This is audiobook made of text from, the title, 
THE DREAM OF A RIDICULOUS MAN, A FANTASTIC STORY,
of FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY. written in 1877.

introduction.

It chronicles the experiences of a man who decides that there is nothing of any value in the world 
and is therefore determined to commit suicide. A chance encounter with a young girl, however, 
begins the man on a journey that re-instills a love for his fellow man. It was first published in A 
Writer's Diary.
Summary.
The story opens with the narrator wandering the streets of St. Petersburg. He contemplates how he 
has always been a ridiculous person, and also, how recently, he has come to the realization that 
nothing much matters to him any more. It is this revelation that leads him to the idea of suicide. 
The narrator of the story reveals that he had bought a revolver months previous with the intent of 
shooting himself in the head.
Despite a dismal night, the narrator looks up to the sky and views a solitary star. Shortly after 
seeing the star, a little girl comes running towards him. The narrator surmises that something is 
wrong with the girl's mother. He shakes the girl away and continues on to his apartment.
Once in his apartment, the narrator sinks into a chair and places his gun on a table next to him. He 
hesitates to shoot himself because of a nagging feeling of guilt that has plagued him ever since he 
shunned the girl. The narrator grapples with internal questions for a few hours before falling asleep 
in the chair. As he sleeps, he descends into a very vivid dream.
In the dream, he shoots himself in the heart. He dies but he is still aware of his surroundings. He 
gathers that there is a funeral and he is also buried. After an indeterminate amount of time in his 
cold grave, water begins to drip down onto his eyelids. The narrator begs for forgiveness. Suddenly 
his grave is opened by an unknown and shadowy figure. This figure pulls the narrator up from his 
grave, and then the two soar through the sky and into space. After flying through space for a long 
time, the narrator is deposited on a planet, one much like Earth, but not the Earth that he left 
through suicide.
The narrator is then placed on what appears to be an idyllic Greek island, identified as the earth 
before the Fall. Soon the inhabitants of the island find him, and they are happy, blissful, sinless 
people. The narrator lives in this utopia for many years, all the while amazed at the goodness 
around him.
One day the narrator accidentally teaches the inhabitants how to lie. This begins the corruption of 
the utopia. The lies engender pride, and pride engenders a deluge of other sins. Soon the first 
murder occurs. Factions are made, wars are waged. Science supplants emotion, and the members of 
the former utopia are incapable of remembering their former happiness. The narrator pleads with 
the people to return to their former state, or at least to kill him for his role in their Fall, but they will 
not allow it.
The narrator then awakens. He is a changed man, thoroughly thankful for life and convinced of 
man's basic goodness and potential for incredible love. He dedicates his life to teaching the promise 
of a Golden Era, a time on earth where everyone loves his brother as he loves himself.
At the conclusion of the story, the narrator states that he tried to find the little girl, and that he will 
go on and on, presumably with the intent of atoning for his past lack of kindness.

Then to the book text.


“I am a ridiculous man. They call me mad now. That would be a step up in rank, 
if I did not still remain as ridiculous to them as before. But now I'm no longer 
angry, now they are all dear to me, and even when they laugh at me -then, too, 
they are even somehow especially dear to me. I would laugh with them -not really 
at myself, but for love of them -if it weren't so sad for me to look at them. 
Sad because they don't know the truth, and I do know the truth. Ah, how hard it 
is to be the only one who knows the truth! But they won't understand that. No, 
they won't understand it. Before, it caused me great anguish that I seemed 
ridiculous. Not seemed, but was. I was always ridiculous, and I know it, maybe 
right from birth. Maybe from the age of seven I already knew I was ridiculous. 
Then I went to school, then to the university, and what -the more I studied, the 
more I learned that I was ridiculous. So that for me, all my university 
education existed ultimately as if only to prove and explain to me, the deeper I 
went into it, that I was ridiculous. And as with learning, so with life. Every 
passing year the same consciousness grew and strengthened in me that my 
appearance was in all respects ridiculous. I was ridiculed by everyone and 
always. But none of them knew or suspected that if there was one man on earth 
who was more aware than anyone else of my ridiculousness, it was I myself, and 
this was the most vexing thing for me, that they didn't know it, but here I 
myself was to blame: I was always so proud that I would never confess it to 
anyone for anything. This pride grew in me over the years, and if it had so 
happened that I allowed myself to confess to anyone at all that I was 
ridiculous, I think that same evening I'd have blown my head off with a 
revolver. 

Oh, how I suffered in my youth over being unable to help myself and suddenly 
somehow confessing it to my comrades. But once I reached early manhood, I became 
a bit calmer for some reason, though with ever passing year I learned more and 
more about my terrible quality. Precisely for some reason, because to this day I 
cannot determine why. Maybe because a dreadful anguish was growing in my soul 
over one circumstance which was innately higher than the whole of me: namely -
the conviction was overtaking me that everywhere in the world it made no 
difference. I had had a presentiment of this for a very long time, but the full 
conviction came during the last year somehow suddenly. 

