Dream Tales and Prose Poems Read online

  I heard a ringing voice like the clang of iron.

  'I am thinking how to give greater power to the leg-muscles of the flea, that he may more easily escape from his enemies. The balance of attack and defence is broken…. It must be restored.'

  'What,' I faltered in reply, 'what is it thou art thinking upon? But are not we, men, thy favourite children?'

  The woman frowned slightly. 'All creatures are my children,' she pronounced, 'and I care for them alike, and all alike I destroy.'

  'But right … reason … justice …' I faltered again.

  'Those are men's words,' I heard the iron voice saying. 'I know not right nor wrong…. Reason is no law for me—and what is justice?—I have given thee life, I shall take it away and give to others, worms or men … I care not…. Do thou meanwhile look out for thyself, and hinder me not!'

  I would have retorted … but the earth uttered a hollow groan and shuddered, and I awoke.

  August 1879.

  'HANG HIM!'

  'It happened in 1803,' began my old acquaintance, 'not long before

  Austerlitz. The regiment in which I was an officer was quartered in

  Moravia.

  'We had strict orders not to molest or annoy the inhabitants; as it was, they regarded us very dubiously, though we were supposed to be allies.

  'I had a servant, formerly a serf of my mother's, Yegor, by name. He was a quiet, honest fellow; I had known him from a child, and treated him as a friend.

  'Well, one day, in the house where I was living, I heard screams of abuse, cries, and lamentations; the woman of the house had had two hens stolen, and she laid the theft at my servant's door. He defended himself, called me to witness…. "Likely he'd turn thief, he, Yegor Avtamonov!" I assured the woman of Yegor's honesty, but she would not listen to me.

  'All at once the thud of horses' hoofs was heard along the street; the commander-in-chief was riding by with his staff. He was riding at a walking pace, a stout, corpulent man, with drooping head, and epaulettes hanging on his breast.

  'The woman saw him, and rushing before his horse, flung herself on her knees, and, bare-headed and all in disorder, she began loudly complaining of my servant, pointing at him.

  '"General!" she screamed; "your Excellency! make an inquiry! help me! save me! this soldier has robbed me!"

  'Yegor stood at the door of the house, bolt upright, his cap in his hand, he even arched his chest and brought his heels together like a sentry, and not a word! Whether he was abashed at all the general's suite halting there in the middle of the street, or stupefied by the calamity facing him, I can't say, but there stood my poor Yegor, blinking and white as chalk!

  'The commander-in-chief cast an abstracted and sullen glance at him, growled angrily, "Well?" … Yegor stood like a statue, showing his teeth as if he were grinning! Looking at him from the side, you'd say the fellow was laughing!

  'Then the commander-in-chief jerked out: "Hang him!" spurred his horse, and moved on, first at a walking-pace, then at a quick trot. The whole staff hurried after him; only one adjutant turned round on his saddle and took a passing glance at Yegor.

  'To disobey was impossible…. Yegor was seized at once and led off to execution.

  'Then he broke down altogether, and simply gasped out twice, "Gracious heavens! gracious heavens!" and then in a whisper, "God knows, it wasn't me!"

  'Bitterly, bitterly he cried, saying good-bye to me. I was in despair.

  "Yegor! Yegor!" I cried, "how came it you said nothing to the general?"

  '"God knows, it wasn't me!" the poor fellow repeated, sobbing. The woman herself was horrified. She had never expected such a dreadful termination, and she started howling on her own account! She fell to imploring all and each for mercy, swore the hens had been found, that she was ready to clear it all up….

  'Of course, all that was no sort of use. Those were war-times, sir!

  Discipline! The woman sobbed louder and louder.

  'Yegor, who had received absolution from the priest, turned to me.

  '"Tell her, your honour, not to upset herself…. I've forgiven her."'

  My acquaintance, as he repeated this, his servant's last words, murmured, 'My poor Yegor, dear fellow, a real saint!' and the tears trickled down his old cheeks.

  August 1879.

  WHAT SHALL I THINK?…

  What shall I think when I come to die, if only I am in a condition to think anything then?

  Shall I think how little use I have made of my life, how I have slumbered, dozed through it, how little I have known how to enjoy its gifts?

  'What? is this death? So soon? Impossible! Why, I have had no time to do anything yet…. I have only been making ready to begin!'

  Shall I recall the past, and dwell in thought on the few bright moments I have lived through—on precious images and faces?

