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Bobok...................................................................................................................................................................1

Fyodor Dostoevsky..................................................................................................................................1

SEMYON ARDALYONOVITCH said to me all of a sudden the day before yesterday: "Why, will you ever

A strange requirement. I did not resent it, I am a timid man; but here they have actually made me out mad. An

artist painted my portrait as it happened: "After all, you are a literary man," he said. I submitted, he exhibited

It may be so, but think of putting it so bluntly into print. In print everything ought to be decorous; there ought

Say it indirectly, at least; that's what you have style for. But no, he doesn't care to do it indirectly. Nowadays

humour and a fine style have disappeared, and abuse is accepted as wit. I do not resent it: but God knows I

am not enough of a literary man to go out of my mind. I have written a novel, it has not been published. I

have written articles they have been refused. Those articles I took about from one editor to another;

everywhere they refused them: you have no salt they told me. "What sort of salt do you want?" I asked with a

They did not even understand, For the most part I translate from the French for the booksellers. I write

advertisements for shopkeepers too: "Unique opportunity! Fine tea, from our own plantations . . ." I made a

nice little sum over a panegyric on his deceased excellency Pyotr Matveyitch. I compiled the "Art of pleasing

the ladies", a commission from a bookseller. I have brought out some six little works of this kind in the

course of my life. I am thinking of making a collection of the bons mobs of Voltaire, but am afraid it may

seem a little flat to our people. Voltaire's no good now; nowadays we want a cudgel, not Voltaire. We knock

each other's last teeth out nowadays. Well, so that's the whole extent of my literary activity. Though indeed I

do send round letters to the editors gratis and fully signed. I give them all sorts of counsels and admonitions,

criticise and point out the true path. The letter I sent last week to an editor's office was the fortieth I had sent

in the last two years. I have wasted four roubles over stamps alone for them. My temper is at the bottom of it

I believe that the artist who painted me did so not for the sake of literature, but for the sake of two

symmetrical warts on my forehead, a natural phenomenon, he would say. They have no ideas, so now they

are out for phenomena. And didn't he succeed in getting my warts in his portrait to the life. That is what

And as to madness, a great many people were put down as mad among us last year. And in such language!

"With such original talent ....... and yet, after all, it appears" . . . "how ever, one ought to have foreseen it

long ago." That is rather artful; so that from the point of view of pure art one may really commend it. Well,

but after all, these socalled madmen have turned out cleverer than ever. So it seems the critics can call them

The wisest of all, in my opinion, is he who can, if only once a month, call himself a fool a faculty unheard

of nowadays. In old days, once a year at any rate a fool would recognise that he was a fool, but nowadays not

a bit of it. And they have so muddled things up that there is no telling a fool from a wise man. They have

I remember a witty Spaniard saying when, two hundred and fifty years ago, the French built their first

madhouses: "They have shut up all their fools in a house apart, to make sure that they are wise men

themselves." Just so: you don't show your own wisdom by shutting someone else in a madhouse. "K. has

gone out of his mind, means that we are sane now." No, it doesn't mean that yet.

Hang it though, why am I maundering on? I go on grumbling and grumbling. Even my maidservant is sick of

me. Yester day a friend came to see me. "Your style is changing," he said; "it is choppy: you chop and chop

and then a parenthesis, then a parenthesis in the parenthesis, then you stick in some thing else in brackets,

The friend is right. Something strange is happening to me. My character is changing and my head aches. I am

beginning to see and hear strange things, not voices exactly, but as though someone beside me were

I went out in search of diversion, I hit upon a funeral. A distant relation a collegiate counsellor, however. A

widow and five daughters, all marriageable young ladies. What must it come to even to keep them in slippers.

Their father managed it, but now there is only a little pension. They will have to eat humble pie. They have

always received me ungraciously. And indeed I should not have gone to the funeral now had it not been for a

peculiar circumstance. I followed the procession to the cemetery with the rest; they were stuckup and held

aloof from me. My uniform was certainly rather shabby. It's five andtwenty years, I believe, since I was at

To begin with the smell. There were fifteen hearses, with palls varying in expensiveness; there were actually

two cata falques. One was a general's and one some lady's. There were many mourners, a great deal of

feigned mourning and a great deal of open gaiety. The clergy have nothing to complain of; it brings them a

good income. But the smell, the smell. I should not like to be one of the clergy here.

