The Precipice Part 1

The Precipice.

by Ivan Goncharov.

PREFACE

Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov (1812-1891) was one of the leading members of the great circle of Russian writers who, in the middle of the nineteenth century, gathered around the _Sovremmenik_ (Contemporary) under Nekrasov's editorship--a circle including Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Byelinsky, and Herzen. He had not the marked genius of the first three of these; but that he is so much less known to the western reader is perhaps also due to the fact that there was nothing sensational either in his life or his literary method. His strength was in the steady delineation of character, conscious of, but not deeply disturbed by, the problems which were obsessing and distracting smaller and greater minds.

Tolstoy has a characteristically prejudiced reminiscence: "I remember how Goncharov, the author, a very sensible and educated man but a thorough townsman and an aesthete, said to me that, after Turgenev, there was nothing left to write about in the life of the lower cla.s.ses.

It was all used up. The life of our wealthy people, with their amorousness and dissatisfaction with their lives, seemed to him full of inexhaustible subject-matter. One hero kissed his lady on her palm, and another on her elbow, and a third somewhere else. One man is discontented through idleness, another because people don't love him.

And Goncharov thought that in this sphere there is no end of variety."

In fact, his greatest success was the portrait of Oblomov in the novel of that name, which was at once recognised as a peculiarly national character--a man of thirty-two years, careless, bored, untidy, lazy, but gentle and good-natured. In the present work, now translated for the first time into English, the type reappears with some differences.

Raisky seems to have been "born tired." He has plenty of intelligence, some artistic gifts, charm, and an abundant kindliness, yet he achieves nothing, either in work or in love, and in the end fades ineffectually out of the story. "He knew he would do better to begin a big piece of work instead of these trifles; but he told himself that Russians did not understand hard work, or that real work demanded rude strength, the use of the hands, the shoulders, and the back," "He is only half a man,"

says Mark Volokov, the wolfish outlaw who quotes Proudhon and talks about "the new knowledge, the new life." This rascal, whose violent pursuit of the heroine produces the tragedy of the book, is a much less convincing figure, though he also represents a reality of Russian life then, and even now.

The true contrast to Raisky of which Goncharov had deep and sympathetic knowledge is shown in the splendid picture of the two women--Vera, the infatuated beauty, and Aunt Tatiana, whose agony of motherly concern and shamed remembrance is depicted with great power. The book is remarkable as a study in the psychology of pa.s.sionate emotion; for the western reader, it is also delightful for the glimpses it gives of the old Russian country life which is slowly pa.s.sing away. The scene lies beside one of the small towns on the Volga--"like other towns, a cemetery ...

the tranquillity of the grave. What a frame for a novel, if only he knew what to put in the novel.... If the image of pa.s.sion should float over this motionless, sleepy little world, the picture would glow into the enchanting colour of life." The storm of pa.s.sion does break over the edge of the hill overlooking the mighty river, and, amid the wreckage, the two victims rise into a n.o.bility that the reckless reformer and the pleasant dilettante have never conceived.

Goncharov had pa.s.sed many years in Governmental service and had, in fact, reached the age of thirty-five when his first work, _"A Common Story,"_ was published. _"The Frigate Pallada,"_ which followed, is a lengthy descriptive account of an official expedition to j.a.pan and Siberia in which Goncharov took part. After the publication of _"The Precipice,"_ its author was moved to write an essay, _"Better Late Than Never,"_ in which he attempted to explain that the purpose of his three novels was to present the eternal struggle between East and West--the lethargy of the Russian and the ferment of foreign influences.

Thus he ranged himself more closely with the great figures among his contemporaries. Two other volumes consist of critical study and reminiscence.

CHAPTER I

Boris Pavlovich Raisky had a vivacious, unusually mobile face. At first sight he appeared younger than his years. The high, white forehead gave an impression of freshness and vigour; the eyes blazed one moment with intelligence, emotion or gaiety, a moment later they wore a meditative, dreamy expression, then again they looked young, even childlike. At other times they evidenced knowledge of life, or looked so weary, so bored that they betrayed their owner's age; at these times there appeared between them three furrows, certain indications of time and knowledge of life. Smooth black hair fell on his neck and half covered the ears, with here and there silver threads about the temples. His complexion had kept the tints of youth except on the temples and the chin, which were a brownish-yellow colour.

