What Is to Be Done?

the sake of making you better acquainted with Rakhmétof. From this conversation you saw that Rakhmétof would like to drink sherry, though he does not take it. That Rakhmétof is not an absolutely gloomy monster, that, on the contrary, on pleasant occasions, he forgets his sorrowful humors, his burning grief, that then he jokes, and talks gayly, although he says it is very rarely that ‘I do it,’ and he says, that ‘is bitter to me that I do it so rarely’; he says, ‘I, myself, am not glad that I am such a gloomy monster, but my circumstances are such that a man, with such a burning love for the good, cannot help being a gloomy monster’; ‘And if it were not for this,’ he says, ‘I should probably joke, and laugh, and sing, and leap, all day.’

“Have you understood, now, sapient reader, that although a good many pages have been devoted to the fair description of the sort of man that Rakhmétof was, yet, in reality, still more pages have been devoted exclusively for the same purpose of making you acquainted with the very same person, who is not at all an active character in my novel? Tell me now, why this figure was brought out and introduced, and so minutely described? Do you remember I said then, ‘It is exclusively for satisfying the main demand of the artistic’? Think! how does it seem, and how is it satisfied by placing before you Rakhmétof’s figure? Was it hard for you? Have you succeeded in finding out? and yet, how could you? Well,83 listen, or rather, don’t listen; you will not understand it. Leave me alone; I have amused myself enough at your expense. I am going to speak now not to you, but the public and I am going to speak seriously.

“The first demand of the artistic is this: it is necessary so to picture things that the reader may see them in their true light. For example, if I want to draw a picture of a house, then I must reach that excellence of drawing that it may look to the reader as a house only, not as a little hut or as a palace. If I want to picture an ordinary man, then I must be able to draw him in such a way that he will not appear to the reader either as a dwarf or as a giant.

“I wanted to picture ordinary decent people of the rising generation, people whom I meet by the hundreds; I took three such people, Viéra Pavlovna, Lopukhóf, and Kirsánof. I look upon them as ordinary people; they look upon themselves in the same way, and all their acquaintances and friends, who are also such people as they are, look upon them in the same way. Where have I spoken about them in any other spirit? What have I said about them that contradicted this? I introduced them with love and respect, because every honorable man is worthy of love and respect; but where have I bowed on my knees before them? Where does the least shadow of a thought show itself in my novel that they are God-knows-how high and beautiful characters, that I can imagine nothing higher and better than they are? that they are ideals of people? As I think of them, so they act for me; not more than ordinary honorable people of the rising generation. What do they do that is wonderful? They don’t do any mean things; they are not cowards; they have ordinary honest convictions; they try to act in accordance with them, and that’s all. What a heroism in reality! Yes, I wanted to represent people who act like ordinary people of their type, and I hope that I have succeeded in so doing. Those readers who accurately know live people of this type, I hope, have constantly seen, from the very first, that the main heroes of my story are not at all ideals, but are people not at all higher than the general level of people of their own type; that every one of my readers who belongs to their type has undergone two or three occurrences, in which he has acted not worse than my characters have acted. Let us suppose that other honorable people have had exactly such experiences as I have related. In this there is absolutely no going to extremes, and the idea that all wives and husbands should part is not presented as a charming ideal; for not every honorable woman feels a passionate love for her husband’s best friend, and not every honorable man wrestles with passion for a married woman, and for three years at that; and moreover, not everybody is driven to commit suicide on the bridge, or to use the words of the sapient reader, to go away somewhere from that hotel. But no honorable man would consider it a heroic deed to act in the situation of those here described, exactly as they acted, but all would be ready to do, if there were any necessity for doing it, and many a time they have acted in situations not less, but probably more, difficult, but still have not looked upon themselves as extraordinary people, but each has said to himself, ‘I am a commonplace man, a pretty honorable man, that’s all there is of it.’ And the good friends of such a man (all such good people as he himself is⁠—for with others he has nothing to do in the way of friendship) also think in regard to him that he is a fine man, but they do not think of falling on their knees before him, but they say to themselves, ‘We are just such people as he is.’ I hope I have succeeded in reaching this point that every honorable man of the rising generation will recognize an ordinary type of his good acquaintances in my three principal characters.

“But these people, who from the