"Erstes Leid," by Franz Kafka: " First Sorrow," English version. "Erstes Leid, First Sorrow," by Franz Kafka, translated in English, with Original Text in German

Franz Kafka in 1906

 

First Sorrow

A trapeze artist—this art, practiced in the high vaulted domes of the great variety theaters, generally considered one of the most difficult that humanity can achieve—, first simply out of his pursuit of perfection, later out of a habit that became overwhelming, had set up is life in such a way that, as long as he kept working for same enterprise, he would remain on his trapeze day and night.

All his needs, very modest for that matter, were supplied by relays of attendants watching from below; they sent up whatever was needed in specially constructed vessels, which then they pulled down.

This way of living caused no particular difficulties to anyone, except when other turns were on the stage: his being still up there and not able to hide proved a bit annoying, and also the fact that, although at such times he mostly remained very still, every now and then he would draw a stray glance from the attendance. Yet the management overlooked this, because he was an extraordinary and irreplaceable artist. And of course they recognized that he did not conduct as such on purpose, and actually it was only this way that he could really keep himself in constant excercise and his art at its perfection.

Otherwise, being up there was quite healthy, and when in the warmer seasons of the year the side windows all around the theatre dome were opened, and with the fresh air the sun entered mightily into the dim vault, it was even beautiful. True, his social life was restricted; only sometimes a fellow acrobat would climb the rope ladder up to him, and then they would both sit on the trapeze, leaning left and right against the supporting ropes and chatting; or a construction worker repairing the roof would exchange a few words with him through an open window; or the fireman, inspecting the emergency lighting in the top gallery, would call over to him something respectful but hardly intelligible. Otherwise, all was quiet around him; once in a while, someone from the staff, while straying through the empty theater in the afternoon, gazed thoughtfully up into the great height, almost beyond the range of the eye, where the trapeze artist, unaware that someone was watching him, practiced his art or rested...
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Erstes Leid

Ein Trapezkünstler - bekanntlich ist diese hoch in den Kuppeln der großen Varietébühnen ausgeübte Kunst eine der schwierigsten unter allen, Menschen erreichbaren - hatte, zuerst nur aus dem Streben nach Vervollkommnung, später auch aus tyrannisch gewordener Gewohnheit sein Leben derart eingerichtet, daß er, solange er im gleichen Unternehmen arbeitete, Tag und Nacht auf dem Trapez blieb. Allen seinen, übrigens sehr geringen Bedürfnissen wurde durch einander ablösende Diener entsprochen, welche unten wachten und alles, was oben benötigt wurde, in eigens konstruierten Gefäßen hinauf- und hinabzogen. Besondere Schwierigkeiten für die Umwelt ergaben sich aus dieser Lebensweise nicht; nur während der sonstigen Programm-Nummern war es ein wenig störend, daß er, wie sich nicht verbergen ließ, oben geblieben war und daß, trotzdem er sich in solchen Zeiten meist ruhig verhielt, hie und da ein Blick aus dem Publikum zu ihm abirrte. Doch verziehen ihm dies die Direktionen, weil er ein außerordentlicher, unersetzlicher Künstler war. Auch sah man natürlich ein, daß er nicht aus Mutwillen so lebte, und eigentlich nur so sich in dauernder Übung erhalten, nur so seine Kunst in ihrer Vollkommenheit bewahren konnte.

Doch war es oben auch sonst gesund, und wenn in der wärmeren Jahreszeit in der ganzen Runde der Wölbung die Seitenfenster aufgeklappt wurden und mit der frischen Luft die Sonne mächtig in den dämmernden Raum eindrang, dann war es dort sogar schön. Freilich, sein menschlicher Verkehr war eingeschränkt, nur manchmal kletterte auf der Strickleiter ein Turnerkollege zu ihm hinauf, dann saßen sie beide auf dem Trapez, lehnten rechts und links an den Haltestricken und plauderten, oder es verbesserten Bauarbeiter das Dach und wechselten einige Worte mit ihm durch ein offenes Fenster, oder es überprüfte der Feuerwehrmann die Notbeleuchtung auf der obersten Galerie und rief ihm etwas Respektvolles, aber wenig Verständliches zu. Sonst blieb es um ihn still; nachdenklich sah nur manchmal irgendein Angestellter, der sich etwa am Nachmittag in das leere Theater verirrte, in die dem Blick sich fast entziehende Höhe empor, wo der Trapezkünstler, ohne wissen zu können, daß jemand ihn beobachtete, seine Künste trieb oder ruhte.

So hätte der Trapezkünstler ungestört leben können, wären nicht die unvermeidlichen Reisen von Ort zu Ort gewesen, die ihm äußerst lästig waren. Zwar sorgte der Impresario dafür, daß der Trapezkünstler von jeder unnötigen Verlängerung seiner Leiden verschont blieb: für die Fahrten in den Städten benützte man Rennautomobile, mit denen man, womöglich in der Nacht oder in den frühesten Morgenstunden, durch die menschenleeren Straßen mit letzter Geschwindigkeit jagte, aber freilich zu langsam für des Trapezkünstlers Sehnsucht; im Eisenbahnzug war ein ganzes Kupee bestellt, in welchem der Trapezkünstler, zwar in kläglichem, aber doch irgendeinem Ersatz seiner sonstigen Lebensweise die Fahrt oben im Gepäcknetz zubrachte; im nächsten Gastspielort war im Theater lange vor der Ankunft des Trapezkünstlers das Trapez schon an seiner Stelle, auch waren alle zum Theaterraum führenden Türen weit geöffnet, alle Gänge frei gehalten - aber es waren doch immer die schönsten Augenblicke im Leben des Impresario, wenn der Trapezkünstler dann den Fuß auf die Strickleiter setzte und im Nu, endlich, wieder oben an seinem Trapez hing.

So viele Reisen nun auch schon dem Impresario geglückt waren, jede neue war ihm doch wieder peinlich, denn die Reisen waren, von allem anderen abgesehen, für die Nerven des Trapezkünstlers jedenfalls zerstörend.

