Tormented by the thirst for the Spirit,
I was dragging myself in a sombre desert,
And a six-winged seraph appeared
Unto me on the parting of the roads;
With fingers as light as a dream
He touched mine eyes;
And mine eyes opened wise,
Like unto the eyes of a frightened eagle.
He touched mine ears,
And they filled with din and ringing.
And I heard the trembling of the heavens,
And the flight of the angels' wings,
And the creeping of the polyps in the sea,
And the growth of the vine in the valley.
And he took hold of my lips,
And out he tore my sinful tongue,
With its empty and false speech.
And the fang of the wise serpent
Between my terrified lips he placed
With bloody hand.
And ope he cut my breast with a sword,
And out he took my trembling heart,
And a coal blazing with flame
He shoved into the open breast.
Like a corpse I lay in the desert;
And the voice of the Lord called unto me:
"Arise! O prophet and guide, and listen,--
Be thou filled with my will,
And going over land and sea,
Burn with the Word the hearts of men!"
24. This is the highest flight of Pushkin. He knew that the poet comes
to deliver the message. But _what_ the message was, was not given unto
him to utter. For God only speaks through those that speak for him, and
Pushkin's was not yet a God-filled soul. Hence the last height left him
yet to climb, the height from which the "Hymn of Force" is sung, Pushkin
did not climb. Pushkin's song, in short, was so far only an utterance of
a gift, it had not become as yet a part of his life. And the highest is
only attainable not when our lives are guided by our gifts, but when our
gifts are guided by our lives. How this thus falling short of a natively
richly endowed soul became possible, can be told only from a study of
his life. To Pushkin his poetic ideal bore the same relation to his
practical life that the Sunday religion of the business-man bears to his
Monday life. To the ordinary business man, Christ's words are a seeing
guide to be followed in church, but a blind enough guide, not to be
followed on the street. Hence Pushkin's life is barren as a source of
inspiration towards what life ought to be; but it is richly fruitful as
a terrifying warning against what life ought not to be.
25. Pushkin died at the age of thirty-eight, at a time when he may be
said to have just begun to live. Once more then we have before us a mere
fragment, a mere possibility, a mere promise of what the great soul was
capable of becoming, of what the great soul was perhaps destined to
become. Pushkin is thus a typical example of the fate of the Slavonic
soul. And the same phases we had occasion to observe as gone through by
the race, we now find here likewise gone through by the individual. It
is this which makes Pushkin eminently a national singer, a Russian
singer. The satire of Gogol, the synthesis of Turgenef, the analysis of
Tolstoy, might have indeed flourished on any other soil. Nay, Turgenef
and Tolstoy are men before they are Russians; but the strength of
Pushkin as a force in Russian literature comes from this his very
weakness. Pushkin is a Russian before he is a man, his song is a Russian
song; hence though many have been the singers in Russia since his day,
none has yet succeeded in filling his place. For many are indeed called,
but few are chosen; and the chosen Russian bard was--Alexander Pushkin.