Part 8

I thank you, Márya Alexándrovna, I thank you for your note, curt as it is. All this time I have been in a state of great agitation; twenty times a day I have thought of you and of my letter. You can imagine how caustically I have laughed at myself; but now I am in a capital frame of mind, and am patting myself on the head. Márya Alexándrovna, I am entering into correspondence with you! Confess that you could not possibly have expected that after your reply; I am amazed at my own audacity ... never mind! But calm yourself: I want to talk to you not about myself, but about you. Here, do you see: I find it imperatively necessary--to speak in antiquated style--to express myself to some one. I have no right to select you for my confidante--I admit that; but hearken: I demand from you no reply to my epistles; I do not even wish to know whether you will peruse my “idle chatter,” but do not send me back my letters, in the name of all that is holy!

Listen--I am utterly alone on earth. In my youth I led a solitary life, although, I remember, I never pretended to be a Byron; but, in the first place, circumstances, in the second place, the ability to dream and a love for reverie, rather cold blood, pride, indolence--in a word, a multitude of varied causes alienated me from the society of men. The transition from a dreamy to an active life was effected in me late ... perhaps too late, perhaps to this day not completely. So long as my own thoughts and feelings diverted me, so long as I was capable of surrendering myself to causeless silent raptures, and so forth, I did not complain of my isolation. I had no comrades--I did have so-called friends. Sometimes I needed their presence as an electrical machine needs a discharger--that was all. Love ... we will be silent on that subject for the present. But now, I confess, now loneliness weighs upon me, and yet I see no escape from my situation. I do not blame Fate; I alone am to blame, and I am justly chastised. In my youth one thing alone interested me: my charming ego; I took my good-natured self-love for shyness; I shunned society, and lo! now I am frightfully bored with myself. What is to become of me? I love no one; all my friendships with other people are, somehow, strained and false; and I have no memories, because in all my past life, I find nothing except my own self. Save me! I have not made you enthusiastic vows of love; I have not deafened you with a torrent of chattering speeches; I have passed you by with considerable coldness, and precisely for that reason I have made up my mind now to have recourse to you. (I had thought of this even earlier, but you were not free then....) Out of all my self-made joys and sufferings, the sole genuine feeling was the small, but involuntary attraction to you, which withered then, like a solitary ear of grain amid worthless weeds.... Allow me, at least, to look into another face, another soul,--my own face has grown repugnant to me; I am like a man who has been condemned to live out his entire life in a room with walls made of mirrors.... I do not demand any confessions from you--oh, heavens, no! Grant me the speechless sympathy of a sister, or at least the simple curiosity of a reader--I will interest you, really, I will.

At any rate, I have the honour to be your sincere friend,

A. S.

IV

_From Alexyéi Petróvitch to Márya Alexándrovna_

PETERSBURG, April 7th.

I write again to you, although I foresee that, without your approval, I shall speedily hold my peace. I must admit that you cannot fail to feel a certain distrust of me. What of that? Perhaps you are right. Formerly I would have declared to you (and, probably, would have believed my own words) that, since we parted, I had “developed,” had advanced; with condescending, almost affectionate scorn I would have referred to my past; with touching boastfulness I would have initiated you into the secrets of my present, active life ... but now, I assure you, Márya Alexándrovna, I consider it shameful and disgusting to allude to the way in which my vile self-love once on a time fermented and amused itself. Fear not: I shall not force upon you any great truths, any profound views; I have none--none of those truths and views. I have become a nice fellow,--truly I have. I’m bored, Márya Alexándrovna--so bored that I can endure it no longer. That is why I am writing to you.... Really, it seems to me that we can come to an agreement....

However, I positively am in no condition to talk to you until you stretch out your hand to me, until I receive from you a note with the one word “Yes.”--Márya Alexándrovna, will you hear me out?--that is the question.

Yours truly, A. S.

V

_From Márya Alexándrovna to Alexyéi Petróvitch_

VILLAGE OF ... NO, April 14.

What a strange man you are! Well, then--“yes.”

MÁRYA B***.

VI

_From Alexyéi Petróvitch to Márya Alexándrovna_

PETERSBURG, May 2, 1840.

Hurrah! Thanks, Márya Alexándrovna, thanks! You are a very kind and indulgent being.

I begin, according to my promise, to speak of myself, and I shall speak with pleasure, verging on appetite.... Precisely that. One may talk of everything in the world with fervour, with rapture, with enthusiasm, but only of one’s self can one talk with appetite.

