And Other Stories Of Communist Russia

by Zoshchenko,Mikhail.

  4. It's all the more important not to forget that a Frenchman spoke these lines. That is, a man extremely emotional by nature and, forgive me, in all likelihood a skirt chaser, who, because of the extremely agitated state of his feelings, is really capable of blurting out God-knows-what in this area.

  They, the French, at home there in Paris, as far as we have been told, go out on the boulevard in the evening, and, except for various beauties whom they honor with the title "little chicken," decisively, from the very beginning, they see nothing else. That's what they are in the way of lovers of feminine beauty and grace!

  So that we have some foundation in lightly snuffing the amazing ardor of these poetic lines.

  5. But just look at a Russian poet. And the Russian poet isn't so far from the ardent Gallic mind. Even more so. Not only about love itself, but even about being in love, we find in his works amazing lines like these:

  Ah, loving, thou art more strict than fate, More imperious than our father's ancient laws ... Sweeter than sounds of martial trumpet.

  From which it may be concluded that our most famous poet considered this emotion to be one of the highest things on earth. Something with which even the strictness of the criminal law or the commands of a father or a mother in those days could not be compared. In a word, he says that there really isn't anything that can be compared with this emotion. The poet even has a kind of reference here to a call to military service—that this, too, is, as it were, nothing in comparison. In general, it would seem as though the poet were holding something back in his mind here. Allegori-cally, he expressed something about a martial trumpet and then he became somber. In all likelihood, he had something to do

  with military service in his time. Therefore, perhaps he resorted to this allegory.

  In this sense, it's much simpler to deal with prose. In prose, there cannot be such obscurities. There, everything is clear. And, moreover, one can also use prose to explain poetry, as you see.

  6. Another Russian poet provides us with lines no less powerful.

  One should say that the house in which this poet was born and in which he spent the best years of his childhood once burned down. And it is curious to note with what the poet solaced himself after the fire.

  He tells about it as follows. He describes it in a poem. Here is what he writes: ,

  It seems that all the joys of childhood

  Burned with the mined house,

  And I wanted to die,

  And I went down to the water,

  But a woman in a boat slipped by

  Who was a second reflection of the moon,

  And if she wishes,

  And if the moon permits,

  I will build myself a hew house

  In her unknown heart.

  And so forth, somewhat in the same vein.

  7. That is, in other words, making a free translation from the pride of poetry to democratic prose, one can in part understand that the poet, beside himself with grief, had wanted to throw himself in the water, but at this most critical moment he suddenly saw an attractive woman rowing in a boat. And so he unexpectedly fell in love with her at first sight, and this love pushed into the background, so to speak, all his incredible sufferings, and, for the time being, even distracted him from his preoccupation with finding himself a new apartment. All the more, that the poet according to the poem, just wanted to move right over to this lady's place, so to speak. Or he wanted to perform some building operations in her house, if she, as he murkily puts it, wishes, and if the moon and the housing administration permit.

  Well, as far as the moon is concerned, the poet dragged it in to strengthen somewhat the poetic impression. The moon, one can say, really has little to do with it. And as far as the housing

  administration is concerned, it certainly cannot grant permission, even if the lady herself wishes, since these lovers have not registered in the marriage bureau, and in general this would be a rather impermissible combination.

  8. I don't know, perhaps it is that our coarse soldierly intellect, having been under fire by heavy artillery in two wars, is not entirely able to understand the most delicate and most tender poetic interlacements of sounds and feelings. But we are so bold as to believe that this interpretation is approximately correct, thanks to a certain significance that life has, and to our understanding of the essential needs of people, whose lives do not always proceed along the course of flowery poetry.

  Briefly, the poet at this point speaks of love as of an elevated emotion, and there is a certain degree of frivolity in this, an elevated emotion which can provide a man with the most essential things, not excluding an apartment. This latter assertion we leave entirely to the conscience of the poet.

