The Czechoslovak Review/Volume 4/Fame (1)
Fame
By SVATOPLUK ČECH. Translated by P. SELVER.
Ever and ever again my spirit soars back to the one corner of the earth where I spent perhaps the most beatiful week of my life. But let no one imagine that I am speaking of a happy first love or anything of that kind. The joys which fell to my lot there proceeded only from charms of nature which I had never before beheld. You may perhaps smile and class me in your mind as one of those morbid enthusiasts for nature who are always raving about it in that hackneyed and bombastic manner, with which Berlin book-keepers on their holidays spoil their fellow-travellers’ enjoyment of the finest views in the mountains. But I assure you that the region of which I am speaking really inspired me with a fervid love, and that perhaps I am only unfortunate in the choice of words with which to express this sentiment of mine.
Imagine that you suddenly stepped from a European apartment, furnished even in the most splendid style, into a magnificent Eastern room where every object would astonish you by its unusual form, differing with poetic boldness from the sober patterns of the West, or surprising at least because of the unusual radiance and peculiar grouping of colours, where a magical lustre would heighten the fairy-like impression of the whole, where a wonderfully sweet music of unknown and hidden instruments and a delicate blending of unfamiliar fragrances would intoxicate your senses, where your heated imagination would paint the magical figures of oriental poetry behind every curtain. Such was my state of mind when, after traveling for several days by rail and ship, I suddenly found myself in the midst of that distant region where the greenish waves of the sea with their metallic glitter flung their white foam at my feet with a medley of many-coloured and gracefully shaped shells, where I was surrounded by mountains which lifted their peaks higher and higher even far beyond the limit of eternal snow, where I saw forests of an unusual kind animated by the alert movements of strange animals, where the rich plant-life captivated me with the beauty and vividness of its colours, and intoxicated me with the strength of its delightful fragrance, and where even natural objects, familiar to me from my home, assumed a new and more magnificent aspect in the brilliant illumination of the southern sun.
If you have in your hands a map of Russian Empire, search at the southern border of the Black Sea for the name Novorossijsk. The black spot beside it has a very sober appearance upon the map.
“Skvernyj Gorodok!” exclaimed the young Russian lieutenant standing beside me on the deck, and stretched out his hand in the direction of the little town before which we had anchored in the bay of Novorossijsk. “Skvernyj Gorodok!” (actually he pronounced it “Skrjorny”), he repeated, and was sorry for me because I had to spend a week in such an out-of-the-way spot.
Well, certainly, Novorossijsk[1] in itself is an out-of-the-way spot, consisting of about 200 insignificant cottages mostly constructed only of wood and clay, a few unimpressive military buildings and a Russian church painted brown, with a green onion-shaped dome in the company of the inevitable smaller domes at the side, also onion-shaped. The only interesting thing about it to me was its population, a motley mixture of Russian officials, traders, and soldiers, Russian peasants, Cossacks, Greeks, Armenians, Georgians and others.
But then on the other hand, the surrounding landscape! Would you like to accompany me on an imaginary excursion into these regions?
“Today you will have a fine journey” observed the Novorossijsk hotel keeper, an Armenian called Gusikov (probably some Armenian name in a Russian uniform), carefully cutting the nail on the toe of his right foot, which for this purpose he had stretched out before him on the table. The capacious sole of his foot was turned towards me, and thus caused a partial eclipse of the flushed moon, as by a poetical comparison I may call the circular, ruddy countenance of my host with its surrounding decoration of reddish locks.
“Don’t forget to cover your head and neck with a pocket hankerchief; a. hat alone is not enough to protect you against our sun” added the waiter with fatherly concern, as he polished his master’s boots behing the buffet, which in the Russian style invited the guests to the free enjoyment of various dainties, such as crabs, spring onions, small pasties, caviare and so on.
