A New Transcendentalist Fable

Having outrun the wolves, Mazeppa's horse limped into a Tartar village. The townsmen, upon seeing the exhausted animal and its unconscious rider, gentled the horse and cut loose its burden. He was carried like a sack of sticks into a hut and, over the course of several weeks, nursed back to health. Unable to explain who he was or from whence he had come, Mazeppa lived among the Tartars and, over time, learned their ways--conforming to them as best he could. But, despite their ungrudging hospitality, he knew--and they knew--that he would never be more than a stranger in their midst. There could be no returning to the life from which he had been exiled, but neither could his assimilation to the new ways of his adoptive people ever be complete. This troubled the Tartars who could not help but feel that, somehow, they had failed him. "No one has failed me," he tried to assure them. "On the contrary, you saved me."

"But you don't belong to us," his Tartar wife complained. "How can you possibly be happy with us--with me--if you do not belong here?"

"I didn't belong to the ones who tried to kill me, either," he replied. "I may have been born to them and raised among them, but their rejection of me could not have been more forceful or more clear." And then some voice, some echo of songs sung to him--perhaps in his childhood, or even in a dream--crept into his consciousness. Without further thought, he repeated with calm deliberation what he heard the voice say. "But be of good cheer; I have overcome the world."