Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

“ Naúm was not sleeping either, at the time when Akím stealthily quitted Efrém's house. He was not asleep; he was lying completely dressed on the wall-bench, with his sheepskin coat rolled up under his head. It was not that his conscience was tormenting him—no! he had been present with astounding cold-bloodedness, from the morning on, at the packing and transportation of Akím's household goods, and had more than once spoken to Avdótya, who was downcast to such a degree that she did not even upbraid him.... His conscience was at ease, but divers surmises and calculations occupied his mind. ”

“ He was considered one of the most brilliant young men of the beginning of Katherine II's reign. My father often told me that he knew more than one old woman who could not mention Vasíly Ivánovitch Lutchínoff without heartfelt emotion. Picture to yourself a man gifted with remarkable strength of will, passionate and calculating, patient and daring, secretive to the last degree and—according to the words of all his contemporaries—bewitchingly, enchantingly amiable. He had neither conscience nor good-nature nor honour, although no one could call him a positively bad man. ”

“ Every one of us often recalls what is over—with regret, or vexation, or simply from nothing to do. But to bend a cold, clear gaze over all one's past life—as a traveller turns and looks from a high mountain on the plain he has passed through—is only possible at a certain age ... and a secret chill clutches at a man's heart when it happens to him for the first time. Mine, anyway, felt a sick pang. While we are young, such an all-round view is impossible. But my youth is over, and, like one who has climbed on to a mountain, everything lies clear before me. ”

“ Bless you!' Bizmyonkov interrupted her.
She pressed his hand.
'You are very good, Bizmyonkov,' she went on;' you are good as an angel. What can I do! I feel I shall love him to the grave. I have forgiven him, I am grateful to him. God give him happiness! May God give him a wife after his own heart'—and her eyes filled with tears—'if only he does not forget me, if only he will sometimes think of his Liza!—Let us go,' she added, after a brief silence. ”

“ Vasíly filled every moment of her life; she could not think of any one else. She soon ceased to take any notice of Rogatchyóff. Vasíly, being a shrewd and clever man, did not speak to Olga in his presence; but he either confused him to the verge of tears, or got up some boisterous game, a stroll in the evening, a rowing-party on the river by night with lanterns and music,—in a word, he did not give Pável Afanásievitch a chance to recover his ground. ”

“ A man whose fate it has been to be the witness of such a passion, has lived through bitter moments if he has loved himself and not been loved. I shall for ever remember that devouring attention, that tender gaiety, that innocent self-oblivion, that glance, still a child's and already a woman's, that happy, as it were flowering smile that never left the half-parted lips and glowing cheeks.... ”

“ The dark, unchanging pine-forest keeps sullen silence or is filled with a dull roar—and at the sight of it sinks into man's heart more deeply, more irresistibly, the sense of his own nothingness. It is hard for man, the creature of a day, born yesterday, and doomed to death on the morrow, it is hard for him to bear the cold gaze of the eternal Isis, fixed without sympathy upon him: not only the daring hopes and dreams of youth are humbled and quenched within him, enfolded by the icy breath of the elements ”

“ All—happiness and love and thought—all have come with a rush together with him; all her tremors are soothed, all her doubts solved by him. Truth itself seems speaking by his lips. She venerates him, is over-awed at her own happiness, learns, loves. Great is his power over her at that time!... If he were a hero, he would fire her, would teach her to sacrifice herself, and all sacrifices would be easy to her! But there are no heroes in our times.... Anyway, he directs her as he pleases. She devotes herself to whatever interests him, every word of his sinks into her soul. ”

“ My thanks to you, Marya Alexandrovna.... You see, I speak to you of myself; of you I dare not speak.... Ah, how absurd my last letter seems to me now, so flowery and sentimental! I beg you earnestly, go on with your confession. I fancy you, too, will be the better for it, and it will do me great good. It's a true saying: 'A woman's wit's better than many a reason,' and a woman's heart's far and away—by God, yes! If women knew how much better, nobler, and wiser they are than men—yes, wiser—they would grow conceited and be spoiled. ”

