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Light in the darkness [Review of "Confession" by M. Gorky]

Review by A. V. Lunacharsky on the story "Confession" by M. Gorky (published in the 23rd collection "Knowledge")

Published as part of the article "On the XXIII collection" Knowledge "" in Sat. "Literary Decay", book. 2, St. Petersburg, 1909, pp. 84–119.

A light to illuminate the tongues and glory to your people Israel.

1
The critics of Confession, both Marxists (Lvov in Education) and non-Marxists, seemed to agree on one thing:

“Confession, in any case, signifies, if not a rejection, then at least some distance between Gorky and Marxism.”

Yes, any advance or elucidation of the essence of this or that teaching of Marxism is a departure from Marxism, then yes!

We understand that the enemies of Marxism would very much like to consider it now and forever and forever and ever a "dry dogma", to pass it off as something dead, like a block of stone, incapable of life and development. Such a position makes it possible to cut off from Marxism every living branch of it, like an illegal neoplasm, like a disease, and condemn it to barrenness, to being a stagnant value in the midst of an ever-developing life. We understand the benefits of such a position for the enemies of Marxism. And even then, they can sincerely believe in the fossil of Marxism because they have not been inside Marxism, they do not understand its living essence. What will you demand from some Philosopher?

But Marxists! Unfortunately, there are also people among them who seem to have no time to understand various "new inventions" and who want to be calm about the theory. We would more often recall the words of Bebel, 1 by no means an ardent and frivolous innovator. Here is what a German veteran said at the Hanoverian party tag (1890):

“Declaring someone a heretic presupposes the existence of a dogma among us. But if there is a party that has no dogma, then this is social democracy, and if there were people who condemned dogmatism completely, cleared our heads of it, then it was Marx and Engels ... We have no dogma and there can be no heretics. .

2. Odyssey of a God-seeker
The hero of the Confession is neither a Social Democrat nor a worker, but a semi-peasant. This should be well noted. The story is his Odyssey of a God-seeker from the “people”. Isn't this populism, isn't it a populist choice of topic? We'll see.

A passionate nature, having met a harsh fate since childhood, Matvey found solace for his rebellious soul in religion. He still could not ponder over the essence of human theology, and even more so of Christian dogma; what fascinated him was a religious feeling, rapturing the heart from the earth, in its effect surpassing that of the strongest music. Forgetfulness of a special kind, a sweet forgetfulness, is given by religion, taking its great place next to all other kinds of intoxication, and even far ahead of them.

“I used to stand alone in the temple, darkness was all around, and my heart was light, for my God is there, and there is no place for childish sorrows, or my insults, and nothing around that is human life. Closeness to God leads one far away from people, but at that time, of course, I could not understand this.

I began to read church books - I read everything that was - and my heart is filled with a quiet ringing of the beauty of the divine word; the soul greedily drinks its sweet moisture, and a source of grateful tears opens in it. Sometimes I would come to church before anyone else, kneel before the image of the Trinity and shed tears, easily and humbly, without thoughts and without prayer; I had nothing to ask of God, and I selflessly worshiped Him.

Faith in a gracious God, so clearly expressed in the words: “I am not alone in the world, but under the protection of God and close to Him,” is completely reconciled and even merges into a harmonious chord with a direct impression of nature, when a person approaches it not as a laborer, extracting she, as a stepmother, necessary for life, but as admiring her beauty. But soon the time came when "people noticed me, and I noticed them."

If Satan did not particularly disturb Matthew while it was a matter of nature, then oh, how strong he turned out to be among people. And not only a spectator, but also a participant in the humiliating and terrible drama of the struggle for existence and personal happiness, Matvey had to become.

Life caught hold of his dear “Olgunka” with his hands and began to throw in her huge creaky wheel. All the harmony of faith without a reflex went to dust. Righteousness met with the impudent and toothy face of "worldly wisdom" and blundered. Proudly floundered Matvey, stirred up around him, hurt his soul. Who in the life of the people, labor, difficult can bypass all this evil spirit? But it only slightly maims and soils some, and with a dead, silent soul or with a brutalized soul, they begin to go in the general crush of spontaneous, economic life to disgusting success or painful death and, finally, to the common pit where their sister of life is raking them. , the mistress of death.

