I
THERE is in Russia an emeritus Professor Nikolay Stepanovitch, a
chevalier and privy councillor; he has so many Russian and foreign
decorations that when he has occasion to put them on the students
nickname him “The Ikonstand.” His acquaintances are of the most
aristocratic; for the last twenty-five or thirty years, at any rate,
there has not been one single distinguished man of learning in Russia
with whom he has not been intimately acquainted. There is no one for him
to make friends with nowadays; but if we turn to the past, the long list
of his famous friends winds up with such names as Pirogov, Kavelin,
and the poet Nekrasov, all of whom bestowed upon him a warm and sincere
affection. He is a member of all the Russian and of three foreign
universities. And so on, and so on. All that and a great deal more that
might be said makes up what is called my “name.”
That is my name as known to the public. In Russia it is known to every
educated man, and abroad it is mentioned in the lecture-room with the
addition “honoured and distinguished.” It is one of those fortunate
names to abuse which or to take which in vain, in public or in print, is
considered a sign of bad taste. And that is as it should be. You see, my
name is closely associated with the conception of a highly distinguished
man of great gifts and unquestionable usefulness. I have the industry
and power of endurance of a camel, and that is important, and I have
talent, which is even more important. Moreover, while I am on this
subject, I am a well-educated, modest, and honest fellow. I have
never poked my nose into literature or politics; I have never sought
popularity in polemics with the ignorant; I have never made speeches
either at public dinners or at the funerals of my friends.... In fact,
there is no slur on my learned name, and there is no complaint one can
make against it. It is fortunate.
The bearer of that name, that is I, see myself as a man of sixty-two,
with a bald head, with false teeth, and with an incurable tic
douloureux. I am myself as dingy and unsightly as my name is brilliant
and splendid. My head and my hands tremble with weakness; my neck, as
Turgenev says of one of his heroines, is like the handle of a double
bass; my chest is hollow; my shoulders narrow; when I talk or lecture,
my mouth turns down at one corner; when I smile, my whole face is
covered with aged-looking, deathly wrinkles. There is nothing impressive
about my pitiful figure; only, perhaps, when I have an attack of tic
douloureux my face wears a peculiar expression, the sight of which must
have roused in every one the grim and impressive thought, “Evidently
that man will soon die.”
I still, as in the past, lecture fairly well; I can still, as in the
past, hold the attention of my listeners for a couple of hours. My
fervour, the literary skill of my exposition, and my humour, almost
efface the defects of my voice, though it is harsh, dry, and monotonous
as a praying beggar’s. I write poorly. That bit of my brain which
presides over the faculty of authorship refuses to work. My memory has
grown weak; there is a lack of sequence in my ideas, and when I put them
on paper it always seems to me that I have lost the instinct for their
organic connection; my construction is monotonous; my language is
poor and timid. Often I write what I do not mean; I have forgotten the
beginning when I am writing the end. Often I forget ordinary words, and
I always have to waste a great deal of energy in avoiding superfluous
phrases and unnecessary parentheses in my letters, both unmistakable
proofs of a decline in mental activity. And it is noteworthy that
the simpler the letter the more painful the effort to write it. At a
scientific article I feel far more intelligent and at ease than at a
letter of congratulation or a minute of proceedings. Another point: I
find it easier to write German or English than to write Russian.
As regards my present manner of life, I must give a foremost place to
the insomnia from which I have suffered of late. If I were asked what
constituted the chief and fundamental feature of my existence now, I
should answer, Insomnia. As in the past, from habit I undress and go to
bed exactly at midnight. I fall asleep quickly, but before two o’clock
I wake up and feel as though I had not slept at all. Sometimes I get out
of bed and light a lamp. For an hour or two I walk up and down the room
looking at the familiar photographs and pictures. When I am weary of
walking about, I sit down to my table. I sit motionless, thinking of
nothing, conscious of no inclination; if a book is lying before me, I
mechanically move it closer and read it without any interest--in that
way not long ago I mechanically read through in one night a whole novel,
with the strange title “The Song the Lark was Singing”; or to occupy my
attention I force myself to count to a thousand; or I imagine the face
of one of my colleagues and begin trying to remember in what year and
under what circumstances he entered the service. I like listening to
sounds. Two rooms away from me my daughter Liza says something rapidly
in her sleep, or my wife crosses the drawing-room with a candle and
invariably drops the matchbox; or a warped cupboard creaks; or the
burner of the lamp suddenly begins to hum--and all these sounds, for
some reason, excite me.
