listen sometimes to the moans of an educated man
of the nineteenth century suffering from toothache, on the second or
third day of the attack, when he is beginning to moan, not as he moaned
on the first day, that is, not simply because he has toothache, not just
as any coarse peasant, but as a man affected by progress and European
civilization, a man who is "divorced from the soil and the national
elements," as they express it now-a-days. His moans become nasty,
disgustingly malignant, and go on for whole days and nights. And of
course he knows himself that he is doing himself no sort of good with
his moans; he knows better than any one that he is only lacerating and
harassing himself and others for nothing; he knows that even the
audience before whom he is making his efforts, and his whole family,
listen to him with loathing, do not put a ha'porth of faith in him, and
inwardly understand that he might moan differently, more simply, without
trills and flourishes, and that he is only amusing himself like that
from ill-humour, from malignancy. Well, in all these recognitions and
disgraces it is that there lies a voluptuous pleasure. As though he
would say: "I am worrying you, I am lacerating your hearts, I am keeping
every one in the house awake. Well, stay awake then, you, too, feel
every minute that I have toothache. I am not a hero to you now, as I
tried to seem before, but simply a nasty person, an impostor. Well, so
be it, then! I am very glad that you see through me. It is nasty for you
to hear my despicable moans: well, let it be nasty; here I will let you
have a nastier flourish in a minute...." You do not understand even now,
gentlemen? No, it seems our development and our consciousness must go
further to understand all the intricacies of this pleasure. You laugh?
Delighted. My jests, gentlemen, are of course in bad taste, jerky,
involved, lacking self-confidence. But of course that is because I do
not respect myself. Can a man of perception respect himself at all?
V
Come, can a man who attempts to find enjoyment in the very feeling of
his own degradation possibly have a spark of respect for himself? I am
not saying this now from any mawkish kind of remorse. And, indeed, I
could never endure saying, "Forgive me, Papa, I won't do it again," not
because I am incapable of saying that--on the contrary, perhaps just
because I have been too capable of it, and in what a way, too! As though
of design I used to get into trouble in cases when I was not to blame in
any way. That was the nastiest part of it. At the same time I was
genuinely touched and penitent, I used to shed tears and, of course,
deceived myself, though I was not acting in the least and there was a
sick feeling in my heart at the time.... For that one could not blame
even the laws of nature, though the laws of nature have continually all
my life offended me more than anything. It is loathsome to remember it
all, but it was loathsome even then. Of course, a minute or so later I
would realize wrathfully that it was all a lie, a revolting lie, an
affected lie, that is, all this penitence, this emotion, these vows of
reform. You will ask why did I worry myself with such antics: answer,
because it was very dull to sit with one's hands folded, and so one
began cutting capers. That is really it. Observe yourselves more
carefully, gentlemen, then you will understand that it is so. I invented
adventures for myself and made up a life, so as at least to live in some
way. How many times it has happened to me--well, for instance, to take
offence simply on purpose, for nothing; and one knows oneself, of
course, that one is offended at nothing, that one is putting it on, but
yet one brings oneself, at last to the point of being really offended.
All my life I have had an impulse to play such pranks, so that in the
end I could not control it in myself. Another time, twice, in fact, I
tried hard to be in love. I suffered, too, gentlemen, I assure you. In
the depth of my heart there was no faith in my suffering, only a faint
stir of mockery, but yet I did suffer, and in the real, orthodox way; I
was jealous, beside myself ... and it was all from _ennui_, gentlemen,
all from _ennui_; inertia overcame me. You know the direct, legitimate
fruit of consciousness is inertia, that is, conscious
sitting-with-the-hands-folded. I have referred to this already. I
repeat, I repeat with emphasis: all "direct" persons and men of action
are active just because they are stupid and limited. How explain that? I
will tell you: in consequence of their limitation they take immediate
and secondary causes for primary ones, and in that way persuade
themselves more quickly and easily than other people do that they have
found an infallible foundation for their activity, and their minds are
at ease and you know that is the chief thing. To begin to act, you know,
you must first have your mind completely at ease and no trace of doubt
left in it. Why, how am I, for example to set my mind at rest? Where are
the primary causes on which I am to build? Where are my foundations?
Where am I to get them from? I exercise myself in reflection, and
consequently with me every primary cause at once draws after itself
another still more primary, and so on to infinity. That is just the
essence of every sort of consciousness and reflection. It must be a case
of the laws of nature again. What is the result of it in the end? Why,
just the same. Remember I spoke just now of vengeance. (I am sure you
did not take it in.) I said that a man revenges himself because he sees
justice in it. Therefore he has found a primary cause, that is, justice.
And so he is at rest on all sides, and consequently he carries out his
revenge calmly and successfully, being persuaded that he is doing a just
and honest thing. But I see no justice in it, I find no sort of virtue
in it either, and consequently if I attempt to revenge myself, it is
only out of spite. Spite, of course, might overcome everything, all my
doubts, and so might serve quite successfully in place of a primary
cause, precisely because it is not a cause. But what is to be done if I
have not even spite (I began with that just now, you know)? In
consequence again of those accursed laws of consciousness, anger in me
is subject to chemical disintegration. You look into it, the object
flies off into air, your reasons evaporate, the criminal is not to be
found, the wrong becomes not a wrong but a phantom, something like the
toothache, for which no one is to blame, and consequently there is only
the same outlet left again--that is, to beat the wall as hard as you
can. So you give it up with a wave of the hand because you have not
found a fundamental cause. And try letting yourself be carried away by
your feelings, blindly, without reflection, without a primary cause,
repelling consciousness at least for a time; hate or love, if only not
to sit with your hands folded. The day after to-morrow, at the latest,
you will begin despising yourself for having knowingly deceived
yourself. Result: a soap-bubble and inertia. Oh, gentlemen, do you know,
perhaps I consider myself an intelligent man, only because all my life I
have been able neither to begin nor to finish anything. Granted I am a
babbler, a harmless vexatious babbler, like all of us. But what is to be
done if the direct and sole vocation of every intelligent man is babble,
that is, the intentional pouring of water through a sieve?
VI
Oh, if I had done nothing simply from laziness! Heavens, how I should
have respected myself, then. I should have respected myself because I
should at least have been capable of being lazy; there would at least
have been one quality, as it were, positive in me, in which I could have
believed myself. Question: What is he? Answer: A sluggard; how very
pleasant it would have been to hear that of oneself! It would mean that