Seven Who Were Hanged

Why did he not cry? He must have forgotten even that he had a voice.

It seemed to him that he was walking along the highest mountain-ridge, which was narrow like the blade of a knife, and on one side he saw Life, on the other side—Death,—like two sparkling, deep, beautiful seas, blending in one boundless, broad surface at the horizon.

Death was not there as yet, but life was there no longer,—there was something new, something astonishing, inexplicable, not entirely reasonable and yet not altogether without meaning,—something so deep and mysterious and supernatural that it was impossible to understand.

What do those people think? That there is nothing more terrible than death. They themselves have invented Death, they are themselves afraid of it, and they try to frighten us with it.

Literature, which I have the honor to serve, is dear to me just because the noblest task it sets before itself is that of wiping out boundaries and distances.

It was strange to think that so much humane painstaking care and exertion was being introduced into the business of hanging people; that the most insane deed on earth was being committed with such an air of simplicity and reasonableness.

Life and Death moved simultaneously, and until the very end Life remained life, to the most ridiculous and insipid trifles.

And he was tortured not by the fact that Death was visible, but that both Life and Death were visible at the same time.

But, as is sometimes the case with good people, he was perhaps liked more for this little foible than for his good qualities.

Perhaps her mind simply did not want to stop at one thought—just as a bird that soars with ease, which sees endless horizons, and to which all space, all the depth, all the joy of the soft and caressing azure are accessible.

Death stationed itself in the corner and would not go away. It would not go away because it was my thought. It is not death that is terrible, but the knowledge of it: it would be utterly impossible to live if a man could know exactly and definitely the day and hour of his death.

And she was seized with sudden joy. There were non doubts, no hesitations-she was received into their midst she entered justified the ranks of those noble people who always ascend to heaven through fires, tortures and executions. Bright peace and tranquillity and endless, calmly radiant happiness! It was as if she had already departed from earth and was nearing the unknown sun of truth and life, and was incorporeally soaring in its light. "And that is-Death? That is not Death!" thought Musya blissfully. And if scientists, philosophers and hangmen from the world over should come to her cell, spreading before her books, scalpels, axes and nooses, and were to attempt to prove to her that Death existed, that a human being dies and is killed, that there is no immortality, they would only surprise her. How could there be no deathlessness, since she was already deathless? Of what other deathlessness, on what other death, could there be a question, since she wa already dead and immortal, alive in death, as she had been dead in life?

The fear of death came over him gradually. It was as if somebody were striking his heart a powerful blow with the fist from below. This sensation was rather painful than terrible. Then the sensation was forgotten, but it returned again a few hours later, and each time it grew more intense and of longer duration, and thus it began to assume vague outlines of some great, even unbearable fear. "Is it possible that I am afraid?" thought Sergey in astonishment. "What nonsense!

The banks of life cannot hold my love, which is as broad as the sea.

But for a long time, altogether unnoticed by his comrades, there had ripened in his soul a dark contempt for mankind; contempt mingled with despair and painful, almost deadly fatigue.

Thus would it be with a man if, while remaining within the bounds of human reason, experience and feelings, he were suddenly to see God Himself. He would see Him but would not understand, even though he knew that it was God, and he would tremble with inconceivable sufferings of incomprehension.

The curtain which through eternity has hidden the mystery of life and the mystery of death was pushed aside by a sacrilegious hand, and the mysteries ceased to be mysteries—yet they remained incomprehensible, like the Truth written in a foreign tongue.

I am not afraid of this devil!” he thought of Death. “I simply feel sorry for my life. It is a splendid thing, no matter what the pessimists say about it. What if they were to hang a pessimist? Ah, I feel sorry for life, very sorry!

Either you are all asses, or I am an ass,” he would declare seriously and even angrily. And all his friends as seriously declared: “You are an ass. We can tell by your voice.

Everything in life was joyous, everything in life was important, everything should be done well.

She was thinking of many things, for to her the thread of life was not broken by Death, but kept winding along calmly and evenly.

Death was something inevitable and even unimportant, of which it was not worth while to think; but for a man in prison, before his execution, to be left without tobacco—that was altogether unbearable.

But in the dark everything was unnatural; the silence and the darkness were in themselves something like death.

It would not go away because it was my thought. It is not death that is terrible, but the knowledge of it: it would be utterly impossible to live if a man could know exactly and definitely the day and hour of his death.

But there is no calm soul in Russia.

The truth of life stands aghast in silence, and its brazen falsehood is loudly shouting, uttering pressing, painful questions: “With whom shall I sympathize? Whom shall I trust? Whom shall I love?

To-morrow, with the rise of the sun, this human face would be distorted with an inhuman grimace, her brain would be covered with thick blood, and her eyes would bulge from their sockets and look glassy,—but now she slept quietly and smiled in her great immortality.