V
From Márya Alexándrovna to Alexyéi Petróvitch
Village of ... no, April 14.
What a strange man you are! Well, then—“yes.”
Márya B***.
VI
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....