Part 1

Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

THE BLIND MUSICIAN

BY VLADIMIR KOROLENKO

_TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN_ BY ALINE DELANO

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY GEORGE KENNAN

ILLUSTRATIONS BY EDMUND H. GARRETT

BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1891

_Copyright, 1890_ BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY

THIRD EDITION

UNIVERSITY PRESS JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE

PREFACE.

In this sketch, called by Korolenko “a psychological study,” the author has attempted to analyze the inner life of the blind. He has undertaken to lay before the reader not only the psychological processes in the mind of the blind, but their suffering from the lack of sight as well, uncomplicated by any untoward circumstances.

To accomplish this he has placed his hero in most favorable, nay, almost exceptional conditions. The subjects for this study are a blind girl, whom the author had known as a child; a boy, a pupil of his, who was gradually losing his sight; and a professional musician, blind from his birth, intellectually gifted, scholarly, and refined.

Upon the completion of my translation, I submitted it to Mr. M. Anagnos, of the Perkins Institution for the blind, and received from him the following note, which he has kindly permitted me to make public:—

MY DEAR MADAM,—I have read, with due care and deep interest, your translation of Vladimir Korolenko’s book, entitled “The Blind Musician,” and I take great pleasure in being able to say that the story, although very simple both in form and substance, is conceived and elaborated with a masterly skill. It is ingenious in construction, artistic in execution, and full of imaginative vigor. The author shows a keen appreciation of what is charming and beautiful in Nature and a fine power of analysis. His ideas on the intellectual development and physical training of the blind are correct, and cannot but deepen the interest of the reader in the various phases of the story. That some of his psychological observations, derived from the study of a limited number of cases, represent individual characteristics or idiosyncrasies which cannot be applied to all persons bereft of the visual sense, in no wise detracts from the value of the work....

Sincerely yours,

M. ANAGNOS.

May this simple story, written from the heart, reach the heart of him who reads it!

ALINE DELANO.

BOSTON, MASS. June, 1890.

CONTENTS

PAGE

INTRODUCTION ix

I. THE BLIND INFANT.—THE FAMILY 3

II. THE SOURCES OF MUSICAL FEELING.—THE BLIND BOY AND THE MELODY 43

III. THE FIRST FRIENDSHIP 91

IV. BLINDNESS.—VAGUE QUESTIONS 125

V. LOVE 145

VI. THE CRISIS.—AN ATTEMPT AT SYNTHESIS 193

VII. INTUITION 227

EPILOGUE 239

INTRODUCTION.

It affords me great pleasure to link my name with that of Vladimir Korolenko by writing a few words in the form of an introduction to the translation of that gifted young author’s “Blind Musician,” which is now to appear for the first time in English.

I knew Korolenko by reputation and by his work long before I made his personal acquaintance. While engaged in making an investigation of the exile system in Siberia, I met many of his banished friends and comrades; and my attention was first called by them to the series of graphic sketches of Siberian life and experience that he was then publishing in “Russian Thought,” “The Northern Messenger,” the “Annals of the Fatherland,” and other Russian periodicals. I read them carefully, and formed from them at once a high opinion of the author’s character and talent.

Upon my return from Siberia in the summer of 1886, I stopped for a few days in the old Tartar town of Nizhni Novgorod on the Volga (where Mr. Korolenko was then living), for the express purpose of calling upon a writer whose life and whose work had so deeply interested me. I need not describe the impression that he made upon me further than to say, that a feeling of warm personal regard and esteem for the man was soon added to the admiration that I already had for him as a literary artist. Mr. Korolenko seems to me to represent the most liberal, the most progressive, and the most sincerely patriotic type of young Russian manhood. The influence that he has exerted, personally and by his writings, has always been on the side of liberty, humanity, and justice; and there could hardly be a more significant commentary upon the existing form of government in Russia than the fact that this talented author, before he was thirty-five years of age, had been four times banished from his home to remote parts of the empire, without even the form of a judicial trial, and had twice been sent as a political exile to Siberia. If he had been an active revolutionist like Lopatin, or even a writer upon prohibited social and political subjects like Chernishèfski, his banishment to Siberia would have been more comprehensible; but he was neither one nor the other. He was removed to the province of Vòlogda, and afterward to the province of Viatka, merely because the police regarded him as a “neblagonadëzhni” (politically untrustworthy person), and then he was exiled to Siberia as a result of a stupid police blunder. When, after years of hardship and privation, he finally returned to his home, he was called upon to take the oath of allegiance to Alexander III., and to swear that he would betray every one of his friends or acquaintances whom he knew to be engaged in revolutionary or anti-Government work. No conscientious and self-respecting man could take such an oath, and Mr. Korolenko, of course, declined to do it. He was thereupon exiled by administrative process to the East-Siberian province of Yakutsk, where in a wretched Yakut “ooloos” he lived for three years, and where he made some of the character studies, such as “The Vagrant” and “Makàr’s Dream,” that first attracted to him the attention of the Russian reading public.

