Dead Souls

From time to time a neighbor would stop by, a retired lieutenant of the hussars, a thoroughly smoke-saturated pipe smoker, or the firebrand colonel, a master and lover of talking about everything. But this, too, began to bore him. Their conversation began to seem to him somehow superficial; lively, adroit behavior, slappings on the knee, and other such casualness began to seem much too direct and overt to him. He decided to break off all his acquaintances and even did it quite abruptly. Namely, when that representative of all firebrand colonels, he who was most pleasant in all superficial conversations about everything, Barbar Nikolaych Vishnepokromov, came calling precisely in order to talk his fill, touching on politics, and philosophy, and literature, and morality, and even the state of England's finances, he sent word that he was not at home, and at the same time was so imprudent as to appear in the window. The guest's and host's eyes met. One, of course, grumbled "Brute!" through his teeth, while the other also sent after him something like a swine. Thus ended their acquaintance. After that no one came to see him. Total solitude installed itself in the house. The master got permanently into his dressing gown, giving his body over to inaction and his mind—to pondering a big work about Russia. How this work was being pondered, the reader has already seen. The day came and went, monotonous and colorless. It cannot be said, however, that there were not moments when he seemed to awaken from his sleep. When the mail brought newspapers, new books, and magazines, and in the press he came across the familiar name of a former schoolmate, who had already succeeded in some prominent post of the government service, or made a modest contribution to science and world knowledge, a secret, quiet sadness would come to his heart, and a doleful, wordlessly sad, quiet complaint at his own inactivity would involuntarily escape him. Then his life seemed revolting and vile to him. Before him his past schooldays rose up with extraordinary force and suddenly Alexander Petrovich stood before him as if alive ... A flood of tears poured from his eyes, and his weeping continued for almost the whole day.

What was the meaning of this weeping? Was his aching soul thereby revealing the doleful mystery of its illness—that the lofty inner man who was beginning to be built in him had had no time to form and gain strength; that, not tried from early years in the struggle with failure, he had never attained the lofty ability to rise and gain strength from obstacles and barriers; that, having melted like heated metal, the wealth of great feelings had not been subjected to a final tempering, and now, lacking resilience, his will was powerless; that an extraordinary mentor had died too soon, and there was no longer anyone in the whole world capable of raising and holding up those forces rocked by eternal vacillation and that feeble will lacking in resilience—who could cry out in a live and rousing voice—cry out to his soul the rousing word: forward!—which the Russian man everywhere, at every level of rank, title, and occupation, yearns for?

Where is he who, in the native tongue of our Russian soul, could speak to us this all-powerful word: forward? who, knowing all the forces and qualities, and all the depths of our nature, could, by one magic gesture, point the Russian man towards a lofty life? With what words, with what love the grateful Russian man would repay him! But century follows century, half a million loafers, sluggards, and sloths lie in deep slumber, and rarely is a man born in Russia who is capable of uttering it, this all-powerful word.