called in a medical student, Kislorodoff, who is a
Nationalist, an Atheist, and a Nihilist, by conviction, and
that is why I had him. I needed a man who would tell me The Idiot
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the bare truth without any humbug or ceremony—and so
he did—indeed, almost with pleasure (which I thought
was going a little too far).
‘Well, he plumped out that I had about a month left
me; it might be a little more, he said, under favourable
circumstances, but it might also be considerably less.
According to his opinion I might die quite suddenly—
tomorrow, for instance—there had been such cases. Only
a day or two since a young lady at Colomna who suffered
from consumption, and was about on a par with myself in
the march of the disease, was going out to market to buy
provisions, when she suddenly felt faint, lay down on the
sofa, gasped once, and died.
‘Kislorodoff told me all this with a sort of exaggerated
devil- may-care negligence, and as though he did me great
honour by talking to me so, because it showed that he
considered me the same sort of exalted Nihilistic being as
himself, to whom death was a matter of no consequence
whatever, either way.
‘At all events, the fact remained—a month of life and
no more! That he is right in his estimation I am absolutely
persuaded.
‘It puzzles me much to think how on earth the prince
guessed yesterday that I have had bad dreams. He said to The Idiot
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me, ‘Your excitement and dreams will find relief at
Pavlofsk.’ Why did he say ‘dreams’? Either he is a doctor,
or else he is a man of exceptional intelligence and
wonderful powers of observation. (But that he is an ‘idiot,’
at bottom there can be no doubt whatever.) It so
happened that just before he arrived I had a delightful little
dream; one of a kind that I have hundreds of just now. I
had fallen asleep about an hour before he came in, and
dreamed that I was in some room, not my own. It was a
large room, well furnished, with a cupboard, chest of
drawers, sofa, and my bed, a fine wide bed covered with a
silken counterpane. But I observed in the room a
dreadful-looking creature, a sort of monster. It was a little
like a scorpion, but was not a scorpion, but far more
horrible, and especially so, because there are no creatures
anything like it in nature, and because it had appeared to
me for a purpose, and bore some mysterious signification.
I looked at the beast well; it was brown in colour and had
a shell; it was a crawling kind of reptile, about eight inches
long, and narrowed down from the head, which was
about a couple of fingers in width, to the end of the tail,
which came to a fine point. Out of its trunk, about a
couple of inches below its head, came two legs at an angle
of forty-five degrees, each about three inches long, so that The Idiot
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the beast looked like a trident from above. It had eight
hard needle-like whiskers coming out from different parts
of its body; it went along like a snake, bending its body
about in spite of the shell it wore, and its motion was very
quick and very horrible to look at. I was dreadfully afraid
it would sting me; somebody had told me, I thought, that
it was venomous; but what tormented me most of all was
the wondering and wondering as to who had sent it into
my room, and what was the mystery which I felt it
contained.
‘It hid itself under the cupboard and under the chest of
drawers, and crawled into the corners. I sat on a chair and
kept my legs tucked under me. Then the beast crawled
quietly across the room and disappeared somewhere near
my chair. I looked about for it in terror, but I still hoped
that as my feet were safely tucked away it would not be
able to touch me.
‘Suddenly I heard behind me, and about on a level
with my head, a sort of rattling sound. I turned sharp
round and saw that the brute had crawled up the wall as
high as the level of my face, and that its horrible tail,
which was moving incredibly fast from side to side, was
actually touching my hair! I jumped up—and it
disappeared. I did not dare lie down on my bed for fear it The Idiot
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should creep under my pillow. My mother came into the
room, and some friends of hers. They began to hunt for
the reptile and were more composed than I was; they did
not seem to be afraid of it. But they did not understand as
I did.
‘Suddenly the monster reappeared; it crawled slowly
across the room 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. Norma was a great Newfoundland, and died five
years ago.
‘She sprang forward and stood still in front of the
reptile as if she had been turned to stone. The beast
stopped too, but its tail and claws still moved about. I
believe animals are incapable of feeling supernatural
fright—if I have been rightly informed,—but at this
moment there appeared to me to be something more than
ordinary about Norma’s terror, as though it must be
supernatural; and as though she felt, just as I did myself,
that this reptile was connected with some mysterious
secret, some fatal omen. The Idiot
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‘Norma backed slowly and carefully away from the
brute, which followed her, creeping deliberately after her
as though it intended to make a sudden dart and sting her.
‘In spite of Norma’s terror she looked furious, though
she trembled in all her limbs. At length she slowly bared
her terrible teeth, opened her great red jaws, hesitated—
took courage, and seized the beast in her mouth. It
seemed to try to dart out of her jaws twice, but Norma
caught at it and half swallowed 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 a horrible manner.
Suddenly Norma gave a piteous whine; the reptile had
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-looking substance, oozing out into
Norma’s mouth; it was of the consistency of a crushed
black-beetle. just then I awoke and the prince entered the
room.’
‘Gentlemen!’ said Hippolyte, breaking off here, ‘I have
not done yet, but it seems to me that I have written down
a great deal here that is unnecessary,—this dream—‘
‘You have indeed!’ said Gania. The Idiot
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‘There is too much about myself, I know, but—’ As
Hippolyte said this his face wore a tired, pained look, and
he wiped the sweat off his brow.
‘Yes,’ said Lebedeff, ‘you certainly think a great deal
too much about yourself.’
