The Big Book of Christmas

by Anton Chekhov

  For where am I, in city or plain,

  Since I am 'ware of the world again?

  And what is this that rises propped

  With pillars of prodigious girth?

  Is it really on the earth,

  This miraculous Dome of God?

  Has the angel's measuring-rod

  Which numbered cubits, gem from gem,

  'Twixt the gates of the New Jerusalem,

  Meted it out,—and what he meted,

  Have the sons of men completed?

  —Binding, ever as he bade,

  Columns in the colonnade

  With arms wide open to embrace

  The entry of the human race

  To the breast of... what is it, yon building,

  Ablaze in front, all paint and gilding,

  With marble for brick, and stones of price

  For garniture of the edifice?

  Now I see; it is no dream;

  It stands there and it does not seem;

  For ever, in pictures, thus it looks,

  And thus I have read of it in books

  Often in England, leagues away,

  And wondered how these fountains play,

  Growing up eternally

  Each to a musical water-tree,

  Whose blossoms drop, a glittering boon,

  Before my eyes, in the light of the moon,

  To the granite layers underneath.

  Liar and dreamer in your teeth!

  I, the sinner that speak to you,

  Was in Rome this night, and stood, and knew

  Both this and more. For see, for see,

  The dark is rent, mine eye is free

  To pierce the crust of the outer wall,

  And I view inside, and all there, all,

  As the swarming hollow of a hive,

  The whole Basilica alive!

  Men in the chancel, body and nave,

  Men on the pillars' architrave,

  Men on the statues, men on the tombs

  With popes and kings in their porphyry wombs,

  All famishing in expectation

  Of the main-altar's consummation.

  For see, for see, the rapturous moment

  Approaches, and earth's best endowment

  Blends with heaven's; the taper-fires

  Pant up, the winding brazen spires

  Heave loftier yet the baldachin1;

  The incense-gaspings, long kept in,

  Suspire in clouds; the organ blatant

  Holds his breath and grovels latent,

  As if God's hushing finger grazed him,

  (Like Behemoth when he praised him)

  At the silver bell's shrill tinkling,

  Quick cold drops of terror sprinkling

  On the sudden pavement strewed

  With faces of the multitude.

  Earth breaks up, time drops away,

  In flows heaven, with its new day

  Of endless life, when He who trod,

  Very man and very God,

  This earth in weakness, shame and pain,

  Dying the death whose signs remain

  Up yonder on the accursed tree,—

  Shall come again, no more to be

  Of captivity the thrall,

  But the one God, All in all,

  King of kings, Lord of lords,

  As His servant John received the words,

  "I died, and live for evermore!"

  * * *

  XI

  * * *

  Yet I was left outside the door.

  "Why sit I here on the threshold-stone

  "Left till He return, alone

  "Save for the garment's extreme fold

  "Abandoned still to bless my hold?"

  My reason, to my doubt, replied,

  As if a book were opened wide,

  And at a certain page I traced

  Every record undefaced,

  Added by successive years,—

  The harvestings of truth's stray ears

  Singly gleaned, and in one sheaf

  Bound together for belief.

  Yes, I said—that he will go

  And sit with these in turn, I know.

  Their faith's heart beats, though her head swims

  Too giddily to guide her limbs,

  Disabled by their palsy-stroke

  From propping mine. Though Rome's gross yoke

  Drops off, no more to be endured,

  Her teaching is not so obscured

  By errors and perversities,

  That no truth shines athwart the lies:

  And he, whose eye detects a spark

  Even where, to man's, the whole seems dark,

  May well see flame where each beholder

  Acknowledges the embers smoulder.

  But I, a mere man, fear to quit

  The clue God gave me as most fit

  To guide my footsteps through life's maze,

  Because himself discerns all ways

  Open to reach him: I, a man

  Able to mark where faith began

  To swerve aside, till from its summit

  Judgment drops her damning plummet,

  Pronouncing such a fatal space

  Departed from the founder's base:

  He will not bid me enter too,

  But rather sit, as now I do,

  Awaiting his return outside.

  —'Twas thus my reason straight replied

  And joyously I turned, and pressed

  The garment's skirt upon my breast,

  Until, afresh its light suffusing me,

  My heart cried—What has been abusing me

  That I should wait here lonely and coldly,

  Instead of rising, entering boldly,

  Baring truth's face, and letting drift

  Her veils of lies as they choose to shift?

  Do these men praise him? I will raise

  My voice up to their point of praise!

  I see the error; but above

  The scope of error, see the love.—

  Oh, love of those first Christian days!

