Tempting Providence

"Tempting Providence" is a poignant short story by Aleksandr Kuprin, set against the backdrop of early 20th-century Russia. The narrative explores themes of love, longing, and the tumultuous nature of human relationships through the tale of a love-struck soldier and a mysterious woman. Kuprin's lyrical prose vividly captures the emotional depth of his characters as they navigate the complexities of passion, desire, and the impact of fate. The story delves into the moral dilemmas they face, ultimately revealing the delicate balance between hope and disillusionment in the quest for genuine connection.

• Novel

								
You're always saying "accident, accident...." That's just the point.
What I want to say is that on every merest accident it is possible to
look more deeply.

Permit me to remark that I am already sixty years old. And this is
just the age when, after all the noisy passions of his youth, a man
must choose one of three ways of life: money-making, ambition, or
philosophy. For my part I think there are only two paths. Ambition
must, sooner or later, take the form of getting something for
oneself--money or power--in acquiring and extending either earthly or
heavenly possibilities.

I don't dare to call myself a philosopher, that's too high-flown a
title for me ... it doesn't go with my character. I'm the sort of
person who might anytime be called upon to show his credentials. But
all the same, my life has been extremely broad and very varied. I have
seen riches and poverty and sickness, war and the loss of friends,
prison, love, ruin, faith, unbelief. And I've even--believe it or
not, as you please--I've even seen people. Perhaps you think that a
foolish remark? But it's not. For one man to see another and understand
him, he must first of all forget his own personality, forget to
consider what impression he himself is making on his neighbours and
what a fine figure he cuts in the world. There are very few who can see
other people, I assure you.

Well, here I am, a sinful man, and in my declining years I love to
ponder upon life. I am old, and solitary as well, and you can't think
how long the nights are to us old folk. My heart and my memory have
preserved for me thousands of living recollections--of myself and of
others. But it's one thing to chew the cud of recollection as a cow
chews nettles, and quite another to consider things with wisdom and
judgment. And that's what I call philosophy.

We've been talking of accident and fate. I quite agree with you that
the happenings of life seem senseless, capricious, blind, aimless,
simply foolish. But over them all--that is, over millions of happenings
interwoven together, there reigns--I am perfectly certain of this--an
inexorable law. Everything passes and returns again, is born again out
of a little thing, out of nothing, burns and tortures itself, rejoices,
reaches a height and falls, and then returns again and again, as if
twining itself about the spiral curve of the flight of time. And this
spiral having been accomplished, it in its turn winds back again for
many years, returning and passing over its former place, and then
making a new curve--a spiral of spirals.... And so on without end.

Of course you'll say that if this law is really in existence people
would long ago have discovered it and would be able to define its
course and make a kind of map of it. No, I don't think so. We are
like weavers, sitting close up to an infinitely long and infinitely
broad web. There are certain colours before our eyes, flowers, blues,
purples, greens, all moving, moving and passing ... but because we're
so near to it we can't make out the pattern. Only those who are able
to stand above life, higher than we do, gentle scholars, prophets,
dreamers, saints and poets, these may have occasional glimpses through
the confusion of life, and their keen inspired gaze may see the
beginnings of a harmonious design, and may divine its end.

You think I express myself extravagantly? Don't you now? But wait a
little; perhaps I can put it more clearly. You musn't let me bore you,
though.... Yet what can one do on a railway journey except talk?

I agree that there are laws of Nature governing alike in their wisdom
the courses of the stars and the digestion of beetles. I believe in
such laws and I revere them. But there is Something or Somebody
stronger than Fate, greater than the world. If it is Something, I
should call it the law of logical absurdity, or of absurd logicality,
just as you please.... I can't express myself very well. If it is
Somebody, then it must be someone in comparison with whom our
biblical devil and our romantic Satan are but puny jesters and harmless
rogues.

Imagine to yourself an almost godlike Power over this world, having a
desperate childish love of playing tricks, knowing neither good nor
evil, but always mercilessly hard, sagacious, and, devil take it all,
somehow strangely just. You don't understand, perhaps? Then let me
illustrate my meaning by examples.

Take Napoleon: a marvellous life, an almost impossibly great
personality, inexhaustible power, and look at his end--on a tiny
island, suffering from disease of the bladder, complaining of the
doctors, of his food, senile grumblings in solitude.... Of course,
this pitiful end was simply a mocking laugh, a derisive smile on
the face of my mysterious Somebody. But consider this tragic
biography thoughtfully, putting aside all the explanations of learned
people--they would explain it all simply in accordance with law--and I
don't know how it will appear to you, but here I see clearly existing
together this mixture of absurdity and logicality, and I cannot
possibly explain it to myself.

Then General Skobelef. A great, a splendid figure. Desperate courage,
and a kind of exaggerated belief in his own destiny. He always mocked
at death, went into a murderous fire of the enemy with bravado, and
courted endless risks in a kind of unappeasable thirst for danger.
And see--he died on a common bed, in a hired room in the company of
prostitutes. Again I say: absurd, cruel, yet somehow logical. It is
as if each of these pitiful deaths by their contrast with the life,
rounded off, blended, completed, two splendid beings.

The ancients knew and feared this mysterious Someone--you remember
the ring of Polycrates--but they mistook his jest for the envy of Fate.

I assure you--i.e., I don't assure you, but I am deeply assured
of it myself--that sometime or other, perhaps after thirty thousand
years, life on this earth will have become marvellously beautiful.
There will be palaces, gardens, fountains.... The burdens now borne
by mankind--slavery, private ownership of property, lies, and
oppression--will cease. There will be no more sickness, disorder,
death; no more envy, no vice, no near or far, all will have become
brothers, And then He--you notice that even in speaking I pronounce
the name with a capital letter--He, passing one day through the
universe, will look on us, frown evilly, smile, and then breathe upon
the world--and the good old Earth will cease to be. A sad end for
this beautiful planet, eh? But just think to what a terrible bloody
orgiastic end universal virtue might lead, if once people succeeded in
getting thoroughly surfeited by it!

However, what's the use of taking such great examples as our earth,
Napoleon, and the ancient Greeks? I myself have, from time to time,
caught a glimpse of this strange and inscrutable law in the most
ordinary occurrences. If you like, I'll tell you a simple incident when
I myself clearly felt the mocking breath of this god.

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