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One is bound to think, too, that it is powerfully affected by the measures that have been taken in Moscow and among us. The educated classes are working vigorously, sparing neither themselves nor their purses; I see them every day, and am touched, and when I remember how Zhitel and Burenin used to vent their acrid spleen on these same educated people I feel almost suffocated.
Burenin says that it does not, and that I waste my time on trifles; the Academy has given me a prize. The devil himself could not make head or tail of it. Write for the sake of money? But I never have any money, and not being used to having it I am almost indifferent to it. For the sake of money I work apathetically. Write for the sake of praise? But praise merely irritates me.
Only those young people can be accepted as healthy who refuse to be reconciled with the old order and foolishly or wisely struggle against it such is the will of nature and it is the foundation of progress, while your son began by absorbing the old order. In our most intimate talks he has never once abused Tatistchev or Burenin, and that's a bad sign.
The man pulls Onyegin and Tatyana down from their pedestals, but Pushkin remains unhurt. Pisarev is the grandfather and father of all the critics of to-day, including Burenin the same pettiness in disparagement, the same cold and conceited wit, and the same coarseness and indelicacy in their attitude to people. It is not Pisarev's ideas that are brutalizing, for he has none, but his coarse tone.
The causes of this are not to be found in our stupidity, our lack of talent, or our insolence, as Burenin imagines, but in a disease which for the artist is worse than syphilis or sexual exhaustion. We lack "something," that is true, and that means that, lift the robe of our muse, and you will find within an empty void.
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