“ O heart, why, to what end, grieve more? try to forget if you would have peace, harden yourself to the meek acceptance of the last parting, to the bitter words 'good-bye' and 'for ever.' Do not look back, do not remember, do not strive to reach where it is light, where youth laughs, where hope is wreathed with the flowers of spring, where dovelike delight soars on azure wings, where love, like dew in the sunrise, flashes with tears of ecstasy; look not where is bliss, and faith and power—that is not our place! ”

“ Yet that 'but'—alas, that but!—and then, too, the words, 'Varia is mine!' aroused in me not a deep, overwhelming rapture, but a sort of paltry, egoistic triumph.... If Varia had refused me point-blank, I should have been burning with furious passion; but having received her consent, I was like a man who has just said to a guest, 'Make yourself at home,' and sees the guest actually beginning to settle into his room, as if he were at home. 'If she had loved Kolosov,' I thought, 'how was it she consented so soon? It's clear she's glad to marry any one.... ”

“ He cut out an aperture in his door expressly for her, and she seemed to feel that only in Gerásim's little den was she the full mistress, and therefore, on entering it, with a look of satisfaction, she immediately leaped upon the bed. At night she did not sleep at all, but she did not bark without discernment, like a stupid watch-dog, which, sitting on its haunches and elevating its muzzle, and shutting its eyes, barks simply out of tedium, at the stars, and usually three times in succession; no! Mumú's shrill voice never resounded without cause! ”

“ Sophia was no less ill at ease; she obviously forced herself to address me, but her eyes avoided mine as mine did hers, and every movement she made, her whole being, expressed constraint, mingled ... why conceal the truth? with secret aversion. I tried, as far as possible, to spare her and myself from such painful sensations. This meeting was happily our last—before her marriage. A sudden change in my fortunes carried me off to the other end of Russia, and I bade a long farewell to Petersburg, to the Zlotnitsky family, and, what was most grievous of all for me, to dear Yakov Pasinkov. ”

“ A white smoke in the distance crept in eddying rings over the pale, blue forest air, showing that a peasant was charcoal-burning for a glass-factory or for a foundry. The further we went on, the darker and stiller it became all round us. In the pine-forest it is always still; there is only, high overhead, a sort of prolonged murmur and subdued roar in the tree-tops. One goes on and on, and this eternal murmur of the forest never ceases, and the heart gradually begins to sink, and a man longs to come out quickly into the open, into the daylight ”

“ In the meantime, while Iván Andréevitch's own children did not dare to indulge in conjectures concerning the strange, speechless quarrel between their parents, Olga, from her earliest years had been disturbed and pained by the position of Anna Pávlovna. Like Vasíly, she loved independence; all oppression revolted her. She had attached herself to her benefactress with all the powers of her soul; she hated old Lutchínoff, and more than once, as she sat at table, she had fixed upon him such sombre glances, that even the man who was serving the viands felt frightened. ”

“ I know these reminiscences are dismal and of no importance, but I have no other. 'The emptiness, the fearful emptiness!' as Liza said.
O my God, my God! Here I am dying.... A heart capable of loving and ready to love will soon cease to beat.... And can it be it will be still for ever without having once known happiness, without having once expanded under the sweet burden of bliss? ”

“ I had learned that Sophia loved another man, and I had for ever forfeited her respect. I felt myself so utterly annihilated and disgraced that I could not even feel indignant with myself. Lying on the sofa with my face turned to the wall, I was revelling in the first rush of despairing misery, when I suddenly heard footsteps in the room. I lifted my head and saw one of my most intimate friends, Yakov Pasinkov. ”

“ Many insects die as soon as they know the joys of love, which destroy the equilibrium. The sick beast plunges into the thicket and expires there alone: he seems to feel that he no longer has the right to look upon the sun that is common to all, nor to breathe the open air; he has not the right to live;—and the man who from his own fault or from the fault of others is faring ill in the world—ought, at least, to know how to keep silence.
'Well, Yegor!' cried Kondrat all at once. He had already settled himself on the box of the cart and was shaking and playing with the reins. ”

