Poor Folk

BELOVED BARBARA— MY JEWEL, MY PRICELESS ONE

P.S. — My heart is full! It is full to bursting of tears! Sorrow has me in its grip, and is tearing me to pieces. Goodbye. My God, what grief! Do not, do not forget
your poor Barbara

Novels are rubbish, and written for fools and for the idle.

Can it be
that the letters are the outcome of a mental disorder?

All the world is built upon the system that each one of us shall have to yield precedence to some other one, as well as to enjoy a certain power of abusing his fellows. Without such a provision the world
could not get on at all, and simple chaos would ensue

My lover’s birthday! Thenceforward, I could not rest by night or day.

Whatever might happen, it was my fixed intention to remind Pokrovski of our friendship by giving him a present. But what sort of present? Finally, I decided to give him books. I knew that he had long wanted to possess a complete set of Pushkin’s works, in the latest edition; so, I decided to buy Pushkin.

Only occasionally did we exchange a few words with one another — words, for the most part, that were of little purport or substance, yet words to which it delighted me to apportion their several meanings, their peculiar secret values.

Often, too, Pokrovski would give me books. At first I read them merely so as to avoid going to sleep, but afterwards I examined them with more attention, and subsequently with actual avidity, for they opened up to me a new,

an unexpected, an unknown, an unfamiliar world. New thoughts, added to new impressions, would come pouring into my heart in a rich flood; and the more emotion, the more pain and labour, it cost me to assimilate these new impressions, the dearer did they become to me, and the more gratefully did they

stir my soul to its very depths. Crowding into my heart without giving it time even to breathe, they would cause my whole being to become lost in a wondrous chaos.

So, whenever I am feeling heartsick and oppressed

and jaded and sad those memories return to freshen and revive me, even as drops

of evening dew return to freshen and revive,

a period grievous and joyous at the same time!