Homo Monstrosus
Taras Bulba, by Nicolai Gogol. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
They burned him at the stake, bound to a great tree in iron chains. The flames lapped at his feet, glowing into his old face that was scarred and leathered with battle, brightening the silver of his fierce mustache....
Out of the reddened shadows that fell over him like a mantle his lips could be seen curling in a smile, contemptuous and arrogant, and he turned his eyes toward the Dnyeper where the boats of his brothers were pulling away under a rain of lead.
“Farewell, comrades,” he shouted to them; “remember me, and come hither again next spring to make merry!”
And then he turned to the Lyakhs against whom he had waged war and who knew him as the raven of the steppe.
The fire had risen above the faggots and the great tree was burning. Out of the flames came the voice of the hero....
“A Tzar shall arise from the Russian soil and there shall not be a Power in the world which shall not submit to him.”
Thus died Taras Bulba, kazak.
In this day when a man’s skin is his most greedily guarded possession and the lisping of pale, pretty words his greatest glory, Taras Bulba comes charging into America, a figure in need. On his black horse he comes, his scalp lock flying in the wind, his sword waving in great circles above his head, his body leaning over the shining neck of his steed and his voice ringing with the battle whoop of the kazak.