De Animalibus Insectis Libri Septem

sentimentality diluted, sweetened the "burning power," and, consequently, proceeded according to Schiller’s pharmacopeia (*); the very age partly contributed to the development of tenderness. For me, the time was arriving when childhood ends and youth begins: this usually happens at 16. The naive beauty of childhood disappears, the beauty of youth has not yet appeared; there is disharmony in the features: they become coarser, there is no grace; the voice modulates from thin to thick, the eyes are languid, and at times they sparkle, the cheeks are pale, and at times they flush—physical majority arrives. The same thing happens in the soul: indefinite feelings, the germs of passions, agitation, languor, the feeling of something secret, unknown, and following that, youth, enthusiastic lyricism, full of love, arms opened to the whole world of God... An early flower, I reached this epoch sooner, and the buds in my soul unfolded at 14; I felt that childhood had ended and youth had begun, and I was offended that no one noticed the transition in my being. Unfortunately, Vasily Evdokimovich noticed this and began, by virtue of that, to teach me aesthetics, in which, lest he be mentioned, he was extremely limited, and at the same time forced me to write articles. It is a pity, a great pity, that when we were moving from the old house to the new, these articles were lost! With what pleasure I would reread them now! What did I not write! There were articles written in competition with Temira, there were literary reviews, and in them I "annihilated" classicism. Vasily Evdokimovich was delighted, making corrections (and no wonder—it was his own thoughts that I was repeating). I translated my reviews into French and proudly presented them to Marchal: "Look, this is how I respect your Boileau." There were also historical articles: a comparison of Marfa the Mayoress A legendary figure of Novgorod resistance against Moscow. (that is, not the real one, but that Spartan Marfa about whom Karamzin wrote a story) with Zenobia of Palmyra; Boris Godunov with Cromwell. It is a pity that I did not write my comparisons in French, for I am sure that they were so unsuitable that they would have landed as examples in Noël’s François-Joseph Michel Noël, author of grammar and literature textbooks. Course of Literature, in the section Paralèles et Caractères Parallels and Characters.

(*) See the above-cited epigraph.