Le Rêve d'un homme ridicule

On the brink of shooting himself, convinced that nothing in the world matters and that all things are equally meaningless, a lonely, disaffected man is interrupted by a frightened little girl begging for help. He turns her away, then falls asleep in his chair and begins to dream.

In the dream he does take his own life, only to awaken on a distant planet, a second Earth untouched by sin, where humankind lives in perfect innocence, love, and joy. But his very presence carries a kind of contagion, and he watches, horrified, as this paradise is corrupted and falls. He wakes transformed, no longer ridiculous in his own eyes but seized by a burning conviction: that people could be happy, that a heaven on earth is possible, and that love is the only truth worth preaching.

One of Dostoevsky's most concentrated and visionary short works, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man is a fantastical philosophical parable about despair, utopia, and moral awakening, presented here in André Markowicz's French translation.