A CONFESSION [2]
ridicule, but as soon as I yielded to low passions I was praised
and encouraged.
Ambition, love of power, covetousness, lasciviousness, pride,
anger, and revenge -- were all respected.
Yielding to those passions I became like the grown-up folk and
felt that they approved of me. The kind aunt with whom I lived,
herself the purest of beings, always told me that there was nothing
she so desired for me as that I should have relations with a
married woman: 'Rien ne forme un juene homme, comme une liaison
avec une femme comme il faut'. [Footnote: Nothing so forms a
young man as an intimacy with a woman of good breeding.] Another
happiness she desired for me was that I should become an aide-de-
camp, and if possible aide-de-camp to the Emperor. But the
greatest happiness of all would be that I should marry a very rich
girl and so become possessed of as many serfs as possible.
I cannot think of those years without horror, loathing and
heartache. I killed men in war and challenged men to duels in
order to kill them. I lost at cards, consumed the labor of the
peasants, sentenced them to punishments, lived loosely, and
deceived people. Lying, robbery, adultery of all kinds,
drunkenness, violence, murder -- there was no crime I did not
commit, and in spite of that people praised my conduct and my
contemporaries considered and consider me to be a comparatively
moral man.
So I lived for ten years.
During that time I began to write from vanity, covetousness,
and pride. In my writings I did the same as in my life. to get
fame and money, for the sake of which I wrote, it was necessary to
hide the good and to display the evil. and I did so. How often in
my writings I contrived to hide under the guise of indifference, or
even of banter, those strivings of mine towards goodness which gave
meaning to my life! And I succeeded in this and was praised.
At twenty-six years of age [Footnote: He was in fact 27 at the
time.] I returned to Petersburg after the war, and met the writers.
They received me as one of themselves and flattered me. And before
I had time to look round I had adopted the views on life of the set
of authors I had come among, and these views completely obliterated
all my former strivings to improve -- they furnished a theory which
justified the dissoluteness of my life.
The view of life of these people, my comrades in authorship,
consisted in this: that life in general goes on developing, and in
this development we -- men of thought -- have the chief part; and
among men of thought it is we -- artists and poets -- who have the
greatest influence. Our vocation is to teach mankind. And lest
the simple question should suggest itself: What do I know, and what
can I teach? it was explained in this theory that this need not be
known, and that the artist and poet teach unconsciously. I was
considered an admirable artist and poet, and therefore it was very
natural for me to adopt this theory. I, artist and poet, wrote and
taught without myself knowing what. For this I was paid money; I
had excellent food, lodging, women, and society; and I had fame,
which showed that what I taught was very good.
this faith in the meaning of poetry and in the development of
life was a religion, and I was one of its priests. To be its
priest was very pleasant and profitable. And I lived a
considerable time in this faith without doubting its validity. But
in the second and still more in the third year of this life I began
to doubt the infallibility of this religion and to examine it. My
first cause of doubt was that I began to notice that the priests of
this religion were not all in accord among themselves. Some said:
We are the best and most useful teachers; we teach what is needed,
but the others teach wrongly. Others said: No! we are the real
teachers, and you teach wrongly. and they disputed, quarrelled,
abused, cheated, and tricked one another. There were also many
among us who did not care who was right and who was wrong,