This particular case, which I have described in such detail, was the reason why I became completely "resolved."
Which means that what contributed to my definitive resolve was not logic, not logical conviction, but revulsion.
It is impossible to remain in a life that assumes such strange, offensive forms.
This apparition humiliated me.
I am unable to submit to a dark power that assumes the shape of a tarantula.
And it was only at twilight, when I finally sensed in myself the definitive moment of full resolution, that I felt better.
That was only the first moment; for the second moment I went to Pavlovsk, but that has already been sufficiently explained.
VII
I had a small pocket pistol, I acquired it when I was still a child, at that ridiculous age when one suddenly begins to like stories about duels, about highway robberies, about how I, too, would be challenged to a duel, and how nobly I would stand facing the pistol.
A month ago I examined it and prepared it.
I found two bullets in the box with it, and enough powder in the powder horn for three shots.
It is a trashy pistol, doesn't shoot straight, and is accurate only up to fifteen paces; but, of course, it would shove your skull sideways if you put it right to your temple.
I decided to die in Pavlovsk, at sunrise, and to do it in the park, so as not to trouble anyone in the dacha.
My
"Explanation" will sufficiently explain the whole matter to the police.
Fanciers of psychology and those who feel the need can deduce whatever they like from it.
However, I would not want this manuscript to be made public.
I ask the prince to keep one copy for himself and to convey the other copy to Aglaya Ivanovna Epanchin.
Such is my will.
I bequeath my skeleton to the Medical Academy for the benefit of science.
I recognize no judges over me and know that I am now beyond all judicial power.
Not long ago I was amused by a certain supposition: what if I should suddenly take it into my head now to kill whomever I like, even a dozen people at once, or to do something most terrible, that is simply considered the most terrible thing in the world, what a quandary the court would find itself in before me, with my two- or three-week term and with torture and the rack abolished!
I would die comfortably in their hospital, in warmth, and with an attentive doctor, and perhaps be much more comfortable and warm than in my own house.
I don't understand why the same thought doesn't occur to people in the same situation as mine, if only as a joke?
However, maybe it does occur to them; there are lots of merry people to be found among us, too.
But if I do not recognize any judgment over me, I know all the same that I will be judged, once I have become a deaf and speechless defendant.
I do not want to go without leaving a word of reply—a free word, not a forced one—not to justify myself—oh, no! I have nothing to ask forgiveness for from anyone—but just because I myself want it so.
First of all, there is a strange thought here: who, in the name of what right, in the name of what motive, would now take it into his head to dispute my right to these two or three weeks of my term?
What court has any business here?
Who precisely needs that I should not only be sentenced, but should graciously keep to the term of my sentence?
Can it really be that anyone needs that?
For the sake of morality?
If, in the bloom of health and strength, I were to make an attempt on my life, which "could be useful to my neighbor," and so on, then I could understand that morality might reproach me, out of old habit, for having dealt with my life arbitrarily, or whatever.
But now, now, when the term of the sentence has been read out to me?
What sort of morality needs, on top of your life, also your last gasp, with which you give up the last atom of life, listening to the consolations of the prince, who is bound to go as far in his Christian reasoning as the happy thought that, essentially, it's even better that you're dying. (Christians like him always get to that idea: it's their favorite hobbyhorse.) And what do they want to do with their ridiculous "Pavlovsk trees"?
Sweeten the last hours of my life?
Don't they understand that the more oblivious I become, the more I give myself up to that last phantom of life and love with which they want to screen my Meyer's wall from me, with all that is written on it so frankly and simple-heartedly, the more unhappy they will make me?
What do I need your nature for, your Pavlovsk park, your sunrises and sunsets, your blue sky, and your all-contented faces, when this whole banquet, which has no end, began by counting me alone as superfluous?
What do I care about all this beauty, when every minute, every second, I must and am forced to know that even this tiny fly that is now buzzing near me in a ray of sunlight, even it participates in this banquet and chorus, knows its place, loves it, and is happy, while I alone am a castaway, and only in my pusillanimity did not want to understand it till now!
Oh, don't I know how the prince and all of them would like to drive me to the point where, instead of all these "perfidious and spiteful" speeches, I would sing, out of good behavior and for the triumph of morality, the famous and classical strophe of Millevoye:19
O, puissent voir votre beaute sacree Tant d'amis sourds a mes adieux!
Qu'ils meurent pleins de jours, que leur mort soit pleuree,
Qu'un ami leur ferme les yeux!*
But believe me, believe me, simple-hearted people, in this well-behaved strophe, in this academic blessing of the world in French verse, there is lodged so much hidden bile, so much implacable spite indulging itself in rhymes, that even the poet himself, perhaps, was duped and took this spite for tears of tenderness, and died with that—may he rest in peace!
Know that there is a limit to disgrace in the consciousness of one's own nonentity and weakness, beyond which man cannot go and at which he begins to take a tremendous pleasure in the disgrace itself . . . Well, of course, humility is a tremendous force in this sense, I admit that—though not in the sense in which religion takes humility for a force.
Religion!
I do admit eternal life and perhaps have always admitted it.
Let consciousness be lit up by the will of a higher power, let it look at the world and say: "I am!" and let the higher power suddenly decree its annihilation, because for some reason—or even without explaining for what reason—that is needed: let it be so, I admit all that, but again comes the eternal question: why is my humility needed here?
Isn't it possible simply to eat me, without demanding that I praise that which has eaten me?
Can it be that someone there will indeed be offended that I don't want to wait for two weeks?