The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
1821–1881
a p enguin since 1951
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
Translated by Ronald Meyer
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‘The Dream of a Ridiculous Man’ first published 1877
‘The Meek One’ first published 1876 ‘Bobok’ first published 1873
‘A Christmas Party and a Wedding’ first published 1848
These translations first published in The Gambler and Other Stories, Penguin Classics 2010
This selection published in Penguin Classics 2025 001
Translation and editorial material copyright © Ronald Meyer, 2010
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The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
A Fantastic Story I
I am a ridiculous man. They call me mad now. That would be a promotion in rank if I weren’t just as ridiculous to them as I was before. But I’m no longer angry now, they’re all so dear to me now, and even when they laugh at me – even then they’re somehow particularly dear to me. I would laugh with them – not at myself really, but because I love them, if it weren’t so sad for me to look at them. Oh, how hard it is when you’re the only one who knows the truth! But they won’t understand that. No, they won’t understand.
Before it used to make me miserable that I seemed ridiculous. Not seemed, but was. I was always ridiculous, and I have known that, perhaps, since the very day I was born. Perhaps I already knew when I was seven years old that I was ridiculous. Then I went to school, then to university and what do you know – the more I studied, the more I learned that I was ridiculous. So that for me all my university studies in the end existed solely to prove and explain to me, the more deeply I delved, that I was ridiculous. As in my studies, so in my life. With each
passing year the same consciousness about my ridiculous appearance in all regards grew and became more firmly established. I was always laughed at by everybody. But not one of them knew or guessed that if there was a man on this earth who knew better than everyone else that I was ridiculous, then that man was I, and that what I found all the more annoying was that they didn’t know, but I was to blame for that: I was always so proud that I never wished under any circumstances to admit it to anybody. This pride grew in me as the years passed and if it had happened that I allowed myself to confess to anybody at all that I was ridiculous, I think I would have blown my brains out with a revolver that very evening. Oh, how I suffered in my adolescence that I might break down and suddenly somehow confess it to my schoolmates myself. But since becoming a man, though I learned with each passing year more and more about my terrible nature, for some reason I became somewhat calmer. Precisely for some reason, because to this day I can’t determine why. Perhaps because a terrible anguish was growing in my soul in connection with a certain circumstance that was already infinitely beyond me: namely, the conviction that was gaining ground in me that in the whole wide world nothing made any difference. I’d had an inkling of this a very long time ago, but I became fully convinced somehow suddenly last year. I suddenly felt that it didn’t make any difference to me whether the world existed or whether there was nothing anywhere. I began to sense and feel with all my being that there was nothing around me. At first it seemed to me that there had been a
The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
great deal before, but then I perceived that there had been nothing before either, but that it had only seemed like that for some reason. Little by little, I was persuaded that there would never be anything in the future either. Then I suddenly stopped getting angry at people and almost stopped noticing them. Indeed, this became apparent in even the smallest trifles: for example, I would happen to be walking down the street and would bump into people. And not because I was lost in thought: what did I have to think about; I had completely stopped thinking then: nothing made any difference to me. And it would have been another matter if I had resolved some problems; oh, but I didn’t resolve a single one, and there were so many of them! But nothing made any difference to me any more and all the questions had faded away.
And then, after all this, I learned the truth. I learned the truth last November, on the 3rd of November to be precise, and from that time I remember every second. It was a gloomy evening, as gloomy as could be. I was returning home some time after ten o’clock and I remember precisely that I thought that there couldn’t possibly be a gloomier time. Even in the physical regard. It had been pouring all day long and it was the coldest and gloomiest rain, the rain was even threatening, I remember that, with a palpable hostility towards people, and then suddenly, at eleven o’clock, it stopped and a strange dampness ensued, damper and colder than when it had been raining, and some sort of steam was rising from everything, from every stone on the street and from every lane, if you looked far into its very depths from the street. It suddenly occurred
to me that if the gaslights everywhere went out, then it would become more cheerful, that gaslight makes the heart sadder, because it lights everything up. I had eaten almost nothing that day and since early evening I had been visiting a certain engineer, who had two other friends with him. I kept my silence, and I think that they had had enough of me. They were talking about something controversial and suddenly even became excited. But it didn’t really make any difference to them, I saw that, and they had become excited merely because they should. And I suddenly said this to them: ‘Gentlemen,’ I told them, ‘you know that it doesn’t make any difference to you.’ They weren’t offended, but they all laughed at me. That’s because I said it without any reproach, but simply because it didn’t make any difference to me. They saw that it didn’t make any difference to me and were amused by that.
When I was on the street thinking about the gaslight, I glanced up at the sky. The sky was terribly dark, but one could clearly distinguish the ragged clouds, and in their midst bottomless black patches. Suddenly I noticed in one of these patches a little star and I began watching it intently. That was because this little star had given me an idea: I had decided to kill myself that night. I had firmly made up my mind about this two months before, and poor as I was, had purchased a fine revolver and loaded it that same day. But two months had already passed, and it was still lying in the drawer; but it made so little difference to me that in the end I wanted to seize the moment when things wouldn’t make so little difference, but why this was so – I don’t
The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
know. And so it was that for these two months as I made my way home every night I thought that I would shoot myself. I kept waiting for the moment. And now this little star had given me the idea and I made up my mind that it would take place without fail that night. But why the little star gave me the idea – I do not know.
And just then, as I was looking at the sky, this little girl suddenly grabbed me by the elbow. The street was empty, and there was practically nobody about. In the distance a cabbie was sleeping on his droshky. The girl was about eight years old, wearing just a kerchief and a little dress, wet all the way through, but I remembered in particular her wet, torn shoes and I remember them still. They particularly caught my eye. She suddenly started tugging me by the elbow and calling out to me. She wasn’t crying, but was somewhat convulsively shouting words, which she couldn’t say properly, because her whole body was shivering from the cold. She was terrified for some reason and shouted desperately: ‘Mama! Mama!’ I almost turned to face her, but I didn’t say a word and continued on my way, but she ran after me and kept tugging at me, and in her voice could be heard the sound that signals despair in very frightened children. I know this sound. Even though she wasn’t getting the words out properly, I understood that her mother was dying somewhere or that something had happened to them and that she had run out to call somebody, to find something to help her mother. But I didn’t follow her, and, on the contrary, I suddenly had the idea to chase her away. At first I told her to find a policeman. But
she suddenly clasped her little hands together and, sobbing and gasping for breath, she kept running alongside me and wouldn’t leave me. That was when I stamped my feet and shouted at her. She merely cried out: ‘Sir, sir! . . .’ But suddenly she gave up on me and took off running to the other side of the street: another passer-by had come into view there and evidently she had rushed to him.
I made the climb to my fifth storey. I rent a private room from my landlady. My room is shabby and small with a semicircular attic window. I have an oilcloth sofa, a table with books on it, two chairs and a comfortable armchair, which is very, very old but still and all a Voltaire armchair. I sat down, lit the candle and began thinking. Next door, in the room on the other side of the partition, the bedlam continued. It had been going on now since the day before yesterday. A retired captain lived there and he had guests – half a dozen ne’er-do-wells were drinking vodka and playing stoss with old cards. There had been a fight last night, and I know that two of them had been pulling each other by the hair for a long time. The landlady wanted to complain, but she was terribly afraid of the captain. There was only one other tenant renting a room: a short, frail woman, the wife of a regimental officer, who had arrived from out of town with three small children who had fallen ill since coming to live here. Both she and the children were mortally afraid of the captain and they trembled and crossed themselves all night long, while the youngest child was so afraid that he had some sort of attack. This captain – I know this for certain – sometimes stops
The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
passers-by on Nevsky Prospekt and begs for money. He can’t get a job, but the strange thing is (and this is why I’m telling you this, you see) that the captain during the whole month that he has been living with us has not caused me to become the least bit irritated. Of course, I avoided his acquaintance from the very beginning, and he himself was bored with me from the very first, but no matter how much they shouted on the other side of their partition and no matter how many of them there were – it made no difference to me at all. I would sit there the whole night and I really didn’t hear them – I had so completely forgotten about them. You see, I don’t ever go to bed before dawn and it’s been like that for a year now. I spend all night sitting at the table in my armchair, not doing anything. I only read books during the day. I sit there like that without even thinking, and some sort of ideas wander about and I set them free. The candle burns down completely during the night. I carefully sat down by the table, took out the revolver and placed it in front of me. When I had put it down, I remember that I asked myself ‘Is this really it?’ And I answered myself quite positively: ‘Yes.’ That is, I would shoot myself. I knew that I would shoot myself that very night for certain, but how much longer I would sit at the table – that I didn’t know. And of course I would have shot myself had it not been for that little girl.
You see, don’t you, that even though it didn’t make any difference to me, I did, for example, feel pain. If someone