I

II

III

IV

V

The knowledge of life is higher than life, the knowledge of the laws of happiness is higher than happiness.

I saw the truth. I saw it and I know it is the truth.

I shall not and I cannot believe that evil is the normal state of mankind.

The consciousness of life is higher than life.

I have committed the most terrible of sins: I have corrupted them all.

I

I am a ridiculous man. They call me a madman now. This would be a promotion in rank if I weren’t still as ridiculous to them as before. But now I am not angry, now they are all dear to me, and even when they laugh at me—even then they are somehow especially dear. I would laugh with them myself—not at myself, but loving them—if I weren’t so sad looking at them. Sad because they don’t know the truth, and I know the truth. Oh, how hard it is to know the truth all alone! But they won’t understand this. No, they won’t understand.

And before, I was very tormented by seeming ridiculous. Not seeming, but being. I have always been ridiculous, and I know it, perhaps, from my very birth. Maybe I knew I was ridiculous when I was seven years old. Then I studied at school, then at university, and what happened—the more I studied, the more I learned that I was ridiculous. So much so that for me, all my university education existed in the end only to prove and explain to me, as I delved into it, that I was ridiculous. It went the same way in life as in science. With every year, the same realization of my ridiculous appearance in all respects grew and strengthened in me. Everyone laughed at me, always.

But none of them knew or guessed that if there was a man on earth who knew more than anyone else that I was ridiculous, it was myself, and this was the most offensive thing for me, that they didn’t know it. But here I was to blame myself: I was always so proud that I would never, under any circumstances, admit it to anyone. This pride grew in me over the years, and if it had happened that I allowed myself to confess to anyone that I was ridiculous, I think I would have smashed my head with a revolver right then, that very evening. Oh, how I suffered in my youth from the fear that I wouldn’t hold out and would suddenly confess to my comrades somehow.

But since I became a young man, although I learned more and more about my terrible quality every year, I somehow became a little calmer. Exactly “somehow” because I still can’t define why. Perhaps because a terrible anguish was growing in my soul about one circumstance that was already infinitely superior to everything about me: specifically—it was a single conviction that had overcome me that everything in the world is all the same. I had a premonition of this for a very long time, but the full conviction came suddenly in the last year. I suddenly felt that it would be all the same to me whether the world existed or if nothing existed anywhere. I began to hear and feel with my whole being that nothing mattered to me. At first, it always seemed to me that a lot had mattered before, but then I guessed that nothing had mattered before either, it only seemed so for some reason. Little by little, I became convinced that there never would be anything. Then I suddenly stopped being angry at people and almost ceased to notice them. Truly, this showed itself even in the smallest trifles: for example, I would happen to walk down the street and bump into people. And not because of absent-mindedness: what did I have to think about, I had completely stopped thinking then: it was all the same to me. And it wouldn’t matter if I had solved the questions; oh, I hadn’t solved a single one, and how many there were! But it became all the same to me, and all the questions moved away.

And so, after that, I learned the truth. I learned the truth last November, and specifically on the third of November, and I remember every moment of mine since that time. It was on a gloomy, the gloomiest evening that can be. I was returning home then around eleven o’clock at night, and I remember thinking that there could not be a gloomier time. Even physically. The rain had poured all day, and it was the coldest and gloomiest rain, somehow even a menacing rain, I remember that, with clear hostility towards people, and then suddenly, at eleven o’clock, it stopped, and a terrible dampness set in, wetter and colder than when the rain was falling, and a kind of steam rose from everything, from every stone on the street and from every alley if you looked deep into it, further away, from the street. It suddenly occurred to me that if the gas went out everywhere, it would be more comforting, but with the gas, the heart was sadder because it illuminated all this. I had barely eaten dinner that day and had been sitting since early evening at an engineer’s place, and two other friends were sitting there. I kept silent and, I think, annoyed them. They were talking about something provocative and suddenly even got heated. But it was all the same to them, I saw that, and they were only getting heated for the sake of it. I suddenly told them this: “Gentlemen, it’s all the same to you, I say.” They were not offended, but all laughed at me. This was because I said it without any reproach, and simply because it was all the same to me. They saw that it was all the same to me, and they became cheerful.

