"I warn you—I mean, I have the honor of warning you—that all the same this is not really the kind of ode that once used to be written for festive occasions, this is almost, so to speak, a joke, but combining indisputable feeling and playful gaiety, and with, so to speak, the realmost truth."
"Read it, read it!"
He unfolded the piece of paper. Of course, no one had time to stop him. Besides, he was there with an usher's bow. In a ringing voice he declaimed:
"To the fatherland's governess of local parts from a poet at the fête.
"I give you greetings grand and grander, Governess! Be triumphant now, Retrograde or true George-Sander, Be exultant anyhow!"
"But that's Lebyadkin's! It is, it's Lebyadkin's!" several voices echoed. There was laughter and even applause, though not widespread.
"You teach our snot-nosed children French From an alphabetic book, The beadle even, in a pinch, For marriage you won't overlook!"
"Hoorah! hoorah!"
"But now, when great reforms are flowering, Even a beadle's hard to hook: Unless, young miss, you've got a 'dowering,' It's back to the alphabetic book."
"Precisely, precisely, that's realism, not a step without a 'dowering'!"
"Today, however, with our hosting We have raised much capital, And while dancing here we're posting A dowry to you from this hall.
Retrograde or true George-Sander, Be exultant anyhow! Governess by dower grander, Spit on the rest and triumph now!"
I confess, I did not believe my ears. Here was such obvious impudence that it was impossible to excuse Liputin even by stupidity. And, anyway, Liputin was far from stupid. The intention was clear, to me at least: they were as if hastening the disorder. Some lines of this idiotic poem, the very last one, for example, were of a sort that no stupidity would allow. Liputin himself seemed to feel that he had taken on too much: having accomplished his great deed, he was so taken aback by his own boldness that he did not even leave the platform, but went on standing there as if wishing to add something. He must have supposed it would come out somehow differently; but even the bunch of hooligans who had applauded during the escapade suddenly fell silent, as if they, too, were taken aback. Stupidest of all was that many of them took the whole escapade in a pathetic sense—that is, not as lampoonery, but indeed as the real truth concerning governesses, as verse with a tendency. But these people, too, were finally struck by the excessive license of the poem. As for the rest of the public, the entire hall was not only scandalized but visibly offended. I am not mistaken in conveying the impression. Yulia Mikhailovna said afterwards that she would have fainted in another moment. One of the most venerable little old men helped his little old lady to her feet, and they both left the hall, followed by the alarmed eyes of the public. Who knows, the example might have carried others along as well, if at that moment Karmazinov himself had not appeared on the platform, in a tailcoat and white tie, and with a notebook in his hand. Yulia Mikhailovna turned rapturous eyes to him, as to a deliverer... But by then I had already gone backstage; I was after Liputin.
"You did it on purpose!" I said, indignantly seizing him by the arm.
"By God, I had no idea," he cowered, immediately starting to lie and pretend to be miserable, "the verses were just brought, and I thought as a merry joke..."
"You never thought any such thing. Can you possibly find that giftless trash a merry joke?"
"Yes, sir, I do."
"You're simply lying, and it wasn't just brought to you. You wrote it yourself, together with Lebyadkin, maybe yesterday, to cause a scandal. The last line is certainly yours, and the part about the beadle as well. Why did he come out in a tailcoat? It means you were preparing to have him read, if he hadn't gotten drunk?"
Liputin looked at me coldly and caustically.
"What business is it of yours?" he asked suddenly, with a strange calm.
"What? You're wearing one of these bows, too... Where is Pyotr Stepanovich?"
"I don't know, somewhere around. Why?"
"Because I see through it now. This is simply a conspiracy against Yulia Mikhailovna, to disgrace the day..."
Liputin again looked askance at me.
"And what is that to you?" he grinned, shrugged, and walked off.
I felt as if stricken. All my suspicions were justified. And I had still hoped I was mistaken! What was I to do? I thought of discussing it with Stepan Trofimovich, but he was standing in front of the mirror, trying on various smiles, and constantly consulting a piece of paper on which he had made some notes. He was to go on right after Karmazinov and was no longer in any condition to talk with me. Should I run to Yulia Mikhailovna? But it was too soon for her: she needed a much harsher lesson to cure her of the conviction of her "surround-edness" and the general "fanatical devotion." She would not believe me and would regard me as a dreamer. And how could she be of help? "Eh," I thought, "really, what business is it of mine? I'll take the bow off and go home, once it starts.” I actually said "once it starts," I remember that.
