懺悔錄A Confession Ch-3

Bashkirs

by Leo Tolstoy

1882

Bill Lin 譯

3.

我自暴自棄的在這種精神錯亂下又生活了六年，直到我結婚時為止。在這段時間我到了國外。歐洲的生活，和我所熟識的先驅和有學問的歐洲人，不只肯定也更增強了我原本就相信的，努力追求完美的信仰，因為我發現在他們之間，也有這相同的信仰。這信仰使我有了我們那個時代大部分受過教育的人所具有的共同形式。用一個字來表示，就是「進步」。那時我以為這個字有某種意義。只是我還不明白，被什麼才是最適合我的生活的問題所困擾(像每一個有活力的人那樣)，我的答案，「符合進步的生活」，我就像一個人在任憑風浪擺佈的小船中，必須回答他的唯一的主要問題：「船要開到哪裡？」卻只會說：「我們正被帶到那裡。」

那時我沒有注意到這一點。只是偶而──不是經由理性而是藉著直覺，我背叛了這個在我們那時最流行的迷信，它被人們用來掩蓋自己對生活的不理解。例如，當我在巴黎的時候，一個執行死刑的景象揭示了我對進步的迷信的動搖。當我看到一個人身首異處，分別掉落在棺材裡時，我明白，不只是我的情感，而是我的身心全人，都認為沒有一個以我們目前進步的有理性的學說能為這一行為辯解；縱使自創世以來的每一個人，持著任何學說，認為這是需要的，我知道這是不需要而且是不好的；所以決定什麼是良善，什麼是邪惡，並不是人們說什麼，做什麼，也不是進不進步，而是在於我和自己的心。另一個使我意識到迷信於進步並不足以當生命的指南的實例就是我哥哥的死亡。他聰明、善良、嚴肅，年紀輕輕的就病了，折磨了一年多，痛苦地死了，不了解為什麼活著，更不了解為什麼必須死。沒什麼學說能給我，或給他，在他緩慢而痛苦死亡的這段時間裡，針對這些問題的任何回答。但這些只是少許懷疑的例子，實際上我繼續生活在自稱只求進步的信仰之下。「每樣東西都在進化，我也跟著進化；而為什麼我和其所有的東西一起進化，日後方見分曉。」所以到那時，我應該會制定好我的信仰。

從國外一回來，我就住到鄉下，有個機會在農民學校中任職。當虛偽對我變得更明顯而且是瞪著我的臉瞧的那段時間，這工作特別對我的口味，因為在學校裡，當我試著用文學的教材教導人們時，我不需面對虛偽。在這兒我也是為進步而工作，但我已經以批判的眼光來看待進步本身了。我對自己說：「進步的某些發展是錯的， 在基本無知的農村孩子當中，一個人必須用完全自由的精神，讓他們挑選他們高興走的路去進展。」實際上，我還是在繞著同一個無解的題目打轉，就是：如何在不知道教什麼的情況下教人。在文學活動的高層領域裡，我已經意識到，一個人不知道要教什麼，是不能教的，因為我看到，大家教的都不一樣，再經過彼此之間的爭吵，只達到了相互隱瞞他們自己的無知。可是在這兒，和農民的孩子在一起，我想我可以避開這個難題，讓他們學他們願意學的東西。現在我一想起來就感到好笑，為了滿足我的教人的慾望而如此的蒙混時，其實在我內心的深處，我很明白，我不能教任何有用的東西，因為我不知道什麼是有用的。在學校工作了一年以後，我再次出國，想要發現如何在自己一無所知的情況下來教導別人。

依我看來，我已經在國外學到了這些，在解放農奴的那年(1861)我帶著所有這方面的智慧回到俄國，擔任調停人的職務。我開始教人，在學校裡教沒有受過教育的人，同時用我出版的雜誌教知識階級的人。一切看來都很順利，但我感覺到，我的心理不太對勁，事情不能這樣持久下去。那時我很可能陷入絕望的境地，就像我15年以後那樣，若不是有了另一面我還沒有體驗過、而且應許我幸福的生活：那就是我的婚姻。

一整年我忙於調停的工作，學校，雜誌；我變得幾乎累死了──特別是我的心理錯亂的影響──而且為了做好我的調停人的工作而很辛苦，在學校裡看不出我的作為的果效，我厭惡自己在雜誌上的蒙混(這些都是出於同一樣事情：渴望要教每個人，又想掩蓋自己不知道該教什麼的事實)，結果我病了，精神病而非肉體上的病，我放下了一切，跑到巴什基爾Bashkirs 人的草原，去呼吸新鮮空氣，喝馬奶，過著只像動物的生活。

從那裡回來以後，我結了婚。幸福家庭生活的新環境，完全移轉我所有對生活的一般目的的探索。在那段期間，我的全部生活都集中在我的家庭、妻子、孩子，和因此而介意要增加我的資財。以往我的努力追求自我完美，早被追求普遍的完美，就是要求進步所代替，而現在又被只單純的要獲取自己和我的家庭的最佳福利的作為所代替了。

如此的又過了15年。儘管事實上，我現在認為著作權不重要──以我的輕微的工作而換取巨大的金錢獎勵和掌聲的誘惑──所以我全力以赴的寫作，把它作為改善自己的物質條件和抑制在我靈裡的關於自己的生活，或一般生活的意義的所有問題的手段。

我寫著：我教導的目的，惟一的真相，就是一個人必須活下去，以便使自己和他的家庭享有最美好的一切。

所以我活下去；但是五年前，我開始碰到一種很奇怪的現象。起先，我經歷到片刻的迷惑和生命停滯，就像是我不知道要做什麼，或該如何活下去；我感到徬徨，變得沮喪。但這個過了，我照樣活著。後來，這些片刻的迷茫開始越發頻繁，總是依著相同的形式。他們常常表現出這樣的問題：目的何在？再下去會是如何？

起先我以為這些是雜亂的，不著邊際的問題。我想這問題是很普遍的，如果我會想要得到解答，應該不會花費我太多的功夫；只是現在我沒有時間，一旦我要的時候，我應該能找到答案。然而這些問題開始重複頻繁地出現，越來越強烈地要求回答，就像一滴滴的墨水，總是落在同一個地方，它們聚成了一個 大黑點。

然後出現了每一個患有內部不治之症的病人的現象。起先只有小病痛的跡象，病人並不在意，後來症狀重複頻繁出現，合併變成一個持續不停的痛苦。痛苦日益加劇，在病人還能回顧以前，他原先認為只是小病痛，已經變成對他來說是世界上最重大的事情──就是死亡！

那就是發生在我身上的事。我知道這不是偶然的病痛，而是某些非常重要的事情，如果這些問題一直在那裡重複，它們就必須得到回答。所以我試著去回答。這些問題看起來是那樣愚蠢，簡單，幼稚的；但是當我一接觸到它們，試著回答時，我立刻被說服了，第一，它們不是 幼稚和愚蠢，而是生活中最重要最深奧的問題；第二，要專心去管理我的薩馬拉Samara的田產、教育兒子、或寫一本書，我必須知道我“為什麼”去做這些事。只要我不知道為什麼，我不能做什麼也活不下去了。那時我正專注於產業管理的思考，這問題突然會冒出來：「這樣，你將會在薩馬拉省有6,000俄畝（註：1俄畝約合2.75英畝。）的土地，300匹馬，然後呢？」…我完全被攪亂了，不知道要想什麼。或者當考慮到我的孩子們的教育計畫時，我會自言自語：「目的何在？」或者當我想到農民如何才能致富的時候，我會突然對自己說：「但這與我何干？」或者當我想到我的作品給我帶來的聲譽時，我會對自己說：「很好；你的聲譽比歌葛爾、或普希金、或莎士比亞、或莫裡哀，或比世界上所有的作家都高，那又如何？」我什麼都回答不了。這些問題不能等，他們要我立刻回答，假如我不回答，它們不會放過我，我活不下去了。但是沒有答案。

我覺得我的立足點已經崩潰了，我的腳底下空無一物。我所賴以維生的不再存在，蕩然無存。

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So I lived, abandoning myself to this insanity for another six years, till my marriage. During that time I went abroad. Life in Europe and my acquaintance with leading and learned Europeans confirmed me yet more in the faith of striving after perfection in which I believed, for I found the same faith among them. That faith took with me the common form it assumes with the majority of educated people of our day. It was expressed by the word "progress". It then appeared to me that this word meant something. I did not as yet understand that, being tormented (like every vital man) by the question how it is best for me to live, in my answer, "Live in conformity with progress", I was like a man in a boat who when carried along by wind and waves should reply to what for him is the chief and only question. "whither to steer", by saying, "We are being carried somewhere".

I did not then notice this. Only occasionally - not by reason but by instinct - I revolted against this superstition so common in our day, by which people hide from themselves their lack of understanding of life…. So, for instance, during my stay in Paris, the sight of an execution revealed to me the instability of my superstitious belief in progress. When I saw the head part from the body and how they thumped separately into the box, I understood, not with my mind but with my whole being, that no theory of the reasonableness of our present progress could justify this deed; and that though everybody from the creation of the world had held it to be necessary, on whatever theory, I knew it to be unnecessary and bad; and therefore the arbiter of what is good and evil is not what people say and do, nor is it progress, but it is my heart and I. Another instance of a realization that the superstitious belief in progress is insufficient as a guide to life, was my brother's death. Wise, good, serious, he fell ill while still a young man, suffered for more than a year, and died painfully, not understanding why he had lived and still less why he had to die. No theories could give me, or him, any reply to these questions during his slow and painful dying. But these were only rare instances of doubt, and I actually continued to live professing a faith only in progress. "Everything evolves and I evolve with it: and why it is that I evolve with all things will be known some day." So I ought to have formulated my faith at that time.

