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146
SÖNYA KOVALÉVSKY
" Well, if you want to sulk, sulk away. It will be
only the worse for you; you shall not know
anything," cried my sister with determination at last, and
began to undress as if nothing had happened.
I remember that I had a wonderful dream that
night. This was strange altogether. Whenever
during my life a great grief has overwhelmed me, I
have always afterward, on the following night, had
wonderfully beautiful, pleasant dreams. But how
painful is the moment of awakening. The dreams
are not yet quite dissipated; the whole body,
exhausted with the tears of the preceding evening,
experiences an agreeable languor after a few hours of
vivifying sleep, a physical pleasure in the restoration
of harmony. Suddenly, like the blow of a hammer,
the memory of the terrible, irretrievable catastrophe
which took place the night before beats upon the
brain, and the soul is seized with the consciousness
that it must begin again to live and suffer.
There is much that is evil in life. All views of
suffering are repulsive. Painful is the paroxysm of the
first wild despair, when the whole being rebels, and
will not submit itself, when it cannot as yet understand
to the full the seriousness of the loss. Almost worse
are the long, long days which follow, when tears are
all exhausted, and the excitement is allayed, and the
man no longer beats his head against the wall; but
only recognizes the fact that, under the stress of grief
which has overwhelmed his soul, a slow process,—
unseen by the rest of the world,—a process of destruction
and of weakness, is in progress.
All this is very bad and torturing; but nevertheless
the first moments of the return to the sad reality after
a brief intermission of unconsciousness are almost the
hardest of all to bear.
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