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04 - A Confession - Leo Tolstory · Philosophy and Faith

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  Speaker 1: Chapter four of a confession by Leo Tolstoy. My life
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  Speaker 1: came to a standstill. I could breathe, eat, drink, and sleep,
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  Speaker 1: and I could not help doing these things. But there
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  Speaker 1: was no life, for there were no wishes the fulfillment
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  Speaker 1: of which I could consider reasonable. If I desired anything,
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  Speaker 1: I knew in advance that whether I satisfied my desire
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  Speaker 1: or not, nothing would come of it. Had a very
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  Speaker 1: common offer to fulfill my desires. I should not have
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  Speaker 1: known what to ask if, in moments of intoxication I
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  Speaker 1: felt something which, though not a wish, was a habit
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  Speaker 1: left by former wishes. In sober moments, I knew this
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  Speaker 1: to be a delusion, and that there was really nothing
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  Speaker 1: to wish for. I could not even wish to know
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  Speaker 1: the truth, for I guessed of what it consisted. The
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  Speaker 1: truth was that life is meaningless. I had, as it were, lived,
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  Speaker 1: lived and walked, walked till I had come to the
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  Speaker 1: precipice and seen clearly that there was nothing ahead of
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  Speaker 1: me but destruction. It was impossible to stop, impossible to
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  Speaker 1: go back, and impossible to close my eyes or avoid
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  Speaker 1: seeing that there was nothing ahead but suffering and real death,
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  Speaker 1: complete annihilation. It had come to this that I, a healthy,
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  Speaker 1: fortunate man, felt I could no longer live. Some irresistible
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  Speaker 1: power impelled me to rid myself, one way or the
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  Speaker 1: other of life. I cannot say I wished to kill myself.
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  Speaker 1: The power which drew me away from life was stronger, fuller,
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  Speaker 1: and more widespread than any mere wish. It was a
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  Speaker 1: force similar to the former striving to live, only in
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  Speaker 1: a contrary direction. All my strength drew me away from life.
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  Speaker 1: The thought of self destruction now came to me as
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  Speaker 1: naturally as thoughts of how to improve my life had
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  Speaker 1: come formerly. And it was seductive that I had to
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  Speaker 1: be cutting with myself lest I should carry it out
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  Speaker 1: too hastily. I did not wish to hurry, because I
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  Speaker 1: wanted to use all efforts to disentangle the matter. If
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  Speaker 1: I cannot unravel matters, there will always be time. And
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  Speaker 1: it was then that I, a man favored by fortune,
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  Speaker 1: hit a chord for myself, lest I should hang myself
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  Speaker 1: from the cross piece of the partition in my room,
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  Speaker 1: where I undressed alone every evening, and I ceased to
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  Speaker 1: go out shooting with a gun, lest I should be
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  Speaker 1: tempted by so easy a way of ending my life.
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  Speaker 1: I did not myself know what I wanted. I feared life,
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  Speaker 1: desired to escape from it, and yet still hoped something
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  Speaker 1: of it. And all this befell me at a time
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  Speaker 1: when all around me I had what is considered complete
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  Speaker 1: good fortune. I was not yet fifty. I had a
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  Speaker 1: good wife who loved me and whom I loved, good children,
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  Speaker 1: and a large estate, which, without much effort on my part,
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  Speaker 1: improved and increased. I was respected by my relations and
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  Speaker 1: acquaintances more than at any previous time. I was praised
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  Speaker 1: by others, and without much self deception, could consider that
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  Speaker 1: my name was famous, and far from being insane or
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  Speaker 1: mentally diseased, I enjoyed, on the contrary, a strength of
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  Speaker 1: mind and body such as I had seldom met among
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  Speaker 1: men of my kind. Physically, I could keep up with
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  Speaker 1: the peasants at mowing, and mentally I could work for
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  Speaker 1: eight and ten hours at a stretch without experiencing any
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  Speaker 1: ill results from such exertion. And in this situation I
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  Speaker 1: came to this that I could not live, and, fearing death,
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  Speaker 1: had to employ cunning with myself to avoid taking my
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  Speaker 1: own life. My mental condition presented itself to me in
