A Confession by Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy (best way to read e books TXT) 📖
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holding on only by the upper part of my back, and not only did it become
uncomfortable but I was even frightened. And then only did I ask myself
about something that had not before occurred to me. I asked myself: Where am
I and what am I lying on? and I began to look around and first of all to
look down in the direction which my body was hanging and whiter I felt I
must soon fall. I looked down and did not believe my eyes. I was not only at
a height comparable to the height of the highest towers or mountains, but at
a height such as I could never have imagined.
I could not even make out whether I saw anything there below, in that
bottomless abyss over which I was hanging and whiter I was being drawn. My
heart contracted, and I experienced horror. To look thither was terrible. If
I looked thither I felt that I should at once slip from the last support and
perish. And I did not look. But not to look was still worse, for I thought
of what would happen to me directly I fell from the last support. And I felt
that from fear I was losing my last supports, and that my back was slowly
slipping lower and lower. Another moment and I should drop off. And then it
occurred to me that this cannot e real. It is a dream. Wake up! I try to
arouse myself but cannot do so. What am I to do? What am I to do? I ask
myself, and look upwards. Above, there is also an infinite space. I look
into the immensity of sky and try to forget about the immensity below, and I
really do forget it. The immensity below repels and frightens me; the
immensity above attracts and strengthens me. I am still supported above the
abyss by the last supports that have not yet slipped from under me; I know
that I am hanging, but I look only upwards and my fear passes. As happens in
dreams, a voice says: “Notice this, this is it!” And I look more and more
into the infinite above me and feel that I am becoming calm. I remember all
that has happened, and remember how it all happened; how I moved my legs,
how I hung down, how frightened I was, and how I was saved from fear by
looking upwards. And I ask myself: Well, and now am I not hanging just the
same? And I do not so much look round as experience with my whole body the
point of support on which I am held. I see that I no longer hang as if about
to fall, but am firmly held. I ask myself how I am held: I feel about, look
round, and see that under me, under the middle of my body, there is one
support, and that when I look upwards I lie on it in the position of
securest balance, and that it alone gave me support before. And then, as
happens in dreams, I imagined the mechanism by means of which I was held; a
very natural intelligible, and sure means, though to one awake that
mechanism has no sense. I was even surprised in my dream that I had not
understood it sooner. It appeared that at my head there was a pillar, and
the security of that slender pillar was undoubted though there was nothing
to support it. From the pillar a loop hung very ingeniously and yet simply,
and if one lay with the middle of one’s body in that loop and looked up,
there could be no question of falling. This was all clear to me, and I was
glad and tranquil. And it seemed as if someone said to me: “See that you
remember.”
And I awoke.
1882.
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