" I made a nice little sum over a panegyric on his deceased excellency Pyotr Matveyitch. I write advertisements for shopkeepers too: "Unique opportunity! Fine tea, from our own plantations. They did not even understand, for the most part I translate from the French for the booksellers. "What sort of salt do you want?" I asked with a sneer. Those articles I took about from one editor to another everywhere they refused them: you have no salt they told me. I have written articles - they have been refused.
I have written a novel, it has not been published. I do not resent it: but God knows I am not enough of a literary man to go out of my mind. Nowadays humour and a fine style have disappeared, and abuse is accepted as wit. But no, he doesn't care to do it indirectly. Say it indirectly, at least that's what you have style for. In print everything ought to be decorous there ought to be ideals, while instead of that. It may be so, but think of putting it so bluntly into print. I read: "Go and look at that morbid face suggesting insanity." An artist painted my portrait as it happened: "After all, you are a literary man," he said. I did not resent it, I am a timid man but here they have actually made me out mad. SEMYON ARDALYONOVITCH said to me all of a sudden the day before yesterday: "Why, will you ever be sober, Ivan Ivanovitch? Tell me that, pray."Ī strange requirement. (1873) A bobok is a small bean Translated by Constance Garnett.
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