There’s Water on the Moon (Poems of the Week)

Last week NASA announced that its mission to smash a rocket into a large crater at the lunar south pole, hoping to kick up ice, had been a success. There’s water on the Moon. And not just a bit: “significant amounts”. Scientists who studied the data say instruments trained on the impact plume saw “copious quantities” of water-ice and water vapour.

Last week also, Stephen Vorley from Bibby Offshore sent me a poem, ‘Space’, written by his ten-year-old daughter, Maria, and for which she was awarded a Certificate of Merit by Young Writers. (Congratulations to Maria!) Beneath its humour and fun rhymes, I love the curiosity, the sense of trying to work out your own position in the universe (‘Space is a place where there is a human race / There is a girl who lives in the human race’). And, as her Dad points out, Mars sounds particularly attractive…

Thinking of a poem to link these two things together – and thinking too of Carl Sagan’s spine-tingling line, “We are how the universe comes to know itself” – I can do no better than Ted Hughes’s ‘Full Moon and Little Frieda’. Enjoy it, and if you have time, leave a comment and tell me your own thoughts.

 

Space

Space is a place where there is a human race
There is a girl who lives in the human race
She has a pace
She leaves a trace
But I am always on her case

Mars has lots of stars  
And has lots of bars
When you look at the stars
You might think it is Mars

Pluto is a planet
Which is made of granite
Mercury is also made of granite
So are all the other planets

Maria Vorley

 

Full Moon and Little Frieda

A cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark
and the clank of a bucket –
And you listening.
A spider’s web, tense for the dew’s touch.
A pail lifted, still and brimming – mirror
To tempt a first star to a tremor.

Cows are going home in the lane there,
looping the hedges with their warm
wreaths of breath –
A dark river of blood, many boulders,
Balancing unspilled milk.

‘Moon!’ you cry suddenly, ‘Moon! Moon!’

The moon has stepped back like an artist
gazing amazed at a work

That points at him amazed.

Ted Hughes

We’re All in the Gutter…

Prompted by the Auden limerick in last week’s email, John Stephens from Bibby Factors Slough sent me this. He says it may jog a few sober memories… 

‘Twas an evening in November, as I very well remember,
I was strolling down the street in drunken pride.
But my knees were all a flutter and I landed in the gutter
And a pig came up and lay down by my side.
Yes, I lay there in the gutter thinking thoughts I could not utter,
When a colleen passing by did softly say:
“You can tell a man who boozes, by the company he chooses” -
And the pig got up and slowly walked away!

Original lyrics by Benjamin Hapgood Burt

Poem of the Week

I don’t know about you, but seeing old photographs, while often funny and sometimes fascinating, always makes me feel sad. My Grandad as a ten-year-old boy, his whole life undecided, a look of profound mischief on his early, unworn face… My Mum’s twenty-first birthday party, lots of laughing, everything somehow more simple… Holiday snaps from childhood… Even quite recent, digital images. How much things change in just a few years.

Photography is a way of trying to stop time, to cheat the universe and trap a moment, like butterfly-hunters preserving their specimens in formaldehyde. It’s a King Canute-like protest against the in-coming tide of forever. But photographs themselves only emphasize how life hasn’t frozen, but has carried on, is getting further and further away from that  moment every second, minute, year…

Such is the subject of today’s poem, a favourite of mine, by Philip Larkin, another favourite of mine. In it, the speaker is finally, after much asking, allowed to look at the photograph album of ’a young lady’…

 

Lines on a Young Lady’s Photograph Album

At last you yielded up the album, which
Once open, sent me distracted. All your ages
Matt and glossy on the thick black pages!
Too much confectionery, too rich:
I choke on such nutritious images.

My swivel eye hungers from pose to pose –
In pigtails, clutching a reluctant cat;
Or furred yourself, a sweet girl-graduate;
Or lifting a heavy-headed rose
Beneath a trellis, or in a trilby-hat

(Faintly disturbing, that, in several ways) –
From every side you strike at my control,
Not least through those these disquieting chaps who loll
At ease about your earlier days:
Not quite your class, I’d say, dear, on the whole.

