Turgenev, Ivan Sergeevich, 1818-1883; Turgenev, Ivan Sergeevich, 1818-1883 -- Criticism and interpretation
"... When I waked up, everything was in darkness; the hay scattered
around smelt strong, and was slightly damp; through the slender
rafters of the half-open roof pale stars were faintly twinkling. I
went out. The glow of sunset had long died away, and its last trace
showed in a faint light on the horizon; but above the freshness
of the night there was still a feeling of heat in the atmosphere,
lately baked through by the sun, and the breast still craved for a
draught of cool air. There was no wind nor were there any clouds; the
sky all round was clear and transparently dark, softly glimmering
with innumerable, but scarcely visible stars. There were lights
twinkling about the village; from the flaring tavern close by rose
a confused, discordant din, amid which I fancied I recognized the
voice of Yakov. Violent laughter came from there in an outburst at
times. I went up to the little window and pressed my face against
the pane. I saw a cheerless, though varied and animated scene; all
were drunk--all from Yakov upwards. With breast bared, he sat on a
bench, and singing in a thick voice a street song to a dance tune, he
lazily fingered and strummed on the strings of a guitar. His moist
hair hung in tufts over his fearfully pale face. In the middle of
the room, the Gabbler, completely 'screwed,' and without his coat,
was hopping about in a dance before the peasant in the grey smock;
the peasant, on his side, was with difficulty stamping and scraping
with his feet, and grinning meaninglessly over his dishevelled
beard; he waved one hand from time to time, as much as to say, 'Here
goes!' Nothing could be more ludicrous than his face; however much
he twitched up his eyebrows, his heavy lids would hardly rise, but
seemed lying upon his scarcely-visible, dim, and mawkish eyes. He was
in that amiable frame of mind of a perfectly intoxicated man, when
every passer-by, directly he looks him in the face, is sure to say,
'Bless you, brother, bless you!' The Blinkard, as red as a lobster,
and his nostrils dilated wide, was laughing malignantly in a corner;
only Nikolai Ivanitch, as befits a good tavern-keeper, preserved his
composure unchanged. The room was thronged with many new faces, but
the Wild Master I did not see in it.
"I turned away with rapid steps and began descending the hill on
which Kolotovka lies. At the foot of this hill stretches a wide
plain; plunged in the misty waves of the evening haze, it seemed more
immense, and was, as it were, merged in the darkening sky. I marched
with long strides along the road by the ravine, when all at once,
from somewhere far away in the plain, came a boy's clear voice:
'Antropka! Antropka-a-a...!' He shouted in obstinate and tearful
desperation, with long, long drawing out of the last syllable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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