Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Sidor ...
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.
216
SÖNYA KOVALÉVSKY
a poet’s ready sympathy with all human conflict and
trouble, even the least important.
This caused her to take a lively interest in everything
that concerned her friends. All the domestic worries
of her married friends were confided to her, and young
girls asked her advice about their dress. The usual
verdict passed upon her by those who knew her was
that she was as simple and unpretentious as a
schoolgirl, and in no way thought herself above other women.
But, as I have already said, this was not a true
estimate of her character, just as the impression of
frankness and affability given by her manners was a
delusion. She was in reality reserved, and she
considered few people her equals. But the mobility of
her nature and intelligence, the wish to please, and the
psychological interest she took in all human things,
gave her the sympathetic manner which charmed all
who saw her. She seldom displayed her sarcastic vein
to her inferiors unless they were really uncongenial to
her. But she used it freely among those whom she
looked upon as her equals.
Meanwhile it did not take her long to exhaust the
social interest in Stockholm. After a time she said she
knew every one by heart, and longed for fresh stimulus
for her intelligence. This was a great misfortune to
her, and accounts for the fact that she could not be
happy in Stockholm, or, perhaps, in any place in the
world. She was continually in want of stimulus. She
desired dramatic interests in life, and was ever
hungering for high-wrought mental delights. She hated with
all her heart the gray monotony of every-day life.
Bohemian by nature, as she often called herself,
she hated everything covered by the expression
bourgeois. She herself attributed this trait in her
character to her descent from a gipsy woman who, I believe,
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
