Notes from Underground and The Double (Penguin) by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Author:Fyodor Dostoevsky [Dostoevsky, Fyodor]
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Four

THE day on which was celebrated the festival of the birth of Clara Olsufyevna, only daughter of State Councillor Berendeyev, at one rime Mr Golyadkin’s patron – the day, marked by a magnificent and splendid formal dinner-party, a dinner-party such as had not been seen for a long time within the walls of any of the flats near Izmailovsky Bridge and round about, occupied by high-ranking officials – a dinner, more like some Belshazzar’s feast than a dinner, which called to mind something Babylonian with its brilliance, luxury, and tastefulness, its Veuve Clicquot, its oysters and its fruits from Eliseyev’s and Kilyutin’s, all its well-fed little ladies and representatives of the higher grades of the Government service – this red-letter day, distinguished by so festive a dinner, ended with a brilliant ball, a small family ball, but brilliant all the same in respect of taste, culture, and good breeding. Balls like this do take place, of course, I entirely agree, but they are rare. Balls like this, more like family rejoicings than balls, can only be given in houses like that, for example, of State Councillor Berendeyev. I will go further: I doubt whether even all State Councillors could give balls like it. Oh, if only I were a poet! – I mean, of course, one of at least the quality of Homer or Pushkin (with less talent than that one can’t thrust one’s oar in) – I would certainly have painted the whole of these highly festive celebrations for you, Reader, with glowing colours and a broad brush. Nay, more: I should have begun my poem with the dinner, and applied myself with special diligence to that solemn and yet joyful moment when the first wine-cup was raised in honour of the queen of the festivities. I should have depicted for you first the guests, plunged in silence and expectancy, more like Demosthenian eloquence than silence. Then I should have portrayed Andrey Philippovich, the oldest of the guests and indeed one with some claim to the first place among them, adorned with grey hairs and with the Orders befitting those grey hairs, rising to his feet and raising higher than his head a goblet of sparkling wine – wine specially brought from a distant kingdom for drinking on such occasions, a wine more like the nectar of the gods than a mere wine. I should have pictured for you the guests and the fortunate parents of the queen of the festivities, following the example of Andrey Philippovich in raising their glasses, and turning on him eyes full of anticipation. I should have pictured for you how the Andrey Philippovich so frequently referred to let a tear fall into his glass before he expressed his felicitations and good wishes, then proposed the toast, and drank it…. But I confess, humbly confess, I could never have described all the majesty of that moment when the queen of the festivities herself, Clara Olsufyevna, glowing like a fresh-picked rose with a blush

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