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  Speaker 1: this way, my life is a stupid and spiteful joke
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  Speaker 1: someone has played on me. Though I did not acknowledge
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  Speaker 1: a someone who created me. Yet such a presentation that
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  Speaker 1: someone had played an evil and stupid joke on me
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  Speaker 1: by placing me in this world was the form of
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  Speaker 1: expression that suggested itself most naturally to me. Involuntarily. It
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  Speaker 1: appeared to me that there somewhere was someone who amused
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  Speaker 1: himself by watching how I lived for thirty or forty years, learning, developing,
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  Speaker 1: maturing in body and mind, and now having with matured
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  Speaker 1: mental powers, reached the summit of life, from which it
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  Speaker 1: all lay before me. I stood on that summit like
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  Speaker 1: an arch fool, seeing clearly that there was nothing in life,
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  Speaker 1: and that there has been and will be nothing. And
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  Speaker 1: he was amused. But whether that someone laughing at me
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  Speaker 1: existed or not, I was none the better off. I
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  Speaker 1: could give no reasonable meaning to any single action or
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  Speaker 1: to my whole life. I was only surprised that I
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  Speaker 1: could have avoided understanding this from the very beginning. It
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  Speaker 1: had been so long known to all to day or tomorrow,
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  Speaker 1: sickness and death will come. They had come already to
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  Speaker 1: those I love, or to me, nothing will remain but
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  Speaker 1: stench and worms. Sooner or later my affairs, whatever they
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  Speaker 1: may be, will be forgotten, and I shall not exist.
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  Speaker 1: Then why go on making any effort? How can man
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  Speaker 1: fail to see this? And how to go on living?
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  Speaker 1: That is what is surprising. One can only live while
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  Speaker 1: one is intoxicated with life. As soon as one is sober,
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  Speaker 1: it is impossible not to see that it is all
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  Speaker 1: mere fraud, and a stupid fraud. That is precisely what
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  Speaker 1: it is. There is nothing either amusing or witty about it.
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  Speaker 1: It is simply cruel and stupid. There is an Eastern
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  Speaker 1: fable told long ago of a traveler overtaken on a
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  Speaker 1: plane by an enraged beast. Escaping from the beast, he
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  Speaker 1: gets into a dry well, but sees at the bottom
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  Speaker 1: of the well a dragon that has opened his jaws
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  Speaker 1: to swallow him. And the unfortunate man, not daring to
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  Speaker 1: climb out lest he should be destroyed by the enraged beast,
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  Speaker 1: and not daring to leap to the bottom of the
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  Speaker 1: well lest he should be eaten by the dragon, seizes
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  Speaker 1: a twig growing in the crack in the wall and
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  Speaker 1: clings to it. His hands are growing weaker and he
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  Speaker 1: feels that he will soon have to resign himself to
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  Speaker 1: the destruction that awaits him above or below, but still
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  Speaker 1: he clings on. Then he sees that two mice, a
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  Speaker 1: black one and a white one, go regularly around and
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  Speaker 1: round the stem of the twig to which he is
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  Speaker 1: clinging and gnaw at it, and as soon as the
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  Speaker 1: twig itself will snap, he will fall into the dragon's jaws.
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  Speaker 1: The traveler sees this and knows that he will inevitably perish,
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  Speaker 1: But while still hanging on, he looks around, sees some
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  Speaker 1: drop of honey on the leaves of the twig, reaches
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  Speaker 1: to them with his tongue and licks them. So, I too,
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  Speaker 1: clung to the twig of life, knowing that the dragon
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  Speaker 1: of death was inevitably awaiting me, ready to tear me
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  Speaker 1: to pieces, and I could not understand why I had
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  Speaker 1: fallen into such torment. I tried to lick the honey,
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  Speaker 1: which formerly consoled me, but the honey no longer gave
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  Speaker 1: me pleasure, and the white and black mice of day
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  Speaker 1: and night gnawed at the branch by which I hung.
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  Speaker 1: I saw the dragon clearly, and the honey no longer
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  Speaker 1: tasted sweet. I only saw the inescapable dragon and the mice,
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  Speaker 1: and I could not tear or my gaze from them.
