By Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881)
It was the second day of Easter week. The air was warm, the sky was blue, the sun was high, warm, bright, but my soul was very gloomy. I sauntered behind the prison barracks. I stared at the palings of the stout prison fence, counting them; but I had no inclination to count them, though it was my habit to do so. This was the second day of the ?holiday?s ? in the prison; the convicts were not taken out to work, there were number of men drunks, loud abuse and quarrelling were springing up continually in every corner. There were hideous, disgusting songs, and card parties installed beside the platform beds. Several of the convicts had been sentenced by their comrades, for special violence, to be beaten till they were half dead, were lying on the platform bed. Covered with sheepskins till the should recover and come themselves again; knives had already been drawn several times. These two days of holiday all this had been torturing me till it made me ill. And indeed I could never endure without repulsion the noise and disorder of drunken people, and especially in this place. On these days even the prison officials did not look into the prison, made no searches, did not look for vodka, understanding that they must allow even these outcast to enjoy themselves once a year, and that things would be even worse if they did not, at last a sudden fury flamed up in my heart. A political prisoner called M. met me; he hooked at me gloomily, his eyes flashed and his lips quivered, ?Je hais ces brigands!? he hissed at me through his teeth, and walked on. I returned to the prison ward, through only a quarter of an hour before I had rushed out of it as though I were crazy, when six stalwart fellows had all together flung themselves upon the drunken Tatar Gazin to suppress him and had begun beating him; they beat him stupidly, a camel might have been killed by such blows, but they knew that this Hercules was not easy to kill, and so they beat him without uneasiness, Now on returning I noticed on the bed in the furthest corner of the room Gazin lying unconscious, almost without sign of life. He lay covered with a sheepskin and everyone walked round him, without speaking; though they confidentially hoped that he would come himself next morning, yet if luck were against him, maybe a beating like that the man would die. I made my way to my own place opposite the window with the iron grating, and lay on my back with my hands behind my head and my eye shut. I liked to lie like that; a sleeping man is not molested, meanwhile one can dream. But I could not dream my heart was beating uneasily, and M.?s words, ?je hais ces brigands!? were echoing in my ears. But why describe my impression? I sometimes dream even now of those times at night, and I have no dreams more agonizing. Perhaps it will be noticed that even to this day I have scarcely once spoken in print of my life in prison. The House of the Dead I wrote 15 years ago was in the character of an imaginary person, a criminal who had killed his wife. I may add by the way that since then, very many persons have supposed, and even now maintain, that I was sent to penal servitude for the murder of my wife.
Gradually I sank into forgetfulness and by
degrees was lost in memories. During the whole course of my four years in prison
I was continually recalling all my past, and seemed to live over again the whole
of my life in recollection. These memories rose up of themselves, it was not
often that I summoned them of my own will. Each would begin from some point,
some little thing at times unnoticed, and then by degree there would rise up
complete picture, some vivid and complete. I used to analyze these impressions,
give new features to what happened long ago, and best of all, I used to correct
it, correct it continually, and that was my great amusement. On this occasion, I
suddenly for some reason remembered an unnoticed moment in my early childhood
when I was only nine years old ? a moment which I should have thought I had
utterly forgotten; but at the time I was particularly fond of memories of my
early childhood. I remembered the month of August in our country house; a dry
bright day but rather cold and windy; summer was waning and soon we should have
to go to Moscow to be bored all winter with French lessons, and I was so sorry
to leave the country. I walked past the threshing ? floor and going down the
ravine, I went up to the dense thicket of bushes that covered the further side
of the ravine as far as the copse. And I plunged right into the midst of the
bushes and heard a peasant plowing alone on the clearing about 30 paces away. I
know that he was plowing up the steep hill and the horse was moving with effort,
and from time to time the peasant?s call ?Come up!? floated upwards to me, I knew almost all our
peasants, but I did not know who it was plowing now and indeed I did not care. I
was absorbed in my own whom it was plowing now, and, indeed I did not care, I
was absorbed in my own affairs. I was busy, too; I was breaking off switches
from the nut trees to whip the frogs with. Nut sticks make such fine whips, but
they do not last; while birch twigs are just the opposite. I was interested,
too, in beetles and other insects; iused to collect them, some were very
ornamental. I was very fond, too, of the nimble red and yellow lizards with
black spots on them, but I was afraid of snakes. Snake however were much more
rare than lizards. There were not many mushrooms there. To get mushrooms one had
to go to the birch wood, and I was about to set off there. And tere was nothing
in the world that I loved so much as the wood with its mushrooms and wild
berries, with its beetles and its birds, its hedgehogs and squirrels, with its
damp smell of dead leaves which I loved so much, and even as I write I smell the
fragrance of our birch wood these impressions will remain for my whole life.
