The whole day we wandered over the Charred Wood. At evening--the sunset had not yet begun to redden in the sky, but the shadows from the trees already lay long and motionless, and in the grass one could feel that chill that comes before the dew--I lay down by the roadside near the cart in which Kondrat, without haste, was harnessing the horses after their feed, and I recalled my cheerless reveries of the day before.
Everything around was as still as the previous evening, but there was not the forest,stifling and weighing down the spirit. On the dry moss,
on the crimson grasses, on the soft dust of the road, on the slender stems and pure little leaves of the young birch-trees, lay the clear
soft light of the no longer scorching, sinking sun. Everything was resting, plunged in soothing coolness; nothing was yet asleep, but
everything was getting ready for the restoring slumber of evening and night-time. Everything seemed to be saying to man: 'Rest, brother of
ours; breathe lightly, and grieve not, thou too, at the sleep close before thee.'
I raised my head and saw at the very end of a delicate twig one of those large flies with emerald head, long body, and four transparent wings, which the fanciful French call 'maidens,' while our guileless people has named them 'bucket-yokes.' For a long while, more than an hour, I did not take my eyes off her. Soaked through and through with sunshine, she did not stir, only from time to time turning her head from side to side and shaking her lifted wings ... that was all. Looking at her, it suddenly seemed to me that I understood the life of nature, understood its clear and unmistakable though, to many,
still mysterious significance. A subdued, quiet animation, an unhasting, restrained use of sensations and powers, an equilibrium of
health in each separate creature--there is her very basis, her unvarying law, that is what she stands upon and holds to. Everything
that goes beyond this level, above or below--it makes no difference--she flings away as worthless. Many insects die as soon as
they know the joys of love, which destroy the equilibrium. The sick beast plunges into the thicket and expires there alone: he seems to
feel that he no longer has the right to look upon the sun that is common to all, nor to breathe the open air; he has not the right to
live;--and the man who from his own fault or from the fault of others is faring ill in the world--ought, at least, to know how to keep
silence.
Turgenev (A Tour of the Forest)
Everything around was as still as the previous evening, but there was not the forest,stifling and weighing down the spirit. On the dry moss,
on the crimson grasses, on the soft dust of the road, on the slender stems and pure little leaves of the young birch-trees, lay the clear
soft light of the no longer scorching, sinking sun. Everything was resting, plunged in soothing coolness; nothing was yet asleep, but
everything was getting ready for the restoring slumber of evening and night-time. Everything seemed to be saying to man: 'Rest, brother of
ours; breathe lightly, and grieve not, thou too, at the sleep close before thee.'
I raised my head and saw at the very end of a delicate twig one of those large flies with emerald head, long body, and four transparent wings, which the fanciful French call 'maidens,' while our guileless people has named them 'bucket-yokes.' For a long while, more than an hour, I did not take my eyes off her. Soaked through and through with sunshine, she did not stir, only from time to time turning her head from side to side and shaking her lifted wings ... that was all. Looking at her, it suddenly seemed to me that I understood the life of nature, understood its clear and unmistakable though, to many,
still mysterious significance. A subdued, quiet animation, an unhasting, restrained use of sensations and powers, an equilibrium of
health in each separate creature--there is her very basis, her unvarying law, that is what she stands upon and holds to. Everything
that goes beyond this level, above or below--it makes no difference--she flings away as worthless. Many insects die as soon as
they know the joys of love, which destroy the equilibrium. The sick beast plunges into the thicket and expires there alone: he seems to
feel that he no longer has the right to look upon the sun that is common to all, nor to breathe the open air; he has not the right to
live;--and the man who from his own fault or from the fault of others is faring ill in the world--ought, at least, to know how to keep
silence.
Turgenev (A Tour of the Forest)
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