University of Virginia Library

17.
CHAPTER XVII.

"WE lived at first in the country, then in the
city, and, if the final misfortune had not hap-
pened, I should have lived thus until my old age
and should then have believed that I had had a
good life,—not too good, but, on the other hand,

not bad,—an existence such as other people lead.

I should not have understood the abyss of mis-
fortune and ignoble falsehood in which I floun-
dered about, feeling that something was not
right. I felt, in the first place, that I, a man,
who, according to my ideas, ought to be the
master, wore the petticoats, and that I could
not get rid of them. The principal cause of my
subjection was the children. I should have
liked to free myself, but I could not. Bringing
up the children, and resting upon them, my wife
ruled. I did not then realize that she could not
help ruling, especially because, in marrying, she
was morally superior to me, as every young girl
is incomparably superior to the man, since she is
incomparably purer. Strange thing! The ordi-
nary wife in our society is a very commonplace
person or worse, selfish, gossiping, whimsical,
whereas the ordinary young girl, until the age of
twenty, is a charming being, ready for every-
thing that is beautiful and lofty. Why is this
so? Evidently because husbands pervert them,
and lower them to their own level.

"In truth, if boys and girls are born equal, the
little girls find themselves in a better situation.

In the first place, the young girl is not subjected
to the perverting conditions to which we are sub-
jected. She has neither cigarettes, nor wine, nor
cards, nor comrades, nor public houses, nor pub-
lic functions. And then the chief thing is that
she is physically pure, and that is why, in marry-
ing, she is superior to her husband. She is
superior to man as a young girl, and when she
becomes a wife in our society, where there is no
need to work in order to live, she becomes supe-
rior, also, by the gravity of the acts of genera-
tion, birth, and nursing.

"Woman, in bringing a child into the world,
and giving it her bosom, sees clearly that her
affair is more serious than the affair of man,
who sits in the Zemstvo, in the court. She
knows that in these functions the main thing is
money, and money can be made in different
ways, and for that very reason money is not in-
evitably necessary, like nursing a child. Conse-
quently woman is necessarily superior to man,
and must rule. But man, in our society, not only
does not recognize this, but, on the contrary, al-
ways looks upon her from the height of his
grandeur, despising what she does.

"Thus my wife despised me for my work at
the Zemstvo, because she gave birth to children
and nursed them. I, in turn, thought that
woman's labor was most contemptible, which one
might and should laugh at.

"Apart from the other motives, we were also
separated by a mutual contempt. Our relations
grew ever more hostile, and we arrived at that
period when, not only did dissent provoke hostil-
ity, but hostility provoked dissent. Whatever
she might say, I was sure in advance to hold a
contrary opinion; and she the same. Toward
the fourth year of our marriage it was tacitly de-
cided between us that no intellectual community
was possible, and we made no further attempts
at it. As to the simplest objects, we each held
obstinately to our own opinions. With strangers
we talked upon the most varied and most inti-
mate matters, but not with each other. Some-
times, in listening to my wife talk with others in
my presence, I said to myself: 'What a woman!

Everything that she says is a lie!' And I was
astonished that the person with whom she was
conversing did not see that she was lying. When
we were together; we were condemned to silence,

or to conversations which, I am sure, might have
been carried on by animals.

"'What time is it? It is bed-time. What is
there for dinner to-day? Where shall we go?

What is there in the newspaper? The doctor
must be sent for, Lise has a sore throat.'

"Unless we kept within the extremely narrow
limits of such conversation, irritation was sure to
ensue. The presence of a third person relieved
us, for through an intermediary we could still
communicate. She probably believed that she
was always right. As for me, in my own eyes, I
was a saint beside her.

"The periods of what we call love arrived as
often as formerly. They were more brutal, with-
out refinement, without ornament; but they were
short, and generally followed by periods of irri-
tation without cause, irritation fed by the most
trivial pretexts. We had spats about the coffee,
the table-cloth, the carriage, games of cards,—
trifles, in short, which could not be of the least
importance to either of us. As for me, a terrible
execration was continually boiling up within me.

