"The Dream of a Ridiculous Man" (Russian: Сон смешного человека, Son smeshnovo cheloveka) is a short story by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
However, after a chance encounter with a young girl, he begins an inner journey that re-instills a love for his fellow man.
After an indeterminate amount of time in his cold grave, indifferent and expecting nothing, water begins to drip down onto his left eyelid.
But if Thou art taking vengeance upon me for my unwise suicide, through the ugliness and absurdity of this life after death, then know that no torment could compare with the contempt that I shall always feel in silence, though it be through millions of years of martyrdom.
He is then placed on what appears to be an idyllic Greek island, where he at once senses an atmosphere of unsullied peace and beauty.
They are happy, fearless, sinless people who live in communion with the trees and the stars and all the natural world around them.
The people fulfill all the natural functions of life, including death, but with serene acceptance and even a kind of ecstatic celebration.
He lives among them for a long time, and although there are aspects of their all-encompassing spiritual freedom and joy that he cannot fathom, he senses its essence with his heart, and loves and worships them unreservedly.
He pleads with the people to return to their former state, or at least to kill him for his role in their Fall, but they laugh at him and threaten to put him in a madhouse.
At the conclusion of the story, the narrator states that he has found the little girl, and that he will never stop preaching the earthly paradise.
According to Mikhail Bakhtin The Dream of a Ridiculous Man is "practically a complete encyclopedia of Dostoevsky's most important themes".
He describes these themes and Dostoevsky's stylistic means for presenting them as characteristic of the carnivalised genre of Menippean satire.