Listen: an extremely strange incident happened to me the other day: I took a glance at my past for the first time. You will understand me: every one of us frequently recalls the past--with compunction or with vexation, or simply for the lack of something to do; but only at a certain age can one cast a cold, clear glance at his whole past life--as a traveller, turning round, gazes from a lofty mountain upon the plain which he has traversed ... and a secret chill grips the heart of a man when this happens to him for the first time. At any rate, my heart contracted with pain. So long as we are young, that sort of looking backward is impossible. But my youth is over--and, like the traveller on the mountain, everything has become clearly visible to me....

Yes, my youth is gone, gone irrevocably!... Here it lies before me, all of it, as though in the palm of my hand....

’Tis not a cheerful spectacle! I confess to you, Márya Alexándrovna, that I am very sorry for myself. My God! My God! Is it possible that I myself have ruined my own life to such a degree, have so ruthlessly entangled and tortured myself?... Now I have come to my senses, but it is too late. Have you ever rescued a fly from a spider? You have? Do you remember, you placed it in the sunshine; its wings, its legs were stuck together, glued fast.... How awkwardly it moved, how clumsily it tried to clean itself!... After long-continued efforts, it got itself to rights, after a fashion; it crawled, it tried to put its wings in order ... but it could not walk as it formerly did; it could not buzz, care-free, in the sunshine, now flying through an open window into a cool room, again fluttering freely out into the hot air.... It, at all events, did not fall into the dreadful net of its own free will ... but I!

I was my own spider.

And, nevertheless, I cannot blame myself so very much. Yes, and who--tell me, for mercy’s sake--who ever was to blame for anything--alone? Or, to put it more accurately, we are all to blame, yet it is impossible to blame us. Circumstances settle our fate: they thrust us into this road or that, and then they punish us. Every man has his fate.... Wait, wait! There occurs to my mind on this score an artfully-constructed but just comparison. As clouds are first formed by the exhalations from the earth, rise up from its bosom, then separate themselves from it, withdraw from it, and bear over it either blessings or ruin, just so around each one of us and from us ourselves is formed--how shall I express it?--is formed a sort of atmosphere which afterward acts destructively or salutarily upon us ourselves. This I call Fate.... In other words, and to put it simply: each person makes his own fate, and it makes each person....

Each person makes his own fate--yes!... but our brethren make it far too much--which constitutes our calamity! Consciousness is aroused in us too early; too early do we begin to observe ourselves.... We Russians have no other life-problem than the cultivation of our personality, and here we, barely adult children, already undertake to cultivate it, this our unhappy personality! Without having received from within any definite direction, in reality respecting nothing, believing firmly in nothing, we are free to make of ourselves whatsoever we will.... But it is impossible to demand of every man that he shall immediately comprehend the sterility of a mind, “seething in empty activity” ... and so, there is one more monster in the world, one more of those insignificant beings in which the habits of self-love distort the very striving after truth, and ridiculous ingenuousness lives side by side with pitiful guile ... one of those beings to whose impotent, uneasy thought there remains forever unknown either the satisfaction of natural activity, or the genuine suffering, or the genuine triumph of conviction.... Combining in itself the defects of all ages, we deprive each defect of its good, its redeeming side.... We are as stupid as children, but we are not sincere like them; we are as cold as old men, but the common sense of old age is not in us.... On the other hand, we are psychologists. Oh, yes, we are great psychologists! But our psychology strays off into pathology; our psychology is an artful study of the laws of a diseased condition and a diseased development, with which healthy people have no concern.... But the chief thing is, we are not young,--in youth itself we are not young!

And yet--why calumniate one’s self? Have we really never been young? Have the vital forces never sparkled, never seethed, never quivered in us? Yet we have been in Arcadia, and we have roved its bright meads!... Have you ever happened, while strolling among bushes, to hit upon those dark-hued harvest-flies, which, springing out from under your very feet, suddenly expand their bright red wings with a clatter, flutter on a few paces, and then tumble into the grass again? Just so did our dark youth sometimes expand its gaily-coloured little wings for a few moments, and a brief flight.... Do you remember our silent evening rambles, the four of us together, along the fence of your park, after some long, warm, animated conversation? Do you remember those gracious moments? Nature received us affectionately and majestically into her lap. We entered, with sinking heart, into some sort of blissful waves. Round about the glow of sunset kindled with sudden and tender crimson; from the crimsoning sky, from the illuminated earth, from everywhere, it seemed as though the fresh and fiery breath of youth were wafted abroad, and the joyous triumph of some immortal happiness; the sunset glow blazed; like it, softly and passionately blazed our enraptured hearts, and the tiny leaves of the young trees quivered sensitively and confusedly above us, as though replying to the inward tremulousness of the indistinct feelings and anticipations within us. Do you remember that purity, that kindness and trustfulness of ideas, that emotion of noble hopes, that silence of plenitude? Can it be that we were not then worthy of something better than that to which life has conducted us? Why have we been fated only at rare intervals to catch sight of the longed-for shore, and never to stand thereon with firm foothold, never to touch it--

Not to weep sweetly, like the first of the Jews On the borders of the Promised Land?

