Zofia Nałkowska

“ Oh, no, it is not death: this is Life! Understand the truth.— It is life; behold it now: life in very deed.
You see now?—All is clear. It was for that reason that Czolhanski was awaiting him here. It was for that reason that he wished you not to come, and that, because you came, he stayed away.
Is—is not this yet Death?
No. It is Life: Life that, out of the accents of that voice, supremely melodious, drowsy, sleepy, yet replete with fire from an unfathomable abyss, out of the lazy, lascivious snaky curves of those limbs of hers ”

“ In the valleys of the mind it is not hard for two souls to come together; but as one reaches the mountain-tops, each is farther and farther apart, and the chasm between them becomes more and more profound; besides, at the tread of the first ponderous foot, those bridges of cunning workmanship, running from peak to peak, are broken and fall to pieces.
Nevertheless, there is no love, nor even much liking, between Martha and myself. We do not so much as call each other friends. We both agree that, between one woman and another, no true love is possible ”

“ No one was allowed into the studio; black coffee was poured out by Radlowski and Gina, and brought to each of us by them. And soft and low fell slowly from our lips words as of silken tissue, containing thoughts of delicate essence, recondite and shrouded in mystery.
The unknown blonde was saying to Emma:
"At such moments as these, I never give one thought to my lover. ... I wish to feel no love for him, in order that I may dream of Love itself. ... I see a land such as on earth there is none: where a Not-sun shines, and where Not-flowers have fragrance! A vision! ... ”

“ To my power, to my continuance, I can find no limits I am not of the earth, I am not Janka Dernowicz; I am eternal, unsleeping consciousness; I am the Universe! In this burial-ground, Janusz grows dismal, and holds forth on the evanescence of all earthly things. A beautiful animal which lives in fear of Death!
What if it be true that animals have no souls?
At times I experience the pangs of an entirely unjustified longing for the man who came into my life and went out of it like a hurricane. Yes, now and again I long for my ice-plains and my Northern Lights! ”

“ Last evening I spent some time in Gina's studio. I was glad she had asked me to come, for last night there was something or other on at Witold's club, and I do not like to pass my evenings alone now. I fear my own thoughts, which are never so profound as in solitude and by night. This activity of my mind sometimes exceeds my limited strength to bear it. And when I note that there is in this some resemblance between myself and Martha, I again hear her prediction of vengeance ringing in my ears.—There are moments when, oh, how weak, how very weak I feel! ”

“ No shadow of any yearning for the Beyond, no shadow of anything like intellect or brightness of thought! ... By day they reflected the sun, her lamp in the evening, and my own eyes at night. They had the beautiful dead gleam of pearls. She might have been less pretty: with such eyes, she was pretty enough for me. And then, that slow, sleepy, brainless voluptuousness in her glance! And her white flashing teeth, too! I tell you, there is not a single spot or flaw in any one of them; her molars are like the molars of a ruminant, large and flat. ”

“ Latterly Janusz has altered very much. His face is pale; it is the face of a man lost in troubled thought. When we are by ourselves, he scarcely ever raises his eyes to mine; and his outbursts of energy resemble the frenzy of delirium. After the equestrian evolutions just performed, he looks wearied and gloomy, and his lips are closed fast as he rides.
Why is each of us thus? I alone can tell. Because Martha is thinking of Imszanski, and Janusz of me, and I am thinking of Roslawski. It is just like a novel: each of us as remote as one star is from another. ”

“ Besides, in the place of mere intensity of impression, I attain a far wider range; for my mind has the pleasure of perceiving and discriminating certain nice shades, which escape the notice of others."
A smile rises to Roslawski's lips, and I feel my soul freezing within me.
And now, summer is dead and gone: withered with suffering and desire, the flame-red flower of Life has fallen to the ground. Now once more the infinite ice-plains are stretching all around me. Behold the sun quenched in the black sky, and the greenish Northern Lights rising above the horizon. ”

“ In company with Gina and Owinski, I was just leaving a coffee-house. In front of us, surrounded by several men, there walked a woman, rather thickset, far from tall, who wore a short-skirted, bright-coloured dress, and a wide-brimmed hat, also of a bright hue. She went slowly, with an undulating motion of the hips, turning, now to right, now to left, now behind her, chattering with lively interest, and addressing them all together, her hands meanwhile nimble with gestures like those of a flower-girl offering nosegays. ”

