Henryk Sienkiewicz

“ I do not know whether there be nothingness, or existence without space and time; perhaps some midplanetary wind carries the spiritual monad from star to star to implant it in an ever-renewing existence. I do not know whether there be immense restlessness, or a peace so perfect as only Omnipotence and Love can bestow on us. But since you have died through my "I do not know," how could I remain here—and live?
The more I fear, the more I do not know,—the more I cannot let you go alone; I cannot, Aniela mine,—and I follow. Together we shall sink into nothingness, or together begin a new life ”

“ I will love you as if you were dead,—I will love your soul. Do you agree to that, Aniela dear? It is a sad love, but angelic. You can accept and return it. I make my vow of faithfulness this moment, and it is as binding as if it had been uttered before the altar. I shall never marry another woman; I shall live for you only, and my soul will be yours. You too will love me as if I had died. I do not ask for anything else; and you will not refuse, because there is no sin. You have read Dante? Remember, he too was married, and he loved Beatrice with the same love I ask from you ”

“ If my scorn could throttle my love, as a wolf throttles a lamb, it would be well. But I had a foreboding that something else would take place. If I did not love Aniela I could not despise her now; therefore my scorn is only another link in the chain, I understand perfectly that beyond Pani Kromitzka, beyond Pan Kromitzki and their relation to each other, nothing interests me,—nothing whatever; neither light nor darkness, war nor peace, nor any other thing. She, Aniela, or rather both she and her husband, and my part in their life, are my reason for existence. ”

“ It is only now I fully understand what Sniatynski meant. If I were not a man out of joint, without an even-balanced mind, poisoned by scepticism, criticism of myself, and criticism of criticism, if my love were in harmony with law and principles, I should have found in Aniela the dogma of my life, and other dogmas, other beliefs, would have come to me in course of time. Yet I do not know; perhaps I could not love otherwise than crookedly; and in this lies my incapacity for life. In short, that which ought to have been my health and salvation has become my disease and damnation. ”

“ Kromitzki's arrival was the most natural thing in the world, and yet I felt as if I had looked into the face of death. It seemed to me like a nightmare, and the words, "How do you do, Leon?" the most fantastic and most improbable words I could have heard anywhere. Presently such a rage, such a loathing combined with fear, seized me that it took all my self-control to prevent me from throwing him down and dashing out his brains. I have sometimes felt such paroxysms of rage and loathing, but never combined with fear; it was not so much fear of a living man as horror of the dead. ”

“ I am like the head of an army, who has foreseen all chances, arranged and calculated everything, and does not sleep on the eve of the day that will decide his fate. But Aniela sleeps peacefully on the other side of the house; and even her dreams plead for me, for my love. When I think of this, all my nerves are vibrating.
In that ocean of trouble, evil, foolishness, uncertainties, and doubts we call life, there is one thing worth living for, as certain and as strong as—nay, stronger than—death; and that is love. Beyond it there is nothingness. ”

“ I do not hate him because he has taken Aniela from me; I dislike him for his long, flat feet, his thick knees, lank figure, and that voice like a coffee-mill. He was always repulsive to me, and I mention the fact now because that aversion has such a strange vitality in me. I cannot help thinking of people who jar upon my nerves. If only Kromitzki and Pani Celina came under that category, I might think those antipathies were hatred in the disguise of aversion. But it is not so. There are others who have roused at some time or other an aversion in me that clings quite as perversely to my memory. ”

“ I am as much in my right as anybody who is defending his life. I do not say this upon the impulse of the moment, but after calm reasoning. I have no convictions, no beliefs, no principles, no stable ground under my feet, for the ground has been undermined by criticism and reflection. I have only those forces of life born with us, and they are all concentrated on one woman. Therefore I clutch my love as a drowning man clutches a plank; if this gives way there will be nothing left to live for. If common-sense asks, "Why did you not marry Aniela?" ”

“ No other woman ever fascinated me so strongly, and there must needs cross my way a Circe-like Laura to lure me away from the one woman I could love, almost my bride.
Nobody feels more than I that the words, "The spell thou hast cast upon me lasts forever," are not a mere poetic fancy, but bitter reality. Besides love and desire, I have for her an immense liking, the tenderness of affection, and am drawn to her with the irresistible force of the magnet to iron. And it cannot be otherwise, for she is still the same Aniela, and is not changed in the least. ”

“ Where are all my theories, my reasonings, that love is far above matrimonial bonds,—that I have a right to love Aniela? I still have my theories, while Kromitzki has Aniela. As the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb I thought the human being capable of carrying only a certain weight, and that if more were put upon his back he must needs break down. In my misery without bounds, and in my equally great foolishness and degradation, I felt that from the time of Kromitzki's arrival I was beginning to despise Aniela. Why? I could not justify it upon any common grounds. "One wife, one husband." ”

