Chapter III: Part I: Zu fragmentarisch ist Welt und Leben (2)

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The raptures of creative activity!--empty words, invented by men who never had an opportunity of judging from their own experience, but who derive their conclusion syllogistically: "if a creation gives us such delight, what must the creator himself experience!" Usually the creator feels only vexations. Every creation is created out of the Void. At the best, the maker finds himself confronted with a formless, meaningless, usually obstinate and stiff matter, which yields reluctantly to form. And he does not know how to begin. Every time a new thought is gendered, so often must that new thought, which for the moment seems so brilliant and fascinating, be thrown aside as worthless. Creative activity is a continual progression from failure to failure, and the condition of the creator is usually one of uncertainty, mistrust, and shattered nerves. The more serious and original the task which a man sets himself, the more tormenting is the self-misgiving. For this reason even men of genius cannot keep up the creative activity to the last. As soon as they have acquired their technique, they begin to repeat themselves, well aware that the public willingly endures the monotony of a favourite, even finds virtue in it. Every connoisseur of art is satisfied if he recognises in a new work the accepted "manner" of the artist. Few realise that the acquiring of a manner is the beginning of the end. Artists realise well enough, and would be glad to be rid of their manner, which seems to them a hackneyed affair. But this requires too great a strain on their powers, new torments, doubts, new groping. He who has once been through the creative raptures is not easily tempted to try again. He prefers to turn out work according to the pattern he has evolved, calmly and securely, assured of his results. Fortunately no one except himself knows that he is not any longer a creator. What a lot of secrets there are in the world, and how easy it is to keep one's secret safe from indiscreet glances!

A writer works himself up to a pitch of ecstasy, otherwise he does not take up his pen. But ecstasy is not so easily distinguished from other kinds of excitement. And as a writer is always in haste to write, he has rarely the patience to wait, but at the first promptings of animation begins to pour himself forth. So in the name of ecstasy we are offered such quantities of banal, by no means ecstatic effusions. Particularly easy it is to confound with ecstasy that very common sort of spring-time liveliness which in our language is well-named calf-rapture. And calf-rapture is much more acceptable to the public than true inspiration or genuine transport. It is easier, more familiar.

A school axiom: logical scepticism refutes itself, since the denial of the possibility of positive knowledge is already an affirmation. But, in the first place, scepticism is not bound to be logical, for it has no desire whatever to gratify that dogma which raises logic to the position of law. Secondly, where is the philosophic theory which, if carried to its extreme, would not destroy itself? Therefore, why is more demanded from scepticism than from other systems? especially from scepticism, which honestly avows that it cannot give that which all other theories claim to give.

The Aristotelian logic, which forms the chief component in modern logic, arose, as we know, as a result of the permanent controversies which were such sport to the Greeks. In order to argue, it is indeed necessary to have a common ground; in other words, to agree about the rules of the game. But in our day dialectic tournaments, like all other bouts of contention, no longer attract people. Thus logic may be relegated to the background.

In Gogol's _Portrait_, the artist despairs at the thought that he has sacrificed art for the sake of "life." In Ibsen's drama, _When We Dead Awaken_, there is also an artist, who has become world-famous, and who repents that he has sacrificed his life--to art. Now, choose--which of the two ways of repentance do you prefer?

Man is often quite indifferent to success whilst he has it. But once he loses his power over people, he begins to fret. And--vice versa.

Turgenev's Insarov strikes the imagination of Elena because he is a man preparing for battle. She prefers him to Shubin the painter, or to Berseniev the savant. Since ancient days women have looked with favour on warriors rather than on peaceful men. Had Turgenev invested that idea with less glamour, he would probably not have become the ideal of the young. Who does not get a thrill from Elena and her elect? Who has not felt the fascination of Turgenev's women! And yet all of them give themselves to the _strong_ male. With such "superior people," as with beasts, the males fight with each other, the woman looks on, and when it is over, she submits herself the slave of the conqueror.

A caterpillar is transformed into a chrysalis, and for a long time lives in a warm, quiet little world. Perhaps if it had human consciousness it would declare that _that_ world was the best, perhaps the only one possible to live in. But there comes a time when some unknown influence causes the little creature to begin the work of destruction. If other caterpillars could see it how horrified they would be, revolted to the bottom of their soul by the awful work in which the insurgent is engaged. They would call it immoral, godless, they would begin to talk about pessimism, scepticism, and so on. To destroy what has cost such labour to construct! Why, what is wrong with this complete, cosy, comfortable little world? To keep it intact they call to their aid sacred morality and the idealistic theory of knowledge. Nobody cares that the caterpillar has grown wings, that when it has nibbled its old nest away it will fly out into space--nobody gives a thought to this.

Wings--that is mysticism; self-nibbling--this is actuality. Those who are engaged in such actuality deserve torture and execution. And there are plenty of prisons and voluntary hangmen on the bright earth. The majority of books are prisons, and great authors are not bad hangmen.

Nietzsche and Dostoevsky seem to be typical "inverted simulators," if one may use the expression. They imitated spiritual sanity, although they were spiritually insane. They knew their morbidity well enough, but they exhibited their disease only to that extent where freakishness passes for originality. With the sensitiveness peculiar to all who are in constant danger, they never went beyond the limits. The axe of the guillotine of public opinion hung over them: one awkward move, and the execution automatically takes place. But they knew how to avoid unwarrantable moves.

