Dedalus Book of Russian Decadence

by Lodge, Kirsten; Rosen, Margo Shohl; Dashevsky, Grigory

  And Sergey Petrovich woke up. He was so terrified he wanted to scream, and he stared with horror at the little vial and backed away from it, as if afraid that someone would pour the lethal poison into his mouth by force. And more than anything in the world he was afraid of his own self at this moment—of the horrifying disobedience of his own legs and hands. He backed away, but at the same time his whole body convulsively lunged forward, towards the vial. His feet, hands and mouth were filled—to their very blood and bones, it seemed—with the passionate, insanely powerful desire to snatch up the vial and rapturously, greedily swallow the poison.

  “I won’t! I won’t!” Sergey Petrovich whispered, and he pushed himself away with his hands and backed up, but it seemed to him that he was approaching the vial, which was growing before his eyes. And when the door stopped him, he could no longer see in front of him, and he cried out and took a step forward.

  At that moment the housemaid came in for the samovar, and took a long time gathering up the dishes, with which she had some trouble, as her eyes were closing from lack of sleep.

  “What time shall I wake you?” she asked as she was going out.

  Sergey Petrovich stopped her and started talking, but heard neither his own questions nor her answers. But when he found himself alone again, the phrase, “What time shall I wake you?” stuck in his mind, and continued to sound long and loud until Sergey Petrovich realised what it meant.

  He realised that, like anyone else, he could undress and lie down to sleep, and he would be woken up tomorrow when the new day began, and Sergey Petrovich would live, as all people do, because he did not want to die, he would not die, and no one could force him to take the vial and swallow the poison. Still trembling, he grasped the vial, opened it purposefully, caught the scent of bitter almond, and carefully, his hand slightly trembling, placed it on the shelf where it was out of sight behind the books. Now that the vial had been in his hands and he had not died, he no longer feared either it or himself.

  When Sergey Petrovich lay down in his bed, it seemed to him that the life that had been saved was rejoicing in every particle of his body, warm under the blanket. He stretched out the legs and hands that had all but committed the crime, and something seemed to be sweetly singing within them in a thin, joyous voice, as if his blood were rejoicing and singing that it had not become a slimy, rotting mass, but was streaming a happy red along its broad and free pathways. And as happy as could be, it filled his heart to the brim, and his heart sang together with it and beat out its own exultant hymn of life.

  “Alive! Alive!” thought Sergey Petrovich, bending and unbending his obedient, flexible fingers. Let him be unhappy, persecuted, deprived of his rightful share; let everyone scorn him and mock him; let him be the lowest of the low, a nothing, the dust people shake from their feet—but he would be alive, alive! He would see the sun, he would breathe, he would bend and unbend his fingers, he would be alive … alive! And this was such happiness, such joy, and no one would take it away, and it would continue for a long, long time … forever! An unending multitude of days ahead would light up at dawn, and every time he would be alive, alive! And suddenly for the first time in many days Sergey Petrovich remembered his father and mother and was horrified, and moved. In his mind he kissed the wrinkles where the tears would most certainly have run, and his heart was bursting with the triumphant victory cry: I’m alive, alive! And when he fell into a light, joyous sleep, the last thing he felt was the salty taste of a tear wetting his lips.

  It was a cold, frosty day and the sun was shining when Sergey Petrovich awoke. For some time he didn’t understand why his bed was made up as usual, and why he was alive beneath the sheets, when yesterday he was supposed to have died. His head was hurting a little, and his whole body ached as if it had been badly beaten. Gradually, thought by thought, he remembered all that had gone through his head yesterday, and he couldn’t understand why he had been so terrified, and what had been so frightening about what he had always known and had pictured dozens of times in his head. Death, the funeral, the grave … well, and how else could it be when a fellow dies? Of course he would be buried and for that a grave would have to be dug, and the corpse would rot in the grave. And with wary attention he again went over all of yesterday’s horrifying visions, but they were all faded and dim and fading more every moment, as happens with dreams that are terribly vivid at the first moment of awakening but then are quite quickly and completely effaced by the living impressions of reality and daytime. And there was nothing terrifying in the pictures of death, and the joy of living seemed incomprehensible and ridiculous.

  And then a thought flashed through his mind, as if in answer to all his questions: he, Sergey Petrovich, was a coward and a braggart.

  He remembered the letter he had sent to Novikov, in which he had informed him of his own death as a done deed, and he flushed with shame, and felt that the decision to die remained just as immutable, unwavering and irreversible as it had been yesterday, before he had given in to his fainthearted, incomprehensible terror. The terror had disappeared, but burning shame lingered on, and with all the strength of his ravaged soul, Sergey Petrovich rose in revolt against the vanished terror, that most humiliating link in the long and heavy chain of the slave. The indifferent, blind force that had summoned Sergey Petrovich from the darkest depths of non-being had made a final effort to chain him to the stocks like a captured runaway, and had managed—even if only for a few hours—to do it.

