The Created Legend | Page 3

February 1916
CHAPTER I
I take a piece of life, coarse and poor, and create from it a delightful
legend--because I am a poet. Whether it linger in the darkness; whether
it be dim, commonplace, or raging with a furious fire--life is before you;
I, a poet, will erect the legend I have created about the enchanting and
the beautiful.
Chance caught in the entangling net of circumstance brings about every
beginning. Yet it is better to begin with what is splendid in earthly
experience, or at any rate with what is beautiful and pleasing. Splendid
are the body, the youth, and the gaiety in man; splendid are the water,
the light, and the summer in nature.
It was a bright, hot midday in summer, and the heavy glances of the
flaming Dragon fell on the River Skorodyen. The water, the light, and
the summer beamed and were glad; they beamed because of the
sunlight that filled the immense space, they were glad because of the
wind that blew from some far land, because of the many birds, because
of the two nude maidens.
Two sisters, Elisaveta and Elena, were bathing in the River Skorodyen.
And the sun and the water were gay, because the two maidens were
beautiful and were naked. And the two girls felt also gay and cool, and
they wanted to scamper and to laugh, to chatter and to jest. They were

talking about a man who had aroused their curiosity.
They were the daughters of a rich proprietor. The place where they
bathed adjoined the spacious old garden of their estate. Perhaps they
enjoyed their bathing because they felt themselves the mistresses of
these fast-flowing waters and of the sand-shoals under their agile feet.
And they swam about and laughed in this river with the assurance and
freedom of princesses born to rule. Few know the boundaries of their
kingdom--but fortunate are they who know what they possess and
exercise their sway.
They swam up and down and across the river, and tried to outswim and
outdive one another. Their bodies, immersed in the water, would have
presented an entrancing sight to any one who might have looked down
upon them from the bench in the garden on the high bank and watched
the exquisite play of their muscles under their thin elastic skin. Pink
tones lost themselves in the skin-yellow pearl of their bodies. But pink
triumphed in their faces, and in those parts of the body most often
exposed.
The river-bank opposite rose in a slope. There were bushes here;
behind them for a great distance stretched fields of rye, while just over
the edge, where the earth and the sky met, were visible the far huts of
the suburban village. Peasant boys passed by on the bank. They did not
look at the bathing women. But a schoolboy, who had come a long way
from the other end of the town, sat on his heels behind the bushes. He
called himself an ass because he had not brought his camera. But he
consoled himself with the thought:
"To-morrow I'll surely bring it."
The schoolboy quickly looked at his watch in order to make a note of
the time the girls went out bathing. He knew them, and often came to
their house to see his friend, their relative. Elena, the younger, now
appealed most to him; she was plump, cheerful, white, rosy, her hands
and feet were small. He did not like the hands and feet of the elder
sister, Elisaveta--they seemed to him to be too large and too red. Her
face also was red, very sunburnt, and she was altogether quite large.

"Oh well," he reflected, "she is certainly well formed, you can't deny
her that."
About a year had now passed since the retired privat-docent Giorgiy
Sergeyevitch Trirodov, a doctor of chemistry, had settled in the town of
Skorodozh.[1] From the very first he had caused much talk in the town,
mostly unsympathetic. It was quite natural that the two rose-yellow,
black-haired girls in the water should also talk of him. They splashed
about gaily, and as they raised jewel-like spray with their feet they kept
up a conversation.
[Footnote 1: Also the scene of Sologub's "Little Demon."]
"How puzzling it all is!" said Elena, the younger sister. "No one knows
where his income comes from, what he does in his house, and why he
has this colony of children. There are all sorts of strange rumours about
him. It's certainly a mystery."
Elena's words reminded Elisaveta of an article she had read lately in a
philosophic periodical published at Moscow. Elisaveta had a good
memory. She recalled a phrase:
"In our world reason will never dominate, and the mysterious will
always maintain its place."
She tried to recall more, but