So fuhren sie wieder einmal miteinander, der Trapezkünstler lag im Gepäcknetz und träumte, der Impresario lehnte in der Fensterecke gegenüber und las ein Buch, da redete ihn der Trapezkünstler leise an. Der Impresario war gleich zu seinen Diensten. Der Trapezkünstler sagte, die Lippen beißend, er müsse jetzt für sein Turnen, statt des bisherigen einen, immer zwei Trapeze haben, zwei Trapeze einander gegenüber. Der Impresario war damit sofort einverstanden. Der Trapezkünstler aber, so als wolle er es zeigen, daß hier die Zustimmung des Impresario ebenso bedeutungslos sei, wie es etwa sein Widerspruch wäre, sagte, daß er nun niemals mehr und unter keinen Umständen nur auf einem Trapez turnen werde. Unter der Vorstellung, daß es vielleicht doch einmal geschehen könnte, schien er zu schaudern. Der Impresario erklärte, zögernd und beobachtend, nochmals sein volles Einverständnis, zwei Trapeze seien besser als eines, auch sonst sei diese neue Einrichtung vorteilhaft, sie mache die Produktion abwechslungsreicher. Da fing der Trapezkünstler plötzlich zu weinen an. Tief erschrocken sprang der Impresario auf und fragte, was denn geschehen sei, und da er keine Antwort bekam, stieg er auf die Bank, streichelte ihn und drückte sein Gesicht an das eigene, so daß er auch von des Trapezkünstlers Tränen überflossen wurde. Aber erst nach vielen Fragen und Schmeichelworten sagte der Trapezkünstler schluchzend: »Nur diese eine Stange in den Händen - wie kann ich denn leben!« Nun war es dem Impresario schon leichter, den Trapezkünstler zu trösten; er versprach, gleich aus der nächsten Station an den nächsten Gastspielort wegen des zweiten Trapezes zu telegraphieren; machte sich Vorwürfe, daß er den Trapezkünstler so lange Zeit nur auf einem Trapez hatte arbeiten lassen, und dankte ihm und lobte ihn sehr, daß er endlich auf den Fehler aufmerksam gemacht hatte. So gelang es dem Impresario, den Trapezkünstler langsam zu beruhigen, und er konnte wieder zurück in seine Ecke gehen. Er selbst aber war nicht beruhigt, mit schwerer Sorge betrachtete er heimlich über das Buch hinweg den Trapezkünstler. Wenn ihn einmal solche Gedanken zu quälen begannen, konnten sie je gänzlich aufhören? Mußten sie sich nicht immerfort steigern? Waren sie nicht existenzbedrohend? Und wirklich glaubte der Impresario zu sehn, wie jetzt im scheinbar ruhigen Schlaf, in welchen das Weinen geendet hatte, die ersten Falten auf des Trapezkünstlers glatter Kinderstirn sich einzuzeichnen begannen.

"Taras Bulba and Other Tales," by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, (Russian: Тара́с Бу́льба) Full Text, Taras Bulba and Other Tales

Почтовая марка России, посвящённая 200-летию со дня рождения Н. В. Гоголя, 2009. Taras Bulba, a  commemorative Russian stamp, 2009.

