Paul Biryukov

“ It is wonderful how, having lived in Clarens two months, still each time, when in the morning and still more in the evening after dinner I open the shutters of the windows already in the shade and look out on the lake and the distant blue mountains reflected in it, their beauty blinds me and startles me with a thrill. I immediately wish to love and even feel the love of others for myself, and regret the past, hope for the future, and feel it become a joy to be alive. I desire to live long, very long, and the thought of death fills me with a childish, poetic awe. ”

“ My earliest reminiscences of my grandmother, before our removal to Moscow and our life there, amount to three strong impressions concerning her. One was how my grandmother washed, and with some kind of special soap produced on her hands wonderful bubbles, which, so it seemed to me, she alone could produce. We used to be purposely brought to her--probably our delight and wonder at her soap-bubbles amused her--in order to see how she washed. I remember the white jacket, petticoat, white aged hands, and the enormous bubbles rising on them, and her satisfied, smiling, white face. ”

“ There is too great a difference between the education, the sentiments, and the point of view of those whom I meet here and my own for me to find any pleasure in their society. It is Nikolay who has the talent, notwithstanding the enormous difference there is between him and all these gentlemen, to amuse himself with them and be liked by all. I envy him this talent, but feel I cannot do the same. It is true that this kind of life is not adapted for one's amusement, and for a very long time I have not thought about pleasures. ”

“ When I afterward used to meet Vasiliy I saw in him merely a good or a bad overseer of my brother's, a man whom I respected, but there was no longer any trace of the former sacred, brotherly, human feeling.
"In a mysterious way, incomprehensible to the human mind, the impressions of early childhood are preserved in one's memory, and not only are they preserved, but they grow in some unfathomed depth of the soul, like a seed thrown on good ground, and after many years all of a sudden thrust their vernal shoots into God's world." ”

“ The longer one lives the more one changes: you who have got the experience tell me, is not this true? I think that the defects and the good qualities - the background of one's character - will always remain the same, but the say of regarding life and happiness must change with age. A year ago I thought I should find happiness in pleasure, in movement; now, on the contrary, rest, both physical and moral, is the state I desire. But I imagine that the state of rest without worry, and with the quiet enjoyments of love and friendship, is the acme of happiness for me! ”

“ This was my aunt, Tatyana Aleksandrovna. I remember a short, stout, black-haired, kind, affectionate, solicitous woman. She put the dressing-gown on to me, and tightened the belt while embracing and kissing me, and I saw that she felt as I did; that it was sad--dreadfully sad--but necessary. For the first time I felt that life was not a plaything, but a difficult task. Shall I not feel the same when I am dying? I shall understand that death or future life is not a plaything, but a difficult task. ”

“ I tried to believe the caressing words with which Feodor Ivanovich sought to attract me; I tried not to see the contempt with which the boys received me, the younger one; I tried to think that it was shameful for a big boy to live with girls, and that there was nothing good in the upstairs life with the nurse. But inwardly I felt dreadfully sad, I knew that I was irretrievably losing innocence and happiness, and only the feeling of self-respect, the consciousness that I was fulfilling my duty, supported me. ”

“ These wild Cossack and Caucasian villages were destined to become historic. Here the artistic forms of Tolstoy's works were conceived, and the first fruit of his creative power came forth. The wonderful scenery of the Northern Caucasus, its mountains, the river Terek, and the Cossack bravery, and the almost primitive simplicity of life - all this in one harmonious whole served to cradle these early creations, and to point out the work of the world-wide genius, who was to struggle for an ideal, to search for truth and the meaning of human life. ”

“ But from the first I noticed in young Tolstoy a kind of unconscious antagonism to all accepted rules in the domain of reasoning. During this short period I saw him only once at Nekrasov's, at our bachelor's literary party. There I witnessed how Turgenev, eager and breathless in discussion, was driven to despair by the apparently calm, but all the more sarcastic, replies of Tolstoy. "I cannot accept," said Tolstoy, "what you said just now as your conviction. I stand at the door with a dagger or sword in hand and say, `while I am alive, no one shall enter this door.' That is conviction. ”

“ Beneficent, consoling voice, which since then has so often been heard suddenly and boldly against all lies, in those sad moments when the soul in silence submitted to the power of deceit and debauchery in life, which has angrily accused the past, has indicated the bright point of the present, causing one to love it, and has promised happiness and well-being in the future - beneficent, consoling voice! ”

