_From Alexyéi Petróvitch to Márya Alexándrovna_
PETERSBURG, May 2, 1840.
Hurrah! Thanks, Márya Alexándrovna, thanks! You are a very kind and
indulgent being.
I begin, according to my promise, to speak of myself, and I shall speak
with pleasure, verging on appetite.... Precisely that. One may talk of
everything in the world with fervour, with rapture, with enthusiasm, but
only of one’s self can one talk with appetite.
Listen: an extremely strange incident happened to me the other day: I
took a glance at my past for the first time. You will understand me:
every one of us frequently recalls the past--with compunction or with
vexation, or simply for the lack of something to do; but only at a
certain age can one cast a cold, clear glance at his whole past life--as
a traveller, turning round, gazes from a lofty mountain upon the plain
which he has traversed ... and a secret chill grips the heart of a man
when this happens to him for the first time. At any rate, my heart
contracted with pain. So long as we are young, that sort of looking
backward is impossible. But my youth is over--and, like the traveller on
the mountain, everything has become clearly visible to me....
Yes, my youth is gone, gone irrevocably!... Here it lies before me, all
of it, as though in the palm of my hand....
’Tis not a cheerful spectacle! I confess to you, Márya Alexándrovna,
that I am very sorry for myself. My God! My God! Is it possible that I
myself have ruined my own life to such a degree, have so ruthlessly
entangled and tortured myself?... Now I have come to my senses, but it
is too late. Have you ever rescued a fly from a spider? You have? Do you
remember, you placed it in the sunshine; its wings, its legs were stuck
together, glued fast.... How awkwardly it moved, how clumsily it tried
to clean itself!... After long-continued efforts, it got itself to
rights, after a fashion; it crawled, it tried to put its wings in order
... but it could not walk as it formerly did; it could not buzz,
care-free, in the sunshine, now flying through an open window into a
cool room, again fluttering freely out into the hot air.... It, at all
events, did not fall into the dreadful net of its own free will ... but
I!