60 lines
2.3 KiB
Markdown
60 lines
2.3 KiB
Markdown
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title = "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877) by Fyodor Dostoevsky"
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date = 2026-05-02
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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.
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<div class="notes">
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{% h(at="01") %}
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I am a ridiculous man. Nowadays they call me mad.
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{% end %}
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{% h(at="02") %}
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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*.
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{% end %}
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{% h(at="03") %}
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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.
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{% end %}
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{% h(at="07") %}
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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.
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{% end %}
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{% h(at="09") %}
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Now they were burying me in the earth. Everyone went away and I was alone.
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{% end %}
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{% h(at="16") %}
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It may have been a dream, but it cannot be that it did not take place.
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{% end %}
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{% h(at="16") %}
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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.
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{% end %}
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{% h(at="17") %}
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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.
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{% end %}
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{% h(at="20") %}
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I won't accept, and refuse to believe that evil is the normal condition of men.
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{% end %}
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{% h(at="21") %}
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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!
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{% end %}
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{% h(at="21") %}
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The chief thing is to love others as oneself, that's the main thing, and that's it—absolutely nothing more is necessary.
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{% end %}
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</div>
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<div class="notes notes--glossary">
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{{ h(at="trichina", body="A parasitic nematode worm.") }}
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</div>
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