TARAS BULBA AND OTHER TALES

By Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

INTRODUCTION

Russian literature, so full of enigmas, contains no greater creative mystery than Nikolai Vasil'evich Gogol (1809-1852), who has done for the Russian novel and Russian prose what Pushkin has done for Russian poetry. Before these two men came Russian literature can hardly have been said to exist. It was pompous and effete with pseudo-classicism; foreign influences were strong; in the speech of the upper circles there was an over-fondness for German, French, and English words. Between them the two friends, by force of their great genius, cleared away the debris which made for sterility and erected in their stead a new structure out of living Russian words. The spoken word, born of the people, gave soul and wing to literature; only by coming to earth, the native earth, was it enabled to soar. Coming up from Little Russia, the Ukraine, with Cossack blood in his veins, Gogol injected his own healthy virus into an effete body, blew his own virile spirit, the spirit of his race, into its nostrils, and gave the Russian novel its direction to this very day.
More than that. The nomad and romantic in him, troubled and restless with Ukrainian myth, legend, and song, impressed upon Russian literature, faced with the realities of modern life, a spirit titanic and in clash with its material, and produced in the mastery of this every-day material, commonly called sordid, a phantasmagoria intense with beauty. A clue to all Russian realism may be found in a Russian critic's observation about Gogol: "Seldom has nature created a man so romantic in bent, yet so masterly in portraying all that is unromantic in life." But this statement does not cover the whole ground, for it is easy to see in almost all of Gogol's work his "free Cossack soul" trying to break through the shell of sordid to-day like some ancient demon, essentially Dionysian. So that his works, true though they are to our life, are at once a reproach, a protest, and a challenge, ever calling for joy, ancient joy, that is no more with us. And they have all the joy and sadness of the Ukrainian songs he loved so much. Ukrainian was to Gogol "the language of the soul," and it was in Ukrainian songs rather than in old chronicles, of which he was not a little contemptuous, that he read the history of his people. Time and again, in his essays and in his letters to friends, he expresses his boundless joy in these songs: "O songs, you are my joy and my life! How I love you. What are the bloodless chronicles I pore over beside those clear, live chronicles! I cannot live without songs; they... reveal everything more and more clearly, oh, how clearly, gone-by life and gone-by men.... The songs of Little Russia are her everything, her poetry, her history, and her ancestral grave. He who has not penetrated them deeply knows nothing of the past of this blooming region of Russia."
Indeed, so great was his enthusiasm for his own land that after collecting material for many years, the year 1833 finds him at work on a history of "poor Ukraine," a work planned to take up six volumes; and writing to a friend at this time he promises to say much in it that has not been said before him. Furthermore, he intended to follow this work with a universal history in eight volumes with a view to establishing, as far as may be gathered, Little Russia and the world in proper relation, connecting the two; a quixotic task, surely. A poet, passionate, religious, loving the heroic, we find him constantly impatient and fuming at the lifeless chronicles, which leave him cold as he seeks in vain for what he cannot find. "Nowhere," he writes in 1834, "can I find anything of the time which ought to be richer than any other in events. Here was a people whose whole existence was passed in activity, and which, even if nature had made it inactive, was compelled to go forward to great affairs and deeds because of its neighbours, its geographic situation, the constant danger to its existence.... If the Crimeans and the Turks had had a literature I am convinced that no history of an independent nation in Europe would prove so interesting as that of the Cossacks." Again he complains of the "withered chronicles"; it is only the wealth of his country's song that encourages him to go on with its history.
Too much a visionary and a poet to be an impartial historian, it is hardly astonishing to note the judgment he passes on his own work, during that same year, 1834: "My history of Little Russia's past is an extraordinarily made thing, and it could not be otherwise." The deeper he goes into Little Russia's past the more fanatically he dreams of Little Russia's future. St. Petersburg wearies him, Moscow awakens no emotion in him, he yearns for Kieff, the mother of Russian cities, which in his vision he sees becoming "the Russian Athens." Russian history gives him no pleasure, and he separates it definitely from Ukrainian history. He is "ready to cast everything aside rather than read Russian history," he writes to Pushkin. During his seven-year stay in St. Petersburg (1829-36) Gogol zealously gathered historical material and, in the words of Professor Kotlyarevsky, "lived in the dream of becoming the Thucydides of Little Russia." How completely he disassociated Ukrainia from Northern Russia may be judged by the conspectus of his lectures written in 1832. He says in it, speaking of the conquest of Southern Russia in the fourteenth century by Prince Guedimin at the head of his Lithuanian host, still dressed in the skins of wild beasts, still worshipping the ancient fire and practising pagan rites: "Then Southern Russia, under the mighty protection of Lithuanian princes, completely separated itself from the North. Every bond between them was broken; two kingdoms were established under a single name—Russia—one under the Tatar yoke, the other under the same rule with Lithuanians. But actually they had no relation with one another; different laws, different customs, different aims, different bonds, and different activities gave them wholly different characters."
This same Prince Guedimin freed Kieff from the Tatar yoke. This city had been laid waste by the golden hordes of Ghengis Khan and hidden for a very long time from the Slavonic chronicler as behind an impenetrable curtain. A shrewd man, Guedimin appointed a Slavonic prince to rule over the city and permitted the inhabitants to practise their own faith, Greek Christianity. Prior to the Mongol invasion, which brought conflagration and ruin, and subjected Russia to a two-century bondage, cutting her off from Europe, a state of chaos existed and the separate tribes fought with one another constantly and for the most petty reasons. Mutual depredations were possible owing to the absence of mountain ranges; there were no natural barriers against sudden attack. The openness of the steppe made the people war-like. But this very openness made it possible later for Guedimin's pagan hosts, fresh from the fir forests of what is now White Russia, to make a clean sweep of the whole country between Lithuania and Poland, and thus give the scattered princedoms a much-needed cohesion. In this way Ukrainia was formed. Except for some forests, infested with bears, the country was one vast plain, marked by an occasional hillock. Whole herds of wild horses and deer stampeded the country, overgrown with tall grass, while flocks of wild goats wandered among the rocks of the Dnieper. Apart from the Dnieper, and in some measure the Desna, emptying into it, there were no navigable rivers and so there was little opportunity for a commercial people. Several tributaries cut across, but made no real boundary line. Whether you looked to the north towards Russia, to the east towards the Tatars, to the south towards the Crimean Tatars, to the west towards Poland, everywhere the country bordered on a field, everywhere on a plain, which left it open to the invader from every side. Had there been here, suggests Gogol in his introduction to his never-written history of Little Russia, if upon one side only, a real frontier of mountain or sea, the people who settled here might have formed a definite political body. Without this natural protection it became a land subject to constant attack and despoliation. "There where three hostile nations came in contact it was manured with bones, wetted with blood. A single Tatar invasion destroyed the whole labour of the soil-tiller; the meadows and the cornfields were trodden down by horses or destroyed by flame, the lightly-built habitations reduced to the ground, the inhabitants scattered or driven off into captivity together with cattle. It was a land of terror, and for this reason there could develop in it only a warlike people, strong in its unity and desperate, a people whose whole existence was bound to be trained and confined to war."