The so-called ultimate questions troubled mankind in the world's dawn as badly as they trouble us now. Adam and Eve wanted "to know," and they plucked the fruit at their risk. Cain, whose sacrifice did not please God, raised his hand against his brother: and it seemed to him he committed murder in the name of justice, in vindication of his own injured rights. Nobody has ever been able to understand why God preferred Abel's sacrifice to that of Cain. In our own day Sallieri repeats Cain's vengeance and poisons his friend and benefactor Mozzart, according to the poem of Poushkin. "All say, there is no justice on earth; but there is no justice up above: this is as clear to me as a simple scale of music." No man on earth can fail to recognise in these words his own tormenting doubts. The outcome is creative tragedy, which for some mysterious reason has been considered up till now as the highest form of human creation. Everything is being unriddled and explained. If we compare our knowledge with that of the ancients, we appear very wise. But we are no nearer to solving the riddle of eternal justice than Cain was. Progress, civilisation, all the conquests of the human mind have brought us nothing new here. Like our ancestors, we stand still with fright and perplexity before ugliness, disease, misery, senility, death. All that the wise men have been able to do so far is to turn the earthly horrors into problems. We are told that perhaps all that is horrible only _appears_ horrible, that perhaps at the end of the long journey something new awaits us. Perhaps! But the modern educated man, with the wisdom of all the centuries of mankind at his command, knows no more about it than the old singer who solved universal problems at his own risk. We, the children of a moribund civilisation, we, old men from our birth, in this respect are as young as the first man.

They say it is impossible to set a bound between the "I" and society. _Naïveté_! Crusoes are to be found not only on desert islands. They are there, in populous cities. It is true they are not clad in skins, they have no dark Fridays in attendance, and so nobody recognises them. But surely Friday and a fur jacket do not make a Crusoe. Loneliness, desertion, a boundless, shoreless sea, on which no sail has risen for tens of years,--do not many of our contemporaries live in such a circumstance? And are they not Crusoes, to whom the rest of people have become a vague reminiscence, barely distinguishable from a dream?

To be irremediably unhappy--this is shameful. An irremediably unhappy person is outside the laws of the earth. Any connection between him and society is severed finally. And since, sooner or later, every individual is doomed to irremediable unhappiness, _the last word, of philosophy is loneliness_.

"It is better to be an unhappy man, than a happy pig." The utilitarians hoped by this golden bridge to get over the chasm which separates them from the promised land of the ideal. But psychology stepped in and rudely interrupted: _There are no unhappy people, the unhappy ones are all pigs_. Dostoevsky's philosopher of the underworld, Raskolnikov, also Hamlet, and such-like, are not simply unhappy men whose fate might be esteemed, or even preferred before some happy fates; they are simply unhappy swine. And they themselves are principally aware of it.... He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.

If you want people to envy you your sorrow or your shame, look as if you were proud of it. If you have only enough of the actor in you, rest assured, you will become the hero of the day. Since the parable of the Pharisee and the publican was uttered, what a lot of people who could not fulfil their sacred duties pretended to be publicans and sinners, and so aroused sympathy, even envy.

Philosophers dearly love to call their utterances "truths," since in that guise they become binding upon us all. But each philosopher invents his own truths. Which means that he asks his pupils to deceive themselves in the way he shows, but that he reserves for himself the option of deceiving himself in his own way. Why? Why not allow everyone to deceive himself just as he likes?

When Xanthippe poured slops over Socrates, as he returned from his philosophical occupations, tradition says that he observed: "After a storm there is always rain." Would it not be more worthy (not of the philosopher, but of philosophy) to say: After one's philosophical exercise, one feels as if one had had Slops emptied over one's head. And therefore Xanthippe did but give outward expression to what had taken place in Socrates' soul. Symbols are not always beautiful.

From the notes of an underworld man--"I read little, I write little, and, it seems to me, I think little. He who is ill-disposed towards me will say that this shows a great defect in my character, perhaps he will call me lazy, an Oblomov, and will repeat the copy-book maxim that idleness is the mother of all the vices. A friend, on the other hand, will say it is only a temporary state, that perhaps I am not quite well--in short, he will find random excuses for me, more with the idea of consoling me than of speaking the truth. But for my part, I say let us wait. If it turns out at the end of my life that I have 'done' not less than others--why, then--it will mean that idleness may be a virtue."

Börne, a contemporary of Heine, was very much offended when his enemies insisted on explaining his misanthropic outpourings as the result of a stomach and liver disease. It seemed to him much nobler and loftier to be indignant and angry because of the triumph of evil on earth, than because of the disorders of his own physical organs. Sentimentality apart--was he right, and is it really nobler?

A real writer _disdains_ to repeat from hearsay events which he has not witnessed. It seems to him tedious and humiliating to tell "in his own words," like a schoolboy, things which he has fished out of another man's books. But there--how can we expect him to stoop to such insignificance!

Whilst conscience stands between the educated and the lower classes, as the only possible mediator, there can be no hope for mutual understanding. Conscience demands sacrifices, nothing but sacrifices. It says to the educated man: "You are happy, well-off, learned--the people are poor, unhappy, ignorant; renounce therefore your well-being, or else soothe your conscience with suave speeches." Only he who has nothing to sacrifice, nothing to lose, having lost everything, can hope to approach the people as an equal.

