The Created Legend quotes

I take a piece of life, coarse and poor, and create from it a delightful legend⁠—because I am a poet.

Whether it linger in the darkness; whether it be dim, commonplace, or raging with a furious fire—life is before you; I, a poet, will erect the legend I have created about the enchanting and the beautiful.

Chance caught in the entangling net of circumstance brings about every beginning. Yet it is better to begin with what is splendid in earthly experience, or at any rate with what is beautiful and pleasing.

Splendid are the body, the youth, and the gaiety in man; splendid are the water, the light, and the summer in nature.

It was a bright, hot midday in summer, and the heavy glances of the flaming Dragon fell on the River Skorodyen. The water, the light, and the summer beamed and were glad;

Perhaps they enjoyed their bathing because they felt themselves the mistresses of these fast-flowing waters and of the sand-shoals under their agile feet. And they swam about and laughed in this river with the assurance and freedom of princesses born to rule.

Few know the boundaries of their kingdom⁠—but fortunate are they who know what they possess and exercise their sway.

They swam up and down and across the river, and tried to outswim and outdive one another.

The sisters walked two versts through the wood. They spoke quietly of various things, and felt a little agitated.

Curiosity often agitates people.

The sinuous road with two wagon-ruts revealed picturesque views at every turn. The path finally chosen by the sisters led to a hollow. Its sides, overgrown with bushes and weeds, looked wildly beautiful.

Their simple, light attire seemed beautiful. It was pleasant to look at them, perhaps because their dress revealed the active parts of their body, the arms and the legs.

Dress here was made to protect, and not to conceal; to clothe, and not to muffle.

The blue and red of the hats and of the dresses gave emphasis to the vivid tones of the faces and of the arms and legs.

This fear of talking about the past occasionally came upon Elisaveta.

Who knows what sorrow is hid behind a bright smile, and from what darkness has sprung the blossoming which gives sudden joy to a glance, elusively beautiful and born of unhappy worldly experience?

“Did you find your way in easily?” asked the golden-haired Nadezhda with a friendly but subtle smile. “It’s usually not a simple matter,” she explained.

Trirodov smiled in a friendly fashion:

“That is the nature of this place,” he observed. “Terror and joy live here together.”

The sisters were shown many interesting things in the house—objects of art and of worship; things which told of distant lands and of hoary antiquity; engravings of a strange and disturbing character; variegated stones, turquoise, pearls; ugly, amorphous, and grotesque idols;

The sisters had seen so much that it seemed as if an age had passed, but actually they had spent only two hours here.

It is impossible to measure time. One hour is an age, another is an instant; but humanity makes no distinction, levels the hours down to an average.

“What, only two hours!” exclaimed Elena. “How long we’ve spent here. It’s time to go home for dinner.”

“I am going to kill him,” said Kiril hotly.

“In order to kill a man you need to believe that one man is essentially better or worse than another, that he is distinct from the other not accidentally or socially, but in the mystic sense. That is to say, murder only confirms inequality.”

“By the way, Elisaveta,” remarked Stchemilov, “we have come to talk business with you.”

They found themselves in constant disagreement, and corrected one another. It might have been a dream. Now it seemed one, now the other. Was it reality or a dream? Where is the borderline?

Whether life be a sweet or a bitter dream, it passes by like a swift vision!

Three days passed by. Again the day was quiet and clear, again the high Dragon smiled his malignant, excessively bright smile. He counted, as he rose, his livid seconds, his flaming minutes;

Elena asked many questions, although Elisaveta tried to restrain her; but they found out nothing. The old woman looked past the sisters and mumbled in answer to all questions:

“I know what I know. I have seen what I have seen.”

The quiet children approached them. They stood motionless and inanimate in the shade of the old trees, and looked at the sisters with a fixed, expressionless stare. The sisters felt uncomfortable and made haste to depart.

“What sort of place have you prepared for yourself?” asked Ostrov, smiling malignantly. “Or is it a secret?”

“It is the moon,” was Trirodov’s simple and tranquil answer.

Ostrov laughed boisterously. Trirodov added:

Ostrov laughed boisterously. Trirodov added:

“Moreover, the moon has been created by me. She is before my window, ready to take me.”