  Will my ill deeds come back to my mind, and will my soul be stung by the burning pain of remorse too late?

  Shall I think of what awaits me beyond the grave … and in truth does anything await me there?

  No…. I fancy I shall try not to think, and shall force myself to take interest in some trifle simply to distract my own attention from the menacing darkness, which is black before me.

  I once saw a dying man who kept complaining they would not let him have hazel-nuts to munch!… and only in the depths of his fast-dimming eyes, something quivered and struggled like the torn wing of a bird wounded to death….

  August 1879.

  'HOW FAIR, HOW FRESH WERE THE ROSES …'

  Somewhere, sometime, long, long ago, I read a poem. It was soon forgotten … but the first line has stuck in my memory—

  'How fair, how fresh were the roses …'

  Now is winter; the frost has iced over the window-panes; in the dark room burns a solitary candle. I sit huddled up in a corner; and in my head the line keeps echoing and echoing—

  'How fair, how fresh were the roses …'

  And I see myself before the low window of a Russian country house. The summer evening is slowly melting into night, the warm air is fragrant of mignonette and lime-blossom; and at the window, leaning on her arm, her head bent on her shoulder, sits a young girl, and silently, intently gazes into the sky, as though looking for new stars to come out. What candour, what inspiration in the dreamy eyes, what moving innocence in the parted questioning lips, how calmly breathes that still-growing, still-untroubled bosom, how pure and tender the profile of the young face! I dare not speak to her; but how dear she is to me, how my heart beats!

  'How fair, how fresh were the roses …'

  But here in the room it gets darker and darker…. The candle burns dim and gutters, dancing shadows quiver on the low ceiling, the cruel crunch of the frost is heard outside, and within the dreary murmur of old age….

  'How fair, how fresh were the roses …'

  There rise up before me other images. I hear the merry hubbub of home life in the country. Two flaxen heads, bending close together, look saucily at me with their bright eyes, rosy cheeks shake with suppressed laughter, hands are clasped in warm affection, young kind voices ring one above the other; while a little farther, at the end of the snug room, other hands, young too, fly with unskilled fingers over the keys of the old piano, and the Lanner waltz cannot drown the hissing of the patriarchal samovar …

  'How fair, how fresh were the roses …'

  The candle flickers and goes out…. Whose is that hoarse and hollow cough?

  Curled up, my old dog lies, shuddering at my feet, my only companion….

  I'm cold … I'm frozen … and all of them are dead … dead …

  'How fair, how fresh were the roses …'

  Sept. 1879.

  ON THE SEA

  I was going from Hamburg to London in a small steamer. We were two passengers; I and a little female monkey, whom a Hamburg merchant was sending as a present to his English partner.

  She was fastened by a light chain to one of the seats on deck, and was moving
restlessly and whining in a little plaintive pipe like a bird's.

  Every time I passed by her she stretched out her little, black, cold hand, and peeped up at me out of her little mournful, almost human eyes. I took her hand, and she ceased whining and moving restlessly about.

  There was a dead calm. The sea stretched on all sides like a motionless sheet of leaden colour. It seemed narrowed and small; a thick fog overhung it, hiding the very mast-tops in cloud, and dazing and wearying the eyes with its soft obscurity. The sun hung, a dull red blur in this obscurity; but before evening it glowed with strange, mysterious, lurid light.

  Long, straight folds, like the folds in some heavy silken stuff, passed one after another over the sea from the ship's prow, and broadening as they passed, and wrinkling and widening, were smoothed out again with a shake, and vanished. The foam flew up, churned by the tediously thudding wheels; white as milk, with a faint hiss it broke up into serpentine eddies, and then melted together again and vanished too, swallowed up by the mist.

  Persistent and plaintive as the monkey's whine rang the small bell at the stern.

  From time to time a porpoise swam up, and with a sudden roll disappeared below the scarcely ruffled surface.

  And the captain, a silent man with a gloomy, sunburnt face, smoked a short pipe and angrily spat into the dull, stagnant sea.

  To all my inquiries he responded by a disconnected grumble. I was obliged to turn to my sole companion, the monkey.

  I sat down beside her; she ceased whining, and again held out her hand to me.

  The clinging fog oppressed us both with its drowsy dampness; and buried in the same unconscious dreaminess, we sat side by side like brother and sister.

  I smile now … but then I had another feeling.

