Explanation for the Silence. The Need for Candor and Simplicity in Correspondence. The Vanity of Secular Life

I was lost in conjecture: what could have happened? And now I know. Grandmother was a little unwell. Well, “grandmother”—that is an all-conquering word. There is no warmer place for granddaughters than at their grandmothers’ sides, and for grandmothers there are no dearer persons than good granddaughters. For this one must thank God. And do you go more often to console your grandmother, and listen more attentively to what she says. Old women have wisdom, acquired through the trials and labors of life. And they often let fall, quite unawares, in simple phrases, such wise lessons as you would not find even if you searched through books.

Although you offered a very satisfactory explanation for why you had not written for so long, still some small penance ought perhaps to have been imposed on you, for the sake of amendment. I think, however, that you may be better disposed toward diligence if I thank you—for having written, and for what you wrote. And I do thank you.

You promise to be candid. Excellent! Candor is the first requirement in a correspondence; otherwise there would have been no point in beginning it. And always write freely, straight from the shoulder—everything that is on your soul, and lay out in particular the questions that stir within your mind and press insistently for resolution. Then the answers will be received as thirsty ground receives water. This is the very best way both to acquire and to fix firmly in the soul those ideas that clarify the essence of the things and affairs whose clear inner vision we consider necessary for ourselves. What use would it be if I wrote to you about one thing while your soul was occupied with something quite different? That would be empty talk, rather like two persons conversing with their backs turned to each other, each holding forth about what lies before his own eyes. It seems to me that you and I agreed from the beginning that we would not busy ourselves with abstractions or draw up plans and theories, but would speak of whatever the current circumstances of life require us to speak about. So we shall proceed step by step.

You write that you are «dazzled.» «For a day or two,» you say, «I happened to be present at the usual social entertainments here—sat at the theatre, went for a walk, attended an evening party. And what a crush it was, what conversations, what elaborate opinions about everything, what manners of conduct! All of this seems strange to me, and from the crush I cannot collect my thoughts.» That is how it seemed to you this first time; afterwards you will get used to it. The impression you experienced, after a quiet, simple family life in the country, is entirely in the natural order of things. I might say to you: judge by this where truth in life lies and where falsehood lies—but I do not know what has settled in your soul from all that you have been through. For it is possible that on the surface there is something like disapproval of such ways, while deeper down there is sympathy with them and a wish to repeat the experience. The kind of life of which you have seen a fragment has a stupefying property: people can see clearly that all of it is not right, and yet they keep being drawn to it—like someone addicted to opium who knows that it will send him into a kind of madness and takes it all the same (or perhaps takes it for that very reason). So how do you feel? Are you still being drawn back there? Do you wish to spend your life that way? I ask you to describe this to me thoroughly—and truthfully.