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

with you? She discovered your deception. Her husband was never allowed to touch her bed again and you, deprived of your toy, used rape. Four villains, the instruments of your will, hold her hands and legs … but we shall not complete this. On her brow is grief, in her eyes despair. She holds the babe, the dolorous fruit of deceit or rape, but the living copy of his adulterous father. After giving birth to him, she forgot the father’s beastliness and her heart began to feel tenderness toward him. She fears that she might fall into the hands of someone similar to the father.—The infant…. Your son, barbarian, your blood. Or do you think that where a church rite has not taken place there is no obligation then? Or do you think that the blessing given on your order by the hired performer of the divine word confirmed their union? Or do you think that a forced marriage in God’s temple can be called a union? The Almighty reviles compulsion, He revels in heartfelt desires. Only they are pure. Oh, between us how many acts of adultery and defilement are committed in the name of the father of joys and the comforter of ills in the presence of witnesses unworthy of their stature.—A lad of twenty-five, her lawful husband, is the companion and confidant of her master. Brutality and vengeance can be seen in his eyes. He repents of his craven acts for his master. A knife is in his pocket; he grabbed hold of it fiercely, his plan not hard to work out…. Your zeal is fruitless. You will be given over to another owner. The hand of your owner, held constantly over the head of his slave, will bend your neck into compliance. Hunger, cold, heat, punishment, everything will be against you. Your mind is alien to noble thoughts. You do not know how to die. You will submit and will be a slave in spirit as much as in station. And if you were to want to resist you would die a slow death in chains. There is no judge to come between you. Your tormentor would not want to punish you personally. He will be your accuser. He will give you over to the municipal justice system.—The justice system!—where the accused scarcely has the power to defend himself.—Let us walk past the other unfortunate people put up for auction.

Scarcely had the terror-inducing hammer emitted its dull sound and unfortunates learned their fate—then tears, sobbing, groaning penetrated the ears of the entire assembly. Even the most callous were moved. Hardened hearts! What is the point of fruitless empathy? O Quakers! if we had your soul, we would have clubbed together, bought these wretches, gifted them freedom.—After living in harmony for many years, these victims of abusive sale will feel the pain of separation. But if the law—or, to put it better, barbaric custom since this is not written—permits such a mockery of humanity, what right do you have to sell this infant? He is illegitimate. The law frees him. Stop, I shall be the denouncer, I shall redeem him. If only I were able to save others with him! O Fortune! why have you stinted so miserably on my portion? I presently yearn to taste your enchanting gaze, for the first time I began to feel a passion for wealth.—My heart was so constrained that I bounded out of the meeting and fled after emptying my purse of my last ten kopecks to the victims. On the staircase I met a foreigner, a friend of mine. “What has happened to you? You are weeping!” “Turn back,” I told him, “do not be a witness to this shameful spectacle. You once cursed the barbaric custom of selling black slaves in the distant settlements of your country; turn back,” I repeated, “do not be a witness to our decline and may you not carry back our shame to your fellow citizens by conversing with them about our mores.” “I cannot believe this,” my friend said to me, “it is impossible that in a place where everyone is permitted to think and worship as they wish such a shameful custom exists.” “Do not be surprised,” I said to him, “the establishment of freedom of religion offends only priests and monks, and even they would sooner wish to acquire for themselves a sheep than a sheep for their Christian flock. But the freedom of rural dwellers will damage what they call the right of ownership. And all those who could champion freedom, all are the great landowners, and it is not from their councils that one should expect freedom, but from the burden of enslavement itself.”

TVER

“The art of writing poetry in Russia,” my dinner companion at the inn was saying, “understood in its various senses, is still far from greatness. Poetry had nearly awakened, but now once again slumbers; whereas versification had taken one step and then came to a standstill.109

“Lomonosov, having perceived what was ridiculous in the Polish cladding of our verses, stripped from them their foreign doublet. After giving good examples of new verses, he fitted on his followers a great model that turned out to be a bridle, and nobody has yet dared to move a step away from it. It was unfortunate that Sumarokov happened to live at the same time and he was an excellent versifier. He practiced verse on the model of Lomonosov, and now all those who follow them cannot imagine that there could be meters other than iambics as practiced by these two famous men. Although both these versifiers taught the rules for other meters, and Sumarokov left behind examples of all types, they were too insignificant to merit from anyone imitation. If Lomonosov had adapted Job or the psalmodist in dactyls; or if Sumarokov had written Semiramis or Dimitry in trochees, then Kheraskov, too, would have thought it possible to write in meters other than iambs and would have