There is in
Russia an emeritus Professor Nikolay Stepanovitch, a chevalier and privy
councillor; he has so many Russian and foreign decorations that when he has
occasion to put them on the students nickname him "The Ikonstand."
His acquaintances are of the most aristocratic; for the last twenty-five or
thirty years, at any rate, there has not been one single distinguished man of
learning in Russia with whom he has not been intimately acquainted. There is no
one for him to make friends with nowadays; but if we turn to the past, the long
list of his famous friends winds up with such names as Pirogov, Kavelin, and
the poet Nekrasov, all of whom bestowed upon him a warm and sincere affection.
He is a member of all the Russian and of three foreign universities. And so on,
and so on. All that and a great deal more that might be said makes up what is
called my "name."
That is my name as known to the public. In
Russia it is known to every educated man, and abroad it is mentioned in the
lecture-room with the addition "honoured and distinguished." It is
one of those fortunate names to abuse which or to take which in vain, in public
or in print, is considered a sign of bad taste. And that is as it should be.
You see, my name is closely associated with the conception of a highly
distinguished man of great gifts and unquestionable usefulness. I have the
industry and power of endurance of a camel, and that is important, and I have
talent, which is even more important. Moreover, while I am on this subject, I
am a well-educated, modest, and honest fellow. I have never poked my nose into
literature or politics; I have never sought popularity in polemics with the
ignorant; I have never made speeches either at public dinners or at the
funerals of my friends ... In fact, there is no slur on my learned name, and
there is no complaint one can make against it. It is fortunate.
The bearer of that name, that is I, see
myself as a man of sixty-two, with a bald head, with false teeth, and with an
incurable tic douloureux. I am myself as dingy and unsightly as my name is
brilliant and splendid. My head and my hands tremble with weakness; my neck, as
Turgenev says of one of his heroines, is like the handle of a double bass; my
chest is hollow; my shoulders narrow; when I talk or lecture, my mouth turns
down at one corner; when I smile, my whole face is covered with aged-looking,
deathly wrinkles. There is nothing impressive about my pitiful figure; only,
perhaps, when I have an attack of tic douloureux my face wears a peculiar expression,
the sight of which must have roused in every one the grim and impressive
thought, "Evidently that man will soon die."
I still, as in the past, lecture fairly
well; I can still, as in the past, hold the attention of my listeners for a
couple of hours. My fervour, the literary skill of my exposition, and my
humour, almost efface the defects of my voice, though it is harsh, dry, and
monotonous as a praying beggar's. I write poorly. That bit of my brain which
presides over the faculty of authorship refuses to work. My memory has grown
weak; there is a lack of sequence in my ideas, and when I put them on paper it
always seems to me that I have lost the instinct for their organic connection;
my construction is monotonous; my language is poor and timid. Often I write
what I do not mean; I have forgotten the beginning when I am writing the end.
Often I forget ordinary words, and I always have to waste a great deal of
energy in avoiding superfluous phrases and unnecessary parentheses in my
letters, both unmistakable proofs of a decline in mental activity. And it is
noteworthy that the simpler the letter the more painful the effort to write it.
At a scientific article I feel far more intelligent and at ease than at a
letter of congratulation or a minute of proceedings. Another point: I find it
easier to write German or English than to write Russian.
As regards my present manner of life, I
must give a foremost place to the insomnia from which I have suffered of late.
If I were asked what constituted the chief and fundamental feature of my
existence now, I should answer, Insomnia. As in the past, from habit I undress
and go to bed exactly at midnight. I fall asleep quickly, but before two
o'clock I wake up and feel as though I had not slept at all. Sometimes I get
out of bed and light a lamp. For an hour or two I walk up and down the room
looking at the familiar photographs and pictures. When I am weary of walking
about, I sit down to my table. I sit motionless, thinking of nothing, conscious
of no inclination; if a book is lying before me, I mechanically move it closer
and read it without any interest -- in that way not long ago I mechanically
read through in one night a whole novel, with the strange title "The Song
the Lark was Singing"; or to occupy my attention I force myself to count
to a thousand; or I imagine the face of one of my colleagues and begin trying
to remember in what year and under what circumstances he entered the service. I
like listening to sounds. Two rooms away from me my daughter Liza says
something rapidly in her sleep, or my wife crosses the drawing-room with a
candle and invariably drops the matchbox; or a warped cupboard creaks; or the
burner of the lamp suddenly begins to hum -- and all these sounds, for some
reason, excite me.
To lie awake at night means to be at every
moment conscious of being abnormal, and so I look forward with impatience to
the morning and the day when I have a right to be awake. Many wearisome hours
pass before the cock crows in the yard. He is my first bringer of good tidings.
As soon as he crows I know that within an hour the porter will wake up below,
and, coughing angrily, will go upstairs to fetch something. And then a pale
light will begin gradually glimmering at the windows, voices will sound in the
street ...
The day begins for me with the entrance of
my wife. She comes in to me in her petticoat, before she has done her hair, but
after she has washed, smelling of flower-scented eau-de-Cologne, looking as
though she had come in by chance. Every time she says exactly the same thing:
"Excuse me, I have just come in for a minute ... Have you had a bad night
again?"
Then she puts out the lamp, sits down near
the table, and begins talking. I am no prophet, but I know what she will talk
about. Every morning it is exactly the same thing. Usually, after anxious
inquiries concerning my health, she suddenly mentions our son who is an officer
serving at Warsaw. After the twentieth of each month we send him fifty roubles,
and that serves as the chief topic of our conversation.
"Of course it is difficult for
us," my wife would sigh, "but until he is completely on his own feet
it is our duty to help him. The boy is among strangers, his pay is small ...
However, if you like, next month we won't send him fifty, but forty. What do
you think?"
Daily experience might have taught my wife
that constantly talking of our expenses does not reduce them, but my wife
refuses to learn by experience, and regularly every morning discusses our
officer son, and tells me that bread, thank God, is cheaper, while sugar is a
halfpenny dearer -- with a tone and an air as though she were communicating
interesting news.
I listen, mechanically assent, and
probably because I have had a bad night, strange and inappropriate thoughts
intrude themselves upon me. I gaze at my wife and wonder like a child. I ask
myself in perplexity, is it possible that this old, very stout, ungainly woman,
with her dull expression of petty anxiety and alarm about daily bread, with eyes
dimmed by continual brooding over debts and money difficulties, who can talk of
nothing
I bet you
anything, no one read this far. (Even i didn't). I was just testing to see how
many people actually read ultra-long boring blog posts, so if you did comment
or tell me or something. It just makes me smile when I write a really long blog
post and I just KNOW that no one will read the whole thing. I apologize if the
story up there is inappropriate I didn't read any of it so......I could say anything
that I want just by knowing that no one will read this. Maybe I should blabber
on about how I......just to be safe I will save that for later