This constant menace, this perpetual pressure of foes on all sides, acted at last like a fierce hammer shaping and hardening resistance against itself. The fugitive from Poland, the fugitive from the Tatar and the Turk, homeless, with nothing to lose, their lives ever exposed to danger, forsook their peaceful occupations and became transformed into a warlike people, known as the Cossacks, whose appearance towards the end of the thirteenth century or at the beginning of the fourteenth was a remarkable event which possibly alone (suggests Gogol) prevented any further inroads by the two Mohammedan nations into Europe. The appearance of the Cossacks was coincident with the appearance in Europe of brotherhoods and knighthood-orders, and this new race, in spite of its living the life of marauders, in spite of turnings its foes' tactics upon its foes, was not free of the religious spirit of its time; if it warred for its existence it warred not less for its faith, which was Greek. Indeed, as the nation grew stronger and became conscious of its strength, the struggle began to partake something of the nature of a religious war, not alone defensive but aggressive also, against the unbeliever. While any man was free to join the brotherhood it was obligatory to believe in the Greek faith. It was this religious unity, blazed into activity by the presence across the borders of unbelieving nations, that alone indicated the germ of a political body in this gathering of men, who otherwise lived the audacious lives of a band of highway robbers. "There was, however," says Gogol, "none of the austerity of the Catholic knight in them; they bound themselves to no vows or fasts; they put no self-restraint upon themselves or mortified their flesh, but were indomitable like the rocks of the Dnieper among which they lived, and in their furious feasts and revels they forgot the whole world. That same intimate brotherhood, maintained in robber communities, bound them together. They had everything in common—wine, food, dwelling. A perpetual fear, a perpetual danger, inspired them with a contempt towards life. The Cossack worried more about a good measure of wine than about his fate. One has to see this denizen of the frontier in his half-Tatar, half-Polish costume—which so sharply outlined the spirit of the borderland—galloping in Asiatic fashion on his horse, now lost in thick grass, now leaping with the speed of a tiger from ambush, or emerging suddenly from the river or swamp, all clinging with mud, and appearing an image of terror to the Tatar...."
Little by little the community grew and with its growing it began to assume a general character. The beginning of the sixteenth century found whole villages settled with families, enjoying the protection of the Cossacks, who exacted certain obligations, chiefly military, so that these settlements bore a military character. The sword and the plough were friends which fraternised at every settler's. On the other hand, Gogol tells us, the gay bachelors began to make depredations across the border to sweep down on Tatars' wives and their daughters and to marry them. "Owing to this co-mingling, their facial features, so different from one another's, received a common impress, tending towards the Asiatic. And so there came into being a nation in faith and place belonging to Europe; on the other hand, in ways of life, customs, and dress quite Asiatic. It was a nation in which the world's two extremes came in contact; European caution and Asiatic indifference, niavete and cunning, an intense activity and the greatest laziness and indulgence, an aspiration to development and perfection, and again a desire to appear indifferent to perfection."
All of Ukraine took on its colour from the Cossack, and if I have drawn largely on Gogol's own account of the origins of this race, it was because it seemed to me that Gogol's emphasis on the heroic rather than on the historical—Gogol is generally discounted as an historian—would give the reader a proper approach to the mood in which he created "Taras Bulba," the finest epic in Russian literature. Gogol never wrote either his history of Little Russia or his universal history. Apart from several brief studies, not always reliable, the net result of his many years' application to his scholarly projects was this brief epic in prose, Homeric in mood. The sense of intense living, "living dangerously"—to use a phrase of Nietzsche's, the recognition of courage as the greatest of all virtues—the God in man, inspired Gogol, living in an age which tended toward grey tedium, with admiration for his more fortunate forefathers, who lived in "a poetic time, when everything was won with the sword, when every one in his turn strove to be an active being and not a spectator." Into this short work he poured all his love of the heroic, all his romanticism, all his poetry, all his joy. Its abundance of life bears one along like a fast-flowing river. And it is not without humour, a calm, detached humour, which, as the critic Bolinsky puts it, is not there merely "because Gogol has a tendency to see the comic in everything, but because it is true to life."
Yet "Taras Bulba" was in a sense an accident, just as many other works of great men are accidents. It often requires a happy combination of circumstances to produce a masterpiece. I have already told in my introduction to "Dead Souls" (1) how Gogol created his great realistic masterpiece, which was to influence Russian literature for generations to come, under the influence of models so remote in time or place as "Don Quixote" or "Pickwick Papers"; and how this combination of influences joined to his own genius produced a work quite new and original in effect and only remotely reminiscent of the models which have inspired it. And just as "Dead Souls" might never have been written if "Don Quixote" had not existed, so there is every reason to believe that "Taras Bulba" could not have been written without the "Odyssey." Once more ancient fire gave life to new beauty. And yet at the time Gogol could not have had more than a smattering of the "Odyssey." The magnificent translation made by his friend Zhukovsky had not yet appeared and Gogol, in spite of his ambition to become a historian, was not equipped as a scholar. But it is evident from his dithyrambic letter on the appearance of Zhukovsky's version, forming one of the famous series of letters known as "Correspondence with Friends," that he was better acquainted with the spirit of Homer than any mere scholar could be. That letter, unfortunately unknown to the English reader, would make every lover of the classics in this day of their disparagement dance with joy. He describes the "Odyssey" as the forgotten source of all that is beautiful and harmonious in life, and he greets its appearance in Russian dress at a time when life is sordid and discordant as a thing inevitable, "cooling" in effect upon a too hectic world. He sees in its perfect grace, its calm and almost childlike simplicity, a power for individual and general good. "It combines all the fascination of a fairy tale and all the simple truth of human adventure, holding out the same allurement to every being, whether he is a noble, a commoner, a merchant, a literate or illiterate person, a private soldier, a lackey, children of both sexes, beginning at an age when a child begins to love a fairy tale—all might read it or listen to it, without tedium." Every one will draw from it what he most needs. Not less than upon these he sees its wholesome effect on the creative writer, its refreshing influence on the critic. But most of all he dwells on its heroic qualities, inseparable to him from what is religious in the "Odyssey"; and, says Gogol, this book contains the idea that a human being, "wherever he might be, whatever pursuit he might follow, is threatened by many woes, that he must need wrestle with them—for that very purpose was life given to him—that never for a single instant must he despair, just as Odysseus did not despair, who in every hard and oppressive moment turned to his own heart, unaware that with this inner scrutiny of himself he had already said that hidden prayer uttered in a moment of distress by every man having no understanding whatever of God." Then he goes on to compare the ancient harmony, perfect down to every detail of dress, to the slightest action, with our slovenliness and confusion and pettiness, a sad result—considering our knowledge of past experience, our possession of superior weapons, our religion given to make us holy and superior beings. And in conclusion he asks: Is not the "Odyssey" in every sense a deep reproach to our nineteenth century?
(1) Everyman's Library, No. 726. An understanding of Gogol's point of view gives the key to "Taras Bulba." For in this panoramic canvas of the Setch, the military brotherhood of the Cossacks, living under open skies, picturesquely and heroically, he has drawn a picture of his romantic ideal, which if far from perfect at any rate seemed to him preferable to the grey tedium of a city peopled with government officials. Gogol has written in "Taras Bulba" his own reproach to the nineteenth century. It is sad and joyous like one of those Ukrainian songs which have helped to inspire him to write it. And then, as he cut himself off more and more from the world of the past, life became a sadder and still sadder thing to him; modern life, with all its gigantic pettiness, closed in around him, he began to write of petty officials and of petty scoundrels, "commonplace heroes" he called them. But nothing is ever lost in this world. Gogol's romanticism, shut in within himself, finding no outlet, became a flame. It was a flame of pity. He was like a man walking in hell, pitying. And that was the miracle, the transfiguration. Out of that flame of pity the Russian novel was born.
JOHN COURNOS
Evenings on the Farm near the Dikanka, 1829-31; Mirgorod, 1831-33; Taras Bulba, 1834; Arabesques (includes tales, The Portrait and A Madman's Diary), 1831-35; The Cloak, 1835; The Revizor (The Inspector-General), 1836; Dead Souls, 1842; Correspondence with Friends, 1847; Letters, 1847, 1895, 4 vols. 1902.
ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS: Cossack Tales (The Night of Christmas Eve, Tarass Boolba), trans. by G. Tolstoy, 1860; St. John's Eve and Other Stories, trans. by Isabel F. Hapgood, New York, Crowell, 1886; Taras Bulba: Also St. John's Eve and Other Stories, London, Vizetelly, 1887; Taras Bulba, trans. by B. C. Baskerville, London, Scott, 1907; The Inspector: a Comedy, Calcutta, 1890; The Inspector-General, trans. by A. A. Sykes, London, Scott, 1892; Revizor, trans. for the Yale Dramatic Association by Max S. Mandell, New Haven, Conn., 1908; Home Life in Russia (adaptation of Dead Souls), London, Hurst, 1854; Tchitchikoff's Journey's; or Dead Souls, trans. by Isabel F. Hapgood, New York, Crowell, 1886; Dead Souls, London, Vizetelly, 1887; Dead Souls, London, Maxwell 1887; Dead Souls, London, Fisher Unwin, 1915; Dead Souls, London, Everyman's Library (Intro. by John Cournos), 1915; Meditations on the Divine Liturgy, trans. by L. Alexeieff, London, A. R. Mowbray and Co., 1913.
LIVES, etc.: (Russian) Kotlyarevsky (N. A.), 1903; Shenrok (V. I.), Materials for a Biography, 1892; (French) Leger (L.), Nicholas Gogol, 1914.