I watched her pour the tea, swing her foot, lift
her spoon to her mouth, and blow upon hot

liquids or sip them, and I detested her as if these
had been so many crimes.

"I did not notice that these periods of irrita-
tion depended very regularly upon the periods of
love. Each of the latter was followed by one of
the former. A period of intense love was fol-
lowed by a long period of anger; a period of
mild love induced a mild irritation. We did not
understand that this love and this hatred were
two opposite faces of the same animal feeling.

To live thus would be terrible, if one understood
the philosophy of it. But we did not perceive
this, we did not analyze it. It is at once the
torture and the relief of man that, when he lives
irregularly, he can cherish illusions as to the mis-
eries of his situation. So did we. She tried to
forget herself in sudden and absorbing occupa-
tions, in household duties, the care of the furni-
ture, her dress and that of her children, in the
education of the latter, and in looking after
their health. These were occupations that did
not arise from any immediate necessity, but she
accomplished them as if her life and that of her
children depended on whether the pastry was
allowed to burn, whether a curtain was hanging

properly, whether a dress was a success, whether
a lesson was well learned, or whether a medicine
was swallowed.

"I saw clearly that to her all this was, more
than anything else, a means of forgetting, an
intoxication, just as hunting, card-playing, and
my functions at the Zemstvo served the same
purpose for me. It is true that in addition I had
an intoxication literally speaking,—tobacco,
which I smoked in large quantities, and wine,
upon which I did not get drunk, but of which I
took too much. Vodka before meals, and during
meals two glasses of wine, so that a perpetual
mist concealed the turmoil of existence.

"These new theories of hypnotism, of mental
maladies, of hysteria are not simple stupidities,
but dangerous or evil stupidities. Charcot, I am
sure, would have said that my wife was hysteri-
cal, and of me he would have said that I was an
abnormal being, and he would have wanted to
treat me. But in us there was nothing requiring
treatment. All this mental malady was the sim-
ple result of the fact that we were living im-
morally. Thanks to this immoral life, we suf-
fered, and, to stifle our sufferings, we tried ab-

The Kreutzer Sonata 103

normal means, which the doctors call the 'symp-
toms' of a mental malady,—
hysteria
.

"There was no occasion in all this to apply
for treatment to Charcot or to anybody else.

Neither suggestion nor bromide would have
been effective in working our cure. The needful
thing was an examination of the origin of the
evil. It is as when one is sitting on a nail; if you
see the nail, you see that which is irregular in
your life, and you avoid it. Then the pain stops,
without any necessity of stifling it. Our pain
arose from the irregularity of our life, and also
my jealousy, my irritability, and the necessity of
keeping myself in a state of perpetual semi-in-
toxication by hunting, card-playing, and, above
all, the use of wine and tobacco. It was because
of this irregularity that my wife so passionately
pursued her occupations. The sudden changes
of her disposition, from extreme sadness to ex-
treme gayety, and her babble, arose from the
need of forgetting herself, of forgetting her life,
in the continual intoxication of varied and very
brief occupations.

"Thus we lived in a perpetual fog, in which
we did not distinguish our condition. We were

like two galley-slaves fastened to the same ball,
cursing each other, poisoning each other's exist-
ence, and trying to shake each other off. I was
still unaware that ninety-nine families out of
every hundred live in the same hell, and that it
cannot be otherwise. I had not learned this fact
from others or from myself. The coincidences
that are met in regular, and even in irregular
life, are surprising. At the very period when
the life of parents becomes impossible, it be-
comes indispensable that they go to the city to
live, in order to educate their children. That is
what we did."

Posdnicheff became silent, and twice there es-
caped him, in the half-darkness, sighs, which at
that moment seemed to me like suppressed sobs.

Then he continued.