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THE PRECIPICE
Original Russian Title: _OBRYV_
By Ivan Goncharov
TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL RUSSIAN; TRANSLATOR UNKNOWN
{This text is condensed from the original.}
PREFACE
Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov (1812-1891) was one of the leading members
of the great circle of Russian writers who, in the middle of the
nineteenth century, gathered around the _Sovremmenik_ (Contemporary)
under Nekrasov’s editorship--a circle including Turgenev, Dostoyevsky,
Tolstoy, Byelinsky, and Herzen. He had not the marked genius of the
first three of these; but that he is so much less known to the western
reader is perhaps also due to the fact that there was nothing
sensational either in his life or his literary method. His strength was
in the steady delineation of character, conscious of, but not deeply
disturbed by, the problems which were obsessing and distracting smaller
and greater minds.
Tolstoy has a characteristically prejudiced reminiscence: “I remember
how Goncharov, the author, a very sensible and educated man but a
thorough townsman and an aesthete, said to me that, after Turgenev,
there was nothing left to write about in the life of the lower classes.
It was all used up. The life of our wealthy people, with their
amorousness and dissatisfaction with their lives, seemed to him full of
inexhaustible subject-matter. One hero kissed his lady on her palm, and
another on her elbow, and a third somewhere else. One man is
discontented through idleness, another because people don’t love him.
And Goncharov thought that in this sphere there is no end of variety.”
In fact, his greatest success was the portrait of Oblomov in the novel
of that name, which was at once recognised as a peculiarly national
character--a man of thirty-two years, careless, bored, untidy, lazy, but
gentle and good-natured. In the present work, now translated for the
first time into English, the type reappears with some differences.
Raisky seems to have been “born tired.” He has plenty of intelligence,
some artistic gifts, charm, and an abundant kindliness, yet he achieves
nothing, either in work or in love, and in the end fades ineffectually
out of the story. “He knew he would do better to begin a big piece of
work instead of these trifles; but he told himself that Russians did not
understand hard work, or that real work demanded rude strength, the use
of the hands, the shoulders, and the back,” “He is only half a man,”
says Mark Volokov, the wolfish outlaw who quotes Proudhon and talks
about “the new knowledge, the new life.” This rascal, whose violent
pursuit of the heroine produces the tragedy of the book, is a much less
convincing figure, though he also represents a reality of Russian life
then, and even now.
The true contrast to Raisky of which Goncharov had deep and sympathetic
knowledge is shown in the splendid picture of the two women--Vera, the
infatuated beauty, and Aunt Tatiana, whose agony of motherly concern and
shamed remembrance is depicted with great power. The book is remarkable
as a study in the psychology of passionate emotion; for the western
reader, it is also delightful for the glimpses it gives of the old
Russian country life which is slowly passing away. The scene lies beside
one of the small towns on the Volga--“like other towns, a cemetery ...
the tranquillity of the grave. What a frame for a novel, if only he knew
what to put in the novel.... If the image of passion should float over
this motionless, sleepy little world, the picture would glow into the
enchanting colour of life.” The storm of passion does break over the
edge of the hill overlooking the mighty river, and, amid the wreckage,
the two victims rise into a nobility that the reckless reformer and the
pleasant dilettante have never conceived.
Goncharov had passed many years in Governmental service and had, in fact,
reached the age of thirty-five when his first work, _“A Common
Story,”_ was published. _“The Frigate Pallada,”_ which followed,
is a lengthy descriptive account of an official expedition to Japan and
Siberia in which Goncharov took part. After the publication of _“The
Precipice,”_ its author was moved to write an essay, _“Better Late
Than Never,”_ in which he attempted to explain that the purpose of
his three novels was to present the eternal struggle between East and
West--the lethargy of the Russian and the ferment of foreign influences.
Thus he ranged himself more closely with the great figures among his
contemporaries. Two other volumes consist of critical study and
reminiscence.
