Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 2

APPENDIX

The following are the readings of the lithograph:

1 Add: with remarkable glittering eyes of an indefinite colour, which attracted attention. Some of the description that follows is omitted.

2 Read: At first the clerk said that the place opposite was engaged; to which the old man replied that he was only going as far as the next station.

3 Read: considering probably that this did not at all infringe the dignity his figure and manner denoted, …

4 For the above paragraph read: ‘And then come discord, financial troubles, mutual recrimination, and the married couple separate,’ said the lawyer.

5 In place of the two preceding lines, read: said the lady, evidently encouraged by the general attention and approval.

6 The old man here replies: ‘Men are a different matter.’ And the lady says: ‘Then to a man, in your opinion, everything is permitted.’

7 Add: ‘Or if some stupid man cannot control his wife – it serves him right. But all the same one must not create a scandal about it. Love or don’t love, but don’t break up the home. Every husband can keep his wife in order, he has the right to do it. Only a fool can’t manage it.’

8 In place of this paragraph read: ‘But you yourself may go on the spree with the girls at Kunávin,’ said the lawyer with a smile.

9 Add: a vein on his forehead stood out,

10 The lithograph here reads differently, and the words that follow are: ‘How do you mean “what kind of love”?’ said the lady. ‘The ordinary love of married couples.’

‘But how can ordinary love sanctify marriage?’ continued the nervous gentleman. He was as agitated as though he were angry and wished to speak unpleasantly to the lady. She felt this and was also agitated.

‘How? Very simply,’ said she. The nervous gentleman at once seized on the word.

‘No, not simply!’

11 Add: and least of all for his wife. That is what the proverb says, and it is a true one. “Another’s wife is a swan, but one’s own is bitter wormwood.”

12 Read: Even if one admits that Menelaus might prefer Helen for his whole lifetime, Helen would prefer Paris.

13 Add: … of Helen with Menelaus or vice versa. The only difference is that with one it comes sooner and with another later. It is only written in stupid novels that they loved one another all their lives, and only children can believe that.

14 Add: ‘This identity of ideals does not occur among old people, but always between handsome and young ones. And I assert that love, real love, does not sanctify marriage as we are accustomed to suppose for one’s whole life, but on the contrary destroys it.’

15 Add: And we feel this, and to avoid it we preach “love”. In reality the preaching of free love is only a call to return to the mingling of the sexes – excuse me,’ said he, turning to the lady, ‘to fornication. The old basis has worn out, and we must find a new one, but not preach depravity!’ He had become so excited that we all remained silent and looked at him.

‘And at present the transition stage is terrible. People feel that it will not do to allow adultery, and that sexual relations must in some way be defined; but bases for this are lacking, except the old ones in which no one any longer believes. And people go on getting married in the old way without believing in what they are doing, and the result is either deception or coercion.

16 Add: and do not themselves know why or what for,

17 Add: In the course of his story he did not once stop after that, and not even the entry of fresh passengers interrupted him. During his narration his face completely changed several times so that nothing resembling the former face remained: his eyes, his mouth, his moustache and even his beard were all different – it was a beautiful, touching, new face. These changes occurred suddenly in the dim light, and for some five minutes there was one face and it was impossible to see the former face, and then, one did not know how, another face appeared and again it was impossible to see it otherwise.

18 Add: … my life and all my terrible story. Terrible, really terrible. The whole story is more terrible than the end.

19 Add: In the first place let me tell you who I am. I am the son of a rich landowner in the steppes, and I took a degree in law at the university. I married when I was rather over thirty, but before telling of my marriage I must say how I lived previously and how I regarded family life.

20 Add: This – the fact that I considered myself moral – came about because in our family there was not any of that particular specialized vice which was so common in our landowning class, and therefore, being brought up in a family where neither my father nor my mother was unfaithful, I nursed the dream of a most elevated and poetic family life from my early years. My wife had to be the height of perfection. Our mutual love had to be most elevated. The purity of our family life was to be dovelike. So I thought, and I praised myself all the time for having such elevated thoughts. And at the same time, for ten years, I lived as an adult, in no haste to get married, and led what I called a respectable, reasonable, bachelor life.

21 Add: and I was naively confident that I was quite a moral man. The women I was intimate with were not mine, and I had nothing to do with them except for the pleasure they afforded me. And I saw nothing disgraceful in this.

22 Add: … in regard to the real woman-question …’

‘That is to say … what do you understand to be the real woman-question?’

‘The question of what this organic creature that is distinct from man is, and how she herself and men also should regard her.

23 For this paragraph read: ‘Yes, for ten years I lived in most disgraceful debauchery, dreaming of a pure, elevated love—and even in the name of that love. Yes, I want to tell of how I killed my wife, and to tell that I must tell how I became depraved.

‘I killed her before I met her; I killed a woman the first time I knew one without loving her, and it was already then that I killed my wife.

24 Read: Who deprave youths? They do! Who deprave women by devising means for them and teaching them not to bear children? Who treat syphilis with enthusiasm? They.’

‘But why not treat syphilis?’

‘Because to cure syphilis is the same as to safeguard vice; it is the same as the Foundlings Hospital for discarded babies.’

‘No, not the same … Then omit to end of paragraph.

25 Insert here: To tell the truth without false shame, I was trapped and caught. Her mamma – her papa was dead – arranged all sorts of traps and one of them – namely boating – succeeded.

26 Insert: No, say what you will, we live up to our ears in such a swamp of lies that unless we have our heads bumped, as I did, we cannot come to our senses.

27 Add: How fortunate that would have been for us!

28 Add: If we only reject the conventional explanations of why and for what reason these things are done, if we …

29 Add: There is no difference. Strictly defining the matter, one must say that prostitutes for short terms are usually despised, while prostitutes for long terms are respected.

30 Add: The men of our circle are kept and fed like breeding stallions. It is only necessary, you know, to close the safety-valve – that is, for a vicious young man to live a continent life for a little while – and immediately a terrible restlessness and excitement is caused, which passing through the prism of the artificial conditions of our social life shows itself in the guise of falling in love. Our love affairs and marriages, for the most part, are conditioned by our food. You are surprised: one ought to be surprised that we have not noticed it sooner.

31 Read: through the prism of novels, stories, verses, music – through the idle, luxurious setting of our life – and there will be amorousness of the purest water.

32 Read: … her parents, knowing more of life and not distracted by a momentary infatuation, but yet loving her not less than they loved themselves – arranged the marriage.

33 Instead of the following lines, read: and we talk of woman’s rights, of “freedom” which is somehow obtainable at university lectures.’

34 Add: and as she cannot consent to be a slave and cannot herself propose, there begins that other abominable lie which is sometimes called “coming out into society”, and sometimes “amusing themselves”, and which is nothing but husband-hunting.

35 Add: ‘They all complain that they are deprived of rights and are oppressed.

36 Add: Look at the people’s fětes, and at our balls and parties. Woman knows how she acts, you can see that by her triumphant smile.

37 Add: whether they believe in that or not – is unimportant.

38 Add: My sister, when very young, married a man twice her age and a debauchee. I remember how astonished we were the night of the wedding, when she ran out of her bedroom in tears and, shaking all over, said that she could on no account, on no account, even tell us what he had wanted to do to her.

39 Add: A pure girl only wants children. Children, – yes, but not a husband.’

‘How then,’ I said with astonishment, ‘how is the human race to be continued?’

‘And why should it be continued?’ was his unexpected rejoinder.

40 Add: You know that Schopenhauer, Hartmann, and all the Buddhists too, declare that it is a blessing not to live. And they are so far right that welfare for humanity coincides with self-annihilation, only they have not expressed themselves rightly: they say that the human race should destroy itself to escape from suffering – that its aim should be self-destruction. That is wrong. The aim of humanity cannot be to escape from suffering by self-destruction, because sufferings are the result of activity, and the aim of an activity cannot be to destroy its consequences. The aim both of men and of humanity is blessedness. For the attainment of blessedness a law has been given to humanity which it should fulfil. The law is that of the union of mankind.

41 In the lithographed version there are a number of small differences in the last paragraphs of Chapter XI, and Chapter XII commences with the words: ‘It is a strange story,’ said I.

‘What is there strange about it? According to all Church teaching the end of the world is coming, and according to all that science teaches the same thing is inevitable. So what is there strange in the fact that moral teaching reaches the same result? “He that is able to receive it, let him receive it,” said Christ. And I understand that just as he said it. For morality to exist between people in sexual relations it is necessary that the aim they set themselves should be complete chastity. In striving towards chastity, man falls; he falls, and the result is a moral marriage; but if, as in our society, man aims directly at physical love, then though it may clothe itself in the pseudo-moral form of marriage, that will merely be permitted debauchery with one woman – and will none the less be an immoral life, such as that in which I perished and destroyed her, and such as among us is called moral family life. Note what a perverse conception exists among us, when the happiest position for a man – that of freedom, celibacy – is considered pitiable and ridiculous. And the highest ideal, the best position, for a woman – that of being pure, a vestal, a virgin – is a thing to be afraid of and a subject for ridicule in our society. How many and many young girls have offered up their purity to that Moloch of opinion by marrying good-for-nothing fellows, merely to avoid remaining virgin, which is the highest state. For fear that she may remain in that highest state she ruins herself! But I did not then understand that the words in the Gospel – that he who looks upon a woman with desire has already committed adultery with her in his heart – refer not to other wives only, but specially and chiefly to one’s own. I did not understand that, and thought that this honeymoon and my behaviour on this honeymoon were most excellent, and that to satisfy desire with my own wife was a perfectly right thing. Then follow in the lithographed version the words: You know those wedding tours, &c.

42 Read: As happens with mirthful young people who, unable to devise funny things to laugh at quickly enough, laugh at their own laughter, so we had not time to devise excuses for our hatred.

43 Read: ‘We all – men and women – are brought up to a kind of veneration for that feeling which we are accustomed to call love. From childhood I prepared to fall in love, and I fell in love; all my youth I was in love and was glad to be so. It was instilled into me that there was no nobler and more exalted business in the world than to be in love. Well at last the expected feeling comes, and a man devotes himself to it. But that is where the deception appears. In theory love is something ideal …

44 Add: I would order them – those wizards – to perform the office of those women who, in their opinion, are necessary to men – and then let them talk!

45 Add: According to the view existing in our society a woman’s vocation is to afford pleasure to man, and the education given her corresponds with this view. From childhood she learns only how to be more attractive. Girls are all taught to think entirely of that. As serfs were brought up to satisfy their masters and it could not be otherwise, so also all our women arc educated to attract men and this too cannot be otherwise. But you will perhaps say that this is true only of badly brought-up girls – those who among us are contemptuously called “young ladies” – you will say there is another, a serious education, supplied in high-schools – even classical ones – in midwifery, and in medical and university courses. That is not true. All female education of whatever kind has in view only the capture of men. Some girls captivate men by music and curls; others by learning and by political services. But the aim is always the same and cannot be other, because there is no other than that of charming a man so as to capture him. Can you imagine courses for women, and scholarship for women, without men: that is to say, that they should be educated but that men should not know about it? I cannot! No bringing up, no education, can alter this as long as woman’s highest ideal remains marriage, and not virginity and freedom from sensuality. Till then she will be a slave. You know one need only think – forgetting how customary they are – of the conditions in which our young ladies are brought up, and we shall be surprised not at the vice which rules among the women of our propertied classes, but on the contrary that there is so little vice. Only think of the finery from early childhood, the adorning of herself, the cleanliness, the grace, the music, the reading of verses and novels, the songs and theatres and concerts for external and internal application, that is those they hear and those in which they perform. And with it all their complete physical idleness and the food they eat, with so much sweetness and so much fat in it. You see, it is only because it is all wrapped up and concealed that we do not know what those unfortunate girls suffer from the excitation of their sensuality: nine out of ten suffer and are unendurably tormented at the period of adolescence and later, if they do not get married by twenty. You know it is only that we do not want to see it, but anyone who has eyes sees that the majority of these unfortunates are so excited by this concealed sensuality (it is well if it is concealed) that they can do nothing, they only begin to live in the presence of a man. Their whole life is passed in preparations for coquetry and in coquetting. In the presence of men they overflow with life and become animated with sensual energy, but as soon as the man goes away their energy all droops and they cease to live. And this is not with some particular man but with any man, if only he is not quite repulsive. You will say, that is exceptional. No, this is the rule. Only it shows itself more strongly in some girls and less in others; none of them however lives a full life of her own, but only in dependence on man. When he is absent they are all alike and cannot help being alike, because for them all to attract to themselves as many men as possible is the highest ideal both of their girlhood and of their married life. And from this arises a feeling stronger than that one which I will not call their feminine vanity – the animal need of every female animal to attract to herself as many males as possible in order to have a chance of choosing. So it is in their girlhood and so it continues to be after marriage.

46 Insert: You must understand that in our world an opinion exists, shared by everyone, that woman is there to afford man enjoyment (and vice versa probably, but I don’t know about that, I know my own part).

47 Add: from Pushkin’s lines about “little feet”.

48 Read: ‘The emancipation of woman lies not in universities and law-courts but in the bedroom. Yes, and the struggle against prostitution lies not in the brothels but in the families.’

The arrangement of this chapter differs in the two versions, and the following passage occurs in the lithographed but is omitted in the printed version:

‘But why so?’ I asked.

