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 I also had the same big hands and feet as
he. At the time, all this seemed to me very shameful.