This is why Dostoevsky and Nietzsche were not afraid to speak in their own name, and did not feel compelled either to stretch up or to stoop down in order to be on a level with men.

Not to know what you want is considered a shameful weakness. To confess it is to lose for ever not only the reputation of a writer, but even of a man. None the less, "conscience" demands such a confession. True, in this case as in most others the demands of conscience are satisfied only when they incur no very dire consequences. Leaving aside the fact that people are no longer terrified of the once-so-terrible public opinion (the public has been tamed, it listens with reverence to what is told to it, and never dares judge)--the admission "I do not know myself what I want" seems to offer a guarantee of something important. Those who know what they want generally want trifles, and attain to inglorious ends: riches, fame, or at the best, progress or a philosophy of their own. Even now it is sometimes not a sin to laugh at such wonders, and may-be the time is coming when a rehabilitated Hamlet will announce, not with shame but with pride: "I don't in the least know what I want." And the crowd will applaud him, for the crowd always applauds heroes and proud men.

Fear of death is explained conclusively by the desire for self-preservation. But at that rate the fear should disappear in old and sick people, who ought by nature to look with indifference on death. Whereas the horror of death is present in all living things. Does not this suggest that there is still some other reason for the dread, and that even where the pangs of horror cannot save a man from his end, still it is a necessary and purposeful anguish? The natural-scientific explanation here, as usual, stops halfway, and fails to lead the human mind to the promised goal.

Moral indignation is only a refined form of ancient vengeance. Once anger spoke with daggers, now words will do. And happy is the man who, loving and thirsting to chastise his offender, yet is appeased when the offence is punished. On account of the gratification it offers to the passions, morality, which has replaced bloody chastisement, will not easily' lose its charm. But there are offences, deep, unforgettable offences, inflicted not by people, but by "laws of nature." How are we to settle these? Here neither dagger nor indignant word will serve. Therefore, for him who has once run foul of the laws of nature morality sinks, for ever or for a time, into subsidiary importance.

Fatalism frightens people particularly in that form which holds it just to say, of anything that happens, or has happened, or will happen: be it so! How can one acquiesce in the actuality of life, when it contains so many horrors? But _amor fati_ does not imply eternal acquiescence in actuality. It is only a truce, for a more or less lasting period. Time is needed in which to estimate the forces and intentions of the enemy. Under the mask of friendship the old enmity persists, and an awful revenge is in preparation.

In the "ultimate questions of life" we are not a bit nearer the truth than our ancestors were. Everybody knows it, and yet so many go on talking about infinity, without any hope of ever saying anything. It is evident that a result--in the usual acceptance of the word--is not necessary. In the very last resort we trust to instinct, even in the field of philosophy, where reason is supposed to reign supreme, uttering its eternal "Why?" "Why?" laughs at all possible "becauses." Instinct, however, does not mock. It simply ignores the whys, and leads us by impossible ways to ends that our divine reason would hold absurd, if it could only see them in time. But reason is a laggard, without much foresight, and, therefore, when we have run up to an unexpected conclusion, nothing remains but for reason to accept: or even to justify, to exalt the new event. And therefore,--"reality is reasonable," say the philosophers: reasonable, not only when they draw their philosophic Salaries, as the socialists, and with them our philosopher Vladimir Soloviov, explain; but still reasonable even when philosophers have their maintenance taken away from them. Nay, in the latter case, particularly in the latter case, in spite of the socialists and VI. Soloviov, reality shows herself most reasonable. A philosopher persecuted, downtrodden, hungry, cold, receiving no salary, is nearly always an extreme fatalist--although this, of course, by no means hinders him from abusing the existing order. Theories of sequence and consequence, as we already know, are binding only upon disciples, whose single virtue lies in their scrupulous, logical developing of the master's idea. But masters themselves _invent_ ideas, and, therefore, have the right to substitute one for another. The sovereign power which proclaims a law has the same power to abolish it. But the duty of the subordinate consists in the praise, in the consequential interpretation and the strict observance of the dictates of the higher will.

The Pharisee in the parable fulfilled all that religion demanded of him: kept his fasts, paid his tithes, etc. Had he a right to be pleased with his own piety, and to despise the erring publican? Everybody thought so, including the Pharisee himself. _The judgment of Christ came as the greatest surprise to him_. He had a clear conscience. He did not merely pretend before others to be righteous, he himself believed in his own righteousness. And suddenly he turns out guilty, awfully guilty. But if the conscience of a righteous man does not help him to distinguish between good and evil, how is he to avoid sin? What does Kant's moral law mean, that law which was as consoling as the starry sky? Kant lived his life in profound peace of soul, he met his death quietly, in the consciousness of his own purity. But if Christ came again, he might condemn the serene philosopher for his very serenity. For the Pharisee, we repeat, was righteous, if purity of intentions, together with a firm readiness to fulfil everything which appears, to him in the light of duty, be righteousness in a man.

We jeer and laugh at a man not because he is ridiculous, but because _we_ want to have a laugh out of him. In the same way we are indignant, not because this or the other act is revolting to us, but because we want to let off our steam. But it does not follow from this that we ought always to be calm and smooth. Woe to him who would try to realise the ideal of justice on earth.