TARAS BULBA

CHAPTER I

"Turn round, my boy! How ridiculous you look! What sort of a priest's cassock have you got on? Does everybody at the academy dress like that?"
With such words did old Bulba greet his two sons, who had been absent for their education at the Royal Seminary of Kief, and had now returned home to their father.
His sons had but just dismounted from their horses. They were a couple of stout lads who still looked bashful, as became youths recently released from the seminary. Their firm healthy faces were covered with the first down of manhood, down which had, as yet, never known a razor. They were greatly discomfited by such a reception from their father, and stood motionless with eyes fixed upon the ground.
"Stand still, stand still! let me have a good look at you," he continued, turning them around. "How long your gaberdines are! What gaberdines! There never were such gaberdines in the world before. Just run, one of you! I want to see whether you will not get entangled in the skirts, and fall down."
"Don't laugh, don't laugh, father!" said the eldest lad at length.
"How touchy we are! Why shouldn't I laugh?"
"Because, although you are my father, if you laugh, by heavens, I will strike you!"
"What kind of son are you? what, strike your father!" exclaimed Taras Bulba, retreating several paces in amazement.
"Yes, even my father. I don't stop to consider persons when an insult is in question."
"So you want to fight me? with your fist, eh?"
"Any way."
"Well, let it be fisticuffs," said Taras Bulba, turning up his sleeves. "I'll see what sort of a man you are with your fists."
And father and son, in lieu of a pleasant greeting after long separation, began to deal each other heavy blows on ribs, back, and chest, now retreating and looking at each other, now attacking afresh.
"Look, good people! the old man has gone man! he has lost his senses completely!" screamed their pale, ugly, kindly mother, who was standing on the threshold, and had not yet succeeded in embracing her darling children. "The children have come home, we have not seen them for over a year; and now he has taken some strange freak—he's pommelling them."
"Yes, he fights well," said Bulba, pausing; "well, by heavens!" he continued, rather as if excusing himself, "although he has never tried his hand at it before, he will make a good Cossack! Now, welcome, son! embrace me," and father and son began to kiss each other. "Good lad! see that you hit every one as you pommelled me; don't let any one escape. Nevertheless your clothes are ridiculous all the same. What rope is this hanging there?—And you, you lout, why are you standing there with your hands hanging beside you?" he added, turning to the youngest. "Why don't you fight me? you son of a dog!"
"What an idea!" said the mother, who had managed in the meantime to embrace her youngest. "Who ever heard of children fighting their own father? That's enough for the present; the child is young, he has had a long journey, he is tired." The child was over twenty, and about six feet high. "He ought to rest, and eat something; and you set him to fighting!"

"Der Kaufmann," by Franz Kafka: "The merchant (or The Businessman)," English version. "Der Kaufmann, The merchant (or The Businessman)," by Franz Kafka, translated in English, with Original Text in German

Jaroslav Róna's bronze statue of Franz Kafka in Prague

 

The Merchant (or The Businessman)

It is possible that some people are sorry for me, but I am not aware of it. My small business fills me with worries that make my forehead and temples ache inside, yet without offering any prospect of relief, for my shop is a small one.

I have to spend hours in advance to make things ready, refresh the memory of the house servant, warn him for fear of mistakes, and figure out each season of the year what the next season's fashions are to going be, and not the ones prevailing among the people I know, but those appealing to inaccessible peasants in the deep countryside.

My money is in the hands of strangers; their circumstances I cannot discern; the misfortune that might strike them I cannot foresee; how could I possibly avert it! Perhaps, they became prodigal and give a banquet in some inn garden, and others may be attending this banquet just a little while before their departure to America.

When in the evening of working days I lock up my shop and suddenly see before me hours, in which I will not be able to do any work to meet the uninterrupted necessities of my business, then the excitement that I drive far away in the morning comes back like a returning flood, but cannot be contained within me, and sweeps me away aimlessly with it.

And yet I can make no use of this mood, I can only go home, for my face and hands are dirty and sweaty, the clothes are stained and dusty, my working cap is on my head, and my boots are scratched by the nails of crates. I go home as carried by a wave, snapping the fingers of both hands, and I caress the hair of the children coming my way.

But the walk is short. Soon I'm at my house, open the door of the elevator, and step in.

I see that now and all of a sudden I'm alone. Others who have to climb the staircase tire a little thereby, have to wait with quick breath till someone opens the door of the apartment, which gives them a reason for irritability and impatience, have to traverse the hallway where they hang their hats, and only once they go down the aisle past a few glass doors and come into their own room are they alone.

But I'm immediately alone in the elevator, and gaze, propped on my knees, into the narrow mirror. As the elevator starts to rise, I say: “Quiet now, step back, will you, in the shadow of the trees you want to make for, or behind the draperies of the window, or into the garden trellis?”

I say it through my teeth, and the banisters flow down past the opaque glass panes like water.

“But enjoy the view of the window, when the processions come out of all three streets, not giving way to each other, but advance through each other and, between their last rank, let the open space emerge again. Wave your handkerchiefs, be terrified, be moved, praise the beautiful lady who passes by. Cross over the stream on the wooden bridge, nod to the children bathing, and gape at the Hurrah rising from the thousand sailors on the distant battleship.

Just follow the inconspicuous man, and when you have pushed him into a doorway and have robbed him, then watch him, with your hands in the pockets, as he sadly goes his way along the left-hand street. The scattered policemen on horseback rein in their galloping horses and thrust you back.

Let them! The empty streets will make them unhappy; I know it.

Already they ride away, pray, in pairs, slowly around the street corners, darting across the squares.”

Then I have to get off, let the elevator go down again, ring the doorbell, and the maid opens the door while I greet her.

From "The Tales of Franz Kafka: English Translation With Original Text In German," available as e-book on Amazon Kindle, iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, on NOOK Book, on Kobo, and as printed, traditional edition through Lulu. 

Der Kaufmann

Es ist möglich, daß einige Leute Mitleid mit mir haben, aber ich spüre nichts davon. Mein kleines Geschäft erfüllt mich mit Sorgen, die mich innen an Stirne und Schläfen schmerzen, aber ohne mir Zufriedenheit in Aussicht zu stellen, denn mein Geschäft ist klein.

