"THE DREAM OF A RIDICULOUS MAN based on a story by F. Dostoyevsky" "A. Petrov" "Everything was like in our world but glowed with majestic glory" "In our world, I have never seen such beauty in Man" "Perhaps only in our children, in the very first years of their age" "From my first glance on their faces, I understood everything." "Everything!" "It was a world, not corrupted by the sin of the Fall." "The people who lived there were innocent" "I saw them myself, I understood them." "I loved them!" "I suffered for them afterwards..." "A dream, my dear, is nonsense, hallucination." "But how to create paradise..." "I don't know" "Because I can't express it in words" "But it's all so simple" "In one day, in one hour" "Everything came to place at once" "The most important thing is to love others like yourself" "That is the most important thing" "Except that, you don't need anything." "The truth became clear to me last November" "Namely, third of November" "I remember every instance of that day" "I aimed to kill myself that night" "And would have defiantly shot myself" "If not that girl" "Mister!" "There" "Mama" "Mister!" "Mister!" "It means nothing to me now" "In an hour or two all will end," "And then what do I care of this girl, or the whole world." "I will become null." "Absolute null!" "Bugger off!" "Who'd that?" "Now, life and world depend on me" "I shoot myself and the world is gone at least for me" "I also thought; what if I lived on the moon or Mars before" "And would have done there some dishonest deed" "Would I care about it from here or not?" "!" "And that point I fell asleep" "Slipped into sleep unnoticed continuing to ponder at the same matter" "Seems there is life after the grave..." "Could it be that this Earth is the same as ours?" "How can such a repeat be possible?" "And what for?" "They were in love with one another" "All was whole, all was shared" "They had love, children were born." "But never have I noticed urges of that cruel pleasure-seeking which afflicts almost all inhabitants of our Earth" "Each and every one." "And serve as almost the sole origin of humanity's sins" "Is it really important if it's a dream or not," "If this dream showed me the truth" "How could me small heart, and capricious insignificant brain" "Rise to such a revelation of truth?" "I saw them myself!" "I understood them and was convinced." "I loved them!" "I suffered for them afterwards" "They mock me by saying it was just a dream" "But what does it matter that it was a dream, if it showed me the truth" "I saw the truth!" "I saw it, and now I know people can be wonderful and happy without losing the capacity to live on earth." "And they laugh at this belief of mine." "Maybe, it wasn't a dream at all" "Until now, I hid it, but now will tell also that truth" "The thing is, I... corrupted them all." "Let us be evil and unjust, as long as we know it" "But we have science" "And through it" "We will find the truth again" "But this time, we will accept it consciously" "With knowledge, which is higher than feeling" "The knowledge of life is higher than life" "Each one is part of the whole" "And the whole is part of each one" "Who's there?" "Who's there?" "WHO'S HERE?" "Dream, child's nonsense, hallucination" "A dream." "What is a dream?" "What?" "Life is not a dream?" "Let it be a dream!" "But this life, that you esteem so highly" "I wanted to snuff out by suicide, but this dream" "showed me a new, greater, rejuvenated life" "THE END Yeroslavel, 1992"