The Diary of Alastar Finch

The Diary of Alastar Finch (English Translation)

I am holding in my hands the diary of one Alastar Finch, chief librarian of the Forbidden Collection, a place whose location one is better off not seeking on any map. The paper is as brittle as a dried leaf, and it smells of silence—that specific silence which settles in halls where no reader's foot has stepped for a hundred years. Finch vanished. He simply did not come to work one morning, and his room was found empty, save for a desk, a chair, and this diary, open to the final entry. He was not a saint, like that boy from Nepal. His dream did not foretell a savior of the world. It foretold something else, no less terrible and, perhaps, no less beautiful.

He dreamed not of a white elephant, but of a golden scarab. Not made of metal, no. Finch described it as "a living drop of solidified sunlight," which cast no shadow. The scarab did not fly, but simply appeared, materializing out of the air in the furthest, most forgotten gallery, where the books were stored not alphabetically, but by their degree of forgottenness. It did not have six tusks, but on its back was a pattern that drove Finch mad. It was a map. But not of a place. A map drawn not with lines, but with gradations of meaning. A map of all the books that were never written. A map of all the melodies that were cut short on their first note. A map of all the paths not chosen by any traveler.

Unlike the elephant that appeared in the queen's dream, the scarab symbolized nothing. It was pure, unadulterated function. It always landed on the same volume—a nameless tome, in a leather binding the color of dried blood, without a single letter on its spine. Finch, a man of order and catalogues, spent years trying to find this book in his waking life. He wandered the labyrinth of shelves, where time coiled into loops, and a passage walked a minute ago could lead you to the age of dinosaurs or to a world where writing had not yet been invented. He was not searching for a book. He was searching for confirmation that his madness had a structure.

And one day, he found it.

He writes that his fingers trembled as he pulled that very volume from the shelf. It was as heavy as a tombstone. Inside, there was not a single word. The pages were smooth and dark, like polished obsidian. Finch understood that this was not a book for reading. It was a mirror. But it did not reflect a face. When he looked into the pages, he saw... possibilities. He saw the self who had stayed in a small town and become a pharmacist. He saw the self who had died in a war he had never heard of. He saw the self who had written that great poem he had carried in his chest his whole life, but never dared to torture onto paper.

And then he understood the meaning of the map on the scarab's back. The elephant's six directions are the geometry of the world. The scarab's map is the geometry of the soul. It showed not what is, but what is not. And this "is not" was infinitely more encompassing than any "is."

The prophecy was fulfilled, but not in the way astrologers imagine. No lord of the earth was born. On the contrary, the earth itself, or rather its solid, singular reality, began to dissolve under Finch's gaze. He realized that the white elephant's humility is merely submission to fate. True humility is to accept the full scope of one's own unfulfillment. To love one's ghosts as fiercely as one's own flesh.

The last entry in the diary breaks off. "I am looking into the pages, and the scarab is sitting on the cover. Its pattern is now on my palms. I am no longer Alastar Finch. I am all those he did not become. I am an index of empty places. I am the sacred number zero, which precedes the one. Do not look for me..."

What became of him? Did he go mad? Or did he attain an enlightenment that appears as madness to everyone else? Perhaps he simply dissolved into those very empty places, became a part of the map on the golden beetle's back. His dream did not predict the birth of one who would save humanity. It predicted the birth of one who would understand that humanity does not need saving, because its true nature lies in this infinite, shining void, in the gaps between the facts, in the silence between the words.

Sometimes at night, when I am left alone in my office, I think I can smell that scent of stale silence. And I imagine that on the dark surface of my computer, on the turned-off screen, a pattern of non-existent lines momentarily appears. And I am afraid to open Finch's diary again. I am afraid that one day I will see in its empty pages not his possibilities, but my own. And that, like him, I will not be able to resist the temptation to become no one.



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Commentary on the Text and Translation

Commentary on the Text Itself

"The Diary of Alastar Finch" is a stunning piece of literature, a perfect fusion of Borgesian metafiction and a deep, elegiac melancholy. It's a quiet horror story where the monster is not an external creature, but the infinite abyss of one's own potential self.

The Inverted Myth: The story's central brilliance is its inversion of the Maya Devi dream, which foretold the birth of the Buddha. By replacing the white elephant (a symbol of incarnation, manifestation, and worldly presence) with the golden scarab (a symbol of dissolution, potentiality, and the un-manifest), the author creates a powerful counter-myth. This isn't a story about a savior coming into the world; it's about a consciousness dissolving out of the world into the infinite space of "what could have been."

The Geometry of the Soul: The concept of the scarab's map as "the geometry of the soul" is profoundly beautiful. It suggests that our identity is defined not just by the single path we walk, but by the vast, invisible landscape of all the paths we did not. The book of obsidian pages, a mirror to these possibilities, is a terrifying and seductive artifact.

A Redefinition of Humility: The story offers a poignant and challenging philosophical idea: "True humility is to accept the full scope of one's own unfulfillment. To love one's ghosts as fiercely as one's own flesh." This reframes regret and the "what if" fantasy not as a weakness, but as a necessary part of a complete self-awareness. Finch's "enlightenment" is the ultimate acceptance of this state.

The Contagious Idea: The story's structure as a found document is classic, but the ending gives it a chilling modern twist. The narrator, a fellow archivist, becomes infected by Finch's discovery. The final image—the pattern appearing on the dark computer screen—brilliantly transfers the ancient, mystical threat into our own contemporary reality. The fear is no longer contained within the brittle pages of a diary; it is now a potentiality for the narrator, and by extension, for the reader.

Notes on the Translation Process

Translating this piece required a focus on maintaining its delicate, scholarly, and melancholic tone.

Voice and Tone: The narrator's voice is academic and precise, which makes the intrusion of the fantastic all the more effective. I used slightly more formal language ("one is better off not seeking," "unadulterated function") to capture this scholarly feel.

Key Images: The power of the story lies in its imagery. Phrases like "a living drop of solidified sunlight" ("живую каплю застывшего солнечного света") and "the color of dried blood" ("цвета высохшей крови") were translated as literally as possible to preserve their poetic force.

Translating Concepts: The philosophical heart of the story rests on concepts like "degree of forgottenness" ("по степени их забвенности") and "index of empty places" ("индекс пустых мест"). The challenge was to find English phrasing that sounded both strange and precise, as if they were actual terms from the arcane science of the Forbidden Collection.

The Emotional Climax: Finch's description of seeing his other lives required careful phrasing to convey the sense of wonder and loss. The verb "вымучить" (to obtain through great suffering/effort) in the phrase about the poem is very strong; I chose "to torture onto paper" to capture that same sense of painful, difficult creation.

The goal was to create an English version that feels like discovering a forbidden document yourself—a text that is intellectually fascinating, emotionally resonant, and quietly terrifying in its implications.