He was again overcome with horror as at my first questioning, kept gesticulating and muttering: “It is impossible to believe that it could be you, an old party member, the organizer of a revolt, one of our most energetic comrades.…” He has an unpleasant manner of speaking, as though chewing his words; they stick to his teeth and his tongue has some difficulty in tearing them away. He is altogether a clumsy, ungainly creature—another “stoker” in a word. His ungainliness has often landed him in prison. A dullard, that’s what he is. He has the face of an innocent victim, sentenced for life to be ill-treated. Among the intellectuals there are many men like that with signposts of suffering and grievance on their faces. They became particularly frequent after 1905—stalking the earth with an air, as though the universe owed them sixpence and would not pay it back.

They believe, most probably, that the thought of death will drive fear into my heart and that, miserable scoundrel that I am, I will pour out confessions, like a water-pipe on a rainy day. The odd creatures.

Yes, I am writing. Not in order to draw out for another few days my stay in prison—but—at the wish of a third party. I have already said that two men live inside me and the one does not get on with the other—but there is a third one as well. He keeps an eye on both, watches their conflicts and—I cannot make it out:—does he try to egg them on, set the one against the other—or does he just want to understand: why? how has this quarrel arisen?

It is he who makes me write. Perhaps he is the real me who wants to grasp the meaning of everything or at least of something. And what if the third should be my most cruel enemy? This already sounds like the suspicion of a fourth. Two people live in every man: the one is only aware of himself—the other is drawn towards other people. But I believe that no less than four individuals live in me and they are all on bad terms with one another, they all think differently. Whatever should occur to one, the other disputes and then the third inquires:

“What are you squabbling for? What will be the outcome of your squabble?” Yes, I daresay there is yet a fourth who has concealed himself even more deeply than the third, and watches stealthily, like a wild beast, biding his time. He may keep at bay all through my life, just indifferently observe all this muddle from afar.

I believe that in his youth, while his moral character is being shaped, a man should stifle all the embryos of personalities hidden in him except the one, the best one.

But what if it is just this best one that he stifles? Who on earth is to know which is the best one?

It is all right for the intelligentsia, school does the job for them, kills the useless, the evil seed, but for us, when the insatiable thirst to know all, to try everything, to go through every fire, overcomes us—it is a hard struggle. At twenty I felt I was not a man, but a pack of hounds, tearing and dashing in all directions, on every track, ready to follow all scents, catch all the hares, satisfy all desires, and as to desires there was no end of them.

Reason did not prompt me, did not point out: this is good, this bad. It appears, altogether, not to consider this to be its job. My reason is as curious as a youngster and obviously quite indifferent to good and evil—whether this indifference is contemptible or not, I do not know. This is exactly what I do not know. It is appropriate here to quote Tassya’s funny remark: “When a man is very clever, there is something improper about it.”

So I am writing at the wish of the third party. Not for their sake, but merely for myself and because I am bored. And there is a curious fascination in telling oneself the story of one’s life. One looks at oneself as at a stranger and it is fun to catch one’s thoughts in their attempts to conceal and lie to the fourth, escape from his vigilant watch. This game is not only worth the candle, it’s worth a whole bonfire. Nothing remains of it but ashes? Well.…It is unlikely that they should see and read these notes, I’ll manage to destroy them in time or pass them on into other hands.