XIV
“And so here we have been living together three years” (before, it used to be said a year, two years, and later it will be said four years, and so on), “and yet we are still like lovers, who see each other rarely and secretly. Where did people get the idea that love grows weak, when there is nothing to hinder people from belonging wholly to each other? These people did not know true love. They felt only an erotic selfishness, or an erotic fancy. Real love begins only when people begin to live together.”
“Do you notice that in me?”
“I notice in you something that is much more interesting. In three years you will forget that you have studied medicine, and in three years you will forget to read, and from all your senses, which are needful for intellectual life, you will use only one—that of sight; and sight, too, will forget to see anything else but me.”
Such conversations do not last long, and are not frequent; but still, occasionally, they have such conversations.
“Yes, it grows stronger every year.”
“In the nature of man does attachment grow weaker? does it fail to be developed by time? When does friendship become stronger and firmer? in a week, or a year, or twenty years after it began? It is only necessary that people should choose the right friends; that they should be suited to each other.”
These conversations take place, but they are not frequent. They are brief, and not frequent. In fact, what reason have they to talk about this subject very often?
But this kind come oftener and last longer:—
“Sasha, how greatly your love supports me! Through it I am becoming independent; I am getting rid of all dependence upon anybody, even upon you. But what has my love brought to you?”
“For me? not less than for you! It is a constant, powerful, healthy stimulus of the nerves; it essentially develops the nervous system!” (“Coarse materialism!” declare the sapient reader and I together.) “And therefore the intellectual and moral strength grow in me from my love.”
“Yes, Sasha, I hear from everybody—I myself am a bad witness in the case; my eyes are blinded—but everybody sees the same thing; your eyes are growing brighter, your views become clearer and keener.”
“Viérotchka, why should I praise or not praise myself before you? We are one. But this must really be reflected in the eyes. My mind has become far stronger; when I make conclusions from observations, or a general examination of the facts, I finish now in an hour what used to take me several hours. And I can grasp with my mind many more facts than before, and the conclusions drawn from them are broader and fuller. Viérotchka, if I had the slightest germ of genius with this feeling, I should become a great genius. If I had been endowed by nature with the power of creating something new in science, with this feeling I should have the power of reorganizing science. But I was born merely to be a rough laborer, a swarthy little toiler, who works over little special questions. Such I was before I knew you; now you know I am different. More is expected of me; it is supposed that I am going to reorganize the most important branch of science, the whole teaching about the functions of the nervous system; and I feel that I am going to fulfil this expectation. At the age of twenty-four a man’s views are wider and bolder and more original, than when he reaches the age of twenty-nine, and the same is true at the age of thirty and thirty-two, and so on; but then it was not true of me as it is now, and I feel that I am still progressing, while without you I should long ago have ceased to grow. Yes, and I did cease to grow the last two or three years before we began to live together. You brought back to me the freshness of my early youth, the power of going vastly further than where I should have stopped, if it had not been for you. And the energy of work, Viérotchka, does that signify little! An immense stimulus of strength is brought into labor when your whole life is so inclined. You know how the energy of intellectual labor is simulated by a glass of coffee; what they afford others for an hour after, which follows a reaction proportionate to these outward and transitory stimuli, this I find constantly; my nerves are constantly attuned to finer, more vital energies.” (“Again coarse materialism!” we remark, etc.)
These conversations are more frequent and longer.
“He who has not experienced how love stimulates all the powers of a man knows not what real love is.”
“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!