I kept glancing at the faces of the dead cautiously, distrust ing my impressionability. Some had a mild

expression, some looked unpleasant. As a rule the smiles were disagreeable, and in some cases very much so.

During the service I went out of the church into the air: it was a grey day, but dry. It was cold too, but then it

was October. I walked about among the tombs. They are of different grades. The third grade cost thirty

roubles; it's decent and not so very dear. The first two grades are tombs in the church and under the porch;

they cost a pretty penny. On this occasion they were burying in tombs of the third grade six persons, among

I looked into the graves and it was horrible: water and such water! Absolutely green, and ... but there, why

talk of it! The gravedigger was baling it out every minute. I went out while the service was going on and

strolled outside the gates. Close by was an almshouse, and a little further off there was a restaurant. It was not

a bad little restaurant: there was lunch and everything. There were lots of the mourners here. I noticed a great

Then I took part in the bearing of the coffin from the church to the grave. Why is it that corpses in their

coffins are so heavy? They say it is due to some sort of inertia, that the body is no longer directed by its

owner . . . or some nonsense of that sort, in opposition to the laws of mechanics and common sense. I don't

like to hear people who have nothing but a general education venture to solve the problems that require

special knowledge; and with us that's done continually. Civilians love to pass opinions about subjects that are

the province of the soldier and even of the fieldmarshal; while men who have been educated as engineers

I did not go to the requiem service. I have some pride, and if I am only received owing to some special

necessity, why force myself on their dinners, even if it be a funeral dinner. The only thing I don't understand

is why I stayed at the cemetery; I sat on a tombstone and sank into appropriate reflections.

I began with the Moscow exhibition and ended with reflect ing upon astonishment in the abstract. My

"To be surprised at everything is stupid of course, and to be astonished at nothing is a great deal more

becoming and for some reason accepted as good form. But that is not really true. To my mind to be

astonished at nothing is much more stupid than to be astonished at everything. And, moreover, to be

astonished at nothing is almost the same as feeling respect for nothing. And indeed a stupid man is incapable

"But what I desire most of all is to feel respect. I thirst to feel respect," one of my acquaintances said to me

He thirsts to feel respect! Goodness, I thought, what would happen to you if you dared to print that

nowadays? At that point I sank into forgetfulness. I don't like reading the epitaphs of tombstones: they are

everlastingly the same. An unfinished sandwich was lying on the tombstone near me; stupid and

inappropriate. I threw it on the ground, as it was not bread but only a sandwich. Though I believe it is not a

sin to throw bread on the earth, but only on the floor. I must look it up in Suvorin's calendar.

I suppose I sat there a long timetoo long a time, in fact; I must have lain down on a long stone which was of

the shape of a marble coffin. And how it happened I don't know, but I began to hear things of all sorts being

said. At first I did not pay attention to it, but treated it with contempt. But the con versation went on. I heard

muffled sounds as though the speakers' mouths were covered with a pillow, and at the same time they were

distinct and very near. I came to myself, sat up and began listening attentively.

"Your Excellency, it's utterly impossible. You led hearts, I return your lead, and here you play the seven of

"You must, your Excellency. One can't do anything with out something to go upon. We must play with

What conceited words! And it was queer and unexpected. One was such a ponderous, dignified voice, the

other softly suave; I should not have believed it if I had not heard it myself. I had not been to the requiem

dinner, I believe. And yet how could they be playing preference here and what general was this? That the

sounds came from under the tombstones of that there could be no doubt. I bent down and read on the tomb:

"Here lies the body of MajorGeneral Pervoyedov . . . a cavalier of such and such orders." Hm! "Passed

away in August of this year ... fiftyseven.... Rest, beloved ashes, till the joyful dawn!"

