Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Impressions of Russian Literature - V
<< 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 been proofread at least once.
(diff)
(history)
Denna sida har korrekturlästs minst en gång.
(skillnad)
(historik)
dishonorable advances and proposals. At last he dies also and
leaves her an annuity, which her stepfather receives.
Three years — six, seven years pass ... time moves on.
She sees it gliding away indifferently and with it life.
Then a new ray of light falls into her existence; a fine
young man, whom she has won, also wins her interest;
then he hears from her associates, from her own depraved
step-brother even, the most scurvy calumnies in regard
to her past history, and draws back. She takes poison.
Or read “The Diary of a Superfluous Man.” The
title explains the contents. It is a man who is mortally
ill, and who occupies his last days in recording the chain
of common events which has made up his useless life.
He has from first to last been in the way in the world.
Once he fell in love, but only to suffer all the pangs of
jealousy, and experience all its humiliations. Elizabeth
did not love him, but a dazzling young prince from
St. Petersburg, who is stopping for a short time in the
provincial town in which she dwells. He challenges the
prince, who spares him in the duel, succeeds only in
passing for a bad man, and appearing to the object of
his affections as a murderer. Even when the prince
seduces and abandons Elizabeth, and when, nevertheless,
he is ready again to ask for her hand, her aversion to
him is unchanged. She gives her hand to another not
less magnanimous friend, who has got the start of the
unhappy lover, and who thus even on this occasion
makes him a superfluity. Here as always the poor
fellow has been the fifth wheel to the coach. And yet
we feel, through every line, how full of feeling, how
nobly endowed and good he is. The last pages of the
diary contain the farewell to life of the consumptive,
who has been given up by his physician.
“Jacob Passinkof” is another story of the same kind.
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
