白痴 英文版 The Idiot
陀思妥耶夫斯基 Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Idiot V. Page 2
"Suddenly the monster reappeared; it crawled slowly across theroom and made for the door, as though with some fixed intention,and with a slow movement that was more horrible than ever.
"Then my mother opened the door and called my dog, Norma. Normawas a great Newfoundland, and died five years ago.
"She sprang forward and stood still in front of the reptile as ifshe had been turned to stone. The beast stopped too, but its tailand claws still moved about. I believe animals are incapable offeeling supernatural fright--if I have been rightly informed,--butat this moment there appeared to me to be something more thanordinary about Norma's terror, as though it must be supernatural;and as though she felt, just as I did myself, that this reptilewas connected with some mysterious secret, some fatal omen.
"Norma backed slowly and carefully away from the brute, whichfollowed her, creeping deliberately after her as though itintended to make a sudden dart and sting her.
"In spite of Norma's terror she looked furious, though shetrembled in all her limbs. At length she slowly bared herterrible teeth, opened her great red jaws, hesitated--tookcourage, and seized the beast in her mouth. It seemed to try todart out of her jaws twice, but Norma caught at it and halfswallowed it as it was escaping. The shell cracked in her teeth;and the tail and legs stuck out of her mouth and shook about in ahorrible manner. Suddenly Norma gave a piteous whine; the reptilehad bitten her tongue. She opened her mouth wide with the pain,and I saw the beast lying across her tongue, and out of its body,which was almost bitten in two, came a hideous white-lookingsubstance, oozing out into Norma's mouth; it was of theconsistency of a crushed black-beetle. just then I awoke and theprince entered the room."
intention,and with a slow movement that was more horrible than ever.called my dog, Norma. Normawas a great.
"Gentlemen!" said Hippolyte, breaking off here, "I have not doneyet, but it seems to me that I have written down a great dealhere that is unnecessary,--this dream--"
"You have indeed!" said Gania.
"There is too much about myself, I know, but--" As Hippolyte saidthis his face wore a tired, pained look, and he wiped the sweatoff his brow.
"Yes," said Lebedeff, "you certainly think a great deal too muchabout yourself."
"Well--gentlemen--I do not force anyone to listen! If any of youare unwilling to sit it out, please go away, by all means!"
"He turns people out of a house that isn't his own," mutteredRogojin.
"Suppose we all go away?" said Ferdishenko suddenly.
Hippolyte clutched his manuscript, and gazing at the last speakerwith glittering eyes, said: "You don't like me at all!" A fewlaughed at this, but not all.
"Hippolyte," said the prince, "give me the papers, and go to bedlike a sensible fellow. We'll have a good talk tomorrow, but youreally mustn't go on with this reading; it is not good for you!"
"How can I? How can I?" cried Hippolyte, looking at him inamazement. "Gentlemen! I was a fool! I won't break off again.Listen, everyone who wants to!"
He gulped down some water out of a glass standing near, bent overthe table, in order to hide his face from the audience, andrecommenced.
"The idea that it is not worth while living for a few weeks tookpossession of me a month ago, when I was told that I had fourweeks to live, but only partially so at that time. The idea quiteovermastered me three days since, that evening at Pavlofsk. Thefirst time that I felt really impressed with this thought was onthe terrace at the prince's, at the very moment when I had takenit into my head to make a last trial of life. I wanted to seepeople and trees (I believe I said so myself), I got excited, Imaintained Burdovsky's rights, 'my neighbour!'--I dreamt that oneand all would open their arms, and embrace me, that there wouldbe an indescribable exchange of forgiveness between us all! In aword, I behaved like a fool, and then, at that very same instant,I felt my 'last conviction.' I ask myself now how I could havewaited six months for that conviction! I knew that I had adisease that spares no one, and I really had no illusions; butthe more I realized my condition, the more I clung to life; Iwanted to live at any price. I confess I might well have resentedthat blind, deaf fate, which, with no apparent reason, seemed tohave decided to crush me like a fly; but why did I not stop atresentment? Why did I begin to live, knowing that it was notworthwhile to begin? Why did I attempt to do what I knew to bean impossibility? And yet I could not even read a book to theend; I had given up reading. What is the good of reading, what isthe good of learning anything, for just six months? That thoughthas made me throw aside a book more than once.
"Yes, that wall of Meyer's could tell a tale if it liked. Therewas no spot on its dirty surface that I did not know by heart.Accursed wall! and yet it is dearer to me than all the Pavlofsktrees!--That is--it WOULD be dearer if it were not all the sameto me, now!
