The Duel quotes

All the recruits were obliged to sing in chorus. It was a hideous concert, and I asked Lieutenant Andrusevich how anyone could put up with such a row so late at night. He answered laughingly, ‘

Why shouldn’t we now and then, like the dogs, howl at the moon?

’ ”

“Ah! that is detestable,” chimed in Viätkin, laughing. “Yesterday, when he favoured the 4th Company with a visit, he shouted: ‘Who dares to thrust the regulations in my face? I am your regulations. Not a word more.

Here I’m your Tsar and your God.

’ ”

Learn to stand at attention and hold your jaw even if the sky falls—etc. Today I’ve had a wigging for you before the whole of my company. Who saddled me with you? Who asked for your services? Not I, at any rate.

You are, for me and my company, about as necessary as a fifth leg is to a dog.

Go to the deuce, and return to your feeding-bottle.”

“

Like a monstrously huge giant that suddenly checks himself in the middle of a furious leap,

” he thought, the train came to an abrupt stop before the platform.

I possess—I don’t know how to express it—a certain flexibility of mind or spirit that helps me to hold my own, to adapt myself everywhere. Finally, Romochka, look at me, gaze at me carefully. Am I, as a human being, so uninteresting?

Am I, as a woman, so devoid of all charms that I deserve to be doomed to stay and be soured in this hateful place, in this awful hole which has no place on the map?

”

Dear, it is nothing.” She pushed him nervously away. Immediately afterwards she turned with a little laugh to Romashov, and whilst she was again snatching the thread from him, she said to him coquettishly: “Answer me candidly, you clumsy thing, am I pretty or not?

Remember, though, it is the height of impoliteness not to pay a woman the compliment she wants.

”

An officer must be a pattern of correctness; he is bound to weigh every word he utters. And, moreover, this delicate squeamishness, the fear of a shot!

Your vocation is to risk your life⁠—which is precisely the point.

”

“No, that is not true!” shouted Nasanski in a voice of thunder. “Yes, I say it once more—it is a lie. In this, as in everything else,

Nature has revealed her wisdom and ingenuity.

The fact is merely that whereas Lieutenant Ditz finds in love only brutal enjoyment, disgust, and surfeit, Dante finds in it beauty, felicity, and harmony. True love is the heritage of the elect, and to understand this let us take another simile.

What is the obstacle, then? No one but yourself. For a person one loves, one can, you know, sacrifice the whole world, and now I ask of you only this one thing; but can you? No, you cannot, and now I bid you goodbye forever.

In thought I kiss you on your forehead as one kisses a corpse, and you are dead to me⁠—forever.

I advise you to destroy this letter, not that I blush for or fear its contents, but because I think it will be a source to you of tormenting recollections. I repeat once more—”

What do you suppose our lot would be if I acted otherwise? I confess I lack the energy and self-denial requisite for becoming the housekeeper, nurse-girl, or sister of mercy to a weakling with no will of his own.

I loathe above everything self-sacrifice and pity for others, and I shall let neither you nor anyone else excite these feelings in me.

I will not have a husband who would only be a dog at my feet, incessantly craving alms or proofs of affection. And you would never be anything else, in spite of your extraordinary talents and noble qualities.

They were a mingling of jealousy of Nasanski—jealousy on account of what had been—but also a certain exultant pity for Nasanski, and in himself there awoke new hopes, dim and indefinite, but delicious and alluring.

It was as if this letter had put into his hand a mysterious, invisible clue that was leading him into the future.

The breeze had subsided. The tepid night’s intense darkness and silence reminded one of soft, warm velvet. One felt, as it were, life’s mystic creative force in the never-slumbering air, in the dumb stillness of the invisible trees, in the smell of the earth.

“Oh, how wonderful, how mysterious is this. And so simple too. Is it true that all individuals possess a similar Ego? Perhaps it is only I who have it? Or perhaps nobody has it.

Down there hundreds of soldiers stand drawn up in front of me.

I give the order: ‘Eyes to the right,’ to hundreds of human beings who has each his own Ego, and who see in me something foreign, distant, i.e. non-Ego—then turn their heads at once to the right.