I suddenly felt that it would make no difference to me whether the world existed 
or there was nothing anywhere. I began to feel and know with my whole being that 
with me there was nothing. At first I kept thinking that instead there had been 
a lot before, but then I realized that there had been nothing before either, it 
only seemed so for some reason. Little by little I became convinced that there 
would never be anything. Then I suddenly stopped being angry with people and 
began almost not to notice them. Indeed, this was manifest even in the, smallest 
trifles: it would happen, for instance, that I'd walk down the street and bump 
into people. It wasn't really because I was lost in thought: what could I have 
been thinking about, I had completely ceased to think then: it made no 
difference to me. And it would have been fine  if I had resolved questions -oh, 
I never resolved a single one, and there were so many! But it began to make no 
difference to me, and the questions all went away.

And then, after that, I learned the truth. I learned the truth last November, 
precisely on the third of November, and since that time I remember my every 
moment. It was a gloomy evening, as gloomy as could be. I was returning home 
then, between ten and eleven o'clock, and I remember I precisely thought that 
there could not be a gloomier time. Even in the physical respect. Rain had 
poured down all day, and it was the coldest and gloomiest rain, even some sort 
of menacing rain, I remember that, with an obvious hostility to people, and now, 
between ten and eleven, it suddenly stopped, and a terrible dampness set in, 
damper and colder than when it was raining, and a sort of steam rose from 
everything, from every stone in the street and from every alleyway, if you 
looked far into its depths from the street. I suddenly imagined that if the 
gaslights went out everywhere, it would be more cheerful, and that with the 
gaslights it was sadder for the heart, because they threw light on it all. I'd 
had almost no dinner that day, and had spent since early evening sitting at some 
engineer's, with two more friends sitting there as well. I kept silent, and they 
seemed to be sick of me. They talked about something provocative and suddenly 
even grew excited. But it made no difference to them, I could see that, and they 
got excited just so. I suddenly told them that: Gentlemen, I said, it makes no 
difference to you.” They weren't offended, but they all started laughing at me. 
It was because I said it without any reproach and simply because it made no   
difference to me. And they could see that it made no difference to me, and found 
that amusing.

When I thought in the street about the gaslights, I looked up at the sky. The 
sky was terribly dark, but one could clearly make out the torn clouds and the 
bottomless black spots between them. Suddenly in one of these spots I noticed a 
little star and began gazing at it intently. Because this little star gave me an 
idea: I resolved to kill myself that night. I had firmly resolved on it two 
months earlier, and, poor as I was, had bought an excellent revolver and loaded 
it that same day. But two months had passed and it was still lying in the 
drawer; but it made so little difference to me that I wished finally to seize a 
moment when it was less so -why, I didn't know. And thus, during those two 
months, returning home each night, I thought I was going to shoot myself. I kept 
waiting for the moment. And so now this little star gave me the idea, and I 
resolved that it would be that night without fail. And why the star gave me the 
idea -I don't know.

,And so, as I was looking at the sky, this girl suddenly seized me by the elbow. 
The street was empty, and almost no one was about. Far off a coachman was 
sleeping in his droshky. The girl was about eight years old, in a kerchief and 
just a little dress, all wet, but I especially remembered her wet, torn shoes, 
and remember them now. They especially flashed before my eyes. She suddenly 
started pulling me by the elbow and calling out. She didn't cry, but somehow 
abruptly shouted some words, which she was unable to pronounce properly because 
she was chilled and shivering all over. She was terrified by something and 
shouted desperately: 

Mama! Mama!” I turned my face to her, but did not say a word and went on 
walking, but, she was running and pulling at me, and in her voice there was the 
sound which in very frightened children indicates despair. I know that sound. 
Though she did not speak all the words out, I understood that her mother was 
dying somewhere, or something had happened with them there, and she had run out 
to call someone, to find something so as to help her mother. But I did not go 
with her and, on the contrary suddenly had the idea of chasing her away. First I 
told her to go and find a policeman. But she suddenly pressed her hands together 
and, sobbing, choking, kept running beside me and wouldn't leave me. It was then 
that I stamped my feet at her and shouted. She only cried out: Mister! Mister!  
but suddenly she dropped me and ran headlong across the street: some other 
passer-by appeared there, and she apparently rushed from me to him.

I went up to my fifth floor. I live in a rented room, a furnished one. It's a 
poor and small room, with a half-round garret window. I have an oilcloth sofa, 
and a table with books on it, two chairs, and an armchair, as old as can be, but 
a Voltaire one. I sat down, lighted a candle, and began to think. Next door, in 
another room, behind a partition, there was a bedlam. It had been going on for 
two days. A retired captain lived there, and he had guests -some six scurvy 
fellows, drinking vodka and playing blackjack with used cards. The previous 
night they'd had a fight, and I know that two of them had pulled each other's 
hair for a long time. The landlady wanted to lodge a complaint, but she's 
terribly afraid of the captain. The only other tenants in our furnished rooms 
are a small, thin lady, an army wife and out-of-towner, with three small 
children who had already fallen ill in our rooms. She and her children are 
afraid of the captain to the point of fainting, and spend whole nights trembling 
and crossing themselves, and the smallest child had some sort of 
fit from fear. 

