Thou Shalt Hear The Fool's Judgment....' - Pushkin

'Thou shalt hear the fool's judgment....' You always told the truth, O great singer of ours. You spoke it this time, too.

'The fool's judgment and the laughter of the crowd' ... who has not known the one and the other?

All that one can, and one ought to bear; and who has the strength, let him despise it!

But there are blows which pierce more cruelly to the very heart.... A man has done all that he could; has worked strenuously, lovingly, honestly....
And honest hearts turn from him in disgust; honest faces burn with indignation at his name. 'Be gone! Away with you!' honest young voices scream at him. 'We have no need of you, nor of your work. You pollute our dwelling-places. You know us not and understand us not.... You are our enemy!'

What is that man to do? Go on working; not try to justify himself, and not even look forward to a fairer judgment.

At one time the tillers of the soil cursed the traveller who brought the potato, the substitute for bread, the poor man's daily food.... They shook the precious gift out of his outstretched hands, flung it in the mud, trampled it underfoot.

Now they are fed with it, and do not even know their benefactor's name.

So be it! What is his name to them? He, nameless though he be, saves them from hunger.

Let us try only that what we bring should be really good food.

Bitter, unjust reproach on the lips of those you love.... But that, too, can be borne....

'Beat me! but listen!' said the Athenian leader to the Spartan.

'Beat me! but be healthy and fed!' we ought to say.

February 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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English

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The Fool

There lived a fool.

For a long time he lived in peace and contentment; but by degrees rumours began to reach him that he was regarded on all sides as a vulgar idiot.

The fool was abashed and began to ponder gloomily how he might put an end to these unpleasant rumours.

A sudden idea, at last, illuminated his dull little brain.... And, without the slightest delay, he put it into practice.

A friend met him in the street, and fell to praising a well-known painter....

'Upon my word!' cried the fool,' that painter was out of date long ago ... you didn't know it? I should never have expected it of you ... you are quite behind the times.'

The friend was alarmed, and promptly agreed with the fool.

'Such a splendid book I read yesterday!' said another friend to him.
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We Will Still Fight On

What an insignificant trifle may sometimes transform the whole man!

Full of melancholy thought, I walked one day along the highroad.

My heart was oppressed by a weight of gloomy apprehension; I was overwhelmed by dejection. I raised my head.... Before me, between two rows of tall poplars, the road darted like an arrow into the distance.

And across it, across this road, ten paces from me, in the golden light of the dazzling summer sunshine, a whole family of sparrows hopped one after another, hopped saucily, drolly, self-reliantly!

One of them, in particular, skipped along sideways with desperate energy, puffing out his little bosom and chirping impudently, as though to say he was not afraid of any one! A gallant little warrior, really!

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Two Stanzas

There was once a town, the inhabitants of which were so passionately fond of poetry, that if some weeks passed by without the appearance of any good new poems, they regarded such a poetic dearth as a public misfortune.

They used at such times to put on their worst clothes, to sprinkle ashes on their heads; and, assembling in crowds in the public squares, to shed tears and bitterly to upbraid the muse who had deserted them.

On one such inauspicious day, the young poet Junius came into a square, thronged with the grieving populace.

With rapid steps he ascended a forum constructed for this purpose, and made signs that he wished to recite a poem.

The lictors at once brandished their fasces. 'Silence! attention!' they shouted loudly, and the crowd was hushed in expectation.

'Friends! Comra...

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Alms

Near a large town, along the broad highroad walked an old sick man.

He tottered as he went; his old wasted legs, halting, dragging, stumbling, moved painfully and feebly, as though they did not belong to him; his clothes hung in rags about him; his uncovered head drooped on his breast.... He was utterly worn-out.

He sat down on a stone by the wayside, bent forward, leant his elbows on his knees, hid his face in his hands; and through the knotted fingers the tears dropped down on to the grey, dry dust.

He remembered....

Remembered how he too had been strong and rich, and how he had wasted his health, and had lavished his riches upon others, friends and enemies....
And here, he had not now a crust of bread; and all had forsaken him, friends even before foes.... Must he sink to begging alms? T...

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The Country

The last day of July; for a thousand versts around, Russia, our native land.

An unbroken blue flooding the whole sky; a single cloudlet upon it, half floating, half fading away. Windlessness, warmth ... air like new milk!

Larks are trilling; pouter-pigeons cooing; noiselessly the swallows dart to and fro; horses are neighing and munching; the dogs do not bark and stand peaceably wagging their tails.

A smell of smoke and of hay, and a little of tar, too, and a little of hides. The hemp, now in full bloom, sheds its heavy, pleasant fragrance.

A deep but sloping ravine. Along its sides willows in rows, with big heads above, trunks cleft below. Through the ravine runs a brook; the tiny pebbles at its bottom are all aquiver through its clear eddies. In the distance, on the border-line between earth a...

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Friend And Enemy

A prisoner, condemned to confinement for life, broke out of his prison and took to head-long flight.... After him, just on his heels flew his gaolers in pursuit.

He ran with all his might.... His pursuers began to be left behind.

But behold, before him was a river with precipitous banks, a narrow, but deep river.... And he could not swim!

A thin rotten plank had been thrown across from one bank to the other. The fugitive already had his foot upon it.... But it so happened that just there beside the river stood his best friend and his bitterest enemy.

His enemy said nothing, he merely folded his arms; but the friend shrieked at the top of his voice: 'Heavens! What are you doing? Madman, think what you're about! Don't you see the plank's utterly rotten? It will break under your weight, and you wil...

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