CHAPTER I
Boris Pavlovich Raisky had a vivacious, unusually mobile face. At first
sight he appeared younger than his years. The high, white forehead gave
an impression of freshness and vigour; the eyes blazed one moment with
intelligence, emotion or gaiety, a moment later they wore a meditative,
dreamy expression, then again they looked young, even childlike. At
other times they evidenced knowledge of life, or looked so weary, so
bored that they betrayed their owner’s age; at these times there
appeared between them three furrows, certain indications of time and
knowledge of life. Smooth black hair fell on his neck and half covered
the ears, with here and there silver threads about the temples. His
complexion had kept the tints of youth except on the temples and the
chin, which were a brownish-yellow colour.
It was easy to guess from his physiognomy that the conflict between
youth and maturity was past, that he had passed the early stages of
life’s journey and that sorrow and sickness had left their marks on him.
Only the mouth, with its delicate lines, with the fresh, almost
childlike smile remained unchanged by age.
He had been left an orphan in childhood, and for some time his
indifferent, bachelor guardian had left his education to a relative,
Boris’s aunt.
This lady was endowed with a rich temperament, but her horizon did not
stretch far beyond her own home, where in the tranquil atmosphere of
woods and gardens, in the environment of the family and the estate,
Boris had passed several years. When he grew older his guardian sent him
to the High School, where the family traditions of former wealth and of
the connexion with other old noble families faded.
His further development, occupations and inclinations led him still
further from the traditions of his childhood. Raisky had lived for about
ten years in St. Petersburg; that is to say he rented three pleasant
rooms from a German landlord, which he retained, although after he had
left the civil service he rarely spent two successive half-years in the
capital.
He had left the civil service as casually as he had entered it, because,
when he had had time to consider his position, he came to the conclusion
that the service is not an aim in itself, but merely a means to bring
together a number of men who would otherwise have had no justification
for their existence. If these men had not existed, the posts which they
filled need never have been created.
Now, he had already passed his thirtieth year, and had neither sowed nor
reaped. He did not follow the same path as the other ordinary arrival
from the interior of Russia, for he was neither an officer nor an
official, nor did he seek a career for himself by hard work or by
influence. He was inscribed in the registers of his police district as a
civil servant.
It would have been hard for the expert in physiognomy to decipher
Raisky’s characteristics, inclinations and character from his face
because of its extraordinary mobility. Still less could his mental
physiognomy be defined. He had moments when, to use his own expression,
he embraced the whole world, so that many people declared that there was
no kinder, more amiable man in existence. Others, on the contrary, who
came across him at an unfortunate moment, when the yellow patches on his
face were most marked, when his lips were drawn in a sinister, nervous
quiver, and he returned kindness and sympathy with cold looks and sharp
words, were repelled by him and even pursued him with their dislike.
Some called him egotistic and proud, while others declared themselves
enchanted with him; some again maintained that he was theatrical, others
that he was not to be trusted. Two or three friends judged otherwise. “A
noble nature,” they said, “most honourable, but with all its virtues,
nervous, passionate, excitable, fiery tempered....” So there had never
been any unanimous opinion of him.
Even in early childhood while he lived with his aunt, and later, after
his school-days had begun, he showed the same enigmatic and
contradictory traits.
It might be expected that the first effort of a new boy would be to
listen to the teacher’s questions and the pupils’ answers. But Raisky
stared at the teacher, as if seeking to impress on his memory the
details of his appearance, his speech, how he took snuff; he looked at
his eyebrows, his beard, then at his clothes, at the cornelian seal
suspended across his waistcoat, and so on. Then he would observe each of
the other boys and note their peculiarities, or he would study his own
person, and wonder what his own face was like, what the others thought
of him....
“What did I say just now?” interrupted the master, noticing Boris’s
wandering glance.
To the teacher’s amazement Boris replied word for word, “And what is the
meaning of this?” He had listened mechanically, and had caught the
actual syllables.
The master repeated his explanation, and again Boris caught the sound of
his voice, noticing that sometimes he spoke shortly, staccato--sometimes
drawled as if he were singing, and then rapped out his words smartly
like nuts.
“Well?”
Raisky blushed, perspired with anxiety, and was silent.