‘That is what is surprising – that no one wishes to know what is so clear and evident, and what the doctors ought to know and to preach, but about which they are silent. Man desires the law of nature – children; but the coming of children presents an obstacle to continuous enjoyment, and people who only desire continuous enjoyment have to devise means to evade that obstacle. And they have devised three such means. One is, by the receipt the rascals give, to cripple the woman by making her barren – which has always been, and must be, a misfortune for a woman – then man can quietly and constantly enjoy himself; the second way is polygamy, not honourable polygamy as among the Mohammedans but our base European polygamy, replete with falsehood and hypocrisy; and there is the third evasion – which is not even an evasion, but a simple, coarse, direct infringement of the laws of nature, and which is committed by all the husbands among the peasants and by most husbands in our so-called honourable families. I too lived in that way. We have not even reached the level of Europe, of Paris, of the Zwei Kinder System, or of the Mohammedans, and we have devised nothing of our own because we have not thought at all about the matter. We feel that there is something nasty in the one plan and in the other, and we wish to have families, but our barbarous view of woman remains the same and the result is yet worse. A woman with us must at one and the same time be pregnant and be her husband’s mistress – must be a nursing mother and his mistress. But her strength cannot stand it.’

49 The lithographed version of Chapter XV begins with a long section on jealousy, omitted in the printed version:

‘Yes, jealousy is one of the secrets of marriage that are known to all and hidden from everybody. Besides the general reason for married couples’ hatred of one another – which is their co-operation in defiling a human being – mutual jealousy is continually gnawing at them. But by mutual agreement it is generally decided to conceal this from everyone, and it is so concealed. Knowing that this is so, each assumes that it is an unhappy peculiarity of his own and not the common lot. So it was with me. So it must be. Jealousy must exist between married couples who live immorally with one another. If they are both unable to sacrifice their own pleasure for the welfare of their child, each rightly concludes that the other will certainly not sacrifice pleasure – I will not say for welfare or tranquillity (for one may sin so as not to be found out), but – merely for conscience’s sake. Each knows that no strong moral obstacle to unfaithfulness exists in the other. They know this because they infringe the demands of morality with one another, and therefore they distrust and watch each other. Oh, what an awful feeling jealousy is! I am not speaking of that real jealousy which at any rate has some basis. That real jealousy is tormenting but it has, and promises, a result; but I am speaking of the unconscious jealousy which inevitably accompanies every immoral marriage, and which, having no definite cause, has also no end. The other is an abscess on a tooth, but this is a tooth aching with its bone – unchanging pain day and night, and again day and night, and unendingly. This jealousy is dreadful, really dreadful! It is like this: a young man is pleasantly talking to my wife and looking at her, as it seems to me, examining her body. How dare he think about her, or dream of a romance with her! But she not merely tolerates it, she is apparently quite pleased. I even see that she is behaving in the same way to him as he is doing to her. And in my soul there arises such a hatred of her that every word of hers and every gesture becomes repulsive. She notices this, and does not know what she is to do, and she puts on an air of animated indifference. “Ah! I suffer and she finds it amusing, she is well satisfied!” And the hatred increases tenfold but I dare not give it vent, for in the depth of my soul I know that there is no real ground for it. And I sit, pretending to be indifferent, and put on an air of special regard and politeness towards him. Then I become angry with myself and wish to get out of the room and leave them alone, and I really go out. But as soon as I am out I am seized with horror at what is going on in my absence. I go back – inventing some excuse for doing so; or sometimes I do not re-enter the room but stop at the door and listen. How can she humiliate herself and me, putting me – me – in such a mean position of suspicion and eaves-dropping! What meanness! Oh, the nasty beast! And he, he! What about him? He is what all men are, what I was when a bachelor. For him it is a pleasure. He even smiles when he looks at me as though saying: “What can you say about it? It is my turn now!” Oh, that feeling is terrible! The sting of that feeling is terrible: I had only to let loose that feeling on anyone if but once – it was enough if once I suspected a man of having designs on my wife – and that man was for ever spoilt for me, as if vitriol had been poured over him. It was enough for me to be jealous of a man once and I could never afterwards renew simple human relations with him. For ever after that, our eyes flashed when we looked at one another. As for my wife, whom I deluged with quantities of this vitriol of jealous hatred, I entirely disfigured her. During this period of unfounded hatred, I quite dethroned and shamed her in my imagination. I imagined the most impossible tricks on her part. I suspected her, I am ashamed to say, of behaving like the queen in the Arabian Nights: being unfaithful to me with a slave almost before my very eyes, and then laughing at me. So that with each fresh access of jealousy (I am still speaking of groundless jealousy) I fell into an already prepared rut of filthy suspicions about her and I made the rut deeper and deeper. She did the same. If I had reasons for jealousy, she, knowing my past, had a thousand times more. And she was even more jealous of me. And the sufferings I experienced from her jealousy were quite different and were also very severe. They occurred like this: we are living more or less quietly; I am even merry and tranquil, when we happen to begin a most ordinary conversation and all at once she does not agree with things she had always agreed with. More than that, I notice that she is becoming irritable without a cause. I think she is upset or that what we are saying is really unpleasant to her. But we turn to something else and the same thing happens, she again attacks me and is again irritable. I am astonished and seek the cause of this. What is it all about? She becomes silent, replies in monosyllables, or when she speaks is evidently hinting at something. I begin to guess that the reason of it is that I have taken a walk in the garden with her cousin, with whom I never even thought of anything wrong, or there is some cause of that kind. I begin to guess at it but cannot mention it. Were I to do so I should confirm her suspicions. I begin to investigate and to interrogate her. She does not reply but guesses that I have understood what it is, and she feels still more strongly confirmed in her suspicions. “What is the matter with you?” I ask. “Nothing, I am the same as usual,” she says; but like a lunatic she utters meaningless, inexplicable, and bitter words. Sometimes I endure it, but sometimes I burst out and become irritable myself, and then a flood of abuse pours forth and I am convicted of some imaginary offence. And all this is carried to an extreme with sobs and tears, and she rushes out of the house to most unusual places. I begin to search for her. I am uneasy as to what the servants and children will think but there is nothing for it. She is in such a state that I feel she may do anything. I run after her and look for her. I spend tormenting nights. And finally, with exhausted nerves, after most cruel words and accusations, we both become tranquillized again.

