Yes, I’ve thirsted for power all my life, power and solitude. I dreamed of them even at such an age that decidedly anyone would have laughed in my face if he had made out what I had inside my skull. That is why I came to love secrecy so much. Yes, I dreamed with all my might and to a point where I had no time to talk; this led to the conclusion that I was unsociable, and my absentmindedness led to a still worse conclusion in my regard, but my rosy cheeks proved the contrary.
I was especially happy when, going to bed and covering myself with a blanket, I began, alone now, in the most complete solitude, with no people moving around and not a single sound from them, to re-create life in a different key. The fiercest dreaming was my companion until I discovered the “idea,” when all my dreams went at once from stupid to reasonable, and from a dreamy form of novel passed on to the rationalistic form of reality.
Everything merged into a single goal. However, they weren’t so stupid even before, though there were myriad upon myriad and thousand upon thousand of them. But I had some favorites . . . However, there’s no point bringing them in here.
Power! I’m convinced that a great many people would find it very funny to learn that such “trash” was aiming at power. But I’ll amaze them still more: maybe from my very first dreams, that is, almost from my very childhood, I was unable to imagine myself otherwise than in the first place, always and in all turns of life. I’ll add a strange confession: maybe that goes on even to this day. And I’ll also note that I’m not apologizing.
In this lies my “idea,” in this lies its strength, that money is the only path that will bring even a nonentity to the first place. Maybe I’m not a nonentity, but I know from the mirror, for instance, that my appearance does me harm, because my face is ordinary. But if I were as rich as Rothschild—who would question my face, and wouldn’t thousands of women rush to me with their charms if I merely whistled? I’m even certain that, in the end, they themselves would quite sincerely find me handsome. Maybe I’m also intelligent. But even if I had a forehead seven inches wide, there would inevitably turn up in society a man with a forehead eight inches wide, and that would be the end of me. Whereas if I were Rothschild—would this smarty with the eight-inch forehead mean anything next to me? He wouldn’t even be allowed to speak next to me! Maybe I’m witty; yet here next to me is Talleyrand or Piron 26—and I’m put in the shade; but once I’m Rothschild—where is Piron, and maybe even Talleyrand? Money is, of course, a despotic power, but at the same time it’s also the highest equalizer, and that is its chief strength. Money equalizes all inequalities. I had already decided all that in Moscow.
You will, of course, see nothing in this thought but impudence, violence, the triumph of nonentity over talent. I agree that it’s a bold thought (and therefore sweet). But so what, so what? Do you think I wished for power then in order to crush unfailingly, to take revenge? That’s just the point, that the ordinary man would unfailingly behave that way. Moreover, I’m certain that if Rothschild’s millions were heaped on them, the thousands of talents and smarties, who are so above it all, would lose control at once and behave like the most banal of ordinary men, and crush more than anybody else. My idea is not that. I’m not afraid of money; it won’t crush me and won’t make me crush others.
I don’t need money, or, better, it’s not money that I need; it’s not even power; I need only what is obtained by power and simply cannot be obtained without power: the solitary and calm awareness of strength! That is the fullest definition of freedom, which the world so struggles over! Freedom! I have finally inscribed that great word . . . Yes, the solitary awareness of strength is fascinating and beautiful. I have strength, and I am calm. Jupiter holds thunder-bolts in his hand, and what then? He’s calm. Do we often hear him thunder? A fool might think he was asleep. But put some writer or foolish peasant woman in Jupiter’s place—oh, what thunder, what thunder there will be!
If only I had power, I reasoned, I’d have no need at all to use it; I assure you that I myself, of my own free will, would take the last place everywhere. If I were Rothschild, I’d go about in an old coat and carry an umbrella. What do I care if I’m jostled in the street, if I’m forced to go skipping through the mud so as not to be run over by cabs? The awareness that it was I, Rothschild himself, would even amuse me at that moment. I know that I can have a dinner like nobody else, and from the world’s foremost chef, and it’s enough for me that I know it. I’ll eat a piece of bread and ham and be satisfied with my awareness. I think so even now.