When I thought about the gas on the street, I looked at the sky. The sky was terribly dark, but torn clouds could clearly be distinguished, and between them, bottomless black spots. Suddenly I noticed a little star in one of these spots and began to stare intently at it. This was because that little star gave me an idea: I had decided to kill myself that night. I had firmly decided this two months ago, and poor as I am, I bought a beautiful revolver and loaded it that very day. But two months had already passed, and it was still lying in the drawer; but it was so much all the same to me that I finally wanted to seize a moment when it wouldn’t be so all the same, why so—I don’t know. And so, in those two months, every night on returning home, I thought I would shoot myself. I was always waiting for the moment. And now this little star gave me an idea, and I decided that it would definitely happen tonight. And why the little star gave me the idea—I don’t know.

And so, as I was looking at the sky, that little girl suddenly grabbed my elbow. The street was already empty, and there was almost no one. A cabman was sleeping in his carriage in the distance. The girl was about eight years old, wearing a kerchief and only a dress, all wet, but I especially remembered her wet, torn shoes and I remember them now. They especially flashed before my eyes. She suddenly began to pull at my elbow and call out. She wasn’t crying, but was somehow abruptly shouting some words that she couldn’t pronounce well because she was shivering all over with a fine tremor from the cold. She was terrified for some reason and cried out desperately: “Mommy! Mommy!” I turned my face towards her, but did not say a word and continued walking, but she ran and pulled at me, and in her voice rang out that sound which, in very frightened children, signifies despair. I know that sound. Although she didn’t finish her words, I understood that her mother was dying somewhere, or something had happened to them, and she had run out to call someone, to find something to help her mother. But I did not go with her, and on the contrary, the thought suddenly occurred to me to drive her away. I first told her to find a policeman. But she suddenly clasped her hands and, sobbing, choking, kept running alongside me and would not leave me. It was then that I stomped my foot at her and shouted. She only cried out: “Sir, sir!..”—but suddenly let go of me and darted across the street: some other passerby appeared there, and she clearly rushed away from me towards him.

I went up to my fifth floor. I rent rooms from the owners, and we have apartments there. My room is poor and small, and the window is a semicircular attic window. I have an oilcloth sofa, a table with books on it, two chairs, and a comfortable armchair, old-old, but a Voltaire armchair. I sat down, lit a candle, and began to think. Next door, in the other room, behind the partition, the riot continued. It had been going on since the day before yesterday. A retired captain lived there, and he had guests—about six scoundrels, drinking vodka and playing stuss with old cards. There was a fight last night, and I know that two of them dragged each other around by the hair for a long time. The landlady wanted to complain, but she is terribly afraid of the captain. The only other lodgers we have are one small, thin lady, from the regimental families, a visitor, with three small children who have already fallen ill in our rooms. Both she and the children are scared of the captain to the point of fainting and tremble and cross themselves all night, and the youngest child even had a fit from fright. This captain, I know for sure, sometimes stops passersby on Nevsky Prospekt and asks for money for the poor. He is not accepted into service, but, strangely enough (which is why I am telling this), the captain has not aroused any annoyance in me for the entire month he has been living with us. I avoided acquaintance, of course, from the very beginning, and he himself found me boring the first time, but no matter how much they shout behind their partition and no matter how many of them there are, it is always all the same to me. I sit up all night and, honestly, I don’t hear them—I forget about them that much. I don’t sleep all night until dawn, and it’s been like this for a year now. I sit up all night at the table in the armchair and do nothing. I only read books during the day. I sit and don’t even think, but just let some thoughts wander freely. The candle burns down completely during the night. I sat down quietly at the table, took out the revolver, and placed it in front of me. When I placed it there, I remember asking myself: “Is this it?” and I answered myself quite affirmatively: “It is.” That is, I will shoot myself. I knew that I would surely shoot myself tonight, but how much longer I would sit at the table until then—I did not know. And I certainly would have shot myself if it hadn’t been for that little girl.