Stephen Graham

“ The sleet falls in Vladikavkaz, and then snow, and then in November even Vladikavkaz is, as Moscow and St Petersburg and the whole wintry north, a snow-clad town. The cycle of seasons has gone round; winter turned to slush on Palm Sunday at Moscow, it changed to laughing spring on the hill-slopes at Vladikavkaz. Summer followed the plough over the fields and blushed in a myriad flowers. The maize fields waved, the sunflowers gazed. Then autumn was seen in the streets, whilst all the village folk threshed the corn with flails. The priest blessed the first fruits and autumn was past. ”

“ Even below the ruins the clefts hold snow, and one sees a rivulet of snow and ice descending to become a cascade of bright water. From the river to the sky the whole is harmonised by moss and lichen and ancient greyness. It is a place where the stupendous majesty of Nature troubles the soul, where one feels oppressed by the immanence of powers greater than oneself, where one knows in one’s heart how small and feeble is the little earth-born creature Man beside those powers which have fashioned the Universe and which move in the fir-hearts of worlds. ”

“ I set off on a peaceful Sunday morning when a sun hotter than we ever know in England, even in July, was flooding the valley of the River Rion with a superabundance of light and heat. The road, eighty miles long from Kutais to Oni, is perhaps the most beautiful in Europe, and this morning, its forested mountains bathed in grey-green loveliness and garlanded with flowers, it was a vision of Paradise. As a Georgian priest had said to me, “When you get there you will see; it is summer, everything is perfectly beautiful. It is heaven. ”

“ The road was hard-beaten snow, a series of frozen cart ruts. The horses scampered ahead and the sledges shot after them. The sledge slipped over the snow like a boat over the reeds of a river. The red-faced driver sat immobile in his seat. We lay back in the sledges and took advantage of every inch of fur and rug. The runners were very low, and we could have touched the snow as we passed. Sometimes we rushed into a drift, and the snow would rise in a splash over us. ”

“ THE COMING OF SUMMER IN THE CAUCASUS ANYTHING more wonderful than the change from winter to summer on the Caucasian mountain slopes could not easily be imagined. In April the plains were deep in snow, and in May, when English woods were leafing, every tree and bush looked stark and bare. Only by an occasional sallow in bloom one knew that the winter was over. The snowdrops and blue-bells sprang up in winter’s traces, and then verdure danced out and clothed valley and slope up even to the summit of some low hills. ”

“ There are many nerveless, sad, despairing people there, people with no apparent means of happiness, people of morbid imagination and a will to be unhappy. All around them Nature has outdone herself with seductive charm; the sun flashes on the mountains, the myriad flowers smile in the valleys, the happy peasantry flood the town with jovial, laughing faces, but all in vain. “The fact is,” as I said to Ivan Savilief, “Adam was only the first modern man; the peasants are still living in their Edens. All your modern Adam and Eves have got to get saved somehow.” ”

“ What was happening in the other places of the world, in Moscow, in Lisitchansk, in London, on Ludgate Hill, in my English home? Why did man live in a scene and forget all the other scenes that existed at the same time? Why did I long to be conscious of the whole surface of life at once, to be, as it were, everywhere at home at once? The pathos of the present time is that it is breadth with length, infinite breadth, and that our scene is only one point on that infinite line. The Present Time is everywhere at once. ”

“ So long is it, and so hard, that by old age thou canst only win back to the sight of the land where thou wast once a child. Be advised, quit the road where thou must always be a seeker. Abandon thy quest, and settle here where the pleasant stream gently flows under the red stone bridge of the village. Thou wilt be lost, but thou wilt sleep and forget, and one morning will find thee once more the happiness lost in leaving the meadow. ”

“ Six miles away, on a mountain, I saw the village of Fortoug. Thence the way wound indolently upward along the sides of gnarled cliffs. A thousand feet beneath lay the silver river. The scene was one of splendour and of strange, wild beauty. For a moment I was alone with myself. It seemed that the wild earth that is so shy of men had taken me to herself and had lost all her timidity. She was living as she does when no one is looking on. Earth is more beautiful than all women, more gentle than the timidest, more splendid than the grandest.... ”

“ The Rion, broad at Kutais, was here but a small torrent. The road, if such it can be called, was traversed by many cascades and broken away by rocks and rivers, so that a horseman could pass only with difficulty. To vehicular traffic it was completely closed. Sitting at any point of the road one could count literally scores of uprooted pines. Above Glola the sun came out, the same hot Caucasian sun, though tempered by the cold air, and, as if to pretend that summer was there, the Camberwell Beauty butterfly (of name obviously not universal) flitted to and fro flaunting its purple and gold. ”

“ They are, moreover, an essential part of the city; they are in perfect harmony with it; take away the beggars and you would destroy something vital. Some are so old and weather-battered that they make the Kremlin itself look older, and those who lie at the monastery doors are so fearfully pitiable in their decrepitude that they lend power to the churches. Moscow would be a different place without the gaunt giants who hang down upon one and moan for bread; without the little cripples who squirm upon the pavement and scream their wants at the passer-by. ”