Matvey, thanks to circumstances, the proud structure of his soul and the first rudiments of a poetic understanding of life, laid down by a sexton and a buffoon, fate immediately somehow hurt, took everything away, deprived him of any attachments to the so-called worldly happiness, making it easier for him to emerge to the surface of the worldly sea, to leave the world , cease to be an active participant in his struggle, turn into a free, like a bird, seeker of God and truth, who is internally gnawed by great longing.

Wandering God-seekers are the embodiment of the search for human conscience in the darkness of a chaotic social order. The soul of the ignorant thinks with the twilight heads of the wise, distorted by absurd sophistication, but by the experience of the torment of a half-enlightened people. With the wounded feet of crippled passers-by, the sufferer-people is chasing the truth.

An outstanding type of such a folk walker for the truth is taken by Gorky.

Will he find something? Will his wanderings be as fruitless as in former ages? Will he mistake some ascetic, human-denying, suicidal illusion for a treasure he has found? Will the lost self-forgetfulness find in the sharp ecstasies of zeal, this Dionysian, tragic, sick rise out of the body and the world? Will it fall on some obscure road leading to some fantastic "Rahman", in the kingdom of presbyter Jonah, to the disappeared tribes of Israel, who somewhere on the "White Waters" found social peace, carried out "life according to conscience"? Or, having sunk down and lost the treasure of his anxiety in the mud of autumn thaws and in the refectory of monasteries, will he turn into a professional wanderer, seeking only food for his body? Or, finally, embittered, will he become a vagabond and find himself instead of the "White Waters" in the mines of Nerchinsk?

We will not dwell on the meetings of our Odysseus. What can be added here? The author speaks for himself. Micah, Anthony, Mardarius and many others will never be forgotten. This is such a plasticity that puts "Confession" in artistic merit on a par with other best works of Russian literature.

But Matvey endures one gloomy despair from his wanderings. His soul has been cleansed of all false illusions; “honest pessimism” reigns in it.

Here he meets Jonah.

The ideological strength and complete novelty of Gorky's story lies precisely in the grandiose picture: the exhausted people, in the person of their walker, their seeker, face to face with the "new faith", with the truth that the proletariat brings to the world.

Can proletarian truth become in all its purity the property of the working masses?

No. But, firstly, many representatives of the indigenous peasant and petty-bourgeois intelligentsia can and must come to it and come to it just as firmly as the best intellectuals. Secondly, such elements that are transitional types to the handicraft and rural proletariat, and the proletariat of this kind itself, may well join the banner of scientific socialism, although in their understanding of the truth of socialism they may appear in a different perspective. Thirdly, that political hegemony, that revolutionary cooperation, whose program he outlined in general terms, and whose possibility was proved even in the eyes of many by such a "narrow orthodoxy" as Kautsky, 2 will undoubtedly have a parallel in their influence of the proletarian ideology on the petty bourgeoisie.

And so, far from adhering to the muddy confusion of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, we can and must take the standpoint that the influence of the proletariat on the masses of the people is not an empty phrase, but a phenomenon of the highest importance. It is he who is portrayed by Gorky in Confession. A light shone in the darkness. This light spills over the villages, where the "power of darkness" is still strong, around every city, every factory.

This light embraces, first of all, the factory proletariat, this chosen people of modern history, but it also serves as enlightenment for everything around. We must rejoice at this endosmosis, we must closely monitor this huge phenomenon. Gorky's book is highly capable of accelerating and intensifying this process, and this will be its historical merit; it is ridiculous to see "populism" in the fulfillment of this task.

3. Free Skirmisher

The light of the proletarian world outlook is spreading over the face of the Russian land; and whimsically, and sometimes truly beautiful, with all originality, is refracted in the heads of nuggets, in which the people are so rich.

It goes without saying that Jonah, this free skirmisher and beater of new truth, does not satisfy all the requirements that are made to a conscious party propagandist.

But he doesn’t aim for a teacher, he understands his place, and this place is great.

“Do not look for statements in my words: I do not want to teach, but to tell. Those for whom the course of life is dangerous affirm that the growth of truth is harmful. They see that the truth burns brighter and brighter—that is why more and more people kindle its flame in their hearts—they see this and get scared! They will hastily seize the truth, as much as it suits them, squeeze it into a small bun and shout to the whole world: here is the truth, pure spiritual food, here it is! and - forever unshakable! And they sit down, accursed, on the face of truth and strangle it, taking it by the throat, and hinder the growth of its strength in every possible way, our enemies and all that exists! And I can say one thing, today it is so, but what will happen tomorrow - I don’t know! For, you see, there is no real, rightful master in life; he has not yet come, and it is not known to me how he will dispose when he comes: what plans he will approve, which he will destroy and what temples he will erect.