Für Stunden im voraus muß ich Bestimmungen treffen, das Gedächtnis des Hausdieners wachhalten, vor befürchteten Fehlern warnen und in einer Jahreszeit die Moden der folgenden berechnen, nicht wie sie unter Leuten meines Kreises herrschen werden, sondern bei unzugänglichen Bevölkerungen auf dem Lande.

Mein Geld haben fremde Leute; ihre Verhältnisse können mir nicht deutlich sein; das Unglück, das sie treffen könnte, ahne ich nicht; wie könnte ich es abwehren! Vielleicht sind sie verschwenderisch geworden und geben ein Fest in einem Wirtshausgarten, und andere halten sich für ein Weilchen auf der Flucht nach Amerika bei diesem Feste auf.

Wenn nun am Abend eines Werktages das Geschäft gesperrt wird und ich plötzlich Stunden vor mir sehe, in denen ich für die ununterbrochenen Bedürfnisse meines Geschäftes nichts werde arbeiten können, dann wirft sich meine am Morgen weit vorausgeschickte Aufregung in mich, wie eine zurückkehrende Flut, hält es aber in mir nicht aus und ohne Ziel reißt sie mich mit.

Und doch kann ich diese Laune gar nicht benützen und kann nur nach Hause gehn, denn ich habe Gesicht und Hände schmutzig und verschwitzt, das Kleid fleckig und staubig, die Geschäftsmütze auf dem Kopfe und von Kistennägeln zerkratzte Stiefel. Ich gehe dann wie auf Wellen, klappere mit den Fingern beider Hände, und mir entgegenkommenden Kindern fahre ich über das Haar.Aber der Weg ist kurz. Gleich bin ich in meinem Hause, öffne die Lifttür und trete ein.

Ich sehe, daß ich jetzt und plötzlich allein bin. Andere, die über Treppen steigen müssen, ermüden dabei ein wenig, müssen mit eilig atmenden Lungen warten, bis man die Tür der Wohnung öffnen kommt, haben dabei einen Grund für Ärger und Ungeduld, kommen jetzt ins Vorzimmer, wo sie den Hut aufhängen, und erst bis sie durch den Gang an einigen Glastüren vorbei in ihr eigenes Zimmer kommen, sind sie allein.

Ich aber bin gleich allein im Lift, und schaue, auf die Knie gestützt, in den schmalen Spiegel. Als der Lift sich zu heben anfängt, sage ich: »Seid still, tretet zurück, wollt ihr in den Schatten der Bäume, hinter die Draperien der Fenster, in das Laubengewölbe?«

Ich rede mit den Zähnen und die Treppengeländer gleiten an den Milchglasscheiben hinunter wie stürzendes Wasser.

»Flieget weg; euere Flügel, die ich niemals gesehen habe, mögen euch ins dörfliche Tal tragen oder nach Paris, wenn es euch dorthin treibt.

Doch genießet die Aussicht des Fensters, wenn die Prozessionen aus allen drei Straßen kommen, einander nicht ausweichen, durcheinandergehn und zwischen ihren letzten Reihen den freien Platz wieder entstehen lassen. Winket mit den Tüchern, seid entsetzt, seid gerührt, lobet die schöne Dame, die vorüberfährt.

Geht über den Bach auf der hölzernen Brücke, nickt den badenden Kindern zu und staunet über das Hurra der tausend Matrosen auf dem fernen Panzerschiff.

Verfolget nur den unscheinbaren Mann, und wenn ihr ihn in einen Torweg gestoßen habt, beraubt ihn und seht ihm dann, jeder die Hände in den Taschen, nach, wie er traurig seines Weges in die linke Gasse geht.

Die verstreut auf ihren Pferden galoppierende Polizei bändigt die Tiere und drängt euch zurück. Lasset sie, die leeren Gassen werden sie unglücklich machen, ich weiß es. Schon reiten sie, ich bitte, paarweise weg, langsam um die Straßenecken, fliegend über die Plätze.«

Dann muß ich aussteigen, den Aufzug hinunterlassen, an der Türglocke läuten, und das Mädchen öffnet die Tür, während ich grüße.

Vincenzo Cardarelli: The Forgotten amongst the Great. Documentary (Italian Language). "Vincenzo Cardarelli: "The Forgotten amongst the Great. A Collection of the Best Poems by Vincenzo Cardarelli, Translated in English"

Vincenzo Cardarelli (pseudonym of Nazareno Caldarelli, 1887-1959) journalist, poet, and literary critic, led a solitary, dignified existence, from a humble background, through self-taught education and innumerable peregrinations, until his final days in poverty and loneliness. He stood and sought for all that a true artist and intellectual has to stand and seek for: the uncompromising authenticity of art.

Until now, with the sole exception of a few poems translated by the great Irish poet Desmond O'Grady in the late 1950's, the work of Vincenzo Cardarelli had remained precluded to the English speaking world and the international audience at large. The publication of this extensive collection will finally disclose the doors to one of the most prominent, yet still relatively unexplored, Italian and European poet of the twentieth century.

"Vincenzo Cardarelli: The Forgotten amongst the Great. A Collection of the Best Poems by Vincenzo Cardarelli, Translated in English," available as e-book on Amazon Kindle, iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, on NOOK Book, on Kobo, and as printed, traditional edition through Lulu.

Production : DUEAFILM
Réalisateur : Luigi Boneschi
Photographie : Willy Tonna
Montage : Fabio Buonocore
Supervision du montage : Ivan Zuccon

Virgin Soil (Russian: Новь Nov) by Ivan Turgenev. Full text translated in English, Virgin Soil (1877), a novel by Ivan Turgenev, Russian: Иван Сергеевич Тургенев

 

Turgenev, by Vasily Perov, 1872

Virgin Soil (Russian: Новь Nov), a novel by Ivan Turgenev (1877).

VIRGIN SOIL

By Ivan S. Turgenev

Translated from the Russian by R. S. Townsend

INTRODUCTION

TURGENEV was the first writer who was able, having both Slavic and

universal imagination enough for it, to interpret modern Russia to the

outer world, and Virgin Soil was the last word of his greater testament.

