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Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
From Dostoevsky's Diary of a Writer, tr. Constance Garnett
Page 8
European is the Original
The French Convention of 1793, whilst it awarded citizenship to the German poet Schiller, the friend of humanity, and although it had thereby made a fine gesture, even a superb and prophetic gesture, it certainly did not suspect that at the other end of Europe, in uncultivated Muscovy, this same Schiller was even more national and much dearer to the barbarian Russians not only than in the France of this time, but throughout the whole nineteenth century, where Schiller, a French citizen and friend of humanity, was known, and then but slightly, only to teachers of literature, and not even by all of them.
Yet Schiller has become part of the Russian soul; he has left his impress upon it; he has almost marked a period in the history of our civilisation. This way we have of regarding literature as universal is a phenomenon almost without precedent in other peoples, as far back as one can go into history (...), which proves that any European poet, any individual who gets up to express an original thought, to display fresh vigour, cannot help but also become a Russian poet, cannot escape Russian thought, cannot fail to be almost a Russian force...
From the Diary of a Writer
"Whoever you may be, if you exist, and if anything more rational that what is happening here is possible, suffer it to be here now. But if you are revenging yourself upon me for my senseless suicide by the hideousness and absurdity of this subsequent existence, then let me tell you that no torture could ever equal the contempt which I shall go on dumbly feeling, though my martyrdom may last a million years!"
I made this appeal and held my peace. There was a full minute of unbroken silence and again another drop fell, but I knew with infinite unshakable certainty that everything would change immediately. And behold my grave suddenly was rent asunder, that is, I don't know whether it was opened or dug up, but I was caught up by some dark and unknown being and we found ourselves in space. I suddenly regained my sight. It was the dead of night, and never, never had there been such darkness. We were flying through space far away from the earth. I did not question the being who was taking me; I was proud and waited. I assured myself that I was not afraid, and was thrilled with ecstasy at the thought that I was not afraid. I do not know how long we were flying, I cannot imagine; it happened as it always does in dreams when you skip over space and time, and the laws of thought and existence, and only pause upon the points for which the heart yearns. I remember that I suddenly saw in the darkness a star. "Is that Sirius?" I asked impulsively, though I had not meant to ask questions.
"No, that is the star you saw between the clouds when you were coming home," the being who was carrying me replied.
I knew that it had something like a human face. Strange to say, I did not like that being, in fact I felt an intense aversion for it. I had expected complete non-existence, and that was why I had put a bullet through my heart. And here I was in the hands of a creature not human, of course, but yet living, existing. "And so there is life beyond the grave," I thought with the strange frivolity one has in dreams. But in its inmost depth my heart remained unchanged. "And if I have got to exist again," I thought, "and live once more under the control of some irresistible power, I won't be vanquished and humiliated."
Cf. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Conversations of Father Zossima * Christodoulos of Athens and all Greece, Without Christianity Europe will be an enlarged marketplace * Rilke, Letter to a Young Poet
