We hear, at last, the indistinct noise that heralds the approach of a
great crowd of people. Then the noise becomes more differentiated--it
changes into song. It is the student body following the coffin with
songs of mourning over the miles of road. They sing beautifully, in
wonderful polyphonic choirs, do the Russians; even envy must follow the
song. They have a perfect ear. After the long waiting the final
deliverance through its solemn notes affects the heart strangely. And
now a new wave of approaching humanity. The impossible becomes possible,
the students crowd past us and gather about the grave. The coffin is
lifted over our heads and into the noose of the dull gravedigger. A
moment of silence. Then the pope reads a short prayer and gives a short
funeral sermon on the departed brother in Christ. Then only does the
funeral ceremony proper begin. The pope steps aside. A white-haired man,
a university professor, whose name passes from mouth to mouth, extols
the departed champion of freedom. He is followed by a poet speaking in
swinging verse. Then a woman. Then a student. Then a woman again, in
irregular, improvised order. Then my neighbor, the man from Siberia,
calls out to the students. Then begins a song full of fervor and
passion. Then a woman speaks again, and after her a young girl. The
police, hundreds of them, with many officers, are crowded quite into the
background. It is better so. For of all the speeches I distinguished but
one word, spoken in passionate tones, "Svoboda! Svoboda!" (Liberty!
Liberty!). And, as if that word were a signal, it calls forth sighs and
weeping and the gnashing of teeth. It is an indescribable drama, a
terribly exciting scene. I cannot control myself, and cry out to my
neighbor, "Make the poor girl keep still," and I point towards the
police, but I am not understood. They have all been seized by a
religious fanaticism that makes martyrdom bliss. How truly lovable they
are, these educated people that still have an ideal and are strange to
the base satiety that so sadly deforms our Western youth! And how the
heart contracts at the thought that all this beautiful enthusiasm must
vanish without result; that the longing and inspiration are helplessly
shivered against the brutality of the Cossacks and gendarmes!
We left the consecrated ground in a strange intoxication after a tiring
struggle with the densely packed crowd that would move neither forward
nor backward. "It is not the business of the police to maintain order,
but only to keep people under surveillance." I have been astonished to
this very day that no one was trampled to death in the crowd.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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