But o, photography! as no art is,
Faithful and disappointing! that records
Dull days as dull, and hold-it smiles as frauds,
And will not censor blemishes
Like washing-lines, and Hall’s-Distemper boards,

But shows the cat as disinclined, and shades
A chin as doubled when it is, what grace
Your candour thus confers upon her face!
How overwhelmingly persuades
That this is a real girl in a real place,

In every sense empirically true!
Or is it just the past? Those flowers, that gate,
These misty parks and motors, lacerate
Simply by being you; you
Contract my heart by looking out of date.

Yes, true; but in the end, surely, we cry
Not only at exclusion, but because
It leaves us free to cry. We know what was
Won’t call on us to justify
Our grief, however hard we yowl across

The gap from eye to page. So I am left
To mourn (without a chance of consequence)
You, balanced on a bike against a fence;
To wonder if you’d spot the theft
Of this one of you bathing; to condense,

In short, a past that no one now can share,
No matter whose your future; calm and dry,
It holds you like a heaven, and you lie
Unvariably lovely there,
Smaller and clearer as the years go by.

Philip Larkin

We Won’t Forget

To mark Remembrance Day, this poem has been recommended by another Mark: Mark Brown from Bibby Factors Scotland. It is ’Dulce et Decorum Est’ by the poet-soldier Wilfred Owen (1893 – 1918). Mark calls it ‘undoubtedly the greatest poem of the First World War’. I agree. It was also one of the first poems I did at school that really made me take notice and realise that poetry wasn’t all the silly-flowery-girly-love nonsense I had previously suspected it to be. Owen’s brutally realistic depiction of a gas attack on a group of soldiers already ‘blood-shod’ and ‘drunk with fatigue’ has lost none of its power nearly a hundred years later.

And yet, for all its vivid horror, this is a poem in which I take much pleasure: pleasure in the sense of something well done and fittingly achieved. From out of the chaos and death and destruction, Owen created something ordered, something lasting, something worthwhile. There was no reason in what was happening, so he at least made it rhyme: he made it into music, and so, in some small way, made it more bearable.

(The Latin line ‘Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori’ comes from the Roman poet Horace and translates as: ‘It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country’. It was well known and often quoted at the time. ‘Five-Nines’ were 5.9 calibre explosive shells.)

 

Dulce et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime…
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, –
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wilfred Owen

Poem of the Week

Today’s comes from the enigmatic and reclusive American poet Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886). Her poems are always short but rarely simple, punctuated by strange dashes instead of commas or full-stops, and manage to cram, TARDIS-like, so much thought into so few words. See what you think of this one.

 

‘Hope is the thing with feathers’

Hope is the thing with feathers —
That perches in the soul —
And sings the tune without the words —
And never stops — at all —

And sweetest — in the Gale — is heard —
And sore must be the storm —
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm —

I’ve heard it in the chillest land —
And on the strangest Sea —
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb — of Me.

Emily Dickinson

Hope, she says, is like a bird: ‘the thing with feathers’ that lives inside your soul and never stops singing, no matter how bad things get. Birdsong doesn’t have words, just as the feeling of hope often doesn’t have a specific object or outcome in mind. You hope things will change. But unlike a real bird that requires food  in order to live, the bird of hope never, even at the worst of times, asks for so much as a crumb from the person within whom it lives and sings. Indeed, it’s at the worst of times - ’in the Gale’ - that hope sings ’sweetest’. A tough old bird!

Hope is about the future. ‘Abandon hope all ye who enter here’ was the inscription above the entrance to Dante’s vision of Hell - i.e. there is no future here; only the past. But for us, there’s always hope because there’s always a future. Tomorrow is, as someone accurately if rather boringly said, another day. And maybe, just maybe, a better one. I hope so.

(Spooky) Poem of the (Hallowe’en) Week

Let there be a spice of terror! Of dark skies and evil things!

To celebrate this weekend of pumpkins, costumes and gaudy ghoulishness, I’ve chosen as today’s poem ‘The Raven’ by Edgar Allan Poe. It’s tricky to read out loud – with all of its rhymes, inner-rhymes and tongue-twisting alliterations – but also, if you’ll forgive me, a real treat. So give it a go!

‘And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain’.

The atmospheric illustrations I’ve added are by the French artist and engraver Gustave Doré (1832 – 1883).

I hope you enjoy it – and have a wonderful weekend, whether you’re going to a party, taking the kids out collecting vile sugary things, or just staring up at the distant moon and ‘dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before’…

 

The Raven

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“‘Tis some visitor”, I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door —
      Only this, and nothing more.”