He was a curious waiter: tall and shambling, in a white linen smock, with a fez upon his head, the bald skull of which was covered here and there with a few wisps of light hair which looked more like whitish fibres. But I was also interested by this man’s history. By birth he was an Adige (Circassian) of a war-like stock which formerly inhabited the mountains round Novorossijsk; after the year 1864, when the Circassians were defeated in their obstinate struggle against the Russians, and some of the left their home in the Caucasus for Turkey, while the rest emigrated to Kuban, he came while still a youth to Asia Minor. But he clearly did not make his fortune in foreign parts, for after several years he returned to his native mountains and was satisfied with the above mentioned modest position in the single “hotel” of Novorossijsk. I often used to see him as he stood before this little one-storied inn, and shaded his eyes with his hand, while his gaze wandered across to the mountains near by. Only ten years or so earlier, these mountains had swarmed with war-like Circassians, and he himself as he sat on the threshold of his native hut in one of the numerous auls (Circassian villages), would dream of his future glory as a hero. Now these moutains are bare and deserted far and wide, the auls have disappeared or are overgrown with dense forests, and there is neither sight nor sound of the Circassians here. So instead of a hero he became a waiter, and avenged himself on his former arch-enemies by serving them with flavourless wine from Kachetin and sour beer from Kertch. As he looked at those bare mountains, did he meditate upon the bitter lot of himself and his whole nation? I do not know. But I never saw in him any traces of sentimentality. His face always used to have a contented and kindly expression, and round his lips there often used to play a merry smile, on which occasions two rows of beautiful large white teeth were displayed under his fair long moustache.
I was just about to reply to the remarks of these two people, when the surgeon Pavel Semenovitch Tabunov, in full riding equipment, stepped into the inn. He informed me that the whole party was assembled outside. I followed him.
To the quiet amusement of the company I made use of the stone bench in front of the inn as I mounted the tractable mountain pony, and with one hand seized carefully the long front points of the Tcherkessian saddle with the high-slung stirrup, which forced the legs into a cramped position uncomfortable to the beginner.
But first of all let me here enumerate the heroes and heroines who under the surgeon’s leadership had assembled for this excursion into the mountains. There was the surgeon’s wife, Anna Kirilovna, a talkative brunette of quite respectable proportions, and in the “prime of her years”; she had undertaken to act the part of motherly supervisor and chaperon to the remaining ladies during the hardships of the excursion. But on the journey she herself soon became the centre of continual care and concern to the whole company.
Then there was an old Colonel, Ivan Ivanovitch Revnin, tall, gaunt, with several scars and numberless wrinkles in his lean, striking face through whose expression of military sternness shone his natural kindness of heart. He still carried himself perfectly straight, and his silver grey hair, eyebrows and moustache charmingly completed the picture of a veteran hero.
It did not take me long to see that this old lion had found two powerful and alert tamers in the persons of his young daughters. Being a widower, he devoted his whole life to their interests, and submitted to their fancies and whims with mild grumbling, although he was very glad to do so. It was clear that they had managed to join the present excursion against his will, by employing those delicate little methods which enabled them to overcome his feeble opposition. Moreover, the anxiety about them which he displayed on the journey was quite unnecessary, for they were both thorough daughters of a soldier, and sat upon their mounts as easily and unconcernedly, as if they were sofas in their boudoir. I took Uljana, the elder, to be about seventeen years old; she was a girl of particular beauty. She was slender but not too tall, with an oval face gently tapering toward the chin. Beneath her large, broad forehead and her gracefully arched and delicate eyebrows, her nose, regular and delicately shaped with its small nostrils, advanced to meet the beautifully shaped lips of her small mouth. But the principal charm of this countenance consisted in the extraordinary purity of the features and the texture of the skin, in the grace of the tender and yet vivid red which adorned her mouth and suffused her face, and above all, in the deep blue and sparkling radiance of her eyes, which in their full beauty admitted of no comparison to describe them. In this girl’s appearance there was not a shadow of sensuality to disturb the pure pleasure which arose from the sight of her loveliness. She gave the impression of being something poetically ideal, but at the same time of possessing a maidenly pride, a mysterious power of command which would have led you involuntarily to bow your head before her. I had never before met with girlish beauty of such a type; but in dreams and in meditations it had often hovered before me ever since my childhood, and indeed I confess that she was the image of my ideal. If I had met her ten years earlier, perhaps. But let us not disturb with vain fancies the calm of a spirit which has grown cold and sober.
