A Confession - Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy (good books for 7th graders txt) 📗

holding on only by the upper part of my back, and not only did it become

uncomfortable but I was even frightened. And then only did I ask myself

about something that had not before occurred to me. I asked myself: Where am

I and what am I lying on? and I began to look around and first of all to

look down in the direction which my body was hanging and whiter I felt I

must soon fall. I looked down and did not believe my eyes. I was not only at

a height comparable to the height of the highest towers or mountains, but at

a height such as I could never have imagined.

I could not even make out whether I saw anything there below, in that

bottomless abyss over which I was hanging and whiter I was being drawn. My

heart contracted, and I experienced horror. To look thither was terrible. If

I looked thither I felt that I should at once slip from the last support and

perish. And I did not look. But not to look was still worse, for I thought

of what would happen to me directly I fell from the last support. And I felt

that from fear I was losing my last supports, and that my back was slowly

slipping lower and lower. Another moment and I should drop off. And then it

occurred to me that this cannot e real. It is a dream. Wake up! I try to

arouse myself but cannot do so. What am I to do? What am I to do? I ask

myself, and look upwards. Above, there is also an infinite space. I look

into the immensity of sky and try to forget about the immensity below, and I

really do forget it. The immensity below repels and frightens me; the

immensity above attracts and strengthens me. I am still supported above the

abyss by the last supports that have not yet slipped from under me; I know

that I am hanging, but I look only upwards and my fear passes. As happens in

dreams, a voice says: “Notice this, this is it!” And I look more and more

into the infinite above me and feel that I am becoming calm. I remember all

that has happened, and remember how it all happened; how I moved my legs,

how I hung down, how frightened I was, and how I was saved from fear by

looking upwards. And I ask myself: Well, and now am I not hanging just the

same? And I do not so much look round as experience with my whole body the

point of support on which I am held. I see that I no longer hang as if about

to fall, but am firmly held. I ask myself how I am held: I feel about, look

round, and see that under me, under the middle of my body, there is one

support, and that when I look upwards I lie on it in the position of

securest balance, and that it alone gave me support before. And then, as

happens in dreams, I imagined the mechanism by means of which I was held; a

very natural intelligible, and sure means, though to one awake that

mechanism has no sense. I was even surprised in my dream that I had not

understood it sooner. It appeared that at my head there was a pillar, and

the security of that slender pillar was undoubted though there was nothing

to support it. From the pillar a loop hung very ingeniously and yet simply,

and if one lay with the middle of one’s body in that loop and looked up,

there could be no question of falling. This was all clear to me, and I was

glad and tranquil. And it seemed as if someone said to me: “See that you

remember.”

And I awoke.

1882.