Surprisingly charming. I found the rambling inner monologue much easier to read here than in White Nights, which felt much more frantic.
Highlights
Here's how it was. I'll simply tell it in order. (Order!) Gentlemen, I'm far from being a literary man, as you'll see, well so be it, but I'll tell it as I myself understand it. That's the horror of it for me, that I understand everything.
Oh sincerity! That's what they win you over with! And it was so charming in her!
What, is it a sin to acknowledge this? I want to judge myself and am doing so.
Oh, I still didn't understand then! I still didn't understand anything, anything then! I didn't understand until today!
And even now I don't understand, even now I don't understand anything! I just now said that she might have been thinking that she should choose the worse of the two misfortunes, that is, the merchant. But who was worse for her than - the merchant or I? The merchant or the pawnbroker who quotes Goethe? That's still a question! What question? You don't understand even that: the answer is lying on the table, and you say 'what question'! But to hell with me! I'm not the point here at all . . . And at the same time, what do I care now - whether I'm the point or not? That's something I'm utterly incapable of deciding. I'd better go to bed. I have a headache . . .
But I wanted breadth, I wanted to instil breadth right into her heart, to instil it in her heart's vista, isn't that so?
[...] instead I acted, so to speak, with pride - I spoke almost silently. And I'm a master of speaking silently - all my life I've spoken silently and I've lived through entire tragedies in silence.
Oh, I've always been proud, I've always wanted all or nothing! And that's precisely why I'm not for half-measures in happiness, but wanted everything - and that's precisely why I was forced to act as I did then, as if to say: 'Figure it out for yourself and appreciate me!' Because, you must agree, if I had begun by explaining and prompting, being evasive and asking for respect - then you, you see, it would have been as if I were asking for charity . . . However . . . However, why am I talking about this!
Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid! I straight away and ruthlessly (and I want to emphasize that it was ruthlessly) explained to her then, in a few words, that the magnanimity of young people was lovely, but not worth a brass button. Why not? Because it comes cheap, they get it without having lived; it's all, so to speak, the 'first impressions of existence', but let's see you do some work! Cheap magnanimity is always easy, and even to give your life - even that's easy, because that's just a matter of the blood boiling and an over-abundance of energy, one passionately longs for beauty! No, take an act of magnanimity that is difficult, quiet, muted, without splendour, where you're slandered, where there's much sacrifice and not a drop of glory - where you, a shining man, are brought forward before everyone as a scoundrel, when you are the most honest man in the world - come on, try your hand at that sort of deed, no, sir, you'll give it up!
But a loving woman, oh, a loving woman idolizes even the vices, even the villainy of her beloved being. He would not seek such justifications for his villainy as she will find for him.
Listen: I was certain of her love then. You see, she would throw herself on my neck then. That meant she loved me, or rather - she wished to love me. Yes, that's what it was: she wished to love, she sought to love. But the main thing, you see, is that there weren't any villainies for which she needed to find justifications.
It goes without saying that it's good that I'm telling this to myself now, but what could have been more stupid than if I had described all this out loud to her then? That was the reason behind my proud silence, and that was the reason we sat in silence. Because what would she have understood?
Oh, how terrible is the truth on this earth! This charming one, this meek one, this heaven - she was a tyrant, the unbearable tyrant of my soul and my tormentor! I'd be slandering myself, you see, if I didn't say that! You think I didn't love her? Who can say that I didn't love her?
I couldn't contain myself, with this phrase I launched into self-justifications, as it were, and that was all she needed, a fresh instance of my humiliation. She burst out in malicious laughter.
And what do you: it turned out (I say this to my credit), it turned out exactly as I had foreseen and supposed, though without realizing that I had foreseen and supposed this. I don't know whether I'm expressing myself clearly.
She came up to the bed and stood over me. I heard everything; although a dead silence had fallen, I heard even that silence.
Oh, what a whirlwind of thoughts, sensations raced through my mind in less than a moment; long live the electricity of human thought!
Why, then, did I accept death? But I will ask: What need would I have of life after the revolver was raised against me by the being whom I adored?
And so - if it's shame, let it be shame, if it's disgrace, let it be disgrace, if it's degradation, let it be degradation, and the worse, the better - that's what I chose.
Having stood up to the revolver, I had avenged all of my gloomy past. And event though nobody knew about it, she knew about it, and that was everything for me, because she was everything to me, all my hopes for the future in my dreams! She was the only person whom I was preparing for myself, and I didn't need another - and now she knew everything; at least she knew that she had unjustly hurried to join my enemies. This thought delighted me.
If she'd started singing in my presence, then she had forgotten about me - that's what was clear and terrible. My heart sensed this. But rapture shone in my soul and overcame my fear.
She kept pleading with me not to say or remember any of this.
Ah, let her, let her despise me, for her whole life even, but let her live, live!
How very thin she is in the coffin, how sharp her little nose has become! Her eyelashes lie like arrows.
What are your laws to me now? What do I need with your customs, your ways, your life, your government, your faith? Let your judges judge me, let them take me to court, to public court, and I will say that I acknowledge nothing. The judge will shout: 'Silence, officer!' And I will cry out to him: 'What power do you now possess that I should obey you? Why has dark inertia shattered that which was dearest of all? What need have I now of your laws? I part company with you.' Oh, it's all the same to me!
Blind, she's blind! Dead, she doesn't hear! You don't know with what paradise I would have surrounded you. The paradise was in my soul; I would have planted it all round you! Well, you wouldn't have loved me - so be it, what of it? Everything would have been like that, everything would have stayed like that. You would have talked to me only as a friend - and we would have rejoiced and laughed with joy, as we looked into each other's eyes. That's how we would have lived.
They say that the sun gives life to the universe. The sun will rise and - look at it, isn't it dead? Everything is dead, the dead are everywhere. There are only people, and all around them is silence - that's the earth.