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A poem by Ivan Turgenev |
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The Contented Man |
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Title: The Contented Man Author: Ivan Turgenev [More Titles by Turgenev] Translated From The Russian By Isabel Hapgood
Along a street of the capital is skipping a man who is still young.--His movements are cheerful, alert; his eyes are beaming, his lips are smiling, his sensitive face is pleasantly rosy.... He is all contentment and joy. What has happened to him? Has he come into an inheritance? Has he been elevated in rank? Is he hastening to a love tryst? Or, simply, has he breakfasted well, and is it a sensation of health, a sensation of full-fed strength which is leaping for joy in all his limbs? Or they may have hung on his neck thy handsome, eight-pointed cross, O Polish King Stanislaus! No. He has concocted a calumny against an acquaintance, he has assiduously disseminated it, he has heard it--that same calumny--from the mouth of another acquaintance--and _has believed it himself_. Oh, how contented, how good even at this moment is that nice, highly-promising young man. February, 1878. [The end] GO TO TOP OF SCREEN |