50 The lithographed version varies here considerably from the printed version, though in some passages the one repeats the other. The lithograph runs as follows:

That is why they do not wish to suckle them: “If I suckle him,” they say, “I shall love him too much – and what shall I do then if he dies?” It seems that they would prefer it if their children were gutta-percha, so that they could not be ill or die but could always be mended. Think what a muddle goes on in the heads and hearts of these unfortunate women. That is why they do nasty things to prevent births: so as not to love! Love – the most joyful condition of the soul – seems to them a danger. And why is this so? Because when a man or woman does not live as a human being should, he or she is much worse than a beast. You see, our women are unable to regard a child otherwise than as a pleasure. It is true that the birth is painful, but its little hands.… Ah, its little feet! Ah, it smiles! Ah, what a darling little body it has! Ah, and it smacks its lips and hiccups! In a word, the animal maternal instinct is sensual. There is in it no thought at all of the mysterious meaning of the arrival of a new human being who will replace us. There is nothing of what is said and done in baptism. You know, nobody believes in baptism, and yet that was really a reminder of the human importance of the baby. People have given that up, they do not believe in it, but they have not replaced it in any way, and only the ribbons and lace and little hands and feet have remained. The animal part has remained. But the thing is that an animal does not possess imagination or foresight or reflections or doctors – yes – again those doctors! Take a hen or a cow: when a chicken gets the pip or a calf dies she cackles a bit or lows a little, and goes on living as before. When among us a child falls ill – what happens? How is it to be treated? Where is it to be nursed? What doctor must we call in? Where is one to drive to? And if it should die – where will the little hands and little feet be then? Why has it all happened so? Why do we have this suffering? A cow does not ask this, and this is why our children are a torment. A cow has no imagination, and therefore cannot think of how she might have saved her offspring by doing so-and-so and so-and-so; and therefore her grief, mingling with her physical condition and continuing for a certain limited time, is not a condition of grief which is augmented by physical idleness and satiation till it becomes despair. She has not a reason which asks, “Why has this happened? Why were all these sufferings endured, why did I love the babies – if they had to die?” The cow has no reason which could say that in future it will be better not to bear offspring or if that happens accidentally then not to suckle it and in general not to love it, or things will be worse for her. But that is how our women reason. And it shows that when a human being does not live humanly, it is worse for him or her than for a beast.’

‘Then what, in your opinion, is the human way in which one should treat children?’ I asked.

‘How? Love them humanly.’

‘Well, don’t mothers love their children?’

