Savva monologue essay

A monologue from the play by Leonid Andreyev

NOTE: This monologue is definitely reprinted via Savva and The Life of Man: Two Plays simply by Leonid Andreyev. Trans. Thomas Seltzer. Boston: Very little, Brown & Company, 1917.

KONDRATY: There is not any God below there\s the particular devil. This really is a terrible destination to live in, on my word it really is, Mr. Savva. I i am a man of experience. It\s no easy thing to fright me personally. But My spouse and i am frightened to walk in the area at night. To you personally educated persons, he looks in a nobler aspect, of course , but to all of us plain, basic people, he reveals himself as he is really. We have simply no peace inside our monastery, almost always there is such a noise and clatter presently there. Everything is definitely quiet exterior, but inside there are groans and gnashing of teeth. Some groan, several whine, and some complain about something, you can\t inform what. As you pass opportunities, you feel as if your heart and soul were taking leave on the planet behind just about every door. Abruptly something skims from fever currently brewing and there\s a shadow on the wall structure. Nothing at all however there\s a shadow within the wall. Consist of places this makes no difference. You pay no attention to such a trifle as a darkness, but below, Savva Yegorovich, they are with your life, and you can practically hear them speak. In the word of honor! Our hall, you know, is so very long that it seems never to end. You enter nothing! The truth is a sort of dark object relocating front of you, something similar to the number of a man. Then it expands out, expands larger and bigger and larger and wider until it reaches across the roof, and then it\s behind you! You keep on walking. Your detects become paralyzed. You lose most consciousness. And God can be impotent in this article. Of course we certainly have sacred relics and a wonder-working icon, but , in the event you\ll excuse me for declaring so , they may have no efficiency. non-e whatever. If you don\t believe me personally, ask the other monks. They\ll endure me away. We hope and pray, and beat our foreheads, and the effect is nothing, absolutely nothing. In case the image performed nothing else than refuse the impure power! But it can\t carry out even that. It weighs there as if it were none of its organization, and as soon as night comes, the stir as well as the gliding plus the flitting around the corners begin again. The abbot says we are cowards, poor in spirit, which we must be ashamed. Yet why are the photographs ineffective? The monks inside the monestary state well, it\s hard to think. It\s not possible. But they the devil took the real graphic long ago the one which could perform miracles and hung up his own photo instead.

Tweet