24 Jan 2010

Dream of a Ridiculous Man

An excerpt from Dostoevsky's The Dream of a Ridiculous Man:
For instance, there suddenly came to me a strange consideration, that if I had once lived on the moon or on Mars, and had committed some most shameful and dishonorable act there, such as can only be imagined, and had been abused and dishonored for it as one can only perhaps feel and imagine in a dream, a nightmare, and if, ending up later on earth, I continued to preserve an awareness of what I had done on the other planet, and knew at the same time that I would never ever return there, then, looking from the earth to the moon—would it make any difference to me, or not?  Would I feel shame for the act, or not?

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