Suddenly in the midst of the profound stillness I heard a clear and distinct
shout, ?Wolf!? I shrieked and, beside myself of terror, calling out at the
top of my voice ran out into the clearing and straight to the peasant who was
plowing.
It was our peasant Marey. I don?t know if
there is such a name, but everyone called him Marey ? a Thickset, rather well
grown peasant of 50, with a good many gray hairs in his dark brown, spreading
beard. I knew him but had scarcely ever happened to speak to him till then. He
stopped his horse on hearing my cry, and when breathless, caught with one hand
at his plow and with the other at his sleeve, he saw how frightened I was.
?There is a wolf!? I cried, panting.
He plunged up his head, could not help looking
round for an instant, almost believing me.
?A shout. Someone shouted: ?wolf?.? I
faltered out.
?Nonsense, nonsense! A wolf?? it was your
fancy! How could there be a wolf? He muttered, reassuring me. But I was
trembling all over, and still kept tight hold of this smock, and I must have
been quite pale. He looked at me with an uneasy smile, evidently anxious and
troubled over me.
?Why, you have had a fright, aie , aie !?
He shook his head. ?There, dear?come little one, I aie!?
He stretched out his hand, and all at once
stroked my cheek.
?Come, come, there; Christ is with you! Cross
yourself!?
But I did not cross myself. The corners of my
mouth were twitching, and I think that struck him particularly. He put out his
thick, black-nailed, earth ? stained finger and softly touched my twitching
lips.
?aie, there, there, ?he said to me
with a slow, almost motherly smile. ?Dear, dear what is the matter? There;
come, come!?
I grasped at last there was no wolf, and that
the shout that I heard was my fancy. Yet that shout had been so clear and
distinct, but such shouts (not only about the wolves) I had imagine once or
twice before, and I was aware of that. (These hallucinations passed away later
as I grew older.)
?Well I will go then,? I said, looking at
him timidly and inquiringly.
?Well, do and I?ll keep watch on you as you
go. I won?t let the wolf get you,? he added, still smiling at me with the
same motherly expression. ?Well, Christ is with you! Come, run along then.?
And he made the sign of the cross over me and then over himself. I walked away,
Looking back almost at every tenth step. Marey Stood still with his mare as I
walked away, and looked after me and nodded to me every time I looked round. I
must own I felt a little ashamed at having let him see me frightened, but I was
still very afraid of the wolf as I walked away, until I reached the first barn
half ? way up the slope of the ravine; there vanished completely, and all at
once our vard - dog Volchock flew to meet me. With Volchock I felt quite safe,
and I turned round to Marey for the last time; I could not see his face
distinctly, but I felt that he was still nodding and smiling affectionately at
me. I waved to him; he waved back at me and started his little mare. ?Come
up!? I heard his call in the distance again, and the little mare pulled at the
plow again.
All this I recalled all at once, I don?t know
why; but with extraordinary minutes of detail. I suddenly roused myself and sat
up on the sleeping platform, and I remember, found myself still smiling quietly
at my memories. I brooded over then for another minute.
When I go home that day I told no one of my
?Adventure? with Marey. And indeed it was hardly an adventure. And in
fact I soon forgot Marey. When I met him now and then afterwards, I never even
spoke to him about the wolf or any thing else; and all at once now, 20 years
afterwards in Siberia, I remembered this meeting with such distinctness to the
smallest detail. So it must have lain hidden in my soul, though I knew nothing
of it, and rose suddenly to my memory when it was wanted; I remembered the soft
motherly smile of the poor serf, the way he signed me with the cross and shook
his head, ?There, there you had have a fright, little one!?
And I remembered particularly the thick earth stained finger with which
he softly and with timid tenderness touched my quivering lips, of course anyone
would have reassured a child, but something quite different seemed to have
happened in that solitary meeting; and if I had been his own son he could not
have looked at me with eyes shining with greater love. And what made him like
that? He was our serf and I was his little master, after all. No one would know
that he had been kind to me and reward him for it. Was he, perhaps, very fond of
little children? Some people are.it was a solitary meeting in the deserted
fields and only God perhaps may have seen from above with what deep and humane
civilized feeling, and with what a delicate almost feminine tenderness, the
heart of coarse, brutally ignorant Russian serf, who had as yet no expectation,
no idea of his freedom, may be filled was not this perhaps, What konstantin
aknasov meant when spoke of the high degree of culture of our peasantry?
And when I got down off the bed and locked
around me, I remember I suddenly felt that I could look at these unhappy
creatures with quite different eyes, and that suddenly by some miracle all
hatred and anger had vanished utterly from my heart, I walked about, looking
into the faces that I meet. That shaven peasant, branded on his face as a
criminal, brawling his hoarse drunken song, may be that very Marey; I cannot
look into his heart.
I meet again M. again that evening. Poor fellow!
