for I really do not understand it.
It is some sort of an allegory in lyrical-dramatic form, recalling the
second part of Faust. The scene opens with a chorus of women, followed
by a chorus of men, then a chorus of incorporeal powers of some sort,
and at the end of all a chorus of spirits not yet living but very
eager to come to life. All these choruses sing about something very
indefinite, for the most part about somebody's curse, but with a tinge
of the higher humour. But the scene is suddenly changed. There begins a
sort of "festival of life" at which even insects sing, a tortoise
comes on the scene with certain sacramental Latin words, and even, if
I remember aright, a mineral sings about something that is a quite
inanimate object. In fact, they all sing continually, or if they
converse, it is simply to abuse one another vaguely, but again with
a tinge of higher meaning. At last the scene is changed again; a
wilderness appears, and among the rocks there wanders a civilized young
man who picks and sucks certain herbs. Asked by a fairy why he sucks
these herbs, he answers that, conscious of a superfluity of life in
himself, he seeks forgetfulness, and finds it in the juice of these
herbs, but that his great desire is to lose his reason at once (a desire
possibly superfluous). Then a youth of indescribable beauty rides in on
a black steed, and an immense multitude of all nations follow him.
The youth represents death, for whom all the peoples are yearning. And
finally, in the last scene we are suddenly shown the Tower of Babel, and
certain athletes at last finish building it with a song of new hope, and
when at length they complete the topmost pinnacle, the lord (of Olympia,
let us say) takes flight in a comic fashion, and man, grasping the
situation and seizing his place, at once begins a new life with new
insight into things. Well, this poem was thought at that time to be
dangerous. Last year I proposed to Stepan Trofimovitch to publish it,
on the ground of its perfect harmlessness nowadays, but he declined
the suggestion with evident dissatisfaction. My view of its complete
harmlessness evidently displeased him, and I even ascribe to it a
certain coldness on his part, which lasted two whole months.

And what do you think? Suddenly, almost at the time I proposed printing
it here, our poem was published abroad in a collection of revolutionary
verse, without the knowledge of Stepan Trofimovitch. He was at
first alarmed,