Rakhmétoff and solely for that purpose. Through this conversation you have learned that Rakhmétoff had a desire for sherry, although he never drank wine; that Rakhmétoff was not absolutely solemn and morose; that on the contrary, when engaged in agreeable business, he forgot his sorrowful thoughts, his bitter sadness, and gaily jested and made merry: only, as he explained it, "that is rarely the case with me, and I am sorry that it is so rarely the case; I do not like to be solemn, but circumstances are such that a man with my ardent love of good cannot help being solemn; if it were not for that, I should jest, I should laugh; perhaps I should sing and dance all day long." Do you understand now, reader with the penetrating eye, why, though many pages were used in directly describing Rakhmétoff, I have devoted additional pages to the accomplishment of the same purpose indirectly? Tell me, now, why I have shown and described this figure in such detail. Remember what I have already told you,—"solely to satisfy the most essential condition of art." What is this condition, and how is it satisfied by the fact that I have put Rakhmétoff's figure before you? Do you understand? No, you cannot see. Well, listen. Or rather do not listen; you will never understand; go away; I have laughed at you enough. I speak to you no longer, but to the public, and I speak seriously. The first demand of art consists in this,—to so represent objects that the reader may conceive them as they really are. For instance, if I wish to represent a house, I must see to it that the reader will conceive it as a house, and not as a hovel or a palace. If I wish to represent an ordinary man, I must see to it that the reader will not conceive him as a dwarf or as a giant.
It has been my purpose to represent ordinarily upright people of the new generation, people whom I meet by hundreds. I have taken three of them: Véra Pavlovna, Lopoukhoff, and Kirsanoff. I consider them ordinary people, they consider themselves such, and are considered such by all their acquaintances (who resemble them). Have I spoken in any other vein? Have I told extraordinary things? I have represented them with affection and esteem, it is true, but that is because every upright man is worthy of such affection and esteem.
But when have I bowed before them? Where have you seen in me the slightest tendency to adoration, or hint that nothing superior to them can be imagined and that they are ideal characters? As I conceive them, so they act,—like simple, upright people of the new generation. What do they do that is remarkably elevated? They do not do cowardly things, they are not poltroons, they have honest but ordinary convictions, they try to act accordingly, and that is all. Where is their heroism? Yes, it has been my purpose to show human beings acting just as all ordinary men of this type act, and I hope I have succeeded. Those of my readers who are intimately acquainted with living men of this type have seen from the beginning and up to the present moment that my principal characters are not at all ideal and not above the general level of people of their type, and that these men
