The Last Meeting

We had once been close and warm friends.... But an unlucky moment came ... and we parted as enemies.

Many years passed by.... And coming to the town where he lived, I learnt that he was helplessly ill, and wished to see me.

I made my way to him, went into his room.... Our eyes met.

I hardly knew him. God! what sickness had done to him!

Yellow, wrinkled, completely bald, with a scanty grey beard, he sat clothed in nothing but a shirt purposely slit open.... He could not bear the weight of even the lightest clothes. Jerkily he stretched out to me his fearfully thin hand that looked as if it were gnawed away, with an effort muttered a few indistinct words - whether of welcome or reproach, who can tell? His emaciated chest heaved, and over the dwindled pupils of his kindling eyes rolled two hard-wrung tears of suffering.

My heart sank.... I sat down on a chair beside him, and involuntarily dropping my eyes before the horror and hideousness of it, I too held out my hand.

But it seemed to me that it was not his hand that took hold of me.

It seemed to me that between us is sitting a tall, still, white woman. A long robe shrouds her from head to foot. Her deep, pale eyes look into vacancy; no sound is uttered by her pale, stern lips.

This woman has joined our hands.... She has reconciled us for ever.

Yes.... Death has reconciled us....

April 1878.

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His novel 'Fathers and Sons' is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century fiction. Turgenev's work is often considered a reflection of the social and political atmosphere of his time, marked by his opposition to serfdom and his advocacy of liberal reforms. He spent much of his later life in Western Europe and was a contemporary of fellow Russian literary figures Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev

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Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev, Simple Poetry

English

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My Adversary

I had a comrade who was my adversary; not in pursuits, nor in service, nor in love, but our views were never alike on any subject, and whenever we met, endless argument arose between us.

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The last days of August.... Autumn was already at hand.

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To The Memory Of U. P. Vrevsky

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The Old Woman

I was walking over a wide plain alone.

And suddenly I fancied light, cautious footsteps behind my back.... Some one was walking after me.

I looked round, and saw a little, bent old woman, all muffled up in grey rags. The face of the old woman alone peeped out from them; a yellow, wrinkled, sharp-nosed, toothless face.

I went up to her.... She stopped.

'Who are you? What do you want? Are you a beggar? Do you seek alms?'

The old woman did not answer. I bent down to her, and noticed that both her eyes were covered with a half-transparent membrane or skin, such as is seen in some birds; they protect their eyes with it from dazzling light.

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The Dog

Us two in the room; my dog and me.... Outside a fearful storm is howling.

The dog sits in front of me, and looks me straight in the face.

And I, too, look into his face.

He wants, it seems, to tell me something. He is dumb, he is without words, he does not understand himself - but I understand him.

I understand that at this instant there is living in him and in me the same feeling, that there is no difference between us. We are the same; in each of us there burns and shines the same trembling spark.

Death sweeps down, with a wave of its chill broad wing....

And the end!

Who then can discern what was the spark that glowed in each of us?

No! We are not beast and man that glance at one another....

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