Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol2.djvu/128

118 spite of himself. Then his life seemed to him hateful and loathsome. His schooldays rose up before him extraordinarily vividly, and Alexandr Petrovitch seemed to stand before him. … Tears streamed from his eyes, his sobs lasted almost all day.

What did those sobs mean? Did his sick soul betray in them the sorrowful secret of its sickness—that the fine inner man, that had begun to be formed within him, had not had time to develop and grow strong; that unpractised in the struggle with failure he had never attained the precious faculty of rising to higher things and gaining strength from obstacles and difficulties; that the rich treasure of lofty feelings that had glowed within him like molten metal had not been tempered like steel, and now his will had no elasticity and was impotent; that his rare, marvellous teacher had died too soon, and now there was no one in the whole world who could rouse and awaken his forces, flagging from continual hesitation, and his weak, impotent will—who could cry to the soul in a living, rousing voice, the rousing word: 'Forward!' which the Russian, at every stage, in every condition and calling, thirsts to hear?

Where is the man who can utter that all-powerful word 'Forward,' in the language of our Russian soul, who knowing all the strength and quality and all the depth of our nature can, with one wonder-working gesture, spur the Russian on to the higher life? With what tears and what