This captain, I know for certain, sometimes stops passers-by on Nevsky Prospect 
and begs money from them. They won't take him into any kind of service, yet, 
strangely (this is what I've been driving at), in the whole month that he had 
been living with us, the captain had never aroused any vexation in me. Of 
course, I avoided making his acquaintance from the very start, and he himself 
got bored with me from the first, yet no matter how they shouted behind their 
partition, and however many they were -it never made any difference to me. I sit 
the whole night and don't really hear them -so far do I forget about them. I 
don't sleep at night until dawn, and that for a year now. I sit all night at the 
table in the armchair and do nothing. I read books only during the day. I sit 
and don't even think, just so, some thoughts wander about and I let them go. A 
whole candle burns down overnight. I quietly sat down at the table, took out the 
revolver, and placed it in front of me. 

As I placed it there, I remember asking myself: Is it so?” and answering myself 
quite an affirmatively: It is.” 

Meaning I would shoot myself. I knew that I would shoot myself that night for 
certain, but how long I would stay sitting at the table before then -that I did 
not know. And of course I would have shot myself if it hadn't been for that 
girl.

You see: though it made no difference to me, I did still feel pain, for 
instance. If someone hit me, I would feel pain. The same in the moral respect: 
if something very pitiful happened, I would feel pity, just as when it still 
made a  difference to me in life. And I felt pity that night: I certainly would 
have helped a child. Why, then, had I not helped the little girl? From an idea 
that had come along then: as she was pulling and calling to me, a question 
suddenly arose before me, and I couldn't resolve it. The question was an idle 
one, but I got angry. I got angry owing to the conclusion that, if I had already 
resolved to kill myself that night, it followed that now more than ever 
everything in the world should make no difference to me. 

Why, then, did I suddenly feel that it did make a difference, and that I pitied 
the girl? I remember that I pitied her very much; even to the point of some 
strange pain, even quite incredible in my situation. Really, I'm unable to 
express the fleeting feeling I had then any better, but the feeling continued at 
home as well, when I had already settled at my table, and I was extremely vexed, 
as I hadn't been for a long time. 

Reasoning flowed from reasoning. It seemed clear that, if I was a man and not 
yet a zero, then, as long as I did not turn into a zero, I was alive, and 
consequently could suffer, be angry, and feel shame for my actions. Good. But if 
I was going to kill myself in two hours, for instance, then what was the girl to 
me and what did I care then about shame or anything in the world? I turned into 
a zero, an absolute zero. And could it be that the awareness that I would 
presently cease to exist altogether, and that therefore nothing would exist, 
could not have the slightest influence either on my feeling of pity of the girl, 
or upon the feeling of shame after the meanness I had committed? 

And I had stamped and shouted at the unfortunate child in a savage voice 
precisely because, \you see, not only do I feel no pity, but even if I commit 
some inhuman meanness, I can do so now, because in two hours everything will be 
extinguished.” Do you believe this was why I shouted? I'm now almost convinced 
of it. It seemed clear that life and the world were now as if dependent on me. 
One might even say that the world was now as if made for me alone: I'd shoot 
myself and there would be no more world, at least for me. Not to mention that 
maybe there would indeed be nothing for anyone after me, and that as soon as my 
consciousness was extinguished, the whole world would be extinguished at once, 
like a phantom, like a mere accessory of my consciousness, it would be done away 
with, for maybe all this world and all these people were -just myself alone. I 
remember that, sitting and reasoning, I turned all these new questions, which 
came crowding one after another, even in quite a different direction and 
invented something quite new. 

For instance, there suddenly came to me a strange consideration, that if I had 
once lived on the moon or on Mars, and had committed some most shameful and 
dishonourable act there, such as can only be imagined, and had been abused and 
dishonoured for it as one can only perhaps feel and imagine in a dream, a 
nightmare, and if, ending up later on earth, I continued to preserve an 
awareness of what I had done on the other planet, and knew at the same time that 
I would never ever return there, then, looking from the earth to the moon -would 
it make any difference to me, or not? Would I feel shame for that act, or not? 

The questions were idle and superfluous, since the revolver was already lying in 
front of me, and I knew with my whole being that this was certain to be, but 
they excited me, and I was getting furious. It was as if I couldn't die now 
without first resolving something. In short, this girl saved me, because with 
the questions I postponed the shot. Meanwhile, everything was also quieting down 
at the captain's: they had ended their card game and were settling down to 
sleep, grumbling and lazily finishing their squabbles. It was then that I 
suddenly fell asleep, something that had never happened to me before, at the 
table, in the armchair. I fell asleep quite imperceptibly to myself. 

Dreams, as is known, are extremely strange: one thing is pictured with the 
most,terrible clarity, with a jeweler's thoroughness in the finish of its 
details, and over other things you skip as if without noticing them at all -for 
instance, over space and time. Dreams apparently proceed not from reason but 
from desire, not from the head but from the heart, and yet what clever things my 
reason has sometimes performed in sleep! And yet quite inconceivable things 
happen with it in sleep. My brother, for instance, died five years ago. 
Sometimes I see him in my dreams: he takes part in my doings, we are both very 
interested, and yet I remember and am fully aware, throughout the whole dream, 
that my brother is dead and buried. Why, then, am I not surprised that, though 
he is dead, he is still here by me and busy with me? Why does my reason fully 
admit all this? But enough. I'll get down to my dream. Yes, I had this dream 
then, my dream of the third of November! 