It’s not I who will get in with the aristocracy, but they who will get in with me; it’s not I who will chase after women, but they who will flow to me like water, offering me everything a woman can offer. The “banal” ones will come running for money, but the intelligent ones will be drawn by curiosity to a strange, proud, closed being, indifferent to everything. I’ll be nice to the ones and to the others, and maybe give them money, but I won’t take anything from them myself. Curiosity gives rise to passion, maybe I’ll also inspire passion. They’ll go away with nothing, I assure you, except perhaps a few presents. I’ll only become twice as curious for them.
... enough for me
Is the awareness of it. 27
The strange thing is that this picture (a correct one, by the way) tempted me when I was no more than seventeen.
I don’t want to crush or torment anyone and I won’t; but I know that if I did want to ruin such-and-such a person, my enemy, no one would keep me from doing it, but everyone would be obliging; and again, enough. I wouldn’t even take revenge on anyone. I was always surprised at how James Rothschild could agree to become a baron! Why, what for, when he’s superior to everyone in the world without that? “Oh, let this insolent general offend me at the posting station, where we’re both waiting for horses; if he knew who I was, he’d run to hitch them up himself and jump out and hasten to seat me in my modest tarantass! They wrote that a certain foreign count or baron, at a certain Viennese railway station, before the public, helped a certain local banker into his shoes, and the man was so ordinary that he allowed it. Oh, let her, let this fearsome beauty (precisely fearsome, there are such!)—the daughter of this magnificent and high-born aristocratic lady, having met me by chance on a steamboat or wherever, look askance and, turning up her nose, wonder scornfully how this humble and puny little man with a newspaper or book in his hands could dare to show up beside her in first class! But if she only knew who was sitting next to her! And she will know—she will know, and will sit down next to me, obedient, timid, gentle, seeking my eyes, glad of my smile . . .” I have purposely introduced these early pictures in order to express my idea more vividly, but the pictures are pale and perhaps trivial. Reality alone justifies everything.
They’ll say it’s stupid to live like that. Why not have a mansion, an open house, gather society, exert influence, get married? But what would Rothschild be then? He’d become like everybody else. All the charm of the “idea” would vanish, all its moral force. As a child I had already learned by heart the monologue of Pushkin’s covetous knight; Pushkin never produced a higher idea than that! I’m also of the same mind now.
“But your ideal is too low,” they’ll say with scorn. “Money, riches! A far cry from social usefulness and humane endeavors!”
But who knows how I’ll use my riches? What is immoral, what is low, in having these millions flow out of a multitude of dirty and pernicious Jewish hands, into the hands of a sober and firm ascetic, who keenly studies the world? Generally, all these dreams of the future, all these conjectures—all this is still like a novel now, and maybe I shouldn’t be writing it down; it should have stayed inside my skull; I also know that maybe no one will read these lines; but if anyone does, would he believe that maybe I, too, was unable to endure the Rothschildian millions? Not because they would crush me, but in quite a different sense, the opposite. In my dreams, I had more than once seized on that moment in the future when my consciousness would be too well satisfied and power would seem all too little. Then—not from boredom, and not from aimless anguish, but because I will desire something boundlessly greater—I will give all my millions away to people; let society distribute all my riches, and I—I will once more mingle with nonentity! Maybe I’ll even turn into that beggar who died on the steamboat, with this difference, that they won’t find anything sewn into my rags. The awareness alone that I had had millions in my hands and had flung them into the mud, would feed me in my wilderness like a raven. 28I’m prepared to think so even now. Yes, my “idea” is that fortress in which I can always and in any case hide from all people, be it even like the beggar who died on the steamboat. This is my poem! And know that I need precisely my wholedepraved will—solely to prove to myselfthat I’m strong enough to renounce it.