Mr. Korolenko has not thus far published anything like a long and carefully worked out novel of Russian life; but the fault is not his own. He wrote such a novel under the title “Pròkhor and the Students” in 1886 or 1887, and the first chapters of it were printed in the well-known magazine “Russian Thought” in 1888. As soon however as the plot began to develop and the nature and tendency of the story became apparent, the censor interposed with his veto; and the publishers of the magazine were compelled to announce to its readers that “on account of circumstances beyond their control” the remainder of the novel could not be printed.

Mr. Korolenko’s short stories, sketches, and studies of character show so much talent, originality, and artistic skill that if he were untrammelled, and could work out his ideas and conceptions in his own way, there would be every reason to predict for him a useful and brilliant literary career. Unfortunately, however, all Russian authors are forced to work within the bounds set for them by an arbitrary and often stupid censorship; and the most promising career may be utterly ruined by the caprice of an ignorant official, or by a sentence of exile for life or for a long term of years to the sub-arctic province of Yakutsk. I can recall the names of a dozen young Russian authors, journalists, or poets, among them Korolenko, Màchtet, Lessèvitch, Volkhòfski, Petropàvlovski, Chudnòfski, Klemens, Ivanchìn-Pìsaref, and Staniukòvitch, who are in Siberia now, or have spent there some of the best years of their young manhood.

One can only wonder at and admire the courage, the energy, and the persistence of men like Korolenko, who, although gagged by the censor, imprisoned, and banished to the remotest parts of Siberia, work on with heroic patience, and finally make their names known and respected, not only in their native country but throughout the civilized world.

GEORGE KENNAN.

I.

The Blind Infant. The Family.

At the hour of midnight, in a wealthy family living in the southwestern part of Russia, a child was born. As the first faint, pitiful cry of the baby echoed through the room, the young mother, who had been lying with closed eyes, unconscious to all appearances, stirred uneasily in the bed. She murmured a word or two in a low whispering tone, while her pallid face, with its sweet and almost childlike features, was disfigured by an expression of impatience,—like that of a spoiled child, who resents the unwonted suffering as something new to her experience. The nurse bent low to catch the inarticulate sounds that fell from her whispering lips.

“Why, why does he—?” murmured the invalid in the same impatient whisper.

The nurse did not understand the question. Again the child cried out, and again the same shadow of sharp pain darkened the face of the mother, while large tears rolled down from her closed eyes.

“Why, why,” she repeated in a whisper.

At last the meaning of her question seemed to occur to the nurse, who answered quite calmly,—

“Oh, you mean why does the child cry? Babies always do. You must not agitate yourself.”

But the mother was not to be pacified. She started every time the little one cried, and kept repeating in tones of angry impatience, “Why—why—so dreadfully?”

To the nurse there seemed nothing unusual in the cries of the infant; and supposing the mother to be either unconscious or simply delirious, she left her, and busied herself with the child.

The young mother said no more, but from time to time an anguish too deep for expression brought the tears to her eyes. They forced their way through the thick black eye-lashes, and slowly rolled down her pale marble-like cheeks. Perchance her mother’s heart was torn by a presentiment of some dark, abiding misery hanging like a heavy cloud over the infant’s crib, and destined to accompany him through life even unto the grave. These signs of emotion, on the other hand, were very likely nothing more than the wanderings of delirium. But however this may have been, the child was indeed born blind.

II.

At first no one perceived it. The boy had that vague way of looking at objects common to all very young infants. As the days went by, the life of the new-born man could soon be reckoned by weeks. His eyes grew clearer; the thin film that had overspread them disappeared, and the pupil became defined. But the child was never seen to turn his head, to follow the bright sunbeams that found their way into the room; nor did the merry chirping of the birds, nor the rustling of the branches of the green beech-trees in the shaded garden beneath the windows, attract his notice.

The mother, who had now recovered, was the first one to mark with anxiety the strange immobility of the child’s expression, so invariably calm and serious. With pitiful eyes, like a frightened dove, she would question those about her: “Tell me what makes him look so unnatural?”

“What do you mean?” strangers would reply in tones of indifference; “he looks like all other children of his age.”

“But watch him! See how oddly he fumbles with his hands!”

“The child cannot yet regulate the movements of his hands by the impressions which his eyes receive,” replied the doctor.

“Why does he look constantly in one direction? He is—blind!”