They tease me now that it was just a dream. But does it make any difference 
whether it was a dream or not, if this dream proclaimed the Truth to me? For if 
you once knew the truth and saw it, then you know that it is the truth and there 
is and can be no other, whether you're asleep or alive. So let it be a dream, 
let it be, but this life, which you extol so much, I wanted to extinguish by 
suicide, while my dream, my dream -oh, it proclaimed to me a new, great, renewed 
strong life!
Listen. I said that I fell asleep imperceptibly and even as if while continuing 
to reason about the same matters. 

Suddenly I dreamed that I took the revolver and, sitting there, aimed it 
straight at my heart -my heart, not my head; thought I had resolved earlier to 
shoot myself in the head, and precisely in the right temple. Having aimed it at 
my chest, I waited for a second or two, and my candle, the table, and the wall 
facing me suddenly started moving and heaving. I hastily fired. In dreams you 
sometimes fall from a height, or are stabbed, or beaten, but you never feel pain 
except when you are somehow really hurt in bed, then you do feel pain and it 
almost always wakes you up. So it was in my dream: I felt no pain, but I 
imagined that, as I fired, everything shook inside me and everything suddenly 
went out, and it became terribly black around me. I became as if blind and dumb, 
and now I'm lying on something hard, stretched out on my back, I don't see 
anything and can't make the slightest movement. Around me there is walking and 
shouting, there is the captain's bass and the landlady's shrieking -and suddenly 
another break, and now I'm being carried in a closed coffin. And I feel the 
coffin heave and I start reasoning about that, when suddenly for the first time 
I'm struck by the idea that I'm dead, quite dead, I know this and do not doubt 
it, I can't see, I can't move, yet I feel and reason. 

But I quickly come to terms with it and, as is usual in dreams accept the 
reality without arguing. And now, they bury me in the ground. Everyone leaves, 
I'm alone, completely alone. I can't move. Always before, whenever I actually 
imagined to myself how I would be buried in the grave, my only association with 
the grave proper was the feeling of dampness and cold. So now, too, I felt that 
I was very cold, especially the tips of my toes, but I didn't feel anything 
else. I lay there and, strangely -didn't expect anything, accepting without 
argument that a dead man has nothing to expect. But it was damp. I don't know 
how much time passed -an hour, or a few days, or many days. 

But then suddenly a drop of water that had seeped through the lid of the coffin 
fell on my closed left eye, another followed it in a minute, then a third a 
minute later, and so on and so on, with a minute's interval. A deep indignation 
suddenly blazed up in my heart, and suddenly I felt physical pain in it. \It's 
my wound,” I thought, \it's my shot, there's a bullet there. ” The drop kept 
dripping, each minute and straight onto my closed eye. And I suddenly called 
out, not in a voice, for I was motionless, but with my whole being, to the 
master of all that was coming to pass with me.

Whoever you are, if you're there, and if there exists anything more reasonable 
than what is coming to pass now, allow it to be here, too. And if you are taking 
revenge on me for my unreasonable suicide by the ugliness and absurdity of my 
subsequent existence, know, then, that no matter what torment befalls me, it 
will never equal the contempt I am silently going to feel, even if the torment 
were to last a million years!. I called out and fell silent. For almost a whole 
minute the deep silence lasted, and one more drop even fell, but I knew, 
boundlessly and inviolably, I knew and believed that everything was certain to 
change presently. And then suddenly my grave gaped wide. 

That is, I don't know whether it was opened and dug up, but I was taken by some 
dark being unknown to me, and we found ourselves in space. I suddenly could see 
again: it was deep night, and never, never has there been such darkness! We were 
rushing through space far from earth. I did not ask the one carrying me about 
anything, I waited and was proud. I assured myself that I was not afraid and 
swooned with delight at the thought that I was not afraid. I don't remember how 
long we rushed like that, and cannot imagine it: everything was happening as it 
always does in dreams, when you leap over space and time and over laws of being 
and reason, and pause only on the points of the heart's reverie. I remember that 
I suddenly saw a little star in the darkness. 

Is that Sirius?” I asked, suddenly unable to restrain myself, for I did not want 
to ask about anything.

No, it is the very star you saw between the clouds, as you were returning home,” 
the being who was carrying me replied. I knew that it had as if a human 
countenance. Strangely, I did not like this being, I even felt a deep revulsion. 
I had expected complete non-existence and with that had shot myself in the 
heart. And here I am in the hands of a being -not a human one, of course -but 
who is, who exists: 

Ah, so there is life beyond the grave!” I thought with the strange light-
mindedness of dreams, but the essence of my heart remained with me in all its 
depth: 
And if I must be again,” I thought, and live again according to someone's 
ineluctable will, I don't want to be defeated and humiliated!” 
You know I'm afraid of you, and you despise me for it,” I said suddenly to my 
companion, unable to hold back the humiliating question, which contained a 
confession, and feeling my humiliation like the prick of a needle in my heart. 
He did not answer my question, but I suddenly felt that I was not despised or 
laughed at, and not even pitied, and that our journey had an unknown and 
mysterious purpose which concerned me alone. 