  The burning shame burst forth with renewed force, and its flame burnt the very memory of his momentary fit of terror to ashes. And when its glow dimmed, the dull, aching pain in his body also disappeared, and his whole body felt light, almost insubstantial. His head, too, had stopped hurting, and his mind began to work with incredible speed, force and clarity, as though feverish. His lips trembled from the desire to speak, and words Sergey Petrovich had never used and didn’t know were springing to his tongue. And he was saying that if he remained alive now, he would despise himself, and he would be forced to drink such a full cup of self-hatred that in comparison the poison would taste like nectar. His “I,” that independent and noble “I,” which for a split second had felt itself the victor and experienced the unencompassable joy of a brave spirit’s triumph over blind and despotic matter, would kill him if the poison did not do it. And it seemed to Sergey Petrovich that he felt in himself the powerful growth of his “I,” he felt that it was rising high up, and the thundering peals of his voice deafened the pathetic squeaks of his body, which had been strong only in the night. Let whoever wants to bow down, but he was breaking his iron cage. And, pathetic, dull and unhappy man that he was, in that minute he was rising higher than any genius, king or mountain, higher than whatever on earth is high, because within him the most pure and beautiful thing in the world was victorious—the bold, free and immortal human “I”! The dark forces of nature could not defeat it; it reigned over life and death—the bold, free and immortal “I”!

  What Sergey Petrovich was experiencing was like the proud and chaotic delirium of a megalomaniac, as some thought upon reading his third letter to Novikov, from which we just gave excerpts. He wrote it without getting dressed, on a scrap of paper—a laundry bill, as it turned out—and it reached Novikov only after passing through the hands of the police and the justice of the peace. Right there and then, without leaving the table, he swallowed the poison as well, and when the housemaid arrived with the samovar, Sergey Petrovich was already unconscious. The poison solution turned out to have been inexpertly made and was weak, and they managed to get Sergey Petrovich to Ekaterininsky Hospital, where his life ended only towards evening.

  The telegram to Sergey Petrovich’s mother got held up, and arrived after the funeral had already taken place. The students who had sent it to her reckoned this was just as well, since Sergey Petrovich, with his hollow, emptied skull and spots on his face, looked very ugly and even downright frightening in his coffin, and the sight of him might have been hard to b
ear. And all that was left of her son were his books and his second-hand clothes, among which was his worn suit jacket, torn at the armpits and freshly mended.

  On the Eve of the Twentieth Century

  Distant from others’ concerns,

  We despondently drag out our lives;

  We are indifferent to what, hidden from us,

  Always brings others delight…

  Fate is tired of punishing us,

  Without faith we drag out our lives…

  It is so difficult for us to live,

  It will be hard for us to die…

  Thus, meeting a new line of centuries,

  The old century, mercilessly rushing forward,

  Hurls at them the cold enigma

  Of mad, living corpses…

  Alexander Blok, 1899

  We are weary. Enough. Ever forwards

  Nature has tirelessly drawn us…

  We have returned: it seems we just left the dawn,

  But again we stand beneath the rising sun…

  We have trod the path of life to the end,

  And the end is where we began…

  But the Creator no longer sends us the support

  That once adorned our path…

  There it is—the sunrise we once knew!

  But its cold fire no longer moves our souls…

  We are weary. In vain we await our repose;

  We no longer believe in hope…

  Alexander Blok, 1899

  Life may bring happiness to some,

  But the stormy weather in my soul

  Will not be followed by the spring of love.

  With a dead gaze, night,

  Spread out above me, meets

  The dull stare of a sick soul

  Bathed in poison, acrid and sweet.

  And vainly, suppressing passions,

  In the cold, pre-dawn mist,

  I wander through the crowd,

  And a sole, secret thought persists:

  The moon may shine, but the night is dark.

  Life may bring happiness to some,

  But the stormy weather in my soul

  Will not be followed by the spring of love.

  Alexander Blok, 1898

  Orpheus

  Alexander Kondratiev

  “Teacher, I saw Mirrinia crying in the neighbouring grove today. She was beating her breast and swearing that there was no man on earth more unbending than you … She even threatened to commit suicide, like Teleboia … Why do you drive them away?”

  “You desire to know, Haemonian, why I rejected the love of blue-eyed Mirrinia, why I chased away white-handed Teleboia when she came to me in a black cloak? My dear, can you really not have noticed that all women in the world are as nothing for me?”

  “O thrice-great Orpheus, O my teacher, so many years have passed since you lost Eurydice. Can it be that even now your inconsolable heart still yearns for her?”

  “No, my boy, I do not long for the wife I left behind in Tartarus. And if the god who rules the underworld were to release her once again to the surface of the earth and she were to come to me in Haemonia—believe me—I would only turn away from her in silence.”

  “Teacher, but didn’t you love her? Or is the talk of how you descended to the depths of Hades for the sake of your wife just idle gossip? I have heard that terrible Pluto himself was touched by the music of your lyre and your sad song. I have heard that he allowed you to take Eurydice away, to the bright expanse under the curve of the azure sky. And only because you failed to heed his injunction not to look at her until you were completely out of Tartarus did the winged god Hermes draw her back down to black Hades … Isn’t this true, son of the sweet-sounding Muse? … But forgive me, you are frowning, no doubt I’ve touched on an unhealed wound in your anguished heart.”