To lie awake at night means to be at every moment conscious of being
abnormal, and so I look forward with impatience to the morning and the
day when I have a right to be awake. Many wearisome hours pass before
the cock crows in the yard. He is my first bringer of good tidings.
As soon as he crows I know that within an hour the porter will wake up
below, and, coughing angrily, will go upstairs to fetch something. And
then a pale light will begin gradually glimmering at the windows, voices
will sound in the street....
The day begins for me with the entrance of my wife. She comes in to
me in her petticoat, before she has done her hair, but after she has
washed, smelling of flower-scented eau-de-Cologne, looking as though
she had come in by chance. Every time she says exactly the same thing:
“Excuse me, I have just come in for a minute.... Have you had a bad
night again?”
Then she puts out the lamp, sits down near the table, and begins
talking. I am no prophet, but I know what she will talk about. Every
morning it is exactly the same thing. Usually, after anxious inquiries
concerning my health, she suddenly mentions our son who is an officer
serving at Warsaw. After the twentieth of each month we send him fifty
roubles, and that serves as the chief topic of our conversation.
“Of course it is difficult for us,” my wife would sigh, “but until he is
completely on his own feet it is our duty to help him. The boy is among
strangers, his pay is small.... However, if you like, next month we
won’t send him fifty, but forty. What do you think?”
Daily experience might have taught my wife that constantly talking
of our expenses does not reduce them, but my wife refuses to learn by
experience, and regularly every morning discusses our officer son, and
tells me that bread, thank God, is cheaper, while sugar is a halfpenny
dearer--with a tone and an air as though she were communicating
interesting news.
I listen, mechanically assent, and probably because I have had a bad
night, strange and inappropriate thoughts intrude themselves upon me. I
gaze at my wife and wonder like a child. I ask myself in perplexity,
is it possible that this old, very stout, ungainly woman, with her
dull expression of petty anxiety and alarm about daily bread, with eyes
dimmed by continual brooding over debts and money difficulties, who
can talk of nothing but expenses and who smiles at nothing but things
getting cheaper--is it possible that this woman is no other than the
slender Varya whom I fell in love with so passionately for her fine,
clear intelligence, for her pure soul, her beauty, and, as Othello his
Desdemona, for her “sympathy” for my studies? Could that woman be no
other than the Varya who had once borne me a son?
I look with strained attention into the face of this flabby, spiritless,
clumsy old woman, seeking in her my Varya, but of her past self nothing
is left but her anxiety over my health and her manner of calling my
salary “our salary,” and my cap “our cap.” It is painful for me to look
at her, and, to give her what little comfort I can, I let her say what
she likes, and say nothing even when she passes unjust criticisms on
other people or pitches into me for not having a private practice or not
publishing text-books.
Our conversation always ends in the same way. My wife suddenly remembers
with dismay that I have not had my tea.
“What am I thinking about, sitting here?” she says, getting up. “The
samovar has been on the table ever so long, and here I stay gossiping.
My goodness! how forgetful I am growing!”
She goes out quickly, and stops in the doorway to say:
“We owe Yegor five months’ wages. Did you know it? You mustn’t let the
servants’ wages run on; how many times I have said it! It’s much easier
to pay ten roubles a month than fifty roubles every five months!”
As she goes out, she stops to say:
“The person I am sorriest for is our Liza. The girl studies at the
Conservatoire, always mixes with people of good position, and goodness
knows how she is dressed. Her fur coat is in such a state she is ashamed
to show herself in the street. If she were somebody else’s daughter
it wouldn’t matter, but of course every one knows that her father is a
distinguished professor, a privy councillor.”
