I am dreaming (like a dream indeed it is) of the boundless fields, the
picturesque ridges, the dark forests and fragrant meadows of Klosow. I
see the park, too, with its neatly-trimmed shrubberies and lofty trees;
their bare trunks and leafy tops forming a canopy high overhead under
the sky, and the foliage turning yellow or red in the sunny glare. The
pond, too, do I see—so large that it may be called a lake—the pond,
bleak and desolate in the moonless, starless night; that night, when I
broke away from the magic spell of Life, and slew my own felicity with
my own hands.
Before my eyes, people are walking along the avenues, strewn with dry
dead leaves. The slightest breath of air brings down from the trees
these tatters and strips, once a purple kingly mantle: but men go on,
pitilessly trampling down the rustling leaves.
Now I am in a strange humour—a sort of Pantheistic mood. My Ego is
multiplying, growing into countless gods, and penetrating the whole
world, wherein there is no room for aught save Me. And, therefore,
prodigious amazement takes hold of me, when I think how all these crowds
of people can tread upon my golden autumnal leaves, or glance at me,
because I have a noticeable face and a hat _à la diable m’enporte_. Can
I think that they live? There is no life but mine only.
No, they have not life.
And there,—an immense way off, on the farther shore of the Ocean of
Infinity,—there he stands, he, the only foe worthy of me: and he waits
that I should go onward to meet him!
And I—I stand in fear. For a week I have not been at Obojanski’s, where
he goes pretty nearly every night.
When the thought comes to me of the splendid sorrel mount I had, and of
Janusz whose lips were so sweet, I have a mind to burst out crying. But
I shall not go back there, unless.... Oh, if I could help going back!
I have an irresistible inclination to seek for types amongst people. I
do not like things accidental, either without logical connection, or
without connection with the special nature of a given mind. If it
depended upon me, I would, like a scientist at work in his laboratory,
remove from every character whatever is unnecessary and unessential,
lest this should render its reactions with others too complicated and
obscure. For example, I should like to make of Obojanski a sage of
ancient Greece, and eliminate from him everything that disagreed with
this type. Smilowicz should be a narrow-minded Socialist: as matters
stand, he is too clever for his type, and most needlessly cleverer than
Obojanski. Roslawski is almost perfect. I should only desire—and this,
too, for purely personal motives—that he might look upon marriage from a
less absolutely ideal standpoint.
What my own type is, I do not know. Very likely I have none; and this
has troubled my mind for ever so many a year. I am unable to find
anything general in myself, or to define my own nature in one word and
make an abstraction of it. For that, I am far too complex.
My father was a bricklayer; and yet there is nothing vulgar in my face
or postures or motions. I sweep my floor and clean my own shoes: yet my
hands are as soft as velvet. During the whole of my childhood, I used
either to go barefoot, or in cheap, clumsy boots; yet my feet are white
and bear no mark that I ever went so. My work for the greater part of
the day—the adding up of innumerable columns of figures—is such as might
benumb most brains, and yet I am quite able to think keenly. Though I
neither write poetry, nor sing, nor paint, I have a thoroughly artistic
mind. My way of living borders on the penurious; yet I have all the
epicurean instincts of those who live at another’s expense. After all, I
am (as I am perfectly well aware) nothing extraordinary; and yet, to be
the little that I am, I have not undergone one twinge of conscience; in
all that is Me, there is not one atom of harm done to any one, and no
one single tear of any being alive.
A post-card from Martha, with a “Decadent” figure of a woman, all
covered over with microscopic handwriting.
“Grandfather is dangerously ill. I have not had a wink of sleep for a
week, and am almost light-headed in consequence. Nervous energy alone
has sustained me till now: I cannot answer for the morrow. I continually
feel as if my brain were swelling, and would presently fly to pieces. I
am tormented with the horrible uselessness of undeserved pain. I don’t
want to think what the end of all this is to be. I only know that
something within me is giving way. Never yet has my spirit been so
broken down: I am now paying the score of the Past, and with usurious
interest besides. The autumn of life has come upon me, taking me
unawares: nor is it relieved by any reminiscence of a springtime that
never was mine. Every night, and all night long, I am sitting by poor
Grandfather’s bed, going over my interminable litany of sorrow, and
shedding my heart’s blood drop by drop.—M.”