“ If I met anybody I knew, I should escape, if to the other end of the world; but crowds have become a necessity to me. When the streets are getting empty I feel terrified. The thought of night fills me with nameless fear. And how long they seem, these nights!
I have continually a metallic taste in my mouth. I felt it for the first time that night when I came home and found Kromitzki waiting for me; the second time I felt it when Pani Celina told me the "great news." What a day! I had gone to ask how Aniela was, when the doctor had seen her for the second time. ”

“ I remember constantly the words Sniatynski wrote to me when I was with the Davises at Peli: "Something must always be growing within us; beware lest something should grow in you which would cause your unhappiness, and the unhappiness of those near and dear to you." I laughed then at the words, yet how true they were. My father, too, spoke several times as if he had pierced the veil that hides the future. To-day the remembrance is too late. I know it is useless to rake up the ashes of the past, but I cannot help it. I am sorry for myself, but more sorry still for Aniela. ”

“ What is, after all, my relation with Aniela? Sometimes I see in it merely the product of a diseased imagination. I am now indeed like the bird that drags one wing on the earth. I have doomed to paralysis one half of my being, live only half a life, and love with half a love. It is a vain enterprise. To separate desire from love is as impossible as to separate thought from existence. Even religious feelings, the most ideal of all feelings, manifest themselves by words, by songs, by kneeling, and kissing of sacred objects ”

“ We consider ourselves the outcome and highest rung of civilization, and yet have lost faith in ourselves; only the most foolish believe in our raison d'être. We look out instinctively for places of enjoyment, gayety, and happiness, and yet we do not believe in happiness. Though our pessimism be wan and ephemeral as the clouds from our Havanas, it obscures our view of wider horizons. Amidst these clouds and mists we create for ourselves a separate world, a world torn off from the immensity of all life, shut up within itself, a little empty and somnolent. ”

“ Let her feel that she is not only your female, but the crown of your head, as precious as your child and friend; wear her close to your heart, let her feel the warmth of it, and you may rest in peace; year after year she will cling closer to you, until you two are like Siamese twins. If you do not give her all that, you pervert her, estrange her by your worthlessness,—and she will leave you. She will leave you as soon as she sees nobler hands stretched out for her; she is forced to do it, as this warmth, this appreciation, are as necessary to her life as the air she breathes. ”

“ Sick people as a rule are fanciful and irritable; I felt irritated at her being so tall. I felt a kind of resentment that she was not like Aniela; for so long a time I had been in the habit of acknowledging grace and beauty only in so far as they approached the grace and beauty of that other one.
Sometimes, looking at Clara, I irritated myself inwardly by the most singular thought that she is beautiful, not because nature meant her to be beautiful,—not by right of her race,—but by a fortunate accident of birth. Sometimes other beautiful feminine heads made upon me the same impression. ”

“ A human being can never be as absolutely a property as a thing, and the taking away somebody's wife is an act of a double will. Why should I respect the rights of a husband if his own wife does not? What is he to me? I meet a woman who wants to be mine, and I take her. Her husband does not exist for me; her vows are no affair of mine. What should hold me back? Respect for the matrimonial institution? But if I loved Pani Kromitzka, I would cry out from the very depth of my soul: "I protest against this marriage; protest against her duties towards Kromitzki. ”

“ I remember what he said about it at Gastein. If my love be a neurosis, then most undoubtedly his feverish desire for gold is the same. When this one aim went out from his life, this one basis slipped away from under his feet, he saw before him, perhaps, a gulf and a desert such as I saw when alone at Berlin. And what could hold him back? The thought of Aniela? He knew we would take care of her; and besides,—who knows?—perhaps in a dim way he felt that he was not necessary to her happiness. ”

“ What an intensity of feeling there is in those men! They may be happy or wretched with it; but how immeasurably richer they are than I! There is no danger of life becoming to them a desert and a barren wilderness. In each of them there is life enough for ten. I too feel conscious of ties to my country; but the consciousness is not so pressing, does not burn with the same steady light, and is not part of myself. My existence does not depend upon any Koslowka, Michna, or Ploszow. Where men such as Sniatynski or Lukomski find live springs from which they draw their motive vigor, I find dry sand. ”

“ Whatever name I might give to the feeling I cherish for Aniela, it is different from anything I ever felt before. Either night or day she is never out of my thought; it has grown into a kind of personal affair for which I feel responsible to myself. This never used to be the case. My other love affairs lasted a longer or shorter time, their memories were pleasant sometimes, a little sad at others, or distasteful as the case might be, but never absorbed my whole being. In the idle, aimless life we are leading, woman, perforce, occupies a large space,—she is always before us ”