‘Not like human beings, they hardly ever do that, and therefore they do not even love them in dog-fashion. Just notice: a hen, a goose, a she-wolf, are always unattainable models of animal love for our women. Few women would at the risk of their lives rush at an elephant to take their baby from him, but no hen, and no she-crow even, would fail to fly at a dog; and each of them would sacrifice itself for its children, while few women would do so. Notice that a human mother can refrain from physical love of her children while an animal cannot do so. Well, is that because a woman is inferior to an animal? No, but because she is superior (though “superior” is incorrect; she is not “superior”, but is a different creature). She has other obligations – human ones; she can refrain from animal love and can transfer her love to the child’s soul. That is becoming to a human mother, and that is what never is done in our society. We read of the heroism of mothers who sacrifice their children for the sake of something higher, and it seems to us that these cases are merely stories of ancient times, which have no relation to us. But yet I think that if a mother has nothing for the sake of which she can sacrifice her animal feelings for her child, and if she transfers the spiritual force, which has been left unapplied, to attempting the impossible – the physical preservation of her child – in which attempt the doctors will assist her, it will be much worse for her, and she will suffer, as she actually does suffer! So it was with my wife. Whether there was one child or five – it was always the same. It was even a little better when we had five of them. Our whole life was continually poisoned by fear on the children’s account – fear of their real or imaginary illnesses – and even by their very presence. I at any rate, during my whole married life, always felt that my life and all my interests continually hung by a hair, and depended on the children’s health and condition and lessons. Children are of course an important matter, but then we all have to live! In our times the grown-ups are not allowed to live. They have no proper life: the life of the whole family hangs every second by a hair; and family life, life for the married couple, is lacking. No matter what important affair you may have, if you suddenly hear that Vásya has vomited, or Lisa’s motion shows signs of blood, everything has instantly to be left, forgotten, thrown away. Everything else is insignificant.… The only important things are the doctors, the enemas, the temperatures: not to mention the fact that you can never begin a conversation without it happening at the most interesting part that Pétya runs in with a troubled face to ask whether he is to eat an apple or which jacket he is to put on, or without the nurse bringing in a shrieking baby. There is no regular firm family life. How you are to live, where to live, and therefore what your occupation is to be, all depends on the children’s health; while their health does not depend on anyone, but, thanks to the doctors who say that they can preserve their health, your whole life may be disturbed at any moment. There is no life; it is a constant peril.’

51 Add: But besides this, the children were for her also a means of forgetting herself – an intoxication. I often noticed that when she was upset about anything she felt better if one of the children fell ill and she could revert to that state of intoxication. But it was an involuntary intoxication; there was nothing evil about it.

52 Add: Of course the doctors confirmed all this with an air of importance and encouraged her in the belief. She would have been glad not to be afraid, but the doctor dropped a word or two about “blood-poisoning”, “scarlatina”, or (God forbid) “dysentery” – and it was all up! Nor could it be otherwise. You see, if among us women had, as in olden times, a belief that “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away”, that a young child’s angel-soul goes to God and it is better for him – the dead child – to die in innocence than to die later on in sin, and so forth, which is what people did believe, you know – if they had any faith of that sort, they could bear the children’s illnesses more quietly; but now there is nothing of that sort left – not a trace of it. There is no belief of that kind. But one must have faith in something, and they have faith – a senseless faith – in medicine – and not even in medicine but in doctors. One woman in I. I., and another in P. P.; and like religious believers they do not see the absurdity of their faith but believe quia absurdum. You know, if they did not believe irrationally, they would see the absurdity of what those brigands prescribe – the whole of it. Scarlatina is an infectious disease; on account of it, in a large town, half the family has to move into an hotel (they twice made us move in that way). But, you see, everyone in a town is a centre of innumerable diameters which carry the threads of all kinds of infection, and there is no possibility of avoiding them: the baker, the tailor, the laundress, and the cabman. So that for everyone who moves out of his own house to another place to escape an infection he knows of, I will undertake to find, in that other place, another infection – if not the very same infection – as near at hand. But that is not enough. We all know of rich people who after diphtheria have had everything in their house destroyed, and in that house when freshly done up, have themselves fallen ill; and we all know of dozens of people who have remained with the sick ones and have not been infected. And so it is with everything; one only need keep one’s ears open. One woman tells another that her doctor is a good one. The other replies: “What are you saying? Why, he killed so-and-so.” And vice versa. Well, bring a country doctor to a lady and she won’t trust him; but bring another doctor in a carriage, who knows precisely as much and who treats his patients on the basis of the same books and the same experiments, and tell her that he must be paid £10 for each visit, and she will believe in him. The root of the matter is that our women are savages. They have no faith in God, and so some of them believe in an evil eye cast by wicked people and others in Doctor I. P. because he charges high fees. If they had faith they would know that scarlatina and so forth is not at all so terrible, for it cannot injure what one can and should love – namely, the soul, and that sickness and death which none of us can avoid may occur. But as there is no faith in God they only love physically and all their energy is directed towards preserving life, which cannot be done, and which only the doctors assure fools, and especially she-fools, that they can save. And so they have to be called in. Therefore having children, far from improving our relations to one another, did not unite us but on the contrary divided us.