Fear was growing in my heart. Something was being communicated to me, mutely but 
tormentingly, from my silent companion, and was as if penetrating me. We were 
rushing through dark and unknown spaces. I had long ceased to see constellations 
familiar to the eye. I knew that in the heavenly spaces there were stars whose 
light reached the earth only after thousands or millions of years. Maybe we were 
already flying through those spaces. I awaited something in a terrible anguish 
that wrung my heart. And suddenly the call of some highly familiar feeling shook 
me:

I suddenly saw our sun! I knew it could not be our sun, which had generated our 
earth, and that we were at an infinite distance from our sun, but for some 
reason I recognized, with my whole being, that it was absolutely the same as our 
sun, its replica and double. The call of a sweet feeling sounded delightfully in 
my soul: the native power of light, the same light that gave birth to me, echoed 
in my heart and resurrected it, and I felt life, the former life, for the first 
time after my grave. But if this is the sun, if this is absolutely the same as 
our sun,” I cried out, then where is the earth?” 

And my companion pointed to the little star that shone in the darkness with an 
emerald brilliance. We were rushing straight toward her.,\And are such replicas 
really possible in the universe, is that really the law of nature?. And if that 
is the earth there, is it really the same as our earth. absolutely the same, 
unfortunate, poor, but dear and eternally beloved, giving birth to the same 
tormenting love for herself even in her most ungrateful child ren?. ” I cried 
out, shaking with irrepressible, rapturous love for that former native earth I 
had abandoned. The image of the poor little girl whom I had off ended flashed 
before me.

You will see all,” my companion replied, and some sadness sounded in his words. 
But we were quickly approaching the planet. It was growing before my eyes, I 
could already make out the ocean, the outlines of Europe, and suddenly a strange 
feeling of some great, holy jealousy blazed up in my heart: \How can there be 
such a replica, and what for? I love, I can love, only the earth I left, where 
the stains of my blood were left, when I, the ungrateful one, extinguished my 
life with a shot in the heart. But never, never did I cease to love that earth, 
and even on that night, as I was parting from her, I perhaps loved her more 
tormentingly than ever before. 

Is there suffering on this new earth? On our earth we can love truly only with 
suffering and through suffering! We're unable to love otherwise and we know no 
other love. I want suffering, in order to love. I want, I thirst, to kiss, this 
very minute, pouring out tears, that one earth alone which I left, and I do not 
want, I do not accept life on any other!.

But my companion had already left me. Suddenly, as if quite imperceptibly, I 
came to stand on this other earth, in the bright light of a sunny day, lovely as 
paradise. I was standing, it seems, on one of those islands which on our earth 
make up the Greek archipelago, or somewhere on the coast of the mainland 
adjacent to that archipelago. Oh, everything was exactly as with us, but seemed 
everywhere to radiate some festivity and a great, holy, and finally attained 
triumph. The gentle emerald se splashed softly against the shores and kissed 
them with love p lain, visible, almost conscious. Tall, beautiful trees stood in 
all the luxury of their flowering, and their numberless leaves, I was convinced, 
greeted me with their soft, gentle sound, as if uttering words of love. The 
grass glittered with bright, fragrant flowers. Flocks of birds flew about in the 
air and, fearless of me, landed on my shoulders and arms, joyfully beating me 
with their dear, fluttering wings. And finally I got to see and know the people 
of that happy earth. 

They came to me themselves, they surrounded me, kissed me. Children of the sun, 
children of their sun -oh, how beautiful they were! Never on earth have I seen 
such beauty in man. Maybe only in our children, in their first years, can one 
find a remote, though faint, glimmer of that beauty. The eyes of these happy 
people shone with clear brightness. Their faces radiated reason and a sort of 
consciousness fulfilled to the point of serenity, yet they were mirthful faces; 
a childlike joy sounded in the, words and voices of these people. Oh, at once, 
with the first glance at their faces, I understood everything, everything! 

This was the earth undefiled by the fall, the people who lived on it had not 
sinned, they lived in the same paradise in which, according to the legends of 
all mankind, our fallen forefathers lived, with the only difference that the 
whole earth here was everywhere one and the same paradise. These people, 
laughing joyfully, crowded around me and caressed me; they took me with them and 
each of them wished to set me at ease. Oh, they didn't ask me about anything, 
but it seemed to me as if they already knew everything, and wished quickly to 
drive the torment from my face.

 You see, once again: well, let it be only a dream! But the feeling of love from 
these innocent and beautiful people remained in me ever after, and I feel that 
their love pours upon me from there even now. I saw them myself, I knew them and 
was convinced, I loved them, I suffered for them afterward. 

Oh I at once understood, even then, that in many ways I would never understand 
them; to me, a modern Russian progressive and vile Petersburger, it seemed 
insoluble, for instance, that they, while knowing so much, did not have our 
science. But I soon realized that their knowledge was fulfilled and nourished by 
different insights than on our earth, and that their aspirations were also quite 
different. They did not wish for anything and were at peace, they did not aspire 
to a knowledge of life, as we do, because their life was fulfilled. But their 
knowledge was deeper and loftier than our science; for our science seeks to 
explain what life is it aspires to comprehend it, in order to teach others to 
live; but they know how to live even without science, and I understood that, but 
I could not understand their knowledge. 

