“Love consists in elevating others, and in being elevated.”
“He who has no stimulus to activity without it finds such stimulus in love; and if a man has a stimulus, love gives him strength to use it to advantage.”
“Only he loves who helps a lovely woman to rise to independence.”
“Only he loves whose mind grows brighter and hands grow stronger from love.”
And the following conversations are very frequent:—
“My dear, I am reading Boccaccio now” (“What immorality!” we remark with the sapient reader—“a woman reading Boccaccio; only he and I have a right to read it.” But I, apart from him, also make this remark, “A woman will hear more veiled nastiness from the sapient reader in five minutes than she will find in all Boccaccio, and she will not hear from him a single fresh, bright, pure thought, while Boccaccio has hosts of them!”); “you are right, my dear; he has great talent. Some of his stories I think can be put in the same rank with the best of Shakespeare’s dramas, from their depth and keenness of psychological analysis.”
“But how do you like the comical stories, in which he is so unceremonious?”
“Some of them are amusing, but for the most part they are dull, like any other coarse farce.”
“But that may be forgiven him, for he lived five hundred years before us; what seems to us too vile, too cheap, was not then considered out of the way.”
“Just as all our habits and all our style will seem dirty to those who will live much less than five hundred years after us—but this is not interesting. I was speaking about those splendid stories of his in which he seriously pictures a passionate, lofty love. In those more than in others his talent lies; but this is what I wanted to say, Sasha: he draws very admirable and powerful pictures of love, but I should judge that he did not understand that tenderness of love which we see nowadays. Love was not felt at that time so keenly, though they say that was the period when love was most fully enjoyed. No, how could it be? They did not enjoy it half so deeply as we do. Their feelings were too superficial; their raptures were too feeble and too transitory.”
“The strength of sensation is proportionate to the depth of the organism from which it takes its rise. If it is stirred exclusively by an outward object, by an outward motive, then it is transitory, and develops only one special side of its life. He who drinks only because he is given a glass understands only very little the taste of wine; it affords him very little pleasure. Enjoyment is vastly stronger when its root is in the imagination; but this is still very weak in comparison to when the root of the relations which are connected with the enjoyment finds its soil in the very depth of the moral life.”
“I am very glad that I gave up before it was too late, that unprofitable way of living. It is true; it is important for the circulation of the blood not to be checked by any hindrances. But why after all should we care if the complexion of the skin does become more tender? It must be so. And how delighted we are at trifles! Trifles, but how you feel them in your feet! The stocking must be put on smooth, and should not be too light; the seam gets in the proper place, and the hurt vanishes.
“It does not pass so quick! I wore corsets only three years; I gave them up before we were married. But it is a fact they still confine the waist too much even without corsets. Isn’t it likely that this deformity will also pass like the pain in the foot? It is likely: even now it is going out of fashion somewhat; it will pass. How glad I am! What a horrible cut of dresses. It is full time that the Russian women had better sense. The dress ought to be wide from the very shoulders, just as the Greeks used to be dressed! How the cut of our dresses ruins our figures! But this line is beginning to be normal in me, and how glad I am!”
“How lovely you are, Viérotchka!”
“How happy I am, Sasha!”
And sweet discourses,
Like rivers of bliss
Spreading and flowing;
His smile and his kiss!96
XV
Viéra Pavlovna’s Fourth Dream
And Viéra Pavlovna dreams a dream as though:—
A voice familiar to her—oh, how familiar to her!—from afar, then nearer, nearer.
Wie herrlich leuchtet
Mir die Natur
Wie glänzet die Sonne
Wie lacht die Flur.
And Viéra Pavlovna sees that it is so, absolutely so. … The cornfield shines with golden hues. The meadow is decked with flowers; hundreds, thousands of blossoms are waving on the copse encircling the meadow, and the forest which rises behind the copse grows green, and whispers and gleams with flowers; fragrance is wafted from the cornfield, from the meadow, from the copse, from the flowers that fill the forest. Little birds are flying from twig to twig, and thousands of voices come forth from the branches with the fragrance; and beyond the cornfield, the meadow, the copse, the forest, are other cornfields shining in gold, other meadows decked with flowers, other copses thick with blossoms, stretching away to the distant mountains covered with forests, gleaming in the sun, and on their summits, here and there, bright, silvery, golden, purple, translucent clouds, changing and casting on the horizon their brilliant blue shadows; the sun mounts on high; it rejoices, and nature rejoices; it pours forth light and warmth, fragrance and song, love and tenderness, into the heart; a song of joy and tenderness poureth forth; of love and goodness from the heart: “Oh, earth! oh, sun! oh, happiness! oh, joy! oh, love! oh, love so golden-beautiful, like morning clouds on