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; — vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow — sorrow for the lost Lenore —
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore —
      Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me — filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
“‘Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door —
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; —
      This it is, and nothing more.”

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you” — here I opened wide the door; —
      Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!” —
      Merely this, and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
“Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice:
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore —
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; —
      ‘Tis the wind and nothing more.”

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door —
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door —
      Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore.
“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore —
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”
      Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

Much I marveled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning — little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blest with seeing bird above his chamber door —
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
      With such name as “Nevermore.”

But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered — not a feather then he fluttered —
Till I scarcely more than muttered, “other friends have flown before —
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.”
      Then the bird said, “Nevermore.”

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore —
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
      Of ‘Never — nevermore’.”

But the Raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;
Then upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore —
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of yore
      Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamplight gloated o’er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamplight gloating o’er,
      She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then methought the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor.
“Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee — by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite — respite and nepenthe, from thy memories of Lenore
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!”
      Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil! — prophet still, if bird or devil! —
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted —
On this home by horror haunted — tell me truly, I implore —
Is there — is there balm in Gilead? — tell me — tell me, I implore!”
      Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil — prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us — by that God we both adore —
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore —
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”
      Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

“Be that word our sign in parting, bird or fiend,” I shrieked, upstarting —
“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! — quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”
      Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And the lamplight o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
      Shall be lifted — nevermore!

Edgar Allan Poe

Poem of the Week

Today’s poem is a great example of how, while culture and custom and language may change over time, human feelings remain the same. Love is the same. Pain is the same. Longing is the same. It was written four hundred years ago, but now, as you read the words Philip Sidney wrote, it’s like you’ve time-travelled back inside his mind. You need to read it twice, at least, before his densely patterned thoughts begin to become clear.

 

‘If I could think how these my thoughts to leave’

If I could think how these my thoughts to leave,
Or thinking still, my thoughts might have good end;
If rebel sense would reason’s law receive,
Or reason foiled would not in vain contend;
     Then might I think what thoughts were best to think:
     Then might I wisely swim or gladly sink.

If either you would change your cruel heart,
Or cruel (still) time did your beauty stain;
If from my soul this love would once depart,
Or for my love some love I might obtain;
     Then might I hope a change or ease of mind,
     By your good help, or in myself to find.

But since my thoughts in thinking still are spent,
With reason’s strife, by senses overthrown;
You fairer still, and still more cruel bent,
I loving still a love that loveth none;
     I yield and strive, I kiss and curse the pain:
     Thought, reason, sense, time, you, and I, maintain.

Philip Sidney

 

There’s a war going on. On the one side, the speaker in the poem knows that his feelings for ‘you’ (the girl, we imagine) are only giving him pain and misery, and that he’d be better off if he could ‘leave’ these thoughts, this part of his brain, and forget about her. On the other side, he loves her. It’s the age-old battle between ‘reason’s law’ (i.e. you know this isn’t working, she doesn’t want you, it’s not worth it) and ’rebel sense’ (i.e. yes, I know all that, but I can’t alter how I feel). Our speaker is caught in his own crossfire, getting hit from both sides.

The three stanzas can be summarized like this:

If I … or … if … or … then might … then might…

If either … or … if … or … then might…

BUT.

One of the most powerful and depressing words in the language: but. But those first two stanzas were just wishful thinking: here’s how it really is. I can’t think how to leave my thoughts, my thoughts don’t have good end, rebel sense won’t listen to reason, yet reason does keep on fighting, you won’t change your cruel heart, time hasn’t stained your beauty – in fact you’re ‘fairer still’ and still won’t give me even ’some’ love in return for all of mine.

So… what? So nothing, that’s what. For all his yielding and striving and kissing and cursing, and despite this poem he’s crafted his deepest thoughts and feelings into, there’s nothing to be done but carry on, ’maintain’. The last line sadly separates all of the pieces that simply won’t fit together, and how painfully that comma separates ‘you’, ‘and I’. Not we. You, comma, and I.

Dense, a bit difficult, but do read it again. I hope it means something to you, or makes you feel something. That’s what poetry’s for, isn’t it?

Bitesize Read: The Lady with the Dog, final part!

IV

And Anna Sergeyevna began coming to see him in Moscow. Once in two or three months she left S—-, telling her husband that she was going to consult a doctor about an internal complaint — and her husband believed her, and did not believe her. In Moscow she stayed at the Slaviansky Bazaar hotel, and at once sent a man in a red cap to Gurov. Gurov went to see her, and no one in Moscow knew of it.

Once he was going to see her in this way on a winter morning (the messenger had come the evening before when he was out). With him walked his daughter, whom he wanted to take to school: it was on the way. Snow was falling in big wet flakes.

“It’s three degrees above freezing-point, and yet it is snowing,” said Gurov to his daughter. “The thaw is only on the surface of the earth; there is quite a different temperature at a greater height in the atmosphere.”

“And why are there no thunderstorms in the winter, father?”

He explained that, too. He talked, thinking all the while that he was going to see her, and no living soul knew of it, and probably never would know. He had two lives: one, open, seen and known by all who cared to know, full of relative truth and of relative falsehood, exactly like the lives of his friends and acquaintances; and another life running its course in secret. And through some strange, perhaps accidental, conjunction of circumstances, everything that was essential, of interest and of value to him, everything in which he was sincere and did not deceive himself, everything that made the kernel of his life, was hidden from other people; and all that was false in him, the sheath in which he hid himself to conceal the truth — such, for instance, as his work in the bank, his discussions at the club, his “lower race,” his presence with his wife at anniversary festivities — all that was open. And he judged of others by himself, not believing in what he saw, and always believing that every man had his real, most interesting life under the cover of secrecy and under the cover of night. All personal life rested on secrecy, and possibly it was partly on that account that civilised man was so nervously anxious that personal privacy should be respected.

After leaving his daughter at school, Gurov went on to the Slaviansky Bazaar. He took off his fur coat below, went upstairs, and softly knocked at the door. Anna Sergeyevna, wearing his favourite grey dress, exhausted by the journey and the suspense, had been expecting him since the evening before. She was pale; she looked at him, and did not smile, and he had hardly come in when she fell on his breast. Their kiss was slow and prolonged, as though they had not met for two years.

“Well, how are you getting on there?” he asked. “What news?”

“Wait; I’ll tell you directly. . . . I can’t talk.”

She could not speak; she was crying. She turned away from him, and pressed her handkerchief to her eyes.

“Let her have her cry out. I’ll sit down and wait,” he thought, and he sat down in an arm-chair.

Then he rang and asked for tea to be brought him, and while he drank his tea she remained standing at the window with her back to him. She was crying from emotion, from the miserable consciousness that their life was so hard for them; they could only meet in secret, hiding themselves from people, like thieves! Was not their life shattered?

“Come, do stop!” he said.

It was evident to him that this love of theirs would not soon be over, that he could not see the end of it. Anna Sergeyevna grew more and more attached to him. She adored him, and it was unthinkable to say to her that it was bound to have an end some day; besides, she would not have believed it!

He went up to her and took her by the shoulders to say something affectionate and cheering, and at that moment he saw himself in the looking-glass.

His hair was already beginning to turn grey. And it seemed strange to him that he had grown so much older, so much plainer during the last few years. The shoulders on which his hands rested were warm and quivering. He felt compassion for this life, still so warm and lovely, but probably already not far from beginning to fade and wither like his own. Why did she love him so much? He always seemed to women different from what he was, and they loved in him not himself, but the man created by their imagination, whom they had been eagerly seeking all their lives; and afterwards, when they noticed their mistake, they loved him all the same. And not one of them had been happy with him. Time passed, he had made their acquaintance, got on with them, parted, but he had never once loved; it was anything you like, but not love.

And only now when his head was grey he had fallen properly, really in love — for the first time in his life.

Anna Sergeyevna and he loved each other like people very close and akin, like husband and wife, like tender friends; it seemed to them that fate itself had meant them for one another, and they could not understand why he had a wife and she a husband; and it was as though they were a pair of birds of passage, caught and forced to live in different cages. They forgave each other for what they were ashamed of in their past, they forgave everything in the present, and felt that this love of theirs had changed them both.

In moments of depression in the past he had comforted himself with any arguments that came into his mind, but now he no longer cared for arguments; he felt profound compassion, he wanted to be sincere and tender. . . .

“Don’t cry, my darling,” he said. “You’ve had your cry; that’s enough. . . . Let us talk now, let us think of some plan.”

