Superposition of States

On the train, my reading of The Idiot had finally lulled me to sleep, despite my passion for this book that is so much more than a novel. It was on this sentence by Lebedev, inspired by the Apocalypse of Saint John, that sleep overtook me: "And the star that fell was called Wormwood [...] The network of railways spread across the earth, that is the star Wormwood," Dostoevsky's volume having slipped onto my chest. At the terminus, I took the underground passage. And there: shock!

Oh, my God, this vision tears my soul apart! I am another, and truth appears to me, raw, in this cold passage of concrete and steel. Look at them! They all walk toward what is called Work, with the implacability of a morning procession. Each one, without exception, carries the burden of their life in briefcases or overly heavy bags. These are not free men; rather, soldiers of an army of serious, necessary people, whose gaze seems, long ago, to have erased all trace of wonder.

Why this joyless haste? What is this "thing" they are going to perform? Beauty? Truth that saves the soul? No, only figures, paperwork and mechanisms that must be oiled without the slightest passion. They sell the one precious Life for the promise of a salary. They go forth to be useful, but to what immense, cold machine that slowly consumes them? They drown in the crowd, isolated from one another despite the closeness of their bodies. Is there no one to stop and weep for the lost splendor of their existence?

And in this greyness of hurried souls, I search in vain for the desperate brilliance of Nastasia Filippovna, realizing with dread that even her martyrdom would no longer have a place in so disenchanted a world. Forgive me this sudden turmoil. I cannot witness this humanity rushing forward without feeling a sharp pain. I am Prince Myshkin for a few seconds more, since the identification is already dissolving and I am becoming myself again, and I ask myself: who, then, is the more alienated: they, hurrying toward oblivion, or I, the Idiot, who can only lament this eternal passage into the void?