I think that the rushing and the rumbles are: the body's pulsations; consciousness, entering the body, experiences it as a lumbering giant; the events of this dream are explainable to me thus.

And—I think ...

—"He's coming, he's coming; look—he's coming"—

—and the shags of diamond torrents are borne off under your feet: into the cavelike windings of the skull ... And you see that He is coming in ... He stands amidst a radiant roar of rays, amidst the clean facets of the walls; everything is white and diamond; and—he looks ... That Very One ... And—with the very same glance ... which you recognize as ... the one that has been resounding in your soul: immemorially familiar, very cherished, forgettable never ...

A voice:—

—"I ...

It has come, it has come, it has come: It has come—"I ..."

—picture: you are entering; and—you raise your head: to the left and to the right run symmetrical rib-vaults; their surfaces are whimsically arched; they rise up before you like a memory ... of memory; the wonderful arcs of the skeleton temple; in front is a passage ... to the white altar; and the skull is there; from the huge, resonant halls, amid the white splendor of juttings, you turn back—toward the exit; worlds of delirium are burning there; amazement, confusion, fear, seize control: actuality, from which you have fallen, is—still not the world...

Contemplation of the skull is strange: and it is the memory of a memory of the splendid skeleton temple hollowed out by our "I" in cliffs of black gloom; in the temple of the body—lie the plans of temples; and from the temple ruins, I believe, will rise: a temple of the body.

. . . . . . . . .

Contemplation of the skull consoles, reminds, and—dimly teaches something. The gesture of arcs above the eyebrows is known to us; this is the gesture of the winged "I" risen up from a covered coffin, from a cave, in order to ascend at some time; in order to ... return to its homeland ...

(Continues...)

Kotik Letaev by Andrei Bely.