THE DREAM OF A RIDICULOUS MAN
A monologue from the
short story by Fyodor Dostoevsky
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NOTE: This monologue is reprinted
from The Dream of a Ridiculous Man. Trans. Constance Garnett.
1916. |
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MAN: I have always been ridiculous, and I have known
it, perhaps, from the hour I was born. Perhaps from the time
I was seven years old I knew I was ridiculous. Afterwards I went
to school, studied at the university, and, do you know, the more
I learned, the more thoroughly I understood that I was ridiculous.
So that it seemed in the end as though all the sciences I studied
at the university existed only to prove and make evident to me
as I went more deeply into them that I was ridiculous. It was
the same with life as it was with science. With every year the
same consciousness of the ridiculous figure I cut in every relation
grew and strengthened. Everyone always laughed at me. But not
one of them knew or guessed that if there were one man on earth
who knew better than anybody else that I was absurd, it was myself,
and what I resented most of all was that they did not know that.
But that was my own fault; I was so proud that nothing would
have ever induced me to tell it to anyone. This pride grew in
me with the years; and if it had happened that I allowed myself
to confess to anyone that I was ridiculous, I believe that I
should have blown out my brains the same evening. Oh, how I suffered
in my early youth from the fear that I might give way and confess
it to my schoolfellows. But since I grew to manhood, I have for
some unknown reason become calmer, though I realised my awful
characteristic more fully every year. I say "unknown",
for to this day I cannot tell why it was. Perhaps it was owing
to the terrible misery that was growing in my soul through something
which was of more consequence than anything else about me: that
something was the conviction that had come upon me that nothing
in the world mattered. I had long had an inkling of it, but the
full realisation came last year almost suddenly. I suddenly felt
that it was all the same to me whether the world existed or whether
there had never been anything at all. Then I left off being angry
with people and almost ceased to notice them. Indeed this showed
itself even in the pettiest trifles: I used, for instance, to
knock against people in the street. And not so much from being
lost in thought: what had I to think about? I had almost given
up thinking by that time; nothing mattered to me. If at least
I had solved my problems! Oh, I had not settled one of them,
and how many there were! But I gave up caring about anything,
and all the problems disappeared.
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MONOLOGUES BY FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY |
