Complete works of henryk.., p.756
Complete Works of Henryk Sienkiewicz, page 756
A certain night the Doctor caught his niece in crime. She had made her way to his bureau, had drawn out his papers, and was preparing to burn them. He and she fell to fighting. A pretty picture! He in his linen, she in her nightdress; they wrestle, they pull, they scratch. He is stronger, and she, though he bruised her and drew blood, experienced a certain agreeableness in feeling on her own maiden skin the strength of a man. And in this is all Zola. But let us listen, for the decisive moment is approaching. The Doctor himself, after he has panted somewhat, talks to her solemnly. The reader is impatient. Is the Doctor, by the power of his genius, to rend the night sky and show her a wilderness beyond the stars, or, by the might of eloquence, to hurl into the dust her church, her beliefs, her impulses, her hopes? At once this verse occurs to one, —
“Darkness on all sides, silence on all sides,
What will come now, what will come now?”
In the silence was heard the low voice of the Doctor:
“I did not wish to show thee this, but it is not possible to live thus any longer; the hour has come. Give me the genealogical tree of the family Rougon-Macquart.”
“What is that? What is that?”
“Yes! The genealogical tree of the family Rougon-Macquart! The reading begins in silence: There was one Adelaide Fouqué who had as husband Rougon and a friend Macquart. From Rougon was born Eugene Rougon, also Pascal Rougon, also Aristides, also Sidonia, also Martha. From Aristides was born Maxim, also Clotilda, also Victor. From Maxim was born Charles, and that is the end; but Sidonia had a daughter Angela, and Martha, who married Mouret, who came from the Macquarts, she had three children, etc.”
The night passes without incident, but the reading continues. After the Rougons come the Macquarts; later, the descendants of both families united. Name follows name, surname surname. They appear evil, they appear good, they appear indifferent; all positions appear, ministers, bankers, great merchants, simple soldiers, or scoundrels without occupation; finally the Doctor stops reading, and, looking with the eyes of a sage on his niece, asks, —
Well, and what now?
But the beautiful Clotilda throws herself into his embraces.
“Thou hast conquered! Thou hast conquered!”
And her God, her faith, her church, her impulses toward ideals, her needs of soul scatter into dust.
Why? In virtue of what inferences? For what good reason? In that tree what could convince her or exercise any kind of influence save tedium? But why did not this question come from her lips which occurs to the reader invincibly, “But what of that?” It is unknown. I have never noted that any author obtained such great and immediate results from such an empty and remote cause. This is something as astonishing as if Zola had commanded the faith and the principles of Clotilda to all into dust because the Doctor had read to her an almanac, a railroad guide, a bill of fare, or a catalogue of any museum. The arbitrariness passes all bounds, and is simply beyond understanding. The reader inquires if the author is deceiving himself, or casting dust in the eyes of the public. And this culminating point of the novel is its fall, and the fall of the whole doctrine. Clotilda ought to have answered as follows, —
“Thy theory does not stand in any relation to my faith in God and the church. Thy theory is so disconnected that by virtue of it one may be everything, and the theory itself becomes nothing; therefore all thy further inferences from it rest also on nothing. According to thee Nana is a streetwalker, and Angela a saint; Father Mouret an ascetic; Jacque Lotier a murderer, — and all because of grandmother Adelaide? But I will tell thee with a greater likelihood that the good are good because they have my faith, because they believe in responsibility and the immortality of the soul, and the sinners are sinners because they believe in nothing. How wilt thou prove to me that the reason of good and evil is Adelaide Fouqué? Wilt thou assure me with thy word simply, or repeat that it is so because it is so; but I can say to thee that faith and a feeling of responsibility have for ages been a barrier against evil, and if as a positivist thou wish to reckon even a little with reality, thou wilt not be able to contradict. In one word, I have objective proof, while thou hast only thy personal ‘it seems to me;’ that being the case, leave me my faith, and throw thy fantastic tree into the fire.”
But Clotilda answers nothing of the kind. On the contrary, she eats immediately an apple from that vain tree, and goes over soul and body to the camp of the Doctor, and she acts thus only and exclusively because it pleases Zola. There is no other reason, and there cannot be.
If sire had gone over out of love for the Doctor, if this reason, which in a woman can play such a great rôle, had really played it, I should have understood the matter. But no! For in such case what would have happened with Zola’s whole doctrine? For it is the doctrine alone which influences Clotilda; it is her reasoning side which the Doctor wants to have so irresistible. And he does what he wants, but simply at the cost of logic and sound sense. From that moment, everything is possible; it is possible to persuade the reader that a man who is not loved makes a woman love him through showing her a price list of butter or of stearine candles. To such a plight is real and great talent brought by doctrinairism.
