The Diary of a Superfluous Man, Ivan Turgenev [graded readers .TXT] 📗

I had years before me. And here now, there's no time to go on. Death, death is coming. I can hear her menacing _crescendo_. The time is come ... the time is come!...

And indeed, what does it matter? Isn't it all the same whatever I write? In sight of death the last earthly cares vanish. I feel I have grown calm; I am becoming simpler, clearer. Too late I've gained sense!... It's a strange thing! I have grown calm--certainly, and at the same time ... I'm full of dread. Yes, I'm full of dread. Half hanging over the silent, yawning abyss, I shudder, turn away, with greedy intentness gaze at everything about me. Every object is doubly precious to me. I cannot gaze enough at my poor, cheerless room, saying farewell to each spot on my walls. Take your fill for the last time, my eyes. Life is retreating; slowly and smoothly she is flying away from me, as the shore flies from the eyes of one at sea. The old yellow face of my nurse, tied up in a dark kerchief, the hissing samovar on the table, the pot of geranium in the window, and you, my poor dog, Tresor, the pen I write these lines with, my own hand, I see you now ... here you are, here.... Is it possible ... can it be, to-day ... I shall never see you again! It's hard for a live creature to part with life! Why do you fawn on me, poor dog? why do you come putting your forepaws on the bed, with your stump of a tail wagging so violently, and your kind, mournful eyes fixed on me all the while? Are you sorry for me? or do you feel already that your master will soon be gone? Ah, if I could only keep my thoughts, too, resting on all the objects in my room! I know these reminiscences are dismal and of no importance, but I have no other. 'The emptiness, the fearful emptiness!' as Liza said.

O my God, my God! Here I am dying.... A heart capable of loving and ready to love will soon cease to beat.... And can it be it will be still for ever without having once known happiness, without having once expanded under the sweet burden of bliss? Alas! it's impossible, impossible, I know.... If only now, at least, before death--for death after all is a sacred thing, after all it elevates any being--if any kind, sad, friendly voice would sing over me a farewell song of my own sorrow, I could, perhaps, be resigned to it. But to die stupidly, stupidly....

I believe I'm beginning to rave.

Farewell, life! farewell, my garden! and you, my lime-trees! When the summer comes, do not forget to be clothed with flowers from head to foot ... and may it be sweet for people to lie in your fragrant shade, on the fresh grass, among the whispering chatter of your leaves, lightly stirred by the wind. Farewell, farewell! Farewell, everything and for ever!

Farewell, Liza! I wrote those two words, and almost laughed aloud. This exclamation strikes me as taken out of a book. It's as though I were writing a sentimental novel and ending up a despairing letter....

To-morrow is the first of April. Can I be going to die to-morrow? That would be really too unseemly. It's just right for me, though ...

How the doctor did chatter to-day.

_April_ 1.

It is over.... Life is over. I shall certainly die to-day. It's hot outside ... almost suffocating ... or is it that my lungs are already refusing to breathe? My little comedy is played out. The curtain is falling.

Sinking into nothing, I cease to be superfluous ...

Ah, how brilliant that sun is! Those mighty beams breathe of eternity ...

Farewell, Terentyevna!... This morning as she sat at the window she was crying ... perhaps over me ... and perhaps because she too will soon have to die. I have made her promise not to kill Tresor.

It's hard for me to write.... I will put down the pen.... It's high time; death is already approaching with ever-increasing rumble, like a carriage at night over the pavement; it is here, it is flitting about me, like the light breath which made the prophet's hair stand up on end.

I am dying.... Live, you who are living,

'And about the grave
May youthful life rejoice,
And nature heedless
Glow with eternal beauty.

_Note by the Editor_.--Under this last line was a head in profile with a big streak of hair and moustaches, with eyes _en face_, and eyelashes like rays; and under the head some one had written the following words:

'This manuscript was read
And the Contents of it Not Approved
By Peter Zudotyeshin
My My My
My dear Sir,
Peter Zudotyeshin,
Dear Sir.'

But as the handwriting of these lines was not in the least like the handwriting in which the other part of the manuscript was written, the editor considers that he is justified in concluding that the above lines were added subsequently by another person, especially since it has come to his (the editor's) knowledge that Mr. Tchulkaturin actually did die on the night between the 1st and 2nd of April in the year 18--, at his native place, Sheep's Springs.