We think with peculiar intensity during the hard moments of our life--we write when we have nothing else to do. So that a writer can only communicate something of importance in reproducing the past. When we are driven to think, we have unfortunately no mind to write, which accounts for the fact that books are never more than a feeble echo of what a man has gone through.

Tchekhov has a story called _Misfortune_ which well illustrates the difficulty a man finds in adapting himself to a new truth, if this truth threaten the security of his condition. The Merchant Avdeyer does not believe that he is condemned, that he has been brought to trial, and tried, and found guilty, for his irregularities in a public bank. He still thinks the verdict is yet to come--he still waits. In the world of learning something like this is happening. The educated have become so accustomed to think themselves not guilty, perfectly in the right, that they do not admit for a moment even now that they are brought to court. When threatening voices reach them, calling them to give an account of themselves, they only suspiciously shrug their shoulders. "All this will pass away"--they think. Well, when at last they are convinced that misfortune has befallen them, they will probably begin to justify themselves, like Avdeyer, declaring that they cannot even read printed matter sufficiently well. As yet, they pass for respectable, wise, experienced, omniscient men.

If a man had come to Dostoevsky and said to him, "I am hopelessly unhappy," the great artist in human misery would probably, at the bottom of his soul, have laughed at the naïveté of the poor creature. May one confess such things of oneself? May one go to such lengths of complaint, and still expect consolation from his neighbour?

Hopelessness is the most solemn and supreme moment in life. Till that point we have been assisted--now we are left to ourselves. Previously we had to do with men and human laws--now with eternity, and with the complete absence of laws. Is it not obvious?

Byelinsky, in his famous letter, accuses Gogol, among other things, that in his _Correspondence with Friends_, he, Gogol, succumbs to the fear of death, of devils, and of hell. I find the accusation just: Gogol definitely feared death, demons, and hell. The point is, whether it is not right to fear these things, and whether fearlessness would be a proof of the high development of a man's soul. Schopenhauer asserts that death inspired philosophy. All the best poetry, all the wonderful mythology of the ancients and of modern peoples have for their source the fear of death. Only modern science forbids men to fear, and insists on a tranquil attitude towards death. So we arrive at utilitarianism and the positivist philosophy. If you wish to be rid of both these creeds you must be allowed to think again of death, and without shame to fear hell and its devils. It may be there is really a certain justification for concealing fears of such kind: in the ability to conceal one's agitation at moments of great danger there is a true beauty. But to deaden human sensitiveness and to keep the human intelligence within the bounds of perception, such a task can have charms only for a petty creature. Happily, mankind has no means by which to perform on itself such monstrous castration. Persecuted Eros, it is true, has hidden himself from the eyes of his enemies, but he has never abjured himself; and even the strictest medieval monks could not completely tear out their hearts from their breasts. Similarly with the aspiration towards the infinite: science persecuted it and put a veto on it. But laboratory workers themselves, sooner or later, recover their senses, and thirstily long to get out of the enclosure of positive knowledge, with that same thirsty longing that tortured the monks who wanted to get out of the enclosure of monastery walls.

If fate--and they say there is such a law--punishes criminals, it has its penalty also for the lovers of good. The former it throttles, the latter it spits upon. The former end in bitter torment, the latter--in ignominy.

Philosophy has always loved to occupy the position of a servant. In the Middle Ages she was the _ancilla theologiæ_, nowadays she waits on science. At the same time she calls herself the science of sciences.

I wonder which more effectually makes a man rush forwards without looking back: the knowledge that behind him hovers the head of Medusa, with horrible snakes, ready to turn him into stone; or the certainty that in the rear lies the unchangeable order laid down by the law of causality and by modern science. Judging from what we see, judging from the degree of tension which human thought has reached to-day, it would seem that the head of Medusa is less terrible than the law of causality. In order to escape the latter, man will face anything. Rather than return to the bosom of scientific cause and effect, he embraces madness: not that fine frenzy of madness which spends itself in fiery speeches, but technical madness, for which one is stowed away in a lunatic asylum.

"To experience a feeling of joy or sorrow, of triumph or despair, _ennui_ or happiness, and so on, without having sufficient cause for such feeling, is an unfailing sign of mental disease...." One of the modern truths which is seeing its last days.

