Сон смешного человека

Я умолял их, чтоб они распяли меня на кресте [...] я хотел принять от них муки, я жаждал мук [...] Но они лишь смеялись надо мной и стали меня считать под конец за юродивого. Они оправдывали меня, они говорили, что получили лишь то, чего сами желали [...] Наконец, они объявили мне, что я становлюсь им опасен и что они посадят меня в сумасшедший дом, если я не замолчу.

I begged them to crucify me on a cross [...] I wanted to take the suffering from them, I longed for their suffering [...] But they only mocked me and in the end began to consider me some sort of holy fool. They vindicated me, they said that they had only received what they themselves had wanted [...] Finally, they explained to me that I was becoming dangerous for them and that they would put me in a madhouse if I did not keep quiet.

A short story that quite clearly embodies Dostoevskii's preoccupation with science and man's pursuit for knowledge as a threat. The narrator, who is assumed mad and at first is set on killing himself, claims to have seen the “truth” in a dream. He dreams that he meets people who live without sin, but, in this dream, he imagines that he himself corrupts them, causing their Fall (грехопадение, literally ‘fall from sin'). Once corrupted, these people take the path we know all too well in the “fallen” world.

Clearly, I have very different views than Dostoevskii on science and knowledge. This is also a very cynical view on mankind, and the story is more a vehicle for Dostoevskii's message than a particularly powerful or original story in its own right. Having said that, it was (thankfully!) a lot easier to get through than [b:Двойник|24297015|Двойник|Fyodor Dostoyevsky|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1438300271s/24297015.jpg|236056] (The Double), but that may have just been because it had not be dragged out into a form larger than a short story...