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Similarly, if a shoemaker sells inferior shoes, then he will lose repeat business. However, there is no repeat business for a coffin-maker, and he is unlikely to be caught if he sells a deal coffin instead of an oak one. Unless, of course, the 'customers' come back from the grave to make complaints, as they do in Prokhoroff's dream. In this way Prokhoroff's dream serves as an admonition for his practice of cheating his customers, and the reader is left to wonder what will come of the talk with Prokhoroff's daughters alluded to at the end of the story. Interestingly, the dishonesty of the coffin-maker parallels the dishonesty of the entire narrative structure. The narrator insists that "out of respect for the truth"(79) he cannot pretend that the coffin-maker is jovial. This is quite a comical statement when one considers that the intricate, fictional framework of the entire collection shows a distinct lack of respect for the truth. Thus this statement by the narrator is just as hypocritical as Prokhoroff's insistence that he will not charge Trukhina's family too much.
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Remembrance
by Aleksandr Pushkin
When the loud day for men who sow and reap
Grows still, and on the silence of the town
The unsubstantial veils of night and sleep,
The meed of the day's labour, settle down,
Then for me in the stillness of the night
The wasting, watchful hours drag on their course,
And in the idle darkness comes the bite
Of all the burning serpents of remorse;
Dreams seethe; and fretful infelicities
Are swarming in my over-burdened soul,
And Memory before my wakeful eyes
With noiseless hand unwinds her lengthy scroll.
Then, as with loathing I peruse the years,
I tremble, and I curse my natal day,
Wail bitterly, and bitterly shed tears,
But cannot wash the woeful script away.
--Translated by Maurice Baring
From "World Poetry," edited by Katharine Washburn, John S. Major and Clifton Fadiman (W.W. Norton: 1,338 pp.) |