These two lines of Fet[10] have reminded me of others,--also by him.... Do you remember how one day, as we were standing in the road, we beheld in the distance a cloud of rosy dust, raised by a light breeze, against the setting sun? “In a billowy cloud” you began, and we all fell silent on the instant, and set to listening:

In a billowy cloud The dust rises in the distance.... Whether horseman or pedestrian-- Cannot be descried for the dust. I see some one galloping On a spirited steed.... My friend, my distant friend-- Remember me!

You ceased.... All of us fairly shuddered, as though the breath of love had flitted over our hearts, and each one of us--I am convinced of that--longed inexpressibly to flee away in the distance, that unknown distance, where the apparition of bliss rises up and beckons athwart the mist. And yet, observe this odd thing: why should we reach out into the distance?--we thought. Were not we in love with each other? Was not happiness “so near, so possible”? And I immediately asked you: “Why have not we gained the shore we long for?” Because falsehood was walking hand in hand with us; because it was poisoning our best sentiments; because everything in us was artificial and strained; because we did not love each other at all, and only tried to love, imagined that we did love....

But enough, enough! Why irritate one’s wounds? Moreover, all that is past irrevocably. That which was good in our past has touched me, and on this good I bid you farewell for the time being. And it is time to end this long letter. I will go and inhale the May air here, in which, through the winter’s stern fortress, the spring is forcing its way with a sort of moist and keen warmth. Farewell.

A. S.

VII

_From Márya Alexándrovna to Alexyéi Petróvitch_

VILLAGE OF ... NO, May 20, 1840.

I have received your letter, Alexyéi Petróvitch, and do you know what feeling it aroused in me?--Indignation ... yes, indignation ... and I will immediately explain to you why it aroused precisely that feeling in me. One thing is a pity: I am not a mistress of the pen--I rarely write. I do not know how to express my thoughts accurately and in a few words; but you will, I hope, come to my aid. You yourself will try to understand me: if only for the sake of knowing why I am angry with you.

Tell me--you are a clever man--have you ever asked yourself what sort of a creature a Russian woman is? What is her fate, her position in the world--in short, what her life is like? I do not know whether you have ever had time to put that question to yourself; I cannot imagine how you would answer it.... I might, in conversation be able to communicate to you my ideas on that subject, but I shall hardly manage it on paper. However, it makes no difference. This is the point: you surely will agree with me that we women--at all events, those of us who are not satisfied with the ordinary cares of domestic life--receive our final education, all the same, from you--from the men: you have a great and powerful influence on us. Look, now, at what you do with us. I shall speak of the young girls, especially of those who, like myself, dwell in the dull places, and there are many such in Russia. Moreover, I do not know others, and cannot judge with regard to them. Figure to yourself such a young girl. Here, now, her education is finished; she is beginning to live, to amuse herself. But amusement alone is not enough for her. She demands a great deal from life; she reads, dreams ... of love:--“Always of love alone!” you will say.... Let us assume that that word means a great deal to her. I will say again that I am not talking of the sort of girl who finds it burdensome and tiresome to think.... She looks about her, waits for the coming of him for whom her soul pines.... At last he makes his appearance: she is carried away; she is like soft wax in his hands. Everything--happiness, and love, and thought--everything has invaded her together with him, all at once; all her tremors are soothed, all her doubts are solved by him; truth itself seems to speak by his mouth; she worships him, she is ashamed of her happiness, she learns, she loves. Great is his power over her at this period!... If he were a hero, he would kindle her to flame, he would teach her to sacrifice herself, and all sacrifices would be easy to her! But there are no heroes in our day.... Nevertheless, he guides her whithersoever he will; she devotes herself to that which interests him, his every word sinks into her soul: at that time, she does not know, as yet, how insignificant and empty and false that word may be, how little it costs him who utters it, and how little faith it merits! These first moments of bliss and hope are followed, generally--according to circumstances--(circumstances are always to blame)--are followed by parting. It is said that there have been cases where two kindred souls, on recognising each other, have immediately united indissolubly; I have heard, also, that they are not always comfortable as a result.... But I will not speak of that which I have not myself beheld--but that the very pettiest sort of calculation, the most woful prudence, may dwell in a young heart side by side with the most passionate rapture,--that is a fact which, unhappily, I know by my own experience. So, then, parting comes.... Happy is that young girl who instantly recognises that the end of all has come, who does not comfort herself with expectation! But you brave, just men, in the majority of cases, have neither the courage nor the desire to tell us the truth ... you find it more easy to deceive us.... I am ready to believe, however, that you deceive yourselves along with us.... Parting! It is both difficult and easy to endure parting. If only faith in him whom one loves were intact and unassailed, the soul would conquer the pain of parting.... I will say more: only when she is left alone does she learn the sweetness of solitude, not sterile but filled with memories and thoughts. Only then will she learn to know herself--will she come to herself, will she grow strong.... In the letters of the distant friend she will find a support for herself; in her own she will, perhaps, for the first time, express her mind fully.... But as two persons who have started from the source of a river along its different banks can, at first, clasp hands, then hold communication only with the voice, but ultimately lose sight of each other: so also two beings are ultimately disjoined by separation. “What of that?” you will say: “evidently they were not fated to go together....” But here comes in the difference between a man and a woman. It signifies nothing to a man to begin a new life, to shake far from him the past; a woman cannot do that. No, she cannot cast aside her past, she cannot tear herself away from her roots--no, a thousand times no! And so, a pitiful and ridiculous spectacle presents itself.... Gradually losing hope and faith in herself,--you can form no idea of how painful that is,--she will pine away and fade alone, obstinately clinging to her memories, and turning away from everything which life around her offers.... And he?... Seek him! Where is he? And is it worth while for him to pause? What time has he for looking back? All this is a thing of the past for him, you see.

