In the six years of my wandering I have seen many people made bad by
sorrow. An unquenchable hatred for every one burned within them, and
they were blind to everything but evil. They saw evil and bathed in it
as in a hot bath, and they drank gall like a drunkard wine, and laughed
and triumphed.
"Ours is the right," they cried. "Evil and unhappiness are everywhere;
there is no place to escape."
They fell into mad despair and, inflamed by it, led depraved lives and
soiled the earth in every way, as if to revenge themselves on her that
she gave them birth. They crawled without strength on the paths of the
earth, and remained slaves of their own weakness to the very day of
their death. They elevated sorrow to godhood and bowed before it, and
desired to see nothing but their own sores and hear nothing but the
outcries of their own despair.
They were to be pitied, for they were as though mad; but how repulsive
to the soul they were, with their readiness to spit their gall into
every face and pollute the sun itself with their spittle if they could.
There were others, who were crushed by sorrow and frightened by it, who
remained silent and tried to hide their small and slave-like lives,
but who did not succeed and only served as clay in the hands of the
strong, to plaster up the chinks in the walls of their own fortress.
Many faces and expressions have become engraved on my mind. Bitter
tears were shed before me, and more than once I was deafened by the
terrible laughter of despair.
I have tasted of all the poisons and drunk of a hundred rivers, and
many times I myself wept the bitter tears of impotence. Life seemed
to me a terrible delirium. It was a whirlwind of frightened words and
warm rain of tears; it was a ceaseless cry of despair, an agonized
convulsion of the whole earth suffering with an upward struggle,
unattainable to my mind and to my heart.
My soul groaned, "No; that is not the right."
The streams of sorrow flowed turbidly over the whole earth, and with
unspeakable horror I saw that there was no room for God in this chaos
which separated man from man. There was no room to manifest His
strength, no spot to place His foot. Eaten up by the vipers of sorrow
and fear, by malice and despair, by greed and shamelessness, all life
was falling into ruin and man was being destroyed by discord and
weakening isolation.
I questioned: "Art Thou not truly, O Lord, but a dream of the soul of
man, a hope created by despair in an hour of dark impotence?"
I saw that each one had his own God, and that his God was neither
more noble nor more beautiful than His worshipers. This revelation
crushed me. It was not God that man sought, but the forgetfulness of
sorrow. Misfortune torments man and drives him in all directions. He
escapes from himself; he wishes to avoid action; he is afraid to work
in harmony with life, and he seeks a quiet corner where he can hide
himself.
I did not find in man the holy feeling of seeking God nor a striving
to rejoice in the Lord. I saw nothing but fear of life, a desire to
overcome sorrow. My conscience cried out: "No; that is not the right!"
It happened more than once that I met a man who seemed deep in serious
thought and had a good, clean light in his eyes. If I met him once or
twice, he was the same; but at the third or fourth meeting I would
see that he was bad or drunk, and that he was no longer modest, but
shameless, vulgar and blasphemed God, and I could not understand why
the man was spoiled or what had broken him. All seemed blind to me, and
to fall easily by the way-side.
I seldom heard an exalted word. Too frequently men spoke strange words
out of habit, not understanding the benefit nor the harm which was
locked up in their thoughts. They gathered together the speeches of the
pious monks or the prophecies of the hermits and the anchorites, and
divided them among each other, like children playing with broken pieces
of china. In fact, I did not see the man, but fragments of broken
lives, dirty human dust, which swept over the earth and was blown by
various winds onto the steps of churches.
The people circled in vast numbers around the relics of the saints or
the miracle-making ikons, or bathed in the holy streams, and sought
only self-forgetfulness. The church processions were painful to me.
Even as a child the miraculous ikons had lost their significance for
me, and my life in the monastery had destroyed any vestige of respect
that was left. At times I felt that man was a gigantic worm, crawling
in the dust of the roads, and that men urged each other on by a force
which I could not see, calling to each other, "Forward! Hurry!"
And above them, forcing their heads to the ground, floated the ikon
like a yellow bird, and it seemed to me that its weight was far too
heavy for them.
Those possessed fell in heaps in the dust and mud under the feet of
the crowd, and they struggled like fish in the water, and their wild
cries were heard. But the crowds passed over these palpitating bodies,
stamped them and kicked them under foot, and cried out to the image of
the Virgin, "Rejoice, Thou queen of heaven!"
Their faces were distorted and wild with straining, damp with sweat and
black with dirt; and this whole procession of man, singing a joyless
song with weary voices and marching with hollow steps, insulted the
earth and darkened the heavens.
The beggars sat or reclined on the sides of the road, under the
trees and stretched themselves out like two gay ribbons--the sick,
the crippled, the wounded, the armless, the legless and the blind.
Their worn bodies crept over the earth, their mutilated arms and legs
trembled in the air and pushed themselves before people to excite their
pity. The beggars moaned and wailed, their wounds burned in the sun,
while they asked and begged a kopeck for themselves, in the name of
God. Many of them were eyeless, while in others the eyes burned like
coals and pain gnawed the flesh without respite, and they resembled
some horrible growth.
I saw man persecuted. The force which drove him into the dust and the
dirt seemed hostile to me. Whither did it drive them? No; that is not
the right!
