De Animalibus Insectis Libri Septem

bathes, like the rising sun, the whole world in purple. The true illumination, which disappears, must disappear, but it is as charming as a summer morning on the seashore. Oh, youth, youth!..
And I was born in Arcadia!

Carelessly, I surrendered myself to the impetuous waves; they carried me far beyond the limits of the quiet channel of private life! I liked the resilient waves, the infinity; the future drew itself as some kind of hippodrome, at the end of which awaited hundred-mouthed fame and the maiden of love, the laurel wreath and the myrtle wreath; I had a presentiment of how my life would be woven as a brilliant strand into the life of humanity, I imagined myself great, valiant... the heart expanded, the head spun... Truly, youth was good! It has passed; life no longer boils like foaming wine; the elements of the soul come into equilibrium, they grow quiet; the age of majority arrives, and blessed be both that wild boiling of the past, and this present harbinger of harmony! Every moment of life is good, if only it is true to itself; it is bad if it appears not in its own form. I do not like modest, prim, exemplary young men: they remind me of Alexey Stepanovich Molchalin A sycophantic character from Griboyedov's Woe from Wit.; they have not grasped life, they have not fed with warm blood of their heart joyful beliefs, they have not rushed to participate in world-altering deeds. They have not lived with hopes for a great calling; they have not shed tears of sorrow at the sight of misfortune, and tears of delight, contemplating the elegant; they have not surrendered to the stormy ecstasy of an orgy; they have not had the need for a friend—and a maiden will not love them with true love: their lot is to drown headlong in the crowd. Let youths be youths. Adulthood will show that Providence did not give so much into the power of each person; that humanity develops according to its world-logic, in which one cannot jump over a term for the sake of individual will; adulthood will show the necessity of private life; the bud that belonged to humanity will develop into a separate branch; but, as Zhukovsky Vasily Zhukovsky, the Russian poet. says about a wave:

Having poured into the sea, it will not flow back from the sea.

The soul that has once surrendered to universal life, to high interests—will be higher than the crowd even in the practical world, sympathizing...