But I had to go and listen to Karmazinov. Taking a last look around backstage, I noticed that there were quite a few outsiders, and even women, darting about, coming and going. This "backstage" was quite a narrow space, totally screened off from the public by a curtain and connected through a corridor in back with other rooms. Here our readers waited their turns. But I was particularly struck at that moment by the lecturer who was to follow Stepan Trofimovich. He, too, was some sort of professor (even now I do not know exactly what he was), who had voluntarily retired from some institution after some student incident and had turned up in our town for one reason or another just a few days earlier. He, too, had been recommended to Yulia Mikhailovna, and she had received him with reverence. I know now that he had visited her only on one evening prior to the reading, had spent the whole evening in silence, had smiled ambiguously at the jokes and tone of the company that surrounded Yulia Mikhailovna, and had made an unpleasant impression on everyone by his air—arrogant and at the same time touchy to the point of timorousness. It was Yulia Mikhailovna herself who had recruited him to read. Now he was pacing from corner to corner and, like Stepan Trofimovich, was whispering to himself as well, but looking at the ground, not in the mirror. He did not try on any smiles, though he smiled frequently and carnivorously. Clearly it was not possible to talk with him, either. He was short, looked about forty, was bald front and back, had a grayish little beard, and dressed decently. But most interesting was that at each turn he raised his right fist high, shook it in the air above his head, and suddenly brought it down as if crushing some adversary to dust. He repeated this trick every moment. It gave me an eerie feeling. I ran quickly to listen to Karmazinov.
III
Again something wrong was hovering in the hall. I declare beforehand: I bow down to the greatness of genius; but why is it that at the end of their illustrious years these gentlemen geniuses of ours sometimes act just like little boys? So what if he is Karmazinov and comes out with all the bearing of five court chamberlains? Is it possible to hold a public like ours for an entire hour with one article? Generally, I have observed that at a light, public literary reading, even the biggest genius cannot occupy the public with himself for more than twenty minutes with impunity. True, the entrance of the great genius was met with the utmost respect. Even the sternest old men expressed approval and curiosity, and the ladies even a certain rapture. The applause, however, was a bit brief, somehow not general, disconcerted. Yet there was not a single escapade from the back rows until Mr. Karmazinov actually began to speak, and even then it was nothing so especially bad, just a misunderstanding, as it were. I have already mentioned that his voice was rather shrill, even somewhat feminine, and with a genuine, highborn, aristocratic lisp besides. He had uttered no more than a few words when someone suddenly permitted himself to laugh loudly—probably some inexperienced little fool, who had never seen anything of the world and, besides, was naturally given to laughter. But there was nothing in the least demonstrative in it; on the contrary, the fool was hissed and he obliterated himself. But then Mr. Karmazinov, mincing and preening, announced that "he had flatly refused to read at first" (much he needed to announce that!). "There are lines," he said, "which so sing themselves from a man's heart as cannot be told,[169] and such a sacred thing simply cannot be laid before the public" (why was he laying it, then?); "but as he had been prevailed upon, so he was laying it, and as he was, moreover, putting down his pen forever, and had sworn never to write again for anything, then, so be it, he had written this last thing; and as he had sworn never, for anything in the world, to read anything in public, then, so be it, he would read this last article to the public," etc., etc., all in the same vein. But all this would still have been nothing, and who does not know what authors' prefaces are like? Though I will note that, given the scanty education of our public and the irritability of the back rows, all this might have had an influence. So, would it not have been better to read a little tale, a tiny story, of the sort he once used to write—that is, polished, mincing, but occasionally witty? That would have saved everything. But no, sir, nothing doing! An oration commenced![170] God, what wasn't in it! I will say positively that even a metropolitan public would have been reduced to stupor, not only ours. Imagine some thirty printed pages of the most mincing and useless babble; what's more, the gentleman was reading somehow superciliously, ruefully, as if for a favor, so that it even came out offensive to our