  But, of course, this is not the opinion merely of three ardent poets.

  All the others, too, strumming away, as it is said, even on the most jingly lyres, have sung love songs even more shocking and brazen than these.

  9. I recall something or other from Apukhtin:

  My heart is resurrected, loving again, Tram-ta-ra-ram, tam-tam . . .

  Along with all that is dear and blessed in my soul. . . Tram-ta-ra-ram...

  Withal, it was no boy of eighteen who wrote this. A solid uncle of forty-eight wrote it, quite improbably, a man fat and unhappy in his personal life. Nevertheless, he, too, as you see, considered all to have been dead and lifeless as long as love had not arisen in his heart.

  Even mad lines like this come back to me:

  What is love? O love! O love!

  It is a sun in the blood, it is the blood in flames . . .

  Something of this sort, devil take it ... how does it go ...

  It is a heavenly canopy, discovered anew.

  Death reigns over the world, and over death—love.

  10. Here, even French poetry, if you will, falls a little behind —one can say that one finds no such mad onslaught there as one does in these lines. But it was a Russian poetess who wrote this. She lived at the beginning of our century and was, they say, fairly attractive. In any case, she had a great poetic temperament. In general, one can see that the little lady was trembling when she wrote those lines. The fact, one can say, is, of course, more a matter of biography than an example to poetry . . . Her poor husband, in all likelihood, had quite enough ... In all likelihood, she was capricious. Plays the fool. In all likelihood, she drags out the day in bed with her puss unwashed. And she's all the time reading her own verses out loud. And the fool of a husband sits there. "Och," he exclaims, "amazing, poopsie, sheer genius!" And she says: "Really?"

  Fools! And then they both up and died. She, it seems, from tuberculosis, and he, too, in all likelihood, infected with something or other.

  11. At this point, without a doubt, there are many skeptics, scholars, and pedants whose hearts have turned pale in their lonely wanderings across the northern lands of science, who, reading these verses, will, if you like, shrug their shoulders and say: There you are, this is the rather unrestrained view of somewhat too ardent hearts, overfree in spirit and corrupt in world outlook.

  And they would be surprised that such a view and such verses exist concerning this emotion, and words such as they never knew and of which they did not even permit themselves to think, that concerning this emotion something like that had sometime been said.

  And maybe they're right, and it really is surprising it's that way, and there is such poetry among us, but not long ago we happened on a certain little book in prose. Its author was the singer, Feodor Ivanovitch Chaliapin.

  And in this little book, with complete frankness, he acknowledges that everything he did in his life, he did in the main for love and for a woman. That's the kind of views there are concerning love among poetically constituted people.

  12. And as far as people of sober judgment are concerned,

  philosophers and various thinkers of that kind, whose minds have shed much light on the most secret and complex manifestations of life, as far as these people are concerned, they have en
tered but little concerning this emotion in the common account; but, at times, of course, they have reckoned with it; they have laughed at it, and again even pronounced aphorisms out of their life wisdom.

  From the more melancholy pronouncements, we can, if you wish, quote you the words of Schopenhauer, one of the gloomiest philosophers the world has ever known.

  This gloomy philosopher, whose wife undoubtedly betrayed him at every step, pronounced the following words concerning love: "Love—it is the blind will to life. It deceives man with the phantasms of individual happiness and makes him an instrument for its aims."

  13. Of the more foolish ancient pronouncements, we can quote the following: "Love is, as it were, the harmony of heavenly sounds."

  Of the more poetic: "Never strike a woman, even with a flower."

  Of the more sober, but with some inclination to idealism: "Love arises from those qualities which the lover prizes the more the less he himself possesses them."

  The not unknown philosopher Plato even proposed the following theorem: 'The essence of love consists of the polar opposition of the greatest possible contrarities."*

  Of the more just pronouncements, we can quote the words of our most brilliant poet and philosopher Pushkin:

  Time came for her to fall in love. A seed that's fallen to the ground Stirs thus at the fire of spring. For long, her heartbeat's languishing Had made a tightness in her breast. Her soul expected someone's coming.

