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Rira bien qui rira le dernier.a Why
“At that painting! A man could even lose his faith from that painting!”
He was loath to resolve the questions that overflowed his soul and heart. “What, then, am I to blame for it all?” he murmured to himself, almost unaware of his words.
Those moments were precisely only an extraordinary intensification of self-awareness—if there was a need to express this condition in a single word—self-awareness and at the same time a self-sense immediate in the highest degree.
Compassion is the chief and perhaps the only law of being for all mankind.
Lizaveta Prokofyevna was a hotheaded and passionate lady, so that suddenly and at once, without thinking long, she would sometimes raise all anchors and set out for the open sea without checking the weather.
“I should have waited and offered it tomorrow when we were alone,” the prince thought at once, “and now it’s unlikely that I can put it right! Yes, I’m an idiot, a real idiot!” he decided to himself in a fit of shame and extreme distress.
and though Chebarov may be a great crook, in this affair he comes out as no more than a pettifogger, a scrivener, a speculator. He hoped to make big money as a lawyer, and his calculation was not only subtle and masterful, but also most certain: he based it on the ease with which the prince gives money away and on his gratefully respectful feeling for the late Pavlishchev; he based it, finally (which is most important), on certain chivalrous views the prince holds concerning the duties of honor and conscience.
Lebedev’s nephew put in a last little word: “Yes, Prince, you must be given credit, you’re so good at exploiting your … hm, sickness (to put it decently); you managed to offer your friendship and money in such a clever form that it is now quite impossible for a noble man to accept them. It’s either all too innocent, or all too clever … you, however, know which.”
Best of all is to leave it to your own conscience, don’t you think?” The prince looked at Keller with extreme curiosity. The question of double thoughts had evidently occupied him for a long time. “Well, why they call you an idiot after that, I don’t understand!” exclaimed Keller.
“No, better let him be happy and live in prosperity without originality,” every mother thinks as she rocks her baby to sleep.
But a certain dullness of mind, it seems, is almost a necessary quality, if not of every active man, at least of every serious maker of money.
“I thought Evgeny Pavlych was speaking seriously,” the prince blushed and lowered his eyes.
“There’s no one here who is worth such words!” Aglaya burst out. “No one, no one here is worth your little finger, or your intelligence, or your heart! You’re more honest than all of them, nobler than all of them, better than all of them, kinder than all of them, more intelligent than all of them! There are people here who aren’t worthy of bending down to pick up the handkerchief you’ve just dropped … Why do you humiliate yourself and place yourself lower than everyone else? Why have you twisted everything in yourself, why is there no pride in you?” “Lord, who’d have thought it?” Lizaveta
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“It’s a joke. It’s the same kind of joke as with the ‘poor knight,’ ” Alexandra whispered firmly in her ear, “and nothing more! She’s poking fun at him again, in her own way. Only the joke has gone too far; it must be stopped, maman! Earlier she was clowning like an actress, frightening us for the fun of it …”
“You’re most welcome, please stay. I’m very glad even without explanations; and thank you very much for your kind words about our friendly relations. You must forgive me for being absentminded tonight; you know, I simply cannot be attentive at the moment.”
And why dreams? He is either a doctor or indeed of an extraordinary intelligence and able to guess a great many things. (But that he is ultimately an “idiot” there can be no doubt at all.)
If he’s alive, everything is in his power! Whose fault is it that he doesn’t understand that?
The point is in life, in life alone—in discovering it, constantly and eternally, and not at all in the discovery itself!
Naturally, that irritated me; but it seems he had decided to imitate the prince in his “Christian humility,” which was slightly ridiculous.
“Whoever infringes upon individual ‘charity,’ ” I began, “infringes upon man’s nature and scorns his personal dignity. But the organizing of ‘social charity’ and the question of personal freedom are two different questions and are not mutually exclusive.
How do you know, Bakhmutov, what meaning this communion of one person with another will have in the destiny of the person communed with?… Here the whole of life stands before us and a countless number of ramifications that are hidden from us.
In sowing your seed, in sowing your ‘charity,’ your good deed in whatever form it takes, you give away part of your person and receive into yourself part of another’s; you mutually commune in each other; a little more attention, and you will be rewarded with knowledge, with the most unexpected discoveries.
We abase providence too much by ascribing our own notions to it, being vexed that we can’t understand it. But, again, if it’s impossible to understand it, then, I repeat, it is hard to have to answer for something it is not given to man to understand.
