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The Black Monk
- Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
I
II
III IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
IX
Kovrin received a professorship at the
University. The inaugural address was fixed for the second of
December, and a notice to that effect was hung up in the
corridor at the University. But on the day appointed he informed
the students' inspector, by telegram, that he was prevented by
illness from giving the lecture.
He had hmorrhage from the throat. He was often spitting blood,
but it happened two or three times a month that there was a
considerable loss of blood, and then he grew extremely weak and
sank into a drowsy condition. This illness did not particularly
frighten him, as he knew that his mother had lived for ten years
or longer suffering from the same disease, and the doctors
assured him that there was no danger, and had only advised him
to avoid excitement, to lead a regular life, and to speak as
little as possible.
In January again his lecture did not take place owing to the
same reason, and in February it was too late to begin the
course. It had to be postponed to the following year.
By now he was living not with Tanya, but with another woman, who
was two years older than he was, and who looked after him as
though he were a baby. He was in a calm and tranquil state of
mind; he readily gave in to her, and when Varvara Nikolaevna --
that was the name of his friend -- decided to take him to the
Crimea, he agreed, though he had a presentiment that no good
would come of the trip.
They reached Sevastopol in the evening and stopped at an hotel
to rest and go on the next day to Yalta. They were both
exhausted by the journey. Varvara Nikolaevna had some tea, went
to bed and was soon asleep. But Kovrin did not go to bed. An
hour before starting for the station, he had received a letter
from Tanya, and had not brought himself to open it, and now it
was lying in his coat pocket, and the thought of it excited him
disagreeably. At the bottom of his heart he genuinely considered
now that his marriage to Tanya had been a mistake. He was glad
that their separation was final, and the thought of that woman
who in the end had turned into a living relic, still walking
about though everything seemed dead in her except her big,
staring, intelligent eyes -- the thought of her roused in him
nothing but pity and disgust with himself. The handwriting on
the envelope reminded him how cruel and unjust he had been two
years before, how he had worked off his anger at his spiritual
emptiness, his boredom, his loneliness, and his dissatisfaction
with life by revenging himself on people in no way to blame. He
remembered, also, how he had torn up his dissertation and all
the articles he had written during his illness, and how he had
thrown them out of window, and the bits of paper had fluttered
in the wind and caught on the trees and flowers. In every line
of them he saw strange, utterly groundless pretension, shallow
defiance, arrogance, megalomania; and they made him feel as
though he were reading a description of his vices. But when the
last manuscript had been torn up and sent flying out of window,
he felt, for some reason, suddenly bitter and angry; he went to
his wife and said a great many unpleasant things to her. My God,
how he had tormented her! One day, wanting to cause her pain, he
told her that her father had played a very unattractive part in
their romance, that he had asked him to marry her. Yegor
Semyonitch accidentally overheard this, ran into the room, and,
in his despair, could not utter a word, could only stamp and
make a strange, bellowing sound as though he had lost the power
of speech, and Tanya, looking at her father, had uttered a
heart-rending shriek and had fallen into a swoon. It was
hideous.
All this came back into his memory as he looked at the familiar
writing. Kovrin went out on to the balcony; it was still warm
weather and there was a smell of the sea. The wonderful bay
reflected the moonshine and the lights, and was of a colour for
which it was difficult to find a name. It was a soft and tender
blending of dark blue and green; in places the water was like
blue vitriol, and in places it seemed as though the moonlight
were liquefied and filling the bay instead of water. And what
harmony of colours, what an atmosphere of peace, calm, and
sublimity!
In the lower storey under the balcony the windows were probably
open, for women's voices and laughter could be heard distinctly.
Apparently there was an evening party.
Kovrin made an effort, tore open the envelope, and, going back
into his room, read:
"My father is just dead. I owe that to you, for you have killed
him. Our garden is being ruined; strangers are managing it
already -- that is, the very thing is happening that poor father
dreaded. That, too, I owe to you. I hate you with my whole soul,
and I hope you may soon perish. Oh, how wretched I am!
Insufferable anguish is burning my soul. . . . My curses on you.
I took you for an extraordinary man, a genius; I loved you, and
you have turned out a madman. . . ."
Kovrin could read no more, he tore up the letter and threw it
away. He was overcome by an uneasiness that was akin to terror.
Varvara Nikolaevna was asleep behind the screen, and he could
hear her breathing. From the lower storey came the sounds of
laughter and women's voices, but he felt as though in the whole
hotel there were no living soul but him. Because Tanya, unhappy,
broken by sorrow, had cursed him in her letter and hoped for his
perdition, he felt eerie and kept glancing hurriedly at the
door, as though he were afraid that the uncomprehended force
which two years before had wrought such havoc in his life and in
the life of those near him might come into the room and master
him once more.
