The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

From Dostoevsky's, 'The Dream of a Ridiculous man'. After
the musings yesterday sought Dostoevsky desperately and
like always his writings opened up further vents.

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But my companion had already left me. I suddenly, quite
without noticing how, found myself on this other earth, in the
bright light of a sunny day, fair as paradise. I believe I was
standing on one of the islands that make up on our globe the
Greek archipelago, or on the coast of the mainland facing
that archipelago. Oh, everything was exactly as it is with us,
only everything seemed to have a festive radiance, the
splendour of some great, holy triumph attained at last. The
caressing sea, green as emerald, splashed softly upon the
shore and kissed it with manifest, almost conscious love.
The tall, lovely trees stood in all the glory of their blossom,
and their innumerable leaves greeted me, I am certain, with
their soft, caressing rustle and seemed to articulate words of
love. The grass glowed with bright and fragrant flowers.
Birds were flying in flocks in the air, and perched fearlessly
on my shoulders and arms and joyfully struck me with their
darling, fluttering wings. And at last I saw and knew the
people of this happy land. That came to me of themselves,
they surrounded me, kissed me. The children of the sun, the
children of their sun - oh, how beautiful they were! Never
had I seen on our own earth such beauty in mankind. Only
perhaps in our children, in their earliest years, one might
find, some remote faint reflection of this beauty. The eyes of
these happy people shone with a clear brightness. Their
faces were radiant with the light of reason and fullness of a
serenity that comes of perfect understanding, but those faces
were gay; in their words and voices there was a note of
childlike joy. Oh, from the first moment, from the first
glance at them, I understood it all! It was the earth
untarnished by the Fall; on it lived people who had not
sinned. They lived just in such a paradise as that in which,
according to all the legends of mankind, our first parents
lived before they sinned; the only difference was that all this
earth was the same paradise. These people, laughing
joyfully, thronged round me and caressed me; they took me
home with them, and each of them tried to reassure me. Oh,
they asked me no questions, but they seemed, I fancied, to
know everything without asking, and they wanted to make
haste to smoothe away the signs of suffering from my face.

IV

And do you know what? Well, granted that it was only a
dream, yet the sensation of the love of those innocent and
beautiful people has remained with me for ever, and I feel as
though their love is still flowing out to me from over there.
I have seen them myself, have known them and been
convinced; I loved them, I suffered for them afterwards. Oh,
I understood at once even at the time that in many things I
could not understand them at all; as an up-to-date Russian
progressive and contemptible Petersburger, it struck me as
inexplicable that, knowing so much, they had, for instance,
no science like our. But I soon realised that their knowledge
was gained and fostered by intuitions different from those of
us on earth, and that their aspirations, too, were quite
different. They desired nothing and were at peace; they did
not aspire to knowledge of life as we aspire to understand it,
because their lives were full. But their knowledge was
higher and deeper than ours; for our science seeks to explain
what life is, aspires to understand it in order to teach others
how to love, while they without science knew how to live;
and that I understood, but I could not understand their
knowledge. They showed me their trees, and I could not
understand the intense love with which they looked at them;
it was as though they were talking with creatures like
themselves. And perhaps I shall not be mistaken if I say that
they conversed with them. Yes, they had found their
language, and I am convinced that the trees understood them.
They looked at all Nature like that - at the animals who lived
in peace with them and did not attack them, but loved them,
conquered by their love. They pointed to the stars and told
me something about them which I could not understand, but
I am convinced that they were somehow in touch with the
stars, not only in thought, but by some living channel. Oh,
these people did not persist in trying to make me understand
them, they loved me without that, but I knew that they would
never understand me, and so I hardly spoke to them about
our earth. I only kissed in their presence the earth on which
they lived and mutely worshipped them themselves. And
they saw that and let me worship them without being abashed
at my adoration, for they themselves loved much. They were
not unhappy on my account when at times I kissed their feet
with tears, joyfully conscious of the love with which they
would respond to mine. At times I asked myself with
wonder how it was they were able never to offend a creature
like me, and never once to arouse a feeling of jealousy or
envy in me? Often I wondered how it could be that, boastful
and untruthful as I was, I never talked to them of what I
knew - of which, of course, they had no notion - that I was
never tempted to do so by a desire to astonish or even to
benefit them.

They were as gay and sportive as children. They
wandered about their lovely woods and copses, they sang
their lovely songs; their fair was light - the fruits of their
trees, the honey from their woods, and the milk of the
animals who loved them. The work they did for food and
raiment was brief and not labourious. They loved and begot
children, but I never noticed in them the impulse of that cruel
sensuality which overcomes almost every man on this earth,
all and each, and is the source of almost every sin of mankind
on earth. They rejoiced at the arrival of children as new
beings to share their happiness. There was no quarrelling, no
jealousy among them, and they did not even know what the
words meant. Their children were the children of all, for
they all made up one family. There was scarcely any illness
among them, though there was death; but their old people
died peacefully, as though falling asleep, giving blessings
and smiles to those who surrounded them to take their last
farewell with bright and lovely smiles. I never saw grief or
tears on those occasions, but only love, which reached the
point of ecstasy, but a calm ecstasy, made perfect and
contemplative. One might think that they were still in
contact with the departed after death, and that their earthly
union was not cut short by death. They scarcely understood
me when I questioned them about immortality, but evidently
they were so convinced of it without reasoning that it was not
for them a question at all. They had no temples, but they had
a real living and uninterrupted sense of oneness with the
whole of the universe; they had no creed, but they had a
certain knowledge that when their earthly joy had reached the
limits of earthly nature, then there would come for them, for
the living and for the dead, a still greater fullness of contact
with the whole of the universe. They looked forward to that
moment with joy, but without haste, not pining for it, but
seeming to have a foretaste of it in their hearts, of which they
talked to one another.

In the evening before going to sleep they liked singing in
musical and harmonious chorus. In those songs they
expressed all the sensations that the parting day had given
them, sang its glories and took leave of it. They sang the
praises of nature, of the sea, of the woods. They liked
making songs about one another, and praised each other like
children; they were the simplest songs, but they sprang from
their hearts and went to one's heart. And not only in their
songs but in all their lives they seemed to do nothing but
admire one another. It was like being in love with each
other, but an all-embracing, universal feeling.

Some of their songs, solemn and rapturous, I scarcely
understood at all. Though I understood the words I could
never fathom their full significance. It remained, as it were,
beyond the grasp of my mind, yet my heart unconsciously
absorbed it more and more. I often told them that I had had
a presentiment of it long before, that this joy and glory had
come to me on our earth in the form of a yearning
melancholy that at times approached insufferable sorrow;
that I had had a foreknowledge of them all and of their glory
in the dreams of my heart and the visions of my mind; that
often on our earth I could not look at the setting sun without
tears. . . that in my hatred for the men of our earth there was
always a yearning anguish: why could I not hate them
without loving them? why could I not help forgiving them?
and in my love for them there was a yearning grief: why
could I not love them without hating them? They listened to
me, and I saw they could not conceive what I was saying, but
I did not regret that I had spoken to them of it: I knew that
they understood the intensity of my yearning anguish over
those whom I had left. But when they looked at me with
their sweet eyes full of love, when I felt that in their presence
my heart, too, became as innocent and just as theirs, the
feeling of the fullness of life took my breath away, and I
worshipped them in silence.