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Lev "the man" Shestov section 15 of All Things Are Possible, with a note citing the Pushkin source by one A.K. ......:)
[quote]The Secret of Pushkin's "inner harmony." - To Pushkin nothing was hopeless. Nay, he saw hopeful signs in everything. It is agreeable to sin, and it is just as delightful to repent. It is good to doubt, but it is still better to believe. It is jolly "with feet shod in steel" to skate the ice, it is pleasant to wander about with gypsies, to pray in church, to quarrel with a friend, to make peace with an enemy, to swoon on waves of harmony, to weep over a passing fancy, to recall the past, to peep into the future. Pushkin could cry hot tears, and he who can weep can hope. "I want to live, so that I may think and suffer," he says; and it seems as if the word "to suffer," which is so beautiful in the poem, just fell in accidentally, because there was no better rhyme in Russian for "to die." The later verses, which are intended to amplify to think and to suffer, prove this. Pushkin might repeat the words of the ancient hero: "danger is dangerous to others, but not to me." Therein lies the secret of his harmonious moods.
[Of my mad years the vanished mirth and laughter
Affect me like a fume-filled morning-after.
Not so past pain-like wine is it to me
That as the years go by gains potency.
Sad is the path before me; toil and sorrow
Lie on the restless seaways of the morrow.
And yet from thought of death, my friends, I shrink;
I want to live - to suffer and to think,
To taste of care and grief and tribulation,
Of rapture and of sweet exhilaration;
Be drunk with harmony; touch fancy's strings
And freely weep o'er its imaginings...
And love's last flash, its smile of farewell tender
My sad decline may yet less mournful render. - my note A.K.][/quote]
[quote]The Secret of Pushkin's "inner harmony." - To Pushkin nothing was hopeless. Nay, he saw hopeful signs in everything. It is agreeable to sin, and it is just as delightful to repent. It is good to doubt, but it is still better to believe. It is jolly "with feet shod in steel" to skate the ice, it is pleasant to wander about with gypsies, to pray in church, to quarrel with a friend, to make peace with an enemy, to swoon on waves of harmony, to weep over a passing fancy, to recall the past, to peep into the future. Pushkin could cry hot tears, and he who can weep can hope. "I want to live, so that I may think and suffer," he says; and it seems as if the word "to suffer," which is so beautiful in the poem, just fell in accidentally, because there was no better rhyme in Russian for "to die." The later verses, which are intended to amplify to think and to suffer, prove this. Pushkin might repeat the words of the ancient hero: "danger is dangerous to others, but not to me." Therein lies the secret of his harmonious moods.
[Of my mad years the vanished mirth and laughter
Affect me like a fume-filled morning-after.
Not so past pain-like wine is it to me
That as the years go by gains potency.
Sad is the path before me; toil and sorrow
Lie on the restless seaways of the morrow.
And yet from thought of death, my friends, I shrink;
I want to live - to suffer and to think,
To taste of care and grief and tribulation,
Of rapture and of sweet exhilaration;
Be drunk with harmony; touch fancy's strings
And freely weep o'er its imaginings...
And love's last flash, its smile of farewell tender
My sad decline may yet less mournful render. - my note A.K.][/quote]
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