“Grandfather is dangerously ill. I have not had a wink of sleep for a week, and am almost light-headed in consequence. Nervous energy alone has sustained me till now: I cannot answer for the morrow. I continually feel as if my brain were swelling, and would presently fly to pieces. I am tormented with the horrible uselessness of undeserved pain. I don’t want to think what the end of all this is to be. I only know that something within me is giving way. Never yet has my spirit been so broken down: I am now paying the score of the Past, and with usurious interest besides. The autumn of life has come upon me, taking me unawares: nor is it relieved by any reminiscence of a springtime that never was mine. Every night, and all night long, I am sitting by poor Grandfather’s bed, going over my interminable litany of sorrow, and shedding my heart’s blood drop by drop.—M.”
And about Janusz not one word!
As I am going home from the office to-day, I come across Smilowicz, with a big parcel of books under his arm. In spite of his ridiculous smile, the man impresses me: the life he leads is in such strict conformity with the doctrines which he professes. Obojanski tells me he is a very able teacher of Natural Science; but he loses all his lessons, because he cannot reconcile his advanced opinions with what the school superintendents require. For some time past, he has had nothing, or nearly nothing, to eat: he spends his mornings in the University Library, and his evenings at Obojanski’s.
As we pass along by the “Philharmonia” building, he informs me that he has never been inside it.
“Do you object to going there?”
“Most certainly. I am against music, fine costumes, everything that represents satisfaction and amusement. To me all that only suggests extortion, wrong-doing, and injustice: for but a few are able to go there, and that only at the expense of others.”
“But you forget that wrong-doing and injustice are by no means essentials of the Beautiful, of Art, and of artistic delight, though at the present time they happen to exist in connection with these. Your theory seems to me to make far too much of what actually is. Try to deliver yourself from the fetters of the Temporal; look upon the present day, as being yourself outside of it and soaring above it: do you see what I mean?—I also resent whatever is unjust, but I can separate the Beautiful therefrom and love it, both in Art and in life.”
“Well, you may be right, but I cannot take up so objective a point of view. In me indignation overbears any gentler artistic sentiment. Yet more: I think it is not now the time to enjoy Art, or to plunge into the deep and subtle analyses of Estheticism. What we want at the present time is Action.”
“But, for myself, I quiet my conscience with the fact, which I know to be true, that I am living now just as I should live in that future when, as Ferri says, all are from the very outset to have equal opportunities for their development.”
Smilowicz is pleased.