As the dread suspicion found utterance in words, not one of them could calm the mother’s agitation. The doctor took the child in his arms, and turning him suddenly toward the light, looked into his eyes. An expression of alarm passed over his countenance, and after a few vague remarks he took his leave, promising to return in two days. The mother moaned and fluttered like a wounded bird, pressing the child to her bosom, while the boy’s eyes kept ever the same steadfast and rigid stare.

The doctor did return in two days, bringing with him an ophthalmoscope. After lighting a candle, he proceeded to test the eyes of the infant by flashing it suddenly before them and as suddenly withdrawing it; finally, with an expression of distress, he said,—

“It grieves me deeply, Madam, but I am forced to admit that you have divined the truth. The boy indeed is blind,—irremediably blind.”

Sadly, but without agitation, the mother listened to this announcement. “I knew it long ago,” she softly murmured.

III.

The family into which this blind child was born was a small one. Its other two members were the father and “Uncle Maxim,” so called not only by his own people, but also by friends and acquaintances. The father was a fair example of the landowners in the southwestern district. He was good-natured, even kindly, probably an excellent overseer of the workmen, fond of building and making alterations in his mills. These occupations consumed all his time; hence his voice was seldom heard in the house except at the regular hours for dinner, lunch, or other events of a similar character. At such times he never failed to ask his customary question of his wife, “Are you feeling well, my dove?” After which he would seat himself at the table, and make no further remarks save perhaps an occasional observation on the subject of cylinders or pinions. It might be expected that his quiet and simple existence would find a pale reflection in the nature of his son.

Uncle Maxim was of quite a different temperament. Ten years previous to the events we are about to describe, he had been famed for his quarrelsome temper, not only in the vicinity of his own estate, but even in Kiev and at the Contracts.[1] No one could understand the existence of such a brother in a family so respectable as that of Pani[2] Popèlska, née Yatzènko. Amicable relations with such a man were out of the question, for it was impossible to please him. He insolently repelled the advances of the Pans,[3] and overlooked an amount of wilfulness and impertinence on the part of the peasants, which would have been punished with blows by even the mildest among the nobility. Finally, to the great joy of all respectable persons, Uncle Maxim for reasons best known to himself became very much displeased with the Austrians, and departed for Italy. There he joined Garibaldi, a heathen soldier, who like himself delighted in fighting,—and who, as it was rumored among the Pan-landlords, was in league with the devil, and showed no reverence for the Pope. By such actions Maxim of course imperilled forever his restless, heretical soul; but on the occasion of the Contracts fewer scandals took place, and many an excellent mother felt more at ease concerning the welfare of her sons.

The Austrians, on their part, were doubtless angry with Uncle Maxim. Now and then his name appeared in the “Courier,”—a favorite old paper of the Pan-landlords,—united with those of Garibaldi’s most daring comrades; and one day the Pans read in the same “Courier” that Uncle Maxim had fallen with his horse on the battle-field. The enraged Austrians, who had long been waiting for a chance to attack this desperate Volynian,[4] who in the opinion of his countrymen was Garibaldi’s mainstay and support, chopped him in pieces like cabbage. “Maxim’s was a sad end,” said the Pans, and ascribed it to the immediate interposition of Saint Peter in behalf of his representative on earth. Maxim was reckoned among the dead. Subsequently, however, it became known that the Austrian sabres had no power to expel Maxim’s obstinate spirit, and that it still dwelt in his considerably damaged body. The Garibaldians, rescuing their worthy comrade from the fray, had carried him to some hospital, and, lo! after a few years Maxim unexpectedly appeared in his sister’s house, where he ever after remained.

But Maxim could fight no more duels. He had lost his right foot, and was obliged to use a crutch, while his left leg was so injured as to require him to use also a cane. On the whole he had lost much of his former excitability, and it was only occasionally that his sharp tongue did duty for his sword. He ceased to visit the Contracts, seldom appeared in society, and spent most of his time in the library reading; but in regard to the contents of the books, save for the _a priori_ supposition that they must be atheistic, no one had the faintest idea. He also wrote from time to time; but as his compositions never appeared in the “Courier,” they were supposed to be quite insignificant.

About the time when the little new being entered upon its career in the country house, one might have noticed streaks of silver gray in Uncle Maxim’s closely cropped hair. From the constant use of crutch and cane he had grown high shouldered, which gave to his figure a certain square effect. His peculiar aspect, his knitted brows, the clatter of his crutch and cane, and the clouds of tobacco smoke in which he was constantly enveloped, since he never took the pipe from his mouth,—all these things intimidated strangers, and only those who lived with him knew that his crippled body held a warm and kind heart, and that his large square head covered with thick bristling hair was the seat of constant mental activity.