public. The theme... But, who could make out the theme? It was some sort of account of some sort of impressions, some sort of recollections. But of what? But what about? No matter how furrowed our provincial brows were through the first half of the reading, they could get none of it, so that they listened through the second half only out of courtesy. True, much was said about love, about the genius's love for some person, but I confess it came out rather awkwardly. The short, fattish little figure of the writer of genius somehow did not go very well, in my opinion, with the story of his first kiss... And, which again was offensive, these kisses occurred somehow not as with the rest of mankind. Here the inevitable furze is growing all around (it is inevitably furze or some such plant, which has to be looked up in botany). At the same time there is inevitably some violet hue in the sky which, of course, no mortal has ever noticed—that is, everyone has seen it, but failed to notice it, "while I," he says, "I looked and am now describing it to you fools as a most ordinary thing." The tree under which the interesting couple sits is inevitably of some orange color. They are sitting somewhere in Germany. Suddenly they see Pompey or Cassius on the eve of battle,[171] and both are pierced by the chill of ecstasy. Some mermaid peeps in the bushes. Gluck begins playing a fiddle among the reeds.[172] The piece he plays is named en toutes lettres,[cxliii] but is not known to anyone, so it has to be looked up in a musical dictionary. Then mist comes billowing, billowing and billowing, more like a million pillows than any mist. And suddenly it all disappears, and the great genius is crossing the Volga in winter, during a thaw. Two and a half pages on the crossing, and he falls through a hole in the ice anyway. The genius is drowning—do you think he drowns? It never occurred to him; all this was so that when he was already quite drowned and choking, there should flash before him a piece of ice, a piece of ice tiny as a pea, but pure and transparent "like a frozen tear," and in this tear Germany was reflected, or, better say, the sky of Germany, and with its iridescent play the reflection reminded him of that same tear which, "remember, rolled from your eye, as we sat beneath the emerald tree, and you exclaimed joyfully: 'There is no crime!' 'Yes,' said I through my tears, 'but, if so, there are also no righteous men.' We wept and parted forever." She somewhere to the seacoast, he to some caves; and so he descends, and descends, for three years he descends beneath the Sukharev Tower in Moscow, and suddenly in the very depths of the earth he finds, in a cave, an icon lamp, and before the icon lamp—a monk. The monk is praying. The genius bends to a tiny barred window and suddenly hears a sigh. You think it was the monk who sighed? Much need he has for your monk! No, sir, it is simply that this sigh "reminded him of her first sigh, thirty-seven years ago," when, "remember, in Germany, we were sitting under the agate tree, and you said to me: 'Why love? Look, ochre is growing all around, and I am in love, but the ochre will stop growing, and I will cease to love.’” Here again mist billowed, Hoffmann appeared, the mermaid whistled something from Chopin, and suddenly, out of the mist, wearing a laurel wreath, over the roofs of Rome appeared Ancus Marcius.[173] "The chill of ecstasy ran down our spines, and we parted forever," etc., etc. In short, I may not be telling it right and perhaps cannot, but the sense of the blather was precisely of that sort. And, finally, what is this disgraceful passion of our great minds for punning in a higher sense! The great European philosopher, the great scholar, the inventor, the laborer and martyr— all these who labor and are heavy-laden[174]—are for our Russian great genius decidedly like cooks in his kitchen. He is the master and they come to him, chef's hat in hand, waiting for orders. True, he also smiles haughtily at Russia, and he likes nothing better than to proclaim Russia's bankruptcy in all respects before the great minds of Europe, but as regards himself—no, sir, he has already risen above these great minds of Europe; they are all only material for his puns. He takes another man's idea, weaves its own antithesis into it, and the pun is ready. There is crime, there is no crime; there is no right, there are no righteous men; atheism, Darwinism, Moscow bells ... But, alas, he no longer believes in Moscow bells; Rome, laurels ... but he does not even believe in laurels ... Then comes a conventional fit of Byronic anguish, a grimace from Heine, something from Pechorin,[175] and—off it goes, off it goes, the engine whistling ... "But praise me anyway, praise me, I do love it terribly; I'm just saying that I'm putting down my pen; wait, I'll wear you out three hundred times over, you'll get tired of reading it..."