Hm, dash it, it really is a general! There was no monument on the grave from which the obsequious voice

came, there was only a tombstone. He must have been a fresh arrival. From his voice he was a lower court

"Ohhohoho!" I heard in a new voice a dozen yards from the general's restingplace, coming from quite a

fresh grave. The voice belonged to a man and a plebeian, mawkish with its affectation of religious fervour.

"Oh, here he is hiccupping again!" cried the haughty and disdainful voice of an irritated lady, apparently of

"I didn't hiccup; why, I've had nothing to eat. It's simply my nature. Really, madam, you don't seem able to

"They put me here, my wife and little children put me here, I did not lie down here of myself. The mystery of

death! And I would not have lain down beside you not for any money; I lie here as befitting my fortune,

judging by the price. For we can always do that pay for a tomb of the third grade."

"Fleece you, indeed! We haven't seen the colour of your money since January. There's a little bill against you

"Well, that's really stupid; to try and recover debts here is too stupid, to my thinking! Go to the surface. Ask

"There's no asking anyone now, and no going anywhere. We have both reached our limit and, before the

"In our sins," the lady mimicked him contemptuously. "Don't dare to speak to me."

Well, this is an entertainment, it is a fine show, I must say! If it has come to this down here, what can one

expect on the surface? But what a queer business! I went on listening, how ever, though with extreme

"Yes, I should like a taste of life! Yes, you know . . . I should like a taste of fife." I heard a new voice

"Do you hear, your Excellency, our friend is at the same game again. For three days at a time he says nothing,

and then he bursts out with 'I should like a taste of life, yes, a taste of life!' And with such appetite, hehe!"

"It gets hold of him, your Excellency, and do you know, he is growing sleepy, quite sleepy he has been here

"And I can't endure either of you," cried the virago disdain fully. "You are both of you bores and can't tell

me anything ideal. I know one little story about you, your Excellency don't turn up your nose, please how

"Avdotya lgnatycvna, ma'am," the shopkeeper wailed suddenly again, "my dear lady, don't be angry, but tell

"Ah, he is at it again, as I expected! For there's a smell from him which means he is turning round!"

"I am not turning round, ma'am, and there's no particular smell from me, for I've kept my body whole as it

should be, while you're regularly high. For the smell is really horrible even for a place like this. I don't speak

"Ohhohoho! If only the time for my requiem would come quickly: I should hear their tearful voices over

"Well, that's a thing to fret for! They'll stuff themselves with funeral rice and go home.... Oh, I wish

"Avdotya Ignatyevna," said the insinuating government clerk, "wait a bit, the new arrivals will speak."

"Even those who came the day before yesterday haven't awakened yet, your Excellency. As you know, they

sometimes don't speak for a week. It's a good job that today and yester day and the day before they brought

"Yes, your Excellency, they buried Tarasevitch, the privy councillor, today. I knew it from the voices. I

"Five steps from you, your Excellency, on the left. . . . Almost at your feet. You should make his

"Oh, he will begin of himself, your Excellency. He will be flattered. Leave it to me, your Excellency, and I . .

"Oh, oh! . . . What is happening to me?" croaked the frightened voice of a new arrival.

"A new arrival, your Excellency, a new arrival, thank God! And how quick he's been! Sometimes they don't

"I. . . I . . . it was a complication, and so sudden!" faltered the young man again. "Only the evening before,

Schultz said to me, 'There's a complication,' and I died suddenly before morning. Oh! oh!"

"Well, there's no help for it, young man," the general observed graciously, evidently pleased at a new arrival.

"You must be comforted. You are kindly welcome to our Vale of Jehoshaphat, so to call it. We are

kindhearted people, you will come to know us and appreciate us. MajorGeneral Vassili Vassilitch

"Oh, no, no! Certainly not! I was at Schultz's; I had a complication, you know, at first it was my chest and a

cough, and then I caught a cold: my lungs and influenza . . . and all of a sudden, quite unexpectedly . . . the

"You say it began with the chest," the government clerk put in suavely, as though he wished to reassure the

"Yes, my chest and catarrh and then no catarrh, but still the chest, and I couldn't breathe ... and you know. . . "

"l know, I know. But if it was the chest you ought to have gone to Ecke and not to Schultz."