And having reproached me with my rank and reputation, she goes away at
last. That is how my day begins. It does not improve as it goes on.
As I am drinking my tea, my Liza comes in wearing her fur coat and
her cap, with her music in her hand, already quite ready to go to the
Conservatoire. She is two-and-twenty. She looks younger, is pretty,
and rather like my wife in her young days. She kisses me tenderly on my
forehead and on my hand, and says:
“Good-morning, papa; are you quite well?”
As a child she was very fond of ice-cream, and I used often to take
her to a confectioner’s. Ice-cream was for her the type of everything
delightful. If she wanted to praise me she would say: “You are as nice
as cream, papa.” We used to call one of her little fingers “pistachio
ice,” the next, “cream ice,” the third “raspberry,” and so on. Usually
when she came in to say good-morning to me I used to sit her on my knee,
kiss her little fingers, and say:
“Creamy ice... pistachio... lemon....”
And now, from old habit, I kiss Liza’s fingers and mutter: “Pistachio...
cream... lemon...” but the effect is utterly different. I am cold as
ice and I am ashamed. When my daughter comes in to me and touches my
forehead with her lips I start as though a bee had stung me on the
head, give a forced smile, and turn my face away. Ever since I have been
suffering from sleeplessness, a question sticks in my brain like a nail.
My daughter often sees me, an old man and a distinguished man, blush
painfully at being in debt to my footman; she sees how often anxiety
over petty debts forces me to lay aside my work and to walk up and down
the room for hours together, thinking; but why is it she never comes to
me in secret to whisper in my ear: “Father, here is my watch, here
are my bracelets, my earrings, my dresses.... Pawn them all; you want
money...”? How is it that, seeing how her mother and I are placed in a
false position and do our utmost to hide our poverty from people, she
does not give up her expensive pleasure of music lessons? I would
not accept her watch nor her bracelets, nor the sacrifice of her
lessons--God forbid! That isn’t what I want.
I think at the same time of my son, the officer at Warsaw. He is a
clever, honest, and sober fellow. But that is not enough for me. I think
if I had an old father, and if I knew there were moments when he was
put to shame by his poverty, I should give up my officer’s commission
to somebody else, and should go out to earn my living as a workman. Such
thoughts about my children poison me. What is the use of them? It is
only a narrow-minded or embittered man who can harbour evil thoughts
about ordinary people because they are not heroes. But enough of that!
At a quarter to ten I have to go and give a lecture to my dear boys. I
dress and walk along the road which I have known for thirty years,
and which has its history for me. Here is the big grey house with the
chemist’s shop; at this point there used to stand a little house, and in
it was a beershop; in that beershop I thought out my thesis and wrote
my first love-letter to Varya. I wrote it in pencil, on a page headed
“Historia morbi.” Here there is a grocer’s shop; at one time it was kept
by a little Jew, who sold me cigarettes on credit; then by a fat peasant
woman, who liked the students because “every one of them has a mother”;
now there is a red-haired shopkeeper sitting in it, a very stolid man
who drinks tea from a copper teapot. And here are the gloomy gates of
the University, which have long needed doing up; I see the bored porter
in his sheep-skin, the broom, the drifts of snow.... On a boy coming
fresh from the provinces and imagining that the temple of science
must really be a temple, such gates cannot make a healthy impression.
Altogether the dilapidated condition of the University buildings, the
gloominess of the corridors, the griminess of the walls, the lack of
light, the dejected aspect of the steps, the hat-stands and the benches,
take a prominent position among predisposing causes in the history of
Russian pessimism.... Here is our garden... I fancy it has grown neither
better nor worse since I was a student. I don’t like it. It would be
far more sensible if there were tall pines and fine oaks growing here
instead of sickly-looking lime-trees, yellow acacias, and skimpy pollard
lilacs. The student whose state of mind is in the majority of cases
created by his surroundings, ought in the place where he is studying
to see facing him at every turn nothing but what is lofty, strong and
elegant.... God preserve him from gaunt trees, broken windows, grey
walls, and doors covered with torn American leather!
