Piotr and Rameyev arrived at Trirodov’s together. Rameyev more than
once said to Piotr that he had been very rude to Trirodov, and that he
ought to smooth out matters somehow. Piotr agreed very unwillingly.
Once more they talked about the war.[34] Trirodov asked Rameyev:
“I think you see only a political significance in this war.”
“And do you disagree with me?” asked Rameyev.
“No,” said Trirodov, “I admit that. But, in my opinion, aside from the
stupid and criminal actions of these or other individuals, there are
more general causes. History has its own dialectic. Whether or not a
war had taken place is all the same: there would have been a fated
collision in any case, in one or another form; there would have begun
the decisive struggle between two worlds, two comprehensions of the
world, two moralities, Buddha and Christ.”
“The teachings of Buddhism resemble those of Christianity
considerably,” said Piotr. “That is its only value.”
“Yes,” said Trirodov. “There appears to be a great resemblance at the
first glance; but actually these two systems are as opposite as the
poles. They are the affirmation and the denial of life, its Yes and
its No, its irony and its lyricism. The affirmation, Yes, is
Christianity; the denial, No, is Buddhism.”
“That seems to me to be too much of a generalization,” said Rameyev.
Trirodov continued:
“I generalize for the sake of clearness. The present moment in history
is especially convenient. It is history’s zenith hour. Now that
Christianity has revealed the eternal contradiction of the world, we
are passing through the poignant struggle of those two world
conceptions.”
“And not the struggle of the classes?” asked Rameyev.
“Yes,” said Trirodov, “there is also the struggle of the classes, to
whatever degree two inimical factors enter into the struggle--social
justice and the real relation of forces--a common morality, which is
always static, and a common dynamism. The Christian element is in
morality, the Buddhistic in dynamism. Indeed, the weakness of Europe
consists in that its life has already for a long time nourished itself
on a substance Buddhistic in origin.”
Piotr said confidently, in the voice of a young prophet:
“In this duel Christianity will triumph--not the historic
Christianity, of course, and not the present, but the Christianity of
St. John and the Apocalypse. And it will triumph only then when
everything will appear lost, and the world will be in the power of the
yellow Antichrist.”
“I don’t think that will happen,” said Trirodov quietly.
“I suppose you think Buddha will triumph,” said Piotr in vexation.
“No,” replied Trirodov calmly.
“The devil, perhaps!” exclaimed Piotr.
“Petya!” exclaimed Rameyev reproachfully.
Trirodov lowered his head slightly, as if he were confused, and said
tranquilly:
“We see two currents, equally powerful. It would be strange that
either one of them should conquer. That is impossible. It is
impossible to destroy half of the whole historical energy.”
“However,” said Piotr, “if neither Christ nor Buddha conquers, what
awaits us? Or is that fool Guyau right when he speaks of the
irreligiousness of future generations?”[35]
“There will be a synthesis,” replied Trirodov. “You will accept it for
the devil.”
“This contradictory mixture is worse than forty devils!” exclaimed
Piotr.
The visitors soon left.
Kirsha came without being called--confused and agitated by an
indefinable something. He was silent, and his dark eyes flamed with
sadness and fear. He walked up to the window, looked out in an
attitude of expectancy. He seemed to see something in the distance.
There was a look of apprehension in his dark, wide-open eyes, as if
they were fixed on a strange distant vision. Thus people look during a
hallucination.
Kirsha turned to his father and, growing pale, said quietly:
“Father, a visitor has come to you from quite afar. How strange that
he has come in a simple carriage and in ordinary clothes! I wonder why
he has come?”
They could hear the crunching sound of the sand under the iron hoops
of the wheels of the calash which had just entered the gates. Kirsha’s
face wore a gloomy expression. It was difficult to comprehend what was
in his soul--was it a reproach?--astonishment?--fear?
Trirodov went to the window. A man of about forty, impressive for his
appearance of calm and self-assurance, stepped out of the calash.
