“Have you noticed,” began Bersenyev, eking out his words with gesticulations, “what a strange feeling nature produces in us? Everything in nature is so complete, so defined, I mean to say, so content with itself, and we understand that and admire it, and at the same time, in me at least, it always excites a kind of restlessness, a kind of uneasiness, even melancholy. What is the meaning of it? Is it that in the face of nature we are more vividly conscious of all our incompleteness, our indefiniteness, or have we little of that content with which nature is satisfied, but something else—I mean to say, what we need, nature has not?”
“H’m,” replied Shubin, “I’ll tell you, Andrei Petrovitch, what all that comes from. You describe the sensations of a solitary man, who is not living but only looking on in ecstasy. Why look on? Live, yourself, and you will be all right. However much you knock at nature’s door, she will never answer you in comprehensible words, because she is dumb. She will utter a musical sound, or a moan, like a harp string, but don’t expect a song from her. A living heart, now—that will give you your answer—especially a woman’s heart. So, my dear fellow, I advise you to get yourself someone to share your heart, and all your distressing sensations will vanish at once. ‘That’s what we need,’ as you say. This agitation, and melancholy, all that, you know, is simply a hunger of a kind. Give the stomach some real food, and everything will be right directly. Take your place in the landscape, live in the body, my dear boy. And after all, what is nature? what’s the use of it? Only hear the word, love—what an intense, glowing sound it has! Nature—what a cold, pedantic expression. And so” (Shubin began humming), “my greetings to Marya Petrovna! or rather,” he added, “not Marya Petrovna, but it’s all the same! Vous me comprenez.”
Bersenyev got up and stood with his chin leaning on his clasped hands. “What is there to laugh at?” he said, without looking at his companion, “why should you scoff? Yes, you are right: love is a grand word, a grand feeling. … But what sort of love do you mean?”
Shubin too, got up. “What sort? What you like, so long as it’s there. I will confess to you that I don’t believe in the existence of different kinds of love. If you are in love—”
“With your whole heart,” put in Bersenyev.
“Well, of course, that’s an understood thing; the heart’s not an apple; you can’t divide it. If you’re in love, you’re justified. And I wasn’t thinking of scoffing. My heart’s as soft at this moment as if it had been melted. … I only wanted to explain why nature has the effect on us you spoke of. It’s because she arouses in us a need for love, and is not capable of satisfying it. Nature is gently driving us to other living embraces, but we don’t understand, and expect something from nature herself. Ah, Andrei, Andrei, this sun, this sky is beautiful, everything around us is beautiful, still you are sad; but if, at this instant, you were holding the hand of a woman you loved, if that hand and the whole woman were yours, if you were even seeing with her eyes, feeling not your own isolated emotion, but her emotion—nature would not make you melancholy or restless then, and you would not be observing nature’s beauty; nature herself would be full of joy and praise; she would be reechoing your hymn, because then you would have given her—dumb nature—speech!”
Shubin leaped on to his feet and walked twice up and down, but Bersenyev bent his head, and his face was overcast by a faint flush.
“I don’t altogether agree with you,” he began: “nature does not always urge us … towards love.” (He could not at once pronounce the word.) “Nature threatens us, too; she reminds us of dreadful … yes, insoluble mysteries. Is she not destined to swallow us up, is she not swallowing us up unceasingly? She holds life and death as well; and death speaks in her as loudly as life.”
“In love, too, there is both life and death,” interposed Shubin.
“And then,” Bersenyev went on: “when I, for example, stand in the spring in the forest, in a green glade, when I can fancy the romantic notes of Oberon’s fairy horn” (Bersenyev was a little ashamed when he had spoken these words)—“is that, too—”
“The thirst for love, the thirst for happiness, nothing more!” broke in Shubin. “I, too, know those notes, I know the languor and the expectation which come upon the soul in the forest’s shade, in its deep recesses, or at evening in the open fields when the sun sets and the river mist rises behind the bushes. But forest, and river, and fields, and sky, every cloud and every blade of grass sets me expecting, hoping for happiness, I feel the approach, I hear the voice of happiness calling in everything. ‘God of my worship, bright and gay!’ That was how I tried to begin my sole poem; you must own it’s a splendid first line, but I could never produce a second. Happiness! happiness! as long as life is not over, as long as we have the use of all our limbs, as long as we are going up, not down, hill! Damn it all!” pursued Shubin with sudden vehemence, “we are young, and neither fools nor monsters; we will conquer happiness for ourselves!”
He shook his curls, and turned a confident almost challenging glance upwards to the sky. Bersenyev raised his eyes and looked at him.
“Is there nothing higher than happiness?” he commented softly.
“And what, for instance?” asked Shubin, stopping short.
“Why, for instance, you and I are, as
