+++
title = "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877) by Fyodor Dostoevsky"
date = 2026-05-02
+++

All of Dostoevsky's quintessential themes fit into less than 30 pages, and extremely accessible. Page for page, one of my favourite pieces of writing ever.

<div class="notes">

{% h(at="01") %}
I am a ridiculous man. Nowadays they call me mad.
{% end %}

{% h(at="02") %}
All of a sudden, I realised that it *would not matter* to me whether the world existed or whether there was nothing at all anywhere. I began to intuit and sense with all my being, that *there was nothing around me*.
{% end %}

{% h(at="03") %}
Suddenly, I noticed in one of these spaces a tiny star and began watching it intently. That was because that tiny star had given me an idea: I decided to kill myself that night.
{% end %}

{% h(at="07") %}
One might go so far as to say that <mark>the world was created for me alone</mark>, as it were: I will shoot myself and the world will cease to exist, at least for me.
{% end %}

{% h(at="09") %}
Now they were burying me in the earth. Everyone went away and I was alone.
{% end %}

{% h(at="16") %}
It may have been a dream, but it cannot be that it did not take place.
{% end %}

{% h(at="16") %}
Like a foul trichina\*, <mark>like a pestilential germ bringing contagion to whole countries, I infected that earth, happy and sinless before my arrival.</mark> They learned how to lie, and grew to love lying and perceive its beauty.
{% end %}

{% h(at="17") %}
When they tookup criminality, they invented justice and enacted whole codes of law to preserve it, while for the maintenance of the codes they set up the guillotine.
{% end %}

{% h(at="20") %}
I won't accept, and refuse to believe that evil is the normal condition of men.
{% end %}

{% h(at="21") %}
Dream? What's a dream? <mark>Isn't this life of ours a dream?</mark> I'll go further: suppose it never, ever comes true, and there is no paradise (now *that* I do understand!), well, I'll still go on preaching. And yet how simple a matter it is: in one day, *in one hour* it could all be brought about at once!
{% end %}

{% h(at="21") %}
The chief thing is to love others as oneself, that's the main thing, and that's it—absolutely nothing more is necessary.
{% end %}

</div>

<div class="notes notes--glossary">

{{ h(at="trichina", body="A parasitic nematode worm.") }}

</div>