There is no true master in life! Who is he? Oh, in relation to him, the current proletariat is only a forerunner, just as Jonah is only a forerunner of proletarian thought. Isn't this master God? Jonah calls him that.

But where does this God stand?

“Who is God, do miracles? Is it our father, or is it the son of our spirit?

The God the old man is talking about is humanity, integral socialist humanity. This is the only divine thing available to us. This God has not been born yet - it is only being built. And who is the god-builder? Of course, the proletariat, first of all at the moment we are living through. But in general, throughout the entire course of history, there is again humanity, but scattered, still dark. And it is necessary to subtract from it the groups that prevented the growth of the forces and consciousness of this humanity, the transformation of unconscious humanity into conscious, its bright transformation. This theory, perhaps, will be called "populist"? No! On the whole, it is also true from our point of view—only we know exactly the process in which the transformation takes place and the role of the proletariat in it. In this exactIn understanding the forces leading to the transformation of economic chaos into socialist harmony, a feature of Marxism in comparison with historical socialism in general, Jonah gives a general truth without defining it precisely. And in this general form, it is more accessible to such a person as Matvey. And he, a God-seeker, understands better the lofty formula in which socialism is clothed here. Looking for God? God is the humanity of the future, build it together with the humanity of the present, adjoining its advanced elements.

“Now the will of the people wakes up, the great, forcibly divided, unites, many are already looking for ways to merge all earthly forces into one, from which the all-embracing God of the earth is formed bright and beautiful!”

Weird formula. It is not stated in our terms, but in essence it is ours. This is the same music, our music, only they play it on new instruments ...

And where will Ion send our Odysseus, whose soul is vague, as before morning? To the source of his wisdom, the source of the refracted light in his head in a peculiar way.

“Go to the factory, work there and talk with my friends; you won't lose, trust me! The people are clear, so I learned from them and, you see, I'm not stupid, huh? Wrote a note and handed it to me. “Hey—hey—go there!” I wish you well, you'll see! The people are newborn and alive!”

4. Newborn people
“I go to the villages, I look. The people are gloomy and impudent, they do not want to talk to anyone. Everyone looks suspiciously, apparently, they are afraid that they would not steal something.

“God-builders,” I think, glancing at the clumsy peasants. I ask: where is the road?

- To the Isetsky plant.

“What is it – all the roads to this plant?”

Here is a simple and at the same time deeply symbolic definition of the attitude of the "people", still completely chaotic, to that part of the people, which the factory boiler helped to be born again. We do not intend to add anything to the description of the plant and the impression it made on Matvey's soul given by the author. But we will focus on one. Teacher Michael is not a heretic? Apparently, the indigenous proletarian Yagikh himself does not approve of some of the oddities in Mikhailov's understanding of socialism. —

“Mishka has two minds,” says Yagikh:

- You wait - he will turn himself around! His factory pop heresiarch called. It's a pity he's confused with God! This is from the mother. My famous sister was a woman in the divine part - she left Orthodoxy for a schism, and she was kicked out of the schism.

What is this "confusion" with God? Perhaps the author needed it as a didactic device? Maybe God is serving Michael to lure people like Matthew into his faith?

The question of God was a constant cause of disputes between Mikhaila and his uncle. As soon as Mikhaila says “God,” Uncle Peter gets angry.

- Started. Don't believe it, Matthew! He got it from his mother!

- Wait, uncle! God for Matthew is a fundamental question!

- Don't lie, Mishka! You send him to hell, Matthew! No gods! It is a dark forest: religion, church and all that; dark forest, and in it are our robbers! Deception!

But no. By referring to Matthew's adherence to theological terminology, Mihaile only dismisses his uncle. And for him the question of God is a deep question that worries his own soul. Should we, like Yagih, not understanding the essence, hearing only the word “God”, shout: “Dark forest, deceit!”? Is there anything dark in Mikhaila's "religion"? Is there any deception in it? Matthew remarks:

- I did not understand God from him; but that didn't bother me; he called a certain substance the main force of the world, and I mentally put God's substances in their place - and everything went well.