When I go to my own entrance the door is flung wide open, and I am met
by my colleague, contemporary, and namesake, the porter Nikolay. As he
lets me in he clears his throat and says:
“A frost, your Excellency!”
Or, if my great-coat is wet:
“Rain, your Excellency!”
Then he runs on ahead of me and opens all the doors on my way. In my
study he carefully takes off my fur coat, and while doing so manages
to tell me some bit of University news. Thanks to the close intimacy
existing between all the University porters and beadles, he knows
everything that goes on in the four faculties, in the office, in the
rector’s private room, in the library. What does he not know? When in
an evil day a rector or dean, for instance, retires, I hear him in
conversation with the young porters mention the candidates for the post,
explain that such a one would not be confirmed by the minister, that
another would himself refuse to accept it, then drop into fantastic
details concerning mysterious papers received in the office, secret
conversations alleged to have taken place between the minister and
the trustee, and so on. With the exception of these details, he almost
always turns out to be right. His estimates of the candidates, though
original, are very correct, too. If one wants to know in what year some
one read his thesis, entered the service, retired, or died, then summon
to your assistance the vast memory of that soldier, and he will not only
tell you the year, the month and the day, but will furnish you also with
the details that accompanied this or that event. Only one who loves can
remember like that.
He is the guardian of the University traditions. From the porters who
were his predecessors he has inherited many legends of University life,
has added to that wealth much of his own gained during his time of
service, and if you care to hear he will tell you many long and
intimate stories. He can tell one about extraordinary sages who knew
_everything_, about remarkable students who did not sleep for weeks,
about numerous martyrs and victims of science; with him good triumphs
over evil, the weak always vanquishes the strong, the wise man the fool,
the humble the proud, the young the old. There is no need to take all
these fables and legends for sterling coin; but filter them, and you
will have left what is wanted: our fine traditions and the names of real
heroes, recognized as such by all.
In our society the knowledge of the learned world consists of anecdotes
of the extraordinary absentmindedness of certain old professors, and two
or three witticisms variously ascribed to Gruber, to me, and to Babukin.
For the educated public that is not much. If it loved science, learned
men, and students, as Nikolay does, its literature would long ago
have contained whole epics, records of sayings and doings such as,
unfortunately, it cannot boast of now.
After telling me a piece of news, Nikolay assumes a severe expression,
and conversation about business begins. If any outsider could at such
times overhear Nikolay’s free use of our terminology, he might perhaps
imagine that he was a learned man disguised as a soldier. And, by the
way, the rumours of the erudition of the University porters are greatly
exaggerated. It is true that Nikolay knows more than a hundred Latin
words, knows how to put the skeleton together, sometimes prepares the
apparatus and amuses the students by some long, learned quotation, but
the by no means complicated theory of the circulation of the blood, for
instance, is as much a mystery to him now as it was twenty years ago.
At the table in my study, bending low over some book or preparation,
sits Pyotr Ignatyevitch, my demonstrator, a modest and industrious but
by no means clever man of five-and-thirty, already bald and corpulent;
he works from morning to night, reads a lot, remembers well everything
he has read--and in that way he is not a man, but pure gold; in all else
he is a carthorse or, in other words, a learned dullard. The carthorse
characteristics that show his lack of talent are these: his outlook is
narrow and sharply limited by his specialty; outside his special branch
he is simple as a child.
“Fancy! what a misfortune! They say Skobelev is dead.”
Nikolay crosses himself, but Pyotr Ignatyevitch turns to me and asks:
“What Skobelev is that?”
Another time--somewhat earlier--I told him that Professor Perov was
dead. Good Pyotr Ignatyevitch asked:
“What did he lecture on?”
I believe if Patti had sung in his very ear, if a horde of Chinese
had invaded Russia, if there had been an earthquake, he would not have
stirred a limb, but screwing up his eye, would have gone on calmly
looking through his microscope. What is he to Hecuba or Hecuba to him,
in fact? I would give a good deal to see how this dry stick sleeps with
his wife at night.
