Short Fiction by Fyodor Sologub (hot novels to read txt) ๐
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Fyodor Sologub was a Russian poet, novelist and playwright, working in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His work generally has a downcast outlook with recurring mystical elements, and often uses anthropomorphic objects or fantastical situations to comment on human behaviour. As well as novels (including the critically acclaimed The Little Demon), Sologub wrote over five hundred short stories, ranging in length from half-page fables to nearly novella-length tales.
While most of his short stories were not contemporaneously translated, both John Cournos and Stephen Graham produced English compilations and contributed individual stories to publications such as The Russian Review and The Egoist. This collection comprises the best individual English translations in the public domain of Sologubโs short stories, presented in chronological order of the publication of their translation.
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- Author: Fyodor Sologub
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And not a word does she utter of her own, her personal affliction, of what is in her soul.
The old, dried-up lips mumble of mercy, of generosity, of brotherly love, of the holy lifeโ โof all those lofty regions pouring out their bounty upon all creation. And not a word of the miracle, awaited eagerly and with trepidation.
But here are words for those who are in prison and in exile; it is a prayer for their liberation, for their redemption.
Here is something at last about Borya.
Freedom and redemption.โ โโ โฆ
But the prayer runs on and on, and it is again for strangers, for distant people, for the universal; only for an instant, and then lightly, does she pause to put in something for herself, for her desire, for what is in her heart.
Then for the deadโ โfor those others, the long since departed, the almost forgotten, the resurrected only in word in the hour of these strangers, prayed for in this easy, gliding way all the world over where piety reigns.
The prayers are ended. Elena Kirillovna lingers for a moment. She has an air of having forgotten to say something indispensable.
What else? Or has she said all?
โAllโโ โsomeone seems to say simply, softly and inexorably.
Elena Kirillovna rises from her knees. She goes to the window. Her soul is calm and self-contained. The prayer has not left her in a mood of piety, but has relieved her weary soul for a brief time of its material, matter-of-fact existence.
XVIIElena Kirillovna looks out of the window. She is returning, as it were, once more from some dark, abstract world to the bright, profusely-coloured, resonant impressions of a rough, cheery, not altogether disagreeable life.
Small white clouds tinged with red float slowly in the heights and merge imperceptibly in the vivid blue. Ablaze like a piece of coal at red heat their soul seems to fuse with their cold white bodies, to consume them as well as itself with fire, and to sink exhausted in the cold blue heights. The sun, as yet invisible behind the left wing of the house, has already begun to pour upon the garden its warm and glowing waves of laughter, joy and light, animating the flowers and birds.
โWell, itโs time to dress,โ Elena Kirillovna says to herself.
She rings.
Soon Glasha appears and helps Elena Kirillovna to dress.
At last she is ready. She casts a final look in the mirror to see that everything is in order.
Elena Kirillovnaโs hair is very neatly combed, and lightly brushed down with a cosmetic. This makes it shine and appear as though it were glued together. At her every movement in the light there is visible, from right to left, a slender silver thread, due to the reflection of light at the parting of the smoothed coiffure. Her face shows slight traces of powder.
Elena Kirillovnaโs dress is always of a light colour, when not actually white, and of the simplest cut. The small soft ruffle of the broad collar hides her neck and chin. She has already substituted for her dressing slippers a pair of light summer shoes.
XVIIIElena Kirillovna enters the dining-room. She looks on as the table is being laid for breakfast. She always notes the slightest disorder. She grumbles quietly as she picks up something from one place on the table and puts it in another.
Then she goes into the large, unused front room, with its closed door on to the staircase of the front faรงade. She walks along the corridor to the vestibule and to the back staircase. She stops on the high landing, wrinkles up her face from the sun, and looks down to see what is going on in the yard. Small, quite erect, like a young schoolgirl with a yellow, wrinkled face which expresses at the moment a severe domestic concern, she stands, looks on, and is silent; she is, it seems, unnecessary here. No one pays her the slightest attention.
โGood morning, Stepanida,โ she calls out. Stepanida, a buxom, red-cheeked maid in a bright red dress, under which is visible a strip of her white chemise and her stout sunburnt legs, is attending to the samovar at the bottom of the stairs, and is vigorously blowing to set the fire going. Upon her head is a neatly-arranged green kerchief, which hides her folded braids of hair like a headdress.
The bulging sides of the samovar glow radiantly in the sun. Its bent chimney sends out a curl of blue smoke, which smells sharply, pungently, and not altogether disagreeably, of juniper and tar.
In answer to the old mistressโs greeting Stepanida raises her broad, cheerfully-preoccupied face, with its small, dark brown eyes, and says in prolonged caressing tones, singsong fashion:
โGood morning to you, matushka barinya.3 Itโs a fine morning, to be sure. How warm it is, by the grace of God! And youโre up early, matushka barinya!โ
Her words are indeed honeyed, and above in the sweet air an early, shaggy bee hovers, with a thick buzzing, tremulously golden in the clear, fluid haze of the early, gentle sun. Silent again, Stepanida is once more busy with the samovar; the disenchanted bee flies away, its buzzing growing less and less audible behind the fence.
The pungent smell of tar causes Elena Kirillovna to frown. She says:
โWhat makes the thing smell so strongly? You had better leave it for a while, or you will get giddy.โ
Stepanida, without moving, answers languidly and indifferently:
โItโs nothing, barinya. We are used to it. Itโs but a slight smell, and it is the juniper.โ
Through the blue, curling smoke of juniper her sweet voice seems dull and bitter. There is a tickling at Elena Kirillovnaโs throat. There is a slight giddiness in her head. Elena Kirillovna makes haste to go. She descends the staircase, and proceeds upon her
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