Then they spent a long while taking counsel together, talked of how to avoid the necessity for secrecy, for deception, for living in different towns and not seeing each other for long at a time. How could they be free from this intolerable bondage?

“How? How?” he asked, clutching his head. “How?”

And it seemed as though in a little while the solution would be found, and then a new and splendid life would begin; and it was clear to both of them that they had still a long, long road before them, and that the most complicated and difficult part of it was only just beginning.

- THE BEGINNING -

Poem of the Week

It is ‘the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world … the spirit of a spiritless situation’. Karl Marx was writing about religion, but it could’ve been poetry.

Today’s poem is a protest, a small human gesture of defiance. It was written by the classical scholar A. E. Housman shortly after the trial and imprisonment of Oscar Wilde for ‘gross indecency’, a Victorian euphemism for homosexual behaviour. The thought, that you can no more decide your sexuality than you can the colour of your hair (and that it no more matters, in moral terms, either), is a remarkably modern one. Too modern for Housman to publish in his lifetime, sadly, for fear of being ‘outed’ himself.

Its lines are long and proud and want to be chanted. I hope you enjoy doing so! Do leave me a comment, too, whether you’re blond(e), black, brunet(te), bright red, burnt orange or beautifully bald.

 

The Colour of His Hair

Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists?
And what has he been after, that they groan and shake their fists?
And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air?
Oh they’re taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.

‘Tis a shame to human nature, such a head of hair as his;
In the good old time ’twas hanging for the colour that it is;
Though hanging isn’t bad enough and flaying would be fair
For the nameless and abominable colour of his hair.

Oh a deal of pains he’s taken and a pretty price he’s paid
To hide his poll or dye it of a mentionable shade;
But they’ve pulled the beggar’s hat off for the world to see and stare,
And they’re haling him to justice for the colour of his hair.

Now ’tis oakum for his fingers and the treadmill for his feet,
And the quarry-gang on Portland in the cold and in the heat,
And between his spells of labour in the time he has to spare
He can curse the God that made him for the colour of his hair.

A. E. Housman (1859 – 1936)

Bitesize Read: The Lady with the Dog, part #3

Part 3 of 4. Here’s where the story really starts to fly. Is anyone reading? How are you finding it? It’s not too late to catch-up: parts 1 and 2 can be found by clicking on the ‘Bitesize Read’ (*shudder*) tag on the right.

 

III

At home in Moscow everything was in its winter routine; the stoves were heated, and in the morning it was still dark when the children were having breakfast and getting ready for school, and the nurse would light the lamp for a short time. The frosts had begun already. When the first snow has fallen, on the first day of sledge-driving it is pleasant to see the white earth, the white roofs, to draw soft, delicious breath, and the season brings back the days of one’s youth. The old limes and birches, white with hoar-frost, have a good-natured expression; they are nearer to one’s heart than cypresses and palms, and near them one doesn’t want to be thinking of the sea and the mountains.

Gurov was Moscow born; he arrived in Moscow on a fine frosty day, and when he put on his fur coat and warm gloves, and walked along Petrovka, and when on Saturday evening he heard the ringing of the bells, his recent trip and the places he had seen lost all charm for him. Little by little he became absorbed in Moscow life, greedily read three newspapers a day, and declared he did not read the Moscow papers on principle! He already felt a longing to go to restaurants, clubs, dinner-parties, anniversary celebrations, and he felt flattered at entertaining distinguished lawyers and artists, and at playing cards with a professor at the doctors’ club. He could already eat a whole plateful of salt fish and cabbage.

In another month, he fancied, the image of Anna Sergeyevna would be shrouded in a mist in his memory, and only from time to time would visit him in his dreams with a touching smile as others did. But more than a month passed, real winter had come, and everything was still clear in his memory as though he had parted with Anna Sergeyevna only the day before. And his memories glowed more and more vividly. When in the evening stillness he heard from his study the voices of his children, preparing their lessons, or when he listened to a song or the organ at the restaurant, or the storm howled in the chimney, suddenly everything would rise up in his memory: what had happened on the groyne, and the early morning with the mist on the mountains, and the steamer coming from Theodosia, and the kisses. He would pace a long time about his room, remembering it all and smiling; then his memories passed into dreams, and in his fancy the past was mingled with what was to come. Anna Sergeyevna did not visit him in dreams, but followed him about everywhere like a shadow and haunted him. When he shut his eyes he saw her as though she were living before him, and she seemed to him lovelier, younger, tenderer than she was; and he imagined himself finer than he had been in Yalta. In the evenings she peeped out at him from the bookcase, from the fireplace, from the corner — he heard her breathing, the caressing rustle of her dress. In the street he watched the women, looking for some one like her.

