506
PARTISAN REVIEW
• • •
Good Lord! How many Nozdrevs there are in Russia these
days (who hasn't defamed whom and how, who hasn't bartered what
for what!)-Korobochkas ("and how much are dead souls going for
in the city now?," "and how much are female manikins going for at
the market now?": me, for instance)-Manilovs ("The Temple of
Friendship" - "The House of the Happy Mother") - Chichikovs (a
born speculator!).
But there's no Gogo!.
It
would be better the other way around.
• • •
Just as rare are those-what's his name?, the one with the
Armenian surname, idze or adze, from Part II, so irreal that 1 can't
even remember his name!
• • •
Alongside our ignoble life - there is another: ceremonial, incor–
ruptible, immutable: the life of the church. The same words, the
same movements-everything as it was centuries ago. Outside time,
that is, outside infidelity.
We don't remember this often enough.
• • •
"No longer laughing,"
(The inscription on my cross.)
• • •
I've taken the year 1919 a bit exaggeratedly - the way people
will understand it a hundred years from now: not a fleck of flour, not
a speck of salt (clinker and clutter enough and to spare!), not a
speck, not a mote, not a shred of soap! - 1 clean the flue myself, my
boots are two sizes too big - this is the way some novelist, using
imagination to the detriment of taste, will describe the year 1919.
• • •
My room.-I'llieave it some day surely. (?) Or, I'll never,
upon opening my eyes, e-ver see anything other than: the high win–
dow in the ceiling - the basin on the floor - clothes on all the chairs
- the axe - the iron (I sharpen the axe on the iron) - and the
G-mans' saw.