  * It is curious that Plato never departed from this view in later life. In his famous book, The Ideal State, Plato establishes the following premises: "Woman should 'bear children for the state' from the age of twenty up to the age of forty years. Man can *create for the state' from thirty to fifty-five years. The strongest should cohabit with the strongest. The weakest with the weakest. The children of the former should be educated; of the latter—thrown away." If, let us assume, this fantastic law had been promulgated in life, then the world would not have known Napoleon, whose father was twenty-two and whose mother was eighteen, nor Pushkin whose father was twenty-seven.

  14. But this is, so to speak, the philosophy and mechanics of love.

  As far as more precise investigations in this area are concerned, why, we know very little about it. And perhaps it isn't even necessary to know about it. Or perhaps, for that matter, it isn't necessary to know anything. Since consciousness corrupts and darkens almost everything it touches.

  As Dostoevski quite rightly said: "Too much consciousness, and even consciousness itself, is a disease." And another poet said: "Woe from wit." And we maintain that this phrase was spoken far from accidentally. In general, how love arises— whether from psychic images, or whether, more likely, there exists some sort of precise formula for it yet to be derived from an undiscovered property of electricity—we do not know and, decisively, we do not want to know.

  And so, acknowledging that we know little of anything about love, but acknowledging at the same time that this tender emotion is something of no little importance and even something grandiose, we take into our hands, with a special trembling and fluttering of the heart, the heavy tomes of history.

  We want to see more quickly, the notable role that this emotion has played in the life of nations. We want to see the grandiose events that have taken place because of love, or the splendid deeds performed on that account by individual citizens. We know what we want to see. And therefore, in order to put the spirit at ease, we make ourselves as comfortable as possible in an armchair, and, smoking a fragrant cigar, we begin to turn the yellowing pages of history with a confident hand.

  And this is what we see there.

  15. At first we find at our fingertips a whole bunch, devil take them, of petty love matters and foolish, nonsensical little affairs from daily life—various engagements, proposals, and marriages, concluded by practical and sober minds.

  Here we see a certain duke ... Here's the kind of man he is ... He marries the king's daughter, entertaining hopes for the throne.

  Here is another certain grand personage; hoping to add a series of cities to his estates, he too makes a proposal to a certain available princess ...

  * The Russian grand dukes . . . Here's the kind they are ... From the epoch of the Tartar yoke .,." Vied with one another,"

  as the historian writes, "in striving to wed the daughter of the khan, with the object of winning his favor for themselves ..."

  Here's still another instance, just imagine, Chilperic I ... the Prankish king . . . marries the daughter of the Spanish king . . . As history literally writes, "With the object of striking a blow against his enemy, Prince Sigebert."

  16. Withal, concerning these love affairs on a commercial scale, the historians write, one can say, without any inspiration, in such a flabby official style, as though of the emptiest, most trifling objects. The historians do not even add any exclamations of their own, such as "Aye-yai!" or "There's a prince for you!" or "Fooh, how unattractive!" or even "Look, still one scoundrel more!"

  No, the unimpassioned historians exclaim nothing of the sort. Although, to be sure, if one began to exclaim, no exclamations would suffice, inasmuch as we see, perusing the course of world history, a whole ocean of similar cases.

  But we, if you please, will not enumerate these commercial transactions in detail. We want to touch on more interesting questions. Although even in this area, of course, there have been a number of striking cases and surprising anecdotes, worthy of the contemporary reader's attention.

  17. Here, for example, is a very amusing fact. We found it pleasing because of the, so to speak, obviousness of the subject. It is very characteristic, this fact. It is taken from old Russian life. From the epoch of Ivan the Terrible.

  At that time, a German duke arrived in Russia, a certain Holstein.

