That is my name as known to the public.  In Russia it is known to every educated man, and abroad it is mentioned in the lecture-room with the addition “honoured and distinguished.”  It is one of those fortunate names to abuse which or to take which in vain, in public or in print, is considered a sign of bad taste.  And that is as it should be.  You see, my name is closely associated with the conception of a highly distinguished man of great gifts and unquestionable usefulness.  I have the industry and power of endurance of a camel, and that is important, and I have talent, which is even more important.  Moreover, while I am on this subject, I am a well-educated, modest, and honest fellow.  I have never poked my nose into literature or politics; I have never sought popularity in polemics with the ignorant; I have never made speeches either at public dinners or at the funerals of my friends....  In fact, there is no slur on my learned name, and there is no complaint one can make against it.  It is fortunate.

The bearer of that name, that is I, see myself as a man of sixty-two, with a bald head, with false teeth, and with an incurable tic douloureux.  I am myself as dingy and unsightly as my name is brilliant and splendid.  My head and my hands tremble with weakness; my neck, as Turgenev says of one of his heroines, is like the handle of a double bass; my chest is hollow; my shoulders narrow; when I talk or lecture, my mouth turns down at one corner; when I smile, my whole face is covered with aged-looking, deathly wrinkles.  There is nothing impressive about my pitiful figure; only, perhaps, when I have an attack of tic douloureux my face wears a peculiar expression, the sight of which must have roused in every one the grim and impressive thought, “Evidently that man will soon die.”

I still, as in the past, lecture fairly well; I can still, as in the past, hold the attention of my listeners for a couple of hours.  My fervour, the literary skill of my exposition, and my humour, almost efface the defects of my voice, though it is harsh, dry, and monotonous as a praying beggar’s.  I write poorly.  That bit of my brain which presides over the faculty of authorship refuses to work.  My memory has grown weak; there is a lack of sequence in my ideas, and when I put them on paper it always seems to me that I have lost the instinct for their organic connection; my construction is monotonous; my language is poor and timid.  Often I write what I do not mean; I have forgotten the beginning when I am writing the end.  Often I forget ordinary words, and I always have to waste a great deal of energy in avoiding superfluous phrases and unnecessary parentheses in my letters, both unmistakable proofs of a decline in mental activity.  And it is noteworthy that the simpler the letter the more painful the effort to write it.  At a scientific article I feel far more intelligent and at ease than at a letter of congratulation or a minute of proceedings.  Another point:  I find it easier to write German or English than to write Russian.