Chapter 30 - Page 2

and
more silly has never yet been included in any collection of
music,"--but which (probably for that very reason) are to be
found on the piano of every Russian lady. True, we also possessed
an unfortunate volume which contained Beethoven's "Sonate
Pathetique" and the C minor Sonata (a volume lamed for life by
the ladies--more especially by Lubotshka, who used to discourse
music from it in memory of Mamma), as well as certain other good
pieces which her teacher in Moscow had given her; but among that
collection there were likewise compositions of the teacher's own,
in the shape of clumsy marches and galops--and these too
Lubotshka used to play! Katenka and I cared nothing for serious
works, but preferred, above all things, "Le Fou" and "The
Nightingale"--the latter of which Katenka would play until her
fingers almost became invisible, and which I too was beginning
to execute with much vigour and some continuity. I had adopted the
gestures of the young man of whom I have spoken, and frequently
regretted that there were no strangers present to see me play.
Soon, however, I began to realise that Liszt and Kalkbrenner were
beyond me, and that I should never overtake Katenka.
Accordingly, imagining that classical music was easier (as well
as, partly, for the sake of originality), I suddenly came to the
conclusion that I loved abstruse German music. I began to go into
raptures whenever Lubotshka played the "Sonate Pathetique," and
although (if the truth be told) that work had for years driven me
to the verge of distraction, I set myself to play Beethoven, and
to talk of him as "Beethoven." Yet through all this chopping and
changing and pretence (as I now conceive) there may have run in
me a certain vein of talent, since music sometimes affected me
even to tears, and things which particularly pleased me I could
strum on the piano afterwards (in a certain fashion) without the
score; so that, had any one taught me at that period to look upon
music as an end, a grace, in itself, and not merely as a means
for pleasing womenfolk with the velocity and pseudo-sentiment of
one's playing, I might possibly have become a passable musician.

The reading of French novels (of which Woloda had brought
a large store with him from Moscow) was another of my amusements
that summer. At that period Monte Cristo and Taine's works had
just appeared, while I also revelled in stories by Sue, Dumas,
and Paul de Kock. Even their most unnatural personages and events
were for me as real as actuality, and not only was I incapable of
suspecting an author of lying, but, in my eyes, there existed no
author at all. That is to say, the various personages and events
of a book