He could have no memories of Russian peasants, and no other view of these people
but: ?je hais ces brigands!? Yes, The polish prisoners had more to
bear than I.
MEN HAVE FORGOTTEN GOD
By: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
When I started going to school
in Rostov-on-Don, other children, egged on by komsomol members, taunted me for
accompanying my mother to the last remaining church in town, and tore the cross
from around my neck. A few years later, I heard a number of older people offer
this explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: ? Men have
forgotten God; that?s why all this has happened.?
Since then I have spent
well-nigh 50 years working on the history of the Russian Revolution; in the
process I have collected hundred of personal testimonies, read hundreds of books
and contributed a eight volumes of my own. But if I were asked today to
formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of ruinous revolution that
swallowed up some 60 million people, I could not put it more accurately than to
repeat: ?Men had forgotten God.?
What is more, if I were called
upon to identify the principal trait of the entire 20th century, I
would be unable to find anything more precise than to reflect once again on how
we have lost touch with our Creator. The failings of human consciousness,
deprived of its divine dimension, have been a determining factor in all the
major crimes of this century.
Dostoyevsky warned that great
events could come upon us and catch us intellectually unprepared. That is
precisely what has happened . The 20th century has been sucked into
the vortex of atheism and
self-destruction. This plunge into the abyss
is a worldwide process, East and West, and has aspects that are dependent
neither on political systems, nor on levels of economic and cultural
development.
It was Dostoyevsky, once
again, who said of the French Revolution and its seething hatred of the church
that ?revolution must necessarily begin with atheism.? But the world had
never before known a godlessness as organized, militarized and tenaciously
malevolent as that practiced by Maxcism. Within the hatred philosophical system
of Marx and Lenin, and at the heart
of psychology hatred of God is the principal driving force, militant atheism a
central pivot. To feeling. The degree to which the atheistic one longs to
annihilate religions stick in its throat, and was demonstrated by the web of
intrigue surrounding the attempt on the life of Pope John Paul II in 1981.
Yet in Russia ? where
churches had been leveled, where tens of thousands of priest, monks and
nuns were tortured shot in cellars, sent to brutal camps, where a
triumphant atheism rampaged uncontrolled for two-thirds of the century, where
even today people are sent to labor camps for their faith ? the Christian
tradition survives.
It is here that we see the
dawn of hope: for no matter how formidably communism bristles with tanks and
rockets, it is doomed never to vanquish Christianity.
The west has yet to experience
a communist invasion: religion remains free. But the west too is experiencing a
drying up of religious consciousness since the late middle ages the tide of
secularism has progressively inundated the west. This gradual sapping of
strength from within is a threat to faith that is perhaps even more dangerous
than any attempt to assault religion violently from without.
The meaning of life in the
West has ceased to be seen as anything more lofty that the ?pursuit of
happiness?, a goal that has been solemnly guaranteed by constitutions. The
concepts of good and evil have long been banished from common use. It has become
embarrassing to appeal to eternal concepts, embarrassing to state that evil
makes its home in the individual human heart before it enters a political
system.
When external rights are
completely unrestricted, why should one make an inner effort to restrain oneself
from ignoble acts? Or why should one refrain from burning hatred, whatever it
basis ? race, class or ideology. Such hatred is in fact corroding many hearts
today, as atheist teachers bring up a younger generation in a spirit of hatred
of their own society. Indeed, the broader the personal freedoms are the higher
the level of prosperity is ? the more vehement, paradoxically, does this blind
hatred become.
With global events looming
over us like mountains, it may seem incongruous to recall that the primary key
to our being or non-being resides in each individual human heart, in the
heart?s preference for specific good or evil. Yet this is the most reliable
key that we have. The social theories that promised so much have demonstrated
their bankruptcy, leaving us at a dead end.
All attempts to find a way out
of the plight of today?s world are fruitless unless we redirect our
consciousness, in repentance to the Creator of all. The resources we have set
aside for ourselves are too impoverished for the task. We must first recognize
the horror perpetrated not by some outside force, not by class or national
enemies, but within each of us individually, and within every society.
Life consists not in the
pursuit of material success but in the quest for worthy spiritual growth. Our
entire earthly existence is but a transitional stage in the movement
to something higher. Materials laws alone do not explain our life or give
it direction. The laws of physics and physiology will never reveal the
indisputable manner in which the creator constantly participates in the life of
each of us. And in the life of our entire planet the Divine Spirit surely moves
with no less force.
To the ill-considered hoped of
the last two centuries, we can propose only a determined quest for the warm hand
of God which we have so rashly and self confidently spurned. Only in this way
can our eyes be opened to the errors of this unfortunate 20th century
and our hands be directed to setting them right.
Research By: Pawskie Vagalazcka And Jonnie Aguilar BSCS Class-English-9