Fyodor Dostoevsky on Identity

My Sonya is dead; we buried her the day before yesterday. I did not know, two hours before her death, that she was to die. Three hours before, the doctor told us that she was better and would live. She was ill only a week; she died of inflammation of the lungs.

Ah, my dear Apollon Nikolayevitch, my love for my first child was probably comical; I daresay I expressed it most comically in my letters to all who congratulated me. I have doubtless been ridiculous in everybody’s eyes, but to you, to you, I am not ashamed to say anything.

That poor little darling creature, scarcely three months old, was already an individual and a person for me. She was just beginning to know me and love me, and smiled when I went near. When I sang to her in my ridiculous voice, she liked to listen. She did not cry or frown when I kissed her; she stopped crying when I went to her. And now people say to comfort me that I shall have other children.

But where is Sonya? Where is the little creature for whom I would, believe me, gladly have suffered death upon the cross, if she could have remained alive?

But enough of this, my wife is crying.