Demons

great genius is crossing the Volga in winter, during a thaw. Two and a half pages on the crossing, and he falls through a hole in the ice anyway. The genius is drowning—do you think he drowns? It never occurred to him; all this was so that when he was already quite drowned and choking, there should flash before him a piece of ice, a piece of ice tiny as a pea, but pure and transparent 'like a frozen tear,' and in this tear Germany was reflected, or, better say, the sky of Germany, and with its iridescent play the reflection reminded him of that same tear which, 'remember, rolled from your eye, as we sat beneath the emerald tree, and you exclaimed joyfully: 'There is no crime!' 'Yes,' said I through my tears, 'but, if so, there are also no righteous men.' We wept and parted forever.' She somewhere to the seacoast, he to some caves; and so he descends, and descends, for three years he descends beneath the Sukharev Tower in Moscow, and suddenly in the very depths of the earth he finds, in a cave, an icon lamp, and before the icon lamp—a monk. The monk is praying. The genius bends to a tiny barred window and suddenly hears a sigh. You think it was the monk who sighed? Much need he has for your monk! No, sir, it is simply that this sigh 'reminded him of her first sigh, thirty-seven years ago,' when, 'remember, in Germany, we were sitting under the agate tree, and you said to me: 'Why love? Look, ochre is growing all around, and I am in love, but the ochre will stop growing, and I will cease to love.’” Here again mist billowed, Hoffmann appeared, the mermaid whistled something from Chopin, and suddenly, out of the mist, wearing a laurel wreath, over the roofs of Rome appeared Ancus Marcius.^[173] 'The chill of ecstasy ran down our spines, and we parted forever,' etc., etc. In short, I may not be telling it right and perhaps cannot, but the sense of the blather was precisely of that sort. And, finally, what is this disgraceful passion of our great minds for punning in a higher sense! The great European philosopher, the great scholar, the inventor, the laborer and martyr— all these who labor and are heavy- laden^[174]—are for our Russian great genius decidedly like cooks in his kitchen. He is the master and they come to him, chef's hat in hand, waiting for orders. True, he also smiles haughtily at Russia, and he likes nothing better than to proclaim Russia's bankruptcy in all respects before the great minds of Europe, but as regards himself—no, sir, he has already risen above these great minds of Europe; they are all only material for his puns. He takes another man's idea, weaves its own antithesis into it, and the pun is ready. There is crime, there is no crime; there is no right, there are no righteous men; atheism, Darwinism, Moscow bells ... But, alas, he no longer believes in Moscow bells; Rome, laurels ... but he does not even believe in laurels ... Then comes a conventional fit of Byronic anguish, a grimace from Heine, something from Pechorin,^[175] and—off it goes, off it goes, the engine whistling ... 'But praise me anyway, praise me, I do love it terribly; I'm just saying that I'm putting down my pen; wait, I'll wear you out three hundred times over, you'll get tired of reading it...'

Of course, the end was none too good; but the bad thing was that everything started with it. Long since there had begun the shuffling, nose-blowing, coughing, and all else that occurs at a literary reading when the writer, whoever he may be, keeps the public longer than twenty minutes. But the writer of genius did not notice any of it. He went on lisping and mumbling, totally oblivious of the public, so that everyone began to be perplexed. Then suddenly, in the back rows, a lonely but loud voice was heard:

'Lord, what rubbish!'

This popped out inadvertently and, I am sure, without any demonstrativeness. The man simply got tired. But Mr. Karmazinov paused, looked mockingly at the public, and suddenly lisped with the bearing of an offended court chamberlain:

'It seems, ladies and gentlemen, that you are rather bored with me?'

And here is where he was at fault, in having spoken first; for in thus provoking a response, he gave all sorts of scum an opportunity to speak as well, and even legitimately, as it were, while if he had refrained, they would have blown their noses a little longer, and it would all have gone over somehow... Perhaps he expected applause in response to his question; but there was no applause; on the contrary, everyone became as if frightened, shrank down, and kept still.

'You never saw any Ancus Marcius, that's all just style,' came one irritated, even as if pained, voice.

'Precisely,' another voice picked up at once, 'there are no ghosts nowadays, only natural science. Look it up in natural science.'

'Ladies and gentlemen, such objections were the last thing I expected,' Karmazinov was terribly surprised. The great genius had grown totally unaccustomed to his fatherland in Karlsruhe.

'In our age it's shameful to read that the world stands on three fishes,' a young girl suddenly rattled out. 'You couldn't have gone down to some hermit in a cave, Karmazinov. Who even talks about hermits nowadays?'

'What surprises me most, ladies and gentlemen, is that it's all so serious. However... however, you are perfectly right. No one respects real truth more than I do...'

Though he was smiling ironically, all the same he was greatly struck. His face simply said: 'I'm not the way you think, I'm for you, only praise me, praise me more, as much as possible, I like it terribly...'

'Ladies and gentlemen,' he cried at last, now completely wounded, 'I see that my poor little poem got to the wrong place. And I think I myself got to the wrong place.'

'Aimed at a crow and got a cow,' some fool, undoubtedly drunk, shouted at the top of his lungs, and of course he ought to have been ignored. True, there was irreverent laughter.

'A cow, you say?' Karmazinov picked up at once. His voice was becoming more and more shrill. 'Concerning crows and cows, ladies and gentlemen, I shall allow myself to refrain. I have too much respect even for any sort of public to allow myself comparisons, however innocent; but I thought...'

'Anyhow, dear sir, you'd better not be so...' someone shouted from the back rows.

'But I supposed that, as I was putting down my pen and saying farewell to the reader, I would be heard...'

'No, no, we want to listen, we do,' several voices, emboldened at last, came from the front row.

'Read, read!' several rapturous ladies' voices picked up, and at last some applause broke through, though scant and thin, it's true. Karmazinov smiled wryly and rose from his place.

'Believe me, Karmazinov, everyone even regards it as an honor...' even the marshal's wife could not restrain herself.

'Mr. Karmazinov,' a fresh, youthful voice suddenly came from the depths of the hall. It was the voice of a very young teacher from the district high school, an excellent young man, quiet and noble, still a recent arrival in town. He even rose slightly from his place. 'Mr. Karmazinov, if I had the good fortune to love as you have described to us, I really wouldn't put anything about my love into an article intended for public reading...'

He even blushed all over...

'Ladies and gentlemen,' Karmazinov cried, 'I have ended. I omit the ending and I withdraw. But permit me to read just the six concluding lines.