Another characteristic is his fanatical faith in the infallibility
of science, and, above all, of everything written by the Germans. He
believes in himself, in his preparations; knows the object of life, and
knows nothing of the doubts and disappointments that turn the hair of
talent grey. He has a slavish reverence for authorities and a complete
lack of any desire for independent thought. To change his convictions is
difficult, to argue with him impossible. How is one to argue with a man
who is firmly persuaded that medicine is the finest of sciences, that
doctors are the best of men, and that the traditions of the medical
profession are superior to those of any other? Of the evil past of
medicine only one tradition has been preserved--the white tie still
worn by doctors; for a learned--in fact, for any educated man the only
traditions that can exist are those of the University as a whole, with
no distinction between medicine, law, etc. But it would be hard for
Pyotr Ignatyevitch to accept these facts, and he is ready to argue with
you till the day of judgment.
I have a clear picture in my mind of his future. In the course of his
life he will prepare many hundreds of chemicals of exceptional purity;
he will write a number of dry and very accurate memoranda, will
make some dozen conscientious translations, but he won’t do anything
striking. To do that one must have imagination, inventiveness, the gift
of insight, and Pyotr Ignatyevitch has nothing of the kind. In short, he
is not a master in science, but a journeyman.
Pyotr Ignatyevitch, Nikolay, and I, talk in subdued tones. We are not
quite ourselves. There is always a peculiar feeling when one hears
through the doors a murmur as of the sea from the lecture-theatre. In
the course of thirty years I have not grown accustomed to this feeling,
and I experience it every morning. I nervously button up my coat, ask
Nikolay unnecessary questions, lose my temper.... It is just as though
I were frightened; it is not timidity, though, but something different
which I can neither describe nor find a name for.
Quite unnecessarily, I look at my watch and say: “Well, it’s time to go
in.”
And we march into the room in the following order: foremost goes
Nikolay, with the chemicals and apparatus or with a chart; after him I
come; and then the carthorse follows humbly, with hanging head; or, when
necessary, a dead body is carried in first on a stretcher, followed by
Nikolay, and so on. On my entrance the students all stand up, then they
sit down, and the sound as of the sea is suddenly hushed. Stillness
reigns.
I know what I am going to lecture about, but I don’t know how I am going
to lecture, where I am going to begin or with what I am going to end.
I haven’t a single sentence ready in my head. But I have only to look
round the lecture-hall (it is built in the form of an amphitheatre)
and utter the stereotyped phrase, “Last lecture we stopped at...” when
sentences spring up from my soul in a long string, and I am carried away
by my own eloquence. I speak with irresistible rapidity and passion, and
it seems as though there were no force which could check the flow of
my words. To lecture well--that is, with profit to the listeners and
without boring them--one must have, besides talent, experience and a
special knack; one must possess a clear conception of one’s own powers,
of the audience to which one is lecturing, and of the subject of one’s
lecture. Moreover, one must be a man who knows what he is doing; one
must keep a sharp lookout, and not for one second lose sight of what
lies before one.
A good conductor, interpreting the thought of the composer, does twenty
things at once: reads the score, waves his baton, watches the singer,
makes a motion sideways, first to the drum then to the wind-instruments,
and so on. I do just the same when I lecture. Before me a hundred and
fifty faces, all unlike one another; three hundred eyes all looking
straight into my face. My object is to dominate this many-headed
monster. If every moment as I lecture I have a clear vision of the
degree of its attention and its power of comprehension, it is in my
power. The other foe I have to overcome is in myself. It is the infinite
variety of forms, phenomena, laws, and the multitude of ideas of my own
and other people’s conditioned by them. Every moment I must have the
skill to snatch out of that vast mass of material what is most important
and necessary, and, as rapidly as my words flow, clothe my thought in a
form in which it can be grasped by the monster’s intelligence, and may
arouse its attention, and at the same time one must keep a sharp lookout
that one’s thoughts are conveyed, not just as they come, but in a
certain order, essential for the correct composition of the picture I
wish to sketch. Further, I endeavour to make my diction literary, my
definitions brief and precise, my wording, as far as possible, simple
and eloquent. Every minute I have to pull myself up and remember that
I have only an hour and forty minutes at my disposal. In short, one has
one’s work cut out. At one and the same minute one has to play the part
of savant and teacher and orator, and it’s a bad thing if the orator
gets the upper hand of the savant or of the teacher in one, or _vice
versa_.
