Bobok

"Bobok" is a short story by Fyodor Dostoevsky, first published in 1864. The narrative follows a man named Ivan Ivanovich, who attends a cemetery and overhears a conversation among the corpses that have just been buried. As he listens, the dead express their thoughts and observations about life, death, and the absurdity of human existence. Through this surreal and darkly humorous premise, Dostoevsky explores existential themes, the nature of consciousness, and the moral implications of human actions, ultimately reflecting the profound depth of human experience even in death. The story serves as a thought-provoking meditation on the significance of life and the inevitability of mortality.

• Novel

								
FROM SOMEBODY'S DIARY

Semyon Ardalyonovitch said to me all of a sudden the day before yesterday:
"Why, will you ever be sober, Ivan Ivanovitch? Tell me that, pray."

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. I read: "Go and look at that morbid face suggesting
insanity."

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

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 jeer. "Attic salt?"

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 bon mots 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
all.

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 they call realism.

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" ... "however, 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 so-called madmen have turned
out cleverer than ever. So it seems the critics can call them mad, but they
cannot produce any one better.

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 done that on purpose.

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 some one 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. Yesterday 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
something else in brackets, then you begin chopping and chopping again."

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 some one beside me were muttering,
"bobok, bobok, bobok!"

What's the meaning of this bobok? I must divert my mind.

       *       *       *       *       *

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 stuck-up and held aloof from me. My
uniform was certainly rather shabby. It's five-and-twenty years, I believe,
since I was at the cemetery; what a wretched place!

To begin with the smell. There were fifteen hearses, with palls varying in
expensiveness; there were actually two catafalques. 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, distrusting my
impressionability. Some had a mild expression, some looked unpleasant. As a
rule the smiles were disagreeable, and in some cases very much so. I don't
like them; they haunt one's dreams.

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
them the general and the lady.

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 deal of gaiety and genuine heartiness. I had something to eat and

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