He was tormented by an intense desire to confide his memories to some one. But in his home it was impossible to talk of his love, and he had no one outside; he could not talk to his tenants nor to any one at the bank. And what had he to talk of? Had he been in love, then? Had there been anything beautiful, poetical, or edifying or simply interesting in his relations with Anna Sergeyevna? And there was nothing for him but to talk vaguely of love, of woman, and no one guessed what it meant; only his wife twitched her black eyebrows, and said:

“The part of a lady-killer does not suit you at all, Dimitri.”

One evening, coming out of the doctors’ club with an official with whom he had been playing cards, he could not resist saying:

“If only you knew what a fascinating woman I made the acquaintance of in Yalta!”

The official got into his sledge and was driving away, but turned suddenly and shouted:

“Dmitri Dmitritch!”

“What?”

“You were right this evening: the sturgeon was a bit too strong!”

These words, so ordinary, for some reason moved Gurov to indignation, and struck him as degrading and unclean. What savage manners, what people! What senseless nights, what uninteresting, uneventful days! The rage for card-playing, the gluttony, the drunkenness, the continual talk always about the same thing. Useless pursuits and conversations always about the same things absorb the better part of one’s time, the better part of one’s strength, and in the end there is left a life grovelling and curtailed, worthless and trivial, and there is no escaping or getting away from it — just as though one were in a madhouse or a prison.

Gurov did not sleep all night, and was filled with indignation. And he had a headache all next day. And the next night he slept badly; he sat up in bed, thinking, or paced up and down his room. He was sick of his children, sick of the bank; he had no desire to go anywhere or to talk of anything.

In the holidays in December he prepared for a journey, and told his wife he was going to Petersburg to do something in the interests of a young friend — and he set off for S—-. What for? He did not very well know himself. He wanted to see Anna Sergeyevna and to talk with her — to arrange a meeting, if possible.

He reached S—- in the morning, and took the best room at the hotel, in which the floor was covered with grey army cloth, and on the table was an inkstand, grey with dust and adorned with a figure on horseback, with its hat in its hand and its head broken off. The hotel porter gave him the necessary information; Von Diderits lived in a house of his own in Old Gontcharny Street — it was not far from the hotel: he was rich and lived in good style, and had his own horses; every one in the town knew him. The porter pronounced the name “Dridirits.”

Gurov went without haste to Old Gontcharny Street and found the house. Just opposite the house stretched a long grey fence adorned with nails.

“One would run away from a fence like that,” thought Gurov, looking from the fence to the windows of the house and back again.

He considered: to-day was a holiday, and the husband would probably be at home. And in any case it would be tactless to go into the house and upset her. If he were to send her a note it might fall into her husband’s hands, and then it might ruin everything. The best thing was to trust to chance. And he kept walking up and down the street by the fence, waiting for the chance. He saw a beggar go in at the gate and dogs fly at him; then an hour later he heard a piano, and the sounds were faint and indistinct. Probably it was Anna Sergeyevna playing. The front door suddenly opened, and an old woman came out, followed by the familiar white Pomeranian. Gurov was on the point of calling to the dog, but his heart began beating violently, and in his excitement he could not remember the dog’s name.

He walked up and down, and loathed the grey fence more and more, and by now he thought irritably that Anna Sergeyevna had forgotten him, and was perhaps already amusing herself with some one else, and that that was very natural in a young woman who had nothing to look at from morning till night but that confounded fence. He went back to his hotel room and sat for a long while on the sofa, not knowing what to do, then he had dinner and a long nap.

“How stupid and worrying it is!” he thought when he woke and looked at the dark windows: it was already evening. “Here I’ve had a good sleep for some reason. What shall I do in the night?”

He sat on the bed, which was covered by a cheap grey blanket, such as one sees in hospitals, and he taunted himself in his vexation:

“So much for the lady with the dog . . . so much for the adventure. . . . You’re in a nice fix. . . .”

