I am getting to know Petrograd as well as a tourist or a philosopher. I spend hours staring at monuments as though I had never seen them before. I try to understand their symbolic meaning. I inspect the palaces and new buildings. I am quite stirred by good architecture. With the greatest interest did I walk round the new Turkish Mosque near the Troitsky Bridge, to get a good view of it from all sides. I felt as though I were travelling in the Far East. I had my lunch on a bench in the Square, and meditated on the many different religions. I went into the Alexander III Museum and admired the pictures. Acquaintances, only, I can’t bear to meet, and disappear down a side street when I catch sight of one in the distance.
About the doings of the Germans I only learn from the staff bulletins on the public notices; I never buy any newspapers now. To judge by people’s countenances, things are going badly with us, and the Germans are still advancing. I don’t know how it will end, and I care very little; my own end will come first. It escaped my notice, somehow, that on the 3rd of the month Grodno was taken.
A ghost among the living, I abandon myself for hours together to ghostly reflections. I can see life as an outsider; I seem to get a bird’s-eye view of it from above, I philosophise; mentally I arrange the affairs of men and governments. The rumbling motor vehicles, the burdened horses, the tense activity made me realise why there was a war. A man wants to possess more than his fellows, that is why we have war. And I approved of his desire.
With a curiosity the living would not understand, I study the plan of the town. I like to know why it is laid out in roads and streets and squares. I can see the full importance of the tramway. I like the look of the block of flats and the porters; I like the stone quay. I saw the Ochta Bridge open to let a steamer pass one day, and I liked that, too. I like the bustling crowds at the railway stations; I never miss going to them every day. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t mind if the whole thing collapsed. It would be an interesting spectacle to watch. I try to picture the flames and the ruins. The town would look very flat when it was over.
I saw two aeroplanes in the sky today from the Krestovsky Island; one made a circuit round the edge of a large cloud. Mentally I was up there flying with them, not without a sense of pleasure. I take a very lordly view of life, on the whole. I mean this in all seriousness. At times I am in the best of moods. I don’t mind how much money I spend, and buy presents and sweets for the children in the most lordly way. I took another basket of fruit to Sashenka, and gave it to her very gallantly.
A lord, indeed!