The Novice (Lermontov)
Short summary
Georgia, early 19th century. A Russian general brought a sick six-year-old prisoner boy to a monastery. A monk nursed the child back to health, and the boy grew up in the monastery, planning to take monastic vows.
One autumn night, the young man vanished. He was found three days later on the steppe, fainted, thin and pale. He refused to speak about his escape and began to fade away. A monk came to hear his confession, and the dying youth told his story.
He explained that he had lived with one burning thought: to escape and reach his homeland. During the stormy night, he fled into the forest, where he saw mountains, woods, and torrents. He remembered his father's hall, his sisters, and his native village. He fought a snow-leopard and won, though he was badly wounded. Lost in the forest, he wandered for days, unable to find his way home.
Yes, in realms behind the sky
my soul will find its refuge due ...
alas! I'd barter, for a few
moments among those steep and strange
rocks where my childhood used to range --
heaven and eternity I'd change
Detailed summary
Division into chapters is editorial.
The monastery and the captive boys story
Not many years ago, where the rivers Aragva and Kura flowed together in Georgia, there stood a monastery. By the time of this tale, it had fallen into ruin, with only crumbling gates, towers, and a vaulted church remaining. An old watchman tended the site, sweeping gravestones that told of how a Georgian king once conveyed his land to Russia's protection.
The confession begins: a life of captivity and yearning
One day, a Russian general rode down from the mountains toward Tiflis with a prisoner-child, a boy about six years old who was ill and weak as kindling-sticks, yet wild as a mountain chamois. The child was exhausted and nearly died in proud silence, refusing food. A monk took pity on the boy, nursed him back to health, and christened him. The child grew up within the monastery walls, learning the strange language and eventually planning to take monastic vows. But one autumn night, he suddenly vanished.
The monks searched for three days and found him fainted on the steppe, thin, pale, and feeble, as if from fever and hunger. He refused to speak and visibly faded toward death. Then his reverend friend came to him with prayer and exhortation. The young man raised himself and began to speak at length, confessing the story of his escape.
Three days of freedom: natures beauty and memories of home
The young man thanked the monk for coming to hear his confession. He explained that he had lived his short life in captivity, knowing only one burning thought that consumed his soul like fire. He had grown up alone and pale within monastery walls, a child in soul but a monk by fate. The words 'mother' and 'father' called to no one for him. He saw others with homes, friends, parents, and native lands, but he had not even dear ones' tombs nearby. He had taken an oath to press his burning breast, even for a moment, against someone from his own land.
I took an oath I swore to keep:
that at some time my burning breast
just for a moment should be pressed
against someone's, perhaps unknown,
yet from a land that was my own.
Escape into the storm and wandering through Gods garden
He asked the monk if he had never known the dreams of wild youth, the sharp hate and hot love, the keen beating of the heart. He declared he was young and wished he could truly live. On that dreadful night when thunder struck the monks down with fright, he had fled, glad to embrace the storm. He ran for long hours through the darkness, then lay exhausted on thick grass, listening to the silence after the storm passed.
It's long since I began to yearn
to see far fields, and to discern
if earth was beautiful -- to learn
whether for freedom or for gaol
we come to this terrestrial vale.
At dawn, he discovered he had been lying on the brink of a frightful cliff above an angry torrent. Around him bloomed God's garden, with flowers in bright raiment, curling vines with heavy grape clusters, and flocks of timorous birds. He lay listening to nature's voices whispering secrets of earth and sky. The morning sky was so clear and translucent that sharp eyes could have traced the flight of angels. But soon, under the sultry noon, he began to pine with thirst and descended toward the torrent, clutching at bushes as rocks rolled and bounded beneath his feet.
The Georgian maiden by the torrent
As he reached the water, he heard a voice and light footfalls. He hid behind scrub and peered out. A Georgian maiden came down the path to the torrent, holding a pitcher on her head. She walked lightfooted, sometimes slipping on rocks and laughing. Her humble dress revealed a face and breast covered in golden haze from sultry days. The darkness of her eyes was so full of love-secrets that his head went round.
