The years of approaching maturity were still distant, however, and my
inner life was personal, not real, so that an element of fermentation
was cast into my mind when a copy of Heine's _Buch der Lieder_ was one
day lent to me. What took my fancy in it was, firstly, the combination
of enthusiasm and wit, then its terse, pithy form, and after that the
parts describing how the poet and his lady love, unable to overcome the
shyness which binds their tongues, involuntarily play hide and seek
with one another and lose each other; for I felt that I should be
equally unable to find natural and simple expression for my feelings,
should things ever come to such a pass with me. Of Heine's personality,
of the poet's historic position, political tendencies or importance, I
knew nothing; in these love-poems I looked more especially for those
verses in which violent self-esteem and blasé superiority to every
situation find expression, because this fell in with the Petsjórin
note, which, since reading Lermontof's novel, was the dominant one in
my mind. As was my habit in those years, when it was still out of the
question for me to buy books that pleased me, I copied out of the _Buch
der Lieder_ all that I liked best, that I might read it again.