Once I was in the exquisite city of Kiev, and I was struck by the
beauty and the grandeur of this ancient nest of the Russians. There I
had an interview with a monk who was supposed to be very wise. I said
to him:
"I cannot understand the laws upon which the life of a man is based."
"Who are you?" he asked me.
"A peasant."
"Can you read and write?"
"A little."
"Reading and writing is not for such as you," he said sternly.
I saw in truth that he was a seer.
"Are you a Stundist?" he asked me.
"No.
"A-ha! Then you are a Dukhobor?"
"Why?"
"I gather it from your words."
His face was pink like flesh and his eyes were small.
"If you seek God," he said to me, "then it is for but one reason--to
abase Him." He threatened me with his finger. "I know your kind. You
will not read the Credo a hundred times. Well, read it, and all your
foolishness will vanish like smoke. I would send all you heretics to
Abyssinia, to the Ethiopians in Africa. There you would perish alive
from the heat."
"Were you ever in Abyssinia?" I asked him.
"Yes," he answered.
"And you didn't perish?"
The monk became enraged.
Another time, near the Dneiper, I met a man. He sat on the banks
opposite Lafra and he threw stones into the water. He was about fifty,
bald, bearded, his face covered with wrinkles, and his head large. At
that time I could tell by the eyes if a man was in earnest or not, and
I walked up to him and sat down at his side. It was toward evening.
The turbid Dneiper rolled its waters hurriedly. Behind it rose the
mountains, gray with temples, where the proud golden heads of the
churches shimmered in the sun, the crosses glistened and the windows
sparkled like precious gems. It appeared that the earth opened its lap
and showed her treasure to the sun in proud bounty.
The man next to me said in a low voice, and sorrowfully:
"They should cover Lafra with glass and drive all the monks away from
it and permit no one to enter, for there is no man worthy to walk amid
such beauty."
It was like a fairy tale told by some wise, great man, which came true
there upon the banks of the river, where the waves of the Dneiper,
rushing down from afar, splashed up against the Lafra with joy at the
sight of it. But its surprised surging could not drown the quiet voice
of man. With what force it commenced, with what strength it was built
up! Like a faint dream, I remembered Prince Vladimir, and the Church
fathers, Anthony and Theodosia, and all the Russian heroes; and I was
filled with regret.
The innumerable chimes on the other side of the bank rang out loudly
and joyfully, but the sad thoughts about life fell more distinctly on
my ears. We do not remember our birth. I came to seek the true faith,
and now I found myself wondering, "Where is man?"
I could not see man. I saw only Cossacks, peasants, officials, priests,
merchants. I could find no one who was not tied up with some daily and
ordinary affair. Each one served some one, each one was under some
one's orders. Above the official was another official, and so they
rose, till they vanished from the eyes in an unattainable height. And
there God was hidden!
Night came on. The water in the river became bluer and the crosses on
the churches lost their rays. The man still threw stones in the water,
but I could no longer see the ripples which they made.
"Three years ago," he said, "we had a riot in Maikop on account of a
pestilence among the cattle. The dragoons were called out to fight us,
and peasants killed peasants. And all because of cattle. Many were
killed. I thought to myself then: 'What is this faith of the Russians,
if we are ready to kill each other on account of a few oxen, when God
said to us, "Thou shalt not kill."'"
The Lafra disappeared in the darkness, and like a vision reentered the
mountain. The Cossack searched for stones in the sand around him, found
them and threw them into the river, and the water splashed loudly.
"Such is man," the Cossack said, lowering his head. "The laws of God
are like spiritual milk, but they come down to us skimmed. It is
written, 'With a pure heart you will see God.' But how can your heart
be pure if you do not live according to your own will? Without one's
freedom there is no true faith, but only a fictitious one."
He arose, shook himself and looked about him. He was a square-built
fellow.
"We are not free enough before God; that is what I think."
He took his cap and went away, and I remained alone, as if glued to
the earth. I wished to grasp the meaning of the Cossack's words, but I
could not. Still, I felt that they were right.
The warm southern night caressed me, and I thought to myself:
"Is it possible that only in suffering is the human soul beautiful?
Where is the pivot around which this human whirlwind moves? What is the
meaning of this vanity?"
In winter I always went south, where it was warmer; but if the snow and
the cold caught me in the north, then I always entered a monastery. At
first the monks did not receive me in a friendly way, but when I showed
them how I worked they accepted me readily. They liked to see a man
work well and not take any money.
My feet rested, while my arms and my head worked. I remembered all that
I saw during the summer, and I desired to draw out of it some clean
food for my soul. I weighed, I extracted, I wanted to understand the
reasons for things, and at times I became so confused that I could have
wept.
I felt overfed with the groans and the sorrows of the earth, and the
boldness of my soul vanished and I became morose, silent, and an anger
arose in me against everything.
From time to time dark despair took hold of me, and for weeks I lived
as if in a dream or blind. I desired nothing and saw nothing.
I began to wonder if I should not stop this wandering and live as every
one else, and stop puzzling over my riddles, and subject myself humbly
to conditions of things which were not of my making.
My days were as dark as the night, and I stood alone on the earth,
like the moon in heaven, except that I gave no light. I could stand
apart from myself and watch myself. I saw myself on the cross-ways, a
healthy young fellow, who was a stranger to every one, and whom nothing
pleased, and who believed in no one. Why did he live? Why was he apart
from the world?
My soul became chilled.