Count Tolstoy's German biographer regrets the constant misunderstanding and quarrels which took place between Tolstoy and Turgenev. He reminds us of Goethe and Schiller, and thinks that Russian literature would have gained a great deal if the two remarkable Russian writers had been more pacific, had remained on constantly friendly terms with one another, and bequeathed to posterity a couple of volumes of letters dealing with literary and philosophic subjects. It might have been very nice--but I refuse to imagine Tolstoy and Turgenev keeping up a long, peaceful correspondence, particularly on high subjects. Nearly every one of Turgenev's opinions drove Tolstoy to madness, or was capable of so driving him. Dostoevsky's dislike of Turgenev was even stronger than Tolstoy's; he wrote of him very spitefully and offensively, libelling him rather than drawing a caricature. Evidently Dostoevsky, like Tolstoy, detested the "European" in their _confrere._ But here he was mistaken, in spite of his psychological acuteness. To Dostoevsky, it was enough that Turgenev wore European clothes and tried to appear like a westerner. He himself did the opposite: he tried to get rid of every trace of Europeanism from himself, apparently without great success, since he failed to make clear to himself wherein lay the strength of Europe, and where her sting. Nevertheless, the late Mikhailovsky is not wrong in calling Dostoevsky a seeker of buried treasure. Surely, in the second half of his literary activity Dostoevsky no longer sought for the real fruits of life. There awoke in him the Russian, the elemental man, with a thirst for the miraculous. Compared with what he wanted, the fruits of European civilisation seemed to him trivial, flat, insipid. The age-long civilisation of his neighbours told him that there never had been a miracle, and never would be. But all his being, not yet broken-in by civilisation, craved for the stupendous unknown. Therefore, the apparently-satisfied progressivist enraged him. Tolstoy once said of Turgenev: "I hate his democratic backside." Dostoevsky might have repeated these words.... And now, for the gratification of the German critic, please reconcile the Russian writers and make them talk serenely on high-flown matters! Dostoevsky was within a hair's-breath of a quarrel with Tolstoy, with whom, not long before death interrupted him, he began a long controversy concerning "Anna Karenina." Even Tolstoy seemed to him too compliant, too accommodating.

We rarely make a display of that which is dear to us, near and dear and necessary. On the other hand, we readily exhibit that which is of no importance to us--there is nothing else to be done with it. A man takes his mistress to the theatre and sticks her in full view of everybody; he prefers to remain at home with the woman he loves, or to go about with her quietly, unnoticed. So with our "Virtues." Every time we notice in ourselves some quality we do not prize we haste to make a show of it, thinking perhaps that someone would be glad of it. If it wins us approval, we are pleased--so there is some gain. To an actor, a writer, or an orator, his own antics, without which he can have no success with the public, are often disgusting. And yet his knack of making-such antics he considers a talent, a divine gift, and he would rather die than that it should be lost to the public. Talent, on the whole, is accounted a divine gift, only because it is always on show, because it serves the public in some way or other. All our judgments are permeated through and through with utilitarianism, and were we to attempt to purify them from this adulteration what would remain of modern philosophy? That is why youngish, inexperienced writers usually believe in _harmonia praestabilitata_, even though they have never heard of Leibnitz. They persuade themselves that there is no breach between egoistic and idealistic aspirations; that, for instance, thirst for fame and desire to serve mankind are one and the same thing. Such a persuasion is usually very tenacious of life, and lasts long in men of vigorous and courageous mind. It seems to me that Poushkin would not have lost it, even had he lived to a prolonged old age. It was also part of Turgenev's belief--if a man of his spiritual fibre could have any belief. Tolstoy now believed, and now disbelieved, according to the work he had in hand. When he had other people's ideas to destroy he doubted the identity of egoistic and idealist aspirations; when he had his own to defend, he believed in it. Which is a line of conduct worthy of attention, and supremely worthy of imitation; for human truths are proper exclusively for ancillary purposes....

Man is such a conservative creature that any change, even a change for the better, scares him, he prefers the bad old way to the new good one. A man who has been all his life a confirmed materialist would not consent to believe that the soul was immortal, not if it were proved to him _more geometrico,_ and not if he were a constitutional coward, fearing death like Shakespeare's Falstaff. Then we must take human conceit into account. Men do not like to admit themselves wrong. It is absurd, but it is so. Men, trivial, wretched creatures, proved by history and by every common event to be bunglers, yet must needs consider themselves infallible, omniscient. What for? Why not admit their ignorance flatly and frankly? True, it is easier said than done. But why should slavish intellect, in spite of our desire to be straightforward, deck us out with would-be truths, of which we cannot divest ourselves even when we know their flimsiness. Socrates wanted to think that he knew nothing--but he could not bring it off. He most absorbedly believed in his own knowledge; nothing could be "truth," except his teaching; he accepted the decree of the oracle, and sincerely esteemed himself the wisest of men. And so it will be, as long as philosophers feel it their duty to teach and to save their neighbours. If a man wants to help people, he is bound to become a liar. We should undertake doubt seriously, not in order to return at length to established beliefs, for that would be a vicious circle. Experience shows us that such a process, certainly in the development of ultimate questions, only leads from error to error; we should doubt _so that doubt becomes a continuous creative force, inspiring the very essence of our life_. For established knowledge argues in us a condition of imperfect receptivity. The weak, flabby spirit cannot bear quick, ceaseless change. It must look round, it must have time to gather its wits, and so it must undergo the same experience time after time. It needs the support and the security of habit, But the well-grown soul despises your crutches. He is tired of crawling on his own cabbage patch, he tears himself away from his own "native" soil, and takes himself off into the far distances, braving the infinitude of space. Surely everybody knows we are not to live in the world for ever. But cowardice prevents one straightforward admitting of it, we keep it close till there is an occasion to air it as a truism. Only when misfortune, disease, old age come upon us, then the dread fear of departure walks with us like our own skeleton. We cannot dismiss him. At length, involuntarily, we begin to examine our gruesome companion with curiosity. And then, strangely enough, we observe that he not only tortures us, but, keeping pace with us, he has begun to gnaw through all the threads that bind us to the old existence. At moments it seems as if, a few more threads gone, nothing, nothing will remain to hold us back, the eternal dream of crawling man will be fulfilled, we shall be released from the bonds, we shall betake ourselves in liberty to regions far from this damned vale of earth....

