Ivan Turgenev — poem “The Dog” – AKirill, Learn, apprenez, translation, traduction, livres bilingues, bilingual books

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Russian Literature – Russian Poetry – Children’s books – Ivan Turgenev – Poems – Obsolete Russian Words and their meaning
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The Dog

There are two of us in the room, my dog and I…. A frightful storm is raging out of doors.

The dog is sitting in front of me, and gazing straight into my eyes.

And I, also, am looking him straight in the eye.

He seems to be anxious to say something to me. He is dumb, he has no words, he does not understand himself—but I understand him.

I understand that, at this moment, both in him and in me there dwells one and the same feeling, that there is no difference whatever between us. We are exactly alike; in each of us there burns and glows the selfsame tremulous flame.

Death is swooping down upon us, it is waving its cold, broad wings….

“And this is the end!”

Who shall decide afterward, precisely what sort of flame burned in each one of us?

No! it is not an animal and a man exchanging glances….

It is two pairs of eyes exactly alike fixed on each other.

And in each of those pairs, in the animal and in the man, one and the same life is huddling up timorously to the other.

February, 1878.

Translated from the Russian by Isabel F. Hapgood

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Russian Literature – Russian Poetry – Children’s books – Ivan Turgenev – Poems – Obsolete Russian Words and their meaning

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Russian Poetry

The Dog

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