* * * * *


A TOUR IN THE FOREST


FIRST DAY

The sight of the vast pinewood, embracing the whole horizon, the sight of the 'Forest,' recalls the sight of the ocean. And the sensations it arouses are the same; the same primaeval untouched force lies outstretched in its breadth and majesty before the eyes of the spectator. From the heart of the eternal forest, from the undying bosom of the waters, comes the same voice: 'I have nothing to do with thee,'--nature says to man, 'I reign supreme, while do thou bestir thyself to thy utmost to escape dying.' But the forest is gloomier and more monotonous than the sea, especially the pine forest, which is always alike and almost soundless. The ocean menaces and caresses, it frolics with every colour, speaks with every voice; it reflects the sky, from which too comes the breath of eternity, but an eternity as it were not so remote from us.... The dark, unchanging pine-forest keeps sullen silence or is filled with a dull roar--and at the sight of it sinks into man's heart more deeply, more irresistibly, the sense of his own nothingness. It is hard for man, the creature of a day, born yesterday, and doomed to death on the morrow, it is hard for him to bear the cold gaze of the eternal Isis, fixed without sympathy upon him: not only the daring hopes and dreams of youth are humbled and quenched within him, enfolded by the icy breath of the elements; no--his whole soul sinks down and swoons within him; he feels that the last of his kind may vanish off the face of the earth--and not one needle will quiver on those twigs; he feels his isolation, his feebleness, his fortuitousness;--and in hurried, secret panic, he turns to the petty cares and labours of life; he is more at ease in that world he has himself created; there he is at home, there he dares yet believe in his own importance and in his own power.

Such were the ideas that came into my mind, some years ago, when, standing on the steps of a little inn on the bank of the marshy little river Ressetta, I first gazed upon the forest. The bluish masses of fir-forest lay in long, continuous ridges before me; here and there was the green patch of a small birch-copse; the whole sky-line was hugged by the pine-wood; nowhere was there the white gleam of a church, nor bright stretches of meadow--it was all trees and trees, everywhere the ragged edge of the tree-tops, and a delicate dim mist, the eternal mist of the forest, hung over them in the distance. It was not indolent repose this immobility of life suggested; no--the absence of life, something dead, even in its grandeur, was what came to me from every side of the horizon. I remember big white clouds were swimming by, slowly and very high up, and the hot summer day lay motionless upon the silent earth. The reddish water of the stream glided without a splash among the thick reeds: at its bottom could be dimly discerned round cushions of pointed moss, and its banks sank away in the swampy mud, and sharply reappeared again in white hillocks of fine crumbling sand. Close by the little inn ran the trodden highroad.

On this road, just opposite the steps, stood a cart, loaded with boxes and hampers. Its owner, a thin pedlar with a hawk nose and mouse-like eyes, bent and lame, was putting in it his little nag, lame like himself. He was a gingerbread-seller, who was making his way to the fair at Karatchev. Suddenly several people appeared on the road, others straggled after them ... at last, quite a crowd came trudging into sight; all of them had sticks in their hands and satchels on their shoulders. From their fatigued yet swinging gait, and from their sun-burnt faces, one could see they had come from a long distance. They were leatherworkers and diggers coming back from working for hire.

An old man of seventy, white all over, seemed to be their leader. From time to time he turned round and with a quiet voice urged on those who lagged behind. 'Now, now, now, lads,' he said, 'no--ow.' They all walked in silence, in a sort of solemn hush. Only one of them, a little man with a wrathful air, in a sheepskin coat wide open, and a lambswool cap pulled right over his eyes, on coming up to the gingerbread man, suddenly inquired: 'How much is the gingerbread, you tomfool?'

'What sort of gingerbread will it be, worthy sir?' the disconcerted gingerbread--man responded in a thin, little voice. 'Some are a farthing--and others cost a halfpenny. Have you a halfpenny in your purse?'

'But I guess it will sweeten the belly too much,' retorted the sheepskin, and he retreated from the cart.

'Hurry up, lads, hurry up,' I heard the old man's voice: 'it's far yet to our night's rest.'

'An uneducated folk,' said the gingerbread-man, with a squint at me, directly all the crowd had trudged past: 'is such a dainty for the likes of them?'

And quickly harnessing his horse, he went down to the river, where a little wooden ferry could be seen. A peasant in a white felt 'schlik' (the usual headgear in the forest) came out of a low mud hut to meet him, and ferried him over to the opposite bank. The little cart, with one wheel creaking from time to time, crawled along the trodden and deeply rutted road.

I fed my horses, and I too was ferried over. After struggling for a couple of miles through the boggy prairie, I got at last on to a narrow raised wooden causeway to a clearing in the forest. The cart jolted unevenly over the round beams of the causeway: I got out and went along on foot. The horses moved in step snorting and shaking their heads from the gnats and flies. The forest took us into its bosom. On the outskirts,