Enough Page #2

"Enough" is a novel by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev that explores themes of existential discontent and the search for meaning in life. The story revolves around the character of a young man, who grapples with feelings of dissatisfaction and frustration as he navigates his relationships and societal expectations. Turgenev delves into the complexities of human emotions, the struggles of the individual against societal norms, and the quest for personal fulfillment. The narrative combines lyrical prose with deep psychological insight, illustrating Turgenev's mastery in portraying the inner lives of his characters and their responses to the challenges they face.

• Novel

								

grave and melancholy is wafted from the high, bare roof, from the huge,
branching columns. Thou standest at my side, mute, apart, as though
knowing me not. Each fold of thy dark cloak hangs motionless as carved
in stone. Motionless, too, lie the bright patches cast by the stained
windows at thy feet on the worn flags. And lo, violently thrilling the
incense-clouded air, thrilling us within, rolled out the mighty flood of
the organ's notes... and I saw thee paler, rigid--thy glance caressed
me, glided higher and rose heavenwards--while to me it seemed none but
an immortal soul could look so, with such eyes...

X

Another picture comes back to me.

No old-world temple subdues us with its stern magnificence; the low
walls of a little snug room shut us off from the whole world. What am I
saying? We are alone, alone in the whole world; except us two there is
nothing living--outside these friendly walls darkness and death and
emptiness... It is not the wind that howls without, not the rain
streaming in floods; without, Chaos wails and moans, his sightless eyes
are weeping. But with us all is peaceful and light and warm and
welcoming; something droll, something of childish innocence, like a
butterfly--isn't it so?--flutters about us. We nestle close to one
another, we lean our heads together and both read a favourite book. I
feel the delicate vein beating in thy soft forehead; I hear that thou
livest, thou hearest that I am living, thy smile is born on my face
before it is on thine, thou makest mute answer to my mute question, thy
thoughts, my thoughts are like the two wings of one bird, lost in the
infinite blue... the last barriers have fallen--and so soothed, so
deepened is our love, so utterly has all apartness vanished that we have
no need for word or look to pass between us.... Only to breathe, to
breathe together is all we want, to be together and scarcely to be
conscious that we are together....

XI

Or last of all, there comes before me that bright September when we
walked through the deserted, still flowering garden of a forsaken palace
on the bank of a great river--not Russian--under the soft brilliance of
the cloudless sky. Oh, how put into words what we felt! The endlessly
flowing river, the solitude and peace and bliss, and a kind of
voluptuous melancholy, and the thrill of rapture, the unfamiliar
monotonous town, the autumn cries of the jackdaws in the high sun-lit
treetops, and the tender words and smiles and looks, long, soft,
piercing to the very in-most soul, and the beauty, beauty in our lives,
about us, on all sides--it is above words. Oh, the bench on which we sat
in silence with heads bowed down under the weight of feeling--I cannot
forget it till the hour I die! How delicious were those few strangers
passing us with brief greetings and kind faces, and the great quiet
boats floating by (in one--dost thou remember?--stood a horse pensively
gazing at the gliding water), the baby prattle of the tiny ripples by
the bank, and the very bark of the distant dogs across the water, the
very shouts of the fat officer drilling the red-faced recruits yonder,
with outspread arms and knees crooked like grasshoppers!... We both felt
that better than those moments nothing in the world had been or would be
for us, that all else... But why compare? Enough... enough... Alas! yes:
enough.

XII

For the last time I give myself up to those memories and bid them
farewell for ever. So a miser gloating over his hoard, his gold, his
bright treasure, covers it over in the damp, grey earth; so the wick of
a smouldering lamp flickers up in a last bright flare and sinks into
cold ash. The wild creature has peeped out from its hole for the last
time at the velvet grass, the sweet sun, the blue, kindly waters, and
has huddled back into the depths, curled up, and gone to sleep. Will he
have glimpses even in sleep of the sweet sun and the grass and the blue
kindly water?...

XIII

Sternly, remorselessly, fate leads each of us, and only at the first,
absorbed in details of all sorts, in trifles, in ourselves, we are not
aware of her harsh hand. While one can be deceived and has no shame in
lying, one can live and there is no shame in hoping. Truth, not the full
truth, of that, indeed, we cannot speak, but even that little we can
reach locks up our lips at once, ties our hands, leads us to 'the No.'
Then one way is left a man to keep his feet, not to fall to pieces, not
to sink into the mire of self-forgetfulness... of self-contempt,--calmly
to turn away from all, to say 'enough!' and folding impotent arms upon
the empty breast, to save the last, the sole honour he can attain to,
the dignity of knowing his own nothingness; that dignity at which Pascal
hints when calling man a thinking reed he says that if the whole
universe crushed him, he, that reed, would be higher than the universe,
because he would know it was crushing him, and it would know it not. A
poor dignity! A sorry consolation! Try your utmost to be penetrated by
it, to have faith in it, you, whoever you may be, my poor brother, and
there's no refuting those words of menace:

  'Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
   That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
   And then is heard no more: it is a tale
   Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
   Signifying nothing.'

I quoted these lines from Macbeth, and there came back to my mind
the witches, phantoms, apparitions.... Alas! no ghosts, no fantastic,
unearthly powers are terrible; there are no terrors in the Hoffmann
world, in whatever form it appears.... What is terrible is that there is
nothing terrible, that the very essence of life is petty, uninteresting
and degradingly inane. Once one is soaked through and through with that
knowledge, once one has tasted of that bitter, no honey more seems
sweet, and even the highest, sweetest bliss, the bliss of love, of
perfect nearness, of complete devotion--even that loses all its magic;
all its dignity is destroyed by its own pettiness, its brevity. Yes; a
man loved, glowed with passion, murmured of eternal bliss, of undying
raptures, and lo, no trace is left of the very worm that devoured the
last relic of his withered tongue. So, on a frosty day in late autumn,
when all is lifeless and dumb in the bleached grey grass, on the bare
forest edge, if the sun but come out for an instant from the fog and
turn one steady glance on the frozen earth, at once the gnats swarm up
on all sides; they sport in the warm rays, bustle, flutter up and down,
circle round one another... The sun is hidden--the gnats fall in a
feeble shower, and there is the end of their momentary life.

XIV

But are there no great conceptions, no great words of consolation:
patriotism, right, freedom, humanity, art? Yes; those words there are,
and many men live by them and for them. And yet it seems to me that if

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