"Oh, no, he is not forbidding at all; I've heard he is so attentive and foretells everything beforehand."

"Oh, not at all, he only asks three roubles, and he makes such an examination, and gives you a prescription . .

.and I was very anxious to see him, for I have been told . . . Well, gentlemen, had I better go to Ecke or to

"What? To whom?" The general's corpse shook with agreeable laughter. The government clerk echoed it in

"Dear boy, dear, delightful boy, how I love you!" Avdotya Ignatyevna squealed ecstatically. "I wish they had

No, that was too much! And these were the dead of our times! Still, I ought to listen to more and not be in too

great a hurry to draw conclusions. That snivelling new arrival I remember him just now in his coffin had

the expression of a frightened chicken, the most revolting expression in the world! However, let us wait and

But what happened next was such a Bedlam that I could not keep it all in my memory. For a great many woke

up at once; an official a civil councillor woke up, and began discussing at once the project of a new

subcommittee in a government department and of the probable transfer of various func tionaries in

connection with the subcommittee which very greatly interested the general. I must confess I learnt a great

deal that was new myself, so much so that I marvelled at the channels by which one may sometimes in the

metropolis learn government news. Then an engineer half woke up, but for a long time muttered absolute

nonsense, so that our friends left off worrying him and let him lie till he was ready. At last the distinguished

lady who had been buried in the morning under the catafalque showed symptoms of the reanimation of the

tomb. Lebeziatnikov (for the obsequious lower court councillor whom I detested and who lay beside General

Pervoyedov was called, it appears, Lebeziatnikov) became much excited, and surprised that they were all

waking up so soon tllis time. I must own I was surprised too; though some of those who woke had been

buried for three days, as, for instance, a very young girl of sixteen who kept giggling ... giggling in a horrible

"Your Excellency, privy councillor Tarasevitch is waking!" Lebeziatnikov announced with extreme fussiness.

"Eh? What?" the privy councillor, waking up suddenly mumbled, with a lisp of disgust. There was a note of

I listened with curiosity for during the last few days I had heard something about Tarasevitch shocking

"Merely to inquire after your Excellency's health; in these unaccustomed surroundings everyone feels at first,

as it were, oppressed. General Pervoyedov wishes to have the honour of making your Excellency's

"No, your Excellency, I am only the lower court councillor Lebeziatnikov, at your service, but General

"Let him be." General Pervoyedov at last himself checked with dignity the disgusting officiousness of his

"He is not fully awake, your Excellency, you must consider that; it's the novelty of it all. When he is fully

"Vassili Vassilitch! Hey, your Excellency!" a perfectly new voice shouted loudly and aggressively from close

beside Avdotya lgnatyevna. It was a voice of gentlemanly insolence, with the languid pronunciation now

fashionable and an arrogant drawl. "I've been watching you all for the last two hours. Do you remember me,

Vassili Vassilitch? My name is Klinevitch, we met at the Volokonskys' where you, too, were received as a

"What, Count Pyotr Petrovitch? . . . Can it be really you . . . and at such an early age? How sorry I am to hear

"Oh, I am sorry myself, though I really don't mind, and I want to amuse myself as far as I can everywhere.

And I am not a count but a baron, only a baron. We are only a set of scurvy barons, risen from being

flunkeys, but why I don't know and I don't care. I am only a scoundrel of the pseudoaristo cratic society,

and I am regarded as 'a charming polisson'. My father is a wretched little general, and my mother was at one

time received en haut lieu. With the help of the Jew Zifel I forged fifty thousand rouble notes last year and

then I informed against him, while Julic Charpentier de Lusignan carried off the money to Bordeaux. And

only fancy, I was engaged to be married to a girl still at school, three months under sixteen, with a dowry of

ninety thousand. Avdotya lgnatyevna, do you remember how you seduced me fifteen years ago when I was a

"You were mistaken in suspecting your neighbour, the business gentleman, of unpleasant fragrance.... I said

nothing, but I laughed. The stench came from me: they had to bury me in a nailedup coffin."