It was easy to guess from his physiognomy that the conflict between youth and maturity was past, that he had pa.s.sed the early stages of life's journey and that sorrow and sickness had left their marks on him.

Only the mouth, with its delicate lines, with the fresh, almost childlike smile remained unchanged by age.

He had been left an orphan in childhood, and for some time his indifferent, bachelor guardian had left his education to a relative, Boris's aunt.

This lady was endowed with a rich temperament, but her horizon did not stretch far beyond her own home, where in the tranquil atmosphere of woods and gardens, in the environment of the family and the estate, Boris had pa.s.sed several years. When he grew older his guardian sent him to the High School, where the family traditions of former wealth and of the connexion with other old n.o.ble families faded.

His further development, occupations and inclinations led him still further from the traditions of his childhood. Raisky had lived for about ten years in St. Petersburg; that is to say he rented three pleasant rooms from a German landlord, which he retained, although after he had left the civil service he rarely spent two successive half-years in the capital.

He had left the civil service as casually as he had entered it, because, when he had had time to consider his position, he came to the conclusion that the service is not an aim in itself, but merely a means to bring together a number of men who would otherwise have had no justification for their existence. If these men had not existed, the posts which they filled need never have been created.

Now, he had already pa.s.sed his thirtieth year, and had neither sowed nor reaped. He did not follow the same path as the other ordinary arrival from the interior of Russia, for he was neither an officer nor an official, nor did he seek a career for himself by hard work or by influence. He was inscribed in the registers of his police district as a civil servant.

It would have been hard for the expert in physiognomy to decipher Raisky's characteristics, inclinations and character from his face because of its extraordinary mobility. Still less could his mental physiognomy be defined. He had moments when, to use his own expression, he embraced the whole world, so that many people declared that there was no kinder, more amiable man in existence. Others, on the contrary, who came across him at an unfortunate moment, when the yellow patches on his face were most marked, when his lips were drawn in a sinister, nervous quiver, and he returned kindness and sympathy with cold looks and sharp words, were repelled by him and even pursued him with their dislike.

Some called him egotistic and proud, while others declared themselves enchanted with him; some again maintained that he was theatrical, others that he was not to be trusted. Two or three friends judged otherwise. "A n.o.ble nature," they said, "most honourable, but with all its virtues, nervous, pa.s.sionate, excitable, fiery tempered...." So there had never been any unanimous opinion of him.

Even in early childhood while he lived with his aunt, and later, after his school-days had begun, he showed the same enigmatic and contradictory traits.

It might be expected that the first effort of a new boy would be to listen to the teacher's questions and the pupils' answers. But Raisky stared at the teacher, as if seeking to impress on his memory the details of his appearance, his speech, how he took snuff; he looked at his eyebrows, his beard, then at his clothes, at the cornelian seal suspended across his waistcoat, and so on. Then he would observe each of the other boys and note their peculiarities, or he would study his own person, and wonder what his own face was like, what the others thought of him....

"What did I say just now?" interrupted the master, noticing Boris's wandering glance.

To the teacher's amazement Boris replied word for word, "And what is the meaning of this?" He had listened mechanically, and had caught the actual syllables.

The master repeated his explanation, and again Boris caught the sound of his voice, noticing that sometimes he spoke shortly, staccato--sometimes drawled as if he were singing, and then rapped out his words smartly like nuts.

"Well?"

Raisky blushed, perspired with anxiety, and was silent.

It was the mathematical master. He went to the blackboard, wrote up the problem, and again began the explanation. Raisky only noticed with what rapidity and certainty he wrote the figures, how the waistcoat with the cornelian seal and then the snuff-spattered shirt front came nearer--nothing, except the solution of the problem, escaped him.

Now and then a notion penetrated to his brain, but when it came to equations he grew weary with the effort required. Sometimes the teacher lost patience with him, and generally concluded: "Go back to your place, you are a blockhead."

But if a whiff of originality pa.s.sed over the master himself, if he taught as if it were a game, and had recourse neither to his book nor to the blackboard, then the solution flashed on Raisky, and he found the answer quicker than any of the others.

He consumed pa.s.sionately history, novels and tales; wherever he could he begged for books. But he did not like facts or theories or anything that drew him from the world of fancy towards the world of reality. In the geography lesson he could not understand how any boy could answer in cla.s.s, but once out of cla.s.s he could talk about foreign countries and cities, or about the sea, to the amazement of his cla.s.smates. He had not learnt it from the teacher or from a book, but he gave a picture of the place as if he had actually been there.