“ Yes, I may throw myself under the wheels of a locomotive, but never will I say I do that out of love for it!
"Reasonable people should remember that 'the heart is no servant,' and that, beyond intellectual and conscious resolve, we can find nothing on which we can safely count." This I say, as light-heartedly and as smilingly as I can, feeling meanwhile the dismay of a horrible misgiving—almost a certitude—clutching at my heart.
And now at last I am alone with Roslawski and Obojanski. I remain in my corner all the evening, saying little, overwhelmed with dread of the coming decisive moment. ”

“ All my culture exists only in my brain; what is emotional in me remains elemental and primitive, full of stupid sentiment and of scruples.
And therefore it is that I am so unlike other women, whose great characteristic is that their feelings are cultured.
At times, when I see him afar, standing out from amongst the crowd, splendid in shape and wonderful in beauty, I have a sense of pride that he is mine—my own! Neither a pet cat nor a dog, neither a parrot nor a canary: a man of the world, tall, refined, in life's prime. ”

“ That I love solitude when alone, but that the feeling of solitude when some one is by me, fills me with unspeakable dread, for then I hear my soul uttering her triumphant laugh: this I would never confess to him.
Vigorous I am, and able to struggle for a long time. But even for warriors there come moments when they trustfully lay their tired heads on some one's lap; when they feel secure in the knowledge of some one above them, watching over them, standing between them and their foes, between them and the Infinite, the Unknown. ”

“ To believe that there is nothingness, one must indeed have an intense power of faith. I cannot bring myself to accept the creed of nothingness. For in the world where I am now, neither Being is, nor Non-Being; there is neither the Ego nor the Non-Ego; nor has the soul ever laid her icy hand upon the body: I am in a world wherein there is no soul of mine.
My soul will end its being at the instant of Death, not because that world is a world of nothingness, but because therein is no such thing as indestructibility of substance. ”

“ I have no faith save in this crystal transparency of my being; save in the knowledge that Life passes close to me, touches me, grazes me, and yet by some miracle never leaves upon my long white robe one streak from the golden pollen of the flowers she bears; no faith save in the immaculateness of this my soul, that can travel through a coal-mine, and yet come out white as snow. The only article of my faith, the sole thing I care for, is the conviction that I shall go through life nobly and beautifully, in sweetness and tranquillity infinite ”

“ That is why I dislike to hear Imszanski babbling, in a superficial and general manner, of the excellence of my nature, not knowing in what it consists, and unable to grasp it.
And that, too, is why I have a liking for Wiazewski, and a wish that he could find it in his heart to love me.
Spring is coming. With a hot sun overhead, there is a cool breeze around. I feel joyful, and frolicsome, and full of animal spirits. I could fall upon the neck of the first man I met in the street! To be loved by somebody, that is my craving. ”

“ Every one has something he can call his own. Sufferers magnify in their mind the power of suffering; those who have abandoned everything make a god of their strength of will to do so. But I have nothing left, nothing absolutely. Of beauty I have not enough to love that beauty in myself. Wisdom is wisdom from one standpoint only: that lost, its very idea ceases to exist. I have too much mind to be artful and mysterious, so I strike no one as being uncommon. ”

“ I am beyond existence and beyond nothingness—in that world wherein dies the immemorial conflict between dream and vigil, where Wrong, robed in her queenly purple, is no longer shadowed by Vengeance, attired in pallid green; where stony Hatred no longer hugs in her fierce embrace the weeping god of love; where the marble statue of Pride no more does homage to the grim spectre, Fear; wherein there are no more wretched victories, nor the portentous delights of worshipping Self and the Power of Self!
And I am in such bliss—bliss so celestial, so divine! ”

“ Along the walls stand many fine old pieces of furniture, and on the veranda outside an orchestra is softly tuning up.
As I enter, I make an impression—the usual one. For a time, whilst every glance is turned in my direction, I feel as if pitted against them all. But, though I scarce know any one here, I am not embarrassed even for one instant. The sensation of unfriendliness, borne in upon me from those around, the feeling of my loneliness in this throng, only produces in me a reaction of haughty defiance. ”

