At Osipovka, where I spent a whole long summer day sitting on a log on
the seashore, I saw a vision of the sea and nymphs--a party of peasant
girls came down and bathed. They were very pretty and frolicsome,
taking to the water in a very different style from educated women.
They were boisterous and wild. They went into the sea backwards, and
let the great waves knock them down; they lay down and were buffeted
by the surf; they ran about the shore, sang, shouted, yelled, waved
their arms; they dived headlong into the waves, swam hand over hand
among them, pulled one another by the legs. The sea does not know how
to play games: it seemed like an ogre with his twelve princesses. They
made sport of him, pulled his beard and his hair, tempted and evaded
him, mocked him when he grabbed at them, befooled him when he captured
them. I used to have an idea of nymphs behaving very artistically with
really drawing-room manners, but I saw I was wrong. Nymphs are only
artistic and alluring singly--one nymph on a rock before a gallant
prince.
In numbers they are absolutely wild and have no manners at all. Lucky
old ogre, to possess twelve such princesses, I thought; but as I
looked at the gleam of their limbs as they mocked, and heard their
hard laughter, I found him to be but a pitiable old greybeard, for he
looked at beauty that he could scarce comprehend and never possess.
The beauty of life has power greater than the beauty of the sea.