“ I also prayed the Lord that He would give happiness to everybody, and that all should be satisfied, and that tomorrow should be good weather for the outing, and then I turned on my other side, my thoughts and dreams became mixed and disturbed, and I fell softly, quietly asleep, my face wet with tears.
"Will that freshness, carelessness, need of love, and strength of faith, which one possesses in childhood, ever return? What time can be better than that when all the best virtues--innocent merriment and limitless need of love--are the only incitements in life? ”

“ Common sense, however, tells us that if the history of the greater part of humanity, the whole so- called East, does not confirm the law of progress, but on the contrary, overthrows it, that law does not exist for all humanity, but only as an article of faith for a certain part of it. I, like all people who are free from the superstition of progress, observe only that humanity lives, that the memories of the past augment as much as they disappear; the labors of the past frequently serve as a basis for the labors of the present, and just as frequently as an impediment ”

“ And for this I especially loved Seryozha. The word loved is not correct. I loved Nikolenka, but for Seryozha I was filled with admiration as for something quite apart and incomprehensible to me. It was a human life, a very fine one, but completely incomprehensible to me, mysterious, and therefore specially attractive.
"A few days ago he died, and in his last illness and his death he was to me as unfathomable and as dear as in our bygone days of childhood. ”

“ How I concocted and caused nothing but shame and woe for myself!' And suddenly it seemed that a new world was open to him. `Happiness is this,' he said to himself: `happiness consists in living for others. This is clear. The desire for happiness is inborn in man; consequently it is legitimate. In attempting to satisfy it in an egotistical manner, that is, by seeking wealth, glory, comforts of life, and love, the circumstances may so arrange themselves that it is impossible to satisfy these desires. Consequently these desires are illegitimate, but the need of happiness is not illegitimate. ”

“ The blacker the circle of my memories of the past, the brighter and clearer stood out from it the bright and clear point of the present, and streamed the rainbow colors of the future. This voice of repentance and passionate desire for perfection was the main new sensation of my soul at that epoch of my development, and it was this which laid a new foundation for my views of myself, of people, and of the whole world. ”

“ But I have one dread - lest the course of time, the abominations of real life, and the deaf and dumb environment should affect you in the same way as they have affected most of us, and destroy that energy which is indispensable to an author, at least to those authors who are necessary for russia at present. You are young; certain changes are taking place; they may - let us hope - end in good, and then a wide arena may be opened before you. Your beginning is such that the least sanguine persons are carried far away in their hopes. ”

“ I am just now meditating, recalling all the unpleasant moments of my life, which in times of depression alone creep into one's mind....No, there is too little delight - man is too capable of imagining happiness and too often in one way or another Fate strikes him, painfully, very painfully catching his tender chord - for us to love life, and, besides, there is something specially sweet and great in indifference to life, and I delight in this feeling. ”

“ Instruction and teaching are means of education when they are exercised without compulsion, and means of training when teaching is compulsory, and when instruction is directed in an exclusive way, i.e., when only those subjects are given which the teacher regards as necessary. There are no rights of education. I do not acknowledge such, nor have they been acknowledged, nor will they ever be, by the young generation under education, which always and everywhere is set against compulsion in education. Education is compulsory, instruction is free. ”

“ Shall we say frankly and honestly to ourselves that we do not know and cannot know what future generations may need but that we feel ourselves obliged to study this need, and that we wish to do so; that we do not wish to accuse the people of ignorance for not accepting our education, but that we shall accuse ourselves of ignorance and self-conceit if we persist in educating the people according to our ideas? ”

“ When I do anything good, I am satisfied with myself, because I know that you will be satisfied with me. When I act badly, what I most fear is to pain you. Your love is everything for me, and you ask God to separate us! I cannot tell you the feeling I have toward you, speech does not suffice to express it, and I am afraid you will think I am exaggerating, and yet I am weeping with burning tears in writing to you. It is to this painful separation I am indebted for knowing what a friend I have in you and how much I love you. But am I the only one who has this feeling for you? ”