But those who were nearer to him had but a vague notion of the problems that perplexed and absorbed Uncle Maxim’s mind at this time. They only knew that he would sit motionless for hours at a time, enveloped in a cloud of blue smoke, with knitted eye-brows and a far-away look in his eyes. Meanwhile this crippled warrior was pondering upon the battle of life, and feeling that there was no room in it for invalids. He pictured himself as having left the ranks forever, and he felt like a man encumbering the hospital ambulance. He was like a knight, unseated and overthrown in the conflict of life. Did it not show a lack of courage to crawl in the dust like a crushed worm? Would it not be a coward’s part to grasp the stirrup of the conqueror, and beg for the sorry remnant of his own life?

While Uncle Maxim was calmly considering this vital question with all its _pros_ and _cons_, a new being appeared before his eyes, whose fate it was to enter life an invalid from his very birth. At first Maxim paid but little heed to the blind child, but as time went on, the singular likeness between the boy’s fate and his own interested him. “Hm! Hm!” he thoughtfully muttered to himself as he looked at the child from the corner of his eyes, “this chap is also an invalid. If we two could be put together, one useful man might be made of us.” And after that he gazed at the child more and more frequently.

IV.

The child was born blind. Who was to blame for this misfortune? No one. There was no slightest shade of the “evil eye;” the very cause of the misfortune itself was hidden somewhere in the depths of the mysterious and complex processes of life. Anguish pierced the mother’s heart as she gazed on her blind boy. She suffered not alone as a mother, in her sympathy with her son’s affliction, together with a sad prescience of the painful future awaiting her child; but added to these feelings there dwelt within the depths of the young mother’s heart a consciousness that the cause of this misfortune may have been latent, as a dreaded possibility, in those who gave him life. This in itself sufficed to make the little creature, with his beautiful sightless eyes, the central figure of the family and its unconscious despot. Every member of the household strove to gratify his lightest fancy.

What would in time have become of this boy, unconsciously predisposed as he was to resent his misfortune, and whose egotism was fostered by all those who surrounded him, had not a strange fatality combined with the Austrian sabres to compel Uncle Maxim to settle down in the country in his sister’s family,—no one can tell. By the presence of the blind boy in the house, the active mind of the crippled soldier was gradually and imperceptibly directed into a new channel. He would still smoke his pipe hour after hour, but the old expression of pain and dejection had given place to one of interest. Yet the more Uncle Maxim pondered, the more he wrinkled his thick brows, and more and more heavy grew the volumes of smoke. Finally one day he made up his mind to interfere.

“That youngster,” he said, puffing out ring after ring of smoke, “will be much more unhappy than I am. Far better had he never been born.”

An expression of acute suffering saddened the mother’s face as she gave her brother a reproachful glance. “It is cruel to remind me of this, Max,” she said gently, “and to do it wantonly!”

“I am simply telling you the truth,” replied Maxim. “I have lost a hand and a foot, but I have eyes. This youngster has no eyes, and in time will have neither hands nor feet nor will.”

“What do you mean?”

“Pray understand me, Anna,” said Maxim in a gentler tone, “I would not reiterate these cruel truths had I no object. This boy’s nervous organization is extremely sensitive; hence it is possible so to develop his other faculties that their acuteness will compensate him, at least to a certain degree, for his blindness. But to attain this he must use his faculties; and the use of one’s faculties must be compelled by necessity. An unwise solicitude, that prevents him from making any effort, will ruin his chances for living a full life.”

The mother was sensible, and therefore knew how to control that instinctive impulse which urged her, at every pitiful cry of the child, to rush to him.

A few months after this conversation the boy could creep about the rooms with ease and rapidity; he listened intently to every sound, and by his sense of touch eagerly examined every object that happened to come within his reach. He soon learned to know his mother by her footstep, by the rustling of her dress, and by certain other signs perceptible to him alone; it made no difference to him whether there were many persons in the room or not, or if they changed their positions,—he never failed to turn with unerring accuracy toward the spot where she sat. When she lifted him in her arms he knew at once that he was sitting in his mother’s lap. When others took him up, he would pass his little hands rapidly over the face of the person, thus recognizing almost at once the nurse, Uncle Maxim, or his father. But if it happened to be a stranger, then the movements of the tiny hands were more deliberate; the boy passed them carefully and attentively over the unfamiliar face, his features betraying his intense interest. He seemed to be looking at the strange face with his finger-tips.

By nature the blind boy was a very lively and active child; but as month succeeded month, blindness set its impress on the boy’s temperament, which began to manifest its true character. He gradually lost his rapidity of motion. He would sit perfectly still for hours in some remote corner, with unchanging expression, as if listening. When at times the various sounds that usually distracted his attention ceased, and the room became quiet, the child would sit absorbed in thought, and upon his beautiful face, serious beyond his years, an expression of bewilderment and surprise would appear.