Ostrov jumped up in great rage from his place, stamped violently with his feet, and shouted:

Ostrov suddenly felt an incomprehensible fear. He experienced the feeling of having passed into another’s power. He felt oppressed. A stern smile marked Trirodov’s face. He said quietly:

“You are of such little value that I could kill you without scruple⁠—like a snake. But I am tired even of other people’s murders.”

“My value?” Ostrov muttered hoarsely and absurdly.

Kirsha remembered her; he could not forget her, and kept on recalling her. Trirodov for some reason associated his wife’s death with the birth of his son, though there was no obvious connection: his wife died from a casual, sharp illness. Trirodov thought:

“She bore, and therefore had to die. Life is only for the innocent.”

After her death he always awaited her; there was for him the consoling thought:

The light of the moon was seductive with mystery. She smiled with her lifeless, tranquil face, and appeared to be saying:

“What was will be again. What was will happen more than once.”

The night was peaceful and clear. They walked a long time—Trirodov and Kirsha, and some distance behind them the quiet Grisha followed. At last there appeared, quite near, peering through the mist, the low white cemetery wall. Another road cut across theirs.

Then when the stamp of horses’ hoofs and the hum of human voices subsided, the residents quietly went back to their beds, and were soon asleep.

Lady Godiva would have been highly pleased with such modest people: they looked, yet did not show themselves, and did not hinder.

They went to bed again, and muttered something to their wives. The freedom-loving bourgeois grumbled:

From one fountain come both the gladdening raptures and the gladdening lusts of the passions.

We torment others only because it gives us joy.

After the agonies on the way from the wood, after a search had been made, many of the prisoners were dispatched to prison. Others were set free.

The slant rays of the rising Dragon, veiled with a light mist, fell upon the scowling faces of the crowd as indifferently as upon the fence or the closed gates.

The Ancient Dragon is not our sun.

The faces of those who stood near the closed gates were scowling. No one was permitted to enter the hospital. Within, preparations were going on for a secret burial of the victims. Tumultuous voices of anger rose in the crowd.

Piotr excused himself. He felt uneasy. He walked out of the house alone, aimlessly, wishing only to escape his own relatives.

The sunset blazed for a long time, tormented itself with its unwillingness to die; it lingered on as if it were its last day, and at last expired.

The whole sky became blue—exquisitely blue. But to the northwest an edge of it was translucently green. The quiet stars trembled in the blue heights. The moon, which had looked for some time a pale white in the luminous clearness, now rose yellow and distinct.

“

Life is tragic. She destroys all illusions with the power of her pitiless irony.

You know, of course, that Elisaveta’s soul is a tragic soul, and that a great boldness is necessary in order to approach her, and to say to her the great Yes of life. Yes, Elisaveta. …”

“

The conscience, ripened to universal fullness, says that every fault is my fault.

”

“It’s this.

You were reading a book, my good people, but not the right one.

”

Much less was said and written about the consumed beer. For some reason or other it did not offend people so much.

In accordance with our general custom of placing substance above the form, it was found that the stealing of the cap deserved the greater protest, inasmuch as it is more difficult to get along without a cap than without beer.

His mother, however, loved him. Of course, she loved him. That was why she beat him in her anger.

Love and cruelty go always together among humankind.

They like to torment, vengeance gives them pleasure. But later Egorka’s mother took pity on him; she thought she had flogged him too hard. And now she walked up quietly to him.

“

Love says ‘No’ to the world, the lyrical ‘No’⁠—marriage says ‘Yes’ to it, the ironic ‘Yes.’

To be in love, to strive, yet not to possess—that is the poetry of love, sweet but illusive. Externally love contradicts the world and conceals its fatal discord.

The young girl walked up to the police sergeant with a light easy gait.

Thus walk queens of beloved free lands, barefoot virgins crowned with white flowers, queens of lands of which our too Parisian age does not know.

The police sergeant whiffed his shag, vodka, and garlic at Zinaida, and smiling lasciviously, so that the green and the yellow of his crooked teeth showed conspicuously, he said:

“

It is the one thing that is decent,

” retorted Trirodov.