Despite the great advantages, enjoyed by poets (admit, except for the right to put the accusative instead of the genitive after the particles are not, and which-no more so-called Carta stihotvorcheskih, we have no special advantages for poets are ignorant) - how else, in spite of all their advantages, These people are exposed to great trouble and unprofitable. Not talking about their ordinary civil insignificance and poverty, proverbial, envy and slander Brothers, of which they are made victims, if they are in glory, the contempt and ridicule, on all sides falling on them, if they do not like the product, - but what, it seems, It can be compared with misfortune for them neizbezhimym (We mean the judgment of fools)? Yet these things and grief, it is great, not the extreme even for them. Evil most bitter, the most unbearable for the poet has his title, nickname, whom he branded and which will never leave. The audience looks at it as his own, He feels entitled to require him to report to the slightest step. In its opinion, he is born for her pleasure and breathes for only, to pick up rhymes. Whether the circumstances require his presence in the village, while returning his first counter asks him: Did not you bring us something new? It will be the only weapon he had in the army *, to look at friends and relatives, the audience will certainly require from him the last poem victory, and newspapermen get angry, why he makes long in coming. Did he think about the upset of their deeds, assumption of nepotism, about illness charming man he, once already gone smile accompanies the trite exclamation: surely you please write. Did he fall in love, the beauty of its purpose buys an album and has been waiting for an elegy. Did he come to a neighbor to talk business or just for fun from their labors, neighbor is calling his son and forces the boy to read poetry-so, and the boy most plaintive voice of the poet treats his own mutilated verses. And this is called a triumph. What must adversity? I do not know, but the latter is easier to, it seems, carry. At least one of my buddies, famous poet, recognized, that these greetings, questions, galleries boys and to the extent it besili, that every minute he was forced to refrain from any rudeness and telling myself, These good people were not, probably, intention to take him out of patience ...
My friend was the most simple and ordinary man, although the poet. When it is on such rubbish (so he called inspiration), he locked himself in his room and wrote in bed in the morning until late at night, odevalsya hastily, to dine in the restaurant, I traveled three hours, returning, again I went to bed and wrote before the rooster. This went on for two weeks he, three, many months, and it happens once a year, always in the autumn. My friend assured me, he only knew true happiness. Rest of the year, he walked, reading a little and not writing anything, and hearing they constantly question neizbezhimy: Whether you will soon present to us a new product of your pen? How long have waited a respectable audience of gifts from my friend, if booksellers were not paid to him quite expensive for his poetry. Having constantly in need of money, My friend published his writings and then had the pleasure of reading about them printed judgments (cm. above), that he called an energetic in his parlance - to eavesdrop at the tavern, what they say about us bondsmen.
My friend came from one of the most ancient nobility of our birth, than vanity and with the utmost kindness. He is as much valued three lines chronicler, in which there was mention of his ancestor, as a fashionable gentleman of the bedchamber three stars cousin of his uncle. being poor, Like almost all of our old nobility, he, raising the nose, assured, he will never marry or marry Princess Rurikovo blood, it is one of the princesses Eletskikh, whom fathers and brothers, as known, now they plow themselves and, meeting with each other at their furrows, otryahayut plow and say: "God help, Prince Antipas Kuzmich, as well as your health today Knyazhye napahalo?" - "Thank, Prince Yarema Avdeevich ... "- In addition to this little weakness, which, however, we refer to a desire to imitate the Lord Byron, Sell as well his poems, My friend was un homme tout rond, man perfectly round, as the French say, homo guadratus, people Foursquare, in the words of the Latin - in our opinion a very good man.
He did not like the company of his brother writers, but a very, very few. He found them too many claims in some twit on the mind, others ardor of imagination, from third sensitivity, The fourth in the melancholy, disappointment, on profundity, the filantropiю, of mizantropiyu, irony, etc.. etc.. Others seemed bored by the nonsense, other obnoxious in tone, third of its nasty meanness, fourth dangerous in its double trade, - generally too selfish and exclusively occupied him so his writings. He preferred them to society of women and men of the world, that, seeing it daily, They ceased to be repaired with him and delivered him from talking about literature and the famous question: You do not write something new?
We have spread our buddy for two reasons:: First of all, because he is the only writer, which we managed to briefly meet, - Secondly, that the story, now proposed to the reader, We heard from him.
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This passage was, probably, preface to the story, not written or lost. We did not want to destroy it ...
