Poor People by Fyodor Dostoevsky — Read

1st July

Whimsy, whimsy, Varenka, simply whimsy! Just go and leave you, and what won't you think over with that little head of yours. This isn't right and that isn't right! But I can see now that it's all whimsy. What is it you lack with us then, my dear, just tell me that! You're loved, you love us, we're all contented and happy – what else is there? Well and what are you going to do among strangers? I mean, you probably don't yet know what a stranger is?. No, you be so good as to ask me about it, and I'll tell you what a stranger is. I know him, my dear, I know him well; I've had occasion to eat his bread. He's angry, Varenka, angry, so very angry that if your little heart is wanting, he tears it apart with a complaint, a reproach and a nasty look. You're nice and warm with us – as if you'd found refuge in a little nest. And you'll leave us headless, in a way, too. Well what will we do without you; what will I, an old man, do then? We don't need you? You're of no use? How do you mean, of no use? No, my dear, you judge for yourself, how can you be no use? You're of great use to me, Varenka. You have this beneficial influence. Here I am thinking of you now, and I'm cheerful. I write you a letter sometimes and set out all my feelings in it, to which I receive a detailed reply from you. I've bought you a bit of a wardrobe, had a hat made; at times you send me some errand and I. No, how can you be no use? And then what am I going to do alone in my old age, what will I be good for? Perhaps you didn't even think of that, Varenka; no, you think precisely of that – "what, then, what will he be good for without me then?" I've grown used to you, my dear. Otherwise what will come of it? I'll go down to the Neva, and that'll be the end of it. Yes, it's the truth, that's how it'll be, Varenka; what else will there remain for me to do without you? Ah, sweetheart, Varenka! Clearly you want a drayman to cart me away to the Volkovo cemetery; some common old beggar woman alone to accompany my coffin, you want them to scatter sand on top of me, then go away and leave me there alone. It's a sin, a sin, my dear! Truly, it's a sin, I swear to God, it is! I'm sending you back your book, my little friend, Varenka, and if, my little friend, you ask my opinion regarding your book, then I shall say that in all my life I've not had occasion to read such splendid books. I ask myself now, my dear, how is it that I lived like such an oaf before, may the Lord forgive me? What was I doing? What forests have I come from? I mean, I know nothing, my dear, I know precisely nothing! I know nothing at all! I'll tell you straight, Varenka – I'm not an educated man; until now I've read little, I've read very little, almost nothing: I've read A Picture of a Man, a wise composition; I've read The Boy Who Plays Various Things on the Bells ‌and The Cranes of Ibycus* – that's all, and I've never read anything more. ‌Now I've read ‘The Postmaster'* here in your book; you know, what I'll say to you, my dear, is that sometimes it happens that you're alive, but you don't know that right alongside you there you've got this book, where the whole of your life is laid out in detail. And things that never occurred to you yourself previously, well here, as you begin to read in this book, bit by bit you yourself remember them, and you discover and divine the meaning of them. And finally, this is also what I came to love your book for: some other work, whatever it might be, you read and read till you're fit to burst sometimes – and it's so complicated that it's as if you don't even understand it. I, for example, I'm dim, I'm dim by nature, so I can't read works that are too important; but you read this – it's like I wrote it myself, it's as if, to give an example, my own heart, such as it is, he took it, turned it inside out for people and described everything in detail – that's what! And it's a simple matter, my God; nothing to it! Truly, I would have written it the same way too; why shouldn't I have written it? After all, I feel the same too, just absolutely like in the book, and I too have at times been in such situations myself as, to give an example, this Samson Vyrin, the poor man. And how many Samson Vyrins are there among us, just such warm-hearted, hapless men! And how cleverly everything is described! I almost shed tears, my dear, when I read that he'd turned to drink, the sinner, so that he'd lost his senses, become a drunkard and slept the whole day under a sheepskin coat, and drowned his sorrows with grog, and cried piteously, wiping his eyes with his dirty coat flap, when he remembered his lost sheep, his daughter Dunyasha! No, it's like real life! You read it; it's like real life! It lives! I've seen it myself – all of it lives near me; there's Tereza, if you like – why go further afield? – there's our poor civil servant too, if you like – after all, perhaps he's just as much a Samson Vyrin, only he has a different name, Gorshkov. It's a common business, my dear, and it could happen to you and to me. And the count that lives on Nevsky Avenue or the embankment, he too will be the same, he'll just seem to be different, because they have everything their own way, in the very best tone, but he too will be the same, anything could happen, and the same thing could happen to me too. That's the way it is, my dear, and here you are wanting to leave us too; but, you know, Varenka, sin could take me unawares. And you could ruin both yourself and me, my dear. Ah, you little flower of mine, for God's sake turn all those wilful thoughts out of your little head and don't torment me for no reason. Well how are you, my weak, unfledged little nestling, how are you to feed yourself, to keep yourself from ruin, to defend yourself from villains? Come now, Varenka, pull yourself together; don't listen to nonsensical advice and slanders, but read your book again, read it attentively; it'll be of benefit to you.