It was the book in which many English readers were destined to make

his acquaintance about a generation ago, and the effect of it was, like

Swinburne's Songs Before Sunrise, Mazzini's Duties of Man, and other

congenial documents, to break up the insular confines in which they had

been reared and to enlarge their new horizon. Afterwards they went on to

read Tolstoi, and Turgenev's powerful and antipathetic fellow-novelist,

Dostoievsky, and many other Russian writers: but as he was the

greatest artist of them all, his individual revelation of his country's

predicament did not lose its effect. Writing in prose he achieved a

style of his own which went as near poetry as narrative prose can do.

without using the wrong music: while over his realism or his irony he

cast a tinge of that mixed modern and oriental fantasy which belonged

to his temperament. He suffered in youth, and suffered badly, from the

romantic malady of his century, and that other malady of Russia, both

expressed in what M. Haumand terms his "Hamletisme." But in Virgin Soil

he is easy and almost negligent master of his instrument, and though he

is an exile and at times a sharply embittered one, he gathers experience

round his theme as only the artist can who has enriched leis art

by having outlived his youth without forgetting its pangs, joys,

mortifications, and love-songs.

In Nejdanov it is another picture of that youth which we see--youth

reduced to ineffectiveness by fatalism and by the egoism of the lyric

nature which longs to gain dramatic freedom, but cannot achieve it.

It is one of a series of portraits, wonderfully traced psychological

studies of the Russian dreamers and incompatibles of last mid-century,

of which the most moving figure is the hero of the earlier novel,

Dimitri Rudin. If we cared to follow Turgenev strictly in his growth

and contemporary relations, we ought to begin with his Sportsman's Note

Book. But so far as his novels go, he is the last writer to be taken

chronologically. He was old enough in youth to understand old age in the

forest, and young enough in age to provide his youth with fresh hues for

another incarnation. Another element of his work which is very finely

revealed and brought to a rare point of characterisation in Virgin Soil,

is the prophetic intention he had of the woman's part in the new order.

For the real hero of the tale, as Mr. Edward Garnett has pointed out in

an essay on Turgenev, is not Nejdanov and not Solomin; the part is cast

in the woman's figure of Mariana who broke the silence of "anonymous

Russia." Ivan Turgenev had the understanding that goes beneath the old

delimitation of the novelist hide-bound by the law--"male and female

created he them."

He had the same extreme susceptibility to the moods of nature. He

loved her first for herself, and then with a sense of those inherited

primitive associations with her scenes and hid influences which still

play upon us to-day; and nothing could be surer than the wilder or tamer

glimpses which are seen in this book and in its landscape settings of

the characters. But Russ as he is, he never lets his scenery hide his

people: he only uses it to enhance them. He is too great an artist to

lose a human trait, as we see even in a grotesque vignette like that of

Fomishka and Fimishka, or a chance picture like that of the Irish girl

once seen by Solomin in London.

Turgenev was born at Orel, son of a cavalry colonel, in ISIS. He died in

exile, like his early master in romance Heine--that is in Paris-on the

4th of September, 1883. But at his own wish his remains were carried

home and buried in the Volkoff Cemetery, St. Petersburg. The grey

crow he had once seen in foreign fields and addressed in a fit of

homesickness.

"Crow, crow, You are grizzled, I know, But from Russia you come; Ah me,

there lies home!" called him back to his mother country, whose true son

he remained despite all he suffered at her hands, and all the delicate

revenges of the artistic prodigal that he was tempted to take.

E. R.

VIRGIN SOIL

"To turn over virgin soil it is necessary to use a deep

plough going well into the earth, not a surface plough

gliding lightly over the top."--From a Farmer's Notebook.

I

AT one o'clock in the afternoon of a spring day in the year 1868, a

young man of twenty-seven, carelessly and shabbily dressed, was toiling

up the back staircase of a five-storied house on Officers Street in

St. Petersburg. Noisily shuffling his down-trodden goloshes and slowly

swinging his heavy, clumsy figure, the man at last reached the very top

flight and stopped before a half-open door hanging off its hinges. He

did not ring the bell, but gave a loud sigh and walked straight into a

small, dark passage.

"Is Nejdanov at home?" he called out in a deep, loud voice.

"No, he's not. I'm here. Come in," an equally coarse woman's voice

responded from the adjoining room.

"Is that Mashurina?" asked the newcomer.

"Yes, it is I. Are you Ostrodumov?

"Pemien Ostrodumov," he replied, carefully removing his goloshes, and

hanging his shabby coat on a nail, he went into the room from whence

issued the woman's voice.

It was a narrow, untidy room, with dull green coloured walls, badly

lighted by two dusty windows. The furnishings consisted of an iron

bedstead standing in a corner, a table in the middle, several chairs,

and a bookcase piled up with books. At the table sat a woman of about

thirty. She was bareheaded, clad in a black stuff dress, and was smoking

a cigarette. On catching sight of Ostrodumov she extended her broad, red

hand without a word. He shook it, also without saying anything, dropped

into a chair and pulled a half-broken cigar out of a side pocket.

Mashurina gave him a light, and without exchanging a single word, or so

much as looking at one another, they began sending out long, blue puffs

into the stuffy room, already filled with smoke.

There was something similar about these two smokers, although their

features were not a bit alike. In these two slovenly figures, with their

coarse lips, teeth, and noses (Ostrodumov was even pock-marked), there

was something honest and firm and persevering.

"Have you seen Nejdanov?" Ostrodumov asked.

"Yes. He will be back directly. He has gone to the library with some

books."

Ostrodumov spat to one side.

"Why is he always rushing about nowadays? One can never get hold of

him."

Mashurina took out another cigarette.

"He's bored," she remarked, lighting it carefully.

"Bored!" Ostrodumov repeated reproachfully. "What self-indulgence! One

would think we had no work to do. Heaven knows how we shall get through

with it, and he complains of being bored!"

"Have you heard from Moscow?" Mashurina asked after a pause.

"Yes. A letter came three days ago."

"Have you read it?"

Ostrodumov nodded his head.

"Well? What news?

"Some of us must go there soon."

Mashurina took the cigarette out of her mouth.

"But why?" she asked. "They say everything is going on well there."

"Yes, that is so, but one man has turned out unreliable and must be

got rid of. Besides that, there are other things. They want you to come

too."

"Do they say so in the letter?"

"Yes."

Mashurina shook back her heavy hair, which was twisted into a small

plait at the back, and fell over her eyebrows in front.

"Well," she remarked; "if the thing is settled, then there is nothing

more to be said."

"Of course not. Only one can't do anything without money, and where are

we to get it from?"

Mashurina became thoughtful.

"Nejdanov must get the money," she said softly, as if to herself.

"That is precisely what I have come about," Ostrodumov observed.

"Have you got the letter?" Mashurina asked suddenly.

"Yes. Would you like to see it?"

"I should rather. But never mind, we can read it together presently."

"You need not doubt what I say. I am speaking the truth," Ostrodumov

grumbled.