"I remember now with what hungry interest I began to watch thelives of other people--interest that I had never felt before! Iused to wait for Colia's arrival impatiently, for I was so illmyself, then, that I could not leave the house. I so threw myselfinto every little detail of news, and took so much interest inevery report and rumour, that I believe I became a regulargossip! I could not understand, among other things, how all thesepeople--with so much life in and before them--do not become RICH--and I don't understand it now. I remember being told of a poorwretch I once knew, who had died of hunger. I was almost besidemyself with rage! I believe if I could have resuscitated him Iwould have done so for the sole purpose of murdering him!
"Occasionally I was so much better that I could go out; but thestreets used to put me in such a rage that I would lock myself upfor days rather than go out, even if I were well enough to do so!I could not bear to see all those preoccupied, anxious-lookingcreatures continuously surging along the streets past me! Why arethey always anxious? What is the meaning of their eternal careand worry? It is their wickedness, their perpetual detestablemalice--that's what it is--they are all full of malice, malice!
"Whose fault is it that they are all miserable, that they don'tknow how to live, though they have fifty or sixty years of lifebefore them? Why did that fool allow himself to die of hungerwith sixty years of unlived life before him?
"And everyone of them shows his rags, his toil-worn hands, andyells in his wrath: 'Here are we, working like cattle all ourlives, and always as hungry as dogs, and there are others who donot work, and are fat and rich!' The eternal refrain! And side byside with them trots along some wretched fellow who has knownbetter days, doing light porter's work from morn to night for aliving, always blubbering and saying that 'his wife died becausehe had no money to buy medicine with,' and his children dying ofcold and hunger, and his eldest daughter gone to the bad, and soon. Oh! I have no pity and no patience for these fools of people.Why can't they be Rothschilds? Whose fault is it that a man hasnot got millions of money like Rothschild? If he has life, allthis must be in his power! Whose fault is it that he does notknow how to live his life?
"Oh! it's all the same to me now--NOW! But at that time I wouldsoak my pillow at night with tears of mortification, and tear atmy blanket in my rage and fury. Oh, how I longed at that time tobe turned out--ME, eighteen years old, poor, half-clothed, turnedout into the street, quite alone, without lodging, without work,without a crust of bread, without relations, without a singleacquaintance, in some large town--hungry, beaten (if you like),but in good health--and THEN I would show them--
"What would I show them?
"Oh, don't think that I have no sense of my own humiliation! Ihave suffered already in reading so far. Which of you all doesnot think me a fool at this moment--a young fool who knowsnothing of life--forgetting that to live as I have lived theselast six months is to live longer than grey-haired old men. Well,let them laugh, and say it is all nonsense, if they please. Theymay say it is all fairy-tales, if they like; and I have spentwhole nights telling myself fairy-tales. I remember them all. Buthow can I tell fairy-tales now? The time for them is over. Theyamused me when I found that there was not even time for me tolearn the Greek grammar, as I wanted to do. 'I shall die before Iget to the syntax,' I thought at the first page--and threw thebook under the table. It is there still, for I forbade anyone topick it up.
"If this 'Explanation' gets into anybody's hands, and they havepatience to read it through, they may consider me a madman, or aschoolboy, or, more likely, a man condemned to die, who thoughtit only natural to conclude that all men, excepting himself,esteem life far too lightly, live it far too carelessly andlazily, and are, therefore, one and all, unworthy of it. Well, Iaffirm that my reader is wrong again, for my convictions havenothing to do with my sentence of death. Ask them, ask any one ofthem, or all of them, what they mean by happiness! Oh, you may beperfectly sure that if Columbus was happy, it was not after hehad discovered America, but when he was discovering it! You maybe quite sure that he reached the culminating point of hishappiness three days before he saw the New World with his actualeves, when his mutinous sailors wanted to tack about, and returnto Europe! What did the New World matter after all? Columbus hadhardly seen it when he died, and in reality he was entirelyignorant of what he had discovered. The important thing is life--life and nothing else! What is any 'discovery' whatever comparedwith the incessant, eternal discovery of life?
"But what is the use of talking? I'm afraid all this is socommonplace that my confession will be taken for a schoolboyexercise--the work of some ambitious lad writing in the hope ofhis work 'seeing the light'; or perhaps my readers will say that'I had perhaps something to say, but did not know how to expressit.'
"Let me add to this that in every idea emanating from genius, oreven in every serious human idea--born in the human brain--therealways remains something--some sediment--which cannot be expressedto others, though one wrote volumes and lectured upon it forfive-and-thirty years. There is always a something, a remnant,which will never come out from your brain, but will remain therewith you, and you alone, for ever and ever, and you will die,perhaps, without having imparted what may be the very essence ofyour idea to a single living soul.
"So that if I cannot now impart all that has tormented me forthe last six months, at all events you will understand that,having reached my 'last convictions,' I must have paid a verydear price for them. That is what I wished, for reasons of myown, to make a point of in this my 'Explanation.'
"But let me resume.