He knew by experience that when his nerves were out of hand the
best thing for him to do was to work. He must sit down to the
table and force himself, at all costs, to concentrate his mind
on some one thought. He took from his red portfolio a manuscript
containing a sketch of a small work of the nature of a
compilation, which he had planned in case he should find it dull
in the Crimea without work. He sat down to the table and began
working at this plan, and it seemed to him that his calm,
peaceful, indifferent mood was coming back. The manuscript with
the sketch even led him to meditation on the vanity of the
world. He thought how much life exacts for the worthless or very
commonplace blessings it can give a man. For instance, to gain,
before forty, a university chair, to be an ordinary professor,
to expound ordinary and second-hand thoughts in dull, heavy,
insipid language -- in fact, to gain the position of a mediocre
learned man, he, Kovrin, had had to study for fifteen years, to
work day and night, to endure a terrible mental illness, to
experience an unhappy marriage, and to do a great number of
stupid and unjust things which it would have been pleasant not
to remember. Kovrin recognised clearly, now, that he was a
mediocrity, and readily resigned himself to it, as he considered
that every man ought to be satisfied with what he is.
The plan of the volume would have soothed him completely, but
the torn letter showed white on the floor and prevented him from
concentrating his attention. He got up from the table, picked up
the pieces of the letter and threw them out of window, but there
was a light wind blowing from the sea, and the bits of paper
were scattered on the windowsill. Again he was overcome by
uneasiness akin to terror, and he felt as though in the whole
hotel there were no living soul but himself. . . . He went out
on the balcony. The bay, like a living thing, looked at him with
its multitude of light blue, dark blue, turquoise and fiery
eyes, and seemed beckoning to him. And it really was hot and
oppressive, and it would not have been amiss to have a bathe.
Suddenly in the lower storey under the balcony a violin began
playing, and two soft feminine voices began singing. It was
something familiar. The song was about a maiden, full of sick
fancies, who heard one night in her garden mysterious sounds, so
strange and lovely that she was obliged to recognise them as a
holy harmony which is unintelligible to us mortals, and so flies
back to heaven. . . . Kovrin caught his breath and there was a
pang of sadness at his heart, and a thrill of the sweet,
exquisite delight he had so long forgotten began to stir in his
breast.
A tall black column, like a whirlwind or a waterspout, appeared
on the further side of the bay. It moved with fearful rapidity
across the bay, towards the hotel, growing smaller and darker as
it came, and Kovrin only just had time to get out of the way to
let it pass. . . . The monk with bare grey head, black eyebrows,
barefoot, his arms crossed over his breast, floated by him, and
stood still in the middle of the room.
"Why did you not believe me?" he asked reproachfully, looking
affectionately at Kovrin. "If you had believed me then, that you
were a genius, you would not have spent these two years so
gloomily and so wretchedly."
Kovrin already believed that he was one of God's chosen and a
genius; he vividly recalled his conversations with the monk in
the past and tried to speak, but the blood flowed from his
throat on to his breast, and not knowing what he was doing, he
passed his hands over his breast, and his cuffs were soaked with
blood. He tried to call Varvara Nikolaevna, who was asleep
behind the screen; he made an effort and said:
"Tanya!"
He fell on the floor, and propping himself on his arms, called
again:
"Tanya!"
He called Tanya, called to the great garden with the gorgeous
flowers sprinkled with dew, called to the park, the pines with
their shaggy roots, the rye-field, his marvellous learning, his
youth, courage, joy -- called to life, which was so lovely. He
saw on the floor near his face a great pool of blood, and was
too weak to utter a word, but an unspeakable, infinite happiness
flooded his whole being. Below, under the balcony, they were
playing the serenade, and the black monk whispered to him that
he was a genius, and that he was dying only because his frail
human body had lost its balance and could no longer serve as the
mortal garb of genius.
When Varvara Nikolaevna woke up and came out from behind the
screen, Kovrin was dead, and a blissful smile was set upon his
face.
NOTES
title: a better translation would be "The Monk in Black"
Tatiana: aria from Act III, Scene 1 of the opera Eugene Onegin
by Tchaikovsky, based on Pushkin's verse novel of the same name;
Tanya (short for Tatyana) in "The Black Monk" has the same name
as the heroine of Pushkin's novel
serenade of Braga's: a vocal serenade by Gaetano Braga
(1829-1907), Italian opera composer
Gaucher: Nikolaus Gaucher (1846-1811) was a prominent
French-born horticulturalist in the 19th century
Kotcheby is rich and glorious: a line from Pushkin's poem
Poltava (1820)
intercropping: planting crops between main crops to better
utilize the soil
Audiatur altera pars: let the other side be heard
Sapienti sat: enough for a wise man
many mansions: John 14:2
Mens sana in corpore sano: a sound mind in a sound body
racing droshky: light carriage
fast of the Assumption: August 15 (the fast lasts from August 1
to 15)
savant: scholar
like Polykrates: Polykrates was Tyrant of Samos, executed c. 522
B. C.; the idea that Polykrates was uneasy with his happiness is
from the German poem Der Ring des Polykrates by Friedrich von
Schiller (1759-1805)
Socrates, Diogenes, and Marcus Aurelius: all famous Greek and
Roman philosophers
the Apostle: St. Paul, 1 Thessslonians 5:16
Elijah's Day: Elijah's Day is July 20
bromide: sodium and potassium bromide were used as sedatives
Buddha, Mahomed, and Shakespeare: Buddha and Mohammed founded
world religions; Shakespeare is the most famous writer in
English
Herod: Herod ordered the Massacre of the Innocents (Matthew
2:13-21)
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