The younger, whose name was Duñaška, was only about fourteen years old, and was quite different in appearance, resembling more the Russian type. Instead of the radiant dark brown hair which seemed to float upon Uljana’s head, her round and chubby countenance was surrounded with an abundance of Russian curls of a golden tinge. Long lashes of the same golden color shaded her large light brown eyes, and the delicate white skin of her little face also radiated a kind of golden glimmer. For her years Duňaška was well developed, and her figure exhibited promising signs that she would become a full blosomed, plumb, alluring Russian beauty. But otherwise she was still only a romping, chattering, pampered child.
The quartette of feminine members of our company was completed by Aglaja Andrejevna (I did not discover her surname), a young relative of the Moscow surgeon with whom she was staying on a visit. She was rather a pretty girl, but with a cold reserved expression in her pale face and with a fixed smile of contempt upon her full, pink lips. She was supposed to have finished her course at a public school; I should certainly have taken her for a would-be- nihilist, if I had already heard of nihilism in Russia at that time.
To conclude this perhaps rather too conscientious description, I must mention Roman Lvovitch Suslikov, a relative of Ivan Ivanovitch, a beardless youth who spoke in a thin sing-song voice with very active gestures, and was fond of showing off his knowledge and lack of knowledge in matters concerned with western culture.
We were all mounted upon good-tempered little horses, the ladies in the more convenient side-saddles, under broad sunshades. In addition, they were equipped against the glowing sun with thick long veils, which in the meantime fluttered beneath their hats around their foreheads and curls, according to the latest fashion. The armed escort of our caravan consisted of two mounted Cossacks, sturdy fellows with tanned bearded faces. The picturesque costume of the Black Sea Cossacks, which was derived from the Circassians, suited them admirably. A high shaggy cap, a tunic reaching to the ankles and fastened round the waist, with a row of cartridge-pouches on both sides of the chest, high close-fitting boots, a long thin sword in the girdle, and slung across the back a light rifle in a cover of dark fur with long hairs. In front and behind the saddles of these Cossacks, partly tied up and partly deposited with care in the capacious “sumky” (bags), which hung down from both sides of the horse’s back, there were also eatable and uneatable necessaries for a journey, including of course, the indispensable vade mecum of the Russians, a large samovar.
We rode out from Novorossijsk, accompanied by the active curiosity of the motley population, which had partly assembled in the bazaar, and stared partly from the open “pogrebs” and “duchans” (taverns), where they were enlivening themselves with wine or vodka.
It was a beautiful May morning. Over the radiant dark blue sky a few delicate cloudlets could be seen here and there like small scattered feathers. The long bay which cut like an outstretched arm deep into the land, at the extremity of which lies Novorossijsk on the left shore, was gleaming at this moment as blue as a sapphire. Two small Turkish vessels with triangular sails were rocking gently by the shore, where their crews in picturesque attire were idly lounging on the sands. Here and there a white seagull hovered above the waves with long outstreiched wings shaped like our accent over the letter ě,—pardon me for this orthographical comparison.
An unbroken range of picturesque peaks, mostly cone-shaped, these are the smaller advanceguard of the Caucasian giants—extends along both sides of the bay, and behind Novorossijsk forms a far-reaching arch around the broad hollow, the greater part of which is covered with a dense growth of leafy forest. We rode from the town in a south-easterly direction towards these peaks. They here stretch quite close up behind the town, and their lower slopes reach as far as the bay itself, along which they are piled in a long row up to the sea, where a dark rock of curious shape projecting sharply into the water, closes this panorama like the remotest background in a piece of theatrical scenery. All the sides of this peak are interlocked with those of its neighbors, and only its rounded breast separated from the others by deep ravines, and its open summits standing out clearly in their manifold shapes against the bright sky, are revealed to the gaze as a range of mountain tops by themselves. They are covered with a growth of low but rank and leafy thickets, in whose fresh and lovely green the gloomy shadows of the cypress tops are here and there mingled.