On returning from abroad I settled in the country and chanced to occupy myself with peasant schools. This work was particularly to my taste because in it I had not to face the falsity which had become obvious to me and stared me in the face when I tried to teach people by literary means. Here also I acted in the name of progress, but I already regarded progress itself critically. I said to myself: "In some of its developments progress has proceeded wrongly, and with primitive peasant children one must deal in a spirit of perfect freedom, letting them choose what path of progress they please." In reality I was ever revolving round one and the same insoluble problem, which was: How to teach without knowing what to teach. In the higher spheres of literary activity I had realized that one could not teach without knowing what, for I saw that people all taught differently, and by quarrelling among themselves only succeeded in hiding their ignorance from one another. But here, with peasant children, I thought to evade this difficulty by letting them learn what they liked. It amuses me now when I remember how I shuffled in trying to satisfy my desire to teach, while in the depth of my soul I knew very well that I could not teach anything needful for I did not know what was needful. After spending a year at school work I went abroad a second time to discover how to teach others while myself knowing nothing.

And it seemed to me that I had learnt this abroad, and in the year of the peasants' emancipation (1861) I returned to Russia armed with all this wisdom, and having become an Arbiter [Footnote: To keep peace between peasants and owners.-A.M.] I began to teach, both the uneducated peasants in schools and the educated classes through a magazine I published. Things appeared to be going well, but I felt I was not quite sound mentally and that matters could not long continue in that way. And I should perhaps then have come to the state of despair I reached fifteen years later had there not been one side of life still unexplored by me which promised me happiness: that was my marriage.

For a year I busied myself with arbitration work, the schools, and the magazine; and I became so worn out - as a result especially of my mental confusion - and so hard was my struggle as Arbiter, so obscure the results of my activity in the schools, so repulsive my shuffling in the magazine (which always amounted to one and the same thing: a desire to teach everybody and to hide the fact that I did not know what to teach), that I fell ill, mentally rather than physically, threw up everything, and went away to the Bashkirs in the steppes, to breathe fresh air, drink kumys [Footnote: A fermented drink prepared from mare's milk.-A. M.], and live a merely animal life.

Returning from there I married. The new conditions of happy family life completely diverted me from all search for the general meaning of life. My whole life was centred at that time in my family, wife and children, and therefore in care to increase our means of livelihood. My striving after self-perfection, for which I had already substituted a striving for perfection in general, i.e. progress, was now again replaced by the effort simply to secure the best possible conditions for myself and my family.

So another fifteen years passed. In spite of the fact that I now regarded authorship as of no importance - the temptation of immense monetary rewards and applause for my insignificant work - and I devoted myself to it as a means of improving my material position and of stifling in my soul all questions as to the meaning of my own life or life in general.

I wrote: teaching what was for me the only truth, namely, that one should live so as to have the best for oneself and one's family.

So I lived; but five years ago something very strange began to happen to me. At first I experienced moments of perplexity and arrest of life, and though I did not know what to do or how to live; and I felt lost and became dejected. But this passed and I went on living as before. Then these moments of perplexity began to recur oftener and oftener, and always in the same form. They were always expressed by the questions: What is it for? What does it lead to?

At first it seemed to me that these were aimless and irrelevant questions. I thought that it was all well known, and that if I should ever wish to deal with the solution it would not cost me much effort; just at present I had no time for it, but when I wanted to I should be able to find the answer. The questions however began to repeat themselves frequently, and to demand replies more and more insistently; and like drops of ink always falling on one place they ran together into one black blot.

Then occurred what happens to everyone sickening with a mortal internal disease. At first trivial signs of indisposition appear to which the sick man pays no attention; then these signs reappear more and more often and merge into one uninterrupted period of suffering. The suffering increases, and before the sick man can look round, what he took for a mere indisposition has already become more important to him than anything else in the world - it is death!

That is what happened to me. I understood that it was no casual indisposition but something very important, and that if these questions constantly repeated themselves they would have to be answered. And I tried to answer them. The questions seemed such stupid, simple, childish ones; but as soon as I touched them and tried to solve them I at once became convinced, first, that they are not childish and stupid but the most important and profound of life's questions; and secondly that, occupying myself with my Samara estate, the education of my son, or the writing of a book, I had to know *why* I was doing it. As long as I did not know why, I could do nothing and could not live. Amid the thoughts of estate management which greatly occupied me at that time, the question would suddenly occur: "Well, you will have 6,000 desyatinas [Footnote: The desyatina is about 2.75 acres.-A.M.] of land in Samara Government and 300 horses, and what then?" ... And I was quite disconcerted and did not know what to think. Or when considering plans for the education of my children, I would say to myself: "What for?" Or when considering how the peasants might become prosperous, I would suddenly say to myself: "But what does it matter to me?" Or when thinking of the fame my works would bring me, I would say to myself, "Very well; you will be more famous than Gogol or Pushkin or Shakespeare or Moliere, or than all the writers in the world - and what of it?" And I could find no reply at all. The questions would not wait, they had to be answered at once, and if I did not answer them it was impossible to live. But there was no answer.

I felt that what I had been standing on had collapsed and that I had nothing left under my feet. What I had lived on no longer existed, and there was nothing left.