“ I was inconsequent, too, when I, a sceptic, had a mass offered up for Leon and Aniela, and prayed like a child, and swallowed my tears like any fool. In future I will always be inconsequent when it suits me and makes me happier. There is only one logic in the world,—the logic of passions. Reason holds the reins for a time, but when the horses tear along in mad career, she sits on the box and merely watches lest the vehicle should go to pieces. ”

“ I could have groaned aloud; there is such a gulf between my love and my misery. Aniela seemed to feel it too, for she did not withdraw her hand at once. She too tried to control her emotion, and the feeling which urged her towards me. Her neck and breast heaved as if she were strangling the sobs that rose to her throat. She feels that I love her beyond everything; that a love like mine is not to be met with every day; and that it might have been a treasure of happiness to last our whole life. ”

“ For instance, when I am very tired or when my mind is concentrated upon one point I seem to look into the future, into far-away space which remains invisible to me in a normal state. Then there comes to me such a conviction that Aniela belongs to me—that in some way she is or will be mine—that when I wake up I have to remind myself that there exists such a man as Kromitzki. Maybe in moments like those I cross the boundary which separates the living from the dead, and have a vision of things more perfect, such as the ideals we dream about, as they might shape themselves in outward form. ”

“ In reality there exists only the individual; the species is an abstract idea, and in comparison to the individual, an utter Nirvana. I understand the love for a son, a grandson, a great grandson,—for the individual, in fact, that is sentenced to perish,—but to profess love for one's species one needs be insincere, or a fanatical sectarian. I can understand now how centuries after Empedocles there came Schopenhauer and Hartmann.
My brain feels as sore as the back of the laborer who carries burdens beyond his strength. But the laborer stooping to his work earns his daily bread and is at peace. ”

“ My relation to Aniela is terrible for me as well as for her. My love shows itself in the guise of hatred, scorn, and irony. It frightens Aniela and hurts her. She looks at me now and then, and her pleading eyes say, "Is it my fault?" And I repeat to myself, "It is not her fault;" but I cannot, God help me, I cannot be different to her. The more I see her oppressed and hurt, the fiercer becomes my resentment towards her, towards Kromitzki, myself, and the whole world. ”

“ In spite of the consciousness that we two are the most dissimilar beings under the sun, as opposite as the poles, I note it down with a certain surprise, and seem not able to get used to the thought. And yet it is true. I am a thousand times more like Laura Davis than Aniela.
And now I begin to understand why I failed.
The rock I split against is the want of that which has vanished within me, thereby freeing my thoughts, but bringing instead of it the mortal disease that has become my tragedy; it is the catechismal simplicity of the soul. ”

“ Even love for the dead consists of a longing after their bodily presence as well as their souls. Among the living this feeling is called resignation.
I did not want to say an untruth when I told Aniela I would love her as if she were dead; but resignation does not exclude all hope. In spite of all my disappointments, in spite of the consciousness that my hopes are vain, I still nourish in a corner of my heart the hope that the present state of affairs is only a halting-place on the way to love. I may repeat to myself over and over again, "Delusion! delusion!" ”

“ My nerves are so overstrung that I start when I hear a dog barking in the distance, or the watchman's rattle; it seems to me as if somebody were bringing news and trying to get to Aniela. I make an effort to calm myself, and explain away the strange fear that haunts me, by the state of Aniela's health; I try to be convinced that but for this I should not feel so uneasy. I repeat to myself that my fear will pass, as everything passes, and afterwards there will be the beginning of a new life. ”

“ This forms a tie; time and patience will do the rest. From my love I weave a thousand threads around her, which will bind us more and more. This would be all in vain if she loved her husband; it would make her hate me. But the past speaks in my favor, and the present does not not belong to Kromitzki. I still think it over with the greatest impartiality, and I come to the same conclusion, that she cannot love him. Aniela's resistance is the inward struggle of an exceptionally pure soul, that does not allow a breath of faithlessness to come near it. But she is without help in that struggle. ”

“ Neither argument nor reasoning, not even my pity will save you; for the whiter, the more perfect and angelic you prove yourself, the more I shall love you, and the more I love, the more desirable you will be to me. I have nothing but crocodile tears for you, which will only sharpen my rapacity. Such is the mazy circle of love. At the sight of Aniela I felt myself drawn into that circle. In the afternoon, that same day, when Pani Celina had fallen asleep on the veranda, Aniela motioned me to follow her into the park. ”

“ The evil genius bent upon wrecking my life had not taken in account one thing: a man crushed and utterly wretched cares less for himself than a happy one. In presence of that indifference fate becomes more or less powerless. I was and am still in that frame of mind that, if angry Fortuna came to me in person, and said: "Go to perdition," I should reply calmly: "Be it so,"—not out of sorrow for the loss of Aniela, but from mere indifference to everything within or without me. ”

