The Dream of a Ridiculous Man Book

The intensity of the long novels of Dostoevsky is compressed in the novella Notes from Underground where the underground man narrates his tale of spite and nastiness in one hundred and thirty pages. However, the intensity is compressed even more, in a kind of super-intensity, as the ridiculous man narrates his fantastic, hallucinogenic tale in the twenty page story The Dream of a Ridiculous Man.

I first read this story years ago and the images made a deep impression. I just did complete rereading the story five times over and each reading made a progressively deeper impression. I recall Isaac Stern saying how one string quartet of Franz Schubert was absolutely perfect, that is, the piece was composed so exactly every single note fit with every other note. That is the way I feel about this work of Dostoevsky - even in English translation, every single sentence, every word even, is a jewel and is perfectly set to work within the story as a whole. What a masterpiece!

We read right at the beginning how the ridiculous man knows he himself is ridiculous and reflects on life as follows: "Perhaps it was owing to the terrible misery that was growing in my soul through something which was of more consequence than anything else about me: that something was the conviction that had come upon me that nothing in the world mattered."

We follow the ridiculous man as he walks the dank streets during a gloomy, rainy evening, and, seeing a star in a particular way, knows this is the evening he will kill himself. Unexpectedly, he then has an encounter with a terrorized, soaked eight year old girl. We follow the ridiculous man back to his flat where he sits in solitude in his chair with his revolver on the table. The ridiculous man thinks his ridiculous thoughts, "It seemed clear to me that life and the world somehow depended on me. I may almost say that the world now seemed created for me along; if I shot myself the world would cease to be at least for me." Who hasn't had their own stream of thought follow a similar logic, even if we sit in our chair without a revolver on the table? Dostoevsky knows the soul of man so well!

The ridiculous man falls asleep in his chair and has his unforgettable dream, which, in a way, is a crystallization and elaboration of the fragmentary dreams every one of us have experienced, either consciously or unconsciously. "And now I was buried in the earth. They all went away, I was left along, utterly alone." After being lead to a world very much like our own, the ridiculous man encounters a people and tells us, "And at last I saw and knew the people of this happy land. They came to me of themselves, they surrounded me, kissed me." Experiencing the beauty of these people, the ridiculous man tells us, "They liked making songs about one another, and praised each other like children; they were the simplest songs, but they sprang from their hearts and went to one's heart."

On a personal note, this is one image I remember from my first reading years ago. Perhaps the reason is my own abiding memory of growing up was how everybody mocked and discounted and belittled one another. As a youth, taking the words and attitudes of those around me, I did the same thing. It was a kind of cultural infection, a sickness, and it wasn't until I was in college that I saw it for exactly what it was - a sickness. As usual, Dostoevsky has his finger right on the pulse here.

I wouldn't want to spoil the ending for anybody by telling how the dream continues and finally ends, but I would like to quote what the ridiculous man says to us toward the end, "And yet it's an old truth which has been told and retold a billion times - but it has not formed part of our lives!" What is the old truth? What has not formed part of our lives? To find out exactly, please read and plumb the depths of your own soul as you follow the ridiculous man on his miraculous journey.