Trirodov recognized his visitor at the first glance, though he had
never met him before in society. He knew him well, but only from
portraits he had seen of him, from his literary works, and from the
stories of his admirers and articles about him. In his youth Trirodov
had had some slight relations with him through friends, but this was
interrupted. He had not even met him.
Trirodov suddenly felt both cheerful and sad. He reflected:
“Why has he come to me? What does he want of me? And why should he
suddenly think of me? Our roads have diverged so much, we have become
such strangers to one another.”
There was his disturbing curiosity:
“I’ll see and hear him for the first time.”
And the mutinous protest:
“His words are a lie! His preachings the ravings of despair. There was
no miracle, there is none, and there will not be!”
Kirsha, very agitated, ran out of the room. The sensitive and painful
feeling of aloneness seized Trirodov as in a sticky net, entangled his
legs, and obstructed his glances with grey.
A quiet boy entered, smiling, and handed him a card, on which, under a
princely crown, was the lithographed inscription:
_Immanuel Osipovitch Davidov_.[36]
In a voice dark and deep with suppressed excitement Trirodov said to
the boy:
“Ask him to come in.”
The provoking and unanswerable question persisted in his mind:
“Why, why has he come? What does he want of me?”
With an avidly curious glance he looked at the door, and did not take
his eyes away. He heard the measured, unhastening footsteps, nearer
and nearer--as if his fate were approaching.
The door opened, admitting the visitor--Prince Immanuel Osipovitch
Davidov, celebrated as author and preacher, a man of a distinguished
family and democratic views, a man beloved of many and possessed of
the mystery of extraordinary fascination, attracting to him many
hearts.
His face was very smooth, quite un-Russian in type. His lips, slightly
descending at the corners, were marked with sorrow. His beard was
reddish, short, and cut to a point. His red-gold, slightly wavy hair
was cut quite short. This astonished Trirodov, who had always seen the
Prince in portraits wearing his hair rather long, like the poet
Nadson. His eyes were black, flaming and deep. Deeply hidden in his
eyes was an expression of great weariness and suffering, which the
inattentive observer might have interpreted as an expression of
fatigued tranquillity and indifference. Everything about the
visitor--his face and his ways--betrayed his habit of speaking in a
large company, even in a crowd.
He walked up tranquilly to Trirodov and said, as he stretched out his
hand:
“I wanted to see you. I have observed you for some time, and at last
have come to you.”
Trirodov, making an effort to control his agitation and his deep
irritation, said with an affectedly amiable voice:
“I’m very pleased to greet you in my house. I’ve heard much about you
from the Pirozhkovskys. Of course you know that they have a great
admiration and affection for you.”
Prince Davidov looked at him piercingly but calmly, perhaps too
calmly. It seemed strange that he answered nothing to the remark about
the Pirozhkovskys--as if Trirodov’s words passed by him like momentary
shadows, without so much as touching anything in his soul. On the
other hand, the Pirozhkovskys have always talked about Prince Davidov
as of an intimate acquaintance. “Yesterday we dined at the Prince’s”;
“The Prince is finishing a new poem”--by simply “the Prince” they gave
one to understand that their remark concerned their friend, Prince
Davidov. Trirodov recalled that the Prince had many acquaintances, and
that there were always large gatherings in his house.
“Permit me to offer you some refreshment,” said Trirodov. “Will you
have wine?”
“I’d rather have tea, if you don’t mind,” said Prince Davidov.
Trirodov pressed the button of the electric bell. Prince Davidov
continued in his tranquil, too tranquil, voice:
“My fiancée lives in this town. I’ve come to see her, and have taken
advantage of this opportunity to have a chat with you. There are many
things I should like to discuss with you but I shall not have the
time. We must limit ourselves to the more important matters.”
And he began to talk, and did not wait for answers or refutations. His
flaming speech poured itself out--about faith, miracles, about the
likely and inevitable transfiguration of the world by means of a
miracle, about our triumph over the fetters of time and over death
itself.
The quiet boy Grisha brought tea and cakes, and with measured
movements put them on the table, pausing now and then to look at the
visitor with his blue, quiet eyes.
