Reflections: Various Variations on Old Themes

would agree in the XIX century to be called Plenira, Temira, Selene, or Uslad. I soon rebelled against this classical naming, and to spite Boileau original: "Boileau" (*), I advised her to call herself Toinon; and when the second volume of "Onegin" was released, I firmly advised her to remain Tatyana, just as the priest had christened her. The change of name did not help much: Tanya, as before, whenever she met the pale companion of the globe the moon, would make a lyrical invocation to it, and as before, she compared her life to flowers thrown into the "turbid waves" of the Klyazma River; in her leisure hours, she loved to weep over her bitter lot and the persecutions of fate (which, in truth, pursued her very modestly, such that its blows were entirely unnoticeable from the outside), and over the fact that "no one in the world understands her." This is the La Fontaine element; no better was the Genlis-style moralistic one: she—begging me, who read heaven-knows-what, not to touch Werther—recommended moral books, and so on. Now all this seems ridiculous to me, but back then, Tanya was a Valkyrie to me; I obediently followed her prophecies. She knew her authority very well and therefore oppressed me; whenever I became indignant and she saw the danger of losing her power, tears flowed from her eyes, accompanied by friendly, warm reproaches from her lips; I felt sorry for her; I seemed guilty to myself, and her throne stood unshaken once again. It must be noted that girls around the age of 18 generally love to lecture a boy who falls into their hands, and upon whom they test weapons prepared for more important conquests; but in return, how they are later lectured by boys, for eighteen years in a row, and the further it goes, the worse it gets! And so, I listened to Tanya, played the sentimentalist, and at times, moral maxims, pale and gaunt, served as the finale to my speeches. I imagine that in those moments I was very ridiculous; my lively character was difficult to bind with the candy-wrapper of false sensitivity, and it did not suit me at all to carve moral maxims out of treacle without the ginger of Genlis’s morality. But what is to be done! I went through this, and perhaps it was not entirely bad:

(*) And to change, without respect for ear or sound
Lycidas into Pierrot, and Philis into Toinon. Art of Poetry.