Translated from the Russian by Constance Garnett
Russian Literature – Children Books – Russian Poetry – Ivan Turgenev – Acia – Contents
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X
All that day passed most delightfully. We were as merry as children. Acia was very sweet and simple. Gagin was delighted, as he watched her. I went home late. When I had got out into the middle of the Rhine, I asked the ferryman to let the boat float down with the current. The old man pulled up his oars, and the majestic river bore us along. As I looked about me, listened, brooded over recollections, I was suddenly aware of a secret restlessness astir in my heart.… I lifted my eyes skywards, but there was no peace even in the sky; studded with stars, it seemed all moving, quivering, twinkling; I bent over to the river—but even there, even in those cold dark depths, the stars were trembling and glimmering; I seemed to feel an exciting quickening of life on all sides—and a sense of alarm rose up within me too. I leaned my elbows on the boat’s edge.… The whispering of the wind in my ears, the soft gurgling of the water at the rudder worked on my nerves, and the fresh breath of the river did not cool me; a nightingale was singing on the bank, and stung me with the sweet poison of its notes. Tears rose into my eyes, but they were not the tears of aimless rapture.… What I was feeling was not the vague sense I had known of late of all-embracing desire when the soul expands, resounds, when it feels that it grasps all, loves all.… No! it was the thirst for happiness aflame in me. I did not dare yet to call it by its name—but happiness, happiness full and overflowing—that was what I wanted, that was what I pined for.… The boat floated on, and the old ferryman sat dozing as he leant on his oars.
< < < Chapter IX
Chapter XI > > >
Russian Literature – Children Books – Russian Poetry – Ivan Turgenev – Acia – Contents
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