It was the mathematical master. He went to the blackboard, wrote up the
problem, and again began the explanation. Raisky only noticed with what
rapidity and certainty he wrote the figures, how the waistcoat with the
cornelian seal and then the snuff-spattered shirt front came
nearer--nothing, except the solution of the problem, escaped him.
Now and then a notion penetrated to his brain, but when it came to
equations he grew weary with the effort required. Sometimes the teacher
lost patience with him, and generally concluded: “Go back to your place,
you are a blockhead.”
But if a whiff of originality passed over the master himself, if he
taught as if it were a game, and had recourse neither to his book nor to
the blackboard, then the solution flashed on Raisky, and he found the
answer quicker than any of the others.
He consumed passionately history, novels and tales; wherever he could he
begged for books. But he did not like facts or theories or anything that
drew him from the world of fancy towards the world of reality. In the
geography lesson he could not understand how any boy could answer in
class, but once out of class he could talk about foreign countries and
cities, or about the sea, to the amazement of his classmates. He had not
learnt it from the teacher or from a book, but he gave a picture of the
place as if he had actually been there.
“You are inventing,” a sceptical listener would say. “Vassili Nikitich
never said that.”
His companions did not know what to make of him, for his sympathies
changed so often that he had neither constant friends nor constant
enemies. One week he would attach himself to one boy, seek his society,
sit with him, read to him, talk to him and give him his confidence. Then,
for no reason, he would leave him, enter into close relations with
another boy, and then as speedily forget him.
If one of his companions annoyed him he became angry with him and
pursued hostilities obstinately long after the original cause was
forgotten. Then suddenly he would have a friendly, magnanimous impulse,
would carefully arrange a scene of reconciliation, which interested
everyone, himself most of all.
When he was out of school, everyday life attracted him very little; he
cared neither for its gayer side nor its sterner activities. If his
guardian asked him how the corn should be threshed, the cloth milled or
linen bleached, he turned away and went out on to the verandah to look
out on the woods, or made his way along the river to the thicket to
watch the insects at work, or to observe the birds, to see how they
alighted, how they sharpened their beaks. He caught a hedgehog and made
a playmate of it, went out fishing all day long with the village boys,
or listened to the tales about Pugachev told by a half-witted old woman
living in a mud hut, greedily drinking in the most singular of the
horrible incidents she related, while he looked into the old woman’s
toothless mouth and into the caverns of her fading eyes.
For hours he would listen with morbid curiosity to the babble of the
idiot Feklusha. At home he read in the most desultory way. He deemed the
secrets of Eastern magic, Russian tales and folk-lore, skimmed Ossian,
Tasso, Homer, or wandered with Cook in strange lands. If he found
nothing to read he lay motionless all day long, as if he were exhausted
with hard work; his fancy carried him beyond Ossian and Homer, beyond
the tales of Cook, until fevered with his imaginings he rose tired,
exhausted, and unable for a long time to resume normal life.
People called him an idler. He feared this accusation, and wept over it
in secret, though he was convinced that he was no idler, but something
different, that no one but himself comprehended.
Unfortunately, there was no one to guide him in a definite direction. On
the one hand, his guardian merely saw to it that his masters came at
stated times and that Boris did not avoid school; on the other, his aunt
contented herself with seeing that he was in good health, ate and slept
well, was decently dressed, and as a well-brought-up boy should, did not
consort with every village lout.
Nobody cared to see what he read; his aunt gave him the keys of his
father’s library in the old house, where he shut himself in, now to read
Spinoza, now a novel, and another day Voltaire or Boccaccio.
He made better progress in the arts than in the sciences. Here too he
had his tricks. One day the teacher set the pupils to draw eyes, but
Raisky grew tired of that, and proceeded to add a nose and a moustache.
The master surprised him, and seized him by the hair. When he looked
closer at the drawing, however, he asked: “Where did you learn to do
that?”
“Nowhere,” was the reply.
“But it is well done, my lad. See yourself what this hurry to get on
leads to; the forehead and nose are good enough, but the ear you have
put in the wrong place, and the hair looks like tow.”
Raisky was triumphant. The words, “But it is well done; the forehead and
nose are good enough,” were for him a crown of laurel.