“ In the May sun the adder shot off from his damp sun-bath as one crushed through the scrub. The trees burst into leaf, first in the valleys and then on the hills. Each day one watched the climbing green and saw the fearful dark brow of a mountain soften away and pass from deep impenetrable black to soft laughing green. Snowy peaks lost their glory of white, and one knew them to be but little grey Grampians beside the huge mountains of Elbruz. The road-mud hardened and Persian stone-breakers were busy smashing their little heaps of boulders ”

“ Slowly while mountains are approached, or when cities and markets crowd the skies to heaven, but suddenly and instantaneously when summits are achieved or when the outskirts dust of town or fair is passed. One day, at a highest point on that road of his, a view will be disclosed and lie before him—the furthest and most magical glance into the 289Future. Away, away in the far-distant grey will lie his newest and last horizon, in a place more fantastic and mystical than the dissolving city, which the eye builds out of sunset clouds. ”

“ Some voice within him seemed to cry, “Behold the opportunity comes; the white horse comes riding past your gate; jump on it and ride away! Something comes for which this present happiness is only a preparation. There comes an adventure worth your sword, and a true bride for your heart. There is a narrow portal to be reached, and now, even now, riseth the tide which takes you there. Only once in a lifetime comes the tide that lifts you and puts you on the high seas.” ”

“ At Utsera it was raining on the Friday morning. At the next village, Glola, a thousand feet higher, the rain was changed for sleet. The road ascends through a fir wood said to be the grandest in the Caucasus; the pines are as broad-trunked as some of our famous oaks, and they rise straight as a die to almost incredible height. Their ancient hoariness and greyness add to their majestic appearance. ”

“ We stopped at an inn in the village, and, looking down from there, could see the thunderstorm that had left us raging in the valleys of Mleti and Ananaour. The clouds were literally below us, and we saw the blue sky above them. How brightly the sun shone! it stood just beyond a little grassy summit where some sheep were browsing; it seemed that if one were there one could stretch out one’s hand and take it from its place. ”

“ The country peasant has awakened from his winter sleep to go on his first adventure and work of the year, for as yet his fields are deep in snow and Jack Frost will not be vanquished for another month. The mushrooms that, with the help of his wife and children, he gathered in the autumn are all frozen together in the casks at the back of his izba; the planks and boards of his sledge, van and market stall lie frozen together among the drifts and icicles. ”

“ The track of the road is an even wilderness of snow. Yet for the fifty or even one hundred miles that the peasant comes to this honey fair he finds his road, and battles gaily forward. Through drift, over stream, skirting the great forest, he goes on with many a slip and tumble, the dry snow blowing up and down in a Russian snow mist. ”

“ It is overhung by gigantic cliffs, the great walls of the corridor of the gorge. The river which rushes underneath is something incomparably stronger than the bridge itself; it is a monster wallowing, plunging, roaring, thundering, lifting up a hundred dirty heads. No horse or man would stand a chance in its current; even the great glacial boulders, weighing tons, are rolled over and over by its waves, and, shutting one’s eyes, one listens to an uproar as of the heaviest streetful of traffic on Cheapside.
I think May is the best time to see the gorge, of a morning at dawn. ”

“ No other opportunity has come, and he knows in himself he will never be so near again. He has become a lonely man, one who prefers his own company, and likes to look upon the sky, or at the wild things in the woods. He always appears as if he were looking for something he has lost. His eyes are wistful and sorrow—charged, his step heavy, his thoughts slow. He comes nearest to happiness on cloudy days of autumn when he attunes himself to Nature. ”

“ We followed the river Ardon through the wonderful gorge of Kassar. The little thread of road runs unobtrusively through ten miles of ruined cliffs. Far below the little river agonises, roars and conquers. The height, the depth, the gloom, the chaos of decay and ruin—these appal the vision. It is more dreadful and uninhabitable than the gorge of Dariel, a dangerous district, moreover, where man needs fear the bear and the wolf. ”

“ No one questions the use of industry of one kind or another. Dear Carlyle, my guide, philosopher and friend, I 13wonder if he, in other realms, has learned the value of idleness. Perhaps now, after a life-time of Nirvana in some Eden planet, he has smoothed out his ruffled soul. Oh, friends, there are depths of calm and happiness to be found even here, and not autumn stillness but spring calm, the joyful peace of the dove brooding on the waters. I have learned to smooth and compose a rough, tumbled mind until it was like a broad, unsullied mirror reflecting the beauty of the world. ”

“ Down the hill and over a moor the way led to the little red-roofed village called Dalin-Dalin. Ten steep downhill miles they were, and every mile waved invitingly. Onward then downward, and with steady steps, for the rain has left everything slippery. Wet it is, wet, and the grasses and fern and scrub are up to the waist, but the sun will dry both these and me, and by noon we shall all be hot and thirsty. Through a long wood the path goes. Last week, when I was in the woods, the ground was golden with cowslips, but the fairies’ pensioners are now all gone. ”