light. For example, if I want to draw a picture of a house, then I must reach that excellence of drawing that it may look to the reader as a house only, not as a little hut or as a palace. If I want to picture an ordinary man, then I must be able to draw him in such a way that he will not appear to the reader either as a dwarf or as a giant.
"I wanted to picture ordinary decent people of the rising generation, people whom I meet by the hundreds; I took three such people, Viéra Pavlovna, Lopukhóf, and Kirsánof. I look upon them as ordinary people; they look upon themselves in the same way, and all their acquaintances and friends, who are also such people as they are, look upon them in the same way. Where have I spoken about them in any other spirit? What have I said about them that contradicted this? I introduced them with love and respect, because every honorable man is worthy of love and respect; but where have I bowed on my knees before them? Where does the least shadow of a thought show itself in my novel that they are God-knows-how high and beautiful characters, that I can imagine nothing higher and better than they are? that they are ideals of people? As I think of them, so they act for me; not more than ordinary honorable people of the rising generation. What do they do that is wonderful? They don't do any mean things; they are not cowards; they have ordinary honest convictions; they try to act in accordance with them, and that's all. What a heroism in reality! Yes, I wanted to represent people who act like ordinary people of their type, and I hope that I have succeeded in so doing. Those readers who accurately know live people of this type, I hope, have constantly seen, from the very first, that the main heroes of my story are not at all ideals, but are people not at all higher than the general level of people of their own type; that every one of my readers who belongs to their type has undergone two or three occurrences, in which he has acted not worse than my characters have acted. Let us suppose that other honorable people have had exactly such experiences as I have related. In this there is absolutely no going to extremes, and the idea that all wives and husbands should part is not presented as a charming ideal; for not every honorable woman feels a passionate love for her husband's best friend, and not every honorable man wrestles with passion for a married woman, and for three years at that; and moreover, not everybody is driven to commit sui-