‘Well—gentlemen—I do not force anyone to listen! If
any of you are unwilling to sit it out, please go away, by
all means!’
‘He turns people out of a house that isn’t his own,’
muttered Rogojin.
‘Suppose we all go away?’ said Ferdishenko suddenly.
Hippolyte clutched his manuscript, and gazing at the
last speaker with glittering eyes, said: ‘You don’t like me at
all!’ A few laughed at this, but not all.
‘Hippolyte,’ said the prince, ‘give me the papers, and
go to bed like a sensible fellow. We’ll have a good talk
tomorrow, but you really mustn’t go on with this reading;
it is not good for you!’
‘How can I? How can I?’ cried Hippolyte, looking at
him in amazement. ‘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 over the table, in order to hide his face from
the audience, and recommenced. The Idiot
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‘The idea that it is not worth while living for a few
weeks took possession of me a month ago, when I was
told that I had four weeks to live, but only partially so at
that time. The idea quite overmastered me three days
since, that evening at Pavlofsk. The first time that I felt
really impressed with this thought was on the terrace at
the prince’s, at the very moment when I had taken it into
my head to make a last trial of life. I wanted to see people
and trees (I believe I said so myself), I got excited, I
maintained Burdovsky’s rights, ‘my neighbour!’—I dreamt
that one and all would open their arms, and embrace me,
that there would be an indescribable exchange of
forgiveness between us all! In a word, I behaved like a
fool, and then, at that very same instant, I felt my ‘last
conviction.’ I ask myself now how I could have waited six
months for that conviction! I knew that I had a disease
that spares no one, and I really had no illusions; but the
more I realized my condition, the more I clung to life; I
wanted to live at any price. I confess I might well have
resented that blind, deaf fate, which, with no apparent
reason, seemed to have decided to crush me like a fly; but
why did I not stop at resentment? Why did I begin to live,
knowing that it was not worthwhile to begin? Why did I
attempt to do what I knew to be an impossibility? And yet The Idiot
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I could not even read a book to the end; I had given up
reading. What is the good of reading, what is the good of
learning anything, for just six months? That thought has
made me throw aside a book more than once.
‘Yes, that wall of Meyer’s could tell a tale if it liked.
There was 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 Pavlofsk trees!—That is—it WOULD be dearer if it
were not all the same to me, now!
‘I remember now with what hungry interest I began to
watch the lives of other people—interest that I had never
felt before! I used to wait for Colia’s arrival impatiently,
for I was so ill myself, then, that I could not leave the
house. I so threw myself into every little detail of news,
and took so much interest in every report and rumour,
that I believe I became a regular gossip! I could not
understand, among other things, how all these people—
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 poor wretch I once knew, who had died of
hunger. I was almost beside myself with rage! I believe if I
could have resuscitated him I would have done so for the
sole purpose of murdering him! The Idiot
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‘Occasionally I was so much better that I could go out;
but the streets used to put me in such a rage that I would
lock myself up for days rather than go out, even if I were
well enough to do so! I could not bear to see all those
preoccupied, anxious-looking creatures continuously
surging along the streets past me! Why are they always
anxious? What is the meaning of their eternal care and
worry? It is their wickedness, their perpetual detestable
malice—that’s what it is—they are all full of malice,
malice!
‘Whose fault is it that they are all miserable, that they
don’t know how to live, though they have fifty or sixty
years of life before them? Why did that fool allow himself
to die of hunger with sixty years of unlived life before
him?
‘And everyone of them shows his rags, his toil-worn
hands, and yells in his wrath: ‘Here are we, working like
cattle all our lives, and always as hungry as dogs, and there
are others who do not work, and are fat and rich!’ The
eternal refrain! And side by side with them trots along
some wretched fellow who has known better days, doing
light porter’s work from morn to night for a living, always
blubbering and saying that ‘his wife died because he had
no money to buy medicine with,’ and his children dying The Idiot
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of cold and hunger, and his eldest daughter gone to the
bad, and so on. 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 has not got millions of money
like Rothschild? If he has life, all this must be in his
power! Whose fault is it that he does not know how to
live his life?
‘Oh! it’s all the same to me now—NOW! But at that
time I would soak my pillow at night with tears of
mortification, and tear at my blanket in my rage and fury.
Oh, how I longed at that time to be turned out—ME,
eighteen years old, poor, half-clothed, turned out into the
street, quite alone, without lodging, without work,
without a crust of bread, without relations, without a
single acquaintance, 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! I have suffered already in reading so far.
Which of you all does not think me a fool at this
moment—a young fool who knows nothing of life—
forgetting that to live as I have lived these last six months
is to live longer than grey-haired old men. Well, let them The Idiot
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laugh, and say it is all nonsense, if they please. They may
say it is all fairy-tales, if they like; and I have spent whole
nights telling myself fairy-tales. I remember them all. But
how can I tell fairy-tales now? The time for them is over.
They amused me when I found that there was not even
time for me to learn the Greek grammar, as I wanted to
do. ‘I shall die before I get to the syntax,’ I thought at the
first page—and threw the book under the table. It is there
still, for I forbade anyone to pick it up.
‘If this ‘Explanation’ gets into anybody’s hands, and
they have patience to read it through, they may consider
me a madman, or a schoolboy, or, more likely, a man
condemned to die, who thought it only natural to
conclude that all men, excepting himself, esteem life far
too lightly, live it far too carelessly and lazily, and are,