It leads also to a complete destruction of moral sense. That heredity is a wall through which as many windows may be pierced as one likes. The Doctor is such a window. He considers himself a degeneration from the family neurosis; that is, he considers himself a normal man, so he would like somehow to show his health to posterity. Clotilda is also of the opinion that it would not be out of the way, and, because love unites them, therefore they take each other. They take each other evidently as people took each other in the time of the cave-dwellers. Zola considers that perfectly natural, Doctor Pascal also, and, because Clotilda has gone over completely to his camp, neither does she protest. This seems a little more wonderful. Clotilda was religious so recently! Youth and inexperience do not explain it either.
Even girls at the age of eight have some instinctive feeling of modesty. A young lady of twenty years and something knows always what she is doing, and cannot become a victim; if she is at variance with the feeling of modesty, it is either through temperament or through love, which ennobles the transport, for it makes it an act of attachment and a duty, but also love itself wishes to be duty legalized. Though a woman be without religion, and renounce the consecration of love by religion, she may still wish her feeling to be legalized before people. The priest or the mayor. Clotilda, who loves Doctor Pascal, desires nothing. Marriage by a mayor seems of secondary value to her. And again, it is simply impossible to understand her, for genuine love should strive to strengthen the bond and make it permanent. Otherwise that happens which happened in this novel, that the first separation was the end of the connection. Had they been married even before a mayor, they would have remained man and wife, in separation they would not have ceased to belong to each other; since they had not been married, he was from the moment of her departure the unmarried Doctor Pascal, as before, she — the seduced Clotilda. Even during the time of their common life a thousand bitternesses rose from this, and moments really harrowing for both. A certain time Clotilda rushes in in tears, and flaming, and when the terrified Doctor asks what the matter is, she answers, —
“Oh, those women! While walking in the shade I closed my parasol and had the misfortune to hit some little child. Then all fell on me, and began to scream out such things! Oh, such things! That I never shall have children; that it is not for such a dishcloth as I am to have them — and other words, which I cannot repeat, and will not, which I did not even understand.”
Her breast rose in sobbing; he grew pale, and, seizing her in his arms, covered her face with kisses; then he said, —
“This is my fault; thou art suffering through me! Listen, let us go to some place far off, where nobody will know thee, where every one will greet thee, and where thou wilt be happy.”
But one thing does not come to the head of either: to marry. When Pascal’s mother speaks to them of it, they have stone ears. Womanly modesty does not commend this method to Clotilda; care for her, and a desire to shield her from disrespect, does not commend it to him. Why? For a reason unjustified by anything. For the reason that it so pleases Zola.
But perhaps his object is to show what tragic results come of illegal connections? Not in the least. He is entirely on the side of the Doctor and Clotilda. If the mayor should marry them, there would be no drama, and the author wants one. That is the reason.
Later comes the Doctor’s bankruptcy. They have to separate. This separation becomes the misfortune of their lives; the Doctor must die of the blow. Both feel that that must be the end; both do not wish it; still they do not imagine any method which would fix forever their mutual relations and change the separation only into a journey, not into a final parting: still they do not marry.
They were people without religion, so they did not want a priest; that we can understand. But why did they not want a mayor? This question is left without an answer.
Here, besides the want of moral feeling, is the lack of common sense. The book is not only immoral; it is a wretched hut built of planks which do not hold together, not suffering the least touch of logic and sound judgment. In this quagmire of nonsense even talent is submerged.
One thing remains: poison flows as formerly into the souls of readers, minds become accustomed to evil and cease to be indignant at it. The poison soaks in, destroys simplicity of soul, moral sensitiveness, and that delicacy of conscience which distinguishes good from evil.
The Doctor, in grief for Clotilda, gets the sclerosis and dies. She returns under the former roof and occupies herself with the rearing of the child. Nothing of what the Doctor had ingrafted into her soul went to nothing or withered. On the contrary, it grew stronger. He loved life; she also loves it now. She accepts it completely; not through resignation, but because she knows it; and the more she ponders over it, fondling the nameless child on her knee, the more she knows it. With this ends the cycle “Rougon-Macquart.”
But this end is a new surprise. Now nineteen volumes lie before us, and in them, as Zola himself says: Tant de boue, tant de larmes. C’était à se demander si d’un coup de foudre, il n’aurait pas mieux valu balayer cette fourmilière gâtée et misérable. It is true! The man who reads these volumes can arrive at no other conclusion than that life is a desperate and blind mechanical process in which one must share, to the greater misfortune of people, since it is impossible to do otherwise. In it mud predominates over green turf, rottenness over freshness; the odor of corpses over the perfume of flowers; sickness, madness, and crime over health and virtue. This Gehenna is not merely terrible, it is disgusting. The hair rises on the head, and at the same time saliva comes to the lips (to spit at it), and in fact the question springs up whether it would not be better if a lightning flash should sweep away cette fourmilière gâtée et misérable?