"Ugh, you horrid creature! Still, I am glad you are here; you can't imagine the lack of life and wit here."

"Quite so, quite so, and I intend to start here something original. Your Excellency I don't mean you,

Pervoyedov your Excellency the other one, Tarasevitch, the privy councillor! Answer! I am Klinevitch,

"I wouldn't trust you with a halfpenny, and I don't care. I simply want to kiss you, dear old man, but luckily I

can't. Do you know, gentlemen, what this grandpere's little game was? He died three or four days ago, and

would you believe it, he left a deficit of four hundred thousand government money from the fund for widows

and orphans. He was the sole person in control of it for some reason, so that his accounts were not audited for

the last eight years. I can fancy what long faces they all have now, and what they call him. It's a delectable

thought, isn't it? I have been wondering for the last year how a wretched old man of seventy, gouty and

rheumatic, succeeded in preserving the physical energy for his debaucheries and now the riddle is solved!

Those widows and orphans the very thought of them must have egged him on! I knew about it long ago, I

was the only one who did know; it was Julie told me, and as soon as I discovered it, I attacked him in a

friendly way at once in Easter week: 'Give me twentyfive thousand, if you don't they'll look into your

accounts tomorrow.' And just fancy, he had only thirteen thousand left then, so it seems it was very apropos

"Cher Khnevitch, I quite agree with you, and there was no need for you . . . to go into such details. Life is so

full of suffering and torment and so little to make up for it ... that I wanted at last to be at rest, and so far as I

"Aah, what Katiche? Why, here on the left, five paces from me and ten from you. She has been here for five

days, and if only you knew, grandpere, what a little wretch she is! Of good family and breeding and a

monster, a regular monster! I did not introduce her to anyone there, I was the only one who knew her....

"Hehehe!" the girl responded with a jangling laugh, in which there was a note of something as sharp as the

"I . . . have long . . . I have long," the old man faltered breathlessly, "cherished the dream of a little fair thing

"Enough!" Klinevitch decided. "I see there is excellent material. We shall soon arrange things better. The

great thing is to spend the rest of our time cheerfully; but what time? Hey, you, government clerk,

"Semyon Yevseitch Lebeziatnikov, lower court councillor, at your service, very, very, very much delighted to

"I don't care whether you are delighted or not, but you seem to know everything here. Tell me first of all how

it is we can talk? I've been wondering ever since yesterday. We are dead and yet we are talking and seem to

"If you want an explanation, baron, Platon Nikolaevitch could give you one better than I."

"Platon Nikolaevitch is our homegrown philosopher, scientist and Master of Arts. He has brought out

several philosophical works, but for the last three months he has been getting quite drowsy, and there is no

"He explains all this by the simplest fact, namely, that when we were living on the surface we mistakenly

thought that death there was death. The body revives, as it were, here, the remains of life are concentrated,

but only in consciousness. I don't know how to express it, but life goes on, as it were, by inertia. In his

opinion everything is concentrated somewhere in con sciousness and goes on for two or three months ...

sometimes even for half a year.... There is one here, for instance, who is almost completely decomposed, but

once every six weeks he suddenly utters one word, quite senseless of course, about some bobok, 'Bobok,

bobok,' but you see that an imper ceptible speck of life is still warm within him."

"It's rather stupid. Well, and how is it I have no sense of smell and yet I feel there's a stench?"

"That ... hehe ... Well, on that point our philosopher is a bit foggy. It's apropos of smell, he said, that the

stench one perceives here is, so to speak, moral hehe! It's the stench of the soul, he says, that in these two

or three months it may have time to recover itself ... and this is, so to speak, the last mercy.... Only, I think,

"Enough; all the rest of it, I am sure, is nonsense. The great thing is that we have two or three months more of

life and then bobok! I propose to spend these two months as agreeably as possible, and so to arrange

"Ah, let us cast aside all shame, let us!" many voices could be heard saying; and strange to say, several new

voices were audible, which must have belonged to others newly awakened. The engineer, now fully awake,

boomed out his agreement with peculiar delight. The girl Katiche giggled gleefully.