“ Aniela's reply, in its simplicity and dogmatism, brought to naught all my arguments. For if the principle that the will ends where love steps in might be open to doubt, there is no doubt whatever that where dogma begins reasoning ceases. Women generally, and Polish women especially, agree with logic as long as it does not bring them into danger. At the approach of danger they shelter themselves behind the fortifications of simple faith and catechismal truth, which strong feeling might force to surrender, but reasoning, never. It is their weakness, and at the same time their strength. ”

“ If I had faith I might become a priest; if I were a man who denies the existence of God I might become a convert. But within me the organs with which we believe are withered, as sometimes a limb withers. I do not know anything except that in my sorrows I do not find comfort in religion.
When Aniela married Kromitzki, I thought everything between us was over. I was mistaken. It is only now I have the full conviction that everything is over; for now we are divided not only by our will and my departure, but by something that is beyond us, by forces of nature independent of us. ”

“ I throw all my scruples to the winds. Even the fear that Aniela might be unhappy loving me must give way before the great truth, great as the universe, that the presence of Love fills the life; gives sustenance to it, and is a hundred thousand times worth more than emptiness and nothingness of existence.
Thousands of years ago it was known to the world that virtue and righteousness alone give power to life; that emptiness and nothingness dwell in the realm of evil. ”

“ And now this lofty nature considers it the most proper thing that a husband in slippers should trample on those snows. What does it all mean? Whenever thoughts like these crowd my brain I feel as if I were on the brink of madness; such a rage seizes me that if I could I would throw down, trample, and spit upon the forces of life, reduce the whole world to chaos and obliterate its existence. On my journey back from Vienna I was searching for some unearthly abode where I might love Aniela even as Dante loved Beatrice. ”

“ Now Sniatynski and his wife are not only in love, but they like each other immensely, and therefore are happy. Ah me! I feel I could have liked Aniela, and we might have been as happy! Better not think about it. As to Laura, she will meet many who may fall in love with her raven hair and statuesque beauty, but she will never inspire real liking. This singular woman attracts irresistibly, and at the same time repulses. I have said that beyond beauty there is nothing else; for even her uncommon intelligence is only the humble slave kneeling at the feet of her own beauty. ”

“ It is a fearful thing when suddenly something goes out of our life for which we lived exclusively. I do not know whether illness has weakened my brain, but I simply cannot understand various phenomena that I perceive within myself. It seems as if jealousy had outlived my love.
It is a twofold jealousy,—a jealousy not only of facts, but of feelings. I am torn by the thought that the child which is to be born will take Aniela's heart from me, and what is more, and concerns me most, it will bring her closer to Kromitzki. ”

“ If it be a great misfortune to love another man's wife, be she ever so commonplace, it is an infinitely greater misfortune to love a virtuous woman. There is something in my relations to Aniela of which I never heard or read; there is no getting out of it, no end. A solution, whether it be a calamity or the fulfilment of desire, is something, but this is only an enchanted circle. If she remain immovable and I do not cease loving her, it will be an everlasting torment, and nothing else. And I have the despairing conviction that neither of us will give way. ”

“ Reason, which serves well enough in the everyday conditions of life, becomes a drivelling fool, like Polonius, in exceptional cases. It seems to me that the usual ethical code cannot be considered a standard by which to measure great passions. To see in an immense feeling like mine only the infringement of this or that law, not to see anything else, not to see that it is an element and part of those higher forces that mock at empty rules, a godlike, immeasurable, creative power on which rests the All-Life, is a kind of blindness and littleness. Alas, Aniela thus looks upon my love! ”

“ It came into my mind that I had no right to expect Aniela to sacrifice everything for me. It is not true that one sacrifices everything to love. If, for instance, I had an encounter with Kromitzki and she adjured me in the name of our love to ask his pardon on my bended knees, I would not do it. It is a fantastic, senseless supposition, yet at the very thought the blood mounts to my head. No, Aniela dear, you are right; there are things we may not sacrifice even to love. ”

“ The thought of love independent of matrimony is already planted in her soul; it is there, and does not leave her for a moment. She must live with it, and get reconciled to it. In such a case a woman, even if she had loved her husband, would turn from him. A drop of water will hollow out a stone. If Aniela loves me ever so little, if she only loves the past, she will be mine. I cannot think of it calmly, because the foretaste of happiness is almost choking me. ”

“ We understand each other! How intensely stupid the man is! But the more stupid he is, the more horrible to me is the thought that Aniela belongs to him, is simply a thing of his! I did not even try to undress that night. I never had seen so clearly that there may be situations where words come to an end, the power of reasoning ceases, even the power of feeling one's calamity,—to which there seems to be no limit. A truly magnificent life which is given unto us! ”