They pointed out their trees to me, and I could not understand the extent of the 
love with which they looked at them: as if they were talking with creatures of 
their own kind. And you know, perhaps I wouldn't be mistaken if I said that they 
did talk to them! Yes, they had found their language, and I'm convinced that the 
trees understood them. They looked at the whole of nature in the same way -at 
the animals, who lived in peace with them, did not attack them, and loved them, 
won over by their love. They pointed out the stars to me and talked of them with 
me about something I couldn't understand, but I'm convinced that they had some 
contact, as it were, with the heavenly stars, not just in thought, but in some 
living way. Oh, these people did not even try to make me understand them, they 
loved me even without that, but on the other hand I knew that they would also 
never understand me, and therefore I hardly ever spoke to them about our earth.

 I only kissed before them that earth on which they lived and wordlessly adored 
them, and they saw it allowed me to adore them without being ashamed of my 
adoring them, because they loved much themselves. They did not suffer for me 
when sometimes, in tears, I kissed their feet, joyfully knowing at heart with 
what force of love they would respond to me. At times I asked myself in 
astonishment: how could they manage, all this while, not to insult a man such as 
I, and never once provoke in a man such as I any feeling of jealousy or envy? 

Many times I asked myself how I, a braggart and a liar, could manage not to 
speak to them about my knowledge -of which they, of course, had no notion -not 
to wish to astonish them with it, if only out of love for them? They were frisky 
and gay as children. They wandered through their, beautiful groves and forests, 
they sang their beautiful songs, they ate their light food -fruit from their 
trees, honey from their forests, and milk from the animals who loved them. For 
their food and clothing they laboured little and but lightly. 

There was love among them, and children were born, but I never observed in them 
any impulses of that cruel sensuality that overtakes almost everyone on our 
earth, each and every one, and is the only source of almost all the sins of our 
mankind. They rejoiced in the children they had as new partakers of their bliss. 
Among them there was no quarrelling or jealousy, they did not even understand 
what it meant. Their children were everyone's children, because they all 
constituted one family. They had almost no illnesses, though there was death; 
but their old people died quietly, as if falling asleep, surrounded by those 
bidding them farewell, blessing them, smiling at them, and receiving bright 
parting smiles themselves. 

I saw no sorrow or tears at that, there was only love increased as if to the 
point of rapture, but a rapture that was calm, fulfilled, contemplative. One 
might think they were in touch with their dead even after their death and that 
the earthly union between them was not interrupted by death. They barely 
understood me when I asked them about eternal life, but they were apparently so 
convinced of it unconsciously that it did not constitute a question for them. 

They had no temples, but they had some essential, living, and constant union 
with the Entirety of the universe; they had no faith, but instead had a form 
knowledge that when their earthly joy was fulfilled to the limits of earthly 
nature, there would then come for them, both for the living and for the dead, a 
still greater expansion of their contract with the Entirety of the universe. 
They waited for this moment with joy, but without haste, without suffering over 
it, but as if already having it in the presages of their hearts, which they 
conveyed to one another. 

In the evenings, before going to sleep, they liked to sing in balanced, 
harmonious choruses. In these songs they expressed all the feelings that the 
departing day had given them, praised it, and bade it farewell. They praised 
nature, the earth, the sea, the forest. They liked to compose songs about each 
other and praised each other like children; these were the most simple songs, 
but they followed from the heart and penetrated hearts. And not in songs only, 
but it seemed they spent their whole life only in admiring each other. It was a 
sort of mutual being-in-love, total, universal. And some of their songs, solemn 
and rapturous, I hardly understood at all. 

While I understood the words, I was never able to penetrate their full meaning. 
It remained as if inaccessible to my mind, yet my heart was as if unconsciously 
pervaded by it more and more. I often told them that I had long ago had a 
presentiment of all this, that all this joy and glory had already spoken to me 
on our earth in a anguished call, sometimes reaching the point of unbearable 
sorrow; that I had a presentiment of them all and of their glory in the dreams 
of my heart and the reveries of my mind, that I had often been unable, on our 
earth, to watch the setting sun without tears. 

That my hatred of the people of our earth always contained anguish: why am I 
unable to hate them without loving them, why am I unable not to forgive them, 
and why is there anguish in my love for them: why am I unable to love them 
without hating them? They listened to me, and I saw that they could not imagine 
what I was talking about, but I did not regret talking to them about it: I knew 
they understood all the intensity of my anguish for those whom I had abandoned. 
Yes, when they looked at me with their dear eyes pervaded by love, when I felt 
that in their presence my heart, too, became, as innocent and truthful as 
theirs, I did not regret not understanding them. The feeling of the fullness of 
life took my breath away, and I silently worshipped them.

Oh, everyone laughs in my face now and assures me that even in dreams one cannot 
see such details as I'm now telling, that in my dream I saw or felt only a 
certain sensation generated by my own heart in delirium, and that I invented the 
details when I woke up. And when I disclosed to them that perhaps it was 
actually so -God, what laughter they threw in my face, and what fun they had at 
my expense! 

