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254
SÖNYA KOVALÉVSKY
Later on she wrote in French:
My brother-in-law has decided to remain in St. Petersburg
till my sister is able to accompany him to Paris. I have thus
sacrificed myself quite uselessly. If I knew you were free, I
would join you in Paris, though I must say all this has quite
taken away any wish to enjoy myself. I feel rather anxious to
stay somewhere where I could write in peace. I have such a
strong desire for some kind of work, either literary or
mathematical. I want to lose myself in work, so as to forget myself
and every one else. If you wanted to meet me as much as I
want to meet you, I would go anywhere to join you. But if
your summer is already, as is probable, planned out, I shall stay
here, most likely, a couple of weeks, and then return with Fouzi
to Stockholm, where I intend to live on the islands and to work
with all my might. I do not wish to make any arrangements
for pleasure-trips. You know what a fatalist I am. I fancy I
see in the stars that I must expect no happiness this summer.
It is better, therefore, to be resigned, and use no more vain
endeavors. . . . Yesterday I wrote the beginning of " Væ Victis."
I shall most likely never finish it.1 Perhaps what I have written
to-day may nevertheless be useful to you as material. In order
to write about mathematics one must feel more at home than I
do at this moment.
In a letter written later on, when Sönya had settled
down in the islands near Stockholm, she writes:
I enjoyed the last few weeks in Russia very much. I made
some rather interesting acquaintances. But a conservative old
mathematical pedant like me cannot write well away from
home. So I returned to old Sweden with my books and my
papers.
Later, from the same place:
I have been thinking a great deal about our first-born.
But, to tell the truth, I find awfully many faults in the poor little
creature, especially in the composition. As though in ridicule,
fate has brought me into contact with three " explorers" this
year, all very interesting in different ways. One of them, in
my opinion the least gifted, has already been successful. The
other, who is full of genius in some ways and in others very
1 The italics are her own-
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