53 In the lithographed version the chapter continues: At first we lived in the country, and later on in town. What I chiefly felt was that I was a man, and that a man, as I understood it, ought to be master, but that I had fallen under my wife’s slipper, as the saying is, and could not manage to escape from under it. What chiefly kept me under her slipper was the children. I wished to get up and assert my authority, but it never came off. She had the children and, supporting herself on them, she ruled. I did not then understand that she was sure to rule, chiefly because when she married she was morally immeasurably superior to me as all maidens always are to man, because they are immeasurably purer than he. Notice this surprising fact, that a woman, an average woman of our circle, is usually a very poor creature, lacking moral bases, an egotist, a chatterbox, and wrong-headed, but a maiden, an ordinary maiden, a girl up to twenty years of age, is for the most part a charming creature ready for everything noble and good. Why is that so? Clearly it is because the husbands pervert their wives and bring them morally down to their own lower level. In fact if boys and girls are born equal the advantage on the girls’ side is still enormous. In the first place a girl is not exposed to those vicious conditions to which we are exposed; she has not the smoking, the wine, the cards, the schools, the comrades, or the state-service we have, and secondly and chiefly she is physically virgin. And so a maiden when she marries is always superior to her husband. She is superior to him while she is a maiden, and when she becomes a married woman, in our circle where the men are under no direct compulsion to earn their own maintenance, she usually becomes superior to him also by the greater importance of her occupation when she begins to bear children and to feed them. A woman when bearing and nursing, clearly sees that her occupation is more important than the man’s – who sits on the County Council,^* in Courts of Justice, or in the Senate. She knows that in all such affairs the one important thing is to get money. But money can be got in various other ways, and therefore the getting of it is not so indubitably necessary as the feeding of a child. So that the woman is certainly superior to the man and ought to rule him. But a man of our circle not only does not acknowledge this, but on the contrary always looks down on woman from the height of his grandeur, and despises her activity. So my wife despised me and my County activities, on the ground that she bore and nursed children. While I, supported by the established masculine view, considered that a woman’s fussing: “swaddlings, teats, and teething,” as I jokingly called it, is a most contemptible activity which one may and should jest about. “The women know how to attend to that.” So besides all other causes we were also separated by mutual contempt.

54 Instead of the next nine lines, read: To people who were quite strangers to us she and I spoke of various subjects, but not with one another. Sometimes hearing how she spoke to other people in my presence, I said to myself: “What lies she is telling!” And I was surprised that the person she was speaking to did not see that she was pretending.

55 Add: The periods of what we called love occurred as often as before, but were barer, coarser, and lacked any cover. But they did not last long and were immediately followed by periods of quite causeless anger springing up on most unintelligible grounds.

56 Add: All these were occupations that were not directly necessary, but she always behaved as if her life and that of the children depended on the pies with the soup not being burnt, on the curtain being hung up, the dress finished, the lesson learnt, and some medicine or other taken. It was clear to me that all this was for her mainly a means of forgetting herself, an intoxication, such as was for me the intoxication of my service, shooting, or cards. It is true that besides these I also had intoxication in its direct meaning – drunkenness: with tobacco, of which I smoked an enormous quantity, and alcohol with which I did not actually get drunk, but of which I took some vodka before meals and a couple of tumblers of wine during meals, so that a continual fog screened from us the discord of our life.

57 Add: All this mental illness of ours occurred simply because we lived immorally. We suffered from our immoral life, and to smother our suffering we committed various abnormal acts – just what those doctors call “indications of mental disease” – hysterics. The cure for these illnesses does not lie with Charcot, nor with them. It cannot be cured by any suggestions or bromides, but it is necessary to recognize what the pain comes from. It is like sitting down on a nail: if you notice the nail, or see what is wrong in your life and cease to do it, the pain will cease and there will be nothing to smother. The wrongness of our life caused the pain, caused my torments of jealousy and my need of going out shooting, of cards, and above all of wine and tobacco to keep myself in a constant state of intoxication. From that wrongness of life arose also her passionate relation to all her occupations, her instability of mood – now gloomy, now terribly gay, – and her volubility – it all came from the constant need of diverting her attention from herself and her life. It was a constant intoxication with this or that work, which always had to be done in a hurry.

58 Add: Unhappy people can get on better in town.

59 Instead of the following line, read: Divorce, well then divorce!” My sister-in-law would not admit that idea.

60 Read: but I have bound myself by my own words.

61 Read: disliked him and understood that he was a dirty adulterer, and I began to be jealous of him even before he saw my wife.

