‘And at present the transition stage is terrible. People feel that it will not do to allow adultery, and that sexual relations must in some way be defined; but bases for this are lacking, except the old ones in which no one any longer believes. And people go on getting married in the old way without believing in what they are doing, and the result is either deception or coercion.
16 Add: and do not themselves know why or what for,
17 Add: In the course of his story he did not once stop after that, and not even the entry of fresh passengers interrupted him. During his narration his face completely changed several times so that nothing resembling the former face remained: his eyes, his mouth, his moustache and even his beard were all different – it was a beautiful, touching, new face. These changes occurred suddenly in the dim light, and for some five minutes there was one face and it was impossible to see the former face, and then, one did not know how, another face appeared and again it was impossible to see it otherwise.
18 Add: … my life and all my terrible story. Terrible, really terrible. The whole story is more terrible than the end.
19 Add: In the first place let me tell you who I am. I am the son of a rich landowner in the steppes, and I took a degree in law at the university. I married when I was rather over thirty, but before telling of my marriage I must say how I lived previously and how I regarded family life.
20 Add: This – the fact that I considered myself moral – came about because in our family there was not any of that particular specialized vice which was so common in our landowning class, and therefore, being brought up in a family where neither my father nor my mother was unfaithful, I nursed the dream of a most elevated and poetic family life from my early years. My wife had to be the height of perfection. Our mutual love had to be most elevated. The purity of our family life was to be dovelike. So I thought, and I praised myself all the time for having such elevated thoughts. And at the same time, for ten years, I lived as an adult, in no haste to get married, and led what I called a respectable, reasonable, bachelor life.
21 Add: and I was naively confident that I was quite a moral man. The women I was intimate with were not mine, and I had nothing to do with them except for the pleasure they afforded me. And I saw nothing disgraceful in this.
22 Add: … in regard to the real woman-question …’
‘That is to say … what do you understand to be the real woman-question?’
‘The question of what this organic creature that is distinct from man is, and how she herself and men also should regard her.
23 For this paragraph read: ‘Yes, for ten years I lived in most disgraceful debauchery, dreaming of a pure, elevated love—and even in the name of that love. Yes, I want to tell of how I killed my wife, and to tell that I must tell how I became depraved.
‘I killed her before I met her; I killed a woman the first time I knew one without loving her, and it was already then that I killed my wife.
24 Read: Who deprave youths? They do! Who deprave women by devising means for them and teaching them not to bear children? Who treat syphilis with enthusiasm? They.’
‘But why not treat syphilis?’
‘Because to cure syphilis is the same as to safeguard vice; it is the same as the Foundlings Hospital for discarded babies.’
‘No, not the same … Then omit to end of paragraph.
25 Insert here: To tell the truth without false shame, I was trapped and caught. Her mamma – her papa was dead – arranged all sorts of traps and one of them – namely boating – succeeded.
26 Insert: No, say what you will, we live up to our ears in such a swamp of lies that unless we have our heads bumped, as I did, we cannot come to our senses.
27 Add: How fortunate that would have been for us!
28 Add: If we only reject the conventional explanations of why and for what reason these things are done, if we …
29 Add: There is no difference. Strictly defining the matter, one must say that prostitutes for short terms are usually despised, while prostitutes for long terms are respected.
30 Add: The men of our circle are kept and fed like breeding stallions. It is only necessary, you know, to close the safety-valve – that is, for a vicious young man to live a continent life for a little while – and immediately a terrible restlessness and excitement is caused, which passing through the prism of the artificial conditions of our social life shows itself in the guise of falling in love. Our love affairs and marriages, for the most part, are conditioned by our food. You are surprised: one ought to be surprised that we have not noticed it sooner.
31 Read: through the prism of novels, stories, verses, music – through the idle, luxurious setting of our life – and there will be amorousness of the purest water.
32 Read: … her parents, knowing more of life and not distracted by a momentary infatuation, but yet loving her not less than they loved themselves – arranged the marriage.
33 Instead of the following lines, read: and we talk of woman’s rights, of “freedom” which is somehow obtainable at university lectures.’
34 Add: and as she cannot consent to be a slave and cannot herself propose, there begins that other abominable lie which is sometimes called “coming out into society”, and sometimes “amusing themselves”, and which is nothing but husband-hunting.
35 Add: ‘They all complain that they are deprived of rights and are oppressed.
36 Add: Look at the people’s fětes, and at our balls and parties. Woman knows how she acts, you can see that by her triumphant smile.
37 Add: whether they believe in that or not – is unimportant.
38 Add: My sister, when very young, married a man twice her age and a debauchee. I remember how astonished we were the night of the wedding, when she ran out of her bedroom in tears and, shaking all over, said that she could on no account, on no account, even tell us what he had wanted to do to her.
39 Add: A pure girl only wants children. Children, – yes, but not a husband.’
‘How then,’ I said with astonishment, ‘how is the human race to be continued?’
‘And why should it be continued?’ was his unexpected rejoinder.
40 Add: You know that Schopenhauer, Hartmann, and all the Buddhists too, declare that it is a blessing not to live. And they are so far right that welfare for humanity coincides with self-annihilation, only they have not expressed themselves rightly: they say that the human race should destroy itself to escape from suffering – that its aim should be self-destruction. That is wrong. The aim of humanity cannot be to escape from suffering by self-destruction, because sufferings are the result of activity, and the aim of an activity cannot be to destroy its consequences. The aim both of men and of humanity is blessedness. For the attainment of blessedness a law has been given to humanity which it should fulfil. The law is that of the union of mankind.
41 In the lithographed version there are a number of small differences in the last paragraphs of Chapter XI, and Chapter XII commences with the words: ‘It is a strange story,’ said I.
‘What is there strange about it? According to all Church teaching the end of the world is coming, and according to all that science teaches the same thing is inevitable. So what is there strange in the fact that moral teaching reaches the same result? “He that is able to receive it, let him receive it,” said Christ. And I understand that just as he said it. For morality to exist between people in sexual relations it is necessary that the aim they set themselves should be complete chastity. In striving towards chastity, man falls; he falls, and the result is a moral marriage; but if, as in our society, man aims directly at physical love, then though it may clothe itself in the pseudo-moral form of marriage, that will merely be permitted debauchery with one woman – and will none the less be an immoral life, such as that in which I perished and destroyed her, and such as among us is called moral family life. Note what a perverse conception exists among us, when the happiest position for a man – that of freedom, celibacy – is considered pitiable and ridiculous. And the highest ideal, the best position, for a woman – that of being pure, a vestal, a virgin – is a thing to be afraid of and a subject for ridicule in our society. How many and many young girls have offered up their purity to that Moloch of opinion by marrying good-for-nothing fellows, merely to avoid remaining virgin, which is the highest state. For fear that she may remain in that highest state she ruins herself! But I did not then understand that the words in the Gospel – that he who looks upon a woman with desire has already committed adultery with her in his heart – refer not to other wives only, but specially and chiefly to one’s own. I did not understand that, and thought that this honeymoon and my behaviour on this honeymoon were most excellent, and that to satisfy desire with my own wife was a perfectly right thing. Then follow in the lithographed version the words: You know those wedding tours, &c.