Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow by Irina Reyfman (top 10 novels of all time .txt) 📕

in the dirt you stretched out to rest, on benches or on rocks. I made no less an effort to keep you from harmful food or drink. Our efforts were the best spice in our midday meal. Remember the pleasure we took in dining in an unfamiliar village after we lost our way home. How delicious we then found the rye bread and village kvass!

“Do not begrudge me if you sometimes find yourselves mocked because you lack a comely gait, because your posture stands comfortably rather than as custom or fashion dictate; that you dress tastelessly, that your hair is curled by the hand of nature rather than a hairdresser. Do not begrudge me if you are overlooked at assemblies, and particularly by women, because you do not know how to praise their beauty. Recall, however, that you run quickly, that you swim tirelessly, that you can lift weights without strain, that you are able to use a plow, dig a furrow, can use a scythe and axe, a plane and chisel, are able to ride horseback, to shoot. Do not feel sad because you are not able to leap like jugglers. Know that the best dancing contains nothing majestic; and if you should be moved by its appearance, the root of it will be salaciousness, everything else is ancillary to this. But you are able to draw animals and nature morte, to draw the features of the king of nature, man. In painting, you shall find genuine satisfaction not only of the senses but of reason as well.—I taught you music so that a string quivering in harmony with your nerves would arouse your slumbering heart; for music, by setting inwardness into motion, makes a habit of tenderheartedness in us.—I taught you the barbaric art of fencing, too. But may this art remain dormant in you until self-preservation requires it. It will not, I reckon, make you arrogant; since you are firm of spirit and will not take offence if an ass kicks you with its hoof or a pig grazes you with its stinking snout.—Do not fear telling anyone that you are able to milk a cow, that you can braise cabbage and porridge, or that a piece of meat roasted by you will be tasty. A person who is able to do something himself will be in a position to make another do it and will be forgiving of mistakes because he knows all the difficulties of performance.

“In your infancy and adolescence, I did not burden your reason with readied reflections or alien thoughts, did not burden your memory with too many topics. But having offered you the path to knowledge, since that time you have begun to sense the power of your own reason, you stride by yourselves along the way that is open to you. Your knowledge is better founded because you acquired it not through repetition, as the proverbial saying goes, like parroting birds. In accordance with this rule, for as long as your powers of reason were inactive, I did not present you concepts about the Almighty Being and even less about Revelation. For what you learned before you acquired reason would have been prejudice in you and hindered reasoning. When I then observed that in your ratiocinations you were led by the mind, that was when I suggested to you the connection of concepts that lead to the awareness of God. I am convinced in the depth of my heart that it is more pleasant for the all-munificent Father to behold two unspoiled souls in whom the lamp of learning is not ignited by prejudice, but of their own accord rise aloft to the primal fire to be kindled. That was when I made a proposition to you about the law of Revelation without hiding from you everything that had been said by many in refutation of it. Because I wanted you to be able to discriminate between milk and bile, and joyously saw that you accepted this vessel of comfort boldly.

“In giving you instruction in the sciences, I did not neglect to acquaint you with various peoples, having taught you foreign languages. But above all my duty was that you should know your own language so that you would be able in it to express your thoughts orally and in writing and so that your style would be unforced and not cause a drop of sweat to form on your face. I tried to give you greater familiarity with the English language,61 as well as Latin, than with others. For the resilience of the spirit of freedom, when transmuted into the signification of language, also trains reason in the concrete concepts essential to all governments.

“But if I allowed your reason to guide your steps on the paths of learning, I endeavored to be all the more vigilant in your moral education. I tried to moderate in you momentary anger, subjecting to reason the anger that is extended and leads to retribution. Retribution! … Your soul abhors it. Of this natural inclination of creatures endowed with sensitivity you have only by defying the urge to repay violence kept the defensiveness of your organism.

“The time has now arrived when your feelings, after reaching an apogee of agitation still short of a complete understanding about what has been stimulated, begin to be alarmed by every external stimulus and to produce a dangerous tremor within you. Now you have reached the time when, as it is said, reason becomes the determinant of your activity and inactivity; or better to say when feelings, earlier sustained by the fluidity of infancy, begin to feel disturbance, or when vital juices, having filled the vessel of youth, begin to overflow its brim in search of a path that suits their current. I preserved you inviolable until now from corrupt disturbances of feelings, but did not hide from you, by using the cloak of ignorance, the fatal consequences of being diverted from the path of moderation in sensual satisfaction. You