“The Stoics, whom you are parodying, were remarkable people, but their teaching froze two thousand years ago and hasn’t moved a drop further, and it won’t, because it’s neither practical nor vital. It was successful only with the minority who spend their life examining and relishing various teachings, but the majority didn’t understand it. A teaching that preaches indifference to wealth, to the good things in life, scorn of suffering and death, is utterly incomprehensible for the vast majority, since that majority has never known either wealth or the good things in life; and for them scorn of suffering would mean scorn of life itself, because the whole essence of man consists in the sensations of hunger, cold, offense, loss, and a Hamletian fear of death. These sensations are the whole of life: you may be oppressed by it, you may hate it, but you cannot scorn it. Yes, so I repeat, the teaching of the Stoics can have no future, and progress, from the beginning of time down to this day, as you see, belongs to struggle, the sensitivity to pain, the ability to respond to irritation …”
Ivan Dmitrich suddenly lost his train of thought, stopped, and rubbed his forehead vexedly
“I wanted to say something important, but I got confused,” he said. “What was it about? Yes! So, I was saying: one of the Stoics sold himself into slavery in order to buy off his neighbor. You see, so the Stoic, too, reacted to an irritation, because for such a magnanimous act as destroying yourself for the sake of your neighbor, you must have an indignant, compassionate soul. Here in prison I’ve forgotten everything I studied, otherwise I’d remember more. But take Christ? Christ responded to reality by weeping, smiling, grieving, being wrathful, even anguished; he didn’t go to meet suffering with a smile, nor did he scorn death, but he prayed in the garden of Gethsemane for this cup to pass from him.”15
Ivan Dmitrich laughed and sat down.
“Suppose that man’s peace and content are not outside but within him,” he said. “Suppose that we ought to scorn suffering and be surprised at nothing. But what is your basis for preaching it? Are you a wise man? A philosopher?”
“No, I’m not a philosopher, but everyone ought to preach it, because it’s reasonable.”
“No, I want to know why you consider yourself competent in matters of comprehension, scorn of suffering, and the rest. Have you ever suffered? Do you have any notion of suffering? Excuse me: were you ever birched as a child?”
“No, my parents detested corporal punishment.”
“Well, my father whipped me cruelly. My father was a tough, hemorrhoidal official with a long nose and a yellow neck. But let’s talk about you. In all your life nobody ever laid a finger on you, nobody frightened you, nobody beat you; you’re sturdy as an ox. You grew up under your father’s wing and studied at his expense, and then at once grabbed a sinecure. For more than twenty years you’ve had free quarters, with heat, light, servants, besides having the right to work as you want and as much as you want, or even not to work at all. By nature you’re a lazy man, a soft man, and therefore you tried to shape your life so that nothing would trouble you or make you stir from your place. You shifted all the work onto your assistant and other scum, and you yourself sat around, warm and peaceful, saving up money, reading books, delighting yourself with thoughts about all sorts of nonsense, and” (Ivan Dmitrich looked at the doctor’s red nose) “tippling away. In short, you’ve never seen life, you don’t know anything about it, and you’re only theoretically acquainted with reality And you scorn suffering and are surprised at nothing for a very simple reason: vanity of vanities, external and internal scorn of life, of suffering, and of death, comprehension, the true blessing—all that is a most suitable philosophy for a Russian lie-about. You see a peasant beating his wife, for instance. Why interfere? Let him beat her, they’ll both die sooner or later anyway; and besides, the man who beats someone only insults himself, not the one he beats. To be a drunkard is stupid, indecent, but one drinks and dies, or does not drink and dies. A peasant woman comes with a toothache … So what? Pain is the notion of pain, and besides, one cannot live in this world without sickness, and we’ll all die, so go away, woman, don’t interfere with my thinking and my vodka drinking. A young man asks for advice, what to do, how to live; another man would stop and think before answering, but here the answer is ready: strive for comprehension, that is, for the true blessing. And what is this fantastic ‘true blessing’? There is no answer, of course. We’re kept behind bars here, to rot and be tortured, but that’s beautiful and reasonable, because there’s no difference between this ward and a warm, cozy study. A convenient philosophy: no need to do anything, and your conscience is clear, and you feel yourself a wise man … No, sir, that’s not philosophy, not thinking, not breadth of vision, it’s laziness, fakirism, a dreamy stupor … Yes!” Ivan Dmitrich became angry again. “You scorn suffering, but I suppose if you pinched your finger in the door, you’d howl your head off!”
“Maybe I wouldn’t,” said Andrei Yefimych, smiling meekly.
“Oh, surely! And if you were suddenly slapped with paralysis or, say, some brazen fool, taking advantage of his position and rank, insulted you publicly, and you knew he’d go unpunished—well, then you’d understand how it is to fob others off with comprehension and the true blessing.”
“That’s original,” Andrei Yefimych said, laughing with pleasure and rubbing his hands. “I’m pleasantly surprised by your inclination to generalize, and the characterization of me that you’ve just produced is simply brilliant. I confess, conversation with you gives me great pleasure. Well, sir, I’ve heard you out, now you kindly hear me out …”
XI
This conversation went on for another hour or so and evidently made a deep impression on Andrei Yefimych. He began visiting the annex every day He went in the morning and after dinner, and often the evening darkness found him conversing with Ivan Dmitrich. At first Ivan Dmitrich was shy with him, suspected him of evil intentions, and openly expressed his animosity, but then he got used to him and changed his cutting manner to a condescendingly ironic one.
The rumor soon spread through the hospital that Dr. Andrei Yefimych had begun visiting Ward No. 6. No one, neither his assistant, nor Nikita, nor the nurses, could understand why he went there, why he sat there for hours at a time, what he talked about, why he did not make any prescriptions. His behavior seemed strange. Mikhail Averyanych often did not find him at home, something that had never happened before, and Daryushka was very confused, because the doctor no longer drank his beer at a certain time and occasionally was even late for dinner.
Once—this was already at the end of June—Dr. Khobotov came to see Andrei Yefimych on some business; not finding him at home, he went to look for him in the yard; there he was told that the old doctor had gone to visit the mental patients. Khobotov went into the annex and, stopping in the front hall, heard the following conversation:
“We’ll never see eye to eye, and you won’t succeed in converting me to your faith,” Ivan Dmitrich was saying vexedly “You’re totally unacquainted with reality, and you’ve never suffered, but, like a leech, have only fed on the sufferings of others, while I have suffered constantly from the day of my birth to this very day. Therefore I tell you frankly that I consider myself superior to you and more competent in all respects. It’s not for you to teach me.”
“I make no pretense of converting you to my faith,” Andrei Yefimych said softly, regretting that the other refused to understand him. “And that is not the point, my friend. The point is not that you have suffered and I have not. Sufferings and joys are transient; let’s drop them, with God’s blessing. The point is that you and I think; we see in each other people who are able to think and reason, and that makes for solidarity between us, however different