Moralists are abused because they offer us "moral consolations." This is not quite fair. Moralists would joyfully substitute palpable blessings for their abstract gifts, _if they could_. When he was young, Tolstoy wanted to make men happy; when he was old, and knew he could not make them happy, he began to preach renunciation, resignation, and so forth. And how angry he got when people wouldn't have his teaching! But if, instead of foisting his doctrines off on us as the solution of the ultimate problems, and as optimism, he had only spoken of the impossibility of finding satisfactory answers, and have offered himself as a pessimist, he would probably have obtained a much more willing hearing. Now he is annoying, because, finding himself unable to relieve his neighbours, he turns to them and insists that they shall consider themselves relieved by him, nay, even made happy by him. To which many will not agree: for why should they voluntarily renounce their rights? Since although, God knows, the right of quarrelling with one's fate, and cursing it, is not a very grand right, still, it _is_ a right ...

Ivanov, in Tchekhov's drama of that name, compares himself to an overstrained labourer. The labourer dies, so that all that remains to Ivanov is to die. But logic, as you know, recommends great caution in coming to conclusions by analogy. Behold Tchekhov himself, who, as far as we can judge, had endured in his own soul all the tragedy, just as Ivanov had, did not die or think of dying, or even turn out a wasted man. He is doing something, he struggles, he seeks, his work seems important and considerable to us, just like other human works. Ivanov shot himself because the drama _must_ end, while Tchekhov had not yet finished his own struggle. Our aesthetics demand that the drama must have a climax and a finale: though we have abandoned the Aristotelian unities. Given a little more time, however, dramatic writers will have got rid of this restriction also. They will frankly confess that they do not know how, or with what event to end their dramas. Stories have already learnt to dispense with an ending.

More of the same.--Ivanov says: "Now, where is my salvation? In what? If an intelligent, educated, healthy man for no discoverable reason sets up a Lazarus lament and starts to roll down an inclined plane, then he is rolling without resisting, and there is no salvation for him." One way out would be to accept the inclined plane and the gathering impetus as normal. Even further, one might find in the rolling descent a proof of one's spiritual superiority to other men. Of course in such a case one should go apart from the rest, not court young girls or fraternise with those who are living the ordinary life, but be alone. "Love is nonsense, caresses maudlin, work is meaningless, and song and fiery speeches are banal, played-out," continued Ivanov. To young Sasha these words are horrible,--but Ivanov will be responsible for them. He is already responsible for them. That he is tottering is nothing: it is still full early for him to shoot himself. He will live whilst his creator, Tchekhov, lives. And we shall listen to the shaky, vacillating philosophy. We are so sick of symmetry and harmony and finality, sick as we are of bourgeois self-complacency.

It will be seen from the above that already in _Ivanov_, one of his early works, Tchekhov has assumed the rôle of _advocatus diaboli_. Wherever Ivanov appears he brings ruin and destruction. It is true, Tchekhov hesitates to take his side openly, and evidently does not know what to do with his hero, so that in the end he shakes him off, so to speak, he washes his hands of him in the accepted fashion: Ivanov shoots himself in the sight of everybody, has not even time to go discreetly into a corner. The only justification of _Ivanov_ is that caricature of honesty, Doctor Lvov. Lvov is not a living figure--that is obvious. But this is why he is remarkable. It is remarkable that Tchekhov should deem it necessary to resurrect the forgotten Starodoum, that utterer of truisms in Fon-Visin's comedy; and to resurrect him no longer that people may bow their heads before the incarnation of virtue, but so that they shall jeer at him. Look at Doctor Lvov! Is he not Starodoum alive again? He is honesty personified. From force of old habit, honesty sticks his chest out, and speaks in a loud voice, with imperious tone, and yet not one of this old loyal subjects gives a brass farthing for him. They don't even trouble to gibe at him, but spit on him and shove him through the door, as a disgusting and impudent toady. Poor honesty! What has he sunk to! Evidently virtues, like everything else, should not live too long on earth.

Tchekhov's "Uncle Vanya" is waiting to throw himself on the neck of his friend and rival, the doctor, throw himself on his neck and sob there like a little child, But he finds that the doctor himself has an unquenchable thirst for consolation and encouragement, whilst poor Sonia can bear her maiden sorrows no longer. They all go wandering round with big, lost eyes, looking for someone to relieve them from _part_ of their woes, at least. And lo, everybody is in the same street as themselves. All are over-heavy-laden, not one can carry his own burden, let alone give a lift to another's. The last consolation is taken away. It is no use complaining: there is no sympathetic response. On all faces the same expression of hopelessness and despair. Each must bear his cross in silence. None may weep nor utter pitiful cries--it would be uncalled-for and indecent. When Uncle Vanya, who has not realised at once the extremity of his situation, begins to cry out: "My life's a waste!" nobody wants to listen to him. "Waste, waste! Everybody knows it's a waste! Shut your mouth, howling won't help you: neither will pistol-shots solve anything. Everyone of us might start your cry--but we don't, neither do we shout:

_--You think I'll weep_;
_No, I'll not weep: I have full cause of weeping,_
_But this heart shall break into a hundred thousand flaws_,
_Or ere I'll weep; O Fool, I shall go mad_."