“

If I were the Tsar, I would eat asparagus every day of my life.

”

Somebody once remarked, ‘Your Excellency, you mean the arms of Morpheus?’ ‘

Oh, that’s the same thing. They both belong to the same mineralogy.

’ Well, that’s just what I am going to do, gentlemen.”

“It is all the same, Hainán.

Allah is in you. Allah is in me. There is one Allah for us all.

”

“Well, yes, old fellow—but it’s life,” replied Viätkin in a sleepy way. “

Life after all is⁠—only natural philosophy and energy. And what is energy?

”

“Wait and listen.

I dreamt of you last night⁠—a wonderful, enchanting dream.

I dreamt we were dancing together in a very remarkable room. Oh, I should at any time recognize that room in its minutest details.

“I can’t say, your Excellency? I have a hundred men under my command. It is hard to remember all about them.”

“Hard to remember, did you say?” repeated the General in a sad and serious voice.

“Ah, gentlemen, gentlemen. You must certainly know what the Scripture says: ‘Do not destroy the soul,’ and what are you doing?

Romashov felt at that moment a boundless hatred and contempt of himself. “I am lost; I am dishonoured forever. I’ll shoot myself. Can I suppose I am worthy to live! What am I? An insignificant, ridiculous, contemptible wretch—a caricature, an ugly, disgusting, idiotic creature.

My own soldiers will laugh at me, and, behind my back, they will make merry with nudges and secret signs, at my expense.

Or, perhaps, they will pity me. All the same, everything is lost, and I—I’ll shoot myself.”

“I shall be brief,” said he in an abrupt and decisive tone. “The regiment is inefficient, but that’s not the fault of the soldiers, but of the officers.

When the coachman is bad the horses will not go.

Gentlemen, you have no heart, no mind or sympathy, so far as the men’s needs and interests are concerned. Don’t forget, ‘Blessed is he who lays down his life for his friend.’

This gloomy, silent monologue forced tears from Romashov’s eyes, but he did not wipe them away.

It was so delicious to imagine himself a martyr, an innocent victim to the malignity of mankind.

He had now reached the white-beet field, the extensive surface of which had an almost oppressive influence on Romashov. He climbed on to a little hillock just beside the ravine in which the railway ran.

… his soul a secret calculating thought that his solemnly promised submission to our Lord’s will would move the All-seeing God suddenly to work, on his behalf, a miracle whereby all the bitter sorrows and trials of this day would appear only as a hideous dream.

“Where are you?” shrieked just then a locomotive down at the station with a short, angry, impatient whistle. Another engine at once answered, in a hollow, threatening tone, “I am coming.”

From the moonlit crest of the ravine’s opposite slope a soft rustle was heard. In order more easily to detect the cause, Romashov raised his head from the ground. A grey, shapeless, scarcely human figure was sliding down to the bottom of the ravine.

“Khliabnikov, you find life unsupportable, but, my friend, believe me, even I am an exceedingly unhappy man.

The whole world wherein I live is to me a puzzle. Everything is so savage, cruel, and senseless.

However, one must be patient, one must learn to suffer.”

Romashov felt himself getting whiter and whiter every moment. He felt a sensation of void in his brain, a sensation of release from every oppressive act of thought or reflection.

A curious mixture of joy and terror arose in his soul, just as the bubbles of sparkling wine ascend to the edge of a goblet.

He saw Biek-Agamalov, whilst continually following the woman with his eyes, slowly raise his sabre above his head. An irresistible flow of frantic jubilation, fear, inconsiderate boldness, carried Romashov away.

“Let me go,” came at last like a hoarse whisper from Biek-Agamalov’s bitten lips.

“Biek, you must never strike a woman,” replied Romashov calmly. “You would blush for it as long as you lived.”

The last sparks of rage and madness now died out in Agamalov’s eyes. Romashov drew a deep breath as if from a long swoon. His heart beat irregularly and quick, and his head was again heavy and feverishly hot.

The order was obeyed without the slightest demur. All departed, cowed and shamefaced, and consequently shy at meeting each other’s glances.

