read and ... well, there is
no impression of any sort; neither emotion nor indignation--just ENNUI.
But then, within the last few days I come across a brief newspaper
notice of a murderer's execution somewhere in France. The Procureur,
who was present at the last toilet of the criminal, sees that he is
putting on his shoes on his bare feet, and--the blockhead!--reminds
him: 'What about the socks?' But the other gives him a look and says,
sort of thoughtfully: 'Is it worth while?' Do you understand, these two
remarks, so very short, struck me like a blow on the skull! At once all
the horror and all the stupidity of unnatural death were revealed to me
... Or here is something else about death ... A certain friend of mine
died, a captain in the infantry--a drunkard, a vagabond, and the finest
soul in the world. For some reason we called him the Electrical
Captain. I was in the vicinity, and it fell to me to dress him for the
last parade. I took his uniform and began to attach the epaulettes to
it. There's a cord, you know, that's drawn through the shank of the
epaulette buttons, and after that the two ends of this cord are shoved
through two little holes under the collar, and on the inside--the
lining--are tied together. Well, I go through all this business, and
tie the cord with a slipknot, and, you know, the loop won't come out,
nohow--either it's too loosely tied, or else one end's too short. I am
fussing over this nonsense, and suddenly into my head comes the most
astonishingly simple thought, that it's far simpler and quicker to tie
it in a knot--for after all, it's all the same, NO ONE IS GOING TO
UNTIE IT. And immediately I felt death with all my being. Until that
time I had seen the captain's eyes, grown glassy, had felt his cold
forehead, and still somehow had not sensed death to the full, but I
thought of the knot--and I was all transpierced, and the simple and sad
realization of the irrevocable, inevitable perishing of all our words,
deeds, and sensations, of the perishing of all the apparent world,
seemed to bow me down to the earth ... And I could bring forward a
hundred such small but staggering trifles ... Even, say, about what
people experienced in the war ... But I want to lead my thought up to
one thing. We all pass by these characteristic trifles indifferently,
like the blind, as though not seeing them scattered about under our
feet. But an artist will come, and he will look over them carefully,
and he wi