After we had passed the outermost extremity of the bay, we found ourselves at the foot of one of these peaks. There, by a little Cossack guardhouse, we were stopped for a moment by an interesting sight. On the green meadow at the foot of the montain a company of Cossacks were going through their drill. The Black Sea Cossacks have, it is true, a uniform, as far as the shape of the clothing is concerned, but not at all with regard to its color. The long coat of one is black, of the second white, of the third brown, of the fourth violet, and so on. Their trousers also, and in fact even their boots, are of various colors. As a result, a troop of them seen somewhere from the distance, resembles a many-colored flower-bed. It was really a rare pleasure to watch this motley throng of sturdy bearded men, for the most part duskily sunburnt, galloping to and fro on their small horses across the meadow and filling the air with the hundredfold glitter of their polished weapons, metal belts, and the gold and silves adornments on their attire flashing in the sun,—it was like gazing into a kaleidoscope whose varied pattern changes every moment.
Behind the guardhouse we had to ascend the mountain side gradually. The pathway, which was covered with grass and which bore only scanty traces of wheels, twined itself along the slope with an abundance of curves. At first we could ride only two abreast. In front rode the Colonel with the surgeon, the remainder in no particular order behind them; I brought up the rear with Uljana.
Oh blissful moment of life! Oh sweet power of memory! I recognised the spring in its full enchantment, and ever since, my spirit has been radiant with the delightful lustre of this image, into which I plunged my insatiable gaze that day, until in spite of myself, I felt it grow dim with the moisture of joyful emotion. What more could I say? Am I to describe how the surrounding air was like transparent gold, and how I felt it wafted on my brow like the breath of a maiden in amorous yearning? Am I to describe the freshness of the herbage with its range of manifold shades, the intoxicating fragrance of countless flowers? Everything there was like a single flower. Never before have I seen so many of thein, and such beautiful ones, together at one time. Flora has here scattered a veritable deluge of flowers from her lap, flinging them forth prodigally in lavish handfuls. Here a thorn-bush is hidden by a cluster of glittering white starlets like newly fallen snow; yonder another shrub is red with great wild roses, and next to that others are covered with flowers of varying shapes and colors. Around the shrubberies was thickly heaped a wonderful medley of many-colored calyces and pods. It was a regret to me then that my paltry botanical knowledge did not permit me to recognize, in addition to the plants most familiar to me from home, the rest of the glorious springtide retinue by genus and name. But what use would it be to you, who are not botarists even if I filled up several lines here with long Latin words barbarously patched together?
One flower especially took my fancy; it consisted of little stars of a dark blue color, unusually beautiful and brilliant, which stood out with a double vividness from the grey shadow of the shrubberies, along whose fringe this plant mostly grew, peeping with its tiny blue blossoms through the glossy green foliage of the dense branches.
I remarked to Uljana how much I liked this flower.
“Ah, I am in love with it too,” said Uljana eagerly. “Although I have lived in this region for several years, I always welcome with joyful admiration year by year the blue eyes of the spring flower, whose beautiful color I really do not know what I can compare to.”
At this she questioningly fixed her clear blue eyes on me. Oh, I knew full well what would serve admirably as a comparison with those beautiful blue blossoms, but I kept my thoughts to myself; I am not fond of gallant phrases of that kind, and in any case, even though it were the truth, what would have been the use for me, an uninteresting stranger, to flatter this young and graceful girl?
I had always been somewhat puzzled by the words with which Heine begins a song of his:“Oh, faith in marvels, blossom blue . . .”but at that moment it seemed to me that I fully understood, why the poet had called faith in marvels a blue blossom.
I was dragged away from these thoughts by a scream of terror which resounded in front of us. We rode up quickly with the rest to Anna Kirilovna, who had frightened us with this scream, and who now, with lively gestures of horror, with staring eyes and outstretched finger, drawing our attention to a sandy spot by the wayside, overgrown here and there with grass.
“Oh, there, there, look—“We looked in the direction which she indicated with her finger, but we could see nothing.
“Well, what has scared you so much, my dear?” Tabunov, who had just galloped up to us with the Colonel, asked of his wife.
“Oh a snake!” announced Anna Kirilovna with a very expressive gesticulation. “A big black ugly snake! It rose up right in front of my horse, ever so high, and how it hissed! Dreadful! Then it darted off like lightning through the grass and disappeared in the thicket over there.”
