Children of the Soil

by Henryk Sienkiewicz

I have discovered why the Slavs prefer synthesis to analysis. It is because they are idlers, and analysis is laborious. A man can synthesize while smoking a cigar after dinner. For that matter, they are right in being idlers. It is comfortably warm in Florence, especially on Lung-Arno. I walk along for myself and make a synthesis of the Florentine school. I have made the acquaintance here of an able artist in water-colors,—a Slav, too, who lives by art; but he proves that art is swinishness, which has grown up from a mercantile need of luxury, and from over-much money, which some pile up at the expense of others. In one word, art is, to his thinking, meanness and injustice. He fell upon me as upon a dog, and asserted that to be a Buddhist and to be occupied with art is the summit of inconsistency; but I attacked him still more savagely, and answered, that to consider consistency as something better than inconsistency was the height of miserable obscurantism, prejudices, and meanness. The man was astonished, and lost speech. I am persuading him to hang himself, but he doesn’t want to. Tell me, art thou sure that the earth turns around the sun, or isn’t this all a joke? For that matter, it is all one to me! In Warsaw I was sorry for that child who died, and here too I think of her frequently. How stupid that was! What is Pani Emilia doing? People have their rôle in the world fixed beforehand, and her rôle came to her with wings and suffering. Why was she good? She would have been happier otherwise. As to thee, O man, show me one kindness. I beg thee, by all things, marry not. Remember that if thou marry, if thou have a son, if thou toil to leave him property, thou wilt do so only for this that that son may be what I am, irreparably so. Farewell burning energy, farewell mercantile house, commission firm, O transitory form, vicious toil, effort for money, future father of a family, rearer of children and trouble. Embrace for me Vaskovski. He, too, is a man of synthesis. May Sakya Muni open thy eyes to know that it is warm in the sun and cool in the shade, and to lie down is better than to stand! Thy

Bukatski.

“Hash!” thought Pan Stanislav. “All this is artificial, all self-deception through a kind of exaggeration. But if a man accustoms himself to this, it will become in time a second nature to him, and, meanwhile, the devils take his reason; his energy and soul decay like a corpse. A man may throw himself headlong into such a hole as Mashko has, or into such a one as Bukatski. In both cases he will go under the ice. What the devil does it mean? Still there must be some healthy and normal life; only it is needful to have a little common sense in the head. But for a man like Bigiel, it is not bad in the world. He has a wife whom he loves, children whom he loves; he works like an ox. At the same time he has a great attachment for people, loves music and his violoncello, on which he plays in the moonlight, with his face raised toward the ceiling. It cannot be said that he is a materialist. No; in him one thing agrees with another somehow, and he is happy.”

Pan Stanislav began to walk through the room, and look from time to time at Litka’s face, smiling from between the birches. The need of balancing accounts with his own self seized hold of him with increasing force. Like a merchant, he set about examining his debit and credit, which, for that matter, was not difficult. On the credit side of his life, his feeling for Litka once occupied the chief place; she was so dear to him in her time that if a year before it had been said, “Take her as your own child,” he would have taken her, and considered that he had something to live for. But now this relation was only a remembrance, and from the rubric of happiness it had passed over to the rubric of misfortune. What was left? First of all, life itself; second, that mental dilettantism, which in every case is a luxury; further, the future, which rouses curiosity; further, the use of material things; and finally, his commercial house. All this had its value; but Pan Stanislav saw that there was a lack of object in it. As to the commercial house, he was pleased with the successes which he experienced, but not with the kind of work which the house demanded; on the contrary, that kind of work was not enough for him,—it was too narrow, too poor, and angered him. On the other hand, dilettantism, books, the world of mind,—all had significance as an ornament of life, but could not become its basis. “Bukatski,” said Pan Stanislav to himself, “has sunk in this up to his ears; he wished to live with it, and has become weak, incompetent, barren. Flowers are good; but whoso wishes to breathe the odor of them exclusively will poison himself.” In truth, Pan Stanislav did not need to be a great sage to see around him a multitude of people who were out of joint, whose health of soul mental dilettantism had undermined,—just as morphine undermines one’s health of body.

This dilettantism had wrought much harm to him, too, if only in this,—that it had made him a skeptic. He had been saved from grievous disease only by a sound organism, which felt the absolute need of expending its superfluous energy. But what will come later? Can he continue in that way? To this Pan Stanislav answered now with a decisive No! Since the business of his house could not fill out his life, and since it was simply perilous to fill it out with dilettantism, it was necessary to fill it out with something else,—to create new worlds, new duties, to open up new horizons; and to do this, he had to do one thing,—to marry.

On a time when he said this to himself, he saw before him a certain undefined form, uniting all the moral and physical requisites, but without a body and without a name. Now it was a real figure; it had calm blue eyes, dark hair, a mouth a trifle too large, and was called Marynia Plavitski. Of any one else there could not be even mention; and Pan Stanislav placed her before himself with such vividness that the veins throbbed in his temples with more life. He was perfectly conscious, however, that something was lacking then in his feeling for Marynia,—namely, that around which the imagination lingers, which dares not ask anything, but hopes everything; which fears, trembles, kneels; which says to the loved woman, “At thy feet;” the love in which desire is at the same time worship, homage,—a feeling which adds a kind of mystic coloring to the relations of a man to a woman; which makes of the man, not merely a lover, but a follower. That had gone. Pan Stanislav, in thinking now of Marynia, thought soberly, almost insolently. He felt that he could go and take her, and have her; and if he did so, it would be for two reasons: first, because Marynia was for him a woman more attractive than all others; and second, reason commanded him to marry, and to marry her.

“She is wonderfully reliable,” thought he; “there is nothing in her fruitless or dried up. Egotism has not destroyed the heart in her; and it is undoubted that such a one will not think merely of what belongs to her. She is honesty incarnate, duty incarnate; and in life the only need will be to prevent her from thinking too little of herself. If reason commands me to marry, I should commit a folly, were I to look for another.”

Then he asked whether, if he abandoned Marynia, he would not act dishonorably. Litka had united them. Something in his heart revolted at the very thought of opposing the will and sacrifice of that child. If he wished, however, to act against that will, should he have borne himself as he had? No. In such an event he ought not to have shown himself at the Plavitskis’ since Litka’s death, nor have seen Marynia, nor kissed her hand, nor let himself be borne away by the current which had borne him,—by the power of events, perhaps,—but borne him so far that to-day he would disappoint Marynia, and fall in her eyes to the wretched position of a man who knows not himself what he wishes. For he would have to be blind not to see that Marynia considers herself his betrothed; and that, if she were not disquieted by his silence so far, it was simply because she ascribed it to the mourning which both had in their hearts for Litka.

“Looking, then,” said Pan Stanislav, “from the side of reason and conservative instinct, from the side of sense and honor, I ought to marry her. Therefore what? Therefore I should be an imbecile if I hesitated, and did not consider the question as settled. It is settled.”

Then he drew breath, and began to walk through the room. Under the lamp lay Bukatski’s letter. Pan Stanislav took it, and read from the place where his eyes fell by chance.