My friend, Paul Biryukov, having undertaken to write my
biography (for the complete edition of my works), has asked me to
furnish him with some particulars of my life.
I very much wished to fulfill his desire, and in my imagination
I began to compose my autobiography. At first, I involuntarily
began in the most natural way with only that which was good in my
life, merely adding to this good side, like shade on a picture, its
dark, repulsive features. But upon examining the events of my life
more seriously I saw that such an autobiography, though it might
not be a direct lie, would yet be a lie, owing to the biased
exposure and lighting up of the good and the hushing up or
smoothing down of the evil. Yet when I thought of writing the
whole truth without concealing anything that was bad in my life, I
was shocked at the impression which such an autobiography was bound
to produce. At that time I fell ill, and during the unavoidable
idleness of an invalid, my thoughts kept continually turning to my
reminiscences, and dreadful these reminiscences were.
I experienced with the utmost force what Pushkin says in his
verses, "Memory":
"When, for mankind, the weary day grows still, And on the City's silent heart there fall The half transparent shadows of the night With sleep, the sweet reward of daily work-- Then is the time when in the hush I wear Through dragging hours of heavy watchfulness: When, idle in the dark, most keen I feel The stinging serpent of my heart's remorse: Reflection seethes--and on my o'erwhelmed mind Rushes a multitude of woeful thoughts, While memory, her unending roll unfolds In silence, and with sick recoil I read The story of my life, and curse myself, And bitterly bewail with bitter tears-- But not one woeful line can I wash out!"
In the last line I would only make this alteration: instead of
"woeful line" I would say "shameful line can I wash out."
Under this impression I wrote the following in my diary:
6th January, 1903:--I am now suffering the torments of hell: I
am calling to mind all the infamies of my former life--these
reminiscences do not pass away and they poison my existence. Generally people regret that the individuality does not retain memory after death. What a happiness that it does not! What an anguish it would be if I remembered in this life all the evil, all that is painful to the conscience, committed by me in a previous life. And, if one remembers the good, one has to remember the evil too. What a happiness that reminiscences disappear with death and that there only remains consciousness, a consciousness which, as it were, represents the general outcome of the good and the evil, like a complex equation reduced to its simplest expression: x = a positive or a negative, a great or a small quantity.
Yes, the extinction of memory is a great happiness; with memory
one could not live a joyful life. As it is, with the extinction of
memory we enter into life with a clean white page upon which we can
write afresh good and evil.
It is true that not all my life was so fearfully bad. That
character prevailed only for a period of twenty years. It is also
true that even during that period my life was not the uninterrupted
evil that it appeared to me during my illness; for even during that
period there used to awake in me impulses toward good, although
they did not last long and were soon stifled by unrestrained
passions.
Still these reflections, especially during my illness, clearly
showed me that my autobiography--as autobiographies are generally
written--if it passed over in silence all the abomination and
criminality of my life, would be a lie, and that, when a man writes
his life, he should write the whole and exact truth. Only such an
autobiography, however humiliating it may be for me to write it, can have a true and fruitful interest for the readers.