Prince Davidov looked reproachfully at Trirodov. A repressed smile
trembled on Trirodov’s lips and an obstinate challenge gleamed in his
eyes. The visitor affectionately drew Grisha to him and stroked him
gently. The quiet boy stood calmly there--and Trirodov was gloomy. He
said to his visitor: “You love children. I can understand that. They
are angelic beings, though unbearable sometimes. It is only a pity
that they die too often upon this accursed earth. They are born in
order to die.”
Prince Davidov, with a tranquil movement, pushed Grisha away from him.
He put his hand on the boy’s head as if in blessing, then suddenly
became grave and stern, and asked quietly:
“Why do you do this?”
He asked the question with a great exertion of the will, like one who
wished to exercise power. Trirodov smiled:
“You do not like it?” he asked. “Well, what of it--you with your
extensive connexions could easily hinder me.”
The tone in which he uttered his words expressed proud irony. Thus
Satan would have spoken, tempting a famished one in the desert.
Prince Davidov frowned. His black eyes flared up. He asked again:
“Why have you done all this? The body of the malefactor and the soul
of an innocent--why should you have it all?”
Trirodov, looking angrily at his visitor, said resolutely:
“My design has been daring and difficult--but have I alone suffered
from despondency, suffered until I perspired with blood? Do I alone
bear within me a dual soul, and unite in me two worlds? Am I alone
worn out by nightmares as heavy as the burdens of the world? Have I
alone in a tragic moment felt myself lonely and forsaken?”
The visitor smiled a strange, sad, tranquil smile. Trirodov continued:
“You had better know that I will never be with you, that I will not
accept your comforting theories. All your literary and preaching
activity is a complete mistake. I don’t believe anything of what you
say so eloquently, enticing the weak. I simply don’t believe it.”
The visitor was silent.
“Leave me alone!” said Trirodov decisively. “There is no miracle.
There was no resurrection. No one has conquered death. The
establishment of a single will over the inert, amorphous world is a
deed not yet accomplished.”
Prince Davidov rose and said sorrowfully:
“I will leave you alone, if you wish it. But you will regret that you
have rejected the path I have shown you--the only path.”
Trirodov said proudly:
“I know the true path--my path.”
“Good-bye,” said Prince Davidov simply and calmly.
He left--and in a little while it seemed that he had not been there.
Lost in painful reflections, Trirodov did not hear the noise of the
departing carriage; the unexpected call of the dark-faced, fascinating
visitor, with his flaming speech and his fiery eyes, stirred his
memory like a midday dream, like an abrupt hallucination.
“Who is his fiancée, and why is she here?” Trirodov asked himself.
A strange, impossible idea came into his head. Did not Elisaveta once
speak about him with rapture? Perhaps the unexpected visitor would
take Elisaveta away from him, as he had taken her from Piotr.
This misgiving tormented him. But Trirodov looked into the clearness
of her eyes on the portrait taken recently and at the grace and
loveliness of her body and suddenly consoled himself. He thought:
“She is mine.”
* * * * *
But Elisaveta, musing and burning, was experiencing passionate dreams;
and she felt the tediousness of the grey monotony of her dull life.
The strange vision suddenly appearing to her in those terrible moments
in the wood repeated itself persistently--and it seemed to her that it
was not another but she herself who was experiencing a parallel life,
that she was passing the exultantly bright, joyous, and sad way of
Queen Ortruda.
THE END
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: Also the scene of Sologub’s “Little Demon.”]
[Footnote 2: Footpath of the dead.]
[Footnote 3: This word, which is the Russian equivalent for _Ham_
of the Bible, describes a man in a state of serfdom. Since the
abolition of serfdom in Russia, it has come to define the plebeian;
and is a sort of personification of the rabble. The satirist Stchedrin
has defined _Kham_ as “one who eats with a knife and takes milk
with his after-dinner coffee.” Merezhkovsky has written a book on
Gorky under the title of “The Future Kham.”--_Translator_.]
[Footnote 4: Bossiak literally means “a barefooted one,” but may be
more freely translated a “tramp.” This type has come very much into
vogue since Gorky has put him into his stories.--Translator.]