Matvey instinctively adopts the cosmic point of view, the religious point of view of Spinoza, Haeckel3 and the monists, naming the totality of the laws of the universe, its boundless substance, by the name of God. It seems, however, that in such a "faith" there is still quite a bit of darkness and deceit can nest. The idea of ​​goodness, holiness and perfection is inextricably intertwined with the concept of "God". A conclusion that involuntarily suggests itself and is actually proclaimed by monists, both by idealists like Hegel and by materialists from Strauss 4before Haeckel, it is clear: the laws of nature are good, holy and perfect, a person should revere them. Meanwhile, the laws of nature are only temporary formulas in which we somehow fit certain manifestations of the immensity. In addition, they are by no means will and prescription by analogy with legal laws, but only a cognitive adaptation - for one's own overcoming. The law of falling is learned in order to fly. Everywhere man must boldly torture nature and overcome her always seeming limitations. Any limitation, as it were, is realized only for this, in order to first mentally, and then in practice, overcome it.

The spirit of reverence for the Universe, which is imbued with bourgeois monism, can become a source of new fetters for man. Nature herself, they say, deigned to establish this and that, and the new Voltairians speak against it in vain. And the new Voltairians would have to destroy the new god-nature in the same way as the oldest Voltaire - the Catholic god, and Haeckel - the god of Voltaire and the deists.

But Mikhailo, smiling, says: "God has not yet been created." In doing so, he takes us to completely new ground. There is nothing in the world before which a person would reverently bow.

“The main crime of the rulers of life is that they destroyed the creative power of the people. There will be time - all the will of the people will merge again at one point; then an boundless and miraculous power must arise in it, and — God will rise again! He is the one you, Matvey, are looking for!”

What Mikhailo agrees to revere is the coming collective will of the people. With it dies, with it that great thing is born, before which an individual person can bow.

We already anticipate the first objection. “And here they will tell us that there is a great danger: the danger of the subjugation of the individual to your Leviathan, your new god, the collective.” What does subjugation mean? In an artificial collective, like a state of proprietors, the collective is really something alien to the individual, here the herd instinct and common interests put pressure on individual aspirations and break (sometimes) private interests. What is common in these completely disparate people has merged into one, suppressing in themselves what is special in each. Here is the tyranny of society over the individual.

But all this will completely disappear in a living, organic and creative collective. Here, the personality is dear precisely for its characteristics, for the sake of a common chorus - everything is eternally moving: perfection is provided by collective selection, and breadth and diversity - by individual variability. There is no split into a citizen and a person, there is only a creative person who feels collectively to the depths of his soul.

Even the individualist Matvey, in contact with the proletariat, began to feel this.

“I began to notice in myself a quiet trembling of new feelings, as if from each person a sharp and thin ray comes to me, invisibly touches me, imperceptibly touches my heart, and I receive these secret rays more and more sensitively. Sometimes workers will gather at Mikhaila's and, as it were, breathe in a hot cloud of thought, which surrounds me and lifts me strangely. Suddenly, everyone will begin to understand me from a half-word, I am standing in a circle of people, and they are like my body, and I am their soul and will, for this hour. And my speech is their voice. Sometimes you feel that you yourself live, like a part of someone’s body, you hear the cry of your soul from other lips, and while you hear it, it’s good for you, but time passes: it will fall silent, and again you are alone, for yourself.

“I remember my former union with God in my prayers: it was good when I disappeared from my memory, ceased to be! But in merging with people, I did not leave myself, but, as it were, grew, towered over myself, and the strength of my spirit increased many times over. And here was self-forgetfulness, but it did not destroy me, but only extinguished my bitter thoughts and anxiety for my loneliness.

And hence the conclusion, which, being not spoken only with the tip of the mouth, not reached only by the effort of cold thought, but tested by the living experience of a passionate heart, becomes enormous.

“In general, you will find immortality, but in solitude you will find inevitable slavery and darkness, inconsolable longing and death.”

In one thing I can reproach Michael. Not in vain, although, of course, and coarsening to the extreme, his uncle says to him:

“You, Mishka, picked up church thoughts, like you stole cucumbers from someone else's garden, and you embarrass people! If you say that the working people are called to renew life - renew, and do not pick up what is worn to the holes with priests, but abandoned!

