Some day I will narrate the touching and instructive history of my life during those ten years of my youth.I think very many people have had a like experience.With all my soul I wished to be good,but I was young,passionate and alone,completely alone when I sought goodness.Every time I tried to express my most sincere desire,which was to be morally good,I met with contempt and ridicule,but as soon as I yielded to low passions I was praised and encouraged.
Ambition,love of power,covetousness,lasciviousness,pride,anger,and revenge--were all respected.
Yielding to those passions I became like the grown-up folk and felt that they approved of me.The kind aunt with whom I lived,herself the purest of beings,always told me that there was nothing she so desired for me as that I should have relations with a married woman:'Rien ne forme un juene homme,comme une liaison avec une femme comme il faut'.[Footnote:Nothing so forms a young man as an intimacy with a woman of good breeding.]Another happiness she desired for me was that I should become an aide-de-camp,and if possible aide-de-camp to the Emperor.But the greatest happiness of all would be that I should marry a very rich girl and so become possessed of as many serfs as possible.
I cannot think of those years without horror,loathing and heartache.I killed men in war and challenged men to duels in order to kill them.I lost at cards,consumed the labor of the peasants,sentenced them to punishments,lived loosely,and deceived people.Lying,robbery,adultery of all kinds,drunkenness,violence,murder--there was no crime I did not commit,and in spite of that people praised my conduct and my contemporaries considered and consider me to be a comparatively moral man.
So I lived for ten years.
During that time I began to write from vanity,covetousness,and pride.In my writings I did the same as in my life.to get fame and money,for the sake of which I wrote,it was necessary to hide the good and to display the evil.and I did so.How often in my writings I contrived to hide under the guise of indifference,or even of banter,those strivings of mine towards goodness which gave meaning to my life!And I succeeded in this and was praised.
At twenty-six years of age [Footnote:He was in fact 27at the time.]I returned to Petersburg after the war,and met the writers.
They received me as one of themselves and flattered me.And before I had time to look round I had adopted the views on life of the set of authors I had come among,and these views completely obliterated all my former strivings to improve--they furnished a theory which justified the dissoluteness of my life.
The view of life of these people,my comrades in authorship,consisted in this:that life in general goes on developing,and in this development we--men of thought--have the chief part;and among men of thought it is we--artists and poets--who have the greatest influence.Our vocation is to teach mankind.And lest the simple question should suggest itself:What do I know,and what can I teach?it was explained in this theory that this need not be known,and that the artist and poet teach unconsciously.I was considered an admirable artist and poet,and therefore it was very natural for me to adopt this theory.I,artist and poet,wrote and taught without myself knowing what.For this I was paid money;I had excellent food,lodging,women,and society;and I had fame,which showed that what I taught was very good.