Oh, yes, of course, I was overcome just by the sensation of that dream, and it 
alone survived in the bloody wound of my heart: yet the real images and forms of 
my dream, that is, those that I actually saw at the time of my dreaming, were 
fulfilled so harmoniously, they were so enchanting and beautiful, and so true, 
that having awakened, I was, of course, unable to embody them in our weak words, 
so that they must have been as if effaced in my mind, and therefore, indeed, 
perhaps I myself unconsciously was forced to invent the details afterward; and 
of course distorted them, especially with my so passionate desire to hurry and 
tell them at least somehow. And yet how can I not believe that it all really 
was? And was, perhaps a thousand times better, brighter, and more joyful than 
I'm telling? Let it be a dream, still it all could not but be. 

You know, I'll tell you a secret: perhaps it wasn't a dream at all! For here a 
certain thing happened, something so terribly true that it couldn't have been 
imagined in a dream. Let my dream have been generated by my heart, but was my 
heart alone capable of generating the terrible truth that happened to me 
afterward? How could I myself invent or imagine it in my heart? Can it be that 
my paltry heart and capricious, insignificant mind were able to rise to such a 
revelation of the truth! Oh, judge for yourselves: I've concealed it so far, but 
now I'll finish telling this truth as well. 

5.

The thing was that,I, corrupted them all! 

 Yes, yes, it ended with me corrupting them all! How it could have happened I 
don't know, but I remember it clearly. The dream flew through thousands of years 
and left in me just a sense of the whole. I know only that the cause of the fall 
was I. Like a foul trichina, like an atom of plague infecting whole countries, 
so I infected that whole happy and previously sinless earth with myself. They 
learned to lie and began to love the lie and knew the beauty of the lie. Oh, 
maybe it started innocently, with a joke, with coquetry, with amorous play, 
maybe, indeed, with an atom, but this atom of lie penetrated their hearts, and 
they liked it. Then sensuality was quickly born, sensuality generated jealousy, 
and jealousy -cruelty. Oh, I don't know, I don't remember, but soon, very soon, 
the first blood was shed; they were astonished and horrified, and began to part, 
to separate. 

Alliances appeared, but against each other now. Rebukes, reproaches began. They 
knew shame, and shame was made into a virtue. The notion of honour was born, and 
each alliance raised its own banner. They began tormenting animals, and the 
animals withdrew from them into the forests and became their enemies. There 
began the struggle for separation, for isolation, for the personal, for mine and 
yours. They started speaking different languages. They knew sorrow and came to 
love sorrow, they thirsted for suffering and said that truth is attained only 
through suffering. Then science appeared among them. When they became wicked, 
they began to talk of brotherhood and, humaneness and understood these ideas. 
When they became criminal, they invented justice and prescribed whole codices 
for themselves in order to maintain it, and to ensure the codices they set up 
the guillotine. 

They just barely remembered what they had lost, and did not even want to believe 
that they had once been innocent and happy. They even laughed at the possibility 
of the former happiness and called it a dream. They couldn't even imagine it in 
forms and images, but -strange and wonderful thing -having lost all belief in 
their former happiness, having called it a fairy tale, they wised so much to be 
innocent and happy again, once more, that they fell down before their hearts 
desires like children, they deified  their desire, they built temples and 
started praying to their own idea, their own desire,” all the while fully 
believing in its unrealizability and unfeasibility, but adoring it in tears and 
worshipping it. 

And yet, if it had so happened that they could have returned to that innocent 
and happy condition which they had lost, or if someone had suddenly shown it to 
them again and asked them: did they want to go back to it? -they would certainly 
have refused. They used to answer me: \Granted we're deceitful, wicked and 
unjust, we know that and weep for it, and we torment ourselves over it, and 
torture and punish ourselves perhaps even more than that merciful judge who will 
judge us and whose name we do not know. But we have science, and through it we 
shall again find the truth, but we shall now accept it consciously, knowledge is 
higher than feelings, the consciousness of life is higher than life. Science 
will give us wisdom, wisdom will discover laws, and knowledge of the laws of 
happiness is higher than happiness.” That's what they used to say, and after 
such words each of them loved himself more than anyone else, and they couldn't 
have done otherwise. 

Each of them became so jealous of his own person that he tried as hard as he 
could to humiliate and belittle it in others, and gave his life to that. Slavery 
appeared, even voluntary slavery: the weak willingly submitted to the strong, 
only so as to help them crush those still weaker than themselves. Righteous men 
appeared, who came to these people in tears and spoke to them of their pride, 
their lack of measure and harmony, their loss of shame. They were derided or 
stoned. Holy blood was spilled on the thresholds of temples. On the other hand, 
people began to appear who started inventing ways for everyone to unite again so 
that each of them, without ceasing to love himself more than anyone else, would 
at the same time not hinder others, and thus live all together in a harmonious 
society, as it were. 

Whole wars arose because of this idea. At the same time, the warring sides all 
firmly believed that science, wisdom, and the sense of self-preservation would 
finally force men to unite in a harmonious and reasonable society, and 
therefore, to speed things up meanwhile, the \wise” tried quickly to exterminate 
all the \unwise,” who did not understand their idea, so that they would not 
hinder its triumph. But the sense of self-preservation quickly began to weaken, 
proud men and sensualists appeared who directly demanded everything or nothing. 
To acquire everything, they resorted to evildoing, and if that did not succeed -
to suicide. Religions appeared with a cult of non being and self-destruction for 
the sake of eternal peace in nothingness. Finally, these people grew weary in 
meaningless toil, and suffering appeared on their faces, and these people 
proclaimed that suffering is beauty, for only in suffering is there thought. 