He remembered the murmuring sound as her jug slowly drowned in the torrent. When he came to his senses, she had gone some distance, walking slow yet lightfooted, straight and slim as a poplar tree. Not far away, two cabins loomed through the evening mist, with smoke rising from one roof. He saw the door gently open and shut. The memory of those moments filled him with yearning and sadness, and he was glad the monk could not conceive why.
Lost in the forest: despair and determination
Worn out by night's travail, he fell into blissful sleep and dreamed again of the Georgian girl. He woke to find the moon high and shining. He longed to go to the cabin but dared not, for he had planned one thing alone—to reach his native land. He quelled his hunger and started on the straightest way, but soon began to stray when he lost sight of the mountains in the forest's night. In despair, he clutched at thorny bushes. The eternal forest grew denser and grimmer with every pace, and darkness peered through every shrub with million coal-black eyes.
Mortal combat with the snow-leopard
He threw himself down weeping, biting the earth's damp breast. He swore he would have accepted no help from men—he felt a stranger to them all, like a steppe beast. He lay on a sandy glade when suddenly two sparks of fire darted round. From the dark forest sprang a huge snow-leopard, the waste's eternal guest, with a coat shot with silver gleams. The creature lay playing with a moistened bone, thumping his tail and turning bloodshot eyes on the moon.
The young man waited with a cudgel in hand, his heart on fire with sudden wild desire for war and blood. The leopard smelt an enemy and howled sadly like a groan. He reared up and leaped, threatening eternal sleep, but the young man forestalled him with a sure and swift stroke that broke the beast's brow open. The leopard toppled but rose again, and they fell together, continuing their fight on the ground, enlaced like a snake-couple, closer than two friends embraced. In that hour, the young man was wild and fiercer than the desert's child, howling as if raised by leopards and wolves. The leopard's strength finally failed, and he died facing his conquering foe, the way a fighting man should go.
Discovery and return: the cruel irony of fate
He left the woodland at daybreak. The dark forest began to talk, and from a distant village, smoke started up. He heard a voiceless hum blow on the wind and turned his gaze far and wide. He knew that countryside—a strong terror came over him. He had headed back to prison, having spent all those days in vain, nursing his secret hope and yearning patience. Suddenly in the silence fell the distant tolling bell, and all was lucid. He had recognized its chime—how often it had chased the bright disguise of dreamland from his childish eyes, the forms of kith and kin, the steppe's wild liberty, the spin of lightfoot horses, and splendid fights among the rocks.
Dying visions and final farewell
He declared he deserved his destined course. On the strange steppe, a mighty horse thrown by its rider could find the homeward way alone, but he could not equal it. His prison had left its brand on him. He was like a blossom that grows in gaol on wet flags, alone and pale, putting out no youthful leaves, languishing for life-giving rays. When moved to a rose-garden where life and sweetness breathe, the sunrise's incandescent power scorches the gaol-nurtured flower.
Burned by day's remorseless fire, he hid his head in the grass. God's whole world seemed numbed in heavy slumber. A madness crushed him, herald of death, and he seemed to die. In his delirium, he lay on the moist bed of a deep river in mysterious darkness. The ice-cold stream flowed into his chest, quenching his eternal thirst. A fish with golden scales and green eyes came to him, singing in a silvery strain, offering him peace in the watery wild. He swooned, and the light quenched in his eyes.
He was found and brought back to the monastery. He finished his confession, saying he did not care whether the monk believed him. One thing grieved him—his body would never come to his homeland to moulder there, and his grievous thrall would never be rehearsed or claim sad repute for his dim name. He asked for the monk's hand in farewell, noting his own was on fire. Since childhood, a flame had lived inside his breast, but now it had blazed its way out and returned to Him who gives just measure of pain and peace to each man.
perhaps near by once more I'll hear
my native tongue! and someone dear ... how, gently, over me he'll bend ... he'll sing to me in undertone
of that dear country, once my own ...
and so I'll sleep