The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories

The Diary of a Superfluous Man
and Other Stories [with accents]

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Title: The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories
Author: Ivan Turgenev

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THE DIARY OF A SUPERFLUOUS MAN
AND OTHER STORIES
by
Ivan Turgenev

Translated from the Russian by Constance Garnett
1899

CONTENTS
THE DIARY OF A SUPERFLUOUS MAN A TOUR IN THE
FOREST YAKOV PASINKOV ANDREI KOLOSOV A
CORRESPONDENCE

THE DIARY OF A SUPERFLUOUS MAN
VILLAGE OF SHEEP'S SPRINGS, March 20, 18--.
The doctor has just left me. At last I have got at something definite! For
all his cunning, he had to speak out at last. Yes, I am soon, very soon,
to die. The frozen rivers will break up, and with the last snow I shall,
most likely, swim away ... whither? God knows! To the ocean too.

Well, well, since one must die, one may as well die in the spring. But
isn't it absurd to begin a diary a fortnight, perhaps, before death? What
does it matter? And by how much are fourteen days less than fourteen
years, fourteen centuries? Beside eternity, they say, all is
nothingness--yes, but in that case eternity, too, is nothing. I see I am
letting myself drop into metaphysics; that's a bad sign--am I not rather
faint-hearted, perchance? I had better begin a description of some sort.
It's damp and windy out of doors.
I'm forbidden to go out. What can I write about, then? No decent man
talks of his maladies; to write a novel is not in my line; reflections on
elevated topics are beyond me; descriptions of the life going on around
me could not even interest me; while I am weary of doing nothing, and
too lazy to read. Ah, I have it, I will write the story of all my life for
myself. A first-rate idea! Just before death it is a suitable thing to do,
and can be of no harm to any one. I will begin.
I was born thirty years ago, the son of fairly well-to-do landowners. My
father had a passion for gambling; my mother was a woman of
character ... a very virtuous woman. Only, I have known no woman
whose moral excellence was less productive of happiness. She was
crushed beneath the weight of her own virtues, and was a source of
misery to every one, from herself upwards. In all the fifty years of her
life, she never once took rest, or sat with her hands in her lap; she was
for ever fussing and bustling about like an ant, and to absolutely no
good purpose, which cannot be said of the ant. The worm of
restlessness fretted her night and day. Only once I saw her perfectly
tranquil, and that was the day after her death, in her coffin. Looking at
her, it positively seemed to me that her face wore an expression of
subdued amazement; with the half-open lips, the sunken cheeks, and
meekly-staring eyes, it seemed expressing, all over, the words, 'How
good to be at rest!' Yes, it is good, good to be rid, at last, of the wearing
sense of life, of the persistent, restless consciousness of existence! But
that's neither here nor there.
I was brought up badly and not happily. My father and mother both
loved me; but that made things no better for me. My father was not,
even in his own house, of the slightest authority or consequence, being
a man openly abandoned to a shameful and ruinous vice; he