The Adolescent

she doesn’t want to know yet. And that’s understandable: they’re not free, and we are free. I, with my Russian yearning, was the only free man in Europe then.

“Make note of a strange thing, my friend: any Frenchman can serve not only his France, but even mankind, solely on condition that he remains most of all a Frenchman; the same applies to the Englishman and the German. Only the Russian, even in our time, that is, long before the general summing up, is capable of becoming most Russian precisely only when he is most European. That is our most essential national distinction from all the rest, and in this respect Russia is like nowhere else. In France I’m a Frenchman, with a German I’m a German, with an ancient Greek a Greek, and by that very fact I’m most Russian. By that very fact I am a real Russian, and I serve Russia most, for I put forward her chief thought. I am a pioneer of that thought. I emigrated then, but did I leave Russia? No, I continued to serve her. Granted, I did nothing in Europe; granted, I went only to wander (and I knew I went only to wander), but it was enough that I went with my thought and my consciousness. I took my Russian yearning there. Oh, it wasn’t only the blood of that time that alarmed me so much, and not even the Tuileries, but all that was bound to follow. They’re doomed to go on fighting for a long time, because they’re still all too German and all too French, and they haven’t finished their work in those roles. But I regret the destruction on the way. For a Russian, Europe is as precious as Russia; for him, every stone in her is dear and beloved. Europe was just as much our fatherland as Russia. Oh, even more! It’s impossible to love Russia more than I do, but I never reproached myself for the fact that Venice, Rome, Paris, the treasures of their science and art, their whole history—are dearer to me than Russia. Oh, Russians cherish those old foreign stones, those wonders of God’s old world, those fragments of holy wonders; and they’re even dearer to us than to them! They have other thoughts and other feelings now, and they’ve ceased to cherish the old stones . . . A conservative there merely struggles for existence; and the petroleur acts up only over the right to a crust of bread. Russia alone lives not for herself, but for thought, and you must agree, my friend, with the portentous fact that, for almost a hundred years, Russia has lived decidedly not for herself, but for Europe alone! And they? Oh, they are doomed to terrible torments before they reach the Kingdom of God.”

I confess, I listened in great confusion; even the tone of his speech alarmed me, though I couldn’t help being struck by the thoughts. I had a morbid fear of falseness. Suddenly I remarked to him in a stern voice:

“You just said ‘the Kingdom of God.’ I’ve heard you preached God there, and wore chains?”

“Let my chains be,” he smiled, “that’s something else entirely. I was not yet preaching anything then, but I was yearning for their God—that’s true. They proclaimed atheism then . . . a small bunch of them, but that makes no difference; these were only the front-runners, but this was their first executive step—that’s the important thing. Here again it’s their logic; but there is always anguish in logic. I was of a different culture, and my heart couldn’t accept it. The ingratitude with which they parted with the idea, the whistling and mudslinging were unbearable to me. The bootishness of the process alarmed me. However, reality always smacks of the boot, even with the brightest striving towards the ideal, and I, of course, should have known that. But even so, I was a man of a different type: I was free in choosing, but they were not—and I wept, wept for them, wept over the old idea, and maybe wept real tears, without any pretty words.”

“You believed so strongly in God?” I asked mistrustfully.

“My friend, that question is perhaps superfluous. Let’s suppose I didn’t believe very much, but still I couldn’t help yearning for the idea. I couldn’t help imagining to myself at times how man was going to live without God and whether it would ever be possible. My heart always decided it was impossible; but a certain period was perhaps possible . . . For me, there is even no doubt that it will come; but here I’ve always imagined another picture to myself . . .”

“Which?”

True, he had said earlier that he was happy; of course, there was a good deal of rapturousness in his words; that is how I take much of what he said then. Without doubt, respecting this man as I do, I will not venture now to set down on paper all that we talked about then; but I will present here several strokes from the strange picture I managed to coax out of him. Above all, always and all the time before then, I had been tormented by these “chains,” and I wanted to clear them up—that was why I persisted. Several fantastic and extremely strange ideas that he uttered then have remained in my heart forever.

“I imagine to myself, my dear,” he began with a pensive smile, “that the battle is over and the fighting has subsided. After the curses, the mudslinging and whistling, a calm has come, and people are left alone, as they wished: the great former idea has left them; the great source of strength that had nourished and warmed them till then is departing, like that majestic, inviting sun in Claude Lorrain’s painting, but it already seemed like the last day of mankind. And people suddenly realized that they remained quite alone, and at once felt a great orphancy. My dear boy, I’ve never been able to imagine people ungrateful and grown stupid. The orphaned people would at once begin pressing together more closely and lovingly; they would hold hands, understanding that they alone were now everything for each other. The great idea of immortality would disappear and would have to be replaced; and all the great abundance of the former love for the one who was himself immortality, would be turned in all of them to nature, to the world, to people, to every blade of grass. They would love the earth and life irrepressibly and in the measure to which they gradually became aware of their transient and finite state, and it would be with a special love now, not as formerly. They would begin to observe and discover such phenomena and secrets in nature as they had never supposed before, because they would look at nature with new eyes, the eyes with which a lover looks at his beloved. They would wake up and hasten to kiss each other, hurrying to love, conscious that the days were short, and that that was all they had left. They would work for each other, and each would give all he had to everyone, and would be happy in that alone. Every child would know and feel that each person on earth was like a father and mother to him. ‘Tomorrow may be my last day,’ each of them would think, looking at the setting sun, ‘but all the same, though I die, they will all remain, and their children after them’—and this thought that they would remain, loving and trembling for each other in the same way, would replace the thought of a meeting beyond the grave. Oh, they would hasten to love, in order to extinguish the great sadness in their hearts. They would be proud and brave for themselves, but would become timorous for one another. Each would tremble for the life and happiness of each. They would become tender to each other and would not be ashamed of it, as now, and would caress each other like children. Meeting each other, they would exchange deep and meaningful looks, and there would be love and sadness in their eyes . . .

“My dear,” he suddenly broke off with a smile, “this is all a fantasy, even quite an incredible one; but I have imagined it only too often, because all my life I’ve been unable to live without it and not to think of it. I’m not talking about my faith: I have no great faith, I’m a deist, a philosophical deist, like all the thousand of us, as I suppose, but . . . but it’s remarkable that I’ve always ended my picture with a vision, as in Heine, of ‘Christ on the Baltic Sea.’³⁵ I couldn’t do without him, I couldn’t help imagining him, finally, amidst the orphaned people. He would come to them, stretch out his arms to them, and say, ‘How could you have forgotten me?’ And here it would be as if a veil fell from everyone’s eyes, and the great exultant hymn of the new and last resurrection would ring out . . .

“Let’s drop it, my friend; and my ‘chains’ are nonsense; don’t worry about them. And here’s another thing: you know that I’m modest and sober of speech; if I fell to talking now, it’s . . . from various feelings, and because it’s with you; I’ll never say it to anyone else. I add that to reassure you.”

But I was even touched; the falseness I had feared wasn’t there, and I was especially glad, because it became clear to me that he really was yearning and suffering and really, undoubtedly, had loved much—and for me that was the most precious thing of all. I told him so with enthusiasm.