it somehow gets better, crawls, tries to open its wings … but there is no more frolicking for it, no more light-hearted buzzing in the sunshine, as before, when it was flying through the open window into the cool room and out again, freely winging its way into the hot air…. The fly, at least, fell through none of its own doing into the dreadful web … but I!
I have been my own spider!
And, at the same time, I cannot greatly blame myself. Who, indeed, tell me, pray, is ever to blame for anything—alone? Or, to put it better, we are all to blame, and yet we can’t be blamed. Circumstances determine us; they shove us into one road or another, and then they punish us for it. Every man has his destiny…. Wait a bit, wait a bit! A cleverly worked-out but true comparison has just come into my head. As the clouds are first condensed from the vapours of earth, rise from out of her bosom, then separate, move away from her, and at last bring her prosperity or ruin: so, about every one of us, and out of ourselves, is fashioned—how is one to express it?—is fashioned a sort of element, which has afterwards a destructive or saving influence on us. This element I call destiny…. In other words, and speaking simply, every one makes his own destiny and destiny makes every one….
Every one makes his destiny—yes!… but people like us make it too much—that’s what’s wrong with us! Consciousness is awakened too early in us; too early we begin to keep watch on ourselves…. We Russians have set ourselves no other task in life but the cultivation of our own personality, and when we’re children hardly grown-up we set to work to cultivate it, this luckless personality! Receiving no definite guidance from without, with no real respect for anything, no strong belief in anything, we are free to make what we choose of ourselves … one can’t expect every one to understand on the spot the uselessness of intellect ‘seething in vain activity’ … and so we get again one monster the more in the world, one more of those worthless creatures in whom habits of self-ccnsciousness distort the very striving for truth, and a ludicrous simplicity exists side by side with a pitiful duplicity … one of those beings of impotent, restless thought who all their lives know neither the satisfaction of natural activity, nor genuine suffering, nor the genuine thrill of conviction…. Mixing up together in ourselves the defects of all ages, we rob each defect of its good redeeming side … we are as silly as children, but we are not sincere as they are; we are cold as old people, but we have none of the good sense of old age…. To make up, we are psychologists. Oh yes, we are great psychologists! But our psychology is akin to pathology; our psychology is that subtle study of the laws of morbid condition and morbid development, with which healthy people have nothing to do…. And, what is the chief point, we are not young, even in our youth we are not young!
And at the same time—why libel ourselves? Were we never young, did we never know the play, the fire, the thrill of life’s forces? We too have been in Arcady, we too have strayed about her bright meadows!… Have you chanced, strolling about a copse, to come across those dark grasshoppers which, jumping up from under your very feet, suddenly with a whirring sound expand bright red wings, fly a few yards, and then drop again into the grass? So our dark youth at times spread its particoloured wings for a few moments and for no long flight…. Do you remember our silent evening walks, the four of us together, beside your garden fence, after some long, warm, spirited conversation? Do you remember those blissful moments? Nature, benign and stately, took us to her bosom. We plunged, swooning, into a flood of bliss. All around, the sunset with a sudden and soft flush, the glowing sky, the earth bathed in light, everything on all sides seemed full of the fresh and fiery breath of youth, the joyous triumph of some deathless happiness. The sunset flamed; and, like it, our rapturous hearts burned with soft and passionate fire, and the tiny leaves of the young trees quivered faintly and expectantly over our heads, as though in response to the inward tremor of vague feelings and anticipations in us. Do you remember the purity, the goodness and trustfulness of ideas, the softening of noble hopes, the silence of full hearts? Were we not really then worth something better than what life has brought us to? Why was it ordained for us only at rare moments to see the longed-for shore, and never to stand firmly on it, never to touch it:
‘Never to weep with joy, like the first Jew
Upon the border of the promised land’!
These two lines of Fet’s remind me of others, also his…. Do you remember once, as we stood in the highroad, we saw in the distance a cloud of pink dust, blown up by the light breeze against the setting sun? ‘In an eddying cloud,’ you began, and we were all still at once to listen:
‘In an eddying cloud
Dust rises in the distance …
Rider or man on foot
Is seen not in the dust.
I see some one trotting
On a gallant steed …
Friend of mine, friend far away,
Think! oh, think of me!’
You ceased … we all felt a shudder pass over us, as though the breath of love had flitted over our hearts, and each of us—I am sure of it—felt irresistibly drawn into the distance, the unknown distance, where the phantom of bliss rises and lures through the mist. And all the while, observe the strangeness; why, one wonders, should we have a yearning for the far away? Were we not in love with each other? Was not happiness ‘so close, so possible’? As I asked you just now: why was it we did not touch the longed-for shore? Because falsehood walked hand in hand with us; because it poisoned our best feelings; because everything in us was artificial and strained; because we did not love each other at all, but were only trying to love, fancying we loved….
But enough, enough! why inflame one’s wounds? Besides, it is all over and done with. What was good in our past moved me, and on that good I will take leave of you for a while. It’s time to make an end of this long letter. I am going out for a breath here of the May air, in which spring is breaking through the dry fastness of winter with a sort of damp, keen warmth. Farewell.—Yours,
A. S.
VII
FROM MARYA ALEXANDROVNA TO ALEXEY PETROVITCH
VILLAGE OF X——,May 1840.
I have received your letter, Alexey Petrovitch, and do you know what feeling t aroused in me?—indignation … yes, indignation … and I will explain to you at once why it aroused just that feeling in me. It’s only a pity I’m not a great hand with my pen; I rarely write, and am not good at expressing my thoughts precisely and in few words. But you will, I hope, come to my aid. You must try, on your side, to understand me, if only to find out why I am indignant with you.
Tell me—you have brains—have you ever asked yourself what sort of creature a Russian woman is? what is her destiny? her position in the world—in short, what is her life? I don’t know if you have had time to put this question to yourself; I can’t picture to myself how you would answer it…. I should, perhaps, in conversation be capable of giving you my ideas on the subject, but on paper I am scarcely equal to it. No matter, though. This is the point: you will certainly agree with me that we women, those of us at least who are not satisfied with the common interests of domestic life, receive our final education, in any case, from you men: you have a great and powerful influence on us. Now, consider what you do to us. I am talking about young girls, especially those who, like me, live in the wilds, and there are very many such in Russia. Besides, I don’t know anything of others and cannot judge of them. Picture to yourself such a girl. Her education, suppose, is finished; she begins to live, to enjoy herself. But enjoyment alone is not much to her. She demands much from life, she reads, and dreams … of love. Always nothing but love! you will say…. Suppose so; but that word means a great deal to her. I repeat that I am not speaking of a girl to whom thinking is tiresome and boring…. She looks round her, is waiting for the time when he will come for whom her soul yearns…. At last he makes his appearance—she is captivated; she is wax in his hands. All—happiness and love and thought—all have come with a rush together with him; all her tremors are soothed, all her doubts solved by him. Truth itself seems speaking by his lips. She venerates him, is over-awed at her own happiness, learns, loves. Great is his power over her at that time!… If he were a hero, he would fire her, would teach her to sacrifice herself, and all sacrifices would be easy to her! But there are no heroes in our times…. Anyway, he directs her as he pleases.
