Short Fiction, Vladimir Korolenko [finding audrey TXT] 📗

“Thought is a secretion of the brain, as bile is of the liver.” This seemed to me both new and brilliant. I saw in it the passionless proclamation of truth, and in my jealous proselytism was ready to follow it out to its logical conclusion. Yes, like bile⁠—like all other secretions⁠—and nevertheless, there was hardly a thing that I worshipped as I worshipped thought.

In those days we lived on arguments, fell in love over arguments, suffered and rejoiced in a cloud of arguments: our tragedies, the raptures and sorrows of rejected love, all these had their origin in “warring opinions.” Evidently, history, for some abstruse reason, needed a contentious generation.

But I will not weary you with a list of the Russian and foreign authors whom I loved and believed, in at that time. You can form an idea of my intellectual condition from the two examples I have already given. I went to the lectures, though I did not care much about them, never missed a students’ meeting, studied⁠—in the strict sense of the word⁠—little, but worked and read much.

The holidays were coming to an end and the lectures would soon recommence. The chill of autumn was already in the air, the water of the lake grew dark and dull; in the flowerbeds the gardeners replace the early summer flowers with their successors of the fall. Here and there, a few leaves fading early, dropped from the trees, shining like gold against the background of shady avenues.

The fields had turned yellow, and the railway trains, passing within two versts of the academy, stood out clearer, and seemed to pass closer than in the summer. Mine was the last room in the top story of the “state,” or students’ lodgings, and part of the railroad was visible from my window. The trains would come out from behind the hills, then disappear, leaving only a white trail of steam floating above the horizon. Then the entire train would reappear further on, and I could see the tiny carriages, like toys, running along the line. I could even distinguish the wheels, and the windows glittering in the sunset. Next, the white ribbon of steam would suddenly break as the train, after gliding under the bridge, disappeared in a deep cutting. The hoarse voice of it died away gradually, and with its last echoes faded the last rays of daylight.

Titus (the friend who shared my room) and I used then to leave the window, and, while waiting for the regulation tea-urn to boil, would lie down on our beds in the twilight and talk of heaven knows what, while the evening chill streamed in at our window from the fields.

It was a pleasant life.

Among my fellow-students at that time were several who afterwards won distinction in different pursuits. You are familiar with their names⁠—names of gifted and honorable workers. And yet if in those days anyone had raised for me, as the rhetoricians say, “the curtain of the future,” and shown them to me as they are now, I should have felt insulted;⁠—it would have seemed so petty in comparison with what I expected. Indeed, I must confess that however high I placed, for instance, Vogt, Buchner, Sechenoff, or Buckle, I felt at times that a certain trace of the old world lingered about them still. But we were to develop into something quite special⁠—altogether new and unexceptional people, such as never lived before. It seemed to me that there was a something in my soul, now latent, yet none the less plainly felt. And when it expanded!⁠ ⁠… Absurd, was it not? Nevertheless I was neither arrogant nor vain. I dreamt neither of wealth nor power, neither of distinction nor fame. I never thought myself a genius. I merely dreamt that in me and my fellow-students there existed, as it were, buds wherein lay hidden and ready to unfold and come forth, the bright, future, the full new life.⁠ ⁠…

At that time there was in the Academy a certain Urmánov. He was two terms ahead of me, and we were not particularly intimate. In spite of which, or perhaps because of it, he roused in me a peculiar, almost romantic interest. Urmánov was a native of the Arkhangelsk tundra (Arctic wastes). That is, he was born in the town of Arkhangelsk itself, in the family of a poor official engaged in the salt industry. But in my imagination his somewhat foreign, good-looking face was indissolubly associated with the idea of the tundra. A lowering sky⁠—snow all round⁠—wretched huts, smoke faintly curling above them⁠—reindeer cropping the scanty grass. The tundra sleeps⁠—the people sleep⁠—the reindeer sleep; and from the distance floats a hardly audible dreary song, full of hopeless grief. All the enchanted kingdom sleeps, until⁠—well, just until Urmánov has finished studying at the academy. Then, armed with knowledge, gained in the lecture halls or otherwise, he will turn aside from all temptations of civilization, from the love of women (this unquestionably)⁠—overcome all the allurements of personal life, and return to his gloomy native land. Then at last it will be springtime in the tundra, the songs will ring out clearer, the Samoyédes53 will awaken from their sleep of centuries to the new life, to the struggle for their rights, for the downtrodden rights of man. The young generation of the Samoyédes will gather round Urmánov, and he will speak to them of their “glorious past” (taking for granted that Samoyédes, like other people, have a glorious past)⁠—will teach them to unite with the best forces of other nations in a quest for the general good of humanity.

All this, among other things, was depicted in a long poem, which I wrote during my first term. The poem left something to be desired in the matter of rhyme and measure; nevertheless, when I read it to my chum and old schoolfellow, Titus, even that extremely sedate and practical personage was enraptured and prophesied for me undying poetic