Reflections: Various Variations on Old Themes

graph" was energetically beginning its career and, with its harsh, angular signs, was rapidly transmitting Europeanism; almanacs with beautiful verses and poems poured in from all sides; Zhukovsky was translating Schiller, Kozlov was translating Byron, and in everything, for everyone, there was an abyss of hopes, aspirations, beliefs, warm and heartfelt. What rapture, what delight I felt when I began to read the first chapter of "Onegin," which had just been published! I carried it in my pocket for two months and learned it by heart. Then, about a year and a half later, I heard that Pushkin was in Moscow. My God, how fervently I wished to see the poet! It seemed to me that I would grow up and become smarter just by looking at him. And I finally saw him, and everyone was pointing with delight, saying: "There he is, there he is"...

No, it is better to be silent, because Sophia Pavlovna Famusova did not evolve in parallel with our literature... Something else, something else.

Bouchot left for Metz; he was replaced by Mr. Marchal. Marchal was a man of great learning (in the French sense), moral, quiet, and gentle; he left me with the memory of a clear summer evening without the slightest cloud. Marchal belonged to the number of those people who, by birth, never had hot passions, whose character is bright and even, to whom just enough love is given so that they might be happy, but not enough for it to burn them. All people of this kind are classics par droit de naissance by right of birth; his fine knowledge of ancient literatures made him, moreover, a classic par droit de conquête by right of conquest. An open admirer of the elegant, sculptural form of Greek poetry and the poetry of the age of Louis XIV sculpted from it, he neither knew nor felt the need to know the deeply spiritual art of Germany. He believed that after the tragedies of Racine, one could not read the bar-