The Dostoyevsky Collection – Notes from Underground, Crime and Punishment, the Gambler and the Brothers Karamazov

PART II

PART II––––––––

à propos of the wet snow

When from dark error's subjugation

My words of passionate exhortation

Had wrenched thy fainting spirit free;

And writhing prone in thine affliction

Thou didst recall with malediction

The vice that had encompassed thee:

And when thy slumbering conscience, fretting

By recollection's torturing flame,

Thou didst reveal the hideous setting

Of thy life's current ere I came:

When suddenly I saw thee sicken,

And weeping, hide thine anguished face,

Revolted, maddened, horror-stricken,

At memories of foul disgrace.

Nekrassov (translated by Juliet Soskice).