Not like priests! The word, the concept of "God" was not created by the priests.

But in general, Mikhailo looks too much back. Together with the hope for God - collective humanity - in the future, he sees it in vain in the past.

“The God I am talking about was when people unanimously created him from the substance of their thought in order to illuminate the darkness of being; but when the people broke into slaves and lords, into parts and pieces, when they tore their thought and will — God perished, God was destroyed!”

No, Mikhailo, the God you are talking about never existed. The dead gods of the people, of course, are nobler, deeper than the artificial god of modern times, they should be studied, because their history is the history of the characteristic and necessary delusions of the human spirit, but they died and will not “resurrect”; not the right word, not the right word!

Let's not shout to any golden-whiskered Perun - "Get out, God!" “The God that Mihaile wants is yet to be born. This is the power of the collective, rational will. And when will he be born? Tasks will always arise before a person, he will always feel his limitations, - “I am not yet God, - not everything is my will, my being is not yet infinite! “That means God hasn’t been born yet!” And God Almighty will never be born, for the universe is infinite and all-encompassing, but what's the matter? God-Absolute, God Almighty will never be born , but with the strengthening of socialism, a mighty collective mind - man will be born. For Mikhaila, the future is like a return to the golden past. This is what confuses Yagih. “Upgrade,” he shouts angrily.

The new environment did not draw in and did not want to immediately draw in a person who was not yet ready. Matthew was enlightened by the proletariat and released by the same carrier of his refracted rays, which was Jonah.

- Involve, - I ask, - and me to this case! Everything burns in me.

“No,” Mikhailo answered, “wait and think, it’s too early for you!.. You have a lot unresolved and for our work—you are not free!” You have been seized and carried away by its beauty and grandeur, but—it unfolded before you in all its might—now you are standing, as it were, on the square, and you can see your whole temple being created in the middle of it, in all its immensity and beauty, but it is being built by quiet and secret everyday life. work, and if you now, poorly knowing the general plan, take up it, the outlines of the temple will disappear for you, the vision that is not strengthened in the soul will dissipate, and labor will seem to you beyond your strength.

“Why,” I ask him with anguish, “are you driving me away?” I have found a place for myself, I am glad to see myself as a necessary force ...

And he calmly and sadly says:

- I do not consider you capable of living according to a plan that is not clear to you; I see that the consciousness of its connection with the spirit of the working people has not yet arisen in your spirit. For me, even now you are the thought of the people, honed by the friction of life, pushed forward, but you yourself do not look at yourself like that: it still seems to you that you are a hero, ready to graciously give help to the powerless from an excess of strength.

You are something special, existing for yourself; you are the beginning and the end for yourself, and not a continuation of the beautiful and great infinite!

This is truly wonderful. This living, concrete feeling of collective unity is just as necessary an element of genuine proletarian socialism as are those strict, "cold" formulas in which many see the alpha and omega of Marxist orthodoxy. Every semi-socialist should think about these words "heretic"! And there are a lot of them, much more than they themselves think.

5. Miracle

The power of the collective, the beauty of the ecstasy of collective life, the miraculous power of the collective - this is what the author believes in, this is what he calls for. But didn't he himself say that the people are scattered and depressed now? Didn't he say that collectivism can only be sought in a newborn people, in a factory?

Yes, only here, only in assembling a class collective, in the slow building of a general proletarian organization, is there real work to transform people into humanity, although it is also preparatory work. This does not mean that a collective mood does not flare up in impulses, moments, that sometimes and accidentally human masses do not merge into a unified whole. And so, as a symbol of the future, as a pale prototype, pale in comparison with the future, but bright in comparison with those around him, Gorky gives his miracle.

Some are shocked by the ceremonial and superstitious atmosphere, the existence of an old-religious ecstasy, the heterogeneity of this, rather generally wild and unsympathetic crowd. Behind these considerations, many have not considered essence.