"Oh, how I long to cast off all shame!" Avdotya lgnatyevna exclaimed rapturously.

"No, no, no, Klinevitch, I was ashamed up there all the same, but here I should like to cast off shame, I

"I understand, Klinevitch," boomed the engineer, "that you want to rearrange life here on new and rational

"Oh, I don't care a hang about that! For that we'll wait for Kudeyarov who was brought here yesterday. When

he wakes he'll tell you all about it. He is such a personality, such a titanic personality! Tomorrow they'll

bring along another natural scientist, I believe, an officer for certain, and three or four days later a journalist,

and, I believe, his editor with him. But deuce take them all, there will be a little group of us any way, and

things will arrange themselves. Though meanwhile I don't want us to be telling lies. That's all I care about, for

that is one thing that matters. One cannot exist on the surface with out lying, for life and lying are

synonymous, but here we will amuse ourselves by not lying. Hang it all, the grave has some value after all!

We'll all tell our stories aloud, and we won't be ashamed of anything. First of all I'll tell you about myself. I

am one of the predatory kind, you know. All that was bound and held in check by rotten cords up there on the

surface. Away with cords and let us spend these two months in shame less truthfulness! Let us strip and be

"The great thing is that no one can interfere with us, and though I see Pervoyedov is in a temper, he can't

"I fully agree, fully, and with the utmost satisfaction, but on condition that Katiche is the first to give us her

"I protest! I protest with all my heart!" General Pervoyedov brought out firmly.

"Your Excellency!" the scoundrel Lebeziatnikov persuaded him in a murmur of fussy excitement, "your

Excellency, it will be to our advantage to agree. Here, you see, there's this girl's ... and all their little affairs."

"It's to our advantage, your Excellency, upon my word it is! If only as an experiment, let us try it. . ."

"In the first place, General, you were playing preference in the grave, and in the second we don't care a hang

"What? Why, you can't get at me, and I can tease you from here as though you were Julie's lapdog. And

another thing, gentlemen, how is he a general here? He was a general there, but here is mere refuse."

"Here you will rot in the grave and six brass buttons will be all that will be left of you."

"We shall run away from the Prussians like mice, they'll crush us to powder!" cried a voice in the distance

"The sword, sir, is an honour," the general cried, but only I heard him. There arose a prolonged and furious

roar, clamour, and hubbub, and only the hysterically impatient squeals of Avdotya Ignatyevna were audible.

"But do let us make haste! Ah, when are we going to begin to cast off all shame!"

"Ohhoho! . . . The soul does in truth pass through torments!" exclaimed the voice of the plebeian, "and . .

And here I suddenly sneezed. It happened suddenly and unintentionally, but the effect was striking: all

became as silent as one expects it to be in a churchyard, it all vanished like a dream. A real silence of the

tomb set in. I don't believe they were ashamed on account of my presence: they had made up their minds to

cast off all shame! I waited five minutes not a word, not a sound. It cannot be supposed that they were

afraid of my informing the police; for what could the police do to them? I must conclude that they had some

secret un known to the living, which they carefully concealed from every mortal.

"Well, my dears," I thought, "I shall visit you again." And with those words, I left the cemetery.

No, that I cannot admit; no, I really cannot! The bobok case does not trouble me (so that is what the bobok

Depravity in such a place, depravity of the last aspirations, depravity of sodden and rotten corpses and not

even sparing the last inoments of consciousness! Those moments have been granted, vouchsafed to them, and

I shall go to other tombs, I shall listen everywhere. Certainly one ought to listen everywhere and not merely

at one spot in order to form an idea. Perhaps one may come across some thing reassuring.

But I shall certainly go back to those. They promised their biographies and anecdotes of all sorts. Tfoo! But I

I shall take it to the Citizen; the editor there has had his portrait exhibited too. Maybe he will print it.