accuse them; but this inclination was quite often followed immediately by another thought, which was all too oppressive for me: “Is it not I myself who am to blame, instead of them?” And how often I accused myself in vain! To avoid resolving such questions, I naturally sought solitude. Besides, I never found anything in the company of people, however I tried, and I did try; at least all my peers, all my comrades to a man, proved to be inferior to me in thinking; I don’t remember a single exception.
Yes, I’m glum, I’m continually closed. I often want to leave society. I may also do good to people, but often I don’t see the slightest reason for doing good to them. And people are not at all so beautiful that they should be cared for so much. Why don’t they come forward directly and openly, and why is it so necessary that I should go and foist myself on them? That’s what I asked myself. I’m a grateful being, and I’ve already proved it by a hundred follies. I would instantly respond with openness to an open person and begin to love him at once. And so I did; but they all cheated me at once and closed themselves to me in mockery. The most open of them was Lambert, who used to beat me badly in childhood; but he, too, was merely an open scoundrel and robber; and here, too, his openness came merely from stupidity. These were my thoughts when I came to Petersburg.
Having left Dergachev’s then (God knows what pushed me to go there), I approached Vasin and, on a rapturous impulse, praised him to the skies. And what then? That same evening I already felt that I liked him much less. Why? Precisely because, by praising him, I had lowered myself before him. Yet it seems it should have been the opposite: a man so just and magnanimous as to give another his due, even to his own detriment, such a man is almost superior in his personal dignity to everyone else. And what, then—I knew this, and still I liked Vasin less, even much less, I purposely give an example already familiar to the reader. Even Kraft I remembered with a bitter and sour feeling, because he brought me out to the front hall himself, and so it remained right up to another day, when everything about Kraft became perfectly clear and it was impossible to be angry. From the very lowest grade in school, as soon as any of my comrades got ahead of me in studies, or in witty answers, or in physical strength, I at once stopped keeping company with him and speaking to him. Not that I hated him or wished him to fail; I simply turned away, because such was my character.
Yes, I’ve thirsted for power all my life, power and solitude. I dreamed of them even at such an age that decidedly anyone would have laughed in my face if he had made out what I had inside my skull. That is why I came to love secrecy so much. Yes, I dreamed with all my might and to a point where I had no time to talk; this led to the conclusion that I was unsociable, and my absentmindedness led to a still worse conclusion in my regard, but my rosy cheeks proved the contrary.
I was especially happy when, going to bed and covering myself with a blanket, I began, alone now, in the most complete solitude, with no people moving around and not a single sound from them, to re-create life in a different key. The fiercest dreaming was my companion until I discovered the “idea,” when all my dreams went at once from stupid to reasonable, and from a dreamy form of novel passed on to the rationalistic form of reality.
Everything merged into a single goal. However, they weren’t so stupid even before, though there were myriad upon myriad and thousand upon thousand of them. But I had some favorites . . . However, there’s no point bringing them in here.
Power! I’m convinced that a great many people would find it very funny to learn that such “trash” was aiming at power. But I’ll amaze them still more: maybe from my very first dreams, that is, almost from my very childhood, I was unable to imagine myself otherwise than in the first place, always and in all turns of life. I’ll add a strange confession: maybe that goes on even to this day. And I’ll also note that I’m not apologizing.
In this lies my “idea,” in this lies its strength, that money is the only path that will bring even a nonentity to the
You will, of course, see nothing in this thought but impudence, violence, the triumph of nonentity over talent. I agree that it’s a bold thought (and therefore sweet). But so what, so what? Do you think I wished for power then in order to crush unfailingly, to take revenge? That’s just the point, that the ordinary man would unfailingly behave that way. Moreover, I’m certain that if Rothschild’s millions were heaped on them, the thousands of talents and smarties, who are so above it all, would lose control at once and behave like the most banal of ordinary men, and crush more than anybody else. My idea is not that. I’m not afraid of money; it won’t crush me and won’t make me crush others.
I don’t need money, or, better, it’s not money that I need; it’s not even power; I need only what is obtained by power and simply cannot be obtained without power: the solitary and calm awareness of strength! That is the fullest definition of freedom, which the world so struggles over! Freedom! I have finally inscribed that great word . . . Yes, the solitary awareness of strength is fascinating and beautiful. I have strength, and I am calm. Jupiter holds thunder-bolts in his hand, and what then? He’s calm. Do we often hear him thunder? A fool might think he was asleep. But put some writer or foolish peasant woman in Jupiter’s place—oh, what thunder, what thunder there will be!
If only I had power, I reasoned, I’d have no need at all to use it; I assure you that I myself, of my own free will, would take the last place everywhere. If I were Rothschild, I’d go about in an old coat and carry an umbrella. What do I care if I’m jostled in the street, if I’m forced to go skipping through the mud so as not to be run over by cabs? The awareness that it was I, Rothschild himself, would even amuse me at that moment. I know that I can have a dinner like nobody else, and from the world’s foremost chef, and it’s enough for me that I know it. I’ll eat a piece of bread and ham and be satisfied with my awareness. I think so even now.
It’s not I who will get in with the aristocracy, but they who will get in with me; it’s not I who will chase after women, but they who will flow to me like water, offering me everything a woman can offer. The “banal” ones will come running for money, but the intelligent ones will be drawn by curiosity to a strange, proud, closed being, indifferent to everything. I’ll be nice to the ones and to the others, and maybe give them money, but I won’t take anything from them myself. Curiosity gives rise to passion, maybe I’ll also inspire passion. They’ll go away with nothing, I assure you, except perhaps a few presents. I’ll only become twice as curious for them.
The strange thing is that this picture (a correct one, by the way) tempted me when I was no more than seventeen.
I don’t want to crush or torment anyone and I won’t; but I know that if I did want to ruin such-and-such a person, my enemy, no one would keep me from doing it, but everyone would be obliging; and again, enough. I wouldn’t even take revenge on anyone. I was always surprised at how James Rothschild could agree to become a baron! Why, what for, when he’s superior to everyone in the world without that? “Oh, let this insolent general
