My mother concentrated her every thought, her every care, upon me. Her
life was wrapped up in my life. That sort of relation between parents and
children is not always good for the children ... it is rather apt to be
harmful to them. Besides, I was my mother’s only son ... and only children
generally grow up in a one-sided way. In bringing them up, the parents
think as much of themselves as of them.... That’s not the right way. I was
neither spoiled nor made hard by it (one or the other is apt to be the fate
of only children), but my nerves were unhinged for a time; moreover, I was
rather delicate in health, taking after my mother, whom I was very like
in face. I avoided the companionship of boys of my own age; I held aloof
from people altogether; even with my mother I talked very little. I liked
best reading, solitary walks, and dreaming, dreaming! What my dreams were
about, it would be hard to say; sometimes, indeed, I seemed to stand at a
half-open door, beyond which lay unknown mysteries, to stand and wait, half
dead with emotion, and not to step over the threshold, but still pondering
what lay beyond, still to wait till I turned faint ... or fell asleep. If
there had been a vein of poetry in me, I should probably have taken to
writing verses; if I had felt an inclination for religion, I should perhaps
have gone into a monastery; but I had no tendency of the sort, and I went
on dreaming and waiting.