At the Edge of the World.

I recently read Nikolai Leskov’s 1875-76 novella На краю света [At the edge of the world], a tale told by an elderly archbishop (based on Nil) about how, many years ago in Siberia, his heathen guide had saved him during a snowstorm, teaching him a lesson about tolerance; one of the memorable figures in it is the priest Kiriak, who was once renowned for converting the heathen but by the time the narrator arrived was refusing to do so any more. They have a discussion in chapter 4 in which the narrator is alternately charmed and irritated by his stubborn interlocutor, and finally asks him to teach him the local language (which he, unlike the other priests, has taken the trouble to learn):

Clearly and quickly he revealed to me all the secrets of comprehending that speech, so impoverished and laconic that it can barely be called a language. In any case it is no more than a language of animal life, and not of intellectual life, and mastering it is very hard: the turns of speech, short and aperiodic, make it extremely difficult to translate into it any text composed according to the rules of a developed language with complex periods and subordinate clauses; poetic and figurative expressions can’t be translated into it at all, and the concepts conveyed by them would remain inaccessible to this poor people. How can you tell them the sense of the words “Be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves” [Matthew 10:16] when they have never seen serpents or doves and cannot even imagine them. They can’t match the words martyr or baptizer or forerunner [John the Baptist is called John the Forerunner in Russian], and if you translate Most Holy Virgin into their words as shochmo Abya, it comes out not as our Mother of God but as some kind of shamanic female divinity — in short, a goddess. It’s even harder to talk about the service of the precious blood or other mysteries of the faith, and to construct for them some sort of theological system or just to say a word about a virgin giving birth without a husband — there’s no point even thinking about it: in the best case they won’t understand a thing, and they may even guffaw right in your face.

Толково и быстро открыл он мне все таинства, как постичь эту молвь, такую бедную и немногословную, что ее едва ли можно и языком назвать. Во всяком разе это не более как язык жизни животной, а не жизни умственной; а между тем усвоить его очень трудно: обороты речи, краткие и непериодические, делают крайне затруднительным переводы на эту молвь всякого текста, изложенного по правилам языка выработанного, со сложными периодами и подчиненными предложениями; а выражения поэтические и фигуральные на него вовсе не переводимы, да и понятия, ими выражаемые, остались бы для этого бедного люда недоступны. Как рассказать им смысл слов: «Будьте хитры, как змии, и незлобивы, как голуби», когда они и ни змеи и ни голубя никогда не видали и даже представить их себе не могут. Нельзя им подобрать слов: ни мученик, ни креститель, ни предтеча, а пресвятую деву если перевести по-ихнему словами шочмо Абя, то выйдет не наша богородица, а какое-то шаманское божество женского пола,— короче сказать — богиня. Про заслуги же святой крови или про другие тайны веры еще труднее говорить, а строить им какую-нибудь богословскую систему или просто слово молвить о рождении без мужа, от девы,— и думать нечего: они или ничего не поймут, и это самое лучшее, а то, пожалуй, еще прямо в глаза расхохочутся.

(I haven’t tried to render the Church Slavonic tinge to his narration, like the archaic word молвь.) I imagine he got the shochmo Abya phrase from Nikolay Ilminsky‘s article Практические замечания о переводах и сочинениях на инородческих языках [Practical remarks on translations and compositions in the languages of national minorities] (1871; available at Google Books), where on p. 182 the same phrase is cited (as Cheremiss, i.e. Mari) with the same explanation. (Ilminsky was an interesting guy who thought “that mother tongue instruction was the key factor in ensuring that nominally orthodox believers could become more committed to these beliefs,” which is the view Leskov has his priest convey.)

There are a couple of passages that strikingly prefigure later, more famous works. This is from chapter 5 (the first speaker is the stubborn and semi-heretical Kiriak):

“Well, you and I are baptized, which is fine; for us it’s like having a ticket to the feast — we go there and know that we’re invited, because we have a ticket.

“Well?”

“Well, now we see that next to us is ambling a little fellow who doesn’t have a ticket. We think “Now, there’s a fool! He’s wasting his time, they won’t let him in! He’ll get there, and the doorkeepers will throw him out.” But when we get there, we see that the doorkeepers want to throw him out, but the host sees him and maybe tells them to let him in, saying “Never mind that he doesn’t have a ticket, I know him anyway: come in anyway,” and he brings him in and honors him more than someone else who came with a ticket.”

