Eh, how I have suffered! Formerly such thoughts never entered my
head--formerly, in those happy days when I myself was wont to flame
like the glow of dawn, and to sing like the nightingale.--I must confess
that everything has grown obscure round about me, all life has withered.
The light which gives to its colours both significance and power--that
light which emanates from the heart of man--has become extinct within
me.... No, it has not yet become extinct--but it is barely smouldering,
without radiance and without warmth. I remember how one day, late at
night, in Moscow, I stepped up to the grated window of an ancient church
and leaned against the uneven glass. It was dark under the low arches; a
forgotten shrine-lamp flickered with a red flame in front of an ancient
holy picture, and only the lips of the holy face were visible, stern and
suffering: mournful gloom closed in around and seemed to be preparing to
crush with its dull weight the faint ray of unnecessary light.... And in
my heart reign now the same sort of light and the same sort of gloom.
V
And this I write to thee--to thee, my only and unforgettable friend; to
thee, my dear companion,[31] whom I have left forever, but whom I shall
never cease to love until my life ends.... Alas! thou knowest what it
was that separated us. But I will not refer to that now. I have left
thee ... but even here, in this remote nook, at this distance, in this
exile, I am all permeated with thee, I am in thy power as of yore, as of
yore I feel the sweet pressure of thy hands upon my bowed head!--Rising
up for the last time, from the mute grave in which I now am lying, I run
a mild, much-moved glance over all my past, over all our past.... There
is no hope and no return, but neither is there any bitterness in me, or
regret; and clearer than the heavenly azure, purer than the first snows
on the mountain heights, are my beautiful memories.... They do not press
upon me in throngs: they pass by in procession, like those muffled
figures of the Athenian god-born ones, which--dost thou remember?--we
admired so greatly on the ancient bas-reliefs of the Vatican....