And about Janusz not one word!
As I am going home from the office to-day, I come across Smilowicz, with
a big parcel of books under his arm. In spite of his ridiculous smile,
the man impresses me: the life he leads is in such strict conformity
with the doctrines which he professes. Obojanski tells me he is a very
able teacher of Natural Science; but he loses all his lessons, because
he cannot reconcile his advanced opinions with what the school
superintendents require. For some time past, he has had nothing, or
nearly nothing, to eat: he spends his mornings in the University
Library, and his evenings at Obojanski’s.
As we pass along by the “Philharmonia” building, he informs me that he
has never been inside it.
“Do you object to going there?”
“Most certainly. I am against music, fine costumes, everything that
represents satisfaction and amusement. To me all that only suggests
extortion, wrong-doing, and injustice: for but a few are able to go
there, and that only at the expense of others.”
“But you forget that wrong-doing and injustice are by no means
essentials of the Beautiful, of Art, and of artistic delight, though at
the present time they happen to exist in connection with these. Your
theory seems to me to make far too much of what actually _is_. Try to
deliver yourself from the fetters of the Temporal; look upon the present
day, as being yourself outside of it and soaring above it: do you see
what I mean?—I also resent whatever is unjust, but I can separate the
Beautiful therefrom and love it, both in Art and in life.”
“Well, you may be right, but I cannot take up so objective a point of
view. In me indignation overbears any gentler artistic sentiment. Yet
more: I think it is not now the time to enjoy Art, or to plunge into the
deep and subtle analyses of Estheticism. What we want at the present
time is Action.”
“But, for myself, I quiet my conscience with the fact, which I know to
be true, that I am living now just as I should live in that future when,
as Ferri says, all are from the very outset to have equal opportunities
for their development.”
Smilowicz is pleased.
“Ah, then you understand.... I was afraid you had been surprised at my
friendship for Obojanski, seeing the way I am accustomed to talk. But,
you know, if scientific work were properly remunerated, Obojanski’s
monographs would bring him in enough money to live as sumptuously as he
is doing now. So he arrives at the very same result, though by different
roads. Yet that, unfortunately, is paltering with principles.”
Oh, I should not object, so far as I am concerned, to any such
“paltering!” As things stand, I am working too much: I might work less
and do something better.... All my talent is quite thrown away on those
everlasting accounts.
My dream is now, how to make more money. And this renders me somewhat
uneasy; perhaps it is on account of pecuniary circumstances that I am
now considering the possibility of marriage with Janusz, in case
Roslawski....
This I should not like. Not because it would show my character in an
ignoble light. That’s nonsense. No, but it would mark how little I care
for the creature I could take on such terms.
I am of those whose sin is greater than the sin of Eve and Adam: I have
eaten of the fruit of the knowledge that there is neither good nor evil.
Yes, for I have gone on—on to the very end. Every one has something he
can call his own. Sufferers magnify in their mind the power of
suffering; those who have abandoned everything make a god of their
strength of will to do so. But I have nothing left, nothing absolutely.
Of beauty I have not enough to love that beauty in myself. Wisdom is
wisdom from one standpoint only: that lost, its very idea ceases to
exist. I have too much mind to be artful and mysterious, so I strike no
one as being uncommon. I have all the shortcomings of a perfect sage;
for I believe in nothing, and am indifferent to all things. But I am
not, as sages are, encyclopædic, nor do I love knowledge, nor have I
any. At the same time, I do not, like a typical Decadent, hug myself at
the thought of my doubts and of my indifference. Quite the contrary—to
others, nay, even to myself, I play the part of one that is blithe,
well-favoured, happy, and quite satisfied with being what I am. This is
not because I deliberately try to keep my secret to myself, but because
merriment is to my mind less wearisome than the apathy of doubt. And I
have not as my own even what I say here, for I am not sure that it is
true....
Roslawski...? Well, say I am attracted by the interest of an experiment.
Out of which I am making a grave and important affair, simply because of
my love for some pathos in life....
Why, Janusz himself can be “distinguished” on certain occasions.
Madame, (he writes),
May I venture to remind you that the period chosen by you, within which
to give me a definite answer, will have come to an end on Monday next?