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I have been my own spider!

And, at the same time, I cannot greatly blame myself. Who, indeed, tell me, pray, is ever to blame for anything–alone? Or, to put it better, we are all to blame, and yet we can’t be blamed. Circumstances determine us; they shove us into one road or another, and then they punish us for it. Every man has his destiny…. Wait a bit, wait a bit! A cleverly worked-out but true comparison has just come into my head. As the clouds are first condensed from the vapours of earth, rise from out of her bosom, then separate, move away from her, and at last bring her prosperity or ruin: so, about every one of us, and out of ourselves, is fashioned–how is one to express it?–is fashioned a sort of element, which has afterwards a destructive or saving influence on us. This element I call destiny…. In other words, and speaking simply, every one makes his own destiny and destiny makes every one….

Every one makes his destiny–yes!… but people like us make it too much–that’s what’s wrong with us! Consciousness is awakened too early in us; too early we begin to keep watch on ourselves…. We Russians have set ourselves no other task in life but the cultivation of our own personality, and when we’re children hardly grown-up we set to work to cultivate it, this luckless personality! Receiving no definite guidance from without, with no real respect for anything, no strong belief in anything, we are free to make what we choose of ourselves … one can’t expect every one to understand on the spot the uselessness of intellect ‘seething in vain activity’ … and so we get again one monster the more in the world, one more of those worthless creatures in whom habits of self-ccnsciousness distort the very striving for truth, and a ludicrous simplicity exists side by side with a pitiful duplicity … one of those beings of impotent, restless thought who all their lives know neither the satisfaction of natural activity, nor genuine suffering, nor the genuine thrill of conviction…. Mixing up together in ourselves the defects of all ages, we rob each defect of its good redeeming side … we are as silly as children, but we are not sincere as they are; we are cold as old people, but we have none of the good sense of old age…. To make up, we are psychologists. Oh yes, we are great psychologists! But our psychology is akin to pathology; our psychology is that subtle study of the laws of morbid condition and morbid development, with which healthy people have nothing to do…. And, what is the chief point, we are not young, even in our youth we are not young!

And at the same time–why libel ourselves? Were we never young, did we never know the play, the fire, the thrill of life’s forces? We too have been in Arcady, we too have strayed about her bright meadows!… Have you chanced, strolling about a copse, to come across those dark grasshoppers which, jumping up from under your very feet, suddenly with a whirring sound expand bright red wings, fly a few yards, and then drop again into the grass? So our dark youth at times spread its particoloured wings for a few moments and for no long flight…. Do you remember our silent evening walks, the four of us together, beside your garden fence, after some long, warm, spirited conversation? Do you remember those blissful moments? Nature, benign and stately, took us to her bosom. We plunged, swooning, into a flood of bliss. All around, the sunset with a sudden and soft flush, the glowing sky, the earth bathed in light, everything on all sides seemed full of the fresh and fiery breath of youth, the joyous triumph of some deathless happiness. The sunset flamed; and, like it, our rapturous hearts burned with soft and passionate fire, and the tiny leaves of the young trees quivered faintly and expectantly over our heads, as though in response to the inward tremor of vague feelings and anticipations in us. Do you remember the purity, the goodness and trustfulness of ideas, the softening of noble hopes, the silence of full hearts? Were we not really then worth something better than what life has brought us to? Why was it ordained for us only at rare moments to see the longed-for shore, and never to stand firmly on it, never to touch it: