The Complete Works of Count Tolstoy/Volume 18/The Kreutzer Sonata/Chapter 4
IV.
"Yes, only by having gone through all the torment, only thanks to this, did I comprehend where the root of it all was, did I comprehend what ought to be, and therefore did I see the terror of all that which is.
"So you see how and when all that began which led me up to my episode. It began when I was not quite sixteen years old. It happened when I was still in the gymnasium, while my elder brother was a first year student at the university. I did not yet know women, but, like all unfortunate children of our circle, I was no longer an innocent boy: I had been debauched by boys for two years already woman, not any kind of a woman, but woman as a sweet being, woman, every woman, the nakedness of woman, had been tormenting me. My withdrawments were impure. I suffered as suffer ninety-nine hundredths of our boys. I was horrified, I was tormented, I prayed, and I fell. I was already debauched in imagination and in fact, but the last step had not yet been taken. I was perishing myself, but I had not yet laid hands on another human being. But my brother's comrade, a jolly student, a so-called good fellow, that is, the worst kind of a good-for-nothing, who had taught us to drink and play cards, persuaded me after a carousal to drive to that place. We went. My brother, too, was innocent still, and he fell that night. And I, a fifteen-year-old boy, desecrated myself and was instrumental in the desecration of a woman, without comprehending what I was doing. I had never heard from my elders that that which I was doing was bad. And even now they do not hear it. It is true. it is mentioned in the commandments, but the commandments are needed only to answer the priest properly at the examination; nor are they as necessary, anywhere near as necessary, as the commandment about the use of ut in conditional sentences.
"Thus, I had never heard it said by my elders, whose opinion I valued, that this was bad. On the contrary, I heard from people whom I respected that it was good. I heard that my struggles and my suffering would cease after it; I heard it and I read it; I heard my elders say that it was good for health; and I heard my companions say that it was meritorious and dashing. Thus, in general, I could foresee nothing but good in it. The danger of disease? Even that was foreseen. The paternal government takes care of that. It watches over the regular activity of the houses of prostitution, and makes debauchery for gymnasiasts safe. And the doctors watch over it, for a stated salary. So it ought to be. They affirm that debauchery is good for health, and they provide a well-regulated, accurate debauchery. I know some mothers who in this sense watch over the health of their sons. And science sends them into houses of prostitution."
"How does science send them there?" I asked.
"Who are the doctors? Priests of science. Who debauches the youths, insisting that this is necessary for their health? They.
"If one-hundredth part of the effort exerted on the cure of syphilis were utilized on the eradication of debauchery, there would long ago not have been a trace left of syphilis. Instead, all effort is exerted not on the eradication of debauchery, but on its encouragement, on securing the safety of debauchery. Well, that is another matter. The point is that to me, as to nine-tenths, if not more, of the men of all conditions of life, even among the peasants, there happened that terrible thing that I fell, not because I became a prey to the natural seductions of a certain woman's charms,—no, not a woman had seduced me, but I fell because the people around me saw in the fall either a most lawful function which was very useful to health, or a most natural, and not only pardonable, but even innocent pastime for a young man.
"I did not understand that there was any fall; I simply began to abandon myself to those part pleasures, part necessities, which, so I had been impressed, were peculiar to a certain age, and I abandoned myself to this debauchery, as I had abandoned myself to drinking and smoking. And yet there was something especial and pathetic in this fall. I remember how even then, before I had left the room, I felt sad, so sad that I felt like weeping,—weeping for the loss of my innocence, for my past relation to woman, now for ever lost. Yes, the simple, natural relation to woman was now for ever lost. From that time there no longer was nor could be any pure relation with women. I became what is called a libertine.
"To be a libertine is a physical condition, resembling the condition of a morphine fiend, a drunkard, a smoker. Just as morphine-eaters, drunkards, smokers no longer are normal men, just so a man who has known several women is no longer a normal man, but will for ever be spoiled,—a libertine. Just as drunkards and morphine-eaters may at once be recognized by their faces and by their manner, just so is a libertine. A libertine may restrain himself and struggle, but the simple, pure, the fraternal relations with women will never again exist for him. A libertine may at once be told from the way he looks at a young woman and surveys her. And thus I became a libertine and remained one, and it was this which brought me to ruin."