“Prince! I wish to put myself in a respectable position … I wish to respect myself and … my rights.” “A man with such wishes is deserving of every respect for that alone.”
‘Rest, dear dust, till the gladsome morning,’8 and,
“Precisely, Prince, and how beautifully you explain it, in conformity with your own heart!” the general cried rapturously, and, strangely enough, real tears glistened in his eyes.
“Prince! You are so kind, so simple-hearted, that I sometimes even feel sorry for you. I look upon you with tenderness; oh, God bless you! May your life begin and blossom … in love. Mine is over! Oh, forgive me, forgive me!”
‘Where is my youth, where is my freshness!’ So exclaimed … Who exclaimed that, Kolya?” “It’s from Gogol, in Dead Souls,21 papa,” Kolya replied and gave his father a frightened sidelong glance. “Dead souls! Oh, yes, dead! When you bury me, write on my tombstone: ‘Here lies a dead soul!’
“Forgive a foolish, bad, spoiled girl” (she took his hand), “and be assured that we all have boundless respect for you. And if I dared to make a mockery of your beautiful … kind simple-heartedness, then forgive me as you would a child for a prank; forgive me that I insisted on an absurdity which, of course, cannot have the least consequences …”
“And here I have to die all the same!” he said, and nearly added: “such a man as I!” “And imagine how your Ganechka plagues me; he thought up, in the guise of an objection, that of those who listened to my notebook, three or four might die before me! I like that! He thinks it’s a consolation, ha, ha! First of all, they haven’t died yet; and even if those people all died off, what sort of consolation would it be, you’ll agree! He judges by himself; however, he goes further still, he now simply abuses me, saying that a respectable man dies silently in such cases, and that the whole thing was
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how will it be best for me to die? So that it will go as well as … more virtuously, that is? Well, speak!” “Pass us by and forgive us our happiness!” the prince said in a low voice.
Open to the thirsting and inflamed companions of Columbus the shores of the New World, open to the Russian man the Russian World, let him find the gold, the treasure, hidden from him in the ground! Show him the future renewal of all mankind and its resurrection, perhaps by Russian thought alone, by the Russian God and Christ, and you’ll see what a mighty and righteous, wise and meek giant will rise up before the astonished world, astonished and frightened, because they expect nothing from us but the sword, the sword and violence, because, judging by themselves, they cannot imagine us without
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“Listen! I know that talking is wrong: it’s better simply to set an example, better simply to begin … I have already begun … and—and is it really possible to be unhappy? Oh, what are my grief and my trouble, if I am able to be happy? You know, I don’t understand how it’s possible to pass by a tree and not be happy to see it. To talk with a man and not be happy that you love him! Oh, I only don’t know how to say it … but there are so many things at every step that are so beautiful, that even the most confused person finds beautiful. Look at a child, look at God’s sunrise, look at the grass
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And perhaps a parting smile of love will shine Upon the sad sunset of my decline.43
trustfulness. I guessed after what he said that anyone who wanted to could deceive him, and whoever deceived him he would forgive afterwards, and it was for that that I loved him …”
Wrath lit up in Aglaya’s face. “I wanted to find out from you,” she said firmly and distinctly, “by what right do you interfere in his feelings towards me? By what right do you dare write letters to me? By what right do you declare every minute to me and to him that you love him, after you yourself abandoned him and ran away from him in such an offensive and … disgraceful way?”
“It’s not possible! She’s … so unhappy!”
and perhaps the benevolent reader will understand precisely what our difficulty is, the more so as this example will not be a digression, but, on the contrary, a direct and immediate continuation of the story.
That, finally, a fallen woman, in his eyes, was even somewhat higher than an unfallen one.
Why can we never know everything about another person when it’s necessary, when the person is to blame!… However,
ha! And what was this about loving two women? With two different loves of some sort? That’s interesting … the poor idiot! And what will become of him now?
Kolya was profoundly struck by what had happened; he became definitively close to his mother. Nina Alexandrovna fears for him, because he is too thoughtful for his years; a good human being will perhaps come out of him.
all. “Enough of these passions, it’s time to serve reason. And all this, and all these foreign lands, and all this Europe of yours, it’s all one big fantasy, and all of us abroad are one big fantasy … remember my words, you’ll see for yourself!” she concluded all but wrathfully, parting from Evgeny Pavlovich.
The Madonna with the Family of the Burgomeister Jacob Meyer (1525–26), by Hans Holbein the Younger (1497–1543), in the Dresden Gallery. The original is in the museum of Darmstadt.
