Chapter 1

WHAT I CONSIDER TO HAVE BEEN THE BEGINNING OF MY YOUTH

I have said that my friendship with Dimitri opened up for me a
new view of my life and of its aim and relations. The essence of
that view lay in the conviction that the destiny of man is to
strive for moral improvement, and that such improvement is at
once easy, possible, and lasting. Hitherto, however, I had found
pleasure only in the new ideas which I discovered to arise from
that conviction, and in the forming of brilliant plans for a
moral, active future, while all the time my life had been
continuing along its old petty, muddled, pleasure-seeking course,
and the same virtuous thoughts which I and my adored friend
Dimitri ("my own marvellous Mitia," as I used to call him to
myself in a whisper) had been wont to exchange with one another
still pleased my intellect, but left my sensibility untouched.
Nevertheless there came a moment when those thoughts swept into
my head with a sudden freshness and force of moral revelation
which left me aghast at the amount of time which I had been
wasting, and made me feel as though I must at once--that very
second--apply those thoughts to life, with the firm intention of
never again changing them.

It is from that moment that I date the beginning of my youth.

I was then nearly sixteen. Tutors still attended to give me
lessons, St. Jerome still acted as general supervisor of my
education, and, willy-nilly, I was being prepared for the
University. In addition to my studies, my occupations included
certain vague dreamings and ponderings, a number of gymnastic
exercises to make myself the finest athlete in the world, a good
deal of aimless, thoughtless wandering through the rooms of the
house (but more especially along the maidservants' corridor), and
much looking at myself in the mirror. From the latter, however, I
always turned away with a vague feeling of depression, almost of
repulsion. Not only did I feel sure that my exterior was ugly,
but I could derive no comfort from any of the usual consolations
under such circumstances. I could not say, for instance, that I
had at least an expressive, clever, or refined face, for there
was nothing whatever expressive about it. Its features were of
the most humdrum, dull, and unbecoming type, with small grey eyes
which seemed to me, whenever I regarded them in the mirror, to be
stupid rather than clever. Of manly bearing I possessed even
less, since, although I was not exactly small of stature, and
had, moreover, plenty of strength for my years, every feature in
my face was of the meek, sleepy-looking, indefinite type. Even
refinement was lacking in it, since, on the contrary, it
precisely resembled that of a simple-looking moujik, while