  —Fanned so soon into a blaze,

  From the spark preserved by the trampled sect,

  That the antique sovereign Intellect

  Which then sat ruling in the world,

  Like a change in dreams, was hurled

  From the throne he reigned upon:

  You looked up and he was gone.

  Gone, his glory of the pen!

  —Love, with Greece and Rome in ken,

  Bade her scribes abhor the trick

  Of poetry and rhetoric,

  And exult with hearts set free,

  In blessed imbecility

  Scrawled, perchance, on some torn sheet

  Leaving Sallust incomplete

  Gone, his pride of sculptor, painter!

  —Love, while able to acquaint her

  While the thousand statues yet

  Fresh from chisel, pictures wet

  From brush, she saw on every side,

  Chose rather with an infant's pride

  To frame those portents which impart

  Such unction to true Christian Art.

  Gone, music too! The air was stirred

  By happy wings: Terpander's2 bird

  (That, when the cold came, fled away)

  Would tarry not the wintry day,—

  As more-enduring sculpture must,

  Till filthy saints rebuked the gust

  With which they chanced to get a sight

  Of some dear naked Aphrodite

  They glanced a thought above the toes of,

  By breaking zealously her nose off.

  Love, surely, from that music's lingering,

  Might have filched her organ-fingering,

  Nor chosen rather to set prayings

  To hog-grunts, praises to horse-neighings.

  Love was the startling thing, the new:

  Love was the all-sufficient too;

  And seeing that, you see the rest:


  As a babe can find its mother's breast

  As well in darkness as in light,

  Love shut our eyes, and all seemed right.

  True, the world's eyes are open now:

  —Less need for me to disallow

  Some few that keep Love's zone unbuckled,

  Peevish as ever to be suckled,

  Lulled by the same old baby-prattle

  With intermixture of the rattle,

  When she would have them creep, stand steady

  Upon their feet, or walk already,

  Not to speak of trying to climb.

  I will be wise another time,

  And not desire a wall between us,

  When next I see a church-roof cover

  So many species of one genus,

  All with foreheads bearing lover

  Written above the earnest eyes of them;

  All with breasts that beat for beauty,

  Whether sublimed, to the surprise of them,

  In noble daring, steadfast duty,

  The heroic in passion, or in action,—

  Or, lowered for sense's satisfaction,

  To the mere outside of human creatures,

  Mere perfect form and faultless features.

  What? with all Rome here, whence to levy

  Such contributions to their appetite,

  With women and men in a gorgeous bevy,

  They take, as it were, a padlock, clap it tight

  On their southern eyes, restrained from feeding

  On the glories of their ancient reading,

  On the beauties of their modern singing,

  On the wonders of the builder's bringing,

  On the majesties of Art around them,—

  And, all these loves, late struggling incessant,

  When faith has at last united and bound them,

  They offer up to God for a present?

  Why, I will, on the whole, be rather proud of it,—

  And, only taking the act in reference

  To the other recipients who might have allowed it,

  I will rejoice that God had the preference.

  * * *

  XII

  * * *

  So I summed up my new resolves:

  Too much love there can never be.

  And where the intellect devolves

  Its function on love exclusively,

  I, a man who possesses both,

  Will accept the provision, nothing loth,

  —Will feast my love, then depart elsewhere,

  That my intellect may find its share.

  And ponder, O soul, the while thou departest,

  And see them applaud the great heart of the artist,

  Who, examining the capabilities

  Of the block of marble he has to fashion

  Into a type of thought or passion,—

  Not always, using obvious facilities,

  Shapes it, as any artist can,

  Into a perfect symmetrical man,

  Complete from head to foot of the life-size,

  Such as old Adam stood in his wife's eyes,—

  But, now and then, bravely aspires to consummate

  A Colossus by no means so easy to come at,

  And uses the whole of his block for the bust,

  Leaving the mind of the public to finish it,

  Since cut it ruefully short he must:

  On the face alone he expends his devotion,

  He rather would mar than resolve to diminish it,

  —Saying, "Applaud me for this grand notion

  "Of what a face may be! As for completing it

  "In breast and body and limbs, do that, you!"

  All hail! I fancy how, happily meeting it,

  A trunk and legs would perfect the statue,

  Could man carve so as to answer volition.

  And how much nobler than petty cavils,

  Were a hope to find, in my spirit-travels,

  Some artist of another ambition,

  Who, having a block to carve, no bigger,

  Has spent his power on the opposite quest,

  And believed to begin at the feet was best—

  For so may I see, ere I die, the whole figure!

  * * *

  XIII

  * * *

  No sooner said than out in the night!