You lecture for a quarter of an hour, for half an hour, when you
notice that the students are beginning to look at the ceiling, at Pyotr
Ignatyevitch; one is feeling for his handkerchief, another shifts in his
seat, another smiles at his thoughts.... That means that their attention
is flagging. Something must be done. Taking advantage of the first
opportunity, I make some pun. A broad grin comes on to a hundred and
fifty faces, the eyes shine brightly, the sound of the sea is audible
for a brief moment.... I laugh too. Their attention is refreshed, and I
can go on.
No kind of sport, no kind of game or diversion, has ever given me such
enjoyment as lecturing. Only at lectures have I been able to abandon
myself entirely to passion, and have understood that inspiration is
not an invention of the poets, but exists in real life, and I imagine
Hercules after the most piquant of his exploits felt just such
voluptuous exhaustion as I experience after every lecture.
That was in old times. Now at lectures I feel nothing but torture.
Before half an hour is over I am conscious of an overwhelming weakness
in my legs and my shoulders. I sit down in my chair, but I am not
accustomed to lecture sitting down; a minute later I get up and go on
standing, then sit down again. There is a dryness in my mouth, my voice
grows husky, my head begins to go round.... To conceal my condition
from my audience I continually drink water, cough, often blow my nose as
though I were hindered by a cold, make puns inappropriately, and in the
end break off earlier than I ought to. But above all I am ashamed.
My conscience and my intelligence tell me that the very best thing I
could do now would be to deliver a farewell lecture to the boys, to
say my last word to them, to bless them, and give up my post to a man
younger and stronger than me. But, God, be my judge, I have not manly
courage enough to act according to my conscience.
Unfortunately, I am not a philosopher and not a theologian. I know
perfectly well that I cannot live more than another six months; it might
be supposed that I ought now to be chiefly concerned with the question
of the shadowy life beyond the grave, and the visions that will visit my
slumbers in the tomb. But for some reason my soul refuses to recognize
these questions, though my mind is fully alive to their importance. Just
as twenty, thirty years ago, so now, on the threshold of death, I am
interested in nothing but science. As I yield up my last breath I shall
still believe that science is the most important, the most splendid,
the most essential thing in the life of man; that it always has been and
will be the highest manifestation of love, and that only by means of it
will man conquer himself and nature. This faith is perhaps naive and may
rest on false assumptions, but it is not my fault that I believe that
and nothing else; I cannot overcome in myself this belief.
But that is not the point. I only ask people to be indulgent to my
weakness, and to realize that to tear from the lecture-theatre and his
pupils a man who is more interested in the history of the development
of the bone medulla than in the final object of creation would be
equivalent to taking him and nailing him up in his coffin without
waiting for him to be dead.
Sleeplessness and the consequent strain of combating increasing weakness
leads to something strange in me. In the middle of my lecture tears
suddenly rise in my throat, my eyes begin to smart, and I feel a
passionate, hysterical desire to stretch out my hands before me and
break into loud lamentation. I want to cry out in a loud voice that I,
a famous man, have been sentenced by fate to the death penalty, that
within some six months another man will be in control here in the
lecture-theatre. I want to shriek that I am poisoned; new ideas such as
I have not known before have poisoned the last days of my life, and are
still stinging my brain like mosquitoes. And at that moment my position
seems to me so awful that I want all my listeners to be horrified, to
leap up from their seats and to rush in panic terror, with desperate
screams, to the exit.
It is not easy to get through such moments.