The Remaining Works of Benedictus de Spinoza

will consent in the 19th century to be called Plenira, Temira, Selena, or Uslad. I soon rebelled against this classical name and, to spite Boileau original: "Et changer, sans respect de l'oreille et du son / Lycidas en Pierrot, et Philis en Toinon. Art Poétique." | gloss: "And to change, without respect for the ear or the sound / Lycidas into Pierrot, and Philis into Toinon.", advised her to call herself Toinon. When the second book of "Onegin" was released, I firmly advised her to remain Tatyana, as the priest had christened her. The change of name did little to help: Tatyana, as before, whenever she encountered a pale friend of the globe, made a lyrical appeal to her, and continued to compare her life to flowers thrown into the "turbulent waves" of the Klyazma River. In her leisure hours, she loved to weep over her bitter fate and the persecutions of destiny (which, incidentally, pursued her so modestly that its blows were entirely imperceptible to outsiders), and that "no one in the world understands her." This is a La Fontaine element, and no better than it was the Genlis-moralizing one: she begged me, who had been reading God-knows-what, not to touch Werther, and recommended moral books, and so on. Now all this seems ridiculous to me, but then Tatyana was a Valkyrie for me: I submissively followed her prophecies. She knew the power of authority very well and therefore oppressed me. When I would grow indignant and she saw the danger of losing her power, tears would flow from her eyes—friendly, warm reproaches from her lips. I would feel sorry for her; I would seem guilty to myself, and her throne would stand firm once again. It should be noted that girls around the age of eighteen generally love to school a boy who falls into their hands, over whom they test weapons prepared for more important conquests. But how they are schooled by boys afterwards, for eighteen years in a row, and the further it goes, the worse it gets! And so, I listened to Tanya, played the sentimentalist, and at times moral sententiae, pale and lean, served as the finale of my speeches. I imagine that in those moments I was very ridiculous. It was difficult to bind my lively character with the candy-wrapper of false sensitivity, and it did not suit me at all to scatter moral sententiae made of molasses without the ginger of Genlis's morality. But what could I do! I went through this, and perhaps it was not bad.