custom, before I went to sleep. At that moment my glance fell upon Jan’s large bundle of poems, which upon my return from the Czech village I had laid upon the table by the bed. Almost without thinking, I picked it up instead of a book. I expected, I must confess, merely something of a pathological interest.
I read the first lines listlessly, I yawned, and it was with difficulty that I could keep my eyes open, but—when the first gleam of morning stole into the room, it found me by the half-extinguished lamp, devouring the last verses of the poem with my eyes excitedly enkindled. I was almost frightened when, looking up from the manuscript which I had finished reading, I saw through the window opposite the green of the mountain slopes already blended with the gold of a spring morning. It was long since such thing had happened to me—the last time was in my youth when I had spent a whole night in ecstasy over Byron’s “Cain.”
I do not wish to suggest a comparison of the unfortunate Jan with the great Englishman. Altogether, I refrain from giving an opinion as to the literary value of his work. I am merely describing the effect that this poem had upon me. After a few stanzas I felt myself suddenly in the grip of something like the breath of the Lord, that vehement whirlwind of God, by which the prophets of old were borne through the air into distant places. Your smile, Aglaja, does not make the slightest difference; you may have already observed that I am matter-of-fact person—perhaps more so than you would like to appear—and that I am not given to exaggerating. But I tell you that I soared throught that night in the twinkling of an eye, rising in unearthly regions upon the mighty wing of poetry, which long after I had returned to earth, dimmed my thoughts with a strange rapture. For a considerable while after I had finished reading this poem, I felt like a man who gradually gropes his way back to reality from the embrace of a beautiful dream.
And how I roved about everywhere that night. I soared through the world, the past and the present, all the huge expanse which Jan’s poetry gauged life-size with its mighty rainbow-colored pinions. It was clear that he had desired to express all his poetical outlook on the world in this work, that he had desired to breathe into it, and had indeed breathed into it, his whole soul. Nature, all human relationships, all struggles and yearnings of mankind were exhibited here in a completely new and magical illumination, such as only spirits of genius can spread upon their earthly paths. And like Dante’s Beatrice, there uprose before him upon this poetical pilgrimage that graceful phantom that he had told me about. The poem ended here in the Causasus whose natural beauties were reflected in it with colors of rare splendor, as in the mirror of a magic lake—on the peak of a lofty mountain where the poet with a magnificent harangue took his farewell from life and the world, and his mysterious ideal placed a wreath of immortality upon his brow. In my judgment his work was truly worthy of undying fame.”
“And what happened to this poem? Where is it?” I exclaimed involuntarily, when the surgeon, after speaking these words, was silent for a while.
“In a moment, you shall hear in a moment” replied Tabunov quietly. “On my second visit to the sick man I saw that his condition was visibly becoming worse. I looked at his haggard, livid face with pity, and my voice trembled with sorrowful emotion as I bestoved sincerely enthusiastic praise upon his poetical work. He listened to it calmly without any signs of joy, as if he had not expected any other judgment. Then, taking back the manuscript from my hand, he said: “I rely upon your promise. You know where to find this which will be the only thing I leave behind me. But at the same time I beg of you imploringly to fulfil one more final wish. You know the decayed Circassian village not far from here in the mountains?”
I assented.
“Above this village” continued the sick man in a feeble voice, “on the flat peak of the mountain, is a spot where I have spent the most beautiful moment of my life. It used to be my favorite haunt as long as I could still leave the house. Above the edge of the abyss stands a solitary young ash-tree, with vine-tendrils trailing over it; in its shadow I have sat for hours at a time, with a notebook in my lap and a pencil in my hand . . . dreaming and writing. I used to be so unspeakably happy in that beautiful solitude where around me, as far as my eye could reach, I saw nothing but magnificent mountains, and above me the radiant vault of heaven. I was there alone with my poetry. Everything round about was silent with a holy stillness, and she alone whispered to me her wondrous sayings. And the light mist, fluttering afar above the forest, would gradually take on the form of a maiden, the likeness of my beauteous unknown, and come aquiver towards me in the air like a white cloud with open embrace. Yearningly I stretched out my hands towards her, plunging my whole soul in the mysterious sapphire depths of her eyes. She nestled tremblingly in my embrace, and then I closed my eyes with inexpressible joy, my head sank back upon the trunk of the ash-tree, and when a breeze passed through its foliage, I used to think that the beautiful vision, bending down gently above me, was whispering words of unearthly grace. How often have I desired in such a moment to rest thus for ever. Well, if I succumb to this illness, it is there that I wish to be buried. My parents would perhaps regard this wish as the expression of a morbid craving, and would bury me in spite of it amid the narrow walls of a graveyeard. So please see