[Footnote 5: This phrase signifies punishment inflicted by the
authorities without a trial.]
[Footnote 6: The name by which the members of the Constitutional
Democratic Party are known. It is a development of the initials “C.
D.”]
[Footnote 7: Reference to the identity of the Black Hundred.]
[Footnote 8: See note on page 44.]
[Footnote 9: The Black Hundred.]
[Footnote 10: Betty.]
[Footnote 11: Nickname for Social Democrats.]
[Footnote 12: Nickname for Social Revolutionaries.]
[Footnote 13: A political party of moderate liberals which owes its
name to the fact that on October 17, 1905, the Russian Constitution
was established and the Duma organized.]
[Footnote 14: Member of the Social Democratic Party.]
[Footnote 15: See note on page 26.]
[Footnote 16: See note on page 44.]
[Footnote 17: Whips.]
[Footnote 18: Members of the Social Revolutionary Party are supposed
to wear black shirts, those of the Social Democratic Party red.]
[Footnote 19: Forest fires are one of the numerous problems of Russia.
They seem to be difficult to put out, and sometimes go on for weeks.
Hence the numerous references in the following pages to the constant
odour of forest flames.]
[Footnote 20: These two Greek Fates are important and recurring
symbols in Sologub’s philosophy. The world of Aisa is the world of
chaos and chance, in which man is too often lost in trying to emerge
from it. The people who belong to Ananke are those who, acting of
necessity, define their world clearly and conquer chaos. Theirs is the
immutable truth. See also Introduction.]
[Footnote 21: A line from a poem by Pushkin.]
[Footnote 22: Siberian island famous for its prison.]
[Footnote 23: Usually brought along as witnesses.]
[Footnote 24: I have it on the authority of one who was of the party
that it actually took place at the house of a celebrated living poet
in St. Petersburg. The lost cap belonged to Dmitry Merezhkovsky, who
immediately wrote a much-discussed article in an important newspaper
under the title of “What has become of our Cap?” The above is an
actual quotation from it. The sarcastic remark about “throwing back
the enemy” is aimed at those “patriots” who used to say that all
Russians had to do to repel foreign enemies was to throw their caps at
them.--Translator.]
[Footnote 25: The second of the novels under the general head of “The
Created Legend” deals with the previous existence of Elisaveta when
she was the Queen Ortruda of the United Isles in the Mediterranean,
and her consort was Prince Tancred, now Trirodov. She died from
suffocation in a volcanic eruption, after a vain effort to help her
people. The author draws a curious parallel, not only with regard to
these two characters, but has also a revolution as the background; it
is a rather veiled effort to describe over again the events which took
place in Russia in 1905.--Translator.]
[Footnote 26: Unleavened bread of the Passover.]
[Footnote 27: In a poem in prose which serves as an introduction to
his Complete Works, Sologub says: “Born not the first time, and not
the first to complete a circle of external transformations, I simply
and calmly reveal my soul. I reveal it in the hope _that the
intimate part of me shall become the universal_.”--Translator.]
[Footnote 28: Readers of “The Little Demon” will have no trouble in
recognizing in Ardalyon Borisovitch an old acquaintance--Peredonov.]
[Footnote 29: Diminutive for father, and used in the sense of “my good
fellow,” etc.]
[Footnote 30: “Golubushka” is “little dove.” English equivalent as
used here: “my dear.”]
[Footnote 31: Title of standard didactic work by Karamzin
(1766-1826).]
[Footnote 32: Mikhail Katkov (1820-1887), a celebrated reactionary and
Slavophil.]
[Footnote 33: Little Mother.]
[Footnote 34: The Russo-Japanese War.]
[Footnote 35: A reference to J. M. Guyau’s book, “Non-Religion of the
Future.”]
[Footnote 36: There is an evident effort here to identify “Immanuel
Osipovitch Davidov” as a modern symbol of Christ, or more properly of
Christ’s teachings, “Osipovitch” means the “son of Joseph”; “Davidov,”
“of David,”--Translator.]