Another conclusion there cannot be; another would be a mad mental deviation, a simple breaking of the laws of reason and logic. And now do you know how this cycle of novels ends really? With a hymn in praise of life.
Here one’s hands simply drop. It is useless labor to show again that the author arrives at something which is directly opposed to that which should flow from his work. We wish him no evil! But let him not be astonished if even his disciples desert him. People must think according to the laws of logic. And because they must also live, they want some consolation on the road of life. Masters, after the manner of Zola, give them only dissolution, chaos, a disgust for life, and despair. The rationalism of these masters can show the world nothing else; and these things it has always shown so eagerly that it has exceeded the measure. To-day those who are stifled with bad air need fresh air; the doubting need hope; those who are torn with unrest need a little repose, therefore they act properly when they turn thither whence hope and repose come, thither where they are blessed with the cross, and where it is said to them, as it was to the palsied: Toile grabatum tuum et ambula! (Take up thy bed and walk!)
And thus is explained the newest evolution, the waves of which are beginning to pass through the world in every direction.
To my thinking, poetry and novels must also pass through this evolution; nay more, they must strengthen and freshen it. To go on as hitherto is simply impossible! On an exhausted field only weeds grow. The novel should strengthen life, not undermine it; ennoble, not defile it; bring good “tidings,” not evil. I care not whether the word that I say pleases or not, since I believe that I reflect the great and urgent need of the soul of humanity, which is crying for a change.
In Vain
Translated by Jeremiah Curtin
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTORY.
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
IN VAIN
INTRODUCTORY.
“In Vain,” the first literary work of Sienkiewicz, was written before he had passed the eighteenth year of his life and while he was studying at Warsaw.
Though not included in his collected works by the author, this book will be received with much favor; of this I feel certain.
The first book of the man who wrote “With Fire and Sword” and “Quo Vadis” will interest those of his admirers who live in America and the British Empire. These people are counted at present by millions.
This volume contains pictures of student life drawn by a student who saw the life which he describes in the following pages. This student was a person of exceptional power and exceptional qualities, hence the value of that which he gives us.
JEREMIAH CURTIN.
Jerusalem, Palestine,
March 8, 1899.
IN VAIN
CHAPTER I
“And this is Kieff!”
Thus spoke to himself a young man named Yosef Shvarts, on entering the ancient city, when, roused by toll-gate formalities, he saw himself unexpectedly among buildings and streets.
The heart quivered in him joyfully. He was young, he was rushing forward to life; and so he drew into his large lungs as much fresh air as he could find place for, and repeated with a gladsome smile, —
“And this is Kieff!”
The Jew’s covered wagon rolled forward, jolting along on the prominent pavement stones. It was painful to Shvarts to sit under the canvas, so he directed the Jew to turn to the nearest inn, while he himself walked along by the side of the wagon.
Torrents of people, as is usual in a city, were moving in various directions; shops were glittering with a show of wares; carriages were passing one after another; merchants, generals, soldiers, beggars, monks pushed along before the eyes of the young man.
It was market-day, so the city had taken on the typical complexion of gatherings of that sort. There was nothing unconsidered there; no movement, no word seemed to be wasted. The merchant was going to his traffic, the official to his office, the criminal to deceit, — all were hastening on with some well-defined object; all pushed life forward, thinking of the morrow, hastening toward something. Above that uproar and movement was a burning atmosphere, and the sun was reflected in the gleaming panes of great edifices with just the same intensity as in any little cottage window.
“This uproar is life,” thought Shvarts, who had never been in Kieff before, or in any large city.
And he was thinking how immensely distant was life in a little town from the broad scene of activity in a great city, when a well-known voice roused him from that meditation.
“Yosef, as God lives!”
Shvarts looked around, gazed some seconds at the man who called him by name; at last he opened his arms widely, and exclaimed, —
“As God lives, it is Gustav!”
Gustav was a man small and thin, about twenty-three years of age; long hair of a chestnut color fell almost to his shoulders; his short reddish mustache cut even with his lip made him seem older than he was in reality.
“What art thou doing, Yosef? Why hast thou come? To the University, hast thou not?”
“Yes.”
“Well done. Life is wretched for the man without knowledge,” said Gustav, as he panted. “What course wilt thou choose?”
“I cannot tell yet; I will see and decide.”
“Think over it carefully. I have been here a year now, and have had a chance to look at things coolly. I regret much a choice made too hastily, but what is one to do afterward? Too late to turn back, to go on there is lack of power. It is easier to commit a folly than correct it. To-morrow I will go with thee to the University; meanwhile, if thou hast no lodgings, let the Jew take thy things to my room, it is not far from here. Thou mayst begin with me; when thou art tired of me, look for another man.”
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