t was sick when a light monastery cutter took me away from Valaam. Many
other feelings came to me and mixed with the feeling of sickness. My sight
with unconscious sadness was nailed to Valaam. I suspect that it was the
sight of farewell! I looked silently at Valaam as the cutter sailed
through the bay. I raised my head to watch the rocks above me. Mighty
nature which always frightened me and always looked at me sternly now was
friendly smiling. Or the sun gave that smile
to water, stones, and thick forest. The edging of the granite cliff where
the monastery stands is crowded with brothers. There were mature men, who
had become stronger in fights with themselves, and young men, who had just
joined the cloister and who would be fighting soon, and oldmen with grey
hair, whose hearts and thoughts are tranquil, whose end is coming and
whose graves are ready to take them. It wasn't enough for them that they
accepted a stranger cordially and soothed him; but they needed send-off
with sorrow of love, with a tear of pity of parting. Magnificent toll of
the monastery bells rang out and the gorges of the mountains repeated it
with loud echo. The cutter came out of the bay, the cliffs remained on
their positions, the vast lake came into the sight; the Serdobolsky shore
was barely seen in the distance there were no shores in other directions
and the blue of the water melts into the blue of the sky. The sails are
raised, and the cutter sails quickly on calm water. We reached the
opposite shore soon and I took a look at Valaam from there: it pictures
me as a planet in light-blue sky on its vast blue endless waters.
September 1846