What is important here is the presence of a common mood, a common will. The collective, it is true, was artificially created here, and its strength is fetishized in the minds of the participants, but it is nevertheless created, and the strength is evident. The point is not to deny completely, but priori, but to understand and evaluate. How to understand the fact of the sweet and grandiose spiritual uplift of the participants in collective religious acts, the fact of the development in such a crowd of new forces that magnetically subdue individual organisms? This is a piece of the future, the author says here, by chance and artificially, a merger of the psyches took place. The basis of all almost miracles of the religious world is the fusion of souls. And what is the score? The most positive in relation to the fact, the most negative in relation to its formal shell. All this is clear from Matthew's reflections after the miracle:

“I saw the earth as a full bowl of bright red, tirelessly boiling, living human blood, and I saw its lord - an omnipotent, immortal people.

He inspires her life with the greatness of deeds and aspirations, and I prayed: - You are that God and the creator of all gods, weaving them from the beauties of your spirit in the work and rebellion of Your searches!

May there not be bozi and others to the world, unless you, for you are the only God, work miracles!

This is what I believe and confess!”

... And - therefore, I return to where people free the souls of their neighbors from the captivity of darkness and superstition, gather the people together, illuminate their secret face before them, help them to feel the power of their will, show people the only and true path to universal merging for the sake of the great deeds, for the sake of universal god-building!

A miracle is a sign, not an expression of things to come. This is not what the author calls for, but what, by the example of which he gives us a kind of anticipation of the desired.

But our fear is great. Procession? Icons? Robe? censer? We don't want to hear anything. At least under these conditions, the most curious socio-psychological phenomena developed. You can not do it this way.

The basic principle of Marxism is to look at the whole world through the eyes of an analyst and dialectician, to respond to its phenomena with the heart of a conscious fighter and an unconditional collectivist. Let the reader, who was shy from the unusual comparison of collectivism and the procession, come to the mighty pages where the miracle is described, with the indicated premises, and he will see what an excellent document on the psychology of the collective the writer gave him.

6
Ilook back at the entire "Confession", after reading it you hear like a harmonious song. It begins with a childish ecstasy, a lonely and life of a still untouched soul, then it becomes confused and broken in dissonances, faced with the wild chaos of life, rises above it in a dreary flight, full of quests and pain, tears, despairs, falls slowly, black, like a heavy raven, gloomy as a funeral march, bleak as autumn clouds. And suddenly, like a rainbow unfolding across the sky like a gigantic fan, everything started, everything was lit up by the peeping sun, as if, after taking a sip of living water, the song rises again, at first timidly ringing, as if not believing in happiness and salvation, as if shy before an unknown force that caressed the chilled soul. And it takes everything higher, like a lark, and throws trills, as if she saw from above that “hail”, which she sought long ago and in vain, and the song grows stronger, turning into a glorification of new power and new truth, and ends with the cry of a petrel, promising something big, terrible, bright! This is the song of a "pagan" who came to the true church, this is the confession of a suffering traveler in the face of a newborn people - the messiah:

“You are the light in the illumination of the tongues and the glory of your people Israel!”

“Let me tell my life; this story will take you a little time, but you need to know it.

This is how Matthew begins his story.

Yes, this life needs to be known.

Before the huge fact of the penetration of proletarian truth into the masses, before the fact of the emergence of a new reader, a new thinker, painfully, intensely discussing life, society, the world, about himself, preparing some terrible deed in the laboratory of his unaccustomed brain - a child not only of instinct, which breeds blind freaks, and thoughts - before this fact, politics on the surface and with the permission of the authorities, all these thoughts of the "Speech", the meaning of which is "dark or insignificant", the impudent "Russian Banners" 5 , etc., all mouse the fuss and chirping of petty-bourgeois journalism and the untidiness of petty-bourgeois literature!...

There, in the depths, work is going on, something is ringing and rustling, like masses of ice moving on a river at night. There is a movement of some molecules, an irresistible process of grouping forces around a new focus.

Having illuminated this process with sheaves of rays, Gorky at the same time helped him. Many Matveevs who have not yet crossed the bright threshold will come to him more directly and sooner. This work is in the name and for the benefit of our concentration.

Get angry, knights of "good chaos." Do you have a bourgeois flair? Believe me, the readiness shown by some of you to be cunning, to play in order to “quarrel” Gorky with Marxism, in order to at least slightly soil him with your praises, is a mistaken tactic. And since it is impossible for you to silence Gorky's new works, the best thing to do is scold them. They are too bright. If anyone imagines that Gorky has taken at least half a step towards "good chaos" - oh, what a disappointment awaits such a simpleton!