Notes from Underground

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Part 2: Apropos of the Wet Snow

     When from dark error's subjugation

     My words of passionate exhortation

     Had wrenched thy fainting spirit free;

     And writhing prone in thine affliction

     Thou didst recall with malediction

     The vice that had encompassed thee:

     And when thy slumbering conscience, fretting

     By recollection's torturing flame,

     Thou didst reveal the hideous setting

     Of thy life's current ere I came:

     When suddenly I saw thee sicken,

     And weeping, hide thine anguished face,

     Revolted, maddened, horror-stricken,

     At memories of foul disgrace.

Nekrassov


(translated by Juliet Soskice).