That morning at the station a poster in large letters had caught his eye. “The Geisha” was to be performed for the first time. He thought of this and went to the theatre.

“It’s quite possible she may go to the first performance,” he thought.

The theatre was full. As in all provincial theatres, there was a fog above the chandelier, the gallery was noisy and restless; in the front row the local dandies were standing up before the beginning of the performance, with their hands behind them; in the Governor’s box the Governor’s daughter, wearing a boa, was sitting in the front seat, while the Governor himself lurked modestly behind the curtain with only his hands visible; the orchestra was a long time tuning up; the stage curtain swayed. All the time the audience were coming in and taking their seats Gurov looked at them eagerly.

Anna Sergeyevna, too, came in. She sat down in the third row, and when Gurov looked at her his heart contracted, and he understood clearly that for him there was in the whole world no creature so near, so precious, and so important to him; she, this little woman, in no way remarkable, lost in a provincial crowd, with a vulgar lorgnette in her hand, filled his whole life now, was his sorrow and his joy, the one happiness that he now desired for himself, and to the sounds of the inferior orchestra, of the wretched provincial violins, he thought how lovely she was. He thought and dreamed.

A young man with small side-whiskers, tall and stooping, came in with Anna Sergeyevna and sat down beside her; he bent his head at every step and seemed to be continually bowing. Most likely this was the husband whom at Yalta, in a rush of bitter feeling, she had called a flunkey. And there really was in his long figure, his side-whiskers, and the small bald patch on his head, something of the flunkey’s obsequiousness; his smile was sugary, and in his buttonhole there was some badge of distinction like the number on a waiter.

During the first interval the husband went away to smoke; she remained alone in her stall. Gurov, who was sitting in the stalls, too, went up to her and said in a trembling voice, with a forced smile:

“Good-evening.”

She glanced at him and turned pale, then glanced again with horror, unable to believe her eyes, and tightly gripped the fan and the lorgnette in her hands, evidently struggling with herself not to faint. Both were silent. She was sitting, he was standing, frightened by her confusion and not venturing to sit down beside her. The violins and the flute began tuning up. He felt suddenly frightened; it seemed as though all the people in the boxes were looking at them. She got up and went quickly to the door; he followed her, and both walked senselessly along passages, and up and down stairs, and figures in legal, scholastic, and civil service uniforms, all wearing badges, flitted before their eyes. They caught glimpses of ladies, of fur coats hanging on pegs; the draughts blew on them, bringing a smell of stale tobacco. And Gurov, whose heart was beating violently, thought:

“Oh, heavens! Why are these people here and this orchestra! . . .”

And at that instant he recalled how when he had seen Anna Sergeyevna off at the station he had thought that everything was over and they would never meet again. But how far they were still from the end!

On the narrow, gloomy staircase over which was written “To the Amphitheatre,” she stopped.

“How you have frightened me!” she said, breathing hard, still pale and overwhelmed. “Oh, how you have frightened me! I am half dead. Why have you come? Why?”

“But do understand, Anna, do understand . . .” he said hastily in a low voice. “I entreat you to understand. . . .”

She looked at him with dread, with entreaty, with love; she looked at him intently, to keep his features more distinctly in her memory.

“I am so unhappy,” she went on, not heeding him. “I have thought of nothing but you all the time; I live only in the thought of you. And I wanted to forget, to forget you; but why, oh, why, have you come?”

On the landing above them two schoolboys were smoking and looking down, but that was nothing to Gurov; he drew Anna Sergeyevna to him, and began kissing her face, her cheeks, and her hands.

“What are you doing, what are you doing!” she cried in horror, pushing him away. “We are mad. Go away to-day; go away at once. . . . I beseech you by all that is sacred, I implore you. . . . There are people coming this way!”

Some one was coming up the stairs.

“You must go away,” Anna Sergeyevna went on in a whisper. “Do you hear, Dmitri Dmitritch? I will come and see you in Moscow. I have never been happy; I am miserable now, and I never, never shall be happy, never! Don’t make me suffer still more! I swear I’ll come to Moscow. But now let us part. My precious, good, dear one, we must part!”

She pressed his hand and began rapidly going downstairs, looking round at him, and from her eyes he could see that she really was unhappy. Gurov stood for a little while, listened, then, when all sound had died away, he found his coat and left the theatre.

(Final part next week)