Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow Irina Reyfman (snow like ashes .TXT) 📖

already sketched by the gleam of nocturnal torches. Gold boards were already prepared as a cover for such a significant composition. O Cook! Why did you spend your life in toils and privation?32 Why did you finish it in such a lamentable way? On board these ships, having begun the journey happily and completed it happily, you would have made as many discoveries while sitting in the same spot (and in my kingdom) and would have been equally celebrated, since you would have been honored by your sovereign.

The suspension of punishment and the amnesty of criminals were the triumphs in which in the blindness of my soul I, too, had most pride—and they scarcely figured on the scale of civic activities. My command was either undermined completely because of misguided directions, or did not have the desired effect because its application was perverse and implementation slow. Clemency became a commercial matter: the gavel of pity and magnanimity struck for the one who paid more. Instead of being renowned among my people as merciful in the pardoning of guilt, I acquired the reputation of a deceiver, hypocrite, and baleful joker. “Refrain from your clemency,” cried thousands of voices, “do not make an announcement of it in a magnificent discourse if you do not intend to fulfil it. Do not add sarcasm to insult, burden to the feeling. We slept and were calm, you disturbed our sleep; we did not wish to keep vigil since it would have been over nothing.” In the establishing of cities I saw only the squandering of public money, not infrequently bathed in the blood and tears of my subjects. In the erection of magnificent buildings there was often coupled with extravagance a failure to understand true art. I saw interior and exterior designs that were utterly tasteless. Their appearances belonged to the age of the Goths and Vandals.33 In the dwelling prepared for the Muses I did not see the springs of Castalia and Hippocrene flowing beneficially;34 this reptilian art hardly dared to lift its gaze above a horizon delimited by routine. Architects, hunched over the sketch of a building, did not think about its beauty, but about how they would acquire thereby a fortune for themselves. I felt disgust at my overblown vanity and averted my eyes.—But the outpouring of my generosity wounded my soul worse than anything. In my blindness, I had thought that one could do no better than use public money that was surplus for governmental needs on helping the destitute, clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, supporting the victims of an adverse accident, or rewarding the dignity of someone indifferent to gain and merit. But how grievous it was to see my acts of generosity showered on the rich, on the flatterer, on the perfidious friend, on a sometimes secret murderer, on the traitor and violator of the social contract, on the panderer to my predilections, on the indulger of my weaknesses, on the woman flaunting her shamelessness. The feeble sources of my generosity barely rewarded modest merit and shy distinction. Tears poured from my eyes and hid from me such pitiful images of my thoughtless generosity.—I now saw clearly that the signs of honor conferred by me were always given to the undeserving. Struck by the glitter of such sham bliss, inexperienced merit always ended up following the same path as flattery and baseness of spirit in the hope of honors, that coveted fancy of mortals; but by dragging its feet unevenly it always became weak with its initial steps and was condemned to find satisfaction in the approval it gave itself, convinced that worldly honors are ash and smoke. Seeing in everything such depravity caused by weakness and the cunning of my ministers; seeing that my tenderness was directed to a woman who in my love sought to satisfy only her vanity and who arranged only her appearance to my delight even as her heart felt disgust for me—I roared in a fury of anger: “Unworthy criminals, villains! Declare why you abused the trust of your master? Come now before your judge. Tremble in the hardness of your villainy. How can you justify your deeds? What can you say in your own excuse?” There he is, I shall summon him from an abode of humiliation. “Come,” I said to the elder whom I observed hiding on the edge of my demesne at the bottom of a hut covered in moss, “come to lighten my burden; come and restore peace to a pained heart and disturbed mind.” Once I said this, I directed my gaze on my station, I understood the extent of my obligation, I understood wherefrom derive my right and power. I was shaken to the core of my being, I felt dread at my office. My blood went into severe tumult and I awoke.—Scarcely coming to, I grabbed myself by the finger but no ring of thorns was on it. Oh, if only it had been even on the little finger of kings!

Ruler of the world, if in reading my dream you should smile sarcastically or furrow your brow, know this: the female wanderer I saw has flown away far from you and shuns your palace.

* six hundred and sixty miles—Trans.

* two-thirds of a mile—Trans.

† ten yards—Trans.

PODBEREZYE

I awoke with difficulty from a mighty sleep in which I had so many dreams.—My head was heavier than lead, worse than sometimes happens to drunks with a hangover after spending a week or so on a binge. I was in no condition to continue my trip and be shaken up on wooden axles (my carriage did not have springs). I got out a book of household remedies, searched whether there might be a recipe for headache caused by delirium in sleep and in a waking state. Although medication always traveled with me just in case, it was according to the proverb “each wise man has his share of foolishness”: I was not forearmed against delirium, which is