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Vladimir Petrovich fell silent and bowed his head, as if waiting for a response. But neither Sergei Nikolaevich, nor the host broke silence, and he himself did not raise his eyes from his manuscript.
'It would seem, gentlemen,' he said at last with an uncomfortable smile, 'that my confession bored you?'
'Oh no, Sergei Nikolaevich rebutted, but ...'
'But what?'
'It's just that ... I wanted to say that it's a strange time we live in ... and we are strange people.'
'Why is that?'
'We are strange people, Sergei Nikolaevich repeated. You didn't add anything in your confession?'
'Nothing.'
'Hm. Anyway, one can sense that. It would seem to me, that only in Russia ...'
'Such a story is possible!' Vladimir Petrovich butted in.
'Such a tale is possible.'
Vladimir Petrovich remained silent. 'And what do you think?' he asked, veering to the host.
I agree with Sergei Nikolaevich,' replied the host without raising his eyes. 'But don't get startled, we would not want to imply that you are a bad person, quite to the contrary. We would rather assert, that the conditions in which we all were raised and reared are of a peculiar kind, and will probably never be repeated. We found your modest and unaffected story rather appalling ... not that it struck us as immoral - there is something deeper and darker to it than plain immorality. You yourself are not at all to blame, but one senses a kind of common guilt here, shared by all the population, something of a crime.'
'You exaggerate!' Vladimir Petrovich remarked.
'Perhaps. But let me repeat after Hamlet: "there is something rotten in the state of Denmark". Let us hope, though, that our children will not have to tell such stories of their childhood.'
'Well,' said Vladimir Petrovich, absorbed in thought. 'That will depend on what the stuff of their childhood will be.'
'Let us hope,' repeated the host, and the guests parted in silence.1
Preamble
I quote this text in full because not many readers will be familiar with it: it is the epilogue Turgenev wrote (in Russian) for the French translation of his First Love (1860) in 1863. It was published in the Literary Heritage ((ProQuest: ... denotes non-USASCII text omitted.))...