Confessions

"I cannot even discern whether I can see anything there below, in the bottomless abyss over which I am hanging and into which I am being drawn. My heart contracts and I feel terrified. It is dreadful to look down there. I feel that if I look down I will immediately slip from the last support and perish. I do not look, but not looking is still worse because I am thinking about what is going to happen to me when I slip from the last support. And I feel that I am losing my last bit of strength through terror, and that my back is slowly slipping lower and lower. Another moment and I will fall off. And then I have a thought: perhaps it is not real. It is a dream. I will wake up. I try to wake up and cannot. 'What can I do, what can I do?' I ask myself, looking upwards. Above there is also an abyss. I look into this abyss of sky and try to forget about the abyss below, and I do in fact forget it. The infinity below repels and frightens me; the infinity above attracts and reassures me. Thus I am hanging over the abyss, held up by the last of the supports that has not yet slipped out from under me; I know that I am dangling but I only look upwards and my fear passes away. As happens in a dream, a voice says: 'Take note of this, this is it!' I look further and further into the infinity above me and feel myself growing calmer. I remember everything that has happened and how it happened: how I shifted the position of my legs, how I was dangling there, how terrified I felt, and how I was saved from my terror by looking upwards. And I asked myself: 'Am I not still dangling there?' And I do not look around so much as feel with my whole body the edge of the support by which I am held up. I see that I am no longer dangling or falling but am firmly supported. I ask myself how I am being supported: I grope about, look around and see that beneath me, under the middle of my body, there is a single support and when I look up I am lying on it in a position of secure balance, and that it alone gave me support before. And then, as happens in dreams, the mechanism by which I am supported seems to me to be a very natural, comprehensible and sure thing, although when awake it makes no sense at all. I am even surprised, in my sleep, that I had not understood this before. It appears that there is a pillar at my head and the solidity of the slender pillar is beyond doubt, although there is nothing for it to stand on. A rope is hanging very ingeniously, yet simply, from the pillar, and if one lies with the middle of one's body on the rope and looks up there can be no question of falling. This was all clear to me and I was glad and tranquil. It was as if someone were saying to me: 'See that you remember.' And I woke up." -Tolstoy