Страница 75 из 78
It was already morning, that is, not light yet, but it was about six o’clock. I came to my senses in the same armchair, my candle had burned all the way down, everyone was asleep at the captain’s, and around me was a silence rare in our apartment. First of all, I jumped up extremely surprised; nothing like that had ever happened to me, even down to trifling little details: for instance, never before had I fallen asleep in my armchair like that. Here suddenly, while I was standing and coming to my senses—suddenly my revolver flashed before me, ready, loaded—but I instantly pushed it away from me! Oh, life, life now! I lifted up my arms and called out to the eternal truth; did not call out, but wept; rapture, boundless rapture, elevated my whole being. Yes, life and—preaching! I decided on preaching that same moment, and, of course, for the rest of my life! I’m going out to preach, I want to preach—what? The truth, for I saw it, saw it with my own eyes, saw all its glory!
And so, since then I’ve been preaching! What’s more—I love those who laugh at me more than all the rest. Why that’s so I don’t know and can’t explain, but let it be so. They say I’m already getting confused now, that is, if I’m already so confused now, how will it be later? The veritable truth: I’m getting confused now, and maybe it will be worse later. And of course I’m going to get confused a few times before I discover how to preach, that is, in what words and in what deeds, because it’s very hard to do. I see it clear as day even now, but listen: is there anyone who doesn’t get confused? And yet everyone goes toward one and the same thing, at least everyone strives for one and the same thing, from the sage to the last robber, only by different paths. This is an old truth, but what is new here is this: I ca
And I found that little girl… And I’ll go! I’ll go!
NOTES
A NASTY ANECDOTE (1862)
1. The Neva River divides into three main branches as it flows into the Gulf of Finland, marking out the three main areas of the city of St. Petersburg. On the left bank of the Neva is the city center, between the Neva and the Little Neva is Vasilievsky Island, and between the Little Neva and the Nevka is the so-called “Petersburg side,” which is thus some distance from the center.
2. These three gentlemen are all in the civil service, not the military. But civil service ranks had military equivalents, which were sometimes used in social address. The following is a list of the fourteen civil service ranks from highest to lowest, with their approximate military equivalents:
1. Chancellor
Field Marshal
2. Actual Privy Councillor
General
3. Actual State Councillor
Major General
5. State Councillor
Colonel
6. Collegiate Councillor
Lieutenant Colonel
7. Court Councillor
Major
8. Collegiate Assessor
Captain
9. Titular Councillor
Staff Captain
10. Collegiate Secretary
Lieutenant
11. Secretary of Naval Constructions
12. Government Secretary
Sub-lieutenant
13. Provincial Secretary
14. Collegiate Registrar
The rank of titular councillor conferred personal nobility; the rank of actual state councillor made it hereditary. Wives of officials shared their husbands’ rank and were entitled to the same mode of address—“Your Honor,” “Your Excellency,” “Your Supreme Excellency.” Mention of an official’s rank automatically indicates the amount of deference he must be shown, and by whom.
3. The star was the decoration of a number of orders, among them the Polish-Russian Order of St. Stanislas (or Stanislav) and the Swedish Order of the North Star.
4. Certain Russian decorations had two degrees, being worn either on the breast or on a ribbon around the neck.
5. “Botched existence” or “failed life” (French).
6. “Talker” and “phrase-maker” (French).
7. A tax-farmer was a private person authorized by the government to collect taxes in exchange for a fixed fee. The practice was open to abuse, and tax-farmers could become extremely rich, though never quite respectable. Tax-farming was eventually abolished by the economic reforms of the emperor Alexander II in the 1860s, to which reference is made here.
8. A reference to Christ’s teaching: “Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine ru
9. “That’s the word” (French).
10. “Good sense” (French).
11. Pralinsky is mulling over the “problem” of the abolition of corporal punishment with birch rods, then still allowed in the army and in the schools as well as with serfs.
12. The clerk’s name is absurdly close to the Russian psevdonym (“pseudonym”), a fact Pralinsky later mentions himself. Pseldonymov is a collegiate registrar.
13. “Mlekopitaev” is also an absurd, though just plausible, name derived from the Russian word for “mammal.”
14. Clerks in the civil service had to have their superiors’ permission to change departments, to move elsewhere, and even to marry.