湖の彼岸　－向こう岸の街、水面に映った社会、二重写しの自分－

PART FIVE CHAPTER 4 (OXFORD p.399-)

'I only killed a louse, Sonya, a unless, vile, pernicious louse.'
'Human being louse!'
'Of course I know she wasn't a louse,' he answered with a strange look. 'But I am not telling the truth, Sonya,' He added. 'It is a long time since I have told or known truth...This was all wrong; your judgement is sound there. There were quite, quite, quite different reason!...I have not talked to anybody for a long time, Sonya...Now my head aches badly...'
His eyes shone with the fire of fever. He was almost beginning to wander; an uneasy smile was on his lips. His utter exhausion was apparent underneath his feverish ecitement. Sonya could understand his weariness. Her head also was biginning to feel dizzy. And he spoke so strangely; some of it seemed clear enough, but still...'But how? How? Oh God!' And she wrung her hands in despair.
'No, Sonya, that's all wrong,' he began again, suddenly raising his head as though struck by a new turn of thought that had aroused him again. 'Taht's not it! Rather...suppose (yes, it's much better this way), suppose I am ambitious, envious, malicious, vile, vindictive, well...and have perhaps a tendancy to madness. (Let's have it all at once! They've talked of madness before, I know.) I told you just now that I couldn't keep myself at the university. But do you know, I might perhaps have done it? My mother would have sent me enough to pay my fees and I could probably have earned money for boots and clothes and food. There was teaching to be got; I was offered half a rouble a lesson. Razumikhin works! But I turned nasty and wouldn't do it. Yes, I turned nasty---that's the right word! Then I lurked in a corner like a spider. You've been in my wretched little hole, of course, you've seen it...but do you know, Sonnya, that low ceilings and cramped rooms crush the mind and the spirit? Oh, how I hated that hole. But all the same I would not leave it. I deliberately stayed in it! For days on end I didn't go out; I wouldn't work, I wouldn't even eat; I just lay there. If Nastasya brought me food, I ate it; if not, I let the day go by without asking, on purpose, out of spite! I had no light at night, and I lay in the dark, because I wouldn't earn the money for candles. I should have been studying, but I had sold my books, and the dust is still lying inches thick on the notebooks and papers on my table. I preferred to lie and think. I spent all the time thinking...And all the time I had such dreams, all sorts of strange dreams; no need to tell you what they were! But it was only then that I began to fancy that...No, that's not it; I am getting it wrong again! You see, I kept on asking myself, ''why am I so stupid that when other poeple are stupid and I know for a certainty that they are, I don't even want to be cleverer than they?'' Then I realized that if we have to wait for everybody to become clever it will take too long. Then I saw that it will never happen, that people don't change, and nobody can chang them, and it's not worth the trouble of trying! Yes, that's it! That's the law of their nature...The law of their nature, Sonya! That's it...And I know now, Sonya, that the man of strong and powerful mind and spirit is their master! The man who dares much is right in their eyes. The man who tramples on the greatest number of things is their law-giver, and whoever is most audacious is most certainly right. So things have always been, and so they will remain, Anyone who is not blind can see it!'