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Recollections of My Childhood and Youth by Georg Morris Cohen Brandes
page 73 of 495 (14%)
such situations as Petsjorin. No woman had ever loved me, still less had
I ever let a woman pay with suffering the penalty of her affection for
me. Never had any old friend of mine come up to me, delighted to see me
again, and been painfully reminded, by my coolness and indifference, how
little he counted for in my life. Petsjorin had done with life; I had
not even begun to live. Petsjorin had drained the cup of enjoyment; I
had never tasted so much as a drop of it. Petsjorin was as blase as a
splendid Russian Officer of the Guards could be; I, as full of
expectation as an insignificant Copenhagen schoolboy could be.
Nevertheless, I had the perplexing feeling of having, for the first time
in my life, seen my inmost nature, hitherto unknown even to myself,
understood, interpreted, reproduced, magnified, in this unharmonious
work of the Russian poet who was snatched away so young.


XX.

The first element whence the imaginary figure which I fancied I
recognized again in Lermontof had its rise was doubtless to be found in
the relations between my older friend and myself (in the reversal of our
roles, and my consequent new feeling of superiority over him). The
essential point, however, was not the comparatively accidental shape in
which I fancied I recognised myself, but that what was at that time
termed _reflection_ had awaked in me, introspection, self-
consciousness, which after all had to awake some day, as all other
impulses awake when their time comes. This introspection was not,
however, by any means a natural or permanent quality in me, but on the
contrary one which made me feel ill at ease and which I soon came to
detest. During these transitional years, as my pondering over myself
grew, I felt more and more unhappy and less and less sure of myself. The
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