We lack "something," that is true, and that means that, lift the robe of
our muse, and you will find within an empty void. Let me remind you that
the writers, who we say are for all time or are simply good, and who
intoxicate us, have one common and very important characteristic; they
are going towards something and are summoning you towards it, too, and
you feel not with your mind, but with your whole being, that they have
some object, just like the ghost of Hamlet's father, who did not come
and disturb the imagination for nothing. Some have more immediate
objects--the abolition of serfdom, the liberation of their country,
politics, beauty, or simply vodka, like Denis Davydov; others have
remote objects--God, life beyond the grave, the happiness of humanity,
and so on. The best of them are realists and paint life as it is, but,
through every line's being soaked in the consciousness of an object, you
feel, besides life as it is, the life which ought to be, and that
captivates you. And we? We! We paint life as it is, but beyond that--
nothing at all.... Flog us and we can do no more! We have neither
immediate nor remote aims, and in our soul there is a great empty space.
We have no politics, we do not believe in revolution, we have no God, we
are not afraid of ghosts, and I personally am not afraid even of death
and blindness. One who wants nothing, hopes for nothing, and fears
nothing, cannot be an artist. Whether it is a disease or not--what it is
does not matter; but we ought to recognize that our position is worse
than a governor's. I don't know how it will be with us in ten or twenty
years--then circumstances may be different, but meanwhile it would be
rash to expect of us anything of real value, apart from the question
whether we have talent or not. We write mechanically, merely obeying the
long-established arrangement in accordance with which some men go into
the government service, others into trade, others write.... Grigorovitch
and you think I am clever. Yes, I am at least so far clever as not to
conceal from myself my disease, and not to deceive myself, and not to