  My heart lighter and more light:

  And still, as before, I was walking swift,

  With my senses settling fast and steadying,

  But my body caught up in the whirl and drift

  Of the vesture's amplitude, still eddying

  On just before me, still to be followed,

  As it carried me after with its motion,

  —What shall I say?—as a path, were hollowed,

  And a man went weltering through the ocean,

  Sucked along in the flying wake

  Of the luminous water-snake.

  * * *

  XIV

  * * *

  Alone! I am left alone once more—

  (Save for the garment's extreme fold

  Abandoned still to bless my hold)

  Alone, beside the entrance-door

  Of a sort of temple,-perhaps a college,

  —Like nothing I ever saw before

  At home in England, to my knowledge.

  The tall old quaint irregular town!

  It may be... though which, I can't affirm... any

  Of the famous middle-age towns of Germany:

  And this flight of stairs where I sit down,

  Is it Halle, Weimar, Cassel, Frankfort

  Or Göttingen, I have to thank for't?

  It may be Göttingen,—most likely.

  Through the open door I catch obliquely

  Glimpses of a lecture-hall;

  And not a bad assembly neither,

  Ranged decent and symmetrical

  On benches, waiting what's to see there:

  Which, holding still by the vesture's hem,

  I also resolve to see with them,

  Cautious this time how I suffer to slip

  The chance of joining in fellowship

  With any that call themselves his friends;

  As these folk do, I have a notion.

  But hist—a buzzing and emotion!

  All settle themselves, the while ascends

  By the creaking rail to the lecture-desk,

  Step by step, deliberate

  Because of his cranium's over-freight,

  Three parts sublime to one grotesque,

  If I have proved an accurate guesser,

  The hawk-nosed high-cheek-boned Professor.

  I felt at once as if there ran

  A shoot of love from my heart to the man—

  That sallow virgin-minded studious

  Martyr to mild enthusiasm,

  As he uttered a kind of cough-preludious

  That woke my sympathetic spasm,

  (Beside some spitting that made me sorry)

  And stood, surveying his auditory

  With a wan pure look, well-nigh celestial,—

  Those blue eyes had survived so much!

  While, under the foot they could not smutch,

  Lay all the fleshly and the bestial.

  Over he bowed, and arranged his notes,

  Till the auditory's clearing of throats

  Was done with, died into a silence;

  And, when each glance was upward sent,

  Each bearded mouth composed intent,

  And a pin might be heard drop half a mile hence,—

  He pushed back higher his spectacles,

  Let the eyes stream out like lamps from cells,

  And giving his head of hair—a hake

  Of undressed tow, for colour and quantity—

  One rapid and impatient shake,

  (As our own Young England adjusts a jaunty tie

  When about to impart, on mature digestion,

  Some thrilling view of the surplice-question)

  �
��The Professor's grave voice, sweet though hoarse,

  Broke into his Christmas-Eve discourse.

  * * *

  XV

  * * *

  And he began it by observing

  How reason dictated that men

  Should rectify the natural swerving,

  By a reversion, now and then,

  To the well-heads of knowledge, few

  And far away, whence rolling grew

  The life-stream wide whereat we drink,

  Commingled, as we needs must think,

  With waters alien to the source;

  To do which, aimed this eve's discourse;

  Since, where could be a fitter time

  For tracing backward to its prime

  This Christianity, this lake,

  This reservoir, whereat we slake,

  From one or other bank, our thirst?

  So, he proposed inquiring first

  Into the various sources whence

  This Myth of Christ is derivable;

  Demanding from the evidence,

  (Since plainly no such life was livable)

  How these phenomena should class?

  Whether 'twere best opine Christ was,

  Or never was at all, or whether

  He was and was not, both together—

  It matters little for the name,

  So the idea be left the same.

  Only, for practical purpose' sake,

  'Twas obviously as well to take

  The popular story,—understanding

  How the ineptitude of the time,

  And the penman's prejudice, expanding

  Fact into fable fit for the clime,

  Had, by slow and sure degrees, translated it

  Into this myth, this Individuum,—

  Which, when reason had strained and abated it

  Of foreign matter, left, for residuum,

  A Man!—a right true man, however,

  Whose work was worthy a man's endeavour:

  Work, that gave warrant almost sufficient

  To his disciples, for rather believing

  He was just omnipotent and omniscient,

  As it gives to us, for as frankly receiving

  His word, their tradition,—which, though it meant

  Something entirely different

  From all that those who only heard it,

  In their simplicity thought and averred it,

  Had yet a meaning quite as respectable:

  For, among other doctrines delectable,

  Was he not surely the first to insist on

  The natural sovereignty of our race?—

  Here the lecturer came to a pausing-place.

  And while his cough, like a drouthy piston,

  Tried to dislodge the husk that grew to him,