Note 67 — Chapter 38 Switzerland—James Fazy and the Refugees—Monte Rosa

These fragments, printed in vol. iv. of The Polar Star, ended with the following dedication, written before the arrival of Ogaryov in London and before the death of Granovsky:

‘... Accept this skull—it belongs to you by right’ (Pushkin).

Here for the time we will stop. Some day I shall publish the chapters I have omitted and shall write others, without which my narrative remains unintelligible, incomplete, perhaps useless, and in any case will not be what I meant. But all that must be later, much later....

Now let us part; and one word at leave-taking, to you friends of my youth.

When everything had been buried, when even the clamour partly provoked by me, partly spontaneous, had subsided about me, and people had dispersed to their homes, I lifted up my head and looked around me; I had nothing living, nothing akin to me but my children. Wandering among strangers, watching them more closely, I gave up seeking friends and held aloof—not from men but from intimacy with them.

It is true, at times it seems that I have still feelings in my heart, words which it is a pity not to utter, which might do good or at least bring comfort to the listener, and one is sorry that it must all be smothered and lost in the soul, as the eye loses itself in the empty distance ... but that is the rapidly fading glow of sunset, the reflection of the retreating past.

It is to that that I have turned back. I have left the world alien to me and have come back to you; and again we have been living together as in old times, are meeting every day, and nothing is changed, no one has grown older, no one is dead—and I am as at home with you, and it is as clear that I have no other standpoint than ours, no vocation but that to which I dedicated myself from childhood.

My story of the past is, maybe, dull and feeble, but you, friends, will give it a warm reception; this work has helped me to live through a terrible period, it has lifted me out of the idle despair in which I was perishing, it has brought me back to you. With it I enter upon my winter, not gaily but calmly (in the words of the poet whom I love beyond measure):—

‘Lieta no ... ma sicura!’ said Leopardi of death in his Ruysch e le sui mummie.

So all unwittingly you have saved me: accept this skull—it belongs to you by right.

Isle of Wight, Ventnor, October 1, 1855.