#karamzin

[oresti-s]

The Shadow and The Substance by Karamzin, Selections of Russian Poetry.

[finita-la-commedia]

Ah ! I love those objects that touch my heart and force me to shed tears of tender grief !

Nikolay Karamzin, from “Poor LIza”  

[inkedwingss]

[ferrari-go-vroom-vroom]

I’ve been to 4 schools in my life and I think that, despite this experience being difficult at times, it is also quite invaluable. I switched schools between 8th and 9th grade and it just so happened that they had a different curriculum and I had a chance to study the same piece of literature twice with different teachers. The book was “Poor Liza”. And it was very interesting to get two entirely different perspectives on it. My first teacher told us that it was about unrequited love, class difference, and naïvety of the young. My second teacher, however, pointed out that the main point of the story was that rich men are trash. I still like to dwell on this sometimes.

[finita-la-commedia]

Who would ever want to die, if only there were a few times when we would have no grief ? . . . Obviously it has to be this way. Perhaps we would forget our soul if tears were never to fall from our eyes.

Nikolay Karamzin, from “Poor LIza”

[finita-la-commedia]

In the next world ... in the next world I will stop weeping. There, so they say, everyone will be happy

Nikolay Karamzin, from “Poor LIza”

[finita-la-commedia]

My dear, kind Erast ! Remember, remember your poor Liza, who loves you even more than herself !

Nikolay Karamzin, from “Poor LIza”

[seabeyondclouds]

Why does my heart suffer without any apparent reason? Why is the light in my eyes extinguished when the bright sun shines in the sky? How to explain such cruel attacks of melancholy, in which my entire soul contracts and grows cold?... Might it not be that such anguish is the adumbration of distant woes? Is this nothing other than the kernel of those woes which Fate intends to visit on me in the future?...

Nikolai Karamzin, Letters of a Russian Traveler