Enough
by
Translated from the Russian By Constance Garnett
A FRAGMENT FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF A DEAD ARTIST
I
II
III
‘Enough,’ I said to myself as I moved with lagging steps over the steep mountainside down to the quiet little brook. ‘Enough,’ I said again, as I drank in the resinous fragrance of the pinewood, strong and pungent in the freshness of falling evening. ‘Enough,’ I said once more, as I sat on the mossy mound above the little brook and gazed into its dark, lingering waters, over which the sturdy reeds thrust up their pale green blades…. ‘Enough.’
No more struggle, no more strain, time to draw in, time to keep firm hold of the head and to bid the heart be silent. No more to brood over the voluptuous sweetness of vague, seductive ecstasy, no more to run after each fresh form of beauty, no more to hang over every tremour of her delicate, strong wings.
All has been felt, all has been gone through… I am weary. What to me now that at this moment, larger, fiercer than ever, the sunset floods the heavens as though aflame with some triumphant passion? What to me that, amid the soft peace and glow of evening, suddenly, two paces hence, hidden in a thick bush’s dewy stillness, a nightingale has sung his heart out in notes magical as though no nightingale had been on earth before him, and he first sang the first song of first love? All this was, has been, has been again, and is a thousand times repeated–and to think that it will last on so to all eternity–as though decreed, ordained–it stirs one’s wrath! Yes… wrath!
IV
Ah, I am grown old! Such thoughts would never have come to me once–in those happy days of old, when I too was aflame like the sunset and my heart sang like the nightingale.
There is no hiding it–everything has faded about me, all life has paled. The light that gives life’s colours depth and meaning–the light that comes out of the heart of man–is dead within me…. No, not dead yet–it feebly smoulders on, giving no light, no warmth.
Once, late in the night in Moscow, I remember I went up to the grating window of an old church, and leaned against the faulty pane. It was dark under the low arched roof–a forgotten lamp shed a dull red light upon the ancient picture; dimly could be discerned the lips only of the sacred face–stern and sorrowful. The sullen darkness gathered about it, ready it seemed to crush under its dead weight the feeble ray of impotent light…. Such now in my heart is the light; and such the darkness.
V
And this I write to thee, to thee, my one never forgotten friend, to thee, my dear companion, whom I have left for ever, but shall not cease to love till my life’s end…. Alas! thou knowest what parted us. But that I have no wish to speak of now. I have left thee… but even here, in these wilds, in this far-off exile, I am all filled through and through with thee; as of old I am in thy power, as of old I feel the sweet burden of thy hand on my bent head!
For the last time I drag myself from out the grave of silence in which I am lying now. I turn a brief and softened gaze on all my past… our past…. No hope and no return; but no bitterness is in my heart and no regret, and clearer than the blue of heaven, purer than the first snow on mountain tops, fair memories rise up before me like the forms of departed gods…. They come, not thronging in crowds, in slow procession they follow one another like those draped Athenian figures we admired so much–dost thou remember?–in the ancient bas-reliefs in the Vatican.