Fariha’s Reviews > On the Eve > Status Update

It sometimes happens that a man, on waking up, asks himself with an involuntary frisson of terror: “Am I really thirty already? Forty? Fifty? How has life passed so quickly? How has death come so close? Death is like a fisherman who has caught a fish in his net and leaves it for a time in the water; the fish is still swimming, but the net is around it and the fisherman will extract it – whenever he wants.”

Probably I shall not survive all this – so much the better. I’ve been brought to the edge of the abyss and must plunge in. Fate did not unite us in vain; who knows, perhaps I killed him; now it’s his turn to draw me after him. I sought happiness – and maybe I’ll find death. Clearly that’s as it should be; clearly, there was guilt… But death covers and reconciles everything, does it not?

Each of us is guilty by virtue of being alive, and there is no thinker so great, no benefactor of mankind who, because of the good he has done, can rely on having the right to live…

...she sank to her knees, but could not pray. There were no reproaches in her heart; she did dare to question God as to why he had not spared them, taken pity on them or protected them. Why was their punishment greater than their guilt, if indeed they were guilty?

Can it be we are alone, quite alone, whilst everywhere else, in all these fathomless gulfs and chasms, everything, absolutely everything, is alien to us?

“why is there death, why separation, sickness and tears? And why is there this beauty, this sweet sense of hope, this soothing awareness of a sure refuge, unfailing defence and immortal protection? What is the meaning of this smiling, beneficent sky, this happy, easeful earth? Can it be that all this is merely within us, while outside us there is eternal cold and silence?

“Give it time,” replied Uvar Ivanovich. “There will be.”
“Will be? The soil, the force of the black earth, has spoken: ‘There will be.’ Look, I’ll take note of your words. But why are you putting out the candle?”
“I want to sleep. Goodnight.”

What a useful, practical occupation! No, if there were worthwhile people among us, this girl, this sensitive soul, would not have left us, would not have slipped away like a fish into water! What is happening, Uvar Ivanovich? When will our time come? When will real people be produced here?”

No, we still haven’t got anyone or anybody, wherever you look. It’s all small fry, rodents, little Hamlets or Samoyeds, darkness and subterranean wildernesses, speculators, time-wasters and tub-thumpers. Then there’s another type: they’ve studied themselves in minute and shameful detail, they constantly take the pulse of their every sensation and report it to themselves: ‘that’s what I feel; that’s what I think’,

“O great philosopher of the Russian land!” Shubin exclaimed. “Your every word is pure gold, and a statue ought to be erected – not to me but to you, and I’ll take the job on. Just as you are lying now, in that pose, about which it is hard to say what there is most of – idleness or strength.