“ The people look upon me no longer as an honest man -- an opinion, on their part, which I have earned during many years -- but as a criminal, an incendiary, or a coiner, who has escaped merely owing to his slyness...." "Ah, friend! you have been caught...you needn't talk to us any more about honesty and justice -- you have almost been handcuffed yourself." "As to the landowners, it goes without saying there is one outburst of delight. Please tell me at once, after consulting Perovskiy or Aleksey Tolstoy, or whom you like, how I am to write and to transmit my letter to the Emperor. ”

“ When I began to look into my materials and to consider the nature and the plan of the work I was undertaking, I grew alarmed on the one hand at its magnitude, while on the other I felt more and more fascinated by it, and, carried away as I was with the subject, I became so much engrossed with it that at the present moment I look upon it as my life's work, and heed no considerations which are offered from a publisher's point of view. ”

“ By always devoting himself to the true and the beautiful, he involuntarily reflects in word, thought, and imagination the contemporary epoch in its mixture of truth, which gladdens a pure heart, and falsehood, which perturbs its harmonious repose. Thus flow together the two streams of literature of which we spoke; thus a writer, a servant of pure art, becomes at times a trenchant social critic, and that unwittingly and sometimes even against his will. ”

“ The next reminiscences refer to the time when I was already four or five years old, but of these I have very few, and not one of them concerns life outside the walls of the house. Nature, up to five years old, did not exist for me. All that I remember takes place in my little bed in a room. Neither grass nor leaves nor sky nor sun exists for me. It cannot be that I was not given flowers or leaves to play with, that I did not see the grass, was not shaded from the sun; still, up to five or six years, I have no recollection of what we call nature. ”

“ I find pleasure and profit in working, and I work. Although I am far from amusing myself, as I have told you, I am also very far from being dull, as I have got something to do; besides this, I enjoy a pleasure sweeter and more elevated than any that society could have given me -- that of feeling at rest in my conscience; of knowing myself, of understanding myself better than I did formerly, and of feeling good and generous sentiments stirring within me. ”

“ I felt both dread and joy, like the seeker after the treasure who suddenly sees the flower of the fern -- I felt joy, because suddenly and quite unexpectedly there was revealed to me that stone of the philosophers which I had vainly been trying to find for two years -- the art of teaching the expression of thought; and dread, because this art made new demands -- brought with it a whole world of desires, which stood in no relation to the surroundings of the pupils, as I thought in the first moment. ”

“ Let us finally adopt the view which we are so plainly told, both by the history of educational methods and the whole history of education, that if the educating class is to know what is good and what is bad, the classes which receive the education must have full power to express their dissatisfaction, or, at least, to swerve from the education which instinctively does not satisfy them -- that the only criterion of educational methods is liberty. ”

“ The university is our first and our chief educational institution. It is the first to arrogate to itself the right of education, and it is the first, so far as the results which it obtains indicate, to prove the impropriety and impossibility of university education. Only from the social point of view is it possible to justify the fruits of the university. The university trains not such men as humanity needs, but such as corrupt society needs. ”

“ Tolstoy put off his journey to Rome till the autumn, and in the spring set out from Paris for Geneva, from which place he writes to his aunt Tatyana:
I have passed a month and a half in Paris, and so pleasantly that I say to myself every day that I did well to come abroad. I have gone very little either into society or the literary world, or the world of cafes and public entertainments, but nevertheless, I have found so much here that is new and interesting to me that every day, when I go to bed, I say to myself: "what a pity it is the day has passed so quickly!" ”

“ There was a time when I was vain of my intelligence, of my position in this world, and of my name, but now I know and feel that if there is anything good in me, and if I have to thank Providence for it, it is a kind heart, sensitive and capable of love, that it has pleased God to give me and to keep for me. ”

“ Who knows whether there is in all of them as much careless, humble joy of life and harmony with the world as lives in the soul of this little man? Endless is the mercy and all-wisdom of Him who has permitted and has commanded all these contradictions to exist. Only to you, insignificant worm, who are boldly, unlawfully trying to penetrate His laws, His intentions, only to you do they appear as contradictions. ”

“ The rights of literature, as subordinate to eternal beauty, do not annihilate the rights of literature as the instrument of criticism and of the disclosure of human defects, while at the same time they help to heal social sores. There is boundless beauty in the serene truth and harmony of the soul; but there is also true and high beauty in the penitence which restores truth and guides men or communities to moral perfection. ”