because he believes in god (I can just see how you have wrinkled up your brow at this point—very well then, let it be “in God”) and he feels offended with Him: Why will You not turn Your paternal gaze on a naughty child like me, why do You not rebuke me or crush me under Your foot? Hey there! Where are You? Wake up! Or else I might start imagining You don't even exist. Stavrogin is bored with the company of ordinary people; what he wants is the supreme Interlocutor. But, unlike Dostoyevsky's defiler of little girls and seducer of idiots, I do not believe either in God or god, and that is my firm position. Human company is quite sufficient for me.
Your earlier literary hint was closer to the mark, when you made me a present of Count Tolstoy's composition War and Peace for my saint's day. I am more like Bolkonsky—not, of course, in terms of his lordliness, but in sharing an interest in Bonapartism. I am twenty-four now, and there is still no sign of my Toulon; in fact there is not even a distant prospect of it. Tolstoy's prince developed such exorbitant vanity owing to his full belly and blasé attitude, for, after all, Fortune had simply given him every imaginable sweet morsel in her possession—noble status, wealth, beauty— all by right of birth, so that he had nothing else left to wish for except to become the peoples idol. But I, by contrast, come from the estate of the half-starved and envious, which, by the way, makes me much more like Napoleon than Tolstoy's aristocrat is and improves my chances of an emperor's crown. But, joking aside, it is more difficult for a man with a full belly to scramble up to the height of a Bonaparte than for a hungry man, because a full belly inclines a man not to nimble climbing, but to philosophizing and peaceful dreaming.
But I have gotten carried away. What you expect from me is not lofty verbiage about literature, but a spy's report about your patrimonial estate that has been engulfed in turmoil and discord.
Let me hasten to reassure Your Reverence. As is usually the case, the seat of the trouble appears far more frightening from a distance than from close up. Sitting in Zavolzhsk, one might imagine that in New Ararat everyone talks of nothing but the Black Monk and the normal flow of life has been totally mesmerized.
Nothing of the sort. Life here pulsates and gurgles in livelier fashion than in your provincial capital, and so far I have not heard any gossip at all about your Saint Dracula, that is, entschuldigen , Saint Basilisk.
At first I found New Ararat disappointing, since on the morning of my arrival the lake was covered by low clouds, which were pouring a repulsive cold rain down onto the islands, and the landscape I saw from the deck of the steamship was all wet mouse color: slimy gray bell towers with a terrible resemblance to enema tubes and the dejected roofs of the small town.
Mindful of the fact that all my expenses will be paid out of your abundant treasure houses, I ordered the porter to take me to the very best local hotel, which bears the proud name of Noah's Ark. I had been expecting to see some kind of gloomy log structure dimly lit with icon lamps, but I was pleasantly surprised. The hotel is fitted out in a perfectly European fashion: the room has a bathroom, mirrors, and molding on the ceiling.
The majority of the guests consists of gentlewomen already of a platonic age from St. Petersburg and Moscow, but in the evening, in the coffee shop on the ground floor, I saw a veritable Princess Lointaine such as is not to be found in quiet Zavolzhsk. I do not know if the like has ever happened before in the global history of relations between the sexes, but I fell in love with the beautiful stranger on the spot, from behind, even before she turned around. Picture to yourself, my pious pastor, a slim figure in an exquisite dress of black silk and a wide-brimmed hat with ostrich feathers, and a delicate, supple neck, quite blinding in its perfection,
Your earlier literary hint was closer to the mark, when you made me a present of Count Tolstoy's composition War and Peace for my saint's day. I am more like Bolkonsky—not, of course, in terms of his lordliness, but in sharing an interest in Bonapartism. I am twenty-four now, and there is still no sign of my Toulon; in fact there is not even a distant prospect of it. Tolstoy's prince developed such exorbitant vanity owing to his full belly and blasé attitude, for, after all, Fortune had simply given him every imaginable sweet morsel in her possession—noble status, wealth, beauty— all by right of birth, so that he had nothing else left to wish for except to become the peoples idol. But I, by contrast, come from the estate of the half-starved and envious, which, by the way, makes me much more like Napoleon than Tolstoy's aristocrat is and improves my chances of an emperor's crown. But, joking aside, it is more difficult for a man with a full belly to scramble up to the height of a Bonaparte than for a hungry man, because a full belly inclines a man not to nimble climbing, but to philosophizing and peaceful dreaming.
But I have gotten carried away. What you expect from me is not lofty verbiage about literature, but a spy's report about your patrimonial estate that has been engulfed in turmoil and discord.
Let me hasten to reassure Your Reverence. As is usually the case, the seat of the trouble appears far more frightening from a distance than from close up. Sitting in Zavolzhsk, one might imagine that in New Ararat everyone talks of nothing but the Black Monk and the normal flow of life has been totally mesmerized.
Nothing of the sort. Life here pulsates and gurgles in livelier fashion than in your provincial capital, and so far I have not heard any gossip at all about your Saint Dracula, that is, entschuldigen , Saint Basilisk.
At first I found New Ararat disappointing, since on the morning of my arrival the lake was covered by low clouds, which were pouring a repulsive cold rain down onto the islands, and the landscape I saw from the deck of the steamship was all wet mouse color: slimy gray bell towers with a terrible resemblance to enema tubes and the dejected roofs of the small town.
Mindful of the fact that all my expenses will be paid out of your abundant treasure houses, I ordered the porter to take me to the very best local hotel, which bears the proud name of Noah's Ark. I had been expecting to see some kind of gloomy log structure dimly lit with icon lamps, but I was pleasantly surprised. The hotel is fitted out in a perfectly European fashion: the room has a bathroom, mirrors, and molding on the ceiling.
The majority of the guests consists of gentlewomen already of a platonic age from St. Petersburg and Moscow, but in the evening, in the coffee shop on the ground floor, I saw a veritable Princess Lointaine such as is not to be found in quiet Zavolzhsk. I do not know if the like has ever happened before in the global history of relations between the sexes, but I fell in love with the beautiful stranger on the spot, from behind, even before she turned around. Picture to yourself, my pious pastor, a slim figure in an exquisite dress of black silk and a wide-brimmed hat with ostrich feathers, and a delicate, supple neck, quite blinding in its perfection,
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