  For a time there was silence on the crown of the cypress-covered hill. Orpheus sat on the gentle slope. A large black panther lay near him amongst the motley flowers; purring, she arched her back against the singer’s caressing hand. The twitching end of the bloodthirsty animal’s tail beat playfully on the green grass. On the lower branches of a cypress hung the lyre of glorious renown. Hushed birds sat in the trees all around. They had come from afar to listen to Orpheus.

  The Thracian now stopped caressing the animal, and fixing his gaze in the direction of the distant ravines, he spoke in a thoughtful tone, “You have been told the truth, O Antimachus, but not the whole truth. I repeat, if the woman I once called my Eurydice were to return from the dark realm, my heart would not ache with sweet pain. Women and girls no longer exist for me on this earth, washed with blue-green waves. They are all deceivers, and behind the contrived clarity of their gaze shines a dog-like, slavish baseness and a fear of the strong; at the bottom of their hearts lurks eternal lust, and they are forever seeking new embraces, new conquests!…”

  “But surely, teacher, not your Eurydice?!”

  “Yes, even she. I can never forget what happened in the land of the dead … When gloomy Pluto, giving in to Persephone’s pleas, agreed to give Eurydice back and two nymphs from the dark waters of Lethe led her to me, I cast my attentive gaze over the face of the woman who had been my wife.

  “She stood naked, pale, shyly lowering her lashes as if concealing the joy of the meeting with her husband.

  “‘Here is your Eurydice! Hermes will escort you to the gates of the kingdom of oblivion. Your wife will follow behind you. But woe unto you if you glance back before you are out! … And you, son of Maia, approach so you may hear my commission to my aegis-bearing brother.’

  “Hermes approached the king of the underworld, and the immortal gods whispered together for a long time, laughing and glancing now and then at Eurydice and me.

  “‘You may go!’ said the sovereign of Tartarus finally, and to the amazement of the mournful shades, we started on our way.

  “With firm steps I made for the gates. My heart was bursting with the pride of victory. My fingers strummed the strings of my lyre, and our procession was accompanied by celebratory tones … Shades of the deceased silently made way for us. Their sad faces gazed apathetically at us from all sides. The gates were close now. An azure and lilac shaft of daylight cut into the gloom.

  “I slowed my steps. Behind me it seemed to me I could hear whispers and kissing. I thought at first that it was only a test to make me turn around, and I drove off my suspicions. After another dozen steps I found myself at a turning, from beyond which a current of warm, fragrant air wafted against my face, and a piece of azure sky and flowery slopes and hills covered with forests met my gaze … Behind me all was quiet. But then from behind me I again caught the sound of quiet, smothered laughter and someone’s drawn-out sigh … There could be no doubt. Only she sighed that way, my Eurydice, in the hours of our blissful embraces.

  “Forgetting myself in my rage, forgetting Pluto’s admonition, like an anthropophagous beast from faraway India, I threw myself back into the jaws of the gate to hell.

  “Gods, what I saw there! Around the bend in the path, she, my Eurydice, my tender beloved with all her demure melancholy—like a wild satyress, in ardent ecstasy, was yielding to the caresses of perfidious Hermes…

  “I stood as if carved in marble, frozen in horror. And only my eyes followed as the son of Maia, with insolent laughter, took the woman who had been my wife back into dark Hades.

  “‘You defied the prohibition, son of Calliope, and therefore you’ll never see your Eurydice again!’ he cried, disappearing into the gloom.

  “Clinging to the treacherous god, the white shade of my depraved wife obediently vanished with him.

  “Not a single curse did I hurl after them.

  “Without a word I lifted my lyre and quietly set off away from Tartarus among green hills and shady hollows. My path led me here, to thickly-wooded Thessaly … Here my heart is not so heavy. Here I can only barely hear that deceitful feminine laughter. Here the wind murmurs in the ravines; dark-green pines nod their heads at
me, and wild beasts follow at my heels and rub their soft fur lovingly against my bare knees…”

  And as if wishing to show that she understood the poet’s speech, the black panther yawned and started tenderly licking Orpheus’s dust-covered feet with her long, pink tongue.

  When she finished, she gave a stretch, arching her supple back like a wave, and then settled back down, assuming a tranquil pose and attentively fastening her yellow-green eyes on the face of the Muse’s son.

  Orpheus and his disciple sat without moving. Around them silence reigned. Only a single small bird timidly twittered something in the branches of a cypress.

  The Doomed

  Secretly my heart prays for death.

  Light heart, glide…

  There, through snowy silver,

  Paths have led me out of life…

  As over that distant hole in the ice

  Water sheds silent steam,

  So with your silent step

  Here you have guided me.

  You led me, your arm around me.

  Your eyes were my fetters.

  Surveying me coldly,

  You surrendered me to white death…

  Where am I fated to languish,

  Where is my soul to dwell,

  If my heart desires death,

  If it secretly prays for the depths?

  Alexander Blok, 1907

  God’s moon is high,