“ Every object is doubly dear to me. I cannot gaze my fill at my poor, cheerless room, as I bid farewell to every tiny fleck on my walls! Sate yourselves for the last time, ye eyes of mine! Life is withdrawing; it is flowing evenly and softly away from me, like the shore from the glances of the traveller by sea. The aged, yellow face of my nurse, bound up in a dark kerchief, the hissing samovár on the table, the pot of geranium in front of the window, and thou, my poor dog, Trésor, the pen wherewith I indite these lines, my own hand, I see you now .... ”

“ I had never fought a duel before. 'O God!' I thought; 'if only that ironical gentleman doesn't take my agitation for timidity!' I was inwardly cursing my nerves; but glancing, at last, straight in the prince's face, and catching on his lips an almost imperceptible smile, I suddenly felt furious again, and was at once at my ease. Meanwhile, our seconds were fixing the barrier, measuring out the paces, loading the pistols. Koloberdyaev did most; Bizmyonkov rather watched him. ”

“ Turgénieff was the first to look into the soul of the common people and demonstrate that that soul was exactly like the soul of the cultivated man, only with its own peculiar turn to conceptions and feelings. By thus bringing the peasant close to us, by exhibiting him in this form, as a being one with us in blood, with whom, therefore, one can sympathise instead of regarding him merely as a rare spectacle, Turgénieff deservedly earned the reputation of a champion of emancipation...... ”

“ Vasíly was somewhat disconcerted. Olga Ivánovna's room was a couple of paces from the bedroom of Anna Pávlovna. Vasíly cautiously seated himself beside Olga, kissed and warmed her hands, and argued with her in a whisper. She listened to him, and shivered silently, slightly. Paláshka stood in the doorway and softly wiped away her tears. In the adjoining room a pendulum was beating heavily and regularly, and the breathing of a sleeper was audible. Olga Ivánovna's torpor dissolved, at last, in tears and dull sobs. Tears are the equivalent of a thunder-storm: after them a person is always quieter. ”

“ My father was not, even in his own house, of the slightest authority or consequence, being a man openly abandoned to a shameful and ruinous vice; he was conscious of his degradation, and not having the strength of will to give up his darling passion, he tried at least, by his invariably amiable and humble demeanour and his unswerving submissiveness, to win the condescending consideration of his exemplary wife. My mother certainly did bear her trial with the superb and majestic long-suffering of virtue, in which there is so much of egoistic pride. ”

“ Varvara Nikolaevna?' I repeated, 'that...'
'I will finish your sentence,' Sophia Nikolaevna took me up; 'that girl you thought so cold, so listless and indifferent, loved your friend; that is why she has never married and never will marry. Till this day no one has known of this but me; Varia would die before she would betray her secret. In our family we know how to suffer in silence.'
I looked long and intently at Sophia Nikolaevna, involuntarily pondering on the bitter significance of her last words. ”

“ I never ceased to love her even when I knew her heart was Asanov's. But how bitter it was for me to know that! If she had loved you, I should at least have rejoiced for you; but Asanov.... How did he make her care for him? It was just his luck! And change her feelings, cease to care, she could not! A true heart does not change....'
I recalled Asanov's visit after the fatal dinner, Pasinkov's intervention, and I could not help flinging up my hands in astonishment. ”

“ However, I gave myself up all that day to a feverish gaiety, assured myself that I simply did not deserve such happiness; but next morning....
A wonderful thing is sleep! It not only renews one's body: in a way it renews one's soul, restoring it to primaeval simplicity and naturalness. In the course of the day you succeed in tuning yourself, in soaking yourself in falsity, in false ideas ... sleep with its cool wave washes away all such pitiful trashiness; and on waking up, at least for the first few instants, you are capable of understanding and loving truth. ”