Tabunov burst into loud laughter at this fearful news, and then exclaimed: “A snake! that is certainly dreadful. You see how right I was when I persuaded you to come on the excursion today. We have ben living for such a long time in this place, and you are still frightened of a snake. Well today, I hope you will make friends with them. Look, there is another one escaping over there, and there again, and yonder, I wager that in each one of these thickets you could find several of their nests. Do you hear that rustling and crackling? They are scuttling away in front of us on all sides. And you are trembling at these poor timid reptiles, even when you are so high up in your saddle? Most of them contain about as much venom as this cigarette of mine, and besides, they haven’t inherited a spark of enterprise from their forefather in Eden.”
In reply to this detailed information Anna Kirilovna could answer nothing, and as she rode on, her expression became more and more vexed as she observed signs of suppressed merriment on the faces of the others.
As a matter of fact, the surrounding brushwood swarmed not only with snakes, but with various other forms of animal life. The sunlit ground between the shrubs was covered with basking snakes of various hues, and beautiful lizards of a glistening green or mottled tint, the greater number of which however, we saw only for a movent like flitting flashes of light, as they vanished with the swiftness of arrows before our caravan into crannies and bushes. Green and brown grasshoppers of various sizes were leaping up high on all sides. Shaggy black spiders, beetles and flies of very beautiful and glistening colors set the grass, the plants and the air astir with their lively movements, while on the ground and in the shrubs could be seen an extraordinary quantity of snails. From time to time a large land-tortoise also came into view, sometimes with an escort of little tortoises, which with their tiny rounded shells beside the huge armor of their male or female parent, afforded a charming and at the same time a comical sight.
But the higher we mounted, the sparser became the bushes and brushwood, until finally the road twined up to the summit of the height only through thick grass. Although we had hitherto ridden only a short part of the journey, and that very much at our ease, yet Anna Kirilovna, at every step taken by her horse, was already complaining of the hardships of the troublesome excursion, and in spite of all the protests of the girls themselves, she announced that these poor creatures could not possibly ride any further without a proper rest. Finally her lips let slip, half to herself, the word “tea”, and the powerful magic of this word can rarely be resisted by the Russian heart.
So we stopped for our rest on a small piece of flat grassy land beneath the top of the mountain, whence a pathway led slopingly to the other side. While Anna Kirilovna attended to the samovar in the centre of this little plain and the horses were grazing round about with the Cossacks in charge of them, we delighted ourselves with the lovely view, which from this spot presented itself to our eyes in all directions. In the west we saw beneath us the blue stretch of the bay merging in the distance with the open sea, and behind it extended a range of green coneshaped peaks, which on the north enclosed a spacious wooded hollow, where could be seen several small villages and a scanty sprinkling of “chutors” (farms). In this valley are to be found the Czech settlements of Kirilovka, Metodějovka and Glěbovka. Directly beneath us at the end of the bay was Novorossijsk.
To the south and the east, the direction in which our journey continued, we could see in front of us a varied and picturesque mountain range, which grew higher and higher in the distance, until, in the background, clouds and mists shut off our view of its highest peaks. The prospect in this direction revealed a glimpse of wildly beautiful and primitive nature. Mountains and hills of varied shapes could be seen there, separated by charming valleys and hollows, nearly all with a dense growth of rank thickets and forests, in some places with dark pine-woods, but for the most part with bright leafage, whose manifold shades of fresh and glittering green were delightfully refreshing to the eyes; in places amid this green, or upon projecting boulders, torrents, and cataracts glittered like silvery flashes, and the mist fluttered here and there through the ravines, or was rended on the sides of the wooded slopes into long trailing girdles and shreds, thus adding to the picturesque and fascinating appearance of the mountains; but nowhere in this broad expanse, as far as we could see, was there any trace of human dwelling or activity; not a single village, not a single farm, not a single cloud of smoke, which would have indicated a solitary hut or a shepherd’s fire. In deep solitude and undisturbed peace rested before our eyes this beautiful mountain region,—the deserted home of the Circassians, who after the Russians had finally conquered the courageous mauntaineers, emigrated for the most part to Turkey, while a smaller number of them settled down in the plain of Kuban.
“Look, every inch of soil here bears witness to the fame of Barjatynsky,” exclaimed the old Colonel with sparkling eyes. “It was a hard piece of heroic labor that he accomplished before he finally broke down the desperate resistance of the Circassians in these remote mountain regions.”
“Hm, fame—fame—“remarked Aglaja Andrejevna, disdainfully curling her pink lips. “What is fame?”