They sang suffering in their songs. I walked among them, wringing my hands, and 
wept over them, but I loved them perhaps still more than before, when there was 
as yet no suffering on their faces and they were innocent and so beautiful. I 
loved their defiled earth still more than when it had been a paradise, only 
because, grief had appeared on it. Alas, I had always loved grief and sorrow, 
but only for myself, for myself, while over them I wept, pitying them. I 
stretched out my arms to them, in despair accusing, cursing, and despising 
myself. I told them that I, I alone, had done it all; that it was I who had 
brought them depravity, infection, and the lie!

 I beseeched them to crucify me on a cross, I taught them how to make a cross. I 
couldn't, I hadn't the strength to kill myself, but I wanted to take the 
suffering from them, I longed for suffering, I longed to shed my blood to the 
last drop in this suffering. But they just laughed at me and in the end began to 
consider me some sort of holy fool. They vindicated me, they said they had 
received only what they themselves had wanted, and that everything could not but 
be as it was. Finally, they announced to me that I was becoming dangerous for 
them and that they would put me in a madhouse if I didn't keep quiet. Here 
sorrow entered my soul with such force that my heart was wrung, and I felt I was 
going to die, and here. Well, here I woke up.

It was already morning, that is, not light yet, but it was about six o'clock. I 
came to my senses in the same armchair, my candle had burned all the way down, 
everyone was asleep at the captain's, and around me was a silence rare in our 
apartment. First of all, I jumped up extremely surprised; nothing like that had 
ever happened to me, even down to trifling little details: for instance, never 
before had I fallen asleep in my armchair like that. Here suddenly, while I was 
standing and coming to my senses -suddenly my revolver flashed before me, ready, 
loaded -but I instantly pushed it away from me! Oh, life, life now! I lifted up 
my arms and called out to the eternal truth; did not call out, but wept; 
rapture, boundless rapture, elevated my whole being. Yes, life and -preaching! I 
decided on preaching that same moment, and, of course, for the rest of my life! 
I'm going out to preach, I want to preach w hat? The truth, for I saw it, saw it 
with my own eyes, saw all its glory!

And so, since then I've been preaching! What's more -I love those who laugh at 
me more than all the rest. Why that's so I don't know and can't explain, but let 
it be so. They say I'm already getting confused now, that is, if I'm already so 
confused now, how will it be later? The veritable truth: I'm getting confused 
now, and maybe it will be worse later. And of course I'm going to get confused a 
few times before I discover how to preach, that is, in what words and in what 
deeds, because it's very hard to do. I see it clear as day even now, but listen: 
is there anyone who doesn't get confused? And yet everyone goes toward one and 
the same thing, at least everyone strives for one and the same thing, from the 
sage to the last robber, only by different paths. This is an old truth, but what 
is new here is this: I cannot get very confused. 

Because I saw the truth, I saw and I know that people can be beautiful and happy 
without losing the ability to live on earth. I will not and cannot believe that 
evil is the normal condition of people. And they all laugh merely at this belief 
of mine. But how can I not believe: I saw the truth it's not that my mind 
invented it, but I saw it, I saw it, and its living image -filled my soul for 
all time. I saw it in such full-filled wholeness that I cannot believe it is 
impossible for people to have it. And so, how could I get confused? I'll wander 
of, of course, even several times, and will maybe even speak in other people's 
words, but not for long: the living image of what I saw will always be with me 
and will always correct and direct me. Oh, I'm hale, I'm fresh, I'm going, 
going, even if it's for a thousand years. 

You know, I even wanted to conceal, at first, that I corrupted them all, but 
that was a mistake -already the first mistake! But truth whispered to me that I 
was lying, and guarded and directed me. But how to set up paradise -I don't 
know, because I'm unable to put it into words. After my dream, I lost words. At 
least all the main words, the most necessary ones. But so be it: I'll go and 
I'll keep talking, tirelessly, because after all I saw it with my own eyes, 
thought I can't recount what I saw. But that is what the scoffers don't 
understand: 
He had a dream,” they say, a delirium, a hallucination.” Eh! As if that's so 
clever? And how proud they are! A dream? What is a dream? And is our life not a 
dream? I'll say more: let it never, let it never come true, and let there be no 
paradise (that I can understand!) -well, but I will preach all the same. And yet 
it's so simple: in one day, in one hour -it could all be set up at once! 

The main thing is -love others as yourself, that's the main thing, and it's 
everything, there's no need for anything else at all: it will immediately be 
discovered how to set things up. And yet this is merely an old truth, repeated 
and read a billion times, but still it has never taken root! 

The consciousness of life is higher than life, the knowledge of the laws of 
happiness is higher than happiness” -that is what must be fought! And I will. If 
only everyone wants it, everything can be set up at once.
And I found that little girl. And I'll go! I'll go!

The end.

Last comment.
A BBC production called "The Dream" (1990), was adapted by Murray Watts from "The Dream of 
a Ridiculous Man". "The Dream" is a monologue. The director was Norman Stone 
("Shadowlands") and it stars Jeremy Irons. There is a short animation movie adapted from the story 
by Aleksandr Petrov, also titled The Dream of a Ridiculous Man.