Works of Ivan Turgenev (Illustrated) (282 page)

FROM ALEXEY PETROVITCH TO MARYA ALEXANDROVNA

ST. PETERSBURG,
April
7.

I am writing to you again, though I foresee that without your approval I shall soon cease writing. I must own that you cannot but feel some distrust of me. Well, perhaps you are right too. In old days I should have triumphantly announced to you (and very likely I should have quite believed my own words myself) that I had ‘developed,’ made progress, since the time when we parted. With condescending, almost affectionate, contempt I should have referred to my past, and with touching self - conceit have initiated you into the secrets of my real, present life … but, now, I assure you, Marya Alexandrovna, I’m positively ashamed and sick to remember the capers and antics cut at times by my paltry egoism. Don’t be afraid: I am not going to force upon you any great truths, any profound views. I have none of them — of those truths and views. I have become a simple good fellow — really. I am bored, Marya Alexandrovna, I’m simply bored past all enduring. That is why I am writing to you…. I really believe we may come to be friends….

But I’m positively incapable of talking to you, till you hold out a hand to me, till I get a note from you with the one word ‘Yes.’ Marya Alexandrovna, are you willing to listen to me? That’s the question. — Yours devotedly,

A. S.

V

FROM MARYA ALEXANDROVNA TO ALEXEY PETROVITCH

VILLAGE OF X —
 
— ,
April
14.

What a strange person you are! Very well, then. — Yes!

MARYA B.

VI

FROM ALEXEY PETROVITCH TO MARYA ALEXANDROVNA

ST. PETERSBURG,
May
2, 1840.

Hurrah! Thanks, Marya Alexandrovna, thanks! You are a very kind and indulgent creature.

I will begin according to my promise to talk about myself, and I shall talk with a relish approaching to appetite…. That’s just it. Of anything in the world one may speak with fire, with enthusiasm, with ecstasy, but with appetite one talks only of oneself.

Let me tell you, during the last few days a very strange experience has befallen me. I have for the first time taken an all - round view of my past. You understand me. Every one of us often recalls what is over — with regret, or vexation, or simply from nothing to do. But to bend a cold, clear gaze over all one’s past life — as a traveller turns and looks from a high mountain on the plain he has passed through — is only possible at a certain age … and a secret chill clutches at a man’s heart when it happens to him for the first time. Mine, anyway, felt a sick pang. While we are young,
such
an all - round view is impossible. But my youth is over, and, like one who has climbed on to a mountain, everything lies clear before me.

Yes, my youth is gone, gone never to return!… Here it lies before me, as it were in the palm of my hand.

A sorry spectacle! I will confess to you, Marya Alexandrovna, I am very sorry for myself. My God! my God! Can it be that I have myself so utterly ruined my life, so mercilessly embroiled and tortured myself!… Now I have come to my senses, but it’s too late. Has it ever happened to you to save a fly from a spider? Has it? You remember, you put it in the sun; its wings and legs were stuck together, glued…. How awkwardly it moved, how clumsily it attempted to get clear!… After prolonged efforts, 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. She devotes herself to whatever interests him, every word of his sinks into her soul. She has not yet learned how worthless and empty and false a word may be, how little it costs him who utters it, and how little it deserves belief! After these first moments of bliss and hope there usually comes — through circumstances — (circumstances are always to blame) — there comes a parting. They say there have been instances of two kindred souls, on getting to know one another, becoming at once inseparably united; I have heard it said, too, that things did not always go smoothly with them in consequence … but of what I have not seen myself I will not speak, — and that the pettiest calculation, the most pitiful prudence, can exist in a youthful heart, side by side with the most passionate enthusiasm — of that I have to my sorrow had practical experience. And so, the parting comes…. Happy the girl who realises at once that it is the end of everything, who does not beguile herself with expectations! But you, valorous, just men, for the most part, have not the pluck, nor even the desire, to tell us the truth…. It is less disturbing for you to deceive us…. However, I am ready to believe that you deceive yourselves together with us…. Parting! To bear separation is both hard and easy. If only there be perfect, untouched faith in him whom one loves, the soul can master the anguish of parting…. I will say more. It is only then, when she is left alone, that she finds out the sweetness of solitude — not fruitless, but filled with memories and ideas. It is only then that she finds out herself, comes to her true self, grows strong…. In the letters of her friend far away she finds a support for herself; in her own, she, very likely for the first time, finds full self - expression…. But as two people who start from a stream’s source, along opposite banks, at first can touch hands, then only communicate by voice, and finally lose sight of each other altogether; so two natures grow apart at last by separation. Well, what then? you will say; it’s clear they were not destined to be together…. But herein the difference between a man and a woman comes out. For a man it means nothing to begin a new life, to shake off all his past; a woman cannot do this. No, she cannot fling off her past, she cannot break away from her roots — no, a thousand times no! And now begins a pitiful and ludicrous spectacle…. Gradually losing hope and faith in herself — and how bitter that is you cannot even imagine! — she pines and wears herself out alone, obstinately clinging to her memories and turning away from everything that the life around offers her…. But he? Look for him! where is he? And is it worth his while to stand still? When has he time to look round? Why, it’s all a thing of the past for him. Or else this is what happens: it happens that he feels a sudden inclination to meet the former object of his feelings, that he even makes an excursion with that aim…. But, mercy on us! the pitiful conceit that leads him into doing that! In his gracious sympathy, in his would - be friendly advice, in his indulgent explanation of the past, such consciousness of his superiority is manifest! It is so agreeable and cheering for him to let himself feel every instant — what a clever person he is, and how kind! And how little he understands what he has done! How clever he is at not even guessing what is passing in a woman’s heart, and how offensive is his compassion if he does guess it!… Tell me, please, where is she to get strength to bear all this? Recollect this, too: for the most part, a girl in whose brain — to her misfortune — thought has begun to stir, such a girl, when she begins to love, and falls under a man’s influence, inevitably grows apart from her family, her circle of friends. She was not, even before then, satisfied with their life, though she moved in step with them, while she treasured all her secret dreams in her soul…. But the discrepancy soon becomes apparent…. They cease to comprehend her, and are ready to look askance at everything she does…. At first this is nothing to her, but afterwards, afterwards … when she is left alone, when what she was striving towards, for which she had sacrificed everything — when heaven is not gained while everything near, everything possible, is lost — what is there to support her? Jeers, sly hints, the vulgar triumph of coarse commonsense, she could still endure somehow … but what is she to do, what is to be her refuge, when an inner voice begins to whisper to her that all of them are right and she was wrong, that life, whatever it may be, is better than dreams, as health is better than sickness … when her favourite pursuits, her favourite books, grow hateful to her, books out of which there is no reading happiness — what, tell me, is to be her support? Must she not inevitably succumb in such a struggle? how is she to live and to go on living in such a desert? To know oneself beaten and to hold out one’s hand, like a beggar, to persons quite indifferent, for them to bestow the sympathy which the proud heart had once fancied it could well dispense with — all that would be nothing! But to feel yourself ludicrous at the very instant when you are shedding bitter, bitter tears … O God, spare such suffering!…