beast-ancient

Updated: May 17, 2025

But, almost without the knowledge of their consciousness, their sensuousness not imagination, but the simple, healthy, instinctive sensuousness of young playful males kindled from chance encounters of their hands with feminine hands and from comradely obliging embraces, when the occasion arose to help the young ladies enter a boat or jump out on shore; from the tender odour of maiden apparel, warmed by the sun; from the feminine cries of coquettish fright on the river; from the sight of feminine figures, negligently half-reclining with a naive immodesty on the green grass around the samovar from all these innocent liberties, which are so usual and unavoidable on picnics, country outings and river excursions, when within man, in the infinite depth of his soul, secretly awakens from the care-free contact with earth, grasses, water and sun, the beast-ancient, splendid, free, but disfigured and intimidated of men.

A. I. (Aleksandr Ivanovich) Kuprin - Yama: the pit