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A BIOGRAPHY
297
last year of her life, down to the Sunday-school1 in
Tiflis and the kindergarten in Kharkoff, all joined in
showing honor to her memory.
The women of Russia decided to raise a monument
on her grave in Stockholm. At her burial,
carriage-loads of flowers covered the dark, newly turned earth
among the snow-drifts in the Stockholm cemetery.
All the papers2 and reviews contained honorable
mention of the unique woman who had brought honor on
her sex.3
But one picture stands out by itself from among
all these signs of homage, these tributes of esteem.
Sönya will be for posterity what she least wished to
be—a marvel of mental development and beautiful
womanhood; or, if you will, a kind of giantess of such
extraordinary proportions that you regard her with
wonder and admiration.
I have, perhaps, in describing her life, in unveiling
its mistakes and weaknesses, its sorrows and
humdia-tions, as well as its greatness and its triumph, reduced
too much its true dimensions. What I had in mind
was to depict Sönya as I knew her, and as she wished
to be known and understood. I have, above all,
sought to emphasize the human traits in the picture,
and in this way place its subject nearer to the level of
other women; to make her one of them—not an
exception to, but a proof of, the ride that the life of the heart
is the most important, not only for women, but for the
whole of the human race. At this central focus of all
humanity the most and the least gifted may ever meet.
1 Appendix L. 2 Appendix M. 3 Appendix N.
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