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262
SÖNYA KOVALÉVSKY
Nansen, at least, seems to have got the position he desired.
He is so kindled with enthusiasm about his voyage to Greenland
that no " sweetheart" could, in his eyes, be of any importance
compared with it. So you must refrain from writing to him the
brilliant idea which occurred to you. For I am afraid you do
not know that not even the knowledge that-would keep
him from visiting the souls of dead heroes which the Lapland
Saga says hover above the ice-fields of Greenland. For my
part, I am working as hard as ever I can at my prize-treatise,
but without any special enthusiasm or pleasure.
Sönya had shortly before made the acquaintance of
Frithiof Nansen, while he had been in Stockholm.
His whole personality and his bold enterprise had
made a great impression on her. They had met only
once, but they were so delighted with each other
during that one meeting that later on they both thought
it would have been possible, had nothing else
intervened to dim the impression, for it to deepen into
something more decided and lifelong.
In Sönya’s next letter, in January, 1888, she writes
again on the same subject:
I am at this moment under the influence of the most
exciting book I have ever read. I got to-day from Nansen a little
pamphlet with a short outline of his projected wanderings
through the ice-fields of Greenland. I got quite depressed by
it. He has just received a subscription of five thousand kroner
[about three hundred pounds] from a Danish merchant named
Gamel, and I suppose no power on earth could now keep him
back. The sketch is so interesting that I shall send it to you
as soon as you forward me a definite address, but only on the
understanding that I get it back immediately. When you have
read it you will have a very fair idea of the man himself.
Today I had a talk with B-about him. B-thinks his works
full of genius. He also thinks him much too good to risk his life
in Greenland.
In her next letter appears the first sign of the crisis
now impending in her life. The letter is not dated,
but was written in March of that year. She had now
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