Short stories, Russian -- Translations into English
There was one other disciple of Socrates. Not long before, the
impetuous Ctesippus had been one of the most frivolous and
pleasure-seeking of the Athenian youths. He had set up beauty as his
sole god, and had bowed before Clinias as its highest exemplar. But
since he had become acquainted with Socrates, all desire for pleasure
and all light-mindedness had gone from him. He looked on indifferently
while others took his place with Clinias. The grace of thought and the
harmony of spirit that he found in Socrates seemed a hundred times
more attractive than the graceful form and the harmonious features of
Clinias. With all the intensity of his stormy temperament he hung on
the man who had disturbed the serenity of his virginal soul, which for
the first time opened to doubts as the bud of a young oak opens to the
fresh winds of spring.
Now that the master was dead, he could find peace neither at his own
hearth nor in the oppressive stillness of the streets nor among his
friends and fellow-disciples. The gods of hearth and home and the gods
of the people inspired him with repugnance.
"I know not," he said, "whether ye are the best of all the gods to
whom numerous generations have burned incense and brought offerings;
all I know is that for your sake the blind mob extinguished the clear
torch of truth, and for your sake sacrificed the greatest and best of
mortals!"
It almost seemed to Ctesippus as though the streets and market-places
still echoed with the shrieking of that unjust sentence. And he
remembered how it was here that the people clamoured for the execution
of the generals who had led them to victory against the Argunisæ, and
how Socrates alone had opposed the savage sentence of the judges and
the blind rage of the mob. But when Socrates himself needed a
champion, no one had been found to defend him with equal strength.
Ctesippus blamed himself and his friends, and for that reason he
wanted to avoid everybody--even himself, if possible.
That evening he went to the sea. But his grief grew only the more
violent. It seemed to him that the mourning daughters of Nereus were
tossing hither and thither on the shore bewailing the death of the
best of the Athenians and the folly of the frenzied city. The waves
broke on the rocky coast with a growl of lament. Their booming sounded
like a funeral dirge.
He turned away, left the shore, and went on further without looking
before him. He forgot time and space and his own ego, filled only with
the afflicting thought of Socrates!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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