I often walk a few versts with Martha, as far as the “Kirkut,” or Jewish cemetery.
There they stand, the hewn gravestones, in long parallel upright rows. Upon them you may see cabalistic signs and symbols; a lion, a broken taper, or a shelf of books; and certain embellishments that might almost be styled “decadent.” The graves, overgrown with moss, heather, and wild thyme, are nearly level with the rest of the ground. The wooden inclosure, over which we always have to climb, is lost in the woods among the pine-trunks; and those long regular rows of stones raise their heads in a forest elsewhere untouched by man. Here, I feel as though I had gone far back into the dim immemorial Past.
I love that burial-ground; I love to contemplate Life trampling upon Death; and as I gaze, I cease to fear Death any more. Death makes away with the individual only, with the accidental manifestations of Life: Life itself remains. I see myself standing for the whole of mankind, and identical with Life. I always was; I shall be everlasting.... Death is slumbering quietly beneath my feet.
And with that a delightful sense, as it were of infinite might, comes over me. To my power, to my continuance, I can find no limit. I am not of the earth, I am not Janka Dernowicz; I am eternal, unsleeping consciousness; I am the Universe! In this burial-ground, Janusz grows dismal, and holds forth on the evanescence of all earthly things. A beautiful animal which lives in fear of Death!
What if it be true that animals have no souls?
At times I experience the pangs of an entirely unjustified longing for the man who came into my life and went out of it like a hurricane. Yes, now and again I long for my ice-plains and my Northern Lights!
Once he asked me whether I should never wish to feel and think and strive along with some companion in life.
Then I burst into laughter; for I hate sentiment—hate to mix up love and “brotherhood of souls.”
Now I am near thinking that this man, whom I never loved, may be the only one fit to become my husband.
Often of nights, lying awake and staring into the darkness with wide-open eyes, I feel burning lips, lips famished with hunger, that are pressed to mine....