"I do not doubt it in the least." They both ceased speaking and, as

before, clouds of smoke rose silently from their mouths and curled

feebly above their shaggy heads.

A sound of goloshes was heard from the passage.

"There he is," Mashurina whispered.

The door opened slightly and a head was thrust in, but it was not the

head of Nejdanov.

It was a round head with rough black hair, a broad wrinkled forehead,

bright brown eyes under thick eyebrows, a snub nose and a humorously-set

mouth. The head looked round, nodded, smiled, showing a set of tiny

white teeth, and came into the room with its feeble body, short arms,

and bandy legs, which were a little lame. As soon as Mashurina and

Ostrodumov caught sight of this head, an expression of contempt mixed

with condescension came over their faces, as if each was thinking

inwardly, "What a nuisance!" but neither moved nor uttered a single

word. The newly arrived guest was not in the least taken aback by this

reception, however; on the contrary it seemed to amuse him.

"What is the meaning of this?" he asked in a squeaky voice. "A duet? Why

not a trio? And where's the chief tenor?

"Do you mean Nejdanov, Mr. Paklin?" Ostrodumov asked solemnly.

"Yes, Mr. Ostrodumov."

"He will be back directly, Mr. Paklin."

"I am glad to hear that, Mr. Ostrodumov."

The little cripple turned to Mashurina. She frowned, and continued

leisurely puffing her cigarette.

"How are you, my dear... my dear... I am so sorry. I always forget your

Christian name and your father's name."

Mashurina shrugged her shoulders.

"There is no need for you to know it. I think you know my surname. What

more do you want? And why do you always keep on asking how I am? You see

that I am still in the land of the living!"

"Of course!" Paklin exclaimed, his face twitching nervously. "If you had

been elsewhere, your humble servant would not have had the pleasure of

seeing you here, and of talking to you! My curiosity is due to a bad,

old-fashioned habit. But with regard to your name, it is awkward,

somehow, simply to say Mashurina. I know that even in letters you only

sign yourself Bonaparte! I beg pardon, Mashurina, but in conversation,

however--"

"And who asks you to talk to me, pray?"

Paklin gave a nervous, gulpy laugh.

"Well, never mind, my dear. Give me your hand. Don't be cross. I know

you mean well, and so do I... Well?"

Paklin extended his hand, Mashurina looked at him severely and extended

her own.

"If you really want to know my name," she said with the same expression

of severity on her face, "I am called Fiekla."

"And I, Pemien," Ostrodumov added in his bass voice.

"How very instructive! Then tell me, Oh Fiekla! and you, Oh Pemien! why

you are so unfriendly, so persistently unfriendly to me when I--"

"Mashurina thinks," Ostrodumov interrupted him, "and not only Mashurina,

that you are not to be depended upon, because you always laugh at

everything."

Paklin turned round on his heels.

"That is the usual mistake people make about me, my dear Pemien! In the

first place, I am not always laughing, and even if I were, that is no

reason why you should not trust me. In the second, I have been flattered

with your confidence on more than one occasion before now, a convincing

proof of my trustworthiness. I am an honest man, my dear Pemien."

Ostrodumov muttered something between his teeth, but Paklin continued

without the slightest trace of a smile on his face.

"No, I am not always laughing! I am not at all a cheerful person. You

have only to look at me!"

Ostrodumov looked at him. And really, when Paklin was not laughing, when

he was silent, his face assumed a dejected, almost scared expression;

it became funny and rather sarcastic only when he opened his lips.

Ostrodumov did not say anything, however, and Paklin turned to Mashurina

again.

"Well? And how are your studies getting on? Have you made any

progress in your truly philanthropical art? Is it very hard to help an

inexperienced citizen on his first appearance in this world?

"It is not at all hard if he happens to be no bigger than you are!"

Mashurina retorted with a self-satisfied smile. (She had quite recently

passed her examination as a midwife. Coming from a poor aristocratic

family, she had left her home in the south of Russia about two years

before, and with about twelve shillings in her pocket had arrived in

Moscow, where she had entered a lying-in institution and had worked

very hard to gain the necessary certificate. She was unmarried and

very chaste.) "No wonder!" some sceptics may say (bearing in mind the

description of her personal appearance; but we will permit ourselves to

say that it was wonderful and rare).

Paklin laughed at her retort.

"Well done, my dear! I feel quite crushed! But it serves me right for

being such a dwarf! I wonder where our host has got to?"

Paklin purposely changed the subject of conversation, which was rather a

sore one to him. He could never resign himself to his small stature, nor

indeed to the whole of his unprepossessing figure. He felt it all the

more because he was passionately fond of women and would have given

anything to be attractive to them. The consciousness of his pitiful

appearance was a much sorer point with him than his low origin and

unenviable position in society. His father, a member of the lower middle

class, had, through all sorts of dishonest means, attained the rank of

titular councillor. He had been fairly successful as an intermediary

in legal matters, and managed estates and house property. He had made a

moderate fortune, but had taken to drink towards the end of his life and

had left nothing after his death.

Young Paklin, he was called Sila--Sila Samsonitch, [Meaning strength,

son of Samson] and always regarded this name as a joke against himself,

was educated in a commercial school, where he had acquired a good

knowledge of German. After a great many difficulties he had entered an

office, where he received a salary of five hundred roubles a year,

out of which he had to keep himself, an invalid aunt, and a humpbacked

sister. At the time of our story Paklin was twenty-eight years old.

He had a great many acquaintances among students and young people,

who liked him for his cynical wit, his harmless, though biting,

self-confident speeches, his one-sided, unpedantic, though genuine,

learning, but occasionally they sat on him severely. Once, on arriving

late at a political meeting, he hastily began excusing himself. "Paklin

was afraid!" some one sang out from a corner of the room, and everyone

laughed. Paklin laughed with them, although it was like a stab in his

heart. "He is right, the blackguard!" he thought to himself. Nejdanov he

had come across in a little Greek restaurant, where he was in the

habit of taking his dinner, and where he sat airing his rather free

and audacious views. He assured everyone that the main cause of his

democratic turn of mind was the bad Greek cooking, which upset his

liver.

"I wonder where our host has got to?" he repeated. "He has been out of

sorts lately. Heaven forbid that he should be in love!"

Mashurina scowled.

"He has gone to the library for books. As for falling in love, he has

neither the time nor the opportunity."

"Why not with you?" almost escaped Paklin's lips.

Full text available via Project Gutenberg