I'll Will Never Leave You, Ever, Even through the End of the World

Ivan Turgenev

The protagonist in Turgenev's Smoke loves this woman who is married into vapid, corrupt, respectable, rich society, but who says that she in reality loves the protagonist. The crisis is at hand when she has either to leave with him or stay in her phony situation, and he says the following words to her:

Hear my last word: if you don't feel capable to-morrow, to-day even, of leaving all and following me – you see how boldly I speak, how little I spare myself,- if you are frightened at the uncertainty of the future, and estrangement and solitude and the censure of men, if you cannot rely on yourself, in fact, tell me so openly and without delay, and I will go away; I shall go with a broken heart, but I shall bless you for your truthfulness.

The teaching of that passage strikes me as applicable to every reality, every situation, we face. I immediately thought of words attributed to Christ that we have to give up everything and follow love: “But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions” and then “Lo, I will be with you always, even to the end of the world.”

It's not necessary to get into what language Christ used or even whether Christ existed or not – the thought in one form or another can be found even in the fairy tales, such as the Grimms' Fundevogel.

One scene that I will always remember even to the end of the world is in Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago where a prison official makes a young girl stand outside in the cold for a long period, needlessly, maliciously. Solzhenitsyn wrote of her: “I will never forget you.”

Another event that I will remember even to the end of the world is Martin Luther King Jr's “A Knock at Midnight” speech, embedded below, in which he hears the words. The speech is sometimes known as his sermon on “Why Jesus Called a Wise Man a Fool” and was, I believe, his last speech before he was assassinated. I feel that the whole of my life, the essence of everything I am and see, are in these words of King, and Solzhenitsyn.