“Oh, Aglaja Andrejevna, you ask what fame is,” said the Colonel in a tone of surprise. “Perhaps you scorn the laurels of the hero, who in noble enthusiasm to good effect helped with his sword to clear the way for the great world-wide mission of his country?”
“If fame is based on wholesale slaughter in general, and on gratifying the ambition or domineering instincts of an individual or of a whole nation in particular,—yes, fame of that sort fills me not merely with contempt, but with disgust as well,” exclaimed the girl-student in a decisive tone and her cold green eye flashed vividly for a moment.
“In this matter I must express my agreement with Aglaja Andrejevna, sir” said Suslikov, intervening in the conversation with his little sing-song voice. “Before very long the time will come when the history of mankind will have to be revised in the spirit of true and pure humanity, when Clio will erase from her scroll the names of ambitious egoists, who for the sake of fame have waded through an ocean of human blood, and during long ages have led mankind astray by their pernicious example. In their places will be inscribed only the names of the real benefactors of mankind, the great thinkers, scholars, poets, artists and geniuses who are worthy of a share in immortality. Yes, from this point of view, fame is in truth a worthy goal for human endeavor. See, such a man departs as an individual to the grave, he perishes and disappears for ever, and with him what we call his spirit or soul, but his name and the memory of his works live in the hearts of countless future generations,—this is the true and only immortality.”
“Excellent, Roman Lvovič,” said Aglaja Andrejevna with an ironical smile, “the most competent German professor would not need to be ashamed of your lecture. But in spite of it all, I could very well do without even that kind of immortality. To live beyond the grave in the praise bestowed by future generations, of which I shall know nothing, nothing whatever—no, that prospect does not attract me. And fame during one’s lifetime,—believe me, that ambition is a craving which causes mankind not only a hundred times more harm than good, but for individuals, as well, is the source of far more suffering than happiness. However, all this is an amusing game with words, phrases—phrases—phrases.”
“Oh, this is a fine thing indeed,” exclaimed Colonel Revnin, now really indignant. “These, then, are the opinions held by our young people, in whom our hopes are set? These, then, are the fruits of the present-day advanced education? We have grown grey in the opinion that, by fighting for the honor and victory of our country, we acquire honorable and lasting merits,—and in the meanwhile, we learn at the close of our lives, that our honorable wounds are in reality a sign of shame and disgrace . . . And our highly educated daughters actually declare that it is not worth while for a man to acquire any merits in respect of posterity,—for the grave is an end to everything, and it is a matter of indifference what opinions future people will form about us. Tell me, Uljana, have you imbibed similar views at your college?”
Uljana has listened only to the beginning of the discusion, and had then become dreamily immersed in the mountain landscape. Interrupted now by her father’s question, she collected her thoughts for a moment and then said with increasing enthusiasm: “What do I think of fame? I myself would not trouble about it. But I see sublime beauty in the idea of a man who, by bravery or wisdom, uplifts himself high above the unknown multitude, and snatches from heaven upon his brow, at least a twinkling ray of immortality. That is in truth beautiful, sublimely beautiful,—is it not?” At this she fixed upon me her beautiful eyes, in whose deep blue glittered stars of enthusiasm, even though I might have had my own ideas about fame, how could I help agreeing with her after such a glance?
“Assuredly,” I assented. “Eagerness for fame is not the guiding principle of my life either, and I feel no resentment at being submerged without a memory in the unknown multitude. But I entirely agree that the longing for fame,—perhaps not the vain ambition and conceit, which pursue only immediate recognition, but the longing for fame beyond grave, is one of the most beautiful and at the same time one of the most noble passions of man. The longing for the praise of future generations, which he will never hear, for the preservation of his name upon this earth, from which his individuality would otherwise vanish without a trace,—is that not,—besides,—yes,—the immortality of mankind as a whole, in which the individual, urged by an unconscious instinct like a dying polyp in its coral abode,—yes,—besides,—”
“Tea, tea, if you please,” announced Anna Kirilovna in a loud voice, thus helping me out of the straits to which my scanty abilities as an orator, and my lack of fluency in Russian had reduced me.(To be continued.)
- ↑ Written more than forty years ago.