Rudin: A Novel

by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

‘Nature has given me much. I know it, and I will not disguise it from you through false modesty, especially now at a moment so bitter, so humiliating for me.... Yes, Nature has given me much, but I shall die without doing anything worthy of my powers, without leaving any trace behind me. All my wealth is dissipated idly; I do not see the fruits of the seeds I sow. I am wanting in something. I cannot say myself exactly what it is I am wanting in.... I am wanting, certainly, in something without which one cannot move men’s hearts, or wholly win a woman’s heart; and to sway men’s minds alone is precarious, and an empire ever unprofitable. A strange, almost farcical fate is mine; I would devote myself—eagerly and wholly to some cause,—and I cannot devote myself. I shall end by sacrificing myself to some folly or other in which I shall not even believe.... Alas! at thirty-five to be still preparing for something!...

‘I have never spoken so openly of myself to any one before—this is my confession.

‘But enough of me. I should like to speak of you, to give you some advice; I can be no use to you further.... You are still young; but as long as you live, always follow the impulse of your heart, do not let it be subordinated to your mind or the mind of others. Believe me, the simpler, the narrower the circle in which life is passed the better; the great thing is not to open out new sides, but that all the phases of life should reach perfection in their own time. “Blessed is he who has been young in his youth.” But I see that this advice applies far more to myself than to you.

‘I confess, Natalya Alexyevna, I am very unhappy. I never deceived myself as to the nature of the feeling which I inspired in Darya Mihailovna; but I hoped I had found at least a temporary home.... Now I must take the chances of the rough world again. What will replace for me your conversation, your presence, your attentive and intelligent face?... I myself am to blame; but admit that fate seems to have designed a jest at my expense. A week ago I did not even myself suspect that I loved you. The day before yesterday, that evening in the garden, I for the first time heard from your lips,... but why remind you of what you said then? and now I am going away to-day. I am going away disgraced, after a cruel explanation with you, carrying with me no hope.... And you do not know yet to what a degree I am to blame as regards you... I have such a foolish lack of reserve, such a weak habit of confiding. But why speak of this? I am leaving you for ever!’

(Here Rudin had related to Natalya his visit to Volintsev, but on second thoughts he erased all that part, and added the second postscript to his letter to Volintsev.)

‘I remain alone upon earth to devote myself, as you said to me this morning with bitter irony, to other interests more congenial to me. Alas! if I could really devote myself to these interests, if I could at last conquer my inertia.... But no! I shall remain to the end the incomplete creature I have always been.... The first obstacle, ... and I collapse entirely; what has passed with you has shown me that. If I had but sacrificed my love to my future work, to my vocation; but I simply was afraid of the responsibility that had fallen upon me, and therefore I am, truly, unworthy of you. I do not deserve that you should be torn out of your sphere for me.... And indeed all this, perhaps, is for the best. I shall perhaps be the stronger and the purer for this experience.

‘I wish you all happiness. Farewell! Think sometimes of me. I hope that you may still hear of me.

‘RUDIN.’

Natalya let Rudin’s letter drop on to her lap, and sat a long time motionless, her eyes fixed on the ground. This letter proved to her clearer than all possible arguments that she had been right, when in the morning, at her parting with Rudin, she had involuntarily cried out that he did not love her! But that made things no easier for her. She sat perfectly still; it seemed as though waves of darkness without a ray of light had closed over her head, and she had gone down cold and dumb to the depths. The first disillusionment is painful for every one; but for a sincere heart, averse to self-deception and innocent of frivolity or exaggeration, it is almost unendurable. Natalya remembered her childhood, how, when walking in the evening, she always tried to go in the direction of the setting sun, where there was light in the sky, and not toward the darkened half of the heavens. Life now stood in darkness before her, and she had turned her back on the light for ever....

Tears started into Natalya’s eyes. Tears do not always bring relief. They are comforting and salutary when, after being long pent up in the breast, they flow at last—at first with violence, and then more easily, more softly; the dumb agony of sorrow is over with the tears. ... But there are cold tears, tears that flow sparingly, wrung out drop by drop from the heart by the immovable, weary weight of pain laid upon it: they are not comforting, and bring no relief. Poverty weeps such tears; and the man has not yet been unhappy who has not shed them. Natalya knew them on that day.