  What he did in his native Germany is not known, and historians have found out only that he visited Russia with the purpose of marrying, for political reasons, the daughter of Ivan IV's male cousin.

  And so he arrived. Most likely, all powdered up. In some kind of silk trousers. Bows. Ribbons. Sword at his side. A kind of red snout, with reddish mustaches. A drunkard, perhaps, a braggart and a fop.

  Here he arrived in Russia, and inasmuch as he had already discussed the matter in writing, the wedding day was designated at once.

  18. Well, there's hustle, in all likelihood, extravagance. Mamochka's running about. Cutting up chickens. They're taking the bride to the bathhouse. The bridegroom is sitting with the

  priest. Guzzling vodka. In all likelihood, lying through his teeth. As follows, in Germany, now, we ... As follows, we dukes, you know, and so on.

  And at this point a fairly mournful incident occurs. The bride, alas, unexpectedly ups and dies. She's returning from the bathhouse, poor thing, catches a devil of a chill, and dies in the course of three days.

  The bridegroom, naturally, suffers indescribable grief, wants to go back to Germany. And all distraught, he is already taking leave of his erstwhile relatives, when, suddenly, they say to him: "Comrade Duke! Don't go yet! We still have a girl who might please you. Her sister. It's true, she's a little older, and maybe a little less interesting, but she might in any case do for you. The more so since you've made such a trip from Germany. It would be a shame to go back empty-handed."

  The duke says: "Naturally, she'll do. Why didn't you tell me till now? It's clear that she'll do. What's all this palaver! Okay, let's have a look at her."

  And so, in spite of the mourning, the wedding soon was celebrated.

  19. But perhaps, devil take it, such facts and deeds took place only among tsars and dukes?

  Perhaps it was only in royal palaces that such coarse calculations and loveless marriages took place, under the compulsion of some kind, I don't know what, of diplomacy, because of chronic impecuniosity or the unimportant circumstances of the lives of tsars.

  Perhaps among simple mortals it was quite the contrary: Love flowed forth naturally and gladdened and rejoiced the hearts of thos
e around?

  To this question, one must answer in the negative.

  Certain categories of simple mortals never, as it were, got as far as love. The upper classes, as is well known, married off their loyal slaves whenever they felt like it.

  Not long ago, we read that Russian landowners quite often married off their peasants in the following fashion: They lined up their peasants by height and matched them off accordingly: tall men with tall women, short ones with short ones. And they sent off a list drawn up that way to the priest for execution.

  ^Here, one can say, there was no such thing as love.

  And as far as various, if you'll pardon the expression, bureau-

  crats, speculators, bagmen and so forth are concerned, these gentlemen, too, thought least of all about love. Their marriages were arranged in the manner of commercial affairs. And without a dowry they were not accustomed to take a single step.

  20. Well, and if one touches on the life of a higher altitude and takes various counts, barons, and merchants, then these gentlemen, for all their easy life, also regarded love in the same way.

  Here is a charming historical tale that depicts for us just how things were in this crowd.

  In France at the time of Louis XV (1720) a certain speculator had, through some dark maneuvers, squeezed out an enormous income for himself. He had achieved everything. And he had everything. But he still wanted to marry into one of the oldest aristocratic families—that was the fantasy that flashed across his mind. With all his wealth, knowing no such thing as an obstacle, he decided to marry off his daughter to an impoverished marquis, who bore the distinguished family name of d'Oiau.

  But at that time his daughter was only three years old. And the marquis was thirty. For which reason, the impoverished marquis, the enormous dowry notwithstanding, had no intention whatsoever of waiting twelve years.

  Elegantly unfolding his hands and flashing his golden lorgnette, he said, in all likelihood in a hoarse voice, to papa-speculator: "Listen, I'd be glad to be a relative of yours, and the sum you propose would quite set me on my feet again, but your bride is terribly little. Let her grow up for a few years—then, let's see, maybe I'll marry her."