Note 152 — Chapter 16 Alexander Lavrentyevitch Vitberg

I thought fit, I don’t understand why, to write these scenes in verse. Probably I thought that anybody could write unrhymed five-foot iambics, since even Pogodin[153] wrote them. In 1839 or 1840, I gave both the manuscripts to Byelinsky to read and calmly awaited his eulogies. But next day Byelinsky sent them back to me with a note in which he said: ‘Do please have them copied to run on without being divided into lines, then I will read them with pleasure, as it is I am bothered all the time by the idea of their being in verse.’

Byelinsky killed both my dramatic efforts. It is always pleasant to pay one’s debts. In 1841, Byelinsky published a long dialogue upon literature in the Notes of the Fatherland. ‘How do you like my last article?’ he asked me, as we were dining together en petit comité at Dusseau’s. ‘Very much,’ I answered, ‘all that you say is excellent, but tell me, please, how could you go on struggling for two hours to talk to that man without seeing at the first word that he was a fool?’ ‘That’s perfectly true,’ said Byelinsky, bursting into laughter. ‘Well, my boy, that is crushing! Why, he is a perfect fool!’