And, nevertheless, I cannot blame myself so very much. Yes, and
who--tell me, for mercy’s sake--who ever was to blame for
anything--alone? Or, to put it more accurately, we are all to blame, yet
it is impossible to blame us. Circumstances settle our fate: they thrust
us into this road or that, and then they punish us. Every man has his
fate.... Wait, wait! There occurs to my mind on this score an
artfully-constructed but just comparison. As clouds are first formed by
the exhalations from the earth, rise up from its bosom, then separate
themselves from it, withdraw from it, and bear over it either blessings
or ruin, just so around each one of us and from us ourselves is
formed--how shall I express it?--is formed a sort of atmosphere which
afterward acts destructively or salutarily upon us ourselves. This I
call Fate.... In other words, and to put it simply: each person makes
his own fate, and it makes each person....
Each person makes his own fate--yes!... but our brethren make it far too
much--which constitutes our calamity! Consciousness is aroused in us too
early; too early do we begin to observe ourselves.... We Russians have
no other life-problem than the cultivation of our personality, and here
we, barely adult children, already undertake to cultivate it, this our
unhappy personality! Without having received from within any definite
direction, in reality respecting nothing, believing firmly in nothing,
we are free to make of ourselves whatsoever we will.... But it is
impossible to demand of every man that he shall immediately comprehend
the sterility of a mind, “seething in empty activity” ... and so, there
is one more monster in the world, one more of those insignificant beings
in which the habits of self-love distort the very striving after truth,
and ridiculous ingenuousness lives side by side with pitiful guile ...
one of those beings to whose impotent, uneasy thought there remains
forever unknown either the satisfaction of natural activity, or the
genuine suffering, or the genuine triumph of conviction.... Combining in
itself the defects of all ages, we deprive each defect of its good, its
redeeming side.... We are as stupid as children, but we are not sincere
like them; we are as cold as old men, but the common sense of old age is
not in us.... On the other hand, we are psychologists. Oh, yes, we are
great psychologists! But our psychology strays off into pathology; our
psychology is an artful study of the laws of a diseased condition and a
diseased development, with which healthy people have no concern.... But
the chief thing is, we are not young,--in youth itself we are not young!
And yet--why calumniate one’s self? Have we really never been young?
Have the vital forces never sparkled, never seethed, never quivered in
us? Yet we have been in Arcadia, and we have roved its bright meads!...
Have you ever happened, while strolling among bushes, to hit upon those
dark-hued harvest-flies, which, springing out from under your very feet,
suddenly expand their bright red wings with a clatter, flutter on a few
paces, and then tumble into the grass again? Just so did our dark youth
sometimes expand its gaily-coloured little wings for a few moments, and
a brief flight.... Do you remember our silent evening rambles, the four
of us together, along the fence of your park, after some long, warm,
animated conversation? Do you remember those gracious moments? Nature
received us affectionately and majestically into her lap. We entered,
with sinking heart, into some sort of blissful waves. Round about the
glow of sunset kindled with sudden and tender crimson; from the
crimsoning sky, from the illuminated earth, from everywhere, it seemed
as though the fresh and fiery breath of youth were wafted abroad, and
the joyous triumph of some immortal happiness; the sunset glow blazed;
like it, softly and passionately blazed our enraptured hearts, and the
tiny leaves of the young trees quivered sensitively and confusedly above
us, as though replying to the inward tremulousness of the indistinct
feelings and anticipations within us. Do you remember that purity, that
kindness and trustfulness of ideas, that emotion of noble hopes, that
silence of plenitude? Can it be that we were not then worthy of
something better than that to which life has conducted us? Why have we
been fated only at rare intervals to catch sight of the longed-for
shore, and never to stand thereon with firm foothold, never to touch
it--
Not to weep sweetly, like the first of the Jews
On the borders of the Promised Land?
These two lines of Fet[10] have reminded me of others,--also by him....
Do you remember how one day, as we were standing in the road, we beheld
in the distance a cloud of rosy dust, raised by a light breeze, against
the setting sun? “In a billowy cloud” you began, and we all fell silent
on the instant, and set to listening:
In a billowy cloud
The dust rises in the distance....
Whether horseman or pedestrian--
Cannot be descried for the dust.
I see some one galloping
On a spirited steed....
My friend, my distant friend--
Remember me!
You ceased.... All of us fairly shuddered, as though the breath of love
had flitted over our hearts, and each one of us--I am convinced of
that--longed inexpressibly to flee away in the distance, that unknown
distance, where the apparition of bliss rises up and beckons athwart the
mist. And yet, observe this odd thing: why should we reach out into the
distance?--we thought. Were not we in love with each other? Was not
happiness “so near, so possible”? And I immediately asked you: “Why have
not we gained the shore we long for?” Because falsehood was walking hand
in hand with us; because it was poisoning our best sentiments; because
everything in us was artificial and strained; because we did not love
each other at all, and only tried to love, imagined that we did love....
But enough, enough! Why irritate one’s wounds? Moreover, all that is
past irrevocably. That which was good in our past has touched me, and on
this good I bid you farewell for the time being. And it is time to end
this long letter. I will go and inhale the May air here, in which,
through the winter’s stern fortress, the spring is forcing its way with
a sort of moist and keen warmth. Farewell.