And perhaps by the power of habit, what they relate has actually taken that shape in their imagination: if so, that is further evidence for my theory of dreams …
If you want to confirm it, try the experiment on yourself: recall the thoughts and imaginings you had while going to sleep and waking up, and if anyone else saw you asleep and can tell you all the circumstances which may have affected you, you will then be able to understand why you had that particular dream and not some other. There are so many of these circumstances, depending on people’s bodily constitution, on their digestion, and on other physical causes, that they are past enumerating. Yet there is a saying that when we dream that we are flying or swimming, it means that we are growing. If you can observe what makes you dream on one occasion that you are swimming, and on another flying, and if you are able to recall it all, you will quite easily arrive at an explanation.
If my dream had been dreamt by one of those people who, as I have said, are accustomed to interpreting dreams, this is how the account of it (by a lady) might have run: ‘I dreamt that St Thomas was running and running for a very long time, and I seemed to be asking him “Why are you running?” and he said to me “I am looking for a bride.”—So you see, either he is getting married, or I shall soon be receiving a letter from him …’
Note also that in memories there is no gradation of time. If you are able to recall your dream, then you know you have already dreamt it. <I awoke in the morning and began to recall what I had been dreaming about. It seemed that my brother and I were out hunting and had brought to bay a lady of exemplary virtue in a thicket. No; before that, before we had gone out hunting, I dreamt that St Thomas came to ask me to forgive him.>
At night you almost always wake up several times, but it is only the two lower levels of consciousness which are fully awake – the body and the feelings. After this the feelings and the body fall asleep again, and the impressions they have accumulated during the period of wakefulness combine with the general impression of the dream, in no particular order or sequence.—If the third, highest level of consciousness has woken too, and then you fall asleep again, your dream will already be divided into two halves.—
Another day. (On the Volga)
I had taken it into my head to travel down the Volga from Saratov to Astrakhan.
In the first place, I had thought it would be better, should the season turn out to be unpropitious, to extend my journey, but not to go jolting on by road for another seven hundred versts; besides, the picturesque banks of the Volga, my daydreams, the perils of the journey – all these things are agreeable and might prove to have a beneficial effect on me. I imagined myself to be a poet, thought about those characters and heroes whom I liked and tried to put myself in their place, – in a word, I thought as I always think when I am embarking on anything new: now at last real life is about to begin, and everything up to this point has been a sort of feeble preface not worth bothering with. I realize of course that this is all nonsense. How many times have I observed that I remain exactly the same, and am no more a poet when I am on the Volga than when I am on the Voronka,5 yet I still go on believing, seeking, hoping for something. I still cannot help thinking when I am pondering whether to undertake something or not: ‘Suppose you don’t do this thing, you don’t visit that place – that is where happiness was lying in wait for you, and you will have missed it for ever.’ I always think: ‘Look, it is going to start without me.’—This may be absurd, but it is what decided me to go down the Volga to Astrakhan. At first I was afraid, and ashamed to be taking action for such ridiculous reasons, but so far as I can judge in looking at my past life, the grounds for my actions have always been no less ridiculous. I do not know how it is for other people, but I have grown accustomed to this state of affairs, and for me the words trivial, ridiculous, have ceased to have any meaning. So where are these powerful, serious reasons for acting?
I went down to the Moscow ferry and began to stroll along beside the boats and the barges. ‘Well, are all these boats engaged? Is there one that is free?’ I enquired of the crowd of barge-haulers standing about near the foreshore. ‘And what does your worship require?’ asked an old man with a long beard, in a grey homespun coat and a lambswool hat.—‘A boat to take me to Astrakhan.’ ‘Right you are, sir, it can be done!’—
1 Literally a soft old mushroom: metaphorically, something battered and knocked about, as here a hard-boiled egg which has been rolled too many times to roll smoothly, and in Anna Karenina, Part 7, Ch. 3, a veteran clubman.
2 How pleasant he is, this young man.
3 When I called to see you, you were still in the arms of Morpheus.
4 Prosper de St Thomas: Tolstoy’s boyhood tutor, the model for St Jérôme in Boyhood.
5 A local stream neat Tolstoy’s home at Yasnaya Polyana.
A CHRISTMAS NIGHT
I
ON one of the clear, frosty twelve nights of Christmas in January of the year 18—, a cab drawn by a pair of lean and broken-down horses was rolling at a jerky trot down the Kuznetsky Most, in Moscow.
Only the lofty dark-blue sky scattered with stars hurtling through space, the hoarfrosted beard of the cabman as he snatched a breath, the air stinging your face and the crunch of the wheels on the frosty snow – only these things would have reminded you of those cold yet poetic Christmases which from childhood on have become associated in our minds with a confusion of feelings – affection for the cherished traditions of older times and the folk customs of the simple, uneducated people, but also the expectation that something mysterious, something extraordinary is about to happen …
Here there are no great white drifts of powdery snow heaped up against doors, fences and windows, no narrow paths beaten between the drifts, no tall black trees with rime-covered branches, no infinite expanses of dazzling white fields lit by a bright winter moon, none of the magical silence of an inexpressibly lovely night in the countryside. Here in the city the tall, oppressively regular buildings block out the horizon and weary the eye with their monotony; the steady urban rumble of wheels never ceases, and inspires in the soul a kind of nagging, intolerable anguish; a patchy, dung-strewn layer of snow lies on the streets, illuminated here and there by lamplight falling from the wide window of a shop, or by a dim streetlight against which a grimy-looking policeman has placed his stepladder and is trying to adjust the light. The whole scene makes a sharp and dismal contrast with the endless, sparkling covering of snow which we associate with a Christmas night. God’s world, man’s world.
The cab drew up before a brightly lit shop. Out of it jumped a fine, well-proportioned young fellow – of about eighteen, to judge by his appearance – wearing a round hat and an overcoat with a beaver fur collar which partly revealed a white evening tie; ringing the bell, he hurriedly entered the shop.
‘Une paire de gants, je vous prie,’1 he replied to the interrogative ‘Bonsoir Monsieur?’ with which he was greeted by a skinny Frenchwoman seated at a writing-desk.