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  Speaker 1: And this is not a fable, but the real, unanswerable truth,
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  Speaker 1: intelligible to all. The deception of the joys of life,
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  Speaker 1: which formerly allayed my terror of the dragon, now no
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  Speaker 1: longer deceived me, no matter how often I may be told,
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  Speaker 1: you cannot understand the meaning of lives, So do not
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  Speaker 1: think about it, but live. I can no longer do it.
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  Speaker 1: I have already done it too long. I cannot now
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  Speaker 1: help seeing day and night going round and bringing me
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  Speaker 1: to death. That is all I see, For that alone
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  Speaker 1: is true. All else is false. The two drops of
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  Speaker 1: honey which diverted my eyes from the cruel truth longer
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  Speaker 1: than the rest, my love of family and of writing art,
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  Speaker 1: as I called it, were no longer sweet to me. Family,
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  Speaker 1: I said to myself. But my family, wife and children
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  Speaker 1: are also human. They are placed just as I am.
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  Speaker 1: They must either live in a lie or see the
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  Speaker 1: terrible truth. Why should they live? Why should I love them?
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  Speaker 1: Guard them, bring them up, or watch them that they
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  Speaker 1: may come to the despair that I feel, or else
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  Speaker 1: be std upid loving them? I cannot hide the truth
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  Speaker 1: from them. Each step in knowledge leads them to the truth,
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  Speaker 1: and the truth is death, art, poetry, under the influence
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  Speaker 1: of success, in the praise of men. I had long
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  Speaker 1: assured myself that this was the thing one could do,
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  Speaker 1: though death was drawing near death, which destroys all things,
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  Speaker 1: including my work and its remembrance. But soon I saw
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  Speaker 1: that it too was a fraud. It was plain to
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  Speaker 1: me that art is an adornment of life, in a
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  Speaker 1: worment to life. But life had lost its attraction for me.
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  Speaker 1: So how could I attract others? As long as I
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  Speaker 1: was not living my own life, but was born on
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  Speaker 1: the waves of some other life. As long as I
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  Speaker 1: believed that life had a meaning, though one I could
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  Speaker 1: not express, the reflection of life, and poetry and art
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  Speaker 1: of all kinds afforded me pleasure. It was pleasant to
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  Speaker 1: look at life in the mirror of art. But when
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  Speaker 1: I began to seek the meaning of life and felt
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  Speaker 1: the necessity of living my own life, that mirror became
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  Speaker 1: for me unnecessary, superfluous, ridiculous, or painful. I could no
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  Speaker 1: longer soothe myself with what I now saw on the mesas,
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  Speaker 1: namely that my position was stupid and desperate. It was
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  Speaker 1: all very well to enjoy the sight, when in the
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  Speaker 1: depth of my soul I believed that my life had
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  Speaker 1: a meaning. Then the play of lights, comic, tragic, touching,
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  Speaker 1: beautiful and terrible in life amused me. No sweetness of
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  Speaker 1: honey could be sweet to me. When I saw the
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  Speaker 1: dragon and saw the mice gnawing away my support. Nor
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  Speaker 1: was that all. Had I simply understood that life had
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  Speaker 1: no meaning, I could have borne it quietly, knowing that
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  Speaker 1: that was my lot. But I could not satisfy myself
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  Speaker 1: with that. Had I been like a man living in
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  Speaker 1: a wood from which he knows there is no exit,
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  Speaker 1: I could have lived. But I was like one lost
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  Speaker 1: in a wood, who, horrified at having lost his way,
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  Speaker 1: rushes about, wishing to find the road. He knows that
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  Speaker 1: each step he takes confuses him more and more, but
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  Speaker 1: still he cannot help rushing about. It was indeed terrible,
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  Speaker 1: and to rid myself with the terror, I wished to
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  Speaker 1: kill myself. I experienced terror at what awaited me. Knew
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  Speaker 1: that the terror was even worse than the position I
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  Speaker 1: was in. But still I could not patiently await the end.
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  Speaker 1: However convincing the argument might be that in any case,
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  Speaker 1: some vessel in my heart would give way, or something
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  Speaker 1: would burst, and all would be over. I could not
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  Speaker 1: patiently await that end. The horror of darkness was too great,
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  Speaker 1: and I wished to free myself of it as quickly
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  Speaker 1: as possible by newsir bullet. That was the feeling which
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  Speaker 1: drew me most strongly towards suicide. End of Chapter four