  We are all children of one mother, and I was glad that the poor little beast was soothed and nestled so confidingly up to me, as to a brother.

  November 1879.

  N.N.

  Calmly and gracefully thou movest along the path of life, tearless and smileless, and scarce a heedless glance of indifferent attention ruffles thy calm.

  Thou art good and wise … and all things are remote from thee, and of no one hast thou need.

  Thou art fair, and no one can say, whether thou prizest thy beauty or not.

  No sympathy hast thou to give; none dost thou desire.

  Thy glance is deep, and no thought is in it; in that clear depth is emptiness.

  So in the Elysian field, to the solemn strains of Gluck's melodies, move without grief or bliss the graceful shades.

  November 1879.

  STAY!

  Stay! as I see thee now, abide for ever in my memory!

  From thy lips the last inspired note has broken. No light, no flash is in thy eyes; they are dim, weighed down by the load of happiness, of the blissful sense of the beauty, it has been thy glad lot to express—the beauty, groping for which thou hast stretched out thy yearning hands, thy triumphant, exhausted hands!

  What is the radiance—purer and higher than the sun's radiance—all about thy limbs, the least fold of thy raiment?

  What god's caressing breath has set thy scattered tresses floating?

  His kiss burns on thy brow, white now as marble.

  This is it, the mystery revealed, the mystery of poesy, of life, of love!

  This, this is immortality! Other immortality there is none, nor need be.

  For this instant thou art immortal.

  It passes, and once more thou art a grain of dust, a woman, a child…. But why need'st thou care! For this instant, thou art above, thou art outside all that is passing, temporary. This thy instant will never end. Stay! and let me share in thy immortality; shed into my soul the light of thy eternity!

  November 1879.

  THE MONK

  I used to know a monk, a hermit, a saint. He lived only for the sweetness of prayer; and steeping himself in it, he would stand so long on the cold floor of the church that his legs below the knees grew numb and senseless as blocks of wood. He did not feel them; he stood on and prayed.

  I understood him, and perhaps envied him; but let him too understand me and not condemn me; me, for whom his joys are inaccessible.

  He has attained to annihilating himself, his hateful ego; but I too; it's not from egoism, I pray not.

  My ego, may be, is even more burdensome and more odious to me, than his to him.

  He has found wherein to forget himself … but I, too, find the same, though not so continuously.

  He does not lie … but neither do I lie.

  November 1879.

  WE WILL STILL FIGHT ON

  What an insignificant trifle may sometimes transform the whole man!

  Full of melancholy thought, I walked one day along the highroad.

  My heart was oppressed by a weight of gloomy apprehension; I was overwhelmed by dejection. I raised my head…. Before me, between two rows of tall poplars, the road darted like an arrow into the distance.

  And across it, across this road, ten paces from me, in the golden light of the dazzling summer sunshine, a whole family of sparrows hopped one after another, hopped saucily, drolly, self-reliantly!

  One of them, in particular, skipped along sideways with desperate energy, puffing out his little bosom and chirping impudently, as though to say he was not afraid of any one! A gallant little warrior, really!

  And, meanwhile, high overhead in the heavens hovered a hawk, destined, perhaps, to devour that little warrior.

  I looked, laughed, shook myself, and the mournful thoughts flew right away: pluck, daring, zeal for life I felt anew. Let him, too, hover over me, my hawk…. We will fight on, and damn it all!

  November 1879.

  PRAYER

  Whatever a man pray for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces to this: 'Great God, grant that twice two be not four.'

  Only such a prayer is a real prayer from person to person. To pray to the Cosmic Spirit, to the Higher Being, to the Kantian, Hegelian, quintessential, formless God is impossible and unthinkable.

  But can even a personal, living, imaged God make twice two not be four?

  Every believer is bound to answer, he can, and is bound to persuade himself of it.

  But if reason sets him revolting against this senselessness?

  Then Shakespeare comes to his aid: 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,' etc.

  And if they set about confuting him in the name of truth, he has but to repeat the famous question, 'What is truth?' And so, let us drink and be merry, and say our prayers.

  July 1881.

  THE RUSSIAN TONGUE

  In days of doubt, in days of dreary musings on my country's fate, thou alone art my stay and support, mighty, true, free Russian speech! But for thee, how not fall into despair, seeing all that is done at home? But who can think that such a tongue is not the gift of a great people!

  June 1882.

  THE END

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  Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

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  Иван Тургенев, Dream Tales and Prose Poems