Читать книгу Kobiety (Women). A Novel of Polish Life онлайн

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I often walk a few versts with Martha, as far as the “Kirkut,” or Jewish cemetery.

There they stand, the hewn gravestones, in long parallel upright rows. Upon them you may see cabalistic signs and symbols; a lion, a broken taper, or a shelf of books; and certain embellishments that might almost be styled “decadent.” The graves, overgrown with moss, heather, and wild thyme, are nearly level with the rest of the ground. The wooden inclosure, over which we always have to climb, is lost in the woods among the pine-trunks; and those long regular rows of stones raise their heads in a forest elsewhere untouched by man. Here, I feel as though I had gone far back into the dim immemorial Past.

I love that burial-ground; I love to contemplate Life trampling upon Death; and as I gaze, I cease to fear Death any more. Death makes away with the individual only, with the accidental manifestations of Life: Life itself remains. I see myself standing for the whole of mankind, and identical with Life. I always was; I shall be everlasting.... Death is slumbering quietly beneath my feet.