Sketches From A Hunter's Album
"....but among us Russian there's no knowing what is sullenness and what is sleepiness...."
The man cooperates. He loves to communicate; and that which is for him to say lies as a load on his heart until it is delivered. But, besides the universal joy of conversation, some men are born with exalted powers for this second creation. Men are born to write. The gardener saves every slip and seed and peach-stone: his vocation is to be a planter of plants. Not less does the writer attend his affair. Whatever he beholds or experiences, comes to him as a model and sits for its picture. He counts it all nonsense that they say, that some things are undescribable. He believes that all that can be thought can be written, first or last; and he would report the Holy Ghost, or attempt it. Nothing so broad, so subtle, or so dear, but comes therefore commended to his pen, and he will write. In his eyes, a man is the faculty of reporting, and the universe is the possibility of being reported.
Emerson
Goethe; Or, The Writer
Representative Men
In the Russian countryside is man. He stands wise, passive, loving, observant, free from the judgment of morality. He is immersed in the beauty of nature. More than anything he wishes he could take you by the hand for the weather is beautiful and the May sky glows a gentle blue. To the left and to the right lie slopes of low hills where the green rye quietly ripples. Smooth young willow leaves shine as if just washed.
He is a member of the landed gentry so the concerns of making a living are unknown to him and he lives solely for the fundamental occupation of the day. He listens to the song of Nature and listens to the Muzhik for his Muzak. There is the beauty of life and a beauty that takes you away from it. Both are the same beauty. Whoever brought you here will have to take you home.
One of the principal advantages of hunting, my dear readers, is that it forces you to travel ceaselessly from place to place, which for someone without any occupation is very pleasant.
Ivan Turgenev
Lebedyan
Sketches From A Hunter’s Album
It is death that has brought him to the lush possibilities of these woods. The same foolish naïve notion that the birds and insects sing for us when their sounds are a soundtrack to a cacophony of slaughter. He exists because the peasant never ceases to work. And he exists again when the rigors of hunting force him into the houses of the people who support him. They light up the samovar as a light rain pebbles the thatching of their hay huts and tell him their stories. He is forced to see them. He is a simple man who divides the world into Hamlets and Don Quixotes.
But he is not only a traveler or a hunter but a writer at heart. He has learned how many eggs that omelette needs. There is no doubt that he will call a spade a spade and will report what the good people have to say. We invent ridiculous social situations—movies, drinking, festivities just to create a pretext where it is okay to hang out with each other. Hunting is his mask for the notebooks of this eccentric weirdo. A man who has a library in his office but his study is outside past those wooden doors and up those hills.
The writer bags a word
While hunting for absurd.
This is some luscious writing. Not an appetizer but a rich dessert. You’ve done something I didn’t believe possible: make me want to revisit Russian writers.