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268
SÖNYA KOVALÉVSKY
circumstances and her own nature earned her forward
to the goal she had set before her. Had she known
what the delay which had taken place in finishing her
treatise was to cost her, she would never have wasted
precious time in writing "A Struggle for Happiness,"
the composing of which made her own struggle for
happiness so much more difficult than it might
otherwise have been.
However, she arrived in Paris and received the prize.1
She was the heroine of the hour. Speeches were made
in her honor, which she was obliged to acknowledge in
like manner. She was interviewed and received visits
all day long, and had scarcely a moment to give to the
man who had come thither in order to be present at
her triumph. In this way both the happiness of her
love and the triumph of her ambition were spoiled.
Separately they would have given her great joy. Her
tragic destiny gave her all she desired in life, but under
such circumstances that, as she herself complained, the
sweetness was turned to gall.
But perhaps this was also due to the peculiarity of
her nature, divided always between the world of thought
and that of feeling; between her need of yielding
herself to another and her need of having herself in her
own keeping. This eternal dualism enters of necessity
into the life of every woman of genius, as soon as love
arrives and makes itself felt as a force.
To this were joined the complications engendered by
S6nya’s jealous, tyrannical temperament. She exacted
from her lover such absolute devotion and
self-abnegation as must have surpassed the powers of all but
a few very exceptional men. On the other hand, she
could not decide to cut her life in two at one blow,
surrender her work, and become merely a wife.
1 Appendix I.
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