ay he is right, for spring is really not a specially good
time to work. But now listen to me. Now I am going to do this little
thing just the same, to make this little point and effect, as Adalbert
would say. Afterward we'll go into the drawing-room and drink some tea,
and you will unburden yourself; for I can see well enough that you are
loaded today. Until then you will group yourself anywhere, for example
on that box yonder, if you are not afraid for your patrician garments."

"Oh, let me alone about my garments, Lisaveta Ivanovna! Would you want
me to run around in a torn velvet jacket or a red vest? Inwardly an
artist is only too much of an adventurer. Outwardly he ought to dress
well, devil take it, and behave like a decent person ... No, I'm not
loaded," he said, watching her prepare a mixture on her palette. "You
heard me say that it was a problem and a contrast that is on my mind
and that disturbed me at my work ... What were we saying just now? Oh,
Adalbert the novelist, and what a proud and substantial fellow he is.
'Spring is the most horrible season,' he said, and went to the cafe.
For a man must know what he wants, mustn't he? You see, the spring
makes me nervous too, I too am upset by the charming triviality of the
recollections and sensations which it awakens; only that I cannot bring
myself to the point of chiding and scorning the spring for it; for the
fact is that I am ashamed before it, ashamed before its pure
naturalness and its victorious youth. And I do not know whether to envy
or to despise Adalbert for not knowing anything of this ...

"We do work badly in the spring, certainly, and why? Because we feel.
And because that man is a duffer who thinks the creative artist is
allowed to feel. Every genuine and sincere artist smiles at the naivete
of this bungler's error--sadly perhaps, but he does smile. For what one
says must of course never be the first consideration, but the
ingredients, indifferent in themselves, from which the esthetic product
is to be put together with easy, calm mastery. If you care too much
about what you have to say, if your heart beats too warmly for it, you
can be sure of a complete fiasco. You become emotional, you become
sentimental; something unwieldy, awkwardly serious, uncontrolled,
unironical, unspiced, tedious, or banal takes form under your hands,
and the end is simply indifference in your public, simply
disappointment and lamentation in yourself ... For so it is, L