62 Read: why, in the important events of our life, in those which decide a man’s fate – as mine was decided then – why, there is no distinction between past and future.

63 Instead of the following three lines, read: I had a consciousness of some terrible calamity connected with that man. But for all that I could not help being affable with him.

64 Read: He played excellently, with a strong and tender tone; difficulties did not exist for him. As soon as he began to play his face altered, became serious and far more sympathetic; he was of course a much better player than my wife and helped her simply and naturally.

65 Read: … simple and pleasant. During the whole evening I seemed not only to the others, but to myself, to be solely interested in the music, while in reality I was unceasingly tormented by jealousy. From the first moment that his eyes met my wife’s I saw that he looked at her as at a woman who was not unpleasant and with whom on occasion it would not be unpleasant to have a liaison. Had I been pure I should not have thought about what he might think of her, but like most men I also thought about women, and therefore understood him and was tormented by it.

66 Read: his restrained voice and her refusal. She seemed to say “but no”, and something more. It was as if someone was intentionally smothering the words. My God, what then arose in me! What I imagined!

67 Add: She will disgrace me! I will go away – but I can’t.

68 Add: and advised me to see it out.

69 Add: A husband ought not to think so, and still less should he shove his nose in and hinder things.

70 Read: graceful, indolent, subtle figure,

71 Add: or something of that kind about my character.

72 Instead of the next six lines, read: and I turned her round and gave her a violent push. “What is the matter with you? Recollect yourself!” said she.

73 Add: rolling my eyes.

74 Read: I restrained myself and

75 Add: We sent for the doctor, and I attended her all night.

76 Add: … not so much on account of my wife’s assurances, as on account of the tormenting suffering I had experienced from my jealousy.

77 Add: He went to fetch his violin. My wife went to the piano and began selecting the music.

78 Add: and long remained silent.

79 Add: In this new condition jealousy had no place.

80 Add: That music drew me into some world in which jealousy no longer had place. Jealousy and the feeling that evoked it seemed trifles not worth considering.

81 Instead of the next eleven lines, read: I hardly felt jealous all the evening. I had to go to the Meetings in two days’ time, and he, when leaving, collected all his music and inquired when I should be back, as he wished to say goodbye before his own departure.… It appeared that I should hardly be back before he left Moscow, so we bade one another a definite good-bye.

82 Add: We spoke in very general terms of the impressions produced by the music, but we were nearer and more friendly to one another that evening, in a way we had seldom been of late.

83 Read: while it was still dark,

84 Add: and as if I should drive on like that to the end of my life and of the world,

85 Add: which was quite a new one,

86 Add: one more cynical than another,

87 Add: forgetting that there was no ground for this.

88 Instead of the next line, read: I cried out, and began to groan.

89 Add: And the same thing began again within me. I suffered as I never had suffered before. I did not know what to do with myself, and the thought occurred to me – and it pleased me very much – of getting out onto the line, lying down under the train, and finishing everything. The one thing that hindered my doing this was my self-pity, which immediately evoked hatred of her and of him. Of him not so much. Regarding him I had a strange feeling of my own humiliation and of his victory, but of her I felt terrible hatred. It will not do to finish myself off and to leave her, it is necessary that she should suffer.

90 Instead of the following words, read: and read the shop sign-boards,

91 Instead of the next sentence, read: I cannot at all explain to myself now why I was in such a hurry.

92 Read: there arose in me an animal craving for physical, agile, cunning, and decisive action.

93 Read: and of the tormenting pleasure of punishing, and executing.

94 In the lithograph the chapter ends with the words: I do not know how I went, with what steps, whether I ran or only walked, through which rooms I went on my way to the drawing-room, how I opened the door or how I entered the room – I remember nothing of all that.

95 In the lithograph this first sentence is omitted.

96 Add: as from a spring.

97 Add: – a sister.

98 Read: ‘ “Yes, if you had not killed me!” she suddenly exclaimed, and her eyes glittered feverishly.

99 The sentence ends: the children, not even Lisa who rushed up to her.

100 In the lithograph the conclusion is different, the last paragraph being as follows: Yes, that is what I have done, and what I have gone through. Yes, a man should understand that the real meaning of the words in the Gospel – Matthew v. 28 – where it says that everyone that looketh on a woman to lust after her commits adultery, relates to woman, his fellow human being – not merely to casual women or strangers, but above all to his own wife.

^* The Zémskoe Sobránie, work in the administration of which was paid for.