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RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD
43
The upper story is the special domain of mama and
Aniuta; but now they are both sitting in their own
chambers. There is no one in the large hall.
I run several times around the hall, chasing my ball
before me. My thoughts wander far afield. Like
the majority of children who grow up alone, I have
already managed to fabricate for myself a rich world
of fancies and dreams, whose existence is not even
suspected by my elders. I am passionately fond of
poetry. The very form, the very rhythm, of poetry
afford me the greatest pleasure. I eagerly devour all
the scraps from the Russian poets which fall under
my eye, and I must confess that the more stilted the
verses, the more they are to my taste. Zhuk6vsky’s
"Ballads" were for a long time the only specimens of
the Russian poets which were known to me. No one
in our house took any particular interest in this
branch of literature, and although we had a fairly
large library, it consisted chiefly of foreign books. It
did not contain the writings of either Pushkin,
Lér-montoff, or Nekråsoff. I could not wait with
patience for the day when FilönoflPs " Compendium of
Russian Literature" should be purchased for us at
the instigation of our Russian tutor. This was a
real treasure-trove for me. For several days
afterward I went about like a mad creature repeating
under my breath strophes from " Mtzyri," or from
" The Prisoner of the Caucasus"1 until the governess
threatened to take the precious book away from me.
The very rhythm of verse always produced upon me
such an effect of fascination, that from the age of five
I began to write verses myself. But my governess
did not approve of this occupation. She had formed
in her own mind a very decided opinion of the
healthy, normal child, who was bound to develop into
1 Both by Lérmontoff.— Trans.
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