“ I said, turning to Gina, "with your quasi-Pantheistic theory of love; nor Madame Wildenhoff, with her volatile and almost man-like eroticism; nor Idalia, nor Martha—none of you is, any more than I am, a woman of the future; you are full of exaggerated theories, of crotchets, of false notions, of atavistic trends and extreme views. Yet I prefer you to that free and happy woman of our dreams, in whom desire, conscious and in perfect equilibrium, will not, however intense it may be, trespass beyond the limits of its possibility to be satisfied. ”

“ But here is the field wherein Imszanski bears away the palm. Never are his movements more elegant, his smiles more cordial, his glances more winning. No one can better than he deal out the small change of social amenities in his looks, his superficial judgments on literature and on art; none, when addressing a compliment to a woman, can more subtly envelope what he means in a mist of allusions.
Both husband and wife appear to advantage. He, with the perfect culture of his ancient and noble descent, is simply enchanting. ”

“ Gina, who had silently disposed her lithe, snake-like, supple figure on a little sofa, looked round with astonishment at her fiancé.
"Oh, we may call it love of a third type," answered Madame Wildenhofif: "love sanctioned by law, the union of two souls in friendship, and the bringing forth of rachitic off-spring: an abnormal combination of brute and human love."
"Do you then, Madame," urged Owinski, "perceive no good points in marriage?"
"None whatever," she replied with a bland smile, "because—and this reason alone would suffice me—because I hate marriage with all my heart. ”

“ Is not misery at its height in the very springtime of life, when the faculty of possible enjoyment is most developed? In this indeed, the lot of our fiancé is always and invariably an enviable one. I am not happy, and I doubt whether you have ever known happiness. A strange being he is, forever plucking flowers and smiling in the sunshine, yet unceasingly, and often unwittingly, marking his road through life by the pain he gives to others, and by the tears, so vain and so unworthy of us, which he makes us shed. ”

“ I merely use him ill, because my soul is a-wandering alone over those ice-plains of mine, is still dreaming cold silvery dreams, is seeking in vain for a fraternal soul.
Is it then really an impossibility to be in love without loving also?
While out shooting to-day, Janusz had just such a gleam in his eyes as he has when he gloats on me.
He is a typical primitive man of a nomad race of hunters, in whom the instinct of conservation manifests itself as vehemently when procuring his own subsistence as when acting for the preservation of the race. Game is to him a vital necessity; so is woman. ”

“ He said aside to Gina: "But something must be done: Emma is here."
Gina laughed. "Oh, all the better! If you have nothing but that to make you uneasy!"
Radlowski was now more at ease. He ushered us into his bedchamber, beyond the studio, and left us there together. Now and then we could hear a confused sound of talking, though the voices were low, in the next room.
"And Emma, who is she?" I asked.
"Oh, a most beautiful woman, though not exactly admissible into society. One of the celebrated étoiles of beauty, formerly a model of Radlowski's." ”

“ My first impulse was to flee her; but Mme. Wildenhoff retained me against my will. She, I think, has not made any definite guess; but the other!
"I must confess to you," she began, "that all I have made you think of me is untrue—a mask of mine, a mannerism, an empty theory. All women are at their heart's core exactly alike; during all their life they follow one thing alone, and perish in pursuit of it." ”

“ I sit for a long time, spending the evening with Imszanski. And I enjoy myself. Although I do not for one instant forget her, that graceful melancholy woman, who now is wandering through the magnificent apartments of her lonely dwelling, always awaiting him, though she knows he will not come, and at the slightest noise rushing to the ante-chamber, listening with her ear close against the door, and her brain on fire with excitement. But the billows of undisturbed stillness are beating all around her. ”

“ His soul was the thing nearest and dearest to me on earth, but I loved him yet more because his eyes were so mournful and his lips so fine.
"He may have been too outspoken: he desired I should know all about him, before I plighted my troth. I wish I had known nothing; there is bliss only where there is ignorance. ... For there have been some instants of forgetfulness; and these have given me an inkling of what my happiness would have been—how immense, how incredible—had I been his only love in the past, as I am (it yet may be) his only love in the present. ”