He walked round the school yard proud in the consciousness that he was
the best in the drawing class; this mood lasted to the next day, when he
came to grief in the ordinary lessons. But he conceived a passion for
drawing, and during the month that followed drew a curly-headed boy,
then the head of Fingal. His fancy was caught by a woman’s head which
hung in the master’s room; it leaned a little towards one shoulder, and
looked away into the distance with melancholy, meditative eyes. “Allow
me to make a copy,” he begged with a gentle, tremulous voice, and with a
nervous quiver of the upper lip.
“Don’t break the glass,” the master warned him, and gave him the picture.
Boris was happy. For a whole week his masters did not secure a single
intelligent answer from him. He sat silently in his corner and drew. At
night he took the drawing to his bedroom, and as he looked into its
gracious eyes, followed the lines of the delicately bent neck, he
shivered, his heart stood still, there was a catch in his breath, and he
closed his eyes; with a faint sigh he pressed the picture to his breast
where the breath came so painfully--and then there was a crash and the
glass fell clattering on the floor.
When he had drawn the head his pride knew no bounds. His work was
exhibited with the drawings of pupils of the top class, the teacher had
made few corrections, had only here and there put broad strokes in the
shading, had drawn three or four more decided lines, had put a point in
each eye--and the eyes were now like life.
“How lifelike and bold it is!” thought Raisky, as he looked at the
strokes inserted by his master, and more especially at the points in the
eyes, which had so suddenly given them the look of life. This step
forward intoxicated him. “Talent! Talent!” sang in his ears.
He sketched the maids, the coachman, the peasants of the countryside. He
was particularly successful with the idiot Feklusha, seated in a cavern
with her bust in the shade, and the light on her wild hair; he had not
the patience nor the skill to finish bust, hands and feet. How could
anybody be expected to sit still all the morning, when the sun was
shedding its rays so gaily and so generously on stream and meadow?
Within three days the picture had faded in his imagination, and new
images were thronging his brain. He would like to have drawn a round
dance, a drunken old man, the rapid passage of a troïka. For two days he
was taken up with this picture, which stood before his mind’s eye in
every detail; the peasants and the women were finished, but not the
waggon with its three fleet horses.
In a week he had forgotten this picture also.
He loved music to distraction. At school he had an enduring affection
for the dull Vassyvkov, who was the laughing stock of the other boys. A
boy would seize Vassyvkov by the ear, crying, “Get out, stupid,
blockhead,” but Raisky stood by him, because Vassyvkov, inattentive,
sleepy, idle, who never did his work even for the universally beloved
Russian master, would every afternoon after dinner take his violin, and
as he played, forget the school, the masters and the nose-pullings. His
eyes as they gazed into the distance, apparently seeking something
strange, enticing, and mysterious, became wild and gloomy, and often
filled with tears.
He was no longer Vassyvkov, but another creature. His pupils dilated,
his eyes ceased to blink, becoming clearer and deeper; his glance was
proud and intelligent; his breath came long and deep. Over his face
stole an expression of happiness, of gentleness; his eyes became darker
and seemed to radiate light. In a word he became beautiful.
Raisky began to think the thoughts of Vassyvkov, to see what he saw. His
surroundings vanished, and boys and benches were lost in a mist. More
notes ... and a wide space opened before him. A world in motion arose.
He heard the murmur of running streams, saw ships, men, woods, and
drifting clouds; everywhere was light, motion, and gaiety. He had the
sensation that he himself was growing taller, he caught his breath....
The dream continued just so long as the notes were heard. Suddenly he
heard a noise, he was awakened with a start, Vassyvkov had ceased to
play; the moving, musical waves vanished, and there were only the boys,
benches and tables. Vassyvkov laid aside his violin, and somebody
tweaked his ear. Raisky threw himself in a rage on the offender, struck
him--all the while possessed by the magic notes.
Every nerve in his body sang. Life, thought, emotion broke in waves in
the seething sea of his consciousness. The notes strike a chord of
memory. A cloud of recollection hovers before him, shaping the figure of
a woman who holds him to her breast. He gropes in his consciousness--it
was thus that his mother’s arms cradled him, his face pressed to her
breast ... her figure grows in distinctness, as if she had risen from
the grave....