Or here is another thing which happens: it sometimes happens that he will suddenly conceive a desire to meet the former object of his affections, he will even deliberately go to her.... But, my God! from what a motive of petty vain-glory he does it! In his polite compassion, in his counsels which are intended to be friendly, in his condescending explanations of the past, there is audible such a consciousness of his own superiority! It is so agreeable and cheerful a thing for him to let himself feel every minute how sensible and kind he is! And how little he understands what he is doing! How well he manages not even to guess at what is going on in the woman’s heart, and how insultingly he pities her, if he does guess it!...

Tell me, please, whence are we to get the strength to endure all this? Remember this, too: in the majority of cases, a girl who, to her misfortune, has an idea beginning to stir in her head, when she begins to love, and falls under the influence of a man, involuntarily separates herself from her family, from her acquaintances. Even previously she has not been satisfied with their life, yet she has walked on by their side, preserving in her soul all her intimate secrets.... But the breach speedily makes itself visible.... They cease to understand her, they are ready to suspect every movement of hers.... At first she pays no heed to this, but afterward, afterward ... when she is left alone, when that toward which she has been striving and for which she has sacrificed everything escapes her grasp, when she has not attained to heaven, but when every near thing, every possible thing, has retreated far from her--what shall uphold her? Sneers, hints, the vulgar triumph of coarse common sense she can still bear, after a fashion ... but what is she to do, to what is she to have recourse, when the inward voice begins to whisper to her that all those people were right, and that she has been mistaken; that life, of whatever sort it may be, is better than dreams, as health is better than disease ... when her favourite occupations, her favourite books, disgust her, the books from which one cannot extract happiness,--what, say you,--what shall uphold her? How is she to help succumbing in such a struggle? How is she to live and to go on living in such a wilderness? Confess herself vanquished, and extend her hand like a beggar to indifferent people? Will not they give her at least some of that happiness with which the proud heart once imagined that it could dispense--all that is nothing as yet! But to feel one’s self ridiculous at the very moment when one is shedding bitter, bitter tears ... akh! God forbid that you should go through that experience!...

My hands are trembling, and I am in a fever all over.... My face is burning hot. It is time for me to stop.... I shall send off this letter as speedily as possible, while I am not ashamed of my weakness. But, for God’s sake, not a word in your reply--do you hear me?--not a word of pity, or I will never write to you again. Understand me: I should not like to have you take this letter as the outpouring of a misunderstood soul which is making complaint.... Akh! it is all a matter of indifference to me! Farewell.

M.

VIII

_From Alexyéi Petróvitch to Márya Alexándrovna_

ST. PETERSBURG, May 28, 1840.