— Ну, вот мы с тобою крещены,— ну, это и хорошо; нам этим как билет дан на пир; мы и идем и знаем, что мы званы, потому что у нас и билет есть.

— Ну!

— Ну а теперь видим, что рядом с нами туда же бредет человечек без билета. Мы думаем: «Вот дурачок! напрасно он идет: не пустят его! Придет, а его привратники вон выгонят». А придем и увидим: привратники-то его погонят, что билета нет, а хозяин увидит, да, может быть, и пустить велит,— скажет: «Ничего, что билета нет,— я его и так знаю: пожалуй, входи», да и введет, да еще, гляди, лучше иного, который с билетом пришел, станет чествовать.

That’s remarkably reminiscent of Ivan Karamazov’s famous peroration:

And if the sufferings of children go to swell the sum of sufferings which was necessary to pay for truth, then I protest that the truth is not worth such a price. I don’t want the mother to embrace the oppressor who threw her son to the dogs! She dare not forgive him! Let her forgive him for herself, if she will, let her forgive the torturer for the immeasurable suffering of her mother’s heart. But the sufferings of her tortured child she has no right to forgive; she dare not forgive the torturer, even if the child were to forgive him! And if that is so, if they dare not forgive, what becomes of harmony? Is there in the whole world a being who would have the right to forgive and could forgive? I don’t want harmony. From love for humanity I don’t want it. I would rather be left with the unavenged suffering. I would rather remain with my unavenged suffering and unsatisfied indignation, even if I were wrong. Besides, too high a price is asked for harmony; it’s beyond our means to pay so much to enter on it. And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket, and if I am an honest man I am bound to give it back as soon as possible. And that I am doing. It’s not God that I don’t accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket.

And Kiriak’s dying words are:

O goodness… O simplicity… O love!.. O my joy!.. Jesus!.. now I run to you, like Nicodemus, at night; hasten to my aid, open the door… let me hear God, walking and speaking!.. Now… Thy garment is already in my hands… crush my thigh… but I will not let Thee go… unless along with me you bless everyone.

— О доброта… о простота… о любовь!.. о радость моя!.. Иисусе!.. вот я бегу к тебе, как Никодим, ночью; вари ко мне, открой дверь… дай мне слышать бога, ходящего и глаголющего!.. Вот… риза твоя уже в руках моих… сокруши стегно мое… но я не отпущу тебя… доколе не благословишь со мной всех.

I can’t fail to think of the end of the Strugatskys’ Roadside Picnic, where the narrator demands СЧАСТЬЕ ДЛЯ ВСЕХ, ДАРОМ, И ПУСТЬ НИКТО НЕ УЙДЁТ ОБИЖЕННЫЙ! [Happiness for everyone, at no cost, and let no one go away offended!].

Update (Sept. 2019). I learn there is a precursor, and possible source, of both the Leskov and Dostoevsky passages; Joseph Frank, in his biography of Dostoevsky, writes: “When he hands back his ‘entrance ticket’ to the promise of an ultimate eternal harmony of God’s world because the price to be paid for it is too high in human suffering, Ivan repeats the gesture and uses the same terms as the protagonist of Schiller’s poem ‘Resignation.’” Here’s the relevant stanza (the third) from the Schiller poem (written in the 1780s):

Da steh’ ich schon auf deiner finstern Brücke,
    Furchtbare Ewigkeit.
Empfange meinen Vollmachtbrief zum Glücke!
Ich bring’ ihn unerbrochen dir zurücke,
    Ich weiß nichts von Glückseligkeit.

I stand already on your dark bridge,
    frightful eternity.
Take my letter of authorization for happiness!
I bring it back to you unopened;
    I know nothing of bliss.

They aren’t actually the same terms — a Vollmachtbrief is not a ticket — but it’s certainly a similar image, and Dostoevsky loved Schiller and quoted him often, so I think we can plausibly see this as a Schiller reference; I don’t know if the Leskov is as well (it seems considerably more distant from the image in “Resignation”).