Don’t pay any attention to her resistance; take full advantage of your animal privilege to be without pity — not like us self-destructive creatures!”
“What are you talking about, Evgeny?
When did you destroy yourself?”
Bazarov raised his head.
“That’s the only thing I’m proud of.
I have not crushed myself, so a little woman can’t crush me.
Amen!
It’s all over.
You won’t hear another word from me about it.”
Both friends lay for a time in silence.
“Yes,” began Bazarov, “man is a strange animal.
When one gets a side view from a distance of the dumb life our ‘fathers’ lead here, one thinks: what could be better?
You eat and drink and know you are acting in the most righteous and sensible way.
If not, you’re devoured by the tedium of it.
One wants to have dealings with people even if it’s only to abuse them.”
“One ought to arrange one’s life so that every moment of it becomes significant,” remarked Arkady thoughtfully.
“I dare say.
The significant may be deceptive but sweet, though it’s even quite possible to put up with the insignificant . . . But petty squabbles, petty squabbles . . . that’s a misery.”
“Petty squabbles don’t exist for the man who refuses to recognize them as such.”
“Hm . . . what you have said is a commonplace turned upside-down.”
“What?
What do you mean by that phrase?”
“I’ll explain; to say for instance that education is beneficial, that’s a commonplace, but to say that education is harmful is a commonplace turned upside-down.
It sounds more stylish, but fundamentally it’s one and the same thing!”
“But where is the truth — on which side?”
“Where?
I answer you like an echo; where?”
“You’re in a melancholy mood today, Evgeny.”
“Really?
The sun must have melted my brain and I ought not to have eaten so many raspberries either.”
“In that case it wouldn’t be a bad plan to doze a bit,” remarked Arkady.
“Certainly. Only don’t look at me; everyone has a stupid face when he’s asleep.”
“But isn’t it all the same to you what people think of you?”
“I don’t quite know how to answer you.
A real man ought not to worry about such things; a real man is not meant to be thought about, but is someone who must be either obeyed or hated.”
“It’s odd! I don’t hate anyone,” observed Arkady after a pause.
“And I hate so many.
You’re a tenderhearted listless creature; how could you hate anyone . . .?
You’re timid, you haven’t much self-reliance.”
“And you,” interrupted Arkady, “do you rely on yourself?
Have you a high opinion of yourself?”
Bazarov paused.
“When I meet a man who can hold his own beside me,” he said with slow deliberation, “then I’ll change my opinion of myself.
Hatred!
You said, for instance, today as we passed the cottage of our bailiff Philip — the one that’s so neat and clean — well, you said, Russia will achieve perfection when the poorest peasant has a house like that, and every one of us ought to help to bring it about . . . And I felt such a hatred for this poorest peasant, this Philip or Sidor, for whom I have to be ready to sacrifice my skin and who won’t even thank me for it — and why should he thank me?
Well, suppose he lives in a clean house, while weeds grow out of me — so, what next?”
“That’s enough, Evgeny . . . listening to you today one would be driven to agree with those who reproach us for absence of principles.”
“You talk like your uncle.
Principles don’t exist in general — you haven’t yet managed to understand even that much! — but there are sensations.
Everything depends on them.”