"You are inventing," a sceptical listener would say. "Va.s.sili Nikitich never said that."

His companions did not know what to make of him, for his sympathies changed so often that he had neither constant friends nor constant enemies. One week he would attach himself to one boy, seek his society, sit with him, read to him, talk to him and give him his confidence. Then, for no reason, he would leave him, enter into close relations with another boy, and then as speedily forget him.

If one of his companions annoyed him he became angry with him and pursued hostilities obstinately long after the original cause was forgotten. Then suddenly he would have a friendly, magnanimous impulse, would carefully arrange a scene of reconciliation, which interested everyone, himself most of all.

When he was out of school, everyday life attracted him very little; he cared neither for its gayer side nor its sterner activities. If his guardian asked him how the corn should be threshed, the cloth milled or linen bleached, he turned away and went out on to the verandah to look out on the woods, or made his way along the river to the thicket to watch the insects at work, or to observe the birds, to see how they alighted, how they sharpened their beaks. He caught a hedgehog and made a playmate of it, went out fishing all day long with the village boys, or listened to the tales about Pugachev told by a half-witted old woman living in a mud hut, greedily drinking in the most singular of the horrible incidents she related, while he looked into the old woman's toothless mouth and into the caverns of her fading eyes.

For hours he would listen with morbid curiosity to the babble of the idiot Feklusha. At home he read in the most desultory way. He deemed the secrets of Eastern magic, Russian tales and folk-lore, skimmed Ossian, Ta.s.so, Homer, or wandered with Cook in strange lands. If he found nothing to read he lay motionless all day long, as if he were exhausted with hard work; his fancy carried him beyond Ossian and Homer, beyond the tales of Cook, until fevered with his imaginings he rose tired, exhausted, and unable for a long time to resume normal life.

People called him an idler. He feared this accusation, and wept over it in secret, though he was convinced that he was no idler, but something different, that no one but himself comprehended.

Unfortunately, there was no one to guide him in a definite direction. On the one hand, his guardian merely saw to it that his masters came at stated times and that Boris did not avoid school; on the other, his aunt contented herself with seeing that he was in good health, ate and slept well, was decently dressed, and as a well-brought-up boy should, did not consort with every village lout.

n.o.body cared to see what he read; his aunt gave him the keys of his father's library in the old house, where he shut himself in, now to read Spinoza, now a novel, and another day Voltaire or Boccaccio.

He made better progress in the arts than in the sciences. Here too he had his tricks. One day the teacher set the pupils to draw eyes, but Raisky grew tired of that, and proceeded to add a nose and a moustache.

The master surprised him, and seized him by the hair. When he looked closer at the drawing, however, he asked: "Where did you learn to do that?"

"Nowhere," was the reply.

"But it is well done, my lad. See yourself what this hurry to get on leads to; the forehead and nose are good enough, but the ear you have put in the wrong place, and the hair looks like tow."

Raisky was triumphant. The words, "But it is well done; the forehead and nose are good enough," were for him a crown of laurel.

He walked round the school yard proud in the consciousness that he was the best in the drawing cla.s.s; this mood lasted to the next day, when he came to grief in the ordinary lessons. But he conceived a pa.s.sion for drawing, and during the month that followed drew a curly-headed boy, then the head of Fingal. His fancy was caught by a woman's head which hung in the master's room; it leaned a little towards one shoulder, and looked away into the distance with melancholy, meditative eyes. "Allow me to make a copy," he begged with a gentle, tremulous voice, and with a nervous quiver of the upper lip.

"Don't break the gla.s.s," the master warned him, and gave him the picture.

Boris was happy. For a whole week his masters did not secure a single intelligent answer from him. He sat silently in his corner and drew. At night he took the drawing to his bedroom, and as he looked into its gracious eyes, followed the lines of the delicately bent neck, he shivered, his heart stood still, there was a catch in his breath, and he closed his eyes; with a faint sigh he pressed the picture to his breast where the breath came so painfully--and then there was a crash and the gla.s.s fell clattering on the floor.

When he had drawn the head his pride knew no bounds. His work was exhibited with the drawings of pupils of the top cla.s.s, the teacher had made few corrections, had only here and there put broad strokes in the shading, had drawn three or four more decided lines, had put a point in each eye--and the eyes were now like life.