Reflections: Various Variations on Old Themes

novels; a year later I already loved to study, and thought awakened in a soul that had lived until then only by childish imagination.

But what did Vasily Evdokimovich’s teaching of literature consist of? It is hard to say; it was some kind of negative teaching. Upon taking up rhetoric, Vasily Evdokimovich announced to me that it was the emptiest branch of all the branches and twigs of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and entirely unnecessary; for to whom God has not given the ability to speak eloquently, neither Quintilian Roman rhetorician nor Cicero Roman orator will teach; and to whom He has given it, that person was born with rhetoric. After such an introduction, he began to explain, in order, figures, metaphors, and chriae rhetorical exercises consisting of the elaboration of a brief moral maxim. Then he prescribed for me to turn the pages of the diurna manu nocturnaque day and night with my own hand in the Model Compositions, a gigantic anthology of twelve volumes, and added, for encouragement, that ten lines of "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" were better than all the model compositions of Muravyov, Kapnist, and company. Despite all the comicality of this negative teaching, in the sum of everything Vasily Evdokimovich said, there shone through a lively, broad, modern view of literature, which I knew how to absorb and, as followers usually do, I squared and cubed all the teacher’s biases. Previously, I had read everything that came my way with equal pleasure: the tragedies of Sumarokov, the nastiest translations of various comedies and novels from the eighties; now I began to choose and value. Pacifersky was in raptures over our new literature, and I, upon taking a book, would immediately check the year of its publication and cast it aside if it had been printed more than five years ago, even if the name of Derzhavin or Karamzin shielded it from such audacity. Yet, the worship of youthful literature became absolute; and indeed, it could captivate precisely in the era of which I am speaking. The great Pushkin appeared as the sovereign-ruler of the literary movement; every line of his flew from hand to hand; printed copies did not suffice, and transcripts circulated among the readers. "Woe from Wit" made more noise in Moscow than all the books written in Russian from the "Travels of Korobeynikov to the Holy Places" to the "Fruits of Sentiments" by Prince Shalikov. "Tele-