The Dzhavakhov Nest

I want to say something else, and I can’t… My thoughts whirl like fiery birds, and my soul burns like in fire. Faint images rise before me. I can’t stay in these halls; I’m drawn out into the air, beyond the walls of the Smolny Convent. I fly as if on wings, rushing down long corridors, leaving my friends bewildered. I take a cab and beg him to go to Fontanka as quickly as possible. Something pushes me, something drives me forward… The desire to write poems, as it used to be in the days of my youth and adolescence? To pour my thoughts onto paper in a diary? No, it’s something else—something that still has no name, no personhood—something completely new and unfamiliar to me…