A Lear of the Steppes, etc.

by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

But I am tired; it’s high time to finish this letter. It’s sure to strike you as foolish and confused. I feel confused myself. I’m not myself. I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I am continually haunted by a little room with bare walls, a lamp, an open door, the fragrance and freshness of the night, and there, near the door, an intent youthful face, light white garments.… I understand now why I wanted to marry her: I was not so stupid, it seems, before my stay in Berlin as I had hitherto supposed. Yes, Semyon Nikolaitch, your friend is in a curious frame of mind. All this I know will pass off … and if it doesn’t pass off,—well, what then? it won’t pass off, and that’s all. But any way I am well satisfied with myself; in the first place, I have spent an exquisite evening; and secondly, if I have awakened that soul, who can blame me? Old Madame Eltsov is nailed up on the wall, and must hold her peace. The old thing!… I don’t know all the details of her life; but I know she ran away from her father’s house; she was not half Italian for nothing, it seems. She wanted to keep her daughter secure … we shall see.

I must put down my pen. You, jeering person, pray think what you like of me, only don’t jeer at me in writing. You and I are old friends, and ought to spare each other. Good-bye!—Yours, P. B.

FIFTH LETTER
From the SAME to the SAME

M—— Village, July 26, 1850.

It’s a long time since I wrote to you, dear Semyon Nicolaitch; more than a month, I think. I had enough to write about but I was overcome by laziness. To tell the truth, I have hardly thought of you all this time. But from your last letter to me I gather that you are drawing conclusions in regard to me, which are unjust, that is to say, not altogether just. You imagine I have fallen in love with Vera (I feel it awkward, somehow, to call her Vera Nikolaevna); you are wrong. Of course I see her often, I like her extremely … indeed, who wouldn’t like her? I should like to see you in my place. She’s an exquisite creature! Rapid intuition, together with the inexperience of a child, clear common-sense, and an innate feeling for beauty, a continual striving towards the true and the lofty, and a comprehension of everything, even of the vicious, even of the ridiculous, a soft womanly charm brooding over all this like an angel’s white wings.… But what’s the use of words! We have read a great deal, we have talked a great deal together during this month. Reading with her is a delight such as I had never experienced before. You seem to be discovering new worlds. She never goes into ecstasies over anything; anything boisterous is distasteful to her; she is softly radiant all over when she likes anything, and her face wears such a noble and good—yes, good expression. From her earliest childhood Vera has not known what deceit was; she is accustomed to truth, it is the breath of her being, and so in poetry too, only what is true strikes her as natural; at once, without effort or difficulty, she recognises it as a familiar face … a great privilege and happiness. One must give her mother credit for it. How many times have I thought, as I watched Vera—yes, Goethe was right, ‘the good even in their obscure striving feel always where the true path lies.’ There is only one thing annoying—her husband is always about the place. (Please don’t laugh a senseless guffaw, don’t sully our pure friendship, even in thought). He is about as capable of understanding poetry as I am of playing the flute, but he does not like to lag behind his wife, he wants to improve himself too. Sometimes she puts me out of patience herself; all of a sudden a mood comes over her; she won’t read or talk, she works at her embroidery frame, busies herself with Natasha, or with the housekeeper, runs off all at once into the kitchen, or simply sits with her hands folded looking out of the window, or sets to playing ‘fools’ with the nurse.… I have noticed at these times it doesn’t do to bother her; it’s better to bide one’s time till she comes up, begins to talk or takes up a book. She has a great deal of independence, and I am very glad of it. In the days of our youth, do you remember, young girls would sometimes repeat one’s own words to one, as they so well knew how, and one would be in ecstasies over the echo, and possibly quite impressed by it, till one realised what it meant? but this woman’s … not so; she thinks for herself. She takes nothing on trust; there’s no overawing her with authority; she won’t begin arguing; but she won’t give in either. We have discussed Faust more than once; but, strange to say, Gretchen she never speaks of, herself, she only listens to what I say of her. Mephistopheles terrifies her, not as the devil, but as ‘something which may exist in every man.…’ These are her own words. I began trying to convince her that this ‘something’ is what we call reflection; but she does not understand the word reflection in its German sense; she only knows the French ‘refléxion’, and is accustomed to regarding it as useful. Our relations are marvellous! From a certain point of view I can say that I have a great influence over her, and am, as it were, educating her; but she too, though she is unaware of it herself, is changing me for the better in many ways. It’s only lately, for instance—thanks to her—that I have discovered what an immense amount of conventional, rhetorical stuff there is in many fine and celebrated poetical works. What leaves her cold is at once suspect in my eyes. Yes, I have grown better, serener. One can’t be near her, see her, and remain the man one was.

What will come of all this? you ask. I really believe—nothing. I shall pass my time very delightfully till September and then go away. Life will seem dark and dreary to me for the first months … I shall get used to it. I know how full of danger is any tie whatever between a man and a young woman, how imperceptibly one feeling passes into another … I should have had the strength to break it off, if I had not been sure that we were both perfectly undisturbed. It is true one day something queer passed between us. I don’t know how or from what—I remember we had been reading Oniegin—I kissed her hand. She turned a little away, bent her eyes upon me (I have never seen such a look, except in her; there is dreaminess and intent attention in it, and a sort of sternness), … suddenly flushed, got up and went away. I did not succeed in being alone with her that day. She avoided me, and for four mortal hours she played cards with her husband, the nurse, and the governess! Next morning she proposed a walk in the garden to me. We walked all through it, down to the lake. Suddenly without turning towards me, she softly whispered—‘Please don’t do that again!’ and instantly began telling me about something else.… I was very much ashamed.

I must admit that her image is never out of my mind, and indeed I may almost say I have begun writing a letter to you with the object of having a reason for thinking and talking about her. I hear the tramp and neighing of horses; it’s my carriage being got ready. I am going to see them. My coachman has given up asking me where to drive to, when I get into my carriage—he takes me straight off to the Priemkovs’. A mile and a half from their village, at an abrupt turn in the road, their house suddenly peeps out from behind a birch copse.… Each time I feel a thrill of joy in my heart directly I catch the glimmer of its windows in the distance. Schimmel (the harmless old man comes to see them from time to time; the princes H——, thank God, have only called once) … Schimmel, with the modest solemnity characteristic of him, said very aptly, pointing to the house where Vera lives: ‘That is the abode of peace!’ In that house dwells an angel of peace.…

Cover me with thy wing,