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Tuesday, 5 September 1876 (24 August)
I have just come back from Poltava, and I have just spent twenty minutes before Antonelli’s portrait. His eyes and his lips have worked me up into a fever, and I cry out again, as before, as always: Shame on me for having let myself be tarnished, and shame on him, for he is a coward!Mardi 5 septembre 1876 (24 août)
A conversation with Alexandre had set my nerves on edge, and I came to fetch my father to go out, but he began asking me where I wanted to go, saying that he had his calling clothes with him. We simply went to Trepké’s shop to buy presents for the Princess’s name day.
Une conversation avec Alexandre m’avait énervée et je vins appeler mon père pour sortir mais il se mit à me demander où je voulais aller disant que ses habits de visite étaient avec lui. On alla simplement au magasin de Trepké acheter des cadeaux pour le jour de nom de la Princesse.
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As for visits... the people I might see are not in town, and as for calling on the wives of tchinovniks,1 I refuse!
Quant aux visites... ceux que je pourrais voir ne sont pas en ville, et voir des femmes de Tchinovnick je me refuse !
“I would have taken you to Madame Miloradovitch’s,” said my father, “but there has been friction, there has been foolishness.”
- Je t’aurais menée chez Mme Miloradovitch, dit mon père, mais on a tiraillé, on a fait des bêtises.
“What? What do you mean?”
- Quoi ? Comment ?
“Before you arrived, Paul did nothing but... well, as if it were... and this and that.”
- Avant que tu arrives, Paul n’a fait que... enfin, comme si c’était... et par-ci et par-là.
“Instead of treating him as you treat the others... well... hum, and now he no longer shows his face!”
Au lieu d’être avec lui comme avec les autres... enfin... hum et à présent il ne se montre plus !
And he began pacing furiously about the room.
Et il se mit à marcher furieusement par la chambre.
“And if we went now,” he went on, “people would say that since he does not come, we are going to fetch him, to bow and scrape!!”
- Et si nous allions à présent, reprit-il, on dirait que lui ne venant pas, nous allons le chercher, nous incliner !!
Michel arrived with five boxes of sweets from Petersburg.
Michel arriva avec cinq boîtes de bonbons de Pétersbourg.
As we were not going out, I allowed myself the innocent pleasure of slipping bits of ice down Michel’s and Pacha’s collars, which made them jump. Michel made me a present of a ball, and we all played until we broke a candelabrum.
Comme nous ne sortions pas je me suis permis le plaisir innocent de glisser des morceaux de glace dans les cols de Michel et de Pacha, ce qui les faisait sauter. Michel me fit cadeau d’une balle et nous avons tous joué au point de casser un candélabre.
We set off at night, and as Pacha was sitting opposite me, I began by calling him a scoundrel, an animal, a cretin, a brute, and ended by launching into a dissertation on Everything; and as the boy put forward ferocious theories and vaguely youthful and very stupid ideas, I told him his brain was still green and that for the present he should simply engrave my words firmly in his memory, so as to understand them in ten years’ time.
Nous partîmes la nuit et comme Pacha était en face de moi je commençai par le nommer scélérat, animal, crétin, brute et je finis par entrer dans une dissertation sur Tout, et comme le garçon émettait des théories féroces et des idées vaguement jeunes et très bêtes je lui dis qu’il avait le cerveau vert et qu’il ne devait pour le moment que bien graver mes paroles dans sa mémoire pour les comprendre dans dix ans.
A moon as in Italy, air as pure as in paradise, and no one!!!
Une lune comme en Italie, un air pur comme au paradis et personne !!!
“Do you know what I am asking myself?” the happy mortal who has me for a daughter suddenly asked.
- Tu sais ce que je me demande ? demanda tout à coup l’heureux mortel qui m’a pour fille.
“What?”
- Quoi ?
“Whether I ought to love you enormously, as I feel the urge to, or not?”
- Si je dois t’aimer énormément comme m’en vient l’envie, ou bien non ?
“Love me, of course; besides, love cannot be commanded.”
- Sans doute aimer, d’ailleurs l’amour ne se commande pas.
“Oh yes it can, at a certain age and in certain circumstances.”
- Si fait, à un certain âge et en de certaines circonstances.
“My dear father, you are talking nonsense! To begin loving or to stop loving! One cannot order oneself to do that. One imagines chimeras. When one orders oneself to stop loving, one believes one is obeying oneself, but no! For one goes on loving, thinking, suffering, and love goes away only when it pleases, just as it would go if one imagined nothing at all, and then one imagines one has driven it out!”
- Mon cher père tu dis des bêtises ! Commencer d’aimer ou cesser d’aimer ! On ne se l’ordonne pas. On s’imagine des chimères. Quand on s’ordonne de ne plus aimer, on croit que l’on s’obéit et non ! Car on aime, on pense, on souffre et l’amour ne s’en va que quand ça lui plaît, comme il s’en irait si on n’imaginait rien du tout, et on s’imagine qu’on l’a chassé !
From whichever side one approaches Gavronzi, one has to come down hills of terrifying steepness. When one thinks of the mountains of Switzerland and Italy compared with these, one wonders how it is that there one climbs them with the greatest ease [One line crossed out] whereas here one risks breaking one’s neck every time.
De quel côté que l’on arrive à Gavronzi, on doit descendre des montagnes d’une rapidité effrayante. Quand on pense aux montagnes de la Suisse et de l’Italie comparées à celles-là on se demande comment il se fait que là on les monte avec la plus grande facilité [Une ligne cancellée] tandis qu’ici, on risque chaque fois de se casser le cou.
This sentence is muddled, but let it pass, and let us arrive... where? Before the portrait of the cardinalino2.... fie!
Cette phrase est embrouillée, mais passons, et arrivons... où ? Devant le portrait du cardinalino....fi !
Notes
Tchinovnick: Marie’s spelling of the Russian chinovnik (чиновник), a government official holding a rank in the civil service; the word often carried a note of contempt for the petty bureaucrat, as it does here. ↩
Cardinalino — Italian: “little cardinal”; Marie’s mocking name for Pietro Antonelli, nephew of Cardinal Antonelli. ↩