Gradually there settles down a dreadful, eternal silence of the cemetery. All go mad, without words, they realise what is happening within them, and make up their minds for the last shift: to hide their grief for ever from men, and to speak in commonplace, trivial words which will be accepted as sensible, serious, and even lofty expressions. No longer will anyone cry: "Life is a waste," and intrude his feelings on his neighbours. Everybody knows that it is shameful for one's life to be a waste, and that this shame should be hidden from every eye. The last law on earth is--loneliness.

_Résigne-toi, mon cœur, dors ton sommeil de brute_!

_Groundless assumptions_.--"Based on nothing," because they seem to derive from common assumption of the reasonableness of human existence, which assumption surely is the child of our desires, and probably a bastard at that..... In his _Miserly Knight_ Poushkin represented a miser as a romantic figure. Gogol, with his Plyushkin, creates on the contrary a repulsive figure of a miser. Gogol was nearer to reality. A miser is ugly, whatever view you take of him--inward or outward. Yet Gogol ought not to teach people to preserve in their age the ideals of their youth. Once old age is upon us--it must not be improved upon, much less apologised for. It must be accepted, and its essence brought to light. Plyushkin, the vulgar, dirty maniac is disgusting--but who knows? perhaps he is fulfilling the serious mission of his own being. He is possessed by one desire--to everything else, to all happenings in the outer world he is indifferent. It is the same to him whether he is hungry or full, warm or cold, clean or dirty. Practically no event can distract his attention from his single purpose. He is disinterestedly mean, if one may say so. He has no need for his riches. He lets them rot in a disgusting heap, and does not dream, like Poushkin's knight, of palaces and power, or of sportive nymphs. Upon what end is he concentrated? No one has the time to think it out. At the sight of Plyushkin everyone recalls the damage the miser has done. Everyone of course is right: Plyushkins, who heap up fortunes to let them rot, are very harmful. The social judgment is nearly always to the point. But not quite always. It won't hurt morals and social considerations if at times they have to hold their tongue--and at such times we might succeed in guessing the riddle of meanness, sordidness, old age.

We have sufficient grounds for taking life mistrustfully: it has defrauded us so often of our cherished expectations. But we have still stronger grounds for mistrusting reason: since if life deceived us, it was only because futile reason let herself be deceived. Perhaps reason herself invented the deception, and then to serve her own ambitious ends, threw the blame on life, so that life shall appear sick-headed. But if we have to choose between life and reason, we choose life, and then we no longer need try to foresee and to explain, we can wait, and accept all that is unalterable as part of the game. And thus Nietzsche, having realised that all his hopes had gradually crumbled, and that he could never get back to his former strength, but must grow worse and worse every day, wrote in a private letter of May 28, 1883: "_Ich will es so schwer haben, wie nur irgend ein Mensch es hat; erst writer diesem Drucke gewinne ich das gute Gewissen dafür, etwas zu besitzen, das wenige Menschen haben und gehabt haben: Flügel, um im Gleichnisse zu reden_." In these few simple words lies the key to the philosophy of Nietzsche.

"So long as Apollo calls him not to the sacred offering, of all the trifling children of men the most trifling perhaps is the poet." Put Poushkin's expression into plain language, and you will get a page on neuropathology. All neurasthenic individuals sink from a state of extreme excitation to one of complete prostration. Poets too: and they are proud of it.

Shy people usually receive their impressions post-dated. During those moments when an event is taking place before their eyes, they can see nothing, only later on, having evoked from their memory a fragment of what happened, they make for themselves an impression of the whole scene. And then, retrospectively arise in their soul feelings of pity, offence, surprise, so vivid, as if they were the flames of the instant moment, not rekindlings from the past. Thus shy people always think a great deal, and are always too late for their work. It is never too late for thought. Timid before others, they reach great heights of daring when alone. They are bad speakers--but often excellent writers. Their life is insignificant and tedious, they are not noticed,--until they become famous. And by the time fame comes, they do not need popular attention any more.

If Tchekhov's Layevsky, in _The Duel_, had been a writer with a literary talent, people would have said of him that he was original, and that he was engaged in the study of the "mysticism of sex," like Gabriele D'Annunzio for example; whereas, as he stands, he is only banal. His idleness is a reproach to him: people would prefer that at least he should copy out extracts from documents.

_From observations on children_.--Egoism in a man strikes us unpleasantly because it betrays our poverty. "I cannot dole out my abundance to my neighbour, for if I do I myself shall be left with little." We should like to be able to scatter riches with a royal hand; and, therefore, when we see someone else clutching his rags with the phrase, "property is sacred," we are hurt. What is sacred comes from the gods, and the gods have plenty of everything, they do not count and skimp, like mortals.

We see a man repent for his actions, and conclude that such actions should be avoided: an instance of false, but apparently irreproachable reasoning. Time passes, and we see the same man repenting again of the self-same acts. If we love logic, this will confirm us in our first conclusion. But if we do not care for logic, we shall say: man is under an equal necessity to commit these acts, and to repent of them. Sometimes, however, the first conclusion is corrected differently. Having decided that repentance proves that a certain course of action should be avoided, man avoids it all his life; only to realise in the end, suddenly, with extraordinary clarity, how bitter is his regret that he has not trodden the forbidden course. But by this time a new conclusion is already useless. Life is over, and the newly-enlightened mind no longer knows how to rid itself of the Superfluous light.