He had begun to take lessons from Vassyvkov. For a whole week he had
been moving the bow up and down, but its scratching set his teeth on
edge. He caught two strings at once, and his hand trembled with weakness.
It was clearly no use. When Vassyvkov played his hand seemed to play of
itself. Tired of the torment, Raisky begged his guardian to allow him to
take piano lessons.
“It will be easier on the pianoforte,” he thought.
His guardian engaged a German master, but took the opportunity of saying
a few words to his nephew.
“Boris,” he said, “for what are you preparing yourself? I have been
intending to ask you for a long time.”
Boris did not understand the question, and made no answer.
“You are nearly sixteen years old, and it is time you began to think of
serious things. It is plain that you have not yet considered what
faculty you will follow in the University, and to which branch of the
service you will devote yourself. You cannot well go into the army,
because you have no great fortune, and yet, for the sake of your family,
could hardly serve elsewhere than in the Guards.”
Boris was silent, and watched through the window how the hens strutted
about, how the pigs wallowed in the mire, how the cat was stalking a
pigeon....
“I am speaking to you seriously, and you stare out of the window. For
what future are you preparing yourself?”
“I want to be an artist.”
“Wha-at?”
“An artist.”
“The devil only knows what notions you have got into your head. Who
would agree to that? Do you even know what an artist is?”
Raisky made no answer.
“An artist ... is a man who borrows money from you, or chatters foolish
nonsense, and drives you to distraction.... Artist! ... These people
lead a wild gipsy life, are destitute of money, clothes, shoes, and all
the time they dream of wealth. Artists live on this earth like the birds
of heaven. I have seen enough of them in St. Petersburg: bold rascals
who meet one another in the evening dressed in fantastic costumes, lie
upon divans, smoke pipes, talk about trifles, read poetry, drink brandy
and declare that they are artists. Uncombed, unwashed....”
“I have heard, Uncle, that artists are now held in high esteem. You are
thinking of the past. Now, the Academy produces many famous people.”
“I am not very old, and I have seen the world. You have heard the bells
ring, but do not know in what tower. Famous people! There are famous
artists as there are famous doctors. But when do they achieve fame? When
do they enter the service and reach the rank of Councillor? If a man
builds a cathedral or erects a monument in a public place, then people
begin to seek him out. But artists begin in poverty, with a crust of
bread. You will find they are for the most part freed serfs, small
tradespeople or foreigners, or Jews. Poverty drives them to art. But
you--a Raisky! You have land of your own, and bread to eat. It’s
pleasant enough to have graceful talents in society, to play the piano,
to sketch in an album, and to sing a song, and I have therefore engaged
a German professor for you. But what an abominable idea to be an artist
by profession! Have you ever heard of a prince or a count who has
painted a picture, or a nobleman who has chiselled a statue? No, and
why?”
“What about Rubens? He was a courtier, an ambassador....”
“Where have you dug that out? Two hundred years ago.... Among the
Germans ... but you are going to the University, to enter the faculty of
law, then you will study for the service in St. Petersburg, try to get a
position as advocate, and your connexions will help you to a place at
court. And if you keep your eyes open, with your name and your
connexions, you will be a Governor in thirty years’ time. That is the
career for you. But there seem to be no serious ideas in your head; you
catch fish with the village boors, have sketched a swamp and a drunken
beggar, but you have not the remotest idea of when this or that crop
should be sown, or at what price it is sold.”
Raisky trembled. His guardian’s lecture affected his nerves.
Like Vassyvkov, the music master began to bend his fingers. If Raisky
had not been ashamed before his guardian he would not have endured the
torture. As it was he succeeded in a few months, after much trouble, in
completing the first stages of his instruction. Very soon he surpassed
and surprised the local young ladies by the strength and boldness of his
playing. His master saw his abilities were remarkable, his indolence
still more remarkable.
That, he thought, was no misfortune. Indolence and negligence are native
to artists. He had been told too that a man who has talent should not
work too hard. Hard work is only for those with moderate abilities.