Each individual dreaded to read in his comrade’s eyes his own shame and self-contempt, and they all gave one the impression of dirty little malicious animals, to whose dim and undeveloped brains a gleam of human understanding had suddenly managed to grope its way.

Day began to dawn. A delightful, glorious morning with a clear, fleckless sky, refreshing coolness, and infinite harmony and peace.

“

And over the old warrior’s rugged features stole a melancholy smile.

”

When he reached the steps he gazed for some time, calm and astonished, at the sky, the trees, a cow grazing on the other side of the fence, the sparrows burrowing in the high road, and thought,

“So everything lives, struggles, and worries about its existence, except myself. I require nothing and I have no interests. I am doomed; I am alone, and dead already to this world.”

With a feeling of sickness and disgust he went to find Biek-Agamalov and Viätkin, whom he had chosen for his seconds. Both granted his request; Biek-Agamalov with a gloomy, solemn countenance, Viätkin with many hearty handshakes.

“Well, admitting that,” resumed Nasanski gently, with his tender, sorrowful eyes fixed on Romashov, “what does that signify?

Time heals all wounds; everything in the world is buried and disappears, even the recollection of this scandal.

You yourself will in time forget both your hatred and your sufferings; but you’ll never forget a man you have killed.

Moreover, we have those who, silently despising such old wives’ fables and puerilities, cross the threshold of death. Others again picture the empire of the grave as a cold, dark, bare room. No, my friend, there is no such future state.

In death there is neither cold, nor darkness, nor space, nor even fear⁠—nothing but absolute annihilation.

”

“Well, admitting that,” resumed Nasanski gently, with his tender, sorrowful eyes fixed on Romashov, “what does that signify? Time heals all wounds; everything in the world is buried and disappears, even the recollection of this scandal.

You yourself will in time forget both your hatred and your sufferings; but you’ll never forget a man you have killed.

He will stand ever at your side, at the head of your bed, at your dinner-table, when you are alone, and when you are amidst the bustle of the world.

Empty-heads, idiots, pretentious imitators and parrots will, of course, at all times solemnly assure you that a murder in the course of a duel is no murder. What madmen!

No, a murder is, and always will be, a murder.

And the most horrible thing about it is not in death and suffering, in pools of blood or in corpses, but inasmuch as it deprives a human being of the joys of life. Oh, how priceless is life!”

What madmen! No, a murder is, and always will be, a murder. And the most horrible thing about it is not in death and suffering, in pools of blood or in corpses, but inasmuch as it deprives a human being of the joys of life.

Oh, how priceless is life!

” exclaimed Nasanski suddenly, in a high voice and with tears in his eyes. “Who do you suppose believes in the reality of an existence after this one? Not you, or I, or any other man of sound reason. Therefore death is feared by all.

Is it himself or his neighbour? No, he kills the gracious warmth and life-giving sun, the bright sky, and all nature with its infinite beauty and charm.

He kills that which never, never, never will return. Oh, what madmen!

”

“Wait,” he went on to say. “Ah, how one’s thoughts fly!

Isn’t it an unpleasant sensation to know that our thoughts lead us, and not we our thoughts?

Well, to resume what we were talking about. Among our senior remaining officers we have also other types, for instance, Captain Plavski.

Over the whole habitable portion of our earth shall tall, airy, lovely buildings be raised. Nothing vulgar, common, low, and impure shall any longer torture the eye. Our daily life shall become a pleasurable toil, an enfranchised science, a wonderful music, an everlasting merrymaking.

Love, free and sovereign, shall become the world’s religion.

No longer shall it be forced in shame to hide its countenance; no longer shall it be coupled with sin, disgrace, and darkness. And our own bodies shall glow with health, strength, and beauty, and go clad in bright, shimmering robes.

Think, Romashov, just this way and in no other. Who is nearer and dearer to me than myself? No one.

You, and none other, are the Tsar and autocrat of your own soul, its pride and ornament.

You are the god of all that lives. To you alone belongs all that you see, hear, and feel. Take what you want and do what you please.