A version of one of the scenes of Tolstoy's _Power of Darkness_ reminds us exactly of a one-act piece of Maeterlinck. There can be no question of imitation. When the _Power of Darkness_ was written nobody had heard of Maeterlinck. Tolstoy evidently wanted to try a new method of creating, and to get rid of his own manner, which he had evolved through tens of years of dogged labour. But the risk was too great. He preferred to cure himself of his doubts by the common expedient, manual toil and an outdoor life. So he took up the plough.

Every woodcock praises its own fen; Lermontov saw the sign of spiritual pre-eminence in dazzling white linen, and therefore his heroes always dressed with taste. Dostoevsky, on the other hand, despised show: Dmitri Karamazov wears dirty linen--and this is assigned to him as a merit, or almost a merit.

While he was yet young, when he wrote his story, _Enough_, Turgenev saw that something terrible hung over his life. He saw, but did not get frightened, although he understood that in time he ought to become frightened, because life without a continual inner disturbance would have no meaning for him.

Napoleon is reputed to have had a profound insight into the human soul; Shakespeare also. And their vision has nothing in common.

What we call imagination, which we value so highly in great poets--is, essentially, unbridled, loose, or if you will, even perverted mentality. In ordinary mortals we call it vice; but to the poets everything is forgiven on account of the benefit and pleasure we derive from their works. In spite of our high-flown theories we have always been extremely practical, great utilitarians. Two-and-a-half-thousand years went by before Tolstoy got up, and, in his turn, offered the poets their choice: either to be virtuous, or to stop creating and forfeit the fame of teachers. If Tolstoy did not make a laughing-stock of himself, he has to thank his grey hairs and the respect which was felt for his past. Anyhow, nobody took him seriously. Far from it; for never yet did poets feel so free from the shackles of morality as they do now. If Schiller were writing his dramas and philosophic essays to-day, he would scarcely find a reader. In Tolstoy himself it is not so much his virtues as his vices which we find interesting. We begin to understand his works, not so much in the light of his striving after ideals, but from the standpoint of that incongruity which existed between the ideas he artificially imposed upon himself, and the demands of his own non-virtu ous soul, which struggled ever for liberty. Nicolenka Irtenyev, in _Childhood, and Youth_, would sit for hours on the terrace, turning over in his mind his elder brother Volodya's love-making with the chambermaids. But, although he desired it "_more than anything on earth_" he could never bring himself to be like Volodya. The maid said to the elder brother, "Why doesn't Nicolai Fetrovitch ever come here and have a lark?" She did not know that Nicolai Petrovitch was sitting at that moment under the stairs, ready to give _anything on earth_ to take the place of the scamp Volodya. "_Everything on earth_" is twice repeated. Tolstoy gives a psychological explanation of his little hero's conduct. "I was timid by nature," Nicolenka tells us, "but my shyness was increased by the conviction of my ugliness." Ugliness, the consciousness of one's ugliness, leads to shyness! What good can there be in virtue which has such a suspicious origin? And how can the morality of Tolstoy's heroes be trusted i Consciousness of one's ugliness begets shyness, shyness drives the passions inwards and allows them no natural outlet. Little by little there develops a monstrous discrepancy between the imagination and its desires, on the one hand, and the power to satisfy these desires, on the other. Permanent hunger, and a contracted alimentary canal, which does not pass the food through. Hence the hatred of the imagination, with its unrealised and unrealisable cravings.... In our day no one has scourged love so cruelly as Tolstoy in _Power of Darkness_. But the feats of the village Don Juan need not necessarily end in tragedy. "More than anything on earth," however, Tolstoy hates the Don Juans, the handsome, brave, successful, the self-confident, who spontaneously act upon suggestion, the conquerors of women, who stretch out their hands to living statues cold as stone. As far as ever he can he has his revenge on them in his writing.

In the drama of the future the whole presentation will be different. First of all, the difficulties of the dénouement will be set aside. The new hero has a past-reminiscent--but no present; neither wife, nor sweetheart, nor friends, nor occupation. He is alone, he communes only with himself or with imaginary listeners. He lives a life apart. So that the stage will represent either a desert island or a room in a large densely-populated city, where among millions of inhabitants one can live alone as on a desert island. The hero must not return to people and to social ideals. He must go forward to loneliness, to absolute loneliness. Even now nobody, looking at Gogol's Plyushkin, will feel any more the slightest response to the pathetic appeal for men to preserve the ideals of youth on into old age. Modern youths go to see Plyushkin, not for the sake of laughing at him or of benefiting from the warning which his terrible miserly figure offers them, but in order to see if there may not be some few little pearls there where they could be least expected, in the midst of his heap of dirt.

... Lycurgus succeeded in fixing the Spartans like cement for some centuries--but after that came the thaw, and all their hardness melted. The last remains of the petrified Doric art are now removed to museums.... Is something happening----?

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All Things are PossibleChapter III: Part I: Zu fragmentarisch ist Welt und Leben (2)

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